#which doesn't always work but has had MUCH better rates of success than just going

[flowerish-cherry-blue]

book review: sputnik sweetheart by haruki murakami | 1999

summary:

sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. but whereas miu is glamorous and successful, sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a kerouac novel.

sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend k. about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell miu how she feels for her? meanwhile k. wonders whether he should confess his own unrequited love for sumire.

then, a desperate miu calls from a small greek island: sumire has mysteriously vanished...

my opinion:

first of all, i will say that i liked sputnik sweetheart much better than kafka on the shore. the plot itself isn't bad if you consider it separately from the love line, which is kind of crazy here. sumire is a person who thinks she wants one thing, when in fact she purely morally can't get near it. miu tries to ignore her past. and k. tries to get over her feelings for sumire while trying to at least remain her friend. this isn't the first time murakami has brought up the subject of split personalities, it feels like he firmly believes that we can be split in half in the literal sense, and one half will live its posh life while another sit in a corner somewhere

sumire tries to write her own novel throughout the book, and the way her worldview changes shows that this may not be what she should be going for. always when we meet new people, they have a strong influence on us, which is what happened when the girl met miu. under the influence of her feelings, she comes to a new awareness of what she's doing, and i don't think that's a bad thing, because it shows that she's still developing as a character. but honestly, probably my favorite character in this book is k. he, despite his feelings for sumire, understands that they can't make it work, and so appreciates their friendship. but at the same time, while he still has some hope, i don't really like that he's starting a relationship with his pupil's mother, it doesn't seem quite right to me. however, no one called him a one-love man, had someone?

the plot development is pretty good, although Ii honestly never understood two things:

• what the twist with sumire's disappearance in greece was for, whether she was actually on the island or got into the reality of the second miu, remained unclear to me.

• the scene with k.'s pupil, how much chance is there that this boy is acting this way because he is also bifurcated? what if murakami wanted to show that absolutely everyone, adult or child, is subject to bifurcation? that's only worth speculating about.

so what we have here is a bit of a detective book, with a love line that is a mess, since no one got anywhere, and except for miu, everyone is a loner with undifferentiated feelings.

sputnik sweetheart is a really good read, especially in its genre, as i said, personally in my opinion, it is better than even kafka on the shore, despite all the complexity of explaining the nature of the relationship itself and what love is, comparing people's relationships to a satellite's, and the atmosphere of loneliness the author conveyed, it is just amazing.

my rating:

3.9/5

«sputnik … ?»

«the name of a literary movement. you know—how they classify writers in various schools of writing. like shiga naoya was in the white birch school.»

finally it dawned on sumire. «beatnik!»

miu lightly dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a napkin.

«beatnik—sputnik. i never can remember those kinds of terms.»

#book review #haruki murakami #sputnik sweetheart #literature #japanese literature #fiction #romance #novel #books

[crystalelemental]

Limited CS clears. I opted to try to beat each stage with a type matching their ace. I uh. I somehow managed to neglect that there were two Ice types in this, and that is...that's not happening. So the Red fight is Flying instead. It matches the secondary type, I'm counting it.

Vs. Koga Poison Man vs. Toxic Ladies. I went with this fight first because I'm a moron. They didn't need higher status chance because Oleana is guaranteed, nor high Toxic damage because Emma is going to massacre them. Which is exactly what happened, by the way. 10k+ per shot off-type. Just no threat to her at all.

Vs. Glacia And now the exact opposite, the hardest fight I had. Ice on Ice violence could probably work on any who isn't Glacia. She also abuses Hail like crazy, and with Ice Zone, Blizzard is a guaranteed KO on any partner Irida could have. After much trial and tribulation, we settled on a solution. Ghetsis' Cold Snap. It's a bit risky, but if he lands it, it's a separate effect from the move, so he can re-queue and we can keep up pressure. So long as Icy Wind doesn't hit us, gauges are...well, still bad, but can be managed. And manage we did, after many attempts, as Irida threw down sync, and still didn't KO, but Ghetsis did get a clutch freeze against Hail and we were able to finish the job. This...was not our best work.

Vs. Molayne When I looked at my Steel-type options, I realized that Steel support is a rough time. They do not have many good options, so for High Score purposes, that's what DeNA should aim to release. My decision was between Registeel and Rose, or SC Jasmine and Summer Tate. There has never been an easier decision. Fun fact! Did you know that Tate's Flash Cannon into Doom Desire combo can one-shot sides after SC Jasmine's sync? Not even with Zone! And with like -2 attack, his sync was still like 30k. Summer twins were stupid good. That said, SC Jasmine is a bit of a weakness in the structure, due to Molayne being physical. Jasmine does not take Hammer Arm well, so Marnie needs to be on top of her flinch game. Marnie was not on top of her flinch game. This was the second highest number of resets to success due to her missing flinches early on and Jasmine getting dead. Pretty embarrassing!

Vs. Grimsley Idiot decided to be Dark type. Get SC Zinnia'd, moron. SC is so good it's disgusting. Legitimately think she's better than NC Marnie, that's not even a joke. Higher disruptive effects, no gauge considerations in 3v3, absolutely batshit sync with respectable DPS, complements Calem so well that in one turn they've capped the entire team's Atk/crit, etc etc etc. I love that it's Thievul who gets to do this. Justice.

Vs. NC Red I want to preface this with "I did make an honest attempt at Ice." I tried out Ghetsis/SS N, but it was not working. If I had SS N to 3/5 and EX, maybe it would, but I'm not about to invest that strongly into nonsense. Instead, we had to pivot to Flying, because Ice is just...it's bad out here, man. Once Irida's gone, when you're like me and refusing to pull Red, it's bad.

Thankfully, Articuno is also part-Flying and we're calling that. I did attempt Ghost against Glacia but my team uses NY Dawn as a tank and guess who's weak to Ice. This had to be the non-Ice clear. And despite the Hostile Environment 9 thing, I never saw Red even try to queue an Ice move. He always went for Brave Bird against Falkner, despite Falkner being weak to Ice. So I'm calling this legitimate. He's clearly maining Flying here. And...yeah, two tries. I got Anni Skyla to 3/5 on the paid select, and good lord what I have been missing all my life. 50% AoE flinch rate and Disarm is disgusting. On the lost fight, I need it to be understood that I only got Red to -2 special attack, and Liza still almost survived it, and would've won with another attack. Disarm, if I had gotten confuse earlier (or more flinches), would've salvaged that run. It's really strong as a supportive effect. Meanwhile Liza over here has absurd sync potential and DPS. She missed every sync crit on this clear and still just powered through with raw Giga Impact energy. Summer Twins, friends. Hilariously over-looked threats.

#champion stadium #limited champion stadium #matched type clear

[aflyingcontradiction]

You know, you can give people advice for decreasing their misery and increasing their happiness without also telling them their brain is broken and their perception of the world is fundamentally wrong. And I’m going to go so far as to say that you can and you should, because that shit is rude and condescending. And if you don’t care about being rude and condescending, consider that it’s probably not all that helpful either. I know for a fact I’ll listen to someone’s advice a lot more if they respect my mind while giving it and I doubt I’m the only person with that reaction.

And no, going “I know a broken brain when I see one ‘cause I’ve got one too” doesn’t make it any more okay. It’s your prerogative to be mean to yourself and hey, if that’s what actually helps you, maybe it’s even the right choice for you. Still doesn’t mean you get to be mean to other people!

#opinions: I has them #I can already feel that this is going to be my next dead horse to beat #But I literally just saw a post purportedly trying to be helpful but telling the person they were trying to help: #'Your brain is broken'. #And I've recently come to the conclusion that not only do I find that obnoxious #but viewing myself that way has literally never actually HELPED me find better ways to cope #Quite the opposite #So I have resolved to instead listen to my brain weasels and try to figure out what it is that they need that I'm not giving them #and if I can actually give it to them #which doesn't always work but has had MUCH better rates of success than just going #'my perception is skewed and I should not listen to my broken brain' #my babbling

[thebreakfastgenie]

Something I tend to do kind of instinctively when looking at the first three seasons of MASH is peel back the sictom funhouse mirror lens and look at what's underneath. Gags and hijinks often don't have consequences in the first few seasons the way they do later, because the show is simply following the conventions of a different genre. For me, it's easier to view the show as a cohesive whole if I don't take those early seasons quite literally.

Henry Blake can be a bit cartoonish and a bit wacky, but I can see a very believable person at the root of that, who is being exaggerated by the genre. He is genuinely inept and lacks leadership skills and is a poor choice for a commanding officer, but he also has a leadership style.

Henry's philosophy is that if has competent people working for him, he should trust them to do their jobs. He's not interested in managing them or even really in supervising them. This is a terrible fit for the commanding officer of a military hospital, and probably would not be a great fit for a civilian hospital administrator, but it's something that could be successful under the right circumstances. For example, running a small private practice in Bloomington, Illinois. If he had other doctors working for me, they were people he trusted. He trusted his nursing staff to perform their jobs. He trusted his secretaries to make the schedules.

And that's what he does at the 4077th. He knows Margaret runs an excellent nursing staff and he stays hands-off. He knows Hawkeye is a good chief surgeon and he knows Hawkeye and Trapper can both handle themselves and their medical skill and judgment is sound, so in the OR he lets them be. He knows Radar runs the camp with a supernatural ability. For all the jokes about Radar getting one over on Henry, Henry knows what Radar is doing and happily allows him to do it, because Henry does not want the responsibility, and Radar is better at it than he would be. He even makes a joke to a general that Radar runs the place, which doesn't go over well.

There are a lot of ways Henry fails, typically when he runs into someone who doesn't want to cooperate with his everyone just agree to be cool style of leadership. Frank causes problems in a number of ways, Hawkeye and Trapper take their antics too far, a situation comes up that requires a decision from an actual leader. But Henry's ineptness never hurts the patients. Henry is a doctor, the patients are what he cares about, and the patients are always taken care of. That 97% efficiency rating was achieved under Henry's leadership. You can't say that was entirely in spite of him.

It's important to recognize that when I say I don't think Henry would be a good hospital administrator, I am assuming he would behave the same way he does when we know him. I don't think he would be radically different, but we can't be sure he would be the same. I think a somewhat overlooked aspect of Henry is he does not want to be there. He hates the war. He doesn't believe in it. He is fully in agreement with Hawkeye and Trapper, which is why he gets along with them so well, and why they respect him even though they think he's an idiot. I don't think we can say Henry would be exactly the same if he wasn't acting in contempt. Henry's ineptness is an act of rebellion. In essence he's saying "you can make me do this job, but you can't make me do it well." Isn't going fishing better than people shooting at each other? The medicine he does well, because that he believes in. One of his best moments is when he confesses to Hawkeye that as much as he hates the war, he feels like he's making more of a difference as a doctor. He's a good doctor, and they can make him a soldier, but they can't make him a good one.

He still feels the stress of command, though, which is largely because he's trying to protect his people from the Army. And Henry steps up when he needs to. He refuses to endorse Frank's complaint against George. He comes through for Hawkeye in Sometimes You Hear the Bullet and Sticky Wicket. I think if he thought the staff of the 4077th couldn't run themselves he might start trying to run them. But he doesn't want to and he doesn't need to. He can thumb his nose at authority through incompetence and still save lives.

#mashposting #henry blake #i have said most of this before but! okay!

[moxfirefly]

I have to thank @southernblossoms for this one, she got evil!Leo in my brain and he hasn’t left ever since.

TW: Violence, Gore, Blood, NSFW content below

Rated Explicit (18+ years)

“She said I'm looking like a bad man, smooth criminal

She said my spirit doesn't move like it did before

She said that I don't look like me no more, no more

I said I'm just tired”

Leonardo always knew there was an inch inside of him that was darkness.

If left alone and unchecked, it would spread. Fester like some disease and he feared that someday he’d allow it to course through his body so freely.

And let it win.

It seemed today would be that unfortunate day. A night like any other, just more bloodshed than necessary. But hey, who said they should go and kill his father? Torture him to such an extent and string up his body for his brothers and him to find.

In that very moment that inch had grown in his soul to a degree that it blinded him. All he knew was to destroy, to hurt and erase those who had done this. He felt so cold, hands cupping his fathers motionless bloodied feet, the gentle tapping of blood and the cries of his brothers echoing in his ears.

So when Leo stood, bloodied (not bathed in his own), holding the head of the monster responsible, how could he regain peace? This had only brought a momentary second of reprieve and it was so fleeting. He looked into Shredder’s lifeless eyes, numbness spreading but a need that had started out as an inch. A need to kill everyone who had been part of this, directly or indirectly.

They all deserved so much worse.

They all deserved death.

Slow and torturous.

He had disappeared after that night. His brothers knew that this was the end of their leader, of their beloved brother who wanted to believe that good in this world could prevail.

For them they never imagined that Leo would just let the darkness take hold of him, nestle him with such a loving embrace. For him to embrace it right back felt justified, for his brothers it painted the gory picture of things to come.

They never expected to meet him in the opposition. To view him as foe and not family. Leonardo had quickly taken hold of the scum of the earth. He had molded the darkness to serve him.

Raphael thought Shredder was their worst enemy.

He never expected to have Leo claim that spot in a matter of months.

The Foot had fallen under his ruling, and he wasted no time in setting examples, and the bloody path those examples left behind never seized to churn the brothers stomachs.

There was no means of bringing him back, and perhaps it’s for the better.

Because whatever has eaten away inside of Leonardo cannot simply be flushed out of his body, nor ripped from his very soul. The body counts too high by now as he strays further and further away from what he was taught.

From what his father taught him...

_______________

You run with the unsavories. An eat or be eaten mentality that has caused you to survive years and years of gang wars and mutant freaks. Not like you’d throw about that last bit, much less when you’re standing single file, close to pissing yourself because he’s there.

And Christ he’s a sight to behold.

A rumor, a legend, a monster.

You tell him you’ve got valuable info, you know where to follow the trail that’ll lead to success. Even when your partner tries to push his chin up in front of Leonardo, you’re already wincing at what his demise will be shaped in.

Leo really loves cutting heads off.

A strong emphasis on loves.

You swallow, eyes flying anywhere but the rapidly growing puddle of blood that approaches your feet. Even then, your eyes stray towards the newest leader of the Foot, Leo punctures his katana into the head, a crude skewer as he lifts it and examines the severed body part as if answers lie in the gush of blood that falls. Those dark blue eyes move on you, you swallow.

He walks over to you, blade in hand, blood tap tapping onto the ground “Your information” Leo’s voice is weightless, bored almost. You motion towards your pocket, the crumpled up note with a poorly drawn map the key to your salvation. Leo reaches his hand in and you’re still, stiff and frightened by the intrusive touch and his proximity.

He pulls the note out and examines, the ghastly expression of horror on the decapitated head so close you can smell the coppery scent. “Can you get more of this? The coordinantes?” You crane your neck to look at him, his stature imposing. “Yeah, I’m your girl for that shit, swear on it” He flicks the blade and the sound of the head rolling makes your stomach flip flop along with it.

You feel the tip of a bloodied katana on your chin.

“Don’t make me cut off such a pretty head, hm?” You want to nod but the blade digs and Leo’s mouth twitches in something akin to a smirk. The small cut to your chin stings, but you wonder why other parts of you vibrate.

The danger, the adrenaline, Leonardo.

_____________

Your next meeting doesn’t quell your nervousness. Leonardo is an impressive sight as always and it’s imposible to ignore that maybe you won’t make it out alive every time you both meet. Unless proven useful, which you take to heart. You bring all sorts of information, names, rumors, possible gangs wanting to take him on, the police. Any word you heard in regards to him.

“It’s possible they might try to meet you half way, catch you off guard” The warehouse is chilly, that fall weather starting to hit but Leo’s unfazed, the black tails of his mask move with the gust of winds. “Stupid of them to assume that” The second floor of the warehouse seems to be his own, leaving the rest of the crew bellow. He sits on the windowsill, cloth running up his katana, it had been bloody when you were brought in.

“I’m just repeating what I heard, I’m sure you’re more than adept to take them on” You stick your hands in the pockets of your jacket, you’d been frisked not like you were stupid enough to bring a weapon to this.

But then again, the more he polished that sword, the more you wished you had something.

“What else have you heard? Any word on Karai?” The woman in question had appeared to have disappeared into thin air after Shredder’s death and Leo taking command of the Foot soldiers. Wether she planned to reclaim what was hers or if she had simply quit was beyond you and anybody else. “Nothing on her, she might’ve skipped town or the country” You offered, eyes following the sword as Leo placed it on a nearby table.

“She strike you as the type? A coward?” He walked over towards you, his expression so eerily unreadable.

Yet, your eyes wandered over him. Over muscle and scales. Overs scars and bruises. That illogical part of your brain making you wonder and fantasize, because fear could be exciting.

There was something exciting about Leonardo.

“Well?” He was in front of you, looking down at you. It hits you how minuscule you must look to him.

“Probably plotting? You did murder her dad” You find his eyes, you swallow.

“Well he murdered mine. Eye for an eye...” He spoke gently almost.

“Makes the whole world go blind” You finished for him, and maybe that was stepping on a line but you noticed the corner of his mouth twitch up. For a brief second you catch his eyes scan yours, move across your face and settle at your lips.

Passed your neck, towards your breasts.

He turns around and grabs his sword.

“One week, find more info on her, your pay is downstairs” You’re dismissed and before you process anything a Foot soldier is ushering you downstairs and shoving an envelope in your hands.

That night you dream about what your lips might feel like against reptilian scales.

—————————

Karai’s whereabouts are practically unheard off. If there was a trail it had run cold months back and judging from the word of mouth being passed around there wasn’t anything sustainable. You dig up anything and everybody. Every dirt bag with an agenda, ex Foot soldiers, opposing gangs, the mob and just about anybody you have in your radar.

It yields nothing.

You can’t return to Leo with nothing.

Rubbing a hand across your tired face, you make your way through the back alleys of the city. Your one week was coming up and all you had were weak possibilities and baseless assumptions. In your line of business enough information to create doubt can go a long way, but this was conspiracy levels bad.

So you thought and you thought quick.

Pulling out your phone you called him first. Perhaps a dumb move but at the same time you figured it showed that you were trying. You asked if the two of you could meet, the line briefly went quiet before your text tone startled you. He hung up and you were met with the address of a building in Brooklyn and to go up to the roof.

To say you were scared was to put it lightly.

You were shitting yourself.

The roof of the building had a green house which seemed unused but it looked like it was being kept up with the vegetation still green and alive. Your hand made for the door knob but something you could only name as a sixth sense made you freeze.

Leo was there, the shift in the atmosphere was impossible to deny. Your turned and blinked.

Wherever he had been, it must’ve been worse. There was blood on him, a fresh gash by his arm and the steady drip drip of blood hitting the concrete. “Jesus are you...?” You knew he was ok, but whomever had been on the receiving end of this had it by far much worse.

“Inside, go inside” He motioned for the green house and you did. Your eyes scanned around hoping to find something to help with. There was a nest of sorts in a corner, several blankets and cushions, a table and a chair amidst the plants. You found what you were looking for near the bonsais, a shelf with a box of first aid. Leo went towards a counter with a basin and a jar of water, he went about cleaning the gash on his arm.

You approached him with the box of first aid, blue eyes were cautious as you took out antiseptic and gauze. Leo had turned to face you, giving you more room to work on his arm as you bandaged it. “You alright?” Your voice held hesitation, Leo’s questioning gaze turned to amusement. “I’m fine, what I want to know is why you wanted to meet” You finished bandaging him and took a step back.

Pick your words wisely, you thought with a slight shutter.

“Listen I’ve spoken with any and everyone who might have any clue but Karai is off the radar”Swallowing a lump in your throat you shrugged off your jacket, worry manifesting in heat. “I know this isn’t what you wanted and I’m really fucking good at my job but this bitch is either underground or who knows! Dead for all I know!” The exasperation and worry was clear as day, he either took this the right way or the wrong way.

Wrong way being you end up pushed off this very building, at best ironically enough.

Leo swallowed the information, clearly bouncing it around his head. The dry specks of blood scattered across his green flesh. An odd silence fell amongst you both and even when he rose in all his imposing glory you kept your eyes focused on him. Getting a read on that cold calculated gaze of his was hard enough.

Your throat feels painfully dry once he has you backed up against the wall. Something about dying alone with not even an audience to witness it didn’t sit too right with you.

But then again, Leo’s large hand gripped your neck, nothing too tight but enough to alert you to its presence. Those blue eyes looked haunted but just beneath that laid something you couldn’t just place your finger on. The tips of his fingers lightly caressed you, one of them fascinated with your quickened pulse. You can’t blink, unsure what may happen and when he dips down your adrenaline makes you flinch.

Leo halts his movement, his blood feels like it’s pumping loudly enough for you to hear. Wide eyed you lean up instead and ghost your lips against his, Leo sighs through his nostrils and it stays that way. A pull but not enough of a push because there’s still fear in your blood and a hesitation that you can’t put a name to from Leonardo.

Your phone going off startles you, nearly making you jump out of your skin and to a fraction of your dismay Leo takes a step away. One of your contacts name flashed on the screen which meant there could still be some good news. Your turned away to speak, pulling a marker from your pocket you write down some information on your forearm. It’s a quick conversation and once done you turn to see Leo putting together his gear again.

You bit your lip, whatever was about to happen would just have to take a back seat. ‘Fucking coward’ you can’t help but think about yourself.

“One of my guys says he might have it on good authority that Karai is still here” You watch him turn his head to listen, even if he’s got his back/shell to you. “Well?” He pushes while adjusting his swords.

“He says she might’ve just met up with...with one of your brothers” Tense doesn’t even begin to explain what his body did, the mear mention of his family was a sore subject and you had been warned to not even attempt to open that can of worms. Swallowing and feeling your throat stick from how dry it felt you see him pull out a key and toss it to you. “Send me that address, you’ll get your money at the warehouse” You barely manage to catch the key to the greenhouse, but still you raise a brow at the offering.

“Come back here when you’re ready” Is all he says about it, confusion is painted on your face but when he moved to leave he takes a moment to hold your chin. “Don’t make me regret this” He says and before you can attempt to ask he’s gone.

You stay there, twenty minutes or so in nothing but your thoughts and his words swimming around your mind.

Feeling heat between your legs and a lick of frustration consuming you.

_____________

Two weeks you contemplate the key in your pocket.

Two weeks you let your thumb hover over his number but never press down.

For two weeks you find your pillow between your legs, trying to reach the sensation he managed with just his body close to yours.

But nothing.

It’s not enough.

New York is covered in rain as you make your way through the sea of people. Regardless of the many umbrellas you still get soaked and by the time you’re up on that roof, hand digging out the key to the green house you’re drenched.

Inside you shake off the excess and remove your jacket. The cold hits you and you can’t help but feel silly that you’re here, maybe this is his way of taking you out, you’re not needed anymore by now you assume.

You turn on the few lanterns that are scattered through the room. Kicking off your boots you rub your arms and shiver, flesh breaking out into goosebumps as the door creaks open once more.

Leo’s equally drenched when he steps through, the black tails of his mask sticking to him. The two of you just stare at one another, steady drips of water and the rain outside picking up more strengh.

Carefully you watch him begin take apart his gear, leaving his katanas by the door. He’s trying to keep your apprehension at low levels, his steps slow and soft. You let your arms fall to your sides and as your heart tries to hammer out of your chest you don’t flinch this time, even as his hands go for the hem of your long sleeve. You take a deep breath as his eyes wander across your now exposed flesh. The fascination goes straight to your core, feeling yourself warm up as his hands rest on your stomach.

With trembling hands you unbutton your jeans and step out of them and the inhale Leo takes as he closes his eyes makes you reach for him. He holds you against him and sighs, large frame shuddering at the feel of your skin against his reptilian one. He buries his snout against your neck, breathing harder as his hands run all over your back and rear. Leo grips and kneads the flesh and a groan escapes against your ear that makes your wrap your arms around his neck. He feels the softness of your breasts against his chest, he’d be a liar if he said he hadn’t been dreaming about them for months now.

You can’t wrap your head around it but he feels just as you fantasized about him. The roughness of his flesh, the edges of his shell and god his teeth nip at your neck with a growl. Wiggling out of his hold you start to undo whatever else needs to be taken off and Leo can’t help but smirk at your frenzied movements. He allows you to undress him, he’s gutted when your hands land on his waist as you start to kneel before him.

“No, no, kiss me first” He cups your face and presses his mouth against yours and that’s it, you’re done for, you’re hooked and can’t go back now. His kiss is possessive, forceful and it drowns every thought in your brain.

You pressed against one of the tables with the many Bonsais when Leo’a tongue slithers into your awaiting mouth. He sits you down on the table and nudges your legs apart to fit himself in between them, you crane your neck up losing yourself in his kiss. He can taste rain water, feels the sweat and rain mingle on your skin. God he wants to run his tongue all over you, eat you whole if he could.

It feels like forever when he pulls away, reluctance in his body. Blue eyes search into your e/c eyes, he wants to see something maybe your fear so he denies himself falling into this rabbit hole. Your hands press against his plastron and gently you run your nails down the hard plates, you shake your head fascinated by the texture. He’s rough but strong, a marvel of a species.

With some difficulty you managed to push your underwear off and spread yourself again for his viewing pleasure. “I want you,” You nodded, eyes falling to the hard length between his legs. Leo wraps a large hand around it and pumps slowly, body shivering at the sensation. “God I fucking want you so bad” You feel him come back to you, mouth on yours in yet another harsh kiss.

The tip of his cock nudges against your wet heat and he bites your lip at the sensation. Leo pushes into you so frustratingly slow, even as his girth stretches you to a point you’ve never been before. You want him inside of you now, and Leo couldn’t agree more. He bottoms out inside of you with a lengthy groan, head thrown back in ecstasy. “You feel... so fucking good” He growls out through gritted teeth, hips picking up speed as you wantonly take him in. You press your lips to his chest and moan with each slow but pronounced thrust of his hips.

His hand finds itself at the back of your head, grabbing fistfuls of your hair to keep your gaze on his. The slight tug burns so good and you can’t help but keep your pleasure filled gaze on his own. Lips parted you let him rock into you steadily until his thrust start to slam into you. The sensation spreads all over your body, little shocks of pleasure rocking your body.

“Mine, you’re going to be mine and only mine” He voices lowly, a threat laced in his passion. You’re too far gone to speak, nodding aimlessly at his every word, moans falling from your lips. “Nobody will own you like I do, nobody will touch you, Y/N? You understand? I’m making you mine” He pressed his forehead to yours, lost in this feeling.

“Fuck yes, yours, I’m gonna be all yours” You lick his lips and when he reaches a hand between both your bodies your mind goes blank. A vicious shudder overtakes you as you muffle a scream against his jaw. He fills you up so good and so warm with a strange vibration that sounds like an endless growl. Each rope he pumps into you making his eyes roll back. You’re shattered against, limp and raw throat from the scream that leaves your mouth.

He watches your come down, hand against your cheek, thumb running across your lips. When he pulls out just enough to watch his essence cascade out of your pretty little hole, he pumps himself back into you. His eyes say it all, from here on out whatever your life was up to this point is over and done with. Leo nuzzles you still lazily pumping himself in you, blissful to the little tremors your cunt produces around his member making him harden once again. Picking you up, bodies still joined, he makes his way to the nest of blankets on the floor.

You hold onto him, all you can do is hold onto him.

____________

It’s rather odd to be in this position. With an entire year that’s passed it never seems to feel normal, not that you’re complaining though.

Being in a position of power by proxy has its fucking fun rewards.

For example nobody in this city will ever contemplate taking you out. Unless they want a very pissed off Foot Leader to set fire to the city and maybe even the world. From opposite points to now standing at his side. No one is to address you as below them, or touch you or let alone breath the same air you do.

You can still hear the bones that were cracked when one particularly unruly Foot soldier made snide comment about you. Each crack of the mans arm being slowly twisted until his arm broke still rang in your ears to this day. Leo hadn’t flinched, hadn’t even scowled even as the twist turned to pulling the limb off.

He did in fact fuck you hard against the glass windows of the hotel suite he had you both in. The copper scent lingering on his scales, but enraptured with the heat enveloping his cock.

With the city at war everyone had began to run amok to do their own barbaric things. Each part of the city divided between gangs, mobs, mutants, police and civilians. You were out on active Foot duties, you were still free to do as you pleased but with protection and Leo demanded your whereabouts on the hour due to possibilities of abduction.

He knew you were a weakness.

But did he give a shit? Of course not. Let them try, he hasn’t needed an excuse for his tyrannical acts thus far, but if harm did ever befall you, you only wished you could witness what his methods would be to exact his revenge.

And he was so familiar with revenge after all.

You admire yourself in the full length mirror, examining the body that training under Leo has provided you. The mutant terrapin in question comes up from behind you and wraps his strong sculpted arms around your waist. You can’t help but smirk as he rest his chin a top your head. “We’re heading out in half an hour” He mumbles against your hair, enjoying the scent. You watch through the mirror as his hands rub up and cup your breast, with a sigh you rest against his strong build. “What’s on the agenda tonight? Purple dragons?” You feel him shake his head, fingers dipping inside the cups of your bra. “Mob,” Is his sole reply.

You bite your lip, gripping his wrists. “We’ll be late” You try to muffle a moan as he tweaks a nipple, he grinds against your backside. “I’m killing them regardless, and I much rather have the scent of your cunt on my hands while I listen to their boring excuses for parley” Your knees buckled when you felt his hand slither inside your underwear, finger already parting your lips and humming as he feels how wet you already are.

You feel his other hand wrap around your neck, keeping you upright and your gaze on the mirror as his finger dips into your welcoming heat.

He engulfs your every thought, every sensation; and what’s the fate of the world when you’ve got him? He chose you just as much as you chose him. You’ve never considered yourself good, scumbag street rat who just happened to make a living amongst the other scumbags. But this? With Leonardo and the trail of bloodied heads he’s left behind, it’s hard not to be excited to see gasoline be poured on the city. He trails his lips to the shell of your ear and you can’t help but grin.

“Mine” He says.

Burn everything.

#tmnt bayverse #tmnt leonardo #tmnt leo #tmnt leo x reader #tmnt leonardo x reader #tmnt Leonardo x fem reader #leonardo #Leo #leonardo x reader #leo x reader #leonardo tmnt #leo tmnt #ns*w #oneshot #evil!Leo #dark!Leo

[nymphigeon]

From me, to you || 07

♤ Pairing: Taehyung x Reader

♤ Genre: fluff, angst, romance, hybrid au, hybrid!Taehyung, detective!reader

♤ Words: 2.5k

♤ Rating: PG-13

♤ Warnings (for this chapter): Mentions of hybrid abuse, swearing.

♤ A/N: Surprise! I'm really sorry it took me this long, but I finally found the time and drive to write again :) Anyway, hope you enjoy!

Synopsis: A story in which he has never known love, so you’ll give it to him.

Series masterlist

06 07

"What do you mean this hybrid doesn't exist?"

Her eyes are wavering with an unspoken fear, perhaps caused by the bitterness my questions holds. I'm not happy, and she knows.

“It’s just, the chance that a dangerous breed such as the tiger hybrid would escape our system is basically zero..” The gaze she held on the computer screen unsurely moves my way. My expression must've instilled another layer of anxiety to the already existing one, as her mouth abruptly stops moving and her pupils dilate.

“Go on, explain.” The tone of my voice softens a bit as I notice her visible discomfort worsening. Even if there is no way that I’ll get any information from this place regarding Taehyung and his owner, I would still like to know why they’re both not showing up here.

Eun-ji takes a few deep breaths to stabilize her voice. As she does her posture slowly relaxes just a little and her eyes lose some of the nervousness they held before. “Because the first ‘successful’ tiger hybrid ran rampant after killing their creator, anyone who still breeds or creates them is being watched very closely by us, as well as by some other institutions.”

Perhaps it’s my lack of reaction that causes her to trail off at the end. Though I’m not judging her or her story, unlike she may think. To encourage her to continue, I give her a nod, tilting my head to show interest.

“The regular citizen isn’t even allowed to have one, needing special training to handle them. It’s like that for most hybrids that find their origins in wild animals. Creating tiger hybrids obviously requires a lot of knowledge when it comes to playing with genes and breeding them…. Well there are only three organization that are authorized to do so. All the resulting hybrids are registered and chipped.”

The explanation, which turns out to be a lengthy one, gets broken by a shuddering breath leaving her lips. She composes herself, clinging on to the little confidence she has left in her line of work to speak about the rest of her clarification.

“Of course people have tried to do it themselves, but those d.i.y operations have always ended in disappointment. If not taken proper care of, with substances only a board certified hybrid doctor can provide you, the pregnancy will fail. These are no easy practices they are dealing with.”

After the girls’ last words I give myself some time to think, letting a silence full of tension fill the room. It must be obvious that my mind is somewhere else at the moment, as the other girl in the room does her best to stay quiet. I don’t need much time however, my thoughts having quickly rearranged themselves as they were trained to do.

“So what you’re saying is, since tiger hybrids are hard to ‘create’, if you will, there are only a few people who actually manage to bring them to life. And so those few people are kept under close watch, as are the hybrids they successfully wake, am I correct?”

Eun-ji nods affirmatively, clearly happy that I seem to understand the situation. “So there is absolutely no way that someone without authorization has had a decent attempt at either genetically merging a human together with a tiger or getting a tiger hybrid pregnancy to be successful?”

Perhaps there might be a bit of scepticism in the question I asked, as her attitude immediately changes into a defensive one. “There is not! Whatever hybrid you’re searching for either gave you a false identity or is not a tiger hybrid at all, which would seem rather unlikely. I told you they get chipped right? Why not go look into that.”

“He doesn’t have one. We already had a hospital take a look at him, they didn’t find anything. ” The statement seems to shock her, the gears in her head instantly turning as to find an answer to this riddle. She however can’t seem to get one.

“They can be removed, can they not? They’re just under the skin. If someone decided to just cut it out they could. Terrifying, but plausible. Either that or one of your faithful authorized employees has been leaking information to outsiders.”

This is where Eun-ji seems to give up. Her shoulders sagging and a heavy sigh leaving her lips. “There would still be the problem of the missing equipment, test subjects, practice… How would you even get hold of fertilized human eggs to play around with? But I guess that wouldn’t be totally impossible. As for cutting it out… There would be a noticeable scar. The implants are always put in the same place, it wouldn’t be hard to miss.”

I make a mental note stating to ask Taehyung about all of this when I get back. If anyone knows how he got onto this world it would be him. “Is there a possibility that you could have someone look into it?” The girl nods in defeat, paying more attention to the ground than to anything else. “I’ll see if I can get someone on the case. I’ll have them contact you if we know anything.”

After those words she turns around in her chair, facing the monitor that had already put itself into sleep, and turns it off. Taking a notepad out of the drawer to her left, she quickly writes something down with the pen from her breast pocket. “I’ll get on it right away. Would you like me to walk you back to the exit?”

I shake my head. “No It’s okay, I’ll find my way back. Thank you for cooperating.” Eun-ji gives me a small smile, followed by a bow and walks out of the room taking the note with her, presumably immediately keeping herself busy with the extra work. Not wanting to waste any time I copy her, walking myself back into the direction we came from. Turns out it proves quite easy to find the exit by myself.

It’s already far past dinnertime when I make it back to the office. Not many of my colleagues have remained in their seats, most of them opting for a nice meal with their families. The few that have stayed behind are mostly known to live alone, quite like myself.

I quietly knock on my supervisor’s door, but when no response emerges from within the room, I can safely deduce that she too has already returned home. “I’ll have to write her a report about today later..” I mutter to myself, before stepping away from the door and instead heading to the cells at the back.

Technically the arrest period had already ended for Taehyung, as the law wouldn’t allow us to keep him locked up for any longer without any charges being held against him. His cell however technically was never locked and so even now, he is free to go wherever he wants. Though it didn’t change the fact that he still has no place to go to.

“Good evening. Had anything to eat yet?” He just chose to stay here and we accepted it. “Oh, hello! Yes, that tall handsome bulky man gave me something earlier, I can’t remember his name. He said something about it ‘being the best shit in town’.”

I slightly giggle at his quote, knowing immediately who it belongs to. “That definitely sounds like something Namjoon would say. What did he give you?”

Taehyung looks a lot better than he did yesterday. The stress of the interrogation seems to have completely worn off, instead traded for the sweet bouncy personality he used to show around me.

“Umm it was something in the shape of a circle and it had meat all over it… Oh! I think he called it a pizza? It was delicious!”

“You’ve never had pizza before?” The words leave my mouth before I actually get the chance to process them, causing me to instantly regret ever even opening my mouth. These days are stressful enough for him as they are, he doesn’t need a painful reminder of the life he never got to live on top of that.

The question doesn’t seem to hit him as hard as I though it would though. In fact, his demeanour doesn’t seem to change at all. Although sadly, it doesn’t make his next words any less painful. “Nope! When I first got adopted all they would feed me was wet cat food. It wasn’t great, but at least I got my three meals a day. The foster family I stayed at after my first owners mysteriously disappeared didn’t actually have the money to even take proper care of themselves, so at that time all I would get was whatever was left of their dinner that day, if there was even any left. It was mostly just greens. The lack of meat made me real sick at the time.”

He pauses talking for a second to look up at my face through the metal bars. The content look on his face quickly changes to one of worry once he catches my eyes. It’s no mystery why, I know I look at him pitifully. Even if he may not wish for my concern, I am only human. I can perfectly hide it when I need to, but this is not one of those cases.

“There it is again, that sad look on your face…” He sits up straight on the side of his bed to fully observe me, a tilt of his head giving him away. I send a sad chuckle his way as I reach for the door of his enclosure, inviting myself into the small space with him. He doesn’t object.

“Is it that obvious?” It was meant more as a way to lighten the mood, not as an actual question that needs answering. He still does however, giving me a simple slow nod. “You don’t need to feel bad for me.”

“Someone has to. You deserve at least that much.”

There’s a chair neatly placed under a small desk in the room. It used to be quite lively, with all kinds of bright colours blending into each other. It was a little positive additive into the dark grey room, but after all the anger that has been acted out on it, it no longer has that same shine.

I pull the chair out to place myself upon it, straddling the seat while I rest my arms on top of the back rest. Facing the tiger I use my arms as a pillow to lean my head on, making myself comfortable on the creaking furniture.

“Say, Taehyung, do you remember anything from when and where you were formed?”

He seems slightly taken aback at first, though quickly regains his composure. He also doesn’t immediately answer, first taking some time to think before coming back to me. “I was born a hybrid to two purebred tiger hybrids. They did their best trying to care for me in the little time we got to spend together, but seeing as it happened on a breeding farm getting to spend time with my parents wasn’t the plan. I got sold off pretty quickly, as soon as I learned to hold my first few full conversations.”

“Do you… Would you happen to know what happened to the farm? To your parents?” I fail to hide my apprehensiveness, needing too much space to form a careful approach. This shouldn’t feel like an interrogation to him, I never even announced one. There is little reason for him to answer me, the vital information from his side has already been given anyway. Nonetheless, even though I probably shouldn’t be doing this right now, I can’t just miss this opportunity.

“I heard my adoptive family talking about how the place was burnt down a while later. Most likely the police had caught a hold of it and they had to delete their left behind evidence. Both building and hybrids.”

Despite talking about the death of his parents, he seems to tell the story with relative ease. Probably not having much connection with the far past, his brain too young to truly hold on to the memory of them.

“They were successful too, as the case got dropped faster than lightning. It wasn’t long before the general public forgot about it too, believing it was just another misunderstanding. Besides, hybrid lives weren’t as important anyway.”

The amount of rights hybrids had when they were first created back in the day were close to zero, only strictly being seen as objects to show off whatever possible wealth one may have had. For a while there was even a popular theory going around that hybrids didn’t actually have the ability to feel any kind of emotion or pain. The genetic puzzle wouldn’t allow for it, as it had been tampered with to an extreme extent. This only built on the carelessness shown towards them, slowly chipping away at their sanity.

Although the rumours were wrong, they came from a place of truth. Facial expressions were rare for hybrids, as was the ability to speak. Most of them couldn’t even keep up with regular humans, exhaustion quickly taking over the little anger they could show. Scientists hadn’t yet quite figured out how to perfectly combine the pieces of genetic code and so hybrids were more like living dolls in the eyes of evil humans. Having no voice to object and barely any means to actually hurt anyone, it wasn’t much of a surprise the selfish nature in humans came to rise.

Luckily, or depending on how you look at it, sadly, these first generation hybrids were never able to reproduce. The doll like hybrid features eventually died out with the rise of the newly perfected pieces and the theory was debunked by a group of scientist who actually did care about the hybrids’ wellbeing. Those hybrids had lived through countless punishments, and every single one of them had hurt. A lot.

Right now hybrids in a lot of ways are superior to the rest of us. Having the combined senses of both animal and human alike, society has reluctantly given up on trying to contain them. They are still to be bought and owned, but no longer to be treated like dirt. The smartest of hybrids have even already gotten complete freedom to do as the please, no longer having to be bound to a human to roam freely. However, those unable to pass the close to impossible tests aren’t so lucky.

“I’m sorry about what happened.”

Taehyung gives me a reassuring wave of his hand, effectively trying to lighten the mood, along with a sad smile. It wouldn’t take a trained professional to know he still longs for his parent’s presence, even if he may do well hiding it.

“It’s okay, it wasn’t your fault.”

That doesn’t make the situation more okay, but I hold my remarks back. For now, that might just be for the best.

Taglist

@suhappysuho @intellectualxprincess @sana-b @littlewolfieposts @nellaphine @the8luvr @deathkat657 @elenaramos1 @namjoonies-dimple

#bangtanarmynet #microgalaxynet #btsgoldnet #btsguild #magicshopnet #bts #bts fanfiction #bts imagines #bts scenario #bts taehyung #bts fic #bts angst #bts fanfic #bts hybrid fanfic #bts hybrid au #bts taehyung x reader #taehyung #taehyung fanfic #taehyung scenarios #taehyung hybrid au #taehyung fluff #taehyung angst #taehyung x reader #kpop scenarios #kpop angst #kpop fanfiction #kpop fanfic #kpop imagines #kpop hybrid au #kpop fluff

[mimisempai]

When you kiss me, you speak to my soul

Summary:

5 times when Loki receives an unexpected kiss and once when he gives one. (or more)

______

This story inaugurates a new series.

"Together, for all time, always"

This series is my way out in case our boys don't canonically have a happy ending.Background: After the events of the TV show, all the members of the TVA are aware of their status as variants and decide to work together on a better TVA. The main team is composed of Loki, Mobius, Sylvie and Miss Minute. The rest will come as time goes by. The stories do not necessarily follow each other.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32203465

3123 words - Rating G

1.

"Okay Loki! You know that in order to get your time travel pass, you have to prove that you know the rules perfectly."

Loki, annoyed, rolled his eyes and sighed,

"Honestly, I'm a rehabilitated variant, god of mischief, who saved the TVA from its slavery, that pass should be granted to me without going through any fucking tests!"

Miss Minutes jumped in front of Loki and pointed her little finger in the direction of Loki's nose, "Ttttt a god don't swear! And when the new TVA administration, of which you are a part, put the rules in place, you all decided to start over. With a new, admittedly less rigid, but still regulated basis that you signed up!  Come on, only two more points to validate!"

Loki grumbled, itching to send the little clock flying.

Unperturbed, Miss Minutes continued, "Tell me the basic rules of time travel? "

Loki began to recite in a bored tone, "Do not interact with yourself, do not interact with your ancestors, do not interact with historical figures. Don't interact with the big events in history even if it means not being able to save everyone. Pay attention to small details and use your time wisely.

"Perfect my little Loki!"

"Hey, a little respect Miss Mimi!"

The little clock coughed and Loki noticed a slight flush on her little cheeks.

"Well, then explain to me the three major paradoxes of time travel."

Loki, keeping the same jaded look on his face, recited again, "The Grandfather Paradox, if you go back in time to kill your grandfather, you effectively kill your father, and therefore yourself. The Predestination Paradox is simply when your past self is the very cause of your need to travel back in time. This creates an endless loop of travel, which is why it is also called a closed causal loop. Finally, the Bootstrap Paradox. It occurs when something is returned, often to the traveler himself, negating the need for its creation in the first place."

The little clock jumped all over Loki's desk, clapping!

"Yay my little Loki! You'll be allowed to get your pass validated!"

Loki, happy but irritated by the little machine, asked him, "So that means I don't need your lessons anymore, right?"

"Absolutely!"

Loki rubbed his hands together as he said, "Perfect."

He began to move his hand, thinking of a spell to cast on the annoying little clock.

A voice whispered in his ear, "Loki... what did we say about spelling those weaker than ourselves?"

Loki turned to Mobius with a pout, "but Mobiuuus, just a little spell!"

Mobius bent down and took the hand with which Loki was about to cast his spell.

He said softly, "These hands do such beautiful magic, it would be such a shame to make them cast second rate spells."

He laid a gentle kiss to the back of Loki's hand and then walked away with a quiet step.

Loki, slightly surprised, touched lightly with his other hand the place where Mobius' lips had lingered.

Then he got up quickly, knocked over his chair and ran behind him.

Miss Minute, who had witnessed the scene, raised her eyes to the sky and returned to her screen.

2.

Mobius was waiting outside the elevator.

"Mobius!"

Mobius turned around, Loki was coming towards him with a quick step. He looked at his watch and said with a slightly reproachful tone, "You'll really have to learn to be on time!"

Loki, with a cheeky grin on his face, replied, "I find I'm making progress, yesterday I was 13 minutes late and today only 11."

Mobius rolled his eyes and was about to answer him when they were interrupted by the voiceover from the elevator.

"The elevator is momentarily out of order, please use the service stairs."

Mobius walked to the door next to the elevator and held it open, waving his hand towards Loki.

"After you."

Loki walked past him and began to descend the stairs.

Almost arriving at the bottom, Mobius, on Loki's heels, put a hand on his shoulder and turned him to face him.

"What's wrong?" Loki asked him, surprised.

"Nothing's wrong. Everything's fine," Mobius replied softly before taking his face in his hands and leaning in to kiss him.

A few moments later, they separated to catch their breath.

Loki gasped slightly, asking Mobius, "I'm not complaining, but what was that for?"

As they finished descending the stairs Mobius replied, "It was the perfect opportunity to reverse the roles, for once I was the one who had to bend over to kiss you."

Loki was still smiling as they walked through the door.

As they passed by the elevator, the door opened to reveal the other members of their team.

"Huh? Is the elevator fixed yet? We took the stairs because they reported that the elevator was momentarily out of order, like... three minutes ago."

"What? But we got on it three minutes ago, four floors higher than you."

Loki looked back at Mobius with a little doubt.

Mobius replied, "Just because you're the god of mischief, doesn't mean you're the only one who can use it."

3.

"Argh, for crying out loud, dates, more dates, always dates!!!"

Loki rubbed his eyes trying to fight the fatigue that was overtaking him.

He stood up, took a few steps to stretch his legs before returning to his seat and continuing to flip through his files.

"Need a helping hand?"

Mobius put his hand on Loki's shoulder and gently squeezed it before sitting down across from him without waiting for an answer.

He continued, "I know this isn't your favorite part of the job, Loki, but it's part of it and I'm glad to see that despite your reluctance, you're not afraid to pitch in.

Loki grunted, "I just don't think it's fair, Sylvie never has to do this kind of work. She's always out there."

"Have you been traveling through time, through all kinds of apocalypses like her for that long?"

"Hmph!Always the voice of wisdom huh?"

Mobius snickered, "Me? No, of course not, but the wiser of the two of us, that I am."

"You prick!" muttered Loki.

"Hey, I heard that!"

They both immersed themselves in the files.

After two hours, Mobius saw Loki get up.

"I'm going to stretch my legs for two minutes."

"Okay."

Five minutes later he saw a small bowl of salad appear in front of his eyes.

Loki said to him as he sat down, "to make up for my bad mood of earlier."

Mobius put his hand on Loki's forearm, "Loki, there is nothing to forgive.  You are allowed to have mood swings. I'm not asking you to be someone else. But thank you for the consideration."

He ate the salad Loki had brought him while the god got back to work.

A little later, he was disturbed in his research by a light snore, he looked up at the familiar sight of Loki asleep, his head on his crossed arms.

He had a fond smile. He knew that this kind of work must seem tedious to someone like Loki and yet, even though he grumbled and acted like a drama queen on a regular basis, it didn't stop him from working seriously.

Looking at the time, he thought they had worked enough for today.

He stood up and whispered in his partner's ear, "Loki, wake up. It's late. We're done for the day."

As Loki slowly opened his eyes, Mobius placed a kiss on the top of his head before getting up and going to put the files away.

Loki straightened up and was stretching again when Mobius returned.

"Was I dreaming or did you kiss me on the head?"

"Unfortunately my sleeping beauty's lips weren't accessible so I had to settle for kissing the top of her head to get her to wake up."

Mobius winked at her and headed for the door.

He turned and said again, "Are we going home?"

Loki, who still hadn't gotten used to the warmth these few words provoked in him, quickened his pace to join him.

4.

When Mobius arrived at the cafeteria, he saw Loki concentrating at the dessert counter.

He joined him, placing his hand on his lower back to signal his presence.

"You look completely absorbed in the contemplation of these desserts. Do you have a favorite?"

Loki turned his head toward him and grumbled, "There's always so much to choose from. And every time there's a new kind. I don't even know what to choose. In Asgard there was fruit and... fruit."

Mobius was amused every time Loki was faced with this kind of problem. He made it an insurmountable challenge. This time, Mobius offered to help him.

"If you want we'll take several and share."

Loki nodded, " You choose, because I don't know what to take."

"Okay, go sit down, I'll pick and join you."

Mobius took a sample of several desserts, located the table Loki was sitting at and joined him.

They spent the next hour sharing the dessert plate. It was just the two of them left in the cafeteria. Loki was finishing the tiramisu while Mobius was bringing a last spoonful of chocolate mousse to his mouth.

"So, have you made your choice? What's your favorite?"

Loki licked his lips and replied, "Undoubtedly the tiramisu."

He put his spoon down and asked Mobius, "What about you?"

Mobius, who was sitting next to him, moved closer and looking at Loki's lips, murmured softly, "I'm hesitating between the chocolate mousse and the tiramisu."

He closed the distance between them and placed his lips on Loki's. Loki parted his lips and let Mobius explore his mouth with his skilled tongue. Mobius finished the fierce kiss with a light bite on Loki's lower lip, soothing him with a final lick. Then he moved back.

"I think in the end, tiramisu is my favorite."

5.

They had just returned from the mission and were in the locker room.

Loki was putting his things away in his locker. As always after a successful mission, he was so excited that he was talking non-stop.

Replaying the events in detail, and because he was Loki, he didn't hesitate to emphasize the moments when he and Mobius had been particularly good.

The rest of the team was used to it and listened with one ear.

Mobius smiled fondly.

Continuing to babble, Loki followed the rest of the team for the post-mission debriefing.

As he walked out the door, he felt himself being pulled back. Then a hand reached into his hair and pulled out the tie that held it together.

He looked back at Mobius who was putting the rubber band in his pocket.

"Mobius?"

Mobius walked over to him.

"Why did you do that?"

Mobius replied with a mischievous smile, "Because when you have your hair tied back, I can't do that."

He raised his hand, and pushed behind Loki's ear the strands of hair that fell over Loki's face, letting his hand linger on the god's neck.

" Neither this."

With his hand on the back of Loki's neck, he ran his fingers through Loki's hair to comb it before gently grabbing it and pulling his head back slightly.

Having cleared with this gesture the throat of Loki, he deposited a rain of butterfly kisses.

Loki sighed, his lips parted, "Mobius..."

Mobius moved back again leaving his hand in Loki's hair.

"Nor this."

He raised his second hand and joined it with the first on the back of Loki's neck, tangling his fingers in the long black strands before pressing gently, forcing the god to tilt his head forward. Their lips were so close that each could feel the other's breath. Mobius pressed his lips to Loki's, his fingers clutching his hair as the god's hands found his waist.

Their kiss was long and slow, and when Mobius pulled back, nipping at Loki's bottom lip, He saw that his eyes were clouded and his mouth wide open.

"That's exactly why I like you better with your hair loose."

With a smile, he kissed Loki briefly on the cheek and headed for the locker room door, the bouncy step of one who has just won a victory, oblivious to Loki's hungry stare.

+1

Loki had had enough.

Mobius obviously enjoyed starting fires with Loki and never extinguished them.

Loki was on edge.

Not that Loki didn't appreciate Mobius' spontaneous displays of affection and kisses, the man was extremely inventive and talented, but he felt like a ball of clay in his hands.

His pride as a god of mischief was at stake!

He had to regain the upper hand, just a little, just a few moments.

"Hoho miss Minutes, looks like someone needs to get laid!"

"Hey Syl! I'm just a pure little watch. I don't want to know anything about your sex lives!"

Sylvie sitting with her feet up on Loki's desk fluttered a paper cutter in the air and snickered back, " Which sex life Mimi?"

The watch returned to the screen and grumbled, "Never mind, Loki and Mobius's love life is none of my business! Hmph!"

Loki with his hands on his hips and a dark look in his eyes, muttered to Sylvie, "Don't you have a job to do instead of gossiping with that piece of junk clock?"

"Hey jerk! I heard you!" Shouted the little voice from the monitor.

"It's so much more interesting to watch you mope about your mustachioed prince."

Loki slumped into the other chair, a sulky look on his face.

"It's not so bad though?" asked Sylvie, studying him, her chin on her hand.

Loki told her everything, from the kiss on his hand to the fiery kiss in the locker room.

"And you dare to complain?!" Sylvie asked him, quite irritated, "You have a man who is completely devoted to you, and full of attention for you.  Do you realize how lucky you are?"

"Wait, Syl! It's not that I don't like it. On the contrary, but... argh" Loki tugged at his hair, "I don't know how to say it, before, the Loki before the TVA, I've always been a hedonist who enjoys the pleasures of life, who takes and throws, but now, even though I'm still a hedonist, I don't just want to consume anymore, I want to give too. And right now I feel like I'm the only one receiving."

"Aw, you're cute you know."

"Hey! Don't make fun of me!"

"But no, well just a little bit, but really Loki, the fact that you're thinking about this, shows how much you've evolved right? Have you even tried talking to Mobius about it?"

Loki shook his head, "You know me, I often talk a lot to mask my insecurities and also because I like to listen to myself talk, but anyway what I mean is that when it's serious I'm unable to express myself properly."

"And show him?"

"How?"

Sylvie rolled her eyes, "Loki, are you the god of mischief or not? You are capable of seducing anyone! Don't embarrass me!"

A few moments later, alone in his office, he thought back to this discussion.

How could he surprise Mobius?

Mobius who knew how to read all his tricks...

Of course! The answer was obvious!

What better way than a direct approach!

He waited for the right moment and went to Mobius' office, sure to find him there.

As he walked through the door, Mobius looked up, a smile blooming on his face as he saw Loki.

"Loki!" He wanted to stand up, Loki stopped him by waving his hand. With one hand he locked the office door and with the other, using a flick of his wrist, he turned Mobius's chair around before walking towards him.

Then, without warning his lover, he straddled Mobius' lap and framed his face with his hands before throwing himself on Mobius' mouth.

Mobius pushed him back slightly and managed to articulate, panting, "Wait, wait, wait Loki! What's the matter with you? Not that I'm against it, but I'm surprised, pleasantly surprised, that you'd take the initiative like this."

Loki with his forehead and lips against Mobius' replied, equally breathless, "The problem is that my lover has been teasing me all week, kissing me everywhere and at any time, and hasn't given me a chance to return the favor, so now you shut up and let me kiss you! It's my turn!"

As Loki resumed the interrupted kiss, Mobius decided, with the last fragment of coherent thought he possessed, that all he had to do was enjoy it. He just ran his hands over Loki's hips pressing him closer until there was no more space between them.

He tried to control the kiss, but Loki would not let him, and finally, after a brief struggle, he gave in to the kiss and the shivers of pleasure that ran down his spine.

He believed to be out of air when Loki moved back slightly and fixed him, the eyes shining with satisfaction, licking his lips like a cat which had just devoured a pot of cream.

They slowly caught their breath and Mobius couldn't help but gently tuck a lock of Loki's hair back behind his ear in a gesture that was becoming more and more familiar.

Loki leaned into Mobius' hand.

"Hey Loki, more seriously," Mobius told him softly, "does it bother you that I'm acting like this? Because you know you can tell me."

Loki sighed, "It doesn't bother me per se, it's just the lack of reciprocity, the fact that I'm receiving a lot and giving nothing."

Mobius shook his head with a smile, "Sweetheart," he couldn't help but notice that Loki seemed to appreciate the endearment, "that's not how it works. When you kissed me just now, did you feel pleasure?"

Loki, indignant, protested, "Yes, of course I-"

Mobius put a finger to his lips.

"It's the same for me, you know. I am aware that in your head the gears are spinning wildly non stop, but in such cases, don't think. Just enjoy it, there's nothing selfish about it."

Loki nodded, then passionately kissed his lover once more, until they were both out of breath again.

Then Loki traced a path of kisses from Mobius' chin to his ear and nibbled on his lobe before whispering, his breath making Mobius shudder, "The rest is for later my love..."

He stood up and headed for the door while swaying his hips, fully aware of the gaze that followed him.

Then before he walked through the door, he threw over his shoulder, with a mischievous smile, "I too can light a fire and make you burn for me."

_________

Not beta'd I hope you enjoyed it 🥰

#loki #lokius fic #lokius #moki #wowki #loki x mobius #loki laufeyson #mobius m mobius #miss minutes #sylvie laufeydottir #established relationship #5+1 things

[drarryruinedme7]

Last year I made a post with all my fave Drarry fics from my first year of fandom. Have my second year wrap up! Listed by Rating and then length. 

RATING: TEEN AND UP AUDIENCES

Beautiful by @xx-thedarklord-xx​​ (2017; 8.9k)

Summary: With the second task looming closer, Harry escapes to the Black Lake to open the egg, in the hopes of avoiding Myrtle. The Mersong isn't just helpful in figuring out that Mermaids are real, it attracts his very own handsome Merman.

*I didn’t know I love merpeople AUs until I read this one. It was cute and sweet and I’m really glad I read it. 

Hermione Granger's Hogwarts Crammer for Delinquents on the Run by @waspabi​​ (2017; 93.3k)

Summary: 'You're a wizard, Harry' is easier to hear from a half-giant when you're eleven, rather than from some kids on a tube platform when you're seventeen and late for work.

*What can I say. This is a masterpiece, it absolutely entered my heart to never leave it again. Best AU ever!!!

Away Childish Things by @letteredlettered​​ (2018; 153.8k)

Summary: Harry gets de-aged. Malfoy has to help him.

* This has been the turning point of my Drarry passion this year. First, I discovered Lettered (good Lord why hadn’t I before?!) and then, well. This fic brought out so many feelings in me and I’ve already re-read it something like 5 or 6 times in the span of a few months. Amazing.

RATING: MATURE

you’ve got the antidote for me by Kandakicksass (2018; 20.7k)

Summary: When Harry Potter unintentionally severs their soulbond before it can fully form, Draco Malfoy resigns himself to a slow death and decides not to burden Harry with a soulmate he's made it very clear he doesn't want.He's never been selfless before, but for Harry, he can try.

* The angst!! It’s usually not my cuppa, but this was bittersweet and just so well written, I couldn’t stop reading. Find the rec for this one at this post.

RATING: EXPLICIT

Give Me Sweet Oblivion by @tryslora​​ (2012; 4k)

Summary: Italy seems like a long way to go to keep a fetish secret. But the club is exclusive, and the far away location, and Muggle nature, promises anonymity from Wizarding Britain. The only problem is that sometimes, great minds think alike.

*Super hot, I love finding old gems like this one. Plus, Italy. Go, folks!

Shiny Things, Slightly Damaged by @lqtraintracks​​ (2020; 5.3k)

Summary: Harry may not ever have had to see it if McGonagall hadn’t decided it was a good idea to hold a ceremony on the grounds outside before the Sorting in the Hall. And by ‘it’ he’s referring to Draco Malfoy on a motorbike.

*jsklajdksajfa This one! THIS ONE! Slayed me. I read it feverishly and then like, fainted at Draco on a motorbike.... this fic surprised me and I 100% loved it.

A Ghost of Blissful Feelings by @alpha-exodus​​ (2020; 6k)

Summary: Harry hadn't expected to spend his eighth year fucking Draco Malfoy, but it's the only thing that helps him let go.

*Dunno guys, I’m amazed by how much this one hit me. You should read the tags before diving in, but it was darkish in the right way, Harry and Draco suffers and find peace in a ‘’special’’ way, but I stand by it. Hot and intense.

Tell Me (What you Need) by @keyflight790​​ (2019; 6k)

Summary: Even though Harry was paying for his Dom, there were limits; breaking points in which someone would refuse, no matter how many Galleons were pushed in their direction.

*Okay, I may be biased because this is a gift for me, but Chris never lets down with her amazing writing and this has everything I need and more: Dom!Rentboy!Draco and a perfectly sweet Harry with a Daddy!kink. I mean.

Dangerous by Faith Wood (2014; 6.3k)

Summary: Being trapped in a dungeon with Malfoy — who's a werewolf, a former Death Eater, and a giant git — is definitely dangerous. Harry has no reason to be excited. None at all.

*Y’all know Faith Wood is like my n.1 fave Drarry author. I have no idea why I had never read this one though!!! It’s actually phenomenal, scorching hot and just dsjkafjaks love this werewolf!Draco. OMG.

Scent and Sensibility by aidaninkling (2018; 7.5k)

Summary: [...] Draco's always known he'd be married off as a trophy omega, but suddenly his mother's trying to make him king by promising him to some stupidly good-looking alpha and she just won't stop smiling at him. Does fate's cruelty know no end?!

*This blew my mind. A/B/O AU so hot I melted while reading it and I loved it so much that I re-read it three times IN A ROW. No kidding. Read it. 

The Eighth Tale by @letteredlettered​​ (2012; 12k)

Summary: Draco Malfoy tries to fix the past, but instead mucks it up some more. For Harry, it all becomes quite clear.

*Back to Lettered. I love Time Travel fics, and this just delivered perfectly. The ending was also enigmatic enough to keep me wandering, which I always appreciate in these kind of stories. 

Sex, Lies and Veritaserum by @letteredlettered​​ (2011; 17.9k)

Summary: This entire fic is one long conversation about sex.

*LOL alright, I’ve developed a new obsession this year (clearly). This was ...gosh! Hot but it also gives away a certain level of intimacy and trust between Draco and Harry to be so open about their kinks... it was perfect.

On One’s Knees by pir8fancier (2008; 33.8k)

Summary: The war is over and to the victors go the spoils.

* The fic which made me fall in love with DownAndOut!Draco. 

The Pirate and the Prince by @nerdherderette​ (2019; 49.2k)

Summary: Draco can't believe that fate and circumstance have made him a stowaway on the Master of Death's ship. He doesn't know what's worse: the dread pirate's legendary vendetta against the aristocracy, or the fact that his captor is the most infuriating yet irrefutably fascinating man Draco has ever met.

*Okay y’all. Nerd is a great person and author. She is phenomenal. And this fic shows it so well. The pirate!AU the Drarry fandom both needed and deserved. Sublime.

Unhook the Stars by jad (2016; 70.5k)

Summary: [...] Seventy-thousand words of pornographic discourse between two boys-turned-men that still haven't learned how to communicate like normal people – with words. Guest appearances by Pansy Parkinson, Neville Longbottom, Hermione Granger, Blaise Zabini, Teddy Lupin, Gregory Goyle, the Weird Sisters, ex-wives, several Weasleys, a Boggart, and a Honey Badger.

*Again, Dom!Draco and such a beautiful sub!Harry. They stole my heart. In this fic they grow up together through the aftermath of the war and they just... they have this intense Dom/sub relationship, I can’t... explain how much I loved this. Scorpius also makes his appearance and it’s so real and cute!

Such Great Heights by aideomai (2015; 93.3k)

Summary: Draco Malfoy, wide-eyed and pale and in a decidedly ragged shirt, was crouched next to the pile of whatever the dragon had been eating. Harry threw himself to a halt and yelled, “Merlin, how many times do I have to save your life?”

*This is one of the last ones I’ve read. Find my rec for it here. Such a cool fic, with a shunned Draco who gets to be so happy in the end, it made me happy too.

Burn The Witch by @lettersbyelise​​ (2019; 95.8)

Summary: When Harry Potter is sent in to investigate Draco Malfoy’s successful potions company, posing as Draco’s bodyguard, he doesn’t know the case will launch a series of events that will change his life — and Draco’s. A story about choices, scars, Chopin piano pieces, and finding all kinds of love in the most unexpected places.

*I do not have the words to express what this fic means to me. First of all, it’s how I met Elise who’s an amazing person and who I’m glad to call friend. She’s the sweetest. And also incredibly talented. This fic will take your breath away from the first word to the last one. Smol!Scorpius is perfectly characterised and my absolute favourite bit of the fic. 

Who we are in the shadows by @quicksilvermaid​​ (2019; 99.7k)

Summary: What happens when you’re forced to become the very thing you despise? Ex-Auror Harry Potter, tossed out of the Ministry for something he had no control over, has been looking for a way back to his former life. When he comes across Draco Malfoy in the criminal underbelly of Wizarding London and in need of protection, Harry figures bringing him in to face the Ministry's justice is his ticket back to everything he's lost. But nothing is exactly as it seems. Not even Harry himself. And as he gets drawn further and further into Malfoy's world of honour and deception he finds himself questioning everything he thought he knew—about his childhood nemesis, the Ministry job he misses so much, and most of all, about himself. What happens when you’re forced to see that you were wrong?

*Another incredible person who I got to know better thanks to her breathtaking storytelling and her sweetness for sharing it with me. Quick made something amazing with this fic and I urge you to read it. It was my first creature fic ever, first time I read about werewolves and I totally fell in love with it. Sheer perfection. 

Freedom to be by @quicksilvermaid​​  (2019; 169.5k)

Summary: Harry Potter is the Boy Who Lived. 12 years after the war, he's become the Boy Who Lived For Everyone Else. He has the perfect wife. The perfect house. The perfect job. The perfect friends. Only nothing feels perfect. Until one day he stumbles across a club called Release and begins a journey of self-discovery that takes him to a very different place.

*Well, could I just miss out on another one of Quick’s great works? With, again, Dom!Draco!??? No, I couldn’t! This is such a great exploration of BDSM and what it means and Harry’s path into it. 

19 Years and 5 Minutes Later by TheMightyFlynn (2015; 202.8k)

Summary: Five minutes after his happily-ever-after, Harry finds himself locked in the public loos with an angry Draco Malfoy and a need that he has denied for 19 years.

*Find my rec for this fic here. It’s really long and has Ginny bashing, but it’s totally worth it!! 

#drarry #drarry squad #drarry fic rec #drarry rec #draco x harry #draco malfoy #harry potter #drarry fics #drarry fanfictions #my recs #two years of drarry #amazing authors #amazing stories

[deltaengineering]

Spring Anime 2021: Embarrassment of Riches

So this current anime season absolutely stinks, which just makes the last one look even more impressive. Well, maybe not all of it...

Zombieland Saga Revenge

First off, you don't need to tell me that the following is a severe outlier opinion. We good? Ok. ZLSR is, in a word, subpar. I liked S1 back in the day, but it was already in the process of getting lazy towards the end. S2 continues this trend and is basically just another idol show. And as someone who actually does watch other idol shows I have to say that it's not a particularly good one of those either. The zombie gimmick has mostly stopped mattering and we're just doing what every idol show does, only with the odd occasional sight gag. The alleged subversive qualities mostly amount to a flashback for Yuugiri, which is admittedly the best part of the show but feels like it barely has anything to do with anything. Apart from that, it's a bunch of generic idol plots, rehashed character beats, shoddy attempts at twists (while not connecting to any setups from S1), and the obligatory "idols give us hope" ending, which is terribly hackneyed and flat out bad. Tae gets further memed into the ground, because of course she does. And there's stuff that was simply never good to begin with, like Kotarou and his comedy schtick, which gets truly insufferable now that there's no qualities to distract from it. It really makes me think that S1 wasn't even all that good to begin with and seems like an attempt to turn this surprise success into an easy money longrunner with no edge and no ambitions. "The idol show for people who don't watch idol shows" indeed, but not the way you mean it. 4/10

Bakuten

But not to dwell on the failures, with the second show we're already above the cut — barely. This one got my attention with its really impressive performance scenes early on and it totally sticks to that, which is even more impressive. But besides that? Well, this is by far the most predictable show in a season where I watched an unambitious Kiraralike and put ZLS on blast for having no ideas. The characters are a mixed bag, some are cool (Shida, Asawo), some are very annoying (Mashiro), but those are the supports. The main cast is extremely one-dimensional, which is fine until they try to heap a ton of pathos on their lead, which doesn't go well. But I guess execution matters, and Bakuten is slick enough to get by. Writing this down in stark daylight I feel like I overrated this show somewhat (I actually put it over the next one originally, which definitely doesn't hold up when thinking about it), but I was indeed mostly entertained. 6/10

Yakunara Mug Cup mo

Yeah. Of course Mug Cup definitely doesn't invent or subvert anything either, but it's a pretty good Kiraralike that's always entertaining to watch. Explaining the qualities of such a nothing genre is as difficult as ever, but it mostly comes down to me liking the characters and it having nothing to annoy me. It's shorter than normal, which is a plus for slim shows like this. And yeah, you can make an excessive amount of dick jokes with the clay fondling. That helps too. Looks are just fine, pleasant but nothing out of the ordinary. Comfy low-effort anime. 6/10

Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song

This one is decent, but sadly still a major letdown. Because the first few episodes of Vivy were excellent and kicked ass, but then it became increasingly clear that the writing can't cash the checks the ideas wrote while the action starts running into severely diminishing returns. Vivy just keeps slowly getting worse and worse as it goes on, not by a huge amount each episode but by the end there's a pretty sizeable gulf between potential and result. Going into detail would probably be a little much for this venue because there's a lot, but from the top level view the issue is that while Vivy has good fundamental ideas and steals at the right places, it just isn't a smart show — it's schlock, and by the end, poorly thought out schlock that tries to smooth out every problem with liberal application of the big feels hammer and le epic twist at that. Yeah, couldn't tell that the Re:Zero dude was aboard here, for sure. That said, it still works pretty well as entertaining schlock that is not to be taken too seriously, and the characters are generally just very fun to watch even when they're doing stupid things. Still, I can't in good conscience rate this higher than Beatless, a show that looks like butt but properly executes on its ideas. 6/10

Super Cub

So this is 100% a Honda commercial, and I got really mad a Yuru Camp last season for being a blatant shill. Yet I'm feeling this, what gives? I think the main difference is that Super Cub is specifically a commercial for one product (and a very iconic product at that), while Yuru Camp is so all over the place that it ends up mostly a commercial for consumerism in general. And when Super Cub goes too hard on the product (which it does), it's at least pretty entertaining. That's something about Super Cub in general: It goes hard. Your regular Kiraralike this is not, because it's uncommonly slow, focused and moody - yes, it almost measures up to Yuru Camp at its best and demolishes it at its worst. Also, it's just extremely amusing to see sadblob Koguma grow a huge grizzly biker beard and become a badass outlaw dad to her goofy wife and cute daughter, all thanks to the power of afforable personal transportation. Needless to say, that can get unintentionally silly, but Super Cub has so much charm that it doesn't matter — it's great when it's good and still funny when it's not. 7/10

Shadows House

Shadows House turned up with a lot of potential, and I have to say it at least delivered on most of it. It has some problems; notably I'm not a fan of how the entire middle turned out to be a tournament arc of sorts that seems curiously inspired by Resident Evil memes, crest-shaped intentations and boulder punching included. I also think that this is a show that would be perfectly fine without explaining much, but I guess it is a shounen manga after all so we got dumped on eventually anyway. At least that came late - close relative Promised Neverland didn't show that much restraint. Shadows House is generally well written though, with great characters, interesting interactions and a great hook. But what really makes it memorable is that it's exceptionally good at the cute/creepy contrast, something that is often tried but rarely works as well as here, with great character designs and very appropriate production. I hope this gets a sequel, because it seems like it's just getting started. 7/10

SSSS.Dynazenon

Coming in with a fondness for Gridman, Dynazenon didn't have to do much to convince me. The surprise though is that it's not a rehash even if it's basically the same show, a character drama where occasionally huge and goofy fights break out. Dynazenon is Gridman done better, and the interesting part is how it accomplishes this - mainly by being far more conventional. I do appreciate that Gridman went for something weird and almost experimental, but that only really paid off towards the end while most of the show was a distraction/holding pattern. It just didn't feel like there was enough material for a full series there, more like a movie maybe, if even that. Dynazenon fixes this by just being a TV show, with an actual cast of characters that each have their own arc. And by spreading the material this way, Dynazenon ends up having a lot more nuance than its intensely focused predecessor, while having the same themes and not actually being any deeper. In a way, Gridman ends up looking like the spinoff in retrospect, while Dynazenon is the full package. 8/10

Thunderbolt Fantasy S3

So how good was this season? So good that Thunderbolt Fantasy doesn't end up at the top, that's how. And all the elements that made Tbolt such a sure thing are still there, big hammy puppets doing stunts and scheming never gets old. However, I do have to note that at this point, the writing appears to have gotten too comfortable. I don't expect it to ever top the amazing S1 ending, but at this point it's like Tbolt has stopped trying to deliver on endings at all and seems in the process of retooling itself into a longrunner instead. Barely anything gets resolved in S3 (the climax is that the climax of S2 is resolved again, for good this time... maybe), and everything else is just setting up plotpoints for the next season. Tbolt is truly lucky that it doesn't actually need to resolve anything to be a great time, but at this point I have to say that I'd appreciate it if they wrapped it up with S4. 8/10

Nomad: Megalobox 2

Speaking of sequels to shows I liked, Nomad doesn't so much improve upon its predecessor but steamrolls right over it. This is a tall order, since Megalobox was surprisingly good for a sports shounen and had a real nice, heartwarming ending that Nomad instantly negates for purposes of drama and everyone being extremely miserable. That sounds like a pretty terrible idea - and it would be, if Nomad wasn't as excellent as it is. To call it not the same show would be an understatement, because it's a true sequel, not just the same characters doing their thing some more, or new characters doing the same thing as the old ones did. Indeed my biggest problem with Megalobox was that it still closely adhered to its genre template and was very predictable; Nomad fixes this issue thoroughly. Nomad is about questioning what being a hotblooded shounen protagonist eventually leads you to, and how to fix everything you screwed up by being one. You could call it a deconstruction, but that term has been so abused for cynical, edgy "thing you like actually sucks" takes that I feel like it doesn't really fit here. Nomad isn't cynical at all, it's just a character drama about some boxers past their prime, and it being a sequel to a show that is indeed rather formulaic just enhances the experience. My biggest issue with it was that I really like what they did with Joe in this story, so the big focus on Mac's backstory felt like a distraction for a long time. But in the end that turned out to be absolutely necessary to make the ending work. The ending's just great, by the way, and I shall say not more about it. 9/10

Odd Taxi

Yeah boy, here's the show that has apparently become somewhat of a "greatest show you didn't watch" meme, which I can feel smug about because I don't need YouTubers to tell me what's good and followed this from day one. Anyway, Odd Taxi is indeed great, the greatest show in a few years even. What starts out as seemingly a relaxed hangout show in the vein of Midnight Diners quickly turns into a psychological murder mystery while never losing its quirky humor. The character writing is outstanding, with even small bit players being on a level that the average anime wishes it could have for leads. And the rollout of the mystery is exemplary, with answers given and new questions raised every episode with a satisfying and logical payoff in the end. This is also the rare anime that has rock solid production from the first to the last second; it's never really flashy but excellently done and highly consistent nonetheless. And the music just owns. I have a few complaints, mainly that there's a few logical weaknesses in the story (which wouldn't even register in a lesser show, but sticks out here since the rest is so immaculately constructed) and that the ending overextends on the emotions when the rest of the show is so reserved and dry in comparison. But those are only the reasons why I didn't give it perfect marks, and I almost did that anyway. 9/10

#Zombieland Saga #bakuten #yakunara mug cup mo #vivy: fluorite eye's song #super cub #shadows house #ssss.dynazenon #thunderbolt fantasy #nomad megalo box #odd taxi #anime #review #spring2021

[corrupt-fvcker]

Boba Fett Fluff Alphabet

Fluff / Relationship Alphabet ( Boba Fett x fem!Reader )

Warnings: fluff overload, NSFW themes, unedited writing, boba fett deserves a warning of his own

Word Count: 5.1K

Author's Note: i was going to write an nsfw alphabet for boba but then i realized that writing a fluff/relationship alphabet would be 100x harder because he's about as emotional as a brick. maybe an angsty brick, but a brick nonetheless. psa, i wrote this at 2am so it might be a little crazy.

A is or Activities (what do they like to do with their s/o? How do they spend their free time with them?): So let's get one the thing straight, Boba's the best bounty hunter in the entire galaxy during the reign of the Galactic Empire. His success rate is unchallenged by any of his so-called competitors and even the most dangerous quarry doesn't stand a chance against Boba Fett. But here's the catch, you don't become the best by sitting around. Free time? Yeah, that's essentially nonexistent aboard the Slave I. So it makes sense that he met his girlfriend through his job. Boba has originally hired you to work as a mechanic for the Slave I, because after one too many power outages in the middle of an asteroid field with a hull full of quarries — Boba vowed to never leave a planet without a mechanic on board again.

So even if designated free time isn't necessarily a thing aboard the Slave I, there are peaceful times in between quarries that offer you some along time with Boba. And even if Boba's adamant on staying focused on bounty hunting, sometimes he'll let his guard down just enough for you to get the attention you're craving.

But just because there isn't enough time in his day to spend hours alone with you, don't think that Boba would neglect your needs. If you need someone to lay with you because you're feeling especially anxious and lonely, Boba will settle down beside you on your shared cot. Sure, he might grumble something under his breath that doesn't quite register through his vocoder and his sigh might be absolutely royal, but he'll lay down with you as lon as you want because Maker forbid you go looking for affection elsewhere. And if you need someone to listen to your rants or a shoulder to lean on, Boba will offer his shoulder and mediocre listening skills to you dutifully. Because even if he's the best bounty hunter in the galaxy, he has to remind himself that he's also your boyfriend. And yeah, he'll make mistakes but he's going to try his best to be there for you.

Now what does Boba like to do with you once you're both finally able to catch your breaths in between quarries? He likes to fuck. Which may only add to his extreme symptoms of exhaustion, but he just can't help himself.

B is for Beauty (what do they admire about their s/o? What do they think is beautiful about them?): Physically, Boba really likes your legs. He loves the way your ankles crisscross against his lower back with your wrap your legs around his waist, desperately holding onto him. While working on the ship you were baggy grease-stained trousers, but once those come off? Fuck, Boba's done for. He can't help but trace every curve of your legs, yearning to kiss and lick up from your calves to your thighs. Don't even try wearing short dresses or mini skirts around him, he'll tear the fabric off of you like a kid opening Christmas presents before you can even get a word in.

Now beyond physical beauty, Boba really admires your compassion. It's a rare trait, Boba's figured this out the hard way. You're incredibly strong and Boba knows that you can handle yourself, but you've got this soft heart that Boba's adamant on protecting. You're kind and understanding, you aren't quick to judge or hate even when you should. You're also stubborn to a fault, which Boba shouldn't find as endearing as he does. You're the only person in the entire galaxy that he's met that's more stubborn than himself — so of course he ends up falling in love with you.

C is for Comfort (how would they help their s/o when they feel down/have a panic attack etc.?): Like I said, Boba's a busy guy, being the best takes a lot of time and energy. But don't ever think that he doesn't have enough time for you. Even if there isn't enough time in the day, he'll be sure to make the time for you. If you're feeling particularly sad or stressed, Boba will be there for you. Admittedly, he's not the best at the whole emotions thing, but he'll try. And he's still learning how to be all soft 'n sweet for his girlfriend, but he'll always try his best for you.  He'll do whatever you need — yes, even if that means putting a pause on his job for a few hours. He wouldn't admit that he enjoys holding you but he reluctantly does enjoy it very much. He'll try his very best to keep his surly deposition in check, making sure to be extra kind to you if you're feeling down. And yes, he's learned this the hard way (he'll never comment on his squeaky pilot's seat that he asked you to fix when you're on your period again for as long as he lives). And if you're all teary-eyed he will trying his kriffing best to be supportive about whatever's gotten you so upset, even if crying makes him very, very uncomfortable. He will be extremely tense the entire time he holds you as you cry into his chest but he won't make any remarks and he will not pull away even if he wants to lock himself in the cockpit.

D is for Dreams (how do they picture their future with their s/o?): Honestly, Boba's not entirely sure. He's been a bounty hunter his life whole, it's all he really knows. He didn't necessarily plan on falling in love and he most certainly didn't plan on having dreams of a domesticated life fill his head when he sleeps. Boba Fett thought he'd never be caught dead dreaming about settling down on some outer rim planet with the love his life. He didn't think his mind wander as he sits alone in the cockpit, thinking about it the two of you would ever marry. He didn't think he'd secretly crave a little house and a family to fill the rooms. But suddenly he is thinking about all those disgustingly domestic things and he's not revolted at the idea of having a family, he actually kinda wants one.

So yeah, Boba's not entirely sure of what your future together is going to look like, but as long as you're together he figures you'll be alright.

E is for Equal (are they the dominant one in the relationship, or rather passive?): Nobody has ever — in all his years of life — used the word passive to describe Boba. It's like oil and water, they just don't mix. Boba likes control, he calls the shots because he really only trusts himself to call them. And even after the two of you finally get together, Boba's not passive. Softer maybe. Or perhaps kinder. But not passive. Whether it be out in public, in the privacy of the Slave I, or beneath the sheets, Boba's the dominant one in your relationship. And it certainly doesn't help that he's technically your boss. If he needs his squeaky pilot's chair fixed you are kinda obligated to fix it. But even outside of your so-called professional relationship, he calls the shots. It took months to convince him to allow you to ride him, but even with you on top, he was somehow still in control. You're not entirely sure if Boba being a perfectionist is accurate but— who the hell are you kidding, yes, that's exactly what Mister The-Best-Bounty-Hunter-In-The-Galaxy is. He likes the control he has whenever he's in a position of authority, it's a feeling of stability that the life of a bounty hunter lacks. But even if he's more dominant in your relationship than you are, he'll never neglect your wishes. He always makes sure that your basic needs are being met and that you're comfortable.

F is for  Fight (would they be easy to forgive their s/o? How are they fighting?): Being a bounty hunter is... stressful. Most arguments between the two of you are petty and avoidable, like you don't really need to argue about who's the better pilot (but you do). Genuine arguments are a rarity, mainly because the two of you are both too busy and too tired to pick fights that are going to last longer than two or three minutes. But every once in a while, all hell in unleashed upon the Slave I and thank the Maker the quarries are all frozen in carbonite because they'd be widely for a bolt if they heard the two of you going at it. There are few topics that Boba and you argue about that actually matter. Namely, safety and (the dreaded) emotions. Like I said, Boba tries real hard to be a supportive and loving boyfriend, but sometimes he just doesn't make the cut. And sometimes he's just, well, an asshole and you're about two seconds away from kicking his green ass out into space. Though as your relationship evolves, these arguments grow less and less common.

Though the topic of safety is always very much present aboard the Slave I. Boba's job is dangerous and a small mistake can have major consequences if you're both not careful. And you understand that, but that doesn't mean you don't get a little annoyed with him. He's a little overbearing (a perfectionist, if you will). Boba has this list. A great, big, long list filled with rules that must be followed when both on and off the ship. And you find that the closer you and Boba become, the more stricter these rules grow. And sometimes (usually) you slip up and break one or two (or three) rules, because sometimes it feels like you're walking on fucking ice with all these rules. But you really shouldn't break them because they're there specially for your safety, so when you break them, Boba kinda loses his shit. It usually starts as a yelling match and it usually ends with a silent treatment from both parties. And more often than not, Boba is the one that has to apologize because you're more stubborn than him and he's also usually the one in the wrong.

After the conflict had been resolved, it can end in one of two ways. Firstly, you and Boba can lay together 'n cuddle because that's both relaxing and reassuring that you both love each other. Or secondly, you can have rough make up sex because that's also both relaxing and reassuring that you both love each other.

G is for Gratitude (how grateful are they in general? Are they aware of what their s/o is doing for them?): Boba may not be the best at expressing his gratitude, but he really is appreciative of everything you do for him. He's not the best with words, he can never think of the right thing to say at the right time unless it's some snark comment that will make you roll your eyes. He tries his best to show you how grateful he is of you, and he knows he can't solely rely on sex to express his gratitude (though you're not complaining). When he's feeling particularly grateful for having a girlfriend as wonderful as you, he tries his best to be extra sweet towards you. And it's the little things that count; asking you if you need anything while he's out, bringing you a snack while you work on the ship, cleaning up after himself to make your life easier.

H is for Honesty (do they have secrets they hide from their s/o? Or do they share everything?): Boba's a bit of an extremist when it comes to honesty. He'll either be painfully honest, speaking the truth with little regards to the fact that you may not like what he's saying. He doesn't like how you fixed the Slave I? Oh, you'll hear about it. Does he think that you're acting impulsive and reckless? Prepare for a lengthy lecture. Partially, you admire that he's willing to be so open with you, but on the other hand, sometimes you want to throw your shoe at his head.

But no matter what you'll always prefer Boba being brutally honest over lying. And Boba knows this, he won't let himself lie to you because he knows that it would only drive you apart. Though sometimes when the truth is little too ugly for someone as tender hearted as yourself, he'll opt to just not speak. Because what you don't know can't hurt you, right? Sometimes he'll forget to tell you that the quarry managed to graze him with a blaster bolt. Or he won't say anything when he sneaks out to go beat up the slimeball that tried to touch you at the cantina. He won't answer you when you ask him what's wrong because he doesn't want to burden you with the fact that it's been exactly twenty years since his father died.

So yes, if the truth is ugly enough, he'll protect you from it but he'll never straightout lie to you.

I is for Inspiration (did their s/o change them somehow, or the other way around? Like trying out new things or helped them overcome personal problems?): Boba's rough around the edges, you knew this before anything slightly romantic conspired between the two of you. He's sharp and quick-witted and incredibly stubborn — it's his way or the highway, and no he's not accepting criticizing because he surely knows better than some mechanic. His brutal honesty usually comes out in sarcastic retorts that are a little more personal than he intends them to be. He doesn't like sharing his thoughts, he'll never speak unless he haves to which makes being part of his "crew" increasingly difficult. He's a bachelor too, enjoys venturing into dingy cantinas and have the bartender suck him off in the refresher.

But again, you knew all this way before you ever thought twice of how ridiculously sexy he probably looks beneath his bucket. And once the two of you actually get together, Boba realizes that he's going to need to change his questionable habits if this is ever going to work out. He figures out that, yeah, expressing his feelings kinda completely sucks, but saying what's on his mind is easier than making you worry that you've done something wrong. He also knows that he can't take your affection for granted, he needs to cherish your soft heart because he'd never forgive himself if he's the reason it breaks. Admitedly or not, Boba loves you and he knows that he needs to learn how to be better so that you can be together.

J is for Jealousy (do they get jealous easily? How do they deal with it?):

Boba never thought he'd be the jealous type, but that was partially because he's never really had someone to be jealous over. Relationships are new to him, which consequently means so is the jealousy the churns his stomach when strangers' stares linger in your direction for longer than he's comfortable with. Don't get me wrong, Boba trusts you to save your affection for him and him only. But he can't help but lose his temper when people approach you at bars like his hand isn't already resting on the small of your back.

K is for Kissing (are they a good kisser? What was the first kiss like?): For someone that has worn a helmet over his head for the majority of his life, Boba's kissing skills are a little too advanced. When you first started working for him, you had always assumed that if something did actually happen between the two of you, Boba would be an inexperienced kisser.

Well, apparently you couldn't have been more wrong. Because as Boba's gloved hand grabs by the nape of your neck and pulls you swiftly into his chest, you start to think that maybe you're the one that's in over their head. And you're suspicions are proven true as soon as his lips are on yours and his hot tongue dips into the cavern of your mouth.

L is for Love Confession (how would they confess to their s/o?): Being the stubborn idiots the two of you are, both of you beat around the bush for quite some time. Surprisingly, Boba fell in love with you a lot faster than anticipated (which fucking terrified him). So when he's watching you stargazing in the cockpit and the three dreaded words nearly slip from his tongue, he nearly haves a heart attack because he wasn't supposed to fall in love with you at all. The original plan was to remain business partners with benefits (which he should've known wouldn't last), but now it's only been two months since your first kiss and he's already preparing to spend the rest of his life with you.

Unsurprisingly, the confession slips from his lips during an argument — not some petty disagreement, but one of your infamous safety arguments. And thank the Maker he was wearing a helmet because fucking tears were lining his eyes and his heart was trying to rip out of his rib cage as he tells you how immature you're being for leaving the ship while he's out after a quarry. And once the three words leave his lips, he quickly realizes that he can't take them back. You look like you've just seen a ghost — eyes wide and jaw slack — and you're not entirely sure of what you should say because you never thought in a million years that Boba Fett would ever love you. And the rest of the evening is blur from the shock of it but Boba swears on his life that your immediate response was a squeaked out"fuck off" because you thought he was toying with you.

But once the bandage was ripped off, saying I love you wasn't as scary as either of you thought it was going to be. It's not exactly a regular sentiment and it's never said with nonchalance, but you both know that you love each other and in special moments you mutter the sweet reassurance to one another.

M is for Marriage (do they want to get married? How do they propose? What would the marriage be like?): Boba's the most shocked of all when he realizes that, yeah, he likes the idea of marrying you. He cherishes the idea of you wearing a ring on your finger for the rest of your shared lives, a symbol of your love. And, fuck, he hates how cheesy it sounds but he just can't help himself. And he's not entirely sure of how to bring up the subject of marriage with you because you've never really expressed interest in getting married and your relationship shared no resemblances to a proper Mandalorian courtship.

But he eventually does propose (and yes, you almost pass out as soon as you turn to see him on his knee), and luckily you accept his proposal with the same smile on your face that makes him feel weak in the knees. There isn't a wedding but you both swap vows and that's all either of you could really ask for. And turns out being married to Boba isn't too different from dating him, except for that he's just a tiny bit more protective and somehow even a bit softer.

N is for Nicknames (what do they call their s/o?): "Sweet girl" - absolutely the softest and most adoring nickname he's given you, and definitely his favorite. And yes, he does notice how sheepish you get when he calls you his sweet girl.

"Kid" - it's definitely your least favorite out of all the names he calls you, which only means that he'll make an effort to call you it more often. He usually uses the endearment when you're being ridiculous, but always used when he's teasing you.

"Babe" - it's so incredibly nonchalant that it doesn't even fit his character, but one night it slips from his lips before he can think twice and it just kinda stuck.

O is for On Cloud Nine (what are they like when they are in love? Is it obvious for others? How do they express their feelings?) Boba's love for you is difficult for outside parties to notice, mainly because they're usually too concerned with the fact that a fucking Mandalorian is casually strolling through town. When Boba's in love he's just softer and he usually expresses his emotions through little actions because words are not his strength. Gently resting his gloved hand on the small of your back when he's feeling protective. Tightly gripping your thigh beneath the table when he's feeling jealous. Brushing a strand of hair from your face when he's feeling particularly captivated by your beauty.

P is for PDA (are they upfront about their relationship? Do they brag with their s/o in front of others? Or are they rather shy to kiss etc. when others are watching?): Boba prefers that whatever happens between the two of you stays between the two of you. You're his, he's yours — there's no need for a third party to be meddling in your personal business. It's very unlikely for anyone to even suspect that the you and Boba are in an intimate relationship unless Boba wants them to know. If the drunk at the cantina gets a little too flirty with you, they'll be the first to know that you are certainly spoken for. Boba's not one to indulge in PDA, he prefers the privacy of the Slave I. The ship is a safe space for Boba, he can remove his armor and weapons without having to worry when your touches distract him. He doesn't have to be on edge, he can relax and be with you.

Although Boba prefers to keep affectionate gestures aboard the Slave I, that's not to say that he will not fuck you thoroughly in an ally on Corellia or refresher on Tatooine...

Q is for Quirk (some random ability they have that's beneficial in a relationship): Boba's surprisingly good at reading people, which even though it's ultimately beneficial for your relationship, it can be really annoying. Because Boba's not exactly the easiest person to be vulnerable around, sometimes you find yourself keeping things from him. You choose not to tell him that your feelings are hurt or that you didn't sleep well the previous night. But it's always fruitless to try to hide something from your boyfriend. He just knows. Your slumped shoulders or fidgeting hands are dead giveaways. He's quick, he'll notice every flaw in your poker face before you even realize that he's looking at you (the visor makes that difficult). And in the beginning of your relationship, Boba wasn't exactly sure how to approach your (ew) feelings. But the longer the two of you are together, he learns that sometimes it's just easier to ask what's wrong than to let your moodiness build up and then explode like a broken dam (his thoughts not mine).

R is for Romance (how romantic are they? What would they do to make their s/o happy? Cliché or rather creative?): Boba is about as romantic as a brick (Maker, apparently I really like comparing this green booger to a brick). He doesn't even really try to be romantic because he already knows that he's going to just kriffing suck at it. He knows about all the cliché stuff but he thinks all that is just bullshit and he hopes — for his sake — that you do too.He will not serenade you because he thinks music is just excess noise and he will not buy you one hundred roses because they'll just wither up and die. But just because he's not Mr. Romance doesn't mean that he'll do just about anything to make you happy. He might complain the whole time, but he'll do whatever he needs to do if it means you'll love him forever. He might not serenade you but he will massage your feet and take you out to your favorite restaurant. He might not buy you one hundred roses but he will cuddle you in the morning and make you a cup of caf so that you can get an extra ten minutes of sleep.

S is for Support - (are they helping their s/o achieve their goals? Do they believe in them?): Boba will always support you, no matter what. Does it feel like he's an amazing, supportive boyfriend? Uh... no, not all the time, it's admittedly one of his weaker spots. Boba's a bit of a pessimist and will tell you just about everything that'll illogical in your dream, but once you shoot him the glareTM he'll shut up. So just know that he is supporting you and your dreams, even if he's a grumpy asshole. Though he's lacking the trait of being verbally supportive, he does do everything in his power to help you achieve your goal. Will he complain? Probably. But he'll continue to push you until you achieve your goal.

T is for Thrill (do they need to try out new things to spice out your relationship? Or do they prefer a certain routine?): Boba's life is already filled with thrill, getting shot at all day is enough for him to want to unwind once he's work day is complete. Every single day is different with Boba, neither of you ever really know what you're getting into. But between the two of you exclusively? There's some sort of routine. Boba's job is usually an all-day affair, so the only time reserved specifically for you is in the morning and at night. Your routine is relatively simple: cuddle in the morning, cuddle at night. What happens between those two points of time is completely random and up to the universe.

U is for Understanding (how good do they know their partner? Are they empathetic?):

Just because Boba can read you doesn't necessarily mean that he understands you. The two of you are very different people. Emotions? Over his head. Girl stuff? Don't even bother. Hobbies? His response was 'do you mean work?'. But Maker, he tries to understand you, he really does. He wants you to feel accepted and loved and important. He'll force himself to be empathetic and compassionate with you (even though he has absolutely no idea why your crying). Boba's a good listener, he'll take whatever you tell him to heart and try to piece together the rest.

V is for Value (how important is the relationship to them? What is it's worth in comparison to other things in their life?): Boba has trouble admitting that your relationship is everything to him. The bastard spends his entire fucking day thinking about you and all the things that remind him of you. And he knows he has it bad when he realizes that he'd quit bounty hunting if it meant making you happy. Fuck, he wants to settle down with you (that's a secret though). You are his everything, nothing in the entire universe compares to your love. And he absolutely hates how he's been reduced to some lovesick puppy, but that's what you've done to him and he wouldn't have it any other way.

W is for Wild Card (a random fluff headcanon): Boba secretly really wants to start a family with you. He'd have to quit bounty hunting and live on a secluded planet somewhere in the outer rim, but he thinks about becoming a father a little more than he's willing to admit. The thought of Clan Fett growing excites him more than you'd think. He likes the idea of having someone to teach everything he's learned, just like how his father had taught him. He finds himself wondering what your future children would look like. Would they get his dark hair and tan skin? Or would they resemble their mother? Would you have boys or girls or a mixture of both? How many would you have? Two? Three? Four? Would they follow his Mandalorian ways or would they be more like you? Would any of your children want to become bounty hunters or would they want to become mechanics like you?

X is for XOXO (are they very affectionate? Do they love to kiss and cuddle?): In public, Boba's affection is microscopic. But in private he tries to show more affection towards you (he sometimes forgets that it's his job as your boyfriends). He would never admit to liking to kiss and cuddle but he really does. Without fail, every time he removes his helmet the first thing he does is kiss you. And cuddling? This boy will complain so much that you'd think that it's torture, but you're too smart for his bullshit. You know he loves holding you. Why else would his arms always find their way around your waist every night once he thinks you're asleep?

Y is for Yearning (how will they cope when they're missing their partner?): When Boba's away from you, he's one grumpy motherfucker. Which is saying something because he's always a grumpy motherfucker. And Maker pray for the poor quarry that's keeping him from you, he'll beat their ass a little more than usual just because of it. He get's quiet, saving all of his energy for when he finally gets to be with you. Manners? Out the window, fuck off everyone and everything isn't you. Boba's impatient on a good day, when he misses you he's always about two seconds from starting a fight.

Z is for Zeal (are they willing to go to great lengths for the relationship?): Like I said, Boba would do anything for you. Willing he complain while doing so? Naturally, but he'll get whatever he needs to done to make you happy.

————

Tags ( a million years ago I made a post and these were the people that liked it so sorry if you liked it accidentally :3 ): @linguistic-lovers @bubbles-in-autumn @pinkninja190 @beskar-boba @clairestrying @satan-incarnate-666 @waymorecake4me @dirty-dancefl00r5 @tinycollectivetrash @coffeeandtodd @arcadianempress @thesparkleslugs @the-silly-skeleton @greatermaguro @justrunamok 

#boba fett #boba fett x reader #boba fett x you #reader insert #self insert #fanfic #fanfiction #relationship alphabet #fluff alphabet #boba fett fluff alphabet #corrupt-fvcker #my writing #fluff

[homemadepastasauce]

A Wild Night

Genre: Smut and hot trash

Pairing: Female Reader X Doyoung, Jimin, Jackson, And Mark

Warning: Not something my mom and I are proud of, Y/N as usual has their legs open 24/7

Alternate Title: Girl goes to party and fricks guys she's barely on a first name basis with.

Author's Note: My first ff! If I made any mistakes no I didn't. If you got any request, request them, I write for anime and kpop ( don't take my account seriously though).

Disclaimer: Y/N doesn't rights, and I feel as the president of the Y/N Sucks Hate Club it's my duty to do this. Also, don't do drugs.

Ok, let me set the scene. You were the guest to one of the biggest party in all of LA, and boy were you excited. You may or may not have slept your way in with the bouncer, but that's a story for a different time. So, you get into the club and the music, weed, and vodka hit. You love that smell. It's powerful. You look around and see unhealthy of amount of hotties. This was your dream come true. First things first you hit the dance floor with a load of people touching up on each other. The DJ dude was crazy too, he was playing all of your favorite tunes. Vibes, absolute vibes.

For like thirty minutes you were busting your moves, like a complete dance machine. You were lost in space, but then you felt two strong arms grab onto your hips from behind.

The stranger whispered in your ear, his breath smelling of slight booze, "You have got to be the most good looking stranger I've seen in a long time." This statement filled your raging ego with pride, it brought a smirk to your face.

"So what website did you get that one from?"

He chuckled, "So, that's how your gonna act, huh? I can't say I don't like it. I'm Doyoung."

"Y/N"

"Say, would care to have a drink with me, Y/N?"

"Sure, but you better not waste my time with this small talk."

"Oh, I promise there won't be a lot of talking when I'm through with you," he grabs your hand and walks you over to the bar.

"Hey, bartender, let me get two shots of Grey Goose with a couple squeezes of lime," you say with a big smile.

"How'd you know I like vodka and why lime?"

"Lucky guess, and lime gives a little kick to it," you replied.

Actually if you were being honestly, it wasn't a lucky guess, you always ordered that. He's just easily impressed. You could tell in no time this guy would be banging your brains out. Drinks are easy baits to get what you want, everyone always seems to fall for it.

💫⭐Quick starter recipe for success by Y/N, an established piece of trash⭐💫

Regular vodka = boring and basic (you didn't even try, easily forgettable)

Vodka with a lil spice to it = a squeeze of lemon? lime? orange? (heck even a slash of henny is a positive plus plus)

"So what do you want and hope to achieve out of this, Y/N?" The bartender sets down your glasses and walks away.

"I don't know. You were the one that came up to me, I'm just going with the flow." You were messing with him, of course, both of you only wanted one thing and one thing alone.

"You're a strange person Y/N," he leaned in close to your ear, "but I know what you want."

You chugged the spicy shot down your throat, "I don't know what you're talking about. If I wanted something from you, I wouldn't said, "I want something from you."

You took out the eight dollars from your purse and set them down on the counter. Doyoung looked confused, almost like he wanted to say something but didn't. You got up from the barstool and made your way to the back bathroom, much quieter than the bar or dance floor. But before you could close the door, Doyoung snapped out of his trans and walked towards you.

"Hey!" He held the door with a strong grip, "You can't just leave, I wasn't done with you." Hmm, you weren't done with him either. You smiled knowing you already had him wrapped around your little finger.

"You're an idiot."

"I'm a what?"

"An idiot," you said confidently, "Get inside and lock the door." He did as he was told, no questions asked with an annoyed look on his face. And at that moment you knew he was about to rearrange your guts.

He started to unbuckle his belt, "You know when I first spoke to you, you seemed interesting enough, but you're just like the rest." The rest? Huh? Anyway, his words didn't faze you, it was the big mount in his unbuckled pants that did. You placed your purse to the side and sat on the sink counter. He does nothing but stare at your body as you slowly take your undies off and throw them on the dirty bathroom floor. Nasty.

"Are you just gonna stand there or are you going get to work before I do," you threaten. He smiles at your bluff and comes close to your face with a sinful look.

"You want this, huh? Know that I'm leaving as soon as I finish."

Ok? Are you supposed to be sad?

He takes his at LEAST nine incher inside you and starts to go ham. No warm-up, no tease. Nope, just right inside.

"You have quite an ego for someone this dry," he teases. His words enraged you, like how dare he say such a crude thing to a whore like you? But for some reason, it just made you even wetter.

Maybe because he looked so scrumptious? Or maybe you couldn't hear it due to all the moans you were letting out? But dear holy moly he was making you feel so good. He was using his fingers on your grandma-looking nub and pounding into you Micheal Jackson style. Holy crap it felt amazing, not the best you've had, but amazing nonetheless.

"Mmmmh," he moaned, "I'm gonna... I'm gonna..."

And before he could say another word, he came inside.

Doyoung cleaned himself up, zipped his pants, and left. Leaving you a complete mess that didn't even get to finish. It was fun while it lasted you had to say. But what a selfish prick, he was hot too. You cleaned up his and yours mess, and put back on the underwear you threw onto the dirty public restroom floor. Yeah, you weren't the smartest book on the shelf.

How’d he do, though? He was definitely good, but not spectacular and a little stiff. Your rating? 7/10.

After your little "bathroom break" with Doyoung, you decided you wanted to have something... not Doyoung. You walk up to the second floor filled with stoners, and people who clearly wanted to jump off a cliff. No problem though, stoners were chill and you could pretty much go up to them and ask if they wanted you to swallow their kids, so that you did. There was a guy smoking the devil’s lettuce, lounging on the couch with two others waiting their turn. Hot dang they looked yummy.

“So what are you boys up to?” You say with a smile.

“Isn’t it obvious?” The boy on the middle said with aggression, “We're blowing one up.” 

“Chill Jimin, she's just trying to make conversation,” he said passing it on to him. He rolled his eyes and started to smok in silence.

The one on the left looked up at you and said, “So which one of us do you want?” 

“How do you know I want only one, what if I want all three of you?”

“Like at a time?”

The guy in the left began to speak again with smoke coming out of his mouth, “No dumbass, look at her, she wants all three filled. Clearly.” He winked. He was just gorgeous, ready for an adventure.

“Jimin, was it?”

“Don’t be so condescending, Jackson said my name not even two minutes ago, don’t get smart with me.”

“Jimin, enough, pass it on to Mark and be nice while you’re at it.” 

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

You rolled your eyes and pointed to a secluded corner out of public view you’ve been eyeing since you came to the floor, “See over there is where you guys are gonna meet me if you wanna have a good time. If not, you’re gonna take the biggest L of the night.”

The guy on the left got up and pasted it back on to the one in middle, aka, Jimin. He scoffed, “Seriously Mark?”

“Ah, yeah, this is a once in a lifetime thing.”

“True that,” the other got up made his way to the corner, following you. 

“How are you guys are being so careless right now?! She probably has like five STDs... and three STIs, and... probably a kidney stone, too!”

You could hear him, but payed no mind. It’s not your fault his friends had good taste, even if there's a ninety eight percent chance they'd get chlamydia.

You got on your knees and started to feel up on their pants. You could feel them getting hard as you unzipped both of their pants. Chile, they were packing full on heat. You started to lick and slurp them up, using your hands, too. There moans made you want to have their babies. Not literally, you weren't that crazy, but figuratively.

“Keep going.”

“Yeah, don’t stop until I say so.” 

You did what they asked like a pro, but before you could deepthroat one of those precious horse pps, you feel someone separate your legs and roam there only source of pride straight into your rectum. In and out. In and out. Gosh darn it felt good. You're not stopping. One of them go into the your vag and the other says in your mouth.

“FDUR, I’m close keep going!!!!”

Already? I mean all of you were close but still.

And not even a half a second you felt three liters of pancake mix fill up your holes. Mhmm, now that’s a job done right. They pulled out and left you right there, not even caring to look back. But it was fine cause you got what you wanted in the end. 10/10

What a night, huh?

#kpop edits #kpop #bts fanfic #kpop smut #bts layouts #bts jimn #jimin x reader #nct 127 #got7 fanfic #kpop angst #doyoung #kpop aesthetic #kpop imagines #kpop senarios #kpop headcanons #bts angst #nct smut

[kittyramblesalot]

Everything A Real Estate Agent Doesn't Want You To Know, A Year In Review 2006

Through 2006 I have written a number of articles known as the "Everything A Real Estate Agent Doesn't Want You To Know" series which has long been a consumer oriented series of information to help home purchasers and sellers protect themselves when conducting a real residence transaction. These articles are a natural extension of courses I have written known as "Everything A Real Estate Agent Doesn't Want Your house Buyer To Know" and "Everything A Real Estate Agent Doesn't Really want A Home Seller To Know". The first book written through 1990 was called "Everything A Real Estate Agent Doesn't Want You to definitely Know" and it had a fair degree of national success, extra than I thought it would, when I introduced it towards the media during 1991/92. We sold the book in each state in the U. S. including Alaska, Hawaii and since far as Pakistan and Japan. This was not a damaging performance for a self-published under-funded author. I wrote the book because I was a licensed real estate agent in the talk about of Ohio and, more importantly, I was a readily available mortgage banker for a few years and I saw a large number of home buyers and sellers experience financial damage as a result of dealing with inexperienced and unethical real estate agents. Many of the agents happen to be either totally incompetent or so self interested that they would certainly mislead buyers and sellers, anything to get them to indication a purchase offer or a listing contract. Many of these family home buyers and sellers who were cut through the neck and also didn't even realize they were bleeding because they lacked understanding and insight into how the real estate game is competed. These books have always caused friction between real estate agents and myself because many agents resent the heading of the books and the ill conceived premise that the position is that all agents are bad crooked people today, which is false. In fact , whenever I did a media gig I always made it a point to clarify this is NOT a baby blanket indictment against real estate agents. There are good, honest, knowledgeable, full time mum real estate agents in the business who are highly professional. The problem is they are the particular minority and not the majority. The major problem with the real estate market place as a whole is the ease with which a person can get a realty license. While the educational requirements vary from state to state, normally, anybody can get a license to sell real estate in about 90 days. This just doesn't make sense to me. Consider that many realtors are little old women who operate part-time, do not have business or selling background, go to school for 33 or 90 days and are licensed to represent home owners in property transactions from around $50, 000. 00 and up. I mean, a lawyer has to go to school for more effective years to get a license to write a fifty-dollar will or perhaps represent somebody in a petty traffic accident. But silly-sally can go to school for 30 days and list the $250, 000 house for sale? That does not compute in my thought process. What kind of representation will a seller get from a in someones spare time agent with one toe in the tub? And the full-time pros know what I am talking about. I have had many close interactions with agents while I was in the business and the the important point is that part timers are often the weakest relationship in getting a deal done, unavailable for showings, etc . The bottom line, part time agents give part time results if you are a buyer, seller or a full time agent attempting make a living. And the truth is that most people, especially first time residential buyers and sellers don't know what is going on... not really. How you find an agent to sell a home, the nature of contract law as well as negotiable elements of listing contracts, purchase contracts, etc . will be way beyond most first time buyers and sellers. The actual result is that sellers sign stupid long-term listing agreements with the wrong agents and the wrong companies and individuals pay way more for property then they would if they received more insight into the workings of real estate transactions including commissioned real estate sales agents. I didn't originate the problem, I identified the problems and the solutions for home buyers plus sellers. CAVEAT EMPTOR is legal jargon which means "buyer beware" and it means what it says. Whether you happen to be a home seller or home buyer, you better determine what you are doing when you are making decisions and signing contracts for the reason that, it is your duty to know and ignorance is no alibi under the law. If you do a stupid real estate deal, it will be your fault. Which is a shame because buying or selling a home is actually a BIG business decision. It is a business transaction composed of individuals, emotions, contracts and cash and those are all the compounds for legal and financial pain if you don't know what what you are doing, and most people don't. And how are people likely to get access to this information that will protect their legal and personal interests before they buy or sell a home in any case? THE POWER OF THE NAR OVER GOVERNMENT AND MEDIA The things many people don't know is the National Association of Realtors Ò (NAR) is one of America's largest special interest categories who have incredible lobbying power over our politicians to put in writing real estate laws that benefit the real estate industry, not even consumers. Thus, the caveat emptor clause... state as well as federal real estate laws are written in the interests of this local real estate company and not you. Something else people are un-aware of is the tremendous advertising influence the NAR seems to have over print and electronic media to manipulate the news you will read, hear and see because of their advertising dollar power. There may be an article written by Elizabeth Lesley of the Washington Journalism critique called Demand Happy News And Often Get It and it exposes the corruption and manipulation of the news consumers trust in to make decisions about buying or selling a home. I strongly encourage everyone to read this article. Real estate is like the stock market utilizing some ways. When you hear of a fad like "flipping" you may be probably at the tail end of that gimmick bubble, kind of like the dot. com days... everybody jumped in as they quite simply thought it was hot and it was really the end of the us dot. com bubble. A lot of people have gotten caught with their dirt bike pants down on the flipping angle. Home foreclosures are " up " across the U. S. because real estate agents and the lenders what person cater to them (the real estate industry has tremendous determine over the lending industry because the are the source of so many place loans) have qualified otherwise unqualified borrowers, by positioning them in gimmick loans. In the mad dash for you to milk the market, people have been steered in to interest primarily loans, negative amortization loans or attractive teaser borrowing products like low interest adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) and other mindless financing that is NOT in the best interest of the buyer. Consumers many of the foreclosures are happening. Naïve and gullible individuals were sold a bill of goods based on unrealistic place values. The market got hyped and the agents and providers were right there to exploit buyers and sellers. Does some people make money? Sure. But many people have found themselves with wall with too much "house", too big a payment along with a housing market that looks pretty bleak for a while... All you will need is one ripple in our fragile economy to turn the estate market into a landslide. Here's a news flash: Typically the economy is on shaky ground. The economy has long been kept strong by housing sales and corporate profit margins and both are an illusion. The real measure of typically the economy is durable goods, like automotive sales, which you'll find in the tank causing massive restructuring and layoffs. Individuals can't afford to buy cars because they are scraping the enameled off their teeth trying to make house payments... So , whoever you are, and you read my real estate articles, take into account the reason I have done what I have done, and will perform what I do, is because I am on the side of the consumer. Now i'm on the side of the person who wants to be a better, more up to date consumer. I am on the side of the person who wants to save a handful of thousand on their real estate transaction by being smart and about the more level playing field with real estate agents. And you really know what? By educating people and teaching them how to achieve deals more intelligently, how to weed out the piece timer agents from the pros and save a few dollars in the process, I am actually helping the professional full time providers. The truth is that honest agents won't have a problem with my place because it will get rid of the riff raff.

[anettrolikova]

A day in my life really depends on what's happening. That said, usually I have themes. For instance, I have a priority list, and I have decision logs that chronicle all the things I am trying to figure out.

I end up trying to insert themes into my days. Like today, for instance, I have a meeting with my small team to begin the week; I reserved my afternoon for product reviews—what we call “greenpathing exercises”—where, oddly, I'm trying to discern how everyone is thinking about the main things we're working on. I do this because oftentimes I feel as though I am the connective tissue combining operations, finance, and more formal business functions with the product itself. This connection helps me to make good decisions.

A lot of this is almost automatic by just having a good color coding system, which is really fun

I made two decisions: one, I'm going to try to learn as much about business as possible. But, if business is very different from software architecture, I'm going to be no good no matter what I do. And so, I ran an experiment to treat engineering principles, software architecture, complex system design, and company building as the same thing. Effectively, we looked for the business equivalent of just turning off servers to see if the system has resiliency. For instance, we used to ask people to use their mouse on their non-dominant hand for a day. We introduced these little nudges to ensure that people didn’t become complacent.

I believe that the job we all have in life is to acquire knowledge and wisdom and then share it. I just don’t know what else there is. This is the bedrock of my belief system.

When I get close to any field, I think about how far I want to go. I'm probably further along with programming. I don’t know if I want to get from 90 to 91% in programming when, with the same amount of work, I could figure out the first 60 to 70% of UX or even something like drawing. There’s a recent book about this called Range, which I really like. The book pushes in this direction and explores this topic a bit more than I do. But I just found myself nodding throughout reading it, because it turns out that very often—really, every field has fundamental wisdom that you discover when you're learning and talking to the people who have mastered it. I find that going wide and learning the best lessons from the people who have dedicated their entire lives to a certain pursuit gets you really, really close to mastery.

people show up with a mastery of certain instruments. Someone ends up being the jazz director and the rest of the band follows

I've always gravitated towards competing against myself in most things.

I really love failing. I feel so good when I do something, and it just doesn't work; especially if I get the feedback about why it didn't work. That gives me a project to work at to improve. And so maybe that's sort of interesting regarding losses.

the major reason why video games are valuable is because of this concept of transfer learning. For instance, people who are good at chess understand when it's time to perform tactics, and when it's time to focus on positional development. Not just in chess, but also in life.

I have found it really, really useful to be able to reason about a relationship without getting egos involved too much. I can have a conversation with someone saying, “Hey, you made a commitment to ship this thing, and you did. That's awesome. That's a super big charge on the trust battery, but you’re actually late for every meeting. Even though that's relatively minor—like it decreases 0.1% on your battery—you should fix that.”

It plays a role like that. That said, it's not useful to talk about trust as a binary thing. People are quick to say, “You don't trust me!” And it's actually more, “Well, no, I trust you to a certain level, but you would like more trust; you want trust at a completely different level.”

if your cell phone is 80% charged, you're not worried about finding a charger. But when your phone in your pocket goes into low battery mode, you're thinking about your phone a lot. What people want to do in a company is get to the 80% or 100% level in the area that they run. You gain full autonomy this way. It’s a process that cannot be given to people by title or something like that.

The reason why it was the best thing for me is because it's almost the perfect counterfactual to how you should run a company. I honestly think that, you know, a coin flip has a batting average of 50%. If you just do the perfect opposite of literally everything about that place, you would probably clock in at 60 to 70% of getting everything right, which would mean you would outperform probably 90% of all companies in the world.

Among other things, almost every incentive system was just wrong. For instance, there was no way you would get a promotion or recognition if you weren't dressed in a suit or if you didn’t use slides in a particular way that resembled the legal profession.

It's infantilization because you literally have a policy about how to dress. If you have a policy on how to dress, that means you don't trust people to dress. It was a pretty stark experience.

We are building hopefully amazing software for absolutely amazing people, like people who are unbelievably brave and really adaptable. Society tries to talk people out of this, like no one wants other people to be successful building companies. Silicon Valley might have gotten to a level of enlightenment where company building is actually encouraged, but the rest of the world isn’t like this.

The learning curve of being a great executive is a lot less like learning the guitar, and a lot more like skydiving. It’s the kind of thing you should not do without an instructor. A coach is probably one of the highest returns on investment anyone can do with their attention. An hour spent with a coach has a 10x, 50x, 100x potential return on time spent.

Our strategy was to hire as many high potential people as we could and have them get to their potential much faster than they actually imagined was possible. Personal growth has no real speed limit. It's more dependent on how often a student is ready, and that often depends on the environment and the norms of a culture around the student. For instance, how often is the teacher appearing when the student is ready? If you can line this up at a fairly high hit rate, then people can go through nearly ten years of career development within a single calendar year. I know the 10x thing is overplayed now, but I have absolutely seen it.

Hey, the reason why you've got this job is not because of everything you know, but because you seem like the kind of person who can figure it out when you need to know something.” That's very basic but also very liberating.

One thing that really makes it work is that we are just extremely different. Almost the only overlap we have is in how much we care about the mission of this company. Outside of that, his skill set is extremely different; his input is extremely different; his life experience is very different. It's very intuitive for us when to go with one of our ideas because this is what a relationship with a 100% trust battery looks like.

I had the source code for Linux, I signed up for the Linux kernel mailing list, and I listened to how they talked about computer architecture. I then spent all my time trying to figure out what these terms meant.

The meaningful thing about this story is that it points at a fallacy. The other important thing is it implies that people in groups end up really cancelling each other's good parts and exposing one another's downsides.

why are technical founders overperforming the market right now? I don't actually think it's because they're technical. I think it's because of a very specific childhood experience that a lot of the people running technology companies have had. Most of us grew up in a world which we knew would change significantly because it was really badly designed given what we knew about the potential coming soon. And this potential coming soon was the march of computers and digitalization. I think that a lot of us, including myself, have leveraged this insight into significant enterprise value.

Norman gave permission to really hate the door instead of hating yourself when you push it instead of pulling it. That is not your fault. No human has ever been at fault for pushing instead of pulling. That has always been the fault of the people who designed the door.

People who learn how to think about how to do things in their environment better, and to understand that the objects in their everyday life have not been designed or created by people who are smarter than they are—they are the people who will become entrepreneurs.

#product #behavior #challenges #act #director #role #job #learning #coach #design #thinking

[amonets-writing]

Imperfect

"Just imagine for a second, that you're not perfect. You're just a regular guy, okay? And now just imagine you're living with someone who is perfect. The pinnacle of human evolution." Tony laughs nervously. "And that person, he expects everyone to be just as perfect as himself. Not consciously, but-" Tony stops. "Okay, you don't get it, do you?"

Tony has Issues-with-an-capital-I and Steve is hopelessly pining, but hey at least they're both equally bad at communication.

Relationship: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark

Rating: General Audiences 

Read it over at Ao3 or under the cut. 

"We're all a little weird, and life's a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love."

    -Dr. Seuss

Steve knows that, sometimes, he is wrong. It doesn't happen often, but it happens. And when it happens, Steve tries to fix it. That's why, when Tony sits down at the breakfast table one morning, Steve says: "You know I didn't mean what I said on the helicarrier, right?"

Tony stares at him, seemingly completely perplexed and only half awake. He hasn't had his coffee yet, obviously. "What?"

"On the helicarrier, when I said the stuff about you and the suit, back when we met," Steve says. "I didn't mean any of it. You're a good man and it wasn't right for me to say anything at all because I didn't know you back then. I know that you know that, I just wanted to have said it."

"Okay," Tony says very slowly and looks at Steve like Steve's a bit mad. Maybe Steve is.

When Steve hands him hands him the plate with the pancakes he takes it though and actually eats some, so Steve counts the mission a success, even though neither of them talks for the remainder of their shared breakfast.

Everything is okay afterwards, for a while. Nothing big happens, there are no attacks, no mandatory team meetings and Steve spends a lot of time at SHIELD or on missions, which is probably the reason it takes him so long to notice that Tony is avoiding him.

He is never in a room that Steve is in, not because he leaves, but because they just don't ever seem to even be on the same floor at the same time and when Steve tries to go and find Tony, he has suddenly mysteriously disappeared from wherever he was supposed to be because of urgent Stark Industries business. It's not that doesn't do his job as a team member anymore, he still shows up to the training exercises, but he's Iron Man there and it's not really the same. He still makes them weapons as well, even Steve, but somehow the fittings and testing that had been so important before weren't needed anymore. Not for Steve, at least because he knows that Tony still sees plenty of the other Avengers. It's not fair. Steve misses him.

Steve considers letting it go and just waiting for it to stop, but he had a conversation with Hill the other day about making Iron Man his co-leader and she had asked him whether Tony would like that and Steve realised that he actually has no clue. Letting it go is not an option if it's disrupting the team dynamics. And since getting a hold of Tony has turned out to be impossible, Steve resorted to calling him in for an official Avengers meeting. It's not really fair, but he really needs to talk to Tony. It’s not just because he misses him. It’s not.

"Hey," Tony says as he opens the door to the meeting room. "I'm sorry I'm late guys, but Stark Industries doesn't…" He trails off and for a moment he just stares at Steve, his expression uncertain. Steve does his best to smile encouragingly. He can basically see Tony's face fall, but he only takes one second to collect himself.

"So, it's just me I guess. Great." He doesn't sound like he thinks it is the least bit great. "Let's make this quick, I have a lot to do and this should all be fairly obvious. We both know that SHIELD can't have the suit. It's mine and I'm not handing it over to anyone. If you kick me off the team, Iron Man is off too."

"Tony," Steve interrupts, but Tony goes on like Steve hasn't said anything.

"-I mean the tower technically belongs to the Avengers, so as long as you don't change the name, that's yours in the divorce. See, you get the house and the kids, I don't think that's a bad deal-"

"Tony," Steve says, this time louder.

"- like realistically speaking. You also get to keep all the gear and the jet, you just have to be careful not to break it, because I'm a very busy person and sadly I'll have more important things to do than clean up your-"

"Tony!" Steve shouts and that finally gets Tony's attention. "No one's kicking you off the team. That's not what this is about." Like I would let them kick you off the team, Steve thinks.

"Oh," Tony says. "Good. But then why…"

"You've been avoiding me. I wanted to talk to you." Steve says and it sounds a bit silly now that he says it out loud. Tony and he don't always get to spend a lot of time together. It's normal for them not see each other for a few days when they both have too much to do. Maybe Tony had just been very busy these past few weeks. No reason to call him in and upset him like this, just because Steve misses him.

Tony doesn't answer immediately and for a few seconds, the only sound is the whirring of a printer in the distance and Steve takes a moment to just wholeheartedly hate SHIELD and their paper-thin walls.

"I just can't sometimes, Steve. Okay?" Tony finally says, looking miserable. One look at him and Steve knows that Tony doesn't want him to ask questions but he doesn't understand what Tony is saying. God, he never does.

"I think you need to explain that to me."

"Okay," Tony says slowly and then he looks directly into Steve's eyes for the first time since he entered the room. "Just imagine for a second, that you're not perfect. You're just a regular guy, okay? And now just imagine you're living with someone who is perfect. The pinnacle of human evolution." Tony laughs nervously. "And that person, he expects everyone to be just as perfect as himself. Not consciously, but-" Tony stops. "Okay, you don't get it, do you?"

Steve really doesn’t.

"Just- Imagine someone is better than you at everything you do together. At everything. Always." Tony looks at him expectantly and Steve nods, more a reflex than an actual acknowledgement of Tony's words. "Okay. And- he always expects you to be just as good as himself. And you never are. Just imagine what that feels like."

"I don't understand," Steve says and he knows his face is one big question mark. "You're saying that - I'm too perfect for you?"

He can see Tony's face fall and this time he doesn't even bother hiding it.

"I'm not making fun of you! I'm just trying- I'm trying to understand, okay?" Steve hurries to explain. He wouldn't make fun of Tony's feelings. He couldn't. Tony is his friend. He likes Tony. A lot.

"I just feel like all I ever do is fail, Steve. And it's a lot to handle sometimes." Tony admits and Steve can see that it costs him great strength to say it. "It's not your fault. I'm working on it, okay?"

It's not often that Steve has absolutely no idea what he should say but if anyone manages to render him, it's of course Tony. It’s always Tony. "You're the smartest person I know." He says because it's the only thing he can think of that at least makes some sense.

Tony blushes, not just a bit, but his face actually goes pink. Steve has never seen Tony blush before. It looks good on him. "What?"

"You don't need to change," Steve says. "We all like you just the way you are, no one expects you to be perfect. You're not failing at anything."

"I-" Tony begins, but then stays silent.

"If it's me who's putting too much pressure on you, then you need to talk to me about that, Tony and I'll try to change. But if it's you, then maybe you just need to cut back a bit. Take a break."

"It's not that." Tony looks frustrated. "It's not work or Avengers business, it's just that-" He takes a deep breath like he's bracing himself for what's to come. "You remember when you apologised for the helicarrier thing?"

Steve nods and gets a small smile in return.

"You said I was a good man. And I'm not. I'm really not, but I'm okay with that, I'm trying to make up for my mistakes and I'm great at what I'm doing at the moment. So, when you say stuff like that, it's like this whole world of possibilities opens up and it's all right in front of me, but still out of reach. It's hard." Tony pauses. "And it hurts." He finally admits.

Steve's doesn’t know what to say to that. They aren't best friends, Tony and him, not really anyway, and Tony has many, many times, proclaimed how little he trusts Steve. And still, here he is, pouring out his soul to Steve. Laying it bare, open, for Steve to do as he wishes. Just months ago, Steve's first thought would have been about using this information, this trust, to better control Tony, but now all he can think about is, that Tony doesn't think he's a good person and it's Steve's fault too.

"You're a good man," Steve says and he doesn't sound nearly as calm as he would like. "You're a hero, you put your life on the line to help others. Your mistakes don't define you, Tony. Nobody is perfect, not you, not Natasha, not Thor and definitely not me, but we all try and we do our best and that's what makes us good people. Not that we've only ever done good, but that we try to make up for the bad." He needs Tony to understand. A part of Steve, the very primal and unreasonable part of him, just wants to shout at Tony and shake him until Tony understands that he's a good person, he's one of the best people Steve's ever known and nothing in this world will change his mind on that.

"You're the most perfect person I know," Tony says lightly, but Steve sees the careful smile and maybe Tony understands, after all. Maybe he gets what Steve's saying.

"I'm stubborn and a terrible liar."

"Yeah, but on you, it's kind of hot," Tony says and Steve's heart skips a beat. Tony doesn't mean it that way, he knows that Tony flirts like he breathes - constantly and unconsciously. It's still very close to something Steve wants, desperately wants, but can't have.

"Shit," Tony says when Steve doesn't react. "I'm sorry- I thought, maybe…" He trails off and Steve can see his hands clenching nervously, and he's actually nervous, he cares, Steve's mind tells him. Say something! "Can you not tell Fury I said that? Or Natasha?" Tony asks and Steve opens his mouth to say something but no sound comes out.

"Yes." Steve finally manages, unreasonably proud of managing a one-syllable word. The peak of human evolution. Yeah, right.

"Good," Tony says and he sounds relieved and disappointed at the same time. He turns around and reaches for the door and Steve has to stop him because it's not that kind of yes, and he doesn't know how to say it.

"No, I mean- I, maybe- You-" Steve stutters and he can feel himself go red as a tomato. He can't believe he's actually doing this.

"Yes?" Tony turns back around and he sounds hopeful, just a tiny bit, which means that he gets what Steve's trying to say - which is great, considering Steve isn't really sure what he's trying to say.

"Yes," Steve says because apparently his vocabulary is now limited to one-syllable words and incoherent babbling. He can't think when Tony is looking at him like that.

"So, we could, you know, get dinner. If you wanted." Tony sounds nervous too and Steve wants to say yes so badly. You don't even know which one the fish knife is, the voice in his head says. He's a billionaire, where would you even take him? You'll embarrass yourself in the first 5 minutes and you won't get a second chance for this.

"I don't think, I can," Steve says and while he's desperately trying to find a good way of saying I'm scared I'll mess this up because I have no clue what I'm doing, Tony's come to his own conclusion.

"Oh- Yeah, okay. Sorry." Why is Tony apologising? Steve is pretty sure that Tony isn't the one who's sending mixed signals here.

"It's not what you think! I like you a lot, Tony, but-" Tony interrupts him and what is it with Tony that he always assumes he knows what Steve's about to say. He's starting to make a habit out of it and he's never right anyway.

"You're not gay, I get it. It's fine, my mistake. I won't let it mess with the whole team dynamics thing-"

"Bisexual," Steve says and surprisingly that actually stops Tony's babbling.

"What?"

"I'm bisexual," Steve repeats. He googled that and he's quite proud of figuring it out on his own. Not that he hadn't known back in the 40's, there were only so many boners you could get in inappropriate situations before you figure that stuff out, but now he had a word for it other than wrong.

"So, it is me?" Tony asks and this conversation is really going in the wrong direction.

"Yes!" Steve says and Tony's expression gets even more pained. Wrong answer. "No! I mean- I like you. I would like to go out with you, I really want to, but it's been a long time and so much has changed and I don't know how to do any of this." Steve finally admits. It feels good to have said it.

"Oh," Tony says and he smiles. "That's okay. We don't have to- We can go slow. There is a nice Italian restaurant, a few blocks from the tower, it's small and private and it wouldn't have to be a big deal. You can hold the door open for me and I'll choose a nice wine and we'll just see how it goes if you want."

"Yes," Steve says and this time it's the right answer because Tony smiles and he gets tiny wrinkles around his eyes and that shouldn't be as attractive as it is. Bucky had them too and Steve can't even put into words how glad he is that it doesn't hurt to think about that. He's done looking back and maybe this can be his new start.

Maybe he is ready for a new chapter.

#amonet-writes #stony #steve's pov #fanfiction #stony fanfiction

[izanyas]

Bliss (Alongside Part 7)

New installment of the Hot Single Dad Shizuo series, Alongside! Thank you Laidon for the beta as always.

Rating: T Words: 5,100 No warnings.

Bliss

Izaya has lived through two bad break-ups in his life. It's either irony or fate that he's only had two relationships at all, and that the first caused the second.

Shiki breaking up with him had felt like white-hot rage, like simmering humiliation, like revenge churning in his stomach and bursting out of his mouth bile-like. Izaya hadn't let himself feel heartbroken so much as hate-filled and hate-fueled for weeks, for months afterward, until he had Shiki's name and prison sentence under his eyes in the morning papers. He'd run his index over the printed characters as he smoked from a half-full pack of cigarettes he had stolen from the man, until his fingertip was black with ink. Until his throat ached from the sweet-smelling tobacco Shiki favored.

Only then had he felt satisfaction. Only then had he started looking back at every shared memory and souring all of them for himself. Slowly, meticulously, like needlework. There was no heartbreak to be felt when he was done.

Shizuo breaking up with him feels like tachycardia; it feels like sorrow is trapped between his ribs and making his heart tire itself out; it feels like every day going by unseen, like Namie texting him There's nothing to report, he's living his damn life and he looks fine, every day at four-thirty. She keeps telling him she won't help him stalk his ex anymore and she keeps doing it anyway because, he surmises, it's better than seeing him like this. This break-up feels like a sob waiting to be let out. It feels like guilt.

Izaya spends two months like this—holed into work, avoiding all but clients and professional emails, Mikage's pathetic efforts at friendship going unindulged—until he slams a fist down against his glass desktop with all the strength he possesses.

"Fuck," Namie says breathlessly, startled by the noise. "What the hell, Izaya?"

His fingers shake when he uncurls his hand, every knuckle aching smartly. "I'm going out," he replies.

"To do what? Punch a brick wall this time? You've got a client coming in ten minutes."

"Reschedule, then," Izaya says, sliding a hollow smile in her direction.

She grits her teeth and turns her head away from him.

Some of the tension in him has been smothered by the pain, but Izaya isn't stupid enough to think it won't come back. He's not stupid enough to think this was any kind of a smart move either. He knows how he is more honestly than he wishes to, and he knows a slippery slope when he sees one—just because he isn't a teenager anymore doesn't mean harming himself isn't a temptation.

Still. There are better ways to harm oneself than simple brutal violence.

Spring is well underway now, closer to summer in heat and sunlight. It's a bright Saturday afternoon and people are out everywhere to enjoy it. Izaya doesn't hear any of their laughs and yells as he walks near public parks and open cafés. His feet take him in the direction of Akane's school because it's where he goes on days like this, when he's sure she doesn't have class and Shizuo doesn't have a reason to come. He sits down at the bad coffee place that was their first meeting and their first date, and he orders tea and broods.

The place is mostly empty, as he expected. Its strongest selling element is its location—rush hours are what makes its success, not the quality of their food and drinks. The tea is tasteless, tepid. Izaya likes tea when the water is right off the boiler, when he can feel his tongue burn on it. All this cup does is make him ache more.

This is stupid, he thinks, like he does every time. And yet he does it every time.

He hasn't been here five minutes when he stands up from his seat. He doesn't linger much longer than ten on worse days. Even the sight of the school hurts, yet another reminder that on top of Shizuo himself it's everything Shizuo loves that he misses as well. He misses Shizuo, and he misses Shizuo's handsome handwriting, and he misses Akane. He misses being loved like he knew from the start he never deserved to be, and just because he knew it could only end badly doesn't make the aftermath any easier to live through.

Izaya's eyes fall down from the school's bell-tower and meet Shizuo's across the street.

His fingers tighten over the plastic cup, making lukewarm tea spill over his hand and shoes.

For a second he doesn't know if he hopes that Shizuo hasn't noticed him; there's a good thirty meters between the two of them and people walking on the sidewalks that separate them, it's not entire inconceivable. Izaya's physical appearance is nothing out of the ordinary in a sea of other ordinary-looking men and women. But Shizuo looks to his right, then his left, and when he crosses the street his eyes are back to Izaya instantly.

Izaya watches him approach silently and doesn't have the strength to steel himself for anything through the longing that grips him by the throat. Shizuo falters a few feet away from him on the wide sidewalks, his gaze searching and sad.

"Hey," he says. He tries to smile, but all it does is make it impossible for Izaya to meet his eyes.

"Shizuo," he replies as evenly as he can.

It's awkward. Shizuo takes another few steps forward—Izaya would step back, but he has the table's edge pressed against the back of his thighs, so what he does instead is turn around a little to put down the tea he's not going to finish and give himself an excuse to bite his lip unseen.

He's tasting blood by the time he straightens up, so he doesn't even try to smile. "It's been a while," he says. "Did you want something?" He nods toward the entrance of the coffee shop. "The cheesecake looks slightly less like it's likely to poison you today."

Shizuo doesn't look away from him, doesn't take the bait, but his lips shiver in the beginning of a smile, and Izaya's heart soars all the way up to his throat in a long, aching beat.

"It has been a while," he replies warmly. "How've you been, Izaya?"

Izaya's chest feels like a solid bruise. He almost answers, Don't say my name like this, almost answers, I've been waking up in the middle of the night to dreams of you kissing me like I wake up from nightmares.

"Fine," he says. "Terrorizing my secretary, making men twice my age beg for mercy. You know how it goes."

Shizuo's mouth twitches again. "Yeah, I can believe that."

Izaya wants to wrap his hands around his neck and press their lips together so hard he'll stop breathing altogether.

He looks at the school again and asks, "How's Akane?" And he means it as a jab or a reminder, as something to make Shizuo remember the reason he's left Izaya feeling like he's carrying his own weight in regrets for two months, but his voice quivers over Akane's name in a way much too telling, and Shizuo's eyes soften.

"Ah." Shizuo brings a hand up, rubs it over his nape. "She's, uh, a little mad at me right now, actually."

"Mad at you?"

"Yeah."

Izaya can't think of anything that would make Akane mad at Shizuo short of Shizuo murdering someone she loves in cold blood, which makes the present situation so unbelievable he wonders for a second if he's dreaming again.

"That's…" he doesn't know how to end his thought.

Shizuo smiles at him briefly, like he knows exactly what Izaya means. Then he clears his throat and says, "Listen, I… do you have some time right now?"

Izaya's fingers rub together, knuckles still painful from earlier. "Why?"

"I'd like to talk to you for a moment."

"Are you free?"

"Yeah. I had the morning shift only."

Izaya hesitates.

He has an idea of what this is, and he doesn't… he doesn't do long heartfelt conversations with exes. He doesn't seek closure because he's incapable of finding it. He doesn't know that he can apologize—and Shizuo will want an apology—and even if by some miracle he can restrain the true and rotten self he's been trying to hide around him, even if Shizuo manages to get some modicum of peace out of whatever Izaya says, Izaya won't. He'll walk out of this feeling worse than he went in. He'll be scratching at wounds that haven't yet scabbed. It's why he hasn't contacted Shizuo once since Shizuo asked him to go.

Shizuo looks at him with no expectation, sunlight glowing in his hair and eyes. He still looks like he did the first time Izaya saw him enter that same place, when he thought of him as a stranger to talk to and drag into his bed. But Izaya has had Shizuo in his bed. He's had Shizuo in Shizuo's bed, and in many places more. He knows exactly what Shizuo looks like with nothing but heat between them—he knows what Shizuo's hands feel like on his skin and he knows what Shizuo sounds like gasping into his neck—and the only thing he can think of is that he'd sacrifice even those memories for the chance to hear him say I love you again.

"I have time," he says, and it comes out more hoarsely than he intended.

--

They don't touch at all as they walk. It's not unfamiliar—neither of them so much as held hands in public even when they were together. Shizuo may not be ashamed of displaying innocent affection, but Izaya tenses when he feels eyes on them. This is not one of the concessions that came as a problem between them.

Now, though, the distance between them aches all the more with the knowledge that they are walking in the same direction and for the same purpose. Izaya would gladly accept the weight of Shizuo's hand and that of onlookers.

"Have you eaten lunch yet?" Shizuo asks quietly.

Izaya glances at him, but Shizuo is looking ahead, troubled. "I'm not hungry," he replies.

"You've lost weight."

Of course he would notice.

Izaya hasn't had an appetite for much more than tea and the occasional takeout. He's skipped breakfast more often than not and left much of the food Namie prepares to go to waste in his fridge. She's been very unhappy about it.

Shizuo takes him to a restaurant without saying more on the topic. It's not a place they've visited together, which Izaya would consider an insult if he weren't so sure that Shizuo is trying to spare his feelings. The sign outside is colorful in the worst way and the people inside noisy. Izaya is trying to parse the concept of a sushi restaurant owned by Russians, eyeing the white man behind the counter and ignoring the loud crowd when someone says, "Shizu-chan!"

"Fuck," he hears Shizuo mutter.

The owner of the voice is a woman seated with three other people. She waves in direction of the entrance, jumping to her feet and urging them over. Shizuo gives Izaya an apologetic glance, which Izaya waves off with more grace than he feels, before heading toward her. He's not going to resent Shizuo for being more social than he is.

"Karisawa," he greets curtly, Izaya a few feet behind him.

"I haven't seen you in forever," the woman says, giddy. "Come on, sit with us!"

The man sitting next to her grabs her by the sleeve and pulls her back down, saying, "Can't you see he's got company? Act your age."

He looks vaguely familiar.

Karisawa pouts. "But everything's so fun with Shizu-chan."

"Don't call me that," Shizuo says, tired. "I'm busy—I'll hang out with you guys later, all right?" He gives a friendly nod to the man with the beanie and raises his hand to answer the other two men's greetings before turning to walk toward Izaya again.

It's then that the man in the hat meets Izaya's eyes for a second, looks away, and then looks back with recognition and surprise etched onto his face.

"Izaya?" he asks, bewildered.

Shizuo pauses, glancing between the two of them.

The man stops looking confused to look glad instead, and his voice is surer when he says, "You're Orihara Izaya, right? Man, it's been a while."

"Have we met?" Izaya answers coldly. He's not exactly in the mood for pleasantries.

"Yeah, we have," the man grins. "I'm Kadota Kyouhei. We went to highschool together."

And suddenly it clicks; the man's face falls into place alongside memories Izaya hasn't browsed in years, younger but no less friendly than it is now. One of two people Izaya talked to on a regular basis in school, and the only one of the two he's likely to forget.

Izaya feels his lips curl into a smile. "Dotachin," he says slowly. "I expected you to be in prison by now."

Kadota laughs and replies, "I expected you to be dead."

"Seems like we both missed out."

"Ooh," one of the two other men says, the one with light blond hair. "Is this the guy you told us about, Kadota-san? The one who started a gambling ring in your school?"

"The one and only," Kadota replies dryly.

"Figures," Shizuo says under his breath. Izaya is the only one who hears him.

It's enough to remind him of why he's here at all. He puts his hands in his pockets and toys with his house key with the tip of his fingers. "Not that I wouldn't love to revisit fond memories, but I'm rather short on time, Dotachin," he says. "If you don't mind catching up later."

"Sure," Kadota says, with the air of someone who knows exactly how unlikely Izaya is to do just that. "I'll ask Sharaku for your number."

It's a threat as much as a promise, but the kind of threat Izaya can brush off with a smile that feels almost genuine.

He and Shizuo walk away, and Izaya hears the Karisawa woman say, "Why are all your friends hot, Dotachin?" and Kadota reply, "Don't ever call me that," with the voice of someone who regrets a lot of things.

Shizuo leans in closer. "I'll get us a private booth," he murmurs, breath running along the shell of Izaya's ear.

It leaves Izaya still all the way to his heart.

He does get them a booth, somehow. It's at the very end of the dining room, where no one can see them except by standing right next to their table. Izaya sits down and doesn't touch the menu.

"Sorry about that lot," Shizuo says after an awkward silence. "They're not exactly discreet."

"Kadota has always had a knack for surrounding himself with eccentrics," Izaya replies evenly. "I had no idea you knew him."

"I had no idea you knew him either. We worked together a couple years before I got my current job and got along well."

"Small world," Izaya mutters.

Shizuo nudges the menu in his direction. "Get yourself something to eat," he says.

"I'm not hungry."

"Have you eaten anything today?"

Izaya frowns and bats away the plastic. It almost slides right off the table and into the feet of the fast-walking waiter who comes out of the kitchen in that moment, but it gets the point across, no matter how childish it is.

"Okay," Shizuo relents. "Sorry."

He sounds so sincere is the problem. It makes the guilt that has clung to every breath Izaya takes shiver inside his throat, makes his face flush with it.

"Look, Shizuo," he says—has to swallow after saying, because Shizuo's very name feels like a knifecut on his tongue. "Just tell me what you want to talk about. Let's not pretend either of us wants to be here."

Shizuo just looks at him in silence for a long moment. Izaya stares unseeingly at the kitchen's door next to the booth, doesn't move when Shizuo waves over the waiter and orders whatever it is he wants before sending him off again.

"I wanted to talk to you," he said, "about what happened the last time we saw each other."

"You mean when you broke up with me."

"Yes. When I broke up with you."

Izaya's lips curl into a smile more feral than friendly, but Shizuo doesn't flinch away when their eyes meet. "What's there to talk about? You made the right choice. The only choice you could've made under the circumstances. I respect that."

"I know," Shizuo replies. "I can't say I've ever had this clean a break with anyone before. Thank you."

The pain in Izaya's chest is so sharp it feels physical in every way. Like Shizuo just stabbed a knife right between his ribs.

"What do you want," he says between his teeth, eyes close.

"I want to know why you never told me the truth."

It's nothing Izaya hadn't expected.

"We've had this conversation—"

"Yeah, and you never answered me properly," Shizuo cuts him off. "You made fun of me, and you acted like you didn't give a damn, and you left when I told you to. I want to know."

"There's nothing to know," Izaya replies icily. "I hid it from you because I knew you'd break up with me if you found out. What more do you want?"

Shizuo is silent for a moment. The waiter comes back with his food—he pushes half of it in front of Izaya, and Izaya feels too hollow to throw it off the table like he wants to, so he settles for letting it sit untouched in front of himself.

Shizuo eats a piece from his plate, looking down. "Did you know about Akane when we got together?" he asks once he's done chewing.

"Yes."

"I see." He looks up again, and Izaya can't read anything in his eyes. His fingers clench together in his lap. "So you were lying from the start."

Izaya smiles. "I was. How does that make you feel?"

"Not very good."

Izaya huffs and looks away.

"The thing is," Shizuo says a moment later, after toying with more of his food, "I can understand lying to me for a while if you only wanted a fling. If you just wanted to sleep with me or something. But that's not what you wanted, was it?"

"Maybe it was," Izaya lies.

Shizuo smiles sadly. "Then let's put it that way, if it's easier for you." Izaya tenses, but Shizuo continues before he can put in a word, "I wanted a relationship. I wanted a real, solid thing, and I consider what we had to be that even now. And you knew it."

Denying it would be fruitless, so Izaya doesn't.

Shizuo sucks a stray drop of soy sauce from his thumb before speaking again. "It lasted a year. That's no fling, Izaya, no matter how much you want to pretend to the contrary. You're smart. You knew the truth would come up eventually." His hand drops down onto the table, fingers splayed wide and gentle. "So why delay it? Why not talk to me about it?"

"Why not tell you that I hurt the person you care the most about?" Izaya parrots dryly. "Yeah, that would've been smart of me, Shizuo."

"It would've been smart of you to give me a chance to hear you out."

Izaya grinds his teeth. "This is useless," he hisses.

"Maybe. But you won't leave, 'cause you know you owe me this much."

It's true. It's the only reason Izaya hasn't listened to the urge to flee yet.

Shizuo takes the time to finish his food this time, to take long sips from the tea he's ordered and which has been steaming softly beside him the entire time. Izaya looks at his hand instead of looking at him. He watches the curve of his knuckles against the heat of the cup and tries to think of nothing.

When he's done, he straightens up in his seat, and his legs extend forward under the table, brushing Izaya's.

"I've been thinking," he starts. "I think there's a lot more to this than you or that Shiki guy want to let me know." Izaya has to restrain an angry shiver at Shiki's name as always, but he says nothing, just looks at Shizuo with what he hopes is bored neutrality. "And some of it is probably legitimately none of my business. But I also know you didn't just want to keep it secret just so you could have sex with me."

"You're just that good. You should be flattered."

Shizuo ignores him. "I think you care a lot about all of this, Izaya."

There's nothing but ruthless honesty in his eyes.

"Enough," Izaya says.

Shizuo shakes his head. "No," he replies. "Not until you tell me the truth."

"What do you want from me, Shizuo?" Izaya's hand flies over the table before he can help it, grasps Shizuo's wrist tightly and tugs it forward. He can feel Shizuo's heartbeat under his index, and it's peaceful, nothing like the storm gathering inside his own chest. His voice turns as derisive and hurtful as he knows how to make it. "Do you want me to beg you? Do you want me to apologize? Because I know how you are, and I know you would like me even less if you knew just how low I'd be willing to stoop. You wouldn't enjoy me begging you like this."

"I want to hear you out, Izaya," Shizuo replies with the first hint of anger he's shown all day. "I want you to tell me the truth with your own words. I don't want to leave everything we had behind just because of a stranger who's angry at you."

Izaya tries to release his grip, but all Shizuo does is trap his hand over the table with a press of his palm, and it doesn't hurt at all in spite of Izaya's bruises.

"Tell me," Shizuo says softly. "Just tell me. I won't mock you. I just want to understand."

His hold is absolute.

Izaya licks his lips. "Just tell you," he repeats.

"Please."

Shizuo squeezes his wrist, and even this much is a better physical contact than Izaya's had in months. It makes warmth spread up his arm and settle in his throat with a purr.

"Shiki and I were in a relationship," Izaya says. "When he broke up with me, I was angry. Angry enough to want to make him pay in a way he'd never forget. So I sank him and his organization."

Shizuo doesn't ask for details, thankfully.

"I'm not a good person," Izaya tells him lowly, flicking a glance toward him and then looking down at their joined hands. "You probably had an idea from the start, but you can't even begin to imagine the number of people I've played like this, Shizuo. I've destroyed countless lives over the smallest offenses—I didn't care at all about collateral damage when it came to taking actual revenge.

"I recognized Akane when Mikage told me her name, but I said nothing, because what would be the point? I wasn't even expecting to see you again." He chuckles. "Then I kept silent because I didn't want you to break up with me, it is the truth."

"But it's not all the truth," Shizuo replies.

Izaya's hand curls into a fist, and Shizuo's hold on his wrist doesn't waver, not for a second. "I didn't want to tell you because you're a good man. You're a better person than anyone I've ever met before. And I didn't want you to—" Izaya sucks in a breath rather than let himself choke, blinks quickly to erase the stinging in his eyes. "I didn't want you to look at me and know, really know, the sort of person I am. I didn't want to disappoint you. I wanted to pretend I deserved you for as long as I could."

"Izaya—"

"So that's it," Izaya interrupts, because he can't handle Shizuo's pity, not now, not ever. "It's just that stupid."

"What about Akane?"

Izaya rips his hand out of Shizuo's grip, finds his eyes and holds their stare, neck aching on his own tension. "Yes, Akane too," he says between clenched teeth. "It's just that fucking stupid, okay? I fooled myself into falling in love with you and getting attached to your daughter and I didn't want you to stop looking at me the way you did. I didn't want you to be disappointed with me, and I didn't want Akane to hate me, and I didn't want either of you out of my life! Is that what you wanted to hear? Because that's the truth. The whole truth. There's no noble grand reason, Shizuo, I'm just selfish."

His voice has become more of a whisper with every word. It's better than yelling and causing a scene. Izaya cradles his aching fingers into the palm of his other hand and stares at the untouched food in front of him, willing his heartbeat to quiet.

His breath stalls when Shizuo reaches forward to take his hand again; he lets him have it because Shizuo's pull is impossible to resist regardless of physical strength, and he has to close his eyes when Shizuo's thumb strokes over the red and blue on his knuckles.

"Enough," Izaya says again in a wisp of a voice. "Please. Just let me go now."

It's a weird parody of the words they exchanged two months ago. Shizuo squeezes his hand, and Izaya wants to cry with the knowledge that he'll crave even this—pressure against aches—if it's from Shizuo.

I'm never getting over him, he thinks, throat so tight with longing that he can't swallow without aching.

"Akane's angry at me," Shizuo says roughly.

Izaya's eyes open just enough to see light and not much else. "So you said."

"We had a talk after you left. She was hurt, yeah, she's angry at you too. But she said I should've let you talk to her before telling you to leave that night."

"She's ten," Izaya replies painfully. His hand feels weak, no matter how tightly Shizuo holds it. "She wouldn't have understood."

"Maybe. But she likes it better when people assume she can understand, even if she can't."

"So what," Izaya scoffs. His entire face burns with shame—it's all he can do not to hold Shizuo's hand back because he's lost that right. "Even if I'd told her, it wouldn't have changed anything. You would've still told me to go."

Shizuo doesn't answer immediately. He turns Izaya's hand around so his palm faces upward and follows one of the lines in it with his thumb, and Izaya doesn't know anything of palmistry, but this is a love line. This is something he'll feel for days.

"She's mostly upset that I'm so miserable," Shizuo says finally. "And she misses you."

Izaya's hand shakes. "Stop."

But— "Izaya," Shizuo murmurs, "I think you think way too highly of me."

"You don't have to comfort me. This isn't how it works." This time, when he tries to take back his hand, Shizuo stops him.

"I was never looking for someone perfect," he continues, implacable. "No one's perfect. I had a hunch that you were involved in illegal things, and that didn't bother me. And now I know for sure that you're not as bad as you make yourself out to be."

Izaya's eyes rise to stare at him, incredulous, and Shizuo smiles. The tiny lines around his eyes deepen as he does.

"You feel like shit over it, Izaya," he says. "You look miserable. Whatever you were before—you're not like that anymore."

"I destroyed your daughter's life," Izaya retorts.

"Would you do it again, knowing her?"

The answer rips itself out of him with no thought: "No."

Shizuo's smile turns softer and deeper, his fingers gentler against Izaya's. "I'm not saying I forgive you. That's not up to me."

"What are you saying?" Izaya breathes.

He has to hunch over the tabletop when Shizuo brings their hands up. The feeling of Shizuo's lips against his knuckles shoots up his arm and settles in his stomach like liquor, warm and dizzying.

"I'm saying that you regret it, and that's good enough for me," Shizuo says. His breath is warm on Izaya's fingers. "And that, if you want, we can figure the rest out together."

Izaya's ears ring from the blood that rushes to his head. When he exhales, all the air in his lungs comes out at once.

"Shizuo," is all he knows how to say.

"Yeah," Shizuo replies, looking down from his eyes to watch his mouth instead. "Izaya."

The table lets out a loud whine when Izaya pushes it forward in his haste, his free hand slamming dangerously close to the food still present by his side, but it wouldn't matter even if someone came to enquire after the noise. Shizuo's lips are warm under his, pliant and accommodating; Izaya shakes his hand out of Shizuo's grip to grab the hair at the back of his head and tilt it sideways, so he can lick the sharp tang of the food he ate directly off his tongue. Shizuo hums into it, holding Izaya's chin and then his shoulder, his hot breath running short against Izaya's cheek.

Izaya's lips are wet when he pulls away. He feels too hot under his clothes and too hot under his skin. Like all the warmth in his body has gathered in his lungs.

He doesn't let go of Shizuo's hair. It's as much to feel the soft of it under his fingers as it is to hold himself upright instead of falling.

"I missed you," Shizuo says, breathless.

"Me too." Izaya can't look away from him, not for a second. "I missed you so much," he says, and he learns forward to kiss him again, thinks about staying like this for hours on end despite the beginning of an ache in the lone arm supporting his weight over the table.

He lets Shizuo drag him around the table and press him into the farthest corner of the booth, lets Shizuo kiss the breath out of him and tread fingers through his hair until all of his scalp tingles and all of his chest burns.

The first time Izaya tells Shizuo he loves him is muffled against the other's mouth.

#durarara!! #shizaya #heiwajima shizuo #orihara izaya #fic: bliss #fic: alongside

[nymphigeon]

Someone you love(d) || KTH

• Pairing: Taehyung x Reader(f)

• Genre: break up au, angst with a happy ending, fluff? (just a lil' bit at the end :))

• Rating: PG

• Words: 7.2k

• Warnings: swearing, mention of weight, they kiss like once, if you don't like cheesy things....skip this one lmao

• Summary: You thought he loved you, you really did, but the way he left told you something else.

Or alternatively;

Taehyung is an emotionally constipated idiot who doesn't know how to deal with his feelings.

• A/N: Okay it took me waaay too long to write this, I'm so sorry T_T I really wanted to get this out earlier, but well things happened....

I only proofread this like once and had some trouble getting everything into the post properly so I'm sorry if there are any mistakes!  Please let me know if you find any so I can fix them asap.

Thank you for the request @mytaetaey​! I hope it matches your expectations!!!

It honestly hasn't even been that long since the day he showed up at my house.

"Let’s break up."

Although I really wouldn't be able to tell you how much time had truly passed.

"W-wait why?"

Days felt like weeks, weeks felt like months. Everything just seemed to last a lot longer than it should have.

"Did I do something wrong? I-I can fix it, just tell me!"

It might have happened last week, or the week before that. Wasn't it three weeks ago?

"No, no you didn't do anything wrong y/n. I'm sorry this just isn't working out."

Bottom line is, the passing of time hasn't really been on my mind. Any day without him is a day lost, a day to forget about.

"What do you mean this isn’t working out? I thought we were doing well together..."

I remember the confusion that went through me. All of a sudden the four years we spent together seemed to have disappeared.

“You thought wrong.”

He had been acting weird for a while, never quite getting close to telling me what was going through his mind. I hadn’t anticipated it ever ending like this though.

“Not everything you believe is a fact.”

The years I had to get to know him ended too soon. They went by so fast, they might as well have been non-existent.

"I... why? I don’t understand…

This all came too sudden. Just a few days before he had been laying on my bed, smiling as I told him about my day.

"I just don't feel the same anymore."

I just needed a little more time. A little more time to adore him. A little more time to say goodbye.

"I don't love you anymore."

But I still did do. He didn’t seem to care though. After he took care of me for a while, he decided I’m not worth it. Not even as someone who he just passes by.

"It's best if we don't see each other anymore."

If you cherish what you have you'll never be left unsatisfied.

"Goodbye."

I did. And it broke me.

“Y/n? Helloooo?”

My daydreams get interrupted by a waving hand in front of my face, followed by a harsh flick against my forehead.

“Ouch! Mina that was too hard!” Both my hands shoot up to the stinging spot between my eyes, one to prevent the evil hand from handing out another flick, the other one to rub at the red spot forming.

“Class ended a few minutes ago, you should probably pack up. Really, did you just stare off into space for the entire class?” Spotting my close to empty notebook, Mina sighs and shakes her head. She’s trying to look disappointed, but under the scolding exterior she’s putting on, there is a hint of pity.

It’s not the first time this week that not a single word has made it into my notes. Each time again the pages are either filled with lazy doodles and meaningless scribbles, or a space of absolute nothingness, not even a drop of ink staining the white paper.

“I’m sorry, I really did try to pay attention, but you know I hate his classes with a passion.” We both know that’s not the reason for my absentness, and neither of us speaks up about it. It’s what I requested myself, not being able to cope with the sadness I was causing my friends to feel. They care too much, I don’t want to burden them for too long.

“I know sweetheart, you did do your best. I’ll send my notes later, if you want I’ll help you understand them too.” Though no matter how hard I try, I still rely on them. They keep convincing me to, their kind souls not being able to leave me alone.  “If you could I’d really appreciate it.”

A sweet smile appears on Mina’s lips as I accept her offer, being more than happy to help me. She has always been the type to give more than she received, and despite me believing she deserves more than she gets, I adore her for it. “Of course, any time.”

I finish packing my belongings into my backpack, first making sure I didn’t leave anything behind before leaving the classroom with Mina close to my side. She talks about everything and nothing as we roam the spacious hallways filled with tired looking students. I wouldn’t be surprised if more than half of them slept until the end of their lectures.

Most of Mina’s words fall on deaf ears as I think back to the thoughts that occupied my mind the entire time my teacher was trying to explain the principle of quantum mechanics. I wouldn’t have understood it regardless of whether I was paying attention or not by the way.

“Ah you don’t have any more classes today, do you?” An unannounced weight falls on my left side as Mina whines into my shoulder, effectively bringing me back down to earth. Some brabbles about life being unfair escape the muffled sounds she produces, clearly not looking forward to the rest of her day.

“I’m going to be so lonely, me and Daeun aren’t allowed to sit next to each other anymore.” Mina raises her head to catch some air, her hands still clinging to the fabric of my shirt. The scowl on her face isn’t hard to miss, as she isn’t doing much to hide it.

“I was just going to head home straight away.” On any other day I would’ve probably teased her, wishing her good luck while I go and enjoy the free life. Today however, I don’t. My face stays in it’s boring resting position, even as Mina waits for the non-existent twist at the end.

It doesn’t take long before she finally sees I’m not poking fun at her. The moment of realization is clear, her whiny expression disappearing and her hands falling back to her sides. “Oh.”

“Well since it’s Friday how about I come hang out at your place when I’m done here? I’ll drag Daeun along with me too.” Mina’s voice is unsure, scared that I’ll reject her offer. A thick tension hangs in the air as we both wait for my reply.

I want to be alone. I want to be able to overthink in peace without others insisting that my mind is wrong. Though on the other side, I do know that I’ve been pushing them away. All the more reason for them to worry about me.

“Yeah sure.” I manage to convince myself to decide on the option I’d like the least. Somewhere I may be hoping that I’ve been missing out on a distraction I needed. I will never know until I experience it.

“Great! I’ll bring snacks too, let’s make it a movie night!” And off she goes, not waiting for any kind of confirmation from my side. Most likely it’s a way to keep me from refusing, forcing me into a situation that’s best for me, according to her.

I might not be looking forward to the events to come, but even I can’t deny the dull blossoming of my heart. The corners of my lips tug up, together with a hand to wave the girl off.

Yeah, perhaps, just maybe, I’m excited to spend some time with them.

I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out what’s wrong with me. Did I gain too much weight? Did I not text him enough? Was I going down the wrong path?

No matter what I wrote down, which new question I thought of, it didn’t seem right. Crumpled up paper balls and clothes littering the apartment show of the frustration occupying my mind.

No aspect of me changed for the worse. I’m still the same healthy weight, we texted almost every day, and I’m running up the path to a successful career. There is nothing wrong with me, so why am I blaming myself so heavily?

Because for some reason I believe that if I had done things differently the outcome would have been better. Because maybe he would’ve changed his mind if I reacted differently. Because it could never be him who was in the wrong.

A knock on the door and the pen I had been holding drops. Focussing on the paper in front of me once more, the harsh worded sentences ending in large written question marks stand out. I’m yearning for answers to questions I don’t even understand myself and it’s terrifying.

Three knocks on the door this time and I’m up, quickly discarding all the papers littering around. Some I tear to pieces, making sure none of the written sentences are visible anymore, others simply get hidden.

The door creaks as it opens, broadcasting it’s old age to the world. I should probably replace it sometime before someone decides to break in. Not that there’s anything worth taking here, I am a student after all.

“Hey dea- Oh no you look horrible.” A slight gasp interrupts Daeun’s cheery greeting when she notices the birds nest that is my hair. After having acted out all my annoyance on the poor strands, they’ve taken to each other for comfort, gladly intertwining. To my dismay, of course.

“I feel horrible. Come in.” The chuckle meant to lighten the statement doesn’t do it’s job properly. Both don’t say anything more as they enter the tiny apartment I call home, but they might as well have been screaming ‘I feel sorry for you.’” If they won’t do it, their faces definitely will.

“I won’t let any of you chose a movie tonight, I’ve got way too many good ideas.” Mina drops the overfilled bags she was holding on the dinner table while she talks. From the few items that stick out it’s safe to deduce that they’re filled with snacks to the brim.

“Also I was thinking we could order some pizza for dinner. All on me, I just got payed.” Like she owns the place, Mina reaches for several bowls high up in the cupboards of the kitchen. “We’ll use these tonight..” She says it more so to herself than to anyone else, not bothering to ask me anything. Not that it was really needed, I would have given her permission anyway.

“How was your day?” Sitting down next to Daeun, who has made herself comfortable on the couch after walking in, I try to start a basic conversation. Even though I’m not particularly in the mood for anything, I decide it’s probably best to try before I ruin the fun.

“You shouldn’t have to pretend that everything is okay, you know.” My question is completely ignored, switched for a statement that sets a heavy atmosphere in the room. The little excitement I had for their visit disappears. Instead, irritation starts taking over.

“Look Daeun, I-”

“I know you don’t want to talk about it, but this is not the way to cope with whatever may be happening inside you right now.” The tone she uses tells me she isn’t about to back out anytime soon. I hate it, hate how she feels like she can tell me what’s best for me.

“If this is what you came here for then I think it’s best that you leave. I’m not playing around here.” I turn away from the both of them, showing my back instead. This was supposed to be a fun evening to get my mind off him. Turns out, it’s the exact opposite.

“She’s right y/n.” It didn’t sound like Mina initially wanted to talk about this. She has always been unsure of when and how to address things, usually rather staying silent. With the right help however, Mina too will spill her words.

“This will always be a part of your life now, no matter how hard you try to erase it, you can’t. I know you’re hurting, and you’re allowed to feel hurt, we just want to help you. We’ll distract you all you like later, but for now, just confide in us please?”

It’s the way I feel both of their eyes burning into my back, the way she isn’t exactly sure how to convey her thoughts, though has the best intentions, the way a gentle hand softly lands on my shoulder. Sooner or later the dam would have broken. Apparently that time has come.

“I gave up so much for that guy! I moved to a more expensive apartment closer to his so we could see each other more, I started working more hours so he wouldn’t need to pay every time we went out together,” I never really got the chance to complain about the negative side to the changes I made, always feeling like it should be worth it, since I did it for him.

“I studied late into the night just so I had time during the day to hang out with him, do you know how much sleep I lost? I couldn’t even go home to my parents regularly anymore, for the distance was too much.”

Not exactly having expected me to rant so much, the two girls seated next to me stare in surprise. Never have I expressed any discomfort with what I was doing, always plastering a smile on my face.

“I don’t even mind that he broke up with me, I mean I do, but he was so cold! I had done my best to keep things going between us and he just gives me an ‘oh I don’t like you anymore’ like it’s common sense. I didn’t even get a thank you for all those years or a sorry for breaking it off! I just wish he’d…”

I take in a deep breath after having forgotten to breathe for the past minute, all the tears I kept in finally making an appearance as my anger get replaced by the same sadness I felt all those days ago.

“I just wished he’d at least given me reassurance I hadn’t been a waste of his time.”

The volume in which I spoke had drastically lowered, coming out in an almost-whisper. All the objects in front of me blurred as a non-stop stream of tears made it’s way out, my cries just mere silent sobs.

The hand resting on my shoulder becomes an arm pulling me into her side, the rough material of her shirt revealing her identity. Daeun doesn’t say anything as her other hand strokes through the strands of my hair, detangling any knots on the way.

For a moment I feel guilty about the tears wetting her shirt. It’s when she pulls me against her a little tighter that the feeling disappears, giving me the opportunity to fully bask in her embrace.

“I’m so sorry sweetheart.” Feeling left out, Mina pats my thigh and breaks the silence. “You worked hard didn’t you? Because you loved him.” I can hear her clothes rustling first, before her arms too wrap around the space Daeun left.

“I still do.” No matter how much I try to forget about him, I can’t seem to do it. He has engraved himself into my mind, forever stuck. If he’d ever leave is a mystery, though for now, it seems impossible.

You know what? Fuck you Kim Taehyung.

“Dude, what do you want for your birthday?” It’s Jungkook who has slammed down my door and completely disturbed my peace.

“Huh? Nothing in particular really.” Despite the rude entrance, I don’t look up from my tv screen, having already gotten used to the lack of announcements before he comes in.

“Didn’t you ask me that already two days ago?” Once again ignoring any form of politeness, the younger one makes grabby hands towards the bag of potato chips laying next to me. I don’t make any move to stop him, knowing very well I can’t win from him in a fight, ever.

“Yeah because I thought maybe you changed your mind. Usually you’re so excited for your birthday, but you just seem so… Unenthusiastic?” There is almost no way to take him seriously when he’s scarfing down my dear food like it’s water. Surely when were out next time I’ll make him get me a new bag.

“Well yeah that’s because…” What exactly was I going to say?

Finally grabbing his full attention, Jungkook puts down the bag of chips and lets himself fall down next to me. “Because?”

There is no mistaking his smirk for a smile, although he does his damn best to hide it. He knows exactly what I was about to say, and I’m not about to admit anything.

“Because I realized it’s nothing to be overly excited about. That’s it.” Challenging Jungkook to prove me wrong I stare right back at him, not planning on chickening out any time soon. It seems to have worked, as he looks away first.

“Ah is that so? I’ll just see if I can find something you’ll like myself in that case.” The boy who has silently admitted defeat removes himself from the couch, moving to his room at the other side of our apartment.  “Good luck buddy.”

No longer having to pay attention to him, I rewind the movie I was watching back. That muscle bunny just made me miss the absolute best part.

“So why exactly are you dragging me to town again?”

It’s not too busy today, which should have been a given as it’s a normal weekday. Everyone is either yawning behind a desk or running around in circles depending on their career choices. Compared to them, I’m making the worst possible choice by letting my best friend convince me to skip class for a reason I wasn’t even familiar with.

“I’m having none of this ‘I don’t care what you get me’ nonsense. We’re going to find something you like, and that’s why we’re here.” Jimin takes a pause from pulling me along by hand to put both of his on his waist like a proud toddler.

“So in other words, we’re here so I can choose my own birthday gift?” Slowly I begin to understand how much of a waste of my time this is. I could’ve been doing fine trying to understand whatever Mrs. Wilson wanted to go over today, but instead I’m going to be reminded of my ex all day. Great.

Well, if she was still here it wouldn’t have mattered whether I knew what I wanted or not, she always had something great for me, and I always looked forward to it. Once she jokingly told me how she felt pressured, having to live up to my expectations. Though honestly there was nothing for her to live up to, I liked her gifts because she gave them to me. Because she always managed to make each and every birthday a fun one.

“Any ideas yet? Jewellery, clothes, games… Wait, nothing too expensive, I’ll go broke!” Jimin’s sudden panic manages to bubble up a chuckle in me. He doesn’t really seem to appreciate it though, as he scowls at the sound. “What? Your taste is too expensive!”

He knows me well it seems. Not that it was ever a real secret. When the contents of your closet is worth more than someone’s rent several times anybody would want to show that off right? Well so do I.

We walk into several stores for inspiration. No real shopping haul, just a quick in and out with Jimin trying to get a reaction out of me by stuffing things he thinks I like into my face. So far no real success, my only reaction being something along the lines of ‘ah yes that looks nice’ at everything he proposes.

It’s not like I’m purposefully trying not to find something I truly like, but more that honestly nothing catches my interest. And I promise it’s not even the price, some of my most prized possessions are the cheapest things I own. This just isn’t doing it for me.

After having been pulled into the what feels like the hundredth store, my stomach decides to make the loudest noise known to mankind. “Can we like, maybe take a break?” There is no doubt that my face is bright red at this moment, instantly heating up when Jimin laughs equally as loud.

“If you were hungry you should’ve just said so. Let’s go find something to eat.” Is probably the only sentence he said today that I’ve fully agreed on.

It sounded so easy, just find somewhere to buy food. Unfortunately, getting our tummies filled wasn’t written in our future so soon. No matter where we look, everything is either closed or completely full with customers. Who knew so many other people were hungry at this moment. Not like it’s close to dinner time or anything.

Eventually, I manage to convince Jimin to eat at a small fancy restaurant down the street on my expense. Despite him agreeing after a few attempts, a set pout is still present on his face, which doesn’t seem to be leaving anytime soon. Together with some murmurs about how this isn’t fair, he makes himself look incredibly adorable.

Soon however, I would come to regret my decision. The fancy tablecloths and nicely plated food wouldn’t be looking so appealing anymore. Because even if I had convinced my mind of the truth my constant lies hold, there was simply no way for me to convince my heart too.

“Hey isn’t that y/n and… I don’t think I know him.”

The male opposite her had somehow won her over with that stupid perfect smile he wore, his eyes an annoyingly beautiful ocean deep blue and his blonde hair styled in an awfully neat way. Everything about the sight annoys the heck out of me, including the way she was smiling back at him. Why does she look so happy? When was the last time I saw her like that?

“Oh are they… I’m sorry Tae.”

I was the one who broke up with her. I was the one who walked out with a load haven fallen off of my shoulders. I was the one who ran even though she cried. There is no reason for me not to be completely fine.

“I don’t care, she can do whatever she wants now.”

So then why am I the one hurting this much?

It came sooner than expected, my birthday. Just sort of snuck up on me. After the restaurant incident Jimin himself magically decided to end the shopping trip and go home to eat. Nobody ever mentioned my birthday again in the following days.

It was pretty clear that someone had told the others about what happened, although none of them spoke about it. That someone obviously being Jimin.

“Soooo… any plans for the day?”

The question comes from Jungkook, who is fidgeting with the hem of his oversized hoodie. He stands quietly in the doorway to my room, waiting for an answer he already knows.

“Go to class and study after.”

“You’re not going out of the house? No party planned?” The suffocating nervosity radiates off of him in waves, displayed by the still ongoing fidgeting and his eyes that can’t seem to focus on one thing at a time.

“Nope, no other plans.” I sit up in bed, slowly coming to terms with the fact that I won’t be getting any more sleep. Despite him looking like he’s scared I’m going to get mad, he doesn’t actually give up, which isn’t appreciated on my part.

“Well the boys thought we could maybe go out together, get a few drinks.” On any other day besides my birthday I would’ve most likely agreed to the plan. Today however, I can’t help but relate every proposition to my birthday, which I, in case you hadn’t noticed yet, want to forget about as soon as possible.

I had already given him enough opportunities to stop. All it would take was leaving me alone. His constant persistence ends up getting to me, successfully causing me to snap at the younger boy. If he expected an outburst, he’s getting it.

“Why the fuck does everyone expect me to celebrate today? If my birthday is the day on which I can do whatever shit I want then let me do whatever I want!” It wasn’t meant to come out that way, and the guilt sets in the moment I realize it, but I don’t have time to apologize.

“Dude, you seriously need to do something about your feelings for y/n.” He sighs the words as he casually leans against the wall, his arms crossed. In an instant the awkward energy around him disappears, replaced by a very prominent eye roll. It’s not hard to guess that this has been on his mind for a while.

“Don’t mention her. This has nothing to do with her.”

“This has everything to do with her and you know it.”

I don’t have anything to say against that. We both know it’s the truth, though only one of us is trying to deny it. The dumb one.

“You know what I think? You spent your past 6 birthdays with the girl of your dreams and now that you pushed her away you have no idea what to do. Am I right?”

He is. I don’t say anything as my head lowers, slowly realizing there is no hiding anything from him. She’s still on my mind. I still wonder what she’s doing, where she is, if she’s safe. I still care. “You’re right.”

I broke up with who I considered my other half, convincing myself that I didn’t need her anymore. Who exactly was I trying to protect?

“I had to, I’ll hurt her.” I already did.

“And suddenly breaking up with her is supposed to make her happy?” I was hoping it would in the long run.

“You’re not the same as him.” Though I am. The same parents, the same group of friends growing up, the same sense of humour. We got along so well. What if we still do?

“He’s my brother Kook. We were so alike. You know he once too adored her.” We don’t talk anymore, I’m disappointed in him. He would’ve been too. I don’t understand what changed.

“He used her, nobody saw it coming. The signs were there, he just hid them too well.” Jungkook leaves his spot against to wall to comfort me, tucking my head into his neck.

“You’re not him and he isn’t you. The fact that you no longer want to be associated with him proves everything. He didn’t care about Hyeon.” So he can look straight at me, he pushes me away with his hands on my shoulders. The expression on his face tells me he’s serious.

“You love her, and you’ve got to fix this mess.”

I don’t like agreeing with him, but once again, he’s right.

As soon as I open the door I want to slam it right back into his face. Or I might want to run into his arms, I can’t decide yet. Regardless, I wasn’t expecting Taehyung to be standing on the other side when the doorbell went off.

“Umm… Hi?” All the words that have been building up in my personal dictionary seem to disappear the moment I lay my eyes on him. He still looks as good as the last time I saw him, even though the circumstances were heart-breaking.

“Hey, um I’m sorry I showed up unannounced. I didn’t really think this through…” Everything about him screams awkward. From the way his feet are pointed slightly more inwards than normally, to the way he doesn’t seem to be able to smile naturally. Instead there is this weird, tight expression on his face.

“Oh um… Would you like to come in though?” I don’t wait for an answer as I step aside, my memory helping me remind that nine out of ten times the answer to that question is ‘yes’. “Oh yeah, thank you.”

“Do you want anything to drink?” Not really having anything to say I cycle through the set few sentences I usually need when I have someone over. I’m not happy that he’s here, but I’m not the type to lash out at people.

“Ah no, I’m okay. Look I’m just going to get straight to the point, I messed up big time. I got insecure and closed myself off to everyone including you and I’m so fucking sorry that I did.”

My lack of reaction surprises me. Sure, my insides are doing somersaults, but I don’t feel the need to express any of it. Like an unused sheet of paper, my face stays blank. “And now you’re here to win me back I presume?”

Somewhere in between his statement and mine, the tables shifted. Slowly, I’m gaining the confidence he is losing.

“Well, not really, I mean yes, but-”

He catches himself rambling, shutting his mouth before any real nonsense can make it out. Taking a deep breath helps, the words coming out more fluently after. Not a great start, but it’s okay. I have patience. Sometimes.

“I just wanted to let you know that the words I shot at you that day weren’t true. I hurt you and I didn’t want those words to roam your mind not knowing they weren’t even close to what I was feeling.”

The deep breath he drew in earlier escapes in a deep sigh, followed by his mouth opening and closing a few times without any sounds making it out. “And?” It was meant as a way to encourage him to continue. Sadly, it came out rather rude.

“I do still care about you, damn I still love you more every day. If there is anything I can do to make it up to you please let me know, I don’t want to have to live in a world where my last words to you made you cry. Obviously I would want a second chance at being the proper lover you deserve, but you’re in charge here. If you want me to walk out the door I will.”

There’s a hopeful look in his eyes making my heart beat erratically. In the past I would’ve instantly dropped to my knees, making sure every wish of his came true. I am no longer that girl.

“Tae it’s been months, you can’t just suddenly drop by and tell me you’re sorry. I spent days wondering why you broke up with me, wailing over the fact that you suddenly just didn’t care anymore, and even now you’re not giving me an answer. Why did you suddenly turn your back on me? Why did you not talk to me about whatever was bothering you? Even now you’re making me feel like you couldn’t trust me. Fuck, you just left me there like I was a piece of trash!”

What was once a hopeful look in his eyes, turned into defeat. He won’t give me an answer.

“You can’t just come in here exclaiming to love me after I’ve worked so hard to get myself over you. You can’t just come in here trying to steal my heart when I’m learning to give it to somebody else.”

“The blonde haired dude?”

Perhaps I shouldn’t feel a sense of accomplishment at the clear jealousy in his voice. However, this man did break my heart in two for apparently no reason. Is it weird I would want to get back at him a little?

“His name is Yejun and he’s a great guy. Look, just leave please. I have nothing more to say or hear. We’re done.” Turning away from him I mark the end of this conversation. It takes a while before there is any movement behind me. Slow steps make their way to the front door before pausing.

“I hope he treats you well, but I’m not going to simply give up on you like that.”

And secretly, I was hoping he wouldn’t.

Two, three four days, before I realize it it has been an entire week since I last saw him. Some part of me is scared, scared that he has decided otherwise and I will never hear from him again.

I had told myself getting over him would be easy when I finally accepted the help of my friends, and for a while it was. Or so I thought, because the moment he walked in here I was right back to square one.

I’m in the middle of working on a new project when the doorbell rings. Standing up, I go to open the door wondering who it could be. If he had come back for me after all. Too bad I would soon be disappointed, as the man standing in front of my door was just an ordinary mailman.

“Umm I didn’t order anything?” My eyes fall on almost gigantic package behind the man. If I ordered some furniture I would’ve surely remembered right?

“Are you not y/f/n y/l/n?”

“No I am.”

“It clearly has your name and address on it miss.”

The building up confusion hasn’t left my head yet, but knowing there is nothing else I can do I decide to accept the package. After thanking the courier I close the door and carefully carry the big box into my living room.

The moment I open the big thing up, a bunch of big balloons float up to my low ceiling. There’s a transparent one with little hearts bouncing around inside, one that’s just one big heart itself, another one has the words ‘I love you’ written on it in a neat font. If I hadn’t checked my calendar this morning I would’ve thought it was valentine’s day.

Diving deeper into the box I find a relatively big fluffy teddy bear, hugging what seems to be a letter in a white envelope.

‘When I was 16 a miracle happened, I met the most beautiful girl. Me not being able to contain myself I immediately introduced myself to her. She said he name was y/n. I think it was back then that I decided her voice was my favourite. I was too much of a coward to ask her out at the time. I eventually did, though looking back I wish I did so sooner. There was never a boring day with her by my side.’

That’s all there is. Just a few words on an otherwise empty piece of paper. No signature at the bottom, no name, and still I knew exactly who wrote it.

The next day another package came in. This time a different set of balloons, a different stuffed animal, but the exact same white envelope.

 ‘When I was 22 my brother and his fiancée broke it off. Just like the piece of shit I have to call my dad he betrayed his partner’s trust, cheating on her without a second thought. My mother heard about it and accused both of us as being just like our father. You know after a while, I really started believing her.’

Each day a new box would come in, always containing a present with a letter attached.

‘I was terrified of hurting you, terrified of you seeing me the way my mom did, so I hid everything from you. I should’ve known that I can’t hide anything, you know me too well. I panicked and left you, the biggest mistake I could ever make. One that made everything that was already happening so much worse. I tried telling myself I didn’t need you, but I just couldn’t.’

I believed him, believed in the words he wrote down.

‘I’m so fucking sorry for everything I put you through. It’s all my fault and I’ll spend forever owning up to my mistakes. I love you and I don’t want to live without you. Please just give me one more chance to prove myself to you. One is all I need.’

I’m sorry Yejun, I can’t forget about him after all.

Actually he should be the one who is nervous, and well maybe he is, but I’m the one standing on his front porch with my knees shaking and my heart beating right out of my chest. At one point I was even scared he would be able to hear me through the door.

Shaking my head I gather all the courage I can to knock on his door before I turn around and run back in the direction I came from. However, when I hear the sound of my fist on the hard wood I briefly still consider hiding somewhere.

Luckily I don’t get the chance to. While still going back and forth between the options staying or coming back some other time, the door creaks. I stiffly force my hands to stay still at my sides. The time it takes for the door to actually open seems like an entirety. If you were to count the passing seconds it would at most be like 5, which doesn’t sound like much, it feels like much.

“y/n?” His stance looks like a ‘what are you doing here?’, but his eyes give more of a ‘please say you’re here to forgive me’. Well, the latter would be right. “Can I come in?”

“Y-yeah of course.”

It’s not hard to notice that he is uncertain of his actions. It pleases me on one hand, as it gives me some sort of confirmation that he doesn’t want to make any more mistakes around me. On the  other hand, I don’t like seeing him uptight around me. I wish he was more comfortable when I’m near.

“I received the letters you wrote.” He knows I received his letters, he was the one who wrote them and sent them out. Surprisingly though, he almost audibly swallows at the information like he did something bad.

“Why couldn’t you tell me in person?” It takes me back to the day he suddenly landed on my doorstep. Even when I explicitly asked for it, he gave me nothing.

“I was scared, I couldn’t get the words out. I wasn’t at all prepared.” He takes a pause before continuing. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, I just didn’t know what else to believe at that point.”

Carefully, I reach out my hand to place on top of his laying on his lap. I don’t touch his skin yet, patiently waiting for him to give me some sort of consent. It comes in the form of him softly raising his hand to meet mine.

“I know, we all have our insecure times. You’re not obligated to tell me anything. I can’t and shouldn’t force you to. I’m sorry I doubted you. I was only upset about the way you left.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I thought that if your last memory of me was a bad one you’d forget me faster.”

It didn’t work the way he wanted it to, but he already knows. Already having been hit with that fact multiple times, I decide to spare him. I don’t mention it again.

“Did you ever stop loving me?” At the time it seemed like he did. Like he wasn’t simply acting, like those harsh words were what he truly felt. “Be honest please.” I don’t want any more lies. I’ll accept whatever comes out, even if it throws me right back to where I started.

“I-I don’t know… I really thought my mother was right. That what I had for you wasn’t what it seemed to be.” His gaze briefly drifts to the ground, before focussing on our touching hands. Like magic, the uncomfortableness he was feeling seems to shift. “No matter what she or I tried to convince myself of, something was always missing. I couldn’t put a mask over my own hurting and guilt anymore.”

He spoke the truth. Well at least I think he did. And so I accepted it.

“Okay, thank you for telling me.”

This talk was long overdue. Something we both needed and completely missed. No screaming, no crying, no accusing. If only it went this way from the start. We’re not all perfect though. Even if someone out there is, I’m not, he isn’t. They must be laughing at us.

“Your letters were cheesy. The gifts too.” I’m not sure if this is me trying to lighten the mood, or if I’m just stating facts. Regardless, it makes the both of us smile.

“I know. But you love cheesy things, like the roses I buy you on special occasions.” When he looks back at me I have to resist the urge to jump on him. The smile he wears look good on him. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it. “You know me too well.”

“Well did they work?”

I had already made up my mind a few days back. While staring at the floating balloons occupying my living room I had decided for myself that he’s worth it. He is.

Tilting my head up like I’m still thinking, I make clear ‘hmm’ sound. I had thought that the answer is quite obvious, seeing as I came to him myself, but when doubt takes away his smile I drop the act. I’ve been through enough. We’ve both been through enough.

“Yeah, yeah it did.”

Unlike myself, he doesn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around me. Burying his head in the crook of my neck like he used to do, he lets out a few low ‘thank you’s’. It doesn’t take me long to return the hug, feeling just as safe with him as I used to.

“What about.. Ah I forgot his name.” It’s not hard to guess who he’s hinting at, the sourness in his voice giving him away. I understand, I wouldn’t like it either.

“I ended things.” His answer just comes in the for of a small nod. There is no need for anything more.

“I honestly thought you were going to reject me again.” He ends his sentence with a chuckle and completely relaxes in my hold. Now that the tension is gone, we can go back to where we left off, slowly rebuilding what was lost.

“I was just playing with you, I’m sorry. But no more being an asshole okay? I promise I will kick your ass.” My giggling might undermine the threat a little to others. Luckily, he knows I’m serious.

“I will give you full permission to, but you’ll never have to. I’m going to dump so much love on you that you’ll regret ever even thinking about taking me back. You’re stuck with me now though, so you better be prepared.”

Pulling himself back a little, he plants a gentle kiss on my lips. And then another one, a second one, three more, each kiss more passionate than the last. A fire spreads throughout my body, burning away the few doubts I had left with success. Eventually, to my dismay, I have to pull back for air. Damn humans for needing oxygen.

“Oh? I’d like to see you try.”

Just in case you were wondering, I never did regret it.

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