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cleo-fox · 4 months

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Unraveled

Summary: It was all fun and games until Loki started wearing that goddamn sweater.

Pairing: Loki x Female Reader

Warnings: Smut, 18+, Minors DNI, dirty talk, praise kink, teasing, orgasm delay, sex, vaginal fingering, godly refractory periods, kitchen sex, semi public sex, Loki in a sweater.

A/N: My explanation for this one is that I saw too many pictures of Tom Hiddleston in a sweater and it gave me thoughts.

Being an Avenger has made you pretty good at rolling with the punches. After your third or fourth encounter with some alien/wizard/android bullshit, your perspective is fundamentally altered and real life seems manageable in a way that it didn’t before. You have to call your insurance company to dispute a claim? Big deal, you’ve negotiated with terrorists; you can handle Garth from Member Services.

The thing is, having that kind of perspective means that the things that do get to you can rattle you a lot more than they should. Natasha had warned you about that, but you were riding high on the thrill of successfully conquering Blue Cross Blue Shield and you kind of got to thinking she was exaggerating.

And then the seasons started to turn and Loki started wearing that goddamn sweater.

You can recognize when someone is out of your league. When you first moved into the Tower, it had been relatively easy for you to assign Loki to that category: he was a god. He’d been featured in last month’s GQ. You were mortal and your most recent press had been a TMZ story featuring unflattering paparazzi photos of you leaving a bodega in your pajamas at seven o’clock in the morning, a bagel halfway into your mouth. You were clearly not the same.

Up until the sweater, you’d managed to keep your cool around Loki and keep your attraction confined to daydreams and the occasional surreptitious lustful glance. Hell, you’d even had the nerve to be proud of yourself for keeping your shit together in front of him.

The sweater lays waste to all of that.

On the surface, it doesn’t seem like a sweater that is capable of completely destroying your carefully constructed composure. It’s a fairly standard crew neck in a deep green so dark it almost looks black at a first glance. But on Loki it just…does things to you. The fabric is well fitted, clinging to his biceps, pulling taut across his chest, emphasizing the line of his pectorals. It somehow accentuates how muscular he is while also still making him look lean and lithe.

The first time he wears it, you find your eyes just trail to him of their own volition, like an incredibly horny moth to the flame. It’s a day of catching yourself staring, panicking, pretending that you were actually looking at something else, and then repeating the process five minutes later when your gaze inevitably wandered again. It almost would have been funny if it didn’t put your blood pressure into the stratosphere.

To make matters worse, at the end of that day’s debriefing, he rises from his chair and raises his arms to the ceiling in a long stretch. The hem of the sweater creeps up, exposing the firm, flat muscles of his stomach, lightly dusted with a trail of hair that meanders in a tantalizing path down to his belt buckle.

You promptly choke on your own spit. Clint claps you hard on the back and asks if you’re okay, which is a question you don’t know how to answer (ultimately, you stick to a thumbs up and mumble something about dust getting caught in your throat). Loki is too preoccupied complaining about the entire concept of office furniture to notice. Or at least you’re pretty sure he doesn’t notice.

You might have been okay if that had been the only incident, but the sweater makes a repeat appearance on Friday. The following Tuesday features the deadly combination of the sweater with a pair of tight, dark wash jeans that nearly send you into cardiac arrest. Your fantasies suddenly become much more frequent and detailed.

You are not really sure what to do about this—it’s not like you can talk to anyone about it, nor can you ask him to stop wearing it without prompting some very uncomfortable questions. The idea that you’ll get used to it is laughable.

You look at your calendar and note that spring is six months away. At least.

Fucking hell.

It’s a Saturday afternoon and in a strange quirk of scheduling, almost everyone is out of town for a mission or a personal obligation, leaving the Tower unusually quiet. As much as you enjoy the daily clatter and chaos that comes with living here, you find a lot of comfort in these moments of quiet, however infrequent they may be.

You intended to make yourself a late afternoon snack. That was the plan, anyway. But as you’re standing at the kitchen counter and cutting up the fruit you just washed, you realize that you’re not entirely alone. From this vantage point, you can see Loki lounging on the couch in the next room and reading.

He’s wearing the sweater. Of course he’s wearing the sweater. And the so-tight-they-should-be-illegal dark wash jeans.

Goddammit.

You have the sense to set the knife down at least. The last thing you need is a trip to the hospital because you got too distracted by your hot colleague while handling a knife.

You let your gaze travel along the firm muscles of his chest. It’s just a sweater. It shouldn’t look this good. It shouldn’t prompt these kinds of thoughts. And yet…

He shifts on the couch and the hem of the sweater creeps up. His hand drops to his belt buckle. It’s entirely appropriate, but the way his long, long fingers are splayed against his stomach makes your mind drop straight to the gutter and wonder what they’d look like wrapped around his rock hard co—

“You know, it’s rude to stare.”

His voice comes from behind you and adrenaline surges through you like an electric shock. The Loki on the couch looks up at you and smirks before disappearing in a shimmer of green.

You wonder if it’s possible to die of embarrassment and a heart attack all at the same time. It certainly feels like you’re about to.

You take a deep breath and try to collect yourself, which feels largely futile. Come on, get it together. You’ve negotiated with terrorists and insurance companies. Shake it off.

You slowly turn around, cheeks burning. Loki is standing right behind you, arms folded across his chest. You swallow.

“I um. I was—I was just…” Words escape you as your brain fires in every direction except a helpful one.

“You were just what?” His expression is intense, but you’re not sure that he’s angry.

“Spacing out,” you say, trying to infuse your voice with confidence that you absolutely do not feel.

He places his hands on the counter behind you, intentionally caging you in with his body. You are overwhelmed by the scent of him—a masculine, wintery musk that makes you want to bury your face against his chest.

“Try again,” he says. His voice is deep enough to rattle your bones.

You swallow. Everything you could possibly say seems wildly inadequate.

Loki has never been one to be at a loss for words, though, and after a moment of terrified silence from you, he continues speaking.

“I’ve noticed something curious over these past few weeks,” he says. “When I wear this sweater, you can’t seem to take your eyes off of me.”

Your heart is pounding. Fucking hell. Have you really been that obvious?

“Now why is that?” he asks, his voice a low purr.

You briefly consider trying to lie again, but the piercing green of his eyes instantly makes you rethink it. “I um…” You swallow hard. “It’s just…it suits you. You…you look good.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I look good?”

You nod.

“Interesting.” His lips twitch in a slight smirk as he looks you up and down. “And how does that make you feel?”

Your heart thuds in your chest, your stomach contorting with a strange combination of fear and desire. You’re still humiliated, but the sound of his voice and the dark intensity of his gaze is intoxicating and incredibly arousing.

“I don’t—I don’t know how to answer that question.”

“Oh, I think you do.” There’s a rawness in his voice that makes your cunt clench.

You shake your head, eyes wide. You’re pretty sure he’s not really mad, but you also don't know where this is going. Surely he’s not making a pass at you…right?

“How does it make you feel to see me in this sweater?” he continues, his voice a low whisper. He pauses for a moment and when you don’t answer, he continues. “Does it…arouse you, perhaps?”

Holy fuck.

This can’t be happening.

You try to think of something clever or sexy, but the bluntness of the question and the fire in his eyes kills whatever remaining brain cells you have left. Mutely, you nod.

There’s that smirk again as he licks his lips. “Are you wet right now?”

Your cheeks burn. You give the tiniest nod possible.

“Hmm.” His hand alights on the button of your jeans. “I believe you Midgardians have a saying that is appropriate here: trust, but verify.” He slips the button free and your heart pounds like a war drum in your chest.

You cannot believe this is happening.

“You haven’t been entirely truthful in this conversation.” His palm presses flat against your stomach, the tips of his fingers slipping under the waistband of your underwear. “So I’m afraid I’m going to have to see for myself.”

His hand is achingly slow, creeping lower and lower. He watches you intently as his hand cups your sex, seemingly cataloging the way your breath hitches and all the little shivers that run through you.

His middle finger finally slides between your folds and you can’t help but moan.

“Oh, you did lie to me,” he growls, his index finger joining his middle, both sliding up to circle your clit. “You’re not wet, you’re soaked.”

Your legs are already starting to tremble and you grab on to his shoulders to try and steady yourself. The fabric of the sweater is softer than a cloud against your hands.

“Sopping wet,” he continues, trapping your right leg between his thighs and the counter, the heavy weight of his erection pressing eagerly against your hip. “And this is all for me?”

Wordlessly, you nod. There’s no point in denying it—and you don’t think he wants you to, either.

“What am I going to do about this?” he muses. His index and middle fingers lightly circle your clit again and you whimper.

“Don’t stop,” you gasp. “Please don’t stop.”

“Don’t stop?” he says. His tone is one of light curiosity, like you’re just chatting casually about the weather. “But if I continue, you’re almost certainly going to come.”

“Yes,” you gasp. “Please.”

“Oh, you want me to make you come?” You can hear the smirk in his voice. “Right here in the middle of the kitchen?”

You nod.

“Anyone could walk in, though,” he purrs. “Anyone could come in and see me with my fingers buried in your dripping cunt. What would they think if they saw you so utterly debauched and at my mercy, begging for me to make you come?”

“Don’t care…” you gasp. How are you already so close?

He raises an eyebrow. “You don’t care what they’d think if they saw us like this?”

You shake your head.

“Oh, you must be desperate.” He adjusts his hand, his thumb taking up the rhythm on your clit while his index finger sinks into your slick channel, making you gasp.

“Loki, please—”

“Begging already,” he says, not letting up in his rhythm. “Has it been a long time, sweetheart? When did you last feel this good?”

It’s not a question you can answer. You don’t know that anyone ever has made you feel like this. You moan, your hips bucking hard against his hand.

“Poor thing,” he tuts. “You’re clearly desperate for it. What kinds of filthy thoughts have you had about me?” he purrs. “I’ve seen you staring, I’ve heard your breath hitch. Have you touched yourself while thinking of me?”

You manage a nod and his smile turns feral. “When was the last time?”

“Last…last night,” you gasp.

“How many times did you come?”

“F-Four.”

“Filthy girl.” His free hand slides up to cradle the back of your head, his fingers tangling in your hair as he tips your head back. “Next time, all you have to do is ask.”

His mouth covers yours, his tongue pushing past your lips as he slides a second finger into you. You moan into his mouth as the pressure in your hips increases.

“Oh yes, let me hear all of those pretty noises,” he murmurs. “Are you going to let me fuck you against the counter after I make you come?”

You nod, whimpering.

“Good girl,” he purrs. “I think you need to be fucked properly and hard. Is that what you need?”

“Yes,” you gasp.

“Mmm, that’s what I thought. This cunt is just too wet and needy for any other treatment.” He draws back to look at you more fully, giving you a lazy, hungry smile. “You’re about to lose it all over my fingers, aren’t you?”

Your orgasm is cresting, the tingling pressure in your hips becoming unbearable. You nod, lost for words.

With one more smirk, he curls his fingers inside of you. “Come for me, pretty girl, let me see you.”

Your cunt spasms around his thrusting fingers and your whole body shudders as your orgasm overtakes you, your head tipping back as you cry out.

“Oh, that’s it,” he murmurs, “there’s my good girl.”

A shiver runs through you at his words, your hips still moving against his hand, trying to draw out every last ripple of pleasure.

He kisses you as you come down from your high, and you take the opportunity to run your hands over his chest and tentatively feel the hard planes of muscle that you’ve been staring at these last few weeks. But after a few moments, he takes your hand and guides it to his cock.

His preference for leather pants or those sinfully tight dark wash jeans made you suspect that the size of his ego might actually be proportionate to the size of his cock and your initial assessment seems to confirm that theory. You rub your fingers over the denim that covers his thick shaft, feeling yourself grow even wetter at the low groan he makes in the back of his throat.

“Take my cock out.” His voice is so deep and his eyes are so smoldering, it feels like the command goes straight to your cunt. You are practically trembling with anticipation as your shaking hands make quick work of the button, buckle, and zipper.

You can’t help but suck in a breath when his cock comes into view. He’s long and deliciously thick—big enough to be a little intimidating, but not overwhelmingly so.

He guides your hand to wrap around his shaft. He barely fits in your hand. “Look at what you’ve done to me,” he says, his voice raspy as he guides your hand to stroke his cock. “Feel how hard I am for you, feel how much I want you.”

His cock practically pulses with need, the tip slick with pre-come and you grasp him more firmly, your cunt pulsing as he gives a deeply satisfying groan.

You stroke him from base to tip, squeezing lightly. He groans again. “They told me to stay away from you, you know,” he says.

You aren’t so far gone that you can let this information slip by. “What? Who?”

“Stark. Rogers. Romanoff. My brother.” He reaches behind you and shoves the fruit and cutting board into the side, the knife clattering into the sink. “They saw how I looked at you,” he says. “They saw that I wanted you. They told me you were too good for me. Too sweet.”

You feel your jeans and underwear melt away in a shimmer of green and he lifts you easily onto the counter.

His eyes flash with desire. “I wonder what they’d say if they knew you’d let me fuck you raw in the middle of the kitchen?”

For a brief moment, frustration almost wins out over your lust. “We could have done this sooner?”

His gaze turns serious. “Darling, we could have done this the moment we met, but I’m told a handshake is more appropriate.”

You take a breath, about to embark on a rant about the individuals he’d named and how they hadn’t even asked, they’d just assumed, but Loki puts a hand up against your mouth.

“Don’t make me wait any longer,” he says. There’s a sincerity and a need in his gaze that you’ve never seen before and it’s enough to calm your anger for just a moment.

“Okay,” you say, wrapping your legs around his waist and angling your hips toward his, “but clear your schedule because I’m gonna need you to fuck me a lot to make up for all that time.”

His grin is feral as he pushes into you.

You shiver at the blunt stretch of his cock, your hands gripping his broad shoulders. He indulges in a low groan as his hips press flush against yours.

“If I’d known they were keeping me from this tight cunt, I would’ve done something sooner,” he rasps. “You feel absolutely perfect.”

“Please,” you breathe, “I need—please.”

His hips snap hard against yours and you moan, your head tipping back.

His eyes glitter as he pulls you close, pressing his mouth against your ear. “The next time I have you, I will be sweet and soft.”

“And this time?” you ask, though you think you already know the answer.

“This time—” His mouth presses against the curve of your neck, teeth scraping just this side of too hard against the tender skin. “—I’m going to utterly ruin you.”

His pace is fast and rough—the word possessive comes to mind. You twist the luxurious fabric of his sweater in your hands as his cock hits that sweet, aching spot inside of you, pressing against your sensitive cunt in a way that makes your muscles spasm and clench around him. You moan, a shiver rolling through you as you inch closer to release.

“I’m…fuck, I’m getting close,” you gasp.

His pace abruptly slows and his grin is wide and his eyes are dancing with mirth when he raises his head from your shoulder.

“That was unnecessary,” you say with a scowl.

“Oh, I just want to savor you for a little longer, my love,” he purrs as he settles into an easy and slow pace that still makes your toes curl. “You’re going to take me right over the edge with you and I’ve waited so terribly long to have you.”

“I feel like you’re probably omitting the fact that you like being a tease,” you say.

He grins again, increasing his pace ever so slightly. “Both things can be true.”

He does this a few times—taking up a wicked pace that almost sends you hurtling over the edge, only to slow at the last possible moment, silencing your whimpering protests with a deep and slow kiss that is good enough to make you forgive him until a few minutes later when he does it all over again.

You hold out for as long as you can, but eventually, the ache in your hips overwhelms you.

“Loki,” you breathe when his pace again begins to increase. “Please don’t stop.”

“Don’t stop?” he rasps, somehow finding the concentration to raise an eyebrow. “You’re quite sure?”

You nod.

“You want to come all over my cock?”

Speech is slightly beyond you at this point, but you manage to gasp a desperate plea as you hurtle into the final plateau, right before the fall.

Loki regards you with that same playful look as he fucks you. You wait, unsure of what he’s going to do, your body desperately crying out for your release.

His lips curl into a smile. “Come for me, sweet thing.”

At the sound of his voice, every one of your muscles is tensing and releasing, the slick walls of your cunt clamping down hard on the thick girth of his cock as you shudder and moan.

The remnants of Loki’s composure are fraying, his eyes closed and his jaw slack as he chases his own end. His brow furrows and he throws his head back, letting out a low groan as he comes and you think it might be the best sound you’ve ever heard.

You sag against him as you both come down from your respective highs, his heart beating hard under the soft fabric of his sweater. He reaches for your face, tilting your head back so he can kiss you, impossibly slow and soft.

You’re in the middle of the kitchen. You understand this. In a wholly rational world, you would be quick to hop off the counter, quick to try and negotiate the return of your jeans from whatever pocket dimension he’s sent them to.

Instead, you find yourself wanting to stay in this moment, with his arms wrapped around you, his cock still pulsing inside you as he kisses you breathless.

You count to ten, then twenty. At forty, you draw back slightly, only to have him pull you back into the kiss.

It’s somewhere after one hundred when he trails his lips to your neck and you manage to say what you intended: “We should probably…” you trail off as he sucks at your pulse point, sending a shiver down your spine.

“We should probably what?” he murmurs against your neck, before tracing a lazy figure eight with the tip of his tongue.

It takes you a moment to find that sentence. “Get dressed and such.”

You feel the sharp press of his smile against your skin. “I think not.”

Before you can open your mouth to say anything, the kitchen is fading in a shimmer of green to an unfamiliar bedroom and the two of you tumble into a bed draped in green silk.

“I’d like to stay like this for a while,” he says, a smile playing at his lips as he slowly rolls his hips against you, somehow still impossibly hard. “In fact, I think I need to have you again.”

“I can live with that,” you say. You tug at the fabric of his sweater. “But this is going to have to go.”

His gaze is smoldering and his bare skin is suddenly pressed against yours as the sweater and the rest of your clothes disappear in that familiar shimmer of green.

“Will you like me as much without it?” he asks, rolling his hips against you.

You drag your fingernails up along the firm muscles of his back. “I think I’ll manage.”

“Good,” he says, leaning in to kiss you, “because as I understand it, we have quite a lot of time to make up for.”

#loki smut #loki x reader smut #loki laufeyson #loki laufeyson smut #loki x female reader smut #loki x female reader #loki fanfiction #loki fanfic #loki x you smut #loki x yn smut #loki imagine

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chappellroansdreamgirl · 20 days

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ellie with a mean gf!

(prjoecting like a mf rn...)

a/n - i have been very unmotivated to write full-fleshed stuff so i'm deciding to write drabbles/headcannons for now. also THANK YOU FOR ALL THE ATTENTION ON CH.1 OF GOOD LUCK, BABE! it makes my heart smile that you guys love it so much... also😭😭...: @sweetcici11 srry that i lied and said ur fic would be out a few nights ago. i'm really trying to finish it but i don't want to rush it and it be shitty. i really want it to be enjoyable and as good as it can be. but i PROMISE you it WILL be posted... sooner or later! i also have a few more drafts to finish too, so, i hope you guys like them when they come out!!!!!

content warnings - fluff, i'm a bitch and i want to feel loved and think that someone can put up with my cuntiness😝😝 , over-usage of commas probably, i think they're low-key kind of toxic?!?!?!?! , guys i promise i'm not this bad i've just been pretty insufferable these last few days and need an outlet 😭😭 .

i wrote way more than i thought i was going to...

------------------------------------------------------------

- you both hated each other at first. ...well actually, you hated her, and she was like, "😞😞" and then got used to it after a while and started being mean back 2 u!!

- dina introduced ellie to you when you both were hanging out with her. "you guys are going to love each other🥰!" ... you didn't 🤗 !

- ellie said hi to you and all you did was look her up and down, stare at her for a few seconds and then turn your head.

- everytime ellie would (attempt to) strike up a conversation you would give an overtly enthusiastic response or just stare at her like she had two heads or just blatantly ignore her. dina is over there like, '😟😟 . can we not have one good day...' when dina would leave for short periods of time and ellie was sure that you didn't like her, she would just talk about anything to get your blood boiling, our girl lllloooovvveessss to push buttons, we know this to be true.

- it got worse yet more tolerable after that. whenever she'd see you at gatherings or parties, you'd do your damnest to stay away from/avoid her. and she'd do her damnest to get you as upset with her as possible. it always ended with not-so-playful not-so-friendly banter!

- you were talking with jesse about something on the couch, and ellie came over and DELIBERATELY, DELIBERATELY... interrupted you 🤗 ! :

you shoot daggers at her face with your eyes, your jaw set hard and your eyes narrowed.

ellie tried to feign innocence, raising a brow at you after she looked over to see your facial expressions long after she felt them.. "what are you looking at me like that for🤨🤨?" , "i was fucking talking, you're being rude." , "if i have to get used to you being a bitch, you got to do the same." , you just huffed at her response and crossed your arms before walking off a few minutes after, realizing that the conversation you were having with jesse earlier was indeed over. ellie smirked to herself, victory was her's!

- she started calling you the nickname brat out of the blue... it blindsided tf out of you. here's the origin story!:

you look at ellie with a disgusted look on your face as she exhales smoke. her glazed over eyes meet yours before she offers the joint to you, out of genuine kindness. "want a hit?" she asked, forgetting how much of a bitch you were for, like, 0.2 seconds. you glare at her for a moment longer before plastering a sarcastic smile on your face, snatching the joint from her fingertips and dropping it onto the floor. you kept her eyes on yours as you stomped and smushed it into the ground.

now she remembered.

she stood up instantaneously, she was pissed. "what the fuck?!" she shouted, earning a few looks from some friends across the room. they strained their necks for a little bit before they saw you, it made sense now, and then turned back to the conversation.

you close your eyes for a slight second as a satisfied smile graced the corners of your lips. "you know i don't smoke, ellie." you responded with in a condescendingly sweet voice.

she didn't even argue with you. "you're such a fuckin' brat." she muttered under her breath before walking away. you had to try your very best to ignore the heartbeat in your pussy. (🤗!)

- she didn't get to see how much effect that title had on you that night, but she noticed afterwards.

- one time you didn't say anything to ellie during a hangout, distracted by someone you disliked more than her. ellie kind of missed it☹️☹️ .

you were brought out of your thoughts when you felt her cold hand touch your shoulder. when you noticed it was her who was doing it, you pulled back with a furrow of her brows. ellie smiled. there she was.

"you haven't said one mean thing to me since i've gotten here. are you dying?"

you scoffed as you pointed in the direction your anger was radiating from. it was a girl ellie saw here and there in jackson, sometimes she was paired with her during patrols, she wasn't crazy about her but she paid no mind to her existence.

"what?- what does this have to do with me-"

"what it has to do with you, is that you should feel honored that i can tolerate you... can't fuckin' stand that bitch."

ellie scoffed before speaking up once more, "oh, c'mon you're being dramatic. don't be a brat."

your eyes went wide for a second and as you turned away, she could see the cheek that was facing her turn an embarrassing shade of red. she found your weakness.

- when you guys started dating, no one, and i mean NO ONE, believed it. (i don't feel like writing how u two got together maybe if y'all like this enough i'll make a full-fleshed oneshot abt it😭.)

- joel saw you guys together... like, not arguing, and HER head on YOUR shoulder... he thought he got laced with acid for a quick second there... jesse felt like he missed a couple chapters and felt very sad that he hadn't caught onto it quicker... and dina was so proud of herself, "told you, you guys would love each other 😁." she's so smug, I LOVE HER!

- she constantly has to reprimand you like you're a child when you guys are around someone you obviously don't like for whatever reason. once whoever left the room, ellie'll pinch your shoulder or your thigh, whatever skin is on display at the moment, not too hard, just to get you to wince a bit. you'll make a face at her afterwards. "ow, what the fuck was that for ellie?" , "we can talk shit when we get home, don't make a scene🙄." you stress her out sometimes...

- just bcs you guys are together DOES NOT mean your attitude has gone away.

whenever ellie and you have gotten in an argument, you're always being extra sarcastic and EXTRA BITCHY just to get on her nerves.

"baby, have you seen my gun?" she asks you, breaking the silence voluntarily as she's two minutes from being late to patrol.

you don't look up to her, you keep on looking at the pages of an old magazine. "idk ellie, did you check to see if it was shoved up your ass."

she just stands there for a second like this 🧍‍♀️ , before sighing and walking somewhere else to find it. "i'll fuckin' deal with you later." she mutters under her breath, obviously annoyed. you smirk to yourself as you flip another page.

- she does love, however, that you've gotten gentler with her since the relationship blossomed between you two. very few people (dina and ellie... sometimes jesse.) can get you to stop, and ellie is proud of herself that she could add beast-tamer to the top of her list of many skills and talents.

- sometimes she has to calm you down, sometimes all it takes is a stare in your direction. ... well, it's oftentimes a glare... you're your own woman/person and a relationship will not restrict you from showing off your talents!!!!!

- ellie has to constantly keep you from getting into arguments that could harm you physically. although your craft of bitchery is amazing, you can't fight to save your life.

she'll be pulling you back like an angry barking dog on a leash.

"i could've fucking took h-" , "you overestimate yourself a lot, baby."

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a-hazbin-reader · 3 months

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I hope this is an okay thing to ask for but could you do headcanons of Alastor with female reader on her- time of the month?? (Kinda wondering what to be like for him with all the blood ya know???) 🙇🏻‍♀️ please, thank you!

Alastor X Reader Headcanons

✅️Romantic

❌️Platonic

TW: Alastor being nasty, canon cannibalism mentioned, menstruation(wish I got a TW for that in real life fr)

Description: ☝️⬆️

Can literally smell it coming before you even have a chance to check your calendar

Creep

He's like a fucking shark, smelling you from miles away

Maybe it's his affection for you but you're the one person he reacts this way to, he's fine around anyone else on their period

If you forget then he's not going to remind you because he likes waking up to the smell of your blood

Don't worry though he'll take care of the sheets and your clothes, he's got you bby girl

Tbh Alastor is practically starving whenever your period starts, the coppery smell making his mouth water constantly

He's sipping tea and you walk by?? Oops, the cup is crushed in his hands and he's sitting there with tea and broken glass all over him

He wants to devour you all the time

Definitely just finds opportunities to bite you and draw blood so he can stave off his desires

Don't worry it feels good

Eats at Cannibal Town more often

Other than that, he tends to pamper you when you're on your period

You're craving something??? Don't worry, Husk or Niffty will go get it for you! He'll snuggle you while you wait

Wait actually that looks kinda good give him a bite

Fuck off

He steals a bite anyways, forcing you to feed him a little nibble

Thank you love

You're experiencing cramps?? Do you want him to massage the area for you? You want a hot water bottle? He's got you

You just want to cuddle and be held? He can spare some time for that, just let him close the door first

Bby please he has a reputation to uphold

Loves when you have mood swings and snap at the others, encourages your anger

He's a shit stirrer

He literally just likes poking the bear and pointing you in his current victim's direction

"My dear, I thought you knew that Angel ate your sweets..."

As long as it's not directed at him

If you turn your anger on him then his ears fold back and he finds an excuse to run off

"I'm sorry my dear but Charlie is calling for me! We'll have to continue this conversation for another time!"

Coward

"Alastor, Y/N is looking for you-"

"I'M NOT HERE"

If your mood changes to sadness and you start crying then he panics and freezes up

"I-uh-I'm...sorry..?"

Makes awkward grabby motions at you then stops

He hates seeing you upset but he's an asshole and doesn't know what to do, doesn't want to make it worse

Idk if he's ever made a genuine attempt to make someone he cares about feel better

Alastor doesn't want to be the reason you're crying

Will just ask you what he can do to make it better, gripping your chin so that you have to look at him

He's serious

Whatever you ask of him he'll do it and he'll do it himself, no sending someone in his place and no fuss

Is visibly relieved once you're calm again, rubbing your back and letting out a sigh

Alastor is as attentive as he can bring himself to be when you're on your period, but you still have to put up with a lot of his shit

I hope this is what you were asking for 🥺

#alastor hazbin hotel x reader #alastor hazbin x reader #hazbin hotel x reader #alastor x reader

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actual-changeling · 4 months

Text

Crowley did not want the holy water as a suicide pill in 1862, but I believe he not not wanted it as one

He gets pulled down to hell in 1827 and it's not just a slap on the wrist for something minor, he did a very good deed—that didn't just cost them one soul, it has ripple effects! It cost them dozens if not more, depending on what Elspeth did with her life.

Additionally, we do not know how long he stayed in hell. "Quite some time" is not a very exact measurement, and I know there are theories that it wasn't long at all, but that's pure speculation.

Canonically, the next time we see him is in 1862, so assuming he took some time to adjust to the new period, he could have come back as late as 1861. It is entirely possible—and in my opinion very likely—that he spent over thirty years being tortured in hell.

By "torture" I do mean actual torture, btw, the same kind hell threatens him with. In the scriptbook, there's a deleted monologue Dagon has while Crowley is getting rejected (again).

They save the wonderful line "Because no matter what agonies the damned are suffering, Crowley, you will have it worse. We SEE how hell tortures the damned, Furfur literally plays it to us like a corporate powerpoint, so whatever they did to him after '27 was bad.

Crowley looks tired, exhausted, almost sick. He is paranoid, in mental and/or physical pain, he looks like he has lost weight, and we barely see him move at all.

Now compare to the Crowley we saw in Edinburgh. Carefree, happy, taking Aziraphale on dates and going on fun little adventures, getting drunk on laudanum, smiling, jumping around—this is the most relaxed we have seen him since around 1601.

After this, we never see him like that again. That bouncy, curly-haired demon is gone, and hell is responsible; they broke him. I know that look on his face in '62, I saw it every day in the mirror for twenty years, which were (also honestly quite literally) torturous.

Crowley asked for the holy water as insurance, he had probably already come up with several contingency plans involving.

What would happen if they still got him though? What if he erased a demon or two and then hell dragged him back down? I am 100% certain that Dagon would have made good on the promise they give him later. If it had come down to killing himself with holy water or being tortured for all eternity, he would have chosen death without hesitation.

Better dead than in hell.

#alex talks good omens #good omens #ineffable husbands #crowley #crowley meta #good omens meta #aziraphale #good omens season 2 #go2 #aziracrow

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months

Text

Sympathy for the spammer

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

In any scam, any con, any hustle, the big winners are the people who supply the scammers – not the scammers themselves. The kids selling dope on the corner are making less than minimum wage, while the respectable crime-bosses who own the labs clean up. Desperate "retail investors" who buy shitcoins from Superbowl ads get skinned, while the MBA bros who issue the coins make millions (in real dollars, not crypto).

It's ever been thus. The California gold rush was a con, and nearly everyone who went west went broke. Famously, the only reliable way to cash out on the gold rush was to sell "picks and shovels" to the credulous, doomed and desperate. That's how Leland Stanford made his fortune, which he funneled into eugenics programs (and founding a university):

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/malcolm-harris/palo-alto/9780316592031/

That means that the people who try to con you are almost always getting conned themselves. Think of Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) scams. My forthcoming novel The Bezzle opens with a baroque and improbable fast-food Ponzi in the town of Avalon on the island of Catalina, founded by the chicle monopolist William Wrigley Jr:

http://thebezzle.org

Wrigley found fast food declasse and banned it from the island, a rule that persists to this day. In The Bezzle, the forensic detective Martin Hench uncovers The Fry Guys, an MLM that flash-freezes contraband burgers and fries smuggled on-island from the mainland and sells them to islanders though an "affiliate marketing" scheme that is really about recruiting other affiliate markets to sell under you. As with every MLM, the value of the burgers and fries sold is dwarfed by the gigantic edifice of finance fraud built around it, with "points" being bought and sold for real cash, which is snaffled up and sucked out of the island by a greedy mainlander who is behind the scheme.

A "bezzle" is John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." In every scam, there's a period where everyone feels richer – but only the scammers are actually cleaning up. The wealth of the marks is illusory, but the longer the scammer can preserve the illusion, the more real money the marks will pump into the system.

MLMs are particularly ugly, because they target people who are shut out of economic opportunity – women, people of color, working people. These people necessarily rely on social ties for survival, looking after each others' kids, loaning each other money they can't afford, sharing what little they have when others have nothing.

It's this social cohesion that MLMs weaponize. Crypto "entrepreneurs" are encouraged to suck in their friends and family by telling them that they're "building Black wealth." Working women are exhorted to suck in their bffs by appealing to their sisterhood and the chance for "women to lift each other up."

The "sales people" trying to get you to buy crypto or leggings or supplements are engaged in predatory conduct that will make you financially and socially worse off, wrecking their communities' finances and shattering the mutual aid survival networks they rely on. But they're not getting rich on this – they're also being scammed:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4686468

This really hit home for me in the mid-2000s, when I was still editing Boing Boing. We had a submission form where our readers could submit links for us to look at for inclusion on the blog, and it was overwhelmed by spam. We'd add all kinds of antispam to it, and still, we'd get floods of hundreds or even thousands of spam submissions to it.

One night, I was lying in my bed in London and watching these spams roll in. They were all for small businesses in the rustbelt, handyman services, lawn-care, odd jobs, that kind of thing. They were 10 million miles from the kind of thing we'd ever post about on Boing Boing. They were coming in so thickly that I literally couldn't finish downloading my email – the POP session was dropping before I could get all the mail in the spool. I had to ssh into my mail server and delete them by hand. It was maddening.

Frustrated and furious, I started calling the phone numbers associated with these small businesses, demanding an explanation. I assumed that they'd hired some kind of sleazy marketing service and I wanted to know who it was so I could give them a piece of my mind.

But what I discovered when I got through was much weirder. These people had all been laid off from factories that were shuttering due to globalization. As part of their termination packages, their bosses had offered them "retraining" via "courses" in founding their own businesses.

The "courses" were the precursors to the current era's rise-and-grind hustle-culture scams (again, the only people getting rich from that stuff are the people selling the courses – the "students" finish the course poorer). They promised these laid-off workers, who'd given their lives to their former employers before being discarded, that they just needed to pull themselves up by their own boostraps:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/10/declaration-of-interdependence/#solidarity-forever

After all, we had the internet now! There were so many new opportunities to be your own boss! The course came with a dreadful build-your-own-website service, complete with an overpriced domain sales portal, and a single form for submitting your new business to "thousands of search engines."

This was nearly 20 years ago, but even then, there was really only one search engine that mattered: Google. The "thousands of search engines" the scammers promised to submit these desperate peoples' websites to were just submission forms for directories, indexes, blogs, and mailing lists. The number of directories, indexes, blogs and mailing lists that would publish their submissions was either "zero" or "nearly zero." There was certainly no possibility that anyone at Boing Boing would ever press the wrong key and accidentally write a 500-word blog post about a leaf-raking service in a collapsing deindustrialized exurb in Kentucky or Ohio.

The people who were drowning me in spam weren't the scammers – they were the scammees.

But that's only half the story. Years later, I discovered how our submission form was getting included in this get-rich-quick's mass-submission system. It was a MLM! Coders in the former Soviet Union were getting work via darknet websites that promised them relative pittances for every submission form they reverse-engineered and submitted. The smart coders didn't crack the forms directly – they recruited other, less business-savvy coders to do that for them, and then often as not, ripped them off.

The scam economy runs on this kind of indirection, where scammees are turned into scammers, who flood useful and productive and nice spaces with useless dross that doesn't even make them any money. Take the submission queue at Clarkesworld, the great online science fiction magazine, which famously had to close after it was flooded with thousands of junk submission "written" by LLMs:

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/24/1159286436/ai-chatbot-chatgpt-magazine-clarkesworld-artificial-intelligence

There was a zero percent chance that Neil Clarke would accidentally accept one of these submissions. They were uniformly terrible. The people submitting these "stories" weren't frustrated sf writers who'd discovered a "life hack" that let them turn out more brilliant prose at scale.

They were scammers who'd been scammed into thinking that AIs were the key to a life of passive income, a 4-Hour Work-Week powered by an AI-based self-licking ice-cream cone:

https://pod.link/1651876897/episode/995c8a778ede17d2d7cff393e5203157

This is absolutely classic passive-income brainworms thinking. "I have a bot that can turn out plausible sentences. I will locate places where sentences can be exchanged for money, aim my bot at it, sit back, and count my winnings." It's MBA logic on meth: find a thing people pay for, then, without bothering to understand why they pay for that thing, find a way to generate something like it at scale and bombard them with it.

Con artists start by conning themselves, with the idea that "you can't con an honest man." But the factor that predicts whether someone is connable isn't their honesty – it's their desperation. The kid selling drugs on the corner, the mom desperately DMing her high-school friends to sell them leggings, the cousin who insists that you get in on their shitcoin – they're all doing it because the system is rigged against them, and getting worse every day.

These people reason – correctly – that all the people getting really rich are scamming. If Amazon can make $38b/year selling "ads" that push worse products that cost more to the top of their search results, why should the mere fact that an "opportunity" is obviously predatory and fraudulent disqualify it?

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/29/aethelred-the-unready/#not-one-penny-for-tribute

The quest for passive income is really the quest for a "greater fool," the economist's term for the person who relieves you of the useless crap you just overpaid for. It rots the mind, atomizes communities, shatters solidarity and breeds cynicism:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The rise and rise of botshit cannot be separated from this phenomenon. The botshit in our search-results, our social media feeds, and our in-boxes isn't making money for the enshittifiers who send it – rather, they are being hustled by someone who's selling them the "picks and shovels" for the AI gold rush:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/03/botshit-generative-ai-imminent-threat-democracy

That's the true cost of all the automation-driven unemployment criti-hype: while we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

The manic "entrepreneurs" who've been stampeded into panic by the (correct) perception that the economy is a game of musical chairs where the number of chairs is decreasing at breakneck speed are easy marks for the Leland Stanfords of AI, who are creating generational wealth for themselves by promising that their bots will automate away all the tedious work that goes into creating value. Expect a lot more Amazon Marketplace products called "I'm sorry, I cannot fulfil this request as it goes against OpenAI use policy":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/12/24036156/openai-policy-amazon-ai-listings

No one's going to buy these products, but the AI picks-and-shovels people will still reap a fortune from the attempt. And because history repeats itself, these newly minted billionaires are continuing Leland Stanford's love affair with eugenics:

https://www.truthdig.com/dig-series/eugenics/

The fact that AI spam doesn't pay is important to the fortunes of AI companies. Most high-value AI applications are very risk-intolerant (self-driving cars, radiology analysis, etc). An AI tool might help a human perform these tasks more accurately – by warning them of things that they've missed – but that's not how AI will turn a profit. There's no market for AI that makes your workers cost more but makes them better at their jobs:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Plenty of people think that spam might be the elusive high-value, low-risk AI application. But that's just not true. The point of AI spam is to get clicks from people who are looking for better content. It's SEO. No one reads 2000 words of algorithm-pleasing LLM garbage over an omelette recipe and then subscribes to that site's feed.

And the omelette recipe generates pennies for the spammer that posted it. They are doing massive volume in order to make those pennies into dollars. You don't make money by posting one spam. If every spammer had to pay the actual recovery costs (energy, chillers, capital amortization, wages) for their query, every AI spam would lose (lots of) money.

Hustle culture and passive income are about turning other peoples' dollars into your dimes. It is a negative-sum activity, a net drain on society. Behind every seemingly successful "passive income" is a con artist who's getting rich by promising – but not delivering – that elusive passive income, and then blaming the victims for not hustling hard enough:

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/12/blueprint-trouble

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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uvobreakmylegs · 2 months

Text

Dark Light Within

part two of Lamp of the Body

Chrollo x female!reader

Part 1

Warnings: trauma, mentions of death, mentions of murder, manipulation. unhealthy relationships, smut, oral (male receiving), choking

Word Count: 12.1k

In the days that followed the compromise you and Chrollo had come to, you found that you were doing well. Over that period, the nightmares stopped and you actually got a few full nights of sleep for the first time in a long while. Finally you had mornings where you woke up feeling completely refreshed and ready for the day, and you had the energy to do more around the apartment as well, happy to no longer be stuck doing one or two tasks you'd set for yourself before you inevitably needed to take a break and recharge.

Admittedly, it was a bit performative as you were trying your hardest to prove that you were okay. That the days of you feeling exhausted from a restless night were over with and had only ever been a temporary problem, one that had solved itself. That Chrollo didn't need to move away from the city for your sake and that the both of you could continue to live here as you had been.

Soon enough, you'd be able to go out again, you were sure of it.

Chrollo obviously noticed your change in mood as he commented on it one evening while you were rinsing off the plate you had used for dinner.

“You seem a bit better recently,” he said.

“I've been feeling better,” you answered.

“That's a relief,” he replied, smiling as he added “maybe I was a bit hasty in my suggestion to move.”

“Maybe,” you repeated, “it's a good thing we held off on that. We saved ourselves from a lot of hassle.”

“So it seems,” he agreed.

You went to bed that night feeling good about yourself.

The fact that the nightmares started up again that very night was ironic. Or it would've been, were it not for the fact that they now felt worse than ever. The new constant was the figure being on top of you, their hands around your throat, squeezing and letting go only to repeat the process over and over again. You always woke up in the middle of the night now, feeling worn out and terrified.

During the times that Chrollo would wake up after you and asked what was wrong, you came up with excuses, mostly claiming that you were feeling restless and joking about how your internal clock was wired wrong since you could no longer get any sleep at night. The look in his eyes told you that he didn't believe you, but he would accept your explanation regardless, even if it seemed to be reluctant.

You just wanted to be okay again.

You were in a good place now; there was no reason for these attacks from your subconscious to continue as they did. They needed to stop so you'd be better, so you could go back to the way things had been before.

Get over it already

But as much as you tried to will yourself into better health, it just wasn't happening. Not on its own. And it was clear that Chrollo could see that. Even without his ability to be as insanely perceptive as he was, no doubt anyone could see that you were tired.

He'd held off on any major discussion of it, but there were comments made here and there that let you know what he thought: that you should stop being so stubborn and putting yourself through unnecessary stress, though you doubted he would ever use such wording. The next time the two of you sat down to actually talk about the issue, you knew you would lose. He had a million reasons as to why his decision was correct and there wouldn't be anything you could do to prove otherwise.

That was what drove you to an impulsive decision.

It came on a day where Chrollo was away running errands; nothing that would last too long, so he had no need to call in any more favors from his friends. And no one else being around you meant that there was no one that would keep you from going out.

It wouldn't be anything major. You were just stepping outside of the building. In your mind, being able to do that without any negative affects would prove that things were okay.

Nothing bad would happen, you told yourself. It was killing two birds with one stone, actually. You would prove that you were doing okay by leaving the apartment while also getting a much needed breath of fresh air. Of course, Chrollo would have argued on the second point that you could've gotten that by going out onto the deck outside your apartment. But that wasn't the same as walking around freely. That was probably part of your problem; that he'd essentially kept you under house arrest out of concern for your safety. Although his concern was appreciated, it felt like that was probably part of why you weren't doing well. Being locked inside had left you feeling stir-crazy, which didn't do any good for your mental state during a time that you were supposed to be recovering.

Dreams and nightmares have meanings, you remembered hearing. Maybe you being paralyzed and the figure that watched you was a representation of your deteriorating health while being kept trapped.

…. It probably wasn't that deep. Your mind was just running with random thoughts because it didn't have anything better to do. Again, another sign that staying cooped up was bad for you, regardless of what Chrollo told you.

It didn't feel good to sneak around him, but surely if you did this, he might ease up a little.

That thought had you feeling pretty good as you made your way down to the apartment lobby, pushing the button for the ground floor of the elevator and absentmindedly humming to yourself to pass the time as the elevator began made its descent. The last time you'd been out was when you were returning from the Dentora Region in Padokea, and you hadn't seen any of it as Chrollo wanted you to keep a bandage over your eyes until it was safe to remove, which was, of course, after you were back home.

There were two others present when you entered the lobby: a woman you didn't recognize who seemed to be a resident like yourself and a receptionist stationed at the desk. They were chatting with one another and didn't pay much attention to you when you walked past them. Heading towards the main doors of the building, you only glanced at them for a moment longer before bringing your attention to what was in front of you. Through the glass doors, you saw the street outside, the people who were walking along the sidewalk and the traffic in the streets.

Perfectly normal, nothing to be worried about.

But when you grasped the handlebar of the door was when you froze, and you stayed in place as you fully took in the sight before you.

The sad part was that nothing had really happened.

There was no dramatic scene outside that made you pause, no recreation of your accident with you being a bystander this time – it was simply a normal day outside in the city streets that were teeming with traffic.

And yet after that sight had set in, you stopped in your tracks.

Why? Nothing bad had happened. You'd been out before. Very briefly and while you were being transported to and from different hospitals and airports with Chrollo at your side, but still, dread filled you when you looked upon that street. Your hand gripped the handlebar so hard that your knuckles paled and your breathing got heavier.

Maybe it was because you were alone, because Chrollo wasn't here.

From behind, you heard the woman at the counter saying something that seemed to be directed at you. You couldn't hear it clearly. Then she got closer, and she said something else when she stood next to you. By that point, her words were background noise.

You weren't able to focus.

Suddenly you were in the backseat of that taxi, checking the weather forecast on your phone while some advertisement played on the car's radio. The driver was chatting with you about something mundane and unimportant while you half-listened to him, adding in some commentary of your own from time to time. Everything was fine.

Then the driver made a left turn and you heard him shout.

You looked up in time to see an oncoming car hit the taxi head on.

Then nothing.

Just the feeling of waking up with a curtain of darkness over your eyes that refused to lift.

This was a bad idea

Go back upstairs, you told yourself. Go back up and if you need to have a breakdown, do it in the comfort of your own home. Go back up.

Those thoughts ran through your head as you continued to look at the scene outside, unable to move.

Go back up.

“What's wrong with your eyes?”

You didn't really understand the question at first; all you knew was that someone was talking to you and you looked over to find that the woman was standing next to you. Better to apologize if she thought you were behaving strangely and to explain what had happened to you a year ago. Surely she and the receptionist would understand, and they would encourage you to go back up so you could recover in private.

But when you looked to the woman, you found that her expressions wasn't one of worry, but that of being disturbed, or even fearful, and she took a step back when you looked at her. When you glanced over to the receptionist who was still seated at their desk, they seemed confused until you made eye contact, and then their expression mirrored that of the woman.

They both looked at you like there was something wrong with you.

“Seriously,” the woman said, “what the hell is wrong with your eyes?”

You heard the question, but again, it didn't register. All you saw were the disturbed gazes of the two before you, and all you wanted in that moment was to get away from them.

Without saying anything, you made your way back to the elevator, pushing the button to summon it and hoping it would come down quick.

It didn't.

And with the two still staring at you for a few more agonizing moments and you feeling like you could tear and claw at your own skin as you desperately wanted them to stop fucking looking at you, you opted to take the stairs back up to your level. Before the door closed behind you, you heard them talking in hushed whispers almost immediately after you were out of sight.

You felt your heart rate increase on hearing that.

You were lucky enough to not run into anyone else on your way back to your unit, though you didn't feel that way when you slammed the door shut and leaned against it after, supporting yourself while you tried to level out your breathing. What just happened? Why did you freak out? How could you still be so unprepared for life outside these walls?

Why did those two look at you like that?

You had no clue. What was that woman even talking about?

Still no clue. Your throat felt dry, though.

Pushing yourself off the door, you made your way to the kitchen. A glass of water should fix that. And maybe getting some fluids into you would help you feel better after that ordeal.

On your way to the kitchen you caught sight of something strange in the reflection of a decorative mirror that hung on the wall as you passed by. Something that looked red.

You paused after you passed it, then took a step back and looked into the mirror.

Your heart could've stopped in that moment.

Where you should've seen two gray eyes in your skull looking back at you, the color you saw in the irises was red. Two violent, bloody red eyes staring back at you, and you saw clearly when your expression grew distraught as you backed away from the mirror.

Why?

In an effort to tell whether or not you were dreaming, you dug your nails into the skin of your arm, just enough to cause you pain. If this was just a dream, the pain would be enough to snap you out of it and bring you back to reality. But as the minor amount of pain made itself known in the flesh of your arms, the image before you stayed the same: you, looking back at yourself in the mirror, and a pair of red eyes in your skull.

Why?

Not convinced that what you were seeing was real, you ran to the bathroom, wanting to see if those eyes would appear in the mirror in that one, too.

They did.

Why?

Desperate to be wrong, you went to the bedroom and pulled out a hand mirror, wanting to believe that somehow, the other mirrors had been tampered with and that this one would show you the truth.

The same bloody red eyes stared back at you a third time.

Why?

Panic overtook you. Your heartbeat was thundering in your ears and you felt so light-headed that you ended up on the floor, sinking your fingers into your scalp while you breathed hard in and out through your mouth. Why was this happening?

What happened in the moments after that point was hard to remember exactly. You were so wrapped up in your panic that you didn't notice when time passed or when someone entered the room.

Chrollo found you on the floor of your bedroom, still staring at the image in the hand mirror that lay in front of you while you cried. He spoke your name as he placed both hands on your shoulders, and that snapped you out of it, looking up at him as you finally realized that you weren't alone anymore.

He stared at you for a moment before saying “it's alright now,” and pulling you against his chest. Without another thought you grabbed at him, holding onto him while you continued to cry. How long he held you like that was also unclear, but once you felt a bit more calm, you noticed that the sun was lower in the sky now than it had been when you first ventured out. Eventually your sobs quieted and your breathing became more regular.

Sensing that you were doing better, Chrollo gently pulled you away, caressing your cheek as he asked “what happened?”

After taking a few breaths, you spoke.

“I'm sorry,” you began, “I wanted to go out. I thought I'd be okay, but when I got down there…. I don't know, I freaked out.”

That wasn't the issue, you remembered. It was your eyes.

Your eyes. That he clearly saw.

You felt stupid. It would've been the first thing he noticed. You were looking right at him, and currently, his expression was neutral. Had it not hit him yet how strange it was? Would he have a similar reaction to the two downstairs? The thought of Chrollo looking at you like that almost sent you into an entirely new panic. But you shoved that down as you forced yourself to speak.

“You can see them, right?” you asked, “my eyes.”

He nodded slowly, but said nothing.

That only made your panic worse.

“I don't – I don't know why this is happening,” you stammered, “I don't know why this happened, what could've caused it. I swear this hasn't-”

Chrollo brought a hand up, and you stopped talking.

“First things first; we should get off the floor,” he told you.

Taking both of your hands into his, he pulled you to your feet and kept his grip firm on you when you stumbled. Once you were steady, he led you out of the bedroom and took you to the kitchen, where he sat you down at the table before pouring you a glass of water and urging you to drink it. You did as he told you, and as you downed the glass, he pulled up a chair to sit closer to you, keeping a hand on your shoulder as he watched your expressions. The water and his touch had you feeling more at ease.

When you placed the glass back down, he asked “are you feeling better?”

“Sort of.”

You reached up to touch the area beneath your eye, asking “but I don't understand why this is happening.”

Upon hearing that, Chrollo's hand that had been softly rubbing your shoulder stilled, and you looked back to find a resigned look on his face.

“Chrollo?”

“It's alright, love,” he said, “you were going to find out sooner or later.”

Your eyebrows furrowed as you asked “find out what?”

Chrollo considered you for a moment before he spoke again, saying “I'm afraid I have a confession to make.”

“Confession?” you repeated.

“About the origins of your current eyes.”

You weren't sure where this was going, so you stayed quiet and waited for him to explain further. But instead, he asked you a question.

“Have you ever heard of the Kurta clan?”

Your eyebrows furrowed again as you shook your head.

“That isn't too surprising. They were a very small, secluded group of people that lived on the other side of the world,” Chrollo explained, “there isn't much known about them due to the way they isolated themselves, but the main thing that was known was what would happen to their eyes once they became agitated or upset in some way.”

What he was saying clicked for you as you asked “they turned red?”

He nodded.

Part of you wanted to feel relieved. Technically speaking, it wasn't so bad. Sure, it would be inconvenient for your eyes to turn red whenever you become upset, and learning to manage that would be difficult, but it could be worse. At the same time, however, you didn't understand why Chrollo had kept this from you. Since he had labeled this as a 'confession', there was no way for him to claim ignorance about the eyes. Maybe keeping this from you for the first few weeks was somewhat reasonable, but to stay silent for all this time? What reason could there be?

“…. So my eyes came from a donor from that clan?” you asked.

You didn't like the way he frowned after you said that, and the sinking feeling you were having only got worse.

“I'm afraid that the story is far more gruesome, love,” he began.

“How?”

“The scarlet eyes were considered by many to be a wonder of sorts, and the way the Kurta hid away from the outside world only made those people want to see them even more.”

You said nothing, but you couldn't help but note that he had referred to the Kurta in the past tense this entire time.

“It ended with the Kurta being massacred several years ago, and the eyes of those that had stayed red after death were harvested and sold on the black market.”

“Black market – people buy them?” you asked, incredulous and not sure what point you should address first.

“They're considered to be a collector's item,” Chrollo explained, “and their value tends to be high, given that there are only thirty six pairs in existence.”

Then he added “although now the number of eyes that one can buy has dropped to thirty five.”

It all clicked into place in that moment, and no words could escape you. All you could do was stare at Chrollo in shock.

He didn't fault you for that as he continued to speak.

“I'm sorry, love. I knew you wouldn't be happy once you learned the history behind them, but after realizing that you may never be able to see again, I decided to take matters into my own hands.”

You didn't know what to say, and your hand returned to your cheek as you processed what he'd just said. Things made sense now. Why he didn't want you going out. Why he made sure you weren't alone for any long periods of time. Why he wanted you to leave the city with him. All it would take was one really bad moment out in public and you would become a spectacle. Like what had happened downstairs in the lobby.

Just how long was he planning on keeping this from you?

Fuck

None of what he'd just told you could've been legal. He said that the eyes were sold on the black market, right? How many crimes had Chrollo committed to help you?

He must have sensed that your thinking at that moment was something along those lines, as he made a point to assure you that nothing bad would come from any of it, that he'd been thorough in making sure nothing would lead back to either of you. That no one knew he'd gotten the eyes aside from the specialist in Padokea, and that they'd been paid to not talk about it. Everything would be fine as long as the two of you were careful.

Everything would be fine.

He'd said that a lot during the past few months, and him telling you that had done a lot to keep you calm. Your thoughts went back to the many, many times he had his hand in yours as he said that, and how at peace you felt when you heard him say that.

And as for right now…. You still wanted that. Chrollo brought about a certain sense of security with him, and as you weren't sure how to take in this new information, it would've made you feel better to feel his touch and have his arms around you again as you decided what would've been the best way to react to all of this.

It didn't feel like you could do that right now as another question was on your lips.

“You bought the eyes of a murder victim off the black market?” you asked.

He was quick to respond.

“I know it sounds nasty, but it was for the best, love,” he answered, “there's nothing that can be done for that person who died, but their eyes can be put to good use for your sake.”

….. You didn't know how to reply to that. And despite his attempts to continue to talk to you, you weren't able to say anything else.

This was all too overwhelming.

You needed some time alone.

When you began to stand up and pull out of his grip, he spoke your name. But you didn't let him get any further as you interrupted him.

“I'm not leaving or doing anything stupid. I just need some time to process this on my own,” you told him.

He didn't seem happy about it, but he let you go and didn't follow after when you walked back to the bedroom and shut the door behind you, though he watched you the entire time. Once you entered, your gaze immediately went to the hand mirror that you had left behind on the floor earlier, and you approached it tentatively, scared of the sight you might find in it again.

Relief hit you when you looked into the mirror and found that the red color had dulled. It wasn't gone completely, but it wasn't as vibrant as before. Hopefully it'd be gone completely soon.

You let out a breath you hadn't realized you'd been holding, and you settled down onto the edge of the bed.

….. The room felt stuffy.

Being on your own wasn't enough. After spending who knows how long in here freaking out, you needed out of this room completely.

The door that opened up to the balcony slid open and you stepped out. Taking in a deep breath as you got the fresh air you'd failed to get earlier, you sat down on the balcony flooring and wrapped your arms around your legs before resting your chin on your knees as you collected your thoughts.

How the fuck had you ended up in this situation?

In the span of a single conversation, you'd found out that your boyfriend of several years had done dealings on the black market by buying the eyes of someone who had been murdered. You'd learned of a clan who seemed to have been driven into extinction because people decided it was better to cut out and pickle their eyes like collectibles, and then that your boyfriend had essentially used one of those pairs of eyes as spare parts so you could go back to the way you'd been before the accident.

Where do you even begin to unpack all of that?

Legally, all of this was wrong. Buying body parts was illegal, and getting involved with the black market and possibly the mafia would be opening up a whole world of potential trouble. How much had all of that cost? The eyes along with whatever he had paid that specialist in Padokea – how much had you drained him financially? You knew Chrollo did well with his job, but would there be any resentment on his part for how much you had cost him?

You hadn't noticed anything off about him, but then again, Chrollo was good at hiding things. This revelation was proof of that.

And then the eyes themselves. Or rather, where they had come from. You'd assumed that they had come from someone who'd been in an accident and had signed up for organ donation. That had made you a bit more comfortable with the idea, that the eyes had belonged to someone who didn't want them to go to waste. Now that you knew what had really happened, it felt morally wrong that you were using them. Someone had died for something as silly as preserving an eye color, and now their eyes had been used just so you could see again.

Spare parts.

Those words came to mind again and you felt guilt for it.

If only that accident hadn't happened. If only you hadn't gone out that day. If only, if only.

You pressed your head against your knees while wrapping your arms tighter. Fat lot of good that kind of thinking did.

The door to the balcony slid open, and you turned your head to find Chrollo standing outside. He had one of your hoodies in hand which he held out to you.

“It's cold out, love,” he said, “wear this.”

You didn't feel that cold, but you accepted the hoodie anyway and gave him a soft “thank you” in response.

He seemed pensive as he watched you pull the hoodie on.

“Do you still need to be alone?” he asked.

It hadn't been that long since you separated yourself from him – it was a few minutes at best – yet you answered “I don't know.”

He hummed as he shut the door behind him and took a place next to you on the balcony, both of you sitting on the floor while you looked out at the buildings across the way. You glanced over at him a few times, only to find that you couldn't really read him in that moment. Your worry from earlier reared its head again – was he mad at you? Did he feel like he'd spent so much time, effort and money only for you to turn out to be an ingrate? What would happen if that was the case?

“Are you angry with me?” you asked. Your nails were digging into the skin of your leg, scared of what his answer might be.

“Of course not, love.”

Chrollo pulled your hand away from your leg and held it, clearly not wanting to see you hurt yourself.

“I should be the one asking if you're upset with me,” he then said.

He kept his eyes on you while your gaze stayed on the city as you thought over what he'd said.

Were you upset?

Yeah.

But how much of that was directed at him?

“I don't think so,” you answered.

“You don't think so?”

It took you a moment to collect your thoughts before you were able to get the words out.

“I don't want to sound ungrateful, because I'm really happy that I got my eyesight back, and it also makes me really happy that you would do so much just for me, that I matter enough for you to go that far,” you began.

“But it's really scary that you would involve yourself with criminals.”

He stayed quiet as you continued.

“I don't want you to get involved with dangerous people and get hurt for my sake. It would kill me if someone went after you because you bought the eyes just so I could see again. If I had known that was what you were going to do to help me, I would've told you not to go through with it.”

Chrollo seemed thoughtful as he considered your words.

“I suppose I wasn't thinking about that,” he told you, “all I could think about was how I could help you.”

That was sweet, you had to admit. And it made you feel guilty for pulling away from him earlier. He was just trying to help, right?

“What made you go that far?” you asked.

“That's a silly question, don't you think? Why wouldn't I do everything in my power for your sake?”

…. That also made sense. And you knew that if the positions were reversed, you would want to do everything you could to help him if he needed it.

The whole issue of the eyes themselves was still strange, however.

“Why didn't you tell me that the eyes would change color?” you asked.

“I wasn't sure they would change at first,” he said, “when they were preserved, they were permanently stuck in their red form. It was quite surprising when you first opened your eyes and I saw that they were gray.”

Had he seemed surprised when you took off the bandages? You couldn't recall; being able to see again had been too overwhelming for you to remember much of how he'd been acting during that time.

“Did you ever realize before this point that they could still turn red?” you asked.

He nodded.

“Why didn't you tell me?”

For once, your boyfriend didn't seem to know how to respond. An unusual sight to see, for sure.

“I was going to once we left the city,” he eventually said, “I thought it'd be good to do it then once we were in an environment that was better for you.”

“I think I would've preferred you told me before this.”

“That's understandable. And for that, I'm sorry.”

Chrollo squeezed your hand gently as he added “thinking on it now, I was using that as an excuse to put off telling you about it. I couldn't think of any way to ease you into revealing the truth.”

He had a point there. As hard as you tried, you couldn't think of any way to open up a conversation like that.

He still should have told you, though.

But there wasn't much you could do about it, so all you said was “at least I know now.”

Chrollo was oddly quiet once again.

“Can I ask you about something else?” you added.

“Of course.”

“Was the specialist you took me to also involved with criminal stuff?” you asked.

“There were no legal avenues I could take to restore your vision, love.”

That made sense. It explained why the doctors at the hospital you'd gone to told you there was nothing that could be done. It was also scary; Chrollo had entrusted everything to some shady individual who operated outside of the legal limits. What if something had gone horribly wrong? What if they'd done something to you and you were left off worse than you were after the accident?

But Chrollo wouldn't have let that happen.

You needed to believe that.

The two of you remained quiet. Your brain couldn't come up with any other questions at that moment, and Chrollo was waiting for you to speak.

Not long after he took the initiative to ask a question of his own.

“What else is bothering you?” he asked.

“…. I feel guilty,” you said.

“Because of how the scarlet eyes came to be available?”

“Yeah.”

“You shouldn't,” he said, “after all, you didn't have anything to do with what happened to those people.

“I know that,” you began, “but I just feel like the person who had the eyes originally would be mad that I was using them. They died because of their eyes, and then I end up using them like they're spare parts for a car.”

“That's quite a pessimistic view.”

“Doesn't mean it's wrong.”

“True, but think of it this way, love,” he continued, “instead of leaving their eyes floating in jars to be gawked at, you're putting them to good use. I'm sure that, whoever they were, the Kurta Clan member would have preferred that someone actually use their eyes as opposed to allowing them to gather dust while they sat on someone's shelf as a decoration.”

…. It did make it sound a bit better, but it wasn't like the guilt could be pushed aside just like that.

That would likely be something else you'd need to learn to live with.

“Are you sure you're not mad at me?” you asked.

“Not at all,” he told you, “I know that the steps I took to help you are ones most consider to be wrong, and I understand the guilt you feel after finding out where the eyes came from. But I hope that you also understand that I did what I did because I wanted to help you.”

“I do. And I really am grateful.”

You sighed, adding “I just wish that accident had never happened. Then we wouldn't even need to have this discussion.”

“I know.”

With that, Chrollo squeezed your hand softly again, just like he had during those long days from before. That made you feel a bit better.

“Can you just promise me something?”

“Promise you what, love?” Chrollo asked.

“That you won't buy human body parts off the black market again. Or anything similar to that. Even if you're just trying to help me,” you said.

To that, he smiled, and brought your hand up to his mouth so he could kiss it.

“I promise I'll never buy body parts off the black market for any reason,” he said after.

You let out a sigh.

“Never thought I'd need to ask you something like that,” you said.

“Life is full of surprises,” said Chrollo.

“That's one way to put it,” you answered.

Sunset was quickly approaching, given the golden hue in the sky. Nightfall would come soon after, and accompanying that would be a drop in the temperature. It probably wouldn't be the greatest idea to be sitting on the floor for too much longer.

Chrollo certainly realized that as he squeezed your hand again and said “we should go back inside, love.”

You nodded.

“Okay.”

With that, he stood back up and pulled you up after. One of his hands went to cup your cheek, his thumb rubbing softly at your skin.

“I think it's time we got started on dinner, don't you?” he asked.

You nodded again.

“And after if you'd like, we can watch one of those terrible horror movies that you enjoy so much.”

At that, you couldn't help but let out a little of a laugh.

“You must be desperate to make me feel better if you're willing to sit through one of those with me,” you said.

“Whatever it takes to make you happy,” he answered, jokingly adding “even if I feel my brain cells slowly shriveling up while I sit through the trash you make me watch.”

“Rude.”

“It's the truth, love.”

You laughed again as he led you inside. This felt good. The normal, playful banter between you two that signified that things were fine. As questionable as everything he'd revealed had been, you didn't want to think about it much right now. It was easier to push it to the side and focus on other things. Like the intentionally awful movie you'd pick for him to roll his eyes at.

But as you were considering that, another thought came to mind.

“Actually….”

Chrollo turned to you after shutting the balcony door, tilting his head in question.

“After dinner, would you read to me?” you asked.

He smiled.

“Of course, love.”

After dinner, the two of you found yourselves on the couch, with you resting your head against Chrollo's shoulder while he read aloud to you, his free hand in your own and your fingers intertwined with his.

After the accident, when you'd been brought home but your leg was still in a cast, Chrollo would read to you often. With you being largely confined to the bed, he would settle down next to you as he read to you, holding out his hand so you could take it in yours. More often than not you would wrap both of your arms around his, your cheek resting on his shoulder while his hand would hold yours firmly. Those moments on their own made the days while your leg healed more bearable.

The feeling of Chrollo's hand holding yours had become a familiar one during that time. It helped a lot more than you would've anticipated – with sound alone, you weren't always sure of where he was around you, but the feeling of his hand in yours while he talked with you or read aloud to you helped you to know for certain that he was by your side.

That he really wouldn't leave you.

He stopped suddenly in the middle of his reading, and you looked up to find his gaze on you.

“What's wrong?” you asked.

“I have to admit, I was worried,” he said, “after learning everything, I thought you may want to leave me.”

“Me? Leave you?”

That thought hadn't crossed your mind even once. While you'd been shocked and incredibly worried when it came to the black market dealings in particular, you couldn't envision any sort of future where you packed up your things and left him behind. Certain things he'd said still scared you, and maybe for some people, those admissions might be enough to make them leave. But everything that had happened, you couldn't imagine spitting in his face like that.

Even if some of what he said was scary, it wasn't like his actions had directly hurt anyone, you told yourself.

You shook your head as you said “I don't think I could live without you, Chrollo.”

The second you uttered those words he kissed you.

It was far more forceful than you'd experienced in months and the pure passion of it surprised you, leaving you slightly stunned. He held you after he pulled away, and again you were surprised, this time by how firmly he held you.

Chrollo had been that worried that your response would be to leave?

You reciprocated his hug, silently communicating that you wouldn't do that.

You sensed the way he smiled against your hair.

He understood.

The day you learned the truth about the scarlet eyes had been a hectic one, yet it had managed to end calmly. Despite that, however, a majority of the days that followed were more in line with what had happened down in the lobby: out of nowhere, something would come over you and leave you unable to function properly as you struggled to control your emotions. Sometimes it was triggered by a phobia that suddenly made itself known, other times you were once again left confused as to why it happened at all.

Maybe it was all because you knew now what would happen once you became upset and how you'd see similar reactions from others like the two downstairs. It could be really bad for you if you freaked out in public and someone from the group that killed the Kurta found out and think that they'd missed one.

It was safe to say that your desire to go back out had died completely.

Even if the chances of those killers finding out about you were slim, you decided that it was too dangerous to risk it. Especially with how out-of-control your emotions were right now. You didn't want people to know – to look at you like that again.

The only one you could depend on was Chrollo.

Your boyfriend was always quick to rush to your side when he saw you weren't doing well – now easier to tell than ever due to the mood ring quality your eyes possessed. Despite this new bought of helplessness you were now displaying, you still got no sense that he was annoyed with you over it. He was just as understanding and calm as he'd been prior.

He stared at your eyes a lot, though.

It took you a few times of it happening before you realized just how often he would stare, his gaze on the blood red color in your eyes. There was always some reason he had to pull away from you, be it to grab you something to drink or to cup your cheek and caress it softly. With that latter action, there was always the silent encouragement to turn your face up towards him, his hand ever so slightly angling your jaw so you would look at him. And when his gray eyes met your scarlet ones, you felt as though you could see something strange moving within them. Some emotion of his being betrayed despite the expression on his face showing something different.

There was some manner of fascination he had with them, you came to realize, and you wondered how long he had known of the scarlet eyes before your accident even happened.

…. At least he wasn't disgusted with you. The faces of those two in the lobby frequently came to mind, especially during those moments of duress. At least Chrollo wasn't looking at you like they had. And even if the way Chrollo would at times treat you as though you were made of glass, you knew it came from a desire to protect you, perhaps born out of whatever feelings of helplessness he had felt once he finally received word that you had been in that accident, that you had been hurt so badly while he happened to be gone.

Chrollo looking at the scarlet eyes the way he did wasn't a big deal, you told yourself.

The fact that he cared about you so deeply was more important.

The other upside during that period of time was the fact that your nightmares had stopped. Maybe that was because you were simply too exhausted from the stress to have the energy to dream. Regardless, you preferred it that way, even if your days weren't all that better.

When Chrollo broached the topic of moving again, you didn't fight him on it. There were too many stresses that came with living in the city. The last few days had made that clear. If you wanted to live a healthy life, you couldn't continue on like this, and while you were sad to leave the life the two of you had made together here, Chrollo encouraged you to think on it positively. It wouldn't be the same, but it would be better for you.

You agreed.

After that point, the panics that took over you almost daily slowly died down as you began moving preparations.

In your mind, that was because you were being moved to a place that would be better for your mental health, with less things that would stress you out. While a part of you would always be sad that you likely wouldn't be back here, the fact that your panic died down cemented to yourself that this was the right decision.

The days were filled with moving boxes and packaging. Monotonous work that left you tired and sweaty after moving around heavy boxes. Today had largely consisted of packing away a majority of Chrollo's book collection, so you were more tired than usual. After a shower, you were standing in front of the bathroom sink in the middle of your bedtime routine, ready for another dreamless sleep.

When Chrollo entered the bathroom and came up behind you, the way he wrapped his arms around you after wasn't entirely unexpected, looking at you through the mirror as he held you close to him.

You leaned into his touch, placing a hand on top of one of his as you asked “everything okay?”

He nodded.

“I'm just grateful we can still have moments like this,” he told you.

You smiled and lightly squeezed his hand as you said “me too.”

Chrollo smiled back at you.

He turned you around and placed a kiss on your lips. You returned the gesture, placing your hands on his chest as you leaned against him.

Then one of Chrollo's hands reached up to cup the back of your head while his tongue pressed against your lips in a not so subtle way of asking that you open up for him. You obliged, and his tongue was then moving against your own while his free hand wandered down and squeezed your ass. The noise of surprise you made was muffled by the kiss.

Ah.

It'd been a while for both of you, hadn't it?

With all that had been going on since your accident, with your broken leg healing up and your recovery after getting the eyes, sex had been one of the furthest things on your mind. But now that you had Chrollo's body pressed up against you and his lips on yours, you realized just how much you needed him. To have that skin on skin contact and that ache in your legs afterwards.

You wrapped your arms around his neck while your teeth nipped at his tongue that was still in your mouth. Chrollo's hands immediately went down so he could hoist you up onto the counter, opening your legs after so he could slot himself between them.

He must've been pent up as well, but had held off until he was certain that you were better.

Always looking out for you and your well-being.

You pulled away from the kiss to whisper “I love you, Chrollo.”

“I love you too,” was the response he gave before he pressed his mouth against yours once more. He seemed needier than you were used to – no doubt a result of him putting his needs aside for you. You decided then that tonight you would do whatever he wanted.

A strand of saliva kept you connected when he pulled his mouth away from yours before it broke as he stood up straight. His hands went to the hem of your shirt with the intent of pulling over your head as he looked back to you-

And then he froze.

Chrollo blinked at you, as if he was surprised. You, on the other hand, were confused by why things had stopped.

“What is it?” you asked, still a bit breathless.

“Have I upset you?”

His question confused you as you answered “what? No, of course not. Why would you think that?”

“Your eyes.”

“Huh?”

You turned your head so you could look at the mirror and see what he was talking about.

Oh no.

Your irises had turned red.

But why? You weren't angry or upset – you wanted this. Why had they changed color when you were fine?

Then you felt Chrollo begin to take his hands off of you, and you quickly turned your attention back to him, grabbing onto his shirt as you said “Chrollo, I'm not upset. Really. I want this, too. I promise.”

One of his hands came up to caress your cheek as he gazed into your eyes.

Then after a moment, he nodded as he said “I believe you.”

Relief filled you, and you glanced back at the mirror again, taking in the red of the irises.

“I don't know why they turned red, though,” you mumbled.

Chrollo hummed as he moved your head so he could look into your eyes again.

“Perhaps,” he began, “the Kurta eyes don't change color just from anger.”

“Wait, you mean they also turn red from….?”

You trailed off, for some reason finding yourself too embarrassed to finish the sentence. But he decided to finish it for you.

“Arousal, yes,” he confirmed.

“…. Did you know about that?” you asked.

“It's new information to me,” he answered, “I doubt that the Kurta clan would have wanted to advertise such a thing.”

“Ah, yeah. That makes sense.”

He was still staring at your eyes, not saying anything. And the longer things stayed like that, the more awkward you felt. Until he'd approached you, you weren't aware of how much you wanted him, the tiredness you'd felt moments earlier gone completely. Now that he'd stopped you desperately wanted to continue where you left off just a few moments earlier.

Did he not want to now? You'd realized that he had a fascination with them, but was adding sex into the mix too off-putting for him?

“… Does it bother you?” you asked after another beat of silence.

He smiled at you.

“On the contrary,” Chrollo said, pulling you off the counter and turning you around once again, making you squeak as he did so.

“You were upset those times before, so it seemed inappropriate to say anything about it-”His hand gripped your jaw as he made you look back at your reflection.

“-but it is a beautiful color, don't you think?”

With little other choice, you looked to the reflection of your eyes in the mirror.

The vibrant scarlet was still present, but now that you were made to really look at them, you found that the color was darkest around the outer circle of the iris, with bits of lighter shades of red speckled around going up towards your pupils. The blood red color itself was so vivid that it almost looked as though it was glowing. Your pupils dilated the longer you looked, and then you noticed another quality they had: an odd shimmer within the scarlet, like a halo that surrounded your pupil that almost seemed to have an iridescent quality to it. All of those things were odd, to say the least, yet you found that you couldn't disagree with your boyfriend's opinion.

You looked back to Chrollo through the mirror and found that he was waiting for a response from you.

“…. It is,” you agreed softly.

He smiled at you before leaning in to kiss you on the cheek.

“It really-” you were cut off when he buried his face in your neck, sucking at your skin with the intent of leaving marks. Looking at the mirror during that felt strange, so you looked to the side while you gripped at the counter.

“It really doesn't bother you?” you managed to get out when you composed yourself.

“I promise you; it doesn't.”

His free hand snaked down beneath the waistband of your pants as he said that, and you let out another squeak when his fingers began to play with your clit.

“Chrollo-”

“Keep looking, love.”

Those fingers continued playing with your clit while his other hand re-positioned itself on your jaw, making you look back at the mirror. While you did try a few times to move your jaw out of his hand, you were forced to give up as his grip was scarily strong. And when you shut your eyes as you felt Chrollo's fingers slip into your cunt, a nip on your neck forced them back open, and he whispered as he once again told you to keep looking. Remembering what you told yourself of doing what he wanted, you followed that instruction.

You saw how your fingers held tight onto the edge of the counter, unable to find purchase anywhere else. You saw how you bit your lip in frustration when Chrollo began to tease you by pushing his fingers in before immediately pulling them of you in favor of caressing the lips of your pussy. You saw how his arm moved as he delved into you again with the intent of scissoring you open. And you saw the way his eyes flashed over to look at you through the mirror when he heard the noise that escaped your mouth.

Through all of that, you found yourself always looking back to the red reflection of your eyes that only seemed to grow more vibrant.

It felt embarrassing, to be made to watch a reflection of yourself becoming a flustered mess from the way your boyfriend toyed with you while he kept you pressed against the counter. Every time his fingers brushed over a part of you that was sensitive would have you jolt against his firm chest, and every time you felt his teeth biting ever so softly into the skin of your neck had you moaning.

By now you could feel how hard he was as his erection pressed up against your ass.

His fingers were gliding out of you even easier now and your underwear was a wet mess. The heat inside of you was building up as you moved your hips against his hand, trying to get him in deeper.

Chrollo glanced up at you again through the mirror and your eyes met.

And then he stopped.

You managed to keep a frustrated whine contained within you as he pulled his hands away from you, leaning them against the counter as he remained on top of you.

“Would you do something for me?” he asked breathlessly.

“D-do what?” you asked in response that was just as breathless.

“Turn around and get on your knees for me.”

“Ah…”

He pulled away from you as you understood what it was he wanted, and though you were immediately missing the way he touched you, you told yourself not to be selfish.

The fibers of the bathroom mat protected your legs from the cool tiles of the floor as you knelt down before him. Though your hands were shaky, you went to undo his zipper before you pulled the material of his pants and underwear out of the way, allowing his cock to spring free of those confines.

You let out a soft breath as one hand went up to stroke him, fingers gliding over his length with a feather light touch. When you gripped him fully was when you felt him twitch in your hand. You continued like that, hand running along his dick while you leaned in to place a kiss at the head, licking the tip after. You heard his sharp intake of breath and saw from your peripheral vision the way his hand clenched into a fist. Remembering once again of how pent up Chrollo must've been spurred you to not waste time with teasing him and in moments you had his length in your mouth, your tongue moving against the underside of his dick and your cheeks hollowing as you sucked.

The appreciative groan that came from his lips and the gentle hand that settled in your hair after told you that you were doing good, and you closed your eyes as you continued to bob up and down his dick.

“Don't do that.”

Those words surprised you, and you stopped suddenly to look up to him, uncertain of what you'd done wrong. The intensity of his stare caught you off-guard and you pulled off of him. Or you would have had it not been for the hand that kept your head from moving any further. Within a moment, that same hand moved to caress your cheek just beneath your eye.

“Keep looking at me, love,” he said, “just like that.”

You made a noise of affirmation before you continued as you had been, keeping your eyes open this time. It felt a little awkward for you to stare at him the whole time, but if that was what he wanted, you would do it.

You wanted him to be happy with you.

His cheeks became more flushed and his breathing was getting harsher, all the while those gray eyes bore into you. Chrollo always had an odd way of seeming to look right through you, and that was no exception now. Though never had there been such an intense look of fascination and awe until now, as his eyes gazed into yours.

You would be lying if you said it wasn't slightly unsettling.

It won't always be like that, you told yourself.

It's only because it's been so long since you did this for him.

Both of Chrollo's hands ended up tangled in your hair, and he stopped your movements completely as he forced himself down your throat. A soft groan from above and the clenching of his thighs served as the signs that he was about to cum, and soon you felt his release running down your throat, forcing you to gulp as you swallowed it since he still held you in place.

When you felt him begin to soften he finally let go, pulling out of your mouth and leaning against the sink counter as he collected his breath. You watched him from your spot on the bathroom floor, your thighs pressing together while you bit your lip. Your pussy was dripping and you were desperate for him to do something about was the frustrating ache inside of you. Remembering the way Chrollo had his fingers inside of you for that brief period only made it worse, and all you wanted was for him to continue where he left off.

He noticed, smiling at you as he asked “shall I take care of you as well?”

“Yes,” you answered without any hesitation.

He laughed.

“Eager, aren't we?”

“I was a little worried you weren't going to,” you admitted.

“When have I ever been that cruel to you, love?”

He said that while holding a hand out for you, one that you took and allowed him to haul you up to your feet. You ended up leaning against his chest, wide eyes staring up at him.

Out of curiosity, you glanced over to the mirror. Your eyes were still red. What a surprise. At least you were getting used to the sight. Chrollo then turned your jaw once more so you would face him as he leaned in for a kiss.

A weird pain suddenly shot through your chest once you saw his face.

You should hate him

…. Why would you ever hate Chrollo?

You weren't given anymore time to think on that as your lips met his and your arms wrapped around his neck while you pressed yourself against him. That weird feeling was pushed down into the depths of your chest; this was all you cared about right now.

Chrollo was on top of you, his arms caging you in on the bed while he thrust his hips against yours. You were squirming beneath him, one of your hands insistent on holding onto one of his own while you did your best to minimize the amount of pained noises coming from your mouth. He knew he was being too rough; you hadn't had sex in months and he should've been more gentle. But the sight of you laying beneath him and the red Kurta eyes staring up at him so lovingly caused Chrollo to simply not care as much at the moment – as long as he didn't hurt you beyond some bruising, you would be fine. And even that could be soothed in the moment. Whenever those noises of discomfort did become too loud, Chrollo would lean back down to place tender kisses on your lips or suck on your neck, and the feeling of his lips against your skin had you mewling while you squeezed his hand.

The marks on your neck, shoulders and chest tallied up while you forgave him easily, likely in part because of the past few months and how much of a burden you must've felt like during that time, as well as because of the sheer gratitude you had towards him, that he had done so much to give you back your sight.

He could get away with being a little rough.

And as he pushed himself back up so he could stare down at you again, he once more brought his gaze to the sight of the scarlet eyes that he admired so much.

It was a surreal sight, one he had never anticipated.

Nor had he planned on using the scarlet eyes for you. Not at first.

It began after bringing you home. Determined to keep the promise he'd made to you at the hospital, he had tracked down a transmuter who had the skills to replace your old eyes with ones that worked – a pity he couldn't steal their abilities for himself – and once you were well enough to travel again, Chrollo had looked about the area where the two of you lived to find a suitable replacement. At that point his goal had been to find a pair of eyes that looked close to yours, spending a considerably long time trying to find the correct shade of your original color while you recovered under the supervision of other members of the troupe.

He thought he knew what he wanted when he found a woman who had the color you once had, and after learning her schedule and when she would be alone, he'd gathered up what he needed for the job: the blade he would use to slice her throat so he could kill without her crying out, the tools that he would use to extract her eyes from her skull without damaging them, and the jars filled with fluids that would keep the eyes preserved until they could be transferred to you.

Chrollo was moments away from ending that woman's life when he remembered that job from years prior, when he and the troupe had attacked the Kurta Clan. Handling the jars had brought the memories back, as they had brought over a hundred of them for the heist; yet most had ended up unused as they hadn't been able to kill enough of the clan members when their eyes had been in the scarlet state.

While the massacre of the Kurta Clan had been a success in the troupe's book, he had always been personally unsatisfied with the final results of that heist. There was something lacking in the end result for him, as the eyes in the jars didn't look the same as when they did in the heads of those Kurta members who had died by his hand. The vibrance that had been present in living eyes that held emotion – that was gone. After the deed was done, all he saw in the dead eyes that floated in those jars was a waste of effort.

It was disappointing, to say the least.

That was when the thought struck him: what if he gave you one of the pairs of scarlet eyes?

… It was impractical, he thought after. For one, it would require him to track down someone who had a pair of the eyes, and once he found them, he'd need to steal them and more than likely kill the owner in the process. And going through all of that would cause you to wait longer. It was much less trouble to go with what he had planned initially and settle for the eyes he had already picked for you.

There was no need to go that extra mile when you would be grateful either way.

But now that the idea had come to him, it itched in his brain. The thought of not only being able to see the scarlet eyes as they were meant to be seen, but also that you might have them.

That mental image was all he could think in that moment, and it was then that Chrollo knew that he wouldn't be satisfied with anything else. So he walked away from his would-be victim's apartment, the woman within completely unaware that a passing thought of his had saved her life.

It was more for him than it was for you. He was well aware of that. And during the time he spent tracking down one of the thirty six pairs, he was aware of the disappointment you felt at how often he was gone, though you kept those thoughts to yourself. He could tell even without Pakunoda informing him that you were desperately terrified at the thought of him leaving you. The relief you felt when he always returned was evident in your voice, your body language and the way you gripped his hand.

The stress he was putting you through his search and retrieval of the eyes was wholly unnecessary.

But he pursued it regardless, intent on making the vision in his mind a reality.

And within a relatively short amount of time, he did just that. Now not only did he have you, but he also had the sight of the scarlet eyes with the life brought back into them.

Your pussy walls fluttered around his cock and he heard you moan. This time it sounded far more pleasurable and he sensed you were getting close. Without missing a beat Chrollo moved his hand so he could rub your clit with his thumb.

That was enough to make you cum on his cock, and the legs you had wrapped around his hips clenched hard onto him while your grasping fingers intertwined with his and you rode out your high beneath him.

That shade of red truly was mesmerizing, Chrollo thought to himself, his eyes focused on yours. Everything he'd done had all been worth it just to get to this moment right now.

He reached down once your orgasm had subsided, softly petting your cheek while you breathed through your mouth. You leaned into his touch immediately, smiling up at him.

“Love,” he began, “may I finish?”

As expected, you agreed. You didn't say anything when he resumed his harsh pace from earlier; you only readjusted your grip on his hand. With another love-bite left on your neck, Chrollo pushed himself back up with his arm, staring down at you while he continued to thrust his hips and fucked you into the bed.

“You're perfect.”

He breathed those words out and you smiled, somehow managing to seem embarrassed by the compliment despite everything he'd done to you tonight, as you glanced away. Chrollo cupped your cheek, bringing your gaze back on him.

When the scarlet eyes looked up at him again he began moving faster.

This surprise you both learned about the Kurta Clan eyeballs was a welcome one. Now he didn't need to force you into a panic to see them again. No more need to use any stolen ability to get your adrenaline to rush during the day while you were left inconsolable. No more need to interrupt your sleep schedule to gaze at them during the night while you silently cried. Now if he wanted a view of those eyes all he needed to do was force you onto your knees and push his cock in your mouth.

He'd be doing that more often. Definitely.

And you would be eager and willing to do so, jumping at any chance you could to show your appreciation for all that he had done.

As Chrollo looked into your eyes, he felt as his hands moved to your throat, grabbing you and holding you just hard enough to cut off the circulation. He'd done it without thinking, continuing the habit he'd picked up from those nights he spent watching you. There was something about the way you looked up at him while he had you like this. How helpless and at his mercy you were.

Your reaction was let out a soft gasp in surprise and to move to place your own hand on his forearm. There was no attempt to pull him off.

Once more, he was fascinated by the sight. And once more, he had to wonder if those eyes had looked at him like that before when they'd been in the possession of their previous owner. If this particular set was one that he himself had collected and bottled up.

If the eyes that now gazed up at him so lovingly had once done so in hate.

His grip on your throat must have gotten too hard, as the hold you had on his forearm tightened ever so slightly while you whined. Hazy scarlet eyes stared up at him, looking up in a mixture of arousal and fear.

He fully lost control then, stopping as he pressed himself as deep as he was able while he came, his hot release spilling into you and making you whimper as you felt his cum dribbling out of you.

That was long overdue.

With that, he released his grip on your throat and relaxed, falling onto the bed next to you as he pulled himself out of your sore pussy. Your eyes were still that shade of vibrant red, and they would remain that way until your heart rate returned to normal.

As relaxed as he felt, he noticed how tense you had become, your eyebrows furrowed as though you were thinking about something unpleasant.

“Is something wrong, love?"

You blinked as you looked over to him in response to his question, looking blank for a moment before forcing a smile on your face and shaking your head. Chrollo brought his hand back up to cup your cheek, asking “are you sure?”

“Yeah,” you answered.

The way your eyes moved about told him that you weren't being entirely truthful, and he wondered for a moment just how much you were able to remember of those nights he spent gazing at you.

But before he could begin to do any sort of damage control, you spoke again, asking “Chrollo, could you do something for me?”

“Anything,” he answered.

Your smile seemed more genuine as you softly asked “will you hold me?”

Within an instant Chrollo had pulled you against his chest, cupping the back of your head with his hand as he said “you never need to ask for that.”

You hummed happily, nuzzling your face against his chest. The tenseness of your muscles melted away shortly after.

He'd been far too greedy tonight. He was so focused on the eyes and the newfound knowledge of the color also being linked to arousal that he'd wanted to drink in the sight at every moment. So much so that he'd held you down to keep you in place, something he'd never really done before the accident.

He would need to do a better job of controlling himself in the future if he wanted to keep you happy and complacent. While the chances were slim, there was always a possibility that you could learn the truth about everything: about him, about the troupe, and about who really was responsible for the death of the Kurtas.

Even with his efforts to ensure that you were heavily dependent on him, you wouldn't want to stay if you learned all of that. You might not even want those eyes in your skull anymore.

Better to not put you in situations where you could remember something unpleasant involving him and begin to put the pieces together. Keeping you happy while he kept you away from the rest of the world would be better for you, even if the alternative possibly gave him more opportunities to see that red color he admired so much. Losing the way you so eagerly clung to him wasn't worth it.

“I think we sabotaged ourselves,” you mumbled against his chest.

“Hm?”

“It's so late, and we still need to do so much. We're going to be exhausted tomorrow,” you continued.

“We'll manage,” he said, “just like we always do. Right?”

You smiled against his skin as you nodded, and Chrollo took the opportunity to place a kiss on top of your head.

“Getting some sleep is a good idea, though,” he added.

You hummed in agreement as Chrollo turned to flip the light switch, and held you once more as the room was shrouded in darkness. Moments passed before you spoke once more.

“Chrollo?”

“What is it, love?”

“Things will be better now, right?”

Chrollo smiled to himself as he answered “of course they will, love. You can trust me on that.”

#reader insert #yandere x reader #yandere hunter x hunter #chrollo x reader #yandere chrollo #chrollo lucilfer #yandere hxh #yandere #hxh x reader

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writingwithcolor · 4 months

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My alternate universe fantasy colonial Hong Kong is more authoritarian and just as racist but less homophobic than in real life, should I change that?

@floatyhands asked:

I’m a Hongkonger working on a magical alternate universe dystopia set in what is basically British colonial Hong Kong in the late 1920s. My main character is a young upper middle-class Eurasian bisexual man. I plan to keep the colony’s historical racial hierarchy in this universe, but I also want the fantasy quirks to mean that unlike in real life history, homosexuality was either recently decriminalized, or that the laws are barely enforced, because my boy deserves a break. Still, the institutions are quite homophobic, and this relative tolerance might not last. Meanwhile, due to other divergences (e.g. eldritch horrors, also the government’s even worse mishandling of the 1922 Seamen's Strike and the 1925 Canton-Hong Kong Strike), the colonial administration is a lot more authoritarian than it was in real history. This growing authoritarianism is not exclusive to the colony, and is part of a larger global trend in this universe. I realize these worldbuilding decisions above may whitewash colonialism, or come off as choosing to ignore one colonial oppression in favor of exaggerating another. Is there any advice as to how I can address this issue? (Maybe I could have my character get away by bribing the cops, though institutional corruption is more associated with the 1960s?) Thank you!

Historical Precedent for Imperialistic Gay Rights

There is a recently-published book about this topic that might actually interest you: Racism And The Making of Gay Rights by Laurie Marhoefer (note: I have yet to read it, it’s on my list). It essentially describes how the modern gay rights movement was built from colonialism and imperialism.

The book covers Magnus Hirschfeld, a German sexologist in the early 1900s, and (one of) his lover(s), Li Shiu Tong, who he met in British Shanghai. Magnus is generally considered to have laid the groundwork for a lot of gay rights, and his research via the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was a target of Nazi book-burnings, but he was working with imperial governments in an era where the British Empire was still everywhere.

Considering they both ended up speaking to multiple world leaders about natural human sexual variation both in terms of intersex issues and sexual attraction, your time period really isn’t that far off for people beginning to be slightly more open-minded—while also being deeply imperialist in other ways.

The thing about this particular time period is homosexuality as we know it was recently coming into play, starting with the trial of Oscar Wilde and the rise of Nazism. But between those two is a pretty wildly fluctuating gap of attitudes.

Oscar Wilde’s trial is generally considered the period where gay people, specifically men who loved men, started becoming a group to be disliked for disrupting social order. It was very public, very scandalous, and his fall from grace is one of the things that drove so many gay and/or queer men underground. It also helped produce some of the extremely queercoded classical literature of the Victorian and Edwardian eras (ex: Dracula), because so many writers were exploring what it meant to be seen as such negative forces. A lot of people hated Oscar Wilde for bringing the concept to such a public discussion point, when being discreet had been so important.

But come the 1920s, people were beginning to wonder if being gay was that bad, and Mangus Hirschfeld managed to do a world tour of speaking come the 1930s, before all of that was derailed by wwii. He (and/or Li Shiu Tong) were writing papers that were getting published and sent to various health departments about how being gay wasn’t an illness, and more just an “alternative” way of loving others.

This was also the era of Boston Marriages where wealthy single women lived together as partners (I’m sure there’s an mlm-equivalent but I cannot remember or find it). People were a lot less likely to care if you kept things discreet, so there might be less day to day homophobia than one would expect. Romantic friendships were everywhere, and were considered the ideal—the amount of affection you could express to your same-sex best friend was far above what is socially tolerable now.

Kaz Rowe has a lot of videos with cited bibliographies about various queer disasters [affectionate] of the late 1800s/early 1900s, not to mention a lot of other cultural oddities of the Victorian era (and how many of those attitudes have carried into modern day) so you can start to get the proper terms to look it up for yourself.

I know there’s a certain… mistrust of specifically queer media analysts on YouTube in the current. Well. Plagiarism/fact-creation scandal (if you don’t know about the fact-creation, check out Todd in the Shadows). I recommend Kaz because they have citations on screen and in the description that aren’t whole-cloth ripped off from wikipedia’s citation list (they’ve also been published via Getty Publications, a museum press).

For audio-preferring people (hi), a video is more accessible than text, and sometimes the exposure to stuff that’s able to pull exact terms can finally get you the resources you need. If text is more accessible, just jump to the description box/transcript and have fun. Consider them and their work a starting place, not a professor.

There is always a vulnerability in learning things, because we can never outrun our own confirmation bias and we always have limited time to chase down facts and sources—we can only do our best and be open to finding facts that disprove what we researched prior.

Colonialism’s Popularity Problem

Something about colonialism that I’ve rarely discussed is how some colonial empires actually “allow” certain types of “deviance” if that deviance will temporarily serve its ends. Namely, when colonialism needs to expand its territory, either from landing in a new area or having recently messed up and needing to re-charm the population.

By that I mean: if a fascist group is struggling to maintain popularity, it will often conditionally open its doors to all walks of life in order to capture a greater market. It will also pay its spokespeople for the privilege of serving their ends, often very well. Authoritarians know the power of having the token supporter from a marginalized group on payroll: it both opens you up directly to that person’s identity, and sways the moderates towards going “well they allow [person/group] so they can’t be that bad, and I prefer them.”

Like it or not, any marginalized group can have its fascist members, sometimes even masquerading as the progressives. Being marginalized does not automatically equate to not wanting fascism, because people tend to want fascist leaders they agree with instead of democracy and coalition building. People can also think that certain people are exaggerating the horrors of colonialism, because it doesn’t happen to good people, and look, they accept their friends who are good people, so they’re fine.

A dominant fascist group can absolutely use this to their advantage in order to gain more foot soldiers, which then increases their raw numbers, which puts them in enough power they can stop caring about opening their ranks, and only then do they turn on their “deviant” members. By the time they turn, it’s usually too late, and there’s often a lot of feelings of betrayal because the spokesperson (and those who liked them) thought they were accepted, instead of just used.

You said it yourself that this colonial government is even stricter than the historical equivalent—which could mean it needs some sort of leverage to maintain its popularity. “Allowing” gay people to be some variation of themselves would be an ideal solution to this, but it would come with a bunch of conditions. What those conditions are I couldn’t tell you—that’s for your own imagination, based off what this group’s ideal is, but some suggestions are “follow the traditional dating/friendship norms”, “have their own gender identity slightly to the left of the cis ideal”, and/or “pretend to never actually be dating but everyone knows and pretends to not care so long as they don’t out themselves”—that would signal to the reader that this is deeply conditional and about to all come apart.

It would, however, mean your poor boy is less likely to get a break, because he would be policed to be the “acceptable kind of gay” that the colonial government is currently tolerating (not unlike the way the States claims to support white cis same-sex couples in the suburbs but not bipoc queer-trans people in polycules). It also provides a more salient angle for this colonial government to come crashing down, if that’s the way this narrative goes.

Colonial governments are often looking for scapegoats; if gay people aren’t the current one, then they’d be offered a lot more freedom just to improve the public image of those in power. You have the opportunity to have the strikers be the current scapegoats, which would take the heat off many other groups—including those hit by homophobia.

In Conclusion

Personally, I’d take a more “gays for Trump” attitude about the colonialism and their apparent “lack” of homophobia—they’re just trying to regain popularity after mishandling a major scandal, and the gay people will be on the outs soon enough.

You could also take the more nuanced approach and see how imperialism shaped modern gay rights and just fast-track that in your time period, to give it the right flavour of imperialism. A lot of BIPOC lgbtqa+ people will tell you the modern gay rights movement is assimilationalist, colonialist, and other flavours of ick, so that angle is viable.

You can also make something that looks more accepting to the modern eye by leaning heavily on romantic friendships that encouraged people waxing poetic for their “best friends”, keeping the “lovers” part deeply on the down low, but is still restrictive and people just don’t talk about it in public unless it’s in euphemisms or among other same-sex-attracted people because there’s nothing wrong with loving your best friend, you just can’t go off and claim you’re a couple like a heterosexual couple is.

Either way, you’re not sanitizing colonialism inherently by having there be less modern-recognized homophobia in this deeply authoritarian setting. You just need to add some guard rails on it so that, sure, your character might be fine if he behaves, but there are still “deviants” that the government will not accept.

Because that’s, in the end, one of the core tenants that makes a government colonial: its acceptance of groups is frequently based on how closely you follow the rules and police others for not following them, and anyone who isn’t their ideal person will be on the outs eventually. But that doesn’t mean they can’t have a facade of pretending those rules are totally going to include people who are to the left of those ideals, if those people fit in every other ideal, or you’re safe only if you keep it quiet.

~ Leigh

#colonialism #colonization #worldbuilding #alternate history #history #lgbt #china #hong kong #british empire #ask

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minhosimthings · 5 months

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Chocolate Sauce

Synopsis: In which you lick Jake's abs and leave a very angry Jake with hickeys on his stomach

Pairings: Bf!idol!Jake × fem!idol!reader

Warnings: smut, 18+ MINORS DNI, fingering, reader licks Jake's abs, oral (f and m), overstimulation, rough sex, mean dom Jake, sub reader, swearing, mention of food, choking, angry sex (meow)

A/N: GUESS WHO DROOLED WHILE WATCHING JAKE DO THE GUILTY CHALLENGE. THIS BITCH RIGHT HERE. So blame Jake not me because bitch had to do that shit on my period. I wanna touch those abs so bad it's actually so bad I hate myself. Anyways, enjoy this shitpost y'all peace.

Sim Jaeyun never failed to amaze you. Even as your boyfriend of three years, about whom you knew probably everything about, he always was succesful in pissing you off, or worse, riling you up. And sometimes when both of the phenomenons happened at the same time, it was a time of bliss for Jake.

"What the fuck Jayeun?" You threw your head back to look at your boyfriend, on whose thigh you were currently sleeping. He looked handsome as ever, hair all messy and fluffy, with the usual grin imprinted on his face. "What happened baby?" He pouted as you got up from his thigh and sat in front of him. "Please tell me I did not just see you acting like a whore on stage right now on my for you page." Jake turned his head sideways, an adorable thing he did when he was confused, and peeked into your phone. A devilish smirk formed on his face as he saw what was causing your current state of distress. "Oh that?" He mused, leaning back against the bedframe, "Yeah I did the Guilty challenge. Pretty good right? You know, Riki was saying my dancing impro-" "I don't give a fuck about the dancing Sim Jayeun." You cut him off, eyes faltering at the way he was looking at you, "I'm talking about the way you literally just showed your abs to every fucking person in that room."

To say that you were jealous was an understatement. Of course Jake had officially taken a pledge that he would never show his abs to anyone except you. And you remembered that the pledge also included not showing it to engenes.

"Aww." Jake cooed, wrapping his arms around your waist and leaning into your chest, "Is my girl jealous?" Resisting the urge to kiss his strawberry lips, you decided to pick up your phone and scroll through your reels, completely ignoring your boyfriend.

"Come on baby-" Jake smirked, leaning closer to your face, "-you know you can't resist me for more than five minutes." His last words were finished in almost a rough whisper, which knocked you off your wind. "I'll forgive you if you do one thing for me." You finally responded, sitting up straight and crossing your arms. "Order away, princess." Jake cocked his head to the left, smirk ever omnipresent on his stupidly handsome face.

"Let me lick your abs."

You didn't know whether it was out of pure shock, or pure embarrassment that Jake choked on air, but he did and accidentally smacked you in the head. "Jake!" You rubbed the back of your head with your hand. "You wanna do what now?" He spoke in a unusually grave voice, looking at you with bedroom eyes.

"Sim Jayeun I think I said it clear enough." You scoffed, "I want to lick your abs. If you don't wanna do it, that's fine I guess." You shrugged your shoulders and leaned back against the bedframe, getting back to your phone. "Alright then." Jake got up swiftly from the bed, and moved out of the room, walking a pace faster than usual. You tried not to think much about it, as you scrolled through the reels again, your fingers distracting you from wherever Jake was, until you heard the sound of your fridge bang close.

"Jake what are you doing?" You quizzed as Jake walked in, a bottle held tightly in his hands. He plummeted down next to you on the bed, and leaned in, giving you a tiny peck on the cheek. "Here." He nudged the bottle into your hand, forcing you to drop your phone into your lap, which he immediately took and hid in the bedside drawer. "Jaeyun!" You reached for your phone, trying to climb over him, "Give me my phone back." "Not until you read the label of that bottle baby."

You rolled your eyes and took the bottle in your eyes, peering to read the lable written in big glittery letters. "Chocolate Sauce?" You sniggered, "What the fuck do you want me to do with it?"

"Well I figured-" Jake popped open the cap of the bottle, "-since it's not pancake season and you don't use it for anything, why don't you lick it off of my abs?"

Your eyes widened at Jake, as he leaned back further, slowly unbuttoning his white shirt. For perhaps the first time in the entire evening, you noticed how truly scrumptious Jake looked in messy hair. "Jak-" "oh come on princess." Jake leaned closer to your ear, "I know you want to do it so bad like the slut you are."

His rough voice made your legs shiver. Jake had unbuttoned his shirt already, giving you a full display of his carved chest and abs. You held out a hand to stroke it, but Jake was quick to grab it with his. "Not until you lick them baby." He let go of your hand, "Are you scared princess?"

You meekly shook your head, and removed your shirt faster than Jake could blink an eyes. He slid a hand behind to your back, fingers searching to unclasp your bra. "Or should we leave it on?" Jake removed his hand from scratching your upper back, "I wanna see those nice tits bounce around in that cute little fabric which isn't hiding shit by the way." He leaned over to kiss your cheek again, "You could have asked for something new you know. Would have loved to buy you something in pink."

You took the open Hershey's bottle in your hand, and took a deep breath before turning it upside down and letting the gooey liquid come out, drizzling over Jake's abs. Jake let out a wince as it touched his skin, probably from the cold temp of the sauce. Anything for his princess though, he thought, enduring the cold grip.

"It doesn't hurt does it?" You spoke, uncertainty grazing your tone, "Maybe I should get-" "shh princess." Jake cooed at you, lifting a hand to stroke your cheek with his thumb, "Just lick them nothing hurts." His strict tone made you falter again, as you licked your lips, leaning over his body as he settled himself in the bed.

You moved towards his abs, taking in how beautiful they looked under the brown sauce. Lowering your tongue to them, you glanced up at Jake. His eyes were closed, and his eyelids were barely moving. As dead as a fish, you thought.

"Ooh princess-" Jake let out a moan, as your tongue touched his abs. You didn't know if it was the fact that the it was probably expired, or the fact that you were licking it off of Jake's belly, but man did the sauce taste good. You really didn't have a taste for sweet things, preferring your coffee bitter and your waffles without honey. But oh god, did sugar taste good when you were licking it off of Jake's belly, your tongue dying to have a taste of his cock.

"Mm-babe-ah fuck." Jake moaned, his voice grasping for more as he traced your hair with his fingers, unconsciously gripping them harder. Your tongue moved swiftly across the board of Jake's tummy, your fingers digging into the sides of his abdomen, desperately searching for more. You could feel the bulge in Jake's pants, rubbing against your belly as you leaned further in, mouth almost begging to have a taste of your favourite poison A thin line of sweat decorated your brow, as you closed your eyes, sinking into Jake's muttered words. "Mine. All mine." He mumbled in between sweet moans. Drunk on the feathery touch of your tongue on his skin, as it moved slowly, licking up all the sticky sweet substance, he didn't even notice that he was pressing your head further and further down. "J-Jake." "Shut up and go suck my cock right now." He commanded, making you whimper as you wiped off the chocolate from your mouth. You had never seen Jake like this before, eyes akin to a wolf filled with desperate hunger.

You quickly unbuttoned Jake's pants, hands fumbling as you did, while he looked on at your figure, all trembling. He loved seeing you like this, like a lamb going off to the slaughter house. It heightened his ego greatly, seeing his princess be so obedient towards him.

You pull his jeans down and mouth at his clothed dick. You began to suck the tip and run your tongue over the slit. You loved the taste of him in your mouth. He was heavy and warm. "Fuck your mouth feels so good." Jake moaned out, his hand resting on the top of your head. You take more into your mouth and you deep throat him. He touched the back of your throat before you looked at him to start fucking your face. He pulls out before slamming back in. He does this a few times as you sputter around him. You weren't expecting him to be so hard to take as he fucked your throat. He moved against your mouth as you sucked him for everything he had. You wanted him to cum in your mouth. He pressed deeper in your throat as you gripped his thighs in hopes of him letting up.

"Fucking hell, you are such a slut." Jake chuckles as he pulls out, to see your mouth coated in his cum. "Just for you." You pant, wiping your mouth with the towel Jake handed you. "Hmm" Jake groaned, moving slightly to make space for you to rest in his arms. "...'m love you princess." He mumbled as you drifted off into sleep.

"L/N Y/N you are in big trouble." Jake's puppy eyes appeared on the screen of your phone, as you picked up the call. "You know usually people greet their partners with a 'hey babe' or a 'i love you till death'." You giggled, moving on with your laundry. Thank god it was the holidays and your members weren't there to annoy you about Jake, you thought as you slammed the washing machine door close and returned to your boyfriend's angry face. "Y/N I swear to God-" Jake sighed, plopping into a chair, "Do you know how much my stylist scolded me today? And do you wanna know the reason why?" Although you already knew what was going to come out of Jake's mouth, you decided to play innocent, wanting to make him more angry. You did always love when he was angry.

"Why baby?" You pouted, widening your eyes and setting your phone down on the table, at a mischievous angle. "You know why princess." Jake's angry tone came through again, "For all the marks you left on my stomach yesterday? They wanted to put me in a crop top today like all the members but instead, because of you, I had to stay in a fucking jacket." "Hmm" you shrugged your shoulders, "sad." You spoke, before cutting the call abruptly. You giggled in response to nobody's joke as you hopped off of the kitchen counter and opened up the fridge to find something to eat, waiting eagerly for Jake to get back home.

Anger was an emotion which was a rarity for Jake. Even when he did get angry, it would usually be playful anger, with Niki or Jay. But somehow you managed to piss him off to his guts, and as he rode in the car, with Sunghoon side eyeing his furrowed face, he thought of all the ways he could punish you as soon as he got home and layed his hands on your body.

"Ah fuck it." You curse as you burn your toast, having left it on the stove for too long. You had wasted a lot of time admiring yourself in front of the mirror, tracing your eyes over the pretty bra you wore, one of Jake's favourites. And now, as you silently waited for your boyfriend to come home, fumbling with the straps of your bra, you wondered what he was going to do to you.

The keyhole clicked twice at the sound of a key being pushed in. You barely had time to get any words out of your mouth as Jake can stomping in, a dark expression clouding his face. There was little time to brace yourself for Jake's next move. You're pressed against the wall before you can protest, although you wouldn’t dare object to this.

“You love when I make you feel good, don’t you baby? Who’s my good girl?” And that’s what did it for you, your eyes rolled back and you tightened around his fingers, but Jake wasn’t taking just that response this evening. He put his fingers in your mouth, and he asked again with raised eyebrows, “What was that? Who’s my good girl?” His fingers lingered down to your throat, applying just enough pressure so that you could still talk. “Yours, only yours” you replied. He nibbled your ear, smirk still prevalent on his face. He whispered in your ear once more,

Jake grips the backs of your thighs and lifts you up, wedging your hips with his own, keeping you steady. A new hardness presses against your core as he juts his hips into you, pure instinct taking over his movements. His cock twitches in his jeans - he needs to watch his cock sink into you, to watch your face contort in bliss when he bottoms out in your pussy. The friction on your swelling clit was rough and warm, with Jake's cock perfectly nestled atop your drenched slit. Each rough push shot pleasure through your core, but it wasn’t enough for your aching cunt.

He moves the two of you to the couch and putting you on your hands and knees before pulling your pants down. He played with your thong before pulling them off too. His tongue goes straight into your little hole which causes you to scream. He tongue fucks you for a little bit before moving up to your clit. He sucks it into his mouth which has you pushing back on his mouth. Jake continues until you are almost there but he stops.

"No-Jake." You whine, jutting out your bottom lip. "You don't get to fucking cum until I say so, got it?" Jake growls, making you whimper and sink into the couch.

He presses his cock to your hole and presses inside. The stretch felt like it would never end. As he pressed in, you felt full already and he was not even half way in. You moan as Jake whispers about you being his whore and that he isn't going to let you go. He keeps fucking up into you with fever and the only thing you could do was to take it. You had no choice with how good he was fucking you.

"Oh, fuck yes," he groaned, totally entranced by the way your pussy warped with his size, swallowing his cock into your soft walls. He bucked his hips on instinct and struck you deeper. You cried softly against your hand, trying to quiet yourself when the tip of his cock pressed against your cervix.

With another set of thrusts you became undone around him, clenching down onto Jake's cock, letting out a high-pitched moan as your orgasm flowed through you. Jake hissed through his teeth at the warm, fluttering sensation, satisfied at your soft moans falling out of your slacked mouth.

"Attagirl, just keep goin'," Jake said sweetly, pulling and pushing your hips in the same rhythm as before. The overstimulation took you over and left you whimpering, sending soft pleas of slow down, it's too much, to your boyfriend.

Your sweet pussy clenched around him and he rubbed your clit as he bounced you up and down on his dick. You got closer and closer before you climaxed. It felt as if you were drowning. You could only scream as Sam doubled his efforts and you orgasmed again. "Jake please-I"

"One more princess, just one more," he says before thrusting harder. He thrusts one last time before spilling into you. His orgasm triggered yours and you squirted a lot onto his lap. He looked down and smiled at his achievement.

"You look so fucking hot right now," He said as he kissed your neck again. "Jake, I don't think I can go another round." "Don't worry sweetheart, I know you can." He said before circling your clit.

You arch your back as his fingers slip inside of you, along side his dick. He pulled out but left his fingers in. He played with the cum inside as he fucked you with his fingers. He wanted you to cum one last time. It didn't take long before you did and almost fainted in his arms.

Jake swooped you up carefully in his arms, and carried you to the bedroom, where he cleaned you up with a towel, before settling in beside you. You crawled upto him, wrapping your arms around his waist, stroking his abs, as you listened to his heartbeat.

"I'm sorry about the hickeys." You mumbled into his chest, too ashamed to show your face. Jake smiled warmly and stroked your hair, a complete contrast to what he was minutes ago. "it's alright." He kissed the top of your forehead, "Let's not pretend like I never gave you hickeys right before your Inkigayo stages." You chuckled weakly to his words, and buried yourself under the blankets, with the taste of chocolate forever lingering in your mouth.

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cherriesformatt · 2 months

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a day || matt sturniolo

matt x fem!reader

summary: what would a typical day as Matt's girlfriend would look like

warnings: pure fluff

word count: 1,6k

a/n: idk let me know how I did English is not my first language but I am working on it

🍒

I was on my way from a long, Friday, morning meeting and all I was thinking about was going back to bed and never leaving it again. My week started with my car breaking down out of nowhere, then I got my period (which is not as bad when you think about it because it would be worse if I didn't get it), and then I had an actual meeting, in an actual office, with actual people (I usually work from home in my pajamas).

I had to drive my boyfriend's car to the meeting downtown. I am glad that I could, but let me tell you one thing, my boyfriend's car is giant and to park this lady downtown I needed to leave 30 minutes early.

chris 🦋:

waiting for u outside thx for picking me up kid ❤️

"oh fuck" I said to myself as I quickly did a U-turn before it was too late. Was it safe? No. Did everyone survive? Yes.

I totally forgot that I was supposed to pick up Chris from his own meeting since Matt couldn't because I had their car. I dialed Chrise's number.

"hi, ur okay?" he asked.

"yes, I just might or might not forgot to pick you up so I'll be there in 15 okay? I'm sorry I had a rough morning..."

"Bro no worries I'll pick up some coffee while I wait and you drive safe okay?" I smiled because wasn't he the best? He doesn't even drink coffee.

"Okay I'll see you there"

I ended the call and typed Chris's location. It wasn't that bad with the traffic so I was there in less than 15 minutes.

I was able to park where he was waiting so he got into the passenger seat and smiled at me while I started driving again. I really want to be home.

"I would say good morning but I'll keep that to myself. Got you an americano and banana bread" He put my coffee in the cup holder and threw his backpack on the back seat.

"Thank you, that's really sweet, I am literally half dead so that will help" I laughed and took a sip of my coffee.

"I still think that my brother is dating a weirdo, how can you even drink it black and unsweetened?" Chris looks at me with a disgusted face.

"You are all literally bunch of weirdos so I just matched the energy you know" I blinked at him and stopped on the red.

"How was your meeting? New fresh love is gonna be fire. I got the drafts in my mail this morning. Did not change a thing. You and the team did great" I said and smiled at him.

I was a graphic designer and helped Chris at the beginning of his brand, but I did not really want to work for him so I just help sometimes if it's needed. I am really happy that he still likes to know what I think about the projects tho. I also used to work for Laura but not anymore. That's basically how we all met. I quit after me and Matt started to be a thing.

"I know right? Well, I knew you will love it. The meeting was great, we should be able to make everything work by the end of the month. And guess what... I actually got samples and I have a pink set for you kid"

"Honestly... made my day, I am going to wear it for everything now" I laughed.

"Just don't post it yet" He said and started to click things on the car's screen.

"Just use my phone for music" I gave him my phone and he typed my code and put our favorite song by lil skies on.

"Still can't believe I memorized Niall Horan's birthday just to get to your phone"

I blinked at him and started rapping with the song. I loved make a toast. Music taste is probably one of the things that made my and Chris's bond strong. Don't get me wrong I love Nick as much as I do Chris, but he just always gets me and we were best friends since day one. The funny thing is that me and Matt did not really liked each other at first.

The ride home made my mood better. We sang and laugh, I wasn't tired of my life that much anymore. I took my shoes off while holding all of my stuff. Matt was on the couch watching something while we made our way up the stairs.

"Hi baby... How was it?" He asked as soon as he saw me.

"Crap, I am going to call Laura to take me back" I laughed and put my stuff on the table and went to wash my hands in the kitchen sink. I then walked up to Matt and just threw myself next to him to cuddle his side.

He kissed my forehead and started to rub my back.

"I am going to take a nice nap, you kids have fun but not too much" Chris waved at us and went back down the stairs to his room.

Matt rolled his eyes and kissed my head again.

"How about we do something nice together? Nick is going to come home with Madi soon, I think, and that means laud. We could go to that beach you like and just get food and watch the sunset later" He asked.

All I was thinking about was his cold hand on my back and how much I just loved that man. He knew exactly what I needed.

"Yes, please. I just need to change. I wore a bra man, can you believe this?" I sit back up.

He laughed at me and shook his head.

"Go then," He said patting my thigh.

I went to put my new fresh love set in Matt's bedroom, used the bathroom and when I was ready we went out.

"Wow, so it's your car now, huh?" Matt started to change the mirrors and seat but he also raised his eyebrows looking at my stuff next to the shift gear.

"Baby it's only essentials to drive, okay?" I smiled and got comfortable in the passenger seat.

We drove to get food and dessert. The weather was perfect to just spend an entire afternoon on the beach. Boys did not have any work plans today so I knew Matt was all mine for the rest of the day.

We sat on the beach, had our food, and just talked or cuddled in comfortable silence. That's what I mostly love about spending time with Matt. We could just sit the whole day without a word and be alright with it, but also we could talk for hours and we would always have something to talk about.

"I love you Matty, thanks for taking me to the beach. This new project sucks but I know it's going to be better after that. I really needed just you today"

I kissed his sweet lips. He tasted like the cherry Pepsi that we just had. He pulled me into his lap and slid his hands under my hoodie while he kissed me back.

I rested my forehead on his as I pulled away and smiled.

"Anything for my girl, I love you kid" He kissed my nose and I just wrapped myself around his body.

"I am not moving, you might as well carry me to your car like this" I said into his neck.

He laughed at that and hugged me back.

"Or we can just stay here" He lay back down on the blanket.

"I promised your brother that we are going to watch Criminal Minds with him tho" I said.

"Sometimes I just wish you and Chris weren't the same person y/n..." He joked and looked at his phone, holding it above my head.

"Let's go back after sunset in that case baby"

We did watch the sunset, my favorite part of the day. We came back home and spent time with his brothers as I had promised Chris.

"Spend the night?" Matt whispered in my ear while the last episode for tonight ended.

I smiled and nodded. I was off tomorrow and did not want him to drive me home that late anyway.

We said goodnight and went to his room.

"I will go take a shower" I said and opened his drawer to take a pair of boxers and a T-shirt.

"Go ahead, I went shopping while you were gone. I did restock your basket under the sink. I hope I did it right" He scratched his neck looking at me.

I had my stuff here, but I usually did the restock. Especially my period stuff under the sink.

"Matt...you did not have to do that, thank you, baby" I said pouting my lips.

"I wanted to, I want you to feel comfortable here. Not only you tho, all our girlfriends that come to our house. It's great that you did the basket and stuff" He smiled and I kissed his cheek.

"You are too sweet Matthew"

I went to the bathroom, when I was done he went to take a shower while I waited in his bed scrolling on TikTok.

When Matt came back from the bathroom I looked at him. He was wearing just his pajama pants.

"Should I just say what all of the girls in my books would say? Matthew, you are such a tease" I wiggled my eyebrows at him.

"Oh my god, would you stop?" He got into bed laughing at what I said.

"You love me for that" I put my phone on the nightstand and rested my head on his chest.

"Goodnight Matt" I closed my eyes.

He turned the lights off and tucked us in with the blanket.

"Goodnight sweet girl" He kissed my head while I was already half asleep after this long day.

The best way to end the day is knowing that I will wake up in his arms the next morning.

#matt sturniolo x reader #matt sturniolo #nick sturniolo #sturniolo triplets #chris sturniolo #sturniolo fanfic #matthew sturniolo #Spotify

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denwritesandcries · 6 months

Text

Love, Hate and No Relationship – Hazel Callahan

Pairings: loser!hazel x fem!reader

Summary: Hazel Callahan hates you and you have no idea why. Now, this wouldn't be such a problem, if it weren't for the fact that you're in love with her.

Word count: 5,4k.

Content: cursing, misunderstandings, mutual pining, idiots to lovers, a little blood (it's a fight club), pj actually being a good friend??, my really bad comedy, loser!hazel, I MEAN IT.

A/N: Hazel can't get social skills to save her life, she's such a loser. I love her.

English is not my first language.

Hazel Callahan hates you.

Alright, maybe hate was a too strong word, but she definitely disliked you. At least that's what you think, but what else could you conclude from someone who couldn't seem to exist in the same space as you without being completely uncomfortable and running away as soon as possible?

Now, being hated by someone you never really had any type of relationship with was bad enough, but being hated by someone you've had a crush on since you were fifteen was even worse.

You swear you didn't do anything wrong, but ever since you met, incidents seem to permeate your relationship with Hazel.

Like during your first day in the new school, where you ended up in the gym with a girl named Josie explaining the entire school hierarchy in your free period while a gym class was going on in the background. You focused on her voice and her speech about what to do to avoid athletes from harassing you in the hallways when you got suddenly interrupted by a ball hitting you directly in the head.

Turning back with a confused look and a hand in the back of your head, you found a girl with the most striking puppy dog eyes you had ever seen, with a completely shocked expression in all the glory of her gym shorts as some other students laughed off what had happened.

The hit didn't hurt much other than your ego, so what you did was laugh when all the pretty girl could do was profusely apologize, continuing to look extremely guilty even after you told her it was okay.

You and Josie decided to leave the gym after that and headed to your next classes, still talking about the event.

"That was Hazel." She said.

You didn't see her for the rest of the day, but her name got stuck in your head.

And then the next day the pretty girl was in the room when you had your first class with Mr.G. She looked completely mortified as you walked through the door, looking away at the table as soon as you noticed her.

Seeing the opportunity to get to know her better, you decided to sit next to her.

"Hey,” you said giving her a smile, “Is it okay if I sit here?”

Hazel turned her head to you, eyes wide and nervous, “Here?” she stutters and you notice her gulps as she nods, "Sure– I mean, if you want to."

You both sat in an awkward silence for a moment as you packed your things for class, until you spoke again and she let out a surprised squeak.

“I’m Y/N, by the way.”

After a moment of hesitation she mumbled without meeting your eyes: "I'm Hazel, but I think you already know that."

You let out a low laugh, “Yeah, I guess I definitely won’t forget you so soon.”

A look that you couldn't tell for sure if it was embarrassment or something else crossed her face and your conversation ended there, all your other attempts to talk to her that day ended with Hazel flinching and mumbling a short reply to you or looking to the other side when trying to get her attention, you won't admit that it disappointed you a little.

You thought that maybe she was still embarrassed by what happened in your first meeting and that this would pass with time, so you could only hope that you could at least become friends with her as the days went by.

It didn't pass. After that there were other little events, like every time you saw Hazel across the classroom and smiled at her in recognition, she would endup stumbling in the leg of your desk. You took it as Hazel being clumsy, but it happened every time and even though it was cute how alarmed she seemed after that, it started to annoy you on the third smudged task by the stumble making the pen slip out of your hand while writing. It started happening so much that you almost thought it was on purpose, so you just stopped greeting her when she arrived, hoping she would stop doing that, it worked – most of the time.

You'd see her in the hallways at school with Josie and PJ, but every time Josie came up to you – it was great to have a friend when you haven't find your own group to fit in yet – Hazel would turn around and practically run away as if she had seen a ghost.

There was a time when she couldn't get away and Josie invited you to have lunch with them, and in the moment the invitation left her mouth Hazel exclaimed a "NO!" screeching with a nervous gesture of her arms, PJ elbowed her while Hazel stuttered non-stop and Josie was quick to apologize for her, but you refused it anyway. Not even noticing the exclamation of "Dude! What the hell was that!?" and "That's not how you talk to your–" as you turned and disappeared from their sight.

Okay, now that really hurt. You chose to start spending your lunches outside, spending your time on other things until it was time to come back so that the situation wouldn't happen again.

Maybe she was too shy or just didn't want you in her friend group, but you weren't going to give up like that.

You would try to talk to her during class, making little comments and observations about what you were thinking at the time or what you were studying that you thought she might laugh or like, sometimes she'd respond, most of the time she seemed to make the most effort to seem smaller in her seat, despite being so restless.

Hazel couldn't help herself sometimes, letting out a loud clumsy laugh that ended up annoying your teacher and leaving you soft and warm inside, so you considered it a huge victory despite the warnings.

You knew you had a crush on her, who wouldn't? Hazel could be so charming that it made your heart swell, her enthusiastic and intelligent nature caught you the moment you saw her for the first time.

Seriously, falling in love with Hazel was perhaps the easiest thing you've ever done.

Thinking you were making some progress with her, you started to feel confident enough to praise her about little things you noticed, whether in class or in the hallways.

"Your hair looks really pretty like that."

"I think I've never seen you with that hodie before, it's really cute!"

"Is that a new ring? It looks so cool."

She reacted completely surprised every time and seeing the way her face flushed up to her ears was totally worth it, even if you missed the knowing looks Josie and PJ exchanged when they witnessed it.

Spending time at your new school like this made you settled and happy. The classes were strangely short, which left you with enough time to dabble in extracurricular activities until you found something you liked and made some friends along the way, you were quiet but sociable and your interactions with Hazel, as awkward as they were, were a part of your day which you waited for. Maybe your high school could actually be a good experience in the end.

One day there is a book holding your attention while your classmates are busy with their own things due to the absence of the teacher in the room when Hazel suddenly pokes your shoulder and points with her chin at what you are reading. It takes a lot more strength than you'd like to admit not to show how excited you are about this.

"Did you know that it is possible to reproduce the same bombs as these characters in real life?"

"What?", you turn around, putting the book aside to give her your full attention, "What do you mean? Have you read this yet?"

"Well, uh–" Hazel stutters, before taking a deep breath, as if gathering courage, "No, but in the movie– in the movie they specify the type of bomb that the characters use against the threat and it's like, completely possible to replicate alone."

You raise an eyebrow, "I… definitely didn't knew that," and then you smile at her, "Are you going to tell me how it's done?"

Hazel nods proudly, confidently, and so you end up in a lecture about types of bombs that you don't understand anything about and you don't have the courage to tell Hazel that you hadn't gotten to the part where everything exploded yet and that she had just given you a spoiler.

You listen to everything with a stupid smile on your face because you've never seen her act like that with you.

At the end of the period, when you wave to her, she doesn't stumble on anything and you think you've finally, finally reached Hazel Callahan. You weren't friends, not exactly, but you were something.

You're so happy that you don't even blink about the part where you see her at the end of the day putting some books in her locker, and when you pass by her to say goodbye, Hazel closes the locker in her own hand; A tired look of defeat crosses her face quickly, but you don't notice it, nor how frustrated she looks about it.

The next day you find a note on your desk during the first period and recognize Hazel's scribbled and messy handwriting.

Get out of my class, it says.

Confusion flooded you and your heart dropped to your stomach, what the fuck was that supposed to mean?

When you try to confront her, all that Hazel does is keep her nervous eyes away from you, trying her best to pretend she doesn't recognize your presence while nibbling on one of her silver necklaces and as soon as the period is over you swear you never saw someone gets through a door so fast.

You were nothing.

You don't stop going to class, obviously, but you ask Mr.G to change seats. He seems so pleased with the idea of you stopping bothering him during his explanations that it doesn't take much to convince him.

So you spend the rest of your school year sitting as far away from Hazel as possible and now you're the one avoiding her in the hallways, too embarrassed by the perspective that bothered the girl so much that she hated you to the point of even not wanting to be near you.

You also become the perfect target for jocks to bother, the student who scared the weirdo in the back who now sits at the front and only answers what the teacher asks you. Just when you think things can't get any worse, Hazel starts stumbling across your desk again, even though now the path to her own is almost the complete opposite of yours, you remain quiet and swallow how annoyed this makes you. Sometimes you look up and she's standing in front of you; Hazel freezes in her way when you notice her, mouth open as if she wants to say something, before shaking her head and running away like a puppy who got kicked, what makes you even angrier is how cute she manages to look doing this.

The last straw happens when, during your last day of school, Hazel somehow spill coffee on you and in the book you were reading at the end of the last period.

For her own credit, Hazel looks extremely guilty and speaks to you for the first time in a really long time in the form of confused apologies as she takes the book from your hands and tries to dry it on the hem of one of her expensive shirts. You are so confused about how this happened and so upset with her that you simply mumbles something back and walks past her straight to the school doors. Feeling a mix of relief and disappointment that you won't have to see Hazel until your senior year starts, you don't realize that you left the book with her until you got home. What problem does this girl have with you anyway? Either way, you don't finish the story.

The senior year begins and some things change, others remain the same. Josie and PJ are now also in Mr.G's class, which makes things a little easier and more fun; and you have as your new lab partner a girl named Isabel, a surprisingly nice cheerleader; You and Hazel still aren't speaking with each other, but at least she's stopped tripping and dropping things on you.

You feel Hazel's eyes on you during class, like she's anxious about something, but you won't talk to her if she doesn't say anything first.

One day you arrive a little earlier than usual and catch Hazel, PJ, and Josie in what they probably think is a low-key discussion, but it couldn't be further from that.

"So you haven't talked to her yet?" Came Josie's incredulous voice through the door.

"I can't! You know what happens every time I try!" You looked out the doors window to see Hazel with her head resting in her arms and looking completely defeated. "Ugh, I don't know what else to do…"

"You know, that's why the club is such a good-" PJ started and Josie interrupted her:

"But you were doing so well," she said, "It would help if you stopped acting like the girl had some deadly virus, y'know."

"No, no, no, no! Ignore it is my best option. Maybe 'til we finish school, then I won't see her again!", Hazel concluded with a head shake.

"You are so hopeless."

"Man, this is getting sad–"

They stopped talking the moment you entered the room, adjusting your backpack over your shoulder.

"Uh… Hi," they stare at you in silence, "Who were you talking about?"

"NOBODY."

"...Alright."

You pretend the rest of the period isn't weird as fuck.

One afternoon you are in your room studying with Josie when you decide to finally resolve the doubt that has haunted you for so long.

“Josie,” you call.

"Hmm?" She doesn't look up from her notebook.

"Why does Hazel hate me so much?"

"What?" Josie snaps her neck at you in shock. "She doesn't hate you. Why do you think that?"

You shrug, suddenly embarrassed at the thought, if one of Hazel's friends thought it was so absurd then maybe you were thinking too much.

"I don't know," you distracted yourself petting your cat lying against your legs, feeling vulnerable with all of it. "I just… tried really hard to get to know her. I really wanted it. But she… never seemed to want it or like it. Like me."

"It's Hazel," Josie said in a comforting tone, as if that explained everything, "She doesn't know how to talk to people."

"She talks to you." You say, raising an eyebrow at her.

"Okay, you've got a point." She snorts, "But it's different. I'm not…"

"You're not…?"

"It's just different." Josie dismisses it with a wave of her hand.

"Then I'm the problem."

"Not a problem," she is quick to retort. "But yeah, I guess there's something to do with you."

Silence settled for a while after that, you more lost in thoughts than actually studying, until Josie spoke again:

"Y'know… we formed a club," she starts.

"Oh," you mumble, "Oh! I think I heard about that, is it seriously like fight club?" You ask, interested, Josie didn't seem like the type that like fighting.

"No!" She exclaims before clearing her throat, "No, it's not like a fight club. It's a women's empowerment and self-defense club, we teach each other there."

"...Right." You got were she was trying to get, 'us' meaning her, PJ and Hazel in a fight club.

"And Hazel is there too," and there it is, "You could come in, maybe you two get closer. Then you see that she doesn't hate you."

"I don't know, Josie." You answered.

"Oh–" She adds, her face suddenly red, "You can bring some friends if you want, like Isabel. You're friends, right? Who knows, maybe she'll bring Brittany too."

"Sure." You respond with a giggle, completely understanding your friend's intentions now. "Okay, no promises, but I'll think about it."

The rest of your afternoon passed without much conversation, with Hazel taking up most of your thoughts as she usually did.

"YOU DID WHAT?"

Josie shrugged, "I asked Y/N to the club."

The three of them were gathered in the stands when Josie decided to tell what happened in your last study session. Hazel didn't seem to be taking the news very well.

"Yes!" PJ cheered, "Did you told her to bring-"

"I did."

"But she–" Hazel interrupted, panicking. "She doesn't like me!"

Everything went silent for an awkward moment. The three of them faced each other until one broke.

"Uh, no. Dude, the girl thinks you hate her." Josie replied.

"What!?"

"What were you expecting? You treated the girl like a plague every time she tried to flirt with you."

"Flirt with me?" Hazel echoed, in completely disbelief.

Josie and PJ gave her the most tired and done looks anyone could ever give.

"Dude."

PJ, who was already fed up, started in an exaggerated voice:

"Oh yes Hazel, that shirt looks SO good on you, you should wear it more often so I can stare at your arms!"

Hazel shook her head and replied in a weak voice: “It wasn’t like that!”

"And your hair looks so pretty like this! I imagine what it would be like to run my hands through it while you kiss me so hard." PJ placed a dramatic hand against her chest.

"It wasn't like that!" Hazel tried again, "That was just… her being nice. She is so nice."

"Man, we saw it, she's only like that with you." Josie pointed at Hazel, "And I can't stand seeing you two pining for each other like that anymore. You even have the same haircut since she complimented you that one time."

Hazel's ears turned red, "But it is a good haircut."

"Oh! And those rings! I wonder what they would feel like inside–"

"ALRIGHT, ENOUGH." Josie interrupted alarmed and looked back at Hazel who seemed to be questioning her entire existence, "We told you before, that girl is down bad for you. I think she even spent the last year trying to ask you out!"

"But why?" Hazel inquired, "She's so…" She makes a dreamy noise.

"Yeah, I'm wondering about that too." PJ scoffed.

"PJ, I swear to God."

Hazel leaned on the stairs behind her in pure confusion, ignoring the last exchange.

"But what else was I supposed to do when that happened!? Give her my clothes that she liked!? One of my rings!?”

"YES–"

"NO!" Josie exclaimed, "Don't give her a ring, Hazel, for God's sake."

When everyone calmed down, Josie spoke again, seeming to want to end the conversation once and for all.

"Hazel, listen, this is almost an intervention, you're lucky we haven't locked you two in a room yet."

"It's true," PJ agreed wisely, "If it continues like this we'll have to resort to more absurd methods."

"You invented a fight club to get a girl, how is that not absurd?" Hazel looked confused.

"She didn't mean literally–"

"I did! And now you can use it to get your girl!" She boasted, "A kiss or a punch, a win is a win."

Hazel still seemed reluctant to the idea, but there was nothing else to do anyway.

"Okay, whatever!" She gestured nervously, "Maybe she won't even show up, then you'll see that you're making things up."

You really weren't going to show up at that fight club – not buying Josie's women empowerment excuse for a second – but there you were, after bringing it up with Isabel like you told Josie you would and she being completely excited about the idea. The insistence and curiosity got the best of you.

You, Isabel, and Brittany were the last to arrive, interrupting PJ's heated speech. It was embarrassing to be the center of attention.

"You guys didn't get off to a good start." Someone hums in the background, you don't know who because the moment your eyes meet Hazel she's already looking at you.

What happens next is pure chaos – the only thing that really seems to hold this school together – after PJ shouts "Y/N, you go first!" and a bunch of people clear a path in front of you, you end up in the middle of a mat.

"Uh, why do I have to go first anyway?" You ask.

"Because you're the new member." Josie responds with a nod.

“So are they,” you point to the cheerleaders watching further back in the crowd.

"It doesn't matter, it is you." PJ says, "And to be your partner, let's see…" She looks around as if analyzing the options, "…Hazel."

It takes only one look at Hazel and notice her gulps for you to know everything is going to go wrong from there.

You even handle well for a completely uncoordinated and unprepared first fight, which only happened after a very long and awkward moment of the two of you in silence that was broken when someone shouted "BEAT HER ASS UP ALREADY!"

Somehow, Hazel ends up beneath you on the mat, breathing fast, face red and her blue eyes brighter than ever, skin hot where her white t-shirt rode up a little during the confusion and you swear there was never a vision more majestic than this.

You have no idea where the impetus of courage came from to flirt with her so shamelessly, but you feel like you have a chance there, the words come out of your mouth before you can think about it:

"Looks like I finally got you, Haze."

Hazel completely freezes. You notice the exact moment her breathing hitches and Hazel's neck and ears turn red too. 'That's so gay,' you hear someone comment in the background and you're almost nodding with a stupid smile on your face and a feeling of victory in your chest.

And then you feel a quick fist on your nose, and it hurts. Hurts a lot.

You fall back with a strangled scream and a bunch of surprised exclamations from those who were watching and when you bring your hand to your face, blood is already running from your nose and you feel a burning cut on your skin.

The rings. The fucking rings.

Now, one thing they don't tell you about physical fights: a hit on the nose always, always makes you cry.

You didn't know that, so when the tears come, you can't stop some from escaping through your cheeks. You look up and Hazel looks completely horrified.

"Dude, if this is your way of flirting with someone, then you seriously need help." Josie's incredulous voice sounds from somewhere.

"When I talked about a punch I definitely didn't mean that!"

But none of you register it, because Hazel is in front of you in a second, looking more serious than you've ever seen her, taking your face in her hands quickly as she checks the wound, a chorus of 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry' coming out of her mouth.

You're too busy thinking about the sensation of her touch on your skin and your burning nose to react when Hazel declares to the rest of the group that she's going to take you to the infirmary before grabbing her own backpack and helping you up. You walk in silence and she guides you by the hand the entire way while you keep the cloth she gave you weighing down the bleeding.

The infirmary is empty when you arrive – this school always seems to be incredibly understaffed – but Hazel still leaves her backpack in the corner and takes you to one of the beds in the room.

"I'm sorry." She echoes in a shy voice. "I'll take care of it, okay?" It's not really a question, she's already taking a first-aid kit out of one of the cupboards.

How did she already know where this was?

She seems to see the question written into your expression, because she responds with a short laugh and a shrug: "I end up here a lot since the club started."

You hummed in response and Hazel walked over to stand between your legs, you opened them a little more to fit her and watched as she removed the rings from her fingers, a metallic silver one with a mark of blood; the one that cut you. She looked even more guilty when she saw this.

"Why did you go to a fight with your hands full of rings anyway?" You ask, hoping to take the focus of the mark away from those sad eyes, but she just shakes her head before focusing on your injury again.

"I forgot, I guess I wasn't thinking straight. I was…" She removes the cloth from your nose carefully, letting out a hiss when she sees the result, "Damn, the cut doesn't look deep but it bled a lot, I hope it doesn't left a scar."

Hazel seemed to take a moment to realize what she said, before looked to be caught like a deer in headlights.

"Not that you wouldn't look pretty with a scar! But it's just, you know, you got hurt. I hurted you. It would be better if you didn't get scarred…" She rambled, "But you're pretty! Really pretty! Seriously, I think It wouldn't be possible to ruin your face–"

"Hazel, it's okay." You interrupt calmly, she stops embarrassed and remains silent while she takes out the things needed to treat you from the box.

She takes your face in her hands again, tilting your chin at just the right angle, with a delicacy worthy of something breakable; the position makes you nervous. Her hands are cold – you hadn't noticed that before –, icy even without the rings, surprising you considering how constantly she's been moving in the last few minutes. Your first instinct is to put them between yours to warm them up.

You do this; places her hands over youre gently, stopping her actions, Hazel's breath leaves her again.

“Hazel,” you start softly, “Why don’t you like me?”

"What!?" She exclaims, completely perplexed, "I like you."

"No, you don't." You're the one who's perplexed this time, "Ever since I started this school I've been trying to get closer to you but it never works out, everything I do always ends up with you pushing me away. It feels like you hate me." You concluded with a frustrated voice.

"Do you think I hate you?" Hazel asked, mouth agape, her hands drop and you immediately miss her touch, "Why?"

It suddenly seems really ridiculous that you're so upset with her for not reciprocating your silly crush, really embarrassing that this is the longest interaction you've had since last year and it's turning into this.

"Why? Because–" You grunt, frustrated, "You never responded to me when I tried to talk to you; kept tripping over my desk and making me smudge my notebook; ignored me in the corridors when I saw you; You didn't even want me to have lunch with you!" You listed, raising and clenching your fists in frustration, "You sent me a note asking me to leave– you– you spilled coffee on my book! And kept it!”

Hazel seems increasingly surprised by your sudden outburst, her jaw dropped, her eyes wide and her arms raised in a placating gesture. She looks so beautiful you want to cry. Your fists beat softly against her chest, soiling the soft texture of her shirt, you hang your head in defeat.

"I just… I don't know why." You mutter, "What did I do wrong?"

For a moment that seems too long, everything is silent.

"Your book," Hazel says, as if she's just realized something important. She removes your hands gently and turns to go to where her backpack is; you watch her confused.

She sets the bag down next to you on the stretcher quickly, before opening it and searching for something with a concentraded look. She takes out a book from there. Your book.

Well, not exactly, it's the same story but a different edition. You think there would be no way to make the coffee magically disappear from the pages.

"What...?" You mumble.

Hazel takes a breath, "Your book." Then she stops, as if expecting to be interrupted, "I bumped into you by accident, I swear! I bought you another one the next day and was going to give it to you, but I– I got nervous. I always get nervous around you. That's what I was going to say before."

You covered her hands with yours again, they were shaking.

"I brought it every day so I could apologize, but I was scared because I thought you hated me, you know, because of everything that happened." She shrugged, her voice going low.

You couldn't suppress a giggle, the previous frustration melting away at her sweet attitude. Hazel was always captivating and was perhaps the sweetest person you've ever seen, that thought about hers never changed, even when you thought she hated you.

Which apparently wasn't true.

You raise an eyebrow, "'Everything,' you say. You mean the note?"

Hazel blushes from neck to ears, suddenly completely embarrassed. "Ugh, that ruined everything, didn't it?" She whimpers, "I thought if I didn't talk to you then I wouldn't make a fool of myself, but it didn't worked," her lips formed a pout, "That's so stupid."

“I don’t think that’s stupid,” You interrupt, setting the book aside and pulling her by the waistband of her pants; she's so close that now you feel her breath against your face, "I don't think you're stupid. I think you're wonderful."

Hazel's breathing hitches again and this time it makes you smile.

“There’s no point on trying to avoid me that hard, Haze,” You say, a smile painting your lips, “You spent two years avoiding this and I still fell in love with you.”

Hazel pauses, as if she can't believe for a second what she just heard, you're about to ask her if she's okay when you feels her lips meeting yours in a quick movement; your nose burns when it's lightly crushed and the tape bothers you, but you wouldn't change it for nothing in the world.

Her cold hands find your waist and there they remain, fitted perfectly, you can feel her pulse racing from where your hands find way to her neck; she sighs contently when you tilt your chin to deepen the kiss, playing with the hair on the back of her neck.

Hazel pulls away too soon.

"I fell in love with you too," she says, eyes glassy, suddenly shy. "Just– just for to you know."

“Yeah,” you snort, “I think I know that now.”

She nods happily, face still red, "Good."

You laugh, “Good.”

You don't need another exchange of words as Hazel leans in again, confidently, her hands gripping your waist more hard as you trace the contour of her jaw, your tongues meeting gently.

Just when you feel Hazel's smile grow during the kiss and you think about maybe closing your legs around her waist to bring her closer, the door of the infirmary opens with a bang, barely giving you time to separate.

"JOSIE," PJ shouts, turning to face the hallway, "THEY'RE SUCKING EACH OTHER'S FACE! NO NEED TO STEAL THE KEYS TO THE JANITOR'S ROOM, EVERYTHING WORKED OUT!"

"OKAY," Josie's voice answers from far away, "YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO SHOUT WHAT I WAS GOING TO DO, IDIOT!"

"SHUT UP," She responds and then turns to you from where you both watch her completely confused, "Keep being gay, we'll be at the club meeting."

PJ leaves the room without even closing the door and you and Hazel exchange the most confused look anyone could give.

"What the fuck was she talking about?" You ask.

Hazel rests her forehead on your shoulder, "Trust me, you don't want to know."

And you know she's probably right, "Okay," you give in easily.

Then you kiss her, again and again and again, just because now you can.

#hazel callahan x reader #hazel callahan x you #hazel callahan #hazel callahan imagine #bottoms movie #bottoms 2023 #denwrites

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