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loaksky · 11 months

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— 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒊 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖 | 𝒆. 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒂𝒎𝒔

collegebff!ellie x fem!reader based on this ask ! fluff / angst / suggestive content / bff2l , wc: 7.1k (sum1 sedate me)

synopsis: since the beginning of college, it’s always been you and ellie. you like to think you’ve got her figured out, but there’s one thing you can’t get a read on and it’s the matters of her heart.

content warnings: language, suggestive content, kissing, ellie’s clueless and reader’s shy. (seemingly) one-sided pining, jazz cabb. this is literally self-indulgent mush.

fic soundtrack: like i want you — giveon / can i — kehlani / electric — alina baraz & khalid / sdp interlude — travis scott / options — doja cat & JID

main masterlist | tlou masterlist

YOU MEET ELLIE BY CHANCE during the first week of freshman year.

It’s a story you recall often in the wee hours of the night, giggling and side-by-side in her full size. The room usually reeks of weed, blanketed by stale incense and Ellie’s favorite cologne.

She’d been skating across the campus quad on her splintered deck in hot pursuit of her mis-located class when she chanced a peek at her cracked phone screen for the time. You’d been equally engrossed, coffee and unread text message from your new roomie occupying far too much attention to realize that Ellie’d been heading straight for you.

Next thing you knew, you were wearing your coffee and Ellie had scraped an elbow and a knee.

“Fuuuuuck,” Ellie moaned, cradling her elbow while inspecting the asphalt burn on her kneecap.

Your quiet sigh of disappointment caught her attention and her eyes were widening when she noticed the growing splotch of milky brown splattering your fitted white top.

“Dude, fuck, I’m so sorry,” Ellie spluttered, scrambling to collect your empty cup and your phone.

She’d inspected the screen to assess the damage, let out a sigh of relief to find it in pristine condition.

“S’okay,” you huffed out a breathy laugh, taking the phone from her as she stretched to grab for her discarded deck. “Accidents happen.”

“Your—” Ellie’s cheeks warmed when she’d noticed the full outline of your bra underneath your top. “Your shirt.”

Your lips parted once, twice, before your arms crossed over your chest in embarrassment. She wasn’t even able to offer you another apology, or anything else for that matter, before you staggered off sheepishly.

She’d redeemed herself, obviously, if your friendship now was anything to go by.

The following week, she’d dipped out of her preluding class a few minutes early to file in line at the student-run coffee shop. She’d taken a snapshot of your coffee cup before throwing it in the bin the week prior, and next thing she knew, she was sitting on the steps of the building you’d emerged from the day of the debacle and hoped for the best.

When she heard the telltale sign of students emerging from the double doors at half past noon, she sprung to her feet so fast, she nearly toppled over.

And there you were, coming out of the math building in a pretty skirt that had Ellie wetting her lips.

“Uh, hey,” she called hesitantly when you blew right by her.

You threw a split-second glance over your shoulder once, then came full stop after the second.

Ellie traveled down the rest of the steps to join you, one hand stuffed in the pocket of her cargo shorts, other practically strangling the poor coffee cup.

“Oh.” You sounded surprised, eyebrows twitching up momentarily. “Hey.”

“This is, uh, for you,” she’d said, offering the drink to you.

“For me?”

“Yeah,” she affirmed. “Y’know, ‘cuz last week and…”

You took the coffee, eyes glancing over the modifications scribbled on the side of the cup.

“How’d you know my order?” Your smile had been enough to make Ellie blow out a shaky breath.

“You left your cup.”

“Right,” you replied shyly. “Thanks, really. You didn’t have to do this.”

“Nah,” Ellie assured you. “I…I—”

And she’d been so fucking speechless because you were staring at her with round eyes through thick lashes. Had her spluttering like an idiot and wringing her unoccupied hands.

The rest—

“Well the rest is history,” Ellie mocks, reciting the end of that stupid story as she takes a deep pull from the skinny joint and watches you through the mirror as you get ready.

You let out a little laugh as you roll a clump of mascara from your corner lashes, the memory fresh in your brain like it’d happened days ago.

In reality, the two of you have been glued for nearly three years. It’s a thought that makes you ruminate a little too much for your liking. Makes you wonder if she’d felt the sparks like you did.

Sometimes you’re convinced that she had. That theses lines you've danced your entire friendship are just ticking moments waiting to detonate. There can’t be any other explanation.

Not when she’d started showing up outside of the math building every Tuesday and Thursday that semester and walked you to your next class. When it’d escalated to exchanging socials medias, then eventually phone numbers, and making plans to eat lunch during a mutual free period. Or hanging out off campus, orbiting each other at gatherings when you find that you've made some mutual friends.

And not now when she shows up every Wednesday evening no later than five past eight with takeout from your favorite spot right outside of campus. Not when she waits for you to finish tutoring outside of the library with your regular coffee in tow (surprise; you haven't changed your order since freshman year). Especially not when she drops what she’s doing, who she’s doing, every time you call.

Course it’s not like she can’t say the same. You’re her biggest supporter, her number one girl no matter what ways the others in your friend group and distant peers try to twist it. You’re there at every one of her research presentations for her astronomy major. Despite not having an athletic bone in your body, you’re at the skatepark with her on the weekends, cheering her on from the stone picnic tables. And when the sun goes down and she’s caked with sweat and dirt, you’re positioned between her knees as she sits on the hood of her car, hissing when you dab a little too much ointment on the cut across her cheek.

To the naked eye, you and Ellie are a lot more like lovers than friends, and the idea is one that makes your gut flutter, makes your toes tingle and your cheeks warm.

But those feelings are tamped down when, like clockwork, Ellie laughs like it’s the funniest thing she’s heard. The picturesque fantasy you’ve built of being with Ellie as more than a friend is smeared. Because even if she doesn’t deny it, doesn’t correct whoever’s made the observation, she’s not confirming it either.

And, Jesus, you don’t want to read too much into it when things are so good between the two of you, but you can’t fucking help yourself when it comes to her. Can’t help but want her when she does what she does, when she looks the way she does.

Your eyes flicker up when the springs in your mattress creak and Ellie’s climbing off your bed to lean against the edge of the desk.

She doesn’t say anything, just swipes the edge of your bottom lip absently, a mixture of your sticky lipgloss and saliva coming off on the pad of her thumb.

“Too much,” is all she says, kicking off the desk to shrug her hoodie on over her black tank top. She’s halfway out your bedroom when she turns to glance at you over her shoulder. “You coming or what? We’re gonna be late, dingus.”

“Yeah...yeah, coming.”

Party’s in full swing when you squeeze in. The bass shakes the grass as you cross the front lawn and the LEDs glow through the closed curtains. For the most part, the festivities are contained, a few bodies on the porch smoking a mixture of cigarettes and greens, but as soon as you and Ellie are sliding through the door, it’s like the vibes start melting and Ellie’s getting into the zone.

She’s in her element like this, couple of prerolls in her pocket for when she’ll find a quiet place out on a balcony or squeeze onto the roof from somebody’s unlocked bedroom and smoke with some friends who’ll either bum a couple passes or pay in full.

“You wanna drink?” Ellie asks you when you guys find a good spot in the living room.

“Sure,” you agree easily. “Seltzer if they have it.”

She nods.

“Gotcha, I’ll be back.”

She’s disappearing into the crowd and you take the opportunity to assess your surroundings. It’s relatively laidback, couple of familiar faces from different lectures and seminars soothing the tiny niggling of anxiety that blooms behind your navel. The living room is shrouded in mood lighting and the vibrations from the speakers rattle the walls.

“Wait, was that Williams?”

Your ears perk when you hear it, eyes flitting to a group of girls that stand in a clump near the stereo.

“Yeah, she’s headed towards the kitchen,” one of the girls says, tall and willowy.

“Think I should?” the girl towards the middle asks.

She’s too pretty for her own good, has glittery shimmer on her eyelids, pearlescent lipgloss and low rise jeans that hug her ass like they were hand-crafted for her.

Something green starts to swell.

“What?” another asks, and you recognize her from discrete calculus.

“Should I talk to her?” Glittery Eyeshadow says.

“Why not?” Your calculus classmate shrugs. “Her little shadow’s not around.”

Okay, wow. Ouch.

You angle your body away, turn your head to hide the burn of your cheeks and to tune in a little better.

“You sure that’s not her girl?” the tall one asks. “They kinda seem like they’re together.”

“Doubt it,” your classmate chuffs like she knows something they don’t. From the corner of your eye, you see them lean in close to each other. “Ellie’s been with a coupla girls on campus. Heard she gives phenomenal head.”

That makes you swallow so hard, your eyes begin to burn.

Ellie usually kept her love life hush, didn’t really mention the likes of anyone else around you, and you’d always been too shy, too enamored to ask. Perhaps too afraid of what the confirmation of her escapades would do to you.

This was Exhibit A.

“Let’s add to that list,” Glittery Eyeshadow says, and your heart absolutely sinks to your ass when you see her walk confidently across the living room and into the kitchen.

You see them from the cutout, and your breath hitches when a switch flips and Glittery Eyeshadow’s tapping Ellie’s shoulder gently, tucking her hands behind her back when she turns on her heel.

Ellie’s widened eyes go soft, a small smile easing its way onto her lips as the girl says something that has your best friend laughing behind a sip of the drink she cracks open. You see the seltzer, the one you’d requested being cracked open and offered to the girl.

“What a lucky fuckin’ bitch,” your calc classmate giggles. “Ellie’s sooo hot.”

“How much do you wanna put on it that it’s not gonna happen?” Tall Girl huffs a laugh.

“No way,” her counterpart scoffs. “Liv’s got infinite ways into anyone’s pants.”

You put a name to the face, find that it’s fitting and feel the envy begin to roil full force.

Tall Girl hums thoughtfully.

“I dunno, Ellie and that one girl are virtually inseparable. Even if they’re not together, there’s something there for sure.”

You peek long enough to see your classmate roll her eyes, but when your gaze swings back to the kitchen, Ellie and Liv are nowhere to be found.

Panic begins to cloud your system, absence of any alcohol or weed making you far too aware of how fucking awful all of this makes you feel.

You decide to stick around for a moment, back nearly plastered to the wall, but after a moment too long passes and you don’t see any sight of Ellie or Liv in the kitchen or through the sliding glass doors that lead to the back porch, you’re peeling away.

The chitters from Liv’s friends die out when they realize you’d only been a few meters away.

The house had seemed like the perfect size when the two of you were walking up, but now, as you weave through every room and poke your head into empty bedrooms, it seems so much larger than you’d expected.

Your last resort is down a set of stairs nestled near the back of the house. There’s more music that bumps from the basement and you figure it’s why it seemed that the grass was rumbling outside.

The basement is finished, paneled and reeks of weed. There’s far less people down here from what you can observe from the railing, but you clock Ellie and Liv before you make your full descent. They’re cozy on a loveseat, one of Liv’s legs is propped over Ellie’s knee while her manicured fingers fumble with some rolling paper.

You hear her over the thrum of the bass.

“You’re so much better at this than I am,” she moans. “Show me how?”

You’re still watching them over the railing, partially hidden by the drywall. And you’re glad, because you nearly retch when you see the way Ellie’s ringed fingers close over Liv’s and they roll the joint together. Ellie’s head is in her space to get a closer look, and it doesn’t take a genius to know that Liv’s pupils are probably blown wide from the proximity.

And fuck, the way the flat of Ellie’s tongue rolls over the edge absolutely seals the last nail just as she does the joint and you’re turning to shakily climb the steps again.

Maybe the two of you were better off as friends. Maybe you were reading way too much into things, into what the two of you could be.

Tonight only solidifies that.

Ellie is stupid, stupid, stupid.

She’d been halfway through the blunt she was sharing with the girl who’d cornered her in the kitchen when she remembers. Remembers that she’d left you upstairs. Only does so because Liv’s taking a swig of the seltzer that was meant to be yours and she’s pushing her leg from her knee and shooting up from the chair.

“Shit,” she breathes. “My bad, I gotta dip.”

Liv’s arched eyebrows raise.

“Huh?”

“I left my girl upstairs.”

And Liv’s eyes narrow.

“Your girl?” she asks, smoke wafting around her pinched expression.

“Yeah, my friend?” she says like you should be common information.

“The girl that follows you around like she’s leashed?” Liv laughs humorlessly.

Ellie’s confused. Like majorly confused right now. Liv had asked her to smoke, had been nice enough when they were chatting in the kitchen, but something’s flipped and it makes annoyance simmer in the pit of her belly.

“The fuck did you just say?” Ellie says stonily.

Liv blinks.

“Dude, fuck you,” she bites, snatching the blunt from Liv’s fingertips. “You owe me forty for the wrapper and the roll. Venmo me by the end of fuckin’ night.”

Liv and a couple half-sober bystanders look stunned at Ellie’s outburst as she rushes from the basement and takes the stairs two at a time.

The first place she looks is where she’d left you, but you’re nowhere to be found. She nearly combs the house top to bottom searching for you, green eyes frantic as she flashes her lockscreen to shitfaced party-goers.

“You seen her?” she asks quickly.

The guy looks at the brightass screen, bleary-eyed.

“Her?” He points to the screen. “Left like fifteen minutes ago…I think. I dunno.”

And that makes it all the worse considering Ellie was your ride.

She’s dodging bodies, moving through the smoky foyer to get to the front door while she shoots you a text.

me: where’d u go bug???

Ellie’s slipping out of the house, taking survey of the front porch and the lawn, gut twisting when she doesn’t see the familiar silhouette of your neck or shoulders among the other bodies.

me: r u still here?

Ellie passes the hedges and jogs down the sidewalk as she presses the phone icon next to your contact and holds the phone between her shoulder and her ear.

She’s so engrossed in getting in contact with you that she barely notices you sitting on the curb a few feet from where she’d parked on the street.

“Jesus,” Ellie sighs in relief, hanging up as soon as the operator tells her to leave a message after the tone. “Been looking everywhere for you.”

You look up at her, blinking quickly like she’d caught you in a daze.

“Huh?”

Ellie’s brows furrow as she lowers herself to sit next to you.

“What d’you mean huh? You scared the shit outta me,” Ellie laughs breathlessly. “Thought you disappeared.”

“Sorry,” you whisper. “Just needed…”

Ellie watches you expectantly.

“Needed a breather,” you admit. “Got a little overwhelmed.”

Her expression falls, eyebrows drawing in concern as she tucks some of your hair from your face. The corners of her lips twitch when a mixture of the pale moonlight and the yellowing streetlights cast a glow over your features. Your lashes are wet and she finds your cheeks warm when her thumb brushes over the skin.

“Did something happen?” she asks suddenly. “Because I swear to god—”

You shrug away from her and stand, unable to stomach the gooey gaze she gives you or the gentle brushes against your skin. It makes you fall back into old habits, into trying to read between the lines.

“I’m gonna call an Uber home,” you tell her. “We just got here and I know the party’s barely started—”

“Nah, no, fuck this party,” Ellie says, standing up to invade your space again. “We can go home, it’s okay, bug.”

And the way she calls it home, like the two of you share, makes that thread tied to domesticity tug entire too hard for you to stand still.

(Perhaps Ellie’s too chicken to admit that home isn’t necessarily just under a roof, but wrapped in the warmth of your arms).

“Ellie—”

“Are you mad at me?” she asks hesitantly, and the look on her face is devastating.

Because no, you could never be mad at Ellie, not when she’s sweet despite being rough around the edges. You can only be mad at the circumstances, at yourself for letting your delusional heart get the best of you.

“No,” you say quickly. “God, no. I’m just not…feeling it tonight, I guess.”

You want to hate Ellie for looking wounded, but instead it makes your heart grow more around the shape of her.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she almost whines, arms wrapping around your shoulders to pull you into her chest. “We coulda just stayed home and ordered pizza. Watch that stupid documentary you like.”

“S’not stupid,” you say weakly.

“C’mon, let’s go.”

“But—”

“No butts except for yours in the front seat,” Ellie says, opening the passenger side door open for you. When you drop in the seat, she’s plopping her unlocked phone in your lap. “Order pizza. And none of that pineapple bullshit on my side or I die.”

You like to think that you could put the party behind you. That maybe you were being a little overdramatic. But after you’ve settled into your favorite spot on Ellie’s couch, wearing a pair of her sweatpants and an oversized shirt, the final crack shakes the front you’ve been maintaining for the past three years.

Ellie’s dozed off, only half a crust left from her half of the pizza sitting in the open box on top of the coffee table. Your documentary’s playing in the background, lulling your droopy eyes to close, but the faint buzzing of Ellie’s cell has you shifting awake.

You don’t mean to, but your ego’s been bruised and curiosity gets the better of you as you’re leaning forward to capture her phone from where it’s nestled between the remote, underneath the takeout box.

An unknown number flashes across the screen, a succession of texts sending the device fluttering in your sweaty palms.

It feels like the ultimate breach of privacy, like you’re using the fact that Ellie trusts you with her phone password in the worst way possible, and perhaps you are.

(307) 578 9432: got your number from your friend cat.

(307) 578 9432 sent $40

(307) 578 9432: here’s a tip <3

(307) 578 9432 sent a photo.

You don’t know what you expect, but a photograph of a girl’s tits definitely isn’t high on the list. A lump forms in your throat, choking the air from your lungs as the tears begin to prick the corner of your eyes.

You know that gemstone choker, seen the way it gleamed under the lowlight of the party when Liv had taken a deep breath before sauntering over to Ellie. It’s the same one in the racy photo, and it’s the last straw.

Ellie’s phone vibrates again.

(307) 578 9432: don’t let your lil pup see ! xx

And that sends you spiraling. Has you closing out of the text thread, sliding Ellie’s phone back in place, and shooting up from couch.

The sudden movement makes Ellie stir, but she never fully rouses from her sleep, and for once, you thank the universe for being on your side.

You’re collecting your things from where you’d discarded them on your way in, and it feels a lot like things are officially crumbling. And you don’t know why. Should’ve seen it coming, really.

She’d never see you that way. She’s leagues above you, charismatic and cool in a way that has everyone wanting a slice of what it’d be like to be friends with Ellie Williams. Doesn’t help that she’s so painfully attractive, energy magnetic. She’s so kind, too fucking smart for her own good, and a really really good friend.

You realize as you slip from her apartment and make the trek home, that maybe that’s all you and her were ever destined to be.

So you mark tonight in your books.

Tonight’s the night you’re gonna start falling out of love with Ellie Williams.

Ellie wakes up to the soft pings of her alarm and she’s rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she pats the area next to her in search of your sleeping form.

She comes up empty and she squints past the filtering sunlight to find that her apartment is completely still. The television’s been turned off, pizza boxes stacked neatly on the eat-in.

She calls your name, once, twice. But she’s met with absolute silence.

“What the fuck?” she mutters under her breath as she stands from the couch and stretches the sleep from her bones.

A quick glance at the digital clock underneath the TV shows that her 10am seminar starts in about half an hour.

Ellie decides, as she takes a quick shower and brushes her teeth, that she’ll call you on the way to class.

But as she skates across the campus, pushing so hard against the asphalt, her knees hurt, you don’t answer her calls. She’d being sent straight to voicemail and straight to confused frustration.

She’s one of the only people you have set to bypass DND, so she knows you’re ignoring her.

When she makes it to the science building, she kicks off her skateboard, straps it onto her backpack and jogs through the corridors.

Ellie’s sliding into her seat near the back of the lecture hall with a few minutes to spare, so she uses the shortcut on her phone to open your text thread, only to find that there are no new additions.

All that glares back at her are the messages she’d sent you last night when you disappeared from the party.

me: hey bug lunch after my sem? half-off day @ benny’s :)

me: also why won’t u answer my calls, you disappeared on me this morning :/

Just as the professor files in and starts getting ready for his lesson, Ellie’s phone vibrates and she frowns at your message.

lovebug: raincheck on lunch, got a lot of work to catch up on

Something feels way off, makes Ellie queasy.

me: cmon bug jus half an hr, wanna c u :/

lovebug: you saw me yesterday??

me: and ?? ur my best friend, wanna c u all the time

Little does Ellie know that that text makes your stomach roil, makes you curl tighter in a ball in your bed because not only does your room still smell like her from the night prior, but because you don’t have it in you to face the world right now.

When you don’t reply to her message, she huffs out a frustrated breath just as her closest friend after you takes a seat next to her.

“Oh, boy,” Jesse comments. “This can’t be good.”

Ellie falls back in her seat, frustration seeping off her in waves.

“She’s being weird as fuck,” she sighs.

“Who?”

“________,” Ellie fills.

“Oh, your lil’ girlfriend,” Jesse snorts. “Why, what’d you do this time?”

“Nothing, nothing!” Ellie whispers. “And stop calling her that.”

Jesse rolls his eyes.

“Don’t know how many times I gotta tell you it’s not like that,” she grumbles, closing out of your text thread in fear that it’ll drive her even more crazy looking at the Read at 10:01am.

As the professor begins his lecture, Ellie continues fumbling with her phone, only to see a thread from an unfamiliar number. Her brows furrow at the most recent message: don’t let your lil pup see ! xx.

Liv.

It had to be.

She hears Jesse choke on a gasp when she opens the thread and a 4K photo of Liv’s tits flash the screen.

“No fuckin’ way,” Ellie hisses under her breath.

Jesse’s snickering beside her, eyes wide as she accepts the forty dollars into her account and deletes the entire thread altogether.

“Hate that stupid—”

“Shh!”

You avoid Ellie like the plague.

It’s a difficult feat on its own considering Ellie knows your schedule like the back of her hand and she’s waiting outside your lectures for you to surface.

But you adapt quick and you’re taking side exits and different routes while you collect yourself enough to face her.

Nearly a week out and you find that the wound’s still too fresh to pick. Realize as much when Ellie finally corners you during a vulnerable moment in the late afternoon on the way to the library.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

The voice startles you so much, you trip one foot in front of the other, and Ellie’s catching you before you can faceplant on the smooth concrete.

She’s righting you, hands dusting your shoulders off before bumping your dipped chin up to look down at your flushed face.

“Hello?”

“Around,” you answer meekly. “Been busy.”

“Alright, cut the shit,” Ellie sighs. “Last year you had that two week auditing BS and we still made time to see each other. You think you’re slick, but your location’s been pinging from home.”

“I can be busy at home,” you argue quietly. “And if you’re so hellbent on seeing me and you knew I was home, why didn’t you stop by?”

Ellie’s face softens.

“‘Cuz something’s obviously bothering you, bug,” she says, smoothing your hair from your face. “And I’ve been waiting on you to be a big girl and tell me what’s up, but it looks like I have to use other tactics.”

“Nothing’s bothering me,” you try again, gently guiding Ellie’s hands away and making a move to side step her in pursuit of the library.

“Bug, come on,” she groans, turning on her heel to watch you walk away. “I’m trying my best here, what’s got you pent up?”

“Nothing, Ellie!” you say so forcefully, she flinches. “I told you nothing’s fuckin’ wrong! Maybe I just want to be left the fuck alone!”

Ellie blinks hard.

“Oh.”

You take in a deep breath, closing your eyes in defeat as your body goes slack.

“I- fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t–”

She shakes her head.

“S’alright,” she assures you, taking a step away. Suddenly, the air seems to thicken. “Sort yourself out. Call me when you need me, I guess.”

“Ellie–”

She’s turning, dropping the board in her grip down onto the asphalt and mounting before the downslope and your eyes begin to water as you watch her figure grow smaller in the distance.

At first Ellie’d been a little disgruntled, maybe a little frustrated, but her feelings have since simmered and now all that remains is lingering sense of sadness.

There’s a you-shaped hole in her life, one that makes her stare at the swirling ceiling of her living room as she smokes through a joint by herself and wonders what the fuck happened to the two of you so suddenly.

She’s almost embarrassed with how quickly she launches from the couch when she hears three quick raps against the front door. Her yearning heart could only hope, but she’s deflating when she finds Jesse and Dina on the other side.

“Oh,” she sighs in disappointment.

“Oh?” Jesse huffs. “Oh?”

Ellie’s grumbling as she leaves the door open for them as a silent invitation, padding back into the living room to continue her moping session.

“We bring you Benny’s and it’s oh?” Jesse continues.

“Not hungry,” Ellie gripes, forearm draped over her eyes.

“Why the fuck not?” Dina whines. “We got so much food ’cuz you eat like a man.”

“Just not hungry,” Ellie mumbles.

She hears the plastic crinkling and then the telltale sign of Jesse throwing his body weight into the right side of the loveseat.

“Alright, what the fuck is going on?” he prods. “You’ve been weird and mopey for the last two weeks and it’s gross.”

Ellie’s arm falls away and she’s sitting up.

“I don’t fuckin’ get what her issue is!” Ellie moans, throwing her hands up in the air. “One day everything’s fuckin’ great and we’re good, but then it turns on a dime and she won’t even look at me!”

Dina and Jessa share a knowing glance.

“Okay, what’s that supposed to mean?” Ellie grunts.

“Walk me through the last time the two of you talked and things were good,” Dina says, taking the arm rest next to Jesse.

“I think, like, two weeks ago at the party? We were at her house and I was smoking and then we just showed up to the party?” Ellie recounts.

“Okay, what else?” Jesse pries.

“Uh, I dunno, we walked in and I asked her if she wanted a drink,” Ellie continues. “While I’m in the kitchen, Liv comes in and asks me if I wanna smoke. Obvious yes, duh.”

Jesse raises an eyebrow.

“The girl who sent you a picture of her tits?”

“Ew, yes. But that’s besides the point,” Ellie huffs. “I rolled and smoked a little with Liv when I remembered leaving ________ up on the main floor, so I told Liv I had to dip to go get her.”

“You left the girl you’ve been in love with since freshman year all alone at some seedy party—”

“Not seedy, it was Marco’s!” Ellie argues. “And it was like fifteen minutes, tops!”

“Ellie!”

“What? I didn’t stick around anyways,” Ellie says like it assuages the entire situation. “She was being a cunt about me being friends with ________.”

“Okay, well there’s your issue,” Dina says matter-of-factly.

Ellie looks clueless.

“You’re really gonna make me spell it out for you?”

“Well obviously because I’m lost as fuck right now,” Ellie bites.

Dina rolls her eyes.

“You ditched her to smoke with some bitchy mean girl!” Dina says like it should make all the sense in the world. “And then said mean girl sent you a picture of her tits!”

“Okay, well how would—”

It clicks. Like an epiphany, Ellie’s shooting to her feet.

“Oh, fuck.”

It really does make sense now. Why you hadn’t been around the morning after, why she hadn’t seen a notification for Liv’s messages on her lockscreen, why the thread had already been marked as read.

“She saw the messages,” Ellie says, horrified. “Fuck, probably thinks me and Liv were making fun of her.”

Jesse groans.

“It’s way fuckin’ more than that, dipshit.”

Ellie’s brows furrow.

“Huh?”

“Christ, are you actually this airheaded or—”

“Okay, unnecessary,” Ellie interrupts.

“Do you not realize that the two of you have been in love with each other for the past three years?” Jesse cracks. “Of course she’s gonna be upset when you ditch her for other girls, when they send you nudes and—”

“I didn’t—”

“She’s jealous, Ellie,” Dina says. “Probably under the impression that you’re fucking around with Liv and she doesn’t know what to do with herself.”

“Dude, there’s literally zero chance she likes me like that,” Ellie says hesitantly.

“I actually want to play in seven lanes of traffic right now, holy shit,” Jesse scoffs. “You have to be unforgivably blind to not see how fucking down bad that girl is for you.”

“Am I the only one not seeing this, like—”

“Yes.” Jesse and Dina are in unison.

Ellie shifts uncomfortably, rolling her lips as she collapses back in her seat.

“She’s my best friend,” Ellie sighs in defeat. “And I don’t want to ruin things with her. What if she…”

“You gotta take the plunge, Williams,” Jesse encourages. “There’s a lot more than something there.”

Ellie opens her mouth to argue again, but Dina’s cutting her off.

“Stop being such a pussy.”

“Wait, I don’t understand, you said it’s at the student planetarium?” you ask, rushing briskly across the campus.

“Fuck,” Dina mumbles over the receiver. “Yeah, almost positive. Astronomy club was having free donuts during lunch hour and I think I left it in the back row.”

“D!” you whine.

“I know, I’m so sorry,” she moans. “I’m the biggest idiot.”

“No, no,” you breathe, tote bag tight in your grasp as you break into a jog. “I get it, D. It’s the shark-shaped one, right?”

“Yes,” Dina confirms. “God, babe, I really owe you one.”

“You’re okay,” you assure her, climbing the steps to the science building. “I’m going in now. Should be there in less than ten.”

“Okay, I’ll be outside of the lecture hall.”

You hum your goodbye, line going dead as you enter the modern atrium. The area’s spacious, a replica skeleton of a massive dinosaur spanning the center of the entrance.

A digital directory built into one of the imposing square pillars indicates that the planetarium is on the third floor.

You’d only been in twice, both times for research presentations Ellie’d given. Her talk of the the stars and the vastness of the universe made you feel so small. So silly. Now you feel infinitely more silly hunting for a shark-shaped pencil case that houses Dina’s flashdrive she needs for her evening lecture’s slideshow presentation.

You decide to take the steps two at a time, choking for a breath by the time you make it up the third flight of stairs. The double doors to the planetarium are at the end of the hall, and if Dina’s directions are correct, the pencil case should be among the first few seats walking in.

Past the double doors, you find that Dina’s pencil case is, in fact, nowhere to be found in the first aisle that you check. But as something rustles down near the semi-illuminated podium, you find your Ellie standing from one of the front row seats. She turns to face you from the bottom of the auditorium, something akin to nervousness etched into her features.

“Ellie…” you swallow.

“Hey, bug.”

“What are you doing here?” you ask, brows furrowing as you fidget on the first step down, hand gripping the armrest of the last seat.

She rolls her lips, plays with the string of her hoodie as she sucks in a deep breath.

It’s now or never, Jesse pep-talked her on the way here, folder full of coordinates and computer commands pushed into her chest as he bounded away.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” she starts. “I…I—”

“I have someplace to be, Ellie,” you interject. “Dina needs me.”

“Dina doesn’t have a presentation,” Ellie sighs guiltily. “She’s probably sitting on my couch eating my Doritos as payback for getting you over here.”

You look lost.

“Huh?”

“Listen, I knew you weren’t going to talk to me, let alone come all the way here if I asked, so…I got some help.”

And the thought makes you guilty. You and Ellie have been best friends for years. Have seen almost every ugly part of the other. But you don’t know how long you can handle being just that.

“It’s not…” You don’t even know what to say, how to deny the blatantly obvious.

“You’re my closest friend,” Ellie says. “I genuinely don’t know what I’d do without you, and…and these past few weeks have been so shit because this has felt like the end and I didn’t know why.”

You murmur her name, taking a step down.

“I have to ask you something.” Ellie’s throat bobs as she slowly climbs the steps. “And you have to be honest.”

You hesitate before nodding, breath hitching when she stands on the step below you, gazes eye level.

You’re sure she can practically feel the vibrations of your heart nearly beating from your chest, pounding against your ribcage and begging to intertwine with hers.

“Okay,” you whisper.

“Did you leave because you saw Liv’s messages?” she asks bluntly.

Your cheeks warm and your gaze falters, fingers fidgeting with the hem of your shorts.

“I—”

Ellie’s eyes are unblinking, sage and searing.

“Yeah,” you admit hoarsely. “You were asleep and she…she…yeah.”

“Why?” Ellie asks, watching you with bated breath.

This is it, she’s got you right where she wants you and this moment could be the final fissure that cracks the very facade of your friendship and sends the two of you as you know it up in flames.

Her face softens when she notices the tears welling in your eyes, the way your body language has shifted so much in these passing moments. It’s unfamiliar.

“It makes me sick,” you mumble in embarrassment, knuckling the brimming tears aways. “It’s so fucking stupid, but the idea of you with anyone else makes me fucking sick.”

Ellie’s stomach is in knots, knees like jelly and heart squeezing in anticipation.

“Why?” she repeats, voice catching in her throat.

“You know why,” you croak in defeat, expression crumpling.

Your name leaves her lips firmly, hands coming up to grasp your biceps.

“Don’t be cruel,” you hiccup.

Ellie’s biting the inside of her lip, eyes searching yours in contemplation before she’s digging in the pockets of her hoodie and producing the remote to the projectors.

She’s brushing past you, up the steps to hit the lights and fully submerge the room in a split second of darkness. Then a heartbeat passes before a constellation blooms near one of the edges of the domed ceiling.

August 20th, three years ago, labels the smattering of stars and the alignment of the planets.

“What’s this,” you whisper, breath hitching as Ellie leans against the back wall.

“The day we met, first Thursday of freshman year,” Ellie says shakily. “With that stupid fucking coffee. You were wearing that white shirt.”

Your throat tightens when another constellation appears, labeled a few weeks later.

“When we first talked. I got you another drink and started walking you to class.”

You realize that every knitting of stars and planetary bodies are captures of the skies in each labeled moment.

“There was something about you,” Ellie says. “There still is. But this one—” She clicks a button and the projection ripples, clouds rolling and stars twinkling like you’re looking up at the real night sky. “This is when I knew.”

Her voice is dangerously close, a hairsbreadth from your ear. You can feel the warmth of her body enveloping yours, toes curling as you look up to the date marked and mentally sort through your thoughts.

Her first research presentation.

“I was so fuckin’ nervous, bug. And I thought I was gonna shit myself, but then you came in at the last minute and you smiled at me and it felt like we were the only two people in the room,” she admits. “And when I finished that stupid presentation and you found me after those higher ups were talking my ear off about my findings, I—”

Your eyes are glassy as you remember the way Ellie seemed to deflate in relief when you slipped into the auditorium with seconds to spare.

“You…?”

“I realized that maybe you were it for me.”

The breath’s knocked from your lungs as Ellie slides her fingers through yours and tugs you down the shallow steps of the planetarium.

The both of you stop at the beginning of the podium’s circle, sheen of tears blurring your vision as you watch more projections sprout onto the screen like fireworks.

They’re all memories, ones that you’ve cherished since the beginning. You just hadn’t realized that Ellie held them as dearly as you did.

She sucks in a deep breath, hand squeezing yours. And god, she wants to look you in your eyes when she says it, but you make her weak and she’s losing courage.

“Guess what I’m trying to say is that...” She licks her lips, pushes the words out through the nausea. “I love you. A lot. And not just as a friend."

“Oh.”

And Ellie wants to shrink at your response, palms clammy as her fingers loosen.

She feels the dread filter in, mixed with a curdling feeling of regret. But something like sick relief floods her system all the same because this feels like a semblance of freedom.

“Ellie—”

It’s her final shot in the dark.

“Tell me I’m not reading into this wrong,” Ellie says softly. “There’s something here, right? I’m not batshit crazy, am I? I— I—”

Ellie’s frequently wondered what your lips taste like. How they would feel against her own. She’d always figured it’d be a good experience, something she could kick her feet to in the dead of night, but this? God, nothing compares to this.

You taste like peach chapstick and wintergreen, lips plush against hers and Ellie’s pounding heart stutters when your hands cup her cheeks.

You kiss her so fervently, she nearly misses it, the way you murmur against her mouth.

“I love you, Ellie,” you whisper between a breath. “Love you so fuckin’ much.”

You feel her giddy grin, feel the way her hesitant hands finally find purchase, fingertips searing the curve of your waist and the small of your back as you eliminate every space possible.

As the two of you meld together under the stars, Ellie realizes that, that maybe this is what coming home feels like.

#ellie williams x reader #ellie williams tlou #ellie williams x female reader #ellie williams #ellie williams fic #ellie williams au

2K notes · View notes

lacybunie · 2 months

Text

i cry, i pray, mon dieu!

“lord, give me one more chance!”

pairing: afab!reader x re4r!leon

warnings: smut, blasphemy, mentions of virginity loss, dubcon, slapping, religious reader, oral (male receiving), facefucking, corruption, rough sex, semi-public sex, degrading, manipulation, mind break, fucking in a church, crying during sex, creampie, biting, porn with plot (again), mean leon, ooc leon (again x2)

note: part 2 of adieu, mon dieu! he says the thing in this!!! :P

the tears streaming down your painted cheeks form a hot puddle below your feet, a glimpse into eternal hell. “do not be afraid to confess, my child. the lord shall forgive you.” the priest on the other side reassures but it only has you heaving for air as this confined space grows smaller around you. you cannot bear the pain that is confessing the betrayal you committed to your heavenly father just four days ago. nor can you bear to confess that you enjoyed it.

the moment you stepped into this temple for mass, flames sparked throughout the veins of your heart like a wildfire. the blood and body of your god tastes bitter and foul, threatening to come back up and escape your unclean body. each verse, each preaching, each word is a twisted stab into your soul. if hell is anything like being punished right now, you would rather suffer the most torturous death over and over.

“forgive me, i can’t.” you manage to choke out before stumbling out the confessional booth, almost falling over your feet in front of sister olivia. your mind drowns out what she’s saying, for the better or worse. the burning in your chest leads you outside to be embraced in the arms of your damned lover. the warmth of leon engulfs you, your brain scrambles for the familiarity. you clutch onto him tightly as he’s the only thing keeping you from falling. “you’re alright, sweetheart.” he reassures, his words bathe you in serenity.

his comfort is medicine for the painful wound in your heart. a hazy halo casts around his head from your teary-eyed vision, you hiccup gibberish as his lips gently kiss your head. “you can try again in a few.” leon grins at you, eyes suffocating yours. his scent of coffee and honey is a warm blanket covering your trembling form. gently wiping at the tears flowing down your cheeks, leon looks at you as if you’re as delicate as the rosary he ripped away from you. “i’ll go with you, yeah?” you nod wearily at the proposition as you get into leon’s jeep.

for the past 96 hours, you are attached to leon’s hip like a parasite latched onto its host. the paranoia that is being alone without him constantly has you in a frantic state. too petrified that the lord will send you to hell without him. your father is probably damning your soul to hell for disobeying every rule he’s enforced. leon is safer to be with, to confide in, to speak to. with the ghost of a smirk that prominently rests on his lips, you can tell leon doesn’t mind.

the parking lot is covered in a lilac veil, the sun fading into a crescent moon. your eyes divert to the cross atop the church’s roof, to the few cars dispersing in the lot, and to your priest finally walking out the building. saturday night mass is over, all that’s left is leon and you. eyes flicker to meet his as the church bell loudly chimes. “i’m scared.” “you have me, angel.” leon faintly smiles, caressing the side of your face. your tooth could ache from how sweet leon is.

hastily making your way pass the large doors of the church, the fragrance of the incense burns your nose so much that you might just vomit. the once comforting scent now revolting. you grab a hold of leon’s hand when you approach the dark oak booth, body filling with dread. “you okay?” you can hear leon whisper, his hand soothing the lower half of your back. the faint shadows of blues and reds from the stained windows cover his face. the aesthetics of this cathedral cannot compare to him.

“can you come in with me?” a soft plead escapes your mouth. thinking it’s such a silly request as your priest is not around to hear your sins but it’s for the best that he doesn’t. you look back to the booth, beams of light along with a large cross carved carefully into its wood. the pit of your stomach is burning with anxiety, lightning striking down on you would be more comforting. the temperature of your body rises a little too high when you look towards leon whose lips are pulled into a smirk. you feel weaker, smaller under his gaze. a sheep tethered in sharp teeth. “of course, sweetheart.”

leon enters the booth before you, taking up the seat in the cramped space. his stare is locked on you when his legs spread open, practically inviting you to sit on him. you don’t break the stare while dragging your feet into the confined space, shutting the heavy door behind you. there’s an indescribable look swirling in leon’s eyes, that look muffles out all thoughts you have. it’s almost hypnotic like leon is purposefully trying to trap you. you can’t seem to pull yourself out of it.

leon hums lowly as you shyly shuffle your way towards him, fiddling with the purity ring that still rests on your finger. “is it okay if i sit on your lap?” the heat of your cheeks are so hot and red asking the question that leon only chuckles at you. “you’ve done worse.” your throat burns at the remark, there’s a lingering tinge in your chest from earlier that grows stronger as you are reminded that this is far from the worse thing you’ve done. leon grasps your wrist to pull you onto his lap, his hands find solace on your waist.

“go on, angel. confess to your god.” leon mutters against your exposed skin that peaks from your dress. butterflies faintly flutter around in your lower abdomen, a feeling you know all too well. its difficult to get your words out when leon begins to knead at your waist, for your comfort or his own purpose. you blur out the feeling as you close your eyes and put your hands in prayer. “forgive me, father, for i have committed the biggest sin of all!” you cry out, heart beating hard against your ribs.

“i have betrayed you, my lord. i gave into temptation and gave into lust. it was gluttonous of me. i’m sorry for betraying you, i know what i have done is terrible.” a cold touch on your bare thigh has you choke on your words, your teary eyes open to see leon bunching up your dress to caress your thighs. “leon?” you whimper, tears cascading down your dampen cheeks. “finish it.” leon demands, his voice raspy. you look over at him, there’s a faint glint in his eyes. the butterflies in your stomach multiply in twos and threes.

“i said, finish it.” leon warns as his hands spread you open, something he knows how to do very well. you close your eyes once again as a sudden rush to your body has the blood in your heart pump harder. “please forgive me, i beg so desperately for your forgiveness.” “pathetic.” there’s a soft rub of a finger on your clothed cunt. you swallow the moan that’s trying to force its way out of your parted lips. “please, leon.” you want him to stop but you can’t bring yourself to rip away from him. “tell em’ what you did.” leon scoffs, pressing a kiss to the nape of your neck.

lips quiver from the little ecstasy leon grants you. oh how infinitely doomed you must be for committing such lewd acts in this very temple. the sight could cause hysteria if anyone were to open the door right now. “i had premarital sex with my lover. i’m so sorry, my lord. i’m sorry for indulging and enjoying sin.” leon rubs your covered clit harshly, your body is burning. “i’m sorry for losing my virginity to a man that’s not my husband. i’m sorry for-” “getting your brains fucked out.” leon interrupts, there’s a quick smack to the skin of your thigh.

you don’t fully process leon pushing you off his lap just as you don’t realize how quick you are to get on your knees before him. leon roughly grabs at your face, squishing your cheeks as if you’re a child getting scolded. “no god will forgive you for being a dirty slut.” leon grits through his teeth, delivering pathetic slaps to your face. a buzzing in your head soon reaches your cunt with each hit. “apologizing for getting your pussy ripped open when i told you it was okay.” “i’m sorry, leon.” you muffle out a sob, knees burning against the aging wood.

“you’re so fucking pathetic.” leon roughly pushes you away, tears blur your vision as you cannot fathom the anger he’s bearing onto you. you had betrayed him, sobbing out your regret right in front of him. your heart is imprinting itself on your chest from the pounding, you cowardly crawl back towards him. “i’m sorry, leon! please forgive me.” your hands tremble to grab his, crying harder than before. “so damn whiny, i need to shut that fucking mouth.” leon unbuckles his belt in a haste, just like he did a few days prior.

leon’s hard cock hits his lower abdomen, you’re dazed at the sight. he says something muffled before grabbing your face and shoving his cock into your mouth, eliciting a muffled gasp from you. your jaw slacks so naturally that it’s hard to believe this is your first time doing this. the now restricted air burns the branches in your lungs like cigarette smoke. your tears cascade down to his exposed thigh, he fucks your throat as if you’re nothing yet everything.

“look at you, slobbering on that cock.” leon grunts, roughly snapping his hips into your face. you unknowingly moan around him, watching a smile creep onto his lips in response. his fingers are tangled in your hair, a sweet sting from the pulling has whimpers escaping your stuffed throat. “making me feel so good, should’ve done this earlier.” leon chuckles, eyes burning through you. your body fights to stay conscious as your oxygen is running terribly low yet you do not seem to mind it. passing out from giving your lover pleasure, what a heavenly way to go.

there’s a craving leon fills as he fucks your mouth, that craving you first had a few nights ago. always wanting more of him, yearning for that feeling he gives you when you reach pure euphoria. no matter how hard you’ve searched to find it in something else, you can not. no amount of bible studies or mass will ever fill your craving. it seems it only resides in leon, and how selfless will you be if you keep depriving yourself from it.

“nasty fucking girl.” leon sighs while freeing his cock from your warm mouth, slapping the tip against your puffy lips. your body is on fire, knees gushing out blood from the rough wood, but the way leon makes you feel is divine. you temporarily taste your salty tears before he shoves his fat cock back into your salivating mouth, throat burning as it gets stretched out. the sight of you would have you crucified in front of the church, so selfish and greedy that you have betrayed your heavenly father again in his own temple.

“doing such a good job, should fuck that pussy of yours.” you moan at the praise, looking up at him in admiration. leon’s face contorts in pure bliss as you hum around his cock, not noticing the crucifix above him shaking to a tilt. your cunt squeezes around nothing as you obediently take him. the feeling of your throat convulsing around leon has him moan out a symphony. “come here.” he pulls you off to sit you atop of his lap, back against his chest. your lips glisten in the candlelit cubicle of your own saliva, shining in the same way as when you drink the blood of christ.

you watch leon fully rip off your dove white panties to expose your drenched cunt. there’s a fuzziness in your brain, like a broken tv displaying static. “i’ll bring you salvation.” leon mutters while slapping the tip of his cock against your cunt. your fingers grip at the hand that’s around your throat when he teases your sopping hole, temporarily depriving you of your craving. “i’ll give you a holy body.” he whispers softly in your ear as he roughly shoves his fat cock into your cunt. hot tears blur your vision once more as leon answers your prayers.

the moans escaping your chest ricochets off the oak walls and straight back into your mouth. leon is fucking you so harshly that you can’t breathe without moaning. his cock abuses your poor cervix that you think you’ll faint if he keeps going. “there’s my pretty girl.” leon’s fingers messily rub your clit, your heartbeat becomes erratic. your eyes pry open to wearily watch as his cock disappears into your cunt, the sight making you dizzy. “got yourself so wet for me.” “god.” you blabber out with drool coating your mouth, too fucked out already, too gone.

there’s a pitiful slap to your rose tinted cheeks, it only makes the coil in your stomach tighten. “bet you missed this. all those tears and prayers will never save you from being a dirty little girl.” leon taunts while biting your neck, drawing the smallest trickle of blood. his tongue laps at your neck while your lungs are filled with fire as leon’s grip on your throat loosens just for a moment. his cock repeatedly hits that sweet spot, your body is going numb from the euphoria. “i can save you, i’m all you need.”

the coil in your stomach seemingly snaps already, whether at leon’s words or his cock ruthlessly pounding your insides, you don’t know for sure. you’re gasping for air, body stupidly shaking at the strong rush of dopamine coming out of your cunt. “leon.” you whine loudly, clawing at his wrist as he doesn’t stop fucking your brains out. this feeling is so much stronger than the first time that the circuit of your brain seems to rewire itself, you’re completely and utterly broken.

“there you go, pretty. all over my cock just like that.” leon hooks his arms around your thighs, finally letting your throat breathe in the hot air. your brain is melted, the only thought you have is leon and his cock. tears stain your eyes as leon pounds deeper into you, not letting your body rest just yet. ears filled with the wet sounds of skin on skin and your own moans. the candles mounted on the oak walls are extinguished, the image of your heavenly father above the doorframe views you with disgust.

“no god will ever make you feel this good.” leon grunts, voice raspy and heavy. “only you, leon.” you manage to say, breaking eye contact with the painting pitifully judging you as you lose yourself in leon. his cock hitting every single spot in repeated thrusts, stars are in your eyes at the indescribable feeling your body is currently drowning in. “only you, only you, only you.” you chant in a lust filled mantra, gripping at the oak walls as leon pounds your cunt harder.

“only me, huh? you’re so fucked.” leon muffles his chuckle into your shoulder, sliding a hand down to your cunt once again. you pathetically make an attempt to stop him from rubbing harsh circles into your clit, already overstimulated enough. “leon, don’t.” you sob as you feel the coil about to snap again. the plead falls on deaf ears, leon bites into your skin while rubbing messy circles on your clit. your cries are broken into scattered moans when leon roughly hits that sweet spot in your cunt, making the coil snap for the second time.

the wave of bliss has you speechless, throat releasing nothing but breathless moans. your body thrashes as the ecstasy you’re receiving is unreal. “such a good girl.” rings in your ears as you feel the hot essence of leon’s cum filling you to the point of fullness. he desperately rids himself of every drop, groaning into the nape of your neck. your throat burns as you moan faintly, like liquid to a sore throat. leon grabs your face to immediately kiss your bruised lips, grasping your limp body into a tight hold. the taste of blood falls onto your tongue, your blood.

“i’m all you need.” leon repeats onto your lips, staring into your eyes and straight through your soul. that familiar glint in his eyes has your heart beating haphazardly. you believe he is the only thing you ever need, your heavenly father will never give you such pleasure as leon does. your heavenly father will never be leon. you mindlessly nod, giddily smiling at leon before kissing his lips, relishing in your newfound faith.

you found god and he’s leon.

#leon kennedy x fem reader #leon kennedy x you #leon kennedy smut #resident evil 4 smut #leon kennedy imagine #omfg how do i tag this!!!!

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redstarwriting · 11 months

Text

the clash | iv. london calling

hobie brown x goth!reader

word count: 2.8k

genre: enemies to lovers

warnings: language, insults, hobie hating you, you hating hobie, smoking weed, alcohol, mentions of a gwen canon event, mentions of death, lil angst

a/n: nother long one! i can’t wait to make it crazy angsty bc when i tell u i have THOUGHTS 👀 thank you to everyone who’s reading, i’m trying to update it every day, so hopefully i can stick with that schedule! enjoy this chapter, friends :)

now reading: iv. london calling

previous chapter: iii. black planet

next chapter: v. ever fallen in love

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He fixes his watch to open a portal to his world. Gwen, Miles, and Pavitr basically run to get to it. He motions for you to go ahead, and you walk through. Immediately when you step into his room, you’re hit with the smell of weed and incense. You’d be lying if you said you hated it. You glance around. You see drums, another electric and acoustic guitar, empty spray paint cans, spray paint on the walls, stacks of newspapers (all defaced in some way)… it feels very Hobie to say the least. “Now this. This is a livin’ area,” he says, appearing behind you. You shake your head. “So loud, both figuratively and literally. How do you ever get anything done?”

“By being louder than everyone else, obviously,” he responds, and you roll your eyes. “What a way to live,” you remark. “Better than that quiet, dark, and gloomy, way,” he retorts, and you shrug. “If you say so.”

“Hey, Hobie, do you still have the roof all decorated?” Gwen asks and he nods. “Course I do. I own the place, head on up,” he jerks his head upwards, and Gwen turns to Miles and Pavitr with a smirk. “Race ya!”

“Hey no fair! You have been here so many times!” Pavitr yells as Gwen takes off. “Come on, Miles!” you hear her yell. Miles smiles gently and shakes his head before going after the two of them. “He’s so obsessed with her it’s making me sick,” you mumble, and Hobie snorts. “What? Miles and Gwen’s relationship too much for you? You hate love?”

“Love has never done anything but cause me pain. And not the good kind,” you glance at him with a frown, and he raises his eyebrow. Suddenly his eyes get wide. “Oh shit… you had a Gwen canon event.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” you respond, and he frowns. “You know, actually talkin’ about that kinda shit is a good way to not sit on it and let it build. You could face some serious problems if you keep doin’ that.”

“Who said I gave a fuck what you think? I didn’t ask for the unneeded advice, alright?” you say, and he narrows his eyes at you. “Oh, right. Forgot I was dealing with a bloody doughnut,” he mumbles and point to the window. “Care to go to the roof and get out of my sight?”

“Sound like the best thing you’ve said since I got here,” you say, leaping out of his window and climbing up the side of the building. While clinging to the wall, you glance out at Hobie’s world. His city looks almost exactly like Night of Yore City, except for the fact that there are a shit ton of fires burning, over half of the buildings look abandoned, the sky is a reddish-orangish hue, and it is so much louder. The name is also vastly different, as his version of NYC is New London. Universal differences get weird and confusing. Nonetheless, you’re intrigued, you turn around, putting your back against the wall and supporting yourself with your hands and feet. The graffitied buildings are a nice touch, you must admit. You snort to yourself when you see a mural of Hobie. If only they knew the asshole behind the mask.

“Now why the hell aren’t you up there with everyone else?” you hear his voice pull you out of your thoughts as he crawls up next to you. You shrug. “I’m a sucker for views, I guess.”

“Well, believe it or not, view is a lot better from the top of the buildin’,” he says, and you roll your eyes. “Can I please just be secluded and observe in peace?”

“Absolutely fuckin’ not. Come on,” he says, starting to walk up the wall. You sigh and lazily roll backwards and up the wall to come to standing and follow him up. When you get to the top of the roof, you see a boombox (blaring punk music, of course) and blankets surrounding a barrel with a fire going in it. Multiple coolers decorate the roof which all look stockpiled full of different beers. “Hey, Hobie, you know that they’re all kids, right?”

“New universe, new rules, love. Drinking age is 16 and up ‘round here, not that I’d give a fuck if it wasn’t anyway. So, sit down, shut up, and drink a damn beer. Maybe you’ll loosen up,” he says, tossing you a random bottle. You roll your eyes and sit down but put the beer to the side.

“Hey, Hobie, do you have any of that–” Miles gets cut off by Hobie tossing him another bottle. “Nice. Thanks, dude,” he says excitedly, cracking the top and taking a drink. Gwen gets her beer of choice, and Pavitr does the same. Hobie, you notice, doesn’t drink anything. “So, what were you guys talking about?” Gwen asks, pointing between the two of you with her bottle. “What?” you ask, and she shrugs. “You guys were alone in Hobie’s for a while and no one died, soooo did you guys finally talk about something you could agree on?”

“We can’t agree on nothin’, Gwen. They were just bein’ their usual self and annoyin’ the shit out of me at any chance they could get,” Hobie says, and you shake your head. “Good to know it worked, mate”

“Stop imitatin’ me, poser.”

“No, I don’t think I will.”

“I’ll make you.”

“Try me, Hobart.”

“Alright, that’s enough of that. What were you guys talking about?” Miles asks, and you and Hobie look at each other. “Just asked where the bathroom was,” you say, and he nods. “Yeah. That’s it.”

You weren’t necessarily ready to reveal you faced the Gwen canon event. Especially not to another Gwen. At least Hobie isn’t enough of a dick to bring it up in front of them. “Oh, yeah, you did change into your everyday clothes. Don’t know how I didn’t notice that,” Gwen states, taking another swig of her beer. You had changed in your apartment after cleaning your wound, but you don’t say anything. Hobie nods at you, and you nod back.

“Why aren’t you drinking anything (Y/n)? Here, try this it’s so good,” Pavitr pushes his bottle toward you, and you shake your head. “I don’t want to drink, but thanks Pavitr,” you say, and he frowns. “Awww.” You smile slightly at how disappointed he sounds. “Well, I want to remember everything you all tell me without it being fuzzy because I was hoping you could let me know a little bit more about all the spider people in Spider Society. I’m still new, you four, Peter B. Parker, and Miguel are the only ones I’ve really met.”

With that, Gwen, Miles, and Pavitr start telling you everything they know. You learn about Jessica Drew, Spider-Man Noir, Peni Parker, and so many more. Gwen, Miles, and Pavitr talk for hours, and since they’re kids, they do not know when to stop drinking. Eventually, the three of them are passed out. Miles is cradling Gwen’s side with his head on her chest as she wraps one of her arms around him, and Pavitr is laying straight on his back, lightly snoring. You giggle softly at the sight. Suddenly the punk music you’ve been listening to for the past however many hours gets softer. You glance over to where it is and see Hobie bent over and turning it down. “Don’t wanna wake ‘em,” he mumbles, walking over to you. The volume of the city has decreased quite a bit, and with the low hum of music coming from the boombox now, his world is actually kind of enjoyable. Though you’d never tell him that. He motions to the skyline, and you turn and look. He was right, as much as you hate to admit it. The view is a lot better from up here.

“Why didn’t you drink anythin’?” he asks, and you shrug. “Didn’t feel like it. Why didn’t you drink anything?” He shrugs and pulls out a rolled cigarette from his vest pocket. “Got somethin’ better.”

“And you didn’t offer any to them?”

“Hey, they can drink here, they don’t need to mess with this shit. ‘Sides I knew they’d be pissed. Gonna have a god-awful hangover tomorrow,” he says, pulling out a lighter. You shake your head. “They can’t mess with your shit, but I can?”

“The two of us are the same age. We’re ‘adults’ or whatever the fuck that means. Are you too stuck up to be ‘round some grass or somethin’?”

“No, Hobie, I don’t give a fuck if you smoke weed. Building manager might, though.”

“Love, I am the building manager. This place is abandoned, so it belongs to me. And you’re not tellin’ me I’m supposed to smoke this myself?” he asks with a sly smirk on his face. You raise your eyebrow at him. “Actually I am.” He groans, putting the joint to his lips and lighting the end of it.

“Do you know how to have any fun?”

“Do you know how to have any–” Before you can finish, he puts his finger over your mouth, and raises the joint to his lips again. He takes a deep breath in, blowing out the excess smoke and glancing at you. “No.”

“You don’t even know what I was gonna say.”

“Don’t care. The answer is no.”

“Have you ever actually tried listening to anything anyone says?” “Nah. I don’t listen to no one. I’m me, and if people don’t like that, good,” he says, taking another drag. He glances over at you and holds the joint out. “Y’sure you don’t want some?”

“You actually want to share with me?”

“I want you to not be as much as a ragin’ fuckwit, so yes,” he blows smoke in your face, and you glare at him. “If I take one hit, will you shut the fuck up about it?”

“Probably not, but it would sure make me happier.” You roll your eyes, and take the joint from him, taking a drag. He watches you. He’d never admit it, but he wishes you weren’t such an asshole. The way you look doing that in the moonlight? Stunning. You pass the joint back to him, some of the smoke coming out of your nose. “Stop staring at me.”

“Just makin’ sure you did it right and didn’t waste my shit,” he says, taking another drag. “I know how to hit a joint, Hobie.”

“Really? Never would have guessed you’d do anything remotely excitin’.”

“Oh, please. You barely know me,” you say, angrier than you probably should be. “Then tell me about yourself, love.”

“Hard pass,” you say, and he groans. “I get the desire to stay anonymous and mysterious, obviously, but come on. Chances are we’re gonna be seein’ each other more than either of us wants to, so just open up a bit,” he says, and you frown. “There’s nothing you need to know.”

“Bullshit.”

“Oh yeah? Then tell me something about you.”

“I killed Norman Osborn with my guitar after defeatin’ him and all of his V.E.N.O.M. forces and successfully led a rebellion against fascism,” he says smugly, “Until those other fuckin’ Nazis showed up, but one day I promise you this world? Will be capitalist and fascist free.”

“No, it won’t. Am I supposed to be impressed?” you ask with a deadpan face. He scoffs. “Damn, you’re a wanker. I’d like to see you try and defeat the V.E.N.O.M. forces. From what I seen your world’s villains are rubbish,” he says and to his surprise, and yours, you laugh. A hint of a smile plays on his features, but you shake your head. “Green Goblin is, you’re right, but... there are others who are much worse. And what the fuck is a venom force? You’re saying that like I should just know what it is.”

“It was a symbiote that– wait, you sayin’ you don’t know what venom is? That’s something every spider-person deals with at some point,” he says, and you shrug. “Guess I haven’t dealt with it yet.”

“Yeah, well, when you do, call me cause you’ll need my help,” he says and you roll your eyes. “I’d rather die than get help from you.”

“I helped you today, love.”

“I could have done that myself,” you retort, and he shakes his head, taking another drag. “I guess I should thank you though.”

“Hmm?”

“For not telling them what we were really talking about,” you say, and he hums. “What they won’t know won’t kill ‘em. But just so you know I was being so serious. Not talkin’ about that shit is more harmful than good,” he says, and you frown. “I’m not much of a talker.”

“Coulda fooled me.”

“Do you ever shut the fuck up,” you groan, and he laughs. He loves pissing you off, might be his favorite thing to do now. But the conversation might actually need to get serious. He may hate you, but he’s Spider-Punk for the people, and you’re apart of that people. He’s there to help, so he may as well try with you.

“Why not?”

“What?”

“Why not? Why won’t you talk about it?” he asks, and you huff. “Because it was my fault, and I don’t want to think about it.”

“Nah, I bet it wasn’t your fault,” he mumbles, taking another drag. You glare at him. “Oh, right, I forgot you were there when their neck snapped after I tried to save them,” you spit, and he glances at you. You can feel that hit starting to affect you, that’s the only reason you said anything about… the incident. Of course, Hobie has good shit, why wouldn’t he. “What were you trying to save them from?” he asks, his voice oddly calm. “The Prowler,” you reply, “He’s the worst of the worst in my universe.” He hums and nods. “Well then, reckon it’s the Prowler’s fault then, innit?”

“What? But I’m the one who couldn’t get to them in time after he–”

“He did it, (Y/n). You did your best, but it ain’t your fault what happened there. That’s what they want you to think. Try and get that through your thick skull, would you?” he says, and you scoff, “They?”

He nods, and you go quiet. He glances over at you as you just sit and stare out at the city. “Stop doin’ ‘at.”

“Doing what?”

“Blamin’ yourself,” he says, taking another long drag. You sigh. “I can’t help it,” you mumble, and he shakes his head. “You can. Just takes time,” he responds. You scoff, “You’d think three years would be enough time.” You look out at his city. It’s so different from yours, but you can still see the beauty in it. And you can see the stars. None of the constellations of your world are here, but the sky is still beautiful. “If you need a place to crash, my couch is very comfortable and has your name written all over it,” Hobie says, and you shake your head. “I should probably just go back to my universe–”

“No way. No dimension hopping under the influence,” he says, and you roll your eyes. “I had one hit,” you say, and he shrugs. “And one hit is enough for you to think you’re goin’ home only to end up in Peter Porker’s shower. You’re stayin’ here tonight.” You roll your eyes. “You’re insufferable.”

“I’m insufferable for watchin’ out for your well-bein’? Okay, sure.”

“I don’t need you to watch out for me. I don’t need anyone,” you hiss, and he scoffs. “Of course you don’t. Too good for everyone else.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“It was implied.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“Look who’s talking.”

“Like you wouldn’t say the same thing,” you say, and he shrugs. “You’re right. I would say I don’t need anyone, because I don’t. Especially not a miserable thing like you,” he says, and you frown. “Good.”

“Great.”

“Fuck you.”

The two of you just glare at each other for a bit before he flicks the butt of his joint off the building. “Goin’ to bed. See you tomorrow.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Shut up and follow me back to my place,” he says, getting up and walking down the building. You follow, yawning as you realize just how tired you are. When you get back inside Hobie’s place, he points at the couch. “Lay there, and don’t move until mornin’, got it?”

“I’ll do what I want.”

“Amazin’. Just don’t wake me up, and I won’t give a fuck,” he says, walking into his bedroom and kicking his door shut. You roll your eyes and lay down on his couch. It’s actually surprisingly comfortable, and you find yourself actually dozing off faster than you anticipated. Hobie walks out of his room to get a drink of water and ready to fight you verbally again, only to see you passed out on his couch with literally no blanket or pillow.

He sighs, grabbing a throw blanket off his bed and gently placing it on top of you. In the morning, you wake up before everyone else. You notice the blanket, and know only one person could have done that, but you don’t feel like sticking around to say anything. You just go home. But before you do, you leave a little note saying, ‘didn’t need your sympathy, thanks but no thanks,’ and draw a little middle finger.

He’ll get the hint you appreciated it.

───────────────────────────────

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#hobie brown x reader #hobie brown x y/n #hobie brown x you #hobie x reader #spiderpunk x reader #spiderverse x reader #hobie brown #hobie #spiderpunk #spider-punk #spiderverse #theclashofthespiderverse

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headspace-hotel · 1 year

Text

Another note on climate change despair:

My politics are pretty leftist, especially by the standards of a red state, but I think there is a such thing as Too Far Left re: the systemic nature of problems

It happens when you start to believe that nothing will ever change unless the current system is completely destroyed and a new one built in its place. In particular, when you believe that taking steps to reform, or decrease the harm of, a corrupt system is pointless or even bad, you've gone off the deep end imho.

People from my own country—the United States—will say things like "Gradual, incremental change is pointless, we need Revolution!"

Look me in the eyes and tell me that women's rights, LGBTQ rights, racial equality, etc. are in the same state they were in 1950. Maybe just google these things first.

Revolution IS an incremental change!!! This country has tens of thousands of elected officials and officeholders!! Every life-supporting industry is run by a fucked up Rube Goldberg machine of bureaucracy that could stretch from here to the Moon 87 times!!! This country's laws, institutions, and supply chains are a Bethesda game programmed in the 1700's, released unfinished and currently running thousands of mods, at least half of which either remove crucial game mechanics and content at random or do things like "make your character take damage when he pees." Do you think it's really possible to raze this clusterfuck to the ground and rebuild it from scratch?

anyway, I say this because a concerning amount of people believe literally nothing meaningful can be done to save the planet until our current government and economic system no longer exist.

I get it. Capitalism is what got us into this mess and it's making it worse right now, but we do not have zero agency, capitalism does not have infinite power and wisdom, and humans and governments can and do make decisions that are contrary to the immediate interests of capitalism. I think it's not only possible but normal throughout history for people's actions and beliefs to flow against the prevailing power of the time.

Think of dandelions. They flourish not because they are wanted, but because they are numerous, and the power that controls the grass and sidewalks cannot reach everywhere at once. And so they are unstoppable, and will never be destroyed.

We must have the raw, opportunistic resisting power of weeds, taking hold in every crack in the terrible machine that controls our lives. We must hold on like little plants in an expanse of cracked concrete—the slab will not be dug up and the soil set free anytime soon, but if enough of us live our lives in spite of it, its power will be weakened and its impenetrable nature changed.

Also, just because technological solutions to climate change don't feel right—they don't satisfy the longer-term, idealized principle of healing the Earth and creating a more sustainable society—doesn't mean they wouldn't, in the short term, work.

Get in losers, we're burning incense to Caesar and tomorrow we will be alive.

#climate despair #nature

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chvoswxtch · 17 days

Text

personal

pairing: frank castle x fem!reader

summary: lately frank has been acting suspicious, and you've decided to finally confront him about it.

warnings: swearing, lots of angst

word count: 3.4k

a/n: i hope y'all have been enjoying things being nice & light & sexy & fun bc these last few chapters aren't holding back any punches. shit is about to get real. as always, feedback is welcomed/appreciated!

[previous chapter] | [series masterlist]

Not even five minutes after Frank walked through the threshold of his apartment, the rumble of an incessant banging sounded on his front door. His dark brows instantly furrowed with irritation at the sound. Slipping his right hand behind his back to grab the handle of the gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans, he turned the knob and swung the door open with just as much ferocity as the person knocking on the other side.

The creases of annoyance on his sharp features suddenly smoothed into recognition at the sight of you standing in front of him, but not long after, his warm brown eyes widened in complete bewilderment seeing the raw fury that was burning in your eyes.

“Hey-”

Before he could utter another word, you forced your way inside his apartment, causing him to quickly retreat backwards, wincing when you swiftly slammed the front door shut behind yourself.

“You need to tell me what the fuck is going on with you, right now.”

Frank was utterly caught off guard by your aggressive behavior. The last time he had seen you this angry with him was when he showed up at your place after Cavella and Walker had attacked you. He was so distracted by your incensed entrance, he almost missed what you said. But when his brain finally caught up with his ears, your words only fueled his convoluted confusion.

“There nothin’ goin’ on-”

“Bullshit! Don’t you dare fucking lie to me, Frank.”

“Sweetheart, I’m not lyin’-”

“You’ve lied to me three times in the past month.”

Creases of puzzlement settled between Frank’s thick brows hearing that. Had he really lied to you three times? He couldn’t even remember what he’d lied about, or how you caught onto the fact that he was. Frank admittedly had been a bit out of it when it came to you lately, but he wasn’t doing it on purpose to hurt you. He just happened to be caught in the middle of something he was trying to keep you as far away from as possible.

Taking his silence as evidence of guilt, you stared up into his eyes, wanting him to see the proof of grief in your reflection that his actions had caused. You wanted him to hear the severity in the words that lacerated your tongue as they slipped past your lips that had been bitten raw from your tortured anxiety.

“You never once lied to me before Frank, ever. I don’t know why you’re choosing to start now, but if I hear one more lie come out of your mouth, I am done. I will walk out that door and I will have nothing to do with you ever again, that's it. Do you hear me?”

That caught Frank’s attention. There was no waver in your voice, no threat in your tone, just raw emotion and sincerity.

For the past month, Frank had been acting strange. You’d caught him in three white lies, and while they may have seemed small and trivial to someone else, they were anything but that to you. Because you’d been stuck with a pathological liar before, and there was no such thing as harmless lies. A lie was a lie, and it was a crack in the foundation of trust and integrity that you’d built with Frank, and a crack could turn into a rift, and a rift could divide you and make it all come crumbling down.

Since yours and Frank’s schedules didn’t always line up, you’d both done everything you could to make every moment count since your first date. But lately, it felt like you were the only one putting in the effort. Frank was chronically distracted these last few weeks. He was late to meet you for dates, he didn’t call when he said he was going to, and sometimes you didn’t hear from him at all until the day was practically over. And when he was with you, Frank was physically present, but mentally he seemed to be somewhere you couldn’t follow. Even sitting right beside one another, it felt like there were oceans of distance separating you subconsciously.

At first, you’d tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. It was one little white lie. One missed call after a long day. Just fifteen minutes of waiting at the restaurant. This was Frank, the man who had saved your life more times than you could count. He was different. This was real. You had nothing to be concerned about.

But then one white lie turned to three, and one missed call turned into not hearing from him until an excuse appeared across your screen at half past midnight, and fifteen minutes late turned into not showing up at all. His behavior planted a seed of suspicion in your mind that grew like wild ivy, coveting the sense of security you had in him with leaves of doubt, sprouting spirals of diabolical hypotheticals that canvassed your brain with catastrophe.

Every knot of faith Frank had woven into your heart with his actions over the last nine months were steadily being unraveled by his own hand in a matter of weeks. The confidence you had in him was now frayed in shreds and left you in a fit of mania, scrutinizing his every intent under a microscope.

You had been here before. You’d been lied to, manipulated, cheated on, pushed to the brink of insanity, and eventually left behind. You recognized all the signs of duplicity and betrayal, but you’d covered your own eyes so you wouldn’t have to acknowledge them, because it was Frank.

Blunt-and-brutally-honest, jump-in-front-of-a-bullet, remembers-every-little-detail, got-his-knuckles-bloody-for-you, killed-for-you, Frank.

And that’s why this hurt so much. That’s why this dagger of deceit tore clean right through your chest, leaving you standing in the middle of Frank’s living room, hysterical and furious for an elixir of truth that could make this pain go away and heal your belief in him once again. He’d been so MIA lately that you had spent hours camped out in front of his apartment building tonight, waiting to see his truck pull up just so you could follow him inside and finally have this conversation face to face.

Frank could hear in your voice that he’d hurt you, and even worse, he could see the evidence of it shining in your eyes. The pieces of yourself you’d lent him to patch up his own heart were suddenly bleeding at the seams seeing how his unintentionally selfish preoccupation had left you marooned. Shame didn’t begin to cover the way he felt. He knew he needed to be honest, but he couldn’t tell you everything.

Not yet.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. But it ain’t what you think, sweetheart.”

“Then what is it? Explain it to me.”

Frank took a seat on the couch and gently patted the space next to him, looking up at you with diligent patience while you internally debated between standing stubbornly or giving into his request to sit with him. After a moment you finally sat down, but you intentionally put space between the two of you and folded your arms across your chest in a silent gesture of defensiveness. Resting his forearms on the tops of his thighs, Frank clasped his right hand over his left wrist, staring down at his worn boots while deciding his next words carefully.

“I got a new assignment.”

The quiet tone of Frank’s voice and the lack of eye contact while he spoke immediately caused a spark in your nervous system.

“Where?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Frank let a moment of silence pass before turning his head to look at you with an apologetic gleam in his warm brown eyes.

“I’ve been helpin’ Madani with somethin’.”

Pinching at the bridge of your nose, you let out a slow exhale of irritation. Frank had already strained your patience with his behavior this past month, and his obscure responses were only making it worse.

“Why are you being so secretive about this?”

“It’s complicated-”

“Complicated how? You didn’t have to hide the last job from me-”

“This one is different-”

“Different how? That doesn’t make any sense-”

“You gonna let me talk? Or you gonna keep yellin’ at me?”

The way you clenched your jaw and narrowed your gaze at his quip made Frank regret letting his own frustration get the best of him. You were already pissed off, now was not the time for him to snap back at you like he normally did when the two of you argued about something. A wave of annoyance quickly crested within you. The second you stood up from the couch, Frank’s large hand reached out to grab your wrist.

“Hey, c’mon. Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Walk away from this conversation-”

“What conversation, Frank? You’re not doing anything but giving me vague excuses. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

Frank gave your wrist a gentle tug to get you to sit back down next to him on the couch. He once again waited calmly as you stood defiantly for a moment before reluctantly sitting back down. He let his large hand glide across your wrist to take your hand into his own, holding it firmly in his lap while cocking his head to the side to try and catch your gaze.

“Look at me, sweetheart.”

When he gave your hand a gentle squeeze, the prolonged pause of silence caused you to eventually shift your attention back to Frank, and you could see that his brown eyes were a deep shade of contrition.

“I’m sorry. I know I’ve been distracted lately, and I haven’t been ‘round like I shoulda been. And you’re right, I did lie to ya, and I’m sorry ‘bout that. I’m not tryin’ to keep things from ya, sweetheart. It’s just…this one is…it’s different.”

“Why? What makes this one so different that you have to lie to me about it?”

“It’s personal.”

Now it was your turn to be perplexed. You thought Frank was long past holding you at arms length and keeping up a fortified impenetrable steel wall around his heart and mind. He’d opened up to you before, talked about his life in the Marines, told you about the family he’d loved and lost, even spoke about them more comfortably and freely now without the shadow of grief looming over his words. Why was he back to shielding his vulnerability?

“Personal?”

Frank knew you wanted more of an explanation. You needed more. And he hated that he couldn’t give it to you right now. He hated that there was still so much that he was holding back from you, and that it was his own fault you were even doubting him in the first place.

“Listen, I can’t explain it right now, alright? But I will. When it’s all said and done, I’m…I’m gonna…I’ll have to tell ya some things first, some things you may not wanna hear and probably won’t like hearin’. But I promise, I’m gonna tell you everythin’, alright? I just need you to trust me right now.”

Every word Frank spoke hid another piece of the puzzle he was crafting, and you were left with misshapen gaps of confusion. You didn’t know what he meant by saying there were things he had to explain that you might not want to hear, or how that factored into the job he was currently working. Nothing he was saying made any sense to you, and it only left you with more crucial questions than justifiable answers. Pulling your hand away from his, you got up from the couch and started to stressfully pace back and forth.

“So the reason you’ve been a shitty boyfriend lately is because of this new assignment, that you can’t tell me anything about, other than it’s personal, but you can’t explain why that is. And it’s going to take you somewhere eventually, but you can’t tell me where, because you don’t even know yet, and even if you did, you still wouldn’t tell me. And I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that you have no idea how long this is going to last, but you expect me to sit here and act like everything is fine between us and trust you even though I have no fucking idea where you’re going or what you’re doing. Did I miss anything?”

Frank could hear the barely concealed hostility in your tone. He couldn’t combat a single thing you said. When you finally stopped pacing and turned to face him, staring at him expectantly, a ring of treachery was blazing around your irises. He could see it right then in your eyes. If he didn’t fix this, he would lose you.

Slowly rising from the couch, Frank stood there with a dispirited weight resting on his shoulders, a look of pleading softening his warm brown eyes.

“I’m gonna handle this as soon as I can, I promise.”

“I can’t do another month of this, Frank.”

“Then it won’t be another month. I’ll figure it out before then.”

“How?”

The resentment you felt towards Frank was rapidly fading into pure desperation. All you wanted was an answer, a real answer. Something of substance that you could understand, something tangible to hold onto during this period of uncertainty. Frank could feel the despair radiating off of you in thick sorrowful waves, and the fact that you were close to forfeiting this argument had him instantly tensing as the chill of dread straightened his spine. He had to give you something.

“Listen, Madani gave me some intel, alright? I’ve been followin’ it, tryin’ to find proof she’s right, or if she’s just seein’ what she wants to see.”

“But why did she give it to you? What can you do that Homeland Security can’t?”

Frank stared at you silently for a moment, and you could see a look of hesitation flash in his eyes. There was something there, something you couldn’t figure out. But you could tell by the expression on his face that there was a lot more to this than it being a top secret assignment from Homeland. Whatever it was, it had everything to do with Frank. You just couldn’t figure out why. After a terse minute of silence, Frank stood up a little straighter while subtly clenching his jaw, and there was a hardened look in his eyes.

“Cause it’s connected to someone I know.”

The way he spoke that sentence with an ominous undertone sent an icy torrent down your spine. Sensing your trepidation, Frank let out a deep sigh and glanced around his apartment for a moment while lost in thought before eventually looking at you again, this time with a softer gaze.

“Look, I can’t explain it all right now, sweetheart. All I can tell ya is that Madani needed someone she could trust on this, and I owe her a debt.”

Letting those words sink in, you tried to put your biased emotions aside for a moment and think logically about what Frank was saying. Dinah had asked him for a favor. Part of you found it surprising that she came to Frank and Billy, considering the way she acted towards Billy the day Steven was arrested. But maybe that look of distrust and disdain had everything to do with the complicated relationship they’d had that Billy mentioned.

If Frank was working for Dinah, then he was working for Homeland, which meant he probably didn’t have a choice but to keep everything from you. And yet, here he was still trying to give you crumbs of explanations, and promising to tell you everything once this new assignment was over. At least you could lay the fear to rest that he was seeing someone else. Standing here now, you felt ridiculous that you’d restlessly jumped to the conclusion of an illicit affair. But in your own defense, it had been difficult to think clearly when Frank’s covert behavior mirrored that of past boyfriends' unfaithful performances.

As your shoulders physically deflated from your own conspiracies unraveling just to get tangled in a new set of ambiguities, you let out a deep exhale and rubbed both of your palms tiredly down your face, grasping onto the back of your neck for a moment. When you first showed up at Frank’s apartment, you had felt completely warranted in your anger. Now, you weren’t sure if you had overreacted in your manic state, or if you still had a right to be upset with Frank. At this point, you just felt drained from trying to balance on that tightrope of your own conflicting emotions.

Frank had saved your life several times over, and Dinah personally made sure that Steven would spend the rest of his life in prison. You owed them both everything. The least you could do was show them a little patience.

“Alright. Fine.”

In the nine months that Frank had known you, never once had you conceded in an argument. Even when you were in the wrong, you struggled with admitting that you had been erroneous. Frank’s blood ran cold with the thought that he might have pushed you too far healing the casual defeat in your voice. He didn’t want you to give up on him like this. Frank quickly took a step towards you the second you took a step towards the door, reaching out to gently grab your arm.

“Hey, hey c’mon. Don’t go.”

“Frank, I’m tired-”

“Then stay. Just stay here, c’mon. It’s late, yeah? Stay.”

Frank wasn’t giving you any room to decline the offer disguised as a command. One of his strong arms slipped around your waist, pulling you firmly into his chest while his large hand gently cradled the back of your head. He pressed his lips in a soft, lingering kiss to the crown of your head, hugging onto you tightly while resting his cheek against the side of your head. The rigid tension in your body lethargically began to melt, and Frank’s deep gravelly voice whispering into your ear dismantled the last of your defensiveness.

“Just stay with me, baby. Please stay.”

Frank knew that he didn’t deserve you. He didn’t feel that he’d earned this second chance at life he was getting. But he would be damned if he’d let anything ruin this now that he had you. He would’ve told Madani to go to hell if he’d known the favor was going to cause such a big disruption to the peace he’d found within you.

But not only did he owe his second shot to her, he desperately needed to know the truth himself.

“When will you leave?”

Frank hugged onto you even tighter, rubbing his hand along your lower back in soothing slow circles.

“M’not sure yet. But I’ll tell ya as soon as I know, I promise. And I’ll make sure you’re taken care of while I’m gone, yeah? I’ll be back before ya know it, baby.”

Hearing the soft sigh that sounded from you, Frank nuzzled his nose into your hair and whispered gently to you.

“Listen, I won’t take no more jobs like this, alright? I’m gonna handle this for Madani, and that’s it. I won’t do anythin’ else that’ll take me too far from you, yeah? I’m not gonna leave ya, sweetheart. I told ya I’m always gonna be here. I meant that then, and I mean it now. You ain’t ever gotta worry ‘bout that.”

You tried to find comfort in those words, but you weren’t in the mental state to accept any vows. You couldn’t get past the glaring truth that Frank was hiding something from you, and until you knew what it was, that crack of dishonesty would continue to slowly spread. You had a sneaking suspicion in the pit of your stomach that whatever verity Frank was concealing had the potential to shatter everything; unveiling the illusion that your relationship hadn’t been formed out of the impervious stone that you’d believed in, but rather of futile glass.

tags: @thyme-in-a-bubble @day-dreaming-goddess @messymissy @itwasthereaminuteago @strawberry1042 @queenofthenoobs @wanda2themax @xcastawayherosx @avengerstower-houseplant @stevenknightmarc @ponyosmom35 @babygal-babygal @wellwwhynot @oldermenaremyreligion @combustiblemeow @tired-night-owl @fairykiss32 @danzer8705 @calkissed @fxckahs-blog @lemon-world1 @polskiperson @imperihoe @v4leoftears @harperdoodle @spideyvibez @joalslibrary @cherry-berry-ollie @sorrowfulfragmentation @kdogreads @sumo-b98 @blackhawkfanatic @gloryekaterina @whistle1whistle @starbritestarlite @callmebrooklynbabes @hallway5 @scarletfvckingwitch @bifuriouslatina @soupyspence @fireeyes-on-teller-dixon-grimes @wonwoosthetic @linguist-breakaribecca @nerdytreeflower @mrs-bellingham @smhnxdiii @s3riou2 @slavic-empress

#frank castle #frank castle x you #frank castle x y/n #frank castle x reader #frank castle x female reader #frank castle x fem!reader #frank castle x f!reader #frank castle fic #frank castle series #the bodyguard series #bodyguard!frank castle fic #bodyguard!frank castle series #bodyguard!frank castle x reader #the punisher #the punisher fic #the punisher series

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bedoballoons · 3 months

Note

Hello!

I really love your writing! This is my first time making a request :^)

Can I request kaveh, tighnari and whoever else you want to include reacting to the reader (preferably m or gn) showing them a guestroom in their house/teapot that they decorated just for them? I'm imagining alot of blushing pre-relationship vibes but established relationship would also be very sweet so it's up to you ^^

No worries if u dont like the prompt and would rather not do it. I'm excited to read more of your work regardless!

AHHHH THIS IDEA IS JUST CHEFS KISS!! This is your first request and it's literally incredible!! Thank you thank you! It's a honour to write your first one so I hope you enjoy it!!

─⊰⁠⊹ฺ❄️𝔾𝕖𝕟𝕤𝕙𝕚𝕟 ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕕𝕔𝕒𝕟𝕠𝕟𝕤⊰⁠⊹ฺ❄️

{༻~A safe place~༺}

CW: Fluffy! GN! Reader! Pre-relationship blushing and cuteness!!

(Includes: Tighnari, Kaveh, and Kazuha!)

𑁍༄Tighnari:

"Alright, now!" You stepped aside as Tighnari moved his tail, uncovering his eyes so he could finally see the surprise you had waiting for him...you'd been decorating and placing everything for days now, even making some of the furniture by hand just for him to have a perfect room in your teapot. Now you'd know if he liked it or not...and your heart was racing with anticipation!

"You did all of this...for me? I don't even...I don't even have a sarcastic remark to make. This is perfect.." He walked inside the room, examining everything even closer, you'd managed to find books on herbology he didn't even know existed and there was a incense burning on his new desk that smelled calmly of flowers...even a small picture of him with you and Collei. No one had ever put so much effort into a place for him or thought of everything like you had.

His cheeks suddenly blushed at the realisation of how much he'd be here now, never wanting to leave a place so perfect for him...a place with you, "I don't know how I could ever thank you enough."

You felt your heart skip a beat, "Just stay around for awhile...?"

"I absolutely will."

𑁍༄Kaveh:

"You really didn't have to make me anything. I was just kidding about the whole giving me a gift makes me sleep better thing, I promise. It's something Alhaitham said and I...well it doesn't really matter but-"

"Kaveh, this has nothing to do with that. This is a gift that I wanted to give you because I like you alot and I think this will make you really happy...or at least I hope it will." You opened the door for him before he could answer you, hoping to distract him from your almost confession about liking him alot...you still didn't know if he liked you back, though maybe this gift would make it clear?

It took him a second to adjust to the new sight, to realise just how big of a gift this truly was.."I- did you decorate this room...just for me?" His mouth hung open in shock as his eyes scanned the beautiful place you'd made for him. Every inch of it decorated to his like, no even better then his liking and he didn't think that was possible. He could cry in happiness, "I am in such awe right now, I don't even have words"

"I definitely understand that feeling, especially when I'm with you." You looked away, your cheeks on fire...you'd never been so bold about your feelings before and this could be coming on stronger then needed, but you couldn't back out now.

"How so?"

"I-...Kaveh..."

"Yes?"

"I like you.."

𑁍༄Kazuha:

"And we are here!" You removed the blindfold from his eyes, ready to show him his new room, the place you'd made just for him whenever he needed it...which you silently hoped was alot. It had everything he could need, sword racks and empty books for his poems, a cozy fireplace for when he returned from a cold rainy adventure and a vase of flowers that made the whole place have a soft floral scent.

His cheeks were dusted with a light blush and he almost appeared to be in a trance...maybe he didn't like it? "Kazu? If you don't like it I could always change it-"

"It's been a long time since I had a place I could truly call home, yes many of my adventures have lead to places with the feeling of home...but to truly have a place I can return to any time I'd like... I'd forgotten how it felt. Please know I love it all, you've done a wonderful job and I thank you for this...for giving me a home." He turned to you, his eyes almost dazed and his smile sweet and sincere...you could have kissed him right then..

Your cheeks went bright red, that thought aching to become a reality, "No need to thank me, having you here is enough thanks in itself. I hope you will use this room often, I would...love to spend more time together."

"As would I with you."

ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* ੈ♡‧₊˚~Have a nice day~*⁠.⁠✧

#genshin impact #genshin headcanons #genshin #genshin fanfic #genshin x reader #genshin x you #tighnari x you #tighnari x reader #tighnari fluff #tighnari headcanons #kaveh fluff #kaveh x you #kaveh x reader #kaveh headcanons #kazuha x reader #kazuha headcanons #kazuha fluff #kazuha x you

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eggyrocks · 9 days

Note

congrats on 500🫂🥳 would like to request #88 with kuroo! thank uu <33

YES THIS ONE IS SO PERFECT FOR KUROO

500 follower special: #88 “Don’t panic but I think we might have accidentally gotten married...”

kuroo x gn reader, drinking, dumb decisions made while drunk, mentions of cheating (not by or on kuroo), not proofread

written content masterlist

They cannot open their eyes. It doesn't matter that the sun is burning through their eyelids or that their phone is ringing incessantly beside their head. Their head is pounding, brain pulsing against their skull, a layer of sweat over their burning skin.

It's a hangover like no other.

A groan rumbles through them as they turn, shifting against their crumbled sheets and turning to the side, eyes still squeezed shut. It's only when their nose bumps into something hard that they fly open.

There, sleeping in their bed, shirtless and face pressed harshly against a pillow, is Kuroo.

Oh, right. Kuroo.

They roll onto their back, pressing the heels of their palms into their eyes. The night before is choppy, and their memory clouded by an alcohol-induced haze.

The fight they remember first.

"You stupid piece of shit!" they yelled, rabid and incensed. Their hands were grabbing at whatever objects they could find in their bedroom: pillows, socks, Pompompurin plushies, and whipping them harshly at his face.

Their boyfriend, currently fast-tracked to 'ex-boyfriend' status, was holding up his hands meekly in front of his chest, his only form of defense. "I'm sorry, baby, please, just listen to me."

Their hand gripped tightly around an almost empty bottle of lotion on their nightstand and launched it forward. It bounced off his forearm. "No, get the fuck out of my house or I swear fucking to god," they yelled, all sense and logic drained from their head, only operating on rage.

"I don't have anywhere to go, baby, please!" he pleaded, hands pressing together like he was praying.

"Then you shouldn't have cheated on me, you dumb piece of shit!" they yelled, about to send their princess Pompompurin plush flying in his direction, but they halted. Pompompurin didn't deserve it. Instead, they fished out their phone from the depth of their pocket, muttering, "Fuck you, I'm calling Kuroo."

Kuroo, they remember as they lie in the bed beside him, was much more effective at getting their ex out of the house than Pompompurin. He had shown up, tie from work loosened around his neck, and grabbed him by the collar. Kuroo dragged him to the curb, throwing out a string of curses and threats as he did so.

Then it was the crying. They had sobbed into Kuroo's chest while his hand smoothed down the hair on the top of their head. "I'm sorry," Kuroo had whispered, cradling them close to his chest. "He didn't deserve you."

The crying part was also when the drinking part started, too, they're pretty sure.

Kuroo had cracked open a beer, ready to settle in beside them on the couch and spend the night in together, watching comforting movies. He was ready to be a distraction.

But Kuroo likely didn't realize that he wasn't really as much of a distraction as he was another, deeper form of heartache. To them, the distraction was the beer.

"Tetsu," they had whined from their spot on the couch, tears dried on their face and can in their hand empty, "grab me another beer, please."

Kuroo stood in front of their open fridge, tie now completely abandoned and shirt unbuttoned. He frowned, and called back to them. "Looks like you're out."

So they went out.

The bar they remember well. Crowded and lively and with good music. The beer on tap tasted like water, so they had switched to something with a little more kick, and Kuroo followed suit.

Kuroo's face was red, and his eyes were drooping by the time he leaned forward and grabbed their cheeks between each of his hands, lightly squishing their face together. "You're too good-looking to get cheated on," he complained, like the thought was too painful for him to bear. "And you're a good person too. That pisses me off. Cause if you sucked, like, that would be different. Still be bad, but like, it's way worse because of how fucking amazing you are."

"Yeah, I know," they replied, words muffled and garbled as Kuroo pressed their mouth into a 'o' shape. "But I feel like I can only get shitheads to date me."

He blinked. They remember him blinking. "Do you think I'm a shithead?" he asked, head tilted, still not releasing their face from his grip.

They did their best to shake their head in reply. "I only think good things about you."

That they wince at, digging their hands further into their eyes, like they're trying to press the memory of it away.

They remember singing along to songs that played. They remember holding onto Kuroo's arm and resting their head on his shoulder. They remember saying, "I love you so fucking much," too many times to be considered just a friend thing.

But other than that, there's an empty space in their head. They know there's more. They know they left the bar and walked in a direction that was certainly not back home. And they know that somehow, Kuroo ended up sleeping shirtless besides them.

They remove their hands from their eyes, and light floods in, temporarily blinding them. They have to blink a few times before their vision returns to them, and when they turn to look over at Kuroo, it seems like he's in a similar state.

He groans, stirring in place as he peels his eyes open. One of their elbows gently nudges into his side. "Testu," they say, voice gravelly and rough.

Kuroo flips around and buries his face into the pillow beneath him, presumably trying to block out that brutal sun. "Yes?"

"Did we hook up last night?" they ask, not so horrified with the idea, more so hoping something like that wouldn't be a drunken regret.

"No," he replies, "we did something stupider."

Thier gut tumbles, and they think for a second that they might throw up. Whether that's the dread and nerves or the hangover, they're not sure. "Oh?"

Groaning the whole way through, Kuroo sits up, resting his weight on his forearm as he props himself up to look down at them. “Don’t panic but I think we might have accidentally gotten married."

They blink. And the words start to piece together some images. They do distinctly remember signing their name on some piece of paper or another. And now, they can see it clearer. Kuroo looking down at them with that shit-eating grin of his, him placing a strawberry gummy ring on their finger, and holy shit, holy fuck, they can remember very, very clearly, Kuroo leaning down and kissing them like it's just a thing he's always done.

Well, they figure that they're technically Kuroo now, too.

"Fucking hell," they say in a thick voice, eyes wide, "we totally got fucking married."

Kuroo studies their expression, eyes still heavy with sleep. "Do we, do we like, get divorced?"

"Do you want to?" they ask at once, perhaps sounding a little more intense than they mean to.

He doesn't say anything. Kuroo just opens his mouth and no words come out, like he doesn't know what the right answer would be.

They lean closer to him. "You wouldn't cheat on me," they say to him, "and you're not a shithead."

"No," he agrees with a shake of his head, "not really, at least. And I mean, you think good things about me.”

Their throat is dry. Maybe if they weren't so debilitated by the hangover they'd be a little less bold. "Okay, so maybe we just go back to bed and then give it a week or a year, and then if you want to get divorced after that we can."

Despite the reek of alcohol that lingers on the both of them, Kuroo manages a grin. "A year doesn't seem long enough. I think we need at least two."

They close their eyes, and settle back against the pillow. "Okay, three years."

Kuroo slumps against his side of the bed, and slings an arm over their shoulder, pulling them in close to his chest. "Alright," he mumbles. "Five to twenty years, then we'll revisit."

an: bet u thought i forgot about these I DIDN'T just taking forever

taglist: @wyrcan @thechaosoflonging @publicbathroompanic @bedeater @rottingt1tz @rintarawr @deluluforcarlos55 @ahseyy @localgaytrainwreck @cherrypieyourface @baskin-robinhoods @polish-cereal @iheartamora @ferntv @eclecticeggknightpsychic @httpakkeiji @does-directions @pinkiscool @michivrse @causenessus (complete form linked in masterlist to be added)

#haikyuu x reader #haikyuu #haikyuu fluff #hq x reader #hq x you #hq #haikyuu x yn #hq x yn #hq kuroo #kuroo x you #kuroo x reader #haikyuu kuroo #kuroo tetsuro x reader #kuroo testuro #kuroo x gn reader #kuroo x gender neutral reader

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inkeyjay · 9 months

Text

🫀 Eucharist of the Ravenous 🫀

It started out as a bellyache, guts rumbling after two days of barely eating. An unfinished visage, featureless, fixing the blurry sockets it had for eyes into his soul.

The humble priest dropped his brush onto the cold floor of the chapel and stumbled backwards. The walls, towards the ceiling, all full of still fresh perfect faces framed by golden halos, that he had been carefully painting non stop for days. Faces of dead saints and prophets, long gone, commissioned by the high church as a display of power and opulence in an age of religious and political crisis. And this last saint, the one that still had some loose and tired brushtrokes for it's face. There was something about it that made the priest flinch out of his creative trance. He swore the paint moved, vibrated with anticipation at the touch of the brush.

He laid tired in the center of the chapel, exposed to a hundred pair of eyes that almost felt judgemental, knowing of the priest's internal thoughts. "Why am i doing this" "Why do i have to over exert myself with work to survive while i use pure gold to embellish... You. This" "Why"

And the faces remained still and silent.

"Why all this for long gone martyrs that had the fortune to die for their for their beliefs, or to let their God speak through their lips, bestow miracles through their fingers"

"Why this for a God that let them die at the heretical hands of the non believers. That leaves hundreds if not thousands of people to die of the pestilence outside this golden, rotten, WALLS"

The bottle of turpentine exploded and its contents dripped down the wall, dragging hours of work with them, dissolving like acid false flesh and gold leaf alike. And then blood, through the priest's hand, holding the neck of the bottle. He panicked and kneeled towards the wall, trying to undo the mistake with cloth, only to make a bloody mess. Red running through the gold, ichor like.

The priest cried holding his hand, a deep wound running through his palm, burning because of the chemicals. But the pain was not the cause of his tears.

"A sign" "I just need a sign"

But the faces remained still and silent.

The priest got up, slowly, and turned around towards the door. Why be here then. Why remain hungry, at the mercy of a dying church that kept their riches safe in mausoleums and layers of paint upon gold leaf upon stone, while its believers died in the streets famished and sick. The priest saw it clear now. If God did ever exist, it was long gone, uncaring for its creation. He might as well die outside, with his people. It would be like inviting the sickness into his chest but at least his last breaths wouldn't taste of incense. His steps echoed through the chamber, determined, reaching for the doors.

But the faces opened their lips. And with a cacophony of voices, each one vibrating with a torrent of beating wings, It spoke. No.

It sang.

Super happy to finally be able to show you this illustration i made for Tome of Pacts, a zine about warlocks, patrons and their pacts! There's a leftover sale going on right now! This is Pantheon, a shapeshifting entity that impersonates long absent gods and feeds on the faith of their followers, always hungry for more. But it's not for me to tell you.

! First of all, credits to @/gothhoblin, the writer of our team, for helping shape out this Patron "...and it spoke with a cacophony of voices, each one vibrating with a torrent of beating wings, a thousand or more." Is a marvelous line of her creation.

Tome of pacts has 11 more patrons and 24 warlocks for your enjoyment, all beautifully depicted by teams of artists and writers. Im super proud to have been able to participate in this project 💛

This short story is about an original character i created after the patron, just as an appetizer, pun intended. You get it right??

Hungry for a copy?

#dnd #tome of pacts #great old one #illustration #dungeons and dragons #magic the gathering #eldritch #patron #warlock #fantasy #dark fantasy #church

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whalesforhands · 2 months

Text

no matter what, you’ll follow him to the ends of earth.

in which you resolve to defect with a jaded geto suguru.

Warm fog and curling wisps of smoke are the first thing your eyes see, the dreary atmosphere enveloping you in something you can only describe as warm commiseration. The cloud-like formations part when you swat at the air, coughing lightly at the burn in your throat, the sting in your eyes when your nose scrunches up in dismay.

He’s been smoking too much.

“Suguru…? Shoko told me you haven’t been out lately…” The door gently clacks, whining on its creaky hinges when it closes behind you. Your steps are slow, feet almost hesitant to venture deeper into his bedroom with a hand over your mouth and your eyes blinking rapidly at the strong provoking of cigarette smoke and lavender incense intertwining with each other against your face.

It should only have been about 2 days since he got back from his last mission. Just how much did he smoke…?

There’s silence and no acknowledgment of your intrusion, his back is still turned to you in favour of staring out his window as he takes another drag of his cigarette, his mind too far away from his physical body as the tendrils of smoke twine tight around his form when he exhales another puff.

The second thing you see is a sight that makes your heart wrench, a coincidental turn of his head when his senses pick up on a twinge of familiarity, swiveling around only to meet you.

“…ah.” It seems he’s only just noticed. His eyes are heavy and disoriented, red with grief and longing and yearning when he hurriedly puts his cigarette out in an ashtray that was looking a little too full. “I’m sorry…” Perhaps it was out of courtesy for you, or perhaps it was the subconscious guilt of having you catch him in the act that made him feel like he was the one in the wrong.

Maybe he was. He doesn’t know anymore. What excuse could he give you? What is he going to say to lessen the blow of your words towards this wretched habit of his?

That it wasn’t much, that it’s only the— How many packs has it been now…? He doesn’t know that either. And what is he going to say about his room? The mess of clothes and his unwashed uniform, cans and plastic bottles that litter the floor, the half-hearted study notes, the plastic packaging of convenience store food— and not to mention the cigarette butts all about.

(And when was the last time he took a shower…?)

Disgusting. He’s disgusting. He shouldn’t have done all this. You can see his hands tremble, his pale fists in tight circles and his face gaunt and dehydrated.

He looks like he was about to cry.

“I didn’t hear you come in.” His eyes are fixated on his windowsill, his front fully turned to you and stepping forward only just that one step— In efforts to hide the overfilled ashtray and empty cigarette packs littering that little area. It has him overcome with a feeling of disgust and regret, compounded by the way your soft footsteps neared him with every passing footfall.

He really doesn’t know anymore, so he chooses to accept it.

Scold him, berate him. Tell him that he was wrong, that he shouldn’t have indulged so much, that he should’ve refrained from this— because he doesn’t know how to differentiate black from white anymore. And maybe, just maybe he’ll feel something worthwhile from your words. Maybe he’ll finally find some sort of comfort when he hears you and your soft voice chiding him for being so disgusting—

But all he feels is your arms around his waist and your cheek against his chest, your warmth against his cold, wretched self. He can feel that it was meant to be comforting, meant to say the words that were hard to be said. Yet, all he hopes for is that the bones on his ribs aren’t digging into your skin, that you won’t feel suffocated by the overwhelming stench of tobacco; that you won’t hate him for what he is right now. His shrivelled conscience bites back a sob from his lips, a cry for help.

The last thing you see is a bare, vulnerable Suguru. He’s relaxing into your touch as you massage Satoru’s expensive, strawberry-scented shampoo into his scalp, his shoulders slumping forward and eyes closed in temporary bliss that makes him think that life may even be worth living.

He sits upon his familiar bath stool, the furo-oke steaming with warm water, the fog hiding away his clear view of you from his bathroom mirror as he continues to let you rub far too expensive shampoo into his once grimey, unwashed hair.

“How are you feeling?” Your arms wrap around his neck from behind when he’s been washed down with hot water, your cheek resting on the crook of his neck as you speak with a tone so tender.

“Better.” That wasn’t a total lie. He does feel good now that you’re here, barely dressed and in his shower together with him as you wash his back, clean out his hair. If circumstances had been different, if he didn’t feel this way… Maybe he would’ve had enough shame to be shy about how you were pressing yourself so intimately close to him. Maybe he would’ve been more ashamed at the fact that you had to help him take a shower— Hell, you even prepared a bath for him.

He should be humiliated, but he just can’t find it in himself.

“Are you sure…?” Your voice is soft and soothing in his ear as you close your eyes and listen to the droplets of water dripping down from his hair and onto tiled floor beneath you, unafraid of getting your already thin clothing wet as you entrap him in your hug.

“…why wouldn’t I be?”

——

“What kind of woman is your type?”

There’s a blank stare from unimpressed amethyst, clearly taken aback by the question and nearly choking on his drink, all whilst your eyes are closed in hard thought, your fingers tapping against the chilled bottle of oolong tea you were sharing with him.

“Someone like Shoko.” Your answer comes without any hesitance, slipping out of you in quick succession with a smile; your type simply getting spilled out in a lob of truth.

(There just isn’t a better answer out there for you.)

“Ah, senpai! That’s such a good answer!” He wipes off the remnants of sticky cola from his lips with the sleeve of his uniform as cheery brown turn to meet you. “I personally like girls who can eat lots and lots!”

“Oh, my juniors are so cute!” Manicured hands jubilantly ruffle both short brown and your own head, rubbing your scalps with affectionate gratitude for your answers. She pulls away from both your smiling faces, her eyes aimed towards the cursed spirit manipulator as he scrutinizes her every movement.

(She’ll ignore how he almost lunged at her when she was rubbing your head.)

“And what about you, Geto Suguru?” And his name leaving her lips has him perking up in attention, purple eyes narrowing and his back straightening all the more.

“And who might you be?” His head is tilted to the side in raised suspicion, his body shifting only the slightest bit closer to you to create distance between you and the— Unknown lady.

“Someone who you’ll be getting to know real soon.” She tacks a wink on as her blonde hair swishes around her, her pose oozing confidence and self-assurance as she turns towards you and Haibara.

“Sorry, but I’ve got some business with your sad friend over here. Could I trouble you both?”

“Oh, not at all Miss!” Haibara’s already up and about, jumping onto his feet as he puts his hand out in assuring motions. “I gotta run off to meet Nanami for my mission soon, anyway!” And he leaves with an exuberant goodbye, running backwards to constantly wave his arms about and hooting his parting message.

“I’ll buy some sweet souvenirs for you all, senpais! Don’t miss me too much!”

And that left only you.

Your first instinct was to turn towards him, catching a nod and his eyes meeting yours. “I’ll be fine.” You feel him land a pat on your head in reassurance, a breath getting sucked in through his teeth as a gentle smile forms on his face. “Would you mind waiting up in my room for me? I’ll be right there.”

He just didn’t look so reassuring with his malnourished form and pale skin— You were worried.

“Don’t worry,” He feels your grip on his hand tighten before letting go, bowing politely to the beautiful woman as you leave the two of them alone when you chose to believe his words.

“It’ll be okay.”

——

Gojo Satoru is generally a quick responder. His messages covered in a flurry of kaomojis and exclamation marks— Not to mention the plethora of selfies he makes sure to spam attach.

But he’s chosen to switch to calls a lot more often now— Or whenever he’s got breathing time inbetween all the missions the higher-ups were shoving at him.

(He really wants to kill them all for this.)

“I don’t know, Satoru— I thought he was getting better,” You’re barely holding yourself together as you sniffle, holding a pillow close as you try not to cry even harder. “But it doesn’t feel right…”

“I don’t think I’m helping him at all.”

Gojo Satoru always liked how susceptible you were to the emotions of others, picking up on hints of hidden feelings and empathetic to the core. It awed him.

Which was why he trusted and liked you so much, knowing that you would care for his significant other in his absence.

His foot taps against the carpet of the hotel room as he hears you sniffle once again. “You’re doing fineeeeee,” He hums, a hand combing through snowy white. “He’s Suguru! He’s wayyyy strong.” And capable. And almost as handsome as he was.

“Though,” He stops momentarily, hoping that he sounded assuring enough to soothe your troubles. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s lost some weight.”

Cause help can only be given to those who want it.

“Just do what you can.” He’s laying back against the bed, his long limbs spread out against the soft material. “I’ll be back with lots of new sweets for ya both to try! And I heard Haibara was gonna buy some sweets back too!”

He’ll see to it himself to make sure that he feeds you both so much that you can’t even think about your troubles anymore!

“So just get some rest to pretty your sweet self up a bit, yeah? Don’t worry too much.”

——

And you’re hit all too sudden by the unthinkable, heart dropping to your stomach as Geto Suguru stands before you— Stained with the blood of 112 villagers as the wind whips through his loosened hair.

Your mouth can barely form the words, your petrified gaze stuck on him as your hands feel clammy and your blood starts to run cold.

“Sugu— Suguru… You— There’s no way— I-I don’t belie—!”

“There’s no mistake,” His smile is too tender as he cuts you off, his eyes far too at ease with the breeze on his skin. “I killed them all.” It’s his sin, his trouble to bear— Yet the guilt pours out with every syllable he surrenders to you. He knows there’s no return, no salvation for him. He knows you won’t, but his heart aches, hopes that one day, you might forgive him for this sin.

(Because maybe only then— He’ll be able to forgive himself too.)

“I found a purpose to my life. My calling, even.” You know he didn’t have to explain himself to you, didn’t have to come here after committing his crime—

Didn’t have to come back for the sake of you.

But he thinks you deserve to know. You deserve so much more than this accursed system, deserve so much more than this cursed life tied to helping these monkeys.

“So I’m leaving.” For a better place, to find a future he can see himself wanting… Even if he can’t bring Satoru, even if he can’t have you.

Because he knows— Knows firsthand how your heart is soft, worn on your sleeve and given freely, how your kindness and love was entwined with your very soul— So he doesn’t have the heart to put you through the suffering and torture his damned self was doomed with.

Doesn’t have the heart to make you go against your loved ones. So when his back turns to you, the clawing at his heart and expecting a barrage of tears and your broken, betrayed self that he has to steel himself to leave behind—

“If— If you’re going to leave,” It weighs heavy on your tongue, makes an ache in your gaping heart as your weak grip struggles to hold on. The trembles of your fingers, the tears in your eyes and the feel of the glowing warmth his palm radiates.

This was the happiest he’s been.

It makes your heart swirl in an unsteady assurance, you bite your lip to push down your urge to cry, to stop feeling the comfort holding his hand brings you when he looks at you so softly.

It’s a decision you never wanted to make, never even bothered to entertain. It was made on a whim, with no prior thought— Fuelled solely by the love you harboured for the one named Geto Suguru.

“Let me come with you…!”

It makes his heart flutter and pound against his ribcage, time feeling like it was frozen when he sees the tears in your eyes and the way you cling onto the last bits of his bitter hope. It makes his heart feel like it was going to burst out of his chest, adrenaline coursing through his blood— And he couldn’t control what came next, his lips upon your own in a kiss that caused you to freeze up, your warm tears a juxtaposition against his cold lips. It felt like poison on your tongue, crawling immorality threatening to spew out of your mouth when you realize you’re kissing someone who was already taken. Someone who cannot be yours, even if you wanted it to be.

Yet, you don’t want to stop.

He’s disappointed when you don’t return the kiss, pulling away with stark dismay, your eyes swirling with lost confusion, wide open in shock as you only feel words of disgust and regret dying on your lips.

He hushes you— Already anticipating what you can’t say when eaten up by guilt.

“Satoru and I were supposed to tell you together.” You feel him stroke your cheek, his eyes closed when he leans his forehead against yours. “We were supposed to ask you to be ours—“ He chokes slightly, his wording coming out just a bit ragged— A bit despaired.

“Together.” But it’s gone in the next moment he opens his eyes for you to meet hopeless, steeled amethyst.

“I love you.” He says it to break your weary silence, says it to give himself to you in his entirety— To prove that he wasn’t lying.

And you think love might be the most twisted curse of them all.

——

“I know it’s selfish, Satoru.” His smile is so empty, so full of pain, reflecting all the anguish of his decimating hope. This street that glowed the under the sun’s rays as he stands within the crowd, the blur of faces brushing past him as he stares head on into distressed blue.

“But if I let her see you… I wouldn’t be able to bear it.”

Geto Suguru will not lie to himself. He knows that you weren’t made for the path he was going to take, knows that your heart wasn’t able to fortify itself against this world.

Knows that Gojo Satoru was just as dangerous as he was for you.

Yet, he wants to keep you all to himself. Fears that Gojo Satoru will be able to change your mind. Knows that his path might end in a bloody future where he loses both of you.

And he accepts it all the same.

“You’re fucking crazy, Suguru!” He’s aware.

“There’s no damn way that would ever work!” He knows.

“Why—“ A heave of dry air. “Why do you have to do this?!” Because this was what he deems right.

“Kill me if you want, Satoru.” His back is turned to him in this seemingly endless crowd.

“Maybe there’s meaning to that, too.”

masterlist

#dyf au #jjk x reader #geto suguru x reader #geto x reader #satosugu x reader #gojo satoru x reader #gojo x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader

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sun-snatcher · 2 months

Text

🌾 ・ OF CLARION CALLS

summ. The rebellion runs into trouble, & Jet takes the brunt of it. In the aftermath, you fight to keep him alive. pairing. Jet x f!medic!reader w.count. 1.5k a/n. So little Jet fics/imagines around so i had to take matters into my own hands. Enjoy!

The moonlight casts a halo above your head, and for a brief moment, Jet thinks you’re a divine spirit, perhaps a goddess— or whatever it is his mother used to read to him before bed.

( In some ways, you are. )

…Jet, he hears, distant. He can’t pinpoint exactly where— every sound is either muffled or echoing, and the world keeps tipping in and out of a blur. All he can sense through the haze is the belt of dull pain creeping up his chest, and the cotton-numbness engulfing his head. Right. He’d been shot clean through his armor plate by a wayward arrow after he’d jumped infront of Sneers to protect him. He remembers now, vaguely. It had been an ambush on their way home.

...et, stay with me.

Jet.

“Jet!”

The world focuses. He inhales, sharp, and the pain blinds him white as he gasps.

“Easy there, handsome,” you joke (not really), holding his twitching body down and trying to meet his dazed look. The blood is thick enough to taste, and one look is enough to tell he’s walking a tightrope between life or death. He's growing colder, and losing colour by the minute. You make quick work to staunch the gaping wound in his chest, hope he can’t detect the shakiness in your hands, or the tears gathering in your eyes. “You’re gonna be okay.”

“Will he?” comes a voice behind the two medics crowding him. It’s Smellerbee, standing at the step of the medical tent; her voice sounds uncharacteristically frightened, and it sends a pang through your heart. I’m fine, Jet instinctively wants to insist, but you answer for him instead. “Yes. He will." ( And, well, surely such a small deception would not count against you, not when it was meant to give the others some measure of peace. )

Jet blinks, finally orienting himself enough to look at you and not through you— and blinks again. You’re lying. He could feel it. He could always tell, whenever it comes to you.

…Stay, he thinks, suddenly and senselessly, and clasps his bloodied hand around your wrist. He calls your name, voice straining in pain. But he must’ve said it aloud instead, because you’d smiled at him as gently as you could— even when it looked as if the effort of doing so would wound you— and said, calmly, convincingly: I promise, I’m not going anywhere.

“With me?” he asks, again, even when he knows he must’ve sounded like a madman. Perhaps it’s the bloodloss. Likely, it was. It wouldn’t be such a bad end, though, so long as you stood by his side. He wants to tell you this— been wanting to for a long time, now— but the strength has left him, leaving him floating somewhere between the world of waking and dreaming.

“With you,” comes your reply.

You catch the ghost of his trademark smile just before he slips away.

Jet survives.

That’s the first surprise.

The second is that; you’re here. Just as you’d promised.

He must have been out for longer than he thinks, because the atmosphere in the medical tent seemed to have ebbed to something much more conducive than last he remembers. The tinctures of alcohol and sedatives surrounding him and his bloody bandages that night are now replaced with dry ingredients; yarrow half-crushed in a mortar and pestle, mixed herbs and colourful liquids corked in tiny bottles and tins he couldn’t begin to name. His armour had been stripped from him, lying above a chest by the corner.

Ever the leader; “Sneers,” is the first word out his mouth, once he’d stirred awake on his cot and recognition returned slowly to him. It’s early sometime in the morning, judging by the colour of the sky outside the tattered tent flaps and the still quietness in the air. Beside him, an incense of sandalwood burns. “Sneers—”

“Is alive, thanks to you,” you override. The faint bitterness in your voice is not lost on him.

Somehow, someway, seeing him conscious now seemed to make you bristle. You think— no, you know— that it’s unfair of you; that it’s simply the pent-up frustrations and stress overflowing from the night he’d been hauled back to camp with one foot in the grave. But Longshot’s harrowing clarion call for a medic from the trees still rings clear as a bell in your head, just as much as the cold shock that had seized you the moment you realised the birdcall was for Jet.

“Good.”

“Not good,” you correct, “Not when you of all people pay the price.”

( Jet doesn’t delude himself into thinking that there could possibly be another meaning to what you said. It would be impossible. ) “You would’ve done the same,” he bites back, and takes your silence as quiet agreement.

“You’re upset,” Jet points out, narrowing his eyes. “Why?”

A sigh. “You just woke up,” you dismiss, if only to get him off your scent. “We can talk another day.”

“We’re already here, so let’s settle it now. The mission went well, and as far as I can see, I’m the only one in here, which means nobody else got hurt on the way back but me. Atleast, not as badly.”

It’s a debrief, you recognise. A coping mechanism for him— to spur himself into action and settle himself. Given the stress and trauma his body has been enduring the past days, you let it pass.

It’s only when you shift out from your seat by his cot, standing to begin putting away the bowls of medicine prepared, that Jet realises your fingers had been holding his wrist before. You must have stayed up for, what he can only imagine to be long nights, to keep track on whether his pulse was still beating. ( Something inside his chest burns. He can’t tell if it’s your doing or the injury being fussy. )

“I’m sorry,” he huffs, sighing out. “If that’s what you wanna hear.”

“For what?” You set the mortar down on your table with more force than necessary, and looked at him sharply from over your shoulder. Jet, damn him, still looks at you straight in the eyes, confident as ever. You want to kiss him. You want to break his nose. “For being a hero?”

“No.”

“Playing martyr?”

“No.”

“For saving Sneers? Everyone?”

“No—”

“Then what?”

“For scaring you,” he says, simply.

Your heart starts.

A frisson runs through you, and you feel the back of your eyes begin to burn.

“I’m sorry you had to see me like that,” he emphasises, and doesn’t say, I’m sorry I made you cry, because your prideful self would have denied it instantly, even if he remembers it clear as day. “I’m sorry I put you through that.”

He yanks at a loose thread on the blanket you’d laid on him a night ago. It must have been terrifying to see him be dragged to the table, half-dead with a broken arrow in his chest, and leave a mess of blood and horror in his wake. It must have been terrifying, indeed, to be the one responsible for him against Death itself— to carry the weight of his life on your shoulders, while the rest of the Freedom Fighters watched on.

“It’s, it’s my job,” you turn away to close a drawer of medical instruments, because you’re not quite sure you can stand meeting his gaze. Not when it only reminds you of just how much he lived, breathed and bleeds chaos and revolution; not when you know this accident definitely won’t be the last.

You can’t handle him. Or maybe it’s yourself you can’t handle, when it comes to him. “Just, be careful.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” he salutes mockingly, albeit with a wince. The flinch is what kicks you back into action.

“You’re staying in bed until you’re better,” you order, curt, ignoring his groan. His wrapped shoulder still seems painfully defiant despite all the numbing you’d given him; it would be a couple of weeks longer before he’d be fully healed, but knowing Jet— he’ll be up performing duties within a week. “That means no strain at all. No scouting or recon or hunting, got it?”

He lulls his head, but there’s a dash of humour on his face. “Since I’m bedridden, does that mean you’re at my every beck and call, then?”

Your face twists. He lets out a laugh when you answer, "In your dreams, Jet."

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

You roll your eyes, though without heat, and place a bowl of fresh water by his side. There is, at the very least, a smile on your face, and Jet’s sure he can sleep well tonight knowing you both are, at the end of the day, okay.

“Hey,” he calls your name, once you've begun making your way out the tent. You try to ignore how much more sweeter it sounds coming from him. “I really am sorry. I’m serious.”

He had caught your sleeve when he spoke, so your fingers now brush against his. You try not to focus on the touch too much. “So am I.”

“We can’t lose you, Jet,” you continue, unsteady; because saying I can’t lose you would have been unthinkable.

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