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#They still have time to be: friends->enemies->lovers
sturn3 · 2 days
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omg and also could you do enemies to lovers headcanons (chris) please
of course i can!! 😜
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enemy! chris, who has hated ever since he was 5. back then, he never understood the feeling that appeared in his stomach when he first saw you. 15 years later, at 20, he still doesn't know, so he disguises it as hate and disgust.
enemy! chris, who would always seek every opportunity to argue with you, even if you did nothing wrong. he'd take it out on you, unfortunately for him, you bit back 10 times worse. you weren't one to back down, that not meaning that you didn't get sad or upset over it.
enemy! chris, who would look for you in every girl he's been with ,without even realizing. (thus being the reason he's never had a serious relationship in his 20 years of life.)
enemy! chris, who would lose his mind every time he saw you with a new boyfriend. hating to see you so happy (without him, but he could never admit that, not even to himself.)
enemy! chris, who would always get upset if you'd say you're not trying to hang out if he's gonna be at the function.
enemy! chris, who would always bring up your moment of weakness, when you ended up in his bed back in senior year of high school. truth was, he wishes he wasn't drunk out of his mind, so he could remember more of it.
enemy! chris, whose brothers were concerned over how dumb and in love he was.
enemy! chris, who would get pissed off when you looked all pretty. your perfectly applied lip gloss on your perfectly plump and pink lips drove him insane. your short and tight clothes doing your body more than justice. his thoughts running wild. cold showers were his best friends. that, being the only way he could release some tension. unfortunately for him, you'd walk in as he was moaning your name. you stared wide-eyed and speechless at him.
enemy! chris, who found you waiting in his room after that, seeing you sitting on his bed all pretty with your long legs crossed over and your cleavage on view. as soon as you saw him, you went up to him and pulled his face into a kiss. he was sure he was dreaming.
enemy! chris, who wasn't such an enemy after the moments you shared under his bed sheets.
enemy! chris, who would tell you all that he did was because he wanted your attention and he couldn't have you.
enemy! chris, who started treating you better than any boyfriend you've ever had. after all, he's known you for his whole life. It was guaranteed he'd know how you wanted to be treated.
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periprose · 2 hours
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Sweet as Nuka Cola
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Cooper Howard/The Ghoul x Reader
You're an upcoming actress who has a constant flirtation with Cooper Howard. But even if things seem to be off to a good start, a nuclear bomb, a cryogenic pod, and two hundred years of carnage ruins all of it. Is there something to be salvaged from your relationship with Mr. Howard?
Genre: Mutual pining, flirting, slow-burn, angst, friends to kind-of enemies to lovers (no cheating but maybe it's a little murky?)
Word Count: 11k
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“Action!”
“Hello. Yes, it’s me.” You wave at the camera, adorned in a classic-red sweetheart neckline dress. “You might know me from ‘Girls Want It All’ or ‘Next Door Babe.’”
Here, you play up your recent bombshell status. As Ed, the director of this advert, keeps reminding you, you need to sell yourself to make customers listen.
You sway in your dress, squeezing your arms and throwing your waist back to plump and push out your chest. The implication of the sex appeal in your movies keeps people watching.
But you’re still a rather new actress, so America might not know you so well. You’re glad Nuka Cola has hired you– if you want to be a star, you need more exposure.
“Do you enjoy feeling refreshed?” You cock your head to the camera, pursing your red lips. “Well, golly, what a silly question. Who doesn't?”
“That's where Nuka Cola comes in.” You lift a bottle out of the cooler next to you, all gentle in demeanour, showing off the logo of the bottle to the camera, in your perfectly manicured hands. “With triple the amount of caffeine found in competitor's bottled cola, it's sure to keep you feeling up for a long, long time.”
“And it's good for you.” Ed whispers, a last minute adlib you did not agree to, but you're a professional, so you add it on with a little wink.
“And it sure as heck is good for you.” You smile, the infamous smile that's won you notoriety to Hollywood execs for being the newest bombshell on the block, and you throw your shoulders back as you really lean into your image. 
“Cut! That's a wrap, everyone!” Ed, wanting to finish early, quickly starts ushering everyone out so not a cent more gets spent. 
You immediately relax out of your practised, professional smile. “Any ADR needed?”
“Don't think so, but we'll let you know.” The director is already moving onto whatever his next project is. Advertisements make more money than anything else these days.
You head over to catering, where you're craving– not a Nuka Cola, considering how much sugar is in that thing it's hardly refreshing at all– but an iced tea. 
You stretch out your ankles in your kitten heels as you prepare it. If you told your Ma back in Mojave that the worst thing about fame would be the uncomfortable outfits, she'd smack you. So you keep it to yourself– you're grateful, you're humble, you'll never be an entitled asshole like those fucking execs.
“Watch out, I'm behind ya.” A man gently presses your shoulder as he walks next to you.
You know that voice. Famous movie cowboy, devilishly handsome, easy to admire. A career worth emulating.
“Mr. Howard?” You turn to look at him, and it is him. Wearing a tuxedo suit, smiling his classic, rugged grin at you.
“The one and the only.” He laughs in a self-deprecating way, as a man tired with his fame and used to mocking it. “Hey, wait, don't I know you?”
You immediately feel your face heat up. “Probably not– lots of people have mistaken me for Lucky Yates so far…”
“No, I do know you.” He points a finger at you, while pouring himself a mug of black coffee. “I told you mister, I'm not here for a long time. Just a good one, and if you can't provide it for me, I'll be inclined to look elsewhere.”
Cooper Howard does a perfect impression of your girly, haughty tone from “Girls Want It All”, and it surprises you that he even knows your dialogue that well. You're not used to this much attention, especially not from one of Hollywood's most notable movie stars.
He says your name.
“Yeah, that's me.” You say sheepishly– even though you know you have to fake that confidence, it's hard when you've been caught off guard. You're starstruck– you don't know how to operate, now realizing that even celebrities are noticing you. “Just shooting an ad for Nuka-Cola.”
“Ah, that’s smart of you.” He leans in– about to give you a bit of Hollywood advice, no doubt– and you feel yourself turning warm at the attention he’s giving you. “I wouldn’t expect any less from one of Hollywood’s upcoming stars– residuals aren’t enough to make the world go round.”
You know he’s admiring your street smarts, but you have to ask. “Upcoming, really?”
“Miss, I’m not sure many other actresses could’ve delivered that little monologue I just did without, er, pardon my language,” Cooper takes a sip of his coffee, his eyes peering down at you over the perimeter of the cup. “Fucking it up. Pantomiming too much wily, feminine shit  that execs love, without that little edge of real, subtle emotion. I’m not the only one who thinks so.”
You giggle a little. “C’mon, really? I hardly got to act the way I wanted to.”
“That’s how it starts. Little moments, little subtleties where you’re letting your real character shine through– it’s noticeable to the industry. More opportunities come that way. But it’s smart to use, uh…” Cooper swallows, a tiny, imperceptible thing that reminds you of your bombshell image, that he must be thinking about it. “Smart to use such attractive imagery, if you get my drift. The public will eat you up.”
The way he drawls that latter part makes you feel excited, but you keep it down– it’s well known Cooper Howard is a married man, and you are not about to be ruined by an affair. Even if he does sound sort of flirty, this sort of complimenting is so common in Hollywood.
“What are you doing in the advertisement shooting lot?” You ask, changing the subject, and Cooper shrugs, a nonchalant ripple of a movement that tells you his general cool demeanour isn’t just acting.
“Promised my wife I’d shoot an advert for her. Vault-Tec, you know?” He admits, telling you he hasn’t forgotten about his wife, either. “Gotta head to the experimental Vault they’ve set up next door.”
“Yes, of course.” You, like anyone else, have seen the ads of Cooper in the Vault-Tec suit– it’s a rather controversial thing to be partaking in, but you think he knows what he’s doing.
“Well, Nuka-Cola.” He hands you an iced tea– one you didn’t even notice him making for you as you were talking to him. “I’ll see you around.”
/
The Ghoul walks around the wasteland, two hundred something years into the future.
He’s searching for a bounty– Leopold St. West– worth at least 1000 caps, and it’s terribly difficult to find him when every single person claims he’s in all these different locations, not a single one correlated to each other.
So he’s walking around a destroyed neighbourhood, where Leopold was last seen a day ago, if his fellow ghouls are to be trusted. If he had to guess, these are the remnants of China Town– the faux Asian-esque details, the cheesy red colouring, the false authenticity Hollywood loves to portray as “good as the real thing”. God, Coop does not miss some parts of the fame.
He suddenly stumbles over a piece of the broken sidewalk. Coop’s usually pretty agile, nonchalant on his feet– he knows this feeling. He’s going through withdrawal.
“Shit, I need a minute.” He mutters to himself, feeling a bit woozy.
He's only got a couple more vials of drugs, so he can't be using them all willy-nilly. No, he needs to recoup things and go through this carefully.
Shelter is necessary– the longer Coop is out in the sun, the harsher the effects of withdrawal feel. And, if he’s lucky, one of these buildings might have something for him to loot– more drugs if he’s extra, extra lucky.
Coop enters a nondescript building– where a radroach is waiting, and he immediately fires at it without even looking, killing it in one shot– and he sees the sign over the entry way, marking the lobby.
This is some Hollywood executive-owned club. It’s hard to tell– two hundredyears of wear-and-tear will do that for you– but Cooper Howard distinctly remembers this place, maybe in some conversation back then, maybe when he was networking. 
Every single thing has a distinct, thick layer of grime over it. Coop thinks of sweaty strippers dancing, actors cheating on their wives– they’re all probably dead now.
He reaches into his satchel and takes a hit of one of his vials– and hopes he can replace what he uses with something here.
There’s not a single bottle behind the bar, and he jostles through, not seeing a chem or a drug left behind by anyone on the floor or behind the counter, and he’s mildly disgruntled over how every place has nearly everything picked clean by raiders, wastelanders– just other people. Coop will always loathe these other assholes.
He climbs the broken stairs with a lanky, languid stretch, making it over a fairly large hole where a corpse waits on the floor below. A raider who didn’t watch where he was stepping. That tells him there should be loot up on this upper floor– at least a bit of it.
He walks to the one closed door in a less-than-discreet hallway, gold sconces and railings marking the way.
“Ah… private office.” Coop jiggles an ostentatious handle to a mahogany door, that is surely leading to an even more pretentiously ostentatious office, and he finds that it’s locked.
A good sign. Most likely no one’s ever been in there, because it’s probably a difficult lock to pick. 
It surprises him that no one’s ever just forced their way through.
Coop doesn’t waste time on this though– he just takes a teeny gun out of his bag, fires it, and admires the hole in the door where the handle used to be. The door creaks open on it’s own, and he saunters into a well furnished, dusty office room.
“Nope, nope, nope…” He pushes box after box in the shelves next to the wall, and they fall with loud clatter– loaded with panicky, nuclear-war-on-the-horizon type shit, like canned meats and beans and preserved jams and pickles. “Fuck no.”
He pushes off a toy figurine of Vault Boy down with extra gusto.
Coop looks behind the desk, where there’s a dusty placard reading Adrian Amos II. He grins– one of the worst producer bastards of all time is not someone he’d feel bad about stealing from, even if there was still some conscience left in him. No, sir, Adrian Amos the second did not deserve any sympathy, especially after the way he was known for bitching about salaries, abusing PAs, and having a predilection for going after less-than-consenting women.
Coop grits his teeth, remembering that asshole and how terrible and gaudy this club was back then. Not that it was better now– but he’s grateful for one man’s deserved death, at least.
He jostles open where the second drawer is filled with the glass clinking sound of many, many vials.
“Fucking jackpot, Jesus.” Coop stares down at how many there are– at least 40 or 50– a hell of a lot to just be left behind.
Well, based on the other supplies, Adrian Amos got fucked over and either didn’t make it to his vault in time, or forgot to run to his private club before heading in.
Coop doesn’t give a fuck, though. He starts piling the vials into his cases, and then back into his bag.
There’s a sudden whirring sound near him. “Huh?”
To his left, an imperceptible secret door has pushed itself outwards, decorated in the same dark brown wallpaper as the rest of the room.
Coop looks down and under– he’s accidentally pressed a secret button on the underside of the drawer. “Fuck.”
He doesn’t know what would be inside the secret room– assassins, raiders waiting on someone to dupe? Maybe even synths, just meant to protect Amos when he needed it.
Inside the room, it’s dark, and he can’t make out anything. Coop can only draw his gun rapidly when there’s a blue light suddenly emitting out from the inside.
He’s careful as he approaches– last thing Coop wants is an ambush– and as his vision improves, he sees it’s a cryonic pod, all frosted over so he can’t make out who’s inside.
Coop sighs, ready to leave it behind– he’s not interested in waking up Amos– and instead, the thing whirs, heating up it’s insides with extremely hot steam, and then opens up with a mechanical flourish.
Coop instinctively steps back, coughing “Holy shit!” as the air whooshes past him.
A body falls out, just looking slightly frosted– mostly thawed by whatever the cryo tank just did. 
/
You're on set again, sitting in a free lawn chair while others get ready for their take– it's not for a Nuka-Cola ad, it's just a guest appearance on everyone's favourite sitcom, The Grady Group, where you play an overly promiscuous babysitter who has no sense for watching over kids.
It's comedic, it's an easy way to get laughs– plus it actually boosts the shows’ ratings since you've been in movies and all. You’re done filming already, you’re just sitting here watching the rest of the shoot, dragging out your return to your car, and then back home. 
Something about the fictional family you wait on, Gill and Gina Grady, and their kids Gideon, Gessica, and Gwen, it makes you miss having a family of your own. In fact, you have half a mind to call your mother, despite all the bitching she’ll give you about the things you haven’t done yet.
It also doesn't help that Gill and Gina are a couple in real life– named Arthur and Bea Smith, they really, really are in love, and in between takes they're often canoodling with each other.
You're happy for them, if not a little– jealous, despite the fact that you're not interested in dating anyone right now. At least, you thought you weren't, but you find that lately, when you return back to your apartment all lonesome after a shoot, you feel like something is missing.
“Hey. Nuka-Cola.” Cooper Howard strolls over to where you're sitting, and you smile up at him, covering your eyes from the sunlight streaming through the windows.
“Mr. Howard. Shooting today?” You ask, and he shakes his head.
“Not at all. Just lounging around, waiting for my kid.” He sits in the lawn chair next to you, leaning back, crossing one leg over the other. “Janey is on a field trip at a museum next door– I thought I’d kill some time before picking her up.”
“Ah, cute.” You grin. Janey Howard is an absolutely precious kid– she shares her dad’s smile, but has a curious nature that you admire. “Is she well?”
“As well as kids can be at that age, running around all the time.” Cooper shrugs. “You know how it is.”
“Kind of. I actually did used to babysit kids, so I know– they can never sit still or mind their business.” You laugh as Cooper grins. 
“So you went method for your guest appearance, huh?” He asks, and you’re mildly baffled.
“How do you know about that?” You squint at him, just being jokingly suspicious.
“Oh, I saw a few clips of your footage. While I was walking over here.” He points over at Stu, the director, standing on the living room set, watching clips on his viewfinder. “Seemed pretty natural to me.”
It almost bothers you that he seems so interested in you and your work, that he always voices support– but he’s well-known for being happily married, for being content in general, unlike you.  
Still, better a friend than nothing at all, that’s what you always tell yourself.
“Thanks. But it’s not hard being around kids, is it?” You reminisce being a kid in Mojave, playing with your friends on your street– and then as a young adult, babysitting new kids that still wanted to play with you. “I still sometimes feel like I’m just a kid pretending to be an adult.”
“That never goes away, darlin’.” Cooper laughs, and you blink. “Being an actor, especially, you’re never losing that childhood sense of wonder, you get my drift?”
“Yeah, of course.” You nod. “I just don’t feel complete, I guess. I’m still waiting for the moment I’ll know I’m an adult– like maybe if I get married or something like that.”
“Being married didn’t change that for me either. Neither did being a dad.” He winces, and scratches at his stubble. “Just don’t tell anyone I said that, but I think it’s all apart of being a human person.”
Your face turns a little more glum at that, and he wonders what he said that bummed you out. It’s not his intention– he wants to cheer you up.
“What’s with the sad, forlorn, ‘I’m-a-pretty-girl-come-comfort-me’ look?” Cooper utters as he leans in, and you laugh a little but silence yourself, recognizing his compliment.
It’s dangerous to flirt with this guy, this taken man who has nothing to gain but a bit of affection he may be missing, but you see that he knows his compliment had effect anyways– and he definitely likes that.
You just choose to assume it’s entirely friendly.
“I just… I like the thought of having a family.” You suck in air,at how foolish and girly this sounds, hardly the cutthroat businesswoman you need to be out here. “This is stupid, I’m sorry.”
“No, no, it isn’t.” Cooper taps his arm rest, thinking. “You’re hurting, I can tell. You got that same pissed off look most ladies get when they ‘don’t wanna talk’ but they’re holding tons of shit inside.”
Damn this guy, you think, but you decide to be honest.
“I just didn’t think it’d be so lonely out here. In Hollywood.” You press your palms together. “Like, everywhere I go, I’m surrounded by classic Americana, the nuclear family– and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m jealous.”
“As a bachelorette, don’t you got plenty of options?” Cooper grins. “I mean, are men not lining up to court Nuka-Cola girl?”
“Ah…” You hum, thinking of dates you’ve had here, settling back in your seat. “I don’t know– it’s cheesy but I want more sincerity.”
“In that case, don’t be jealous, marriage ain’t all that.” Cooper tuts, knowing that you of all people should hear about how it doesn’t complete you. “It’s not perfect, it’s not a magical fairy-tale where everything gets solved, it’s a hell of a lot more work than people let on.”
“Oh.” You knew that, deep down– but hearing it from him really solidifies that for you. It’s a silly dream.
It sounds like he’s speaking from experience, so you quiet down. But you’re not trying to get your hopes up about that or anything.
“And you’re not an idiot, Nuka-Cola. Don’t get into something you’re not a hundred fucking percent sure about.” Cooper clicks his tongue. “If you really feel the urge to suddenly go and play wife with someone, just for me, make sure he’s absolutely worth it.”
“For you?” You raise your eyebrows at that.
“I figure you won’t do it for yourself. Love is blind and all that.” He points at himself. “But if I, as your buddy Cooper, hold you to that? I’ll bet that you’ll vet every single guy.”
“Oh, really.” You smirk at him, your nose scrunching a little. “Is that for my benefit, or yours?”
“Uh…” Cooper is truly caught off guard here. He knows he didn’t intend anything by what he said, but it does feel like… he won’t enjoy the fact that if the next few times he talks to you, continuing become close to you, he’ll have to get the approval of some man.
Some man who wouldn’t even know you as long he has known you. He always likes his chats with you, and there’s an urge inside him not to let you go.
He thinks again that you’re a little too spontaneous. Not easy to dupe, no– he can’t just flirt with you for fun because you’ll always pick up on it, even if he did it by mistake.
“No comment.” He finally answers with a raspy, low tone, one that you barely hear but are satisfied by.
/
A few months later, you check your face in your little compact mirror before stuffing it in your purse and heading inside Sebastian Leslie’s home. Exciting, yes, because this is the first time you’ve been invited not just to network, not just because a big name has seen you in the movies and wants to flaunt that they know you tangentially.
No, this is the first time you know someone, you’re actually in with a crowd– you’re friends with the host. You don’t feel nearly as awkward walking into Sebastian’s comfortable home and seeing familiar faces that you’re close with, decor that you already recognize.
“There she is.” Sebastian greets you with a tight hug– for a massive flirt he’s actually rather protective of you sometimes. “Love the dress, by the way– is that a vintage Chanel? Black is very flattering on you, my dear.”
You get the sense he didn’t want you to be involved in this industry sometimes, but other times– he likes that you put work in.
“I saw your newest advertisement on TV yesterday.” He comments, and you giggle.
“Was it good?” 
“Yeah, amazing as usual– but you gotta do more than that.” Sebastian holds your hand as he pulls you into the crowd of other low-level actors, people who could risk showing up, really, and you fix your dress, a black one with a low square neckline. “Look into Vault-Tec– I’ve been telling Cooper here about how our futures are totally going to be surrounded by their products, even though that fucker does not want to listen.”
Cooper’s lounging in a low sofa in the pit of this living room, holding a crystal glass full of amber liquid, black button up shirt half open– he looks dishevelled, hair slightly askew, jaw off-kilter as he presses his tongue into his cheek, thinking. Lost by something, but still put together as celebrities are. Geez, you really need to temper your attraction to him.
It doesn’t help how he looks at you, either– there’s something deep and reverent about his gaze, like he wants to believe whatever he sees when he’s looking at you– but you have no idea if it’s real, or if it’s just an act like with most of these celebrities.
You used to see him a lot more frequently too, over the last few months. Either at set, or at more fancy parties– most of which he’s been perfectly pleasant and kind to you.
“Of course you’d label me as some fucking chairman for them, Seabass.” Cooper slams back half a pint of whisky, and pours himself some more. “Hey, Nuka-Cola.”
“Hey, Mr. Howard.” You smile gently. You’ve heard about his divorce– everyone has, but you’re not 100% sure why it’s happened, why now when things seemed to be going so well for him.
Well is relative, though. You know loads of actors have decried him privately– no one wants to hang out with the man promoting the end of the world, apparently. It must be a tough thing to only be hired for your wife’s advertisements– and even then, you don’t exactly agree with what they’re marketing, either.
You don’t feel so strongly against Cooper, though. Maybe because you do like him– but also because you know what it’s like to have your image connected to something you don’t really promote. Nuka-Cola isn’t healthy, it’s got enough sugar to induce instant death when drank regularly. But you do it for the connections, the money– and you’re sure Cooper did too.
“Cooper is fine.” He grumbles, and you remember his last name is maybe a sore subject right now.
“Sorry.” You do your best to be delicate as you sit next to him, and Sebastian sits on the other side of you. “How’re you, Cooper?”
“Not bad. If you count being divorced as being alright.” He sighs, and you feel terrible that you even asked. “It’s like I never knew her, man– I thought Barb was different. Or they changed her, I don’t fucking know.”
“She had her eyes set on the prize. As did you, Coop.” Sebastian states, and Cooper turns, affronted.
“We’re all interested in money and glory, Seabass. Fuck you if you think otherwise.” Cooper tenses, and you feel a bit awkward listening in on this conversation.
“What did I say that negates that? I’m as money hungry as they come.” Sebastian shrugs. “I only meant that– despite it all, making money was what you had in common, evidently not the world-going-nuclear shit. Maybe you’ve got a heart of gold, a change of mind, I don’t know, Cooper. But throwing away an easy life just to pay alimony must be fucking awful, so I just don’t think you’re in it for the money anymore.”
“You’re fucking telling me.” Cooper sniggers. “I don’t think Barb cares. I’m here with no career, and she’s out there getting promoted in Vault-Tec. As for the heart of gold… any former marine would’ve been against that shit.”
You want to ask what shit, but you don’t want to overstep your boundaries. You get the general fear of nuclear war– but Cooper sounds more personally affected by it.
Cooper glances over at you. “What do you think? Better to be richer than you can spend in a lifetime, or to be out with a good conscience?” 
“I don’t know if I’m that interested in money.” You say honestly, and Cooper raises his eyebrows.   
“Really? Nuka-Cola’s a saint, huh.” He chuckles– he’s clearly a bit buzzed.
“No, I’m not. Of course I want to have a career.” You think about this carefully, so it doesn’t sound insincere. “Making money is nice– but I don’t think I have the right to say it should come at the cost of human lives. You know Nuka-Cola is terrible for you, right? ”
Cooper stares at you for a moment too long, and then looks away. “Yeah… addicting.”
He’s definitely not talking about Cola, but you continue on. “Yeah, so just in that way– I disagree with how much power marketing has. We’ve convinced America that they need this– just so some chairman can make an extra dollar.”
Cooper looks at you, renewed by whatever you just said. “Hell, woman after my own heart. That’s damn true.”
“Yes, yes, you two oblivious flirts– there’s no art in filmmaking anymore, just commercialism. Not like it hasn’t been the case for a century.” Sebastian chimes in, and you bite your lip, pretending not to notice how Cooper’s face is smirking bashfully. “But, babe. You’re going to want to make your money before the world fucking ends.”
“What’s that?” You startle, and Cooper laughs sardonically at your surprise, while Sebastian gets up.
“Let me get myself a drink– I hardly want to tell this story sober.” He leaves, and Cooper has half a heart to glare at him– he knows Sebastian is leaving the two of you alone so he can do the dirty work.
Not like his reputation can ever get better, especially by telling this story again with it’s lurid details, but at least it doesn't hurt that he's with you. 
“What does he mean by that, Mr. Howard?” You wince at your use of that. “Sorry– I meant Cooper.”
“Ah, call me what you’d like.” Cooper takes another sip of his drink, leaning back in the couch to the point where he is practically lying down and against you. “It sounds good coming out of your mouth no matter what you pick, Nuka-Cola.”
Now that’s a suggestive, loaded line, and you feel a little more comfortable flirting with him even if it’s a bit of a rebound for him. The end of the world is approaching, right?
“The end of the world?” You prod at him, and he sighs, leaning against your shoulder. 
“It’s fucking ridiculous, what it is… probably never going to happen anytime soon.” Cooper’s tone of voice is hazy as he examines his last sip of whisky in the glass. “No, no. Just something those fucking commies put in my head. I guess they’re not really commies, are they?”
“Unless you elaborate, I can’t say.” You utter back at him, and he pushes down a smile.
“Alright. Vault-Tec’s been selling this nuclear protective stuff, right?” He says, and you nod, your cheek brushing against the top of his hair. “All I can say is that a few… radicals, if you will, think that Vault-Tec might actually be more involved with it than they say. Like, they might be…”
“Not just protective, huh? More offensive? Everyone’s got that feeling, Mr. Howard. And that doesn't sound like a particularly commie-train-of-thought to me.” You hear the sorrow in his tone, even if he’s trying to make it sound like a rumour. “Did you hear this from your ex-wife?”
Cooper winces here. He still feels slightly guilty about spying on her. A part of him thinks they might’ve not divorced if he hadn’t found out– but he knows he was bound to find out eventually, and he would’ve just delayed the inevitable.
“Maybe, Cola. Maybe you’re just sharp.” He whispers, and you smile and he feels it– your skin is intoxicatingly close right now.
“So, odds are?” You ask, just curious, and he exhales.
“Bad. I have to agree with them.” He admits, and it feels exhilarating to admit this– that Vault-Tec is gonna nuke the world at some point, that the radicals are more like minded to him than he’s wanted to believe in the past. “Even if it didn’t cost my movies, I regret partaking in what they were selling.”
That’s a big thing for him to say– you know Cooper loves acting, he absolutely adores playing a hardened sheriff, the last vestige of goodness in the wild, wild west. All the times you’ve visited him on his set– probably during his last contractual movie, now that you think about it– and he was always so excited to show off the architecture and intricacies of the fictional western town they’d set up, share script details and little character quirks so you could have an insider’s viewpoint. He even donned his cowboy hat on you, saying you wore it like a natural.
He loved being the hero, really.
He lights a cigarette, and takes a puff.
“Most big-name connections refuse to talk to me because of this stuff– I’ve basically been dropped out of phonebooks all together. They think I’m still in on it, they think I’ve only stopped because of backlash–” He stops as you begin to scratch his scalp, still leaning against your shoulder, but getting progressively into your neck area.
Jesus, that feels good. He thinks. He hasn’t been intimate in a while– Barb became increasingly more cold to him over the last few months, as their marriage kept falling apart.
“Backlash, really?” You whisper. 
“Yeah.” He stutters for just a moment, because your eyes are peering into his, and for a moment he thinks you could really make it as just a bombshell if you wanted to– then he takes another puff. “When really, I was just backing out of what I thought was really a massive crime against humanity.”
“Are you only telling me this to validate your poor conscience? Remedy that reputation a little?” You ask, and he presses his lips together. 
“Well, I'll be honest, yeah. Of fucking course I'd tell the one woman who seems to be like me on this.” He sounds so certain of you, sounds so sure that you're on his side.
And you absolutely are.
“The world’s about to end, Mr. Howard. You're not a bad man for not wanting to support it. I'm inclined to agree.” You inhale deeply, and Cooper stares at you– something stirs inside him as he does. 
“Kiss me, then. Humour me– since none of this will matter soon.” Cooper murmurs, lying on top of your chest now, the smoke from his cigarette enveloping your face.
He’s so close you barely have to move to oblige to what he’s said– you're second guessing yourself for just a moment, because it feels like a dream that he'd ask you to do this, so out of the blue, such a picture perfect fantasy that you almost don't care about the impending doom, and you press your lips gently to his in an upside-down kiss, his hair brushing against your open cleavage, but Cooper is insistent and leans upward, kissing you with such intensity that your head is spinning afterwards.
God, now that's a movie star kiss. You think.
He kisses you again as Sebastian returns, drink in hand.
“Oi! You two. Jesus Christ, can't keep your hands off each other, can you?” Sebastian pretends to vomit. “C’mon, if I want to talk to you at my party, I should have that right.”
You attempt to pull away– but Cooper, being a little mischevious, perhaps wanting to show off in a way he hasn’t been able to, sits up right and kisses you again, this time normally, just very slowly and passionately though, slithering an arm around your waist in a way that has Sebastian rolling his eyes. 
“Okay, present.” He says, not pulling his arm off your waist. 
“Thanks.” Sebastian shakes his head. “I was thinking we should take the mood off with some party games…”
/
It's about 2 AM when you've finally left the party. Cooper didn't want to let you go– he's crashing at an apartment for the time being, but you really don't want to waste yourself on being his rebound, if he really likes you.
You tell him as much, and he likes that– you really are rather sharp about things. 
“Well. Gimme a call when you realize I'm not kidding around with you.” He says unabashedly, holding your hand, kissing it as you leave.
You’re absolutely sure he's drunk, and he's being a little too clingy– but you want to believe him anyways. 
You walk back to your car, alone. Thinking about if Cooper is worth the damage it could have on your potential career. But then again– the end of the world is coming, right?
So maybe it won’t matter. And you find that you like this, the secret potential of this option, just hanging out with Cooper in a place that used to be America, no more expectations on you both. There’s also the chance you just both die, though.
You shudder.
You don't notice that there's a man in the backseat of your car when you get in, brandishing a chloroform stained cloth.
/
The Ghoul prods at the body that's just fallen out of the cryo pod.
Oh fuck. 
It's starting to stir, whoever it is, and Coop knows he's ready, if this is really some synthetic android-clone thing, to make their life hell. Get some of his anger out on something that doesn’t matter.
Wait– he recognizes that cherry red fabric. That coiffed hair, frosty after being inside the pod. Oh, Jesus… even the makeup is the same as when he last saw you. 
“Ah… shit.” He chuckles to himself in exasperation, because this is beyond belief. “Nuka-Cola, is that you?”
You tilt yourself to the side, eyes bleary, unable to see clearly. Everything’s dark. But you know that voice, you just heard it a couple of days ago.
“Mr. Howard?” You croak out, and he hisses inwards– nobody has called him that in centuries. Nobody knows who he is… except for you, of course. 
“The one and the same, baby.” He licks the side of his gums, deciding to stick with his identity for now. “Well, maybe a little different. You wouldn't happen to know what a Ghoul is, huh?”
“What?” You don't know how long your vision is going to stay black for, but you don't like the sound of that. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Eyes haven't been opened for… two hundred years. I'll give you some time, Cola.” He sighs; cracks his neck, while you sink back into the floor. “Just imagine the ugliest horror-picture monster you can imagine. Zombie, no nose. That paint a picture for you?”
“...”
“What was that?” Coop can't hear you when your voice is muffled into the tiles of this secret room. He grasps your hair gently, from the root, pulling your head upwards so you'll speak– clearly you don't have the strength to lift up your body. 
“I said, how is that any different from before?” 
“Oh, she's still a jokester.” Coop scoffs– despite himself he snorts– and he lets go of your hair so you land back on the floor with a thump.
“–Ow!” You flinch, and then turn over so you’re on your back. “Still an asshole, huh?”
“Me?” He grins maliciously. Ooh, maybe he can use some misplaced anger on you. “You're the one who didn't call back for several weeks.”
“How could I? You can see I've been trapped in a cryo thing for… however long. Did you say two hundred years?” You flatly ask, and Coop still thinks you're lying.
“Yes, and bullshit. You probably had a couple weeks since I last saw you to call me.” He states, and he doesn’t actually hold a grudge, at least not that much of it in comparison to all the other horrid shit that’s happened to him– he just thinks it's funny to push your buttons after all of that, like looking into a mirror of the past– and you groan.
“No, I didn't. I got in my car after Sebastian's party, and some goon sprayed something in my face, I passed out, and he drove me here.” You start, and you begin frowning in such a way that Coop almost feels bad. 
“Why you, sweetheart?” He shakes his head. “You weren't exactly high up in popularity yet.”
“Exactly. No one would miss me.” You spit out bitterly, remember the end to that night, where you were so unaware of your surroundings, and terrified of being assaulted as you were pushed around into this room, blindfolded.
“Adrian fucking Amos, the fucking Second, thought it would be great if I just became his permanent doll during the apocalypse.” You swallow, and Coop sits down next to you, to listen more clearly. You shift towards his body heat– and to his surprise, he still likes that. “See, his daddy has shares in Vault-Tec, so he decided before nuclear fallout happened, he wanted a guaranteed sex slave from his favourite advertisements.”
“Nuka-Cola.” Coop utters with the slowest drawl, concluding your statement– and you like that.
“Yeah, Nuka fucking Cola.” You grimace. “Then he undressed me, put me in this little number, and threw me in the pod. I barely remember this shit because I was so out of it.”
“Shame. I always wondered why you never called me back.” Coop circles back to his little grudge– but he also feels bad, feels some level of guilt that neither he nor Sebastian had the sense to look out for you back then, and you were practically assaulted (maybe actually so if you didn't remember). 
“Yeah, because I wanted to miss out on that piece of ass. Sure.” You joke feebly, and Coop laughs despite himself. 
“Honey, you're gonna run away screaming when you finally see me. Don't worry about it.” He shakes his head. “The real world's a lot more fucking difficult than would'ves and could'ves.”
“Okay, explain. If you're willing to owe me that much.” You start, and Coop gets reminded of that fateful night a couple hundred years ago, where he was the one to clue you into the impending nuclear war.
Not even three months later, it was all over, and you were nowhere in sight– if his mind ever did drift to you, the what-ifs and who-knows that still persisted– he would always assume you were dead.
Now he thinks you're just unfinished business. 
“Fine.” He taps your shoulder, and you lean a little closer towards him– you touch his hand, and instead of flinching as many people have in the past– you trace the tough, callused skin there.
He thinks there’s something wrong with you. Why do you seem drawn to him anyways? You’re completely fucking up his tough guy, lone-wolf persona by being here, and he wants you gone. He pulls away his hand, ignoring how your face falls for a moment.
Coop inhales, and then starts. “In October 2077, they nuked America, bombed it all to hell. By they, I think we both know what I’m implying.”
“It wasn’t the Chinese.” You interrupt, and he shushes you.
“Yeah, Cola.” He starts playing with his fingers, feeling like you don’t deserve to be here right now. That you should’ve just stayed dead. “Vault-Tec destroyed it all.”
It’s no good. He’s an old man, and you’re still as soft and young as ever. He’s always haunted by his past, like with Barb and Janey, and then Sebastian’s voice in every single Mr. Handy robot he comes by, and then finally, his last couple memories with you.
“The last two hundred something years have been filled with carnage, death, unspeakable horrors that your pretty little mind could never comprehend.” He grits out, pushing past the past and remembering that this is who he is now– a killer– and you stare at him vacantly, because his tone is so much more serious suddenly. “Nothing is the same. Everyone has blood on their hands, water is a fucking commodity, if you’re not watching out for humans to betray you, hideous creatures like me roam the ground, and that ground? Sands, deserts, barely a hint of green. It’s nothing worth coming back to.”
“So you’re saying I’m in hell.” You suddenly inhale harshly, and Coop ignores the urge to check on you.
The last thing he needs is an extra person to take care of– especially someone who doesn’t know the Wasteland. So it’s better now that he just weans you off and leaves you here.
“Yeah, sweetheart. And I'm the devil.” Coop sucks on his teeth again. “If you had any sense, you’d go back into that fucking freezer until some utopia is born four hundred years from–”
You flinch, and he stops. 
“Oh, God, my eyes–”
The sight comes back slowly then all at once. Light everywhere, overwhelming your senses. 
You blink, tears rolling down your face. 
“Maybe it would’ve been better if you stayed blind, Cola.” He stares at you as you rub your eyes, taking in the state of the room. 
It’s a warning, but you look up at him again anyways. And Coop waits for the utter horror, for the sign that he really has transformed into a monster, so he can hurry up and leave– this entire conversation with you is just him finishing Cooper Howard’s past with a bow. A shiny, Nuka-Cola-red bow.
“...” You swallow, and then bite your lip, tilting your head up at him. “Couldn’t let go of the cowboy identity, huh?”
Coop furrows his non-existent eyebrows, disliking how hard you’re making this, how clever you still seem to be– you also seem way too relaxed with him. He has half a mind to fire a warning shot at you. “Yeah, okay, darlin’. You’re just avoiding facing that horrific, bile-inducing sensation in your throat, aren’t you?”
You shake your head, disagreeing immediately. “You might look– a little less like how I remember you, I guess… but you’re still you. I see it, and apparently so do you.”
How dare you? Coop thinks, how dare you intertwine his two images together so easily when he could never be the same man again, when just seeing an old VHS tape of one of his movies pains him?
“Yeah, no thanks. If this is your way to get me to valet you around, I’m not that man anymore, Nuka-Cola.” He resents the way you think he could still be good– just because his western image brings him a little comfort nowadays. “Not a sheriff anymore.”
Your face drops, but you seem to take that information readily. “Yeah, I figured that based on your outfit, the little blood splatters on your pants… if that’s how the world is, then so be it.”
You’re saying things that on paper should be right– but Coop is getting more and more disgruntled with you, and you feel like you need to separate yourself from him. Yes, tough, because to you it’s been all of forty-eight hours since you kissed him– but you can see, no matter how deep the original Cooper Howard is inside this new Ghoul, you’re not going to be able to bring him out.
You stand up, on shaky, bare feet, and motion for Coop to move out of the way. Independent woman to the end, you are, and you want to get your bearings without him.
Coop internally sighs. He doesn’t believe for one second you’ll survive out there– and he really doesn’t need to spend the time seeing you die, so he turns around, and leaves you here.
/
He never did find Leopold St. West, much to his chagrin– you really, really messed up his day. 
It happens. Sometimes he’ll see Janey in another person’s eyes and freak out, and have to boil it down by murdering random raiders. 
But now Coop is just spiteful. He’s always figured that a lot of what happened to the world was just a bunch of rich people picking and choosing a destiny for themselves to the detriment of everyone else, and now he’s aware that included you, too. To casually be grabbed away by some man, just because he was rich… Coop isn’t unsympathetic to how you ended up, even if he treated you quite poorly. It’s sickening.
Two hundred years of quiet, always-dwelling agony, the first few years out of fear for being alone, and the next few years spent conspiring about what could’ve happened to his family– and then here you are as confirmation of his worst theories.
No wonder he enjoys his casket time.
/
Coop sighs.
Vaultie is hard to keep track of. She got away with murder this time at the organ harvesting clinic– so Coop finds it easier to stop working with her, to move when he wants to.
The Govermint (really just Booker’s shitty gang) was rather easy to dismantle. The two sheriffs that he killed required no expertise on his part.
He’s thinking about the fact that since Moldaver is still alive, and apparently that fucker Hank MacLean, then that means there’s a good chance Barb and Janey are too– perhaps he could go and find them.
It’s an odd urge, though. Everytime he thinks about it, he wonders how he’s actually supposed to connect with them again– they’ve been fractured for so long, and he’s changed, and there’s a good chance neither of them would accept him like this.
But you did, didn’t you? You were on the verge of saying yes, you’d accept him– as if nothing had changed.
Coop grumbles. The big, significant difference is that you were infatuated with him, but Barb divorced him, and Janey was too young to make that choice. He considers that it could be a pipe dream, but he still has hope– for Janey, at least.
He thinks you’re probably dead anyways. He hasn’t seen you in several months, since that day where he unceremoniously woke you up– and he hopes it stays that way.
He's chilling in another small, scrappy area of the wasteland. Nobody bothers the Ghoul, not when he's casually fiddling with his gun and and chewing on a toothpick.
A man runs past him, holding a significantly valuable piece of Brotherhood equipment. Maybe worth thousands of caps if he knows his shit, and he does. That’s a fusion core, and they’re not exactly mass producing those anymore during the apocalypse.
Coop points his gun at him, finger on the trigger, seconds away from creating a bloody mess–
A blade thwacks into the guy’s neck, blood spurting as he falls and chokes. A person– a woman– jumps on his back, her face obscured by a deep green bandana . She yanks out the knife, stabs a few more times for good measure– and Coop knows the game, he’s not surprised he’s not the only one to go after this guy.
He’s pretty good at killing casually, and he barely even moves from where he’s standing, aiming the gun at her.
No way is he letting easy money pass by him.
He’s about to pull the trigger extra-quick when she yanks the bandana down, taking a deep breath as she sweats, and Coop actually misses.
It’s you. You stare up at him from where you’re squatting over the body, and your gaze hardens, furrowed brows, dark lashes, intensely dark pupils. You purse your lips, press them together, jaw set in a stern fashion, recognizing him but refusing to hear him out– and Coop doesn’t know why he’s not firing, but he’s almost… enamoured with how you are now, almost taken aback by your new nature.
Not so taken aback that he doesn’t immediately start firing when you take the fusion core and start running.
And Coop doesn’t want to actually kill you, he just wants to incite some damage. See how far you can take it.
You interweave through random gaps in the metal scraps of this little abode, seeking shelter as you do so, and Coop’s gunfire only ricochets off them with cartoony sounding “pings!”
He manages to graze your left thigh through a small window, and you inhale sharply, stopping as you grit through the pain.
Coop grins to himself. This little cat and mouse chase is what he expected, what was predictable from you– you’re smart enough to stay on the defense, but you would probably never attack him, avoiding him because of your sad feelings of the old times, never resort to carnage unless you needed to–
You shove past the walls where you’ve been roaming, and manage one kick against his stomach and he manages to grab you and restrain you, your back against his front.
You grab his own jacket for purchase, and instead of pulling forward– you push back, landing on top of him with a thud that surely hurts him. Coop clenches his teeth, back against the ground now, but you scramble, straddling him. Hands around his throat, knife pressed against one of his tendons. Not outright strangling him, but just enough pressure that he knows you’re seriously threatening him.
Holy fuck, have you changed. Just like Vaultie, maybe you’re showing your honest self– and Coop supposes it may have been his mistake to underestimate you.
“Got a whole new outfit… I like it.” He admires your new leather jacket, cargo pants around your thighs pushing his arms down, a blouse fashioned out of your old Nuka-Cola dress. Tough combat boots dig into his thighs as you push against him. “Don’t fucking start–” You squeeze a little harder and he groans, the tip of the knife pushing in. “With your on and off, hot and cold bullshit.” 
Ooh, it sounds like you have a little bit of a grudge over how you were treated.
“Get over it, Cola. It was centuries ago, whatever we had.” He spits out, and you have a glint of sadness in your eyes.
He knew you were a little too gushy for your own good– not even he adapted that quickly to the wilderness of the Wasteland. He waits for you to make the mistake, apologize, break down– and then he can take the core and get out of here.
But you’re still firm in your grasp of him, your weight pushing him down, blade against him.
You’re not angry about back then. You’ve come to terms with that.
You’re angry at the state of the world. 
“You know what I fucking hate, Ghoul?” You spit in his face, and he blinks, spittle now on his chin. “You are all so selfish. I got left behind, likely for dead, right, and nobody gives a shit, whatever. But instead of me hoping that the leftover crumbs of society would at least try to be, I don’t fucking know, more hopeful and kind, or at the very least, not be so fucking greedy and transparently trying to be the new party in charge.”
“You’re living in a dream world.” Coop interrupts, and he’s rewarded with you carving a small, little cut on his cheek, a rapid movement you hardly think about, and it causes him to inhale sharply, a drop of blood smearing across his face.
“Oh, no. I’m not asking for everyone to hold hands and play family.” You laugh suddenly, and then somehow lean in closer, and Coop finds that in some fucked up way he enjoys the pressure against him. “It’s bullshit, that kind of image making– you and I both know that. But for all this supposed talk against the rich billionaires who ruined our lives, how are we not just emulating them?”
Coop is actually drawn to silence.
“Maybe you actually got fooled by self-image, Cola.” He murmurs. “Or maybe that’s just people’s true nature.”
You don’t like that answer. You don’t actually want to believe that, but the more you think about it, the more it’s probably true. People lie all the time, but the amount of outrage you’ve heard from people the last few months, bemoaning Vault-Tec and all those rich fuckers, you were inclined to believe they wouldn’t act the exact same way.
Just at a different level. Power corrupts all, you guess.
You loosen your grasp a little. “Thank you.”
It’s honest, and Coop doesn’t like how much he does like your nature of trusting him– how even as this new, terrible version of yourself, you still trust him, and you still ask for his advice.
He doesn’t know what to make of this, but he thinks maybe he can get some use out of you yet.
Coop wrangles his arm from out under your thigh, where you’ve accidentally let a gap through, and shoves you over.
You fall with a gasp, hitting the ground, and he stands up and kicks you for good measure, while you screech in pain. 
Coop picks you up by your throat, and you instantly move to fighting– your blade against his stomach, teeth gritted in resolute urge to kill– but he’s got his pistol at your neck, and the way he brushes it against you is almost like a lover’s embrace.
“One thing I hate is a fucking liar, Cola.” He grumbles, and you glare at him. “You’re not some innocent– why else do you got a fusion core in your pocket?”
“I never claimed I was a good woman.” You shake your head. “I just wonder why the Brotherhood, the Enclave, hell, even some of the Raiders… everyone wants the ultimate piece of the pie.”
“Besides, you’re the one who kept saying to survive out here I’d have to be a killer.” You remind him, and he looks down at you, thinking. “The world’s grieving– I don’t blame it for that, I feel the same way.”
You’ve still got a way with words, he thinks, and he was right. He can use you for his benefit.
“Say, Nuka-Cola. Why don’t we take some of those fuckers down?” He stills. “Not randoms. The power-hungry pie-eaters, like how you so eloquently put it.”
You don’t fully trust him again, but you’re into the prospect. You don’t want power, and you know he doesn’t either, but it’s not just looting. No, no, this is something akin to revenge.
“Alright.” You whisper.
“Alright. Okay, I won’t shoot if you don’t cut me.” He speaks softly, slowly, trying to cajole you out of attacking– and you move as he does. 
The threatening air of before is gone now, and the Ghoul has only a odd stare for you, something that makes you feel watched, almost reminding you of two centuries ago. It could be that he doesn’t trust you either– and so you walk onward with a gap between you two, heading to wherever a faction that needs fucking up could be.
/
Coop strolls inside the makeshift bar as you make conversation, staying within the shadows. It’s not on official Enclave grounds, it’s simply a nearby bar where members have been known to hang out. 
He doesn’t exactly mind being the one to pick up the slack of killing people– he can tell you’re good at charming people what with your former bombshell acting techniques, your silly, soft blinks, the way how your skin still looks smooth and untouched.
Was it all a lie with him? Aw, shit, why does he care? He really doesn’t have time to wonder if he’s been manipulated by you– he won’t be manipulated by you now, when he gets rid of many the people who represents obstacles in his way to finding still-existing Vault-Tec members.
Yes, that’s all this is to him. Another step to finding Moldaver, Henry MacLean, then his family if he’s lucky. And you’ll get some rage out of it, so he doesn’t even consider this to be that bad of an evasion of his. 
You laugh at something the knight next to you says. Coop catches a bit of it, of him asking how you look under that big jacket– and you mentioning you’d like to see him without that government get-up, too.
He grits his teeth. He’s not fucking in love with you, or anything stupidly juvenile like that– but he definitely felt something before when the two of you were fighting, or when you had conversations during the long, arduous talk here– you bit into a piece of his jerky when he offered it, and he laughed in surprise that you didn’t spit it out after he revealed it was feral ghoul ass jerky.
He also found that his gaze kept being drawn to you, too. You kept up with him, you were capable of hunting and searching on your own, you took lives when the need arose, and you had his back, even if he didn’t ask for it.
You made him subconsciously draw from the past, reminiscing about a time with you and a future he never thought he’d revisit. And now he can’t ignore that, so he needs to let off some steam.
There’s a splatter of blood across your face as the guy in front of you splutters, a bullet hole shot through his forehead. Little pieces of flesh hit the bar counter as he falls, and you gasp.
Coop is kind of quick with it now– he fires off, and because these “politicians” are unprepared, he’s able to kill off more than half.
You get over your shock quickly and fire your own tiny pistol at random, managing a few kills, but the Ghoul takes the last one and looks back at you, with an intrepid glance that you can’t figure out.
“What the hell was that?” You call out, and he doesn’t respond, instead beginning to pilfer the bodies, looking for shit to take. “Hey, Ghoul…”
“We came here to kill off those guys.” He answers you, but it’s not really an answer.
“Yeah, but I thought we agreed on discussing this shit as we were doing it. What happened to signalling?” You approach him, and as you get close enough, he turns around and stares unnervingly into your eyes.
“I did signal, sweetheart.” He clicks his tongue, lying through his teeth. 
“Bullshit.”
“No, I did.” He points at you. “It’s not my fault that you were too busy schmoozing and flirting to notice.”
“Wow.” You laugh exasperatedly at his antics, while he tilts his head. “You’re really obtuse, you know?”
“Nah. I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. You’re gonna say you’re not jealous–” At that word, the Ghoul snarls, ready to tell you exactly how little he cares for you, and you motion for him to zip it. “But at the very instance of seeing me flirt, mind you, in the most fake way possible, you lost it. You can’t even tell the difference between my genuine flirting and the fakest, schlockiest shit?”
“...” Coop frowns, because you’re right– he did kind of let his mind go wild over nothing in particular. 
Even worse, it means he’s made it apparent to you that he still harbours some feelings for your long-ago relationship. And that’s definitely a potential weakness– he does not want you to believe you can just work him around.
“Fuck you.” He spits, and instead of your face flinching in hurt, you stay neutral.
“I know you think you can come close and then shove me off every once in a while, because you’re fucking terrified of what it means that you’re not as hard as you pretended to be, that you still have a bit of human emotion inside you.” You tiptoe up to his face so he can’t avoid you. “I don’t care. That’s your problem.”
You turn to leave, to continue looting the bodies– and Coop’s hand wraps around your wrist. 
He hates what you’ve said, because it’s absolutely provoking the worst issue he has– he can never just let go. Two hundred years of this has made him a different creature altogether, spiteful; evil, but Coop knows as well as anyone that his transformation doesn’t negate his original nature, buried deep down.
It was a lie on his part– people are not as evil as he made them out to be, it’s the cycle of this situation that perpetuates that shit. Violence begets violence and all that. He can’t seem to say this to you, though, because he can tell you already probably knew that.
What is this fuckery, that you’re able to generate such a sense of guilt in him?
“Show it to me again. Genuine flirting.” he says instead, and he knows it’s stupid as hell to say something like this. “It’s been hundreds of years, you can’t expect me to fuckin’ remem…”
You grasp his arm back, making him quiet.
He’s half expecting you to punch him, but you see something you like– something that finally satisfies you, and you kiss his cheek, where you cut him much earlier in the day. It’s a soft bruise, mostly healed over in the way ghouls heal– but it’s overwhelmingly, embarrassingly hot there now as you pull away.
“I won’t forget the difference next time, Nuka-Cola.” He tips his hat at you in a mockery of his acting as a dashing cowboy once upon a time.
“Won’t be a next time.” You shrug. “I would hate to have to flirt with someone again just to get you to notice me.”
This severely bothers him, like you haven’t been an annoyance in his mind this whole time. And then he wonders if you’re an idiot, like you have no idea the effect you had on him back then, and even now. Hell, even that overly-chaste kiss has him remembering how he felt at Sebastian’s party when you humoured him the first time.
Do you think the only thing he’s burying is some empathy for the human race?
He can’t just let you be this wrong about this, no fucking way. And it’s with this in mind that the Ghoul feels his reserve melt as he tightly grabs your face and kisses you. Not a soft, movie-star kiss of the past, but one more hungry, his lips swallowing yours, pressed sternly, firmly, like he’s not gonna let you go. He parts his mouth ever so slightly, trying to catch a reaction from you.
You’re caught off guard, and he’s glad. He likes that you don’t know what to do with yourself, that for once you’re floundering rather than him, and you barely remember to kiss back until a couple seconds later when your hands grasp the base of his skull. You’re tracing grooves, calluses, skin that’s been eroded by his ghoulishness. You feel like he tastes ever so acidic– perhaps from the radiation emitting from his body– but some weird part of you loves it, and you part your lips as you kiss him harder, wanting to feel his tongue.
Your lips are just as soft as he remembers– but there’s more excitement now, more of an urgency as you kiss him, so he takes your invitation and swirls his tongue around on yours, disgustingly vulgar and perversely fast, yet lingering to enjoy the sensation, and he kinda loves being a corrupting force, being the ghoul who eats up this sweet human girl, and he tightens his grip– it almost hurts you, how tightly his hands weave around your waist suddenly– and then before you know it, he pulls away.
He wipes his mouth, never taking his eyes off of you.
“So. Did I taste like Nuka-Cola?” You joke, and he laughs in your face.
“Nope. Darlin, you haven’t been the Nuka-Cola girl for hundreds of years. They replaced you not long after you vanished.” He smiles widely at how your face drops. “I can show you some of the new girl’s billboards, if you’d like.”
“That would explain the lack of revenue.” You raise your eyebrows. “Then why do you still call me Nuka-Cola, Cola, etcetera?”
“That’s how I remember you.” It sounds too sweet, too nice that he keeps your nickname on tabs, so he twists his lips in a sneer. “Plus I don’t remember your name.”
“Oh.” You bite your lip, finding his insult more funny than anything else, and turn around to take items from the bodies around you. “Okay, Mr. Howard.”
It was the optimal moment for you to joke back, calling him the Ghoul, but in classic you-fashion, you decided to extend an olive branch to him– reminding him that he’ll never just be the Ghoul to you. And even if Coop knows he’ll always remember you by Nuka-Cola, he has a fondness for you that he doesn’t neglect anymore– and he murmurs your name so softly, but just enough that you turn back and look at him, and smile with pleased recognition. 
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bluesidez · 2 days
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OKAY I HAD TO HIT YOU W THIS BC I NEED THIS TO COME TRUE 🗣🗣‼️‼️
AcademicRival!Miguel x AcademicRival!reader
where they will do quite literally ANYTHING (legally) POSSIBLE to one up each other.
whether their petty rivalry began in high school or first year of uni/college, IDC- but they absolutely despise each other.
and!!! at some point down the track, they forgot why they were beefing in the first place, only for it to start stemming from a place of 'jealousy' (yk how sometimes jealousy is actually feelings of romantic interest in disguise,, yeah, that) and it gets to the point where they are quite literally making it all their friends' problem bc of it.
like i can imagine reader drinking something that Miguel sees and Miguel going 'i need to have this all the time and sell it out so reader can never have any' and Peter is like '???', or reader finding out Miguel got a certain mark and goes 'nobody speak to me for a month i have to understand everything about quantum physics before that smug asshole opens his mouth' and Jess is like '??? just kiss, fym??'
and then they finally have a moment where they have no choice but to rely on each other- whether Miguel's car breaks down on the side of the road reader happens to drive by and she takes him to his, or if reader desperately needs help in a situation and immediately calls him bc she knows he'll pick up bc she needs scary dog privileges and thats HIM so then they end up having a moment of reflection together with either super fluffy smut or absolute debauchery and fluffy aftercare i totally dont mind either way.
IDK do you know what i mean??? 🫣🫢🤭
anyway LY BLUE-BLUE, thank yew for letting me ramble on 🤍🩵
Are you asking me to write this? 🧐 (I shall add it to the pending ideas list just for you 🐰🩵)
I wrote that as a reply as soon as you sent it, but now I have more ideas that I wanna yap about to go along with this.
SO!! You already have a rivals, enemies to lovers trope going on. What better way to make it even more fun than to add the stoic x chatty dynamic???
Like I’m imagining the reader and Miguel first meeting in middle or high school. He’s a transfer student that’s immediately making the top grades and people are like where tf did he come from?? Reader doesn’t really think anything of it, she just carries on with her school life, chatting away (and getting in on the gossip about Miguel).
It’s not until he ends up in the same class with reader one semester (probably in high school) that reader is finally able to be in close contact with him. He’s so quiet and a little boring, but there’s always random girls coming in and out of the classroom to attempt to chat to him.
They’re always bringing snacks or sweets for him. He always turns them down with a “No thank you. I don’t like chocolate.” type of response. (What he thinks to be polite and cordial)
The guys in the class think he’s a huge jerk. The girls in the class still fond over him. You think he’s an oddball, a weirdo. But you really have no solid information to justify it.
It’s not until one day that the teacher asks this obscure question that he pisses you off. (I havent thought of a weird question yet tho). Everyone else has given crude or stupid answers, riling each other up and joking. You raise your head to give the most out-of-the-box, yet plausible answer that leaves the teacher impressed and the class laughing in shock. Miguel scoffs and debunks it so fast, that you start to feel like one of his rejected groupies. If you thought the laughter for your answer was loud, the laughter for his sounds like the crowd in a football stadium.
You’re embarrassed but you don’t really show it. You just brush it off and joke with everyone else like usual.
Then, one of the class’s first huge tests come. You’re gunning for the number 1 spot although you figure it won’t be too hard with half of the room being class clowns and the other half not giving af. You read over the material once and already have a good grasp on it, so you joke around with everyone else. There’s rap battles and TT routines. You guys even manage to get the teacher in on some of them. From the front of the room, you can see Miguel glancing back at you with such a sour look on his face. Wtf was his deal??
Test day finally comes. You’re the first to turn yours in with a smug smile on your face. You even take a nap until the next bell.
You’re on cloud nine for about a good week. Although, every time you open your mouth in class, Miguel looks like he woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
Then, the time came for the teacher to hand out the papers. He was pretty theatrical and loved to announce who got the highest score.
You were gearing up for him to say your name. And you don’t know of you’re crazy, but you’re certain your mom didn’t put “Miguel O’Hara” on your school registration form.
You frown as you come back to reality, watching as teacher handed him is paper. From your seat, you can see the bright red 100 in the corner, a smiley face to adorn it.
Then the teacher hands you your paper. A 99.5. Just 0.5 points from a perfect score. And what you got points taken off for is something so ridiculous that you could scream.
You can see him in your peripheral as you chat with the other students about the answers. Just as you discuss your silly mistake you take a small look at him. He has a faint smirk on his face, as if to laugh at your downfall.
From then on, you decide that it’s a war.
[and obviously, the story would travel with them as they grow. Once they’re adults, I can imagine Miguel to still be this same stoic, yet more approachable person who has had a ROSTER of hookups and a reader who’s still so flirty and chatty, yet can’t find a good partner to save their life. The dynamic of him knowing exactly how to make reader feel good verses reader being overwhelmed for once would be sooooo good]
What do you think Lexie-bun?? 🥸
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jazzyblusnowflake · 3 days
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OMG hi…I really like your art and was wondering if you wanna be mutuals??????????? Also tell me about your MD ships :3c
honey we are dating- .....okay yknow what- HI PRETTY & TALENTED LADY- yess i will absolutely love toooo 🙈💕💕💕💕💕
also lets see uhhh okay this is an excuse for me to just... expload-
keep in mind not every ship is meant for all of you so dont badger me about stuff that ISNT CANON or YOU DONT SHIP. contrary to whatever you believe, when somone posts about THEIR ships, nobody wants to hear about you NOT shipping it on THAT EXACT post.
hang in there, this gon be a long one >:p
First off we are starting strong with Nuzi- Biscuitbites obviously thats a given- these two just have too much to be said about why and how they make eachother the best version of eachother, whether they ever became canon or not- they fit like puzzle pieces- they lessen eachothers negative traits by being their for eachother.
next is Vuzi- Violentviolet, they are my favorite kind of enemies to lovers 😔 but its also tragic smh. kinda pissed off at how V always does something good in Uzis favor only when she is LITERALLY PASSED OUT- either in the camp ep on the bus or in Alices lab. like damn ofFUCKINGcourse Uzi wouldnt know she cares about her 😭😭😭
envuzi- Violentbitingbiscuits, i love these goobers with all my heart- they deserve the best 😔💕💕💕💕
envy - [does this poor ship just NOT have an exclusive FINDABLE tag name??? im calling them GoldenMemories...], i like to think that if they were in the manor still, and nothing bad had ever happened, these two would be comforting eachother in the healthiest way possible. V needs someone like N and N is just adorable like that uwu
Next we have JxTessa/Jessa- [calling them Fancyblades cuz why not-] J deserves some closure for the shit shes gone through smhhh 😔, its a tragic yuri of J loving and wanting something she probably already accepted she couldnt have, and even then she gotta deal with Ns ass being the favorite one regardless of how hard she tries to be perfect... sighhh i wanna imagine them in a future where Tessa was spared as the only human and J could save her 😭😭😭😭 Tessa might have loved doing mechanical stuff or wore black to hide grease/oil stains on her clothes from her parents and wore gloves to hide her oily stained hands- i want her to have a scene of wiring drones back to life and saving them and saying something like "hey there, you made it! dont worry, ill take care of you, youre my friend now :3" or something //dies//, also before anyone says it- even if Tessa was a teen in the flashbacks- romance is not exclusive to ADULTS, teens can love eachother without having sexual stuff involved. no she was not their MOTHER figure, she was their FRIEND who liked to fix robots for herself to not be alone in a house where her own parents literally chain her up as punishment. i dont even know why im arguing about this, people headcanon or make aus about characters NOT being dead all the time and if Tessa was alive for as long as J thought she was, Tessa would have been a perfectly fine adult either way. so counting this, yes shes canonically considered an adult when Cyn tries to imitate an adult humans body 🙄 makes as much sense as everything else i guess-
next ones i got is NorixYeva/Neva- Solverlilies- i just think theyre neat 😭😭😭 and once again, like everything else in this franchise- they are tragic yuris 😔 damn liam im finding a pattern over here 🤨 anyway, i like to think they either got closer in the lab experimentations or were already close when they were working as WDs in the campsite area for the humans. obviously canonically they were probably straight or just not into eachother romantically- [Nori either u have the worst taste men or Khan just fucking lost it after you died-] but also on the other handddd.... they have 2 hands and they are robots, i want them to kiss like two barbie dolls and im gonna make them do just that-
DollxLizzy/Dizzy- Bloodypink, wost fucking ship names ever, i cant find shit on them with these tags and it makes me angry >:/ at this point 2/3s of my ships are just tragic yuris smh, Doll did not deserve any of the things handed to her, even if she went about doing some things the wrong way i wish Lizzy didnt just abandon her- but then again, Doll did kinda abuse Lizzys trust and Lizzy got scared of being close to a serial murderer so.... morality calls this a draw? 😭 im crying... i wish someone was there to help Doll... sigh... i like to think Lizzy would have waited for Doll to just come back at some point... oh well, thats why AUs exist :"3 //sobs in the corner//
DollxUzi/Dollzi- Bloodybats, this ship is so underrated to me... they could have been... so much more. but why weren't they? did Yeva abandon ever getting close to Uzi when she was a kid after Nori died? did Uzi and Doll just never play around together as kids when their mothers were so close? were they ever close and something went wrong as they grew older? at worst they could have been like sisters together, and at best maybe more than friends. i just dont know what happened here, like Yeva could have tried to keep an eye on Uzi, maybe Uzi could have found Dolls powers so cool before having them too- i dont know theres literally tons of possibilities- but if Doll deserved to be saved or cared for by anyone, at least one of them should have been Uzi... sigh.
ThadxV- Killingblonde, yall this is... the cutest shit... ever???? like from here on out we kinda go into the more or less crackship territory but these two are adorable- Dumbass yet wholesome jock boy that just wants to keep his queen happy 😔👌👌👌 He and Uzi would have so much to talk about on "crushing on literal murder bots that stabbed and almost ate us" its literally love at first stab smhhh 😫💕
ThadxSam- Smokyjock ???? for some fucking reason??? i dont know what my brain did here man- i just like the trope of someone getting under Thads skin- like pair up the healthy sports loving gym boy with the lazy but wholesome dumbass that does drugs or is always just sleep deprived and Thad is always trying to just... take care of his ass and make him take care of himself but he just WONT SMHHH-
okay some more or less crack ships down here:
ThadxN: it speaks for itself. its too adorable and youll go blind from the light of wholesomeness-
ThadxNxUzi: Uzi will die here from the overwhelming wholesomeness... oh bonus if its just a 4s polycule of ThadxNxUzixV i mean i know im pushing my luck but.... random crackships go brr- V and Uzi will complain but love their dumbass golden puppy partners-
ThadxUzi: i think they could have been close and Thad caring about her as a childhood friend turned crush sounds just too cute for me 😔
LizzyxUzi: another random ass rivals to lovers or some shit idk what this is, Lizzy would pay Uzi to kiss the fuck out of her i dont make the rules-
ThadxLizzy: in some cases where they are NOT headcanoned as siblings or cousins, i think they have a good energy of wholesome jock bf and girly queen cheerleader lol, Thad is just a good bf eitherway-
DollxUzixLizzy: the gals would not leave a single second of silence for the small gremlin i swear to God- [Uzi is gay as FUCK for her gfs, absolute girloser unit with her gorgeous but crazy gfs]
okay for the end i have some characters that arent ships but i wish they could have become closer as friends or work out their issues...
J and N- too much abuse and toxicity here, i wish they could talk together more and see they have a lot of things in common- maybe a full line of dialogue from J without threatning N in every sense of the manner would be nice for a change =_=
Doll and V- again, a bit morally ambiguous to ship a character with the murderer of your family, esp when said murderer hasnt expressed regret lmao, but i wish they could at least be friends... Dolls disdain for the murder drones pushed her to end up the way she did. maybe if she didnt do it alone she would have been alive by now. so i like to think what would have happened if she and V could have made up- not necessarily Doll forgiving her- but at least having the space to grow and understand why they did they things that happened.
Cyn and literally ANYONE- i want the solver to be SEPARATE from Cyn- i wish Cyn would have still existed somewhere down there and was savable- i wish this poor child AI had a happy ending to her by connecting with the others as ACTUAL siblings... goddamnit 😔
aaaand thats it for this fine ass day 🫡 yall are welcome to ask about any of these- boy the tags are gonna be.... a lot.
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Text
Disaster. Part 1 —Joao Felix.
summary: You see Joao again after he broke your heart and nothing goes as you expected.
warnings: none. enemy to lovers, exes to lovers, many curses, cute, soft.
words count: +2.3k
#SEXYNOTE: Don't worry, there will be a second part of this and it will come faster than you think. Thanks for waiting, sorry for being late. love y'all 💙
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The Uber took you to the place you had indicated when you left home, right outside the restaurant where you were supposed to have dinner. Before entering you took your purse and took out a gloss to put some on your lips, it was just a little gloss to look more appropriate. Even though you had left work an hour ago and after a quick shower and putting on the first thing you found, it wasn't like you were ready for your date.
Yes, a date. A blind date that your best friend had set up for you, which you clearly hadn't asked for but had had to agree to when she was so insistent that you come along.
Camila had taken it upon herself to find the perfect suitor for you, according to her. You had absolutely no idea who this was, you didn't even know if it was true or if it was going to be a joke from your friend. She was very insistent that your partners were invisible because she had never really seen you with one. But you had never done anything official with anyone for a long time, you didn't invest your time in men anymore.
You walked into the fancy restaurant, which you allowed yourself to admire as you closed the door behind you. Your friend had mentioned dressing well and you felt a little offended when she said it, but now you understood. Eating here was probably going to be expensive but you could treat yourself for today and if it all ended badly on the date, you would never come to this place again.
"Hello, excuse me" you called to the receptionist. "The table in the name of Y/LN?" you asked at the girl's kind smile.
"Good evening, your table is table 9" she kindly replied checking on her computer.
You politely thanked her and as you turned to go your way, your legs shook. You were nervous and you were not one to get nervous. But the thought of sitting down to dinner with a complete stranger made you hesitate. However, you plucked up your courage and went on your way, spotting the tables guiding you to find your number.
A man's marked back made you swallow your breath. You were a few steps away from him and when your eyes caught sight of the young man with his back turned, you sighed, calming your nerves. I'll just be a while, eat, chat and then leave. «Be nice» You said in your mind. Above all you were going to be polite, whatever your date, you were going to make a good impression.
You took your last steps, approaching the table and when the boy heard you, he looked up at you.
Oh, no. No way.
"Hello, Y/n" he greeted with a smile.
You, on the other hand, frowned in confusion feeling your legs wobble. Damn it. It couldn't be. This was a dream.
"I'm sorry, I think there's been a mistake" you said trying to pretend you didn't recognize it. Your voice dropped and you looked to your sides in confusion.
But inside you, everything moved. This was not true.
"There isn't" the young man mentioned. "Camila wanted to get us together apparently" came back a chuckle.
Damn it. You couldn't believe it was him sitting there. He looked so changed. He really looked more handsome, more mature, like a real man. But in your mind he was still the young man from a few summers ago, the handsome boy who had been driving you crazy since you were little.
"This has got to be a fucking joke," you sigh in disbelief.
Your friend really is crazy, how could she think she could bring you on a date with Joao? The same guy who had rejected you years ago and broke your heart, you hated him!
"You look great" he announced trying to flirt.
"Not with me, Joao" you warn denying.
You don't know whether to be offended by the situation, whether he had been sent by someone who hated you in this life or what was the reason he was here. But he definitely knew you would be here, while you came here hoping to connect with someone else.
You felt somewhat frustrated by what happened that the hunger or anxiety you felt vanished and the urge to run from the place came over you.
"I-I think I should go" you stammered starting to walk.
"Wait!" you heard him yell but you started running to get out of the place.
Yes, you felt offended, humiliated and weird. How were you supposed to connect with Joao if you guys weren't speaking to each other since that day, you hadn't even thought about seeing him again. You were supposed to move on with your lives and never cross paths again. Had Camila lost her mind? Of course she had. There was no other explanation.
You stood on the sidewalk of the place with your head looking sideways, waiting for a cab to arrive as quickly as possible. Damn it! You'd come here for nothing, now you were hungry and a goddamn craving for Joao!
It was clear that seeing him again had had an effect on you, even more so when he looked as fucking hot as he did. You weren't the same as before, now you were both grown up and you had the strength to face him, but he wasn't going to play with you again.
A sigh escaped your lips as no one seemed to appear in the night. Great, what else could go wrong? You'd already ruined dinner, you'd drive home hungry and embarrassed. There were no cabs around and walking was not an option.
Lights flashed in your view as a car approached you, you sighed gratefully. When it parked in front of you, you bit your lower lip with a grimace. It wasn't a cab or an Uber. It was a damn sports car that was worth more than your entire estate put together. It was Joao's car.
You ignored him as he leaned out the window, averting your eyes to the road praying a cab would show up right now. You weren't going to let him drive you home, you weren't going to let him into your life again.
"Stop acting immature, get in" he indicated after a few minutes.
No one had shown up until then. Not even a damn bus that could take you home. But you couldn't give in.
You turned on your heels and started walking briskly, with your head held high and taking it all in. Getting a little further away was a good option and maybe on the way you would find a cab. Beside you, you could see the car start to approach you, and you pressed your lips together indignantly. Why hadn't he left yet? Wasn't it enough for him to see you running out of the restaurant or to ignore him here?
As you walked, the car's lights still shining on you, you could see out of the corner of your eye how he was getting closer and closer to you. You were starting to get annoyed.
"Get in, Y/n, please" he shouted from inside like a plea. "It's late, let me take you home safe and sound" he said again and you stood up with a start.
You hated it. You had done something wrong in this life for karma to pay you back like this, right where it hurt the most. Of course. It's not easy to forget when a man rejects you in your full youth, much less one you liked very much. And he had hurt you so much.
You sigh cursing and grab the doorknob of the car, opening the door to sit in the seat with a serious little pout on your face. You stare straight ahead at all times, not giving him the pleasure of looking at you even though you know he smiled like he had won the lottery.
"Don't say a word" you point out angrily. Joao nods with a chuckle and sets off.
The silence is overwhelming inside the car and you can feel the nerves stinging on the tips of your toes. Your palms sweat and you don't know what to do. There is no music, no words. There are only sighs and the voice of the geolocator pointing the way to your house.
The tension becomes more and more suffocating, at times you find it hard to breathe and your gaze wanders a little to the boy's place. You swallow as your eyes focus on his muscular thighs and you shift uncomfortably in your seat. Joao notices your tension and turns from time to time to look at you, making it increasingly difficult.
Damn it. Through the window you catch a glimpse of his profile and your heart races at the sight of him looking so calm, when you're a mess inside thanks to him. The heat in your neck makes you swallow your saliva nervously, the trip seems to take forever and you start to get anxious about getting home.
A current of electricity runs down your back when Joao's hand releases the steering wheel and goes to your leg. Your breath hitches and you freeze. His fingers dig into your inner thigh and you stifle a gasp in your throat as he gently caresses you. You want to grab his hand and pull it away but you cannot. He's left you speechless. You don't even recognize yourself right now, but the fire begins to grow inside you and you despair that you can't control it.
You're thankful when you start to recognize the houses in your neighborhood, knowing you're close to home makes you feel a little safe. You need to get out of this car before something else grows inside you.
When his car parks in front of your house, you sigh to fill your sick lungs with air. You haven't breathed easy since his hand caressed you and when his hand is removed from your body, the air rushes back into your system. You open the door, staggering, anxious to get out. You listen as Joao also gets out of the car and you watch him from the corner of your eye circle the car.
On his face is a seductive smile, a smile that makes you think he won. Damn it, you should never have let him bring you home. Or let him touch you. «Great, Y/N, you're an idiot!»
When he's close to you, he's leaning against the side of the hood of his car, his hands in his pockets, staring at you. Your body is on its side, you turn your back to him and it's now that you feel humiliated. You have to thank him, it's the least you can do for driving here but your face falls in shame. You hug your body, giving yourself some reassurance and turn around facing him.
"Thanks for the ride" you say simply.
The distance between you is prudent but you know that doesn't ensure you feel your belly contract as you see him there, licking his lips with his exalted gaze on you. Your eyes tremble as they meet his, you try to look away but you can't help but think how cute they are. Everything about him. Damn it.
"My pleasure, Y/n" he says softly. You nod with a grimace.
You make the feint to turn around but stop yourself. You can't, your body acts on its own. You run up to him and kiss him without saying anything. Even though you took him by surprise, Joao rests his hands on your hips and pulls you to him, kissing your lips. Your tongues dance in rhythm, while your hands are busy caressing his chest. The taste of his mouth is still intact in your memory, recalling your first kiss years ago.
When the images of that night that was so special for you (but nothing special for Joao) come into your head, you quickly pull away from him. Your lips are numb and heavy, your heart pounding and the fire in your chest burning.
It was a nice kiss but that will be all.
You won't see him again, you don't want to see him again. This is just part of your mistake in having gone on the date in the first place. Tomorrow you can forget about it as long as you stay away from Joao.
Just like that, you turn and walk quickly for home, escaping his nets before it's too late.
It's not too late, is it?
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raisedbythetv89 · 9 hours
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The writers I think mostly completely by accident with the assistance of James charming his way into becoming a main character created the perfect storm to ensure people who love spike would reach absolute peak levels of being completely obsessively deranged about him forever
Season 2:
He’s a punk rock villain with killer cheekbones, enchanting eyes, and an absolutely DEVILISH smile - who’s an incredibly dedicated and dangerous fighter who specifically seeks out challenging fights he’s not guaranteed to win (brave and reckless - normally traits seen in heroes) hates everyone except his mentally ill physically sick wife (the statistics of men who leave their wives when they get sick in the US is horrifying like nurses literally have to warn married women who get sick it happens so often) who he’s hopelessly devoted to and unbelievably soft with and always listens to her while also exuding a psychotic amount of sex appeal and is just F U N he loves being a vampire and he loves fighting and it makes it so much fun for the audience. While still showing how much he respects and admires his enemy for her skill, strength, resourcefulness, and intelligence - NEVER underestimating her just because she’s a tiny blonde girl - and instead of destroying the world for love he SAVES the world for love - a villain doing good to get the love of his life back who essentially dumped him for her ex????????? D E V O T E D and shockingly extremely trustworthy??? And has amazing chemistry with our heroine and is there for a pivotal moment in her life and is the only one there for her when she has no one else????? *enemies to lovers girlies ENTER THE CHAT*
Season 3:
He shows he fucking MEANS IT when he says Dru is the love of his life when he shows up in Sunnydale because he blames Angel not Buffy or Drusilla but the man actually responsible for all their problems and he is the most pathetic mess we’ve ever SEEN!!!! He’s crying and drunk all the time and he’s so sad he goes to Buffy’s mom TO TALK 💀😭 our pathetic sensitive little self admitted lover boy who KNOWS he’s love’s bitch and he won’t be pretending he’s anything otherwise who shows how clearly he sees and understands other people and the depths of his emotional intelligence so much so Buffy herself admits she can’t fool Spike she can fool her friends BUT NOT SPIKE OR HERSELF EXCUSE ME MA’AM WHAT???????
AND Spike doesn’t just uselessly MOPE forever he gets some perspective and is like I know what I’m gonna do to her back and I’m gonna go do that now! 😁👍🏻 showing he never stays down for long and is always gonna get back up to keep fighting for his love while BOTH he and Buffy still honor the truce even though he’s broken it by coming back??? While Buffy’s all “I violently dislike you” YEAH OK GIRL WHATEVER YOU SAY *enemies to lovers girlies chomping at the bit intensifies*
Season 4:
CLEARLY heartbroken about Drusilla (DEVOTED!!!) but it’s turned into anger and resentment directed at Harmony who how bizarre looks nothing like Drusilla but A LOT like Buffy…… hmmmmmmmmmmmmm HOW INTERESTING *enemies to lovers girlies are vibrating with anticipation that turns into a full blown combustion when something blue happens*
Spike doesn’t pretend to love Harmony in order to get what he wants from her (shown in direct contrast to Parker) he’s ironically very honest despite being a villain - he’s showing he’s STILL loyal to Drusilla in ONLY loving her even after she’s dumped him... again!
We see Spike treat Buffy the EXACT same way he treated Drusilla during something blue reaffirming THIS IS HOW THIS MAN LOVES WHEN HE LOVES YOU. He’s extremely affectionate, helpful, protective, caring - D E V O T E D - and is truly just the most certified lover boy we’ve ever fucking seen
Season 5:
SURPRISE HE’S SECRETLY A LOVESICK MAMA’S BOY POET AT HEART UNDERNEATH THE BAD BOY PERSONA AND A PROTECTIVE BIG BROTHER AND NOW BUFFY AND HER FAMILY’S MOST LOYAL DEFENDER AND IS WILLING TO DIE NOT JUST FOR BUFFY BUT FOR ALL THE SUMMERS WOMEN AND HE KNOWS AND SEES BUFFY SO DEEPLY AND INTIMATELY AND CAN HOLD SPACE FOR HER PAIN LIKE NO ON ELSE CAN AND SHOWS THE DEVOTION THAT ONCE BELONGED TO DRUSILLA NOW BELONGS TO BUFFY AND IT IS GOING NOWHERE EVEN WHEN SHE DIES AND WE'VE SEEN IN HIM CRY BEFORE BUT NEVER HAVE WE SEEN HIM BREAK DOWN LIKE HE DOES AT THE SIGHT OF BUFFY'S BODY!!!!!!!!!!!
*all of us screaming, crying, throwing up, climbing the walls and generally just losing our minds*
Season 6:
No soul, his love is so great for Buffy as is his loyalty and devotion to her, he now helps all of his dead love’s friends fight evil and is raising her sister and dreams of saving her every night for 148 nights 🤚🏻😭 don’t even fucking talk to me I can’t take it
Forgive the absolute 180 in tone change here:
Dick game is FIRE - his touch is the only thing that makes Buffy feel alive AND SHE WAS IN HEAVEN BRO SHE KNOWS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE IN HEAVEN AND SPIKE IS THE ONLY THING KEEPING HER GOING like damn girl yes YOU FUCK THAT HOUSE DOWN!!! Also he is now just naked 50% of the time just to drive us all even FURTHER out of our minds and somehow has just gotten even hotter as the seasons have gone on like this is what’s been hiding under the leather jacket all this time! Enjoy!
And THE MOST unintended consequence of jw’s vindictive writing:
SPITE
He clearly didn’t want us to love Spike and tried to manipulate us into hating him in such a blatant and clumsy ooc attempt all that did was weed out the weakest amongst the Spuffy/Spike fans until all that remained were us:
The most devoted and stubborn fans who REFUSED to have the thing they loved ruined or taken away from us and were smart enough to see through his bullshit manipulation attempt in the first place.
Genuinely they created the equivalent of supersoilder strength level fans with this absolutely lethal combination of events 💀
AND THEN as if all that wasn't enough he goes and gets his soul on purpose for Buffy so he can be the man she deserves and she can love him without hating herself for loving him despite the immense pain it will cause him which is the most selfless thing we have ever seen anyone do for Buffy only to be topped when he sacrifices himself to destroy the hellmouth, save the world and free her from Sunnydale!!! Plus ya know once he gets the soul even though he did it for her he never tries to use that as leverage to get anything from her like he truly expects nothing from her at all but still wants to help her and James delivers the most devastating performances we've ever fucking seen, finally tells her friends off which has needed to happen for 5 seasons, the "you're the one speech" him being a dad to all the potentials with Buffy giving us supernatural parent core who made it through their rough patch with their first kid in season 6 with Dawn and now are just the beautiful team with their found family and Buffy finally has someone who can truly carry her burdens with her and just all the tenderness and devotion they both deserve after so many years of pain and fighting. Basically giving the audience the message that even if you have a metric ton of pain and trauma there are people out there who see you and understand you and there is a chance for you to heal both together and separately to build your own version of a more normal and stable life. It's a message of such hope and I personally know several people, including myself who watched what Spike and Buffy have and it inspired us to look at the relationships we were in and realize we deserved SO MUCH MORE than what we were getting and in my case it turned out I was being emotionally abused and manipulated that entire time!! Much like Buffy was by both Riley and Angel. So it isn't an exaggeration to say Spuffy saved my life in a lot of ways both in being there for me at such a dark time and helping me draw a map of how to get out. Not to mention loving them in fandom spaces has helped me connect with so many people just like me who share very similar experiences and have helped me feel so much less alone and has helped me heal in so many ways 🖤
Spuffies get "hOw cAn yOu liKe sPiKe aFtEr wHaT hE dId" all the fucking time and truly the better question is how can you NOT like Spike???? HAVE YOU BEEN PAYING ATTENTION AT ALL??? DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT GOOD RELATIONSHIPS NEED TO WORK?? BECAUSE AT THEIR CORE SPUFFY HAS THEM ALL!
It's jw writing so NOTHING will escape his toxic bullshit but Spike - because he was hated by jw for so long - so much of the time when he tried to make Spike less popular he just kept making him better and more complex and more and more targeted to the female gaze which is exactly why he snapped and made the choices he literally forced everyone else to go along with despite their protests with that scene to make it the most traumatizing scene in all of Buffy history not just for the audience but for the actors as well because yes it is incredibly horrific and upsetting to watch (which is why I skip it on rewatches) but I still am able to see if for what it is which is a narcissist lashing out at people he hates because he hasn't been able to control them and too bad for him I refuse to be manipulated by his bullshit so it failed completely and made so many of us that much more stubbornly protective of Spike and his and Buffy's relationship not just from other fans but from the creator himself 🙃🖕🏻like he basically just trauma bonded us to Spike and Buffy which has led to the creation of one of the most devoted, loyal, intelligent fanbases who is absolutely unhinged (affectionate) with their love of this character and his relationship which is why we are all still creating and writing about this character 25 year later and show absolutely zero signs of slowing down or stopping 💀
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thepictureofjune · 2 days
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The Tortured Poets Departement of schloss einstein
— relating songs to characters and relationships because in my eyes, everyone is a little sad
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Hallo. Wilkommen. This is me trying to relate everything I somewhat like to my current obsession even if it does not fit at all because this is a kids show and the album is probably anything but relatable to a 12 year old, trying to find a treasure. But I tried and I tried explaining my choices. This is my very insane and over-dramatic interpretation, please just deal with me. 
Disclaimer: hab versucht, mich möglichst auf Staffel 26 und 27 Charaktere zu begrenzen, hat aber (siehe literally erstes Beispiel) manchmal besser bei früheren Charakteren oder Beziehungen gepasst. Btw would love it if anyone could find people to relate the missing songs to. (my chronic rewatching kinda failed me in the end…)
Fortnight - Till und Martha (Staffel 23)
And for a fortnight there, we were forever Run into you sometimes, ask about the weather Now you're in my backyard, turned into good neighbors Your wife waters flowers, I wanna kill her All my mornings are Mondays stuck in an endless February I took the miracle move-on drug, the effects were temporary And I love you, it's ruining my life I love you, it's ruining my life I touched you for only a fortnight I touched you, but I touched you
For me this fits within the whole Martha Kasimir Till drama and obviously the somewhat enemies to lovers arc Martha and Till had going on. How probably liking Martha ruined Tills life more than it already was because when they kissed for the first time, she was still dating Kasimir and that, of course, ensured a lot of issues probably. 
The Tortured Poets Department - Nesrin und Annika (Staffel 27!)
But you're in self-sabotage mode Throwing spikes down on the road But I've seen this episode and still loved the show Who else decodes you? And who's gonna hold you like me? And who's gonna know you, if not me? I laughed in your face and said "You're not Dylan Thomas, I'm not Patti Smith This ain't the Chelsea Hotel, we'rе modern idiots" (...) Sometimes, I wonder if you're gonna screw this up with me But you told Lucy you'd kill yourself if I ever leave And I had said that to Jack about you, so I felt seen Everyone we know understands why it's meant to be 'Cause we're crazy So tell me, who else is gonna know me?
We get introduced to them as these two best friends who are never really seen without each other. Annika knows Nesrin and Nesrin knows Annika and no one is ever going to get in between them, right? Because then it changes and we get the whole fight of Nesrin not really seeming to know Annika all that well anymore, them constantly fighting because maybe after all, all they had was the pranks they did together and what is their friendship beyond that? What is their friendship now?
Down Bad - Noah und Colin aus Noahs Sicht (Staffel 27 post 1062)
For a moment, I knew cosmic love Now I'm down bad, cryin' at the gym Everything comes out teenage petulance "Fuck it if I can't have him" "I might just die, it would make no difference" Down bad, wakin' up in blood Starin' at the sky, come back and pick me up Fuck it if I can't have us I might just not get up, I might stay
Did you take all my old clothes Just to leave me here, naked and alone In a field in my same old town That somehow seems so hollow now? They'll say I'm nuts if I talk about The existence of you
I loved your hostile takeovers Encounters closer and closer All your indecent exposures How dare you say that it's— I'll build you a fort on some planet Where they can all understand it How dare you think it's romantic Leaving me safe and stranded 'Cause fuck it, I was in love So fuck you if I can't have us
So Noah kinda knows he likes Colin now, knows that he misses Colin but what if Colin doesn’t miss him? What if Colin already moved on? Nothing would make sense anymore. He lost his best friend and for what? Only to be alone in the end?
Because right now, for all Noah knows, Colin might still be mad at him. 
So Long, London - Noah und Colin aus Colins Sicht (Staffel 27 post 1056) 
I saw in my mind fairy lights through the mist I kept calm and carried the weight of the rift Pulled him in tighter each time he was driftin' away My spine split from carrying us up the hill Wet through my clothes, weary bones caught the chill I stopped tryna make him laugh, stopped tryna drill the safe Thinkin', "How much sad did you think I had Did you think I had in me?" Oh, the tragedy
So long, London You'll find someone For so long, London Stitches undone Two graves, one gun I'll find someone And you say I abandoned the ship But I was going down with it My white-knuckle dying grip Holding tight to your quiet resentment And my friends said it isn't right to be scared Every day of a love affair Every breath feels like rarest air When you're not sure if he wants to be there You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues? I died on the altar waitin' for the proof You sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days And I'm just getting color back into my face I'm just mad as hell 'cause I loved this place
But Daddy I Love Him - Julia Sponer (Staffel 25 u 26) 
Too high a horse for a simple girl To rise above it They slammed the door on my whole world The one thing I wanted Now I'm runnin' with my dress unbuttoned Scrеamin', "But, Daddy, I love him I'm havin' his baby" No, I'm not, but you should see your faces I'm tellin' him to floor it through thе fences No, I'm not coming to my senses
This one is mainly for the dramatics of the song, of playing the part and of Julia wanting to take a path (acting) that is usually not really met with great immediate success. 
Fresh Out The Slammer - Lucky und Paulina (Staffel 11 u 12) 
Gray and blue and fights and tunnels Handcuffed to the spell I was under For just one hour of sunshine Years of labor, locks, and ceilings In the shade of how he was feeling But it's gonna be alright, I did my time Now, pretty baby, I'm runnin' back home to you Frеsh out the slammer, I know who my first call will be to Camera flashes, welcome bashes, get the matches Toss the ashes off the ledge As I said in my letters, now that I know better I will never lose my baby again
Give me one couple in the entirety of Schloss Einstein that screams Partners in Crime better than they do. (also give me one modern character that would be looked at like a criminal - they don’t do them like that anymore) 
Florida!!! - Joyce Simon (Staffel 24 u 25)
Little did you know your home's really only A town you're just a guest in So you work your life away just to pay For a time-share down in Destin (...) The hurricane with my name when it came I got drunk and I dared it to wash me away Barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine Well, me and my ghosts, wе had a hell of a time Yes, I'm hauntеd, but I'm feeling just fine
One character who never quite seemed to feel at home, who had a friend and still fled the country, who has never had a home because family was always foreign. 
Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me? - Joshua Hockenbrink (Staffel 27) 
The who's who of "Who's that?" is poised for the attack But my bare hands paved their paths You don't get to tell me about "sad" (...) Crash the party like a record scratch as I scream "Who's afraid of little old me?" You should be The scandal was contained The bullet had just grazed At all costs, keep your good name You don't get to tell me you feel bad Is it a wonder I broke? Let's hear one morе joke Then we could all just laugh until I cry (...) So tell me everything is not about me But what if it is? Then say they didn't do it to hurt me But what if they did? I wanna snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me You wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me So all you kids can sneak into my house with all the cobwebs I'm always drunk on my own tears, isn't that what they all said? That I'll sue you if you step on my lawn That I'm fearsome and I'm wretched and I'm wrong
A birthday party organized simply to taunt him, the usually slightly mean behavior that drives everyone away and makes you think he is nothing more than rude, nothing more than a villain. But he’s also the boy that seems to want nothing more than to find a place that accepts him. 
loml - Leon und Io aus Leons Sicht (Staffel 27 post 1064) 
We embroidered the memories of the time I was away Stitching, "We were just kids, babe" I said, "I don't mind, it takes time" I thought I was better safe than starry-eyed I've felt a glow like this never before and never since (...) You holy ghost, you told me I'm the love of your life You said I'm the love of your life About a million times Who's gonna tell me the truth when you blew in with the winds of fate (...) I wish I could unrecall How we almost had it all Dancing phantoms on the terrace Are they second-hand embarrassed That I can't get out of bed
I Can Do It With a Broken Heart - Massuda Phanit (Staffel 26 u 27)
I can read your mind "She's having the time of her life There in her glittering prime The lights refract sequin stars off her silhouette every night" I can show you lies 'Cause I'm a real tough kid I can handle my shit They said, "Babe, you gotta fake it 'til you make it" and I did Lights, camera, bitch, smile Even when you wanna die Breaking down, I hit the floor All the piеces of me shatterеd as the crowd was chanting, "More" I was grinnin' like I'm winnin' I was hittin' my marks I'm so depressed, I act like it's my birthday every day
Massuda is glitter, she is smiles in the camera, she is organizing parties and loud music and dancing and…She is also the parents that don’t accept her if she doesn’t have good grades. She is also the one who has to hide her true self whenever her parents turn up. 
Clara Bow - Marlon to Simon (Staffel 27)
"You look like Clara Bow In this light, remarkable All your life, did you know You'd be picked like a rose?" I'm not trying to exaggerate But I think I might die if it happened Die if it happened to me No one in my small town Thought I'd see the lights of Manhattan Take the glory, give everything Promise to be dazzling
This might seem a wee bit crazy but hear me out! Marlon likes Nesrin but he also thinks Nesrin likes Simon. And he knows Simon is probably better at this whole liking someone and flirting with them thing that he will ever be because after all, he’s just the kid with the star bread.
— june🪐
(the anthology comes in a separate part bcs else this is too long to read - it already prob is)
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That makes sense with Blanche! Tbh I’m the same ^^;; What if his love asked him about going on a date as a way to confess (she is attempting to indirectly confess by asking if they are going to go on a date together). Alternatively, if she was feeling bold and asked if he would kiss her?
Anon also asked: I forgot to ask in the last one I sent, if Blanche’s love asked him “do you have romantic feelings for me?” Would he answer honestly?
The previous ask connected to this
tw: sexually suggestive
Blanche would be as dense as a rock. He thinks you asking him out on a date is the same as wanting to hang out with him platonically. The same goes for the request for a kiss, Blanche thinks that you just wanted affection from him then. It's not like he had never put his lips on you, he does that all the time!
It's only when you ask if he could kiss you on the lips, will he starts to stutter and blush a bit as it's slightly suggestive. However, he chooses to think you have the purest intentions, he would give you a tender peck on your lips regardless of flustering.
Any and every indirect confession will not work on him, he will remain as affectionate as ever. It is only when you explicitly tell him that you want to fuck him or suck him off, he will understand that you want to steer this relationship in another direction, to uncharted waters. In usual Blanche-y fashion, he will stutter, become all bashful, and turn into a tomato. He will tend to hide behind his hands, too embarrassed to face you.
His belief is that once the relationship has a sexual aspect to it, it's automatically romantic. There are no such things as friends with benefits to him, that's silly! You cannot remain friends with someone who has been inside you or you inside them. That is another level of vulnerability that can only be shared between the sweetest of lovers.
Blanche's behavior will change around you, perhaps for the better. He would be a bit awkward and under extreme stress for the first few weeks, but everything will eventually get back to normal. Except with the occasional lewd touches and dirty flirting (usually from your end, he would still be too shy and too much of a gentleman to initiate such things so boldly).
However, once you change the relationship into this state, there is no going back. You can't tell him that you just see him as a mere friend, you wouldn't want to make him think you led him on, would you? And you knew what he thought of those who made a fool out of him, you definitely wouldn't want him to see you as his enemy.
The only way to break up with him is through death. Even then, it may not be guaranteed.
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jinx-on-mars-19xx · 23 hours
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Pressure Got My Head in Knots
🩸Previous Parts Here🩸
Dom x Colson (Yungblud x Machine Gun Kelly)
Warnings: ABO dynamics (knots, slick, heat), alpha serial killer/hitman Dom, omega mob boss Kells, mentions of killing, allusions to past abuse, cursing, allusions to trafficking, awkward boys, stilted conversation, bad dreams, night terrors, mentions of Dom's pretty uncut monster cock, misunderstandings, embarrassment, insults, stiff sleeping positions, boys cuddling, emerging feels, passage of time (not long), too much metaphor (I won't apologize), secret masterbation, improper use of a t shirt (they're always cum goblins), hurt/comfort, accidental grinding, biting/marking, blood, nervous boys, enemies to lovers 💣 Rating: explicit
All ideas helped by @iamnotanearthlingmotherfucker 🖤
The roof was almost becoming a comfort for Dom. It was his spot really. He could look out over the terrible city they lived in and ponder how many Alphas were just waiting for his knife. He hadn't killed anyone since before he met the omega but it steadied him to think about it. He'd been coming here since their afternoon together and occasionally sleeping on the balcony. He never meant to fall asleep but the night after they fucked he went to check on Colson and thought he heard him sound pained. He was whimpering and sounded scared and it made Dominic’s blood run cold. After a moment he realized the man was only having a bad dream but the sight of the strong mob boss curling a pillow against his chest like a teddy bear hurt the heart Dom didn't think he had. Since he couldn't comfort him and didn't even know how he'd desired at least to stay close. Watch over him. Most nights he stayed on the balcony but he would escape before the sun rose and sleep fitfully in his own bed.
He was having trouble making himself take that last step off the edge of the building after what Collette had told him earlier at the club. He hadn't expected to feel so torn up inside knowing his… lover? had been hurt so badly but he was filled with shite he didn't know how to deal with. He was scared if he saw the man again he'd accidentally show somehow that he knew. They matched in so many ways besides just being devils in the playground of LA’s underworld. He never expected that. His gaze rolled up to the blank black sky, devoid of stars and didn't that just match his soul. “Fuck.” He huffed, stomping out his cigarette before he took the leap. For once he didn't smile at the rush of air tickling him and when his feet touched down his stomach dropped.
The first thing he noticed wasn't the light still on in the bedroom and it wasn't the pacing omega shadow ghosting over him- it was the glass door that was normally locked tight. For once it was… open?
Colson was exhausted after his long fucking night. He swore the universe was screwing with him. First the shipment of omegas was stolen out from under him and then his mother had pulled him aside when they got home. She lived on another floor and when they were out together they always shared a car. Collette had waited until they were walking inside and she finally spoke up about that fucking psycho. She'd explained gently how terrible Dom looked, that she didn't think the boy was sleeping any better than him. She'd kept her voice loving when she suggested he just give him a chance, what could it hurt having a friend?
He knew her better than that and he knew she knew him. Col didn't make friends easily and whatever was between them wasn't that. Dom knew what he was. Dom had quite literally been inside him, something no one else had ever been allowed. Since they slept together he couldn't sleep right. Old memories came back with a vengeance. She knew all of that, she knew his history, hell she'd lived it too. She'd slipped in one simple thing that had made him think and he hated it. He hated how damn well it worked on him. Travis would have loved him. The thing that pissed him off most was that she was right. Fuck.
“Ello.” The word was simple but it made Colson jump and he reached for a gun he didn't have. He rolled his eyes and turned to face the other man, his heart racing in his chest.
Collette had been right, Dom looked like hell. His eyes were tired and dark, his wild hair almost limp. He looked like a kicked puppy and Kells knew he was behind the boot. Damnit. “Hey.” Well… that was helpful. They were like awkward teenagers at the prom and not two mostly full grown men who knew each other intimately.
Dom tried to look less intimidating by slipping his hands in his hoodie pocket. LA heat was rough but sometimes he needed something to hide in. He didn't step too far into the room, he wasn't sure he was welcome. He'd already done damage with his cock, he wouldn't make it worse. He couldn't stop his gaze from wandering though- Colson was just in jeans and nothing else. The man was gorgeous and he almost couldn't believe he knew exactly what he felt like from the inside. Oh fuck he had to stop thinking like that. Col arched a brow as if he could feel Dom’s thoughts and moved to sit on the foot of the bed. Something made him curse under his breath and reposition himself. “You still ‘urt?”
Kells scoffed and shook his head. He didn't think whatever had twinged in his belly was from the Alpha's monster dick and even if it was he'd never say so. He couldn't give him the satisfaction. “Just pulled a muscle in the gym I think. You good?”
Dom startled at the question. He wasn't sure how to answer that so he just hip checked the dresser and stared at the other man. “No. But you ain't nei’ver. Jus’ been sleeping off.” He tried to lighten the statement with a tease but it fell flat. The omega had to know he'd been sleeping on the balcony if he left it open. He just wasn't used to trying to be a person, Tom never expected it from him. Maybe he shouldn't try to fake it with Colson either. “So you got fucked tonight?”
Col’s eyes went wide and for a moment he thought to clutch his pearls. Where the fuck did this asshole get the audacity?
“The meeting! At ya club. Seemed like it didn't go right. I didn't mean- bloody ‘ell.” The Alpha went so pink and his voice so rushed. His accent thick enough to walk on. Something happened inside the omega, something he really wasn't used to. The embarrassment from the Alpha made him laugh.
Dom smirked as the other man laughed at him. It was such a nice sound he didn't even mind it was at his expense. He was just happy to help however he could. “Fink I would ‘ave noticed summat else. I jus’- Yeah, yeah. Make fun of the guy wiv the silly accent.”
“Dude, fuuuuck that was good. Thanks for that. Yeah uh… I got screwed over tonight. A shipment of omegas was coming in from the East Coast and someone jacked it.” Kells wiped his eyes and tried to stop his laughing, it kept setting off whatever was aching in his stomach. Fuck, his body was feeling strange since he went off the blockers. He wasn't looking forward to what else was in store. What if his heats were a regular thing now? Maybe it was smart to let the Alpha hang around. It wasn't like he'd trust anyone else to help. He didn't know if that meant he trusted the killer already though or not. It took him a moment to realize Dom had gone quiet and he looked up to see the Alpha look away. “I don't sell them. I save them. I figured mom told you? Why the fuck would you come back if you seriously thought I was selling people?” He was truly shocked. He could see the contempt fade from the other man's face and a look of relief shone in his darkened jade eyes. Dom killed Alphas for less. He came to put Col down because of it… Why would he still show up?
“You needed me.” The Alpha shrugged but something tight and messy in his chest relaxed. He could see the omega working through something mentally but he didn't push. He wanted to be welcome.
Colson ignored the way that statement made him feel, especially how easily Dom said it. Instead he moved to crawl up the bed and settle under the blankets, carefully working off his jeans once he was safely hidden from view. He tossed them at the Alpha who caught them and tried his hardest not to sniff. Kells saw it though, those tired eyes flashed red before he folded the pants and set them aside. “Just so you know, my adoptive dad started this. He bought omegas and gave them new lives. I took over for him.” He explained simply. He was too exhausted to get into too much detail and it felt strange to talk because it didn't feel strange to talk to Dom. He was feeling too much to simply talk, especially after what he just realized. The killer ignored his deepest beliefs because he needed him. How was he supposed to handle that?
The Alpha wondered if he should leave but Colson patted the bed next to him. “Shut the fucking door and come to bed. Aren't you tired?”
After a moment Dom nodded and did as he was told before he walked around the bed. He tried to keep his mind from wandering to the night they met or how pretty the other would look spread out under him. His bite scar twinged as he took a seat on top of the covers and he rested back against the headboard. He kept to himself, his ankles crossed and his hands in his pockets. He didn't trust himself to do anything else. “Fanks.” He sighed, letting his eyes close as he leaned his head back but he could feel the other man staring at him.
“You're a fucking weirdo. I hope you know that.” Colson huffed with a playful edge to his voice. He didn't mean to scoot closer but he did by just a few inches as he tried to find comfort on his side. One thing he liked about being off his blockers hit him as he took a breath and closed his eyes.
The creepy psycho Alpha smelled like home.
🖤🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🖤
When Colson woke up the next morning he was surprised to realize how well he slept and even more so because at some point he'd inched over the rest of the space between them to cuddle against Dom’s side even though the Alpha never moved a bit. He pried himself away as carefully as possible to let the man sleep and promptly removed himself from the situation pushing the thought out of his mind. He couldn't process everything happening so instead he thought he'd work out. He could keep his days normal and decide what to do with the other man at night.
🌛
Dom appeared again once the sun went down, though of course he'd been watching most of the day. He was excited to jump to the balcony and even found himself smiling when he saw the door open. He wasn't used to being welcomed. Expected. Potentially even… wanted? They still didn't really talk but that night when Kells gave him a look he pulled his hoodie off and slipped free of his shoes. Waiting on the bed was an extra blanket and as he got comfortable he tugged it over himself. He still made sure to keep separate but he let himself lay down that night.
🖤🩸🩸🩸🩸🖤
Yet again Colson found himself glued to the Alpha when the sun rose, his arm over the other man's chest. He huffed softly at himself but lingered a moment, taking a second to explore and memorize his bedmate’s face. Without the stress of their waking lives etched into Dom's features he appeared every bit his young age. The omega was tempted to kiss his plush lips but he forced himself to disengage, he had shit to do and he still didn't want to get attached. They were just… helping each other sleep. That was it.
🌛
As Dom closed and locked the glass door behind him that night he was surprised to see Colson watching him and holding the other side of the blankets up. The extra he'd been granted the night before was gone and the omega was smiling like he'd pulled the perfect prank. “I don't like jeans in bed. Don't be an asshole.” The mob boss grumbled and Dom had to obey. Even though he'd fucked the man it still felt weirdly intimate to undress to his boxer briefs and t shirt in front of him. Col smiled as the Alpha slipped in bed and for the first time they laid under the same sheet and faced each other. They fell asleep talking lightly about what had happened that day even though Dom already knew it all. To the Alpha it was starting to feel like home.
🖤🩸🩸🩸🖤
Kells sighed as he woke up, pressing his face into the Alpha's messy hair. They were tangled together and he wasn't surprised that even though Dom was asleep, part of his monster was very very awake. He let himself smile, his belly full of butterflies at the feeling of the psycho hard against him. Dom wasn't the only one but… he couldn't bring himself to do anything. Sleeping together was one thing but sleeping together when it wasn't a life or death situation? Fuck that. A part of his mind whispered ‘soon’ as he pulled himself free and escaped to the bathroom to take care of himself. He thought he might leave the mess on something for Dom to find but he'd be at the gym before the Alpha woke.
🌛
Dom was flipping Colson off as he joined him that night, he still couldn't believe what the bastard did. “Tha’ were me favorite shirt. Twat.” He huffed, getting undressed down to his boxer briefs. He jokingly hid his tee under the pillow instead of leaving it on. The omega had used the shirt on his body as a cum rag while he was sleeping and he wouldn't give him that chance again. If Kells needed relief he could use his bare skin. He didn't push it more than that though, they just laughed together as they got comfortable in bed, facing each other again. That night Dom liked the sound of his lover's laugh so much he found himself telling embarrassing stories. As they started to dirft they inched closer until their fingers touched.
🖤🩸🩸🖤
Colson slept a little fitfully that night so when he woke he wasn't surprised to find the Alpha spooning him and holding him tight. The strong arm he scarred was wrapped over him, that beautiful death dealing hand rest light on his abs. He let himself linger, a little mentally messy from bad dreams and worse memories. He tried to shift and felt a little worse for wear and slightly sick. He hated how much his trauma could still affect him after so long. He was pissed his memory could make him feel so sick so he stayed a little longer in bed and let the snoozing Alpha comfort him. It wasn't like the psycho would know. He'd still leave before Dom woke and ignore his thoughts for the rest of the day.
🖤🩸🖤
It kept on that way for another week. Another. Each night Dom would wander into Col’s bedroom and strip down to almost nothing. They'd settle close but not too in bed and talk. Or not. What they did didn't matter, just that they could help each other sleep.
🖤🖤
It was almost a month of their new routine when something different happened one night. Everything had gone well- Dom showed up, slipped mostly nude in bed, they shared a few laughs or complaints, and drifted off to sleep. Normally the Alpha stayed awake longer to make sure the other was doing well. He had learned to judge how bad Col’s dreams would be by how much he whimpered or whined but that night he was quiet and Dom misjudged what that meant. Shortly after he drifted himself he was woken up by a blood curdling scream. He was jarred awake and instantly on alert, blinking his tired eyes fast. His sight cleared quickly to find Kells fighting himself, full body trembling as he scratched bloody marks in his inked skin.
The Alpha was scared which was an emotion he wasn't used to but he tried to move to help. He gently reached out to stop the assault but one touch was enough to wake the man. For a moment they stared wide eyed at each other before one tear escaped down Col’s cheek. “Colson-” Dom whispered softly, his voice thick with emotion he couldn't share.
“D-Dom?” The omega's voice was small and that one word broke the dam. The normally collected man felt a sob break free and without a second thought he was throwing himself at his lover's chest and crying against his neck.
Dominic wasn't used to comforting anyone but he wrapped his omega tight in his hold and pet his fingers slowly down his back. It was what Tom did for him when he felt shattered and it was all he had to offer besides a softly whispered- “I'm so sorry.”
“Why did he- why did they- why wasn't I good enough?” The Alpha couldn't make out much but he put a few things together from choked words and context clues. Besides that, he'd asked those questions a lot as a boy. He'd grown out of begging the universe for answers about the time he ripped his father open.
“You was. ‘Ush tha’. You was. No one else was for you. I ain't. No one is.” Dom was surprised at the words on his lips but he meant every one of them. It hurt his black heart to hear the strong man sound so young and broken and yet again he vowed to end the people who caused all that pain.
“Fuck you.” Colson whimpered, biting a kiss into his lover's neck. It surprised a moan out of the Alpha which somehow made Kells do it again. “Fuck you.” Curse. Kiss. Bite. A drop of blood hit his tongue. Dom groaned and their bodies moved until they slot perfectly together- cloth covered cock to cloth covered cock.
“Wha'?” Dom didn't know what to do. He could feel his dick filling hard and fast. His shaking hands wandered the sweat slick planes of Col’s inked back and he kept his head tilted. He wouldn't take any liberties but if the omega needed him he would do anything to help. He had his own needs though and they were rushing to the surface, probably making his eyes shine crimson bright.
“Shut the fuck up. Not good enough? Fuck you. Look at you.” Colson didn't know what he was doing. He just knew the more he touched and tasted the younger man the more his hellish dream was erased. At least for the time being. His tongue traced the Alpha's thundering pulse until he sucked a mark on his jaw. His hips rolled as their hands explored and his darkness ebbed slowly.
“Look- look at- fuck Cols?” Dom whined his name like a beg and the omega nodded as they thrust harder. Before he knew it their lips were meeting in a blood flavored kiss.
The Alpha could barely breathe, everything was too hot and so much. His cock was so hard it was poking out the top of his underwear and grinding against Col’s doing the same. They groped each other and pulled the other tighter, their panted breath mingling between rough kisses. Besides their soft moans and needy whimpers the sound of their precum wet bellies sticking together was near deafening.
Neither knew who hit their peak first, it seemed they were sucked under together. One cried out and the other answered and they both spilled a hot rush against their skin. At some point Dom's thigh had fit between Col’s own and the Alpha felt his leg drenched in slick. He didn't say anything but he savored the scent and feel as they rocked through their pleasure with shaking limbs.
Eventually their breathing calmed and their bodies stilled but they didn't pull apart. They weren't even sure they could if they tried. Kells couldn't bring himself to speak so instead he tucked himself under his lover's chin. He couldn't work out what had just happened and he was scared if he tried he'd break the tentative peace. Dom was just as confused but pleasantly pleased, his veins buzzing with pleasure. He just held the other close and pet his back as they drifted, eventually falling asleep again.
At one point Colson thought he heard the Alpha whisper something that felt both true and terrifying. It settled his soul but raced his heart in his chest. “You're safe. ‘Ome.” He tried to ignore it and sleep but he found himself waiting for the sun to rise so he could escape the safety of Dom's arms before he did something stupid like get used to it. Deep down he knew it was too fucking late. He already was. Home.
Author's Note/Tags: @iamnotanearthlingmotherfucker @hollywoodxwhore @jaxbreaker @fenoy7 @cole-way-iero28 if anyone wants tagged let me know 🖤
It's not exactly a birthday fic but at least Kells got some special attention. I know it's a lot of deep feels and it may get worse before it gets better but you know I'm all about the silly happy dumb boys 😂 I hope you enjoyed it! 🩸🖤
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neet-elite · 1 day
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☆ 500 FOLLOWER PROMPT EVENT ☆
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yahoooo!!! we hit 500 followers, that's insane! thank you so much everyone for following, liking, interacting, and generally supporting me, this blog, and my creative endeavours! i've made so many friends thanks to this blog, and i appreciate every single one of you (even if you just lurk hehe). Please read the following carefully if you'd like to take part in a celebration event!!
— the event will last until: April 30th. you can send multiple requests in during this time period !!
— characters included in the event are as follows !! SDV: sam, sebastian, alex, harvey, elliott, shane, kent, penny, haley. DoL: whitney, robin, kylar, sydney, alex. — if asking for alex, please specify if you mean SDV or DoL alex, thank you!
— max of 2 characters and 2 prompt numbers allowed per ask !! — i only write for f!reader, but i also don't mind doing character/character requests! just make sure to tell me you want character/character only, otherwise i'll assume you want threesome content.
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↳ how to take part!!
— be 18+, duh. include your age in your bio because i will be checking lmao. if you don't have this, your request will be deleted.
— send me an ask off anon. this is because i want to be able to track who asked for what more easily, however, you will still remain anonymous because all of the event requests will be posted as STANDALONE TEXT POSTS meaning I will only answer your ask privately to let you know when i've finished the request!
— include the character(s) you want included, the prompt number(s), and anything else you feel is necessary! such as: enemies to lovers, childhood besties, your preferred setting like school, bedroom, beach, etc. ↳ for example: for the follower event, can i request sam and sebastian with numbers 3 and 6? i'd like it if both sam and seb were childhood friends with the reader if possible. thank you! *
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↳ prompts !!
.01 — sleepy/good morning sex
.02 — hybrid(s) (you can specify if just one character is a hybrid, or if you want everyone to be a hybrid etc!)
.03 — date night
.04 — breeding
.05 — worship (you can specify the type of worship, such as general body, a specific body part, or something like yandere worship!)
.06 — jealousy sex
.07 — incest (you can specify if blood or step!)
.08 — stuck (like in a wall, under a fence, etc)
.09 — dry humping
.10 — phone sex
.11 — oral fixation
.12 — corruption kink
.13 — aphrodisiac
.14 — hypnosis
.15 — dumbification (you can specify who you want to be dumbified!)
.16 — role reversal
.17 — watersports
.18 — yandere (for characters who are not already!)
.19 — anal (you can specify who you want to be giving/receiving!)
.20 — AU of your choice! (for example: rock star sam, etc. just be sure to tell me the general basis of which au you're picking!)
that's all folks! thank you for taking the time to look, and thank you extra if you want to take part in the event! i'll update this post with a completed masterlist of all of the posts when the event is over. i hope you're all doing well and im sending u all a lil kiss mwah!
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ryssbelle · 2 months
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Legends Arceus blorbos got me like 🤪
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maulfucker · 2 months
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This song is making me want to start yet another fic to never finish,, "Tell me... Where is your hideout? Who are we running from? I'm starting to think that you were right, and now I'm afraid of letting go of your hand...." Maul giving up on his Mandalore plan and deciding to just stalk Kenobi to tell him about his vision. Staying illegally in Obi-Wan's room because I love putting these guys in situations (and because Maul would NOT leave him alone until Obi-Wan actually accepted Maul is right, which he won't). Following Obi-Wan to Utapau and helping him escape after the clones attack, feeling equal parts vindicated and enraged (because he was proved right but Sidious still won). Them being on the run together....
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yeonban · 4 months
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As soon as I get a window of free time (which should be in the next 1-2 non-business days) I NEED to write a post about how knowing / interacting with Kolya gives off a very... surreal vibe. The kind you got every summer as a child. The same as a summertime fling that only exists on borrowed time and will vanish just as abruptly as it started, never to be felt again after summer ends. The sort you sometimes wonder if you've dreamed up or if it really happened, but no matter which one it is you're certain you'll never forget it.
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torchickentacos · 1 year
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So my sister and I were talking and this happened (a masterpiece made in 30 seconds) (long tags)
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the-acid-pear · 11 months
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On: today i dreamt...
What started as a story about a group of gangster breaking into an abandoned (but not really?) prison to film their movie and being caught soon devolved into an international conspiracy filled with subplots about love and corruption, culminating with both groups that we thought were equally righteous finding out not everything was quite as it seems.
#luly talks#i had to run a man on all 4s to catch him it was great#movie-dream started about like torture with our protags being thrown into a container at first full of blood and missing limbs#but that soon got dropped w the only thing left of it being this one man who had part of his jaw and ribs falling/peeling off#and he had to lovers an old one who was kissing him and a new one#(a cop; too) who was looking at his naked for for the first time as he looked at the sea and sunset#and she slowly approached him before starting to kiss his somehow still bleeding wounds as he mourned the pain of being crucified#like that guy literally never showed up again#oh my god actually there was something aside from that there was a really fucked up sims world that just couldn't be real#and ended w marge and homer drowning i think (their house was underwater) and Maggie dying too as a nursery rhyme played#and there was also a random event of domestic violence#anyway about the movie-dream; it had something to do about the government making illnesses and having the cure but keeping it#and it was tied to reagan but we all were talking spanish (tbf movie-dream; could've been dubbed DKDHNSGD) and the reason why we realized#this was because a radio message of a british girl named sumthin like casey i think who had cancer or something#and basically the government knew and had the mediums to cure her but wouldn't do it#so in the end me and this girl who discovered this conspiracy and the other and og group who was doing fuck all i guess came back together#and at first my friend pretended to be all of our enemies (she was enemies w only one guy there) but then we turned on the guy#and as I guess revenge on the people who were supporting this goverment conspiracy and helping it instead of killing them we grabbed them#and flashed a weird scan light onto their eye which made em be infected#<- in dream this shit was cool as fuck ok?#and then everyone went on w their lives and in the bud#bus* ppl spoke w me and gave me food leftovers to help out those who needed em but it felt... awkward#like they were doing it out of fear instead of kindness y'know#oh btw i rode an helicopter 😁
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lonelywhalien22 · 11 months
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xo kitty final post of thoughts (I promise) in the tags below if anyone cares and then imma dissapear into the void again and go back to trying to write my own sh-t lol 😆
#someone needs to draw up a relationship chart for this d@mn show#bc wtf it was actually too much even for the messy dramatic in me#like the amount of possible relationships in this short series of 10 30 min episodes covers like -#2-3 seasons worth of relationship permutations in like your standard american tv show lol#*xo kitty spoilers after this tag*#dae and juliana deserved better.#still trying to understand how kitty fell for someone who was a literal antagonist in the first half of the show -#and did so many hurtful things to her#like??? it didn't feel like enemies to lovers it just felt straight up antagonistic lol#not to mention i feel like constant interruption/straight up miscommunication got in the way of kitty and dae actually talking through -#the stupid conflict in the first part of the show#and i hate when that's used as a plot device too much - it becomes a crutch imo#did i mention that the fake dating plot just...didn’t hit for me#like they're fake dating but yuri was committed to the act in a way that made no sense considering her initial motivations 🧐#like eye -#and minho was meh - i didn’t hate him by the end#but there was no need to make him interested in kitty as well that just seemed random af to me too ngl#how are you suddenly in love bro you just met her and yall weren’t even spending time like that on the regular???#wished they'd spent more time addressing the loneliness he clearly feels with having a celebrity mom#and how he overcompensates for it by being overly committed/attached to his friends and their lives and parties and flings...#but anyways -#also wished dae just got more background with his family and money situation.#i enjoyed when he was on screen and would have liked to see more#but d@mn did he get shoved to the side in this story lol#best part was prob family drama with alex yuri's mom and professor snape lol#and q and florian. loved them <3#juliana was in this for all of maybe like 9 minutes total lol like wtf ik she was sent away but damn 😂#in 2023's internet age she and yuri couldn’t find each other despite their parent's involvement???#anyways - thank you for coming to my ted talk#this review is so unserious just ranting for fun so don't take it too seriously unless you agree then send me comments bc wtf was this lol
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