#especially when it comes to my fictional favorite characters | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

novelistrry · 1 year

Text

Her mouth gawked open at how casually he said it was like it was completely okay for her eyes to be ogling him like he was a piece of meat. Every single time he wore that shirt, she felt guilty for the ways her eyes could have burnt holes through his chest. Now, she was thinking he wore that shirt so often on purpose— to make her squirm. She tucked her face into the neck of her arm to hide from him.

“Stop hiding from me. Want to see your bashful face,” he pulled her face from the neck of her arm and placed his fingers below the underside of her chin once more so she wouldn’t pull away. “Y’know if you were one of the seven dwarfs, you would most definitely be Bashful.”

With an eye roll and a defeated puff from her lips, she finally gave him the answer he was hoping for, “I’ll go with you.”

As much as he wanted to be delighted by her response, he wanted to confirm that she was positive she actually wanted to go. He didn’t want to force her into doing anything she was unsure of, “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Y/N stood from the chair and stretched out to rid the aches in her joints from sitting in one position for too long. “Do you think we could watch a movie?”

Harry is a young professor and Y/N has never felt this kind of attraction before.

Disclaimer: There is only light editing and it is smutty in this part!

Word Count: 14k+

Part One

The Spring breeze brushed Y/N’s cheeks.

Sprawling out on a plaid picnic blanket with her and Niall’s favorite lunch items was her favorite way to spend Sundays, especially when the park was filled with laughter, butterflies, and blooming flowers. Sunshine covered the entirety of the park, seeping warmth that trickled deep into her skin and bones, and she was soaking up every ounce she could get. Sunshine made her feel happy, and optimistic even.

Niall sat there with a book in hand, reading something for pleasure, taking a pause from all the educational content he had consumed over the past few months. It was some book that he begged Y/N to read, telling her that she would absolutely fall in love with the characters, but Y/N was too preoccupied with the tension brewing in her own life, not leaving much room for her to brew over fictional characters.

With a few snaps and a couple grunts, Niall managed to pull her from her reverie looking disgruntled as his book lay askew in his lap. “Sheesh, what do I have to do to get your attention nowadays. Dye my hair brown and curl it?”

That familiar heat that normally crept up her skin, penetrating her cheeks and the top of her ears rose once more, and her sheepish smile remained as she swatted in his direction, not actually able to nudge at him because he was a little too far. Y/N and Niall hadn’t talked about the bar a few weeks ago. He didn’t know where she snuck off to after school or why she was coming home late at night. It’s not that she didn’t want to tell him, Niall just hadn’t asked. “Oh, stop that!”

A teasing smile played upon his lips, curling just slightly and his eyes gleaming enough to know that a snide remark was going to be hurled at her soon. “So what, you spend all your time with him now and he occupies your thoughts when I’m with ya?”

Pink lips curved up, matching the same teasing smile Niall had displayed across his face. A shimmer in her eye had him realizing he wasn’t that far off the mark with his assumption, though she wasn’t keen on confirming that with him. A floral-scented breeze blew through her hair as she inhaled sharply, filling her lungs with the clean Spring air, resetting her breath and her thoughts. “How would you know if I spent all my time with him?”

In a fraction of a second, Niall was sitting a little closer to her, the book he was once enthralled with falling off of his lap and closing on itself, losing the page he had carefully left it open on. His arm extended to nudge her slightly, pushing her in the direction of that floral-scented breeze she just couldn’t get enough of. Dandelions were growing in the grass, rose petals were falling from the bushes that paved the park sidewalks, and blue skies hung over them. It was an omen of goodness, she thought.

“You think I don’t realize how late you sneak through the door? I can hear ya!” He wasn’t speaking to her in an accusatory tone like she was sneaking behind his back because she wasn’t. He spoke to her in a tone that says I’m your best friend, I just wanna know what’s going on in your life, so she decided that she would give him a glimpse at how her afternoons are spent.

“He’s been tutoring me, that’s all. He found out I was failing abnormal psych and told me he can help me. It’s completely innocent, but he helps me after school…” She trailed off, leaving out the details that he drives her to his apartment where they lay her books out on the kitchen table and he goes through each concept with her, or that sometimes when they’re feeling a little tired, they lay her books out on the coffee table and sit together on the couch, elbows and knees brushing. She leaves out the fact that she stares at the way his mouth moves when he speaks, and sometimes he gives her a stern look, indicating that he knows where she’s looking and she needs to focus on the subject at hand. Besides the subtle and gentle brushes of bare skin, and the fact that she sometimes stares when she shouldn’t, it was a completely innocent thing.

“But you don’t want it to be innocent, is that it?” Niall asked, the judgment-free from his tone. Curiosity was interwoven between the syllables, but there was no indication that he was judging her for her…. Er… Feelings?

Hummingbirds flew past them as she thought of an answer. A couple thoughts were swimming through her brain, but none that she wanted to share with him. No, she wanted to keep some of them private, just for her. She didn’t want to tell him about the kiss they shared, or the way her fingers would graze her lips the following week after their lips had touched ever-so-gently. She didn’t want to tell him that when she breathes in the citrus scents in the produce aisle at the grocery store she thinks of his minty citrus cologne, or how sometimes when he would lean in while she studied, her heart would thump a little harder and her skin would warm with a feeling she couldn’t quite place just yet.

“I don’t think so,” was all she said, not giving any other information. That is all Niall wanted to hear, that she knew she was feeling something more than a bond between two colleagues. If he was being honest with himself, he was a little worried for her. A professor and TA isn’t the worst combination, eventually, when the semester ended, she would no longer be his TA, but she had never expressed a crush even throughout undergrad. Hell, Niall didn’t think she had very much experience with guys, but that would never be an appropriate question to ask her.

“As long as you’re being safe, I’m happy that you feel so happy,” the response was honest. He was happy, though a tad nervous like mentioned before, but happy to see her so consumed with the sunshine, the flowers, and the hummingbirds that swirled around them. He thinks maybe, just maybe, her sweetened mood might be the force that brought Spring on so suddenly.

“Thank you, Niall,” she said slowly, “I am happy.”

____

“Are you understanding this?” Harry pointed to words in bolded letters that read mood disorders. His tongue flicked out across his bottom lip as he lowered himself from the couch to the floor, criss crossing his legs so that he was adjacent to the book Professor Smith required in his class (it happened to be the same one Harry required, so he knew the book like the back of his hand and it made the lessons with Y/N so much simpler).

A puff blew from Y/N’s lips as she eyed him, the words he was speaking weren’t registering in her ears. It seemed that with each passing day, she became more flustered with the proximity of him and more restless each time their skin brushed or she watched his tongue wet his lips— something she had never quite experienced. To her own embarrassment, she had googled the symptoms and Google had told her she was experiencing a kind of attraction she had probably never experienced before. Y/N thought back to the few people she had a crush on years ago and realized that they just made something bubble in her tummy, but never made her feel the way she felt when she looked at Harry. She felt so jumpy and jittery around him, she was beginning to think something was wrong with her. Quickly, she clicked out the tab and then cleared her search history, although she knew that no one was going to be able to look through it beside her. She just didn’t want to be reminded of the fact that she had googled something that made her feel so virginal.

It was true, she had only ever kissed one person other than Harry. She didn’t have half the experience Harry had, and she probably couldn’t even convincingly say she had a quarter of his experience either. The boy was named Kitt, and she met him at a summer camp they both attended in high school. At the end of the camp, right before she was shipped back home, Kitt planted one on her. She didn’t feel for Harry the same way she felt for Kitt, her relationship with Kitt felt childish in comparison. She wanted to feel Harry, really truly feel his mouth against hers. Not the way he kissed her in the office to cheer her up, make her feel better, and soothe the horrid thoughts that were rifling through her brain. She wanted a kiss where she was attentive, where she could explore every inch of his mouth, and where she could—

“Are you even listening to me?” He asked her, pushing his face into his hands. At first, she thought maybe he was losing patience with her, but when he nudged her with his elbow and sent an angelic smile (the kind of smile that would make a person drop to their knees), she knew he was only teasing her.

Embarrassment flooded through her as she was caught, once again, not paying attention to the concepts he was trying to teach her and rather drifting off into daydreams about him. The sun was setting, the natural light in the living room slowly dimmed as they shifted from day to night, and she knew that their time together for the night would be coming to an end soon. She should have really been listening to him, taking in each sound of his voice, the way his deep voice wrapped around the consonants and vowels, but she just couldn’t help it. Ugh, she just couldn’t focus.

“I’m sorry,” she answered him genuinely. She was sorry for not listening. He was taking so much of his free time to help her learn and she repaid him by not listening. How could she tell him that the way his eyes locked with hers, sultry and tempting sent her spiraling into daydreams she didn’t want to pick herself out of? How could she tell him that when she watched his tongue flick over his lips, she thought of the way his lips felt against hers and how she wanted to feel that again? She wouldn’t tell him that, so she settled on the next best thing and put her face in her hands to hide from his concerned stare, “I’m just having trouble focusing.”

With caution, he shifted his body and brought himself back onto the couch so that he was sitting next to her once more. Harry had been noticing the way she was in and out of their conversations, sometimes completely immersed and other times floating away so high that he thought he would have to bring her back down with a butterfly net. Usually, he tried not to make her feel too bad about it, he didn’t want her to think that she was upsetting him, because she wasn’t. But, this was the second week of her floating to space as he talked. Sometimes he would catch her right before she slipped into the reveries it was hard to bring her out of, but today she was long gone and he was beginning to feel anxious over her lack of focus.

“I know you are,” he reached over and hooked his fingers on the inside of her wrists, pulling her hands away from her face so that she would look at him. He didn’t want to treat her like a damsel in distress of any sort or like he was some hero trying to save her from her own thoughts— that’s not what was going on at all. He just wanted to understand her better, to figure out where her brain was running off to. “Won’t you tell me why?”

There it was again, that soft voice that makes her admit things she otherwise would have been so unwilling to do. Fingers caressed her cheek lightly; his fingers. Without much thought, she tilted her head into his fingers, begging for his touch without actually saying anything. It was dangerous, he knew it was. The last time he crossed a boundary with her, he told her it couldn’t happen again, and though she occupied most of his thoughts, it had been a month since the kiss, since he pushed her up against the wall of the bar and she licked his finger, and he wasn’t willing to cross that boundary again even though he wanted to.

“‘Can’t stop thinking about you,” she mumbled, her eyes fluttering close as his fingers brushed against her cheek in soft strokes. With so much delicacy, with so much precision, he gave her one last stroke of the cheek before tucking his hands in his lap. Y/N’s eyes which were peacefully shut as she soaked in the brief skin-on-skin contact abruptly opened at the lack of physical touch.

“I see,” his tone shifted to one that was more guarded, one that was less like the cheerful, sweet Harry she had gotten so used to over the past month. “You just really need to understand this stuff.”

Harry was trying to reason with her, he really was and she knew it too. She wanted to cross her arms, turn her lips down into a gruff point, and tell him that she wanted to talk to him outside of all the studying. Maybe it was wrong, but she wanted to get to know him for who he was outside of a college professor. There were so many things in his home that made her think that he was quite possibly the most interesting being to ever walk the planet. Vinyls crammed into a bookshelf that was absolutely not made for vinyl but must have run out of room for his records on the measly shelves you can buy at the record store. The furniture wasn’t your typical ikea branded nightstands and sofas. It was much more intricate like he had spent his days going to vintage furniture stores, trying to find the coziest couch that matched his bubbly spirit. Y/N had never been so interested in the ins and outs of someone’s life, how they formed their taste, or how they decided their career path. The closest thing she could think of was how she hammered Niall with twenty questions when they first met. It was purely platonic, never any mutual attraction between the two. Obviously, Y/N knew he was a little pretty, but she was much more interested in being his friend than anything else.

“I know,” she huffed out, furrowing her brows in frustration. A feeling of smallness washed over her, realizing that she admitted she thinks about him. A lot. Too much. And he responded by telling her she needed to understand the course contents. Of course, she knew that. “I’m trying.”

His lips twitched and though he knew he shouldn’t indulge her further, he liked to see her bashful gaze and the way she sucked in her bottom lip between her teeth and furrowed her eyebrows, attempting to give him the most thoughtful answer she could possibly think of. Honestly, Y/N was the type of girl that people could say was put through a time machine. She chose her words carefully, she picked her actions cautiously, and she was too mindful for her own good. But when it came to Harry, she felt so out of control of herself. It was massively infuriating.

Against his own better judgment he asked her the question he knew he shouldn’t have, “What do you think of when you think of me?”

She pondered momentarily, tucking her bottom lip between her teeth, furrowing her eyebrows, and searching the crevices of her brain for a way to respond to him. She just spent the better half of the lesson with him, thinking about his lips and how they felt, but she didn’t let her thoughts go further than that. No, she barely tried to think about the way her tongue licked from the base of his finger and then swirled against the tip because she could barely handle where the thoughts might lead to. She didn’t want to admit it, not when he was so firm about the boundary they set in his office a month ago right after the kiss they shared. “I wonder what you’re like outside of school and tutoring. I look around your apartment and see all these intricate things and beautiful paintings, and it makes me wonder how you spend your free time.”

“That’s all?” He looked at her incredulously, wondering why she was so shy about daydreaming about how he spends his free time. Actually, he would have even gone as far as to say that he was disappointed. All she had to do was ask him, and he would cross that boundary with her once more.

“Yes,” she hummed out, slumping her shoulders forward and resting her elbows on her knees, “That’s it.”

“Well,” he responded, closing the textbook but not before dog-earring the book to mark their spot (one of Y/N’s biggest pet peeves was dog-earring a book instead of using a bookmark, but she guesses she doesn’t mind so much when it’s Harry who does it). “Can I make a deal with you?”

“That depends on the deal,” she quirked one of her eyebrows.

“If I tell you that we can spend some time together outside of studying, do you promise to try and pay attention a little more?” He asked, giving her the best deal she could have possibly thought of.

“Of course!” Excitement nearly burst from the pores of her skin, and she didn’t have it in herself to be mortified by the way she responded with such enthusiasm.

“It’s a deal, Darling,” he reached out his hand and grasped hers, shaking gently.

That’s how it began. That is how Y/N and Harry began spending so much time together, going on picnics, seeing movies, getting coffees at the shop on the corner of where his flat was located, visiting flower shops, feeding the ducks bread at the pond (though Y/N googled it and found out that oats are much better for ducks because if you throw the bread in the pond, it can rot and collect algae causing harm to the wildlife in the surrounding area). That is how Harry ended up keeping a 42-ounce container of oats in his car just in case she wanted to feed the ducks.

____

Bright lights shone in the sterile atmosphere, and Y/N knew she should have been paying attention after being called out by Professor Smith just last month, but it was only partner work with Mallory and Mallory didn’t mind that she was dazing off back into that far away land. Actually, Y/N noticed that Mallory was too, except when she peered over at Mallory, her eyes were narrowed, her fingers were gripping the desk tightly, and it was like she could physically see the color drain from her face.

“Mallory?” Y/N questioned her friend, pulling Mallory from her thoughts. With care, Mallory set the pen on the table, then rubbed her eyes in a couple brisk moments. When she finally looked back at Y/N, she still didn’t have that signature warm look in her eyes. The kind of look that tells people “You’re safe with me.” It was gone, buried under deep gray clouds and Y/N could nearly see that the storm was brewing behind those eyes.

“I’m sorry, I have a lot on my mind,” she explained, her eyes still not meeting Y/N’s. The blank gaze was becoming alarming with each passing minute, and usually, Y/N didn’t like to push because she knew how it felt, and it was not a very good feeling, but she decided that she and Mallory had made good enough friends that it was slightly acceptable.

“Do you want to talk about it?” A question that was open, and couldn’t be classified as pushing because it was a close-ended yes or no type of question. If she said no, they would move on immediately and Mallory would never hear another peep out of Y/N regarding the subject. Prying just felt too invasive.

“I think Josh is cheating on me.” It turns out Mallory didn’t need any other pushing, because the words slipped from her lips so easily but with careful caution as she looked around the room, eager to see if anyone was eavesdropping on the pair (no one was, Y/N thinks Mallory just didn’t want the whole class to know her business, which was fair. She didn’t want anyone knowing her business either, but Professor Smith had other plans).

“Why do you think that?” The question Y/N asked was genuine, and filled with care. Y/N couldn’t imagine, what a horrible thing to think and how it must be weighing on Mallory heavily. Y/N thinks if she was kissing Harry all the time, and then found out he had been with other girls, it would feel like a knife right in her chest. But it was much different for Mallory. Mallory was in love with Josh, and from what Y/N gathered, Josh loved Mallory too. So how could he do something like that?

“I found underwear in the backseat of his car when I was looking for one of my earbuds that I dropped…” Mallory began gathering her thoughts, “they were tucked in between the seat and the floor, right next to where my earbud went.”

Y/N nodded in understanding, “I see, and you don’t understand why your underwear would be in the car.”

“Well, no,” Mallory explained, trying to get Y/N on the same wavelength as her. “It wouldn’t matter if I found my underwear in the car. Sometimes we just need each other so bad. The issue is that it wasn’t my underwear. I have never owned a laced pair of red underwear with pink hearts embroidered. Never.”

It suddenly clicked in Y/N’s brain. That wouldn’t make a lot of sense for Mallory to find a pair of underwear she has never owned in her life in Josh’s car. Y/N tried to think of ways it could be a misunderstanding, to reassure Mallory that maybe it wasn’t as it seemed. There was no way Y/N could spin it in her head that made Josh look less guilty than he actually was. He seemed very guilty. “Have you said anything to him yet?”

Mallory shook her head and pressed her cheek against the coolness of the wooden desk, “Tonight I will. I think I just wanna be in my thoughts right now.”

Y/N whispered something small, telling her that she understood and did not fault Mallory for not wanting to talk about it anymore. Maybe Y/N was a little relieved at that because she didn’t know the first thing that would make someone feel better about that. She couldn’t tap into prior experience, she couldn’t pull from when she was cheated on because Y/N was never in a situation like that. Actually, Y/N couldn’t stop replaying that sentence Mallory had said that awakened a realization deep in the pit of her gut, it was fizzling like a volcano was ready to explode. Sometimes we just need each other so bad, was what Mallory had said. Those simple string of words laced together helped Y/N describe the way she had been feeling for Harry; restless, tense, and she felt like she just needed him so badly every time she saw him. It was a realization that what she was experiencing was an attraction like no other, but how was she supposed to tell him?

____

Harry hated it.

If there was one thing he couldn’t stand it was miscommunication; plain and simple. Or in this case, lack of communication.

He couldn’t even tell you how many nights they sat down, side by side at his kitchen table going over the textbook (at this point he wanted to throw it through the window, he was so sick of it) and ignored the tension that was growing between them. With each longing glance, the tension was nourished. They were watering it, he thought. They were causing it to grow bigger and bigger until one day it couldn’t be confined to the four walls and they were just going to explode.

Sometimes the tension grew when they weren’t studying too. Actually, that’s where it seemed to get worse. When they were out and about, she would do subtle things that would work him up. Make him wanna grip her hips and pin her against the wall again, just like the bar. God, the bar. He pushed the thought down, but a similar thought began to rise.

“No, Harry,” she shook her head and tutted her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Carefully, she wrapped her fingers around his and encased his hand in hers. She was trying to show him the best way to feed the ducks. “This is how you do it.”

“So now you’re the professor?” He asked her, watching the bashful gaze flutter upon her features as she tucked her cheek against his shoulder. She began shaking his hand, letting the oats fall out from in between his fingers. He did understand it, though, the technique she was teaching him was a lot better than the technique he was using which clumped all the oats together. Now the ducks could pick the oats off the ground with space instead of cramming against one another.

“I think you can learn a few things from me,” She retorted, finally dropping his hand from hers. It was a strange feeling he had. The feeling that he didn’t want her to let go, he didn’t want her touch to fade.

“I think I can too,” he replied, tilting his head to the side, admiring her compassion and thoughtfulness. He thinks that if he weren’t there with her, Y/N would have the ducks eating from the palm of her hand.

But, finally, the lack of communication had reached its breaking point. He couldn’t handle it anymore, he needed to hear her thoughts. He just needed her to talk to him. So, he slammed the textbook shut a little too aggressively, causing her to jump and glare at him with frustration.

“I was in the middle of reading that!” Y/N’s glare persisted, but now her eyebrows were furrowed and her lips were flipped downward in a pout that told him she wasn’t happy with him shutting the book so abruptly and not giving a warning.

“Let’s talk,” he ignored the pout on her lips and the way her eyebrows furrowed in frustration. What he didn’t ignore was the way her fingernails nervously scratched at the table. Gently, he took her hands into his and shifted his body so they were facing each other. Her hands, still tucked tightly in his, were placed in his lap. It didn’t take long for him to note the way the pout wiped from her face as soon as she felt his skin against hers as if it was soothing for her hands to be in his.

“But you always scold me for talking when I’m trying to study!” She argued, trying to get to the bottom of why he wanted to talk. Y/N went through a mental checklist in her head of things he might want to talk about, but there was nothing so pressing that he needed to slam her book closed mid-sentence. She was finally passing Professor Smith’s class, she was keeping up with all her TA work in his class, and she wasn’t slipping into daydreams since her conversation with Mallory happened.

It took him a couple moments to respond. Instead, he admired her for just a second. She deserves admiration from time to time. Hell, she deserves admiration all the time. She was so cute he didn’t think it was humanly possible. If someone came knocking down his door and telling him that he was seduced by an alien and needed to report to NASA headquarters immediately, he wouldn’t have second-guessed it. He looked at her like she hung the moon, the sun, the galaxy, and everything in between.

“Will you quit staring,” she grumbled shyly.

“I just want to know how you feel, that’s all.” He was trying to be as straightforward as possible.

____

He wanted to know how she felt? Since her conversation with Mallory, she tried to find the words she would tell him. Y/N knew it wasn’t healthy to keep it bottled up and locked away. In fact, with each passing day, she felt like she was going to burst. Eventually, they were going to have this talk and she knew it was coming. No matter how much she thought about it, she didn’t think she would ever fully prepare for it. Obviously, after she and Harry shared the kiss, they talked about it and how it couldn’t ever happen again, but besides that, they both chose to ignore that it ever happened.

She popped her mouth open ready for the words to come out, but when they didn’t, she closed her mouth once more. Y/N did this a few more times, noting how patient Harry was with her. She thinks she might be the luckiest girl to be able to talk to someone so patient and kind.

“I was talking with Mallory,” Harry stiffened at the sound of Mallory’s name so she quickly revised the thoughts that poured from her brain and straight out the fountain that was her mouth, “Not about us! About her and her boyfriend. She thinks he’s cheating on her, but she hasn’t gotten to talk to him yet…” Y/N’s words faded out as she tried to figure out how to phrase this without sounding needy.

Y/N decided the best way was to start from the beginning, so she continued with her story, “Mallory said she dropped an earbud, so she was looking in the backseat of her boyfriend's car for it and found a pair of underwear that didn’t belong to her. Well, at first I thought it was because why would there be underwear in his car, but then she explained it wouldn’t have been that weird to find her underwear in his car because I guess sometimes they sleep together in the car. She told me they only did that when they felt like they needed each other badly,” she paused momentarily, once again trying to locate the words. “I think that’s how I feel about you. A strong desire.”

A strong desire? What was she thinking? She replayed the words, feeling so stupid for even saying them out loud. Y/N had admitted that she desired him but didn’t think he would return that same desire. How could he? The look on his face was unreadable, and she was suddenly hyper-aware of the room around them. She could feel the lights penetrating through the top layer of skin warming her up, she could hear the sound of the fireplace under his television crackling, and she could see the way his eyes flickered between her mouth and then back to her pupils. She may have messed up something go—

As if he was plucking a delicate flower from the grass, he pulled her body closer to him. She was off the chair and back in his lap in mere seconds, the same way she was back in his office when they shared the first kiss. Completely straddling him on the dining room chair, she was all too aware of how exposed she was in his position. She was reminded of the feel of his thighs between her legs once more. This time the kiss wasn’t gentle and filled with tears, it was more longing and wet. He pinched the sides of her hips with a such delicate precision that her mouth dropped open, just slightly to let him in.

Her prior kisses played on a loop in her mind. They had never felt like this before. This was pure desire, no doubt about it. His tongue caressed the inside of her mouth, and he tasted like the juice he was drinking as they studied. A soft and subtle notion of cranberry filled her mouth, and when she took a deep breath through her nose, she smelled his minty citrus signature scent.

Tongues colliding, she felt as if she could transcend from her body. And for a second, she thought she may have left her body and watched the two of them go at it from an outside perspective. It was sensual the way they moved together as if the two of them were one and the same. A piece of art carved from the same stone.

When his tongue retreated back to his own mouth, allowing her to feel the inside of his, she let a small moan escape, the vibration snaking its way up her throat and into his mouth. He could have melted then and there. The sound embarrassed her just a little bit. The moan—or whimper, really— was filled with such desperation and corrupt desire she couldn’t help but feel a small twinge of shame in the pit of her gut.

She pulled away, her face burying into his chest so that she couldn’t see the look on his face. “Sorry.”

He stroked his fingers up and down her sides, slipping beneath her shirt to feel her skin and she let out a small gasp at the feel of his fingers brushing against her sides. “What are you sorry for, baby?”

“You said we couldn’t do it again, remember?” She tacked on the end of her sentence to jog his memory. As if he had forgotten what he told her in his office a month ago about how they needed to place a boundary. Clearly, it wasn’t going to work so why deny them the pleasure of each other’s company even further?

“Is this what you want?” He pulled her face from his chest, using one of his fingers to support the underside of her chin. At this moment, he wanted eye contact with her, he wanted to make sure she was telling him what she wanted. He didn’t want to guess or have to read between the lines; he had to know. Did she want him?

“I want this,” she puffed out a breath, sleepily fluttering her eyes. “Really, I want this.”

“I think,” he breathes slowly, bringing his finger to her lips and wiping off the residue of his mouth. He had half a mind to leave it there for him to admire under the dim kitchen light, “I want to do this with you too. We just have to be careful.”

“Right,” her sleepy eyes settled upon his brown curls. “No one can find out.”

“It’s not that,” he shook his head and grasped her hands once more, bringing their hands enclosed together to his chest. She could feel the thump of his heart against her chest, “I want to protect you here.” And she knew he meant her heart.

Stars circled around them, enclosing them in their own bubble against the word. It was at this moment she took the time to look at him, really truly see him for what he was. She had done it once before when she first met him, but she tried not to do it again to keep her heart from fluttering at an alarmingly fast rate. But now she felt like she could appreciate his beauty for what it was; she was comfortable with that. Harry’s jaw was sharp and clean-cut like he was cut from stone. The apples of his cheeks were kissed by angels, pink and rosy. His eyes were a clear green, the type of green that flourished in the forest and faeries hid in. He wasn’t just handsome. No, he was more than that. Truly, he was beautiful. A spark twitched in her chest, an appreciation that he wanted her the same way, too.

“Stop looking at me that way,” amusement flickered in his eyes, but longing swam in his bones as her gaze studied the intricacies of his facial features.

Confusion appeared on her face, “What do you mean?”

“Stop lookin’ at me like I hung the moon and the stars, and make the earth spin on its axis.” He was only teasing her, and it was something she was still trying to get used to. Sometimes, Y/N was a very literal person, and couldn’t pick up on teasing or sarcasm on the first go. She had to dissect the conversation a little more before she could be certain teasing and sarcasm were at play.

“I think you did,” she hummed and his chest thumped faster against her hands. Y/N liked that she was making him do that.

Rose-colored blush presented on his cheeks, and with a successful feeling stirring inside her, she pressed a kiss to the tops of each cheek.

“Do you think I could tell Mallory?” If there was one person Y/N wanted to tell, it was Mallory. Well, Niall too, but she knew that she didn’t need to ask Harry about that. It’s not like Niall was one of his TAs too.

“Yes, Sweetheart. I think that would be fine,” without hesitation, his lips collided with hers once more, but the words he murmured when he pulled away caused a breath to catch in her throat, “You’re very pretty.”

____

Tomato sandwiches were currently Y/N’s hyper-fixation meal, and as Mallory talked and Y/N listened (no surprise there), she gnawed on the edge of her sandwich.

The pair had been eating lunch together in the cafeteria. Mallory was fighting a rough breakup, and Josh would not stop texting her. At one point, Mallory handed Y/N her phone and told her to just scroll through. It was a series of apologies, ‘it will never happen again’, and ‘I need you.’ Y/N was proud that Mallory basically told him to swim in the stream of his own tears, then blocked him. After Josh realized Mallory blocked him from texting her, he moved to other forms of communication, but this time he was no longer texting her apologies and they were actually quite alarming messages.

“Do you wanna hear what I think?” Y/N asked before giving unsolicited advice. If Mallory didn’t want to hear what Y/N was thinking, she wouldn’t just spring that information onto her. Through the course of the past couple of weeks, Y/N began collecting her thoughts on the situation. She didn’t want to give advice or put in her two cents prematurely, but as the situation between Mallory and Josh got worse and worse, Y/N was sure her thoughts on him wouldn’t change.

“Of course I do. You’re my friend,” Mallory insisted, waiting for her to give some humbling advice. It wasn’t often Y/N asked Mallory if she could offer her thoughts on the situation. As time went on, Mallory noted that Y/N wasn’t the talkative type. While she always had great things to add to the conversation, if she didn’t want to speak then she wouldn’t. Sometimes Y/N only wanted to listen, and that was okay with Mallory. In truth, Mallory thinks they balanced each other well.

“I think you dodged a bullet,” Y/N said a little loudly over the sound of sports players rushing into the college cafeteria, heavy cleats clicking against the tile sounding louder as they passed by the pair trying to enjoy their lunch in peace. “And you’re my friend, too,” Y/N added at the end there.

“You’re right,” A sorrowful sigh escaped from Mallory’s lips, indicating to Y/N that even though she was right, Mallory was still sad about it. Y/N really, really didn’t want her to be too sad over a guy that was proven to be disgustingly manipulative. Maybe Y/N wasn’t the best judge of character, a little too trusting, but the red flags Josh was displaying toward Mallory were enough for Y/N to know that his intentions were not very good.

“What did you think of my friend Niall?” Y/N asked. After Y/N and Niall got home from their “double date” (she used that term very loosely), Niall wouldn’t stop talking about how funny Mallory was. He kept saying that she was better than the comedian they had all saw before the nightclub came to life, and that next time they should put her on the stage. He also kept saying that she was very pretty, and Y/N noticed the sheepish glances he threw in Mallory’s direction throughout the night.

“He was very fun to be around,” Hesitation was laced in Mallory’s tone, and if Mallory didn’t know any better, she thought Y/N and Niall were finally together. “Are you guys finally together?”

“No! Ugh!” Y/N threw her hands up in exasperation, dropping her tomato sandwich back on the paper napkin she packed in her lunch pale. “I want to set you guys up on a date. I don’t like Niall like that! Actually, I’m seeing someone. He’s not my boyfriend or anything, and he might not even really like me like that, but he likes to kiss me.”

Mallory paused for a moment, scrunching her nose and finally nodding her head in response to Y/N, “I would probably like to go on a date with Niall. If he’s chosen you as a best friend, I know he’s got good taste.”

Y/N’s cheeks warmed, “Well, then, good. Because I know Niall would like to go on a date with you.”

Mallory backtracked for a moment, the words Y/N spoke finally processing fully in her head, “Who are you seeing? And, I think the term you’re looking for is hooking up. If you guys don’t actually like each other like that and it's purely physical.”

Purely physical? Is that what she wanted? Y/N brought her voice to a whisper, glancing around to see if anyone was trying to listen in on their conversation (they weren’t) before murmuring, “Harry.”

Mallory’s face didn’t drop in shock, her face didn’t contort with disgust, but her eyes sparked with delight. “You might be the luckiest girl alive.”

____

“Now when you read this concept from the book—”

“Would you go out with me, Mallory, and Niall on Friday? We’re going to play putt-putt, and I’m trying to set them up,” Y/N interrupted him, surprisingly for the first time during their one-on-one lesson today. It wasn’t that she wasn’t paying attention, but about ten minutes ago, she realized her attempt to set Niall and Mallory up was going to turn into her being the third wheel. Now, there was nothing wrong with that, but she had a feeling once Niall and Mallory got their hands on each other, they wouldn’t take them off. If Harry agreed to come along at least she could use him to escape during the date, and it would be fun to see how he gets along with her friends. Obviously, Harry and Mallory get along well in a work-type setting, but she wanted to see how they could get along as simply friends.

With delicacy, he shut the book. If there was one thing Harry could pick up on, it was when Y/N’s brain was becoming overloaded with information. She couldn’t retain an information dump the way he could, so he adjusted to the way she learned best because all he wanted was for her to be as comfortable as possible. Sometimes he thought about the way, with teary eyes, told him she didn’t want him to think she was stupid. He never wanted her to feel that way again.

“Could we make another deal, Darling?” Harry’s fingers grazed the underside of her chin, pushing it up just a tad so he could get a full view of her face. Viewing her face in full was a must for him, he was constantly imagining that face when she wasn’t around.

“I am open to making a deal,” the words came out slowly, her head nodded with each syllable, and she tended to like the deals he made with her because there was always some sort of benefit for the both of them.

“If I come with you to see your friends, would you come with me to see mine on Saturday?” He didn’t want to pressure her into coming. In fact, he thought about asking her but decided against it because he didn’t want her to feel obligated. When she brought up the question about him tagging along with her, Mallory, and Niall, he thought maybe he was in the clear to ask her a similar question about meeting his friends, but then her face fell in what he thought was… Hesitation?

“What’s the occasion?” The pressure was applied to his fingertips as she glanced down at her hands in her lap, and she began picking at the sides of her fingernails. She wanted to meet Harry’s friends, but she was nervous about being around large groups of new people. At least when she hung out in big groups with Niall, she had him around her at all times, and by now, she was so used to Niall’s friends, it wasn’t uncomfortable to strike up a conversation with his pals.

“It’s a wine night. My friend Mitch is hosting this time. It’s basically a small party. We wear nice clothes, drink wine, listen to music, and catch up. It’s proper fun,” Harry was trying to make the environment as calming and fun as possible, realizing the hesitation on her end was just nerves.

“Nice clothes?” She questioned and had to physically stop herself from picking at her nails by grasping at the edge of the table otherwise she would make her skin go raw.

“Not super nice, just not sweatpants and jumpers since it won’t only be our immediate friend group. Sometimes we do that when it’s purely game night, drinks, and a movie,” he explained, and he knew exactly what to say to get her to agree so he added at the end, “I’ll even wear that satin shirt you like. You know, the one that has my tattoos peeking out. The one you drool over.”

With an eye roll and a defeated puff from her lips, she finally gave him the answer he was hoping for, “I’ll go with you.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Y/N stood from the chair and stretched out to rid the aches in her joints from sitting in one position for too long. “Do you think we could watch a movie?”

“Anything for you,” he spoke softly and honestly, the gentle tone ringing in her ear like music. His voice was a symphony made just for her, “You know that.”

____

The words that tumbled from Y/N’s lips in the middle of the movie really caught Harry off guard. It was her delivery, actually, that had him furrowing his eyebrows and asking her to repeat the statement one more time just in case he heard it wrong. It was unprompted, there was no sign indicating that’s how she was feeling (specifically at that exact moment), and the look on her face was of shock like she hadn’t meant to say it; it just kind of slipped out.

“I said,” She cleared her throat and he felt her cheeks heat beneath his fingertips as she spoke. The pair were uniquely sitting on the couch. Harry was sitting with his legs kicked up on the coffee table, and Y/N was sitting with her head in his lap and her legs taking up the rest of the unused couch space. As they were watching the movie, Harry would stroke her cheeks or run his fingers through her hair just to feel her, “I would like to do more than kiss.”

If Harry was trying to keep a composed face, free of shock or confusion, he was almost positive he was failing. His lips and eyes felt too numb to actually realize how he was looking at her. How could he lie and say he didn’t want to do more than kiss either, he just wasn’t sure how to initiate it given their circumstances— and why would he deny her what she wanted?

“What do you want to do, then?” He spoke the words clearly, that lustful tone leaking past his lips and soaking her with it,

“I’m not,” she began, pausing for thought, “As experienced as you, I think.”

Harry nodded, encouraging Y/N to continue. He could tell there was something on the tip of her tongue, the words she was failing to formulate stuck in the back of her throat, begging to come out.

“Well, I just think...” she picked her head off the warmth that was his lap, “You’re very good at teaching. Would you teach me? I want to be good for you.”

It turns out that Harry was going to make her work for it, he was going to make her say the words out loud. His ego was slightly inflated by her gentle words, calling him a good teacher and asking him to teach her. Harry didn’t like assuming, but from what he was understanding, she wanted to teach him how to feel good and make other people feel good. Though, Harry didn’t think she would need much teaching as half the time he has to go close his eyes and take a few deep breaths to will his stiff cock away.

“Teach you what, Darling?” His fingers were grazing the inside of her thighs, telling her he knew exactly what she wanted from him. He was just slightly devilish, wanting to hear the filthy words fall from her lips.

Sighing, she moved her thigh into his touch. Begging, pleading, wanting... “Please don’t make me say it, Harry.”

“Are you gonna be a good girl for me? Hm?” Harry continued to work his fingers up her thigh until it rested just above the button of her pants where he was waiting to help her out of her pants. At this point, he was no longer assuming, he knew exactly what she wanted; she wanted to hit that sweet spot, she wanted him to get her there, to ride it out on him and hit that euphoric state right in front of him.

With a shuddering breath, she responded, “Yes, yes... I’ll be good. Just please.” Her fingers reached for her button, gently touching Harry’s own fingers, and her pants were off in a matter of seconds. She thinks she heard something about him saying she was so good for begging him for it, but the words didn’t register as he gently pulled her across his lap so that each leg was on either side of her thigh. Her wet center was directly on his thighs, and if she knew any better, she could have come right on the spot.

“Would you look at that?” His fingers strode up her slit covered by the fabric of her white panties, “I can see you straight through your panties, Darling. How long have you been this soaked?”

He prompted her to start rocking against his thigh, so she did as she was told and began moving up and down. The friction was enough to make her let out a noise she had never heard from herself before. As of now, she wasn’t embarrassed, just full of wanting, needing, and lusting. She would be embarrassed by her desire and the sounds she mewled atop his thigh later, but for right now, she just wanted to feel good.

With one quick motion, he was stimulating her clit, making her feel so many things, so many emotions, she could barely handle it. She continued to rock against his thigh, and if she didn’t know any better, he may have shifted his leg upwards so that she was getting the best possible access to his leg. This was going to be her new obsession; she was going to stare at his thigh at school and wonder what it would feel like for him to take her right into his office, she was going to drool over it while they studied and beg him to let her feel good because she can’t focus until he lets her come.

“Those are such pretty noises,” he commented when another moan slipped past her lips and her head threw back as he gripped her hips and brought her closer to his crotch.

She looked down, taking in his cock through his sweatpants. God, he was so pretty. Hard against the fabric of his pants, and the tip was leaking just enough for her to notice through the gray cotton.

He glanced down at what she was staring out, a smirk playing across his lips. She was simply everything. So good, so sweet, so attentive. “You’re gonna come just by looking at my cock through my pants?”

She didn’t have it in her to feel ashamed when she felt this good. All she could think about is how he would feel inside her, how his lips would feel around her neck. Even... how his hands would feel around her neck, claiming her as his own. In response to him, she just moaned and mumbled something— slightly incoherent, it took him a moment to decipher— “Want to feel your cock inside me.”

____

Harry was over the moon with the phrase that tumbled off her lips in her pure, unadulterated need for him. As much as he wanted to give her what she asked for. She was such a good girl, she deserved the whole world. He wasn’t sure how well she would be able to take it now. Y/N was already overstimulated by his thigh and his fingers circling her clit when she let out an unrestrained moan, threw her head back, and her thighs tensed around his, he knew she was going to come. But, he wanted her to hold out, just for a little bit.

He couldn’t help it; she looked so pretty like this. She looked like she was made for him, like a puzzle piece that fit on his thigh so well, there was no possible way the pair weren’t made for each other. Longing glances and looks filled with need had been exchanged by Harry and Y/N for quite some time, sometimes in between classes he’d have to give his cock a proper tug, otherwise, he would have been walking around stiff— and aching— for the rest of the day. He wanted her so much, it was unbelievable. But, Harry wanted her to make the first move, he wanted her to be sure this is what she wanted, and when she finally looked at him with that needy gaze, he knew he had to give her what she asked for.

“You’re not ready for my cock, baby. You’re so needy, hm?” It was slightly condescending, and what did it say about her that tightness in her belly coiled when he called her needy? He was right, she was needy.

“Can I move against your cock the way I am now? With your pants still on? Need it. Really need it,” Her words were jumbled together, separated by moans filled with desire as she moved in up and down motions against his thigh. He knew if he gave her what she wanted, she would come right then and there, as soon as her core touched the hardness of his cock, and maybe he was a little selfish for it, but he wasn’t ready for her to get there.

“That’s not how you ask, Angel. You know your manners. Use them.” The slight reprimand made her toes curl, and when he realized that she liked it; liked being reprimanded and it was definitely getting her off, he stopped her rocking motions by digging his fingers into her hips and giving her a pointed look; the same look he gives her when she’s not paying attention while she’s studying. It sent waves through her, and she felt like she was floating on a cloud.

“How do you ask?” He prompted, encouraging the words he wanted to hear.

“Please, may I?” She tried to rock once more, but his fingers kept her in place. A sensual gaze lingered on her features, looking him up and down like she could swallow him whole, and how could he say no to that?

“Good girl,” he brought her left leg over his other leg so that her pussy was in full contact with his clothed cock. Before she started rutting against him, moaning, and throwing her head back in pure carnal desire, he decided he would give her a little incentive. “If you hold out for me, give me ten more minutes of seeing you look so pretty as you rut this pussy against my cock,” one of his fingers moved from her hip where he was holding her in place to the slit of her pussy and worked it’s way over, slicking his finger with his wetness and popping it in his mouth to see how good she tasted, “I will let you watch while I run my hand over my cock and make myself feel good, hm?”

A jumbled yes came from the back of her throat, and he used his fingers that were against her hips to help her find her rhythm against his cock. He could have come right there at the sight of her, but he was good at holding off, good at edging himself. It was something he wanted to teach her how to do. How to get to that good place, then rip herself away from it. In the end, all of the frustration makes the orgasm worth it.

She tried to last, she tried to make those ten minutes, but she just couldn’t. With a cry, she warned him, “Harry... I can’t. I can’t wait. Please.”

“That’s okay, baby,” Harry comforted, letting her know that it was okay. He would teach her how to stave off soon enough, but right now he was more concerned with her feeling good and comfortable.

That was all it took her to that nice place. As her orgasm filled her body, lingering in her bones and warming her skin, she came against him. Pulling away as her nerves were overstimulated and sensitive, sweat beading at the top of her forehead, and mewling noises coming out of her lips. He thought she looked beautiful.

Quickly, she took herself off of him, not able to handle the overstimulating she was feeling in her core and in her brain. She tried not to look at the wet spot she left on his thigh, and directly on his crotch.

He could tell by the way her eyes averted, and she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear that she was feeling embarrassed, but he didn’t think she should feel so ashamed for feeling good. She should never be ashamed of that. With a gentle finger, he lifted her chin from her downward stare into her lap and whispered softly, “Don’t ever feel embarrassed about that. Do you see how hard you’ve got me?”

Heat flooded her cheeks, warming her skin, and that coil she felt in her lower belly when she first started grinding against the muscles of his thigh stirred in her once more as she eyed his hard cock covered in her wetness. “I don’t get to watch you now because I didn’t wait?”

How could he deny her what she wanted when she was so, so good for him? Listening attentively, asking politely, and being so sweet to him? “I’ll let you watch. We can call it a consolation prize.”

Heart fluttering, she shifted slightly so she could get a full view of this. His eyes darkened as he slid his sweatpants down just enough to pull his cock out of his boxers. It sprang out, the tip a blissful pink color, and she thinks that her mouth has never watered so badly. He was even bigger than she had been able to realize through his sweatpants, and it all made sense. He was sweet, but calculated and there was a rough edge of confidence laced in the way he speaks. The size of his cock matching the confidence of his personality wasn’t anything that should surprise her.

When Y/N let out a soft, sultry, sweet-coated moan at the sight of his right hand clutching the base of his cock and tugging upwards, Harry realized three things about her that he would dissect later.

Y/N had an extreme praise kink, thinking back to how she sucked in sharp breaths when he told her what a good girl she was, and how she moaned at the sight of her reward.

Y/N got off on a slight reprimand from him, seeking guidance and his stern words fulfilling something deep in the pit of her gut.

Y/N might have been crafted just for him, and he, just for her.

Just the look on her face was enough to make him come on the sight, but she had done so well, he wanted to give her a little bit of a show. With each movement calculated, he lifted his shirt just enough for her to see his abdomen then grabbed the base of himself and stroked upwards, using the precum oozing from the tip as a lubricant for his hand.

“Would you do me a favor, sweet girl?” He asked her, his eyes remaining fixed on her as he watched how her body reacted to his words and movements.

Eyebrows furrowed, she responded so sweetly and sincerely if his eyes were closed, he would have sworn there were droplets of honey dripping off her lips. “Yes,” she almost begged, “What can I do?”

Harry guided her head with his hand, gripping his fingers around the back of her head and lowering it so she was adjacent to the head of his cock. Eagerly, she thought he was going to let her wrap her lips around his so she moved her head a little closer, and when he realized what she thought he wanted from her.

“No, baby, not yet. I just want you to spit on it for me, hm? Let me use your spit to work my cock?” He knew the words were filthy, and he knew it sent a shiver down her spine. She opened her mouth, just a little so closely to the tip of his cock that her top lip just swept over it as the wetness from her mouth dripped down him.

“Fuck, baby,” Harry guided her head back so that she was sitting directly in front of him with a perfect view of how his hand brought him to his own tipping point.

He leaned his head back against the couch, eyes fixated on hers as her gaze didn’t stutter from his hand. A little bit of drool leaked from her lip, but she quickly caught it, finally breaking her gaze from his hand and looking to see if he saw that.

“Quite literally drooling over my cock, are you?” It fueled his ego, working his hand harder over himself as he realized what an effect he had on her.

Finally, he was there, eyes locked on her and reaching his pinnacle. His own sweet spot washed over him, ripping a moan from his throat and filling the living room air. Silky whiteness spurted from the tip of his cock and onto his abdomen, and she had to stop herself from leaning down and tasting him. She just wanted to taste him, but how could she voice that? The combination of wanting to taste him, the way his face contorted with pleasure, and the sound of his deep-provocative moan that gathered in the back of his throat and then filled her ears worked her back into that sweet place with no stimulation from Harry or even herself. As he worked himself down from his own orgasm, guilt washed over her face and he couldn’t help but give her a lazy-half smile. “What?” He asked gently.

“I think...” She shoved her face in her hands, the bashful person she was shining through what they had just done together, “I reached that spot again when you let that sound out. I just, I just felt so good.”

Eyes fluttering shut, he took in her words. “Baby, I’m so happy you felt so good. When was the last time you felt like that?”

Y/N just shakes her head, the words caught in her throat. “I don’t know if I’ve ever felt like that with anyone else— even... even myself.”

He just smiled, glad that he was able to get her there, and then hooked his hand under the backside of her knee, pulling her close for a sweet and simple kiss compared to what they have just done. While his lips were still pressed against his, he spoke, “I think we should get cleaned up.”

“I think so too,” Y/N smiled into the kiss, and Harry thought he would give up anything to stay like this with her forever. Talking with their lips pressed together, his hands all over her, and her hands all over him.

“Would you mind taking a shower with me?” It sounded so intimate rolling off his tongue, but that’s what he wanted with her—intimacy.

“I would love that,” his heart leaped at the realization that she wanted the same things as him.

____

“I’m a bit of a sore loser, baby, so please tell me you’re good at putt-putt,” Harry said as his hand grasped the steering wheel of the car. He was driving them to putt-putt golf with Mallory and Niall. Niall had decided he would take Mallory out to lunch before the other two joined them to get some one-on-one time together.

Y/N noticed a shift in their relationship after he had made her orgasm twice without doing much, and after she watched him tug away at his cock. She was more comfortable with him, more open to asking him questions, and Harry absolutely loved it. Just a few days ago, she asked him (without Harry having to work the question out of her) when she could taste him, and he told her, in the most gentle way possible, that he wanted to go slowly. He just wanted to make it special for her.

At first, she was nervous to ask him when she could taste him, not quite sure how she could voice the question, but as a few days passed, she realized that there was never any judgment or harshness in Harry’s tone.

“Well, I’m not very good at putt-putt. And maybe I’d like to see you a little pouty,” she reasoned with him. She always felt like she was the pouty one, maybe it would be a nice change of pace to see him pouting for once.

“Y/N, you know I could never be pouty around you. You make me too happy.” Harry explained, taking one hand off the steering wheel and linking their fingers together, and bringing her hand to his lap.

Y/N decided she was just going to enjoy the drive, and the simplicity that was her, Harry, Niall, and Mallory enjoying their afternoon together.

As it turns out, Y/N was really good at putt-putt, though she had never played before in her life. Niall and Harry got to talking about how they both liked playing real golf and made plans to go out some weekends together. It made Y/N’s heart turn, just a little to see her best friend getting along with Harry so well. They seemed like they were really hitting off (and not to Y/N’s surprise at all, she knew this would happen, Niall and Mallory were very much enjoying the company of one another). By the end of the night, they were sharing drinks and then spent the night tucked into Harry’s chest.

Y/N was happy. Very happy.

____

Y/N was not happy.

Harry’s friends were not as nice as he had explained them to be. Well, maybe it was just one friend that left a sour taste in her mouth and made her stomach fizzle with anger; possibly even jealousy.

The evening started off great. She wore a simple, yet elegant, midnight green dress, and Harry (as promised) wore that cream-colored satin shirt with midnight green slacks to match her accordingly. He ogled over her the minute she stepped out of his room wearing that green dress, looking as lovely as ever.

When Harry was done swooning and gawking over her, he led her out to his car and began driving in the direction of his friend’s house. Y/N noted the beautiful scenery on the way to the house, and when Y/N finally commented on the scenic drive, Harry explained that his friend lived in a winery.

“On a winery?” Y/N questioned, making simple conversation as they drove up a windy road with a narrow pathway, barely able to fit two cars. “Is your friend a vintner?”

Harry nodded in response, throwing over the occasional glance as he drove, though it made Y/N nervous for him to take his eyes off the road ahead of them. She trusted him though and didn’t make any comments about how the drive was making her feel. Part of her didn’t want to say anything because she wasn’t sure if the drive was making her feel a little queasy or if it was the fact that she was going to a party latched onto Harry’s arms. She was about to meet his closest friends, and even though he said they were nice, she knew she would be under a degree of scrutiny. She was coming as his date, of course, they were going to look at her with cautious-watchful eyes, so they could reconvene later in the night and ask one another, what do ya think of Harry’s new girl?

Before Y/N even knew it, they were parked in a round-a-bout driveway, and Harry was helping her out of the car. She must have paled on the drive up, because when he took her hand in his, and lead her up the stairs of the beautiful home, he leaned over and whispered in her ear, pressing his lips against the lobe, “Feeling okay?”

A nod came from her in response, and before she could even respond verbally, the person who was lingering on the other side of the door quickly threw it open. A chill ran down Y/N’s spine as she thought of Harry’s lips against her ear. They hadn’t done anything from when they sat on the couch and Y/N came on his clothed cock. She had brought up how she wanted to taste him, but they haven’t had the chance to yet, and Harry had told her that he wanted to take things a little slow. She understood. How could she argue with that?

“Oh, come on in before you two get cold out there,” the man standing on the opposite side of the door said to them as he noted the chill that racked through Y/N’s body. It wasn’t the cold wind, though the wind was colder than it had been these past couple of Spring days. It was the thought of Harry’s lips against her ear, and when she looked over at Harry and saw the way his lips curved upward in a devilish grin, she knew exactly what his plan was. He did that on purpose, he was trying to work her up.

Like Harry told her, the man lived in a winery and before she even had the chance to learn his name (it was Mitch she found out a few minutes later), he was thrusting a glass of red wine in between her fingers. She took a couple sips, mumbling something about how it was sweet, and without hesitation, Harry leaned and whispered something naughty in her ear, causing heat to flood her face and between her legs, “I bet you taste sweet, baby.”

They mingled, and Y/N who normally felt overwhelmed in situations like these was actually doing alright. It might have been the way the wine was starting to flow through her veins, or how genuinely kind Harry’s friends actually were (not that she doubted him very much, but you never know), but she was actually enjoying her time.

Well, she was enjoying her time until Harry ruined it by whispering the filthiest things she’s ever heard into her ears. In fact, she was beginning to feel flustered, because she wasn’t sure her panties could handle another bout of wetness before it started dripping down her leg. Her dress only hit below her knee, so if it began running down her leg, people were bound to notice and she didn’t think she could handle the shame.

So, she stood there, with her legs crossed, wine glass in her hand, and pouted. He could tell he got her there; to the point of frustration that she would burst at any second. Her responses to him were becoming short and pointed, bratty even. If there was one thing Harry could teach her, it was how not to be a brat. It was how to ask for what you wanted because all she had to do was say the words and he’d take her right into the bathroom and let her have that release.

When they had finally broken free from the conversation they were having with Mitch and… Well, Y/N actually didn’t grab the other person’s name because of the frustration filling her from head to toe, Harry grabbed her upper arm gently and pulled her so close to him that her chest was pressed against his, “Won’t you tell me why you’re acting like a brat?”

Disappointment donned her features. Was she acting like a brat as he said? If so, she really didn’t mean to, she just couldn’t help it. The words fumbled from her mouth quickly as she straightened her back just a little bit so that her body language didn’t look so dejected, “Sorry. I don’t mean to act like a brat.”

“I didn’t ask for an apology,” he stated and the sternness in his voice made her core ache even more than it already was, “I asked for you to tell me why.”

She gave in to his request, hoping that if she told him why she was acting like a brat, he would tell her what a good girl she was for listening. “I’m so wet, Harry.”

His cock throbbed against his slacks, and he murmured softly against her neck, pressing a soft kiss just under her ear, “So instead of acting like a brat, what should you have done?”

“I should have told you what was bothering me,” she guessed, not quite sure what the actual answer was, but it seemed good enough for him because his response was exactly what she was begging for.

“Good girl,” he pulled away from her, resting his fingers just under her chin, and hummed out, “Now should I take care of you?”

She only nodded.

____

The bathroom of the house was big enough to fit them both in there and when Harry sat her on top of the bathroom counter and hiked her dress out, he grumbled out a “Fuck, Y/N.”

She wasn’t being dramatic when she said she was so wet. If he kept her out there for five more minutes, she would have dripped down her leg, and Harry doesn’t know what it says about him the fact that that turns him on so greatly. For his friends to see just how much of a reaction she has to him. How his words can get her mewling and thrashing and moaning.

Quickly, he tugged her panties off and shoved them into his pocket. She was still up on the counter, watching his movements with lust-filled eyes, and leaking onto his wrist that he had pressed against her center. His hand was gripping the counter, the inside of his wrist pressing against her and when he moved, even slightly, she would let out small, sharp gasps. “Can I touch you?”

“Please,” she responded, and that was all he needed before he began working her to that special spot. His fingers, covered in rings, slipped inside her slowly, so slowly it was agonizing. He didn’t need her to lick his fingers, offering that extra lubricant because she was so wet that she was soaking the counter. He flicked his fingers upward, hitting that soft spot inside her, and when he finally found it, her eyes widened, as she had never been stimulated there before. It only took a few motions in and out of her, before her walls began squeezing around his fingers. Right before she was about to come, about to hit the peak of her orgasm, he pulled his fingers out of her.

Eyebrows furrowed, she questioned his actions, “Why did you do that?”

“I’m not ready for you to orgasm just yet,” he said softly, his green eyes glimmering with want and need.

“Please?” She asked, “I-I need it!”

Normally, she would feel embarrassed by her begging, but right now she didn’t have it in her to feel embarrassed. The only thing she had in her was that she wanted that orgasm to encompass her, sending her body to that place she went when she was rutting against her thigh.

She was so beautiful and so lovely that he couldn’t deny her of that, and he knew it, so he slipped his fingers back into her with careful precision and stimulated that soft spot inside her once more. She let out soft moans filled with nothing but desire, and she squeezed around his fingers once more before letting her orgasm rip through her. He worked her down with his fingers, and when she looked up at him with a sleepy gaze, he knew she was feeling much better; the frustration completely obliterated from his body.

Although, when he brought his fingers, covered in her wetness to his lips, licked it off with his tongue, and said, “I was right. You do taste sweet,” she thinks she could have gone again.

Harry helped her get her panties back on, and hop off the counter of the bathroom, promising that when they got home he was going to help her shower the stickiness from in between her thighs and take good care of her. She knew she was safe with him, and it was possibly one of her favorite feelings in the entire world.

“Why don’t you go back out there, love? I’ll clean up here and be right out.” He bargained with her, and she followed his instructions because it probably wouldn’t look too good if the both of them slipped from the bathroom at the same time.

Harry’s plan was to clean up, but he had to relieve himself somehow too.

____

Y/N’s eyes searched the room, and she found the girl she was chatting with earlier— Colette was her name, she finally remembered and blamed the sexual frustration on her jumbled brain and her post-orgasmic state on her clarity over Colette’s name.

Across the room, Colette sat with a few other girls, and Y/N thought that the best thing to do while Harry was cleaning up in the bathroom was to make her way over there and hop in the conversation, so that is exactly what she did.

She sat directly next to Colette, and jumped into their conversation a few times, adding a few things here and there to keep herself present in the conversation. It wasn’t until Harry finally slipped from the bathroom, signaling that he was going to get them a drink that she felt a sense of relief.

One of the girls next to Colette’s eyes followed Y/N’s to Harry and when she saw what Y/N was looking at she interjected with a, “Don’t even bother with him. He’s a nice guy, but he’s not the relationship type. He only fucks, but nothing else. Trust me, I’ve tried. Also, the rumor is that he brought a girl with him this time around, and good luck to her, because she doesn’t know what she’s in for.”

Y/N’s mouth dropped open in pure shock, and Colette’s face whitened as she grasped Y/N’s hand, “Emma!” Colette said in a harsh whisper, “Why would you say that?”

Colette helped Y/N up, and Y/N couldn’t even feel mad at the girl— Emma, she guessed— because it was not like she knew that Y/N was the girl Harry brought along with him tonight. Her stomach dropped, feeling icky and displaced as she walked alongside Colette and toward the kitchen where Harry was striking up a conversation with someone, two cans of some liquid Y/N couldn’t quite pinpoint in the palm of one of his hands— his big, big hands.

“Don’t listen to her, she’s just cross because Harry only wanted to be friends with benefits with her. That is not how he is with every girl, I hope you know that,” Colette whispered, guiding her by the small of her back toward Harry.

Did Y/N know that? She didn’t think she did.

What if that is what Harry wanted from her? What if he felt nothing for her at all? What if she was merely a conquest for him?

Y/N decided not to say anything about what Emma said to her as Y/N and Colette entered the conversation Harry was currently participating in.

Harry rested one of the drinks on the counter and popped open the other with his fingers, handing it to her, then pressing a soft kiss to her cheek. Was that a good sign?

For the first time since she began studying with Harry, Y/N felt stupid again.

____

Harry was completely oblivious to the internal turmoil Y/N was facing, but how could he have known when she slipped on a mask so well?

After he had finished up in the bathroom, he couldn’t stop thinking about how Y/N was the only thing that occupied his mind. He filled her thoughts, her scent infiltrated his apartment, and her smile when she walked into his class was the thing that kept him going on days when he was more tired than he should have been.

He thought he made it so obvious how much he cared for her. There was no way she didn’t know how special she was to him.

Y/N, he thinks, was perfect for him. And he was perfect for her.

TAG LIST: @skysladylazarus @sunshinemoonsposts @shamelessfangirl-3 @lovelyharry @tenaciousperfectionunknown @winterrays @kiwilikesmeow @cherieshine @harryssky1 @allannahdaisy @cthwildflwr @grapejuicebluesrry @ppleasingg @ronanthesimp @awwshucks13 @libbyhermione @matildasatellite

(If you wanted to be added or taken off please let me know)

1K notes · View notes

linktotheheart · 3 months

Text

I feel like so many people misunderstand BOTW/TOTK Link especially (Zelda too, but that's another topic entirely)

His lack of expressiveness IS a personality trait. It's a direct result of the pressure on his soldiers to be a perfect soldier, hero, and savior. No, he's not Skyward Sword Link, and never will be, because his story is completely different.

"But [other Link] hugged Zelda when he got her back!" and this Link maintained a respectful distance as his princess's subordinate - but ALSO out of respect for Zelda as a person, because she spent her whole childhood having her agency denied and he wants to let her initiate even something as simple as platonic contact whenever possible. He's being kind!

(And yes, I know that primarily only the "he is a knight and she is a princess" part is directly supported in the actual game, but I'll remind the people making comparisons that the dynamic was COMPLETELY different in their favorite comparison game, Skyward Sword. But also... look at the gentleness with which Link interacts with Zelda, the tenderness that he shows so few other characters - Mipha probably being the closest example. Look at the way he looks to her first to see what to do in every scene they're in together, unless he's protecting her from an immediate threat to her life. Notice how outside of that, Zelda IS usually the one to initiate any physical contact)

I also personally hate it when people describe quiet, not very expressive people as "lacking personality" because... my partner IRL is like that. If she expressed herself at all around most people, it's in a very flat, reserved way. I've seen how it hurts her that people treat her like she doesn't have a personality, like she isn't even a full person - and I know that's real life and Zelda is fiction, but come on, do you think all the people that aren't highly expressive and extroverted don't hear that about very popular characters and internalize it?

Being reserved is a personality trait. Being cautious and not impulsive is a personality trait. In fact, I'd even say just because you as an expressive, extroverted person see Link as a blank slate to project your own personality onto, doesn't mean he actually is or was even intended that way.

(I also think this is a very US-centric point of view, honestly. There's plenty of cultures where even BOTW Link would be considered at least close to average - Finnish culture specifically comes to mind, even if he's still slightly exaggerated in that regard as, y'know, a character.)

Idk, this is as much a silly little vent post as anything, it's not that serious, etc, but whatever

(and don't get me started on "oh Zelda got no agency in TOTK and she learned the powers she was struggling overnight". No, it's called a time skip, and just because she learned her powers before the 13th hour this time - which yeah, she would get them easier this time with a mentor who could actually use the same powers, and having already learned to use her light powers - doesn't mean it just "happened overnight". And... she didn't express agency? She was actively influencing the entire flow of the timeline, changing the actions of her ancestors by convincing her ancestors to act, learning to control her powers and fighting Ganondorf, and finally expressing the ultimate form of autonomy in choosing to sacrifice herself to save the world. Some of the criticisms of TOTK didn't even seem to play the same game. Just because a heroine isn't a pop feminist badass who *gasp* wears pants and easily and perfectly kicks every villain's ass, doesn't mean she "has no agency" and is being sidelined. Like, a princess engaging in courtly politics is neither powerless nor "doing nothing")

#totk #botw #tears of the kingdom #breath of the wild #link #zelda #I'm a multishipper so I can see Zelda and Link as romantic or platonic tbh #vent post #I mean you can reblog but like #even if you disagree don't be an asshole about it #botw/totk haters tho just like. don't. criticism is fine but I'm not interested in debating w/ppl who don't bother to engage in good faith

381 notes · View notes

mysisters-bike · 8 months

Text

The theory that Eric cared for Dylan more than Dylan cared for Eric is...wrong.

I have heard, every now and again, a theory that Dylan was Eric's best friend but Eric was not Dylan's best friend. Sue Klebold mentions this in her book by bringing up Dylan's closeness to friends like Nate Dykeman or Zack Heckler, but here's my take:

I think Dylan really wanted to be accepted; Eric wanted to be accepted too. Dylan's desperation for friendship allowed him to accept Eric and vice versa.

Truly, I don't think anybody saw the depth of their relationship because they didn't want anyone to. This is the same concept we can apply to the entire, what, year? That they spent plotting their attack.

When Eric and Dylan were arrested in January 1998, it was like the nail in their coffins. Eric would go on to write in his journal: "Isn’t America supposed to be the land of the free? How come, If I’m free, I can’t deprive a stupid fucking dumbshit from his possessions if he leaves them sitting in the front seat of his fucking van out in plain sight and in the middle of fucking nowhere on a Frifuckingday night. NATURAL SELECTION. Fucker should be shot."

Dylan fashioned his messages to Eric in the style of Doom books, going so far as to write multiple notes to him throughout the entire yearbook and drawing a Doom POV shotgun as an indicator to “continue [reading] where you see this.”

Upon the numerous pages he wrote, he drew pictures of fictional characters that Eric liked and quoted Eric’s own website posts back to him (Specifically writing: You know what I hate??? PEOPLE!! YEAA!!). He recounts his favorite memories over the last year: working together at Blackjack, smoking cigarettes together at Blackjack, lighting fires, and the last two 4th of July celebrations.

In the end of March 1998, Eric wrote in his planner that he still had movie plans with Dylan. This was at the same time that Dylan told Brooks about Eric’s website and threats. In April 1998, Eric writes, "…sometime in April [1999] me and V will get revenge and kick natural selection up a few notches." This indicates their continued contact and their early planning of their attack on Columbine.

Dylan would write in Eric’s 1997-1998 yearbook: "We, the gods, will have so much fun w NBK!! Killing enemies, blowing up stuff, killing cops!! My wrath for January’s incident will be godlike."

As early as April 1998 Eric mentions “going NBK.”

Dylan was deeply connected to Zack especially, and took it really hard when Zack and Devon started dating. However, Dylan also laments over the fear of losing Eric too once Eric started casually seeing someone. He had the same fears of abandonment that he did for Zack as he did for Eric...but perhaps, to a lesser degree.

Eric and Dylan had achieved homophily. While both of them maintained their own separate peer groups, their relationship remained constant. The amount of time they spent together continued to mount, despite their closeness having a tendency to go unnoticed or be dismissed. In Sue’s book, the claim is made that Nate was Dylan’s closest friend. With this in mind, who did Dylan choose to sign up for every single class with? Who did he sit with in every class? Who did he wake up at 3:30AM with to get the best parking spots at school? Who did he routinely sneak out with every week? And lastly, who did he choose to die with?

#eric harris #dylan klebold #columbine #tcc #true crime

568 notes · View notes

calicobigamy · 9 months

Text

Essence of a Babygirl (a tumblr joke essay)

Babygirl, the term has spiked in popularity, but what is a babygirl? Is the term a bit more complicated than at first glance? What is the essence of a babygirl? Today I will be answering these questions.

Urban dictionary describes babygirl as thusly:

“A term used towards grown fictional men who have the fandom in a loving chokehold.”

A Mashable article titled The internet's 2022 horny dictionary defines babygirl as

“... a term of endearment for when a man is being cute, comfortable in his masculinity, or weak in an evocative way.”

These descriptions are wholesome. They create an avenue of masculinity that can be vulnerable and attractive at the same time. A term for a type of masculinity that creates room for a multi-dimensional character in fiction. Various fictional characters have been affectionately dubbed as “babygirls”. One of the most well known being Leon Kennedy from the Resident Evil franchise.

However the term is also used to describe characters that are remarkably not wholesome. Characters like Izzy Hands, played by Con O’Neil from the incredible show written by David Jenkins called Our Flag Means Death and Marvel’s Loki, played by Tom Hiddleston, have been called babygirls. This must indicate a spectrum of “babygirlness” that scales from wholesome to not wholesome.

A good babygirl can be seen at a glance, but what makes these other characters part of that babygirl spectrum on the negative side? As my colleague (@robogart) and I studied the issue we realized that negative babygirlness included more nuance.

We created a study group to determine what attributes make up a bad babygirl. Included in our study was: Izzy Hands (Our Flag Means Death), Gal Dukat (Deep Space 9), David Xanathos and Oberon (Gargoyles), Anders (DA2), Yami Bakura (Yugi-oh, 4kids Production), King of All Cosmos (Katamari), Patches (Fromsoft), Ratagin (Great Mouse Detective), and the Six Fingered Man (Princess Bride).

The five characteristics that we found amongst all of the babygirls we picked from various media were: being decidedly not wholesome, pathetic, emotionally unhinged and dastardly, but all in all containing some kind of charm.

We went through and put all of our babygirls to the test with our system. The results were surprising, with Izzy Hands coming out decidedly less babygirl than we predicted and Ratagin being the epitome of babygirlness.

What did these tests show about babygirlness on a whole? The spectrum ranges from morally good characters to bad, but all share a few common traits. However they express their vulnerabilities, either as completely unhinged or emotionally accessible, we as the audience are captivated and find “their weakness evocative”. Another aspect that is continuous through the spectrum of babygirlness, whether good or bad, is that a babygirl is secure in his masculinity however he chooses to express it. Babygirls on either end of the spectrum do end up having a “loving chokehold on their fandom”. Those people in the fandom are not necessarily of quantity, but of quality. Especially for the baby girls on the “bad” end of the spectrum.

In conclusion a babygirl can be summed up as a fictional male character that is evocative in his vulnerability and at the same time confident in his masculinity regardless of his moral compass.

Co-Written with @robogart

THANK YOU FOR READING ALL THE WAY TO THE END OF THIS SILLY LITTLE ESSAY!

Please feel free to copy and paste the bad babygirl diagram and see where you babygirls fit!! I am excited to see your favorites!!

799 notes · View notes

slickfordain · 1 year

Text

𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐬.

Warning: Yandere behavior, but we all know I always write Yandere on Tumblr. No specified gender for you. Also, reader with my personality again— since some people liked it very much.

Edit: I forgot to say the kids in Genshin are all platonic 💀

Teyvat is aware of their divine using them as a vessel. Teyvat is aware Celestia cannot defeat you either… As Celestia was obviously made by you. However, you have some concerning habits… Some are very very cute in your harem’s eyes ~ While some makes them worry for your health.

You have a problem with making your Genshin self-insert insert having such a gruesome backstory, it makes them wanna cry and hug your self-insert in their world. Apparently, your insert is indeed inserted in the game— ahah, when you shut off the screen and log off of course ♡

Perhaps, let’s say Zhongli would pick up on how you eat a lot of food… It amazes him. You even have a lot of mora, that you only spend it on food and nothing else. It… Does make him worry— But Yanfei would definitely sign the chefs to make your favorite dishes, just in case ~

Xingqiu would pick up on how you write an unfamiliar word called “Fan-fictions”. It has some Japanese words such as “Yandere” and “Tsundere”. He listened further into your works, and goodness, he has never felt so called out in his entire life when you specifically explained what Yanderes are. If you liked writing about Yanderes… You wouldn’t mind him being one for you, would you?

Childe would laugh his ass off whenever he hears you talking constantly to yourself, pretending as if you’re responding to them. But this makes him think you’re trying to communicate with him and Teyvat, makes his heart sore so much. You’re so sweet and acknowledging everyone, specifically him. ♡

Characters such as Pantalone and Baizhu have a realization you love spending Primogems on wishes, and always wasting them. So what do they do? Mischievously somehow gain Primogems for you, which you didn’t complain about at all.

People also have heard about your hatred towards Albert for being a creepy stalker. Now, this made Mondstadt furious at Albert. Not only does he stalk poor Barbara, he even dared to boldly disappoint you. (Barbatos killed him ehe)

Barbara has never felt so loved this much, she wants to bawl her eyes out — to show how much she loves and adores you.

Characters like Razor and Raiden Ei have come to realization you love sleeping around so much, they’ve gotten to know you sleep in work from time to time whenever it’s break. They take this advantage to make a setup room for you, where either of them can hold you in their arms and cuddle as they sleep against you.

Beidou, Lisa and Yae Miko would often see that you especially get easily injured. I’m not saying they’re the only ones terrified— trust me, many people in Teyvat are going to kill whoever hurt you,,, but they are the ones who ends up hearing about your condition. They’re so worried when they find out you don’t scream in pain, nor do you care about it because you’ve always been clumsy since childhood. They’re so worried, they might have a heart attack someday.

The Adeptus’ pick on the fact you like listening to “8-bit” version of music… It sounds hard to play, but they can’t deny you did have taste in music. Makes the guy from Lantern lite quest more inretested with you, and wishes to know you more! Or more so… Perhaps Enjou would take interest in this.~ He’s just as silly as you, why not?

Dainsleif notices how you stare at his character with adoration and love his design oh so much, that he also knows you love drawing, just like Albedo. Hearing this, Albedo loves you to death, like… Literally.

Aether hearing you’re also unstoppable that even Unknown God can’t stop you? Goodness this boy is falling in a deep rabbit hole for falling for you~!

Paimon sees you as a mother/father figure too honestly… Paimon relates to you so much about food, and always gets so happy when you agreed by getting food. Despite your tired expression, she just wants to cry because you did not once call her an “Emergency food”.

How about your complex theories? Tighnari and Al-haitham will have a whole set of a store with written details about your theories. You did die when Teyvat was made, so makes sense why you didn’t know everything. (…. You ate popcorn and watched your show as Archon war was a thing.) Every theories, is about very interesting things.

Snezhnaya and Tsaritsa would be so happy when they find out your world was filled with snow (to those who live in a snowy weather like me), and would flex it off to other nations like cocky little bastards. They see this as a blessing, and would try getting to know your culture by just the fact you and them have snow. That would mean you wouldn’t be cold in their place, right?

How about Fontaine being in horror when they find about your Creepypasta and FnaF books? They’ll keep themselves aware of the woods and will isolate any innocent beings from anywhere that involves woods and trees. Jeff the killer and Jeffrey C. Hodek (canon Jeff) definitely traumatized numerous of the people in Fontaine, considering their skins got burned a lot.

Yelan being also surprised she and other rich people in Teyvat, are in fact not the richest people in their own world after learning that… Moras aren’t actually real money? I can see Mona laughing at their misery, even though she’s sad she doesn’t exist literally in your world. How the fuck is she supposed to kiss hug you huh?

Venti and Nahida being so drawn to your morning voice, hearing you cursing as they didn’t know what the meanings behind those languages meant. Nahida would stare at your face in awe, listening to your stories as Venti would too, making a song about it probably— only for it to go downfall when they realize you occasionally hurt yourself in work. They’re horrified. YOU FELL OFF THE STAIRS??! They’re gonna faint.

Cyno who is in love with a heated face when he learns you love jokes, hearing you making a dark humor that just has him down bad for you— and ends up laughing. Your dark humor never goes too far, and he just loves it that you can accept his jokes. He is definitely going to be very loyal towards you…

Imagine Scaramouche/Wanderer lovingly gazing at your side view as you try to do makeup real quickly before playing your game. It didn’t matter. He loved your little habit of always doing your makeup first— and then play. He’s patient, and will always try his best… Ends up killing Hilichurls under one second, oops~

With everyone in Teyvat learning about your habits, learning about your talents…

They officially are definitely in love with you. They will always love you. They know when it’s you, even if someone tries to look like you and act like you to get attention. It will never work. They don’t care what form you take, because they’re obsessed and in love with the idea of you. They will only love you, you you you. You’re genderless? They’ll love you, you’re a bully? They’ll love you. It doesn’t matter what form you take.

They will always love you, [Name].

I wanna do a small love hc with Dainsleif and Pantalone x reader because I’m in love with them ♡ but I also wanna do persona insert x canon… Man.

#various x reader #various #yandere x reader #sagau x reader #yandere sagau genshin impact #genshin impact sagau #sagau cult au #sagau brainrot #yandere sagau #sagau fluff #sagau headcanons

2K notes · View notes

nepherit · 2 months

Text

Justice for Raphael

I'm very new to Tumblr, I created an account here a few months ago after I discovered all the amazing Bg3-related art content that this place has to offer. Since then, I've never posted a single thing and barely left any comments, I'm not a very social person...but today I was scrolling my favorite bg3-related feed, when I stumbled upon a post of someone who received a rather rude ask from an anon whose sole purpose was to mock their works and insult their (possibly) favorite character Raphael, who was referred to by that anon as a "100% canon two pump chump bottom cringe clown".

It is saddening to get yet another confirmation that some people out there aren't capable of respecting others' likes, not even in a fictional/virtual environment...but I guess that's to be expected. Besides the obvious, what made me decide to write this wall of text as my very first post is that Raphael happens to be my favorite too, the one and only fictional character I've ever felt invested in, and probably the reason why Bg3 will leave a life-long lasting impression on me.

So here I am, trying my best to point out some facts that (apparently) are easy to go amiss for some people out here: First of all, there's nothing canon regarding what Haarlep says of Raphael, as a character's opinion about another isn't a fact to begin with. Especially if said character is (proved by facts) very unreliable as a source: him being an incubus whose standards are undoubtedly different from any mortals' and the fact that he hates Raphael are but the most obvious. Not to mention that "Speak with the dead" isn't 100% reliable either by D&D 5e rules ("the corpse is under no compulsion to offer a truthful answer if you are hostile to it or it recognizes you as an enemy"). Besides that, even if everything Haarlep says is to be considered true, the mocking words the players can say to Raphael before the fight are NOT, as Haarlep never gives such info to the player (he only responds with a "no" if asked about the matter). That line we can say before the fight is but the player's guess/ childish mockery, certainly it's not a fact.

From a purely objective perspective, the only info Haarlep gives to the player that isn't merely his opinion is Raphael's obvious selfishness and narcissism (the HoH is covered with images of him) and the fact that he likely only sleeps with himself (he has his incubus wearing his shape, even his name). By no means does that make Raphael a "cringe clown", nor would it even in the case where Haarlep spoke entirely the truth. Honestly, it never ceases to baffle me how some people can be so shortsighted and shallow. But perhaps those people are yet to grow up and come to learn that there can be much hidden beneath someone's (fictional or not) behavior. There's nothing to mock about the "Raphael only wants to sleep with himself and only loves himself" statement.

How could it be otherwise? How, when the only person who ever loved Raphael, the only one he could trust and rely on since his birth, was himself? How could he crave someone's affection and so, be seen as weak? How could he care for another or their feelings when he never got that care or respect, to begin with? Despite his theatrics and his facade, Raphael was born Cambion, a half-breed never to be considered more than the lesser of the devils in the hierarchy of the Hells. Cambions cannot rank up, no matter their blood ties, yet Raphael managed to achieve all that he has...his palace, his many souls, and his power. None of that was gifted to him, he fought hard and earned every last bit of it with his claws, his wits, and his determination. I admire Raphael for that, for striving to become something greater than what he was supposed to be...something better than his father's "half-devil" son.

To reduce Raphael, who's most certainly one of the deepest and most complex characters we can encounter in the game, to a "100% canon two pump chump bottom cringe clown" is beyond low, very immature, and a rather shallow view, more so if it comes from someone who hasn't even had the guts to show their name...

Well, that's all. I doubt someone will make it this far, as I wrote a veeeeery long paragraph. But for once, I wanted to have my say ^^

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 raphael #raphael bg3 #baldur's gate 3 raphael #raphael the cambion #first post #fuck the haters

169 notes · View notes

rawliverandgoronspice · 1 year

Text

THE GERUDO POST

(aka an attempt at a critique of how gerudos were handled in BotW and before)

Oh no. TOTK being right around the corner, it might finally be time for the Gerudo Post.

(aka half of the reason why I made a Zelda sideblog in the first place)

So I want to preface all of this by saying that, as you could probably tell already, I’ve always adored the gerudos. They have fascinated my small child brain when I was 7; then the obsession made its comeback when I was 14, and now, here we are, almost 28, and I’m still thinking about the gerudos. I think they might be among my favorite fictional cultures for their potential and their understated storyline. I guess growing up in a very Arabic neighborhood, coupled with being bi-culturally latinx (?? does Brazil count?? you tell me), also always made them feel like home to me –especially when I was very young and there was not a lot of cool female representation flying around that managed to involve fiercely independent PoC women, flaws and teeth included.

This whole weird-essay-thing tries to do two things. First: analyze the place gerudos have occupied in the series, their initial problematisms and their subtextual narrative arc during the Myth Era coupled with their relationship to Ganondorf. Second: tiptoe to Breath of the Wild and poke it with a stick to see what happens –and in doing that, explain why I believe a lot of their characterization was defanged in service of smoothing their past with the hylians instead of deepening the culture on its own terms, and why I’m a little apprehensive about what that might mean for TotK even though I adore seeing the best girls at it again.

Those are the uhh terms of service??

And now, we must go back to 1998.

OCARINA OF TIME ERA

There’s so many things about the gerudos that are noteworthy and rich, and they’ve made for a complex piece of Zelda lore ever since their introduction –and when I say complex, I don’t 100% mean it as praise. The very racially charged decisions made about their inclusion have been discussed at length by the fandom, especially when it comes to orientalist and Islamophobic tropes being deployed pretty thoughtlessly in Ocarina of Time (their sigil being literally a crescent moon and star originally, the parallels are pretty obviously there).

We’re talking about a band of amazon-like, big-nosed brown women from the desert ruled by a single Scary Evil Man born once every hundred years hellbent on conquering Hyrule who they apparently worship like a god, characterized primarily as thieves, decked in jewelry and orientalist-inspired harem/belly-dancing clothing, hostile to the white good guys of Hyrule (especially men), unblessed by the Goddesses and so deprived of elongated ears (this is true for OoT –we’ll come back to that), also known as a demon tribe with their deity straight-out described as evil-looking by Navi (on my way to cancel you on twitter Navi you watch out), and secretly led by evil twin witches who can turn into a single seductress and, as two mothers, raised their Scary Evil Guy king who happens to basically be the devil.

In so few words, gerudos are the future that liberals want.

It’s worth notice, also, that Ganondorf’s characterization in this game is… kind of relentlessly uncomfortable to play through, especially before the 7 year skip. The utter assumption of depraved and evil intents from every character surrounded by dialogue that does little to hide its biases in spite of having generally very little proof to back them up –even though, in the game’s context, every character is correct to call his eyes evil and the darkness of his skin a moral judgment in on itself. The scene where Zelda demands that we believe her conclusion that the sole and only brown guy in the entire kingdom is evil and will do harm, and the game straight out refuses to progress until we concede that her dreams are prophetic and that this man must be stopped at any cost even though she has no more proof than her discomfort… hits different on replay.

I’m restating all of this not to pretend I’m making a novel and thought-provoking point, but to bounce back on a tumblr post I saw a while back (that I can’t find anymore!! I’ll link it if I find it again) –and so express what it is that gripped me with the gerudos in spite of their pretty damning depiction… and actually maybe thanks to it.

There’s a surprising amount of texture to Ocarina of Time’s worldbuilding that exists folded within the things introduced and left hanging, or in its subtext –and whether on purpose or not, I believe it is why people keep coming back to this iteration of Hyrule.

What was that about the king of Hyrule unifying a war-torn country? Why did the gerudos break the bridge connecting them to the rest of the kingdom during the 7 year timeskip while still worshiping Ganondorf, and why are the carpenters trying to rebuild it against their apparent wishes? What was that about gerudos imprisoning hylian men trying to force entry into their lands? What was that about the secret death torture chambers right next to the Royal Family’s tomb and connected to the race of people who were, apparently, born to serve them?

Nothing? Oh okay… okay… okay….

The same can be said about this strange depiction of this hostile tribe, consistently described as wicked yet suddenly friendly once you prove you deserve their respect once you... defeat them, so you now have joined them? Ocarina of Time isn’t very consistent when it comes to characterizing them as their occupation (thieves) or as a proper culture, with a king and a strange system of rulership that seem to involve at least 5 people: Ganondorf, the Twinrova, Nabooru and the unnamed random woman who decides you’re now part of the gerudos because you slashed enough of them with your sword and hookshot, which, uhh ok.

They’re but a ragtag and negligible group when discussed next to gorons and zoras and hylians, but they also clearly have their own religion and at least a 400-hundred years old history (probably far longer than this) and hints of a written language of their own. I’m not sure the game itself knows what it wants them to be, beyond: intimidating and hot and cool, but also wicked and, because of Ganondorf and the way you barge in their forbidden fortress (heh) with the explicit intent to dismantle their king, in apparent need to be saved from themselves.

Speaking of rulership and the Spirit Temple, let’s have a quick tangent about Nabooru: I always found her characterization when meeting with Child Link pretty strange. I refuse to mention the promised reward, which feeds into everything orientalist mentioned above, but I always found her moral compass so extremely convoluted for someone coming from gerudo culture. Nabooru says that, despite being a cool thief herself, she resents Ganondorf for killing people as well as stealing from women and children. Stealing... from women. Nabooru. Why are you this pressed that he steals from women!!! This feels so out of place, that the only girl of that hostile culture that betrays her king and befriends you, is the one that upholds moral values that only a hylian could possibly hold.

Either way: the strange unquestioned contempt of the game for them as a culture, mixed with the occasional bouts of heart, friendliness and badassery, makes it hard not to consider their depiction as pretty biased in favor of the hylians finding them at once exotic, scary and exciting, and could hide a more complex reality you might only get one side of –especially when you know there were originally plans for Ganondorf’s character to be more gray and motivated than what the campy final version ended up being. To be blunt: even in the context of a game for children, and maybe because of that fact, it all reads like a reductionist and imperialist/colonialist reading of a more complex situation.

This might seem like A Lot coming from a game where the actual game writing can be this overall flimsy and simplistic due to the standards of the time (it’s rough, it's so rough). But I would have never dwelt on that thought about a little children’s game if not for the mainline entries that came soon after, because... ooo boy.

The sense you’re not getting the whole story was certainly not helped by the introduction of Wind Waker Ganondorf, and the chilling emptiness of Gerudo Desert in Twilight Princess.

AFTER THE TIMELINE SPLIT

(I’m skipping Majora’s Mask, not because I dislike them in the game or think they’re not worth talking about, but because it’s a parallel universe and they’re never even called gerudos and their reality seems extremely different from their sisters in Hyrule so I think it’s okay to call them tangential and not dive too deep in this particular depiction)

Here’s something I want to highlight about gerudos and how they were characterized before BotW came along: their absence. Not only their physical absence, the lack of any gerudo character that calls themselves gerudo, but their absence from the text itself.

It’s not that Wind Waker and Twilight Princess retroactively scratch them off existence: we can clearly see Nabooru’s stained glass art in WW as well as recognize them being mentioned in Ganondorf’s final boss soliloquy, and WELL there’s quite a lot to say about their imprint over the world of TP. They are there –or at least they... were there. But nobody ever talks about what happened.

In Wind Waker, there was the deluge. It’s assumed lots of people died then, and those who survived scattered across the Great Sea. Are they sealed under the waves? Have they drowned? Is Jolene, Linebeck’s ex-girlfriend in Phantom Hourglass, a distant relative of one of the rare survivors? It’s unclear, beyond the fact that Ganondorf is the only living gerudo we see in this entire branch of the Timeline split.

In Twilight Princess, the desert which bares their name is empty. The hylians never mention that it used to be the name of a tribe: they’re not even named when Ganondorf is introduced for the first time, reduced once again to a mere band of thieves. We learn his plans to steal the Triforce in OoT were foiled, and that he may have turned to war. Then he lost the war, and was executed in Arbiter’s Ground: a strange structure in the desert, a mixture between a temple, a prison and a coliseum. What looks like gerudo writing coexists with hylian symbols, which often look much fresher. This dungeon is the Shadow Temple of TP: a prison hosting the worst criminals the kingdom has ever known, now haunted and cursed. Besides the locations, the only character that vaguely look gerudo in the entire game besides Ganondorf is Telma, a character with pointed ears that never seems to identify as anything but a hylian. What happened? Who’s to say. Nobody ever says anything. Not even Ganondorf bothers to mention them the way he did in WW –and though the game’s story is quite focused on another exiled tribe seeking revenge and dominion over Hyrule as retribution, the parallel is never explicitly drawn. So who’s to say what happened there. Who’s to say.

And in A Link to the Past and the games forward? The only mention of other gerudo characters are Koume and Kotake, resurrecting their son in the Oracles games through their own sacrifice and failing to bring anything back but a monstrosity incapable of making conscious decisions. Granted, most games in that extremely weird Fallen Timeline predate OoT and therefore had yet to make gerudos up at all. Still: canonically, between the gap of OoT and ALLTP, whatever it may be, gerudos disappeared here as well.

I think there’s something subtle and a little heartbreaking about the fact that no matter what Ganondorf does, the gerudos always end up dying out. His yearning for Hyrule, its gentler wind and the Triforce blessing its lands always costs him the kingdom that he does have already.

Now, does he care? A lot of people would argue that he doesn’t, that he used them like pawns for his own ambition and saw them as servants more-so than sisters, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Nintendo’s official opinion, but… One very powerful thing about most of Ganondorf’s incarnations (focusing on the human ones) is that he never seems to reject his cultural heritage. They could have gone for him wearing more kingly hylian stuff given the whole underlying theme of envy and pride surrounding his character, but never once does he try to look more hylian, beyond the ear situation that seems to be tied to the Triforce of Power? Either way: he is gerudo. Several of his outfits reference his mothers, as well as general gerudo patterning and jewelry. His heritage is something he proudly displays, even hundred of years in the future when there is no one left to remember what it means but him. I think it’s a very potent piece of characterization, an arc that crosses over multiple game and says something pretty intense about this character’s fate and his inherent destructiveness over the things he touches –starting with the Triforce, all the way up to his very own body and mind. His mental breakdown by the end of Wind Waker, when the king of Hyrule himself forces him to give up on the thing he sacrificed everything for, takes a new kind of weight with the whole picture taken into account.

(not to excuse genocide or general egomania-fueled madness and violence, but one thing doesn’t mean the other isn’t also relevant)

Regardless of whether this is a tragedy for Ganondorf as their uhh complete failure of a king, honestly, it is undeniably a tragedy for the gerudos themselves: a once-in-a-lifetime joyful event turned into a never-ending nightmare from which there seems to be no escape, their legacy now condemned to fade to black, leaving nothing behind but a demon boar forever laying ruin upon the world.

One may say I’m taking on the bleakest explication for the gerudos’ absence when there could be others. It’s true! Perhaps the gerudos are just chilling off-screen, completely fine, not interested in whatever is happening in the kingdom nearby and their disaster child having yet another temper tantrum about not being the Goddesses’ favorite boy. It’s possible! But regardless, what little elements we do possess as players doesn’t seem to support this, even if it remains possible –and regardless of actual gerudo lives, gerudo culture is definitively a goner in every single timeline.

Even if they did survive... Hyrule still won its unification war.

(I won’t mention Skyward Sword as they are not really a thing there, except for a butterfly that seems to suggest the Gerudo Province was a thing before the gerudo people –I don’t know what to do with this honestly– and the whole Groose situation, which, I’m not sure what to make of either beyond the fact that he may have gotten cursed by opposing Demise? And then went on to start the gerudo tribe, which ended up being an all-women group for some reason? Maybe? It’s not confirmed? I feel like it’s more of a fun tidbit than a central piece of the gerudo puzzle, so I’ll leave it there like I would a cool rock I brought back from a walk and that I don’t know where to put in my house)

Then, Breath of the Wild happened and changed things.

BREATH OF THE WILD

(Additional short note, but: while I won’t mention Four Swords Adventure, since it’s a weird one that almost nobody has played and severely messes with the Timeline, we kind of see the beginnings of what is about to happen in Breath of the Wild in this game –gerudos coming back without much explanation, then distancing themselves from Ganondorf to become friends with hylians because he was too hungry for power and now they are nice and have good reputation because they are our friendsss)

I was actually so happy to learn gerudos were making a comeback in a mainline Zelda game, and this got me more excited about Breath of the Wild than basically anything else the game involved. And getting to explore the Desert once again, meeting this new batch of impossibly tall buff girls, getting more about their language and their culture, Riju and the rest of the little girls are adorable, the grandmas are so cool, the sand seals??? sign me the fuck up??? And above it all, hanging around Gerudo Town at night and feeling as warm and cozy as little me liked to imagine how freeing it would feel, to stay there and watch the desert behind the safety of their walls in OoT… This was great. I loved it.

It was a huge compensation for the criticism I’m about to make, but did leave me with… questions regarding how their culture was going to be handled moving forward.

I’ll start with something small yet deeply revelatory, then work my way from there.

So... gerudos’ ears are pointy now.

This is pretty significant. Lore-wise, it’s been said that the elongated ears of hylians are there so they can better hear the voices of the gods. It’s considered a sign of holiness in-universe. There's a bunch of really thoughtful analysis on tumblr over that whole Ganondorf ear situation, which is a mess but also very interesting, but the short answer is: I think the absence of pointy ears was a clear design choice to originally signify them as Less Good. Even when Ganondorf gets pointier ears, they never get as long as hylians’. Worth noting: not every non-gerudo character has pointy ears: gorons, zoras and ritos (among others) do not possess this trait, and there are even some humans that have regular rounded ears in the series –though they always seem to be of lesser relevance, if not downright peasants in Twilight Princess. Pointy ears always tended to implied a strict hierarchy in the series: basically, the more pointy, the more Protagonist you become.

(also their eyes becoming green instead of the traditional yellow/golden, which looks more wicked and demonic --and cooler also tbh)

The pointy ears imply two things. From within the game, this could be interpreted in two ways: either that gerudos… converted, for a lack of a better term, and are now considered holy through their worship of the Golden Goddesses and/or Hylia, or that their mingling with hylians through tens of thousands of years had them acquiring this trait out of sheer genetic override (though they have kept their mostly-women birth rates, their big nose, darker skin –for the most part– and red hair). Probably a healthy mixture of both. Design-wise, it signifies something quite simple to the player: they are on hylians’ side now. They are good guys. We can trust them, even if they still have a little spice in them. They aligned themselves with us and against Ganon in all of its manifestations (even if he’s but an angry ghastly pig being parasitic to everything it touches in this iteration). They are on the side of Good, definitively, and will fight evil by our side.

On that note, I think it’s worth bringing out another major change from their initial iteration, which is their overt friendship with Hyrule as a whole, and with the Royal Family in particular. Despite not allowing any voe inside their walls (we’ll come back to this), their relationship with hylians is pretty neat. They have booming trade roads, travel and meet with the rest of the cultures, and are fierce enemies with the Yiga clan, who are renowned for being huge Calamity Ganon supporters. The tables certainly have turned. I want to bring out, in particular, Urbosa’s friendship with the queen and her role as the cool aunt taking care of Zelda and protecting her from evil (to be noted: I am not familiar with Age of Calamity so if I’m mischaracterizing her in any way, please let me know). The gerudo sense of sisterhood has been extended to the royals they used to fight against. I would go on and say the cultures peacefully coexist, but I think that what we’re looking at here is a case of vassal behavior, just like we used to have from zoras (in the non-Fallen Timelines) and gorons. This is a huge departure from gerudos being openly rejecting of Hylian culture in their initial iteration, and something that is worth returning to later.

Okay. Now it’s time to mention the weird obsession BotW gerudos have with romance. I didn’t take notice of my issues with their writing until I realized how prevalent of a theme that was. Now, the reason given for gerudos to refuse entry to males (of every race) has much more to do with preventing young gerudos to make mistakes than anything else, and is actively being put into question by the younger generations –which would make sense. But the amount of NPCs that either lament their lack of match, talk about their husbands (because they marry now apparently) or are invested in romance, and a very limited understanding of romance at that (heterosexual, closed, etc), makes for much more of the population that I initially expected. There’s no mention of what’s going on with their males, if there are new males being born and either exiled or abandoned, or if Ganondorf being technically still alive have have cut them off male heirs. Either way: no more kings, only girlbosses chiefs.

To have the gerudos so interconnected with Hyrule, not only through trade but through extremely coded romance where they have to make themselves palatable to a future male partner and enforce fidelity, was… a choice. The extremely brief and skippable mention of gerudos sometimes going to Castle Town in search for boyfriends in OoT became half of their personality traits in this game. We went from a race that was fiercely independent and mocking of the unworthy men who tried to mingle with them, to… this. Now I’m not saying some of the sidequests aren’t cute, or that I didn’t like the wedding, or that the grandma near the abandoned statue of Hylia (so she was worshipped at some point) clocking us and talking about her love life wasn’t one of my favorite gerudo conversations. I’m saying that the vibes have definitively changed. For the better? I’m not sure.

I once stumbled upon an article that said that Breath of the Wild gerudos were a huge improvement compared to their original introduction, because they were no longer presented as evil and hostile thieves groveling at the boot of a single man, but as a full culture allied with the protagonist and actively involved in the story, while still getting their Cool Girl Badass moment (again can’t find it anymore, I’ll link it if I stumble upon it again). I see where this comes from, but I honestly can’t help but consider it a reading that assumes something pretty major (though through no fault of their own, as the games tend to hammer this down as hard as they can), and that being hylians as the unquestioned anchor of Good.

Which, in spite of what the games want me to believe, I… feel uncomfortable taking at face value.

To me, regarding how gerudos are being incorporated in that goodie narrative, this is kind of a case of surface-level feminism trumping over colonialist/imperialist concerns. It becomes more important to perform the aesthetics of being cool and friendly and independent than scratching at any deeper problem that would risk making people uncomfortable. This is kind of Green Skin Ganon all over again: oh wait, isn’t it a little icky to have the evil bad guy being brown while faced by the most aryan-looking ass heroes of all time? Okay, then let’s take the brown guy and make his skin green so we don’t have to feel bad anymore that the conflict has racial undertones!! Solved!! There’s nothing questionable about changing a PoC's features to make it more monstrous and less human, right?

To me, it’s kind of the coward option: instead of accepting the messy reality those initial choices created (and their interesting nuances if taken at face value), let’s just… rewrite the PoC culture’s history to make it feel less uncomfortable for the white heroes. In many ways, it is an extension of what hylians have always done: scrubbing the weird and messy things about the past and shoving them deep down into the spooky well and far into the desert prison and away in alternate hellish dimensions, and then make up a very simple story where they get to feel good about themselves –except this time, it’s the fabric of the games, the literal reality, bending backward to make it happen. Which, in my opinion, makes it much worse than before. Now, there’s no conversation. The fabric of reality is changing their own history so that there is nothing to discuss anymore. Ganondorf was always evil incarnate. He never had any point. It was always 100% his own fault, his own hubris, his own fated wickedness. He was always demonic (and green, very important –having a flashback to people on twitter accusing artists restoring the TotK green skin to the original brown of wanting to make Ganondorf black, and like….. how do I put it gently…..)

And, above all else: gerudo are to distance themselves from his legacy so they can stay in the club of the Good and Just and Holy.

Because here’s the messy thing: as much as I love seeing the gerudos again in Breath of the Wild and as much I love for them to have survived the Era of Myth (??? somehow ???), this… kind of changes Ganondorf’s character arc. No longer do we have the story of a king who wanted more, either for his people, for himself or both, and led his culture to its destruction in his search for absolute Power, while remaining ironically incapable of maintaining what little he already had. This starts from him kneeling to the king of Hyrule in OoT and leads to the deluge, Arbiter’s Ground, his own mothers dying for the sake of his failed resurrection. Breath of the Wild changes this: now, the gerudo were apparently fine without him? They apparently did their own thing and became suddenly and inexplicably disconnected from his actions? I know it’s kind of implied they side with hylians at the end of OoT, but it’s honestly never really explored why they would cheer for the death of their king while never seeming to resent him before except for Nabooru –there are mentions of brainwashing for those who resist him (as well as “other groups in the desert”, tho they are never mentioned again), but it’s hardly a proper plot point for the majority of the tribe, aaaand they still die by Wind Waker in the Adult Timeline, in spite of their potential alliegance…

(again, this shift towards submitting to Hyrule actually started with Four Swords Adventure, getting crisper with each iteration)

There used to be this polite blur regarding Ganondorf’s relationship to them, how much he used them and how much he acted in their name (with arguments for both sides), and I think this messy and debatable question mark was one of the most compelling aspects of his character. Gerudos rejecting their relationship at a near-cosmic, reality-bending level, removes a huge layer of complexity to both parties… all for the benefit of making hylians come out cleaner out of this whole exchange, their moral grayness barely a whisper in the distance.

I’ll kind of go on the record and say that I suspect the addition of Demise to the canon to serve a similar purpose (at least in part): if Ganondorf becomes but the manifestation of a demonic curse, and is no longer an extremely messy character brimming with agency and drive, forcing the heavens to reckon with said agency in a way he was never meant to access, born from a complex set of circumstances from which we clearly get only a limited and biased perspective, then it becomes extremely clear that he’s a Bad in a way that isn’t worth exploring further. Even if he does have some points, he is a Bad. It’s what matters most. Not to say I even hate what this angle can bring to the table or that I want him to become Good (I don’t –I’ll talk more about why I dislike most takes on him being a helpless victim to the curse), but once again, who benefits from adding another Unquestionned Baddie to the equation to rest upon? Not him, and not the gerudos, that’s for sure.

So. Why did I, me, personally, like the gerudos in the first place?

Beyond the inherent coolness factor of their culture and the fascinating mysteries of what is merely suggested, I think… I think I loved gerudos because we were obvious outsiders. Because their rejection of Hylian culture was so sharp and extreme, their value system so different, and their writing, their religion, their relationship to power and hierarchy and worth wanted nothing to do with hylians. They didn’t need hylians, beyond them having potential resources to steal. In fact, the threat of hylians influencing their culture was such that the entry to the Fortress was forbidden to everyone (I don’t think men were ever singled out, by the way, even though they are mocked relentlessly). I think there was something inherently hopeful about this semi-matriarchy resisting the outside world, and especially its notions of what girls were meant to be –it was 1998, and every other girl character in OoT, besides Impa and Sheik that?? is another can of worms entirely, is either helpless or someone to save. For them to reject this narrow vision of femininity was, in my opinion, much more radical than what we got in BotW. Less nuanced, more problematic perhaps? But also much more powerful. Gerudo Valley is home, not to a town, but a Fortress.

Hylians were worth being resisted.

In Breath of the Wild, their refusal to let men enter their town is kind of boiled down to a fading tradition over-focused on romance, a meek little game of chase. Their entire goal seems to be finding a hylian to settle down with. Say what you will about the single man and the many girls (never explored and completely open-ended in its implications, btw), but at least it wasn’t… that. At least it opened the way for different ways for people to exist and imagine culture and civilization, outside of the heterosexual couple, the christian-infused patriarchy and its trickling down implications. What I want to say is: let my girls tell hylians they ain’t shit!! That they aren’t the end all be all of reality! This is what made gerudos so compelling in the first place! Where is that bite now? Where is that self-definition?

It’s gone, because hylians need to be Good. So we tee-hee at the creep running laps around the town, we disguise ourselves to breach their trust and infiltrate their town (though there is nuance to be had there, gender be complicated etc), we watch them pine after shitty dudes and take classes to become the perfect approachable woman and make love soups with ?? strange ingredients honestly, and we witness them get very friendly with the Royal Family they used to conspire against, dying to protect the princess against the manifestation of their ancient king reduced to a raving puddle of Bad Boar.

Hyrule, unified against him.

TEARS OF THE KINGDOM

For posterity’s sake: this post was made before the game was released. I’ll probably update my thoughts on a separate thing later on.

I don’t think gerudos allying with the hylians and burying their own legends about Ganondorf as deeply underground as they can until it blows up in their face is a bad setup at all. It’s actually pretty juicy, and there’s a ton of fascinating stuff that could happen here –even some involving gerudos taking a firm stand against him while still reconnecting with their past and the choices they made once. This is my hope with the title of the game: Tears of the Kingdoms. Let’s examine them all, account for the damage, and decide how we move forward from there with the full knowledge of where we come from.

What I am afraid of (and I already made posts about that) is the scenario where gerudos rallying against Ganondorf, which I expect will forcefully try to take back his place as their king, is used for cheap feminist points that completely fail to examine, well. Everything mentioned above. Where reality bends itself out of the way of the Goddesses, and hylians’ responsibility in any of this mess, so that everything bad is 100% Ganon’s fault and so he must be cast aside and torn away from the Cool Gerudo Girls and this is 100% justified and deserved because we are Independent Women Who Take No Shit from No Men (unless they are the king of Hyrule or any random hylian they wish to marry apparently).

I’ll say this here because it’s been burning my mouth every time I see discourse about Ganondorf and the gerudo: gerudos declared him as their king. To make a really bad comparison that I dislike: he didn’t run around to assemble girls and make a cult around himself, he was born with the cult already formed around him (and it’s not a cult, it’s just a different mode of governance –hylians also revere the Royal Family like gods, don’t they?). This heavily changes the dynamics at play. Not to remove any agency from him to do a little invasion about it, but chances are the ancestors to BotW’s gerudos fully expected him to behave in this way, at least to a degree –in OoT you see very plainly that they value physical prowess, feats of thievery, witchcraft and general violence. It’s more complicated than him being a Bad and making the poor helpless women go along with the plan uwu –even taking the brainwashing into account, AND Koume and Kotake counting as gerudos too, even if they might not be not fully innocent in shaping the culture and the man himself. If manipulation and forced servitude is the explanation given, I’ll be genuinely mad –because, once more, all the nuance and messiness would be flattened for the sake of making Ganondorf Bad and the gerudo Good (= on hylians’ side).

It bears to be said: I think feminism stances that require, not to criticize (which is fair), but to fully dehumanize and bestialize men of color to make any sense are uhhh bad, and it's worth questionning who they end up serving in the end.

The flip side of this would be to make Ganondorf a poor little meow meow that was secretly controlled by the evil Demise all along, and... I’ll be real. I really don’t think it solves our problem at all. It might even make it worse.

My problem with how gerudos have been handled thus far, being mostly connected to how they behave in relation to hylians Good, is that they’ve been systematically defanged not to threaten the status quo as much as they used to. I think it’s pretty clear why I’m not a fan of Ganondorf being a mere victim of cosmic circumstances; I have a post that goes more in depth about this, but to simplify: my man has legitimate grievances. To make him a mere puppet to Evil Incarnate would, to me, be just another attempt to erase the despotism of the Goddesses, the unjust hierarchy of the world, what hylians have historically done to the races they were in conflict with (looking at the Yiga for the most recent example…)

I’m not saying his fight is clean or even legitimate, that he isn't driven by his own sense of self-importance above anything else, or that he should win (he has no plan beyond domination and victory, that's not a future). But I think there’s something really important about having someone being willing to fully consume himself and everything around him for the simple fact that someone should resist the order of the world. Even if that makes him a heartless, cruel, and egomaniac demon-pig. Even if there’s no Hyrule left to rule. Even if his own people despise him, or are long gone and forgotten.

Is it a little heart-wrenching? Uhh yes to me yes most definitively. This is why Wind Waker Ganondorf hits so hard, and remains (I think) his favorite entry in the series so far. But… I still find this fate of eternal resistance more resonant and empowered, and far less grim, than if Hyrule’s lore absorbs his hatred and rage, gives it to another entity that would be Badder (= more opposed to hylians and the goddesses), and scrubs it off anything icky and uncomfortable, rendering it completely domesticated and non-threatening to hylian domination; rubbed of his skin color, of his complexity, of his own emotions, even made... kind of sexy now, in the same way his sisters have been made before him? I am very, very afraid of him being turned from furious and an unapologetic subject in his own legend to a "redeemed" (according to whom??) and palatable object in somebody else’s, that you now end up having to… save from himself.

Again, I want to trust that Tears of the Kingdom can walk that line and preserve everything sharp and contrasting and profound and thrilling about this fascinating setup. I don’t expect a philosophy course, this is a game for children –but it doesn’t mean Nintendo didn’t do an astounding job with similar setups in the past. Again, I’ll invoke the Wind Waker conflict, but Twilight Princess did a lot of great things as well (Zant’s speech, if you can get past the weird stretches and stumping and NNHYAAAs, is pretty fantastic) –and the subtle writing of Majora’s Mask is also proof enough this series can be complex without being impermeable.

So this is where my hope lies. Not really with BotW’s writing, which, I’m sorry to say, but I found to be below what the series has done in the past (I have no problem with the setup and how the story is explored, I think it was a great idea, but wasn’t ever sold on the actual writing the way I may have been with previous titles –it felt… very tropey to me overall, with a couple of highlights). But Nintendo has shown to know how to write compelling stories for children that know where to sprinkle its darkness and how to preserve its hope, and this is this side I’m relying on for this delicate storyline moving forward.

And now? Now… I suppose we wait and see.

(thank you for reading my impossibly long essay what the actual hell, at least I got it all out of my system, see you in part 2 for when TotK comes out I suppose aaa)

879 notes · View notes

sapphixxx · 4 months

Text

Part of why I dragged my feet on ever checking out JJK was the reputation I heard was that it's a BRUTAL grimdark story where ANYONE can DIE in a snap and the author says FUCK you. And after finally catching up with the anime that just... Isn't the tone at all?? Like, Game of Thrones, Gantz, Attack on Titan, etc other cornerstone grimdark reference points, I think one of their defining hallmarks is not just that characters die suddenly and violently, but that human life is nasty, brutish, and meaningless, and it's your own fault for being stupid enough to get attached.

Jujutsu Kaisen on the other hand, I don't know how you can look at one of the most recent casualties circa S2Ep20 of the anime where that character gets a full entire episode reminiscing about their childhood, and the moments and people that meant most to them, and come away thinking the author's intent was to treat life as meaningless. The amount of screen time devoted to the following character who gets badly maimed, the audience gets enthusiastically shoved neck deep into their insane kaleidoscopic passion that is never once undercut or subverted. Both of these characters, far from being callously snuffed out and dumped in the trash, were shown immense love. What we got was not a statement of their life being disposable, but a celebration of life, a reminder of who they are, what they cared about, what made them special, who they loved and who loved them and will remember them in turn.

This is a story about curses born of misery, hatred, and malice. It is also a story deeply concerned with dualism, especially when it comes to attachment and desire. Misery stems from worldly attachments, but it is not weak or foolish to become attached to things in this world. To love something is to set yourself up for the pain or anger of losing it, or sadness of having it denied. But that love is what makes life worth living anyway, and what makes it worth it to keep fighting. We as the audience are sad because we are attached to these characters who have met terrible fates. We see enough of them to be able to clearly picture the whole rich life they could have lived surrounded by friends and feel the sting of that path cut short. It is a story about how it was worthwhile knowing them well enough to be attached anyway, even if it meant unavoidable heartbreak.

This is true of both the human protagonists as well as the curses! Volcano Man and Mahito are ruthless killers who cruelly take lives without a thought. They also have hopes and dreams that they earnestly try to protect and follow through on, and face heartbreaking despair upon defeat. They feel pain just like we do, but must nevertheless be killed. Humans face pain through the very act of living, but nevertheless must live.

In true grimdark fiction there is rarely anything good in life for characters to return to once the battle is over. In Jujutsu Kaisen, on the contrary, there is enough good in life that we see it even amidst the battle. I can see that no other way than an expression of genuine affection. Truly bleak fiction leaves me wondering why everyone involved doesn't just put a gun in their mouth and be done with it. JJK provides an answer--because you'll get to laugh about ruining an expensive shirt, because you'll meet an acquaintance's hot mom, because the next human earthworm movie is coming out, because your favorite idol is doing a meet and greet this weekend, because maybe someday you'll finally go to Malaysia. There are many answers, and none of them are stupid.

#Chainsaw Man is also like this #op #jjk

236 notes · View notes

coralinnii · 1 year

Text

❋ If you are a villain, then let me be your accomplice ❋ feat: Jamil genre: mild hurt/comfort, budding romance note: sequel to reincarnated into a new world as the bad guy AU Jamil ver, not gender specific reader, no pronouns used, villainess!reader gets sulky, 1.7k word count

I liivvveee! For now, anyway. I still have my job projects and midterms are upon me but I finally found some time to myself so I hope you enjoy another addition to the Villain/ess!series. Jamil is such an intriguing character with such complex emotions.

series index

Be it luck or the universe finally giving you a break but you noticed that Jamil is starting to like you…or at least tolerates you a bit more than before.

Since that fateful incident, the competent boy was more willing to be on your side and a lot more comfortable with you, even if it’s mostly reprimanding you.

“You shouldn’t run in the hallways, you could trip and get hurt!” “Don’t touch those flowers, they have thorns! If you wanted some, just ask me”

Jamil’s tone was harsh, but he always offered his hand to you to help you walk with your heavy garbs on and would give you the most beautiful bouquet of flowers that you keep in your personal guest room, one that the Asim family provided considering how often you come over.

Because of your frequent visits, you have the blessing to see the hidden sides of Jamil that you never considered even with your knowledge of this fictional world.

Like how his voice gets higher when he gets frustrated or surprised, or how animated he gets with his arms whenever Kalim does something spontaneous (which is pretty much all of the time). You especially like how he tries to hide his face whenever he gets embarrassed, especially after finding out how weak he actually was to sincere compliments.

“Will you teach me to dance, Jamil? You look so cool when I see you”

“I’m sure you can find someone much more capable than me”

“Please? You’re so beautiful when you do it”

“…If I have the time, then”

“Yay!~”

In your bliss, you’ve forgotten all about your previous plans to leave this kingdom if not for your father asking you about your thoughts on some academies that were recommended to him by the Asim head.

You wondered about that now. You wanted to leave this land in hopes of avoiding your bad ending with Jamil but with your growing friendship with both Jamil and Kalim, you feel more reluctant to leave them. You asked your father to give you some time and postpone your applications, just so you can rearrange your thoughts.

Despite your predestined future, you were reincarnated into a luxurious life. Being a second-born in an established and rich family, you were not bound by responsibilities or expectations aside from noble standards. Your only job was apparently to marry well which could be stifling to some but you choose to ignore that in favor of enjoying your youth. Marriage talk is still far for you to consider and you have better things to worry about.

Like wondering why Jamil is avoiding you again!

“Kalim, tell me the truth. Does Jamil hate me?” You asked your fair-haired friend who had a sudden feeling of deja vu.

“There’s no way! Jamil really cares about you, I can tell” Kalim reassured you, pressing a fist to his chest in honesty. He had seen how much you matter to his dear friend.

Kalim saw how meticulous Jamil was when arranging the bouquet with your favorite flowers, just because you wanted a singular one from the garden, and he was there when Jamil was trying to hide his smile when you were adamant to learn how to dance from him because you love how he looked when he danced.

Jamil hating you? That’s crazy.

“He won’t even be in the same room as me anymore” you rebutted, pouting as you were sure Jamil didn’t want it to be obvious that he was avoiding you, but you definitely noticed with how much you miss his company.

“Then we’ll just make sure he will be!” Kalim yelled out, his expression screaming ‘I have a great idea!’. This worries you.

Jamil was huffing, running through the hallways with as much caution as he could. A servant told him that Kalim requested him to come over to his room as soon as he could. Even if he knew the Kalim wouldn’t care if he was a little slow, as a servant of the esteemed Asim family he can’t ignore the supposed urgency for his assistance.

Finally reaching Kalim’s room, Jamil took a few seconds to adjust his appearance before knocking on the door, announcing his presence. But Kalim did not respond from the other side of the door.

“Young master Kalim, it’s Jamil” Jamil announced his presence again. Still no answer.

Jamil let out a small sigh. Kalim must have fallen asleep while waiting, he assumed. Used to this situation, Jamil slowly opened the door and inspected the room. The room was quiet with no sign of the Asim heir. He looked over to the large bed that had its canopy curtains loose, covering the bed.

“So I was right, Kalim did fall asleep” Jamil suppressed his exasperation as he walked towards the bed, pulling the curtains aside.

“Young master Kalim, what did you need from me that was-“

To Jamil’s surprise, it was not Kalim but you sitting on his master’s bed, looking somewhat angry. The dark-haired servant started looking around the room presumably in search of Kalim and for him to explain this situation. But since he wasn’t here, you volunteer to explain yourself.

“Kalim is currently in the village partaking in the weekly market,” you raised your hand when you saw the look of panic on Jamil’s face “He didn’t go alone, he has someone with him. That newly assigned tutor of his, I believe”

Jamil looked visibly calmer but you could tell that he still had some questions swirling in his head. It’s strange but you don’t feel surprised by how much you could tell about Jamil, that’s just how close you felt to him. But apparently, that isn’t mutual.

“I asked Kalim to call you on my behalf since you seem to be avoiding me.”

“I assure you, I could never be so rude as to avoid you-“

“But it feels like it! You don’t talk to me anymore, and I haven’t been able to see you as often as we used to” you knew that you sounded very childish, in fact this whole conversation is childish but you didn’t want whatever was going on between you and Jamil to continue and maybe even someday break apart this new bond.

“I just don’t want to drift apart from you” you whispered to yourself but Jamil with how keen he was, overheard your thoughts.

The truth was, he was avoiding you. Some time ago, he overheard the conversation between your father and Kalim’s father about recommendations for oversea studies and found out that you wanted to leave this kingdom. Jamil felt a pain in his chest he didn’t expect. To his surprise, he found himself feeling sad over the idea that he may not see you again for a long time, maybe even forever. Unlike him, you were free to travel with nobody to chain you down or obligations to come back. You could walk out of his life and never return.

Jamil didn’t like that feeling, so he decided he should nip this new friendship in the bud before it hurts even more.

But there he was, second-guessing his choice as he watches the look of sadness on your face, confessing that the mere few days without him left you upset. But still, he crushed that doubt (and hidden glee in the shared sadness) and chose to put on a face of professional indifference.

“I apologize for upsetting you but I’m sure there are more capable companions than I for you” Jamil spoke to you so formally, just like the days of your first meeting. “When you start your oversea studies, there will be a great diversity of people that will be worthy of your time”

“Wait, when did you hear about my plans to go overseas?”

Jamil's face paled as he realized his mistake. That was apparently not common knowledge amongst the servants and he just admitted that he knows because he heard something he had no right to as a worker of the esteemed Asim family.

Quickly, Jamil fell to his knees and dropped his gaze to the floor. This shocked you and quickly rushed to the floor to pull Jamil to his feet when he spoke again.

“I committed a crime. I overheard something that was not meant for my ears, therefore I will accept any punishment.” Jamil's tone was unwavering which scared you. A young teen like him speaking about punishment over a mere accident was a terrifying sight. What's more, he treated you less like a friend and more like an authoritative figure of his, which broke your heart.

“Jamil, I’m not going to punish you. And I never will!” You assured your friend, glancing to the door to make sure no one heard the two of you. “And Jamil, I haven’t decided if I want to study overseas”

You just kept on surprising Jamil.

“I thought about traveling to study but now…I don’t think I want to travel when I’m just going to miss you too much” you confessed your reasons before panicking slightly “and Kalim, of course! And my family!”

To anyone else, they’d think you were being foolish. Who wouldn’t want to travel and experience the world? Even Jamil dreamt about it, where he wasn’t bound by his obligations and was free to go wherever he pleases, maybe make a name for himself rather than simply Kalim’s shadow. If he was honest, he envied you for being someone unbounded or shadowed by anything or anyone.

Even with your embarrassing confession, you can tell that Jamil was unconvinced which left you exasperated before continuing on. “You and I finally got closer and I didn’t want to just suddenly leave like that. I know I’m being childish but that’s how I feel.”

You were being childish, Jamil thought. There you go again being foolish and nonsensical as Kalim with your emotions controlling your thoughts instead of being level-headed. To refuse a chance to see the world just to keep a superficial friendship with a mere servant like him is crazy, ridiculous, absolutely stupid…

But why does he feel so warm inside? This bubbly feeling of happiness growing in his chest?

“How irrational can you be? To forgo an opportunity like this for a mere servant like me…”

“But you’re not some ‘mere servant’,” you puff out your cheeks over that self-deprecating comment, grabbing your friend’s hands and encasing them tightly in yours. “You are the one and only Jamil Viper, someone very important to me.”

Without any way to hide his face, you got a glimpse of something rare. An embarrassed Jamil.

Bonus

"Hey Jamil..."

"Yes?"

"If I do think about traveling, would you like to come with me?"

"What would you need me for?"

"Just be there with me, enjoy the world together with me...like equals"

"...If I have the time, then...I would like that"

"Yay!~"

#twisted wonderland #twst #twst x reader #twst imagines #twisted wonderland x reader #disney twisted wonderland #twst scenarios #twisted wonderland imagines #twst jamil #jamil viper #jamil x reader #villainess au

851 notes · View notes

abyssruler · 1 year

Text

the thing about isekai is

scaramouche x gn!reader

when waking up in a place once thought to be fictional, most people would try to find a way back to their own world. you, however, find your favorite character and tell him how much you adore him.

isekai, fluff

The thing about being isekai’d into Teyvat is that the first thing you’ll do is find your favorite person and tell him how important he is.

“People… love me?”

You laugh, not the mocking sort of laugh, no. This one is light and airy, like cotton drifting through the air, your soft voice tinkling like chimes in the wind.

“Yes, a lot of us do!” You grin, bright as the sun rising through the horizon. “Do you know how many people would kill to be in my position? All of us…” you sigh, a nostalgic sort of smile on your lips. “All of us really adore you.”

He looks away, tugging his hat down to his face. Hah, did you really expect him to believe your words so easily? Though he is curious, which isn’t to say he believes your outrageous claims, but…

“Tell me more about this… scaranation you’ve been rambling about.”

Clapping your hands in delight, you go on a rant about the many people in this community you speak of. Fans you, say—of his. It’s difficult to accept your words, but the content itself—hearing about the amount of people who’ve squandered money for him, who waited years for him, who apparently think he’s worthy of being loved—it’s not… unpleasant.

“Hmph. I’ve heard enough.” No, he hasn’t. He wants to hear more, wants to know more, wants to see these people with his own eyes, wants to understand why you look at him like he hung the stars with his own hands. All crinkled eyes and a smile that you can’t seem to wipe from your face.

However…

“Scara-nation, really?”

You snicker. “Most of us got too used to calling you Scaramouche.”

He crosses his arms. “I’ve long since let go of that name.”

“I know.” Then, a delighted look crosses your face that instantly sends him on edge. “Wait til you hear what people named you.”

“…Do I even want to?”

You laugh. “Probably not, but just know I named you Baby.”

He levels you with an unimpressed glare. “Baby? Baby? Do I look like a child to you?”

“Some would say you do, in fact—”

He grumbles through your explanation, occasionally making barbed comments, especially when you reached the part where people apparently wrote stories about him. How outrageous and odd and… flattering, though the world would sooner burn before he admits it.

Mostly, though, he remains quiet, absorbing everything you had to say about how others viewed him and the lengths they’ve gone to… make him come home? Whatever that meant.

Sitting in the shade of a tree with you and listening to your strange tales feels almost nice, in a way the kabukimono of his past would have described it.

“I cried, y’know? Absolutely bawling my eyes out and snot coming out of my nose when I lost the fifty-fifty! I had to spend money, which wasn’t much compared to the others who spent, like, thousands for you. And did you know…”

The Wanderer didn’t realize it, but there’d been a faint smile on his lips the entire time.

#genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #scaramouche x reader #wanderer x reader #kunikuzushi x reader #gn reader #genshin shorts

2K notes · View notes

devilishchaos · 9 months

Note

your writing is amazing <3 if your requests are still open, could you write fluff fic and smut (if you like), where rúben is really gentle, taking care of you while you’re drunk. perhaps you both went to a party together and we all know that he can’t drink alcohol so he basically takes care of you from the bar/club to your shared house and you were so needy asking him to have sex with you while your drunk.

The one where you get drunk and he looks after you | Rúben Dias imagine

Rating / genre: fluff

Pairings: Reader x Rúben Dias

Warnings: mentions of drinking, explicit talk, begging

AN: Thank you for requesting <3 I hope you like it! :)

Word Count: 1 743 words

This is a work of fiction. The story, names, characters and incidents either are product or the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A group evening together with the whole Man City squad and their families usually spelled disaster for all of you, especially when celebrating.

“Another one!” Jack announces as he hands you another shot. With a click, the two of you are throwing them back. You’re already feeling tipsy and the encouragement is enough to keep you going.

Rúben is not as nearly far gone as everyone else, telling you to let loose. He holds your hand as you two walk around to the kitchen to find a snack. He giggles at your slight stumble, holding you up successfully.

“You’re so strong.” you say with a hiccup and Rúben shakes his head with a grin as he forces you to sip on some water in between your next drink.

John screams as his favorite song comes on, begging you to come join them. You pull Rúben along with you, his hands become steady on your hips as he presses kisses to your neck as the two of you sway in sync.

You are far gone. Rúben’s hands haven’t left your body, not that you’d complain - you are more than grateful for the way he’s holding you up.

“Here, let’s get some water in you, amor.” he picks you up and sits you on the counter, finding home between your legs as you sip on a cup of water.

“Good girl.” he says, pushing your hair from your face.

“You can not say that to me right now, Dias.” you say, wiggling your eyebrows “Nuh uh, no mister. Not when you look like this.” you give him a pout, only causing him to smile.

The whole journey home was filled with conversation, from only one of you in the car. Light giggles were the only thing that came from Rúben, as you spoke about anything that came to mind, slurring most of your words.

“This place looks familiar..” you whispered as you pulled up outside your shared apartment.

“There’s a reason for that.” Rúben sighed, getting himself out of the car before giving you a helping hand.

As soon as you stepped foot into the apartment, you threw yourself down onto the sofa, lifting your feet up for Rúben to untie the laces of your strappy heels and strip your jacket off of you. You could feel his eyes studying you closely with every little thing you did, bringing a light red blush to your face.

“What are you looking at?” you giggled as he lifted your legs up, sitting himself down on the sofa before moving your legs across to rest in his lap “Why do you keep looking at me like that? Have I got something on my face or on my jeans? Oh, man..not my jeans.”

Rúben rolled his eyes “Your jeans are fine, and so is your face. I’m just admiring how you look when you’re drunk.”

“Is that because you looooooove me?” you cheekily asked, holding your hand out for him to take a hold of “Because I love you, I love you a lot. Have I told you that I love you?”

“I think you might have mentioned it a couple of times Y/N, don’t worry about that.” Rúben assured you.

As the room darkened and finally silence began to descend upon you, the dizzy state you had found yourself in for most of the night began to subside. It didn’t stop your eyes from staring across at Rúben though, focussing on the feeling of his hands running against the bare skin of your ankles.

“Rúben..” you whispered, breaking up the silence in the room “..come lay with me for a bit?” you questioned, tapping the space beside you on the sofa.

Without a second thought, Rúben lifted your legs up so that he could swing his frame around to rest against the back of the sofa. The stench of alcohol hit him as soon as he got close enough to your face, as he pressed a kiss against your cheek.

“You smell nice.” your voice was muffled against the collar of his shirt. Breaths of warm air brushed against his neck and Rúben clenched his jaw in a half-ditched effort to seize the pounding in his chest. Surely you could hear it.

“Let’s get you to bed, amor.” Rúben said softly, as he got up from the sofa and took you with him, starting to take a step backward. You kept your arms wrapped tightly around his waist, but you allowed your legs to follow him. Steady, careful steps were taken as Rúben continued to walk backwards towards the bedroom.

His hand felt around for the door knob and he twisted it open. You had yet to lift your head from the alcove of his neck, sighing contently as he pulled you into the room. Rúben flicked the light switch on at your bedside, illuminating the room in a soft white hue in an effort to preserve the sensitivity in your eyes.

“I’m going to find some sleep clothes for you, alright?” Rúben asked, as he reached behind him and pulled your arms from around his waist. The flash of disappointment across your face as your lips tugged into a frown did not slip his notice. He set you against the edge of the bed, a steady hand on your shoulder to make sure you were balanced. He turned back towards the closet.

“You want to sleep in my clothes or yours, baby?” Rúben scratched at his head, tucking his hair behind his ears.

“Baby?”

When he turned back towards you, a gasp caught in his throat to find you standing just inches away. How you managed to sneak up on him in this state, he’ll never know. You were staring at his lips, breathing heavily as eyes slowly trailed up to meet his. If Rúben thought his heart was beating painfully before..

A brush of your fingers at his waist line, playing with the edge of his shirt forced a gulp out of him. You purse your lips into a mischievous grin, grabbing at the fabric.

“Take this off.”

“W-what?” Rúben stuttered. God, he was never as nervous as he was around you.

You leaned forward, hands releasing the fabric and trailing along his stomach under his shirt. Nails gently dragging over his skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake. Before Rúben could say a word, your lips were on his neck.

“A-amor, hold on now..” Rúben started, though he found he couldn’t finish where he was going. He couldn’t remember what he was even going to say, not with the way your lips were sucking so sweetly against that spot on his neck that drove him wild, traveling up to pepper kisses along his jaw. He closed his eyes, relishing in the sensation you left behind with each kiss. He knew he should stop you, but, God, how could he possibly when your lips were on the corner of his mouth?

The moment you pressed your lips to his, he froze, hands out to the side. Your soft, plump lips kissed at his own, tongue dragging against the bottom of his lip, until you bit down, not enough to hurt but enough that it took Rúben out of his trance.

His hands came up to the sides of your face, holding you against him as he parted his lips further for you. It was wet and messy, and rushed, and nothing like he thought it would be as you moaned into his mouth, sending a jolt below his waistline. The way you were tugging at him, the way his hands tangled in your knotted hair, it was all so much rougher than he wanted it to be. But with your tongue sweeping over his, all he could think about was how bad he wanted this.

“Amor..” you moaned and Rúben nearly came on the spot “..Rúben..please, I need you to fuck me.”

Rúben pulled away instantly, panting heavily. Eyes wide as you sat down on the bed, reaching to pull your shirt over your head. He couldn’t believe what he was doing, but hands darted out to grab yours before you had the chance to remove the fabric.

“Wait a second, amor.” Rúben urged, stare caught on your swollen lips. He was screaming in his own head.

You frowned “Rú, please. Fuck me.”

The heavy slur of your words. The way your eyes couldn’t quite focus on him. The sway of your body, unable to keep balance even as you sat on the bed. You weren’t in your right mind. He should have known that from the moment you touched him.

“Fuck.” Rúben cursed under his breath, the realization of what he was doing flooding through him. He took a step back, brushing his hand over his mouth “I- I can’t, amor. I’m sorry.”

“But, Rúbenn..” you wined, grabbing at his arms and pulling yourself back to your feet. Your lips connected with his neck again and he had to stifle a moan before it came out. His hands set carefully on your shoulders in an effort to push you away. He couldn’t do this to you, not like this.

Your lips came back to his own and Rúben pulled away reluctantly. It killed him to do so, tore at his chest in every painful way imaginable, but he did it.

“Not like this, baby.” he urged and pushed softly against your shoulders, keeping you at a distance. Your eyes searched his, confusion evident across your features “Not now, maybe later..”

“Why don’t you lie down, for now, hm?” Rúben gestured towards the bed. You followed his gaze and nodded slowly. All of your energy seemed to drain away in an instant. He had to nearly carry you to the side of the bed. Lifting the covers and tucking two pillows under your head to aid in the dizziness, Rúben helped to tuck you in. A warm smile pulled at the corners of your lips as you closed your eyes, just barely visible, enough so that he would have missed it if he wasn’t watching you so closely.

He leaned forward and pressed his lips to your forehead. A couple pain relievers and a glass of water by your bedside were left for you. He changed into some comfy clothes and joined you to bed, plopping down with a heavy sigh. His fingers brushed up at his lips, the sensation of you still tingling there.

#ruben dias #ruben gato dias #ruben dias fic #ruben dias imagine #ruben dias imagines #ruben dias x reader #ruben dias x you #ruben dias x y/n #ruben dias fluff #football imagine #football imagines

369 notes · View notes

everlastlady · 3 months

Text

Boyfriend Vox HCS

✥- Author's Note: I can't wait for Hazbin Hotel to come out, now Vox isn't my favorite character but he isn't a character that I hate. He's a character that I find interesting, and when the show comes out maybe my interest will spike and I'll enjoy him more. I'm already enjoying his voice, design, and especially his singing voice, tell me what you guys think about Vox's voice and design, what do you hope to see in the show when it comes to Vox besides his rivalry with the radio demon Alastor. Remember to eat a meal or a snack, drink some water, get some fresh air, take your medicine, and remember that you are loved. If you loved this story remember to comment, click or tap that heart button, reblog with tags, and blaze if you can. Always remember to support your local writers. ♡♡♡

✤- Story Contains: CEO female reader, romance, Vox being a bit of an ass, strong language, reader is a falling angel, and overall just a fun silly fan fiction.

✤- Vox has always been asshole towards (Name) but (Name) was always an ass back to Vox too. The two trading insults and even shoving each other. This was this love language because the two were dating. The powerful Overlord was dating the falling angel ceo of Hell. Vox was fascinated that (Name) was a falling angel, and built a company on helping falling angel especially since they made a lot of money. But Vox didn't love them for the money, he loved them for their passion, fiery attitude, and being able to stand for themselves. Vox was glad that (Name) was his girlfriend.

✥- The two helped each other out. Vox made sure that (Name) had all the power and influence she needed for her company. And made sure that Vox any of his associates were protected from the angels. She also uses Vox's products at her company and having models use them in photoshoot. " Think you can have one of your models eat my cereal in the video babe? " Vox asked. " Yeah, sure. " (Name) smiled giving a nod. " In a sexy way please. " Vox walked away. It took (Name) a while to progress what her wide screen boyfriend just said. " .... In a sexy way? "

✥- Whenever (Name) and Vox argue in public or call each other names. Even shoving each other and fighting. People don't know that it's over the most stupidest things. Vox could say a cloud looks like a turtle but (Name) would say it looks more like a mouse then they'll fight even in meetings. If you were there Velvet would just say. " Don't worry this is how they express their love. "

✥- Vox loves to spoil (Name), he loves getting her a ton of gifts and outfits. Only the best for his woman, he especially will rent out her favorite restaurant so that they can have it all to themselves and order whatever they want off the menu. Vox once rented out Loo Loo World for their anniversary and they had a lot of fun. But (Name) laughed her ass off because Vox was screaming like a little girl because of a roller coaster ride and he could hit the targets at one of the games after bragging about how he'll win her a prize but in the end, it was (Name) that one him a large plush toy of a wolf bear that he keeps in his bedroom.

✥- (Name) also spoils Vox. She treats him to fancy dinners, gets him the most cleanest and comfortable suits. Sends him a shit ton of birthdays money. (Name) also spoils him in affection with kisses and pet names. Sometimes in public which Vox doesn't mind. He wants people to know that (Name) is his girlfriend anyone who even tries to flirt with her has to deal with Vox.

✥- Vox will brew up a hot boiling pot of rant when he talking about Alastor which (Name) finds annoying because she didn't care about Alastor and wasn't afraid of him. So whenever Vox got worked up to the point his ranting was annoying (Name) she would say. " He's starting to sound more like a crush that you want to kiss instead of a rival, maybe he should be your boyfriend. " (Name) said smirking. Vox would buffer a bit before making a face of disgust. " I don't love that mediocre show host, don't ever think or suggesting that. " Vox said. He would walk off, finally (Name) could read in peace.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin vox #vox x reader #vox hazbin hotel #vox x female reader #hazbin fandom #hazbin fanfic #hazbin everlasting #everlasting writes🪻

340 notes · View notes

goldenseresinretriever · 5 months

Text

Snitches Get Stitches: Chapter 9

Pairing: Jake “Hangman” Seresin x Reader

Part of the San Diego Dogfighters universe

Summary: Jake Seresin, golden boy of the NHL and Captain of the Dallas Stars makes headlines when he unexpectedly signs with newly-formed San Diego Dogfighters. When your future seems at the verge of crashing down, you receive the opportunity of a lifetime to become the team physician for the Dogfighters. You never expected to be working directly with your favorite hockey player. Jake has a secret and you have a job to do. Will he be able to trust you enough to help and will you be able to trust him with your heart?

Chapter CW: 18+ ONLY, swearing, smut, mutual masturbation, medical inaccuracies, hockey inaccuracies, legal inaccuracies. No use of Y/N. Any opinions on NHL teams expressed by my characters are not my own and describe fictional versions of these teams.

Word Count: 3.9k

A/N: It’s been a minute, Dogfighters fans! I had to catch up on requests and then last week we celebrated 200 followers with our first ever press conference! Check out that in the tag “#sdd press conference” If you haven’t read Chapter 8.5 which is Jake’s POV of Chapter 8, you can find that here!

Previous Chapter // Series Masterlist // Next Chapter

You wake to the scratch of unfamiliar fabric against your cheek. Blinking against the afternoon light that slips in through the curtains to your right, your eyes adjust and you realize you’re in a bed, an unfamiliar bed. Your chest tightens in panic, struggling to remember how you got here until a familiar scent hits your nostrils. Jake. The whole room smells like him but especially the bed. You relax into the mattress letting the scent envelop you and calm your racing heart. You’re in Jake’s bed, you’re safe. You’re in Jake’s bed. Your heart is pounding for a completely different reason now. Finally, your brain catches up to your situation and you remember everything: the car crash, Jake coming to get you, and you agreeing to stay at his place tonight. You groan as a dull throbbing in your head reminds you that you’re concussed. It doesn’t feel too serious and you’ll probably feel better in the morning but for now, you feel like shit.

You shift uncomfortably and your hand brushes something wet and a gentle whine questions you. You turn your head gingerly and smile as you see that Pudding is sprawled next to you, worry in her chocolate eyes as she nudges your hand with her nose gently. “Hey girl, where’s your dad, huh?” She whines again, lifting her huge head and scooting her fluffy body closer to you, dropping her head on your stomach and you chuckle, moving your hand to stroke the fur on her head. “I missed you too, baby. I think I messed things up with your dad. I’m sorry I wasn’t here this morning.” Your heart aches as you remember Jake leaving last night. And now you’re in his bed. You’re confused, to say the least, but you figure that’s just Jake’s big heart getting in the way of his head.

You should go home. Maybe you can call Zam and have her stay over to keep an eye on you. You glance around for your phone and see it on the nightstand, plugged into a charger you can only assume is Jake’s. It feels like it’s an ocean away due to the fact that, of course, your giant hockey player sleeps in a king-sized bed all by himself. Well not entirely by himself, you think as you continue to snuggle with Pudding. With her head on your stomach, you can’t get to your phone so you swallow down your anxiety and call for Jake. Your voice is scratchy from disuse and you cringe at the sound. Pudding shifts her head to look at the door and you hear footsteps approach the open doorway as Jake comes in, a mixture of concern and relief knitting his brow. He’s holding a glass of water with a straw in it, and he smiles at you as he turns on a lamp next to the bed, sitting down on the edge and leaning over to get a better look at you.

“Hey Bunny, how’re you feeling?” You smile back, suddenly shy under his gaze.

“Better. Thanks for letting me stay over.” He frowns at the scratchy sound of your voice and holds the glass near your mouth, letting the straw rest on your lips and you sip gratefully. You make the mistake of meeting his eyes as you suck at the straw and feel your cheeks heat at the intensity in them. A strand of your hair slips across your face as you shift to sit up a little and Jake instantly reaches to tuck it back behind your ear. Your breath catches as you drink and the water goes down the wrong pipe. You choke, coughing violently as you release the straw from your lips, turning to shield Jake from your coughs, and pounding your fist against your chest. His hand presses to your back, smoothing circles into it as you catch your breath. “Sorry,” you croak as you look back up at him, eyes watering from the burn of the water in your throat. You take the glass from his other hand, foregoing the straw to gulp down the water in an attempt to soothe the burning in your throat. You hand the glass back to him and he leans over to place it on the nightstand next to your phone. You motion for him to pass it to you. “I need to let Cyclone know I won’t be in tomorrow.” Jake shakes his head gently.

“Don't worry about that. Zam’s already taken care of that. I hope you don’t mind, but I gave her your keys and had her grab you some clothes.” You shake your head.

“Thanks.”

“Just wanted to make sure you would be comfortable here.”

“I’m always comfortable here.” You whisper so low that you're not sure he heard you. “Though I feel bad hogging your bed, isn’t there a guest room I could use instead?” You shift nervously. You think you see his cheeks pinken slightly but it could just be a trick of the lamplight.

“Yeah but it’s not set up yet, it’s kind of a mess right now. I haven’t had time to put the bed together yet with my leg and all that.” Your eyes widen.

“Wait then where are YOU sleeping?” He’d invited you into his home without a second thought but now you were dreading his answer

“The couch is just fine for me, Bunny.” Your face fell.

“Jake! I can’t kick you out of your bed in your own home AND make you sleep on the couch!” He chuckles, reaching to trace formless shapes on the back of your hand.

“Don’t you worry about me, Bunny. You’re the patient today. Just let me take care of you.”

You pout up at him, frowning. “You’re still my patient too, you know. It's only fair for me to want to take care of you too.” Jake squeezes his eyes shut and groans.

“Please don’t remind me, Bunny.”

“Remind you of what?”

“That I’m your patient.” You frown again.

“Well tough shit, Lola, you are.” The corners of his mouth raise even as his eyes stay squeezed shut.

“I love it when you call me that.” He says, actively fighting the smile stretching across his face.

“You said it yourself, Jake. We’re a team.” You giggle and Jake peeks at you out of one eye, groaning again.

“Bunny, you’re killing me.” You feel your face heat in embarrassment. For the first time since you called Jake after the accident, you think about what you’re doing here. You called him immediately, screaming for him, and then you practically climbed him like a tree the moment he arrived, and now you’re flirting with him while lying in his bed. All after you’d practically begged him to keep your relationship professional. You’d thrown that all away over the course of the last twenty-four hours and now all you could feel was shame, hanging your head.

“I’m sorry.” Your voice is a whisper and you hate how it wavers. “I’m so sorry, Jake.”

“Bunny…” You peek up, unable to lift your head, and look at him directly. His eyes are open and gazing at you with a look that knocks the air out of your lungs. His hand reaches out, gripping your chin lightly and tilting your head up to look back at him.

“Jake…” You hate the way he can hear the tears in your voice, and he can surely see them blurring your vision. “Jake, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t have called you. I’m so sorry.”

“Bunny, no.” His hand shifts to cup your jaw, the cool pad of his thumb stroking over the heated apple of your cheek. “I’m so glad you called me, Bunny, that you trust me enough to call me.” His smile is rueful, his eyes holding so much gentleness that you don’t deserve.

“But I asked you to be professional and then all I’ve done is not be, and,” you swallow, trying to stop the trembling that’s taken over your shoulders. “I’m making a mess of everything.” The words are choked as you force them out.

“Shh, it’s okay. It’s not your fault, baby. Don’t you dare blame yourself.” His lips press into a line, the grip on your jaw tightening, thumb still stroking your cheek with contrasting gentleness.

“But it is, Jake. It’s all my fault. You got in a fight today because of me. Then I wrecked your truck. Those could have been PR nightmares if the wrong people were there and I’m playing with not just my career but your career too and all because I can’t think straight around you anymore because I’m just so in love with you.” Your voice breaks in a sob and your shoulders shake as the dam in your eyes shatters and tears make their way down your cheeks, blurring your vision so drastically that you can’t see the look on Jake’s face until you swipe at your eyes, and your heart stops at the look on his face.

You’re not sure that Jake’s breathing. There are tears in his eyes and his fingers are trembling where they’re holding your face. “You’re in love with me?” You’ve never heard him sound so tentative. Not even when he told you about his leg or his coach.

You swallow hard, laughing softly as you reach out a hand to lay it softly against his rough cheek, nodding. All the fear, guilt, and shame melt away and all you can see is this beautiful, strong man so shocked that you could possibly love him when you couldn’t imagine not. “Jake Seresin, I love you so much that it genuinely scares me.” You avert your eyes as your confession makes you shy all over again under the intensity of his gaze. Your eyes dart back up though as Jake leans his forehead against yours and you can taste the breath that leaves his lips.

“If you go, I go, Bunny.” He whispers the words against your lips and they don’t sound like a secret, they sound like a prayer. Before they can slip away into the liminal space that’s Jake’s bedroom and run away forever, leaving the two of you in the dim light, you seal them forever between your lips as you close the gap. Jake kisses you back instantly and while you can taste the desperation in his lips, he’s slow, and gentle, taking time that the two of you don’t have. Because after this? You’re officially living on borrowed time until everything falls apart around you, but in this moment you can’t be bothered to care anymore because the man you love so much it hurts is holding you like you’re the most precious thing in the entire world. You sigh against his mouth as he nips at your lower lip, tongue sliding against the seam begging for entrance. He takes advantage of your parted lips, sweeping in, stroking his tongue along yours as you feel the weight of Pudding’s head lift from your stomach and then Jake’s arms are hauling you up, awkwardly into his lap. It’s perfect for all of five seconds before your head throbs at the sharp movement and then it feels like you’re spinning as your hands grip Jake’s shoulders trying to ground yourself. Jake must notice something’s wrong because he pulls away, concern in his eyes as they search your face as it twists into a grimace and you press your forehead against his roughly, hoping to alleviate the throbbing.

“Bunny? You okay?” Jake strokes your hair gently as his brow furrows against your forehead.

“Head hurts.” You grit out. “Feel dizzy.” He’s pulling away then and you whimper at the loss of contact until he presses a soft kiss to your forehead.

“I’m not entirely sure about the medical benefits of kissing it better but it’s worth a shot. I’m gonna grab you some Tylenol just in case.” You pout at him as he pulls away and slides back across the bed before leaving the room. “I’ll be right back.” He promises but you still feel your heart ache once he’s out of view. You turn to give Pudding a longing look and she returns it.

“Pud, I love him so much.” You whisper as you reach over to give her head a scratch and she nuzzles your hand in agreement. You bathe in comfortable silence for a few minutes as you wait for Jake before you finally let the words escape your lips nervously. “Do you think he loves me?” Sure he’d said it back in his own way, but the cynical part of your brain is itching with uneasiness until Jake’s voice pulls your attention back to the doorway where he’s leaning against the frame, holding the refilled glass of water and pill bottle, gazing at you and Pudding with so much unabashed adoration is his eyes.

“I would say so.” Your cheeks flush at being caught in your moment of vulnerability. Jake crosses the room, climbing back on the bed, giving Pudding a scratch before lacing his fingers with yours and guiding you back against the pillows as he presses a soft kiss to your lips. “I love you more than you can imagine, Bunny.” You feel your tears from earlier threatening to make a second appearance as he strokes your cheek with the hand that’s not holding yours, littering your lips with quick pecks. You whimper under him as his lips change trajectory to the side of your mouth to trace the line of your jaw. He pauses as he gets to the sensitive underside of your jaw, nosing at the spot gently, before pressing a revering kiss there. “And as much as I want to show you exactly how much, you need to get some rest.” You whine at his words, reaching your free hand from where it’s been fisting the sheets under you to thread through his golden locks, pulling him up to look at you.

“You’re such a tease.” He grins at your pout before pressing a kiss to it, giving your hand one last squeeze before he sits up to grab the pills and water. You sit up slowly, adjusting the pillows to prop you up as Jake hands the glass and you take the pills obediently before slouching back against the pillows, content to gaze at Jake as he traces formless shapes on your legs. You groan, exhausted, as you gaze down at the slacks and blouse you wore today instead of your usual scrubs. Discomfort settles over you and you scowl as you sit up, scanning the room for the clothes Jake mentioned earlier.

“Looking for something, Bunny?”

“The clothes you mentioned. I need out of these dress clothes.” He chuckles as you scrunch your nose up in distaste before sliding off the bed and grabbing a familiar duffel bag from the floor, passing it to you.

“That’s what Zam brought, do you need help getting to the bathroom?” You hesitate but the idea of faceplanting on Jake’s floor isn’t ideal so you nod, reaching out a hand for him to help you get across the ocean of sheets but when Jake pulls you along, he doesn’t stop with just helping you to the edge of your bed. Instead, he swings you into his arms, keeping a firm hold on your butt as he reaches back to grab the duffel bag and swing it over the shoulder you’re not leaning on before readjusting you in his arms and carrying you towards a closed door across the room despite your protests.

“Jake, I can walk, I promise! You shouldn’t be carrying me with your knee still healing!” You scowl at him but he just leans over and kisses the tip of your nose before depositing you on the bathroom counter. He places the bag next to you and you open it before letting out a long groan, leaning your head back against the mirror. You can’t believe Zam, truly.

“Everything okay?” Jake asks cautiously and you can tell he’s fighting the urge to look in your bag and see what’s bothering you so much. You just sigh and pull out the shirt on top, unfurling it so he can see it and you watch the grin spread across his face as he takes in the familiar shade of green. “I don’t see the problem here, Bunny.” He’s laughing, his shit-eating grin so wide that his dimples are prominent as you lower the Dallas Stars shirt with Jake’s face plastered all over it and SERESIN emblazoned across the front, with the number 86 on the back facing you. You roll your eyes, if he wants something to laugh at, you can give him something to laugh at. Setting the shirt down next to you, you pull your blouse over your head and you hear his laughter falter. You smirk at him as his green eyes go wide at the sight of your plain cotton black bra. “B-bunny, what are you doing?” Your fingers drop to the button of your slacks and you arch an eyebrow at him as you unbutton them, the sound of the zipper deafening as you push your butt up just enough to wiggle your pants down and they slide down your legs to fall to the floor in a puddle. You don’t know what’s brought on this confidence that’s so unlike you, but confessing your feelings to Jake and having him reciprocate them has you feeling bold.

“Changing.” You say as innocently as you can, still smirking at him as he groans. Emboldened by the sound of pure desire from his lips, you readjust yourself, shifting your legs so he gets a flash of the dampening fabric between them before reaching for the shirt.

“Bunny.” You smile wider at the sound of desperation, giggling at him.

“No physical activity when you’re concussed, remember Jake? Complete rest is necessary for the first couple of days.” He groans again, staring at you like he’s just barely holding himself back, one hand dropping to the front of his shorts and your eyes follow to where you can just see the outline of his growing erection. You trap your lip between your teeth as you suppress a groan yourself as Jake gasps his cock through his shorts, head falling back at the sensation. He lifts it to gaze at you through half-lidded eyes swimming with desire. You let your hand trail down your body before sliding it past the waistband of your panties and Jake growls.

“Bunny-” He’s cut off by your loud moan as your fingers ghost over your clit, your legs falling open of their own accord, showing off the dark spot on your green panties and the outline of your fingers behind them, teasing your dripping slit with delicate touches, your breath coming out in short pants.

“Jake!” You whine his name as the sensations overwhelm you and your finger lingers on your clit, shifting from ghosting touches to rubbing in a circular motion over the aching bud.

“Fuck, Bunny!” Jake’s shorts are pooled around his ankles and he’s leaned against the wall opposite you, his hand slipped into his own underwear, stroking his length in shaky movements as he watches you chase your pleasure.

You shift forward so you’re hanging off the counter as you speed up your movements, the coil in your belly tightening faster than you’d anticipated at the sight of Jake about to cum in his boxers at the sight of you. You let your body slump back against the mirror behind you, the cool surface soothing your sweat-slicked back. You’re chanting his name like a prayer as you get closer, your movements going faster as you feel the wrist grasping the counter begin to burn with the strain of making sure you don’t slide off as your slick soaks through your panties.

“Bunny!” Jake cries out your name as his body goes slack, his movements turning sloppy as he works himself through his peak, and the sight of him lost to his own pleasure pushes you over the edge and you answer his cries with ones of your own as you go boneless on the counter, your fingers rubbing tight circles as you ride the wave of your orgasm.

Your wrist gives out and you feel your body begin to slide down the counter. You use the last of your strength to claw at the marble to stop your fall, but strong arms wrap around your bare thighs as Jake crosses the bathroom just in time to catch you. You blink up at him in orgasmic bliss as he gathers you against his chest. You feel the damp spot on the front of his boxers against your thigh as you listen to the beat of his heart as it struggles to slow after the exertion you’ve both partaken in. “I love you, Jake.” You whisper against his chest as he strokes over your hair gently.

“I love you too, Bunny.” He presses a tender kiss to the crown of your head as he holds you close.

***

You’re back in Jake’s bed, freshly showered and dressed in clean underwear and the shirt with Jake’s face all over it. After your strength came back, Jake had left you in his bathroom to shower while he took the guest one and now you were waiting for him to come back. Pudding is snuggled against your left side and you’re hoping her dad will join on your right. The door swings open and Jake comes in, pajama pants slung low on his hips as he sits gently on the edge of the bed, offering his hand to your outstretched one.

“Will you stay?” You ask, hesitantly, gazing up at him shyly.

“Do you want me to stay?” He rubs his thumb along the back of your entangled hands. You nod and Jake doesn’t hesitate to pull back the covers and slide underneath. You reach for him and he chuckles, scooting close and you curl up against his warm chest, breathing in the scent you know so well plus a crisp coating of cleanness. “You comfy, Bunny?”

“Very.” You assure him as he chuckles and you feel the rumble under your cheek, sighing contentedly. “Jake?”

“Yes, Bunny?”

You hate to ruin the mood but you need to know what’s happening before you let yourself truly fall away from all reason. “Will you still be here when I wake up?” Jake reaches a hand to stroke your hair and he presses a kiss there and you feel him nod against your head.

“I’ll be here. I told you. if you go, I go.” Your heart aches.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” you say, idly tracing shapes on his bare chest.

“That’s fine with me, sweetheart, I can do hard.” You hear the smirk in his voice and swat at his chest but without any real force. He pauses before he asks, “Zam said she was working on something? What’s that about?” You sigh.

“It seems we weren’t as subtle as we thought we were being. Zam caught on and then she said she’d see if she could find some way to help us make this work.” Jake’s hand shifts to your back as he thinks.

“Zam really is the best, isn’t she, Bunny?”

“She really is.” You smile softly, pausing before you ask. “So we’re doing this?”

“I’m in if you are, Bunny. We’re a team, remember?” You press a gentle kiss to his chest at his sweet words.

“Yes, yes we are.”

A/N: They’re official! It’s been a long time coming but our favorite couple has officially sealed the deal~

#snitches get stitches // sdd #san diego dogfighters #san diego dogfighters au #san diego dogfighters hockey au #sgs // sdd #tgm hockey au #top gun maverick hockey au #top gun maverick #TGM #jake seresin x reader #jake seresin x you #jake hangman seresin x you #jake hangman seresin x reader #hangman x reader #hangman x you #no use of y/n

234 notes · View notes