#but Will's entire send off has been -plead emoji-

[zedxspacess]

Zack Sabre Jr coming out from the curtains to send Will Ospreay off after his final match (for now) at RevPro

#they'll both be back soon enough #but Will's entire send off has been -plead emoji- #so sweet #wrestling #pro wrestling #Will Ospreay #Zack Sabre Jr #zsj #revpro #njpw

[lovelylotusf1]

Waltz to the booming tick of the clock

It begins as all things do: Lando convincing Oscar to do something and Oscar going along with it because he can never say no to those pleading eyes and pouting lips, even if he knows that it's exactly why Lando looks at him like that. This time, it's Lando running up to Oscar, begging him to teach him how to dance so he can impress the girl he likes.

It starts innocently enough. Late night messages with links to dance tutorials and elaborate music playlists and countless emojis reacting as soon as the chime of a bell indicates a new thought has been sent. A chat filled with various "I don't think that's possible" and "Lando, why did you send me this, this is hip-hop, not waltz!" and "look Osc, isn't this music so pretentious? I prefer something faster but I do what needs to be done, right?"

Finally finding a time to meet up, maybe even renting a dance studio because if they do this, then they should do it right, yeah? A space only for them, a space protected against the booming tick of time from outside. In here, the only tick that counts is from the metronome that dictates their pace.

It syncs with the beat of their hearts and why is Oscar's heart beating so fast when he looks at Lando, all determined sparks in his eyes and flexible body stretching and twisting to warm up, in positions Oscar would never have dreamed were physically possible?

They start with Oscar patiently teaching Lando the steps. Guiding him through the 3/4 rhythm, smiling at Lando protesting that he knows this because he's also a dj, god damnit! Laughing when they step on each other's toes. Getting dizzy when they first try out the simplest of spins. Cackling at the stupid square they are supposed to be creating with their steps and stop laughing Lando, this is serious! Said with the widest and softest grin Oscar is only capable of making when it's Lando.

Until Lando gets it, he's determined when he puts his mind to something after all. Then they move on. Move a step further. Hand on the waist, on the shoulder. Was Oscar's waist always this small? Were his shoulders always this broad?

Was Lando's body always this soft, pliable like putty, ready to be guided when Oscar led?

Hand clasped together - small against big. Oscar's hand almost engulfed by Lando's. Made to be together, made to hold each other like two pieces of a puzzle slotting together for the first time. Were their hands always this warm?

Their bodies flush together when they're dancing, a high blush on both their cheeks from exhaustion, their hair sweaty and Oscar wants nothing more than to ask Lando to stay like this forever. Freeze this moment in time just like their space is frozen - something uniquely theirs.

He thinks about running his fingers through Lando's hair, marvel at how lovely he looks with his skin glowing gold from the evening sun (they've been practising the whole day). He thinks about putting a hand on Lando's cheek, tracing that beautiful smile of his, admiring how happy he looks when he's dancing with Oscar.

Repeating thoughts. Day after day, week after week.

Oscar clings to these moments because deep inside, he knows they won't last. Soon, Lando won't need him any more. He'll get bored of Oscar. He'll move on to the girl he was always supposed to be dancing with.

When he inevitably does, Oscar will send Lando off with his signature thumbs-up, a small and fragile smile plastered on his face. Trying to ignore the sound of his heart shattering into two, the clock coming to a screeching halt.

Maybe, just maybe, Lando will look back. Ignore the girl with her long flowery dress, beautiful hair and doe-like eyes. Maybe, he will look at Oscar's hands, remember how they felt against his body, remember how they belonged there, remember the sparks between them in those fragile yet endless moments.

Or maybe, he will forget their dancing lessons entirely. Maybe he will move on, with a toothy grin on his face like there always is, with a "thanks mate, I owe you one" and a clap on the back, hands never lingering longer than they absolutely have to. Turn his back on Oscar, dance with the girl that will have everything Oscar would never dare to dream of.

But for now, Oscar will be the one who continues to dance with Lando. All while ignoring the booming clock that's ticking down to the end.

Background info: I just saw an ad on TV which had two boys dancing together to a slow waltz. I was almost cooing because yay, representation on a channel where there is practically none (even if it's in the form of ugh, an ad)! But then it showed that they were only "practising" for one boy to finally dance with the girl of his dreams while the other watched with a proud but wistful smile.

Yeah. This spawned many thoughts.

#i was overwhelmed by an ad and spat this out as a result #does this qualify as: #lotus wrote something #i don't know #lotus rambles #landoscar #f1 rpf #formula 1 rpf #f1 fanfiction

[shurisneakers]

harmless (iv)

Summary: Bucky volunteers to go stop a small time villain, but nothing can prepare him for what exactly he has to deal with. (Bucky x villain!reader, drabble series)

Warnings: cursing, guns, mention of war, frustrated bucky, dramatic reader

Word count: 1.5k

A/N: good evening i’ve never been to any of the places i mention in this series so dont come @ me

if you have any ideas for future inventions/evil plans, lemme know! i might actually end up using them 

here’s my ko-fi if you’d like to support my writing <333

Previous Part || Series Masterlist

He spends the weekend doing nothing. It’s supposed to be relaxing. He finds it nauseatingly boring.

“No mini mission this week?” Steve asks him from across the couch. 

They’re supposed to be catching up on Star Wars but two prequels in and Bucky could feel himself lose his sanity. Anyone could present him with a random assortment of alphabets, call it a Star Wars species and he would have no reason not to believe them.

It’s not like he doesn’t like space. It’s just that he’s had enough of it and everything and everyone who came from it for the foreseeable future.

“No. Someone else is taking care of it.”

“Didn’t you volunteer for this?”

“I pulled myself out of the case.”

“I thought you were having fun.” 

Bucky’s head slowly turns to look at him. “Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know,” Steve shrugged. “Looked like you were.”

Well, he wasn’t. He likes it here at home, glued to the TV. Popcorn beside him, sweatpants on. Refreshing, calming, slow, mundane, and Jesus Christ, so fucking boring-

His spiralling is interrupted by the dinging of the elevator to the common floor. No one was allowed up there unless it was extremely urgent. Guests were barely allowed into the Tower as it was. 

It reveals the receptionist from downstairs, Marie. She’s always a little reserved, a little shy. But Bucky had seen her chew and spit out trespassers or anyone who dared to get on her nerve. He adores her.

“Hey, Marie,” Steve says while Bucky sends her a friendly wave in greeting. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s a hostage situation downtown,” she informs them. 

“Okay...” Steve drawls, waiting for a reason why this was an Avengers level threat.

“They’ve asked for Mr. Barnes by name.” She makes a mention towards him.

Bucky sits up straight. Bits of popcorn fall off his chest. 

“What?”

“They said, and I quote-” she looks down at her notepad. “‘Tell that grumpy motherfucker that I’m waiting for him and that he’s not getting out of this so easily because we have come too far.’ End quote. They’ve also told me to include a kissing emoji. And a skull.”

Steve and he look at each other.

“Well?” Steve prods. 

Bucky sighs and gets up to go get ready.

The entrance of Chuck E. Cheese is more crowded than he’d ever seen. He wasn’t even sure he’d seen people in the store before. If there were, they probably only came up till his waist. 

There are a few journalists, a few policemen standing together outside. Whispers of confusion and curiosity reigned free. 

Bucky gently pushes his way to the front. He gets a nod from a police officer who opens the door for him after a quick briefing. 

The place is darker than it usually would be. A trademark, it seemed. The blinds are drawn shut and most of the light is coming through whatever sneaks in through the crack. 

“Hey, Barnes.” Your voice is muffled by a mask that looks suspiciously like it was made out of classroom craft supplies.

There’s a person in a loose chokehold in your hand with a gun pressed against his head. Once again it looks straight out of a cartoon, purple with round disks lining its barrel. 

“What’s all this now?” He gestures around monotonously. 

“A hostage situation. Didn’t you get the memo?”

“Got that part down, genius,” he bites back. “But why?”

“Fucker kept harassing me when I was walkin’ down the street.” 

The guy’s helpless gaze met Bucky. 

“Catcalling me, stalking me.” You tighten the grip you have on him. “Call me darlin’ one more time, you son of a bitch. I dare you.”

He wasn’t impressed with his pleading eyes. He kinda felt like he deserved it. 

“Why’d you do it here?” The bright colours were starting to give him a heading. “And where are the staff?”

“It’s symbolic, Bucky,” you emphasise, “He deserves to be among other rat bastards.”

Of course.

“The staff?” he asks again. 

“Gave them thirty bucks and told them to leave. I’m not a monster.”

“Right.” He doesn’t bother refuting you. “Why’d you call me here?”

“Dunno.” You shrug. “Thought it’d be fun. You having fun yet?”

You shake the guy you’re holding. He gives a small whimper. 

Bucky doesn’t want to stop you. He had chugged enough Respect Juice in his lifetime to know that this guy probably deserved a threat or two.

Hell, he’d even help but you were more than capable of handling this on your own.

“Listen,” he sighed. “As much as I’m sure he deserves it, this is technically illegal and I’m required to stop you.”

“Sorry sarge, I thought you weren’t interested in playing this stupid game with me,” you mock, voice dropping to imitate him.

“I’m not.” It wasn’t entirely true. One Saturday with Jar Jar Binks had convinced him otherwise.

“Okay, so before you leave, do me a favour and call Hawkeye. I hear he looks mighty fine when he’s annoyed.”

His face involuntarily scrunched up. You were going to replace him with Clint? Clint?

He probably took it more as an insult than he should have.

“I’m not doing that.” Bless his foul mouthed friend, but he was a little shit who was too sarcastic for his own good. At least twice a week he’d say something stupid to Bucky and then take out his hearing aids when he tried to argue back. 

“You’re leavin’ me with no options here,” you groaned, using your thumb to flip a switch. The gun looks like it powered up, lights along the side turning red.

If he let you have this, it’d be a bad look for the Avengers.

New York man dies in Chuck E. Cheese lone hostage situation, unable to be saved by same superhero who tried to fight Thanos with a machine gun.

“Tell ya what,” he says instead, “If you kill him, there won’t even be a slight chance that you’ll see me again.”

Your grip on the gun falters.

“If I let him go...”

“I might consider coming back next week.” He’s trying to spin it, make it look like he’s the one with the upper hand here. “But you gotta let him go.”

You search his face for any signs of dishonesty.

“Let him go or you’ll never see me again.” It sounds too much like Clint’s arguments with his dog who brought a live squirrel into the house. 

“Fine,” you relent, a glint in your eye. “but say goodbye to this fuckface.”

Before Bucky can open his mouth to shout in protest, you pull the trigger. The man clenches his eyes shut, face red.

He expects blood to be splatter across his face.

Nothing happens.

A barrage of bubbles floats into the room.

“I meant it literally,” you say, pushing him off you. “Say goodbye. He’s leaving.”

The man stumbles to the ground and Bucky doesn’t make any attempt to catch him. He scrambles to his knees, picking himself up and scurrying out the door to a hoard of reporters.

The door shuts behind him with the chime of a bell.

“You’re annoying,” Bucky states, giving a small sigh.

“I’m well aware of that.” You pull off the mask, wiping the sweat off your brow.

“Where is the agent assigned to your case?” 

“Dunno. Last I saw he was crying on the driveway of my lair. I just figured he’d pick himself up later so I left him there.”

Bucky’s nose twitches. 

“You weren’t actually going to kill him, were you.” He shrugs with his shoulder towards the door. It wasn’t a question, more a statement. He knew you wouldn’t. 

“I could have.”

“But you weren’t going to,” he repeats. 

“No,” you admit. “I wasn’t. But I’m glad to see you showed up.”

“You held someone hostage as leverage.”

“No, no. I held someone hostage and then asked to see you. They were completely unrelated.”

“You’re evil.”

“You jumped to conclusions,” you point out. “Would you like a trampoline next time? Maybe a pogo stick, you clown?”

He has a very real gun in his holster. His very real metal death arm aches to use it. 

“No one else agreed to come,” he deflects. 

“We both know that’s a lie. You were going to come back anyway.” You stuff the bubble gun back into the bag. “I’m deliciously irresistible.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Then beg.” You give him a smirk and he rolls his eyes. “Don’t worry, you win this round, sarge.”

He doesn’t say anything. He watches you remove your heist gear, revealing normal civilian clothes underneath.

You walk casually to the kitchen, intending to leave through the back door.

“But I can’t say I lost either.” You send him a wink before swiftly pushing open the door and leaving him behind.

He only watches you leave.

It doesn’t hit him until a few seconds later that he let a criminal out of his hands when there were several policemen and journalists outside.

He entertains the idea of chasing you down and handing you over. 

It takes him only a few seconds to decide that if they wanted you, they’d have to try themselves.

Next part 

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #mcu fic #bucky fic #bucky barnes fic #bucky fluff #bucky barnes fluff #bucky angst #bucky barnes angst #harmless fic #winter soldier x reader #Winter Soldier #bucky barnes #bucky

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Time Apart

CW: Trauma survivor, referenced noncon and assault, heavy internalized victim-blaming and self-loathing/anti-asexuality (Chris has serious issues from his conditioning around this)

(references events from this small series)

I think you should spend time apart, not with me.

When Chris picks up his phone, it's not at all the message from Laken he expected to see. Not the kind of thing they've ever sent before.

He has to read it two times, then three. The letters swim and shake along with a dull pounding inside his head, but no matter how he tries to make them into other words - tell himself he must have misunderstood, must be missing something - they come back together the same in the end.

I think you should spend time apart, not with me.

Each letter is as crisp and clean as a sterilized blade between each rib, one by one by one by one.

The words are a body blow. They're a hundred blows, beating him into a barely recognizable shattered shell of himself. It wasn't supposed to happen this way - it's been a bad few days, yeah, a bad week really, but until yesterday's fight it had never occurred to him that Laken might give up on him.

The fight was his fault, anyway.

He meant to apologize last night, but then Nova had come into his room, and he'd lost the rest of the night to lying next to Jake, trying to remember how to stop living inside his head again, how to stop being still.

He'd woke up this morning with his stomach doing butterfly flips inside him, nervous, but he'd really wanted to say he was sorry, for the fight, for all the weirdness lately. He'd wanted to apologize for being difficult.

Instead... he'd woken up to find a missed text from the night before, sent after he'd shoved Nova away but before he could stand to look at anything again.

I think you should spend time apart, not with me.

There it sits.

He hasn't unlocked his phone yet. Instead, he keeps tapping the button to light up the screen, looking at the message preview that has all he needs to see. Lets it go dark again. As if one of these times he'll click and it'll say something else.

But it doesn't,

It just says the same damn thing.

I think you should spend time apart.

Not with me.

He's still staring at it when another one comes in. He feels the soft pulse of his phone in his hand, and the screen lights on its own.

LAKEN - NOW Did you see my message? 

He thinks maybe Kauri had it easier when he was the age Chris is now. Back when Kauri carried on entire conversations in emoji form, letting the nuance and ambiguity take over, the recipient working through the meaning on their own. With this, each letter is merciless, each word is unmistakable. He can’t misunderstand it. 

Can he?

He opens the phone with shaking fingers, types back yes, presses send, and turns his phone off.

Then he throws it at the wall.

He’s grateful for the heavy plastic case that makes it bounce off and drop to the floor without breaking. There's a strip on the back, textured and a soft purple, gray, white, and black. He rubs his fingers over it sometimes in class to keep himself from rocking and being distracting.

Now he just... stares at it.

Laken bought that for him. They bought the shirt he's wearing right now-

He yanks it off his head before he can think, balls up the soft fabric and throws it as well. It just sort of drifts pointlessly to the floor, a single eyeball from the print of a band he likes staring back at him.

Laken has ranted before about people who break up by text message, and Chris has to breathe through a physical ache in his chest that tightens every muscle at how awful he must be that they're not doing this face to face. How awful, how used-up, how shredded apart, how fucking pretty he is.

After all, he and Laken have been together for more than a year, and he still held perfectly still for Nova to touch him before he remembered how to move. After all, he’s a grown man who still cried and fell apart when Jake was hurt. After all, after all, after all...

He scrambles across the floor for his phone again, turns it back on. Part of him hopes he’ll see a new text saying they take it back, they didn’t mean it. Or just asking him to apologize for what he’d said that night before, for how he’d thrown their confusion over his reaction to something back at them, echoing out the way Kauri fights sometimes, talking about himself the way he thinks everyone else might be thinking about him, so he says the insult first and no one else gets to surprise him with it.

But there’s nothing new.

He manages to open the texts again, barely, and breathes in gasps, nearly pants, as he types out, you don’t want me at your place?

Not right now.

Is it because of what I can’t do?

It takes them a minute to answer. Every single second ticks by with a slowness Chris hasn’t felt since his days in the cold white room, tied down to stillness, forced to endure every minute that passed in perfect silence or to the soundtrack of his own tears and pleading for it to stop.

When they do respond, it’s just, it’s because of what you won’t do.

His breath catches in his throat. The ache in his head starts to pound harder, and he has to close his eyes against a sharp stab behind them. 

What he won’t do.

They’ve never cared before. How-... how could they suddenly care now? The fight had only a little bit been about that, it’d really been about something else. About his nightmares, how he’s not sleeping, not seeing his friends, skipping therapy. It hadn’t even been about... that. About what Chris can do and what he can’t, in bed. 

But that was the thing - the fight had started when Chris had flinched back from Laken’s touch to his back, and snapped at them, and accused them of wanting too much, and...

And now this.

It’s like they knew about Nova. Knew that he could be good just fine - better than fine, Handler Petrus said he was one of the best he’d ever worked with once - he just... wouldn’t. Won’t. Doesn’t want to. Never wanted to. 

Can’t do it without tearing himself to pieces all over again. 

It was always a scream inside his mind, but should he have pushed it down and tried harder to be more like everyone else? Is he losing Laken because of it? Did Nova pick up on something Chris himself doesn’t know?

Should he have... tried?

Even if it hurt?

He drops the phone again, then kicks it viciously under his bed, listening to the scrape of it sliding across the floor, the thump as it hits the wall. He hears it vibrate again, but this time he doesn’t care what Laken has to say.

They’ve said enough.

He understands.

Part of him expected this eventually.

He leaves the room, doesn’t bother to pull on his compression shirt, even. He lets his skin prickle bare and exposed to the air. He accepts the discomfort, the uneasy feeling of being too seen, too felt. 

The house is quiet, this early. 

He makes himself toast with butter, wincing at the scrape of the knife against the crisp bread, the sound boring into his ears. But eventually it’s done, and he slumps into a chair at the kitchen table, willing himself to cry. Somehow, the tears just... don’t happen.

He can hear Jake snoring softly from the living room. He’d been up with Chris until nearly 4 am, then Chris was awake again at 6:30, looking at that text, looking over and over and over again. Two hours of sleep leave him weirdly euphoric alongside his despair. Like he’s floating in some nightmare place that isn’t awake and isn’t sleeping, either.

He’s probably slept nine hours in three days at this point. He keeps seeing Jake with a knife sticking out of him every time he closes his eyes. Jake, screaming as Antoni pushed cloth into his wound to stop up the bleeding. Jake with a bullet wound, sitting up against the wall, staring at him with wide eyes whispering, It’s okay, Tristan, I love you, it’s okay as he dies. 

He can’t sleep. He can’t leave for long. He can’t breathe. He can’t think.

Him being what he is, it’s the reason Jake is hurt. If he hadn’t been his brother, he wouldn’t have decided to run a house for Romantics, and he wouldn’t have ended up dealing with all the dangerous bits about them.

Jake said it himself, didn’t he? It’s a mistake, running a house for Romantics. Not his best idea. A mistake.

Chris is a mistake.

Him being weak, and cowardly... it’s hurting Jake, making his life harder.

He makes everyone’s life harder.

There’s a soft sound of footsteps behind him, and he turns to find Nova in the doorway, staring back. She’s in a sleeveless gray dress and has her long dark hair pulled back from her temples, spilling in a waterfall down her back. Her eyes are dark and fathomless, and she gives him a faint, slight smile.

She had smiled like that with one hand down his pants.

Chris turns around, too fast, his head spinning a little, and hunches over his toast. “Good... good, um, good morning,” He mumbles. 

She clears her throat. “Morning. Chris, about-... about last night...”

“Don’t, um, don’t-... don’t don’t don’t worry about it.” He takes a breath. He doesn’t want his toast any longer. 

“I’m sorry,” She says, simply. “I spoke to Sarita about it, and... and she said this happens with us, and I should apologize, but, um. So I am. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have-... I thought I was helping.”

“I... know you did.” His words are slowing down. Chris can’t hold on to his thoughts, they want to drift away somewhere else, somewhere safer. Somewhere darker. 

“When I was with-... with my Miss, she would always say, if you are sad the best way to fix it is to make your body forget that feeling, replace it with something else. And that was what we replaced my sadness with. So, you were sad and upset, and I thought I could fix it that way.” She pauses, flushing a little, looking down and to the side as she moves with effortless grace to get a glass and fill it with water, take a small sip. 

“Kauri used to... to do that,” Chris says after a pause, thinking about it. Kauri, who would show up in the small hours of the morning reeking of liquor and someone else’s cologne, or just didn’t show up at all. Kauri, who would laugh instead of crying, and laugh with someone’s arms around him, a guy whose name he didn’t know. 

Kauri, who ran and ran and ran and can do things and be things that Chris can’t.

Or... won’t.

What if he’s been hurting Laken this whole time and didn’t know it, because he was already hurt himself?

His foot starts to tap tap tap on the floor until he stops it. 

“Did he? Did it-... work for him?” Nova asks it with genuine curiosity, and her eyes are so pretty. He looks up at her, and then down again, pushing the plate of toast away from himself. 

“I don’t know,” Chris whispers. “I, I don’t know. He’s happy now, but...”

“Was he happy then?”

“No. But, but, but... maybe we aren’t supposed to be. At least... not with, with anyone... who isn’t like us.”

“Jake isn’t like us,” Nova points out. Her presence in the room feels heavy, like a weight pushing down on him. But what does it matter? He’s not with Laken anymore, anyway. If he wanted to, he could stand right up and kiss Nova right now, press her back into the counter, and learn what it’s like to be the one doing things and not just having them done to him.

But his body doesn’t stir at the thought. It never has.

“He is,” Chris answers. “A, a little bit. I’m, I’m, I’m sorry, too, Nova. Sorry that I-I can’t.”

“No, I know. You have a partner, and I shouldn’t have-”

“I don’t have... I, I, I I don’t have a partner anymore.” Chris stands up, leaving her there with his plate of untouched toast. The sky outside is bright as the sun rises, as if mocking the way he feels like a stormcloud inside. 

Nova watches him leave, and whispers to herself, “No partner?”

Chris goes outside, pulling a sweatshirt that hangs on the coatrack on over his head to protect his skin, curling up on the porch swing and watching cars pulling out of driveways as the neighborhood starts to head to work in ones and twos. 

He doesn’t cry.

He sits very, very still, and he is silent. 

Upstairs, under the bed, his phone vibrates, again and again, unnoticed.

Just go talk to Nat, Chris. That’s all I said. Just go see Nat and get a night or three away from the house. Being there all the time is overwhelming you. Are you even looking at these? Chris you can’t just ignore me every time I say something you don’t like Chris answer me ... ... Oh shit, Chris, my phone autocorrected earlier and I didn’t notice I meant “some time at Nat’s”, not apart Chris? Are you seeing my messages? Baby? Chris, please check your phone and answer me. Please.

-

@burtlederp @finder-of-rings @endless-whump @whumpfigure @astrobly @newandfiguringitout @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @eatyourdamnpears

#whump oc #whump #emotional whump #angst #misunderstandings #communication misunderstanding #internalized victim-blaming #internalized self-hatred #conditioned behavior #internalized ableism #sort of #but not really? #but kinda #bbu #box boy universe #box boy #recovering whumpee #trauma recovery tw #trauma response tw #past noncon reference #ptsd tw #chris the strawberry blond romantic #nova bb

[tiredb0igivemesugars]

Burning pains

Summary: Tony's son (y/n) goes out for the day with Peter but bad luck always seems to find the pair

📝Words📝: 2k

⚠️Warnings⚠️: mentions of monsters, hospitals and descriptions of burn marks and pain

💙Pairing💙: Tony Stark!dad x reader!son also reader and Peter Parker friendship

📎Note📎: This is just a dream I had a few nights ago with some slight changes. No beta.

It was exceptionally hot that day. You couldn’t even lay in bed for as long as you wanted because of how sweaty you were getting. ”Wanna grab lunch today?” Peter had texted you. You smiled at the text before sending a ”1 PM sound good?” He replied quickly with a thumbs-up emoji. You took a shower before getting dressed, already cursing to yourself because you knew how sweaty you were bound to get.

”Morning,” you mumbled as you entered the kitchen, seeing your dad there with Bruce. ”I believe it’s day since it’s already twelve,” your dad snarked. You flipped him off inconspicuously and grabbed juice from the fridge since it was too hot for coffee. You sat down at the table. You sat opposite your dad, Bruce sitting next to him. They were both working on something on their laptops as they drank coffee. ”Any plans for today?” Your dad suddenly asked. ”Lunch with Peter and then some errands,” you mumbled into your drink. ”Drink lots of water since it’s hot outside and try to stay cool,” Tony instructed.

The warm breeze hit you like a truck as you stepped outside. It felt like someone had just blown their breath in your face after eating something with beans. You felt like gagging. You walked at a brisk pace towards the subway, only noticing that you wouldn’t make it if you didn’t run. You picked up your pace, trying to make it on time. You panted as you tried to breathe properly. As you jogged down the stairs, the air got significantly colder, making you feel better. Of course, your sweat would turn cold and make you shiver but you’d take anything instead of the hot sweaty you’d had to endure for the past hour or so. You held onto the sidebar as the subway moved forwards, again, it was hot. People were all fanning themselves with leaflets, their hands and their clothes.

Your next stop was announced from the PA. It was again a little colder once you left the carriage. Your hand left your side as you walked out. You pushed through the people blocking your way and made your way up. The sun greeted you as you made your way up. You felt a new trail of sweat make its way down your back, you sighed in annoyance. The street smelled like food and sweat, not a combination one usually liked and you didn’t either. Not too far away, you saw Peter. You picked up your pace to reach him faster but didn’t fully pay attention to your surroundings. So when you bumped into that man you just quickly apologised and continued walking.

Peter greeted you with a hug. ”It’s hot today isn’t it?” He made small talk. You just nodded, a pain slowly increasing within you. Peter opened the door to a cold diner, the air hitting you in the face like a truck. You sighed in relief. ”What are you having?” He asked as he eyed the menu. ”I’m not too sure. It’s pretty hot out so maybe nothing too heavy,” you spoke, your voice wavering as you tried to mask your increasing discomfort. ”Hey, are you okay?” Peter asked, clearly noticing your discomfort. You sighed as you massaged your rib. ”Yeah, just feeling some discomfort that’s all,” you explained with a fake smile. Peter asked you a question, which you didn’t have time to answer before the whole building shook. Peter’s eyes looked over your shoulder towards the glass window where he could see the street. Right at that moment, the glass exploded into millions of tiny pieces. You ducked as best as you could as you felt the shards of glass hit your back.

You could hear people screaming as the ground shook again. New York didn’t have earthquakes but maybe there was a first for everything. But then there was the roar, the roar of something foreign. Peter ran outside, ”Peter wait!” You yelled as you followed him outside. And there, at the end of the street stood a tall figure, a figure as tall as a building and almost as wide as the street. Its eyes glowed like fire and as it roared, entire buildings shook and windows shattered. People were screaming and crying, calling out for help. The monster roared again and then it stomped, sending the asphalt flying in the air. A woman ran down the street in your direction, pushing a stroller forward. You watched as the woman ran till she fell, her stroller still rolling forward. You ran to help her, not missing the now sharp, almost paralysing pain in your chest. You helped the woman stand up and brought the stroller closer to her. That’s when you saw the child standing in the middle of the street, crying and calling out to his mommy.

”Hey let’s find your mommy,” you said to the little boy as you hoisted him on your hip, almost crying out from the pain. The child cried more. ”Can you see where your mommy is?” You asked the child spinning around slowly so the boy would see his surrounding better. ”Mommy is asleep,” the boy said as he pointed at a woman laying down on the sidewalk, not too far from you. ”Okay. Let’s get you somewhere else and then I’ll go get your mommy too?” You asked the boy, already running in the opposite direction of the monster. ”Daddy!” The boy suddenly yelled as he pointed to a tall man, calling out the name ”Charlie” over and over again. ”Is that your daddy?” You tried to confirm as you pointed at the man. The boy merely nodded. ”Hi is this Charlie?” You asked the man who was furiously looking for his kid. The man nodded and furiously thanked you. You now ran back to that street to help out Peter who, too, had taken it upon himself to help the civilians.

Your phone buzzed in your pocket, it was your dad. ”Please tell me you’re nowhere near that street,” was the first thing he said. You chuckled dryly as you ran. ”You know damn well I’m on that very street since fate has a habit of putting me in bad situations,” you answered, stopping slightly to wait if the pain in your chest would go away. ”I suppose there’s no chance for you to just, I don’t know. Be smart and leave?” He asked you. ”Of course not,” you said, silently hissing as you felt the pain only worsening. ”Alright. Just stay close to Peter then,” your dad said and hung up the call. The pain was getting unbearable, a stabbing kind of pain. You felt like you were on fire like your lungs were on fire. You tried to make your legs move, you needed to find Peter as your dad instructed. Luckily, he came across you before you had the chance to look for him further. ”Everybody out?” You asked him. You leaned against the stone wall next to you, slightly holding yourself as if it’d help your pain at all. ”Yeah everybody except the dead ones,” Peter explained, still doing last-minute checks by looking around himself.

”Y/n are you alright?” You heard Peter ask. Your eyes shot back open, revealing a very concerned looking Peter. You wiped some sweat off your forehead and offered a small smile. ”I’m alright,” you lied. Just then, another wave of pain washed over you. This time stronger and harder than before. You audibly gasped as you slid down the wall next to you. You felt Peter crouch down next to you, helplessly flailing his arms around. You held yourself as you, at last, sobbed in pain. ”What’s wrong?” Peter asked, sounding terrified. ”I don’t know I feel like I’m going to die,” you sobbed. Your lungs burned as you spoke, you felt like you couldn’t breathe anymore. Like you were burned from the inside out. Peter glanced around the corner, to the street you had been on before turning to you. ”Your dad is there. He’s taking care of it,” Peter said to you. ”I’m gonna lay you down,” he said to you. You could only sob, not finding any strength in you to make words come out of your mouth.

You cried as the sidewalk touched your back. Your hands went to hold your chest as you cried out in pain. If you didn’t know any better you’d say that someone was using your body as a bonfire. Peter tore your shirt in half before gasping and falling back in shock. ”Y/n what happened?” He asked once he came to it, you could move your head anymore, it caused too much pain. ”You’re covered in burns. This is like fourth degree or something,” he gasped out. You cried out in pain again, how could you have burned yourself? You saw Peter take out his phone, after that, your sense of what was happening worsened by a lot. Black spots invaded your vision as your hearing became more muffled.

”Mr Stark,” you heard Peter say into the phone. Then your name was said, the things that came after that were a mystery to you. You could feel as everything slowed down, your screams died in your throat. Your eyes blinked slower until they refused to open anymore.

With shaky hands, Peter dialled the number of his mentor. ”Kid we’re a little busy right now,” tony’s voice spoke from the phone. Peter bit back a cry as he saw you laying on the sidewalk, clearly going in and out of consciousness. ”It’s Y/n,” he said. ”What about y/n?” Tony asked, his voice having completely changed. ”I- I don’t know what happened but he’s covered in burns and he kept screaming but now he’s quiet and just stares around himself please mister Stark I don’t know what to do,” Peter cried into the phone. He glanced at you again, seeing how your eyes began rolling backwards. ”No no no,” he chanted as he put the phone on the ground on speaker as he turned his attention towards you. His arm sneaked under your back, he felt how your skin was just melting off as he held you in a slightly upward position. ”Y/n open your eyes. Please,” he pleaded. ”What do you mean he’s covered in burns?” Tony asked on the other line. ”Mister Stark his skin is melting off as we speak please help me,” Peter cried as he held your lifeless body in his arms. Tony’s jets sounded near Peter. ”I thought I’d web the wounds but I wasn’t sure,” he cried, feeling like he was witnessing you dying, which he most definitely was. ”I’m gonna need some serious medical help on 112th now,” Tony spoke into his comms. Peter didn’t dare to look up, he felt like he had failed Tony. He had failed to protect Tony’s kid and this was on him.

Tony was glued in his place. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t do anything. He’d be haunted by nightmares for the rest of his life. The spotless skin Tony had washed multiple times when his kid was just a baby would never be the same. He could almost see the smoke oozing out of his son’s body, at least that’s what his brain told him. The paramedics came and did the best they could before getting your burned body into the vehicle.

Your eyes turned inside your head, you moved them around under your eyelids, trying to find out where you were without opening your eyes to the, no doubt, bright room. There was a steady beeping to your right. A hospital. slowly, your eyes opened. You glanced around yourself. Your dad was asleep on one of those really uncomfortable plastic chairs. You tried to sit up slowly, coughing in the process. Your dad awoke. ”No don’t sit up,” he spoke. You listened to him. ”What happened?” You mustered up the strength to speak. ”You were poisoned. They made it seem like you were burned and you were supposed to feel like that too,” your dad explained as he sat up slowly, clearly exhausted. ”So all that pain was inside my head?” You asked, amazed. ”Yeah. They’re getting pretty creative with these assassination attempts,” your dad snickered. You laughed too, relieved to be okay. Peter came in a few minutes later, relieved to find you awake and doing okay.

#marvel #oneshot #tony stark #peter parker x male reader #x reader #hurt #irondad #x male reader #avengers imagine #the avengers #tony stark x stark!reader #spiderman

[b0rista]

— ❝︎ 𝐘𝐎𝐔 & 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐑 𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐎 𝐈𝐍 𝐀 𝐌𝐎𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐍! 𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐁𝐄𝐑 𝐂𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐀𝐔. ·˚ ༘

♡︎ : the atmosphere i'm going for is frustratingly difficult to describe djjfjg the word "somber" doesn't really do it for me, but it's pretty much these emojis 🌑🌨🎞💸🚬⛓🔭

lowkey just wanted to put this trio & y/n (aka the loml) in a really dark, gloomy, modern metropolis type of place full of cold weather, inner monologues, and cigarettes JFKGK

ALSO my insp was the reiner + annie fanart in the center of the divider i made!! i really wish i knew the artist, but i couldn't find them :(( definitely NOT taking credit, it isn't my art whatsoever. but LOOK AT THEM UGH THE AESTHETIC

to balance things out, i wrote the reader as female! && characters are aged up to their early twenties.

the bunch of you met through your college courses— of course, the three of them had known one another since childhood, but you managed to weasel your way into their close-knit friend group. ever since then, you all share the melancholy city life.

during your guys' campus days, reiner worked for his master's in kinesiology. it isn't that big of a shocker that he aimed for something that pertained to his bulkier build,, mans grows up to be an absolute unit, lmao. wanting to maintain an above average salary, he used his education to earn himself a place in the certified training department. currently, he's a personal trainer of many clients, all of which he does his best to maintain.

bertholdt majored in philosophy, and worked toward his master's degree. with his intelligence, he got it. while all three of you (reiner especially), urged him to pursue non-profit professionalism, praising his skill and all around ability to do so, he lacked the confidence to push for it, and ended up going down another path. currently, he's sticking to the safe road, aiming to become a professor in the very course he excelled in. he's yet to get there, though— right now, he's a professor's assistant. it's less tiring, at least. still, he was capable of becoming something better.

as for annie, she majored in political science. unlike the other two, she worked to obtain a bachelor's degree. with that being said, she attended college for a little longer. eventually, she got her degree, and while she was a little lost after graduation, she made her way into the policy analyst game. she had the writing skills, sOmewhat of the drive, and while she's the youngest worker in her office, she's also the brightest. they're all also terrified of her, she speaks .6 words a day.

of course, what you did is entirely up to you! if you took two or three years to get your degree, you likely graduated alongside the boys. if it took longer, no worries, annie's degree took quite a bit.

now, the four of you are living in the same city, and you're all experiencing that said city's constant mournful, dingy atmosphere. the aesthetic is calming, actually; the weather is never nice, it's a rarity that you ever get an actual glimpse of the sun. no matter the season, so long as it isn't summertime, layers are a must. rainfall is a weekly occurrence, as well as the occasional thunderstorm. the merged stench of coffee grounds and burnt oil linger within the streets of the city, simply adding to the melancholy. basically, the general scenery is dark, cold, wet, and quiet. it's a gloomy place,, definitely comparable to forks, washington, but more of a metropolis than a town.

even with all of that being said, you and your friends have a good time. honestly, if you didn't all have eachother, you'd all probably go mental.

while reiner and bertholdt have their own seperate apartments, you and annie share a place. the rent was cheap, especially once split between two homeowners. two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a single kitchen & living area. it was too good of a deal to pass up. fortunately, you and her are compatible roomates.

with that being said, of course, it's often that the four lounge around at your guys' apartment. bertholdt always makes sure to check in before visiting, while reiner has the sour habit of showing up unannounced. you've both had to deny him a key, despite his pleading. you love him, but not that much.

sometimes, the two of them crash in your living room. typically, it's reiner on the couch while bertholdt takes up the floor, waking up the next morning in whatever flamboyant position he'd folded himself into during the night. every now and then, you and annie forget to head back to your rooms, and you crash right there with them. before you all fall asleep, you're typically all huddled up near the glass doored balcony, allowing the rainfall to serenade the four of you into a deep slumber whilst sitting within the crisp remnants of cigarette smoke and freshly opened liquor.

in a way, it's funny, because you all have a tendency to do that on a work night. just the four of you, sitting in your living room, drinking your alcohol, coating your furniture in the brisk stench of pure, solicited nicotine, watching your very own city drown within the darkening sky's tears as little to zero words are even spoken. when it comes to you and your friends, that's something that can never be contradicted; the quiet. these were how you spent your evenings together, especially after a rough day— silence, smoking, and the most peaceful sorrow imaginable.

of course, when you aren't wallowing in your own self pity, you're known to get drinks together. there's this certain booth in a local pub, it had burnt burgundy seats made out of leather. it's your guys' booth, and whenever you go out for a drink or two, that's where you sit. it's way back in the corner, where none of you can be bothered. one time, a couple of rascals had stolen it, and they refused to move. without a second thought, annie slammed one of those motherfucker's faces into the table. in suite, reiner took care of the other one, yanking him from the collar and kicking him to the floor. you and bertholdt only watched,, you were laughing, poor bert simply dragGed his palm down his face.

hey, at least you got your seats back! absentmindedly, you etched your initials into the bottom of the table with your pen. without a thought, the other three did the same, marking the corner as their own. don't fuck with that table, you'll be slaughtered.

when winter hits, it hits mercilessly. it's insanely aesthetic, seeing your group standing on the side of the busy street, all absolutely layered up in buttoned up winter coats and thickly knitted scarves. because they're both unnecessarily large, you depend on them for warmth every now and then. the amount of times you've buried your face within reiner's side while sitting on the subway during the midst of wintertime is stupid. as for bertholdt, he occasionally takes off his very own coat, draping it over you or annie's shoulders whenever either of you are seen shivering. he doesn't mind getting a cold, so long as you're warm.

speaking of the subway, your city has one. it's a pretty average way to travel, and due to none of you actually owning your own vehicles, it's where you go whenever walking or taking the bus isn't an option. the only one who isn't allowed to ride the subway alone is you. there was instance where on your way home from work, you had a run-in with an unpleasant bystander with the means to hurt you. ever since then, a code has been set where if you want to travel underground, you do it with one of them.

^ one time, you didn't listen, and you went by yourself anyway— unfortunately for you, reiner was boarding the exact same stop as you, and gave you quite the scolding. however, it's only because you're special to him. to all of them.

you and annie are actually closer than you'd imagine. being one of the only female friends she's ever been able to keep, you've grown to be an important figure in her life. of course, she'd never admit that to you, but you know. some nights, the two of you lean against one another on the sofa while black & white reruns play on the television, ultimately sending you both to sleep.

once a week, you have lunch with bertholdt at the university he assists at. you know just how glum the work makes him, and fortunately, you showing up every single sunday with coffee and sandwiches never fails to brighten his day. sometimes, you're the only one that can get him through the week.

bert's crush on annie is still very much a thing, even in this universe. of course, he's older, and for the most part, he's grown out of it. still, he stares. not as much as he once did, but he does. you and reiner only watch from afar, quietly sullen that he'd never quite gotten the guts to act on it.

bertholdt is also the group's umbrella holder. it's constantly raining, and due to his height, he's the one holding the bigass umbrella over the four of your guys' heads. when there isn't an umbrella, you just sort of seek refuse underneath his arms, which he gladly gives you. reiner and annie don't really mind, they get wet. it is a thing where you're all rushing to get out of the rain, the two men shielding the women's hair from the storm with their jackets as they run for shelter.

you all smoke. well, actually, whether or not you smoke cigarettes in this scenario is entirely up to you. if you'd like, ignore this part. anyway, cigarette sharing is a given. while reiner's preferred brand of darts is far more lucrative and more likely to kill him (he's dead inside, it fits), he won't hesitate to snatch a cigarette from in between the tips of your lips, bringing them to his own. it's something all of you do, even bertholdt. sharing is caring, you all say. you tend to do the same thing with wine glasses, or beer bottles.

it's practically gotham city, you're all dead inside grownups, god isn't real.

irllydidn'tlikehowthisturnedout-

#attack on titan #aot #shingeki no kyojin #snk #aot headcanons #aot au #aot scenarios #reiner braun #bertholdt hoover #annie leonhart #aot x reader #attack on titan x reader #modern aot

[jamaiskookie]

can i request a soft fluffy little drabble of fanboy yoongi and idol reader?

soundcloud rapper meets professional idol- myg

it’s #starrieselcaday !! where everyone posts their selfie in the hopes of their bias replying to them! alternatively, yoongi is a shy fanboy and you’re an idol with an undercover account where you stalk your fans. 

masterlist

listen

min yoongi is not a liar

HOWEVER, if you happen to ask him what kind of music he likes to listen to..... that’s a rare exception. 

he’ll probably reply by rattling off some of his favourite hip-hop rappers etc etc (emInEM!!! KANYE!! THE CLASSICS!!!!! beyonce)

which,, is not entirely a lie, okay?? he DOES listen to those artists! but his greatest guilty pleasure is this ... idolgirlgroup UGH he feels lame just thinking about it. 

not that it’s a pathetic thing, ya know? it’s just that he’s ~min yoongi~ jin literally told him once that he would be re-born as a rock and he AGREES WITH THAT. 

it’s not like he’s ashamed of saying he’s a fan of your group, it’s just that it’s not expected of the stone-cold soundcloud-rapper yoongi. 

but secretly, he winds down by watching your fancams, mass streaming your albums, screaming about your debut anniversary, the list goes on... the day in a stans life never ENDS GOD.

he literally screamed at his laptop and bursted into tears for a good 4 hours your last comeback.

he even got jimin and namjoon to end up liking his ult group!!!

seokjin refuses to ‘lower himself’ to their standards but everyone knows he secretly has all of your albums downloaded 

the group (lomls) called dreamcloud consists of five members- yoona, jisoo, lia, chae, and y/n. the fandom name is called starrie, even though nobody knows how that came about??

(his favourite single is their newest song called cloud 9)

three guesses to who’s his bias gO!!

if you guessed y/n congrats you’re CORRECT. other stans say that the bias they started with is NEVER the bias they have no but you’ve been yoongle’s ult bias since debut and it’ll forever be that way!!!

he’s been bias wrecked approx. 30 times but we don’t talk about that. 

like lia is THIS close to stealing the bias spot but you’ll always have such a special place in his heart :,-)

which is why when he sees the hashtag #starrieselcaday which was trended by you when you tweeted out a selca he POUNCES ON THE CHANCE TO POST A SELCA

on his secret fan account of course.

oh boy he really hopes nobody from uni is going to see this..,,, he’ll deal with it if the time comes. 

he definitely spends 30 minutes with jimin trying to figure out where the best lighting in the dorm is and then an additional 30 minutes just taking the damn picture. 

he ends up taking the photo in his black bucket hat (the e-boy one) with this slightly awkward half smile plastered on his face. 

he kinda hates it but it was also the best shot out of the 2000 he just took so that one it is!! (he’s also pretty tired of jimin telling him to ‘pOSE’)

he just posts it on his twitter with nothing but the #starrieselcaday hashtag. it’s the first time he’s participated in these so he’s kinda ~nervous~ but whaddya know!!

other starries are already hyping him up in his mentions!! [proud tears] gosh he loves this fandom so freaking much. he links jimin’s selca below his, telling his followers to go hype jimin’s picture too. 

it’s slightly concerning how big of a following yoongi has on his stan account. 

#STARRIESELCADAY! ✨@/liabby

replying to @/ynssuga

you look so cute suga!!!! ur bucket hat omg where did you get it send LINKS!!!

dreamcloud D-14!!! 🍬@/starriejoonn

replying to @/ynssuga

so THIS is what you spent an hour doing with jimin. owo looking good my friend! 😎

jade 💜ot5 @/vitaminchae

replying to @/ynssuga

omg you did #starrieselcaday !!! congrats on 50k by the way!! we’re all anticipating your album review (keysmashes) <3

awhhhh

how cute!

see? best fandom. 

honestly he wasn’t even aware that he hit 50 thousand on his stan account what the FRICK that’s insane!!

the only thing he does on this stupid account is give album reviews (which are quite useless at this point it’s always a 10/10) and scream about the comeback stages. 

occasionally he’ll go on to remind his fellow starries to drink water and take breaks from streaming- because contrary to popular belief he can be soft. 

☁️STREAM #CLOUD9 ☁️@/yoonsoohearteu

replying to @/ynssuga

hOOOOOOOTTTT!! woohoo!! why didn’t you tell us you were attractive irl?? 👀 ru single bby? 👉👈

yoongi snorts reading that comment, replying to tell @/yoonsoohearteu that he’s far from attractive and is unfortunately, single. it’s all y/n’s fault, he jokes in his reply. dreamcloud has raised his standards too much. 

y/n ✅@/dreamcloudy/n_official

replying to @/ynssuga

💞💞💞

[blink]

[bliiiink]

[?????????]

wut.

are his eyes deceiving him? WHAT? 

yoongi checks again, and sure enough, the little checkmark verifying your OFFICIAL twitter account lays next to your handle,.,, WHICH IS BELOW HIS POST. 

he takes a deep breath, trying to recall whatever breathing exercise his therapist taught him just last week. 

it doesn’t work. 

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH- “

💤☁️.

“y/n!“ yoona calls from the kitchen. in your large XL hoodie, you step in, humming a ‘hmm?’ to your leader. all the other girls are camped out in their rooms, preparing for the comeback coming soon. 

yoona’s scrolling on her phone with a confused look on her face. 

“why is hashtag starrie-selca-day trending? did you tweet something or was it chae?“ she asks, and you hide a slight smile. 

“oh yeah,“ you reply. “i tweeted my selca this morning. you guys can tweet out yours too.“ 

yoona raises her eyebrow. “okay,” she asks. “just be careful.” you blink. 

“be careful... of?“ 

“make sure the agency doesn’t find out about your secret account you use to stalk the starries.“ you sputter, spitting out a random excuse. 

“you’re too obvious these days, y/n,“ yoona says, not unkindly. “i figured that your comment wasn’t intentional... was it on that guy suga’s page? anyways, your official account didn’t reply to any other fan’s selcas, so maybe you should comment on some other fans twitter accounts too.“ 

huh?

what on earth is she talking about- OH NO. 

you scramble to take your phone out, immediately clicking into your twitter notifications. 

you groan when you see ‘y/nsuga’ is already trending. you should’ve double checked which account you were on before commenting, for god’s sakes!

this is amateur stuff, you scold yourself. how could you forget?

like yoona said, you begin commenting on other selcas, so it doesn’t look like you’re singling just one fan out. 

(except you kind of already did that.)

yoona stifles a laugh. “so,” she says. “we’re not going to talk about how you commented three heart emojis on this guy’s selca on your secret account... right?” 

your cheeks heat up. “please don’t tell the other girls.” you plead. jisoo unnie would never let you live this down. 

it’s not your fault some of your fans are. like, really cute, okay? 

this guy- ‘suga’. well, that’s the name you’ve been calling him in your head- since it’s the alias he goes by on twitter. 

he was one of the first fan accounts opened on twitter- just when you debuted! he posts these detailed and insightful reviews every time you have new music, and he’s always been such a loyal fan!

(plus, it’s super fun seeing him shut down your haters!! he always comes up with the most awesome comebacks)

((your personal favourite is ‘y/n could single handedly step on you with the heel of her five inch stilettos while she continues to do the choreography perfectly. shut your bitchass mouth up’))

so is it a crime to check up on a devoted fan’s twitter page every once in a while... on your secret twitter account??

he still hasn’t replied to your comment, which you’re slightly down about. he’s just busy, you reason with yourself. it’s not like you can expect his world to revolve around you, you scold. 

yoona nonchalantly waves her hand. “i already screenshotted the evidence though, so that’s going in my y/n blackmail folder.” 

you let out a multitude of complaints, noises that mostly consist of various versions of ‘fuck you uwu’ 

at least it was yoona who found out first. she’s the most gentle in the group... even though she has blackmail folders for each of the members. 

you reassure yourself by telling yourself that she’d never actually use the folders for real blackmail purposes.... probably. 

looking down at your phone, you frown. 

cute boy suga still hasn’t replied. 

you don’t know it, but the only reason why is because he’s still screaming. 

“AHHHHLHFH*HDFGLHHHHH?&$5FLIQJARSODFILJQWOI?!!!?!?!!”

#bts fanfiction #bts suga #min yoongi #min yoongi x reader #yoongi x reader #bts scenario #bts au #idol! reader #idol! au #bts imagine #bts fic recs #bts edits #yoongi smut #yoongi fluff #yoongi crack #yoongi fanfiction #btsgif #yoongi fic

[mortal-kuddles]

More on dating Kabal:

Deep down Kabal wants to do cute couple things like have his lover as his lock screen, or their name flanked by emojis in his phone but he refuses while still working with the Black Dragon. Even if some of his allies know who his partner is Kabal isn’t willing to risk it. Their number has been committed to memory and he’s quick to delete any messages he sends or receives from them. He doesn’t feel right risking their safety over his bad choices.

Known for his footwork Kabal is just as comfortable dancing as he is fighting. He has no reason to show this off while at work, but even if it’s been a while since he’s gotten to dance he’s far from rusty. It comes out most when he finally gets around to tidying up their apartment. 

He does own headphones, so sometimes his partner is graced with the sight of him moving and shaking without sound. That comical sight is rare, reserved only for when he’s trying to be nice to his lover and keep the noise down while they rest. Usually, his stereo is spitefully loud as he knows there’s nothing his neighbors will do to him. The rock concert volume almost seems to encourage him to dance once he realizes his lover is watching him. 

With enough pleading Kabal will even give his lover a striptease, torn between wanting to rile them up and make them laugh. After his burns, this stops entirely, but if his lover is patient he can be talked into still dancing with them so they don’t lose his shaking hips forever. 

Kabal enjoys grinding up against his lover. Did they bend over to grab something from the bottom shelf? He's gotta show his appreciation. If the timing or angle isn’t right he will often settle for a not-so-subtle hip thrust. Thankfully this kind of playfulness is usually reserved for when they’re alone, although cooking together can sometimes be an ordeal.

His partner can also expect lots of hugs from behind as well. Kabal enjoys being able to hold on and whisper in their ear at the same time. If not stopped it also often escalates to him kissing their neck. 

In a similar vein, he enjoys his partner sitting on his lap, enough to actually keep him sitting for extended periods of time. He’s prone to get up and wander during movies and meetings unless he has no choice but to sit still. His partner likely knows he’s fully capable of forcing himself to stay put when he needs to, but he’ll still insist they help him.

Kabal will take obscenely long showers. Although his speed is impressive and for the most part not as taxing on his body as some may think it does still take its toll. If his missions have been coming fast and hard for a bit too long his lover will likely find him relaxing under the hot water, enjoying a shower beer, and smoking a joint. In his own words, the only thing that could make the shower better is if his lover joined him. 

If they want any hot water, they will.

#kabal #kabal imagines #mortal kombat imagines #mortal kombat #mk11 #the spirit of kabal lust overtook me i guess #he's solid bf material tho like gd

[dreamescapeswriting]

The Fun Fair ~ PJM [M] [Reqest]

↬↬↬Word Count: 2.6K

↬↬↬Genre: ANGST

↬↬↬Pairing:Jimin x Fem!Reader

↬↬↬A/N: I personally don’t like the term crazy so I’m not going into too much of what happens with Jimin afterwards but I hope this is okay.

↬↬↬TRIGGER WARNINGS: Suggestive comments made my drunken men, men grabbing you, drunken states, murder, blood, angst, physical abuse.

It had been three months since Jimin and she who shall never be named again had broken up and you had finally picked up the pieces of his shattered heart and put them back together. Three months since your best friend showed up on your doorstep crying and sobbing about how she'd ripped his heart out and broken it into pieces, you wanted to kill her the moment he showed up. You'd warned her when they first started dating that if she ever hurt him you'd kill her, rip her head off and a bunch of other threats that slipped your mind. 

"You okay?" Jimin asked as he looked up at you, you were on his sofa looking at the TV screen as you watched some Romantic movie about how the friend and the best friend always got together at the end of the movie and it made you think of your crush on Jimin. 

"Wanna go out?" You spat out before you could even think about what you were saying, Jimin started at you while he blinked. 

"What?"

"I mean- No...Yes, do you want to go out on a date?" If he started laughing you could just tell him you meant with someone else other than you but if he agreed then all of your dreams were going to come true and you wouldn't have to hide how you truly felt about him anymore. 

"With you?" He wasn't laughing so that was a good sign, you nodded slowly at him and bit your lip. Jimin wasn't going to lie to himself and say he'd never thought about it before because he had before he had started dating Mina he'd been hung up on you. 

"We don't have to, I thought it would be fun there's the new funfair-" His lips on yours cut off your rambling when he kissed you and you smiled against his lips leaning into the kiss, sparks flying off your body as he drew you closer by wrapping his arm around your waist.

"Funfair date tomorrow it is," He whispered to you cupping your chin in his hand and smiling as you got shy under his touch. 

"I'll meet you by the hook-a-duck booth?" He suggested as he ran his thumb along your bottom lip, it had been where you used to meet whenever the funfair was in town when you were kids. 

"Sounds good to me Jiminie," You whispered kissing him again as you got up from the sofa and began walking towards your apartment door, he chuckled wrapping his arms around you and kissing you again. 

"I never thought I'd get to do that you know," He laughed softly as you stood at the door just talking. While you were both lost talking about the details of your date tomorrow you hadn't noticed Mina's best friend walking past your apartment and snapping a photo of you both together, sending it to Mina to ask what was happening. 

Mina had told everyone that she and Jimin were just on a short term break while she worked her way around things and not the truth, that she'd cheated on him with most of her guy friends. That was the thing about Mina, she craved the love and attention she got from everyone around her it was as though she was addicted to the dopamines. 

"I'll see you tomorrow night okay?" Jimin chuckled kissing you a final time as he tried to force himself to leave your apartment, he wanted to go home and get ready and you needed to spend the entire night pampering yourself. 

While you got ready for your date that night Jimin went out to buy you some flowers to bring with him - he was going to bring your favourite ones, he was about to leave his apartment when he saw Mina walking up his driveway crying. He frowned looking as her shoulders shook, holding a tissue to her nose as he heard small sobs falling from her lips,

"J-Jimin!" She wept loudly running towards him and throwing her arms around him, just like that you melted out of his brain and the only thing that matter was making sure Mina was okay. 

"What happened?!" He panicked tilting her head up to look at him as he frowned looking into her eyes, 

"I'm sorry! W-What I did! It was so wrong, Jimin I'm so sorry." She pushed him into the apartment and kicked the door shut as she sobbed into his arms, begging for his forgiveness for everything she'd done to him. 

"I-I was stupid, I just craved attention and I'm sorry Jimin...It won't happen again." She whimpered looking into his eyes as she pleaded with him to take her back staring into his eyes as she cried hysterically. 

"Mina-"

"Jimin I'll never hurt you again, I love you too much to ever hurt you again." She whispered running her hand over his cheek, as soon as she touched him he fell into her trap. Giving in and kissing her roughly as they made out on the sofa, 

"Fuck I missed you so much!" She cried out, running her hands down his shirt and towards his jeans. While he kissed her neck she rolled her eyes at everything he was doing, she didn't want to be there but she didn't want him to go out with you so she was going to do everything she could to keep him there tonight. He was hers and no-one else could have him even if she didn't want him just yet.

"I need you Jimin," She moaned kissing down his neck while her hands worked on undoing the jeans he was wearing, 

"F-Fuck I missed you too." He whimpered pushing his jeans down and moaning out as she touched him for the first time in months her hands pumping him slowly as she kissed him roughly. No one could ever replace her in his eyes, she was going to be the only one he would ever need. 

Biting your lip you checked the time again, it was getting late and dark which meant soon enough the fair would be packed with people who were drunk and you hated the thought of it.

"Jimin call me? You're an hour late and I'm getting worried," You heard giggling coming from in front of you and you looked up to see Mina's friends walking by shutting up as soon as they saw you looking at then. You shook it off as if it was nothing and tried Jimin again but there was no response. 

"Hey, baby!" Your heart filled with hope as you heard a voice calling out but when you turned around you saw two drunken men walking towards you so you stepped out of the way pretending to be busy on your phone.

"What's up? Date stand you up?" One asked as he stood in front of you, the smell of Vodka dripped from him as if he'd been bathing in the stuff and the one behind you chuckled as he held onto your arms. 

"We just wanna hang out baby girl, why don't we go on one of the rides?" You shook your head trying to answer them but the one in front laughed, 

"Don't be nervous, you can ride me if you want." You shoved him away from you trying to get out of their grasp but he didn't like it,

"Who the fuck do you think you are?!" He yelled grabbing onto your wrist tightly and pulling you into his chest so he could look deep into your eyes,

"Well?! Who do you think you are?!" You were growing more and more uncomfortable with each passing second and people around you ignored the scene as if they couldn't see it so you stomped onto his foot and tried to make a run for it only to have the second guy drag you into his arms. Pinning your arms down by your side as a hat was placed into your mouth to stop you from screaming. 

"You're a fucking dirty bitch!" The first one yelled slapping you across the face as they began to take you behind the booths, you tried screaming out for help from people but hardly anyone was around and the hat inside of your mouth was muffling your cries for help.

"Leave me alone!" You whimpered as he ripped the hat from your mouth, the first one kicked the back of your knees knocking you down onto the ground so you would have to kneel in front of them and then took both of your arms and pinned them behind your back. 

"Keep your mouth shut!" A pocket knife was pulled from the first man's pocket and pressed against your cheekbone cutting into the skin, 

"Such a pretty face, it's a shame it has to get so wasted," The blade stung as it cut down your cheek and dug into your skin, you could already feel the blood dripping down, 

"Why are you doing this?!" You asked them as you fought to get out of the other man's grasp but he only tightened his hold on you. 

"Because it's fun because we can and we have before." You struggled against the grasp when you got a slap across the cheek,

"D-Done what before?" You stuttered out watching the man in front of you with the knife, 

"Killed. It's fun you know, watching the life of someone drain out from them right in front of your eyes." You whimpered trying to kick yourself up but he lunged himself towards your pushing the small blade into your side and twisting it, only to do it again and again until he felt satisfied with himself. 

Jimin woke up with Mina in his arms, snuggling against him when he heard his phone vibrating, he had 60 missed calls from your phone and a text. 

[Y/N]: Help! SOS! Along with five siren emojis beside it, he tried calling you but the phone was cutting straight to your voicemail, he shifted out from under Mina. The only time you ever used those emojis was when it was in a real emergency and panicked washed through him as he realised where he was supposed to meet you and when, 

"Where are you going?" Mina asked looking at him, 

"Y/n, I think something's wrong, I'll be right back-"

"Jimin stay with me," She whined holding onto his arms but he told her that he had to do this, that it was something serious. 

"Whatever, I don't care. I won't be here when you get back," She scoffed looking at him as she got changed into her own clothes, he had no time to waste on asking her what the problem was he just sprinted out to his car and drove to the fair. 

"Y/N!?" Jimin screamed out in the almost empty park, it was going to be like finding a needle in a haystack, he began calling out your name before ringing you but your phone wasn't connecting to anything it was just going to your answering machine, 

"Y/n?!" He called out but that was when he heard a strangled version of his name, 

"Y/n?!" He panicked rushing over to the hook-a-duck section that was closed when he saw your legs poking out from behind the booth, 

"Y/n...What are you doing down here?" As soon as his eyes landed on you he called for help, dialling for an ambulance on his phone as he took you into his arms. He didn't care about the blood that was coming from you, you looked up at him weakly your head feeling too heavy to hold up anymore. 

"You came," You stuttered out looking up at him and smiling weakly, he smiled softly at you and nodded.

"I came, I know I'm late but I g-got held up," He didn't need to tell you what had held him up right now all that matter was getting you some help, he told the ambulance where he was and he held you close to him trying to keep you warm. 

"I'm cold Jimin," You whispered to him as you felt a shiver run through your body, you could barely feel your feet anymore and you were starting to feel dizzy, 

"Save your breath okay? We'll get you to the hospital and they'll warm you up." He whispered laying his jacket over your arms and trying to support you but you shook your head at him, you both knew you weren't going to make it through this. You'd lost too much blood and the world was starting to sound as though everything was further away than it was. 

"T-They were wearing all black," You whimpered trying to describe the men to him so he would be able to catch them before they did this to someone else.

"T-The one that had the knife he had a scar along his lips as if someone had tried to put a smile into it." He shook his head at you begging you not to keep talking. That he would get you safe and you could tell the police all of this yourself, 

"J-Jimin I-I love you." You whispered to him as you felt your hands going numb, 

"You're saying goodbye," He whimpered looking at you as you nodded at him, you were too tired to fight it off anymore. You'd tried phoning for the ambulance yourself but your phone died after calling Jimin so much and now you were too tired to do anything.

"I love you." You repeated as your version began to blur, he sobbed shaking his head as you looked up at him biting down on your lip, he pulled you closer promising not to let go until he got you some help.

"Jimin it's been a year now, how are you feeling?" What kind of question was that? The doctor stared at him while she waited for an answer but Jimin stayed silent and turned to look out of the window. 

"Does anyone else in the group want to talk?" Everyone in the room began talking about their experiences but Jimin just stared down at the grass that was in the hospital garden. 

"Cat got your tongue?!" Hoseok - one of the other patients asked as he came up behind Jimin. He hadn't even noticed that the group therapy was out of session until Hoseok grabbed his attention away from the window. 

"Sorry Hobi, I haven't been sleeping again," Hoseok laughed sitting across from him, 

"We both know I have the opposite problem of that." Hoseok was in the hospital - narcolepsy - he'd been left there and he and Jimin grew close over their time there together. Jimin had spent most of his time here after you died, you'd died in his arms and he began to see you everywhere, every time he went to sleep you were in his dreams and then you began appearing around the house. After a while his friends took him to see someone who advised he come into the hospital to be watched and ever since he'd never left, he never wanted to. It felt it was a good punishment since he blamed himself for you dying that night he blamed himself for everything if he hadn't had fallen dumb to Mina he never would have left you alone that night and you would still be there with him.

"Come on, I know how to get some extra pudding," Hoseok said, he knew where Jimin's head was going and he wasn't about to let him suffer alone. 

Tagline: 

@writingdreamsnottragedies​ @snowy-meowl​ @jooniesdarlingdimples​ @lyoongx​ @fan-ati--c​ @mitzwinchester​ @callingmyangel​ @rjsmochii​ @taestannie​ @kneel-begyourpardon​ @innersooya​

#bts #bts x reader #bts smut #bts x you #bts x y/n #bts imagine #bts imagines #seokjin #jin #kim seokjin #min yoongi #yoongi #suga #jhope #jung hoseok #hoseok #namjoon #kim namjoon #park jimin #park jimin imagine #park jimin smut #park jimin x reader #jimin #jimin x reader #jimin imagine #jimin smut #kim taehyung #taehyung #jeon jungkook #jungkook

[jiangchengrights]

i wake to you at dawn

also available on ao3

“Alright, I get it,” Wei Ying mumbles to herself from where she lays, half of her face shoved into the pillow beneath her head, the other half just barely illuminated by the screen on her phone, “This dog is friends with that other dog now. Whoop de-fucking-do.”

Usually, these soft animal videos on Instagram don’t annoy her that much, even when they are about dogs, but she’s seen this specific post about fourteen times tonight. She can recite by memory the posts that come after it (a celebrity laying out in the sun, the tagline only the sunflower emoji, followed by one of Wen Qing, looking stern but fond as her lap is completely covered by both Wei Ying and Wen Ning, the tagline for that being ‘Reluctant jie’, and so on and so on) because she’s been frenetically refreshing all of her social media apps in order; she now knows the current lineup of instagram posts and tweets in her feed and has seen every godforsaken not-actually-that-interesting story of all of her friends (which isn’t fair to them, really, considering all of the important ones are here trapped in this same hotel as Wei Ying).

“Oh my god,” Jiang Cheng grumbles from the other side of the room where he lays on his bed (because of course he’s a part of her bridal party. Kind of. He’s walking her down the aisle tomorrow which, okay, makes him technically not a part of her party but she wasn’t about to let him skate free the night before her wedding)(or any of her bridal functions)(not that she needed to worry: he’d taken all planning rights away from her for her bridal shower and bachelorette party, he’d only tolerated the help of shijie) and throws his extra pillow at her, “If I have to hear that fucking dog video one more time, I swear to god, I’ll break your kneecaps. Do you hear me? I’ll have to drag you down the aisle tomorrow because you won’t be able to walk.”

“I thought you liked dogs, Shidi,” she replies, shifting ever-so-slightly so that she can squint at him past her phone.

“Wei Wuxian-”

“A-Cheng, A-Ying,” Shijie hums soothingly, from the other side of the room, “Please rest, for me. Your Shijie needs sleep too.”

“And if you don’t,” Wen Qing pipes up, “I know other ways to make you shut up.”

“Okay, okay,” Wei Ying whines, locking her phone with an audible click and resting it on the pillow next to her head, “I’ll try to sleep. For Shijie.”

Wei Ying does not sleep. She tries, she really does. Turns off all the lights and all the sounds and everything shiny that could keep her just engaged enough to stay awake. She tries to listen to the steadying breathes of her bridal party around her; Jiang Cheng and Nie Huaisang lay on the bed to her left, Shijie and Wen Qing to her right, Wen Ning passed out on the floor (he’d been invited, truly, to sleep in the empty spot next to her, only he’d fallen asleep long before everyone else and moving him to an actual bed proved to be very difficult when all the adults in the room were half (three fourths) wine drunk and giggling, so they’d just put a pillow under his head and wrapped him in their softest blankets and left it at that). She practices all the meditation tricks Lan Zhan had taught her; tries to calm her mind and her breathing and her heart.

It doesn’t work.

God, she wishes to herself, regardless of however illogical it may be, I wish Lan Zhan was in my bridal party.

With a sigh, she spends some time reflecting. She’s made so many bad decisions in her life, ones that have resulted in no less than three broken arms (sorry A-Cheng), many school detentions, almost getting expelled from university, a car accident that had left Shijie with seatbelt burns and a black eye from the airbag and Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan, had left Lan Zhan, who’d been sitting prim and proper in the back seat, with scars that still lingered across the expanse of her back in the shape of all of Wei Ying’s nightmares. She’d chosen to hide away after that for three years in a different city with different hair and a different smile on her face and pretend like she didn’t feel a bone crushing loneliness in her entire being every time she thought of her Shijie, and didi, and her Lan Zhan who wasn’t really hers anymore, and that fact that in her self imposed exile she would never seen any of them again. That was, until Lan Zhan found her and dragged her back home and made her whole again.

Wei Ying was always whole, Lan Zhan would say, has said, I just helped Wei Ying find a way back. Will always bring Wei Ying back.

But with all that behind her and mostly wrapped up, this, tonight, right here, feels like her worst idea yet. She’d been so confident too! Had fought every naysayer, including Lan Zhan herself, with a cocky smile and a wave of her hand.

Brides shouldn't see each other the night before the wedding! She had laughed, and then laughed harder when Lan Zhan’s fingers had tightened where they dug into her hip, Besides, we’re not one of those couples! We can handle one night apart!

And she had been right, for the most part. Of course she missed Lan Zhan, but a night spent apart, having fun with her little family, all of them basking in the shared excitement of her impending nuptials. What she hadn’t anticipated was trying to sleep without Lan Zhan beside her, not when she’s this nervous, hadn’t thought about how deeply she would miss Lan Zhan’s warm weight behind her, her steadying arm firm around her waist, holding Wei Ying together like she did every night. She feels the absence with every shift of her hips that press backwards into nothing, every time she throws an arm out to rest on an empty pillow and the fact that there are no warm, soft, calves to ruthlessly shove her cold toes against.

By the time she picks up her phone again, everyone in the room is peacefully asleep and the  clock on her bedside table blinks 2:36, proud and red and rude, if you ask Wei Ying. She gives up on sleep and starts mentally calculating exactly how much concealer she’ll need to cover the bags under her eyes. After all, she wants to look her absolute best for Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan who is so steady and warm and beautiful, Lan Zhan who could open her mouth wide and eat Wei Ying’s entire heart in one bite but doesn’t, instead offering her own heart up on a silver platter for Wei Ying.

Wei Ying opens their messages on her phone, reads through the last few, laughs at the pictures she’d sent earlier in the night of Nie Mingjue, eyes half lidded with alcohol, laying messy kisses to the side of Xichen-ge’s face, who seemed to be accepting them with grace and only slightly tinged red ears. She taps her fingers on the screen, starting a message, lan zhan i can’t slee-

She doubles back, erasing it, deciding she doesn’t need to be whiny the night before their wedding, when Lan Zhan is surely asleep anyways. Again she starts, good early morning, lan zhan! i can’t wait to see you in your-

Too much, that is utterly too much. i love you, she types, hesitates with her thumb over the send button. What if the sound of her phone wakes Lan Zhan up? What if then Lan Zhan can’t fall back asleep? What if Lan Zhan tosses and turns all night and ends up with a headache, overtired on their wedding day of all times? What if this texts absolutely ruins everythi-

Her phone sounds, the little swooping noise it makes when she receives a new message on the thread she’s already looking at. She looks down and finds a link from Lan Zhan to a video of baby bunnies playing together with a message that says, When we return from our honeymoon, I think it is time we get another bunny. Possibly two.

And well. Her decision is made for her really. If Lan Zhan is awake, laying in her own bed in a room on the other side of the hotel, fighting off insomniatic boredom with bunny videos, there’s no way Wei Ying can stay here and allow them both to suffer.

She finds herself glad that Wen Ning is on the floor, though it looks a tad uncomfortable, because she’s able to slip out of bed with ease, bare feet silent on the carpeted floor. The only thing she grabs is her phone, not even bothering to try to find her shoes in the colossal mess that is her dark bridal room, littered with take out and bottles and stripped off clothing. Her nose crinkles, amused, when she thinks of the look of reprove she’ll surely get from Lan Zhan when she realizes Wei Ying walked around barefoot.

She manages to zigzag her way to the door without stepping on anything or making any noise, a feat she will congratulate herself on later. The door opens slowly, making the barest hint of noise as yellow hotel-hallway light floods the entrance to the room. Wei Ying pumps her fist, gloating at being able to sneak out without a single one of her party-poopers (read: caring family) waking up to ruin it for her and make her climb back into her own bed.

That is, until she catches Nie Huaisang’s eyes, watching her from where he lays next to Jiang Cheng. The most dangerous opponent, really, because with one shove of his arm he’d have Jiang Cheng up and yelling, alarming the whole room before she’d even make it to the elevator. She’s not sure she knows the layout of the hotel well enough to make it safely inside Lan Zhan’s room before one of them caught her.

Silent, slow, she moves one finger up to place over her lips, keeping eye contact with Nie Huaisang the whole time. She pleads with him from across the room, imploring him to be cool. He blinks, once, twice, slow like a cat in the sun, and then closes his eyes a third time for good and raises one, slow, thumbs up to her.

Her sigh of relief is the last noise in the room before she shuts the door and power walks to the elevator at the end of the hallway. She is going to buy him the biggest fruit basket. She dances by herself once inside the elevator, suddenly feeling cold and exposed in her red silk sleep tank and shorts, goosebumps prickling her arms and thighs. If only Lan Zhan’s room wasn’t so stupidly far away.

Of course her room has to be far away! Jiang Cheng had yelled when Wei Ying whined about it, the second you start drinking all you want to do is sit in her lap! You’re lucky I’m letting her party stay in the same hotel as yours!

And well, he hadn’t been wrong, per say, she thinks to herself as she tiptoes off the elevator and down the maze-like hall to get to Lan Zhan’s room. She still didn’t appreciate the distance though. She quietly tap taps on the door with one hand, pressing send on a text with the other that reads, lan zhan let me in lan ZHAN!!!

The door opens before her hand has even fallen back to her side. And there is her Lan Zhan, in soft cloud print pajamas pants and a white t-shirt, hair drawn up into a neat bun, eyes tired but awake.

“Wei Ying,” she says, the smile in her voice all Wei Ying needs to know about her welcome. She slides closer, wrapping her arms around Lan Zhan’s neck, grinning when she feels the others arms sneak around her waist.

“Mmm, Lan Zhan,” she hums against Lan Zhan’s neck, moving up to her tiptoes so she can nuzzle her nose against the corner of Lan Zhan’s jaw, “I’m tired, let’s go to bed.”

“I thought I was not supposed to see the bride the night before the wedding,” Lan Zhan replies, but she’s already inching backwards into the room, dragging Wei Ying along with her.

“Who ever said that?” Wei Ying asks, knowing full well she was the one who said that, a smile on her face when she lets Lan Zhan drop her into bed.

“Besides,” she says, once Lan Zhan is settled beside her, reaching one hand up to pet the side of Lan Zhan’s face, thumb rubbing gentle circles across the expanse of Lan Zhan’s cheekbone, “Does it count if there’s two brides? I don’t think so, we cancel each other out, see? If anything we have to do the opposite, you know, we have to see each other extra hard tonight.”

“Hmm,” Lan Zhan hums, her lips pulling up ever so slightly on one side as she leans in to rest her forehead against Wei Ying’s, legs tangling together, one hand sliding underneath Wei Ying’s shirt to spread warm and wide and firm in the valley between her shoulder blades, “Is that so?”

“Yes, tonight we have to,” Wei Ying nods, finally allowing her eyes to close as she presses further into Lan Zhan’s embrace, sleep finally weighing on her shoulders. She lets her head drop down, lips brushing against Lan Zhan’s collarbone, breathing her words right into Lan Zhan’s chest, “And every night too. I’ll tack that on for free, Lan Zhan, every night.”

“Yes, Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan sighs against her hair and melts under Wei Ying’s nimble fingers, relaxed at once with the promise of forever, “Every night.”

“I love you,” Wei Ying whispers, one final thing, around a yawn and finally, finally settles for the night. She almost misses Lan Zhan’s whispered reply, I love you too.

But she doesn’t. She never wants to miss a single thing Lan Zhan has to say.

Coda:

For all of fifteen seconds, the world is warm and bright and everything good when Wei Ying wakes up. Toned legs tangle with her own and a soft hand pets her hair away from her face, gentle and comforting again and again. She herself is pressed messily against Lan Zhan’s chest, quite possibly, embarrassingly, drooling ever so slightly. She does not have time to register this, however, before the banging starts.

“Wei Wuxian, I know you’re in there!” comes a belt from the other side of the door, that has her shooting up in an awkward half sitting position, splayed on one-fourth on the bed and three-fourths in Lan Zhan’s lap. Lan Zhan’s hands act as a steadying force, one on her hip, the other on her back, as she blinks deliriously around the room.

Nie Mingjue seems to be in a similar position, probably blinking off a hangover and propelling up from his sleeping position, glaring around the room like he might find the source of their disturbance somewhere inside. Jin Zixuan, on the other hand, groans loud and long, pressing his pillow over his ears.

“I see you are up,” Lan Xichen smiles from the little table where he sits, drinking his cup of tea peacefully, unperturbed by the pounding on their door, “I hope you rested well.”

“I did, thank you Xichen-ge,” Wei Ying tries to laugh around the blush high in her cheeks, only now really registering the fact that Lan Zhan was also sharing a room and not, in fact, alone just waiting for Wei Ying to traipse her way in.

But when she looks down at the woman laying beside her, she sees none of her own embarrassment reflected there, only a fond smile and a soft hand reaching out to tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ears. Huh, she thinks, revising her earlier thoughts, maybe not alone but definitely waiting for me.

“Wei Wuxian!” comes again from outside the door, though this time it just has her laughing, pushing into Lan Zhan’s hands like a cat.

“When did you get here?” Nie Mingjue asks, rubbing at his eyes. But he stands and stumbles his way over to Xichen and the tea and doesn’t seem particularly hard pressed for an answer, so Wei Ying ignores it.

“Hi, we’re getting married today,” she says instead, meeting Lan Zhan’s smile with her own.

“Mn,” Lan Zhan hums while the banging on the door stops. Finally, Wei Ying sighs, leaning down to press her lips against Lan Zhan’s, chaste because they are still in front of Lan Zhan’s brother and her brother in law. She’s still there when the door pops open, revealing a quietly furious Wen Qing.

“Wei Wuxian,” she seethes, taking calculated steps closer, “You were supposed to stay in your bed.”

“I did!” Wei Ying says, smiling wide to prove her innocence, “Lan Zhan is my bed!”

“I am going to-” Jiang Cheng barges through, leaving no one to hold the door open; it swings heavily back straight towards Jiang Yanli.

Before Wei Ying can even shout a disgruntled hey! Jin Zixuan, who was already on his way to the door, catches it with his hand and leads Jiang Yanli inside with a gentle hand and a soft smile that makes Wei Ying want to puke.

But Yanli-jie smiles back, big and happy and unashamed, leaning up to press a kiss to his cheek, “Hello, husband.”

“Good morning, A-Li,” he says back, wistful and dopey as he leads her inside with a soft hand on the small of her back. Right in that moment, Wei Ying decides maybe she doesn’t hate him. For now.

“Sorry, Shijie,” Jiang Cheng responds, automatic when he looks back but Jiang Yanli waves him off with a forgiving smile.

“I know it wasn’t on purpose A-Cheng.”

The commotion leaves Wei Ying relaxed in a way she should have known better than to be, because all too soon she is being hoisted away from her warm spot on the bed and dragged out of the room.

“You promised, Wei Wuxian!” Wen Qing snaps, but Wei Ying can already hear the forgiveness in her voice, the amusement. Wei Ying lets herself be dragged along, barefoot again, back to her own room. And then because honestly she’s a little on the edge of too-excited and too-in love she shouts over her shoulder:

“I’ll see you at the end of the aisle, Wife!” and maintains vision of the room just long enough for Lan Zhan, who’d pushed herself into an upright position, turn red and drop back down into the bed with a gasp, like all of the air had been knocked out of her.

Wei Ying’s cackles are only rivaled by the quiet, but pleased chuckles from Lan Xichen.

“Do you have to be such an annoyingly sweet couple every single day?” Wen Qing huffs, letting go of her (fake, Wei Ying is pretty sure) anger entirely, sliding her arm up so they can lock elbows, walking arm and arm back to Wei Ying’s room.

Wei Ying thinks of Lan Zhan, warm around her and ever inviting, even if it was 2AM, even if Wei Ying looked like a ragamuffin, even if, even if, and smiles wide, cheesy, deliriously with all the right decisions she’s made in this life and says, “Yes.”

#wangxian #wei wuxian #wei ying #lan wangji #lan zhan #lan xichen #wen qing #wen ning #jiang cheng #jiang yanli #nie mingjue #nie huaisang #jin zixuan #my writing #my fics #jiangchengrights

[hunnybby]

based on assumptions: chapter 6

title: the other side (his pov)

pairing: ennoshita chikara x fem reader

genre: general/fluff

word count: 1k

a/n: hey everyone!!!! how are u this fine tuesday?

-

there’s a feeling blooming in ennoshita’s chest when he feels the smoothness of your fingers. there’s another feeling in his throat when he sees you leave, no flee, tanaka’s room. additionally, there’s also a feeling of disappointment that he feels in his gut when he hears tanaka’s front door close.

not too long after, he’s about ready to pack his stuff up for the night and head home. he doesn’t realize how late it is until he yawns for the third time. “i better get going in a bit.”

he’s collecting his things, the shuffling of his items drowning out other noises. he really just wants to be in bed. he really wants to fall asleep while scrolling through his phone. he really wants-

his inner planning is cut off when he hears tanaka snickering, and he narrows his eyes in suspicion. the baldy laughing is never good for his soul. “what’s so funny?”

“nothing,” he says, attempting to hold back the continued snicker. “just wondering why you freaked y/n out so much that she had to leave.”

ennoshita knows he’s teasing. he also knows it’s lighthearted banter. but what he doesn’t know is why you left in such a hurry. was it him?

“hey,” he turns to tanaka, “i’m... approachable right? i’m nice?” he wants to the last question to sound like a statement, but he’s not entirely sure himself.

“i’m not gonna lie, ennoshita,” tanaka scratches at the side of his face, “sometimes you scare me more than daichi.”

he sighs, dejected. “i only scare you because you never seem to do your work,” he says simply, closing his bag and leaning back on his hands. it wouldn’t hurt to converse a bit more. “i guess what i’m trying to ask is- do i make people uncomfortable?”

this time, tanaka sits across from ennoshita, the same spot you were in not too long ago. “you’re a very respectable man,” he wags his finger back and forth, “and you probably don’t make people uncomfortable.”

probably? he wasn’t going to get anywhere with tanaka.

“do i make y/n uncomfortable?”

tanaka perks up at the sound of your name. “and what makes you say that, hmm?” he presses, his chin resting on the palm of his hand as he leans forward, suggestive smile touching his features.

if there was some sort of insinuation, ennoshita wasn’t getting it. “i mean,” he shifts his position on the floor, opting to put a knee up for a more comfortable sit, “i think she ran out earlier because of me. do i give off some sort of vibe? is this what people call a vibe check?”

ennoshita has always been a worry wart. he was always overthinking things, always doubting himself. did he think he was a good person? of course. did he think people liked him? he didn’t particularly care, but it irked him to think that maybe you... didn’t want to be around him?

you were always saying ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ to him. you have his number, he has yours, and yet you hadn’t texted him. had he read the situation wrong?

tanaka sighs heavily, bringing him out of his thoughts. “i don’t know. why don’t you ask her? you have her number,” he states, pointing to his phone laying face-down on the table.

he eyes his phone, lips pouting in thought. he could text you. nothing was stopping him. his second guessing gets the better of him; he wouldn’t know what to say. “i can’t just ask someone for a vibe check.”

before he could stop his friend, tanaka snatches his phone and stands, lips twisted in a sick grin. he’s mumbling words he can barely hear, but he does hear this: “i’ll text her then.”

ennoshita’s eyes widen as he gets up and attempts to snatch the phone from tanaka, but his friends years of amazing reflexes trumps his when tanaka turns around and ducks slightly. he wants to scream when he hears the sound of a text being sent.

a text from tanaka is bad. a text from tanaka to a girl? even worse. he’s seen the way he tries to flirt with shimizu.

“please tell me you didn’t say anything stupid,” he pleads, eyes closed and body slack.

tanaka tosses him his phone. “i’d never do anything to embarass you, my friend.” ennoshita eyes him wearily.

you [20:50] did you get home safely?

he sighs. knowing tanaka, he thought maybe he’d send a flurry of emoji’s with some out-of-character sentence. but this was a pleasant surprise.

when he looks back up, he sees tanaka still standing, arms crossed proudly in front of him with his nose in the air. “you’re welcome.”

“didn’t know you could talk to girls so normally,” he mutters, reverting back to the sarcastic ennoshita tanaka knew and love.

“i’ll have you know y/n and i talk on a regular basis,” he points out. then his own phone vibrates from his pocket. “that’s probably her right now, telling me how great of a friend i am for texting her.”

“you texted her from my phone 2 seconds ago,” ennoshita replies flatly, reminding him that he did not text you. then his phone dings in his hand. “she responded.” it’s a quick tone change, and it makes tanaka perk up. then it dings again.

y/n [20:52] hey! yeah i did thanks sorry for running out earlier lol

he sighs again, but this time in relief. “we’re good tanaka,” he slumps, allowing his posture to loosen. he lets a small smile form on his lips, “i think i passed the vibe check.”

tanaka, who was also looking at his own phone, gives him a thumbs up with his free hand. “you’ll always pass the vibe check if you let me text for ya!”

the notification goes off again.

y/n [20:55] have a good night!

there’s the feeling of something pushing his way out of his chest again. it makes him bite back a smile.

-

taglist: @kingkags @kuroos-babie @tiawrites@iidkhowtrash@infamouswhitepawsies@hqprotectionsquad@multifandomphenomena @lunarknox

*let me know if you would like to be removed from or added to the taglist!

#haikyuuwritersnet #ennoshita chikara #ennoshita #ennoshita x reader #haikyuu!! #my fic #based on assumptions #boa #haikyuucreations

[notcanoncompliant]

hi! i'm the anon from the earlier starker request (78). maybe seventeen and eighteen? or just eighteen and eighteen, if you're more comfortable with it. i think ill pop up more often, so ill use an emoji. does 🌻 work? - 🌻 (possibly)

Hope you're still around Anon! Here's your request (from like four months ago...😅)

78. "Don't fucking touch what is not yours."

*****************************************************

Peachy

***************

Peter can take care of himself just fine. He's been doing it his entire grade school career, doubly so since he presented as an omega; he definitely doesn't need some knothead alpha to fight his battles for him.

But, oh man, Tony Stark is hot when he's angry.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Beck?"

And the alpha over Peter by his locker is an idiot, because he seems to interpret Tony’s nearly prowling approach as non-threatening.

Peter shivers involuntarily when Tony gets close; the alpha smells like petrichor and ozone and the tang of saltwater, a literal force of nature.

Beck snorts and doesn't put any distance between himself and Peter. “I don’t see your name on him, Stark. Get your own.”

And Tony must be near a rut, because Peter’s hardly spoken to the other teen outside of class, and Tony’s kind of an ass, but he wouldn’t just slam one of his teammates into the lockers with teeth-rattling force over some random omega...but against the lockers is where Beck ends up, the collar of his shirt twisted in Tony’s fists.

“He’s mine,” Tony snarls. “You get your own.”

The (somewhat redundant) warning growl that follows rumbles deep in the alpha’s chest, a sound that calls to something in Peter…

...which just serves to piss off the omega.

‘Mine’? Who the hell does he think he is?

Peter scowls, pushes off from where he’d been pinned. “Yeah...I’m just gonna go.”

He’s at the end of the hall, almost to the front doors, when he realizes Tony’s following him. There’s no sign of Beck, but it’s not that surprising; there aren’t a lot of guys who would push a fight with Tony.

(It’s not attractive, it’s not--it’s macho alpha crap, and it is never appealing, not even when Peter’s alone in bed...at night...with his inflatable knot. *cough* Never.)

“Let me drive you home.”

Peter rolls his eyes. “No thank you.”

The alpha just looks at him with exasperation that is definitely not warranted, and it makes Peter’s hackles rise.

“I’m fine, Tony. I don’t need a bodyguard.”

“You do when you smell like you’re about to roll over.”

Oh. Oh WOW.

Peter’s not sure what his face is doing, but when he looks at Tony, the alpha blanches and takes a step back.

“Shit, I’m sorry, that was--”

“That was some designationist bullshit, and I’d appreciate it if you’d leave me alone.”

With a last glare, Peter turns and stalks off towards the doors, pushes his way outside--

--to be faced with a torrential downpour.

The doors open and shut behind him, and Tony comes to stand beside him, his still apologetic (and a tiny bit smug) thunderstorm scent blending almost perfectly with the rain.

“...You sure you don’t want a ride? Not like that--ow, Jesus--”

***

Getting into Tony’s car was a mistake.

It smells amazing inside, a blend of clean leather and Tony and alpha. Peter's still irritated, but he loosens up, melting into the seat with a sigh he doesn’t mean to let out.

Tony smirks over at him. “Cozy?”

“...No,” Peter says, facing resolutely forward.

Tony doesn’t say anything else, just starts the car, but Peter can feel the alpha’s amusement.

He huffs quietly and lowers himself slightly in the seat. None of this should feel nice, none of it should feel so comforting or safe or--

“You wanna tell me where I’m going?”

Peter opens his eyes (hadn’t even realized he’d closed them), and sits up a little straighter, clears his throat, face heating. “Right. Address. You need that.”

He rattles it off and goes back to trying to ignore...well,Tony, but also the obvious warmth in his own face. His own...everywhere, actually. He’s warm. Overly warm.

Oh no. Maybe Tony wasn’t so far off, as crudely as he’d put it.

They’re about halfway to his house when Peter finally gives up, turns to ask Tony to shut off the heat (maybe it’ll make the scent less intense, everything smells like Tony but stronger; is it getting stronger?) but the words catch in his throat.

Tony’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel, his jaw tight, eyes a little brighter, wild.

“Are you...are you okay?” It’s another thing Peter wants to deny, isn’t sure why he asks, why he...fuck, why he wants to hear Tony say it. To hear him say anything. Why he wants to hear the bass notes of arousal that match the increase in Tony’s scent.

“Peachy,” Tony answers tightly, not looking over.

The shortness doesn’t matter; by the time they pull into the (thankfully empty) driveway, Peter's struggling with conflicting impulses to get as far from the alpha as possible or to just straddle him right there in the driver’s seat.

“Thank you, for, you know. The ride.”

Tony’s scent flares, the leather of the wheel creaking under his hands. “No problem.”

Getting out of the car is the next logical step, but Peter is glued to his seat (not literally, thank god; he can’t feel any slick yet, but he can tell it’s a near thing). The only way he’s getting out is--

No, nope. He’s not going to invite Tony inside, he’s not going to do that.

Swallowing, Peter rubs his palms down his thighs, uses the texture of the denim to ground himself. “Well, um. Yeah. Thanks. I’m just...bye.” He un-clicks his seatbelt and climbs out, trying to ignore the tug low in his belly insisting he get back into the cocoon of good-smell.

It’s better this way, obviously; he doesn’t actually know Tony, doesn’t actually like him. Just because the alpha’s hot...and an impressive rubgy player...and on Peter's level in all the advanced classes...doesn't mean he wants to spend a heat with him (a heat Peter wasn't even supposed to be having right now, what the heck is going on with his suppressants).

He's at the front door, fumbling with his keys, when he hears the car shut off. A door opens and closes with a bang, followed closely by the slap of sneakers pavement.

The infuriatingly intoxicating scent of thunderstorms thickens when the porch steps creak with Tony’s approach, and Peter already knows what's going to happen. Feels it with a terrifyingly right sense of inevitability.

Tony stops behind him, not touching, but close enough Peter can feel his warmth.

Peter doesn’t turn around. “I don’t...Did you need something?” he asks inanely, a little breathless.

“I...need you to tell me to leave.”

It’s not what Peter expected. If he’s being entirely honest, he’d been half hoping Tony would just shove him up against the door (or try, anyway); that he’d give Peter a reason to fight back, to shove him away, to deny the instincts pinging like electricity under his skin.

Peter swallows. “You can go.”

“Do you want me to?”

Fuck.

The key slides into the lock, finally, the click of the latch somehow audible even through the sound of the rain pattering on the overhang above them.

“No.”

**

The blend of their scents, of Tony’s stormy, feral arousal and the sweetness of Peter’s slick, is delicious--filthy and thick and everywhere, and Peter knows he’s going to have the scent in his sheets, deep in his mattress, in his skin, for days, maybe weeks.

But, the memories...those are going to be seared in his brain for the rest of his life, probably.

He rocks his hips forward, groaning. “You feel so good--so tight, god--”

Tony just stares up at him, whines around the soaked boxer briefs crammed in his mouth. He looks gorgeous like this, flushed, eyes hooded and dark, gripping Peter’s headboard as tightly as he had the steering wheel, earlier.

When they’d first stepped inside, Peter had been surprised. Tony had kept his hands to himself, followed Peter up to his bedroom without comment, without pushing. The only thing that gave away Tony’s understanding of the situation was his weirdly polite request that Peter give him a quick tour of the kitchen, so he’d know where to go to get Peter food and water, later.

It didn’t jibe with the alpha posturing at school, and not with the smug boldness that is Tony. Did not compute.

Tony had obviously been aroused, his very much alpha-sized cock straining obscenely in his jeans, but he’d just stood there when the got to Peter’s room, shifting restlessly foot to foot, just...waiting, until Peter had finally asked if Tony really wanted this, why he wasn’t doing anything.

The characteristic smirk had made an appearance, weighed down just a little by nerves, and then Tony had asked Peter to tell him what to do.

Peter had definitely been amenable to that request. And to every one that led them to this moment, to Tony on his back on Peter’s bed, flushed olive skin against the navy blue of Peter’s sheets.

It’s beautiful. It’s breathtaking and amazing and so many other things. He can’t believe he gets to do this, that Tony’s letting him inside, in more ways than one. It’s satisfying and weirdly humbling, and Peter’s going to have to process everything later, but right now...right now, it feels good.

When one of Tony’s hands leaves the headboard, Peter feels a rush of anticipation. “Ah ah, no,” he says, smacks it away before it can touch the erection Peter’s been deliberately neglecting.

Tony makes a helpless apologetic sound through his mouthful, snapping up to grab the headboard again, and Peter shivers, fucks into the alpha’s tight heat a little harder, a little faster, a reward and a punishment.

He won’t be able to maintain this much longer; it’s early enough in his heat that he’s not yet reduced to a single-minded mess of near-delirious want, but Peter thinks he has just enough time to say what he’s been thinking about since he’d been given permission to handle Tony this way.

Curling forward, he leans in to nip and suck at Tony’s chest and collarbones, Tony’s small huffing breaths and pleading sounds in response sending showers of sparks low in Peter’s spine, through his own hot, needy insides.

“You know better than that,” Peter admonishes, voice a little unsteady. “Or, I thought you did.” He sits back, trails his hands down Tony’s chest, his stomach. “You seemed pretty clear on it with Beck.”

Peter shivers, smirking when Tony glares, growling; he can feel the vibrations where they’re connected, and he suddenly very much gets the appeal of angry sex. But he can’t get distracted.

“Shh, Alpha,” he soothes, a little mocking. Tony doesn’t seem to mind, going by the precum that drips anew. “I just thought you understood the rules.”

Peter pulls out carefully, heedless of Tony’s noise of complaint, shushes him as he crawls forward until he’s straddling Tony’s hips.

Tony’s hazy, questioning look vanishes with an almost pained groan when Peter wraps a hand around the base of his cock (tries; his fingers barely touch, fuck) and squeezes, right where the alpha’s knot is going to expand, and stands him up.

“Don’t touch...what doesn’t belong to you,” Peter manages breathlessly, “And this is mine.”

The last word ends on more of a moan than anything syllabic as Peter sinks down--full, full, so fucking full, fuck--and he has to take a second to adjust to the girth, to his...fuck, his first time with an alpha.

Everything’s starting to get hazy and euphoric, now, heralding the point of Peter’s heat where he’ll cease to notice almost anything besides whatever’s pumping inside him, filling him up. But he’s still clear enough to feel a burst of appreciative affection for the way Tony’s trembling with the effort to not move, to not just buck up into Peter’s heat.

Peter reaches out and pulls the underwear from Tony’s mouth, tosses them somewhere off the side of the bed. Leaning down, he claims Tony’s mouth in a deep, sloppy kiss, moaning at the sensation from just a minor change in angle.

When he pulls back, the taste of Tony and himself flooding his senses, he grins.

“Now let go of that headboard and show me who you belong to.”

************************

Everything Tag List: @silkystark, @hoeforthegays, @the-amazing-spidertwink, @starkeroverlord, @smidnite, @cagestark

Again, if anyone wants to be on the Everything Tag list, or wants to be taken off, please let me know!

#starker #tony stark x peter parker #ironspider #starkerflowers fic #omega!peter #alpha!tony #a/b/o dynamics #a/b/o #smut #nff #d/s

[thejonzone]

Riverdale is the Best Show You’ve Written Off

About once a month, a tweet will go around, reading something like “I can’t believe Netflix cancelled [SHOW X], but Riverdale is still on?!? *eye roll emoji, angry cussing emoji*.” It can be difficult to read tweets like these, because I like Riverdale. But I understand why it has struggled to keep an audience-- there is a perception that the show has gone completely off the rails, a chaos of hot actors in their mid-20s playing glamorous high school sociopaths, with the show choosing excess over narrative cohesion. That perception is pretty accurate. It’s an easy show to write off and easy to make fun of, especially because, as a CW show, it’s ostensibly geared to teens. So it brings me no pleasure to say that Riverdale, currently in its 5th season, has reached a renaissance, and its episodes so far this season represent its high-water mark. 

To appreciate how stunning and exciting Riverdale’s new direction is, it’s important to understand how we got here.

In the first season, a murder in the titular town revealed an underbelly of thugs, power brokers, and shady backroom rulers, all vying for control with gothic morbidity. What followed after that season though, was something else entirely. 

Riverdale, ramping up during Seasons 2 through 4, became a beautiful mess. I think it’s important to state that no other show on television is even attempting to do what Riverdale did/is doing. The show is, at any one point, 5-7 wholly different shows. There is a season’s worth of plot per episode. It’s storytelling mania and in-real-time dementia. I don’t remember what happened at the end of last episode because SO much happened. And besides, coherence is overrated! Give me hot actors, give me drug-addicted mobsters, give me creepy principals! On Riverdale, the parents are both former teen heartthrobs and serial killers, children operate underground speakeasies, and for some reason not one therapist has realized they could make a fortune helping our cast work through the intense psychological terror and emotional abuse they receive every episode.

This show is beyond pastiche, hyper-loaded with reference. My roommate and I had a joke that the show’s third season could be mapped to a quadrant of influences: Twin Peaks, True Detective, The Sopranos, and Gossip Girl. At any point Riverdale was acknowledging and playing into the influence of one of these shows. Season Four doubled down on the show’s horror anthology tendency. No one wants you to miss the references being made. You know that menacing boarding school Jughead attends in Season Four? You’d be right If it reminded you of Donna Tartt’s A Secret History. After all, consider Jughead’s classmate, whose name is Donna Sweet. Maybe you picked up on the violence simmering underneath the surface of Jughead’s other classmate, Bret Easton-Elli--  I mean, Bret Weston-Wallis.

Every week, the show seems primed for failure, attempting to juggle more storylines than possible or even necessary. The show is like a house of cards that has already fallen, and yet the writers are somehow still haphazardly adding more cards to the top. “Be reasonable!” I would plead. To no avail. And that’s the thrill of it. The plotlines are secondary to the spectacle. The show is a celebration and parody of violent legacy dramas, camp, teen horror, canonical literature, and anything else it can stuff under the hood, as much an ode to other pieces of media as it is an original work itself. 

But now, something completely different is happening. The beginning of Season Five brought an end to the seasons-long saga the show felt trapped in. Archie, Veronica, Betty, and Jughead graduated high school, and the show flashed forward seven years. What might be considered a hokey technique was one of the best decisions the writers ever did. Because now we have a blank slate for our main cast. The writers effectively cut the fat from three seasons of violent, ridiculous maximalism. And it’s psychically refreshing.

At the heart of any good sitcom, we just want to see our main characters hanging out together. Change is part of life, but it shouldn’t be in television. Which is why this new season is so exciting-- Riverdale is now in the process of bringing its four main characters back from their adult lives and re-engaging them in the deadly politics of their hometown. Pop Tate, the owner-manager of Pop’s, Riverdale’s diner, is retiring, and Archie gets the gang back in town to celebrate the man who helped make the diner such a great hang-out spot. In the words of Jughead, “You gave us a home, Pop.” Like so mant other sitcoms before it, Riverdale used Pop’s to establish its characters and their relationships to each other.

I grew up on Seinfeld so I’ve always been attracted to the idea of the diner. The pandemic has made me yearn even harder for the sitcom diner, that idealistic place where all my friends are, where people enter with problems to be solved, drama to be explained, good news to be celebrated. Riverdale’s acknowledgment of Pop and his diner as the show’s connective tissue is a grounding and human choice. It works fantastically to set up this upcoming season, where our gang must confront the newest nefarious plot for control over the soul of Riverdale.

No doubt the show will continue its pattern of naming and spoofing genre. Veronica, in her adult life, had an Uncut Gems-style few scenes where she works as a charismatic (of course) diamond merchant. She married a possessive, boring guy who’s only characteristic seems to be that his voice is *exactly* like Veronica’s megalomaniac dad, Hiram. Something something Freud, something something daddy sexy. And credit where credit is due, Mark Consuelos is really hot.

Jughead is a writer now, in the most white guy college freshman fantasy of being a writer possible. He attended the Iowa Writers Workshop as an undergrad, something that is definitely not possible. He’s written a hit book but now suffers from *gasp* writer’s block?? He’s a cool guy writer who, in his opening montage, gets recognized by, hit on, and then has sex with a college-aged fan. Back in Riverdale, Jug writes a speech for Pop’s retirement and sends it to his agent. His agent is smitten with the work, calling it “tragic americana” and proclaiming that Jughead’s next book will be titled “Elegy for a Small Town”. This is almost certainly a reference to J.D. Vance’s bad book, and I’m sure the show will be bringing in more elements of “tragic” “americana” as the season unfolds. 

Betty is FBI in training, because as the show has loved to tell us, Betty has “the serial killer gene”, but is using it for good. For the record, her dad was a serial killer, and her brother was a serial killer. And it’s not like her mom or sister can cast the first stone. Betty’s endured enough trauma to fill 100 lives with unending pain and I’m sure the show will have no trouble heaping more on top. Already in the new season we’ve seen flashbacks to some point during the time jump when Betty was taken hostage, in what’s clearly a homage to The Silence of the Lambs. 

And then there’s Archie. I don’t know if anyone knows what to do with the guy. Played by K.J. Apa, who is both really good-looking with his shirt off and a god-awful actor, Archie has been in the army. The show is using him to shill for the military-industrial complex. 

I’ve long joked that the Riverdale writers have no idea what they’re doing. But through a global pandemic affecting TV production and *the* major narrative complication in any high school-set show (graduation), the Riverdale writers have seamlessly transitioned the show to a new stasis. Past seasons are informing this one, but we aren’t bogged down by the details in this new season. The bigger joke, of course, is that the writers have known exactly what they’ve been doing this whole time, and I’m just an idiot. Well I mean, of course I’m an idiot. I use television to regulate my emotions and simulate a static friend group that doesn’t leave or change. And Riverdale is perfect for that. If a renaissance is a rebirth, well then my friends, cut the umbilical cord and save the placenta to put in pills, because Riverdale is cranking out episodes that are better than ever.

[beardrabbles]

THIN ICE

rating: k

words: 1796

characters: female stark reader, peter parker, tony stark

notes: ( ao3 request ) I deleted the chapter with the request like the dummy I am, but the gist of it was reader is a Stark, and Peter is frightened of Tony after learning that. Been a while, but I’m glad to be writing for you all again! :D

tags: none

“Weather’s nice…”

“Mhmm.”

“Would really suck if it was raining.”

“Yeah, it would.”

You spare a moment to glance at the boy beside you and find him muttering quietly to himself, the tone reprimanding and self-depreciating. Without meaning to, you giggled. You had fully anticipated waiting alone on the edge of the street, but another had arrived not long after you had. Clearly, the ones that had promised to pick you up were late, forcing awkward interaction between you and the one with splotchy, red cheeks. Although, now that you were getting a longer look at him — with his pushed back hair and his kind eyes — something about him seemed familiar.

“I feel like I’ve seen you before, but I don’t remember you being in any of my classes.” You turned to him, giving him your undivided attention. “Have we met before?”

The boy chuckled nervously and gave his lean shoulders a shrug. “I don’t think we have. I mean, aside from now. Now we’ve met.”

“Have we?” You arched a brow, and it only made him redder still. “Cause it still doesn’t feel like I know who you are.”

“Oh, yeah! Parker. Uh, Peter.” He held a hand out and smiled twitchily.

“Peter Parker? Nice to meet you. My name is (Y/N).” You were sure to avoid saying your last name, and he didn’t seem to catch that. Your first name was enough to make his eyes light up and his posture slacken even after you placed your hand in his.

“(Y/N). That’s a nice name.” He shook your hand for a second too long, but was prompt in dropping it after he realized how long he’d held it for. “You waiting for someone to pick you up?”

“Yeah, my dad.” You rolled your eyes and looked down both ends of the street, but didn’t spot the car you knew your father was driving. There was always the possibility it would blend in, except your father’s car was far from dusty or rusty or average. You knew for an absolute fact that you’d recognize it from miles away, and you had yet to see it after waiting nearly an hour. “Figures he’d be late.”

“I dunno, I’m kind of glad he’s late. Wouldn’t have been able to talk to you if he got here on time.” Peter became flushed again, and so did you. “Hey, I know this is sudden, but would you wanna hang out with me and my friends tomorrow? We were going to get pizza and relax a little before tests start next week.”

“Relaxing before tests? No studying?”

“It’s Ned’s idea, and I think he’s right. We can only study so much, and pizza’s good.” Peter laughed, and you joined in soon after.

“He is right. Y’know, I’ve been here for about a week and I’ve done nothing but run around. Keeping up with my classes, getting used to being in a new state, new school, not knowing anyone — it’s a pain. I think vegging out over some pizza would do me some good.”

“Great! Here.” Peter fished out his phone and handed it over. “So I can tell you where we’re meeting.”

“Good idea.” He didn’t give you the impression that he was doing this just to get your number, but you would have given it to him either way. Peter seemed nice and a little dorky, but you knew you could be too.

You tapped your number into his phone, and he was quick to send you a text so you could add his number in exchange. The single pizza slice emoji elicited a giggle before you put your phone away. “So, are you waiting for someone too?”

Peter nodded and began to rock on the soles of his sneakers. “Yeah! My mentor’s got something planned for me, and he said he’d pick me up today to make things easier.”

“Mentor? Are you an intern?” You would have been more surprised, but most of the students you now shared a school with were smart enough to own their own business.

“It’s not a big deal.” Peter shrugged modestly and looked down at his feet. “It’s just some big, hot-shot guy. Super cool. His tech is beyond what I expected. Loads smarter than me, but he’s teaching me so much. He’s kind of the best, but I think he already knows that.”

“Not a big deal, huh?” You laughed and nudged him with your shoulder. “He sounds pretty great. Who is it?”

“Oh, uh... You’ve heard of him. Everyone has.” His hesitation was endearing but ill timed. As he struggled with the balance between modesty and excited bragging, a car pulled up alongside the street. The slick, black exterior still managed to glisten despite the overcast sky and the looming threat for rain. The windows were tinted, of course, but you knew who sat in the driver’s seat.

“Looks like Dad finally decided to show up.” You adjusted the pack on your back and grinned towards Peter, but all you saw was confusion.

“Dad? But that’s Mr. Stark’s car.”

It was your turn to look at him strangely. “Mr. Stark? You sound like one of the people that works for him.”

“I don’t work for him, but——”

“He idolizes me.” Tony stepped out of the car, a cheeky smirk on his lips. “Who doesn’t?” 

You wanted to groan loudly at your father’s mountain sized ego, but you had less self-centered people to talk to at the moment. Addressing Peter again, you had only one question. “Let me guess, he’s the mentor you were talking about?”

“He never told me he had a daughter!” Peter balked.

“You never asked.” Tony countered. He moved around the nose of the car, brown eyes peering over the tops of his sunglasses. “I had a feeling you two would run into each other eventually.”

“How come I haven’t run into her while working with you?” Peter looked between the two of you, spotting minor similarities in posture, facial structure and ( now that the two of you were speaking ) the cadence in speech.

“Because I’m not his shadow, as much as he’d love for me to be.” You pass him a smile, but it was too sweet and clearly fake. The smile he gave you in return was soft and genuine, a rare sight. An arm wrapped around your shoulder and pulled you in, his facial hair rough against your temple where he placed a loving, fatherly kiss.

“She’s got her own plans. Whether they follow mine or they go in an entirely different direction doesn’t matter. She’s a Stark! She’s destined to be the best in any field!” He bragged, giving your shoulders an extra squeeze before releasing you. You were flush under his praise, and you had to wonder what you’d done to deserve such an accepting father.

“This.  .  . is weird.” Peter frowned, and it caused both you and Tony to raise an eyebrow in such a way that it only weirded him out more that you two were so alike.

“What’s weird about it?” Tony asked.

“I just asked her ou——” Peter sucked in a breath, paused with his mouth open, then clamped his lips shut. Sadly, it was too late. Tony tensed beside you, and you felt the need to leap forward and protect Peter from the sudden shift in atmosphere.

“He wanted me to hang out with him and his friends.” You quickly amended.

Tony licked behind his lower lip and shoved his hands into the pockets of his faded jeans, his whole posture threatening. There was a moment of silence, but it somehow still felt noisy with the sheer amount of thoughts rolling around in Tony’s head.

“Him and his friends, or just him?” The question he posed felt like it was meant for you, but his dark eyes remained on Peter. Because of this, you kept your mouth shut and let him answer.

“Mr. Stark, you know I’d never——”

“Alone or with friends, Parker?” The sharp jab of his last name made Peter flinch.

“With friends! You know them. I’ve told you about them. Ned and MJ wanted to get pizza and hang out, but we haven’t picked a place yet. So we exchanged numbers so I could tell her when we did. I swear, it’s just to chill out before testing next week.” He sounded pleading, and it annoyed you — not because the pleading itself bothered you, but because your father was causing it.

“Dad, get back in the freakin’ car.” You grabbed his arm and turned him around, hands pushing at his back. He didn’t fight you off, but he did raise his hands while complaining.

“You’re dismissing your own father? I’m hurt, (Y/N). I never thought a boy would be more important than family.” He followed along as he was lead back to the driver side door.

“You are an actual menace. Leave us alone. I’m a big girl, and I want friends.” Once you neared the door, you lowered your voice so only he could hear. “You know him, right? Is he alright?”

“He’s more than alright.” Tony whispered back. “He’s one of the smartest kids I’ve met, aside from you. A little on a dweeb side, but you could make worse friends. Don’t tell him I said that, you I’m docking your allowance.”

“You won’t.” You smiled and bit at your lip. “So I can go with him?”

“Only if I’m allowed to mess with him a little more.” Perfectly white teeth were flashed in a cheeky grin. “I think I freaked him out.”

“I think so too.” You suppressed the urge to laugh and stepped back. “But you’re an actual butthead.”

“I know.” Tony winked, then put on another severe expression that he directed towards Peter. Sharply and menacingly, he motioned with two fingers that he would be keeping his eyes on the young hero. Peter stammered again, but Tony had already folded himself into the driver’s seat.

You moved around the car again and stopped in front of Peter, a spring in your step.

“Text me when you’ve got it figured out. I wanna come along.” You smiled shyly and nudged your shoulder against his. “See you, Peter!”

Peter lifted a hand in farewell, but made it a point to avoid looking anywhere in Tony’s direction. “Yeah! See you. Later. Tomorrow.”

You fled into the car, but rolled your window down at the request of your father. He leaned across you and shouted through the window as he slowly rolled the car forward.

“Watch yourself, Parker! I’ll know if you try anything!”

And with that, you and your father drove away, leaving Peter to panic on his own.

#peter parker x reader #peter parker imagine #marvel imagine #mcu imagine #stark reader #( got two more requests after this :D woop! )

[direnightshade]

Drifting / Chpt. 1

A suitcase emoji. Something so small and seemingly insignificant to anyone else sends your entire world crashing down onto its head when it appears on screen. You’ve been waiting for this moment for years, and now that it’s here, your heart thrums violently with anticipation and dread. This will simultaneously be the best and worst moment of your life.

This fic is based on the series Run, and as always, this can be found up on AO3.

Warnings: Infidelity, Panic Attacks / Generalized Anxiety Template credit: monetscanvas

The soft clatter of silverware sounds from all around the seventies-inspired room of Barclay Prime, the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the windows to bounce off of glass tumblers, the light reflecting off onto the walls and seats. You’re deep into the middle of a conversation with your publicist, who’s seated across from you in a chic, forest green armchair. The topic at hand is your ‘latest and greatest’ novel. “Have you given any more thought into Jerry’s revisions,” asks Nora as she slices the sharpened edge of her knife into her steak, eyes focused on the task at hand rather than at you.

Your head shakes from side to side, even in spite of the fact that her attention is elsewhere. “No.” When her gaze does finally lift, she finds you nursing your glass of sazerac. She looks less than impressed with your response, and when she sets down her fork and knife with a heavy sigh, all you can do is shrug, smiling sheepishly from overtop the rim of the glass. “I just don’t like the revisions,” you say plainly before taking another sip of your drink, feeling the burn of it as it slides down your throat. “I think they’re unnecessary.”

How many times had the two of you been down this road? You respect Jerry, sure, but these edits were not something that you are willing to budge on, not now. Not this time. Unlike your last book, this one had been more real, more substantial, and as much as you’ve added your own little embellishments to make things more interesting, you aren’t keen to allow anyone else to make changes to the story. But even still, Nora isn’t about to let things go that easily. She does know how to get a book to sell, after all.

She opens her mouth to speak, but when she does, your phone buzzes atop the marble tabletop, the sound drawing both of your attention to the mobile device. “I’m sorry,” you murmur, brows furrowing when you see the name that pops up onto the screen. ‘Charlie’ it reads in bold letters, and though the name means nothing to Nora, it means everything to you. It’s a name belonging to someone you haven’t heard from in years, so to see it now, well, it can only mean one thing. Nora’s already begun to go off on one of her tangents again, this time the focus on you and your unwillingness to relent to the edits, but her words are nothing but background noise to you now as you lift your phone and swipe the screen with a shaky finger to open it and reveal the message. A suitcase emoji. Something so small and seemingly insignificant to anyone else sends your entire world crashing down onto its head when it appears on screen. You’ve been waiting for this moment for years, and now that it’s here, your heart thrums violently with anticipation and dread.

“Are you okay?” Nora’s voice finally breaks through to capture your attention. Your panicked gaze lifts to find her, and the look of concern is evident on your face. You nod in spite of feeling the sick feeling that’s washing over you now.

“Yes. Yes, I’m okay. I, uh, I’m so sorry, I just need to, uh . . .” Scooting back up out of your chair, you rise up onto your feet and clutch your phone in your hand, your other hand slinging the strap of your purse onto your shoulder. “Can we reschedule? I’m sorry.”

Nora’s left visibly confused as you step away from the table without so much as an explanation, and as you move towards the entrance, you can hear her call out for you, pleading with you to wait. Your free hand pushes against the door, swinging it open as you step out into the cool spring air, stopping only long enough to unlock your phone’s screen again, taking a moment to stare down at the message. With your heart hammering in your chest, and your fingers shaking to an uncontrollable degree, you send back a single emoji in response: the plane.

Slipping your phone into the back pocket of your jeans, you step further out onto the sidewalk and turn to stride down the block in the direction of Suburban Station. You know that if you’re going to do this, you don’t have the time to afforded to you to make your way back to your apartment to grab your belongings. This has to be done and it has to be done now.

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

Philadelphia International Airport is crowded for a Sunday evening, shockingly so, but even still, you manage to make your way to the Delta ticket counter much faster than you’d anticipated given the sheer size of the line. “I need a ticket,” you say, fishing out your wallet and pulling out your credit card in anticipation of your purchase.

“To which location?” The woman behind the counter watches you, waiting expectantly as you hesitate, and for a fleeting moment, you wonder if you’ll go through with it.

Swallowing the lump in your throat, you slide your card across the counter towards her. “Seattle, please. One way.”

You can tell now that she’s taking in the sight of you and your lack of baggage. She, herself, hesitates a moment before giving you a nod and typing the information into the system. “The next available flight to Seattle is in thirty minutes.” It’s a question more so than a statement, and she falls silent, waiting for your nod of approval, which you give her, before she takes your card and follows through with the transaction.

With the card and ticket now handed off to you, you thank her and turn to make the mad dash through security and to the gate before the flight takes off.

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

You’re a winded mess by the time you make it to the gate just as the attendant is making moves to close the door. “Wait! Wait, please!” Your hand is raised as you shout, waving the man down to bring his attention to you when he turns to find the source of the hollering. By some semblance of a miracle, you’ve made it just before he’s closed the door, which means you’ve managed to land yourself on that flight. The realization makes your heart flutter, because you know what will be waiting for you in Seattle.

Once your ticket’s been scanned, you hustle down the length of the walkway until you’re greeted by the flight attendants who graciously point you in the direction of your seat. Quickly settling into the aisle seat, you buckle yourself in and brace yourself for what will be the longest ride of your life. In six hours, you’ll be coming face to face with Charlie for the first time in years.

— — — — —

Tagging my fellow Charlie lovers!

@ellelaconiwrites​, @little-laamb​, @holacherrycola90​, @prncess91​, @candycanes19, @gurl-ly, @duty-isnt-always-honour, @pretty-wiseee, @klauscarolove​

If you’d like to be added to the tag list, give me a shout!

#Charlie Barber #Charlie #Marriage Story #Charlie Barber x Reader #Charlie x Reader

[planetsam]

Alex shuts down and is traumatized after witnessing Michael dying -Max brings him back- and Michael trying to reach out to him. Just them being each other’s life line please!

He shoots up with lungs on fire and his heart pounding in his ears.

He shoots up and cracks his forehead against Max’s.

Max goes down like a cheap drunk.

To be fair if he didn’t remember the sick, cold pull of losing most of his blood, if he didn’t remember Max being dead a few months ago, he probably would have a better reaction. As it is he scrambles over, shoving his fingers against Max’s neck to make sure he’s got a pulse and he’s breathing. The paleness only comes from his powers. Thank God. But if that hadn’t happened, he thinks, he probably would have been more aware. He would have realized that Max wasn’t the only person who was watching him bleed out.

Or maybe Alex is just too damn good at slipping away.

Isobel takes them both home and there’s a lot of hugging. Like a lot a lot. Which means it’s nearly forty eight hours before he realizes that the only reply he’s received from Alex is a quick ‘Working’. That’s not unusual in itself. Alex isn’t big into texting, he’s lived his entire life with his messages being closely monitored. His answers are usually one word or they come from a number Michael doesn’t recognize. So he doesn’t think much of it. He sends a devil emoji and Alex sends back a smiley face. He doesn’t even try to interpret that.

“Where are you going?” Isobel demands.

“I’m going to see Alex,” Michael says, “I think he’s avoiding me.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“Iz,” he whines and she scowls, “I’ll text when I get there,” he offers. She sighs but nods.

“Be careful,” she says.

He fights the urge to make a joke about always having protection and slips out before Max can voice an objection to him being out of sight. He’s not risking fate by texting while driving so he just drives to Alex’s house. His car is in the driveway and Michael frowns when he sees that Kyle’s is there too. The little bubble of worry begins to expand as he sees the parking job Alex has done. He knocks on the door, waiting to see who opens it. It’s Kyle who does, his face very firmly in doctor mode. Michael does not like doctors as a rule, but he likes doctors in between him and Alex even less.

“What’s wrong?” He demands. Kyle seems torn between sympathy and doctor patient confidentiality. It doesn’t make him feel better, “Kyle!”

“Keep your voice down!” Kyle snaps, closing the door, “he needs to rest.”

“What is wrong with him?” He repeats and Kyle glares, “I mean right now,” he amends, “why does he need to rest? What happened?” Kyle looks stunned and Michael suddenly has a renewed desire to kill him, “i was dying, my spacial awareness was not great!”

“You bled out in his lap,” Kyle cuts in. He ducks past him and pulls out a plastic bag. Michael opens it and almost gags at the smell, “He was trying to stop the bleeding. I found him this morning. He’s been in shock.”

“Damn it,” he swears, knotting the bag and shoving past Kyle who grabs his arm, “get off!”

“He’s asleep!” Kyle says, “I have him on an iv and he’s sleeping. I gave him a sedative. He’s not going to wake up for a few hours.”

“I don’t care!” He says and wrenches his arm free, opening the door.

Kyle doesn’t let it slam as he gets from the door into the bedroom. The picture over Alex’s bed is gone and hanging from the hook is a bag. Tubing snakes down into then crook of his elbow. Alex’s face is slack and his hair is unruly from going to bed with it wet. He’s got a grey Air Force shirt on and he’s completely still. It’s a profound disconnect from how Alex usually sleeps. Michael feels his throat tighten at the sight of it. Of him. He died but Alex was trying to stop that. Alex who never met a battle he didn’t want to fight was watching him bleed out. Was in shock for two days, probably locked in the basement wearing those clothes. Michael doesn’t know who he’s more upset with.

“Damn it Alex,” he mutters, tossing his hat to the side and toeing off his shoes.

Almost dying doesn’t mean Alex is going to let him off the hook if he goes under the covers in his jeans. Which is fine, he climbs on top of them, getting as close to Alex as he can. Sedative or no, he can’t really just lay there watching Alex sleep so he closes his eyes, focuses on the deep, even breaths that Alex is taking and let’s himself drift off.

“I’m fine.”

“You absolutely are not. Don’t say you ate. Tequila is not a food group.”

The huff brings him fully into consciousness. It’s late and there’s a lamp on. Alex is scowling up at Kyle who has his arms folded and no intention of letting him up. Alex glances over and his eyes widen in surprise. Michael rubs his eyes and realizes he was really asleep. Kyle looks from Alex to him which only seems to piss Alex off.

“He needs to eat,” he says.

“Okay okay,” Michael says.

“There’s food here.”

“I’ll make sure he eats,” Michael promises.

“Thank you,” Alex says to Kyle.

He doesn’t look thrilled Kyle is leaving. But Kyle’s the only one with a stable job and people to help. Which kind of leaves them together. Alex dips his head and looks at him quietly. Michael is very used to Alex initiating conversations like this, his silence is strange and unsettling. It feels like they are playing chicken. He caves first.

“You’re working?”

“I was.”

“What if Kyle hadn’t been here?” Michael demands, “what if you had been passed out—“ he’s not the only miserable liar apparently, “you were passed out?!”

“I’m fine,” he says.

“You are not fine! Stop saying that! God—i didn’t even know you were there or I would have checked on you way earlier,” Michael shakes his head in self disgust, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he says. His stomach rumbles, “lets get food, okay?” He looks over, knowing that his stomach has good timing for once, “can you help me?”

Grateful for something to do besides just hugging Alex in the bed—he promised Kyle he’d make him eat—he glances around for Alex’s prosthetic. Alex nods towards his crutches which are positioned near the bed. Michael picks them up and looks around, putting two and two together. It’s odd to see Alex get out of bed with one pant leg rolled up and tucked around the missing part of his leg. Alex hates the crutches, in more than just a metaphorical sense.

“I’ll clean it,” he says.

“You don’t have to—“

“Course I don’t but I got it,” he says, “where’s your leg?”

“Bathroom,” Alex relents, “I have cleaning stuff in the kitchen.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

He goes into the bathroom. Alex’s leg is disassembled and Michael realizes that they’re trying to dry it out. Blood is caked everywhere on it. They aren’t trying to dry it out because it’s wet from cleaning. His blood has damaged it. The metaphors is nauseating. But at least this is one area he can actually help in. He grabs all the pieces and makes his way into the kitchen where Alex is putting food on plates. He ducks under the sink and grabs the cleaning stuff. He ignores the food in favor of making sure Alex’s leg isn’t messed up by him bleeding out. Alex doesn’t react to the water in the bucket turning pink and then red, he focuses on other things.

“This is gross,” Michael says finally, “seriously this is disgusting. It’s not even all blood.”

“I mean,” Alex swallows, “you were pretty badly hurt.”

“Tell me all of them are dead,” he says looking over at him, “come on I need one piece of good news.”

“They’re dead,” Alex confirms.

Good. He isn’t thrilled about dying but he’s more concerned with the emotional distress they’ve put Alex under. Max can fix physical wounds. Alex is full of grit but he’s making progress damn it. Michael’s been enough of a setback for him. He scrubs the various pieces and wipes them down, making sure they are all clean. He fixes the vacuum mechanism. When he turns to Alex though, Alex shakes his head. Michael can’t blame him. He gets up and puts the leg back in the bathroom.

“Thanks,” Alex says.

“Seems like the least I could do,” Michael says.

“You’re here,” Alex points out and he doesn’t have a response for that.

He cleans up and eats. Alex is eating slower but he hasn’t had Isobel feeding him for the past 48 hours. Even though they’ve slept for most of the day, Michael finds himself tired. He yawns before he can stop himself. When he looks over Alex is yawning too. He smiles but Alex looks at him far more seriously.

“Do you want to sleep here?” He asks.

“Yeah,” Michael says. Alex nods, “Lemme text Iz.”

“I’ll get you something to sleep in.”

One berating later, he finds himself climbing into Alex’s bed. It’s strange and nod just because the bed is big enough. It’s strange because this is the most clothed he’s been laying next to Alex in his entire life. He needs this though, they both do, but his heart is pounding in his ears as he climbs in. He doesn’t know why he’s nervous, maybe it’s just because the dark and not seeing each other have always been crutches in their relationship. Whatever that relationship is in the moment. He rips the bandaid off as he turns to Alex.

“Talk to me,” he says, “come on.”

“I—“ Alex trails off.

“Alex,” He isn’t sure why he’s pleading with him. He doesn’t want to damage him, no more than he seems to do without meaning to. It’s fucking shitty that their relationship only seems to work when Alex is doing all of it, “Come on,” He says. Alex blows out a breath. The second one he blows out is shakier and Michael’s stomach drops, “c’mere.”

Alex rolls into his chest with barely any resistance and Michael grips him as tight as he can as Alex sobs into his chest. He just mumbles nonsense and holds Alex, trying his best to remind him at every moment he stops that he’s alive. He’s here. There’s one benefit to being with a screw up alien whose brother can heal. It’s better for Alex to get it out now but fuck if it doesn’t hurt to have him sob like this.

“It’s worth it, you know? I’d do it again—“

“Don’t,” Alex cuts him off, “don’t you dare say that.”

“It’s true,” Michael repeats, “I don’t want you hurt.”

“You almost died,” he says, “I was covered in your blood. Again.”

“I know, I know,” Michael smoothes his hair back and presses their foreheads together, “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. You saved me just as much as Max did,” he doesn’t let Alex shake his head, “you did. Now you gotta stay with me, right here, okay?”

Alex trembles and Michael aches to hold him but he has to hear. He strokes the tears from his cheeks uselessly.

“Alex—“

“Okay,” Alex says, managing to sound partially annoyed. Michael hugs him close, “you too.”

“Okay okay,” Michael relents, “I’m here,” Alex grips his shirt, “I’m here,” he repeats, in time with their heartbeats, “I’m right here.”

#michael guerin #alex manes #malex fic #roswell new mexico #malex #malex fanfic #roswell nm fanfic #prompts #michael x alex