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#you really don't see a lot of warm families in media
kookslastbutton · 6 days
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Guilty Pleasures ༓ jjk, kth (m) | chapter iii
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✑ Summary: Three years of being Seoul's power couple earns you nothing but a big fat divorce settlement and your face plaster on every gossip column around town. You're angry, hurt, and desperately want to move on, but worst of all? You're still in love with the man who started the whole mess, even though the most he can ever see you as is a friend. The renowned actor you've hired to be your company's new endorser seems to have a soft spot for you though. He's easy on the eyes, you'll admit, but who actually wants a divorcee like yourself? It's unrealistic really.
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pairing: ex-husband ceo!jungkook x ceo!reader, actor!taehyung x ceo!reader (not poly)
genre/AU: angst, smut, fluff, loverstoexesto ?, coworkers2?, unrequited love
Word count: 5.3k+
Warnings: some time skips (none too huge), oc and jk are both 30, Taehyung is 32, swearing, lots of introspection, tornado of emotions, morally grey characters, mentions of toxic relationships, mentions of broken home/families, themes of abandonment, mention of love bombing, reoccurring nightmares, sleep paralysis, mentions of therapy, struggles of self-blame, regret, guilt, etc., mentions of alcohol consumption, mentions of sexism in the media and business world, death (minor character), life-threatening accident (major character)
playlist: Unkiss Me, Apologize, Hate That I Love You, etc.
a/n: ANGST ANGST ANGST...don't say I never warned you hahaha. Anyway, once again, I had an amazing time writing this! (although nervous af 👉🏼 👈🏼) Just FYI, there are some time skips as this starts a few weeks after the gala! So to clarify, it’s now 3 months since oc’s divorce was officially finalized, as in done (the process itself took way longer). The chapter continues from there and yeah, the pace is picked up. Okay, let’s go! Enjoy! 🥰
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Fresh linen. Warm breeze. The smell and sound of the ocean.
You know this place too well, like a memory you hoped to have forgotten. Why are you here now? You glance around, taking in the familiar details—the blank ceiling above, the soft comforter that curls around your body like silk against your skin, and delicate rose petals scattered at the foot of the bed. It’s exactly as it was before — it feels exactly the same; too quiet, too peaceful, and too good to be true.
The sunlight streaming through the window is blinding, yet it draws you in with a force you can't resist. Carefully, you stand up, your feet meeting the cool wood floor, and you shiver. Each step you take towards the window feels heavier, like wading through water. When you reach the window, you see the sandy beach below, the waves beating rhythmically against the shore. It’s beautiful, but the painful kind.
To the left, a young couple, not much older than yourself, their hands tightly intertwined, as if afraid to let go. To the right, an older couple sitting further up the beach, comfortably silent as they take in the horizon, reminiscent of their many years together. You always dreamt of achieving the latter, yet here you stand, having neither, and the chances of ever obtaining it growing dimmer with each passing day.
For many, this was supposed to be a place of happiness, a symbol of love, promises, and new beginnings, but not for you. For you, it was a cocoon, trapping you in a deceptive comfort. You close your eyes, trying to steady your rapid breathing, yet it doesn’t prove to be of much help. Images from your past that you’ve tried blocking out of your mind time and time again suddenly resurface — the arguments, the tears, the feeling of everything and nothing at the same time.
“You’re up early,” His voice startles you, causing you to spin around in a panic. At that moment, your heart tightens in your chest, and a cold sweat forms on your brow. You thought you were alone. You’re certain of it. Yet the sight of your ex-husband standing only a few feet away, his hair still damp from his morning shower, is enough to leave you completely speechless.
"Why are you here?" you whisper, your voice trembling.
"Why are you here?" he counters, his dark eyes piercing into yours. "Isn't this what you wanted? To remember us, to remember how it felt to be together?”
What? This isn't making any sense. Why is he talking to you as if he were a ghost? Your eyes search frantically around the room until you spot it—the wedding band on his finger. No, not again. You hear yourself plead, but the words don't leave your lips. All at once, the room begins to feel smaller, the walls closing in on you. You're stuck in another manifestation of your past, this time reliving your honeymoon, three years ago in Greece.
"I didn't want this," you say, your voice barely audible. "I wanted to forget this."
"But you can't forget, can you?" he says, stepping closer. “You remember this view. You remember the floors and the walls. You remember that we had our first time together here and promised our devotion to each other."
“That’s not fair, Jungkook," you reply, taking a step back, "it's not fair at all, you left me. You don't get to patronize me like this."
“We both know our marriage came with stipulations, __. So when did I ever give you a reason to stay? Or to love me?”
You’re back in the bed, the sheets now suffocating rather than comforting. The sound of the ocean is louder, more insistent, drowning out your thoughts. You want to scream, to run, but you’re paralyzed by the fear, the guilt, the regret.
"This isn’t real,” you say to yourself, tears streaming down your face. “I’m dreaming, none of this is happening.”
“You can't escape what we had, or what we lost. We’ll always be here, together __, in this place,” he says softly, reaching out to touch your hand.
"No," you whisper, pulling your hand away. "I need to wake up. I need to let go...of you."
The room fades, his figure dissolving into the shadows. The sound of the ocean becomes a distant murmur as you fight to open your eyes. Wake up, please wake up. It's your own pleads chanting in your head. Finally, with a gasp, you awake, the nightmare diminishing like vapor.
“Fuck,” you curse, fingers gripping your sheets, “just another damn dream.” Rolling onto your back, you take a deep breath before reaching out for the glass of water on your nightstand. Its coolness soothes your dry throat. You reach for your phone next, checking the time—4:47 AM. Too early to start the day, too late to attempt falling back to sleep.
Your thumb hovers over Jimin’s name in your text threads. It would be 10 AM where he is. You consider sending a message, but you find yourself at a loss for words. Forget it, you lock your phone and rise from your bed, you’ll go for a walk instead. Yeah, it’s brisk outside, but the fresh air will help clear your mind.
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After tossing on your warmest coat and scarf, you head outside, the sun beginning to break over the horizon. At first, you wander aimlessly, lost in thought as you pass the odd person or two on the sidewalk. One individual accidentally knocks into you, yet he's quick to apologize. You easily understand their rush; perhaps they've just finished the night shift and are eager to reach the comfort of home.
You imagine their loved ones who must be waiting for them. You could be wrong, and maybe you're biased, but the image you depict is a future you once envisioned for yourself—one of laughter, love, and a warm family. It’s a dream you secretly carried as a child, amidst your unstable upbringing. But as the years passed, what was once a lifelong aspiration felt more and more elusive, slipping through your fingers like grains of sand. It seems, in the end, it was just a dream…nothing more.
Of course, you've achieved other goals instead, success in your career for one. It's what you wanted most the more you became an adult. Even before Jungkook came in the picture you were thriving. Yes, you needed investors to expand, but you had already made a strong name for yourself, hence the reason his company even reached out to you for a partnership in the first place.
The second, and more formidable goal you’ve achieved was saving your company. You built your business with an earnest heart, good morals, and an ambition to serve a community. You couldn’t let it all be washed out by a larger, greedier industry giant. You had to do something. Too bad your judgment was skewed the day you saw a similar ambition in Jungkook’s eyes; he was just as determined as you to save what was his.
For a while you got what you wanted, stability for your business. But you got too invested, too short-sighted to anticipate that one day, it would all feel hollow without someone proper to share it with. Alas, your prior hopes, the ones you thought were buried long ago, began returning to you as if they were an overwhelming tsunami.
You wanted warmth.
You wanted intimacy.
You wanted a home.
You sought companionship with Jungkook but no, you read the signs all wrong. Once you dropped the L word, his attentiveness towards you skyrocketed. He began calling you while you were apart, surprising you with little gifts, and setting more time aside so you could both take Bam to the dog park on free days. But then it all stopped. After months of showering you with attention, his efforts exhausted him, so he looked for the first exit out.
You remember getting the text one afternoon— When will you be home tonight? We need to talk about something. Selfishly, you hoped he was going to tell you that you could take that trip to Fiji together. You had been hinting at it for the last two weeks. Of course, you were wrong because the last time you checked, trip itineraries didn’t come with divorce papers. At that moment, you realized that Jungkook didn’t try to love you in the slightest, he tried loving at you; love bombing 101. Your ties are now completely severed.
Yesterday marked three months since your divorce was finalized. You didn’t cry like you thought you would, but you did meet with Melody that day. As your therapist, she offered you her empathy, validation, and perspective. You feel you’ve gotten better since you started meeting with her, finally beginning to heal. Yet the unsettling dream that haunted your sleep last night shows you there are many things still left to resolve, feelings you need to confront, but where to start?
You love your ex-husband, but why?
Can it even be called love?
And do you really need him to love you back?
While you can only offer fragments of an answer for the first two, you seem to have a better-formed answer for the last.
No, you don’t need Jungkook to love you. He’s proven to you time and time again that you are not the one he can bear his heart to. He’s always reiterating that he wants you to find someone else, someone more deserving of you, whatever that means. Likely, it’s all projection. Out of the two of you, he’s the one more likely to re-marry.
As for you, you’ll always love him, at least a semblance of it. After all, he was once a part of you. But what was once a part of you, doesn’t need to be anymore. You have to let him go...though you wish you didn't have to.
You continue walking straight until you find yourself drawn to a small park overlooking the city skyline. It's fairly empty, with only a few people nearby. As you settle onto a weathered bench, you take in the view before you. It stretches endlessly. Sunrises have always held a special place in your heart—the amber glow breaking through the abyss of darkness as if a beacon of hope.
"You'll get through this __," you reassure yourself, “one day at a time.”
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“Happy six months, boss!”
A goofy, boxy smile graces the man’s lips as he leans against the doorframe of your office. You take in his appearance: crème-colored sweater paired with dark brown slacks, the fabric impeccably tailored to his tall, lean frame. His ebony hair is perfectly parted down the center and feathered out to either side of his face, giving him a soft, approachable look. The glasses are new though, round with a hint of gold. Though a minor accessory, they seem to tie the rest of the look together.
Classy, yet cozy, you hum silently, it suits him.
Everything about the way he’s dressed today complements his features—not that it could be any other way, as Taehyung could never not look good in something. You learned that the hard way when you opted against a gaudy shirt and pant set your stylists suggested he wear for a commercial. Taehyung, being a free spirit, decided to try it on for kicks, and yeah, it strangely worked. He ended up shooting the entire commercial with it on. That video’s gotten your business the highest engagement rate across all your media platforms to this day.
“Mr. Kim, does six months of working together really merit a celebratory drop-in?” You lean back in your desk chair, arms folded as you narrow your eyes at the man. You're taunting him, not that he minds.
“Please,__,” he starts, stepping further into the room, his presence effortlessly filling the space. “The only person that still calls me that is the intern who works on set with us. Makes me feel old, like I’m double my real age.”
“Well, you are older than both of us.”
Taehyung gives you the look, a mix of amusement and mild aggravation.
“Two years is hardly considered older, but if you’re done trying to prod me, I’d like to ask you a series of serious questions.”
“Okay, what?” You straighten your back, curious to know what he’s thinking.
“Red or white wine?” He waits for your response, eyes seemingly hopeful. You're unsure where he's going with this, so you delay your response, suspicious of the spontaneity of the inquiry.
“Red,” you respond, cautiously. Taehyung seems pleased.
“Strawberries or blueberries?”
“Strawberries, though I prefer cherries most."
“Science or literature?"
"Literature." You surprise him with this one. "I like books, vintage ones."
"Do a lot of reading in your spare time?" he asks.
"When I get some, yes."
"Me too. Tolstoy?"
"Occasionally," you answer. "Where are you going with this, Taehyung?"
He shrugs. "Just making conversation." He pauses before continuing, “I also happen to know a place that offers all those things plus private bookings. How about you and I go for dinner tonight, as colleagues? If you hate the wine, I’ll drink it for you.”
The weight of his request hits you like a ton of bricks. Apart from a handful of social events, you and Taehyung haven't exactly mingled outside of the office. His sudden invitation to go out for dinner takes you by surprise, especially considering the nature of your professional relationship. However, you can't deny the subtle shifts in his behavior, the way he's been checking in on you more often, especially since the Winter Gala. Weeks have passed since then, but, no doubt, the memory of that night still lingers in both your minds—the shaming from a bitter business competitor, the unwanted press shining a light on your divorce, and your ex-husband who so easily approached you like it was nothing.
Taehyung suggested for you to slip away through the back door with him, offering to drive you home himself rather than leaving you with your limo driver. But you declined, feeling embarrassed that he wasn't merely a witness to the night's events, but also made to be a spectacle himself. You never wanted him to feel like he had to pity you or coax you through your personal trials. Being a good colleague is one thing, but he didn't need to go above and beyond.
“I don’t know if I can join you tonight, I'm sorry. I have a lot to do,” you say, your voice wavering slightly. It's not far from the truth with the mountain of business reports and budget plans to look over. Though your business remains functioning, it's a lot to maintain, especially with the number of investors having withdrawn their support once news got out about your marital separation. It's unfortunate how much a person's situation and the things they've built can change on someone else's dime.
“You sure?" Taehyung tries again, careful not to sound pushy. "The place isn’t overly posh, but we could go elsewhere if you’d prefer."
“I’m sorry, Taehyung, maybe another time?” you say, fingers fidgeting with a few documents on your desk, a nervous habit you developed ages ago. “I-"
“I understand,” he says, his expression softening, a hint of disappointment flickering in his eyes before he masks it with a gentle smile. "I have a film shoot that might go late anyway. Speaking of which, I'm expected on set in about half an hour so I'm going to head out, but if you change your mind, you know how to reach me."
You nod, recalling having his contact in your phone. The two of you agreed it would be easier to coordinate meetings and schedules this way. "I will, thank you. Good luck with your filming."
As you watch him leave, a twinge of guilt tugs at your conscience. Perhaps you shouldn't have dismissed him so quickly, considering how insistent he seemed. It's as if he was genuinely looking forward to the affair.
No, you can't entertain it any further. You have no way of knowing how far the night might've led—it's best to leave Kim Taehyung alone.
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When you declined Taehyung's invitation to get dinner, you didn’t expect it to result in not seeing or hearing from him for the next week and a half. As an endorser, he doesn't work at the office regularly, coming and going as needed and since you hadn’t had any promotional projects for him recently, his absence seemed normal at first.
But this was Kim Taehyung. The same Taehyung who loved making spontaneous visits to the company, especially towards the end of the week. He often came in once, twice, sometimes three times a week to talk with Namjoon, your secretary, in particular. Somehow, the pair had become friends, and since Namjoon’s desk was near yours, Taehyung would drop by whenever he saw your door open. So, not hearing from him for 11 days straight was strange, like he'd vanished.
It was now Friday evening, the clock pushing 5 pm. You consider texting him to make sure he's okay, but wouldn’t that be hypocritical? You had agreed with yourself to leave him alone. Maybe he was on vacation, perhaps at a vineyard, or had taken on another film project. Being a highly talented actor, Taehyung had no shortage of casting directors contacting him for their movies and TV shows.
Embarrassingly, you hadn’t actually seen any of his movies. You enjoyed a good rom-com now and then, like the ones Taehyung starred in, but you usually opted for something more mindless when you had the time to watch anything.
You can imagine the loyal following he has though, as Taehyung was the epitome of a "dream boat" with his natural good looks and expressive eyes. He must be good at kiss scenes, which must be especially difficult for anyone dating him. You know you'd have a hard time accepting it at least, the fact that your flawless actor boyfriend was off making out with equally beautiful co-stars on set, that is. Anyway, as your endorser, maybe you should try supporting his films a bit more. There had to be one that would catch your eye.
Curious, you open a new tab on your phone and search for him.
"Holy fuck," the curse leaves your lips the minute the search returns. Dozens of articles display on your phone screen at once, all covering South Korean actor Kim Taehyung's recent motorcycle accident. You checked the publishing date—six hours ago. “Taehyung’s in the hospital. He’s in the fucking hospital!”
Panicked, you leave your office to speak with your secretary.
“Ms. __,” Namjoon greets you immediately, a trace of hesitation in his tone upon seeing your frazzled state. “Is everything alright?”
“Joon,” you refer to him by his pet name, “Did you know that Taehyung’s in the hospital?”
“What?” He seems as shocked as you, his eyebrows shooting up in alarm.
“It happened this morning around eleven or something. It was a collision, a motorcycle accident. Oh god, he’s—he’s been taken to the ER,” you choke out the words, struggling to maintain your composure as you try recalling one of the articles you skimmed. “We have to go. I have to go right now.”
“I’m coming with you.” Namjoon leaps from his chair, grabbing his keys from his desk drawer. “I’ll drive.”
“No,” you stop him, “I don’t know how long this’ll be and you usually work until 5:30, so I don't want you to have to be stuck at the hospital with me. I want you to be able to call it an early night if you want. We'll take separate cars over.”
“Okay,” he nods. “I’ll meet you over there then?”
“Yeah.” You nod back, clutching your keys harder in your palm. “Yeah, sounds good.” You turn around to head for the nearest exit, but your secretary stops you mid-step.
“__,” he calls you by your name, having known you for the past decade permits him to do so. He softens his eyes when he sees the worry in your own clear as day. “He’s gonna be okay. We have to believe that. Please drive safe.”
“You too,” you say, then disappear from his sight.
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When you arrive, it’s a madhouse. Sirens blare as ambulances rush into the hospital parking lot, doctors and nurses race from room to room, and fans—so many fans—crowd outside, all waving signs of comfort and support.
“I'm here to see Kim Taehyung,” you say urgently to the charge nurse. She recognizes you immediately and throws you a look of distaste, but you’re too focused on the emergency at hand to care. “I’m sure you know who I am, but I need to see him. We work together, we're colleagues.”
“Ms. __,” she replies, surprisingly calm and collected amidst her obvious dislike of you. “I’m afraid he’s currently receiving serious medical attention and won’t be able to have any visitors at the moment.”
“I’ll wait,” you blurt out the words faster than you anticipate. You feel like you're eating your words from earlier about leaving him alone, but this is different—his life is on the line. "I can wait for him.”
“Visiting hours are only until 8 pm. I really don’t think—”
“Please,” you interrupt, your voice stern and urgent. “He's part of my team. He's my...friend. I have to know if he’s okay.”
The nurse hesitates, her expression softening slightly as she sees the genuine concern in your eyes. “Alright,” she finally says, her tone firm but kinder. “You can wait in the family lounge, but I can’t promise you’ll be able to see him anytime soon."
“Thank you,” you say, relief flooding through you. She directs you to a quiet room down the hall, away from the commotion where you're better able to calm your racing thoughts. You find a seat in the far corner immediately and send a quick text to Namjoon, letting him know where you are.
As you wait, the minutes drag by painfully slow. You can’t stop replaying the articles in your mind from earlier, the words “motorcycle accident” echoing like a mantra. How did this even happen? How bad was his condition? How much strain is this going to put on his acting career? You wish you knew.
A handful of nurses enter the lounge occasionally, calling out names and providing updates, but none of them are Taehyung’s. You find your ears burning every time the door opens, heart racing, only to sink back into your seat when it’s not about him.
Finally, you catch sight of Namjoon, his face mirroring your concern. He spots you immediately and rushes over, taking a seat in the chair beside you. “Any news?” he asks, his voice low and urgent.
“Not yet,” you reply, your voice barely above a whisper. “They said he’s receiving serious medical attention and don't know when we'll be able to see him. We have to leave by 8.”
Namjoon nods, his expression grim but unwavering “We’ll wait together.”
"If you need to leave sooner than—"
"I know," he interrupts. "I appreciate it, but please let me be here too."
You sit in silence from then on, exhaustion beginning to weigh heavy on both your shoulders. It's not until 7:35 when a doctor walks into the lounge, his tired eyes scan the room until they land on you and Namjoon.
“Are you here for Kim Taehyung?” he asks. "I'm Dr. Min."
You nod, your heart in your throat.
“He’s stable for now,” Dr. Min explains, “but he's still in critical condition. We’re doing everything we can.”
“Can we see him?” you ask, your voice barely above a whisper.
He sighs. “Only for a few minutes. And you need to be prepared—he’s heavily sedated and has sustained significant injuries.”
“I understand,” you reply, mentally preparing yourself for what’s to come.
Dr. Min leads you through a maze of hallways until you reach the ICU. As you enter Taehyung’s room, the sight of him hooked up to machines and covered in bandages nearly breaks you. You take a deep breath and step closer, Namjoon right next to you.
“Taehyung,” you whisper, but he remains motionless, his breathing steady and rhythmic. The severity of his injuries is evident in the way he lies.
“We're here, Taehyung,” Namjoon continues, noticing your slightly frozen state. “We’re both here for you. Please, fight through this. You and I, we're good pals, remember? Like brothers. You have to—"
Although the more collected one before, Namjoon begins to struggle with his words. You place a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to comfort him. Having known him for 10 years, you know that despite his strong exterior, he has one of the softest souls you know.
"I think I have to go, __. It'll be better if I see him when he's awake. I want to stay longer, but I just don't know if I can."
"I understand, we can't stay much longer anyway. Go home and get some rest. Dr. Min will call us when he's awake and able to talk."
After you give him a hug, Namjoon leaves the room, leaving you alone with Taehyung. You end up pulling up a chair beside his bed and slowly reach out to touch his hand. It's instinctive for you, the need to feel his heartbeat overpowering any other thought.
"I'm so sorry this happened to you, Taehyung," you start, your voice a mere murmur. "You'll push through this, right? Like in the movies you film. I confess I haven't seen any of them yet, but—but I will! That's how I found out about all this actually. We hadn't seen you for nearly two weeks, so I searched you up. Not in a weird way though, okay? Not like...anyway, I'm sorry I said no to you that day. When you asked to go for dinner, it threw me off. This whole thing with my ex-husband just has my mind in fifty million directions, so I promise it wasn't you. I hope you didn't think that."
"You've always seemed to show up for me, whether it's for the good of the company or even a little emotionally in some aspects. With the reputation I have these days, I'll always be grateful that you chose to work with me. You have a good heart, Taehyung, so much that I think if we ever got close, I think it might be unbearable for me," you pause, a couple of tears slipping down your face.
Just then, a creaking of the room's door momentarily pulls your attention away. Dr. Min stands a few feet away, clearing his throat—a gentle but firm signal that it's time for you to leave.
"I have to go soon, but I'll be back tomorrow, okay? Even if you're still asleep or not, I'll stop in and sit with you for a while because...because I need to be sure that you'll be alright. Namjoon will come see you too when he's ready. But I'll see you in the morning, alright Kim?"
You squeeze Taehyung's hand gently before heading out of the room, thanking the medical staff along the way.
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When you get home, the first thing you do is head straight for the bathroom. Your whole body feels riddled with stress and exhaustion, and you know that the only thing that can offer even the slightest amount of solace is the warmth of water.
Yet not four minutes after immersing yourself in your tub does your phone ring, demanding your attention. Being this late into the evening, you figure it has to be Jimin.
But you're wrong.
When you reach to answer the call, it's actually an unrecognizable number that's flashing on the screen. You hesitate for a moment, debating whether to answer or let it go to voicemail.
"Hello?" you answer cautiously, curiosity getting the best of you.
There's a brief pause on the other end before his voice comes through, words slightly muddled. "Hey, it's me," he says, his tone soft. "I've been...I've been thinking about my life, you know? About everything.
"J-Jungkook?" Your heart sinks as you quickly decipher the owner of the voice, but then it hardens. It's obvious from the slurring of his words that he's been drinking. "Why on earth are you calling me? And at this godforsaken hour too."
"I told you...I've been thinking about my life."
"I'm hanging up."
"No, please, stay on the line for five minutes. Please, I have to tell you...what I've been thinking."
"You have three minutes," you sigh, ready for anything (except what he was about to spring on you).
"I wanted to save my company," he continues, his voice wavering slightly. "For my mom's sake, you know? My dad owned it and stuff but she was the one who was behind all the technology...and that's why I married you. You...reminded me of her."
Your breath catches in your throat as he reveals the truth behind his actions, the raw honesty of his words hitting you like a punch to the gut. You knew very little of Jungkook's mother, too, as he didn't speak of her often.
"And then...then there's the real reason I divorced you," he admits, his voice breaking slightly. "My parents had a terrible marriage, you know? My mom...she had to manage my dad's temper for years...he didn't love her at all. He just married her because she was smart and could make him rich. It made her so unhappy, but you know she loved him so much. She...she passed away when I was 16, and...and I didn't want that for you. I didn't want you to be trapped like she was, because I'm like my dad you know? My feelings are...weird... I never know what the hell I'm...feeling. I'm probably not making a lot of sense am I?"
"I'm trying to understand." You want to hang up here and now but every time he speaks, you cant bring yourself to do it. The pain in his voice cuts through you like a knife, and it's a side of him that you've rarely seen before.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, his voice thick with regret. "I'm sorry for being such a dumbass that day I got my stuff. That was like, six months ago and I still hate myself for it. I shouldn't have made an advance on you like that. I was...I was immature, and I wasn't thinking."
"After the gala," he continues, his words becoming more coherent as he speaks. "I...I felt even more guilty, you know? Because, I still have a photo of you and Bam on my dresser. It's small, but I've tried to put it away over and over and over again, but I can't do it. I don't know what's wrong with me...it's almost a year since we lived under the same goddam roof and I can still smell your perfume, I can still remember how you laugh with both your lips and your eyes...the way you scrunch you nose when—"
"What are you trying to say Jungkook?" You interrupt. "That you're sorry and can't get me out of your head, so you need my forgiveness to move on?"
"No! That's...that's not it at all. I mean, I do want your forgiveness but—"
"Well, what the fuck is it?" You hate how aggressive your voice is sounding, but the obscene amount of incoherent information he's revealing to you is overwhelming. "It's 10 freaking pm at night, I had a long day, I'm sleep deprived, and Taehyung's in the fucking hospital which is so distressing, so I'm sorry, but I can't handle any more of your cryptic messages!"
"I think I might love you," he finally says, his voice raising as well. "I know I'm...I'm being a dumbass, but I...I think I love you. I love you __, fuck!"
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a/n: So....how are we feeling about Jungkook rn? Also, my darling Taehyung is taking one for the team here 😭 🤍 LMK what you think! Lastly, I understand the timeline of events is a bit tricky to follow, so if it helps I can put something in the series masterlist to help. Vote for jjk or kth!
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side note: I tried tagging readers in comments but most of them didn't go through, so i'm sorry about the clutter here...😬
no reposting, copying, or translating my work– © kookslastbutton
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natailiatulls07 · 4 months
Note
could i request some leclerc!reader and so comfort with charles please
It's okay
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Arthur Leclerc Charles Leclerc Lorenzo Leclerc Pascale Leclerc & Leclerc!reader
Summary - In order to find her way in life, Y/n Leclerc runs away in the dead of night only leaving a note
Warning - neglection, running away
-
Growing up with three older brothers and two of such competing in karting competions, life was hard for Y/n Leclerc. Pascale and Hervé invested lots of their money and energy into Arthur and Charles.
When she was seven, Y/n's interest in ballet started. The young girl had her heart set on being a professional ballerina. So thats what she did. Y/n convince Pascale to enrol her in ballet class.
From then on, she became more and more talented. Quickly becoming the top of class. Yet when recitals came round and she was the lead, the only person who came to watch was Lorenzo.
The rest of the family were out at karting competitions cheering on Charles and Arthur. Yes they would apolgise to Y/n for their absence but to her it never really felt quite right.
-
Y/n was 14 years old, life got harder. Karting turned to formula 2 and E. Lorenzo now building his own life, he moved out of the house.
And the worst of all, Hervé Leclerc passed away. This meant attention was limited, Pascale was busy. She had her salon to run, she was running around supporting the two boys racing and she was mourning the lose of her partner.
As much as he wanted to support Y/n during her recitals, Lorenzos life became busier and he could no longer come along each recital. She felt as though no one her family could see her or her talent.
So what did she do? Y/n collected enough money to enrol herself into a ballet academy. In the dead of night she packed just enough and left without a sound. Of course she couldn't leave without leaving a note, she loved her family.
Dear Maman, Charlie and Arthur, I love you all dearly, please don't worry about me. I will be gone for a while, Lo Lo knows where I will be but please do not pester him. Thank you for everything and more Love from your dearest daughter, Y/n xx
-
Y/n Leclerc was a sensation, one of the best of her age. She was a household name, even if you weren't that well educated on ballet you knew who this elegant women was.
However, it was rare for the ballerina to speak publicily, Espercially as many would ask of her surname and family relations. And it wasn't hard to understand why.
"So Y/n please tell me, any relation to formula one driver Charles Leclerc?"
"No comment, thank you"
Charles, Arthur, Pascale and Lorenzo watched on, following her social media through burner accounts not wanting to make this harder for Y/n.
They could see how she spent most of her time dancing, spending time to herself or getting cocktails with friends she made along the way.
~
yourusername
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Week in my life...
Spending time alone, you must prioritize self care
Fruit cocktails with friends, the key to my heart
Looking after the minis, they're the cutest little things
Lounging on my sofa after a long day of rehearsals, it is tiring!
Liked by cl_2648749 and 146,283 others
comments are limited
username Gorg gorg girlie
cl_2648749 <3
username I so wanna be her friend omfggg
~
But she wasn't stupid, Y/n knew who those burner accounts were. Every single post, the burner accounts were there front and center. She felt their eyes on her, it was silly really but she constantly felt like they were watching her.
However, Y/n felt warm with that in mind. Like they were finally noticing her for the first time. No longer was she fighting for the attension with her two older brothers. But was it just online? If she were to go back, would it go back to how it was before.
Plus she had built up a life on ballet. Y/n made a family with her friends. Everyone knew her, fuck she is a household name hiding her Leclerc identity from the world, even herself.
-
"I think it's a good idea! It's been long overdue in my opinion"
"No. We need to work to her choices, not make her uncomfortable."
"Okay when?!" Charles throws his arms in the air with frustration. He was pacing in front of the television; Arthur, Pascale and Lorenzo all sat on the sofa watching him.
The topic of Y/n came up in passing by Arthur and it became much more. Charles was fighting, he was desperate to get his dear little sister back home. However Lorenzo, knowing how Y/n felt about everything, was fighting back and trying to prioritize her feelings.
The constant pacing stopped abruptly, and Charles turned to look at Lorenzo with a harsh glare. "Why do you want to so desperately work to her choices? Are you in contact with her?" You could hear a penny drop.
Eyes snapped over to the oldest boy, all confused and harsh. Lorenzo sunk into himself. "I um..." He took a deep breath before continuing. "Yeah um so I kept contact with her yes"
"Is she okay?" The first question Pascale asked. Years of guilt plagued her mind, she neglected her own daughter and she was now paying the price for that.
Lorenzo nodded. "Yes, she's okay...Y/n she um built up a family through her friends and as you know she is doing well for herself..." A small proud smile morphed onto his face, he was proud of her for doing this for herself.
"Does she hate us for what we did?"
He breathed in and out. "No, she doesn't hate any of us...she understands completely..." That did ease some guilt for the other three, it would of killed them to know that she hated them, her own family.
There was silence for a couple of minutes whilst they all fell into their own thoughts. And then Pascale spoke up again. "Can you at least text her or call her whatever...talk to her, please tell her that we love her and that we want to see her again...we're so so proud and sorry"
Arthur and Charles both nodded in agreement. "I'll see what I can do..." Lorenzo promised.
-
It seemed that the next time they would see Y/n would come round much soon than expected. It wasn't planned, totally sporadic.
Charles was in the kitchen, in Lorenzos apartment. He was scrolling through his phone when there was a ring coming from Lorenzos phone. "Lorenzo! Your phone, it's ring!" Looking over the driver read the name.
Y/n
He knew it was wrong to answer the call, but it felt right like this would do something so he did. Charles picked up the phone and answer.
Before he could speak the voice he missed so dear filled his ear, yet it was panicked and he could hear uneven breathing.
"Lo I'm sorry please, I came back to Monte C but uh um the paps they um oh my god I can't breathe they keep following me! Please please I don't- I don't know where to go!" He missed her voice, granted it for much more mature and wiser now, he still missed it.
Though he was entranced by the situation, now very concerned. "It's okay, it's okay" His mind was on speed mode, much like it was in the car. "Send me the location, I'll come and collect you"
Y/n's voice came out calmer and confused now. "Cha...is that you?"
Charles nodded his head before realising she couldn't see him. "Yeah um it is Cha, I'm on my way" He rushed down to his ferrari.
-
Pulling up to her location, his heart clenched. Y/n had grown so much since he had last seen her, she had grown into herself and looked alot like Pascale now.
Charles climbed out of his car, walking over to her and collided her into a bone crushing hug. "Oh chérie, je suis vraiment désolé..." Oh darling, I'm so sorry
Tears soaked his shoulder, the whole chaos of the day and reuniting with her older brother weighing down on Y/n had finally toppled off completely.
She couldn't speak, just hung onto him. That long time spent away from her family catching up to her. "It's okay...it's okay..." Charles whispered in her ear.
-
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fun-k-board · 8 months
Note
Hey again 😄😄😄
Thank you so so much for the smoke headcanon I really enjoyed it, I was wondering if you could do it again but this time with reptile please ??
Syzoth / Reptile Friendship / General Headcanons
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Note(s) : You're a regular human and not a champion, it's implied you're friends with the human kharacters and meet Reptile through them.
Reptile is extremely anxious around you at first because you're not a champion, you're just an Earthrealmer with no fighting skills or prior knowledge on Outworld, and he finds himself a little confused on your presence most of the time.
As such, he finds himself explaining to you a lot of things that he would believe are just common sense. He doesn't get annoyed though, because he realises his constant questions on regular human ideas must be strange too.
He's still a Zatteran despite his ability to shapeshift into a human form, and so, any human social cues you've mastered will probably be strange to him, and vice versa.
Syzoth will typically eat bugs like cockroaches, spiders, flies, and forgets that some human cultures don't have that normalised, but he's extremely overjoyed when he finds out that certain places consider bugs a delicacy. He basically begs you to take him to those places.
If Johnny invites you to be in a movie, whether acting or stage hand, Syzoth, and by extension a large chunk of the Kast, will a million percent also be there after being coincidentally, also invited by Johnny! He's interested in Earth culture, and after watching Predator, which scared the daylights out of him, he wants to know the process behind movies.
Hundred percent asks to see movies with you, apart from horrors, never show him a horror movie, he will not be able to sleep for weeks.
Movie nights are incredibly common, a lot of other non Earthrealmers join in as well! It becomes very cramped very fast in your house, let's hope Johnny is nice enough to lend you all his mansion for the night.
He's a big fan of superhero media, there's always an invisible person, although he finds the fact a lot of them have to strip incredibly strange, or some type of half human half animal hybrid, he feels at home a lot of the time watching those types of superheros.
He can't stomach human food, so if he ever stays at yours for a sleepover or just to hang out for a day, he'll be an exterminator for you and eat any bugs he can find as his lunch / dinner. It's very helpful during summer.
Speaking of summer, he always wears his usual attire even in unbearable heat, he's uncomfortable with his human form and he feels awkward to show more of it. Besides, he likes to keep warm because he gets cold too easily, and when he's cold he gets slower which is impractical and annoying.
After the death of his wife and children, he's been looking for a distraction, he needs some form of comfort and he feels talking to you and his other friends is a huge help. Especially if you've experienced a close loss before, even if you don't know ways to help cope, you can always find ways to help each other heal together.
He tries to ask you for dating advice with Ashra, this most likely goes over well no matter how horrible your advice is, because Ashra and Syzoth are the best couple and are so wholesome nothing could offend either.
Syzoth is always awkward around dinners, whenever he's invited to Madam Bo's by one of the Kast of you, he sort of just sits around and tries to talk instead of eat. Reptiles learned after a while that it's impolite to humans when you just eat bugs out of the air, which he doesn't understand, and so refrains from eating at most public dinners.
He really wants to bring you to Zattera, but he knows far too well that they don't take kindly to warm blood, and while he understands his people's reason, he's still disappointed.
Luckily! He can visit your home in Earthrealm.
He does unfortunately get a lot of stares when he visits your home, your family and even strangers on the street always assume he's a cosplayer.
After he gets roles for a few of Johnny's movies, he becomes a micro celebrity of some sorts, including you if you decide to star in them. People recognise him on the streets and he gets rather embarrassed, but also very appreciated, he feels a lot of love around fans.
Apart from the weird ones... He tries to tell people that he's taken, with a wonderful girlfriend who'd he'd never betray, but... He needs you to chase them off a lot.
I imagine at first, your family and friends might think he's really weird, like, not even 'wow that was strange' weird, but 'never invite this man to be close to my vicinity again' type weird.
He's always looking around suspiciously, eyes wide, sweaty, sometimes he looks like he's going to speak but then holds a hand over his mouth, always when there's a fly near...
But, it only takes a day of knowing him for them to switch up and genuinely adore him.
They invite him around all the time, he's sweating buckets and terrified of messing up, but they're so taken aback by how goddamn sweet this guy is they don't notice.
Once again, you become his saviour and help him whenever they get too talkative about where he's from. They don't know about Outworld, and Liu Kang would prefer it if you didn't spill to everybody.
He finds human fashion a bit strange, but he actually really likes hoodies, especially the ones with short sleeves, they feel comfortable and he can move around a lot without it being a hassle of detangling and annoyance. He also likes wearing fingerless gloves everywhere.
Introducing him to Earthrealm music is... Interesting, to say the least. He really enjoys a lot of them! Especially classical, they're closer to what he knows from Outworld, but, he's also surprised at how much he likes a lot of modern music.
I'm spreading my Britney Spears fan Syzoth agenda and you can't stop me.
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unreliablesnake · 6 months
Text
Reunion (Simon Riley x reader)
Simon wasn’t a huge fan of the school reunions that some of his old friends organized every few years. Usually he wasn’t even around to attend them. But he kept track of some people on social media, although this was something he would have denied without hesitation.
His main target was you. He knew about everything you shared, he saw the photos, he saw the cheesy posts about your life. About your perfect husband.
Because that guy was perfect based on the photos, your posts, the comments from friends and family, and his own profile. Tall, handsome, successful, popular, coming from a good family, and apparently he was so madly in love with you that Simon felt like throwing up every time he saw one of his declarations of love.
Back in the day, during those terrible teenage years, he had wanted to ask you out on a date. But with his background, he always felt like he wasn’t enough for you. You talked to him, yes, but it usually felt like an empty, polite chat instead of a deep conversation.
So when he went grocery shopping one day, he was surprised to meet you in the parking lot. His first reaction was to look away and act like he didn’t recognize you. You wouldn’t remember him anyway, and since you were still a beautiful woman, men looking at you should be nothing new for you.
But his whole body froze when he heard you call after him. “Simon? Simon Riley? Is that you?” He slowly turned around and watched you without a word. Sure, he nodded, even smiled a little, but he didn’t want to look desperate to talk to you. “Oh my god, it’s been so long!”
Before he knew it, you were wrapping your arms around him in a warm hug. He didn’t even know what to do. You were a married woman in the middle of a crowded parking lot, anyone could see you hugging a man who wasn’t your husband.
“You never come to the reunions, you’re inactive on social media… I know nothing about what you do these days,” you said with a pout after you playfully punched his chest. “The last thing I heard is that you joined the SAS. Are you still there?”
Who the hell had told you that? Whoever it was, they deserved a punch in the face. But it was water under the bridge, you already knew the truth. “Yeah, that's my life now,” he replied with a nod. “And what about you? What do you do these days?”
He listened to you giving him the answer with wide, happy gestures, and he couldn't hold back the smile that crept on his lips. You were so nice, so alive, so different from the people he was surrounded by. Maybe it was nostalgia making him see you in such a way, but he didn't really care about the why.
Having you in his life again, even if for just a few minutes, made him happy, made him wish you would stick around. He wanted to spend more time with you, although he knew you weren't available. But you could be friends, right? There were no rules stating a man and a woman couldn't be friends.
You suddenly looked down at your phone and cursed under your breath. “I'm late. It was so nice to see you again, Simon,” you said with a wide smile as you unlocked the phone and gave it to him. “Can I get your number? I might check in every now and then. You know, just to know you're okay, even if you don't attend the reunions.”
Oh, he was more than happy to give you his number. Once he gave back the device, you quickly called him so he would have your number as well. “Don't get lost,” he told you with a smirk.
“I won't,” you promised.
Yet you disappeared. He expected you to call him, to send a text, but there was nothing in the following months.
Being deployed and being focused on the mission he was on made things a little easier. He didn't spend every moment of the day thinking about you, thinking about whether or not it was him who did something stupid that made you change your mind. Price noticed that something was wrong with him, but when Simon refused to explain, he gave up trying.
And then, just one week before he was supposed to go home, your name showed up on the screen. At first he thought it was a mistake and you would end the call right away. But it kept ringing, so he took a deep breath and picked up.
“Hey, Simon. You got a minute?” you asked cheerfully.
------
Note: Thanks for reading. I don't have a taglist. If you want to know when I post new stuff, follow @unreliablesnakefics and hit the get notifications button.
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vampyrsm · 2 years
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'let me make you feel good' (5.2k) shoto todoroki x female reader ft. izuku midoriya
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warnings: cuckolding, izuku is the cuck, humiliation sorta for izuku, blowjob, light degrading with a lot of praise to balance it out, vaginal sex, creampie, overstim.
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➼ 'kinktober 2022 masterlist'
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"Sure,"
"And I promise it won't be weird—" Izuku pauses. "Wait, really?"
Shouto shrugs a little, long careful fingers flicking through a stack of paperwork. "Sure, I don't see why not. As long as she's okay with it." Mismatched eyes finally look up from his desk to the large burly green-haired man who had stopped by.
Izuku is quick to nod, curls bouncing away from his forehead. "I mean, it was her idea for it to be you. I suggested Kacchan—" he watches Shouto raise an eyebrow at that suggestion, it wouldn't have ended well. "Yeah, I know, she gave me the same look."
Relaxing into the big office chair, his legs spreading slightly as he finally takes in the blush on Izuku's face. "I never would've put you as the guy who likes to watch other people fuck his girlfriend." The reaction from Izuku is almost immediate, the man somehow blushing more furiously than before at the casual tone, and volume, of the half-and-half hero.
"Todoroki-kun!" Izuku hisses, hastily shutting the door he had left open himself. "Don't say it so loud, I don't need some sidekick overhearing that." He turns back to see Shouto with a shit-eating smirk on his face, oh, he was enjoying humiliating Izuku it seems. Still ever the pot-stirrer when it came to things that probably shouldn't be meddled with.
Shouto shrugs. "Just text me with the details whenever you both want it to happen." Shouto may look calm and relaxed on the outside, shrugging off the idea of fucking another man's girlfriend in front of them but his heart is tattooing itself against the inside of his ribcage. Hammering away in a mixture of excitement and anxiety, he'd always loved being around you when he hung out with Midoriya but to know you picked him? He just hopes he's up to your standards.
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It was just over three weeks later when Shouto received a text. He figured perhaps it would be done in a hotel room or even Shouto's own place to ensure he didn't 'invade' your personal space. But the butterflies returned with renewed vigour when he received a text from you, not Midoriya, asking if he wanted to come over on Saturday night if he didn't have patrol or any important work that needed to be done. He responded almost too quickly, informing you he wasn't busy.
He neglected the fact he would cancel attending the monthly dinner his father insisted the entire family attended.
So here he stood, a crisp white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, black slacks and shiny black shoes. He looked every bit the "rich boy" the media often painted him as, a man with killer looks but was often seen as 'too gentle', 'too much of a gentleman'. If only they know the real reason why he was standing with a lump in his throat before someone's front door, maybe from the outside it would just look like he was coming over for a dinner.
The door finally opened, and as expected it was Midoriya who answered the door. The usual friendly smile on his face, "Shouto, hey, come in!", Shouto tries to not notice the band of blush across Midoriya's face, and instead steps past the other pro into the warm home. His eyes immediately dart over the various items, it's a different feeling than Midoriya's own apartment. It's more homely, more welcoming, an old warmth in his chest blooms at the thought.
After toeing off his shoes, he follows Midoriya through the thin corridor before it opens up into the rest of the house. It's smaller than most but he figures that's the point, it's a humble place to live. "She's upstairs already, she figured it might be a bit weird if we both greeted you at the door." Midoriya scratches at the back of his head, clearly just as out of his depth as the Ice and Fire hero. Shouto just nods, allowing Midoriya to take the lead once again to take him up the stairs and into your bedroom.
The door opens, Midoriya stepping out of the way to stand next to the bed and Shouto is certain his heart stops for a second at the sight before him. He had never been in any situation before where he had seen you in anything less than clothing except maybe the one time he had seen you in a bikini but even then that didn't feel quite as sexual as this. The lump in his throat is back with vengeance, tightening as he continues to ogle at you openly.
His eyes start at your feet, skin nearly showing through the sheer material of the stockings you were wearing. It makes his toes curl against the thick-carpeted floor the longer his eyes glide up the glossy material until he meets the apex of your thighs, the pudge of your thighs just spilling out over the top of the tight material has him salivating. Nothing has quite looked as biteable as your thighs. He follows along the suspender belt holding up the stockings, eyes briefly grazing over the thin piece of material hiding away the very thing he would be buried inside of at some point tonight. But before he could eye the rest of what you were wearing, Midoriya speaks.
"Angel, why don't you stand up and show Shouto what a pretty girl you are, hm? Got all dressed up for him and everything." Shouto finally looks at your face, the bashful look on your face is adorable he thinks. You look just as shy as he feels but you do what you're told. Sliding off of the bed until you're stood not too far from the man himself, he has to tilt his head down to look at you properly and for some reason, the size difference has something stirring in his stomach.
He does his best to slow his heart, to stop the butterflies from bursting from his chest at the way you look at him through your eyelashes before you do a slow spin for him. He thinks he can hear Midoriya groan over the blood pounding in his ears when his eyes instantly dart down to the ample amount of skin on display when you give your back to him. He was right about the thin material of your panties, but this was much more than what he imagined. The thong was doing nothing to hide anything from behind, the string buried deep between your asscheeks and something in the back of his mind tells him he wants to definitely have you on your hands and knees at some point tonight.
When you finally turn around again, he has to clear his throat and look away. The heat on his face must be obvious because you laugh, not a condescending one but one that's more like bells chiming. "I hope you like it, Todoroki-kun." He tries not to think too much about the honorific, clearing his throat again.
"You can just call me Shouto, just sounds like Midoriya is the one trying to seduce me when you use that name." This time you do laugh, genuinely and his eyes snap back to your own, just for his hands to grow a little bit more sweaty and the racing in his heart to pick back up. You looked beautiful.
"Sorry, of course, Shouto." you smile, half turning back to look at your boyfriend who is smiling himself, before Midoriya switches his gaze away from you and onto Shouto.
Shouto shuffles a little on his feet, trying to give himself a little more breathing room in his pants before he speaks. "Uh, are there any rules? What's on the table and what's not?"
You step aside, letting Midoriya speak whilst you seem to busy yourself off to the side somewhere and it's taking the years of hero work for him to keep his eyes on Midoriya and not you, as you bend over to grab something off of the floor. "Uh, well, we did talk about it and there're not too many rules, I guess. She said it's a hard no on things like piss, scat, that sort of thing..." Midoriya has to look down at his feet, this conversation was clearly neither of them had ever seen happening in their lives.
"And for me, I may have taken some quirk cancelling cuffs from the agency—"
The two heroes glance over to the sound of giggling, Shouto's eyes shamelessly roaming over the front of your lingerie set. It's a beautiful red shade, and the colour choice is definitely not lost on him. "Sorry, you both just look adorable blushing over it like two school girls." Your eyes meet his own when his lips lift into a gentle smile, he can't help but be thankful you're at ease with the idea. He worried that maybe Midoriya had pushed this kink onto you but you seem just as relaxed and at home with both men just feet away from you whilst you were in nothing but underwear.
Finally, you come back over, stepping past Shouto and towards Midoriya who follows your own steps backwards until his knees are forced to bend when he hits the futon. Shouto can't help but watch the expression on Midoriyas face, he was so enraptured by you even as he offered up his wrists, allowing you to click on the metal and strip him of his quirk. "Love you," you murmur before pressing a gentle kiss to Izuku's lips, smiling at the obvious heart eyes the green-haired man was giving back.
And then suddenly, all the attention was back on Shouto as you turned around to face him. The space between the both of you seems to dwindle in a matter of seconds, and he can now smell the sweet perfume you have on — it's making his head feel fuzzy and eyes lower until he's giving the exact same look back; the look of absolute desire. The warmth of your hand on his chest has him jolting, body strung high and muscles were drawn tight as he watches the way your fingers delicately dance over his shirt until you reach the buttons on his shirt.
"We know all about my rules but what about yours, Shouto? What do you want from this?" your voice sounds like honey, his brain struggling to wade through it when all of his attention is locked onto the way your hands are now moving to undo his buttons, the brief brush of your bare skin on his has his body flaring in heat and toes curling again.
He somehow manages to gain power over his tongue again, eyes however still unable to break away from your now roaming hands as they brushed over his pectoral muscles. "I'm not sure," he admits and his heart flutters when your eyes met his, a little wide and almost shocked? "I mean, I don't know if I have any rules. I'm just here for you, and making you feel good." His admission even has him stumped, was that the truth? Was he really just here for you?
Yes. His mind supplies, he is most definitely here for you.
You swallow thickly, the subtle squeezing of your thighs not going unmissed by the man who was watching you like a hawk. Shouto figures that you're probably more used to Midoriya taking control in the bedroom, so his hands raise finally from the place they were frozen at. Both hands cupping either side of your head delicately, tilting you up to look at him and he can't stop himself from leaning in, a gentle "You look beautiful," passing by his lips before they're pressing into your own.
He feels your fingers curl against the undone material of his shirt, pulling on it gently to press the entirety of your upper body against his abdomen and chest, the warmth of the skin-on-skin contact having him suck in a harsh breath through his nose. Faintly he can hear Midoriya groan, a thump of what must be his head hitting the wall whilst Shouto opens your mouth carefully with his own, letting his tongue test the waters by brushing against your own. You're so receptive to his advances, letting him take control of the situation entirely and just becoming complete putty in the palm of his hands when his tongue drags along the roof of your mouth, flicking against the back of your teeth before he's diving back in for more.
Something clicks in Shouto's mind, something deep and primal telling him to consume you whole. That he can't rest until he has you shaking and sobbing beneath him whilst he bullies his way through your walls. The thought has his cock twitching between the tight constraints of his slacks, so he takes action. He keeps the hold on your head, lips still attached to your own as he carefully manoeuvres you around until you're forced to pull away from the kiss before falling onto your back on the bed.
It's sinful, the way you're looking up at him, propped up on your elbows and chest heaving in shaky breaths. He feels powerful, too powerful, as he stands over you. Your eyes don't leave him as he starts to peel off the shirt, tossing it onto the floor to be forgotten about for now before his hands are on the black leather belt at his waist, deft fingers undoing and ripping it free from his trousers with a quick snap that has you jumping in place. Just as his hands move to undo the button, he watches you hastily sit up and place your hands against his thighs. A raised eyebrow asks you a silent question.
"Let me," your hands smooth over the expanse of his thighs, feeling the muscle tense the further you slide up. "Please? Wanna make you feel good first." How could he say no with the way you're looking up at him and steadily pushing him back enough to make room between him and the bed so you can kneel in front of him. His eyes flutter at the release of pressure when you undo the button and the fly of his slacks. The tip of your nose drags along the bulge in his boxers, nuzzling into it as your hands continue to stroke up and up along his deep-set v-line, fingers dancing over his abdominal muscles and down through the mixture of red and white hair.
The groan comes from somewhere deep in his chest when your soft warm hand reaches back down to his boxers, easily pulling him free and the air feels cold against the sticky tip of his cock making him twitch as you stare at him with no shame. The warmth of your breath has his hands moving up into your hair, brushing it away from your face just in time for you to flick your eyes up at him. He would've believed it were just the two of you if it weren't for the shift of something off to the side and just as Shouto glances to the side, it's like he's been punched in the gut.
The warmth of your mouth around the tip of his cock has him flinching, fingers digging into the scalp of your head and when he looks back down at you, you have the audacity to smile up at him as if you knew exactly what you were doing. Your tongue swirled around the leaky tip, lapping up every drop of pre that he couldn't seem to stop drooling before you took ahold of him at the base, holding him in place as you slowly tortured him with your tongue. The pressure of the tip of your tongue dragging along the prominent vein had his head spinning and he expected you to retrace the path you drew with your tongue, so when you slipped down enough to draw his balls into his mouth he moaned, pretty lips parting to let the noises free unabashedly.
Finally, you returned back to the tip of his cock, angling yourself just so that you could spit against the tip, gentle fingers stroking him up and down to spread it fully all the whilst you were staring up at him, eyes blown wide and he imagines he's mirroring the exact expression on your face. He watched as you leaned closer, not once breaking the eye contact as your lips parted to let his cock slip deeper into your mouth, tongue wiggling to accommodate his length.
"Oh, fuck," Midoriya moans off to the side, and Shouto does glance over this time without the fear of being caught off-guard. Izuku seems to be in no better shape than himself, his hands desperately trying to grab at himself through his loose basketball shorts despite being restrained by the cuffs. "Hah, she's too good with her mouth."
Shouto can't dispute that, the way your tongue is welcoming him further and further into your throat has his quirk threatening to misfire, his toes curling desperately into the carpet every time you gag and pull back. He sweeps his hands through your hair again, gathering it the best he can to hold it out of your way at the back of your head and he angles his body back so Izuku had a good view of what his girlfriend was doing to him, how her throat constricted and how her cheeks were streaked with tears every time she tried to take the entirety of his cock down her throat.
But he wasn't here just to be sucked off, the reminder of the hot coil tightening in his stomach being enough for him to pull on your hair to get you to release him from your mouth. The string of saliva is lewd, downright dirty as it snaps and sticks to your chin, dripping down onto the top of your breasts. His hand automatically comes down to the base of his cock, squeezing as hard as he can to stave off the need to cum on your face right there and then.
"On the bed, beautiful." he smiles at you, and you're quick to stand up and wipe off the excess saliva from your face before you're clambering onto the bed. He watches you kneel there for a second, unsure of what position he wants you in until he speaks again. "Hands and knees, let me see that pretty ass of yours." He loves how obedient you are, immediately moving to get on your hands and knees, arching your back just enough to present everything to him in a beautiful lace package.
He edges closer to the edge of the bed, his hands unable to stop themselves from reaching out to slide along the exposed skin of your hips and down to your ass. For once he was thankful for having big hands, stretching his fingers as much as he could to grab handfuls of your ass to watch the fat pool between his fingers before releasing it to watch it jiggle back into place. His hands slip back down over the curve of your ass, thumbs tucking against the top of your thighs to spread you open for his greedy eyes despite the material of your panties still being there.
If you could even call them panties that is, he watched the way your pussy swallowed the material until it was rubbing just right against you when you swayed your hips in his grip. "So wet already," his voice is low, dripping with needy lust when he focuses on the glisten of your lower lips. He can't help but lean in, mouthing at the exposed skin as well as the black lace that had been pushed deeper against you. You moan, finally, loud at the pressure of his nose pressing against your clenching hole whilst his tongue lapped against your sticky arousal. It was filthy, the way he was lapping at you like a man who hadn't had a sip of water in weeks but you tasted so good. So sweet. He wanted to drink at the oasis between your legs for eternity.
God, he wants you so fucking bad and every second where he isn't buried inside of you is agonising. How did he not know Midoriya was into this earlier? How many times had he missed out on being buried inside of you for the sake of his best friend's dirty perversion? He can't help but feel the need to make up for "lost time". So he pulls back, much to your whine at the loss of pressure and warmth against your clothed pussy but that's quickly forgotten about when his fingers unclip the clasps of your suspended belt before tugging down your thong. He helps you out of it until the sodden lace is forgotten about with his shirt on the floor.
The bed dips when he kneels behind you, and it must be an instinct for you to drop to your elbows and raise your hips up for him, the arch in your back well trained. It has his cock twitching against his stomach, abs tensing when he nears close enough that he can feel the warmth between your legs against the length of his dick. His hands spread against your ass again, spreading you open for his eyes whilst he rolls his hips back and forth. The sticky squelching sound is obscene when his cock rubs up and down your slit, and he isn't even inside of you yet. Did it turn you on just as much to be fucked by another man?
He looks up from the space between your legs just to catch your eyes looking at him over your shoulder, your hair was a mess and the look you were giving him was pleading. Your hips bucked impatiently backwards when he caught your clit again against the tip of his cock before he's angling himself with the help of his hand, the head catching against your entrance. This time he watches the way your mouth opens, the sweetest of moans dripping from plump lips as he inches deeper and deeper.
"Oh, fuck, shit." Shouto groans, eyebrows furrowing whilst he watches every last inch disappear deeper and deeper inside of you until his hips were flush with your ass. He can feel everything with how tight you're wrapped around him, the way you squeeze and flutter when his cock twitches with the need to cum. "Stop squeezing so much princess, 'm not gonna last..." he sounds breathless, mostly because he is. It feels like he's run a mile, all his muscles drawn tight and a trigger away from failing to satisfy you.
"Sho..." you give him a minute to recuperate, to let him get used to the tight wet heat wrapped around him until you impatiently wiggle your hips enough to elicit a low groan from the man. "Fuck me, please, Shouto."
He doesn't need to be told twice.
He gives an experimental roll of his hips, stomach flipping at the way you squeeze at him again when his hips bump back against your ass. His hands find their way to your hips, flexing his fingers until he has a firm grip against you and you seem to know what's coming as you lower yourself down until the side of your face is pressed into the bed sheets.
And then he isn't holding back, the rhythmic pat, pat, pat of his thighs hitting your own is loud. The low moans coming from his left is enough to know that he's definitely fulfilling his best friends request but also your own with the way you're babbling nonsense, talking about how his cock is so big, "Feel so full, 's too much," and he briefly wonders if you're just talking him up in front of your boyfriend. Was that a part of the kink? To degrade your partner because you had to get another man to please you? He blinks a little at the realisation, earning himself a peek over to see how Midoriya was holding up in the whole situation.
And it's no surprise to see he had somehow managed to wrangle himself out of his shorts, big hands struggling to stroke himself properly with the restraints on his wrists but he doesn't seem deterred in the way he's stroking himself, moaning when you speak dirty about how good Shouto feels. The tiny devil on Shouto's shoulder tells him to engage in this, to see just how far he could push Midoriya whilst balls deep inside of the other man's girlfriend.
With a new goal in mind, Shouto leans his body over your own and hooks a large hand around your throat to pull you up into an awkward arch. You're looking up at him through your eyelashes, lips parted in a silent moan at the new angle he's forcing you to take his cock in. "Is it really too much for you? Your boyfriend not big enough to satisfy a pretty slut like you?" he watches the way your pupils expand, swallowing the beautiful shade of your iris whole. Seems he hit the nail on the head too with Midoriya who grunts, a loud thump of what must be his head on the wall but Shouto can't take his eyes away from you.
"Why don't you show your boyfriend what a good little slut you are, and ride me?" It's a rhetorical question you realise as he pulls out, the cool air of the room sticking to the sticky slick coating his cock whilst he moves around you to lay on the bed, angling himself so Midoriya would have the perfect view of just what he wants. You move to straddle him before he holds up a hand and uses his index finger to indicate for you to face the opposite way—to face your boyfriend.
His hands find their place back on your hips when you settle over him, hand wrapping around the length of his cock before you're guiding him back deep inside of him with a pretty moan. He does wish he could see your face, to see just how good he's making you feel on your cock but this angle, the way you're leaning back to press your hands against his chest, has him seeing stars. And clearly, it must be doing the same for you, it feels like he's drowning in just how wet you are when you lower yourself down and raise back up to reveal a creamy ring at the base of his cock.
"You look so sexy, angel," Midoriya comments from somewhere Shouto can't see, but he can hear the way his hand speeds up at the new view Shouto has given him. "Takin' him so well, look at you."
His words seem to inject more adrenaline into your veins as you start to bounce up and down a little faster, but he can feel the way you're starting to falter, the way your feet keep slipping against the sheets so Shouto lets his hero stamina take over, gripping your waist hard before he's bucking his hips up hard enough to plant his feet hard on the bed. Then he's fucking up into you, pounding at a pace that has you nearly screaming, head lolling back as he continues to bully the tip of his cock against the one spot that has you twitching, thighs tensing and jumping each time he hits it.
And he knows it too, Shouto knows you're close, so he doesn't stop. Keeps the brutal pace that has even his thighs burning, and his balls drawing up tight as he throws both you and himself over the edge of the orgasm that he had been holding back from the very second you pulled him into your mouth. The way your walls milk him has his head dropping back, bi-coloured hair falling away from his eyes as he stares up at the ceiling trying to suck in a breath deep enough to steady himself. But he can't, not with the way you remain sat atop of him even when his legs relax back down onto the bed.
Especially not when you lean forward, hands planting against his thighs and you fucking grind against him. The whine in Shouto's throat is unsuspecting, catching himself off guard but you don't seem deterred, if anything you're moving with a little more vigour in your hips as you raise up, just enough for him to watch the way his cum spills out from your still clenching pussy and dripping down the length of his cock before you drop down again.
"Fuck, wait," his hands try to push against your hips to get you to stop, to just let his sensitive dick relax but you're not listening, rolling your hips back and forth perfectly and he can feel his cock twitch again, another hot stream of cum painting your walls. His toes curl painfully, every muscle in his body unable to relax as you continue to milk him for all he's worth, to have every drop of his seed buried deep inside of you. Shouto knows he could easily push you off, but he can't find that strength to stop you—in truth, it feels too fucking good.
"'m gonna cum," he hears you moan, but he can't see past the stars behind his eyes, can't really hear much over the sound of the blood in his veins running a hundred miles per hour. This time your orgasm is much faster, squeezing and clamping down on his cock which has the man jolting, fucking himself deeper into you despite the ache in his balls and the prickly pain of overstimulation that is making him feel lightheaded. He lets you ride out your orgasm until finally, finally, you roll off of him and onto the bed next to him.
For the first time in what must be ten minutes, he can finally breathe, taking in greedy breaths and letting his head fall to the side to watch you. You're in no better shape, sweaty and taking in uneven breaths. So he reaches over, cupping a hand on the back of your neck and he watches the relief hit you almost instantly, the coolness eliciting a gentle shudder down your spine. He's about to speak before he hears someone clear their throat, and he lifts his head enough to look over the mess of his own body to see Midoriya is in a bad state.
The man had came all over himself, reaching as far as his collarbone and his face was glistening with sweat. He was beet red, eyes unfocused as he continued to stare at the two of you on the bed. "Fuck, I," he clears his throat again with a gentle laugh. "We have to do that again sometime, can't tell you how fucking hot that was."
And Shouto looks over to you, to see your response but you're already looking at him with a gentle smile, a tired look in your eyes. "Only if you want to," you say, and you cringe a little at the way your voice is hoarse.
"Of course," he relaxes into the bed again. "Maybe next time Midoriya can join me."
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➼ 'kinktober 2022 masterlist' disclaimer: i would totally fuck katsuki if izuku asked me to lol, dont need to tell me twice
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tyrantisterror · 4 months
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My Personal History with My Good Friend, Satan
My first encounter with The Devil - that I can remember, at least - came when I was about three or so. My mom liked to borrow VHS tapes from libraries to show me and my siblings a lot, and one of the libraries she used was the one at our church. It was a small and obviously very religion-centric collection, but it left a notable mark on me - like, that's where I saw this weird, kinda shitty cartoon version of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe which might be responsible for irreconcilably fucking up my taste in women? I just have this distinct memory of watching the scene where Edmund is tempted by the White Witch and thinking, "Yeah, he's making the right call." If anything I was frustrated that he hesitated - three year old me was already simping for this woman. Just imagine a child channeling Ernie Hudson in Ghostbusters and growling, "When a terrifying and beautiful woman offers you candy and a private sleigh ride, you say YES!" and that's basically me as a kid.
Where was I? Right, Satan. So, the other video from that library I remember was this cartoon retelling of Bible stories, and really I just remember the Adam and Eve part. The temptation scene had this huge, super gnarly-looking demonic red snake in it, and he was so cool and badass and I was already predisposed to like snakes anyway, so of course he was my instant favorite. But, like almost all media featuring reptiles that captured my little child heart, he turned out to be the bad guy - literally The Devil, in this case - and was punished at the end of the story. And that pissed me off.
Sometime shortly thereafter - or at least that's how I remember it, this was over thirty years ago so things might be smushed closer together than they really were by the fog of ages - some of the kids in my preschool chastised me for liking snakes. "Don't you know the devil is a snake? Snakes are evil!" I remembered the movie, and it made me angry.
Because snakes aren't evil, and as a kid I knew that because my parents taught me it. Snakes were just animals, they don't know right from wrong, and to call them evil it to judge them for what they are, not what they do. That experience taught me a very important lesson: The Devil is a tool to make people hate the innocent. And as I'd later learn, snakes were far from the only innocents people would vilify because of a demonic association.
The second time I met the devil came a few years later, when I was six or seven or so. My Grampa and Grams liked to take us up North to Mackinac City and the Upper Peninsula each summer, and I have a lot of fond memories of those trips, but there was one in particular that's relevant to this discussion. We saw a sign for a "laser light show" in the shopping district, and I got to stay up late to see it with my family. The show in question was basically a cartoon projected into the night sky adapting the song The Devil Went Down to Georgia. It was super primitive and hokey and cornball and terrible and I loved every second of it. I was enchanted, absolutely delighted with the spectacle and the silly song where the devil was less a force of evil and more a comically bumbling inept supervillain - one of my favorite archetypes, even back then. So that's the second lesson about the devil I learned: The Devil can be fun sometimes.
Now, Godzilla, one of the few reptile characters I encountered as a kid who didn't end up a villain (at least not in the first movie of his I saw, Godzilla vs. Megalon), had already set me on the path to loving monsters of all stripes and, by extension, horror fiction in general, so as I grew up I had many more encounters with the devil. But while I warmed up quickly to most monster archetypes, like vampires, zombies, werewolves, etc., I always felt dismissive of demons. It kind of coincided with me becoming disillusioned with Christianity as a whole, in fact. A story about fighting evil, Christian-style demons is ultimately an allegory for fighting evil as defined by Christianity, and Christianity's definition of what evil is, well, sucks. It's bad! They got some things right, but some things horribly wrong. The devil is the tool Christianity uses to make you hate the innocent, and I struggled to enjoy a lot of demon stories because of that. Still do with some, in fact.
There were exceptions, of course - I loved The Evil Dead series as soon as I saw it at too-early-of-an-age, but then, the demons in it aren't super Christian. They aren't repelled by holy water or crucifixes or prayer, and in fact God and Jesus barely get mentioned in the series and never come up as a potential solution. They're kind of secular as demons go, and maybe that made them easier to stomach. But overall, demons ranked pretty low in the hierarchy of monsters to me - they were too tainted by the religion that spawned them for me to enjoy.
Until college, anyway. I quietly renounced my faith during my Freshmen year, and then, as if seeking one last chance at redemption in my eyes, the devil came to me again the following year. That's when I had a class on Medieval literature, and was exposed to far older devil stories than I had ever seen before. And Medieval devils kick ass. They have so much more personality and variety than I had come to expect, and some are downright affable, even sympathetic to a degree. It was one of many moments in college when I realized there was much more to a topic I'd previously written off as boring and trite.
This is when I read Dante's The Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost and Marlowe's Faust and Ben Johnson's The Devil Is An Ass. It's when I read early Gothic Horror novels like Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk, and dived into The Twilight Zone, which has more than a few episodes that are updates of medieval-style devil folktales in a more modern (i.e. 1960's) setting. And so many of these works presented the Devil not as a stand-in for everything Christianity hates, but as a person - a deeply flawed person, yes, but a person with actual wants and feelings and thoughts of his own, a person who was interesting and compelling - and sometimes funny, and sometimes charming, and sometimes really sad. There was, dare I say... sympathy for the devil growing in my heart.
In the last year of my undergraduate studies, I attended my college's yearly Medieval Studies Congress, where people from all over the world came to Kalamazoo just to share their research papers on medieval history and literature. One girl's thesis paper was on the subject of "rueful devils," i.e. depictions of demons in literature where they wanted to repent their sins and redeem themselves, which uniformly ended with the devils' hopes being dashed as they could not fully repent. This idea... possessed me. The idea that the devil could repent, or at least try to - that there could be hope even in the most debauched sinner. It was such a good narrative trope in my eyes - why did it die out centuries ago?
Well, because the church didn't like it, you see. If the devil can repent - if the Absolute King of Evil can choose to become a good person - then he's not very useful as a tool to make people hate the innocent anymore. The devil MUST be "pure evil" to work as intended. A rueful devil, a repentant devil, a devil that can be redeemed, forces us to be more forgiving and kind. It forces us to be better. It prevents us from hating people because an old book says so. And some people just couldn't have that, and so the trope died.
...
After I got my bachelor's degree, I entered the job market and, after applying to fifty different places or so, was finally hired as a high school english teacher about two weeks before the school year started. Said school year was the worst year of my life. Like, I've had extreme self loathing issues and suicidal ideation since, like, sixth grade, but holy shit it was NEVER as bad as it was in that nine month stretch between 2012 and 2013. There was this bridge I had to cross on the way to work each morning, and about two months in the job was so stressful that part of my morning routine was thinking, "You know, if I just swerve to the right, this can all be over and I'll never have to worry again." About halfway in I began drastically losing weight despite not changing my diet or getting more exercise and it was so traumatic that to this day whenever my weight starts to drop my initial reaction is dread rather than excitement. I impulse bought the first two Kung-Fu Panda movies and, after watching each for the first time and crying hideously, proceeded to watch them on repeat for an entire weekend while sobbing myself hoarse for reasons I couldn't comprehend at the time.
I was in Hell. And the devil met me there.
I started writing a story during that year. I didn't get very far, just a couple chapters, but it was one of the few things that gave me a sense of accomplishment. Despite all the stress and sadness and misery, I made something. It was a story about demons, and Hell, and trying to make your life better even when the world around you seems deadset on making you suffer as much as possible.
When my bosses called me into their office at the end of that year and told me that I had to quit my job so the assistant principal could take my teaching position and survive the downsizing they'd get next year, and that if I didn't quit they'd give me the lowest teacher evaluation they could and make it supremely difficult for me to get hired elsewhere... I was relieved. I'd been let out of Hell. After a handful of months left to finish out the year, I was free.
And then I went home, with nothing. No job, no desire to pursue the career for which I'd spent five years and an ungodly amount of money getting a degree to pursue, no nest egg, nothing. Nothing except a few chapters of a book.
The years that followed were hard. I did a lot of temp work, it took me a very long time to find something that worked for me. I may have left the worst year of my life, but there was still a lot of misery waiting for me. And through it all, I felt the need to accomplish... something, ANYTHING. I had to make something to prove I had a reason to exist, even if it was something that only had value to me.
With three years of work, those chapters became my first novel, No Sympathies: A Tale of Those Who Trespass Against Us. It was about the devil, and Hell, and finding salvation even when things seem inescapably bleak. It was my first novel, and now, eight years later, it's the first of five.
The devil saved my life. He saw me at my lowest, lifted me up, whispered, "It'll be ok. You have to keep going. I'll be with you, but you have to keep going," and goddammit, he kept me from swerving right.
That's when I learned the greatest truth about the devil, at least to me. The devil is a tool to make people hate the innocent, yes, this is true, but because of that, the devil can be a savior for the broken, the beaten, and the damned. You can feel like you're worthless, wretched, and doomed. But if the devil can rise from Hell, if the devil can choose to change, if people are willing to pray for the one sinner who needs it most - then there's hope for you too, isn't there?
Demons are creatures of rebellion - against God, against nature, against the powers that be, against doom and damnation itself. They were made to be a tool to hurt the innocent, but that's not what they have to be. Devils can lift us up, because no matter how far you fall, no one can say whether it's the end for you except you.
...I would like to point out that I am being figurative here. The devil does not literally exist, at least not in my view of things. He's a fictional character, nothing more. But he's a prolific fictional character, and how we portray him can say so much about us. And, to me, he is a dear friend, despite being imaginary, because the devil was there for me when I was low, and it was on his wings that I rose from doom.
...again, figuratively, not literally.
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Hello hello! Got another request if you don’t mind! How would the 141 react to the femmilitary reader having a big family? Like she has a mum and dad, aunts and uncles and lots of cousins, and their all wholesome. Like the ultimate wholesome family?
Thank you ! 🏡👨‍👩‍👧👨‍👩‍👦‍👦👩‍👦👨‍👩‍👧‍👦
As someone who comes from a big family, this is something I can easily write about lol
Also sorry this took me forever ❤️
How Do They React to Reader who has a big family
Price
When he first found out about your big family it was bittersweet
On one hand, he liked that you had a family you could rely on when you went home. He knows that a lot of the people he works with don't and that having a support system that you can fall back onto is great
On the other hand, it meant that if anything happened to you, there would be a lot of heartbreak
He makes it his mission that you return safely for this reason
He probably ask about all of them, how your nieces/nephews are doing in school, how your siblings are, what your parents are doing. He's curious
If you show him pictures he'll be happy to see them
Won't be nervous to meet your family, he knows so much about them that he has so much to talk about
Would probably help whoever is grilling if it's a cookout
If there are any nieces/nephews who are kids they're going to love him so much he's going to be stolen away by them but he doesn't mind
He's actually really good with kids and will be the best person to tire them out for the parents
Shares obscure stories with your parents, uncles and aunts
He fits in really well with your family and when the visit is over you'll probably gets texts telling you to bring him around again
Ghost
He honestly finds it hard to understand how someone can have that big of a family but he's not that intimated by it
Much like Price, he becomes a lot more aware of your safety and takes extra precautions to make sure that you make it back to base with minimal or no life threatening injuries
Won't really ask about them unless you mentioned something about them offhandedly, then he'll want you to elaborate
He does like when you show him pictures though since he likes putting a face to the names you give him
He'll be a little nervous about meeting your family, being the natural introvert he is and what he would have to do about wearing a mask in front of everyone, even when you assured him that no one would make fun of him
He will probably try to stay in the less traffic/popular areas, though it's a little difficult with that many people
He will make small talk with anyone who tries to talk to him though, he's not rude, he's just a little bit overwhelmed
Eventually he will warm up and that when your nieces/nephews strike
They'll have him do anything and everything, parading him around as their pack mule for toys and showing him around the house. He's not going to question it at all, he's going to do what they tell him to.
Ends up getting a little sad because he gets reminded of his own family, but holds out until the event is over
Will get emotional if you tell him your family likes having him around and wants him to come back, but it'll take him a while to feel accepted just due to his own distance he puts between your family and him
Soap
Oh this guy is so happy to know you have a big family
He wants to everything about them and even friends a bunch of them on Facebook because he's nosy and likes to be in the know of what's going on in your life and your families
Will never stop asking about them. He's so excited to learn about what's going on and if you don't know he will most definitely found out by sleuthing through social media for it
Love seeing pictures. Please show him pictures
Lowkey accidental lives vicariously through you since he rarely ever sees his family or hears from them so getting to know all about them makes him feel a lot less lonely
Not nervous to meet your family, in fact he shows up like he's known them his entire life and your family greets him the same way
Gets along with everybody, he's got this charm to him that just wins people over
Jokes a lot with the adults and never fails to have stories to tell them that make them laugh. When he starts talking they all listen because they want to know what he's going to say but he's also just loud
Gets really into the family games
Price may tire the kids out but Soap puts them to bed with how much energy he's able to get out of them. He's really proud about it
Your family definitely wants him around and he might even visit them when you're not there. He's just that comfortable
Gaz
Ever heard of the phrase "Parents love him"? Yeah that's him
Was honestly surprised to learn you came from a huge family but is super curious about them nonetheless
He gives me only child vibes idk why so he's always willing to listen to how the family dynamics are within yours
Will ask about them a moderate amount and genuinely listens when you tell him what's going on
Probably friends a few of them on Facebook too
Likes pictures, thinks it's really sweet when he sees them
Nervous to meet your family but once they greet him with open arms all of it goes away and he feels right at home with them
Becomes the one that will do anything that needs to be done
Food needs to be moved? You got it. Things need to be carried? You don't have to ask him twice. Need help setting up tables? He's already doing it.
Talks with everyone but mostly connects with your cousins since they're most likely similar in age. He even manages to get some juicy gossip from them because he can be persuasive
The kids like to use him much like Ghost but they force him to actually play games and toys with them
He's happy to know that your family wants him back while your family wants you to marry him as quick as you can since he's so sweet
Hope you like! Sorry again for how long it took me to get to it.
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benkyoutobentou · 7 months
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What I've Been Enjoying Lately - Japanese Media
This is way overdue! I've been consuming so much great media in Japanese, it's time to share the love and recommend some things for all of you lovely language learners
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📚 Books:
旅猫リポート - 有川浩: This is a super adorable novel about a stray cat who is taken in by a young man. Five years later, the owner is suddenly unable to take care of this cat and the two embark on a road trip across Japan to find the perfect new owner. This one is definitely a tear jerker to any animal lover and will absolutely make you want to cuddle your own fluffy friends into oblivion.
キノの旅 - 時雨沢恵一: This is a light novel series that's extremely close to my heart! The 2003 anime adaption of this series also isn't just my favorite anime, but my favorite TV show ever. Because of the relatively simple vocabulary, I often see it recommended as a first read for Japanese learners just dipping their toes into novel reading, and I find myself agreeing. This series follows a teenager named Kino who travel from country to country with a motorrad named Hermes. There's not much of a continuous plot and very few recurring characters, making it even easier to follow if something confuses you. Despite the fluffy sounding description, this series has a good amount of content warnings accompanying it and can get pretty gory at times as well.
僕らの地球の歩き方 - ソライモネ: An adorable manga series in which two men travel the world together under the agreement that, upon returning to Japan, they'll get married. I feel like if someone looked into my brain to find what I like in a series in order to create a manga series perfectly suited to my tastes, it would be 僕らの地球の歩き方. It's gay, it's adorable, it's about traveling the world, it's about loving the people around you and human culture and delicious food, I'm already crying. Definitely one of my all time favorites.
薔薇王の葬列 - 菅野文: I went back and forth about putting this on my list, but it's not titled "What I've Been Enjoying Lately" for nothing and boy oh boy have I been enjoying this lately. Perhaps I've been enjoying it a bit too much. A while back, I actually banned myself from reading this series because I didn't have the full set and would instantly be put in an awful mood if I caught up with the volumes I had. This manga series follows Richard Plantagenet III, yes, that one, and his ascendance to the British throne. This series is chock full of treachery, murder, violence, and everything else nice. Due to the... everything about this series.... there's a lot of unusual vocabulary, but it has furigana on everything, which helps a lot for speedy look ups.
気になってる人が男じゃなかった - 新井すみこ: Bonus manga! Because this one is worth it, and also because everyone needs a little more GL on their shelves. This manga is so good that I've even been seeing people who don't speak Japanese buy this to have on their shelves. It follows a slightly awkward girl and a gyaru from her class as the two bond of their shared love of western rock music. Yeah, this is the manga that's doing a collab with Nirvana.
📺 Shows and Movies:
Old Fashion Cupcake - This is a BL office romance drama about a middle aged man and his subordinate who begin acting like teenage girls in an attempt to regain some of their youth. Through eating sweets together, taking selfies and food pictures, and talking "girls' talk," the two deepen their bond. I don't think I can say this enough, I love food romances. If their is food involved in a romance, I'm there, no need to tell me twice. This series is super sweet and a really enjoyable watch.
カルテット - Four musicians meet by chance and decide to form a quartet together. However, each one has secrets that they're hiding. Bonus points to Netflix for actually having a J-drama I like for once. This series has a warm and cozy found family vibe, while still managing to have some of the most wildest shenanigans imaginable. I also really appreciated that this series seems to take some stances that I've never seen before, especially regarding family and what you owe to your parents.
映像研には手を出すな! - This anime follows three girls and their attempts to make anime. As an anime that is about the creation of anime, it's really no surprise that the art and animation is stand out in this series. I loved the ways that we as the viewer were able to see the imaginations of the characters. I also really enjoyed the characters, and the voice acting was phenomenal as well. This show is also home to one of the best intros ever.
赤髪の白雪姫 - This fantasy anime follows the titular character Shirayuki as she escapes from her home kingdom after being chosen as a royal concubine due to her unusual red hair. On her travels, she meets a prince from a neighboring kingdom and becomes a palace herbalist. It's not often that I watch or care about straight romances in media, but this romance is so adorable, and even beyond it, I truly love all the characters and their relationships in this series. Also, I think this is the only show I've watched where I found the soundtrack to actually be distracting- and not because I didn't like it, but because it was just that good.
🎤 Music:
オーガストの風 - THE BLACKBAND
夢伝説 - Stardust Revue
lemonade - Chili Beans.
Show - Ado
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starks-hero · 9 months
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Congrats on 4k!!! That is just amazing!!!
My request: Dining at the Ritz
Character: Crowley (Good Omens)
Themes: anxiety / over stimulation / toxic family situation (nothing too heavy, just verbal homophobia) / some reminders from Crowley about self care
Note to author: Hope you’re doing amazing!! Have a wonderful day/evening! If anything I said in my request doesn’t make sense, please let me know 🌟
Also, it is okay to post my letter publicly
Hello dove,
I know it's odd, hearing from me like this. I've tried your phone a few times, alright maybe more than a few times, with no answer. I reckon things may be feeling a little too much at the moment so you're taking some time for yourself, which I'm so very proud of you for. I figured the letter would be a softer approach, no irritating notifications you feel obliged to answer, (I suppose encouraging the creation of social media can be jot down as another one of my failed temptations, ey?)
Speaking of temptations, I know how difficult it is to not give in to that little voice in your head, that nagging ball of miserable thoughts that fills your mind with all the bad things and pushes out the good. It's so easy to give in, to think there may be some truth to them. But I've been here a long time, sweets, and one thing I know about humans is that you're a resilient lot. Every single hardship that has been thrown your way you have overcome and that's not an easy feat.
You are so strong, dove. Never doubt your capability. I mean, you helped us save the world for Satan's, for heaven's, for somebody's sake!
On another note, the bookshop feels quiet without you around. Whether you choose to believe it or not, angel and I really feel it when you're not here; leaves a very you-shaped hole in our lives. I hate it, knowing that the people you're surrounded with at the moment don't appreciate you as they should, don't see you how I do. That they would take the things that make you so irreversibly you and turn it against you, it makes me feel anger of the likes of which I haven't felt since I last visited the fifth circle. And that was well– hell.
It's just– it's very important that you know how much your existence means to me. You're so incredibly strong and resilient, a perfect personification of humanity. And I know I don't say it often, not as often as I should anyway but I care about you. Just look after yourself, alright? Don't forget the sleeping and eating and drinking and all the other stuff your lot needs to do to keep those human engines running.
Aziraphale sends his love, I'm sure you can probably feel it now, that warm sensation in your chest. It's the least we can do at the moment.
I'll speak to you soon, dove.
Yours insufferably,
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dairy-farmer · 8 months
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You know that au you have where Bruce kept Tim in a basement? Can we see Bruce come back and everyone’s reactions? Or a new au with a not brain damaged Tim who Bruce keeps locked up because he’s so paranoid he’ll lose Tim like Jason? .,,, and Tim doesn’t mind Bruce locks him up like a Princess and Bruce is the dragon?
!!!! it's been a while since i thought of this dark au!!!! in the au where the family takes in tim, who they find out has more or less been a captive pet for bruce for years, they'd 100% be much less warm to bruce when he returns.
without tim having been around as robin, he was never there to be this kind of...gel padding for bruce and his kids. it's sort of implied that bruce and dick's relationship never fully recovered because it was tim as robin that facilitated that healing relationship. but tim was never around here. so that means dick really only returned for jason and damian. since there was no robin after him jason was a little more receptive to reconciliation but he also would've had a pretty split dislike for damian. he'd dislike him deeply because he's robin and because talia blindsided him with it but he'd also be more aware of damian's young age so it would kind of even him out.
so in general, all their relationships are a little fucked. but they did all feel pained when bruce died. they were upset that they lost out on the possibility of ever improving their relationship to him and getting closer. but here, since bruce always had tim one on one and used him as a sort of crutch with the fact that he was a son that loved him unconditionally- i think that would've made it so bruce wasn't exactly in the healthiest state of mind and therefore didn't reach out to his children as much as he could've or should've because he had tim there to fill that void of having a child that loved him and that allowed him to love them in return.
despite tim's more childlike state that resulted from brain damage that was bruce's fault, he is still at his core very much tim. so he sees the beginnings of clues that the rest of the family does not. the portrait of 'mordecai wayne' that tim obsesses over is a portrait of bruce and if the rest of the family had given tim more consideration they would've recognized it. but they don't so bruce isn't rescued for several more years.
a combination of different capes all note how something is off in the timeline, that there are...snags in the fabric of time. one report turns to two turns to five turns to ten.
eventually a common factor is found. evidence of...bats.
capes have come back from the dead before and it shouldn't be such a shock but still....superman orders that no one tell any of the bats in gotham until they're certain. but then they have bruce sitting in the medical bay. emaciated and heavily traumatized.
it's like a bomb is dropped on the family when they're told.
mixed emotions, heavy feelings, struggling with feeling relieved and happy while also being furious and upset because they know about tim.
tim who has become a sweet and beloved member of the family.
a lot of capes still don't know about him, the media definitely doesn't because dick was half certain that jason would bomb their offices if a single bad word about tim was published. and also because...dick feels some odd...shame about tim. he feels an urge to hide him away, to not let others know tim is in his care and is....special.
dick knows it's wrong. he knows it's wrong to feel that way about tim while also...taking advantage of him. dick knows he's scum as jason never fails to remind him, harshly whispering to him in the kitchen while tim is in the other room and saying that dick is a piece of shit for being one of those people that are embarrassed about having disabled siblings.
but the shame never leaves him and dick can never shake it off.
it's dick who goes up to the watchtower to watch over bruce while he recovers.
partly because he has the authority to, he's batman afterall, even though dick as batman has pulled away from the league and focused more on gotham. and partly because...he needs to see this man he thought he knew so well. he's spent years trying to figure out what bruce had been thinking, trying to get in his head, and trying to understand what had been going through his mind when he...he took a child.
a perfectly normal and average child. and yet when tim had been rescued from bruce's care he'd had....several healed fractures and bone breaks.
eventually, leslie had been able to conduct a thorough health examination. that's when they'd found the old injuries. injuries that were years old. a spinal injury, broken ribs, a wrist that had split clean through, the head injury that occurred at the same time that leslie said was likely the result of a drop from a big height.
when she said that dick thought back to bruce's common tactic of dangling people by their ankles from fire escapes. dick had never thought of it before but...what if....what if bruce didn't catch one of them in time?
based on tim's early medical file leslie concluded that tim may have suffered a brain bleed as a result of the fall. that would explain his delay in cognition and rendered child-like state.
it's not the first time that bruce had rendered permanent injury on someone but...but this was a kid. what on earth could tim have done to have earned this kind of punishment? and then to keep him?
to keep him from his family who died thinking he was missing? to chain him up and hide him away like he was...like he was an animal?
it was so much crueler than dick had ever thought bruce capable.
tim loved bruce. it was clear in how he referred to him with so much affection and nuzzled pictures of him. but dick couldn't exactly trust tim's words when tim was so susceptible to manipulation.
jason and damian were still having a hard time with news of bruce's return so dick had made the executive decision to go to the watchtower alone and give the rest of the family time to....come to terms with the fact that bruce was back.
dick does his best to monitor and control his emotions as bruce regains strength. as he talks about how happy he is to see dick again.
dick keeps all the emotions in check. the questions, the shouts that want to burst out of him.
bruce is everything he remembered him as but also...not. there's a new side of him dick had never seen before and now he can't ignore it.
dick talks tentatively about alfred and jason and damian, barbara, and cass and gotham.
bruce is still quite weak. confused as well. dick has entire conversations with him but then two minutes later bruce will completely forget about it.
bruce gets cleared to return home. dick receives care instructions and a bunch of medication for bruce.
dick does not mention tim. does not breathe a word of him.
he's not sure what he's expecting bruce's reaction to be when they walk through the front door of the manor and tim, who'd been sitting quietly playing with toys, is suddenly up and squealing and running to bruce with jubilant calls of 'daddy!'.
dick was maybe expecting shame. guilt. shock that his dirty little secret was out and blowing in the open.
he doesn't expect bruce to muster every bit of his strength and lift a giggling tim up like a father greeting their toddler after a long day of work.
tim wraps his arms and legs around bruce, clinging and laughing as bruce spins them around. tim's mouth is stained purple, likely from a popsicle, though bruce doesn't appear to care, leaning into tim's kisses to his cheeks.
dick feels a wad of cotton fill his throat as he tries to ignore the memory of tim's sticky, candy sweet mouth on his, little tongue pressing against dick's while dick is pressing him into the bed and softly fucking him while the rest of the family is out.
it's quite a flip on what dick had been expecting. that bruce is the one basking in a happy reunion while dick stands nearby swimming with guilt and self-hatred.
the rest of the family follows quickly behind tim's bubbly giggles that usually only happen when jason blows rasberries into his tummy.
dick can see the split among them. the tense feelings for bruce knowing about tim. and the affection for tim and seeing him so happy in bruce's arms.
bruce knows that they know about tim. he might be a little slow at the moment but the league doctors said he should be much better in a few months. there's no way that bruce doesn't remember how he'd left tim.
there's no way he's unaware how tim could've died a slow, terrifying death by starving to death in that bunker because what if dick had never found that key? what if he'd just brushed it into a garbage bag? what then?
tim didn't even know how to use the can opener! he'd been so hungry when they found him. he'd eaten two grilled cheese and half a sleeve of oreos. or worse. what if he'd hurt himself all alone in that bunker? dick had gone back down to get some of tim's things and found a dulled paring knife in one of the drawers. none of the knobs on the little countertop stove had been childproofed. what if tim had cut himself? what if he'd turned the gas on? granted tim was very good at following rules and had never once tried to touch the stove but alfred had insisted on proofing it just in case.
so many things could've happened to tim before dick reached him. a million things could've happened to tim if dick had never found that key by chance.
by chance, he always repeated to himself hysterically. it was pure luck that tim was rescued in time and dick thinks he just can't shake that off.
dick thinks about that sometimes. he has nightmares of finding that bunker years too late and only finding a skeleton. he thinks about bruce returning and being disoriented and confusing his family with his strange words and calls for 'tim' and his insistence to visit his bunker and only then do they find about his secret other son.
and even now tim is still a secret. aside from his own internalized struggle, dick couldn't just waltz into a courthouse and adopt a missing child who had been presumed dead. if anyone...if the gcpd or the media ever found out about tim there would be a lot of uncomfortable questions they'd need to answer that bruce's 'eccentric billionaire' persona wouldn't have gotten them out of.
they're tough thoughts made worse by dick's own guilt that had only grown over the years about what he's been doing to tim.
jason hates him for never having accepted tim as a little brother. damian had even tentatively broached the topic about it once.
but how could he? how could dick think of tim as his little brother when dick violates him on a weekly basis?
it used to be nightly. but then dick learned to resist. learned to stop going somewhere alone with tim and fucking his pretty little slit.
sometimes jason would force dick to take tim out for ice cream. some attempt to get them to bond. but dick would inevitably pull over to the side of the road, some patch of woods, and he'd fuck tim in the backseats, watching him squirm on his cock and make little keens and noises of pleasure.
then dick would pick up ice cream for them and it would be so much worse because he felt like a predator buying his victim a treat to keep him quiet.
over the years it became clear that jason had not been participating in these...acts. not like dick was.
and that's when dick figured it out. what bruce had likely done with tim in the bunker (dick was made certain when he made a third trip to the bunker and found the nearly empty box of condoms in tim's little bathroom right next to his toothpaste).
bruce was the reason tim knew how to ride a cock, how he knew a cock in his pussy felt good and why his little hole ached to be full.
it was his fault. it was yet another thing that was bruce's fault. it was his fault that dick had become this...this type of man.
dick wants to hate him. despite him.
but aren't they the same now?
maybe that's why dick isn't as harsh on bruce when he returns. why he isn't as cold as the rest of the family, why he doesn't have a screaming match like jason does asking what the fuck was wrong with bruce.
because if bruce was fucked up then so was dick.
the two of them are two fucked individuals. two people swallowed up by batman and made more twisted for it. the father and the son made in his image.
when dick walks into bruce's room in the middle of the night to find tim naked and on top of bruce, sweet body grinding and whining as bruce's cock pumps in and out of him- dick can't find a single shred of him that is horrified.
the only emotion he feels is relief.
relief that he's no longer alone in the horror that is being himself.
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alwaysbethewest · 1 month
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Triple Frontier/Narcos fic: Crossing the Streams
This week is @fleetwoodmactshirt's birthday and I knew I wanted to write her something if I could—it was just a question of what. Frankie Morales making ravioli from scratch? An intimate morning spent with Ezra? Or: this? A deeply self-indulgent (and Fleetwood-indulgent) AU of an AU crossed over with another AU from an entirely different piece of media. It made sense in my head.
This concept is something we've jokingly(?) discussed for years but it always felt too outrageous to actually put to words. Until now. Happy birthday, beloved! I hope this makes you smile.
Title: Crossing the Streams Characters/Pairings: Frankie Morales, Benny Miller, Javier Peña, OFC, Baby Morales, ghost!Reader. Nascent Fishben implied; Javi/OFC implied. Rating: Teen (but maybe Gen) Word count: 1.8k Content/warnings: Crossover of my ghost 'verse and @fleetwoodmactshirt's Javier Peña X-Files AU 🙃 Not really exactly officially a part of the ghost 'verse, but could be considered a spin-off chapter of it maybe. I don't think any particular warnings apply. Reader is a ghost. The OFC listed above is the reader from Fleetwood's AU, and I tried to leave her a blank slate. Javi holds the baby a lot. I fudged the timelines so Javi is older but not as much older as he would be. Unbetaed, so let me know if you spot any mistakes.
You can see the family resemblance immediately. The man standing in the foyer isn’t an exact carbon copy of Francisco, but they could easily be mistaken for brothers. Benny had been the one to answer the door and the visitor is sizing him up, friendly but with a hint of narrow-eyed assessment peeking through. Benny senses it and stands a little straighter, calling over his shoulder, “Fish, they’re here!”
The slap-slap-slap sound of the baby’s hands on the hardwood floor announces her arrival even before she rounds the corner into the hallway, crawling rapidly towards the front door while Francisco ambles behind her. Ben scoops her up before she can reach the threshold, easily hefting her up to his shoulder, while the other men greet each other with a hug.
“Ah, mi sobrino!” Francisco’s uncle gives him an affectionate pat on the cheek. “Te ves bien, Francisco.”
“Hola, tío Javi,” he says with a grin. “Come on in. You met Benny?”
Now that they’re standing side by side you’re able to see the similarities and differences between them. Javier is older by fifteen years or so, his dark hair greying at the temples, slim body still fit but gone a little soft around the middle. He’s cleanshaven but for an attractive, full mustache, and his warm brown eyes are shielded by a pair of glasses with dark, slightly rounded plastic frames.
Javier nods. “I haven’t met this one yet, though,” he says, reaching for Francisco’s daughter. She goes to him without hesitation and he has to catch her chubby hands in his before she can drag his glasses down his nose. He pulls a face at her and she giggles.
“And is your…” Francisco pauses, as if searching for the right word. “Partner outside?”
Javi glances out the open door. “She’s getting some equipment out of the trunk. Listen,” he says, lowering his voice a little, “she takes this stuff seriously and she can be a little—excitable, about it. Take it easy on her, okay?”
This stuff, as it turns out, is investigating the world of the paranormal.
After Francisco’s mom had heard about Santiago’s suspicion that the house was haunted, she’d been the one to suggest he invite tío Javier and his… partner, for a visit. (You understand the hesitation before “partner” as soon as you see her; the energy flowing between them is lit up with something far brighter than a pair of regular, platonic co-workers would ever have. And even someone without your vision might notice the way it takes her a moment to recover from the sight of him with the baby in his arms, or how his hand hovers over the small of her back as they make their way down the hall.)
Francisco leads them into the kitchen, where he sets a pot of coffee brewing.
“You can set her down if you want,” he tells Javi, nodding to the baby’s high chair.
“That’s alright,” he says, taking a seat and easily shifting her into the crook of his arm. He crosses his legs so she’s half in his lap and bounces his thigh, just lightly, offering up his free hand for her to pull and pinch and bite at as she likes to keep her entertained.
His partner is watching from the doorway and you observe with interest how her breathing goes almost imperceptibly unsteady before she gathers herself again.
“So which of you saw the ghost?” she asks Francisco and Benny.
Ben’s eyes shift to the corner where you’re perched on the kitchen counter, but Francisco is already answering for the both of them. “Neither of us,” he tells her. “Our friend Santiago is the one who thinks he saw something.”
She’s taking notes in a pocket-sized notebook.
“And what was it that Santiago saw?”
“Socks,” he says, in a tone that indicates he thinks this is just as silly as it sounds.
“Socks,” she echoes, tilting her head inquisitively.
“Floating in the air.” He makes a vague, floaty gesture with one hand while pouring the coffee with the other.
Tío Javi’s partner finally takes a seat at the table, so she’s not stuck juggling her coffee cup and the notebook. The baby leans towards her, curious, and she gives her a polite smile. “Hello.” Then, struck by a thought, she looks to Francisco again.
“Has the baby seen the ghost?” she asks.
Benny’s eyes widen. Francisco just chuckles. “Not that she’s mentioned,” he says dryly. “Look, I don’t want to be wasting your time. You should know that—I’m not suggesting Santi’s making it up or anything but—the guy’s had more than one concussion before. You know what I’m saying?”
“That’s interesting,” she remarks, jotting it down.
Francisco exchanges a glance with Javier.
“Is it?”
“Well, brain injuries, trauma, near-death experiences—they can open a person’s senses to things that others can’t see,” she explains.
He looks skeptical.
“We’ve all had near-death experiences,” he says, gesturing around the room. He says it so matter-of-factly that she looks startled, and maybe a little concerned. “Ben and I were Special Forces. Tío, I’ve heard your stories from Colombia. We’ve all dealt with some dark shit.”
Javi flattens his mouth in a grim line. Ben is rubbing his knuckles over his lips and you can see the anxiety building in him. The room falls silent for a moment.
“I’m sorry if I upset you,” she says. Under the table, Javi shifts his leg to bump his foot with hers reassuringly.
“No.” Francisco frowns. “I’m sorry. You’re just doing your job. You—I know you brought some gear with you. You’re welcome to check the house, or… do whatever you need. I’ll show you where Santi saw the socks in the air.”
She sets down her pen.
“If you don’t mind.”
Francisco leads her upstairs to the nursery. You’re not sure you want to get anywhere near her ghost-hunting equipment, whatever it may be, so you stick to the kitchen and keep Ben company while he attempts to make conversation with Francisco’s uncle.
“So you worked in Colombia,” he tries. Javi gives a quiet grunt to the affirmative. He doesn’t want to talk about that—you can tell, and Benny figures it out pretty quickly, too.
“Do you—” he starts, but Javi’s already speaking.
“What’s the situation here?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
“Between you and Frankie.”
You can almost feel the heat radiating off him as the air shimmering around Benny turns a deep, blushing pink.
“There’s no situation,” he says.
“You’re roommates?”
“Yeah—I mean, we’ve been friends for a long time. My lease ended a few months ago and he said I could stay here. He has a guest room,” he adds, a touch defensively.
Javi smiles and nods like he hadn’t meant anything by it.
“What about you?” Benny asks. He nods to the ceiling, where Javi’s partner is upstairs. “You guys seem close. Are you dating her?”
Javi’s placid smile doesn’t falter for a moment, but his eyes narrow a little.
“No,” he says. “She has a guest room, too.”
Ben’s mouth opens, then snaps closed, and the men sit in silence for a moment.
“I think she wants to get down,” he says, gesturing to the baby in Javi’s arms, who’s squirming and lunging forward as if to jump to the floor. He sets her down carefully on all fours and she takes off at speed, leaving Ben to scramble behind her. Javier looks around the empty room, eyes skipping right over you, drains his coffee, and follows suit.
You trail behind him to the living room, where Benny has deposited the baby in the middle of the conversation pit with a basket of toys. Javi stops short, taken aback by the sunken couches.
“Holy shit,” he says. “This place hasn’t been remodeled in a while, huh?”
Benny glances at you, knowing this subject is a sore spot. You’d taken great pride in this house, back when it had belonged just to you, and you’re not sure why everybody keeps wishing to change it now.
“We like it,” he tells him. “It’s got character. Plus, this is like a built-in play pen. She’s too little to climb out.”
Javier sits himself down, spreading his legs comfortably wide in a confident-man sprawl.
“It’s a good house,” he admits. “Quiet neighborhood.”
They watch the baby playing on the floor. You join her there, rolling plastic balls back to her too subtly for Javier to realize they haven’t simply bounced.
“Can I ask you something?” Benny says. Javi raises an eyebrow in assent. “Say there is a ghost—” he starts.
“There isn’t.” Javi narrows his eyes a little, like he’s trying to decide if Benny really believes in something so unfathomable.
Benny is avoiding your gaze.
“But theoretically,” he says. “If there was. What would—I mean—What do you do? Like if the EMF meter or whatever registered something.”
“Well,” Javi replies slowly. “Theoretically, if there was a ghost hanging around I think my partner would tell you there’s something unresolved that they still need. A sense of peace, or…”
He pauses, scratching his chin. Eyes still on the child.
“It’s the same as what anybody wants, right? A sense of fulfillment. So you can move on.”
It makes something feel hollow and fluttery inside your chest, achy like you haven’t felt in a while. Now you’re the one avoiding Ben’s eyes, when he looks at you. You retreat to the corner, wanting to be alone but unwilling to give up eavesdropping on such a rare visit.
Their conversation is cut short by the others’ return. Francisco still looks skeptical and she looks thoughtful. Javi tilts his head back and raises an eyebrow.
“Inconclusive,” she announces. “There were some very interesting readings but nothing concrete. There are some other tests we could—”
“I think this is enough,” Francisco cuts her off gently. “It’s not like any of us have been possessed. If blood starts dripping down the walls, we’ll call you back.”
“Well, for a simple specter I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that,” she assures him. “Blood drips can be indicative of—”
“It was a joke,” he says, and she smiles but she also shrugs like, well, we’ll see.
“Mijo,” Javier says, changing the subject for everyone’s sake. “Pick a restaurant, we’ll go out to dinner, my treat. Your roommate can come too.”
The emphasis he puts on roommate isn’t strong enough for Francisco to pick up on, but Benny does and he shoots Javi a narrow look. Javi gives him an innocent grin and turns back to the baby, who’s been pulling herself up on his pant legs, trying to climb up to her dad since he’d walked in the room. He swings her into his arms and hands her over to Francisco, and after a ten-minute debate over a pizzeria versus a steakhouse, and a five-minute diaper change, the group heads outside.
Alone in the quiet house, you float up to your attic window seat, where you settle in to contemplate tío Javi’s words about things unresolved.
(tiny tag list: @pedrostories, @littlemisspascal, @loversandantiheroes, @by-ilmater, @pettyprocrastination, @littleferal, @pennyserenade)
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zodiactalks · 3 months
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Zodiac Signs Ranked from Least to Most Likely to Cheat on their Partner
Loyalty? Never heard of it.
The world is full of temptations, but while some people manage to overcome them or resist them, others embrace them; it could be drugs, alcohol, working too much, shopping too much, or any other kind of excess.
Temptations also come in the shape of lying, stealing, or cheating, and when it comes to the latter, some signs are more likely to do it than others.
Today, we'll cover all the Zodiac signs, from the least likely to cheat, to the most.
Let's get started.
#1. Aries
Aries is far from the most sensitive and warm souls out there, and can often come off as rude, but that kind of behavior comes from Aries's inability to pretend to be anything other than what they are, and their complete rejection of deceit.
Aries is far more likely to call off a relationship with no warning than cheat. It might come off as cold and insensitive, but it saves a lot of time and pain in the long term.
#2. Cancer
Family is the single most important thing for Cancer, so they're not going to risk sacrificing their family for a casual fling.
If they've gone steady, then they intend to remain steady to the bitter end, choosing to tackle hard times and difficulties head-on rather than looking for some form of escapism.
#3. Taurus
Taurus loves stability and is smart enough to recognize a good deal when they see it.
If their relationship is stable and happy, then there's no point in changing it; If their relationship is unsalvageable, then there's no point in stretching it out.
They're so picky and careful about who they choose, that the thought of wasting all that hard work for a quick fling just seems like a poor choice.
#4. Virgo
Virgos hate drama, and, for that reason alone, they're more likely to avoid cheating.
Yes, a hot and steamy affair can be tempting, but is it really worth the downfall if their partner finds out what happened?
For Virgo, the answer is more often than not a resounding no. Virgo is far more likely to want to work on any relationship problems a couple may have than cheat, at least at first.
#5. Sagittarius
Sagittarius is a bit of a contradiction.
They're not particularly interested in monogamy, or rather in committed relationships but they have pretty strong morals that prevent them from cheating out of principle alone.
Because of this, they're one of the most likely sign to propose, point-blank, an open relationship. They'd rather have the liberty to explore other people, but they don't want to lie to their partner.
#6. Capricorn
Capricorns are very demanding when it comes to their partners, which means they're unwilling to risk losing them if they feel like they've found the one.
It also means that if they feel like they chose wrong, they won't hesitate to see if they can find a better option.
#7. Scorpio
When it comes to Scorpio, loyalty breeds loyalty.
They can be the most loving, dedicated, and committed person in the world, but they demand the same thing from you.
If you cheat on them, or just show indications that you're no longer interested in the relationship, expect the same in return.
#8. Aquarius
Aquarius likes to flirt. It's as easy as that.
They might not cheat outright, but they might flirt through texts and social media, or have a little side-romance through those mediums, just to get some thrills.
It's nothing against their partner. They just like flirting, and that doesn't go away just because they've committed.
#9. Leo
Leo needs to be the center of attention, which means they're quite likely to get tempted by people giving them precisely that.
If they feel like their partner is neglecting them or doesn't treasure them enough, they're quite likely to go out and find someone that does.
#10. Libra
Libras love flirting, and that's one of the main reasons why they don't commit easily.
If convinced to commit to a single person, though, don't expect the flirting to stop anytime soon. As far as Libra cares, if they don't physically cheat, then there's nothing to worry about.
#11. Gemini
Geminis tend to be particularly needy, and more than a little insecure. They require a partner that makes them feel loved, treasured, and secured, and they're not afraid of looking elsewhere for it.
They also find it hard to make decisive choices, so it's not uncommon for them to end in a love triangle; they don't want to hurt or play the other two parties, they simply don't want to choose.
#12. Pisces
Believe it or not, this hopeless romantic zodiac sign is most likely to cheat. After all, they tend to get caught in the blooming romance to the point that they forget about everything else.
They're emotional, impulsive, and hate the idea of hurting the ones they love, so rather than calling off a relationship outright, they're likely to go behind their partners back.
It might sound ridiculous, but it makes sense to them.
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your-queer-dad · 2 months
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Hi Dad ♥ Thank you so much for the last answer you gave me, it really warmed my heart and brought my spirits up! making slow steps forward, but one thing I did this week was I talked to my doc about bottom surgery! im excited! on a more serious note, im hearing a lot of calls for political action among my distant online peers, and while I share sentiments with them, noones really able to give me all that much information on how I can get involved.... do you have any resources for those of us willing to get out and do some activism?
Hey kiddo!! Glad to hear from you again! And congrats on talking to your doctor, that's awesome and I'm really proud of you!
Activism for beginners: advice for accessing activism and get involved!
- Figure out which causes are important to you, what makes you angry? What are you passionate about? What change do you want to see in the world?
- What limitations do you have? Work hours, travel, school, disabilities or access needs, family, money?
- What kind of activism are you interested/could you do with the limitations that help your cause?
Protests? Boycotts? Demonstrations? Community work?
- Look locally. I personally used social media. There's 100s of groups, protests and information out there for you to search for
- Do something that you actually want to do, and not what you think you should do. If you don't feel passionately about the cause or find the idea of going on protest overwhelming, you're gonna struggle to do it consistently
- community groups or online groups can be a really good way to meet new people and learn more!
Let me know if you have any other questions!
- dad x
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verdemoun · 15 days
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can I get some timewarp Charles or Dutch? I love your au 😭
cracks every bone in my hands lets fucking gooo
charles blessed and beloved. he died of illness in 1908 but it was so peaceful he died in his sleep in a warm bed and as got sick he accepted it with a very similar flare to hosea talking about bessie where he was quietly hopeful he would get to see arthur again and instead of being jolted to the present like the more violent deaths he just woke up peacefully to an arthur that got to age and looks healthy and is smiling at him so affectionately because he missed him so much
they're in love, your honor
arthur already has his own place (very close to hosea's, of course) so charles immediately moves in with arthur and they fall into domestic bliss without actually having the conversation of 'i know we were close friends and confidants with unaddressed feelings in the past and it's been almost a decade and you had to mourn me but do you want to be my partner for the rest of our natural lives btw i have an adult son'
charles is still awkward though he didn't understand life and people in 1899 sometimes modern era is just too much they'll be grocery shopping and someone will say a new sentence so stupid he has to go sit in the truck and just disengage with society for a while.
he has zero social media presence and cannot handle the constant depression of tv news media. what do you mean people are still fighting over civil rights and racism back in my day you could throw a stick of dynamite at a kkk meeting or shoot a eugenicist in front of the law and no one cared. if he's home alone he's listening to cds on through an actual cd player
charles smith would absolutely fuck with a home depot helping john build beecher's hope awakened something in him. the garage is almost as big as their house on one side you have arthur's eclectic collection of passing interests including the car he's working on and on the other side you have precision organised charles's expanse of every kind of tool you can imagine. hand tools power tools different kinds of wood organized by tree and then grain
he might be a little in love with the customer service guy at the tool shop who is similarly awkward and accidentally blunt with a flat sense of humor. no small talk. just 'this is my project' 'you will need this. this is the brand we're meant to promote but this is just as effective with more attachments and it's cheaper' 'thank you' 'it's literally my job'. sometimes they go to each others workshops to show off their projects he is charles 'doesn't drain my social battery' friend
charles' job title is just 'decent guy with a truck' every construction company in the local area has his number and will send him a text asking him to help out on a job or if they can borrow some obscure power tool only charles smith would have. it suits charles really well because it means he can just turn off his phone and go on a spontaneous three week hunting trip with arthur and isaac without needing to communicate with anyone. people know if you don't hear back within 15 minutes he's turned off his phone and you will hear from him when he gets back from whatever adventure he's gone on with his family find someone else to do the job
for a lot of the gang they almost have to get to know charles again like he became a lot more comfortable with himself as a person between 1899 and 1907 the first time he cracks jokes or acts downright silly they almost don't recognize him. like yass charles be happy.
admittedly he is the guy they call to help build furniture charles doesn't follow ikea instructions he just rocks up with a drill and assembles it the way that makes sense
eliza and charles are besties and arthur lives in constant fear. they go out for coffee and gossip about whatever the latest antic is. she talks to charles honestly more than arthur and takes charles to functions when she needs a plus one because they are both just wallflowers who talk shit about everyone else quietly. isaac sitting patiently in the principal's office having gotten in trouble for something stupid with the most passive aggressive slight smile on his face as he hears charles and eliza pull up (arthur got banned for threatening the principal)
i may need to part 2 this for dutch
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lovelybrooke · 1 year
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Brooke, if you died and got isekai’d which anime mom/dads would you want as your new parents?
I took a lot of liberties with this and decided to choose characters from a wide range of media. I also chose some that would be good platonic yandere siblings. (Also, this ask made me realize how little anime I've watched).
Catelyn and Ned Stark:
There aren't that many good parents in Game of Throne and House of the Dragons. So, if I had to pick one it would be them. The were definitely the best parents and had a very genuine love for their children. Personally, I think the Stark family with a child who was transported to their world would be very interesting. I think at the beginning, Catelyn wouldn't really like you since, like with Jon, she sees you as some random kid trying to ruin her family, but after a while she grows on you. Ned would love having another child, even if he pretends like he doesn't. I view Ned as a caretaker at heart and would love the opportunity to take care of someone, regardless of if they were "his" child or not.
Marc Spector/ Steven Grant and Layla El-fouly:
I know technically they're divorced, but I still think they would be great parents. I like out of the three, Steven would want a child the most. He loves taking care of the children at his museum job and would secretly want a child of his own. Layla would love the idea of a child but wouldn't really warm up to it until she spends time with you. She would teeter on being a strict mother, while also being a fun mom you want to spend your time with. Marc doesn't like the idea of children due to all he's been through. He doesn't think he'd be a good father, but regardless, I think if he happened to have one, he would do everything in his power to be the best dad possible.
Daemon and Rhaenyra Targaryen:
Another Game of Thrones one, but I had to mention them. I feel like, compared to the greens, their children are the most well-adjusted. I think both of them, regardless of if they are Yandere or not, would be extremely protective of their children. However, if they were yanderes, their protectiveness would be ten times greater. They are both very controlling but would work hard for you to have a great life. It also doesn't help that their children also inherit their yandere tendencies.
Dracula and Lisa (Castlevania)
I think they would be amazing parents. While it's been a while since I watched the show, I know they would care deeply about their children. I can see Lisa finding you, a sick child unable to take care of themselves, and nursing you back to health. During this, her and her husband become deeply invested in you, and can't possibly let you go once you get better. Dracula despises the idea of you growing old and dying, so he does whatever he can to prevent it. He would definitely encourage Alucard to be just as protective in you as him and Lisa are.
Honorary mentions:
Literally any character from LOTR/ the Hobbit
Nearly any Marvel character
the Grayson Family (Invincible)
I'm really sorry I couldn't come up with more. I haven't watched a lot of anime since I don't really have that much time, and because they're all so long. So, I apologize if this wasn't what you wanted.
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kiara-ish · 1 year
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IDOL SOLDIER
Chapter 1
Words: 5k+
Summary: The world is changing yet again. People are turning into flesh biting monsters and with all backs to the walls, every second is a war between life and death. You expected a lot in life but never in your wildest dreams did you expect to meet Kim Seokjin in the middle of an apocalypse.
Pairing: Enlisted Soldier!Seokjin x fem!Reader
Genre: Dystopia | Romance
Rating: series rating - 18+ | chapter rating - 16+
Series Warnings: blood, gore, violence, mentions of abuse, mentions of sexual harrasment, deaths, graphic descriptions, suggestive themes.
Author's Note: This was initially supposed to be a long oneshot but after scrapping my drafts multiple times, I decided to break it into parts for easy reading and smooth writing too. Also, if I blinded you with that horrible cover, I'm really sorry me and graphics don't go well together. I'll fix it whenever I can.
m.list | next ->
Dystopia always was my favourite trope to write. There was something about hopelessness that always had me taking up the pen. I always supposed it was something rather mundane and humane – to be curious of misery and despair. Until one day when the television that I sometimes left on in the evenings when I felt extraordinarily lonely caught my attention.
"...the rapid growth of the virus Z-24 is shocking. The constant spike in the number of affected is fearsome especially because the medium of transfer is yet to be discovered. What is spreading even more terror is the worsening condition of those infected, they have shown signs of insanity and as the specialists have named it – the zombie syndrome. It is becoming very difficult to reassure the crowd of grieving and worried families outside the hospitals and quarantine. Today, we have with us…"
With the said attention having the span matching that of a goldfish, I was distracted by a ping of notification on my phone and zoned out the news. In hindsight, my listening or not listening to the news wouldn't have made much of a difference. But it might have made me prepare better, it might have allowed me to ponder more on zombie syndrome than Kim Seokjin's nearing end of military service.
Apart from the regulation of wearing masks and sanitizing, there wasn't much havoc about the virus so people took it as seriously as they did coronavirus – scared but reassured that it will be fine sooner or later. So like every other patient citizen, I lost my shit when a lockdown was declared simultaneously with a message from my manager announcing the reduction of the travel allowance because of the change in mode of work.
Going off the texts, my social media was flooded with video clips, hazy, distraught – almost like an illegally filmed video. I knew what they would show but did not want to experience the same fervent panic from the night before. I scrolled past most videos until my clumsy fingers accidentally let go of the phone and in the eager grasp of catching it, a video started playing.
A vlogger was speaking in a broken, hushed voice. His words were unclear nor did I have the motivation to be keener in my observation. He was showing pitch darkness and it intrigued me. So instead of scrolling past like I intended, I stayed and tried to scrutinize the scene but to no help — it was all dark.
"Did you hear that?"
The vlogger's voice was suddenly clearer but his question threw me off. It was unnerving. There was an unfamiliar tremor in his voice that made me feel the same fear as him. The dark screen was suddenly not still and the silhouette of a door came into view.
"The sound came from right outside. Should I open the door to see?"
Of course he shouldn't. There could be found some ten thousand horror movies that would tell him that he should not. But he did anyway. There was no foreboding creek as the door opened, some fragments of street light in the distance that looked more ominous than reassuring. It was still silent, eerily like it was a warm summer evening in the countryside where people had nothing to worry about let alone flesh biting horrors.
"There is nothing here. To appreciate my bravery don't be shy in sending gifts and whatever your heart desires at–"
It was so quick I almost missed it and had I been successful at missing it, maybe my heart would be saved.
It wasn't a grand howl and attack. It was just a blink of darkness moving, covering the lights in the distance with the shadow and as the lights became visible again, it was obvious that something had moved. There was no foreshadowing, ominously sidelining; in a wink there was a rustle of clothes and the clang of the camera falling to the floor. It was pitch darkness but the vlogger had left no stone turned in choosing his recording mic.
As the mic stayed on around his mouth, the squelching of blood resonated loudly as the infected tore his neck probably, its heavy breathing and teeth biting into flesh with a small ripping sound like that of soft muslin. A second too late, the man started gurgling on his blood. He had no time to scream, no chance to run. The gushing of blood as the infected but around until it was done was so loud that I threw my phone away without a care in the world. Yet the only sound that reached me was the low, deep gurgle of blood and the throaty groan of the infected.
No amount of gory movies and books would have prepared me for that video and the silence that rang through the apartment after that prevailed for a very long time with the only noises being my gasps and puking. The clip went viral and everyone went crazy; traffic in the streets for miles as everyone tried to flee the city, flight tickets skyrocketed and the ruckus continued. I couldn't afford the tickets and I had nowhere else to go so I tried to order as much grocery as I could while trying to hold off the anxiety of living through yet another possible pandemic.
More clips started surfacing but I watched none of it, staying off the internet unless it was for work until finally hell couldn't be contained and the internet was shut down in the whole city. The government couldn't do shit for the virus yet so they ensured what they liked best – quiet. Work was close to impossible and salaries were further reduced regardless of the increasing bills.
In all the chaos of possibly a zombie apocalypse in construction and intense inflation, there was bound for things to go wrong — very, very wrong.
--
Ripping off the fabric of a shirt from the backpack, I tied it around the long scratch on my arm. Darkness blurred my vision every time I exhaled and every inhale burned my lungs. Looking around, I realised I had run into the woods, which explained the itchy scratches everywhere on my body. But there was nowhere else to go and if I navigated in the right direction, I would arrive at the isolated military camp, which was a hopeful ray of my survival.
It wasn't supposed to happen; I was supposed to move south to downtown, where there could be a shit ton of infected but more chances of communication too. But the streets looked awfully empty as I walked and sprinted carefully. There were occasional abandoned cars that looked good as new but I did not dare peek in. Last thing I would want was an investigation after all the ruckus clears off, that too for petty theft. The cramp in my stomach was occasionally wrenching my insides but the adrenaline kept me going.
Humans are cute. Hold their hand, caress their scars and give them a warm seat and they'll think they are home. The empty roads, the quiet and the chilly breeze that brushed through my sweaty, filthy skin felt like a cold shower after enduring a heatwave. I got too comfortable so it was only right that I would get plowed to the street.
It was all in a split second. One second I was running and the next a heavy weight crashed to my side, effectively pushing me to the ground and scraping my exposed skin against the rough asphalt. But before I could cry out or even look at the force, there was a putrid stench scorching my nostrils and a growl above me.
There was a squelch of flesh being torn apart and a scream escaped my parched throat, a hoarse but disturbingly loud sound. I felt like I was floating just like I always imagined death to be except something was wrong. There was no pain. I wasn't pathetically thrashing in sheer agony of having my flesh bitten off and the infected person above me was not moving.
Lightheaded, I finally looked, really looked. Blood never looked so relieving. The makeshift spear on my hand was protruding through the neck of the infected and cold blood dripped down the puncture wound. The infected person, what looked like a young man, had his eyes stuck on me but they were vacant of any semblance of life. They were bloodshot and pupils dilated, looking like they would pop out of their sockets any moment. His body weight was crushing me and I couldn't breathe with my already throbbing head.
Pushing off the body, I rolled away, breathing in the open air. But before a complete breath, my body instinctively flipped and with wretched gags that shook my whole body, I puked again. At this point I wasn't sure what I was throwing up, probably my dying organs. The putrid stench was stronger and my gags worsened.
In the midst of that, I heard it this time. Shuffling, wheezing and groaning, footsteps. How did I forget my own scream? How was I not expecting it? My throat hurt and so did my entire body. I wanted to scream and cry with helplessness. But I knew I needed to move. I needed to get the fuck back up.
Because I might not be the main character in the whole story, but I was the main character in mine.
That's how I ended up running in a random direction, then more random directions doing anything to escape the footsteps. Every time I saw the slightest of shifts in my periphery, I changed directions. My makeshift spear remained digging into an infected person's throat and taking out any other knife would take time. I wanted to ram my head into a tree trunk for leaving behind the spear but I had to run then.
At one point, the road was deserted. The woods ran through one side and empty fields through another. There was no house around and nothing objectively obstructive of view. So I stopped but adrenaline was heavy so I stumbled to the ground and rolled on my back. Breathing. Just breathing.
The sky was clear but dusk was approaching. I didn't even want to think what would happen after nightfall so I kept breathing like it was a task. It was so silent that my head got louder again. I was hyper aware of my being, from my aching legs to my throbbing head and sinking heart. I couldn't close my eyes. Every time I gave in to the darkness, I saw a pair of bloodshot protruding eyes first, then a sensation – a cold liquid dripping down my arm and then finally, a knife lodged into a man's throat and the handle of that knife was held by-
I opened my eyes with as much life I had in me to the bright sky, unnerving quiet and my own heavy breathing. There was a nagging thought in my head that I wanted to throttle and bury but it came up again and again. To evade it, I sat up.
I took out a knife from my backpack, knowing that it wouldn't be half as useful as my spear but it was something better than nothing. I held it firmly but did not stand up. I couldn't. My legs were weak and hurt like a bitch. I had always contemplated how quickly things could go wrong but my estimation wasn't even close to what it was happening in reality. I remember basking in the warmth of my airy apartment and listening to music, laughing with my friends on call about how I was finally on the same land as BTS. But then suddenly it was chaos and now I had blood on my hands, filthy but it wasn't my own.
There was a cackling, a giggle around me and goosebumps lined my skin. I looked around for a moment when a realization hit me. It hit me so hard that I began sprinting again. Running towards the woods aimlessly, I ignored the burning of my soles and the scratches of small thin branches tearing my skin. All the while I kept thinking back to that sound.
It was me. I was laughing. I couldn't suppress the thought anymore. I was going insane.
--
Aimlessly wandering through the woods, I finally tried to breathe a little better. Stumbling through the huge trees and trying my best to navigate towards the setting sun, where a military camp should stand tall, I tried to ignore the burning pain that was spreading through my whole body.
The forest wasn't too thick. One couldn't see the other side at one glance but it wasn't complete wilderness. There were some rare trees marked by the government and some sections were fenced with wires. But all the big trees and growing tangled bines yet not one fruit caught my eye. No matter how much the infected scared me and no matter how much my whole body throbbed with a dull ache constantly, I couldn't ignore my cramped stomach and my dry mouth. But I couldn't drop my gait, not before nightfall.
The setting sun was like a halo in the distance and staring at it, as I moved forward, I felt a serenity take over me. There was nothing that was as hopeful as that constant ball of brightness in the desolate quiet of the woods, in a city filled with sick people.
So lost in the blinding light of the sun, I couldn't control my feet as they stepped on a dry branch on the ground and a loud creak echoed through the forest. The echoing felt like nature was mocking me, really laughing at me, pointing and saying, 'look at her, what a dumb bitch.'
Looking around me, I tried to confirm that nothing was going to jump on me at the next second. At least my back wouldn't be to the wall if something did pop up. At most, it would delay my navigation — or that's what I tried to assure myself. I was doing a fine job at it too, taking slow steps further towards the direction of the setting sun until I noticed it.
At some distance, there was a man walking towards my direction. He wasn't stumbling and that gave me hope that it could be another survivor. It couldn't be me all alone. But I didn't want to call out loud and attract attention. So I leaned against a thick tree, away from his sight, just the sound of his footsteps nearing me. The footsteps were steady, not haphazard. They felt conscious and they were closer than ever before.
I held my breath as I heard the footsteps just on the other side of the tree. I could see his shoes standing still. Peeking out a little more, I caught sight of him, looking straight ahead. His side profile looked completely untouched and with his completely fine posture, I was sure by then that he was indeed uninfected. A strange ray of joy sparked through me. He looked very alert and upright, probably because of the sound I made.
So I finally decided to step out from behind the bark. A step and then another until I was beside him. But he still didn't notice me, so I tried to reach out a hand and tap his shoulder. My shaking hands reached out and it was almost at his shoulder blade when I heard his breathing. He was breathing heavily which wasn't abnormal but it was followed by a deep gurgling sound – a growl.
In a beat I was ducking behind the tree again, only in time to catch his head turn in my direction; a knife was sticking out of his other eye, the sight making bile rise to my throat again as a scream threatened to erupt but at the distance he was in, one wrong move and I wouldn't be able to scream ever again. His other eye looked around keenly, heavy breathing and that same eerie gurgling groan as if he was choking on his own blood.
A few moments passed like that with me holding my breath, as he stood motionless. But after what felt like an eternity, he began walking again. Steady footsteps moving past the tree had me finally exhaling. But I couldn't waste any more time, it was already darkening. I had to get somewhere at least.
I took off in a sprint, the desire to put a distance between the infected and myself overwhelming my senses. Ducking below branches and jumping over roots, I let the air rage war on my skin as the surroundings changed to a blur. Even in all that overwhelming stimulation, I could feel it before I saw it. There was someone sprinting behind me. It was not a human. It had a protruding knife from its eye.
I wanted to scream out loud or at least cry in despair. But in lieu of all the mockery I made of characters in dystopian fictions at their obnoxious and unrealistic behaviour, even my mind was working on autopilot and instead of screaming or crying, I pushed my legs to run faster, letting the subdued animalistic urge of survival take over my senses, until I could see nothing but the peeking glimpses of the road at the distance.
My feet met the asphalt again and I let myself blink, feeling the water dripping down my cheeks. I couldn't perceive anything other than my own shoes hitting the road, slowing down with each fall to a jog then a walk and then a standstill.
I looked around the deserted road, panting. My vision was even more blurry than before but I couldn't miss the sight of a military barricade in the distance. This was the path to the military camp, where there should be people that can help me. The sun had dropped below the horizon but the bright halo remained and that too was slowly dimming.
I couldn't brush off the fact that there were probably infected around so I took quick strides to the path opposite the military barricade. A big white arrow was drawn on the road and it made me increase my pace. Soon enough a building came in my sight but it was still far and no matter how much I sped up, it felt far like a mirage.
"Help!"
I stumbled to a stop. There was a looming fear that I was going insane but I was sure I heard someone scream for help. It was coming from the darkening forest. My heart thudded loudly in my chest as I stared at the darkness.
"Help me please!"
I heard it distinct this time and closer than before. There was indeed another person. But I couldn't forget the infected person I encountered before. With the loud shouting from this person asking for help, he would definitely be following the source too. There was a person asking for help and there was an infected person probably tailing the sound.
I've never counted myself as a great person and that wasn't due to humility. I was never a great person. I always prioritized myself first and when the situation had come to a literal man-eating-man situation, I saw nothing wrong in it.
So I sprinted towards the building, ignoring the calls for help, the sound ringing in my ears like a siren.
"Help!"
"Help, please, someone!"
"HELP!"
--
It wasn't a military camp. It didn't look like one at least. It was a huge building, fenced with a huge metal gate, but empty. Deserted. Not one person was around. But I didn't want to lose hope, they could have locked themselves in somewhere.
The gate was open thankfully, so I tried to push myself in through that but ended up opening it slightly wider than before albeit soundlessly. It was dark, the halo of the sun gone. The sky was just minutes away from darkening to a void.
With quiet footsteps I walked towards the only door in sight. It was huge but opened even with a gentle push, no creaking. The place was quiet. With the staircases and the multiple hallways, it looked like the barracks. But no lights were on and nothing was in sight. There was a chill running down my spine as I slowly stepped towards the first hallway to the left.
The long, narrow passage gave way to another big door. The door was closed but through the big glasses on the door, I could well see the inside. I could barely conceal my cry when I saw numerous infected people stumbling around in what looked like the cafeteria. There was food spilled on the ground and they all looked like chefs but a few were wearing military boots too.
My last hope drowned. I could only visualise letting an infected person tear into me. The pain would be immense but it won't last too long. Muffled sobs uncontrollably poured out of me as I stared at the people inside walking around like monsters of the night, waiting for one little sound, then they would tear them down to dust.
I was subconsciously staring at the young soldier who had a huge chunk of his forearm missing. He was young, might have even enlisted recently. His buzz cut looked newly shaped. It made my heart lurch in agony. I couldn't falter the ringing of my ears, the only sound enthralling my eardrums was the cry for help that I ignored. When I closed my eyes to blink I saw a man with a knife sticking out of his throat, a knife that I stabbed him with. It was so terrifying that I wanted to never close my eyes again.
The young soldier's eyes met mine all of a sudden and I took a step back. His eyes remained on mine when I moved further and further back until I began sprinting in the opposite direction. The adrenaline got the best of me and forsaking the sense of directions, I ran up the staircase. The sound of my shoes hitting the floor hurt my own ears. I had no idea where I was running to but I couldn't stop.
Not until I was suddenly pulled back inside a room and thrown against the wall with a heavy body up against me and a hand on my mouth interrupting the scream that I was about to let out. It was dark but I could make out a tall silhouette gently closing the door with one hand while still holding me against the wall.
Tears flowed out my eyes as I heard a familiar groaning right outside the door. Squeezing my eyes shut, I pressed myself to the wall as if it would just suck me in and free me from the wall but the stranger looked unshaken, his hand remained firm on my mouth and eyes on the door. A moment or two passed like that with me holding my breath and a loud drumming of heartbeat in my ears before abnormal footsteps slowly moved past the door and somewhere further down the hall.
The stranger still showed no intent of moving and there were hundreds of thoughts running through me but I let him wait for another minute or so before he moved and let me collapse to the floor like a heap of messy laundry. I couldn't control my trembling body, letting everything over the past weeks finally take their toll on me. I couldn't even look up and catch the stranger step back until he was on the opposite wall where he slid down to the floor too.
"Are you hurt somewhere?"
There was a gentle familiarity in his voice that made my stomach clench uncomfortably. I had no idea how much time had passed since I stopped crying.
"Just some scratches."
He suddenly looked alert and stood up. It took me a few seconds to comprehend his reaction so I was quick to clear the misunderstanding, "Not by the infected people. Just tree branches. I ran through the woods."
There was a sigh heard in the room and I watched his silhouette move to the small window with the blinds down. His shoulders were broad and his physique looked intimidating from my position on the ground but it strangely did not throw me off. There was something about him that felt unnaturally familiar. I didn't know how.
He parted the blinds and let more light flood in before turning to face me. I blinked at him for a moment, my head couldn't process what was going on. The familiar kind eyes, the high nose bridge and the pouty lips were all features of one person I recognised like the back of my hand; someone I had spent years fangirling over. I couldn't mistake that countenance, never. But the only sigh of misery that left me was the consequences I was seeing him in.
I wasn't ready to meet Kim Seokjin in the middle of an apocalypse.
There was utter silence in the room, only our breathing and probably my drumming heart. He had returned to his seat at the opposite wall while I remained fixated to my side. I had so many questions, so many things to say but moving my lips felt like a task. I had nothing on me that would get me going now that the adrenaline had run out. So we remained in an exhausting silence.
"Is the road clear?" he whispered.
"Barely. The woods are not clear so I doubt the road will stay safe too long."
He didn't reply and I couldn't resist the urge so I asked him, "How are you here?"
"I was supposed to be discharged the next day when all this happened. I was in my room packing up when I heard some commotion downstairs."
I didn't need to know what commotions nor did he feel it to be said. Silence prevailed when I couldn't come up with a reply but there was something shifting in me. I was breathing a little easier.
"I'm not going to be here anymore though."
I watched him stand up and move to the bed in the corner and there was a slightly coarse sound of a wrapper being torn, of a small protein bar when it was brought before my eyes. I looked up at Jin who held the bar in front of me, another small water bottle with some water in it.
I was confused. Why was he showing it to me? Was he giving it to me? He couldn't be that stupid. Who would share food and water in this scarcity? I kept staring at the protein bar letting my mouth water and my stomach groan loudly. But I didn't take it from his hand.
It must have been frustrating for him because he suddenly dropped to the floor right in front of me and shoved the bar in my hand and placed the water bottle before me. When my limp hand finally fisted around the bar, he brought my hand to my mouth and shoved it in.
I could have cried as the taste of the melting bar sent a few shudders to my body and I was gobbling it up in less than a few seconds.
"I'm sorry I'm usually more gentle. But I can't be patient right now."
Mouth full with the last bite of the bar, I reached for the water bottle watching him with keen eyes as he continued, "I can only give you this much. I'll leave tomorrow."
The water flowing down my burning throat sent another round of shudders down my body and my eyes closed in bliss. I saved a few sips for later and let the embarrassing sound of my stomach groaning be heard before I processed his words.
"To where? It's hell out there."
"My brothers. They are in the main camp."
I didn't agree with him wholeheartedly but I understood him. The moment my brain registered that it was Kim Seokjin, my mind went to the other six members. The exhaustion had gotten overwhelming and the thought had left me. Hearing it from him was a different feeling. He was the eldest, his sense of responsibility had to be peaking.
I had no idea when I fell asleep but when I woke up it was day again. Lights poured in through the windows with the blinds pushed up. A rustle of fabric made me jump up to a stand still when I remembered I wasn't alone.
Jin was walking around the room, randomly checking drawers and tables. I felt my thoughts to be more organised than last night so I could finally process a lot of things; first being the fact that I wasn't dead or infected yet and I somehow met Kim Seokjin and the second, he is ethereal.
He looked like an angel with the sun beaming on his face, as he looked out. What were the odds of me ending up with him of all people? But before I could further contemplate the odds, he turned to me with a small grimace for a smile but I swooned nonetheless.
"Slept well? You should keep your guards up now. I'll get going."
It all came back to me in an instant. He did talk about leaving to look for the other members and I didn't remember what I replied back.
"Have you been outside? It's hell."
"I know, you've told me before."
"How do you plan to make it there?"
He looked at me with his backpack in hand, "I'm not sure. I don't have much with me, just some scraps for snacks and a bottle of water or two."
I couldn't help the quake of my body when I recalled the infected people I had encountered on my way. At least I had a knife, it looked like he was charging in without anything.
I noticed my own backpack lying abandoned so I picked it up and took out one of the knives from in there.
"There you go," I held it out to him as he continued staring with an unreadable expression, "you will need some kind of protection. I suppose you happen to not have a gun, right?"
He stared at the knife for a moment and I was about to take it back, afraid of his widening eyes but instead he suddenly spoke up, "Guns! There are guns here somewhere-"
"In this room?"
"No, maybe in the gym."
I had no idea what to do with this piece of information so I waited for his mind to continue turning the gears.
"I'm going to try and look for one before I leave."
He didn't wait for any affirmation from my side, immediately moving towards the door when an uncomfortable feeling began sinking in my stomach. He was really leaving like that. Hand on the doorknob, he was about to pull it open when I was pulling his arm back.
Wide eyed he stared as if I had grown two heads, "what are you doing?"
"I'll go with you."
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