#you see a lot of interesting things as the camera follows him through his house

[dudefrommywesterns]

there are some little details about ricco that tell the viewer a bit more about him

#you see a lot of interesting things as the camera follows him through his house #like the italian style kitchen and the crucifix on his wall #and #what type of toothpaste he uses #i think it's colgate but it's smushed up so it's a bit hard to tell #it has the old logo #also i feel like costuming took a nap #because his jewelry (a ring on his left pinky and a necklace) belong to his actor #he keeps his cigarettes in what looks like a big toothpick container #on his nightstand #which is interesting #there are more probably but those are the ones i can think of right now #♡ right now you're supposed to be in my arms — ⌜ joe ricco ⌟ #typewriter dings

[strawberrysturniolo]

fic reqqq

can you pretty pretty please write a fluffy kind of sleep aid fic w chris where yall cuddle in bed tgth and u start snoozing and he tucks u in and everything🫶 np if not your writing is actually so bomb like everytime i see a new post from u i start foaming @ the mouth like a rabid dog and gnawing on my enclosure 😭

sleepy // bf!chris

soft chris

summary: you spend the day filming with your boyfriend and his brothers and can't wait to go home and snuggle in bed with him.

The entirety of my day has been spent following my boyfriend, Chris, and his brothers around while they film. 

We started our day by getting lunch at a local diner, did some shopping afterwards at a flea market, then finished the night off with a few rounds at Top Golf.

“Good job, babe!” I cheer my boyfriend on as he makes a perfect swing.

He turns around grinning before handing his club to his brother, Matt. “That was pretty good, right?!” He sits down next to me and tosses his arm around my shoulder. I tilt my head to the left so it lays perfectly on him, and he pulls me closer, kissing the top of my head. When his other brother, Nick, leaves the table to film Matt’s turn, Chris leans into me, whispering, “I really appreciate you coming out with us today.”

My exhaustion is evident. I thoroughly enjoy spending time with them on days where they are filming, and while I’m usually hidden somewhere off-camera to maintain privacy, it’s still fun to watch my boyfriend do something he loves, and interesting to see him at work. I have to say, walking around all day so they can get content in, and now sitting down watching them golf only reminds me of how tired I am. 

“Sleepy, baby?” he asks, nudging me lightly when he sees my eyes falling shut. 

“Mhm,” I hum into his shoulder. 

“I’m sorry. I know it’s been a long day.”

He uses his left hand to carefully push my hair out of my face, using his other hand to pull me closer to him, falling asleep right at the table. 

“Alright Chris,” Nick calls out. “It’s your turn, come on.”

I can feel Chris’ head turn a few times, looking between me and his brothers. “Can you go for me? I don’t really want to get up.”

I struggle to push myself up because of how tired I am, but I manage. “No, go play. We’re almost done anyway. I just need to stick it out until we get home and I’ll sleep well tonight.” 

“Are you sure?” 

I nod, not wanting to kill the mood for them. 

He delicately kisses my forehead before tossing his arms around his brothers, his energy back to 100% when the camera is on him.

One thing about Chris is, no matter how private he wants our relationship to be, he will always find a way to show some sort of PDA when we’re around people. Whether it’s holding my hand, putting an arm around me, having me wear his clothes. He may not fully makeout with me in a public setting, but he’ll still kiss my forehead and hold me in his arms so everyone can see how much he loves me without losing an element of our intimacy. 

The boys finish up their game, and when we head back to Matt’s car, he suggests we go to get a late breakfast tonight. I of course am mid-yawn when this comes up.

“Why don’t we head home?” Chris counters. “We already have a lot of footage from today, and if we need more we still have tomorrow.”

Matt groans, but when Nick sees me half-asleep in the backseat next to him, he sides with Chris. “He’s right. Let me work through this footage tonight and see if we need to go back out tomorrow before we end up with an hour long vlog that will take me an extra day to edit.”

I end up passing out asleep on the drive back despite it only being 15 minutes. I’m lightly shaken awake and greeted by my boyfriend’s hushed whisper. 

“Baby, let’s get you inside okay? We’re home and you can sleep in bed.” He unbuckles my seatbelt and carefully leads me out of the car and inside the house, guiding me downstairs with his arm around me. “Go change into your pajamas.”

I pull out a Fresh Love set from his closet and toss my clothes from today into the hamper while Chris is in the bathroom. He comes out with makeup wipes and pulls one from the package. 

“I can do that,” I say quietly. 

“No, I want to.” He flattens out the makeup wipe and gently rubs my face with it, checking it every few seconds to make sure the product is coming off on it. “You’ve had a long day and it’s partly my fault. Let me do this and then you can brush your teeth and wash your face.”

Another minute passes before Chris discards the now used makeup wipe into the trash. I then head into the bathroom and wash off any remaining makeup and brush my teeth, climbing into bed once I’m done. 

Chris follows me through all those steps, laying in bed next to me and smirking at my choice of pajamas. “I love when you wear these.” I have no energy left in me to speak. I simply nod and hope he can read my mind. His fingers trace my face as I doze off, slowly going in and out of my slumber. His arms wrap around me and pull me into him, and my face nuzzles into his chest. He uses one hand to push the covers into our bodies, tucking us in and keeping us warm while the ceiling fan balances the temperature out. 

He places one more kiss on my head as he rubs his hands over my back.

“I love you so much,” he whispers into my hair. 

I mumble a muffled, “I love you,” back to him before falling asleep for the night, the last thing I remember being him holding me tight and feeling the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes. 

#chris sturniolo #christopher sturniolo #nick sturniolo #matt sturniolo #sturniolo triplets #nicolas sturniolo #sturniolo fanfic #sturniolo smut #sturniolo x reader #chris sturniolo smut #chris sturniolo x reader

[mediocreanomaly]

Mermaid vash with s/o human reader

I feel like Vash would court the reader by giving them random "lost" stuff that he found from people that dropped things in the ocean, like bottles, broken camera, jewelry, a random knive. Anything shiny and cool looking ends up in the reader's hands from Vash. He'd be very happy if the reader accepts the gifts but if the reader gives him something? Any thoughts gone, Vash is malfunctioning.

Just thought this would be a cute idea

Authors Note: Guys please I'm a creature lover at heart don't get me started on these prompts- (joking please get me started on these prompts mer!Vash makes me happy)

Mer!Vash x Reader HC's

•Vash is extremely interested in humans. Think...Ariel lmao. Although humans are known for trying to poach merfolk (their scales and fins are extremely valuable) he can't help but love them!

•He does his best to stay hidden as he follows along boats from afar to watch the crew work during the day or play cards and drink at night. He sits on far away rocks on beaches to watch the humans splash in the water and sunbathe on the beach. Basically if he can watch humans somewhere he'll be there

•Which is why when you became the newest light house keeper for the port, you were the perfect human for Vash to watch

•It was perfect, the light house was far enough from the actual port that he could lay on the rocks with out being seen, he'd watch you through the light house windows, he'd watch when you'd leave to dip your feet in the water or sit on the rocks to watch the horizon. It became Vash's new favorite pass time so it was only a matter of time before you noticed your fishy companion

•When you first see him his lower body is in the water, only his head sits out watching you, you blink and begin approaching him thinking it's someone who's swam too close to the rocks

"Hey! This might not be the best place to swim there's lots of rocks and the actual swimmers beach is-" you pause caught off guard when, a couple steps in, you see a long red and orange tail gleaming in the water. You lose your balance and fall in the shallow water screaming-

"ahhh!" "ahhh!" the merman mimics back in your voice, which only concerns you more and...leads you to scream again, "ahhh!!!" "ahhh!!!"

•This whole mimicking thing seems to go back and forth for about two more screams before you settle. You catch your breath as you stare at the merman who just watches you curiously not making a move to leave

•You had heard of merfolk, everyone had but it was rare to see them unless you were a poacher and even then merfolk were famous for sinking the ships that were after them. You had met a cocky sailor once who had tried to boast by showing off a few mermaid scales he has sliced off some mermaid he was tracking but it had only disgusted you thinking about how terrified the poor girl must've been

•Although as you carfully look over the merman in front of you it doesn't look like this one has had any better luck, winding scars paint his chest and it seems he's missing an arm...you wearily glance up to the blue eyes watching you, you're pretty sure merfolks were supposed to have silted iris but this merman's pupils are blown wide with curiosity

"...so...can you copy anything I say?" you ask, "...so...can you copy anything I say?" He repeats in your voice, which...is admittedly a bit creepy but he makes a pleased trill noise after he shows off

"Right...so you uh, have a name?" you ask, the merman nods eagerly then pauses looking a little sad before smiling and saying "Vash!" in a woman's voice you've never heard before

•You come to realize that Vash can mimic pretty much any sound as long as he's heard it before. You assume it's some sort of hunting tactic which scared you a bit until you realized he mostly used it to mimic the noises of other sea animals to bring them closer, so it seemed humans were not on the merfolk menu

•Vash comes around pretty much everyday, trying to communicate through half phrases he had heard and various chirps and trills you often had to decode the message of. Luckily he was very expressive so it helped with the context

•You find Vash loves human things, you even started bringing him foods after he snatched a bag of donuts from your hand one morning. So you eat most your meals out by the rocks now, not that you mind. The life of a light house keeper was a lonely one, so you were glad for the company as unconventional as it may be

•The two of you actually become close, or...as close as a human and merman can get you guess? Only issue for you is you don't seem to realize how close you actually are

•Vash has decided. You'd be the perfect mate. You're a good swimmer (for a human), you provide food (donuts), and it only confirms it in his head when one day he makes and happy chirp noise and you jokingly try to mimic it back the same way he does, not realizing it's a show of affection in the merfolk world

•So Vash takes it upon himself to begin courting you. You know how I said think Ariel when you think about Vash? Yeah he has a little cave in the ocean that he just collects trinkets in. Pennies, jewelry, screws, knives, if it shimmers he's picked it up and stashed it away. Which is why he's sure he'll be very good at scavenging to show you how good of a mate he would make!

•It starts off slow, when you're sitting on the rocks with Vash and he hands you a small shiny quarter. You glance up at him as he watches you eagerly waiting for a response. You smile and run your hand through his wet hair

"For me?" you hum, he makes an affirmative trill, tail slapping against the rock excitedly

"Well thank you, it's very nice Vash"

•Then the next day he brings you a necklace he found which you please him by wearing, something that just confirms his courting is working. Then he brings you and old camera, then a bottle, then a whole sword which you go wide eyed at when your smiling blonde companion pulls it out of the water

•You aren't 100% sure why Vash feels the need to bring you things but you enjoy the collection of shells, sand dollars, and shiny objects he leaves you. Although you feel a little bad that, besides the snacks you offer him, you haven't ever given him a gift

•So you go to the market the next day trying to find something. You didn't really know if Vash had a home to keep anything big in...where did merfolk live anyways? You'd have to ask Vash next time you saw him- and you're getting distracted.

•You sigh almost giving up when a stall that glimmers in the sun catches your eye. Perfect! Vash loved shiny things! You run over to the stall to see what they have when your gaze lands on a gold ear ring. The whole "one ear ring" look was becoming popular among sailors but...Vash liked mimicking humans, maybe he'd like this?

•You quickly buy it (in part thanks to all the spare change Vash leaves in your hands every morning) and head back out to the light house

•When you get there Vash has already pushed himself up on the rocks waiting for you. He makes a pleased trill noise and greets you with a "Good morning!" in your own voice. You chuckle and carfully climb your way over to his spot and sit down

"Good morning to you too! Hold out your hand!" You urge as you dig in your bag for your gift, Vash gives a curious look and tilts his head letting out a questioning "vrr?"

"please? c'mon it's good surprise promise" you say, he nods not one to deny you and holds out his hand. You press the gold ear ring into his palm and smile at him.

"so? do you like it? ...Vash? uh...Vash?" You try to wave your hand in front of his face but his eyes are locked on the trinket, as if completely shocked. His face is...also going a very bright shade of red the longer he looks at it- did you break him?

"Vash if you don't like it-" before you can finish that thought he quickly makes a panicked chirp when you go to grab it out of his hand and dives into the water leaving you wondering what just happened

•Vash meanwhile is running his fingers over the metal of the ear ring over and over again. Never in his wildest dreams had he expected a courting gift from you! This was so embarrassing! To accept courting advances was one thing but to be so bold as to court back? He never expected you to be so forward! Well...that just confirmed you wanted to be his mate...and that he'd have to up his courting tactics to really impress you

•After about a half hour of sitting bewildered at the mermans reaction you finally spot him as he peaks his head out of the water and- oh! he's wearing the gold ear ring, the hoop hanging from his right ear

"Vash! I almost thought you left for the day" you sigh padding into the water after him, he shakes his head and makes a cooing noise before repeating "Hold out your hand!" just as you had earlier

"hmm? oh you didn't have to get me something too but okay" You relent holding out your hand, expecting more change or something shiny-

"ahhhh!" you scream as a a live fish about as big as your arm is dropped into your hands. You fumble and drop it, the fish flops around before darting away as soon as it hits the water. Vash frowns, this...was going to be harder than he thought.

#vash x reader #vash x you #trigun x reader #mer!vash #Trimaid? #Mergun? #Yeah that doesn't sound right #mer!vash x reader

[xiaq]

How did you and B meet?

I'm sure I've talked about this before, but here's the Official Story from our reception invitations:

Erica met B through their mutual friend G while rock climbing at the Austin greenbelt in April of 2019.

Erica had just purchased a new camera and 80% of the photos she took that day were of B. She shyly sent B the best ones and noted he was a lovely subject. B said, “thanks bro” and used those pictures for his Bumble profile.

It was an auspicious beginning.

At the time, B was living and working in Austin while Erica was a PhD student in Dallas. She often visited “home” to see her parents and climb, so they met up regularly over the next two years.

When the pandemic hit, Erica moved back to Austin to work on her dissertation, and isolated with a small group of climbers that included B. They also started playing D&D together.

Erica’s character was a chaotic neutral half-elf bard who cast spells and cantrips exclusively via limerick. Her go-to solutions to problems they encountered were seduction, inciting political rebellion, befriending monsters, and stabbing.

B played a lawful good half-elf paladin who found Erica’s character extremely vexing.

In real life, however, they had quite a bit in common, and started spending time alone outside of group climbing and D&D meetups. Later, they would discover they had a mutual romantic interest at this point, but neither acted on it since Erica had accepted a visiting professorship in Colorado. She moved in July.

When Erica returned briefly to Austin over spring break the following year, she spent most of her time with B: climbing, hiking, grilling at her parent’s place, and staunchly denying there was anything happening between them even if she wished there was because honestly, mom, he's never shown the slightest bit of interest in me (her father scoffed loudly from the other room).

She decided to move back to Austin at the end of the school year. When B (and G) came to visit her a few weeks before she moved, Erica decided to be brave and make her intentions known. While watching a UFC fight with B on the couch, she tucked her toes, lasciviously, under B’s thigh.

Shockingly, he did not respond to this unequivocal romantic overture. But he did help her remove all the temporary wallpaper on her ugly rental cabinets before they left, so that was nice.

The following month, when Erica moved back to Austin, B asked if she’d like to come over for dinner after climbing. She agreed because she wanted to procrastinate unpacking and also she was slightly in love with him. The following day, he asked if she wanted to have dinner again. She did.

“Wow,” Erica said to her mother that morning, “I guess B is really lonely since G moved. He’s been asking me to hang out with him a lot.”

“You're an idiot,” her mother said.

That night, B asked Erica if she'd ever thought about them dating.

“I’m thinking about it now,” she said, cavalier, suave, blasé, and not nervous at all.

This wasn’t a lie, but she had also thought about it once or twice prior to that moment as well.

“Great,” B said, “How would you feel if I kissed you?”

And Erica said, “Yeah, I’d feel pretty good about that.”

A few weeks later, B casually showed Erica an empty shelf in his bathroom cabinet and an inviting space in his closet and a couple spare drawers in his dresser and she, equally casually, moved in with him.

Over the next year, the apartment’s decor and Erica’s diet improved drastically. They traveled, they climbed, they spent time with each others families. They lived, laughed, loved and reduced, reused, recycled. Shortly after moving into their new house, combining bank accounts, making each other their medical powers of attorney, solidifying their retirement plans, and discussing whether getting married would have tax benefits, they realized most people got engaged before doing…a good portion of those things. So they planned to propose to each other.

Christmas of 2022, they took a road trip across Colorado. B proposed to Erica on the gondola in Telluride; two days later, Erica proposed to B on the Train to Cascade Canyon in Durango. They both said yes.

In August 2023 they will elope, with their dog Deacon as a witness, to Mt. Rainier national park.

In November 2023, they’ll celebrate with their friends and family at a backyard reception that will include food, drinks, swimming, croquet, corn hole, axe-throwing and a bounce house (the axe-throwing and the bounce-house will be on opposite sides of the lawn; if it's cold, the pool will be heated). They hope you’ll come and share their joy with them.

#b #wedding stuff #love #romance

[luveline]

idk if you've done anything like this but maybe a rockstar!james where he introduces his relationship to the world/his fans ?

this was SO FUN tysm for your request! ♥ fem!reader | 1.1k words

James had asked specifically before he did what he did if it was okay. You love him and think it's sweet that he wants to, so you tell him to make sure he uses a good picture. 

Some huge magazine had asked him to do a video for their website. You know vaguely when it gets uploaded because suddenly friends and even acquaintances are texting you repetitively. It's not long after that when The Marauders superfans start requesting to follow your twitter account. You'd set it to private beforehand, though there was nothing of interest there anyways, only retweets and Spotify links. You're glad you did when the notifications start and don't stop. 

You turn off your phone and open up your laptop, navigating to the magazine's website, where the front page boasts your pretty boyfriend's face right at the top. You click the video link and wait for it to load, heartbeat as quick as a mouse's.

The introduction is quick. James sits behind a white table wearing a black, nondescript short-sleeved t-shirt. His fancy watch catches the light as he leans forward. "Hey, I'm James Potter from the rock band The Marauders, and today I'll be showing you guys what's in my bag." 

He picks up a much cleaner version of his rucksack, new for the shoot. His actual rucksack sits at the bottom of your bed. You move your socked feet out of the way so you can compare it to the fraud on screen. It'll be fun to poke fun at him tonight over his lies. 

There's not a lot of guidance to the video. He takes things out one at a time and gives some story behind them. There's a battered pair of drumsticks and a cleaner pair swiftly follows. James goes through them quickly, so a spare is always a good idea. The drumsticks are followed by a piece of drum gum in a plastic case, and a wrist brace for his dicky left arm. 

He pulls out his chapstick with a subtle smirk. 

"And my book," he says, pulling out a messed up paperback. You roll your eyes when you see it because it's not his book at all, it's yours, and he's wrecked it completely. 

A bookmark sticks out about halfway through. "I got this recommended to me by a very pretty girl. Beautiful women seem to always have the best taste in books. I don't have to tell you guys," he says with a wink. He puts the book with everything else he's unveiled so far. "And it's a damn good book." 

You flush warm with pleasure.  

He pulls out some amazingly expensive headphones, an adapter for his electric drum kit, a different pair of noise cancelling headphones, his custom earplugs, his phone charger – again, new for the shoot – and a familiar notebook. 

"This is for everything." He pulls it open to a random page and broadcasts what's clearly not his own handwriting. "I hate transcribing. Remus has done it for me here," he confides. "You have to love him." 

You can imagine the twitter uproar as fans sing the band's bassist's praises. You do have to love Remus, he's an angel, and you'll have to have a word with James about taking advantage of his friend's kindness. 

He turns it to another page. There's a sketch there of a tree you don't really recognise. James draws a lot, more than you could ever keep track of. He's even painted you a landscape or two in heavy gauche before, gifts with awfully sweet dedications on the back. 

He's very good. "For sketching and things. This was a sycamore outside of the Point House arena. It had those helicopter seeds falling from it. You remember when you'd pick those up as a kid and throw them back up into the air?"

The camera person says something and James nods passionately. "Right, we'd have races too! Simpler times." 

It cuts to James pulling out his wallet and his phone. They ask to see his phone wallpaper and he obliges. It's a photo of him and Sirius as kids. They could only be thirteen or fourteen in the photograph, but already Sirius holds his wicked charm like a knife, a sharp smile and a sharper gaze, though his arm around James shoulder is languidly placed. 

"Yep, he's always been like that." 

And finally, his wallet. It's nothing fancy. You can't afford anything as quality as he could himself but he hasn't tried to replace it since you bought it. He peels it open and makes a joke about nobody stealing his identity. 

He smiles wide. "Here's the most important thing in my bag. No, not my card." 

He pulls a piece of white paper from the fold between deft fingers and then turns it to reveal you, a photo of you.

You'll admit you look pretty. There's nothing fanciful to it, just you giving him a soft smile with your hair done up, your head tilting ever so slightly toward your lifted shoulder. 

"This is my girl." He pulls your photo toward him and looks down over the top, no bravado, no charming comment. He smiles at you. "Doesn't she look nice here?" 

The camera person says something again. James looks up, waiting for them to finish before he grins. 

"Yeah, this is my girlfriend. Y/N." 

There's subtitles for the camera person's next question. "This is the first time you've talked about having a partner publicly. Why now?" 

The truth is just the unfortunate consequence of fame. Smear campaigns, hatemail, paparazzi, invasions of privacy. But you can't hide forever. And it feels nice – feels incredible, like your cheeks might bruise from the ache of your smile – to be shown off. 

"'Cos I wanna take her on vacation for our six months, and I want the first photo people see of her to be this one, rather than her drooling on my arm in the airport." 

You laugh. 

"Six months, you've been together?" the camera person asks. 

"And counting. Best six months of my life." 

The interview moves on. There's a few layover shots of the bag's contents. You can't help but feel embarrassed at your face on a clear display next to his wallet, though a binging notification catches your attention before you can pick it apart. 

You click on the notification, an email. It opens, James' voice in the background talking about the new album. 

It's unsurprisingly from loverboy himself. 

Answer your phone!!!!! sent from my iPhone.

You email him back. I've had to turn it off. 

Oh fuck. Are you okay?

You pull the email tab to the side and watch James smile and say goodbye to everyone watching. 

Yeah, I'm perfect. Facetime me?

On you like a rash. 

#james potter x reader #james potter x you #james potter x y/n #marauders era #marauders #james potter blurb #james potter imagine #james potter drabble #james potter dialogue #james potter #james potter x fem!reader #fem!reader #drummer!james #rockstar!au #rockstar!james potter

[angelsanarchy]

Glass Houses: Jack Thurlow x Y/N Series CH 02 -> CH 03

"He looks just like Rusty and he keeps following me." "Unless you're walking through pet sematary, I assure you that's not Rusty."

Tagging: @roryculkinluvr @thatsthewrongwallcraig @icarus-star

"How was therapy?" Shanda asked as Jack walked through the neighbor smoking a cigarette.

"He recommended getting fresh air instead of staying locked up in the house. Naturally I'm having a cigarette and talking a walk." Jack smirked.

"I'd say that's progress, somewhat." Shanda laughed. Jack knew she really didn't want to leave him by himself but it had been a few days and he honestly felt fine. He didn't mind the silence when he was writing and when the silence made him anxious, he turned on a playlist to start boxing things in the upper levels up.

"I was checking with work and I think I might be able to make it back for the weekend-" Jack cut her off.

"Shan, please stop trying to fuck your own life up to babysit me. I am following all the rules, being a good little patient and working on myself. I don't want you to waste your life freaking out about me." Jack loved Shanda. They had been through a lot as kids and now as adults. He wanted her to be happy and live the life she wanted to live and she couldn't do that if she was taking care of him.

"Jack, you're my best friend. I'm going to worry." Shanda defended.

"I know that and I love you for that but I promised you that if I ever got those feelings again, I would reach out. I'm not going to let myself get that bad again." Jack knew the meds were working because his mind was usually at ease. It was his body that wasn't working out.

"How about the sleeping? How's that going?" Shanda asked.

"I sleep a lot more and I'm trying to eat more but everything makes me nauseous. I need to find something to supplement my lack of vitamins or something because sleeping half the day doesn't help when you're trying to meet deadlines." Jack placed the cigarette between his lips to run his hand through his hair.

"What about the sleep walking?" Shanda was the only one who knew about his sleep walking episodes. It was something that bonded them as kids because everyone else thought they were weird for having such vivid sleep walking episodes.

"None that I know of but I did put up some cameras just to make sure. I'm thinking about putting a few inside just in case. Basement cameras, maybe one in the kitchen." Jack could hear whining but couldn't quite place where it was coming from.

"You should get those nanny-cams they have for elderly people so I can check on you when you don't answer my calls." Shanda joked making Jack laugh.

"That would just give me motivation to figure out my dick dysfunction to scar you." Jack had been medicated since he was hospitalized and he hadn't been able to get a single hard on since he started. At first it didn't bother him because nothing was really piquing his sexual interest but now his body felt far past pent up.

"It wouldn't be the first guy whose tried to jerk off at me. Remember I live in New York." Jack heard the whining again and stopped walking.

"What the hell is that?" Jack looked around in the open field he was standing in trying to follow the sound.

"What's wrong?" Shanda asked.

"I keep hearing something whining, like a dog or an animal of some kind." Jack started towards the trees and heard it again.

"Are you sure? Maybe you're just hearing feedback through the phone." Jack knew what feedback sounded like and this wasn't it. He got all the way to the tree line when a small white dog popped out of the woods and strutted up to him.

"Holy shit..." Jack put his cigarette out on his shoe and stuffed the butt in his pocket.

"What?! What is it? Did you find the noise?" Shanda sounded concerned.

"Rusty?" Jack knelt down to the dog and he didn't move.

"Um...Jack." Shanda had the unfortunate experience of seeing the collateral damage that came from Jack's breakdown. Sadly Rusty was it.

"I know, I know. He's dead. I killed him but Shan..." Jack held his hand out and the dog still didn't move.

"I'm sure there are plenty of dogs that look like Rusty in that neighborhood. Your neighbors are upper class white elders. Just walk away from him." Shanda suggested.

Jack stood up and looked behind the dog, not hearing anyone call out for him or come popping through the trees to retrieve him. He also noticed it didn't have a collar either. He tried walking away but now the dog was following him.

"Did you walk away?" Shan asked curiously.

"Yeah but I mean I can't seem to-" The dog had run up to him and was no jumping on his legs.

"He looks just like Rusty and he keeps following me." Jack knelt down to pet the dog now that he was engaging with him.

"Unless you're walking through Pet Semetary, I assure you that's not Rusty." Shanda reminded. Jack missed Rusty more than anything. Rusty had been his comfort through a lot of his life and knowing that he was a victim of his mental break broke his heart more than anything.

"I can't just leave him out here by himself. It's going to get dark soon." Jack got back to his feet and picked the dog up.

"Jack, please don't do anything that's going to set you back. Just ask some of your neighbors. They'll probably be able to tell you who he belongs to." Jack started walking back to the neighborhood but wasn't really ready to go interacting with his neighbors. He didn't see the point in getting stuck in the cycle of everyone talking to him about his dead parents and decision to move into the big house by himself.

"I'll just take him home tonight and call Nancy at the vet. She might be able to figure out who they belong to." Jack scratched the dogs head and started towards the house, ending his phone call abruptly with Shanda. He kept his eyes peeled for anyone running around frantically looking for a lost dog but no one ever came outside.

"Come on little buddy. Let's get you something to eat. You look tired." Jack rooted through some of the groceries Shanda had left behind for him and could only find a bag of goldfish. He grabbed Rusty's old dog dish and took him upstairs. He cleaned him up in the sink before plopping him down on the bedroom floor.

"Sorry buddy, I only have this. It's not much but I wasn't really expecting company." Jack sat on the floor next to the bowls, one filled with water and the other with goldfish crackers. The pup sniffed them both and started eating the goldfish. Jack pet his back softly.

"That's a good boy. Good boy." His heart hadn't ached for much while he was hospitalized but sitting here with Rusty's doppelganger made his heart hurt. He made a mental note to mention getting a new dog to his therapist.

#Jack Thurlow #Jack Goes Home #One Shot Series #Culkin Cult #Glass Houses #Rory Culkin #Y/n will appear in the next one shot #let me know if you want to be included on the tag list #2/32

[thezombieprostitute]

Changing Minds - Part 4

Summary: Your long time work acquaintance Nick Fowler offers to take you to a fancy fundraiser as a way of cheering you up. He insists it's only as friends but when he sees you falling into the grasp of someone he knows is no good, he might change his mind on that.

Word Count: ~2.4k (definitely a big'un for my standards!)

Warnings: Implied violence and attempted murder. Please let me know if I missed any.

A/N: Reader is an older female (late 30's +). This is part of the Garbage Men AU.

Part 3 -- Part 5

Series Masterlist

Nick’s been making sure to keep texting you. Nothing too romantic, too revealing, but still keeping in touch, keeping up the appearance of interest. He’s gotten his hands on a tennis bracelet with your favorite color gemstones. Jake was able to find a small enough tracker that could be hidden behind one of the stones. He figured it should be easy enough to offer it to you while you were at work.

But as he pulls into the parking lot he’s thrown into a mild panic at the sight of so many police vehicles and ambulances. He gets out of the car and walks as close as he can before he’s stopped by an officer.

“What’s going on,” he asks, worry etched into his face.

“There’s a bomb,” the officer responds. “We’ve got almost everyone safely out. Bomb squad is in there now.”

“What about Y/N? She’s a friend of mine who works here.”

The officer shrugs, “everyone who’s gotten out of the building is over in that section.” He points to a small group near the ambulances. Nick immediately walks over but he doesn’t see you. He recognizes one of the people who works for you, Nikki? Nicole? He can’t remember but he gets their attention.

“Where is Y/N? Why isn’t she with you?”

“The bomb was at her desk,” the young lady whispers. “It…it was activated when she sat down on her chair or something.”

For a moment, Nick can’t think. Any second now you could be dead, likely all because of him. He sees the police lights flashing and pulls out his phone, dialing Sheriff Bodecker. 

He answers after three rings, “this had better be damn important, Fowler.”

“The City Clerk office–”

“Yeah, we got our best people helpin’ out that little lady. What about it?”

“I need access.”

“No can do, Fowler. That’s a city-owned building with city employees at risk. Can’t be havin’ a civilian helpin’ on the investigation. This stays in house.”

“Bullshit,” Nick growls into the phone. “She’s my friend! She’s in danger and I need to know who the hell placed that damn thing!”

“You’ll get access to the reports the same time as every other citizen,” Lee states. “You know where my loyalties lie, Nick, but when it comes to city stuff, I got alotta protocol to follow if I want to keep my job.”

Nick angrily hangs up the phone. He knows Bodecker is right but he’s still pissed off about it. He calls up Jake to ask him to hack the security cameras but Jensen says it’s a no-go. The security cameras are all self-contained. He’d have to be in the building itself to mess with them. Nick hangs up, frustrated.

He’s trying to think of other options when his eyes spot Clark Kent near the building, talking to the police. Confused and enraged Nick stalks over to him, trying to pick up as much of the conversation as he can. He hears snippets of “oh that poor lady,” and “any resources I can offer” before Kent spots him.

“Mr. Fowler,” he greets. “I’m not surprised to see you here. Your poor friend must be a mess!”

“What are you doing here,” Nick seethed.

“I was hoping to pay the lovely Lady a visit,” he calmly answers. “I had such a lovely time talking with her and I was hoping to talk to her some more. But then this!” Kent gestures at the building, “who would do such a thing? Why would they do such a thing?”

Nick sees through the mask of concern Kent has set up. They both know the value of the records in that building and several reasons why someone would want them destroyed. But if either of them admits to it, it would only be used against them. As much as Nick wants to punch him, he knows it would only make everything worse. 

Fortunately the tension is cut with a small cheer from your coworkers. Both men look and see you being walked outside. Nick’s never seen you so scared and he tries to run to you but is stopped by the officer.

“Please,” Nick insists, “she’s my friend. Please let me go help her.”

“It’s okay, Officer,” Kent adds. “I can confirm their friendship. Please let him go to her?” The officer looks at both men and lets Nick pass, letting the officer escorting you know what’s going on. When you see Nick you reach out to him and take his hand. 

“W’ere taking her to the ambulance,” the officer tells him. “Gonna get her vitals checked. Likely in a state of shock.” Nick nods and walks with you, his hand never leaving yours. 

You find yourself leaning into him as you get to the ambulance. Your coworkers try to get closer but Nick gestures at them to stay back saying, correctly, you need air. The EMT gets to work checking everything she can. She confirms that you’re suffering from shock and either need a hospital stay overnight or to have a friend keep an eye on you at your home. You don’t argue when Nick says he’ll take care of you. You just nod.

Your coworkers give you space as Nick walks you to his car, all of them giving you well wishes. You nod and quietly thank each of them as you walk. You definitely didn’t expect to see Mr. Kent walking up to you, steel blue eyes full of concern.

“My dear Lady,” he starts, taking your free hand in both of his, “I do hope you will recover quickly.” You can’t bring yourself to say anything so you just nod and keep walking.

Nick helps you into your apartment and let yourself slump into your favorite chair. Every time Nick has tried to speak you put up a hand to stop him. You need this. The familiarity of home and comfort before you can bring yourself to have the conversation you know you need to have with him. 

Nick has respected your request for silence but, in his need to do something, he asks, “can I get you some tea or something? If I can find the stuff.” You take a deep breath to steady yourself. Nick notices your nostrils flaring in agitation and wishes he’d kept his mouth shut.

“What I need,” you huff, “is for you to tell me what the hell is going on?” You glare at Nick and he’s taken aback at the ferocity in your eyes. 

“I don’t know anything about the bomb, I swear to you.”

“Of course it isn’t you, Nick,” you scold, your voice getting louder with each word. “We’ve been acquaintances for years with no problem. Then I’m introduced to Mr. Kent, hear your background with him, and suddenly I’m given police reports meant to make you look dangerous and have a bomb placed at my desk! He even showed up to the scene of the damn crime! It doesn’t take a genius to figure this shit out!” 

Nick finds himself stumbling over his words. He’s never seen you like this before and he’s not sure what he can do or say to help.

“Don’t you dare tell me you don’t know anything,” you scold him. “You got me into this damn mess, you’re going to either get me out of it or keep me safe!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Nick whispers in awe of your anger. He’s very glad he didn’t get you that cup of tea as he’s pretty sure he’d be covered in burn marks from you throwing it in his face. 

“And you’re going to call whatever people you’re associated with and get me some more secure locks on my door and maybe even a fucking panic button I can press if I need help. Hell, maybe even a tracker in case I get kidnapped!” Nick ducks his head in shame at that one. “You actually have something already, don’t you,” you chide. “Well, let’s see it!”

Nick pulls out the jewelry box with the tennis bracelet and hands it to you. Your eyes widen in surprise at how pretty it is. “So this is why you wanted to know things like my favorite color?” He nods. “Alright, show me where the tracker is so that I can make sure it doesn’t get damaged or something.” He quietly shows you everything and you put on the necklace. He shows you the locator app on his phone and you feel a little relief. At least now there’s a chance someone would find your body.

While his phone is out he calls someone named “Barnes”. He tries to walk to another room to have a quiet conversation but you refuse to let him leave you alone. If he says anything that downplays his role in your current situation you will make sure this Barnes fellow hears your counter argument. 

The entire conversation he feels the burn of your glare on him. He had no idea you could possess such rage. He wonders if this is how people feel when he’s angry at them. He feels like he needs to confess every bad thing he’s ever done just to get you to stop looking at him like that. 

He hangs up the phone and tells you a couple of people will be there to beef up your security around the apartment and talk to you about other security options.

After a couple of hours Nick tells you the “guests” are here and there’s a knock at the door right after. He checks the peephole and opens the door. Inside walks a tall, broad man with a dark beard, blue eyes, wearing a beanie and carrying a toolbag. With him is a curvy woman who approaches you with a gentle smile and says, “you can call me Teach. This is Curtis, he’s going to make sure your apartment door and windows are all reinforced with stronger locks.” Curtis grunts acknowledgement as the door closes and he immediately gets to work.

Nick tries to approach and stand next to you as you start talking with Teach but you give him a glare and he ends up sitting at the far end of your couch. You’d laugh at how much he looks like a petulant child if you weren’t still angry at him. Teach definitely picks up on your animosity and asks “would you like someone else on your security detail?”

“I’m not sure,” you quietly admit. 

“If it helps at all he is one of the best three in terms of personal security.”

You nod, “but will having him around just make it worse for me?”

“Quite possibly,” Teach admits. “It feels like the closer you and Nick appear to be, the worse it’ll be for you. On the other hand, if he’s not around, it leaves you open and vulnerable. We just don’t know enough to know if Kent’s people will leave you alone if the two of you have a falling out or if he’ll try something anyways just to further hurt Nick. Considering the options, it’s likely safer for you to keep him around.”

Sighing, you concede to her logic, “I suppose we can keep up the friendship and fake dating thing until we know how Kent will react to a breakup.”

“Oh good,” Teach says. “Nick did tell you it was a platonic date.”

“No he didn’t,” you shake your head and her eyes widen. “He didn’t need to,” you scoff. “Nick isn’t as good at hiding his feelings as he likes to think.”

Teach seems to consider your words, “or you’re just that good at reading him. He’s a regular winner at the monthly poker games.” She shakes her head, “but that’s neither here nor there. He’ll be assigned to your security under the premise of dating. We’ll make sure to get you some additional coverage in the form of surveillance. We’ve got eyes on nearby security cameras for your apartment and your office. I’ll give you my contact information so that, if you think of other security measures you’d like, you can ask me.”

“Thank you, Teach, sincerely. How can I repay you?”

She gets a sly smile, “make sure Nick doesn’t get off easy? He fucked up big time and you’re paying the price.”

“He only took me to that event to try to cheer me up.”

“And yet,” she whispers, “from what I’ve heard, he didn’t even try to play it cool in separating you from Kent. If he’d been more casual, let you spend the evening with Kent, maybe there wouldn’t be such a big target on your back. Seriously, for as good as Nick can be about hiding his feelings, he seems to be unable to mask up around you.” 

You ponder on that while Curtis finishes up the reinforcement measures for your apartment. He and Teach head out and move to stand in front of Nick, who hasn’t moved from his spot on the couch.

Clearing your throat to get his attention your heart softens when you see the pain in his eyes. “We need to discuss the rules and get our story straight,” you tell him. He nods and you continue, “we can actually use the emotional trauma of the bomb and say that was the catalyst that moved us from friends to dating.” Again, a silent nod from him. “Every time you’re at my apartment you will sleep on the couch. Every time you see me you will bring me a flower or some other small gift. Every time we go out, we will keep PDA to a minimum.” For each requirement you bring up he silently nods.

“Do you have anything to say,” you chide.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” he starts. “I…I shouldn’t have…I’m just...so sorry.” Your feel deflated as the last of your anger dissipates at his sincere apology.

Sighing, you tell him, “I need to get some sleep. Feel free to familiarize yourself with the kitchen. You are allowed to roam my apartment but not my bedroom.” You start walking towards your bed and mutter under your breath, “that’s reserved for people actually interested in me.”

Part 3 -- Part 5

Series Masterlist

Tags:

@alicedopey

@jaqui-has-a-conspiracy-theory

@rebekahdawkins

@texmexdarling

If you'd like to be tagged, please let me know.

#nick fowler x reader #mafia!nick fowler x reader #dark!clark kent #mob au #nick fowler #mob!nick fowler #nick fowler x female reader

[kashimos-hajime]

—𝟐𝟐 - 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 | 𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐲, 𝐢 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮

pairing: getou suguru x fem!reader

summary: anonymous musician, kogane, had been dropping non-hints of who they were since they first began releasing music to the students of tokyo metropolitan technical college nine months ago to the frustration of everyone ever.

getou suguru, long-time (arguably #1) fan and campus heartthrob with a reputation is determined to find out exactly who they are before he graduates, and he has no idea where to start. that is, until resident idiot and best friend and roommate, gojo satoru, points him in the direction of you, the musical genius behind kogane

word count: 11.3k

a/n: hey yall!! i’m here with one of the most important chapters of the series. for reference for the song that *spoiler* suguru and y/n dance to, it is house of cards - full length by bts. i recommend you search up the translation of the lyrics if you do give it a listen because it has a lot of foreshadowing (also it’s a certified banger)

[9:30 AM]

You get up with a sense of trepidation. 

You spent all of last night picking out what to wear, and making sure you had everything you’d need so you wouldn’t rush in the morning, and as you leave the apartment while Maki still asleep, you can’t help feeling like your stomach’s about to spill out of your body.

A date. Your first… real date in a long time. Are you insane? As you check your reflection in your phone camera, you can’t help but scrutinize every aspect of your face. Every imperfection. What is going on through his head? What… what made him suddenly ask you out?

No. He might not even have meant it like that, you tell yourself firmly, turning off your phone screen and slipping it back into your pocket. Despite what your friends said, you have to keep a sane head about you. Not to mention, all that talk about Sukuna…

There’s no space for him in your head today of all days, and you firmly try to shut down that thought before it can branch any further.

He’s waiting in front of the building, looking around, and the way your entire body seems to lunge forward at the sight of him makes you burn in embarrassment. He’s dressed in sweats and a hoodie, a windbreaker pulled over that, and his gym bag is slung across his body, but he looks handsome as always, and he lights up when he spots you coming over.

Your heart cramps in your chest.

“Good morning. Sorry if it’s too early,” is the first thing Suguru says as you approach him. 

“If it was too early, I would’ve came later. I need to get work done anyway.” You push your glasses up your face, and fish out your student card from your pocket. It’s attached to a lanyard, and you loop your wrist through it. “I need to stop by the recording studio first really quickly before we head to where you needa go.”

“Yeah, sure.” They walk to the door, and you scan your card so they can head in as he adds casually, “You look nice.”

Your ears warm. “What?”

“You look nice,” he repeats. “I like your cardigan.” You look over at him just as there’s a beep, but he’s already moving to hold open the door and he sweeps his arm, gesturing for you to go in first. “After you.”

“Uh. Thanks.” Maybe it’s the memories of the last time you’d seen him flashing in your head, but your entire mouth blazes and you duck your head to walk in first, leading the way. 

The building’s pretty confusing if you’re a newcomer, but it’s one of the most comfortable places you’ve ever been in. Equipped with many rooms for recording music, practicing instruments, rehearsing for dance, it’s a place where many of those majoring in such studies have to be in for up to twelve hours a day. Your work space is the third floor, and Suguru follows close, just a half-step behind.

In the elevator, you glance up at the numbers.

“How’re you and Mina?” you ask as nonchalantly as you can. “You said you guys weren’t friends?”

“I stopped seeing her,” he answers. “Just not interested anymore.”

“She got boring?” You frown, surprised. It’s harsh of you to say, but Suguru’s been seen hanging onto her since the party. You’d thought that whatever had occurred to him was nothing more than water under the bridge and she was… she’s prettier than you, and bubblier. Very kind. Friendly. Hard to find someone like her boring.

Suguru shrugs. “No. She just wasn’t my type.”

“She’s not your type? But she’s beautiful and really nice, too.”

“So?”

“Well, if that isn’t your type, I don’t know what is.” The doors open and you walk ahead. He trails after you after a beat, and your mind wracks for what could possibly be the reason Suguru decided to drop someone like Mina so suddenly. Not interested in dating? Then why was he with her for the past week? And he hadn’t denied the rumours surrounding him earlier when you had asked him before yesterday.

Men are so fucking confusing. 

You shake your head.

The studio you’ve unofficially designated as yours as one of the senior music students is the one closest to the lounge room that houses a small kitchen unit, big couches, and even a TV that is hoisted onto a wall. 

You explain, briefly, about the lounge: “There’s even a gaming system that someone donated a few years back.” Unlocking the door to the lounge for him, you turn to Suguru with a faint smile. “You can wait here,” you tell him. “I just needa grab something next door.”

“I can’t come with?” he asks and you shake your head. “Why not?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Surprise?”

A track that you’d been crafting for a while that you want to upload later in the year, but you’re not about to tell him that so you just smile. “Mhm.” Suguru pouts playfully, and you shove him into the room, promising you’ll be back soon. “I’m sure you can entertain yourself. I’ll just be next door.”

“But I wanna see your studio.”

“You’ve seen it before.”

“I know, but it’s been a while.” 

“Suguru.”

“I missed you,” he sniffs, nose scrunching and a playfully childish expression on his face. You roll your eyes, and he inches closer, as if to walk past you towards your studio himself. You grab his arm, and he grins toothily. “I want to spend time with you, (Name).”

“Can’t you last two seconds without me?”

“I think I’ll die,” he affirms, and you can’t help your own foolish smile. He tilts his head, catching it, but you merely turn away, taking the arm you’ve grabbed and throwing it towards the lounge door. “Wait—“

“Stay put, baby,” you drawl, and his eyes widen. Ears beginning to pink, he opens his mouth to argue but you simply shove him deeper into the room and close the door on him. 

Scampering to your studio, you swipe your card and slip in. Taking your laptop out of your bag, you hook it up and begin to transfer a file you wanted to insert into the track. It’s a pretty old audio, from a recording of when you were a new student on campus, and now that you’re in your last year, you thought it would be right ro release a graduation song. A last farewell. It includes your voice back then, too, and you cringe at your own singing as you listen to it playback through headphones you shove onto one ear.

As soon as it’s done, you click through to make sure it transferred properly before sighing and unhooking everything. You try to keep your school laptop pretty empty, consisting of only new works in progress and other school files, which means all your music on the side has been shoved into USBs scattered across everywhere you live, other computers. One day, you’ll be glad that you can strip this laptop bare and have it focused solely on producing your tracks and not stress out about anything else.

You slip your laptop back into your bag and head out, migrating back to the lounge room. Inside, Suguru’s laying on the couch, his legs draped over the back of it as he scrolls on his phone, but at the sound of the door opening, his eyes dart up to meet yours.

“Look who came crawling back,” he teases, drawing himself up, and you shake your head, moving to check on the fridge. There’s a lot in here surprisingly, but you think a lot of it comes from people working at restaurants and them bringing their leftovers when they can. You sigh, rifling through it to make sure nothing’s spoiled. It stinks up the entire floor if someone’s not on top of it so most of the senior students keep up to date on the inside. “Woah, you got a lot of food in here.”

You jump, head snapping to the sound, and you jerk back when you find Suguru’s face mere inches away from yours. Heat flashes across your face as you straighten up, backing up. He observes you quietly through squinted eyes, and then he leans over the fridge door that barricades them from each other, smirking. “Did I scare you?”

“The food is for all-nighters. Need coffee and food to stay awake when you’re working at 3 AM,” you manage to say, pulling away from him as quick as you can without it being weird. Dark eyes bore into yours, and you reach to close the fridge. It seals itself shut and suddenly there’s nothing between their bodies. For some reason, it makes you feel very vulnerable. “And no. You didn’t scare me.” 

He clicks his tongue with a wry side smile. “Tch. Dang.”

Running a thumb underneath the shoulder strap of your laptop bag, you begin to walk away. “You’re annoying.”

“And yet, you keep me around.” He follows.

. 

You’ve only been to the uni’s dance studios once or twice, but Suguru leads you to one you’ve never been in before. It’s on the top most floor, and has a good view of the rest of the campus. When they go inside, the blinds are down, but Suguru tells you to make yourself at home and heads to pull them up, revealing so much sunlight pouring into the room it makes you squint. One wall is all mirrors to the left of the windows, and on the right are ballet barres, which you situate yourself under so you’re near the center back of the room. 

“You comfy there, baby?” he calls, and you look up on instinct, nodding before registering what he called you and you look down, pulling your laptop out hastily. He walks back over to you, sliding forward onto his knees with a hand planted on the ground and his leg bumps into yours as he flashes you a smile. “If you get hungry or anything, tell me. We can stop whenever.”

“Okay. But you’re working on something, too, right?”

“Mhm.”

“What is it?”

“Just workshopping some things,” he answers. “I hope you don’t mind me playing music.”

“I got my headphones,” you reply, pulling them out. He tilts his head, eyes flickering to it, before back up to you, and you blink, brow furrowing at the soft smile that flits across his face. He sighs, sets a hand on your head and pushes himself off.

“You’re cute,” he mutters, shaking his head. You scowl but he’s already turning his back, and you’ve lost your chance to spit something out in retort. 

This is so weird.

Is this a date or not?

It certainly doesn’t feel like one. They haven’t seen each other in a few days, but it feels just like it did when they hung out before. The heat, the way you feel so self-conscious around him. He gets close to you, and something in you wants to freak out but you can’t even fucking tell if you want to freak out in a good way or a bad way, and then he’s gone and the entire opportunity has melted away.

Suguru’s got rid of his jacket and hoodie in favour of a loose white tee, and now that he’s just in socks, he begins to roll down his body, stretching and slowly warming up with a lo-fi music playlist that you’ve just noticed beginning to play. His eyes are closed so he can’t see you looking, but when he lifts his arms up above your head, a flash of skin makes you avert your gaze.

You should not be staring.

Firmly placing your headphones on, you open your audio mixing program and bury yourself into the work. The sunlight warms your skin pleasantly, and you begin to forget where you are, finding a comfortable slouch as your mind begins to run like an engine humming, searching for new nooks and crannies in the score that you can fit or adjust another aspect of the instrumental. You haven’t finalized lyrics or anything, but there’s a certain sound that’s missing, and you’re not sure what it is.

It’ll have to be saved for later. You can never be satisfied with what you make. It’s probably one of the worst aspects of being a perfectionist, you think. You can’t let loose ends be. It’ll dog at you until you force yourself to give it up, but until then, you’ll keep trying to craft the perfect goodbye.

Replaying a segment of the bridge, you adjust your legs, stretching them out in front of you and resting your computer in your lap. Your eyes glance to the top right corner to check on the battery, and you roll your neck under a palm as you fish out your charger from your bag blindly. Fingers wrapping around the looped cord, you look up.

And what catches your eye makes your entire body freeze, soften, melt. Your eyes widen as you watch Suguru dance. He’s beautiful as he moves, his hair unbound, his body a singular flowing being that pushes and pulls with the pulse of sound. Your heart lurches into your throat as you dumbly slide the headphones off your ears just to hear what he’s hearing.

You’ve seen him dance before—of course, you have at year-end festivals and other presentations. In short bursts when they were talking about the project. It’s not an unknown fact that Suguru is one of the most talented dancers in the program. 

But there’s something different here. It doesn’t feel like a performance, more it’s like you’re watching something you’re not sure you should be seeing.

The purest expression of human emotion in the way his body is impacted by each note, Suguru bleeds something… vulnerable. Something raw. It’s a pain that echoes and your legs twitch, as if you want to join him, and it takes all your impulse control to stay down.

You’ve never been so close to Suguru while he was immersed fully in his choreography, and when his feet shift, when his arms stretch into those languid lines that are honed with practice, you can’t help but feel something swell in your chest. It hoists the two broken halves of your heart like a balloon, and mends the sharp edges with soft, buttery rubber that wanes under the grace of his pirouette.

You feel soft, and warm, and cherished as you observe art. You don’t know if this is how other people feel when they watch him dance, but this is how you feel. It might be because you have feelings for him, or maybe it’s the way his eyes are barely open, letting his instinct guide him, letting his heart lead his body to extend into the most beautiful lines, but in the sunlight pouring through the wide, tall windows, you are sure that Suguru’s pale golden figure swaying to the song pouring from the speakers is as close to an angel as you will ever get.

The song begins to climax, and Suguru prepares himself for a sharp spin. Your breath hitches and the world begins to slow as he pushes off his foot. Leg out to the side, he begins to pull it in with a control you can’t even fathom. As he turns faster and faster, though, his balance falters, and he stumbles out of the turn four rotations in.

Collapsing to his knees, Suguru lets out a frustrated noise, and he rolls out and lands spread-eagle on his back. He slaps his hand on the floor before it curls into a tight fist, and he throws an arm over his eyes. When the track completely finishes, he flips himself onto his hands and knees, and pushes himself up to his feet again, eyes dark and a displeased scowl plastered across his mouth. It’s so dark it nearly takes you aback, but you know exactly the feeling.

“I like the song,” you offer quietly as the music starts again from the beginning of the track. Suguru’s gaze snaps to you, and you meet his stare head on, offering a half-smile and a shrug. The tension in his face melts away, and the corner of his lip pulls up. Using the bottom of his tee to wipe the sweat from his face, he sighs, and turns around, staring at himself in the mirror and letting his arms swing out, shaking the excess tension out. “You’re a beautiful dancer, Suguru.”

“Thanks. If I could get this turn, maybe I’d be even better,” he adds the latter in a softer, more venomous tone, and you shake your head.

“It looks difficult.”

“I guess.” He shakes his head and sets himself into the prep stance for the turn again. His shoulders square off, and he shifts his weight testily on his back foot. Arms out, he stares at his own reflection, and he’s about to go when he drops his limbs, turning around to look at you. “Don’t watch me.”

“Why?”

“It makes me nervous.”

You can’t help but laugh. “Me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because when pretty girls watch me, I get shy,” he drawls, hands on his hips. His tee sleeves have been folded up as a make-shift tank top, and his posture’s slouched as he cocks his head, still catching his breath. He wipes at his nose with the back of his hand. “Turn around, (Name).”

“I literally will not do that,” you reply. “Staring at the wall is stupid.”

“For me?”

“What on earth makes you think that would make me change my mind?”

He sighs dramatically, and you can’t help your smile growing as he turns back around. You return your focus to your laptop, but watch through your eyelashes as he sets himself into his prep stance once more. One attempt. Two. Four.

You can’t tell if it’s getting better or worse. You have no expert eye, but when Suguru falls onto his back and runs a hand raggedly through his sweaty hair, pulling on the ends, you know for sure that he isn’t feeling his best. You sigh, putting all your stuff down and getting up. He doesn’t raise his head at the sound, and your heart swells in sympathy at the fierce scowl twists his face.

Descending to your knees, your lips press together, and he tilts his head towards you. An arm has been tossed over his eyes again, and he lifts it a bit higher when he realizes you’re so close.

“This is embarrassing,” he admits. “I wanted to impress you with how unbearably talented I was at dancing, but I’ve been stuck on this part of my routine for weeks. To be honest, I thought the extra motivation would help.”

“Perfectionist,” you mutter, surprisingly fond. His face softens, and you help him sit up. He shakes his head, and you let your hand rest on his elbow as he hunches over, sighing. “Maybe you’re in a rut because you’re so focused on it.”

“You think?”

“Mmm, that’s how I feel when I compose something. If there’s sections that aren’t connecting the way I want, I just keep working and go back to it.” Sitting back on your calves, you shrug. “I get frustrated really easily, but I have a pride thing about it, so it’s been a hard road of figuring out that giving your brain a break actually helps see the solution clearer.”

You feel cold compared to the heat radiating off of him. When he offers a hand, you let go of his elbow to take it, and together, they stand. Your heart is pulsing at a mellow pace, but it oozes warm honey everywhere through your body, and it makes your limbs feel lethargic. Your mouth opens, and you wonder what you would’ve said, but Suguru merely grins and it silences you.

“You always know what to say, huh.”

“I’ve been freaking out about a lot of things long before I met you,” you answer, and he laughs. Suguru squeezes your hand before letting go and heading to where his phone is hooked up and you grab your fingers, the tingling that buzzes over your skin making you uncomfortable in your own skin. “What are you doing now?”

Pausing the music, he scrolls on his phone, and you’re about to head over, curiosity piqued, but he holds out a hand, concentration overtaking his features.

“Hold on one second… trying to find it, ah—here it is.”

He presses play and piano begins to flow through the speakers before a strong, hearty string accompaniment joins the instrumental, and Suguru begins to saunter over to you as vocals kick in. You barely hide your smile at the over-exaggerated way he bends his knees as he swaggers over, his body swaying like a piece of silk flowing through wind.

“What are you doing?”

“Convincing you to dance with me with my uncontrollable appeal.”

You laugh. “You’re doing a terrible job of doing it.”

“Am I?” He finally arrives within arms length, and his fingers reach for your forearms, trailing down to your wrists. Leaving trails of cold fire that cause your spine to shudder, you let him pull you into him, and you shake your head as he guides your hand onto his shoulder. His other hand clasps yours in a firm grip you can easily slip out of, and his eyes are on yours the whole time, gauging for any sort of discomfort that could flicker across your face. 

His concern is touching, but you can’t imagine even deciding to run now as his arm tentatively rests on your waist. You step closer, and his Adam’s apple bobs. A tiny nod to himself, Suguru adjusts his feet, shifting his weight in a easy, simple move to the music. 

“Maybe you’re not so bad,” you admit, tilting your head. Your hand on his shoulder runs down the curve of it, and you watch the sun hit his smooth face that’s not lost its pink tinge ever since you’ve come close to him. “You know how to lead.”

“I’m an excellent dance partner,” he informs you, and you roll your eyes.

“Don’t let me convince you otherwise.” 

You have never danced with someone like his before. It’s completely out of your comfort zone to be this close with someone who you aren’t already close with, but Suguru tells no lie in regards to his passion for dancing. You can’t deny you don’t feel out of place as Suguru turns them around the room to the beat as the music begins to pick up in the chorus. 

His feet are placed smoothly, and he guides you without you needing to glance around, but you’re not quite sure you could’ve looked away from his dark eyes either way. Dark, affectionate, his watchful gaze does not stray from your face for a moment. Hair nearly falls into his eyes, but every time, you brush it back behind his ear, and he smiles when you touch his face—not a full smile, but that one he does that pulls at the corner of his mouth teasingly. Like a secret shared between two people. A secret between the sun and the moon.

He lifts his hand to turn you a few times, and he always catches you as they disappear in between the violin, the sound of the singers breathing through their notes in heavenly harmonies, the consistent pattern of piano chords that you can hear as clear as you can feel your blood in your ears. 

Music is your life. You can’t deny it. That, and the intrinsic link it has to dancing. The expressions of the soul. Oh… Suguru. You cannot help but think of the poeticism of it. The romance of it all. Your rose-tinted glasses shift, catch the sunlight, and you can’t help your smile grow bigger as the music begins to fade. You and Suguru still step to their own tune that’s been strung into their bodies, and as he guides you into another spin, you realize then that you trust him entirely.

You trust Suguru not to drop you—or, at least, to break your landing when you fall for him.

Whether it’s to reciprocate your feelings, though you doubt it, you know that through everything he says, everything he does… he cares about you. You’re not stupid enough to deny that he has some sort of affection for you, and that he only has your best intentions, and you have to tell him. You have to tell him everything. Sukuna. Your feelings. Everything. It bottles up inside you, shakes so suddenly like a boiling kettle, that you think you might explode.

He stops your turn, and their fingers find each other easily this time, interlacing. Suguru’s smiling at you, and you lift your hand from his shoulder to brush a few stray strands back away from his face. He turns his face into your knuckles, and you poke his brow, pushing him back.

“You’re so clingy,” you mumble, secretly pleased, and he laughs. Nerves twist your stomach as you let your hand return to his shoulder. “What’s gotten into you?”

“I missed you. We haven’t spoken at all in person this week since the party.” His hand on your waist does not let go, and you let go of his hand in favour of draping your arms over his shoulders lazily. His free palm settles on your other side and they toddle, sway to a panel of sunlight where it’s warm. Suguru hums, slowly stopping their rocking rhythm so they can just stand in the golden beam. “You’re a good follower. If you were in our program, so many people would want to partner up with you.”

“It’s not hard to be a follower. The lead does all the work.”

“That’s not true,” he corrects. “It’s hard to let go of control and trust someone like that, especially people you don’t know that well. The lead has to know where they’re going most of the time and physically hold up their partner, true, but the follower has to let themself flow with the lead. If they resist, it makes everything impossible. They support the lead just as much as the lead supports them.”

“But I do know you. That’s why I trust you,” you reply. “If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t even let them touch me.”

“Hah. Now, that, I have some experience in.”

“So, you’re happy that I’m letting you so close to me, now?” Something playfully malevolent possesses your tongue and you nearly regret your next words as they fly out: “Nanami wasn’t this close to me at the Halloween party, if you’re still keeping score.”

He groans. “Don’t bring up my stupid lapse of judgement, (Name).”

“I think I’ll bring it up as much as I’d like,” you retort, grinning. “You got so jealous over nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing. He likes you and you guys spent nearly the whole night together.”

“Well, whose fault was that? I wanted to spend time with you, but you decided to be all grumpy, but don’t worry, I haven’t seen him since.” You narrow your eyes at him. “Are you jealous again? He barely even exists to me.”

“I know, but—“

Exasperated, you shake your head. “Suguru. Why do you care so much? And I know I asked you this before, but… but Nanami’s not here. He’s not even—I don’t even have any way to message him,  and it’s not like he reached out, so why does it still bother you?”

“Because it’s stupid.”

“What is?”

“How much I wanted to be where he was,” he confesses. Each word presses against your skin in a plush, soft breath, and your heart shoots forward as he tilts his head, his nose brushing against yours. Stomach tightening, you swallow, lips parting. Suguru lets out another pained sigh, “Oh, fuck.”

His eyes find your mouth.

When Sukuna kissed you for the first time five years ago, it had been your very first kiss. You hadn’t known, truly, what it would spiral into. You couldn’t really see his eyes at the time, and in your dreams, they are swallowed by his shadows. In reality, his room had just been too dark to make out anything more than the shape of his nose, his chin, his lips, outlined by the light of his laptop screen. You couldn’t even watch it happen. It just happened. 

One moment, you were watching a show, the next, a mouth had pressed against yours softly, and you submitted to him. For years, you have wondered if the lights had been on, if you would’ve still been there. If the lights had been on as a witness to what your body was doing, would your brain have screeched to a stop?

You think of this now.

Not because you want to think of him. You don’t. You just look into Suguru’s face, and you think of Sukuna, who you can barely recall at this very moment, and you watch it happen this time. 

There’s so much sunlight in this room it’s almost spilling out of their skin, and you can see the way Suguru’s eyebrows twitch together. You watch his thoughts like a one-way glass; you can see into him, and he can’t see a single thing into you, and as he searches your eyes, your mouth, your face for the answers to questions you’re nearly certain he’s silently asking, a sinking feeling begins to rise into your stomach at how long it’s taking. Sukuna had been near instantaneous. You had initiated last time at the party.

But they’re both sober right now, in broad daylight, and they’re both more than aware of what’s going to happen. You’re aware of every atom in your body—the placement of his hands on your body, your arms over his muscled shoulders. You can see the pores in his cheeks, the small acne scars from when he was a teenager you didn’t know existed.

Wasn’t this how a kiss went? Don’t they just go for it?

“If you kissed me right now,” you mumble, feeling more and more uncertain the longer the moment drags on, “I wouldn’t be mad at you or anything.”

Yet, he still doesn’t move.

Why?

Because he won’t do it.

No.

Because why would he? 

You’re right.

Why… would Getou Suguru ever kiss you when he’s sober?

“I can’t,” he finally utters, and the little voice in your head crows in triumph. You draw your hands back until you’re holding onto his shoulders, but even that feels like too much and you step far enough that his hands fall off your body too. 

Oh… but you expected this, didn’t you? 

Fucking shut up.

A boiling oily feeling coats your nose and cheeks as Suguru scowls at the floor, fists clenching and unclenching. His knuckles blanche, and you stare at them, trying to ignore the burning in your eyes. The back of your neck prickles as he curses hotly. “Fuck. Fuck me.”

“What?” you intone, lifting your head with a deep breath and pasting a smile on your face. His head jerks to you, but you only keep that wry half-smile on your face. “Taking the rejection harder than me or something?”

A horrified expression seizes his face, and he grabs your arms suddenly, his mouth opening to explain in a rush. “No, no. (Name), wait—“

“Suguru, it’s fine if you don’t want to kiss me,” you tell him despite the ache in your heart. Gently pushing his grip off with the side of your palms, you pull away. Your face is burning with shame, but you swallow your injured pride in favour of appearing unaffected. It’s better if people don’t know how they hurt you. It’s embarrassing when others figure out that they can hurt you like that. 

After all, you’re supposed to be cold, closed off. Untouchable.

Except, you had decided you would tell him anyway, didn’t you? You’d tell him all about the hurt that has festered and rotted in your heart in hopes that it’ll clear a space for him to settle in.

Except, when Suguru reaches for you again so insistently, tentative shaking fingers at your wrists, you don’t feel as invincible as you’d like.

You’re a book open for his perusal. You’ll tell him. You will. He’s already denied you one thing, but if you want to be friends with Getou Suguru, you must be as honest with him as he has always been with you.

“Actually,” you finally manage to say, “this is probably a good thing. It was stupid of me. We both said we weren’t looking for… for anything, so it’s better not to complicate things with that sort of stuff. I get it.”

“(Name).” His thumbs stroke your wrists and you want to curse his name. “(Name), no, No, it’s not that I don’t… you don’t understand how stupid I feel knowing I said all that shit about you not being my type and here I am standing, wanting nothing more than for you to kiss me. Or let me kiss you.” He laughs nervously, and draws your hands closer to his chest. You can feel his heart thumping swift like a river against your knuckles, but you can only blink in response to his own words. “It’s just… I need to tell you something before I dig myself too deep a hole that I can’t get myself out, y’know, I—”

“I like you, Suguru,” you blurt out, and when those words leave your mouth, you feel so relieved you think your heart might float out of your body. Suguru’s mouth drops open and you twist your hands to take hold of his own, squeezing painfully. “I like you… a lot. Like in a ‘I want to date you’ way, which I know you don’t exactly fuck with, but, y’know, I can’t help it. Fuck, it feels good to tell you, but I have to tell you, I’m fucking mortified right now because I’m pretty sure I’m just digging myself a deeper grave.”

“(Name)… I…”

“And you don’t have to do anything with that knowledge. You probably have people telling you that all the time, so I just thought I’d toss my two cents while I’m here because it’s good to be honest, right? We promised to be honest. I’m not feeding your ego again after this so you might as well take this while you can,” you ramble, that smile digging deeper and deeper into your lips. He watches you with a sympathy that makes you hate everything as he lifts a hand to cradle your face. You recoil, turning your head away but he grasps your chin, forcing you to meet his eyes. “What?”

“Can I tell you a secret, (Name)?” he asks softly, and his thumb stretches up to rest just underneath the swell of your bottom lip. He regards you in a way that makes you shatter, and when he smiles, you think that a rotten part of you that died five years ago breathes to life—swells with blood, oxygen, knits together unnaturally to the side of you like a tumour. But it’s just you. It’s just your heart. “I tell every person that they’re not my type to let them down as gently as I can.”

A beat. “That’s not gentle,” you point out, strangled, and he hums.

“I know. I… it’s the best way I can put it. It’s rarely ever because of them, though.” As if that excuses it. At your silence, Suguru explains himself with a quiet tint of shame: “It’s… just I couldn’t think of someone who could change my mind on relationships, and there was all these people wanting something I couldn’t give them. I never wanted to date because it never felt like it would be worth it to open up to someone, y’know, and then break up with them and start over. There wasn’t anyone I wanted to get to know like that again. It was just a waste of effort.”

“Suguru…”

“I know. There has to be some deep-rooted fucking psychological problem with me because who thinks about the end before it begins, right? I never want to miss anyone ever again.” He chuckles mirthlessly and your brow furrows, your frown grows. “Then at the party, the idea that Nanami could have you drove me fucking crazy.”

“We don’t have to go over this again,” you tell him hastily. “I was just joking about it.”

“No. We do, because I don’t want to lose you to someone else more than I don’t want to miss you.” He strokes your bottom lip, and his face softens. In the sunlight, his eyes are clear brown, as if you’re seeing through crystals, and you reach up shakily to touch his cheek. He smiles as soon as your fingers brush his skin. “I was lying when I said it would be lame to care about it. It’s not. It’s actually so fucking not lame that I feel… I don’t know. I don’t want any other person looking at you, or talking to you the way I want to talk to you, but I was afraid you’d freak out if I told you, but I can’t not tell you when I get so irrational about it because I fucking like you.”

You inhale sharply. No. This has to be a joke. “You do?”

He nods. “I do. I’ll swear to whatever you want me to swear on that I do.”

“Y-you… you don’t have to do all of that,” you murmur, and he chuckles, touching your face everywhere, looking at your eyes, your nose, your brow where sunlight is dancing across your skin. He carefully pulls your glassess off, tucking them into his sweatpants pocket, and his fingers dust over your eyelids. Cupping your jaw, Suguru hums, amused, and you don’t know what to do with your hands. One of them is still on his cheek, the other over his shoulder, and although the silence swallows them, you think your world has stopped.

Getou Suguru likes you.

Getou Suguru likes you back.

This hasn’t all been for nothing. Your heart tripping in your chest, you try to figure out if he’s lying or if he’s joking so he can try to scam you for sympathy points, but as soon as you think it, a pulse of disgust rises up in defense of the boy. 

Suguru would never hurt you on purpose. Not like this. He knows. He has just as much on the line as you.

“Can I have my glasses back?” you demand quietly, and he laughs.

“You’re so beautiful.” His breath kisses your skin, and your lips part before you remember yourself, pressing your mouth into a thin line and swallowing hard. “So… so beautiful. I can’t stand it.”

“Stop talking nonsense.”

“‘M not,” he mumbles. “I wanna kiss you so badly. You drive me crazy, but I always feel like I’m finally a little bit more sane when I’m around you.” Your shoulders sink and he pulls away just to stare at your face. His thumb touches your under-eye, and he sighs. Wrapping your arms around his neck, you haul him into a hug, one he accepts fully with his arms encircling your waist. “I haven’t felt sane in a long, long time.”

“Suguru…”

“I need to tell you something, (Name),” he murmurs, one hand cradling the back of your head, the other wrapped around your waist. His heat seeps into your body—he’s wearing a freshly washed shirt, and he smells like his cologne and a hint of sweat. Every inch of him is soft, pliant, and when he tucks his head into your shoulder, silky strands of his hair fall through the crevices of your hand when you card your fingers through. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“I need to tell you something, too,” you whisper. 

“Okay. Okay.” He withdraws, and holds your face in his hands, before smiling. It doesn’t reach his eyes, but his effort shines through the dimple that pokes his cheek, and you touch it. You’d never noticed he had dimples before. “You tell me first.”

.

You sit against the wall underneath the barre. That’s where Suguru finds you when he returns with drinks from the nearest café on campus. Handing you a matcha latte, he grins at your glasses back on your face, and he reaches down to fiddle with them. You smack his hand, scowling, and he chuckles, sitting down beside you.

“How much was it?”

“I dunno why you even try, baby,” he says around a sip of his own coffee, and you roll your eyes, crossing an arm over your stomach and taking a stubborn taste of your own drink. Your lips twitch into a faint pleased smile, before you set it down beside you and look over at him. “So… we got drinks. Do you wanna talk about it or do you want a little more time?”

“No. I had time to think about how I wanted to say it,” you mutter, although you won’t look at him. He frowns around his drink. A part of him is secretly dreading what you’re about to tell him. It’s hard to decipher, especially when after that whole sunlight dance, you had detached yourself so robotically, and asked him to give you some time alone to organize your thoughts. Suguru can’t read your every thought, even though he likes to flatter himself with thinking he can read you better than most people, so he sits there, nursing his drink as you pull your knees to your chest, resting your chin on your knees.

“There was a guy in high school. He was my… first everything, I guess,” you utter at length. “He was sort of everything I wasn’t. I was a band kid, y’know, choir. Smart-ish. He was kind of like the bad boy. But popular, and it was sort of annoying because I didn’t really get it. He had all these girls trying to ask him out, but he was mean to them, so why the fuck would they want him?” A hint of a laugh makes his heart ache. You sound so nostalgic, so young, then. “But… then we became desk mates. It’s stupid, but I liked him because he wasn’t ever mean to me and I felt special. He was a bit rude, but he wouldn’t insult me over stuff I was insecure about, and he was really patient when I was dealing with things. We were friends, sort of. I guess. Friend circles didn’t mix, but we shared classes.”

Suguru thinks he has an idea of where it’s going as you unfold yourself, crossing your legs and leaning back against the wall. You stare at some far off distant point in the floor, but he only has eyes on you.

“I liked him a lot in my second year of middle school, but then nothing ever happened, and we drifted apart. I guess we were just too different, but there’s that feeling, I don’t know if you ever… but it’s like when you have these people in your life, and you look at them, and you think, ‘oh, I could fall in love with you so easily if I had the chance.’ He was like that person for me. I thought if I ever tried even a little, I could really like him again, and maybe I just never stopped liking him, because I wasn’t really interested in anyone else besides him.”

“Did anything ever come out of it?” he asks softly.

You nod, swallowing. A bitterness curves your lip. “In my second year of high school, we somehow… I don’t even remember how anymore. It just happened we reconnected somehow, and we decided to hang out, just the two of us. I feel like it was me who initiated it, because I feel so stupid about it.” Wistful: “It was winter. Not snowy. It was just beginning to melt, actually, and I thought we were just friends just going out for lunch. I thought… I thought he wanted to hang out with me because we were friends.”

His heart drops. A premonition of dread begins to grow darker and sharper in the back of his mind. “(Name), you don’t have to—“

“He invited me back to his house,” you whisper, trembling. “And we were just watching some show that we were talking about earlier. I don’t know how it happened. I just kept saying yes because I wanted to, I really did, and I thought he liked me. That he had sex with me because…” You cannot continue the sentence. Instead, you inhale sharply, and let out an agonizing exhale. “When he dropped me off at my house after, he texted me that he loved spending time with me, but he didn’t have feelings for me and that he just wanted to be honest so I didn’t get hurt further down the road. Isn’t that funny? It makes me laugh because I had to sit there, holding onto my phone, and pretend that my heart wasn’t breaking reading his texts. When he said he cared about me, but he didn’t want a relationship with me because we wouldn’t work out in the long run, he could see it, and that all we did… that all of that was pretty much… nothing to him. Man, I felt so.... so disgusting and used.” 

Raging anger shoots through his system as you shake your head and let out a quivering breath. “It hurts so much, in here.” A hand against your heart. Your eyes are closed, head tilted against the wall, and your lips are pulled into a grimace as if you’re holding back tears. Suguru’s entire body feels hollow as he watches your face scrunch up at the memory. “Why did he do that if he always knew he didn’t want to be with me?” You don’t wait for or want his answer. “And the worst thing is… I can’t ever bring myself to hate him. I can’t. I fell in love with him over the course of that day, and I… it’s so hard to get over someone you never even dated, Suguru, you have no fucking idea.”

A beat of silence. You inhale deeply, lifting your head from the wall to look at him blankly, and it clicks. The way you tried so hard to avoid his touch, your aversion for a relationship. You had given yourself to someone before, and they had discarded you like nothing.

“Something must have happened between him dropping him off at my house, and driving back to his own,” you continue with such a strong conviction that it makes Suguru’s heart ache. “Maki thinks he was just a fucking douchebag, but none of my friends knew him like I did. It’s been five years, and sometimes I think I can’t move on, but then I met you, and…”

“Do you still love him?” he asks tentatively, and your smile grows fonder, your eyes fall to half-mast as you regard him in that way of yours that makes him feel like he’s the only thing you see. Suguru looks down between them, his mind a swirl.

He already knows what he’s decided: he can’t tell you. He can’t tell you the truth. Not after this. Shoko can kill him for all he cares, but if she knew what he knew, she would fucking understand.

“When I first started liking you, I was so afraid that everything that happened with him would happen to me again, but you make me feel willing to try.” Your fingers stretch to touch his hand, and he takes hold of you immediately. “I’m telling you because it’s important, and I want to explain everything. Why I can’t move fast—why this is a really big deal for me. Suguru, please, look at me.” He sets down his latte and does so. “It still affects me. It still scares me, but I want to try. Do you… do you want to try?”

You’re so beautiful. Tentative with your heart in his hands, but open. You want to give him everything. You want him, and Suguru is a selfish boy with a liar’s tongue. He can’t hurt you now. Everything he wanted to tell you, the courage he’d been building up since he asked you out last night, crumbles to ash.

Because to say Getou Suguru is not a lover is not entirely true. He wants love. He needs it. But he is not built for love—not designed to be a capsule for it where it can age and ripen and grow into something warmer and hearty and healthier. He is a sieve. Everything will fall through no matter how fine, how big, a particle is, and he can do nothing but watch.

And you want to love him, but he remembers Riko, and Nanami, and now there is another figure in the corner of his eye that looks like a stranger, and you are in front of him, surrounded by all this shadow, untouched, pure in the light. You are the sun, unmarked by the noxious miasma that fogs his brain. 

His throat tightens. 

Riko’s youthful face is just like he remembers, flickering by your shoulder and smilling, completely unaware of anything happening as she speaks to someone. He hasn’t seen a mirage of her in so long. Not since she died. He used to see hints of her in the halls of the school, wisps of someone who used to be alive, and knows this is just a residual memory playing in his mind. 

An everlasting reminder.

But you would’ve liked her, he thinks. You are both too sunshine-like to not get along.

Because you are the sun. Hidden behind a cloudy, stormy exterior, Suguru has never seen someone shine quite so brightly as you when you finally let him in.

“Suguru,” you whisper presently, reaching to touch his face, and he blinks, head jerking to you. When had he even drifted away? “Are you still there?” Your fingers touch his cheek. “You look a little… lost.”

“I want us to work,” he insists, and his eyes close. “Sorry. I just was thinking…”

“You’re here,” you tell him softly. “And I’m here, if you want me to be.”

“Okay.” He nods. “Okay, I’m okay.”

“You’re okay,” you repeat, and he lets out a soft sigh, opening his eyes. “Let’s get up, and find something to eat.”

“I’m sorry. I’m all distracted when you told me all this stuff. I promise, it’s not because it’s not important, it’s because—“

“You’re thinking about Riko, aren’t you,” you murmur, and his eyes flash to you. “I can tell.”

“You can?”

“Relationships are a big commitment, and you’re… you’re sort of scared of commitment, Suguru. Dunno if you can tell,” you murmur, voice edging on teasing. It diffuses the heat inside him, and he slouches as you chuckle, coming closer. He lets you, fingers wrapping around your wrist to hold your hand against his face. Kissing the palm of your hand, he closes his eyes. “Could be because of her.”

“It probably is.”

“I mean, I’m not a psychiatrist, so…” you drawl playfully, and he lifts his head again, glaring at you in faux irritation. You smirk. “What?”

“You’re too smart.”

“Why else would you like me?”

“Do you want me to whip out my notes, again?” he asks, pulling away, and you scoff. “I can do it. I’m gonna do it.”

“Do not—“

“I’m getting up to do it.” Pushing himself to his feet, he begins to walk back to where he left his phone and you call his name, annoyed. He doesn’t listen though, content to walk like there’s a breeze beneath his feet. He just about reaches the table when something grabs his hand, pulling him backwards. His muscles contract, hauling you close as he turns around, and he catches you before they can knock heads.

“I don’t wanna hear about your weird lists,” you snap, eyes narrowed, but you don’t try to escape, and he chuckles, leaning in closer and rubbing the tip of his nose against yours teasingly.

“Why not, baby?”

“Because it’s embarrassing,” you mumble, turning your face away. He lifts a hand from your bicep to tilt your face back towards him, and he leans in close. “Stop,” you whine. “You make me feel so stupid.”

“What’s so embarrassing about me having feelings for you?” he utters softly, and you inhale, shivering in his hold. “Should’ve known as soon as I made a list of all the things I knew about you in my notes app that I was a goner.” 

Your eyes meet his, and he’s struck by the glow in your eyes. It’s not something physics can explain. Something more innate than science ignites Suguru from head to toe and he feels like he’s been ushered into a warm room after nights spent out in the winter night. 

You swallow, lips parting to speak, but he rushes to cut you off: to say you’re beautiful, you’re the prettiest girl he’s ever fucking known. But what comes out instead is: “Shit.”

You frown. “What is it?”

“Is it okay if I kiss you?”

Your eyes widen, and you struggle to formulate a sentence, before settling on a nod, your breathy ‘yes’ just barely reaching his ears.

Suguru lifts his hand to remove your glasses, setting them blindly on the surface behind them. He cannot take his eyes off you. The sunlight is just barely hitting your face, giving your skin a warm glow despite the coming winter.

And there’s that tiny little frown again, the one he adores so much. He needs to kiss that pouty mouth or he thinks he’ll starve.

Suguru kisses you, and his entire body cannot help but meld into yours. He pulls you even closer until you’re flush against him, his hands immediately cupping your jaw as soon as he feels your body against his. Your fingers wrap around his wrists gently, your mouth parting, and he feels your gasp in his body as his tongue tentatively slips against yours, warm and soft and velvety. 

You let out a soft keening noise, and a hot surge pulses through Suguru’s core, but he suppresses the desire and pulls back. Sucking in a deep breath, he returns with lingering, but chaste kisses, and your fingers dig into his wrists tightly as you push up against him, almost chasing him. It makes him grin against your mouth, and he draws back fully, thumb brushing the swell of your lip.

Your eyes open slowly, dreamily. You look so happy that Suguru wants to eternalize this moment. He doesn’t want to let another thing hurt you in this life, in this world. Not when he’s still here by your side. He wants to swear it, but he can’t, and all of a sudden, his heart cramps in his chest so intensely it’s like it’s reminding him that it’s still here, and still beating, still alive. 

He’s been here before, or something that looks enough like it. His mind reeling, his eyebrows knit together as he thinks back to earlier this week, to when he had said he couldn’t be your boyfriend. All the events leading up to that moment, even the positions their bodies had been in as he said it, are unclear blobs of colour vaguely resembling their costumes, but when you shift your body, his stomach tightens and he sucks in a soft breath.

They’ve been here before. Arms around each other, eyes shining with all the adoration a human being can possible encompass. Your legs wet against his from the hot tub. Your mouth burning from the alcohol as you kissed him senseless. His hands on your body, the sneaking glances when they’d returned, concealed by drunk giggles.

You burrowing into his hoodie as you fell deeper asleep on Satoru’s couch, relaxed and at peace in the remnants of their party.

Did you have feelings for him then? How far back did they go? Do they go as far as he’s willing to acknowledge his own? Or did they come closer to today, where they stand now, body to body, nose to nose. He wants to know. He wants to know everything. 

“Suguru? What is it?” you whisper presently, derailing his thought train. Their illusion is slowly breaking, and the golden bubble is rapidly disappearing as you frown. Suguru meets your eyes tenderly. Oh, you are the most precious thing, and he is weak at the knees.

“You’ve kissed me before,” he informs, scarcely audible. You flinch away from him, but he doesn’t let go of your waist, squeezing reassuringly. “I’m not mad. I’m just—“

“I thought you didn’t remember.” Horrified, you duck your head. “Shit. I—I didn’t want to tell you in case it didn’t mean anything. I… I thought you didn’t remember.”

“I didn’t. I just remembered.” Then, testing: “Do you remember anything?”

Your shoulders sink and you shake your head. A swell of relief tides in Suguru despite the guilt prickling in his gut. So you don’t remember what he said. That’s good. It’s simpler if you don’t remember stupid things he’s said.

Don’t get him wrong. He was honest with you back then when he said he couldn’t be your boyfriend, but that had been drunk thoughts, insecurity, and the secret of it all threatening to spill out of his chest. He couldn’t wasn’t the same as he shouldn’t or he wouldn’t. 

You regard him warily. “Are we okay?” 

Suguru blinks, and there’s that distinct feeling from his youth growing up side by side with someone like Satoru; that feeling of not being quite able to catch up. Mouth dry, he affirms, “Of course. I just wish you told me. Then, I wouldn’t have had to waste this week trying to figure shit out.”

“Yeah, well, I was scared it didn’t really matter to you. It was just a kiss, after all, and I didn’t want to ruin something over a thing I might’ve blown out of proportion when you probably didn’t care, so I… I don’t know. Y’know, I take that stuff kinda seriously.”

“Well, it wasn’t just a kiss to me,” he says. “You kissed me. The girl I like kissed me. I would’ve been fucking elated if I remembered.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. And then, maybe today wouldn’t have been an elaborate, subtle, kind of vague ploy to get you to go out with me, and we could actually be going out for real right now.”

Your eyebrows shoot up. “Was this supposed to be a romantic date?” you ask curiously, and heat rises to his face as you carefully wrap your arms around his neck. He puts on a smile and shrugs carelessly. “Stupid.”

“Have you been on better dates?”

“Considering what I just told you, no. So, granted, you’re winning so far,” you tease. He opens his mouth to apologize, but you shake your head. “I get to make fun of it. It’s okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Mhm. Five years, and I’m getting over it. Enough to like your sorry ass.”

“Well, sorry you fell for my good looks, charisma, and natural talent for everything.” You shove him away, scoffing, and he laughs, grabbing your hand again, and squeezing it. “C’mon. Something to eat, right?”

“You’re driving us somewhere, then.”

“Demanding me of something already and we’re not even five minutes into this relationship,” he jokes. Your gaze darts to him warily, and you cross your arms over your chest. He catches the shift, and he straightens up, smile shrinking. “What is it?”

“That’s what this is?” you ask quietly. Your fingers dig into your own biceps as you look away. “A relationship?”

He frowns, hesitantly asking, “Isn’t that what you want?”

“I… I do want it,” you admit, “but now that it might happen, I don’t know if I can do it. If I can just go out in public and say, hey, I’m dating the guy everyone wants to date. That’s just not me.”

“We don’t have to make a big announcement out of everything. We can just… see how it goes, can’t we? Play it safe and slow,” he murmurs, but you shake your head, looking doubtfully at the space between their bodies. “Hey, hey, hey. It’s really no big deal to me how you wanna go about this. I really do like you, and if you want to date, fine, if not… that’s fine, too.”

You deliberate this for a moment.

Then: “I’m just gonna this first before we go further that you’re not gonna fuck me.”

His body goes stiff. Not from disappointment, but just by the sheer amount of ice in your tone. “What?”

You turn to pick up your glasses from behind you. “We’re not having sex or anything today. If that’s what you’re looking for, tough luck.” You slide them on, trying to move past him, but he grabs your elbows insistently, keeping you rooted before him. You try to fight it at first, begrudging attempts at trying to rip yourself away, but Suguru is stronger. When you finally don’t try to run, he lifts an index finger to your chin, guiding your gaze back to him, and your face contorts, anguished and cracking apart at the seams. 

“Don’t ever think that. I’m not here just so I can have sex with you, (Name).”

“I know it’s out of left-field but most guys expect that, don’t they?”

“Yeah, but I don’t,” he insists firmly, trying to keep the irritation out of his tone. He knows he’s not annoyed at you and he doesn’t want you to mistake it that way. He’s pissed that you think like that, sure, but you have every reason. Fuck, if he could just… somehow heal that part of you, he’d give anything, but you’d hate his pity. Gentler, he adds: “I don’t like you just because I think I can sleep with you,” he says, appalled. “Do you trust me?”

“I do. I do trust you, I just I can’t…. I can’t put myself there without feeling gross, Suguru, and a relationship normally progresses that way, and I don’t know if I can do it now, or soon, or whatever your timeline is, so please, don’t ask that of me.”

“I won’t,” he assures you, as sincere as he can be. “I don’t need that kind of stuff. As long as you’re comfortable with everything we have going on, I’m happy, okay? And if you want to sleep with me, okay, if you don’t, all good. I like you, (Name). I always have. That’s not gonna change just because I can’t do something as trivial as sex.”

“I wish it was that easy for me,” you mutter, but he shakes his head.

“I like that you take this stuff seriously. I think it’s admirable, and romantic, and I like that about you,” he murmurs. “Believe me, it just inspires me to woo you even more.”

“Woo me?” you echo, sarcasm inked into your words, but your tone lightens. Suguru’s heart lifts, too. “How are you going to go about that?”

“Well, first,” he drawls, tilting his head to press a kiss against your cheek, “I take you out to dinner.” A kiss to your other cheek. “And then I take you to the beach.” Your eyes meet his, and he grins. “Hopefully there are fireworks.”

“So, it’d have to be a special occasion.”

“Mmm, and we could dance on the beach.”

“That sounds nice, actually.”

“You could lead me, too, and dip me over your leg to kiss me,” he suggests much to your dismayed expression, and he chuckles. “Just kidding.” He sneaks a peck, one that has your eyes closing, and you swallow, letting out a long exhale. 

When your eyes open again, they’re filled with a renewed vigour. 

“Suguru, you’re really sure about this? Boyfriend, and all?”

“If I wasn’t sure, I wouldn’t still be here. Believe me.”

You bite your lip and nod. “I’ll try.”

“Good enough for me.” Stepping back, he extends a hand towards you, fingers outstretched, and when your hand slips into his, it has never felt more like two puzzle pieces finally finding one another. 

You run to catch up to him, and your face is cupped by his free hand briefly, his lips seeking your forehead. You pause, feeling his lips brush down your temple, and your cheek pulls. He can feel your smile against his lips as he finally touches your lips with his own in a soft, lingering kiss.

Three words threaten to push against his tongue, but he pulls away, surprised at the urge to blurt out something he’s not even sure exists, so he simply settles on kissing your forehead again and pulling away.

“I can keep calling you baby, right?” he checks, and your nose wrinkles as you laugh, shoving his face away.

“All that, and that’s what you want to ask me?” A beat. “Yes, you can, baby.” You grab his chin, kissing his jaw, before letting go of his hand to gather your things.

“Well, I might wanna try other names.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Honey. Dear. Sweetheart. Flower.”

“I like baby, I think.”

“Baby?”

“Yeah. I’m just used to it.”

“Okay.”

You hoist the bag ont your shoulder. Suguru grabs his bag, too, grabbing everything he needs. Thoughtfully: “Flower is a strong contender.”

An idea springs forth, and he glances over his shoulder. “How about sunshine?” You’re adjusting your glasses, but you’re hiding a smile behind your hand as you meet his gaze. He thinks on it. “Sunbeam.”

“That doesn’t suit me.”

“Yes, it does. Go argue with a wall.” You walk up to him, and a faint smile graces his lips as he catches your phone camera sneaking a picture of him. Quirking an eyebrow, he leans over to see what you’re doing, but you turn away. Suguru peers over your shoulder, and a heat blooms from his chest when he realizes you’re changing his profile picture.

“You just changed it a few days ago,” he points out as you adjust the position of the picture. You look up at him, and he shimmies closer to watch you save the image. It’s slightly blurry, but it looks distinctly charming. Maybe because you took it. Resting an arm across your shoulders, he presses his nose against your temple. “Sunbeam.”

“Yeah?’ you mumble, distracted. You’re swiping through notifications on your phone, now, and he averts his gaze, focusing on leading you to the door. His hand slips into your free hand, and you finally look up when he closes the door behind you. Flattening your bag strap, you rub at your face. “Sorry. Got distracted.”

“’S long as I’m still your boyfriend,” he says, and the word settles so easily on his tongue he wants to say it again. Announce it to the whole world. He’s a boyfriend now. Getou Suguru is a boyfriend. 

He doesn’t think it would’ve ever sat right if he was someone else’s boyfriend—anyone else’s but yours. Because you roll your eyes, and you try to pretend it’s not a big deal to you and say something about how Maki’s going to hate his guts, but when they walk to his car and you climb into his passenger seat, you shyly press a kiss to his mouth before he pulls out of the lot, and sneak your fingers between his on the centre console.

There’s a soft melody playing from one of his CDs you picked. 

He squeezes your hand as he passes an intersection. You squeeze back, looking out the window, but in the reflection of the glass, he can see the curve of your smile.

a/n: thanks for sticking around and reading all the way to the end! please leave a reblog/comment if you enjoyed :)

tags: @thelameless @lucyrocks86​ @kentospet @id-rather-be-an-outsider​  @ys2800​ @tuzuis4thwife @pidwidge​ @xbookmanx​ @kaitlyn2907​ @butterfly-skinnylegend​ @rumi-rants​ @bloombb​ @mykyoon​ @waterlily502​ @hanabihwa​

#fic: sorry i love you #getou suguru x reader #getou suguru x you #getou suguru #getou x reader #getou x you #getou x y/n #geto suguru #geto suguru x you #geto suguru x reader #geto x reader #geto x you #jjk x y/n #jjk #jjk x you #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen x you #my writing

[justaboot]

Reminds me of that split-second moment in "The Last Crash of the Sunchaser" where Scrooge says 'Nothing will happen to her!" and Beakley responds 'Her? Her who?' Launchpad then gets really sad and hesitates to follow Scrooge's orders which shocks Beakley.

Later, in the finale, when Beakley retells the story of what happened to Scrooge after Della disappeared to the boys, Webby, and Donald during the reunion party, the camera focuses on Launchpad and he starts to freak out. Once she's finished telling the story, Launchpad angrily shouts "A lot! This lady knows a lot!"

It makes me wonder what the relationship of Scrooge & LP was like before the boys came to visit and how LP came to learn the story of what happened to Della, seeing as he didn't know her and had no involvement with the Spear of Selene.

Ahh I don’t know how I missed this in my ask box, but everything about Beakley in Last Crash is such good storytelling as to the years they spent living together before the boys showed up. She’s got his number she was THERE to watch everything after it fell apart.

“I havent felt this energized since…”

She KNOWS

She KNOWS

LOOK AT HER FACE SHE WAS THERE FOR THE STORY HES ABOUT TO TELL THIS LADY KNOWS A LOT

Realizing now my reading comprehension is garbage at the moment anyway LP

I always took that moment with LP as a moment of clarity for him, like there is CLEARLY a conversation happening here that The Grown Ups are having that he doesn’t understand, and he looks around and realizes he’s one of The Grown Ups, and is put in a decision making position.

Like ^ love LP but Scrooge just made a HUGE slip up, and that boy is head. empty.

I do think it would have been interesting to have seen his take on it, but I’m realizing now in present day, his whole perspective on What Happened was completely based on what he can see. I’m not sure he ever considered what happened before, or why things are the way they are, just that This Is How It Is, you know? And the boys are here now, and so the most important thing is what’s in front of him, which is keeping them in the house. And then when Beakley lays out her “Hey, Scrooge is a person who went through something, have you considered he is still hurting, too?” it’s an awakening for him as well. I don’t think thought about it, either.

#honestly that episode is such a good character study for her she’s in control she’s proper she’s bossy but she’s also so empathetic #HES ABOUT TO TELL THE STORY OF THE WORST THING THATS EVER HAPPENED IN HIS 150 YEARS AND SHE KNOWS IT #I get really emotional thinking about how Beakley tries to defend Scrooge #they call him out on things he didn’t do and she’s like Hey that’s not how it happened- #bc she was THERE for everything in the flashbacks #ahhh #that’s her FRIEND she wants to drop kick him off the roof 6 days of the week but he’s her FRIEND

[brittlebutch]

Desperately trying to make sense of Alex's motivations in Season Two and you know, I do eventually have to wonder if maybe Alex wasn't actually lying in the majority of those tapes.

Like, we tend to assume that Alex's motivations have been a consistent throughline since the college years, but do we actually know that that's the case? Do we know for sure that Alex was acting in deliberate, calculated ways in 2006; or could it be that he's telling the Truth on those olds tapes when he says he's blacking out and can't remember what's happening to anyone? After all, if we're assuming that Season 2 Alex's motivations are the exact same as his motives in Season 3, then it doesn't make any sense at all that he spend months working with Jay to try to find Amy; Season 3 Alex would have attempted to kill Jay like, on sight just to get things over with as quickly as possible and contain the spread of contamination as best as he could.

But, maybe, if Alex really had been separated from Amy after the events of the 04-04-10 tape, and if he really doesn't know where she is, then maybe that could make things start to make more sense. Maybe he really had been watching Jay's channel, and seeing Jay start going through the same things he went through in college without things devolving into violence and disappearances, and wondered if things maybe could play out differently this time. Maybe he really did send that tape to Jay to ask him for help, maybe he really was just trying to find Amy.

But then, instead of actually being helpful, Jay makes it extremely clear that he's a lot more interested in stalking Alex than he is in finding Amy. Alex asked for help, and instead there's a bunch of masked dudes on Jay's heels that keep attacking him, Jay is breaking into his house, stealing his things, leading the Operator right to him all over again, keeps trying to get other people (namely: Jessica -- if Alex is being honest when he says that his call reassuring her that Amy had been found was an effort to make Sure she stayed away from everything that was happening) involved; and instead of anything getting better, instead of anyone finding Amy, things are just getting worse all over again.

It's not until after the incident at the tunnel that things seem to start rapidly devolving. Rather than a calculated attempt to finally follow through with his need to curb the spread of contamination, this is very clearly an outburst of rage and terror. Alex's "I told you not to follow me" line in conjunction with Jay speculating that Alex didn't know who that guy was, to me, pretty firmly seems to speak to Alex having mistaken that stranger for Jay. From his point of view, Alex knows that Jay and totheark know where he live, have broken in before, he suspects that Jay stole a key to make it easier to get into his house, and he's been followed on the daily for months -- Alex is sitting at the tunnel because he doesn't know where else he can go without being constantly surveilled, hunted, and assaulted. And instead of getting a moment by himself to breathe, Jay followed him out there all over again (it feels like Alex looks directly at the camera in Jay's footage of him from this day; he knew for a fact that Jay was there), and then to make matters worse now 'Jay' won't even keep his distance anymore.

So Alex lashes out. And it's not until afterwards that he looks down and finally recognizes that this wasn't Jay -- it was someone completely innocent. Things have finally reached the low point he was at in college all over again; maybe even worse this time. If Alex doesn't remember attacking anyone in college, but he was at least partially conscious of it this time, then things have reached an entirely new rock bottom, they've reached an absolute point of no return.

He has no idea what happened to Amy, and he's spent months trying to find her with no hint of where she could be; he doesn't know where Jay actually is or what additional trouble he could be causing at this point; he does know that now innocent people are getting caught in the crossfire (in regards to the stranger in the tunnel, and also Jessica now that Jay has her phone number, and the untold number of people Jay got involved when he started posting videos to the Marble Hornets channel); things are spiraling out of control and there's no one left to ask for help. The situation isn't getting better, it's getting worse; things aren't getting easier to handle, they're just getting more out of hand; the negative impact is spreading and who knows how much further it can still go?

So, Alex decides to go scorched earth. He disfigures the body with the rock either to hide evidence or to make sure the guy would actually stay dead and not just get back up to start his own cycle of contamination in a few years. He tries to give Jay one last chance to back off, and Jay instead admits he's been talking to Jessica, acts obstinate and lies about not having Alex's spare key, and then breaks into Alex's house a second time (minimum). If Alex doesn't stop him now, who will? Alex met with Jay planning to kill the others, and then himself, so he could put a stop to this once and for all and keep things from getting any worse than they already were.

Maybe it makes a lot more sense if, rather than being a strangely incomprehensible detour on what should have been a straight path, the events of Season Two were the breaking point that put Alex on that path to begin with.

#N posts stuff #idk!!! I've been thinking a lot lately about the tendency to take Characters at Face Value; when they tell us things we tend to #automatically believe them despite what evidence we might have to the contrary. & like when it comes to deciphering what #went down during the college film project it's mostly totheark that posits that Alex was Definitely Lying and Definitely Acting on Purpose #(even Jay is largely ambivalent - wondering which way it leans and basically saying it could go either way) #but. do we KNOW that they know that? Do we Know that they're Right when they claim that? Or are they just Assuming based off #of their own rage and animosity towards Alex due to what happened? Do we Know for Sure that Alex Was Lying in s1? #i don't know if we do!! And so without Knowing that for sure; how can we speak to Alex's motivations in season one OR season two? #now TO BE CLEAR: I am not saying this in an attempt to claim that Alex is somehow completely innocent of all guilt and that like. #Jay is the 'Real Antagonist' of the series - not at all my intention. this is just More of my usual 'look. Everyone in this series is #all kinds of Morally Grey; no recurring character in this series is free of guilt they ALL have unique fatal flaws & trends towards #antagonism that makes things worse and dooms them all' shtick - a la 'everyone Thinks they're doing the Right Thing but No One Is' #BUT i Am wondering if this Does help to like. clear up some of the ambiguity/uncertainty of Season Two - and even Season One - and #lets the series as a whole read a little bit clearer? idk i know that Jay does Claim to think that Alex was bullshitting him #the whole time & was Actually planning on tying up loose ends the whole time but AGAIN it doesn't make Sense he'd wait so long #idk - Am i making sense? does any of this track? i'm trying to figure it out; i am open to comments on the subject to help #i haven't rewatched season 3 yet today and so maybe there's stuff in there that contradicts this whole theory lmao but i'm taking a break #and just posting this anyway; we'll see what happens lol #marble hornets #mh lb

[draventhedemon]

A lot of people already have asked for a part 2, so here it is!

Lets hope it lives up to you expectations!

⚠️ There is swearing ⚠️

(2 days before the wedding)

It has been 3 months since the big reveal. And every time me, Clay, Nick or George go live we have been bombarded with questions from chat. And we have always answered it the same

"You don't need to worry, Tommy will vlog it so you get to know what goes down."

So we could continue our streams with less interruptions. And we also have FINALLY found out who Clay's best mans gonna be. And well the options were supposed to be Nick or George but because of the constant arguing... Patches, has been bought a suit and will be the best man.

But enough about the past few months. I gotta tell you about today!

Today I have packed my stuff because I'm gonna be spending the next 2 nights at a Hotel with Eret, my bridesmaids and some friends.

And also Tommy because he wants to vlog

And because of the superstition of no seeing the bride before the wedding. I have been packing. Slowly, because of Clay distracting me with his honeymoon phase already being activated.

"Clay... Stop before this goes to far" I say as his chin nudges even further into the crook of my neck.

"do you haft to go? The tradition is stupid anyway?" He says with a whiny voice while kissing my jawline "the tradition may be stupid but I've already told my friends I was gonna be there in an hour" I respond while moving a bit away from him and kissing his nose while getting up. He whines as he tries to drag me back to the floor "jesus, your acting like a clingy cat" I laugh while I pick up my bag and walk out the bedroom door with Clay following shortly behind me. "do you have your dress?" He asks even though he already knows it's in the hands of Eret and the bridesmaids.

"bye Y/n!" I hear Sapnap say from the living room as George holds Dream back from follow me out the door.

"bye you guys!" I say as I wave goodbye and walk out the door. "There gonna burn the house down" I mumble to myself while getting into the Uber.

"It will be around a 30 minute drive" The Uber driver says while I nod and turn on my favorite song to listen to for the drive.

And when I look up from my phone I see my friends all waiting for me. Which Tommy has brought over Ranboo and Tubbo to keep the vlog interesting.

(A/n in this universe Ranboo and Tubbo still get along)

"The woman has arrived!" Tommy says while holding the camera up to my face "You don't need to scream, I'm right here!" I scream back jokingly as he continues to scream into my ear.

"How did Dream take you leaving?" Eret says while taking my bag from the car and all of us walking inside. "I think he took it well" I say while clearly joking as I look around the hotel lobby. "This is gonna be a fun 2 days" I say as Tommy turns off the camera

(1 day before the wedding)

I have been playing competitive Candyland with the Bench trio for the the last 10 minutes and so far Ranboo is in first, Me in second, Tubbo in third and Tommy in last. "You haft to go back to licorice castle Tommy" I point as he screams "What the fuck!?!" As I move his red character back to the castle. "Why do you keep on going back?" Tubbo says with a laugh as Ranboo pulls a card. "I win!" Ranboo lifts his card up showing that he has landed a red and moves his character to the end.

"What the hell did I just walk into?" Niki says as she walks in with Wilbur shortly behind her. "NIKI!" I scream as I run to her because of her sudden appearance "Did you think I was gonna miss this! I get to be a bridesmaid!" She says as she hugs me. "I'm just gonna slip on through here" Wilbur says while walking in and immediately getting tackled hugged by the three boys that we're just sitting down in the living room. "All my bridesmaids have finally arrived" I say while letting go of Niki.

(the wedding will be the very next thing I write!)

#dream smp x reader #dsmp x y/n #dreamwastaken #dream smp #dream x reader #dream mcyt #ranboo dsmp #tommy innit #dsmp tommyinnit #ranboo #dsmp tubbo #tubbo #dsmp eret #niki nihachu #wilbur soot

[naughtyneganjdm]

Good Luck Charm - Chapter 17

Summary:  After Negan gets nervous about the events he's witnessed on the news, he comes over to help Y/N try to keep her and Evie safe.

Characters: Negan, the reader (OC), etc.

Warnings: Swearing, Angst, smut, etc.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39423063/chapters/105853230

Notes: To anyone reading this, I love you guys. Thank you for keeping up with things. Regardless of how hard they’ve been. 

“I feel like this is overkill Negan,” Y/N stammered while she held onto the ladder that he was on top of to keep it steady. Staring up from where she was at, she watched closely while Negan finished putting up the last security camera that she had bought. Lucille was at work and Evie was at school, leaving them some alone time to be able to work this out together. “I’ve been in this neighborhood for over a decade. You lived here for a while. You know how boring it is here.”

“Listen, people are getting weird,” Negan grunted while he worked on getting the camera up for Y/N. “I know you hate watching the news, but the news is filled with some pretty crazy shit right now. People are just up and attacking people. It’s like the world has gone fucking crazy which is why I told you that you needed to put these things up. I know it’s an added expense, but at the end of the day I think it’s worth it. It just keeps you and the little one safe so you are always aware of what is going on.”

“I think maybe you need to take a break from the news,” Y/N suggested, letting out a tiny snicker when Negan looked down at her with a glare. “I’m just saying. I’ve never seen you as someone who is a worrier and this is a bit extreme for you.”

“Turn the news on and you will see why,” Negan waved his hand about while he held onto the drill that he was using. It had been a few weeks since Evie’s birthday and, in that time, he was hearing a lot of stories about people going crazy in the big cities. “I don’t know if it’s in the water or some shit, but if you look at New York City? That shit is getting intense. I know that people just don’t care anymore, but to the extent of what people are doing is insane. They are beating each other, biting each other…it’s getting wild Y/N.”

“That’s New York City,” she pointed out making Negan roll his eyes and go back to work. “We’re in a quiet little suburb and I think we’ll be okay.”

“This just makes sure that you are. It’s going to record everything for you and instead of having to go outside to check something if you hear something weird, you can just look on the cameras. It was the safest option and it makes me feel better knowing that my girls are safe.”

“I still think this is a bit extensive, but I did it to make you feel comfortable,” she informed him with a shrug of her shoulders. Multiple times Negan had told her that he thought she should get security cameras. By the time he had come over to check in with her and he mentioned how worried he was about everything, she finally agreed to getting them.

“And I appreciate that. Sure, Evie is with me right now, but it makes sense to have these things. It’s worth it,” Negan insisted, climbing down the ladder once he was finished. Grabbing the tools, he motioned her to follow him into the house while he went to put things away. “Now we just have to make sure they all show up.”

“I’m sure they do,” she followed Negan toward the laptop where some of the footage was already running. Negan took a seat at the table, grabbed his glasses to wear and was surveying over the things that were there. “It’s going to be really interesting seeing the squirrels that run the neighborhood to the ground.”

“I love the sarcasm,” Negan grunted fixing his glasses while he went from each screen to see if all of the cameras were working. Letting out a frustrated breath, Negan noticed that one of the cameras wasn’t running and he brushed his fingers through his hair uneasily. “The one in the back isn’t powered on. I have to go get it.”

“I’ve got it,” she waved her hand in the air dismissively knowing that the one that wasn’t working was one that was closer to the ground that she would have no problem getting. “Just let me know when it starts working. Holler at me.”

“I’m good at that,” Negan winked as she headed for the back door. Moving to the security camera, she searched around for a minute before adjusting some of the wiring. Maybe she should have asked first how to get it to power on. There was nothing in response and she looked to the side where the back door was open.

“Anything?” she called out waiting for some kind of response from Negan. Raising her voice, she tinkered with the wires a bit more before calling out again. “Hey? Anything?”

“Not yet,” Negan hollered back making her frown when she folded her arms in front of her chest. Observing the wires, she tried to determine what was wrong with it and tried to see if everything was pushed in right. After a while of fooling around with it, she looked to the side to see that Negan was staring at her. It made him smile when he managed to shock her. “I saw your beautiful face a few minutes ago, I just wanted to see how long it took you to notice I was standing here watching you.”

“Dick,” she reached for the empty box that was beside her to toss it at him making Negan snort when she headed back into the house with him on her tail. Moving over toward her laptop, she lowered down to gaze over the videos. “I’m going to end up being one of those neighbors that watches the neighbors and treats this like reality television.”

“I thought you said that this subdivision was boring,” Negan reminded her with an arch of his eyebrow making her smirk. “Now all of a sudden, you think you’re going to catch some interestingly wild stuff.”

“Well who knows? Maybe I’ll catch the eighty-year-old neighbor across the street having an affair with the thirty some year old living next to him,” Y/N joked with Negan making him snicker before he lowered in beside her to brace his hand against the table so he could survey the videos with her. “We could have all the juicy drama caught on tape.”

“I hope you find something that keeps you entertained,” Negan grumbled knowing that he had just gotten her to do this because he was worried about her and Evie. The way the world was acting lately had him worried about their wellbeing. There was a silence that lingered between the two of them when Negan licked over his lips. “Hey, do you think the two of us can talk about something?”

“Sure?” she closed the laptop and turned to face Negan, folding her arms out in front of her chest. Negan seemed a bit stressed about whatever was on his mind when he brushed his fingers through his hair and swallowed down hard. “What is it?”

“Can we talk about Evie’s birthday?” Negan requested making Y/N’s teasing expression that she had previously fade from her features and she suddenly became quite serious.

“What about it?” she cleared her throat, avoiding eye contact with Negan. “A lot happened that day.”

“I guess there are a few things that I wanted to talk about,” Negan began, pushing his hands into his pockets. Rocking forwards and backwards on his feet, he tipped his head to the side and let out a whistling sound. “I know it’s been a while since we talked about our personal lives, but are you still with Shane?”

“Yes,” she answered, a chill running down her spine when she heard the disappointment in Negan’s breathing.

“How can you continue to be with him when he did all that shit in front of Evie Y/N?” Negan pushed, his voice hitching when she finally looked up at him with sadness behind her eyes. “I don’t understand how you could even sleep with that man knowing…”

“I haven’t slept with him in a very long time. I told you that day that I hadn’t slept with him in over a month and that hasn’t changed,” she declared knowing that she was sticking to her guns with that whole thing. She was uncomfortable with the idea of having sex with Shane and this time she was actually standing up for herself. “Not that he hasn’t tried, because he has…”

“I’m not surprised to hear that considering he’s a fucking rapist,” Negan’s brow line was flexed, his nose scrunching when he folded his arms out in front of his chest. “Did you tell him what happened between the two of us?”

“Negan, you would be hurt far more than you are right now,” she stepped forward to palm in over the side of Negan’s face where a small bruise remained under his right eye. “I genuinely thought you were going to look so much worse than you do.”

“Well, I was icing it a lot,” Negan recalled reaching up to circle his finger around his eyes and nose area. Dropping his hand in defeat, Negan watched Y/N step back and away from him while she braced herself against the edge of the table. “Y/N, I’m genuinely scared about the man that Shane is becoming. The jealousy, the rage…”

“I’ve been pushing him away to a degree. He used to be living here every day and he’s only been here a day or two out of the week recently,” she claimed knowing that her relationships were becoming more complicated the more time that passed. “He knows I am really upset with him for what he did. Bringing Evie into things is where he messed up.”

“Okay, well let’s put Shane on pause for a second,” Negan slurred, his right eyebrow arching up and over his rims. Lowering his arms, he rubbed his hands together and shook his head a bit. “What about us? What started between us was passionate, it was sensual…”

“It should have never happened Negan,” she interrupted him, her face flushing over when she was reminded of the start of their sexual encounter that happened between the two of them. “We’re not meant to be together Negan. It was wrong. What I did…it made me a bad person. I just proved Shane right by what I did.”

“You’re not a bad person for wanting to be with me,” Negan reasoned, his voice getting deeper and his eyes attempting to lock with hers. His body language showed that he was stressed and he was struggling to form the right words to reach out to her. “I just think we needed time apart to realize that there is something there between us.”

“But we will never be together,” she swallowed down hard hating to face that truth, but it was something that she had to live with. It was something she lived with for over almost the last eight years. “You’re meant to be with Lucille who loves you so much. And I’m just here to help you and be your friend. Which brings me to that job…”

“Don’t change the subject,” Negan hushed her, raising his hand up in the air to silence her. Stepping forward, Negan wanted so badly to touch her, but he didn’t know if it was okay or not in the moment. “The only reason Lucille is still with me is because you love me enough not to tell her what I did. If she knew the things I did, I don’t know if she would still want to stay with me. And if she did, she would certainly kick my ass for what I have done.”

“I don’t know Negan. She loves you so much that I don’t think she could ever leave you,” Y/N stated with a long exhale. Everything she knew about Lucille told her that Lucille would never leave Negan. She might get angry with him, but she had put up with a whole lot as it was already in being married to Negan. “You’re very lucky in the sense that you have two women who are blindly and hopelessly in love with you.”

“And I don’t deserve it,” Negan recognized with a frown. There was no doubting that he realized that. It was something he thought about quite often and he knew that he was lucky to have two incredibly amazing women that loved him. “But…”

Negan let out a shuddering breath and he turned on his heel to head over to the couch. Negan dropped down and he lowered his head, brushing his fingers through his thick, dark hair, “Y/N, I’ve had a lot of time to think about things. Things that have been swirling around in my fucking brain relentlessly. I’ve been questioning a lot of things that have happened. You and I have been in each other’s lives for a very long time.”

“Right,” she headed across the room and took a seat on the opposite side of the couch. “Time flies. That’s for sure.”

“It does, but with everything falling apart I have gone through a lot of emotions,” Negan opened up to her, turning enough on the couch so he could face her. “In my life, I’ve loved two women. You and Lucille. When I was a kid, I fell so fucking hard for Lucille. I planned our future out in my head. I had this idea of what I thought perfect was. I thought I would be a professional ball player. Lucille would get married to me. We’d have this big family and I’d be so fucking successful. I’d live in this big house…but then I got hurt. And after that, Lucille left me. I was a bum. I had nothing. My perfect life was gone. I could never have the life that I thought I was going to have. Then I met you. I have never been a hero in my whole life. Ever. People have always had to save my ass. But I felt like the world was telling me that I wasn’t a waste of space. That I was meant to save you that night. That you and I were destined to be in each other’s lives.”

Negan licked his lips, locking his fingers together while he rocked where he was sitting showing the discomfort that he had in his body, “I told myself that I wasn’t going to fall for someone because Lucille was it for me, you know? But the more time I spent with you, the happier I realized I was. You made me feel like a man that I never thought I was capable of being. Someone that was happy with a normal life. I had a best friend and a lover all in one. Who gets to say that? A lot of people can’t even say that they enjoy spending time with their significant other, but I looked forward to it.”

Y/N’s lips parted. It looked like she wanted to say something, but nothing came out. It was obvious that she was trying to avoid getting emotional while he brought up their past together, “I fell head over heels in love with you. You were like a drug. One that made me happy. You gave me a life that I never thought I was capable of. You adjusted your dreams and your future just to make me happy. In you I saw someone that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. When I pictured our future, I saw the white picket fence. I realized more than anything I wanted to be a family man and have the kind of life that only people could dream about. And it was achievable and we were headed in that direction. I wanted to make all of your dreams come true.”

“Negan,” she whimpered, her bottom lip trembling when she lifted her head and he saw that tears were burning at her eyes. “What are you doing?”

Sitting up straight, Negan reached inside of the hoodie that he was wearing to pull something out of it. Handing it over, he could see that her fingers were trembling when she looked at the photo that Chuck had given him, “I have stared at that photo a lot lately. Chuck gave it to me at our interview. When I got back with Lucille, I told myself that I never loved you. That I was never happy. That I was just settling because I couldn’t have Lucille, but when I looked at that photo, everything came back to me and it made me feel miserable.”

Noticing the tear that was sliding down the side of Y/N’s face, Negan reached out to stroke his fingers over her flesh to sweep it away, “I realized the lies that I was telling myself about not loving you wasn’t true. At that party, I told everyone how happy I was. I bragged to anyone that would listen and even to those that didn’t care to listen that my incredible fiancée was pregnant with my baby. I just kept telling everyone how I was the luckiest man in the world. I had an incredibly sexy woman I was engaged to who loved me with everything that she was. She was smart, kind…everything I could only dream of. I had the perfect job. The perfect home. The perfect dog. And I was going to have that baby I always fucking wanted. You know? There was no one that I had known that would have been a better mother and someone that I wanted to spend forever with other than you. With you, I was never stressed. I was never upset. I was always happy. I was always smiling. I was always talking about my life and how proud of you I was.”

“Why are you saying this?” she felt Negan sliding in closer to her and she felt her body shaking. “The second you could be with Lucille again, you took off Negan. I wasn’t important.”

“You were always my good luck charm Y/N. I won’t lie about that. You brought the best into my life. But not because you were just good luck, but because we had an incredible relationship,” Negan admitted with tension in his tone, his throat flexing with an uneasiness to him. “You’re not the bad person. I am. Do you know what the happiest moment of my life was?”

“When you married Lucille?” she guessed making Negan bite down on his bottom lip and shake his head.

“It was in that ultrasound appointment. Your fingers were hooked with mine and when they told us that we were going to have a daughter I fucking cried and I just kissed you immediately. I never thought that I could feel the happiness that I did in that moment. I didn’t think anything could top the day that you told me you were pregnant, but the moment I found out that we were having that little girl it was the most amazing thing ever. To see our little girl on that screen. Knowing that inside of you was growing the miracle of our love…” Negan’s voice broke, his eyebrows furrowing when he bit down on his bottom lip. “I was so happy. My thought in my head is that I went through all that fucking pain to gain this. I lost my dreams, the love of my life…everything, but it was okay because it brought me our perfect little angel. With you, my dreams changed and it didn’t bother me.”

“Why are you doing this?” she felt herself getting emotional. Hell, they were both emotional and crying. Negan’s bottom lip was tremoring when she went to hand back the photo to him. “That day went from being one of the most emotional, amazing days of my life to crashing all around me.”

“I just need you to know these things Y/N. They’ve been inside of my head for so long, especially lately. I thought the world was playing a cruel prank on me that day. I had the most amazing moment shared with you and then I walk down to call my mother and there is Lucille standing right there in front of me. I read the signs wrong. I think God put Lucille there to show me that I had everything I could want and more with you. The perfect woman, a baby on the way…a life that only so many people could dream of,” Negan looked down at the photo that she was holding out and he shakily grabbed the photo. “But instead I thought it was the world punishing me telling me that I made the wrong decision. That I was meant to have the original dream. That I was pushing for this different path that I wasn’t supposed to take. God put Lucille there to test me and I failed. I failed you. I failed the test. I failed Evie. You were everything to me and that day, I just let you slip right through my fingers and the man I became I hated. This picture shows it Y/N. When is the last time you saw me this happy?”

Negan held up the photo that Chuck had given him to originally give to Evie. While Negan smiled all the time, she always knew that was just part of his personality. There was no hiding in the picture that he was holding up of the two of them that he was genuinely thrilled about life, “I had everything and I gave it all up because I was afraid of what I would miss out on if I let Lucille slip through my fingers again. And then for the next two years I treated you like shit. Because I knew that you were the only other person that I loved. If I told myself that we were a mistake and I pushed you away, it would make me realize that Lucille was who I was meant to be with. So I did what I could to stop feeling how I did about you, but you were on my mind constantly. Every time I saw you…every time I see you…you take my breath away.”

“But no matter what I do, you’re always going to pick Lucille over me,” she stammered with a whimper, shrugging her shoulders and feeling her body shaking. “All I’ve ever wanted was to be married to you and have that family you dreamt of. When I was young, all I wanted was to be successful. To be the best at what I did. Then you came into my life and your dreams became my dreams. When you left, my dreams didn’t change. I was stuck with the world that you promised me but I could no longer have that because you were in love with Lucille.”

“Y/N,” Negan slid in closer to her after he set the photo down on the coffee table, he grasped her hands in his and squeezed tightly to them. “You were the best thing that ever happened to me, but I know that I was the worst thing that ever happened to you.”

“Not the worst,” she piped knowing that there were certain situations in her life that could top certain things. “You just have given me the biggest heart break with your promises and then ripping them away from me.”

“I was wrong to do what I did. I’m so sorry,” Negan repeated, visibly emotional while he held onto her. “I kept you hanging on because I was always on the edge of my decisions, never knowing if I was making the right or wrong one. I don’t want you to forgive me, but you need to know that I did love you. I do love you and I miss you…I miss us so much.”

“Negan,” she heard him let out a trembling breath and she felt his hands clasping to hers tighter.

“The first night I met you I saved you from being raped by some asshole. I was your hero. You were the one person in my life that I’ve ever been the hero to. After that, you were the one that kept saving me. You’ve always been saving me,” Negan stammered, his eyes misting over further while he spoke. “What kills me the most is that I hurt you so bad that I pushed you into a situation where you got raped and I…I couldn’t save you. It was my fault.”

“Negan…no,” she immediately responded hearing his broken breathing when he lowered his head away from her to hide how emotional the last statement actually made him. “Shane was never your fault. It was mine for not wanting to be alone. I let someone take advantage of me because…”

“Because I hurt you. If I would have never done what I did, you would still be with Lucille and me,” Negan scoffed, lifting his head to show her that his emotions were absolutely conflicted and nose scrunched up. “Shane wouldn’t even be a thought. I hurt you so much that I pushed you away and you sought comfort elsewhere. It was my fault. I was supposed to save you and the only thing I did was get you hurt.”

“Negan,” she breathed out when he stood up from the couch and paced across the room. Negan lowered his head into his hand. Getting up, she followed him to where he was and reached out to place her hand in over his shoulders.

“You were always my good luck charm and my compass. You always led me to the best parts in my life and lifted me up even when I didn’t deserve it,” Negan recalled, gazing back at her with his reddened over hazel eyes. “And I led you to nothing, but pain. With you I was the happiest I ever was. And with me, you were the most miserable.”

“But it doesn’t mean you were to blame for Shane and what…happened to me,” she still had a hard time acknowledging that what happened to her was rape because when she thought about it, that made things extraordinarily bad. Getting with someone she knew raped her just because there was no one else didn’t look good for her and she knew that. “Misery, sure. But Shane? No.”

“The best thing you could ever do is kick me out of your life completely because I feel like I’m the biggest piece of shit,” Negan slid out of her grasp and headed for the kitchen to leave her there in the living room. Thinking things over, she headed into the kitchen and saw that he had taken his glasses off to brush at his eyes. When he heard her entering the kitchen, he put the glasses back on and cleared his throat. “Shane isn’t wrong about me Y/N. I’m a deadbeat. I let everyone down eventually. I loved Lucille and look what I did to her. You, you gave me everything and look what I did to you. And with Evie…”

“Don’t let Shane get into your head with Evie,” she stepped forward to grab the sides of his face after he turned to face her. Negan’s lips were agape and he seemed to be lost in the thought of how awful he was. “You’ve made mistakes. You’ve done some fucked up shit, but the one thing I know you to be is a good father. You have never fucked that up. Evie loves you…more than anything.”

“She loves us more than anything,” Negan corrected her, his hands sliding in over hers and he leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers. “Y/N, I know you don’t believe me, but since you’ve been out of my life it has gone to absolute shit. You make my life better. You make me better. I love you. So fucking much. I love you.”

The soft stroking of Negan’s hands over her face drew her eyes to close and the warmth of Negan’s breath over hers made a chill run down her spine. Hesitantly, Negan’s lips hovered with an eagerness to kiss her. Faintly, his mouth brushed over hers making a sharp exhale fall from her throat. Involuntarily she was shaking while they stood before each other for a few moments. It was like they were both too afraid to kiss each other until she stepped up on her toes to bring their lips together. Soft strokes from Negan’s rough fingertips were felt over her face and her hands settled in over the center of his chest. With each tender, sweep of his lips over hers she could feel her heart hammering inside of her chest.

“I miss you,” she breathed against his lips, stroking her fingers down over the side of Negan’s face. Their lips were still touching, but they were slightly parted. “I have never loved anyone the way I have loved you. And I never will.”

“Please…” Negan stroked his fingers from his right hand through her hair and tipped back enough to trace his fingertips from his left hand over her lips. Negan’s breathing was loud while she kissed softly at the tips of his fingers. “I can’t not have you in my life anymore. I’m falling apart without you. You’re the one thing that keeps me whole and I’m the one thing that makes you happy. You deserve to be happy and I’m…”

“Shhh,” she hushed, sliding her hand up over the side of his neck to trace her thumb in over his bottom lip. Repeating the gesture she had been doing to his fingers, he faintly kissed at the tip of her thumb and his eyes were locked on hers.

“I love you. So fucking much,” Negan declared with a shuddering exhale when she tipped back up on her toes again to meet him in a passionate kiss. With time the intensity of it grew and Negan pulled her in closer to him hooking his arms around her waist. Their bodies pressed together when his fingers wrapped loosely around her throat, his thumb sweeping over her jawline while he kissed her to the sweetest of surrenders.

“I love you too,” she purred against his lips when his free hand slid around to slip in over her bottom. Squeezing softly, Negan hummed and then skimmed his hand up the planes of her back. Teasing his fingertips underneath the back of her t-shirt, his fingers stroked at her flesh making her eyes come to a tight close. Taking her move, she repeated the gesture he did, but pushed her palms up under his shirt to stroke her fingers over his chest. A low, raspy moan fell from Negan’s throat while she took her time caressing over his body. “Arms up.”

“Yes ma’am,” Negan followed her order, lifting his arms up and allowing her to pull the material from his body to drop it to the floor. Both of them were breathing loud, their hands touching and caressing every bit of each other’s bodies. Moments later, Negan reached for the bottom of her shirt and pulled it up allowing her to lift her arms for him to get the shirt off of her. “You won’t think this is a mistake again?”

“No,” she answered with a whimper when his thumb slid in over the material covering her breast. “Will you leave me feeling miserable?”

“I never want to make you miserable again,” Negan hooked his arm around her in search of the clip in her bra. Taking his time, he got the material from her body and then pulled her close to him. Meshing their bodies together, Negan enjoyed the warmth of the skin-to-skin contact between them and he curled his finger in underneath her jaw. Teasing his lips over hers, Negan noticed how desperately she wanted him to kiss her and it made him smile. “I just want you happy. I want to see you smile again. I want to see you smile because of me. Please come back to me. I can’t sleep because I think about you constantly. Tell me what I have to do…what do I have to do in order to fix what I’ve done?”

“Negan,” she could see the passion in his eyes and for once she felt like he was genuinely serious.

“You don’t understand Y/N. If I could go back…I would do everything I could to fix things. To stop you from getting hurt. I would keep you safe and take care of you like I was supposed to. Like I should have done from the fucking start,” Negan stammered noticing the more emotional she got as he continued. “I just want to fix what I’ve done. I know I can’t, but it kills me to see you accepting the worst because you don’t think you deserve better. You’re not a bad person. You deserve so much more than you are allowing yourself and I know that I might not be capable of giving you what you deserve, but I know that I love you.”

Without saying anything in response, she hooked her arm loosely around Negan’s shoulders to pull him down to her so she could meet his lips once more. Hooking her fingers into his hair, she knew that there were only two people that she found comfort in kissing as of late. That was Negan and Lucille. Even though she was attracted to Shane, there was something that never felt right. Reaching down, Y/N’s hands fumbled with Negan’s belt getting it undone while his tongue flicked out over hers.

“You’re keeping the glasses on?” she confirmed making him chuckle against her lips while she pulled apart his pants and then dragged down his zipper. With a groan, Negan looked down between them to see her slipping her hand between the material of his pants to caress over his body through the material of his tight, black boxer briefs.

“I know how much you like them,” Negan snickered helping her get his pants off him. When he was able to kick out of them, Negan reached for her pants to get them off as well. It seemed like the less clothes she had on, the more nervous she seemed to get. Picking her up in his arms, Negan sat her down on the edge of the counter and kissed her heatedly. Negan noticed her shaking and reached for her hands to hook his fingers with hers while her legs loosely wrapped around his waist. “Are you okay? We can stop.”

“I’m fine,” she assured him, enjoying the warmth of him close to her. “It’s just what you do to me. Every time I’m with you, it feels like the first time.”

Hearing that made a smile expand over Negan’s handsome features. Keeping his fingers on his left hand hooked with hers, Negan let go with his right and took his time to trace his fingers over her arm. It was slow making her eyes come to a tight close when he swept over her collarbone. Continuing with his caress, he slid his fingers up over the side of her neck and leaned forward.

“You are so beautiful,” Negan slurred, his words hot against the side of her neck when he started peppering wet kisses over her flesh. A breath hitched in her throat with Negan’s rough stubble giving a significant contrast to the wet kisses over her neck, but she loved it. Taking her free hand, she flattened her palm out over Negan’s shoulder and traced over some of the freckles that were there. With ease, his lips went from her neck to over her jawline and he met her lips in a desperate caress. “I love you.”

“I love you too. You know that,” she panted against his wet lips releasing his hand so she could caress up and over the long planes of his back before pulling them forward to stroke her fingers through the dark hair that covered his chest. “I’ll always love you.”

Sinking his fingers into her hair, Negan hovered his lips over hers and their eyes were locked. There was a look that only Negan could give that would make you feel like you were the only person in the world that mattered. It was seductive and longing, but it was so damn addictive. To be looked at like that was an incredible feeling. One she longed for but had tried to push aside.

Negan adjusted her weight when he reached for her panties to get them from her body, taking his time to pull them down her legs before dropping them. Urging her to lean back slightly, Negan slid his palm down over her chest dropping it down her body in a feathery fashion. It trailed between her breasts, over her abdomen and then over her thighs. It made her tremble and a sound of awe fell deeply from within Negan.

Dropping his head down, Negan’s mouth followed the motion his hand did starting at the center of her chest. As he lowered, his lips traveled their way over her breast to tease over her sensitive flesh. When his lips surrounded her breast, she tipped her head back and cried out. His tongue flicked circles around the taut flesh before sucking delicately. Gripping tightly to his shoulders made him growl against her sensitive body. Sliding his kisses across her chest, he went to go focus on her other breast hearing her moaning out while she descended her fingers into his hair to grasp tightly at it. With a slurping sound, he pulled from her breast, following the route down her body. Getting on his knees, Negan turned his head to press a kiss against the inside of her thigh making her grasp tightly to the edge of the counter where she was seated.

“Are you sure you can do this with your nose?” she reminded him shuddering when he laughed against her thigh.

“I did this the day it happened and my face was numb as hell sweetheart,” Negan pointed out with an arch of his eyebrow over his thick framed glasses. “It’s worth it. Trust me.”

Hooking his arms around her thighs, Negan pulled her forward on the counter to bring her right to the edge making her gasp. Dragging his lips over the inside of her thigh had her releasing a shuddering exhale. When the warmth of his breath etched over the most sensitive parts of her, she arched forward making him growl out in amusement. Firmly grasping to her thighs, Negan finally teased his tongue out over her folds making her bite into her bottom lip. Taking his time, Negan enjoyed the way she would shake or cry out when he used his talented mouth over her. With a wince, she felt one of his long, slender digits pushing into her body while Negan’s tongue was flicking out against her clit making her cry out his name. When he inserted a second finger, she felt him pumping them inside of her matching the tempo of his tongue. There was a desire to reach her breaking point while she rocked her hips against his movements. It was a mystery to her how Negan was able to read her better than anyone she had ever been with. He knew what to do and how to do it with ease.

“Negan,” she panted his name seeing the dedication he had with what he was doing. His eyes were closed, his head going from side to side while he worked to bring her right to the edge of her orgasm. Hooking her fingers tightly into his hair she cried out his name and heard the wet sounds that his mouth made in not missing a step in continuing while her hips shook against his movements. What he was doing had her heart hammering inside of her chest. The most delicious shiver continued to fill her body and if she didn’t reach for him, he would have kept going. Honestly, part of her questioned if she did want him to stop because it felt so good. It had been a very long time since she had felt this kind of high from something. Negan was very good with his mouth. He knew that. In fact, he was proud of it. It got him off knowing that he could have someone eating out of the palm of his hand. With the variations between his tongue, his lips and the meticulous strokes and movements he did he knew that he could turn Y/N into a mess in no time. “Get up.”

“Yes ma’am,” Negan pulled back, licking his lips when he did as she requested. With a bob of his head, he watched while her fingers pulled at the waistband of his boxer briefs, tugging the material that was clinging to his erection down. With a bounce, his cock sprung free to the cool air surrounding them making him moan. Helping her get the material from his body, Negan kicked out of them and stepped forward to allow her fingers to wrap around the shaft of his manhood. Nothing in this was rushed. They both wanted to spend what they could with each other, learning to accept the other’s body again. With the way she traced over the length of him, he could tell that she was admiring him. “You’re always on my mind.”

“Negan…” she shook her head, circling her fingers over the tip of his cock making it twitch and his abdomen sank in when he moaned. There was no doubt that she was incredibly attracted to the perfect specimen of the man before her. Negan was very verbal in the way that someone would make him feel. The way his eyes were heavy with lust followed by the deep, raspy moans and the erotic lick of his lips had her whole body on fire. “You don’t have to say these things.”

“But I mean these things,” Negan whispered with a wince when she released him from her grasp to urge him in closer to her.

Adjusting his position between her thighs, Negan hooked his arm around her waist while his other hand grabbed a firm hold of his rigid manhood. Tracing the tip of his body through her folds had her lips parting, her eyebrows furrowing. Pressing his forehead to hers, he was eager to have that close contact between the two of them with this happening. Tapping the bulbous tip of his cock against her clit had her whimpering while she clung tightly to him. Not being able to hold on any longer, Negan led his swollen length to her opening. Rolling is hips up allowed him to ease himself into her with a low rumble of a raspy growl. Y/N’s eyelids were heavy with desire while he took his time to fill her with his length. When she licked her lips and nodded, he pulled his hips back before unhurriedly thrusting them forward again. Negan wanted this to be slow, focused, sensual…all the things that would make Y/N feel good. Her nails bit at his shoulders making him hiss out leaving him with the overwhelming need to kiss her. Being enveloped in her warmth along with kissing her so passionately had him lost inside of the moment.

It had been so long since the two of them had this kind of connection. There was no doubt that their bodies were perfect for each other. With every push and pull of his hips, Y/N was reacting leaving him enthusiastic to keep searching out that reaction. While he had an incredible sexual relationship with his wife, Y/N bonded with him in a way that no one else had when it came to sex. It felt so much more intense. There was something so strong, so passionate between the two of them that it all felt so much more enhanced.

Their breathing was loud and uneven when his movements started to get quicker with her clinging tightly to him, “You feel so fucking good.”

Y/N was panting out his name, reacting exactly the way he looked forward to when he was with her. There was so much he loved in this position. One being that he could watch the pull of his thick cock thrusting inside of her. Another being the fact that he was able to observe every single emotion he could draw out of her. There was a flushing to her cheeks and he could see that her pleasure was already so heightened with him inside of her.

Growling out, Negan picked Y/N up from the counter making her gasp and cling tightly to him when he led her over toward the table in the dining room. Carefully setting her down on top of it, he urged her to lay back against the length of it keeping her hips right near the edge. Hooking his arms underneath her knees, he started thrusting making her purr out in delight.

It was thrilling to see how much she loved him inside of her. Everything about the situation had Negan proud. With her mewls of pleasure, her chest rising and falling heavily while she grasped tightly to his wrists had him on cloud nine. She was absolutely living for what he was doing while he thrust into her repeatedly. Grasping firmly to her hips, Negan helped in rocking her to him and he could hear her whimpering getting louder.

If anything, their time apart made her more sensitive to everything that she had been lacking for so long with Negan. Hissing out, Negan dropped his head back and started to smack up against her harder making the table shake with his movements.

“You are so fucking gorgeous, you know that?” Negan lowered her legs and reached out to palm up over her sides to cup her breasts in his rough palms. Pressing in over her, he felt her hands cupping at his chiseled jawline. When he went to kiss her, his glasses fell down over his face making the both of them laugh before he reached up to set them aside. “I might look sexy in them, but they don’t work well when I’m in movement.”

“We can fix that,” she stammered with a bright smile, reaching for his glasses getting him to back up when she pressed her hand into the center of his chest. Grabbing his hand in hers, she led him toward the couch and pressed into his chest to get him to sit down. Crawling in over his lap, she put the glasses back on him making him snort out a laugh. “You can leave the movement to me.”

“Happily,” Negan’s eyes narrowed, his hands settling in over her hips when she reached between them to lead his rigid cock back into her. There was a moment of hesitance when she got used to the stretching feeling of him inside of her again, but it didn’t last long before she was confidently bouncing her hips over his making Negan moan out enthusiastically. “Good girl…”

Negan lifted up enough to nip at her neck, his moans vibrating against her damp flesh while she had her way with him. There was one thing they weren’t when they were together and that was quiet. Every time they were together, they were both very verbal and loud, but Negan always felt that was a sign of a job well done. It meant they were both enjoying each other and that’s all he could ask for.

“Fuck me,” Negan dropped his head back, his jaw locking up when he felt a fire burning deep inside of him. Lowering his stare, he admired the way she moved over his length. Rising almost to the tip before burying him deep inside of her when she brought her hips back down. “You were always so good with taking what you wanted. You missed daddy as much as he missed you, didn’t you?”

Dragging his thumb over her bottom lip, she took it between her lips and sucked softly at it before he arched up enough to meet her lips in a wet, sloppy kiss where they were both eager to have control over it. Y/N sucked softly at Negan’s tongue when he pressed it between her lips, but he returned the gesture when she did the same.

“Please…” she panted, making Negan notice with the way she was trembling over him that she was close to another orgasm. Grasping firmly to her hips, he started powerfully driving his body up into her again and again making her fall forward. Her head rest against the inside of his neck while he pumped into her. There was a fire flooding her veins making her feel lightheaded when Negan brought her to another earth-shattering orgasm that had her pulling her hips up and away from him making him groan out.

“Good girl mama,” Negan slid his finger in underneath her jaw to get her to look at him so he could kiss her again. Being careful with the way that he moved, Negan persuaded her onto her back and could see that her body was still somewhat shaking from her last orgasm. Taking his glasses off, he set them on the coffee table and got on his knees above Y/N. Wrapping his long fingers around his thick, straining erection made him let out a moan. With Y/N stretched out before him, he felt his body on fire knowing that she had made him feel incredible. When she squeezed at his thighs and licked her lips, it made Negan snicker when he lowered back down over her. Balancing himself between her thighs, Negan reached down while hovering his lips over hers. “The connection between the two of us is just too strong to hold back on…”

“Negan,” she purred out when he led himself back into her warmth. Negan buried himself deep inside of her and then made very meticulous movements. It wasn’t rushed. He wanted to feel everything and build up his orgasm. It was very much his way of making love to her while he worked himself up to his release. They were breathing together, their eyes locked while Negan’s moans became more frequent. There was an incredible rush flooding through him when he lowered enough to have her fingers hooking around the back of his neck while he nuzzled his nose against her neck.

With Negan whispering everything she wanted to hear, she felt like she never wanted to let him go. Never again. Negan’s winces were filling the air and she pulled at his hair to get his mouth to hers. With him bucking up against her, his incredibly sexy, raspy moans falling from his throat she knew he was almost finished. Meshing their lips together, she kissed him like the world depended on it feeling his length throbbing inside of her. Pushing through, Negan continued to plunge into her when his release started. With the warmth of him inside of her, she was in amazement of him when he continue to roll his hips into her until the very end of his orgasm. When he finished, Negan lowered in over her and she happily accepted him into her arms stroking her fingers through his wet hair.

“Can we stay like this forever?” Negan hummed against the side of her neck making her laugh when she kissed at his temple. To be fair, that was something she would have found herself saying. Not Negan, but it felt so good like this. With Negan still inside of her and the warmth of his breath teasing at her flesh she felt like she could get lost in all of this. Everything ached, but in a good way. “Your arms feel like home.”

“I feel like your wife may have a problem with that,” a voice made them both jump when Negan looked back over his shoulder to see that standing in the doorway was Shane. How had he managed to open the door with them not even noticing? Were they really that lost in each other that they were too focused on each other to notice? A panicked sound fell from Y/N’s throat knowing that she had given him a key in the past. When Negan pulled his hips away, she let out a whimper since he was still very much inside of her when they realized Shane was there. Negan attempted to grab the pillows to help cover Y/N to keep her from Shane’s sight making Shane smile. “Please buddy. I’m her fucking boyfriend. I don’t think you need to cover her up in order to make her feel comfortable. It’s not something I haven’t seen. It may have been a few months since we’ve had sex, but I’m very much aware of what she looks like naked. Which this whole thing is starting to make sense.”

“Shane,” she attempted to breathe, holding the pillows closer to her seeing that Shane’s eyes were locked on Negan who reached for the last remaining throw pillow to cover himself with. “How long were you there?”

“Long enough,” Shane huffed, his thick jaw locking up when he lowered his head and nodded. “So with me, I have to wear a condom all the time, but with the man who is married you have no problem letting him pump you full of his cum, huh?”

“Watch it,” Negan warned, his breathing labored when Shane itched at the side of his face. The color had drained from both Negan and Y/N’s faces with Shane there.

“Or what? What are you going to do Negan?” Shane threw his hands up noticing the way that Y/N tried to get up, but she was keeping the pillows over her. “You’re going to get mad at me for calling my girlfriend a skank with your fucking cum dripping out of her right now and getting on the couch?”

“I am so sorry,” Y/N apologized from where she was sitting hearing Negan’s loud breathing filling the air. She didn’t know what to do. Whether she should get up or not to go grab her clothes from the kitchen, but she was frozen. The way that Shane was looking at her made her feel horrible while he looked between her and Negan trying to assess the situation. “Negan just came over to help with something and…”

“And you ended up fucking him,” Shane grumbled stroking his fingers over the back of his neck with an uneven breath. “You know, I fucking called you to let you know that I was stopping by. Texted you too, but obviously you didn’t give a shit or you wanted me to see this.”

“I had no idea that you…” she looked toward her phone that was charging at the corner of the room. She had it on the kitchen table originally, but it must have fallen when her and Negan had sex on top of it. “I’m sorry Shane. I didn’t mean for you to see this or find out like this. I just…”

“You’re not sorry. This is what you fucking wanted this whole time,” Shane declared with a shake of his head, his face growing hot when she got up and kept the pillows over her when she back stepped toward the kitchen. “You are so fucking predictable and fucking pathetic.”

“Listen…” she saw Shane roll his eyes and shake his head before walking right out the door. Quickly putting on her clothes, she went to head back for the door, but Negan stopped her. “I need to talk to him. The way he found out…the way that just happened.”

“Let him leave. He’s a hot head,” Negan begged of her when Negan reached for his clothes in attempts to get them on.

“I need to say something, just please…stay in here because I don’t think you will make it better,” she explained moving around Negan in order to go to the door. Walking outside, she saw that Shane was pacing in the front yard and she carefully moved in before him. When he noticed her, his angry, dark eyes locked with hers.

“What the fuck is wrong with you Y/N?” Shane slurred, his voice raising enough to get his point across when she lowered her head down. “You will never get over that fucking guy. He left you when you were eight months pregnant with his child. He treated you like fucking scum, but you are so fucking desperate to get him back between your legs. Why? Because he has a big dick? Are you really that much of a skank that you…”

“It’s not about the sex with Negan, it’s just…” she knew that she could do more in explaining things, but it wasn’t something that Shane honestly wanted to hear and she knew that. “It doesn’t matter why that happened, it was wrong and I’m sorry. I should have talked to you about things. After the party, I just…the two of us haven’t been on the best of terms and…”

“I don’t want to fucking hear it Y/N,” Shane snarled, closing the distance between the two of them. “What do you think is going to come from this? Huh? You think all of your dreams are going to come true? You think he is going to instantly fall back in love with you and give up his smoking hot wife for you? Newsflash Princess, that’s not going to fucking happen. He doesn’t even fucking like you. He uses you so fucking bad and you just let him because you are fucking pathetic.”

“I’m sorry. I got caught up in things and I know that you’re upset. You have every right to be upset with me,” she reasoned knowing that she felt like a shitty person as it was for doing what she did on Evie’s birthday. She was a cheater and it really now just hit her how awful she was for doing it. “Listen, I do care about you. I care about you a lot and I just got caught up in things. This isn’t how I would want things to end with us, but…”

“Oh, so now you’re breaking up with me because the asshole fucks you once and suddenly you think all of your problems are going to be fixed with him, huh?” Shane blurt out, stepping forward to close the distance between the two of them to press her back against his police car. Lowering his hand between them, he palmed in over her body making her let out an uncomfortable sound. “Suddenly you have a pussy full of his seed and you think you’re going to belong to him again, huh?”

“Stop,” she pushed into his chest feeling the warmth of Shane’s breath over her neck. His touch was aggressive and she did everything that she could to get him away from her. Finally getting the strength over him, she shoved into him and made him stumble back. “I know I’m not a good person. I never thought I was, but the two of us…we just don’t work together. I love and care about you as a friend, but…”

“You have something severely wrong with you. There is something broken so far down inside of you that you are so desperately in love with someone who thinks you’re fucking scum. Negan keeps you on the fucking side for when his wife finally decides that he’s the loser that he is because he knows your dumb enough to stick around for him,” Shane tossed his hand up in the air, his face turning a darker shade of red. “It makes him feel good to know that you are so desperately in love with him. Knowing that he can control you at any time because you’re a fucking moron. You’re always going to be a miserable bitch because of him.”

Shane looked to the door to see that Negan was standing there watching the two of them making Shane let out an angered sound, “You have no idea how fucking hard it is for me right now not to take out my gun and shoot him between the fucking eyes. He knows what he was doing. This is exactly the kind of thing he wanted to happen to take you away from me.”

“This wasn’t purposeful, it just happened,” she tried to reason with Shane with a frown her chest aching with the stress from everything. “I never had the strength to break up with you Shane. This is my fault. I haven’t been comfortable with the two of us as a couple. I loved being your friend, but this…”

“You know you’re going to be alone forever because of him, right?” Shane pointed his finger toward the door, his eyes furious with her. “You’re giving up the only person that liked you at this point because you think he’s going to finally give you what you want. Instead you’re going to be a miserable, stupid girl that is going to wait forever for a man that doesn’t even love you.”

“I think we should calm down and talk things out,” she saw Shane turn on his heel and she stepped forward. “The two of us were close before we ever became a couple and I think if we talk things out, we can still be friends. Evie loves you and I know that she would still love to have you in her life because…”

Before Y/N could even comprehend what was happening, Shane had spun on his heel when she had touched his shoulder. It was all so fast, but she was on the ground with the wind knocked out of her after Shane had undoubtedly hit her. It felt like her face was on fire when she turned on her side and felt Shane reach down to grab a hold of her. Shane’s hands were clinging to her shirt, forcefully pulling her up from the ground when he threw her back against his vehicle. The contact her body made with it made her let out a pained breath and she tried to lift her hands up enough to press them in over the center of Shane’s chest. Shane’s chest was rising and falling heavily while he stared out at her. Shane’s hand wrapped around her throat when he stepped closer to her.

When Shane raised his fist again, she flinched back and away from him making him chuckle when it showed that she was scared of what he would do next, “Please…don’t…”

A moment later she felt Shane being pulled away from her and she tried to balance herself against the car. Negan had knocked Shane down to the ground, putting himself between Y/N and Shane to get them separated.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Negan warned with a roar making Shane hiss out and get up from the ground launching himself at Negan. With Shane going to attack him first, Negan threw his fist out and connected it with Shane’s jaw. It was a loud enough smack to fill the area surrounding them. While Y/N wanted this to stop she was still feeling the effects from Shane’s hit.

Grunts were filling the air while the two men were having a full out brawl in her front yard absolutely tearing into each other. Knowing that Negan was on probation and that Shane was a cop had her worried, “Stop!”

“Stay away,” Negan watched Y/N step forward after he had managed to get Shane to the ground. “He’s a loose cannon. Keep yourself safe.”

“Negan,” she didn’t know what to do when Shane brought his arm up to hammer it into Negan’s face the way he had done on Evie’s birthday. Standing there confused and terrified she watched frozen while both men landed hit after hit on each other. They both were bleeding pretty good at this point and she knew that she needed to get help, but she didn’t know how.

“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Shane spit out when he got Negan onto his back. Shane’s fingers wrapped firmly around Negan’s throat making a wincing sound fall from Negan. With a grunt, Negan brought his leg up kicking Shane in the groin before rolling Shane over onto his back. Bringing his fist into Shane’s face over and over again, Negan took out all the anger and aggression that he had pent up for this man hearing the grunts from Shane beneath him.

“Negan, stop. Think about Evie,” Y/N begged from where she had slid down on the ground while resting herself against the car. Negan looked down at the bloody mess of the man that was beneath him. Shane’s breathing was gurgled and Negan felt everything inside of him on fire. Keeping his fist raised, Negan roared out before dropping Shane back down to the ground. There was no strength left in him as he crawled his way over to Y/N. Once he reached her, he fell into her lap and she held onto him. It took a few minutes for Negan to finally gather himself before he stumbled to his feet. Reaching for Y/N, he picked her up in his arms and was heading for the house to take care of her.

“You’re going back to jail,” Shane spit from where he was finally starting to move, blood dripping from his face. After Negan’s last set of hits, Shane’s face looked like that out of a horror movie with how much he was bleeding. Getting to his knees, Shane nodded and cleared his throat uneasily. “I’m going to make sure you never get out. I’m going to take your daughter away from you and let her know what a vile piece of shit you really are.”

“Fucking try me,” Negan pulled Y/N in closer to him and he shook his head. Nodding over toward one of the cameras that he had just had Y/N set up, he could see the confused expression in Shane’s face. “You picked the wrong day to do this buddy. Those cameras are up and running. You come after me. I will come after you with everything that I’ve got. Which is camera footage of you assaulting Y/N and then trying to attack me first after I just got you away from her. How would your job feel knowing that you assault woman? Huh? You turn me in, you go down with me you son of a bitch.”

Shane went silent and he attempted to get up, but he only fell back to one knee, “You’re smooth as hell, aren’t you? It’s fine. You can keep the fucking skank. We all know what you’re going to do with her anyways.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” Negan demanded carrying Y/N back into the house, closing the door with his foot behind him. Heading to the bathroom, Negan took her to where she had taken him on Evie’s birthday. Setting her down on the bench in the shower, he dropped down in the corner of the shower and was visibly having trouble himself. Negan just barely got the win in that fight and it even surprised her that he managed to get the upper hand on Shane. “We should get you to the hospital. Make sure that you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” she lowered her head into her hands knowing that she just got roughed a bit with Shane’s hit. “Hospitals ask questions.”

“Maybe they should know the answers,” Negan spit out making her look to him. Negan’s bottom lip was split open and his mouth was bloody. There was a wound over his eyebrow and his face looked bruised and battered.

“Not only would he get in trouble, but so would you,” she reminded him making Negan shrug.

“Maybe it’s time that I did,” Negan slurred, shaking his head about. “Shane shouldn’t get away with hitting you. You never hit a woman. You just don’t. If I have to go down in order to take him down, it’s worth it.”

“Not when our daughter is part of this. You are everything to her,” she declared making Negan huff out loudly and lower his head. “Besides, you look like you need the hospital more than I do.”

“I’m okay,” Negan muttered lifting his head to see the way she was looking at him. “I’m not okay.”

“You’re not,” she agreed with him, reaching up to touch her face where Shane had hit her. There was a sense of sadness to her when Negan reached out with his hand to grab a hold of hers. “I never thought he would hit me. That was never a worry I ever had.”

“I told you I was scared of what he was capable of,” Negan noticed the way that she was stroking over the back of his hand and he sighed. Negan’s knuckles were bloody and scratched up from the war that he went through. Frowning, she brought his hand up to press faint kisses over his knuckles. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll live,” she explained, seeing Negan crawling over to her so he could sit on the bench with her. Their fingers hooked together and they both were absolutely drained. “You shouldn’t have fought with Shane. Not over me.”

“It’s been a long time coming,” Negan grunted, a wince falling from his throat when his face tensed up. “I’ve wanted to destroy him from the first moment that Lucille told me what he did to you.”

“You could have lost everything,” she muttered, her eyes locking on Negan when he simply turned his head to look down at her. “It wasn’t worth it for me.”

“When are you going to get it?” Negan retorted lifting his free hand up to stroke it over the side of her face. “You’re worth it. You’re worth so much more than you give yourself credit for. All I saw was that asshole hit you and everything went red. I love Evie, but I wasn’t going to let him hurt you any further.”

“Maybe I deserved it,” she whimpered seeing Negan’s face scrunch up and she felt her eyes tearing over. “I’m not a good person Negan. I was dating him and I did cheat on him twice.”

“No, no. You didn’t deserve this,” Negan maintained with a strong shake of his head. “I refuse to believe that and you shouldn’t either. A real man doesn’t do what Shane did. Shane is a psychotic piece of shit. I promise you, you didn’t deserve this Y/N. You can’t help who you love. I love you and you love me. Don’t you ever think that you deserve someone who is supposed to care for you hitting you because nothing you have done makes you deserve any abuse.”

“I don’t know Negan. I led him on. Instead of going home to Atlanta, he stayed here for me,” she recalled the information that Shane had told her with her time with him. “When I couldn’t even sleep with him, I should have told him that I couldn’t keep this thing going. I was wasting his time. He told me he loved me and…”

“You can’t force yourself to love someone that you don’t love. His response to this happening…it shows what a horrible piece of shit he was,” Negan hissed, his angered face showing through the blood that was still over his skin. “What’s to say that the next time he gets mad, he doesn’t take it out on Evie? He loves you and look what he did to you. If I wasn’t there to stop it, what would have happened next Y/N? You have to think about that. You can’t blame yourself for this.”

“I just…I don’t know,” she felt herself getting emotional and Negan turned her to him so he could rest his forehead against hers. Negan wrapped her up in his arms, pressing a kiss against her temple while he held onto her. For a while they stayed like that. When she was able to calm down, Y/N helped clean Negan up. It was a bit of a mess, but when they were done Negan had grabbed them both some ice packs. They sat down on the couch with Y/N laying in his lap keeping the ice pack over the side of her face. Negan had it over his eyebrow and they both looked like they had been through a war. “How are your ribs?”

“I mean…” Negan tipped his head from side to side letting out a wince, “I kind of feel like I was horse kicked in them, but I will live.”

“This is my fault,” she frowned while she turned in his lap. Lifting out she dragged her fingers down Negan’s abdomen making him wince when she did and she pulled her hand away with a nervousness. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault that Shane is psychotic,” Negan responded, pulling the ice from his face to look down at her to give her his full attention. “Stop blaming yourself for this whole thing. I told you that Shane was on the verge of erupting. This whole thing is fucked up and it’s because of him, not you.”

“I just can’t help but feel this is all my fault for bringing him into my life to begin with,” she turned in Negan’s lap and his fingers brushed through her hair. “If I didn’t think I was going to be alone for the rest of my life, I would have been thinking clearer.”

“You won’t be alone. Lucille and I will always be here for you,” Negan insisted with a hushing sound while sweeping his thumb over the side of her face that wasn’t hurt.  “I would do anything for you. I think this kind of proves it Y/N.”

“Right,” she swallowed down hard and turn her head into Negan’s palm pressing a faint kiss over the pulse point near his wrist. It made Negan smirk before reaching for their ice packs.

“I feel like these have become cold water at this point,” Negan motioned her to sit up for a minute and he took them toward the kitchen. “I’m going to put them away and then I’m going to go see if I’m pissing blood.”

“Negan,” she groaned hearing him laugh, but then winced afterwards showing that it hurt to laugh. Getting up, she moved over toward her computer to look at it. Opening the laptop, the security cameras were still up and she sat down before it. “We should probably keep the footage of what Shane did just in case he tries to do something.”

“Makes sense,” Negan walked back into the room with his arm wrapped around his ribs. “I’ll be right back.”

“Okay,” she bit down on her bottom lip, scrolling through the footage of what had taken place. Stopping on when she was talking to Shane, she felt her heart skip a beat when she actually witnessed Shane hitting her. It made her stomach turn and honestly? It made her emotional. This was someone she actually cared about. She never thought he would have hurt her like that. Even with Negan and Lucille’s warnings, she never saw him actually hitting her. So seeing it actually happen on these security cameras had her shaken. What followed with the fight played out before her between Negan and Shane. Hearing her phone vibrate on the table, she reached for it and saw the alert that was still there for Shane’s text message.

Opening up her phone, she looked at the time he called and the text that he had sent. How had she not realized that he had contacted her? If she knew that Shane was coming over, she would have never done what she had with Negan. While she enjoyed what had happened originally, there was a sense of guilt that was eating away at her. Looking at the time, she tried to place what was going on at the time for her to be so busy that she didn’t notice he had called. Scrolling through the video, she stopped at the time when she was outside in the backyard fixing the camera. Well that was definitely the time that Shane had called her so that made sense as to why she didn’t hear it. The video continued to play out to when Negan had stepped outside to watch her trying to fix the camera and she looked at the time on the camera. It would have been a few minutes after Shane had called which made things start swirling around in her mind. Why didn’t Negan tell her that her phone had rung in the first place?

Pushing away from the table, she thought about how Shane had told her that Negan would have done anything to get him out of her life. All the wonderful, amazing things that Negan had said were running through her mind and she cleared her throat.

The sound of the door opening was heard and she looked back over her shoulder when Negan entered the room, “No blood, shit just hurts.”

With the way that Y/N was looking at him, it made the half smirk from Negan’s face fade, “What’s wrong?”

“Negan, why didn’t you tell me that my cell phone went off while I was in the backyard trying to fix the camera?” she questioned while gradually getting up from the chair that she was seated in making Negan’s eyebrows furrow. “You were in here when Shane called my cell phone. Why didn’t you tell me that it went off?”

“Because I was paying attention to the cameras and whoever is calling you is none of my business,” Negan answered, resting his shoulder against the wall while he stared out at her. “I wouldn’t have looked at your phone to begin with because it’s none of my business.”

“Yeah, but what if it was the school calling about Evie? What if it was work? Wouldn’t you want to tell me that my phone was going off?” she pushed further making Negan’s lips part and he seemed confused.

“No, I wasn’t worried about it being Evie because if there was something wrong and they couldn’t get ahold of you, they would have called me,” Negan reasoned with her, confusion still flooding his features. “Why are you asking these kind of questions? I didn’t realize I had to tell you that your phone went off while I was in here. I’m sorry…”

“I called out to you and you didn’t respond to me,” she thought back on what happened earlier making Negan’s head tip to the side. “Did you see that it was Shane that called me? Did you see his text and that’s why you did what you did? You knew that Shane would be showing up, so you played me in order to get Shane to see the two of us.”

“What?” Negan blurt out, dropping his hands down at his sides. “Of course not. I said everything I did because I meant it. Where is this coming from Y/N? Plus, I don’t know the key to your phone. How would I know that Shane was coming here?”

“Because you can see the text preview on the phone even when it is locked Negan,” she reached for her phone that was on the table. Negan seemed stressed with what she was saying and she shook her head. “Please tell me you didn’t see the text and that’s why you did what you did.”

“I didn’t see the text. I said the things that I did because I meant them. Every single word,” Negan declared stepping forward to reach out for Y/N, but she pulled away from him. “Y/N? Don’t let Shane get into your head. This wasn’t some elaborate plan.”

“But you did want Shane out of my life. You made that clear from the start,” she thought back on everything making Negan frown when she stepped back and further away from him. “You are incredibly good at lying.”

“I’m not lying. Please, get Shane out of your head. This is his messed-up theories screwing with you,” Negan pled with her, his voice getting raspier when he could see that she was getting upset at the idea of all of this. “Y/N, I meant every word I said to you. I love you…so much.”

“What’s the plan with us Negan? Huh?” she questioned throwing her hands up in the air while she thought about everything. “We just go back to the way that things were with Lucille? The three of us being together. You won’t get upset? You won’t throw a shit fit when the two of us girls are close again?”

“Y/N, right now I think we just need to focus on what happened today,” Negan pointed out with a grunt trying to move forward to touch her reaching out to cup her face in his hands tenderly doing his best to avoid touching where she was hurt. “Get through today and then focus on tomorrow. You know that both Lucille and I miss you. You know that we both love you…”

“You know how much I love you,” she felt tears burning at her eyes while Negan continued to be uneasy while standing before her. “You knew what you could say to have me eating out of the palm of your hand.”

“Y/N, please. Listen to yourself. I didn’t come up with some kind of elaborate plan to trick you into having sex with me so when Shane showed up that he would see us,” Negan pleaded with her trying to hush her so she would listen to him. “I know that Shane is crazy. I would have never put you in harm’s way like that. Look at my face Y/N. I went to war for you with Shane.”

“You wanted to destroy Shane long before today, Negan,” she attempted to move away from him, but Negan kept her where she was. “You might have thought that Shane would have attacked you. I would have seen it. I was already uneasy with Shane for attacking you before. Maybe this would have been the final nail in the coffin.”

“Y/N, the two of us started having sex on Evie’s birthday. None of that was planned. You know that the two of us have something that is unbreakable. Over ten years and we still know that,” Negan reminded her of their life together. “Please stop letting this cloud your judgment.”

“Negan, if you looked at that phone and you knew that Shane was heading over here…it is partially your fault that Shane hit me,” she dug in that information making him step back and away from her. “I know it’s mostly my fault.”

“It’s neither of our faults because I didn’t see your phone. I didn’t. I swear to you,” Negan stood his ground when she lowered his hands from her face. There was still doubt in Y/N’s eyes and Negan didn’t know what to do. “I know I did a lot of fucked up shit in the past Y/N, but I promise you this is not something that happened. It’s Shane’s words eating away at you because everything I said, I meant.”

“So given the chance to redo everything, you would have turned Lucille away? You wouldn’t have left me alone when I was eight months pregnant?” she blurt out making Negan’s face twist with an array of emotion. Negan stepped back and she laughed. “Of course not because Lucille is the most important person in your life.”

“Why are you doing this?” Negan was trying to understand what was happening, but when she went off in the other direction, he tried following her. “Y/N? You love Lucille too.”

“I do,” she threw her hands up in the air and turned to look at Negan with frustration. “But I have been hopelessly in love with you for over a decade. And every time when you’re given a decision, you always pick her over me. And you always will. The only reason you want me in your life is because without me you feel like your life has fallen to shit.”

“My life is shit without you,” Negan agreed with her making her get tense, “but the way you are saying it is not the way that I feel it. My life is shit because without you I’m miserable.”

“No, your life is shit because your good luck charm is no longer with you,” she moved forward to shove into his chest making Negan wince when she did it since he was still sore. “I’m so stupid. I am never going to be anyone’s first choice. This is my mistake for putting myself in with both you and Shane.”

“Hold on, I’ve done nothing wrong,” Negan reasoned making her glare out at him and he held his hands up in the air defensively. “Yes, I’ve made huge, massive mistakes in the past. I did. I know I did. But I have done my best to be a better man. Mainly for you. I went to therapy because I hated the way that I was. I got my ass kicked today in the name of you. I want you in my life. I know I made a mistake. I did. But please, don’t let Shane cloud your mind with all of this. Yes, I love Lucille, but I love you too. Call it greedy, but I want to be with the both of you. I know you were happy when it was the three of us. The happiest you’ve been in a long time and…”

“Until when Negan? Until I upset you somehow and you make some grand gesture to let me know how much better Lucille is than me?” she felt herself getting emotional while Negan stood before her not knowing how to handle everything that was taking place. “Shane is sadly right. I am going to be alone forever because I am hopelessly in love with you. I’ve always been head over heels in love with you and no matter what you are never going to be mine.”

“But you would be ours,” Negan placed his hand in over the center of his chest, “and I would be both of yours. It’s what you wanted.”

“But for how long? The two of you aren’t going to want me around forever. You’re going to want your alone time and when that time comes, I’m still going to be lonely. Alone,” she whimpered stepping back from Negan when he tried to reach out to her. “Shane isn’t wrong. I’m pathetic Negan. You’re still the man that cheated on me when I was four months pregnant. You’re still the man that left me when I was eight months pregnant. You’re still the man that asked me to marry him a second time knowing that I was happy with the way things were, but you fed me this elaborate lie and I believed you Negan. You promised me the thing I wanted the most in the world even though I was okay with settling with what I had. And you left me hanging.”

“I know what I did and I’m so fucking sorry, but it’s been almost a year and I know how awful I feel not having you in my life. I fucked up. I fucked up so bad and there is nothing I can do to make up for it, but please don’t still believe I’m that same person. The kind of person that would risk your safety just to get what I want because I swear to God, I’m not that person,” Negan begged, his voice breaking when he tried to reach out to her, but she wouldn’t let him touch her. “Y/N, please. I need you in my life. I’m not the man I want to be when you’re not in my life.”

“I can’t do this anymore,” she headed over toward the couch to sit down and Negan moved over toward her. “I need to officially cut you out of my life because I’m always going to be unhappy because I want you so bad that I’m willing to question everything that I am just to be with you. I don’t like who I am when I’m with you.”

“Y/N,” Negan lowered down to his knees and reached out to caress over her knees, trying to get her to look at him. “I know I’ve made mistakes, but I promise you I will do anything for you. Just please…”

“No you won’t,” she reached out to caress her hand in over Negan’s beaten and battered face. Negan’s bottom lip was tremoring while he was attempting to reach out to her. “After ten years, I should have realized that this was all a mistake. “I was actually a really happy outgoing person before I met you. It’s just all the pain I’ve gone through…a lot of it was because of you.”

“Y/N, please…I didn’t see your phone. I swear to you,” Negan repeated, his eyes tearing over while he tried to appeal to her. “We are on the way to fixing things here between us. I need you in my life Y/N. You keep me level. I know what I’ve done in the past, but please…give us a chance again. You make me the man I want to be. Without you, I’m afraid of who I will become. I would have gone to jail for you today.”

“It’s not my responsibility to fix you Negan,” she breathed out dragging her palm down over the side of his face making a broken breath fall from his lips. Getting up from the couch, she watched him slump down on the ground looking absolutely defeated. “Go home. I need time to be alone. But us…this…it all has to stop once and for all. You’re married to an incredible woman. You’ll survive.”

“I won’t,” Negan’s bottom lip was trembling, his eyes tearing over when she closed the laptop that was on the kitchen table. “I love Lucille, I do, but with both of you…”

“You don’t get to have both of us,” she snapped at him watching the way that Negan’s face tensed up when she got upset with him. “I deserve to be someone’s one and only. I deserve happiness. So does Lucille. So get your shit together Negan. Call Chuck and take the job that I worked to get you. Get your life together.”

“After what I did today, why are you…” Negan began with broken breaths slowly pulling himself up from the ground. “Why are you treating me like this? Why are you doing this? I’m not Shane. I didn’t cause this Y/N.”

“Fine, you didn’t cause this,” she threw her hands up in the air blocking him from touching her again when he reached for her. “Go home Negan!”

“Listen, I’m begging you,” Negan reached for her hand, getting on his knees before her watching her roll her eyes at his movements. “Y/N, everything I said to you I meant. Everything. I promise with everything that I am. I swear on my relationship with my daughter that I didn’t…”

“Don’t,” she cut him off immediately, pulling her hand away from him. “Don’t pull that shit.”

“You know how much Evie means to me so if I’m telling you that I didn’t do that, I didn’t do that,” Negan reiterated seeing Y/N pace and the stress that was filling her body was completely evident. “I’m telling you Y/N, more than anything right now I need you back in my life like before. What we had today was incredible and…”

“No,” she put her foot down, heading for Negan’s glasses that he had put on the table along with the photo he had showed her. Tossing them out to Negan, she could tell that he was upset with how things were turning out. “I don’t want to be with you and I don’t want to be with Shane. I’m done with the both of you. For good. You’re my daughter’s father. Nothing more.”

“You don’t mean that,” Negan shook his head, his face sinking with sadness. Y/N moved for the door and opened it, pointing out toward the outside. She was crying at this point and he tried to get her to look at him when he moved to the door. “You don’t want this. You’re crying and…”

“Negan, leave!” she screamed at him making him swallow down hard before nodding. Negan stepped out on the porch and turned on his heel to look back at her.

“I love you,” Negan whispered only for her to slam the door shut leaving him outside.

Sliding down to the ground, she rest her head in her hands while she cried. After all she had gone through, she didn’t know what was right or wrong anymore. All she knew was that she was broken. So broken in fact that she was worried she was going to drown completely if she didn’t try to change things. No matter how much it hurt, she was too confused and conflicted to make the decision her heart truly wanted. Now she was just going to have to live with her decision and be fine with it. There was no going back.

----

Tags: @slutlanna976 @fuckthis-and-fuckthat @jennydehavilland  @felicity291 @ibelongtonegan @smallsadjellyfish @labyrinthofheartagrams  @msjamesmarch @thebeautysurrounds @hotfornegan @redmercysugar @caprithebunny @tuttifuckinfruitty @emoryhemsworth @a-girl-interupted @akumune @stoneyggirl2 @xsarcasticwriterx  @insertneganhere​ @haleygreen23​ @xhannahbananax03​ @sanctuaryforthelost​ @burningredaffair​ @killaweiser​ @dead-of-niight​  @ayumi-wolf​ @neganswoman​

#Negan #negan fanfiction #Jeffrey Dean Morgan #negan x reader #The Walking Dead #twd fanfiction

[macgyvertape]

Glass Onion thoughts (major spoilers)

Seriously spoilers for the whole thing since I saw it in theaters

First Knives Out was really dated to Trump’s presidency with the anti-immigration and anti-Hispanic rhetoric. This one is really dated to Covid lockdown, and I wonder how many years until the references like Zoom calls with pajama pants on and playing Among Us stop being so understandable.

I work in the STEM field, a lot of my social circle is nerds or work in it too so a lot of the irl techbro bullshit this movie was referencing was very recognizable. Like the one scene of Miles wearing a black turtleneck and talking about the “reality distortion field” I immediately recognized as Steve Jobs

Just like the first movie the cast of suspects are all awful in various sterotypical archetype ways, but Birdie Jay throwing a huge party with her “pod” and wearing a mesh mask has me hating her on a personal level.

Movie nerd friend mentioned they built elaborate light boxes in the back of the set to make the glass reflections look correct on camera. Rian Johnson really does flex he’s a good director. One thing that stood out to me was how the camera pans around the island as great scene to scene transitions so you get a sense of how the house is laid out.

Also when all the lights go out it’s great use of lighting, that it’s actually pitch black at first, but there’s enough lighting to see details when everyone starts running around, and the strobe of the light house illuminating characters around corners is :chefskiss:

The way the tension built right before Duke died where everything feels discordant, I figured someone was about to die but wasn’t expecting it to be Duke.

The difference between seeing this in a theater vs at home where you can rewind; I wasn’t watching closely what Miles’ hand was doing with his glass, it’s such a brief thing that seeing it play out differently as Miles describes it adds to the viewers confusion and is a lot more compelling than Miles just saying it.

In the following moments after Duke’s death I’m not thinking to track Duke’s phone and gun until much later. It’s cleverly done, before Dukes murder you and the characters are watching Birdie Jay spin, afterwards you’re watching Duke die.

A good who dunnit has the audience clueless in different ways than the characters and plays with their expecations, and Rian Johnson with the reframed the plot during the flashback by giving context the audience lacked but also literally by just changing the camera angle on a few scenes.

The framing leading into the flashback is really good you see Blanc cry which establishes this is someone who he cares deeply about, encouraging the audience who likes Blanc to become emotionally invested. So most of the flashback you’re growing to like Helen more and more all while creating the tension because you know she gets shot.

I read Hugh Grant’s character as partner/husband especially with how Benoit Blanc dressesed, my straight friend didn’t but nice to see there is confirmation Blanc is gay.

Benoit Blanc is the archetypical detective who is a force for moral good and fully aware of the failings of the law and justice system which really helps him be so likeable. It’s interesting how he doesn’t lie about how he got the box he just let Miles make his own assumptions and be mislead. The same way his references to the first movie where he was paid by a mysterious party to show up are a red herring to the audience.

I was wondering why Andi was so stand off and awkward but the twist it’s her twin sister she’s impersonating, it immediately made more sense. She’s avoiding speaking to everyone who could call her out.

Whiskey in the flashback was a reversal of audience expectations through more context, she’s not really cheating on Duke, she’s not the “dumb blonde” she markets herself as. However despite her saying it was shitty how the group treated Andi she refused to tell the truth against Miles at the end because it would cost her brand.

It’s a shame the Mona Lisa burned because it’s such a culturally significant piece of art. But that’s the whole point, it’s a thematic statement of property isn’t worth more than peoples lives, and it burned because the social contact of justice fell apart. The Mona Lisa is there because some tech bro wanted it for his ego, then someone in the French government was willing to sell it out, and the tech bro’s ego couldn’t handle not being able to disable the protections. It burned because the justice system wouldn’t believe the word of a black woman over a rich white man when the evidence is circumstantial and the witnesses will commit perjury for money. Only when it becomes clear how much the Mona Lisa having burned is going to ruin. Lies’ Braun and give cause for a general investigation do any of the other disrupters even speak up.

The other disrupters were happy to join in smashing a few pieces of art but they still refused to back Helen and tried to stop her burning Miles’ house and the Mona Lisa, it felt like a reference at “performative activism”. Ties nicely to the disruptor speech at the beginning “you have to keep going until you break the thing they don’t want you to break”.

I later realize Andi was forced out of the company and later murdered over covering up how unsafe that fuel was, in burning the painting and destroying his company Helen also saved lives from the contractedcrystal fuel power plant.

I know the throat spray is just a “plot device” so not everyone is wearing masks but knowing how much of a fraud Miles Bron is, I’m sure it doesn’t do jack-shit

Side note: having the song be Mona Lisa by Nat King Cole with the lyrics “Mona Lisa” was perfectly on the nose

The fact Helen lives makes this more of an enjoyable watch than the first one where there’s the collateral death of Fran

The timing on humor is so well done through the whole movie, especially with brick jokes like “non smoking area”, and the stoner who kept saying “just ignore me”, which I would do because he was just out of the way most of the time.

All of Blanc’s outfits were great, I wanna dress like a gay older southern gentleman. I also really liked Birdie Jay’s multicolor dress, I don’t think I’m tall enough to pull it off though. I’d enjoy seeing a fashion breakdown for all the characters.

I would have liked to see more screen time of Peg but understandably in a large cast someone gets the short straw.

I thought I heard the Fugue music from the puzzle box in a few other places, I really want to see an essay on that

#glass onion #knives out #glass onion spoilers #knives out spoilers #best movie of the year IMO

[natashacoco]

Sorry to bother you again 😅😅😅

Can you do another headcanon for Lewis Tan x reader where the reader is an assassin or something along those lines and if you want, Lewis trying to protect the reader as a bodyguard???

I am so sorry that this took forever and I hope that you end up seeing this anon, for some reason this got lost in my inbox somehow for who knows how long and ofc tumblr notifications suck and I just saw this due to another notification i got recently. I tweaked it just a little bit to make things flow just a little more but otherwise, here you go bb

The game: cat and mouse.

The players: You and Lewis.

The objective: you were a trained assassin with a target close to somebody Lewis cared about and he could never know that the person he thought he was protecting needed it more than he thought he did when it came to you.

It started out simply enough, you were assigned a target from your underworld shadow organization. You never questioned why you were being sent or the reason why the picture of the person needed to be "dealt with", but that was just the way it went. Unbridled and unquestioning loyalty imbued in you for as long as you could remember

Your assignment was easy, watch and monitor a target for intel

Unless of course they had to be taken care of. If that was the case, make it look like an accident or a mugging gone too far, by any means necessary

Simple enough, right?

You were used to working in the shadows, stalking your targets and learning their habits and routines better than they did it themselves.

You "accidentally" bump into them one day and end up cloning their phone for easy access to their lives

You find that their routine is almost identical every week without fail, never once faltering or changing

Monday: leave the house at 8:20-8:25 to get to work by 9. Maybe a quick stop by their favorite coffee shop with that 10 minute window they allowed themselves.

Tuesday night: hit the gym

Wednesday: Try a new restaurant with friends

Thursday: stay late at the office so they can leave early on Friday

Friday: meetings in the morning followed by a night of takeout and nights spent at home.

You can't believe that you were sent on this mission, it's almost comical at home easy it'll be to take out your target

It's not until a break in their routine when things start to become a little more complicated.

You notice small changes in your targets schedule after a couple of weeks that don't bother or raise suspicions

it isn't until you start combing through their e-mails and notice the late night calls you listen in on.

That's when you realize why they've become your target: they've found some discrepancies within their company and they're planning on becoming a whistle blower

Your target ends up becoming more erratic at work, outbursts to people, constantly looking over his shoulder. You find yourself smiling and wondering if he can somehow feel your ever hovering presence.

His righteous paranoia comes to a head when he decides to hire a personal bodyguard from one of the best independent security companies in the city.

That's when you're introduced to Lewis Tan

Tall, handsome, tattoos littered all over his body and a professional martial artist

Your interests are piqued of course, not that he'd be able to stop you but that this assignment just got a lot more interesting

You decide to test the waters with how adequate Lewis is with protecting his client

You start off small, following them as they set up a new routine that's completely different from the one your target started with

You scope out the new surveillance camera and system that Lewis has installed

It's simple enough to bypass the system with your skill set, even looping the footage for later use

You decide to tease your target a little more and hack into his personal computer, leaving no hints or clues for him to find

Finally after weeks of observing and reporting to your superiors, you're given the go ahead to take out the target before they're moved to a secure safe house set up by Lewis's team

You expertly end up setting up a Trojan Horse malware that ends up destroying the evidence on the targets computers along with any and all copies made on that computer

thanks to your surveillance over the weeks you know that the original piece of evidence is currently sitting in a safety deposit box under a fake name at the city bank.

That'd be your first stop tomorrow morning before the bank opens and notices it missing by the time Lewis and his team arrive to retrieve it

Your chance comes when a storm hits the town and the power goes out (thanks to a little help of course). No lights, no phones, nothing works

you sneak into the house, completely under the cover of darkness and shadows

You know exactly where your target is

it seems like hours rather than minutes before you've sneaked up behind them

like your assignment you take out your target, making sure it looks like an "accident"

just as easily you sneak out of the house, once again returning to the shadows.

#Lewis tan #Lewis tan x reader #lewis tan x assassin! reader #lewis tan headcannon #this took for fucking ever #i hope you see this anon #shadow and bone #mortal kombat

[eric-the-bmo]

The Neighborhood Watch S3 Ep2: Lost and Found

[Summary: John sees a familiar face, and Louis has a chat with Song's father. Someone from Markus's past makes a surprise visit.] @gr3y-plays-ttrpgs

This will be less formal today! Wanted to try out a more chill style again. Happy New Year btw!! <3

So, Last we left off: Shelby had gone missing.

John is trying So Hard to not panic because oh my god where's Shelby where did she go. He rolls well to Investigate, though he's visibly a bit more nervous than usual, and eventually finds a crowd! And screaming!!!

He pushes his way through and finds Shelby at the center- a crowd's gathered around her, taking pictures and selfies with her.

John is relieved- of course , everything's fine, she had just run into some fans of hers, he was overreacting- and then Shelby spots him and waves, and suddenly the crowd is looking at him!! He's a deer in the headlights as people recognize him; while he's never shown his face on camera, he's appeared in the background of Shelby's streams at times. Shelby eventually sees the attention is making him uncomfortable, so she gets the people to leave, pulls him aside, and- after they both go "hey where were you??"- she asks if he's okay, does he need some air?

John can tell that Shelby wants to stay, so he refuses the offer despite everything happening, and the two of them go to play blackjack.

But then, from the dealer's part of the table is a familiar voice: "John?" It's Clara. You know, the girl he's been avoiding for a whole month.

---

Meanwhile at the North Hotel, Song, her father, and Louis are continuing the tour. Song's father pays for lunch at one of the restaurants the hotels have; it's this New Orleans place, and it's kinda close to how Louis remembers food being back there.

Song's dad asks Louis how he likes Greenville, and our southern gentleman is all "well i was hoping it would a nice place to have an early retirement, but so far it's been... Well it's an interesting place with interesting people." He continues, and I'm counting this as another "this town is weird" rant. He says he works in personal security and finances when asked about his job, and Song's dad finds out Louis used to work for one of his branch companies.

The food arrives; they talk about Song's studies, her mom is mentioned (HELLO? IS SONG'S MOM DEAD??), and meanwhile Louis is trying so so hard to be chill and not freak out bc Man, his girlfriend's dad is really intimidating!!! Speaking of the man, he asks if they've got plans later and Song is all "yeah, cooking lessons"- which, btw: sometimes song and louis actually do cook, and sometimes they do... other stuff- howver her dad doesn't know this and is all "oh, nice! Anyway i should get going, work duties and all"

He pays for the lunch, gives Song some extra cash, and also finally introduces himself to Louis by name: Greyson. He goes to shake Louis' hand; it's a firm handshake, and Louis tries to match it. Greyson does that whole Scary Dad thing of "take care of my daughter now, ok?" and walks off.

Song tells Louis he did a great job talking to her dad! Meanwhile since Greyson left, Louis is able to show how nervous he was the whole time, holding his hurting hand like "aaa thanks darling :'-)"

Song asks Louis how he ended up here anyway- Louis said he had a lot of heat on him (his vampiric ex, a detective, etc), and when he found out he won a raffle he didn't even enter for a house, he took the chance and left. They have a whole conversation I unfortunately didn't catch, about fate and coincidences.

Song kisses Louis against the wall and heads into the casino to find Shelby and John. Louis is extremely flustered before he goes to follow.

Markus heads home to find a tourist couple waiting outside their house, asking if it's the bug museum that was listed on Google Maps, because they would like a tour! Markus is like "oh my god my house is a location on google maps now?? what the fuck???" but gives them the tour anyway.

They're very attentive, asking all sorts of questions- at first Markus is socially anxious about it, but eventually the joy of their special interest takes over, and they ramble about it ☆

But Markus only has enough social energy, and it turns out the tourists paid enough to come back The Next Day, and as they leave Markus leans against the wall, dreading more social interaction.

There's a knock on the door.

Markus goes to open it ("I swear if it's that rat-summoning creep again-") and upon seeing who it is they immediately slam it shut. After the shock wears off, they slowly open it again.

They ask their sister, Analetta, how she managed to find them.

She holds up her phone- Google maps. ("Do our parents know where I am?" "No, they don't.") She hugs them, crying, and while Markus hugs back they reassure her that everything is fine? There's no reason to cry?? ("I mean, I don't have a car but besides that everything's fine-")

Analette says Markus had just disappeared without telling anyone- Markus is like "Do you blame me?" They tell her they vanished because a way to leave home had suddenly appeared for them, and they didn't know if a chance like that would ever show up again; They didn't really have to take things or people with them.

Analetta tells them she managed to visit them by saying she's studying abroad ("oh thank god you didn't move here"), and Markus apologizes for slamming the door in her face. They ask if she'd like to meet their friends. Analetta's like "oh my god? you have friends??" and pokes fun at their sibling when they mention Shelby. Markus is all "No it's not like that, she's my friend," and the two argue over who's going to pay for the food they're going to get from the only DoorDash guy in town (who, btw, is also the only weed dealer in town- they get some of that too).

As they eat sushi Markus fills her in on everything, and while she knows about their bugs, they omit the rest of the supernatural stuff- they don't wanna drag her into all of this. Analetta says that life got harder back home when Markus left, and while she's trying to live the life her parents want her to live, it's killing her inside. She took an opportunity to leave, and wanted to visit Markus one last time. They say she can stay as long as she wants, and might take them up on it; She's actually supposed to be in Japan right now.

Markus sends a text to the group chat so the Main Cast can their sister.

In the hotel, Song and Louis finally get a text notif for the message, which reads: “PLEASE COME TO MY HOUSE ITS SUPER IMPORTANT PLEASE!!!!!”

Louis texts back like "Hey sorry we got this late, is it still possible to come over?"

“YES STILL AT HOUSE PLEASE HURRY”

Song and Louis are all "ok we should find shelby and john," and they bump into Sammy on the way over– he helps one of them up, since he accidentally knocked one of them onto the floor.

Meanwhile, John is in a social scenario hell- yes, Clara is here, being kinda cold and professional (and part of him wonders if she's making sure he keeps losing), but you wanna know who else is here? Harold, that little creep who was really rude to Shelby last season!! John hates this man- He manages to scare him off by Staring at him with his monster eyes.

At this point, Song and Louis show up like "hey, we got a text from Markus and they want us to come over, and we don't wanna disappoint them like last time." (John doesn't say anything about how he actually visited them last time they asked, so-)

(Shelby notices that hey, yeah, the cell service is shit here in this casino!)

Anyway, so John and Shelby get up to leave but Clara insists that John cash in his chips- as she's doing this for him, she discreetly hands him a small note. He catches the vibe he should look at it later, and leaves the Casino with the Main Cast. As they leave, everyone's phone clocks correct themselves to match the current time outside the casino- it's currently around 3pm. John trails behind the group as usual, and opens the note to read it.

"Meet me out front at 5:30 after my shift."

Notes/Commentary:

I forgot Shelby was lowkey a celebrity lmao

It's canon that every single photo of John is a little bit blurry! That's so funny <3

Hi. Something about John sacrificing small bits of comfort (ie not leaving the casino to chill out) bc he wants Shelby to be okay/not leave her.... he has issues

Hey Song. What's with your mom, did she leave? die? what's up??

The GM informed me later that casino workers are meant to be all formal and not show favoritism at their jobs, right, and Sir i think she was doing the Opposite of favoritism /lh

John being able to initimidate people is very cool, thank you GM

MARKUS LORE MARKUS LORE

I was? Not aware our guys had a group chat??

SAMMY?? SIR?? weren't u being kidnapped earlier whats going on /lh

My notes say "Song easily finds John bc he's tall as fuck"

The players are placing bets (/j) on if Clara is a secret monster hunter or not-

John is fully expecting to get yelled at by her btw :-(

I so badly want him to try and date her or somehting. please for the love of god can john actually kiss someone and be really nervous about it bc he's never done that before and wants to try it out, and maybe he'll have to roll for Hunger bc his teeth are So So close to human flesh and it'll just be Dramatic <3

#eric finally speaks #motw campaign #the neighborhood watch #motw #monster of the week #motw oc

[androxys]

Kid Detective (Tim Drake - The Eras Tour: A Lonely Place of Dying)

So I know I’ve talked before about Tim Drake and his character in the context of A Lonely Place of Dying, and how LPoD is foundational (in my humble opinion) to understanding the context of pretty much any modern Batman comic. Like, if your Batman has lost Jason Todd and carries his savior/guilt complex like an albatross, LPoD. if you have literally anything with Tim, LPoD. Simply foundational.

So I went back through it and here, in no particular order (spoiler alert: it’s chronological order) are a collection of comic snippets about about 2k of my thoughts that I think do a pretty good job of reflecting on this era of Tim, which I fondly call the Kid Detective Era.

I think it’s funny that we don’t see Tim at all at first; he’s introduced to us as a bodiless character.

(Batman 440)

    Here is our first real introduction to Tim as a narrative character. I say this because technically at this point we have met Tim as a character before, but we’ll get into that later. This is the first time we’re getting a thought or speech bubble directly from Tim, even though we don’t know that it’s him yet. We also got Tim Fact #1: caucasian. Beyond that, all we know is that someone is following Batman and taking photos of him. This person knows of a connection between Batman and Bruce Wayne, and is now headed to Dick.

    Tonally, this is such an ominous introduction to Tim. Reading this now, in 2022 with all the pleasure of knowing exactly who Tim is, and having always known who Tim is. I can’t imagine this being the cold open to a comic with a mysterious new character… especially as this character reveals that he has context.

(Batman 440)

    Tim is still off camera here, so we still don’t know anything about him. How old he is, what he looks like, nothing. This is his photograph collection, which we imagine are a lot of photos he took himself, as well as newspaper clippings and articles that he found. This serves to show that Tim’s interest in Batman is not a quick thing– a collection like this would have taken time and dedication to build. There was work and premeditation involved. This spread also brings us back to the point that technically we have seen Tim before, back in Batman #436.

(Batman 436)

See here the photo from above. Tim will provide even more context to this later, once he actually meets Dick Grayson. But first, he has to find him. Tim tracks Dick up to New York, where he follows Starfire home (yikes) and asks her where Nightwing is. Starfire is– understandably– confused, and it’s in New Titans #60 that Starfire provides our first detail about the stranger who is following Dick. The stranger is “that kid.” At this moment, Dick is off the grid and going back to Haly’s Circus, where he performed as a child, and which now is facing financial difficulty. The Titans didn’t know about this because Dick just… didn’t tell them… I guess. Tim knows about this because he broke into Dick’s house, found Dick’s safe, broke into it, and stole some of Dick’s papers.The Titans take this as confirmation that whoever broke into Dick’s house knows that Dick is Nightwing.

(New Titans 60)

    All this leads us to the exciting moment where Tim, staking out the circus, sees a clown perform an acrobatic move to stop an out-of-control lion. Tim (correctly) concludes that the clown has to be Dick Grayson, and in this moment we get our first real look at Tim Drake. He’s got his camera in hand, a youthful glow, and two living parents. All this will change.

(New Titans 60)

     Here is Tim and Dick’s first real conversation. I think it’s worth noting here that Tim is not a very good conversationalist! He doesn’t really make any time for Dick’s very justified confusion, he just steamrolls right into his “Batman needs you” speech. But before they can deal with that, they have to deal with the circus mystery happening in the present, with the aforementioned lion. Tim wasted no time here either– he is not a very patient lad, at present– and has already been digging through the trash for clues. Tim does fail to solve this particular mystery, but Dick gets it, and things end up right as rain at the circus. So Dick decides to take this kid back to Wayne Manor, because what else do you do with the kid who knows the answer to “Who Is Batman?”

(Batman 441)

     Tim explains how he figured out who Batman and Robin were, by telling Dick how he was there the night the Flying Graysons died. How he took the picture with Dick, and coped with the trauma of watching two people die got really invested in learning about the Flying Graysons. He watched Robin perform a quadruple somersault, something only three people could do, and Tim was able to connect the dots to Dick. From there he tracked it to Batman, and then deduced Jason’s identity.

(Batman 441)

    As Tim is explaining all this to Dick, he keeps returning to his Big Point: that Batman needs Robin. And Tim thinks that when Dick was Robin, things were better, so therefore Dick should just be Robin again, and things will be better again. It’s a very thirteen year old way of thinking, bless his heart. Also, can you believe he’s thirteen here? Crucially, while Tim kind of floats the idea about him being Robin in the “every teenager thinks about being Robin” way, he did not set out on a particular mission to become Robin himself. He very explicitly thinks Dick is the one for the role.

     The problem with this, of course, is that Dick is Nightwing. It was kind of a whole thing when Dick stopped being Robin. He isn’t too eager to jump back in, and tells Tim as much. He takes Tim down into the Batcave, because why bother to keep any secrets at this point I suppose, and shows him the Robin costume before suiting up as Nightwing and tearing off to find Batman. (By the way, there’s a whole Two-Face plot happening, and that’s where Bruce is. But this post isn’t about him, it’s about Tim, so Bruce gets relegated to background character status.)

(Batman 441)

(New Titans 61)

    There’s a little bit of tone jumping going on, because Batman 441 leads directly into New Titans 61 and they didn’t get the scenes lined up exactly (comics, amiright?) but the gist is here– Tim is distraught that Dick isn’t taking Robin back up. To Tim, it’s very important that it’s Batman AND Robin. Tim is reading very heavily into the symbolism of the mantles here, and is treating them like a sacred thing. It’s Alfred then who begins to plant the seed that perhaps Dick knows that he cannot be Robin again, but that Dick’s inability to retake the role does not mean he disagrees with Tim’s premise; it’s just time for another person to take up the pixie boots.

(Batman 442)

    Alfred must not have paid too much attention to gardening though, because he seems surprised when his seeds bear rapid fruit. In fairness to Alfred, I think there’s a kind reading here that could go along the lines of him seeing a potential candidate for Robin in Tim, with Dick’s tacit approval, but Alfred did not imagine the speed with which Tim would take to the idea, nor did Alfred believe Tim was anywhere near ready. Which would explain his hesitation when Tim went to put on the suit just pages after seemingly suggesting that Tim could be Robin. But there is also a reading here that would call Alfred out as a hypocrite, throwing Tim to the wolves to keep Bruce from killing himself. Regardless, Tim is right, Batman needs help, so Alfred drives Tim– in Jason’s suit– to a building that Two-Face collapsed on him and Dick.

(Batman 442)

    When Alfred and Tim arrive, they help the two out from under the building and Bruce doesn’t react well to seeing some kid in his dead son’s clothes. Which, fair. He insists that there is no more Robin, to which Tim makes his big case.

(Batman 442)

    Tim lays out his entire beliefs to Batman, stands toe to toe with the Dark Knight, and explains his conviction in the symbol. Always the symbols with this boy, at this moment in time. Tim at this point, importantly, has accepted that Dick cannot be Robin again, and that it is up to him to be Robin for Bruce, if he is the best candidate to do it. So Bruce decides that on a tentative basis, Tim can begin training to see if he can be trusted. Which is such a Bruce thing. He can’t commit to a new Robin yet, so he’ll make this boy dedicate time and effort into seeing if he can measure up to a near-mythological ideal that he has built up, without any clear goal or end in sight except for gaining Batman’s nebulously defined trust. Great job, Bruce.

    I don’t know if it’s better or worse that from Bruce’s perspective, Tim really is just some kid. It’s just that when this random kid happens to know his biggest secret, what else can you do? Speaking of the fact that Tim isn’t Bruce’s son (yet) though, where are Tim’s parents? Well, he relayed that back when he was explaining his connection to Dick.

(Batman 441)

    The Drakes are, in a word, absent. Off on business, leaving Tim at a boarding school that Tim slipped out of on vacation. LPoD doesn’t establish Tim with much of anything in the way of parental oversight or authority figures, leaving a narrative gap that Batman can slot nicely into.

This all builds to a collective image of Tim in his debut story. The first major pillar is his belief in Batman and Robin. He believes in them as symbols, as universal truths. Batman needs Robin. He starts this story thinking that Dick Grayson is that Robin. He doesn’t necessarily know or even think that Bruce Wayne needs Dick Grayson (he does, but that’s besides the point) because Tim isn’t privy to the family dynamics inside Wayne Manor. He’s just an exceptionally determined kid with a camera who saw what only Alfred and Commissioner Gordon were seeing: Batman was slipping without a Robin to balance him out. So Tim went out to correct that balance. He has a good mind already, figuring out everyone’s identities and following Dick to Haly’s Circus. Tim was remarkably straightforward and determined in that goal, to the point where he could be a little creepy, invasive, and stubborn. He really could have slowed down and talked to Dick at the circus, but the mystery of the lion grabbed him. He’s very focused on the task at hand; when a problem arises that impedes that task, he solves it with a similar directness. There’s very little finesse here, at this stage. That will come later for Tim. Right now, he’s just a kid with a dream, and that dream is on probation at best.

#tim drake #batman #dick grayson #dc comics #meta #a lonely place of dying #chit chat #the way i can already feel this getting out of hand #as I plot out the next TD era I want to cover #there are probably typos but whatever #tim drake eras tour