#gonna ruin everyone time by pointing out that in almost every pic

[leejeongz]

nsfw a-z: PARK JIHOON (treasure)

requested: yes, by anon

🔅thanks for requesting sweetheart i hope u like it🔅

most of this is taken from conversations i’ve had with my good pal @multifandomwhxre there are probably thousands of direct quotes lol 🥺😳 if ur reading this, pls give her a follow ❤️

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

he gets quite soft. since he’s a hard dom, he wants to show you that even though you’re his little bitch, you’re also his little baby that he wants to cuddle forever. i think he’d like to talk about what happened and actually praise you in hopes of getting praised back.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

he likes your eyes, he likes how they say everything. they tell him everything you’re too shy to say or everything you’re not allowed to say.

on him, he likes his arms (shocker ik). his physical strength gives him even more power over you, like being able to pin you down on the bed or up against a wall, maybe even hold you for a short while.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

he LOVES to cum inside you but only when you agree to it. if you don’t, he’s more than happy to pull out and cum on your stomach and admire how pretty it looks. when he decides you’re just gonna suck his dick, he takes great care trying to get all of his cum into your mouth and making you swallow it while his hand holds up your chin, forcing you to look at him as you do so. sometimes it doesn’t always go as planned, getting it over your face, but he’d just be like “oh look at all this mess you just made” and then use his fingers to put in all into your mouth.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

all the pictures you send him get saved into an album and he uses them and them only to get off to, even some selfies are worthy of being put in the wank bank. he thinks porn is cheating and if he ever caught you watching it, he’d be pretty disappointed rather than turned on (even if u were just fwb), so that’s why he uses ur pics and his imagination.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

he knows what he’s doing, alright. he’s had enough experience to know what he likes and that’s pretty much all that matters to him and all he lets on to you too. (he’s probably only had one sexual partner, but the way he acts makes you think he’s had more)

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

butterfly (lying on the edge of the bed (or any surface) while he stands between your legs)

he loves being able to pull you closer to him by your legs, being able to reach deeper inside you and (maybe his favourite parts) being able to grab your tits and rub your clit with his thumb. there are no disadvantages of this position for him.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

very serious. might laugh AT you but that’s the only laughing to be heard.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

completely clean shaven. even the balls lol.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

not very romantic. at all. you’re still his and he doesn’t let you forget that. but you’re his cum slut or his dirty little whore in the moment. kisses are few and far between and mainly occur after he’s finished.

just wanna make a quick point- he’s not always gonna be hard dom jihoon who loves to tease and doesn’t care for ur wants. ofc he reserves some time for you two to actually be romantic, with little tickles and smooches. he can switch it up real quick depending on how YOU are feeling, it’s not about him all the time. i just chose to write this mainly about the other side of him since that is the most InTeREsTiNG and probably the most frequent kind of sex you’d have.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

only once a week. quite secretive about it when he’s acc doing it but doesn’t shy away from cracking jokes or even just generally talking about masturbation with anyone.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

where do i even begin i think it would be easier to list kinks he doesn’t have… anyway:

degradation - in the moment, you’re his slut, his whore and your desires mean very little to him. he’s not going to stop when you ask him to stop (unless u say the safe word or seem genuinely uncomfortable), you ARE going to do what he tells you to do and when he tells you to do it and you are not going to do anything else.

bondage (kinda?)- handcuffs are his best friend, he likes having your hands where he can see them or where he can hold onto the chain/your wrists, behind your back is his favourite, but he never knows which he prefers, holding them or pulling your hair. even though he has handcuffs, sometimes he likes to spice it up and use a leather belt, he finds this hotter and it turns him on a lot more.

corruption - this can include taking your virginity or just “teaching” someone innocent (virgin or not) about sex. jihoon would love it if you kept asking questions and he could just show you. he’d love to see the sluttier side of you become more and more noticeable and apparent, knowing he did that to you.

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

he’s up for doing it anywhere but he’d rather do it in the comfort of his own home, in the bedroom.

he wouldn’t be opposed to doing it on someone else’s bed. i imagine he’d actually find it pretty funny to fuck you on someone else’s bed, let you both get it all dirty, then go and face the friend all innocently. the inside joke/secret could be used for teasing or just to bring you closer together.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

i mean making him jealous always makes him wanna show you who you really belong to but do you really wanna be risking the best fuck of your life like that. he could easily get rid of you if you even slightly overstep the boundaries.

it’s safer to just… act like a little brat. telling him you don’t wanna do something for him like getting him a drink gets him real mad and mad jihoon=turned on jihoon when it comes to you.

but also just the normal stuff. seeing you all dressed up nice makes him wanna cancel your plans for you. pressing yourself against him while spooning gives him an instant hard on (and you need to be punished for doing that to him). sometimes even just the way you look at him, maybe it reminds him of how you look up at him while sucking his dick.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

let you be the dom 😳 absolutely never not in a million years. some guys might like to watch you try, but he doesn’t even give you the chance. he likes it when you top, but he would never EVER let you be in control.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

prefers to receive. likes to fuck your face and watch your mascara get ruined. wants you to take his whole dick, every last inch and will not be satisfied until you do.

when giving, he also likes to use his hands too. this man knows where the clit is i’m just saying. very rare that he eats you out (would rather use his fingers or toys during foreplay) and usually doesn’t last that long because it turns him on too much, he just wants to fuck you. when he does go down on you, it’s usually after he’s finished (doesn’t want to if he’s cum inside u tho).

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

whatever makes you squirm and moan the most. starts slow but gets fast real quick. once you let out even a hint of pleasure, he’s gonna slow it right down again. the “hard and fast” approach doesn’t work for everyone and so he’d make it suit your needs.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

would rather be able to spend time making the experience better and dirtier than the last, however, if he wanted to fuck there and then, or if he wanted to be in your mouth right at that moment, and there’s nothing stopping him, he’ll just take you to the bathroom or smth and would just d o i t. (tease him for a fast pass to the bathroom)

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

he will do almost everything once, and most of the time will enjoy it and do it again. a light bit of bdsm and sensory deprivation (with a safe word of course) would be incorporated into what you pair would deem a normal round after just a few nights.

he’d also try anything you wanted to, he wouldn’t shy away from anything that you suggested, even if he thought he wouldn’t like it.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

he can usually last for a while (a while in my opinion anyway idk what u think is a long time CoUgH cOUgh evie) maybe 20-30 minutes (including foreplay ofc) but he can only usually last one round a night. he’s more than happy to eat you out or put his hands to good use if you wanna cum again tho- one of the only times he’ll let you tell him what to do.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

uses toys to tease you. likes holding a vibrator to your clit and telling you not to cum until he says you can. it really turns him on to use them on you. but if he ever caught you using them on yourself without his permission… you’re in for one hell of a “talking to”.

would never use them on himself- he thinks giving you the power to use them on him, or even using them on himself, is too much power that he doesn’t have for himself if that makes sense.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

a whole bloody lot okay. he doesn’t care where you are or who you’re with, if he wants to tease you, he will. is the type to buy one of those toys that you can control on your phone and then laugh when you’re at point of orgasm in the middle of dinner. the reactions he gets from you might turn him on a little, and it’s always your fault if they do, you’re gonna pay for it.

he’s really REALLY unfair during sex too, although to him it’s very fair that you have to wait to be treated. as i mentioned before, he likes to steady the pace when you’re getting into it and he also likes slapping his dick on you to tease you before actually going in. just some of the many things he does to tease you and to treat you “as you deserve”

a lot of the teasing he does is for you though, don’t get me wrong. he knows this will make up you hungrier and you will cum harder and feel good so he doesn’t it all the more.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

GROWLS

only so you can hear them, right next to your ear.

and also a lot of degradation, but volume isn’t something he cares about with that.

idk where to put this but i don’t think he’d be a fan of you being too loud, especially when there are other people in the house. if they were gonna hear anyone, he wants it to be him.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

“come here” jihoon orders as you shut the front door behind you.

you apprehensively approach the coach upon which he is sat, relaxed but noticeably hard.

“care to explain this” he shows you the text you sent him as you were on your way home reading “remember that cash you gave me to spend?” with a photo of your new ruby red lingerie set attached. “you knew what you were doing, didn’t you? maybe i shouldn’t even punish you for this, but i want to”

you swallowed audibly, knowing you were going to be punished, kind of excited about what’s to come.

“get here” he nodded towards his lap. you did as he requested, lying face down on his lap, and he immediately pulled your jeans down a little. he rubbed your ass a little before forcefully planting a harsh hand on it. the other hand held your wrists together behind your back, squeezing them until they became numb. you squealed a little which encouraged another smack. both cheeks soon became the same colour as your new lingerie, still jiggling as much as the first time even though you were tense.

“you want another?” he asked. you nodded without thinking, the stinging infesting your brain. “hmm interesting” he sat back for a moment, considering his next move while his hand rested on your back. you tried to get up… little did you know this was when the real punishment was going to begin.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

does it matter this guy can give you all the pleasure you need with whatever tools he’s got 👀

but i think he’s average tbh… maybe a lil bit longer and girthier (?) but nothing too large. one of the biggest in group. still enough to have you choking and gagging in the first 5 mins of a blowjob hahahahahah

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

very high 😳 and he’s not afraid to show it. 5 days a week is his ideal but he understands that too much of a good thing can make you bored of it so it’s usually probably just once or twice a week. expects some spontaneous head when ur not gonna acc have sex tho.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

once he knows that you’re happy and that you’ve had a good time, he can fall asleep anytime (usually pretty quickly bc he’s tired from having a literal workout with you). if something seems off with you afterwards, he’d stay awake for hours thinking what he could have possibly done wrong, even though he knows you’d tell him if something was wrong.

#park jihoon #park jihoon smut #treasure #treasure smut #park jihoon imagines #treasure imagines #smut

[uno-writing]

Tar lo birthday hcs including that pic of john cakeing him in the face

Sure!!🍿🥤🍭🍬🍫🧋

*Tbh…he tries to avoid the main crew as much as possible

*Bc he knows most of them will make a super big deal out of his birthday

*The only ones who probs wouldn’t make a big deal out of it is Blyke and maybe Sera

*But he’s not taking any chances

*So the main cast would have to try and corner Arlo in order to throw him a B-Day party

*He considers skipping school just so he doesn’t have to deal with the main cast

*Finally at the end of the day they manage to corner him in a classroom

*And Remi has made John promise no shenanigans until the end of the party and John agrees

*So the party goes smoothly

*Arlo still hates every part of it (tho he likes that no one got him gifts except Isen, who didn't get the memo and got Arlo a neat looking pen)

*And the entire time he’s just wearily eyeing John bc he knows John is gonna pull something

*It’s to the point that John almost doesn’t want to do anything bc Arlo’s paranoia is so much more gratifying

*The end of the party comes around and John starts looking at Remi more and more often, just waiting for her to give him the okay

*He knows she worked hard on this party so he doesn’t want to ruin it

*The second Remi gives him the okay, he’s slamming the cake into Arlo’s face

*He’ll smear it around Arlo’s head too, so it gets all stuck in his hair

*Arlo is so close to killing John, and he probably would have if literally everyone else wasn’t laughing and enjoying it (specifically Remi, Arlo’s just glad she’s laughing this hard)

*Though John’s kinda pissed that Arlo didn’t have a bigger reaction so now he’s reaching for the icecream and Sera has to stop him bc everyone at least wants some icecream

#unordinary #unordinary seraphina #unordinary john #unordinary arlo #unordinary remi #unordinary blyke #unordinary isen #unordinary headcanon #berriwords

[hemmingslftv]

18 from the prompt list with luke!!!

Going public // L.H

Rating: T

Word count: 1.4k

Warning: none

Requested: based on the prompt “I promise I will never let anything bad happen to you”. Requests are open! (and they don’t have to be necessarily based on the prompts)

A/N: I don’t know how I feel about this one. At first, I didn’t know what to write with this prompt and then I got this idea but I feel like it was better in my head? Idk. I’m thinking about writing a second part to this so tell me if you’d want it. Feedback is appreciated, enjoy!

Masterlist

“Why don’t we do it now? This way, when lockdown ends, we’ll be able to go on a proper date, I want to take you to that restaurant you said you loved”

You and Luke had been dating for a while and you had spent self-isolation at his house, falling even more in love with him (and Petunia) that you were before. You had met through your best friend, who happened to walk Petunia when Luke was too busy. When you first started seeing each other, he explained he hadn’t had the best experiences with his exes and the public eye, so he preferred to wait until you told anyone, and until now, only your closest friends knew about it.

It had been hard for you, especially at the beginning. You were used to having dinner dates or just going for a walk with the person you were getting to know so it was weird not being able to go out together. But it was all worth it because you enjoyed every moment you got to spend at his house, at yours or at a party with many more people around, you didn’t care as long as he was there. After only three or four “dates” you realized you were falling for him, and you were falling fast. So, when he asked you to spend quarantine at his house, you had no doubt about accepting. You could easily work from there and you lived by yourself so you figured it would be better to have some company, not even knowing for how long you’d have to stay inside.

After almost 5 months of living together, your relationship had gotten a lot stronger. At this point, you had shared with each other all your secrets, you knew each other’s routines and you had learned to read each other as if you had known each other your whole lives. 

A few days ago Luke had suggested you told your families. His mum already knew about it, since she was the person Luke trusted the most, but she was excited to talk to you for the first time. After the skype call with his family and how smooth it had been, you were thrilled to tell your parents. 

You didn’t expect their reaction at all since they were everything but supportive. They got angry at you for lying to them and hiding the relationship in the first place and then they started to bomb Luke with questions when you told them he was a singer. They even said they were sure he had better options than you and would leave you as soon as all this covid19 situation ended. It was Luke who ended the call, furious they were insinuating you weren’t good enough for him when you were everything he had ever dreamt of. That night you cried yourself to sleep on his arms, sad and frustrated, while he kept repeating softly at you ear how lucky he was to have you by his side.

It was a rough night and it made you realized that not everyone’s reaction was going to be good. You hadn’t really stopped to think about what people would think before, but now that you had, it was terrifying. You were confident and you felt proud of your achievements but you knew you weren’t perfect. You had your insecurities and you were afraid people would point them out. What if everyone thought you weren’t good enough for Luke? What if he really deserved someone better than you? 

You had been so focused on building a strong relationship between you two that you were now afraid that letting others in would ruin it. But you knew it had to be done sooner or later, you couldn’t live in the comfort of his house forever, not that you would mind, but things had to get slowly back to normal. 

“Babe, are you sure it is the right time to go public? Everyone has a lot of free time and spends the day on social media” you asked, hoping he would give you a few more days to get used to the idea.

“Yes, I am more than ready now. I know it was me who told you we should wait but after spending all this time in quarantine with you, I just wanna show you to the world and show them our love. I’ve never felt as comfortable with anyone as I do with you and I want the fans to see it, I want them to know you’re the reason I’m happy. Besides, they suspect I have a girlfriend already and I want them to know who did my makeup on CALM’s release and who helped me film the wildflower music video. I love you, and I want them to know you”

“How are you so cheesy?” you giggled and pressed your lips together on a short peck. “Okay, how should we do it?”

“I was thinking we could just post something on Instagram, it’s the easiest way” 

“Yeah, let’s take some pics!”

“What? Like now?”

“Yeah now”

“But we look like shit”

“Speak for yourself Hemmings, and that’s the point, cozy homey vibes” he laughed and nodded. 

You moved the mirror so it was in front of your bed and arranged the bedsheets. He sat on the bed with his back pressed to the wall and you sat in between his legs. After a few minutes of him and you trying to take the perfect picture with your phones, you decided you had enough to choose from. 

“Wait here, I’ll be back in a sec”, you told him, getting up from the bed and going downstairs to get your polaroid camera. “I want to keep a physical memory of this moment, the last few minutes of us being private, of our relationship being just ours”, you said once you were back on the room. 

Luke looked up from his phone screen and smiled at you. He opened his arms as a sign for you to get closer to him. You placed the camera carefully on the bed and hugged him, sitting on top of his legs with yours wrapped around him.

“That was a little dramatic, are you okay?” you sighed and sat up looking at him.

“Yes, I’m okay. It’s just that I’ve been thinking and I’m scared of the media and the fan’s reaction. I hadn’t thought much about it but after my parents... what if everyone thinks I’m not good enough?”

“Shh... don’t even think that. You’re perfect for me, I swear to god”

“But you know people are mean online and I’m not like you. I’m just a normal girl, not a singer, not a supermodel, not an influencer, not nearly as pretty as your exes, I’m just me”

“And you are everything I need, and the most beautiful person I’ve met” you smiled shily and rested your head on his chest, wrapping your arms around his torso once again.

“I know, but I’ve never had a public life and I guess I’m afraid people will judge me, criticize me, my body, or question my actions or my decisions, you know?”

“Believe me, I get it, babe. And I know it is a hard decision, I’m sorry I’m making you go through it but you know it would be impossible to keep this from them forever”

“No, I know, I want to go out with you like a normal couple, and I knew what I was getting into when I met you, you don’t have to be sorry”

“I’m not gonna lie to you sweetheart, some people are probably gonna send us hate or comment hurtful things and there’s not much we can do about it” you nodded in understanding “but, besides that, I promise I will never let anything bad happen to you, I will protect you over anything, do you hear me? And I know you don’t need anyone to protect you, but just in case” you giggled.

“Thank you, babe, I think I needed to hear that. It’s just scary to expose myself to the world”

“I know. But I’m here to defend you, babygirl, always”

You took the polaroid and laid together on your bed while you choose the pictures you were gonna upload and edited them. Once they were ready, you posted them at the same time and turned off your phones to enjoy a relaxing shower together.

#5sos #luke hemmings #hemmingslftv #requested #anonymous #prompt list #luke hemmings blurb #luke hemmings blurbs #5sos blurb #5sos blurbs #luke hemmings fluff #luke hemmings fluffs #5sos fluff #5sos fluffs #luke hemmings one shot #5sos one shot #luke hemmings imagine #luke hemmings imagines #5sos imagine #5sos imagines #luke hemmings fic #luke hemmings fics #5sos fic #5sos fics #luke hemmings fanfic #5sos fanfic #luke hemmings fanfiction #5sos fanfiction

[animatedminds]

Pixar’s Soul: Review and Reaction

The first sentence I’ve always used to describe Pete Docter and Pixar’s Soul since watching it has nothing to do with the plot. It’s instead is a starstruck comment about the music: the movie begins with a cover of a Duke Ellington classic - Mercer Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What they Used to Be.” It ends with a jazz rendition of a classic from several decades later - but still quite a bit in our past - Curtis Mayfield’s soul classic “It’s Alright.” On a personal level, this would say way more about Soul that most other descriptions of it might to get me to watch it - were I not the kind of person who was absolutely intent on watching the movie day one regardless. Though I am myself a few generations after either of those artists were around, their music has been a part of my life since I was a kid and are essential on any playlist in my opinion. Curtis Mayfield’s music, especially, deserves all the love in the world, and hearing by surprise someone cover his work in a Disney movie made my entire day - and it would have, even if the film weren’t the meaningful ride it is.

But before we get into all that, lets also look at those songs. “Things Aren’t What They Used To Be” is played a la a teacher and a higher school band class: the students are learning and a bit difficult to listen to, while the music-loving teacher cringes at the front. But the choice of song tells us a lot. It’s a jazz standard: which means when it comes to jazz, it’s one of the essentials - a tune every band learns to play, and every jazz fan has heard before. The teacher is a jazzman - you can probably guess who - and the whole time he’s listening to the song you can hear him wanting to sit down and make it sound as perfectly as he hears it in his head. Remember that analogy. Heck, when you watch or rewatch the movie, remember the mindset Joe - because that’s who that teacher is, Joe Gardner, is in for that whole teaching scene in the first place: and remember how important the desire to make things perfect is to the greater story the movie is trying to tell.

“Things Aren’t The Way They Used To Be,” indeed. By the end, you have to wonder: isn’t that the point? Now the second song. “It’s All Right” is a smooth number for dancing to - not frenetic and wild dancing, but more a slow jam sort of vibe. BUt it’s the lyrics that are the most befitting the themes of the movie. Like several of Curtis Mayfield’s tunes “It’s All Right” is an ear worm of an R&B number that’s actually about being a peace with yourself. “You’ve got soul” - ha, I get it - “and everybody knows, that it’s all right.” Or, to quote instead my favorite verse of the song (I did say Mayfield was one of my favorites): “when you wake up early in the morning feeling sad like so many of us do, hum a little soul, make life your goal, and surely something’s gonna come to you.” This is before the spoilery part of the review, but they could not have picked a better song for the movie’s themes if they wrote it themselves.

Soul, after all, is ultimately a movie about how the things we do, the things we love, even the things that define us and should make us feel good in and of themselves, can become a shackle that prevents us from feeling the things that we adopt them to feel. Dreams - especially dreams deferred - can consume us rather than uplift us, and sometimes in pursuing them we may forget to live, and forget that others are living in this world and dreaming alongside us.

This, as you might be able to tell from the way I’ve described it, is a movie with a very strong, and most importantly very well related message that - as we’ve come to expect from Pixar’s output at this point - touches us in our jaded adult hearts. As a creative person with lofty dreams who has almost literally been where the protagonist is in this film - and as many in my generation also have gone through - it definitely feels like a film that was directed straight at the generation that first watched Toy Story as kids decades ago, and now feel somewhat unfulfilled as adults going into the world. Same as Inside Out (a movie specifically designed to make adults cry, in my opinion), the SparkShorts and arguably Onward (I definitely related to Bailey, some). So much like my review of Jingle Jangle, you have something of an idea where this review is going to go before the jump, but that’s okay. This movie did have ups and downs, but its just the kind of up Pixar is good at: they know they’re audience, and especially did for this gem. By the end, it can definitely make you feel as though you too can make it through, as long as you have a little Soul. However, it is not just the message, but the nuances and skill in which they relate that message (and they do come close to making decisions that could have ruined it, at times), which means it’s very difficult for me to put why this movie works into a review without SPOILERS. If you want to avoid SPOILERS, don’t hop over the pic and instead treat the above as your non-SPOILER review.

Soul is the story of one Joe Gardner, played by Jamie Foxx a brilliant early middle-aged pianist with lifelong dreams of becoming a jazz musician, who we first meet teaching part time band at a local high school. The inciting incident is an interesting choice: Joe gets a major offer - he can come on as a full time teacher, making his occupation a career! But Joe believes very much in the adage that “those who cannot do, teach” - in the sense that he wants to do. He cannot accept the position - over the advice of his mother - because that would mean giving up on his dream of being out there playing music for a living: a dream that has consumed him his entire life but which has given him nothing in return. Until now. While agonizing over the decision to take the position, Joe's life then gets a big twist: a former student of his, remembering him fondly years after they knew each other, has a hook for him to join the band of a famous jazz singer and saxophonist - played by Angela Basset (side note, here: jazz has long had a reputation for being something of a boys club, especially for certain instruments, and the choice to have the lead saxophonist and famous idol whose band Joe wants to join be a woman is a great choice that my entire jazz-loving and living family took note of). Joe is instantly elated - he rushes over and naturally aces the audition for the part in the band, and so is on cloud nine...

Until he dies. That’s when the plot really starts. Joe falls down a manhole like an astronomer in an aesop fable, and is now stuck on the slow escalator to The Great Beyond. Naturally, he’s not for that and tries to escape - pursued by overeager spiritual soul-accountant Terry - ending up in the Great Before instead, and leaving his body in a still-living coma (the implications that coma patients in general are people who are choosing not to die when they’re “supposed” to is something I’m sure the writers didn’t intend, so I’ll let it slide). There, Joe is pressganged into mentoring a pre-prepared soul for birth, helping them find their Spark for life - which Joe interprets as the one true purpose and dream they are meant to fulfill. Once he gets them their Spark, he will be able to steal a badge his mentee earns as fully fledged souls and . Luckily for his intended very morally suspect intent on spiritual larceny, he ends up with Soul #22 - and that’s #22 out of hundreds of billions - a soul who has simply never found a Spark despite having been in the Great Before for thousands of years. #22 doesn’t want to live, so she agrees to give him her patch when they’re done. But no mentor before has been able to inspire her (well, technically #22 is genderless, as she demonstrates in the story at Joe’s request, but she is voiced by Tina Fey), so how can Joe? When that proves to be too hard indeed, #22 instead decides to help Joe get back - mostly because she’s intrigued at why anyone would want to cling to life so badly - with the help of some mystics who astral project while in the Zone: where everyone goes when they’re fully immersed in what they do. This almost works, but at the last second everything goes awry: #22 gets mixed up with Joe when he returns, and so he doesn’t quite get back the way he wants to...

That’s enough plot summary for now. That’s all just the set-up anyway, for the choices in writing and concept that I’m about to talk about. As you might have been able to tell from that ominous last note, the middle chunk of Soul - almost right up until the climax, in fact - is actually a body-swap movie, a la Freaky Friday. #22 ends up in Joe’s body, so he has to get her to do the things he needs to get ready for his gig and get through the day while they wait for the mystic to bring a way to set everything right. And did I mention he’s in the body of a cat? Having been following the movie, this wasn’t entirely a surprise, but it was still not something I was entirely ready for coming in. I tend to shy away from that kind of story on a personal level, as body-swap narratives are nearly predominantly based on cringe moments and awkward misconceptions - and that sort of thing usually tends to make me want to leave the scene in question and get a cup of water until after the awkwardness passes. However, this isn’t really part of the review in the sense that I perceive that the movie being in that genre is a flaw - because ultimately that’s just an aspect of my personal taste. Rather, I use it to show just how strong a movie Soul was and how well its narrative choices resonated with its themes that ultimately while it did indeed partake in your typical body-swap narrative cringe moments - “look, the [redacted] in Joe’s body just ran into his boss / mom!” / “look, the [redacted] is having a bizarre conversation with Joe’s friends!” / etc - those moments actually add to the narrative rather than take you out of it. Joe as “friends,” as exemplified by the barber he goes to to get his hair ready for the gig when it inevitably gets ruined in a bout of hijinks (the barber being that extremely well-designed bearded character the internet went wild over). He goes to that barber all the time, talks with him constantly, and believes he knows him well. But it turns out that Joe’s so wrapped up in his wants and desires that he’s never even asked him about his life - he just assumed that the barber was like him, born to do that one thing he was good at. It takes #22′s innocent, slightly off-kilter and occasional philosophical questions about what the heck all this “life” stuff is about for Joe to learn that this person in his life didn’t even want to be where he ended up initially, he ended up there because that’s the way his life turned, but he loves it because it’s life and he appreciates the world he’s come to create around himself. Likewise, he runs into his mom, but while Joe has come to expect his mother to be dismissive of him and his dreams, it takes an accident with #22 for him to realize that he’s been so caught up in his desires and her in her preconceptions that neither of them have ever had a real talk about their relationship, nor given a chance to grow in each other’s eyes. You might notice a trend. One of Joe’s students - a brilliant trombonist - comes to tell him she’s quitting band, but she doesn’t really. She’s just insecure because the other students make fun of her. Joe knows this already - it’s become commonplace to him - so the doesn’t feel the need to do anything about it and instead focuses on his own needs. But #22 decides to talk to her on a whim, and this push and pull of insecurity but joy in what one is good at fascinates her, while it bores Joe. While - like any other New Yorker - public transit is a chore to Joe, the melting pot of people and music draws #22 in: best evidenced by the moment where Joe and #22 meet another great musician playing for tips in the subway. Joe, despite being capable of relating as a musician, just walks past him after appreciating the sound for a sec, while #22, entranced by the things people do, leaves something for him. The world is drab and lacking in vibrancy from Joe’s point of view, as evidenced by the very accurate grimy look of the high school he work at - but from #22′s seemingly jaded eyes seeing it for the first time, it’s full of wonder.

This actually creates an interesting character contrast on top of the one we already know: Joe is the idealist, and #22 is the cynic... right? Well, it turns out Joe doesn’t have much of an appreciation for the world around him - not intentionally, but still to a very strong degree - whereas #22 simply hasn’t had the chance to experience life yet and thus never knew what it was that made people want to be part of it. Life itself becomes her Spark, though neither of them realize it at the time. Lets just get the aesop out of the way now. Your dream is not your life: that’s what Soul wants to say. Things that compel you as a person may consume you, even embitter you, and prevent you from seeing the world around you for what it is. But that doesn’t make dreams a bad thing: people everywhere find that Spark from the dreams to keep moving forward - it’s just that it shouldn’t preclude living, nor should living preclude your dreams. Life is a delicate balance, and man is this movie serving up some complicated life lessons here. I immediately took this as a far more mature take on the message The Princess and the Frog stumbled somewhat through years ago (man, I’m turning out to be pretty hard on that movie in this blog). My biggest issue with PATF is that it tells us that Tiana should be less intent on her dream and find love instead, but doesn’t show us. It’s just characters chiding her for not settling down until the plot ultimately pushes a man in front of her and she realizes she should’ve been finding one all along. That’s a very harsh way of putting it, but it condenses what I’m trying to say: ultimately PATF pushes Tiana to realizations she doesn’t seem to need, whereas Soul has a similar message about life and does so by focusing on character development, about how the protagonist doesn’t have as firm a handle on his life as he thought, and thus brings us a take on the lesson that’s far less cut and dry.

If you’re a fan of The Incredibles, the comparison to Mr. Incredible is fairly easy. Joe, though well meaning and decent overall, is a very self-centered person who happens to be so for very sympathetic and relatable reasons. He just wants to do the thing he feels he was born to. He'll do anything to get back to life and do that thing, even for a single night. He’s consumed by this desire so much that he's oblivious to the people around him, unable to connect to the people he loves, and unable to find joy in anything but his dream. And man, as a young writer who knows in their heart of hearts they can do great things and feels pain at the idea of not doing so, that hits different let me tell you.

The lessons Joe learns from #22 even stick. It turns out that part of what caused Joe’s dream to fail all those time was because of that lack of connection with life. He never presented himself in a way that got people to take notice of him, he never pushed for that position he wanted even though people said no, he never made himself and his life so vibrant that he glowed in the eyes of others (and again, that hits different). That’s maybe the most simplistic message of the bunch, but as a person in the creative field it’s true that sometimes being the smartest person in the room isn’t enough: it’s making himself shine that ultimately clinches Joe the gig even after he almost lost it thanks to the day’s shenanigans.

But in the end, it doesn’t feel like he thought he would.

Remember when I said there are parts where the movie comes perilously close to kiboshing its message? That moment is one, it’s the one. Not that that moment is bad - far from it, it’s the best moment in the entire movie (and you can fight me on that if you want to). It’s because it’s the crossroads, the pin, the core of the entire film: depending on the choice they made after that point, that moment could have either been the best moment in the entire movie, or the moment that toppled everything.

The realization of Joe’s dream doesn’t feel like the explosion of confetti and catharsis that he expected. It was just another moment of his life, a great one, but it’s still just part of his life. So what does Joe do? Does he panic? Does he keep going until it feels good? Does he - as he would in a lesser movie trying to give a cookie cutter aesop - immediately quit and realize he should’ve been teaching all along? No, he does none of those things. He absorbs the moment. He realizes that at the end of the dream you’re still just living life, and that you have to appreciate that. Joe isn’t wrong for pursuit of his dream. He’s not wrong for believing that hopes and dreams make life so much more worthwhile. He’s wrong in thinking that those dreams are all that define us, and that their realization is all that makes people themselves worthwhile at all.

And in the end - though I may be getting a bit too referential for this - the unexamined life is just so much less fulfilling than the alternative.

And all that a message and a half! It hits different. It’s mature as all heck. It’s something people my age (especially in my generation), twice my age, half my age never learn. It’s a callsign that sometimes Pixar is still make movies for the people who were kids way back when Toy Story was released, and are now insecure adults wondering why the world isn’t as wonderful as they saw on the screen. It’s brilliant. I said before that Joe interprets the “Spark” to be one’s purpose in life. The one thing that makes them who they are, that they are on the planet to do. He is wrong, absolutely and utterly. And in that misconception, when #22 finally does get their Spark just from being on Earth and seeing what its life, he accuses them of leeching self-actualization over his own personal ambitions, fully believing that they didn’t find a “purpose" on her own, but just copied his. But the Spark, as it turns out, is just the joy of living, the thing that makes people want to live. It can come from a dream, or just from watching the beauty of the sun set over a leaf drifting in the wind. Only in understanding this can Joe finally understand what he’s been missing in life, only then can he reconcile with #22 and help her finally be born, only then can he walk into the world and know how he’s going to live it.

We never find out what Joe decides, whether he goes back to teaching, or continues with the band. The choice is open to him, but we never find out which one he takes - another choice that keeps the aesop from falling apart. The point of all of that wasn’t that Joe has to do one thing or another to be happy, it was that Joe needs to be happy and secure in himself before he chooses what his life should be. Either of those could make him happy. Neither of those could. But now he’s in a much better place to see it, and do what he can.

We also never find out what #22 is like when she (or he, etc) is born. The two of them never meet past the point where #22 goes to Earth. Their time together has passed, and #22′s life is now their own. And that’s a great choice either. I’ve seen the occasional person feel that the choice made in this paragraph or noted in the previous one made the story confusing, but they’re ultimately what make the story what it is. The answer isn’t the necessity of resolution, its the reaffirmation of the journey. It reminds me somewhat of Wreck-It Ralph (an example of the main Disney Studio delivering a complex aesop, rather Pixar delivering them all), where being a villain wasn’t Ralph’s problem - it was that he wasn’t happy doing the thing he loved. You have to live, from living you will learn, and from learning you will do. The sheer incredible execution of this message (as you may have guessed, it’s a fairly difficult one to relay adequately in a film narrative, and the movie goes non-traditional in conclusion to maintain it) would have made this film a recommend for me even if it wasn't also beautifully animated, very well acted, funny (there’s a Knicks joke that floored me), heartwarming and relatable. But it’s also all of those things, so I have to recommend it twice as much. It is, regrettably, another movie with a black lead where the lead spends most of it transfigured into a form that’s not a black person (a soul, and then a cat), and I’ve already seen some grumbling that instead for much of it a character explicitly coded as a white woman is in his body instead, but I perceive that as an issue that’s endemic to the industry than a fault in this movie specifically. Everyone does that, but this is the only movie I’ve seen where doing that is an essential part of how the narrative develops the characters (Joe has to not be himself in order to understand his life from an outside perspective, a la Scrooge as a ghost watching his own history), and so I don’t scorn the movie for it. I, however, would very much like Hollywood to start doing that less, and - hey - as a prospective writer that’s one of those things I plan to do my part to combat. This movie, however, gets a pass in my book in ways that the general usage of this concept does not. In short, you should see it. If you get the chance to see it right now, you should take it to feel good at the end of this incredibly insane year. If you don’t want to have to sign up for Disney+ to see it now, I get you and understand, but if you get a chance to see it later do not pass it up. It’s one of the few movies I’ve watched that are an instant buy when it becomes available on digital - and the last time a movie did that for me was BlacKKKlansman. Whatever you choose to do, do it well. Keep the spirit alive, always keep searching for the real you - because it’s not always easy to find, but it’s worth looking for - and always remember that you could always have a little soul.

#Soul #film review #Disney Pixar #Pixar #Pete Docter #Jamie Foxx #Tina Fey #the afterlife #self actualization #jazz #curtis mayfield #duke ellington #animated film #animation review #animated minds for animated times #Joe Gardner #22 #recommended

[not-close-to-straight]

You Give Love a Bad Name (Final)

MASTERLIST HERE

************** Chapter Five-- Somewhere Hot and Humid and Honeymoon-y

“Alright.” Bucky filled a shot glass to the rim with tequila and balanced it carefully on his middle finger. “Never have I ever seduced someone then killed them shortly before orgasm, which is a bitch move by the way, how you gonna off somebody before they get off?”

“That’s fucking cheating, and you know it.” Natasha warned, snatched the tequila and pounded it in a single swallow. “My turn. Never have I ever strangled someone to death with my bare hands.” 

“Cheating.” Bucky answered promptly, and leaned in to lick a line of salt off Nat’s neck before taking his own shot. “Never have I ever worn purple velour shorts with the word JUICY across the ass.” 

“Damn you. Where’d you find the picture?” Natasha took a shot and wiped her mouth, motioned for the lime. 

“Believe it or not, it was in that big photo album we kept at the house in the suburbs.” Bucky lifted up the nearly empty tequila bottle and eyed the remainder. “Back in the fake photos I supplied for my college days and what I can only assume are staged pics of you and Maria? Dat ass, purple velour shorts, JUICY. You look amazing.” 

“Never have I ever…” Natasha hesitated because after a solid hour and a half they were running out of ideas, and Bucky cut in with a, “Jumped from th’top floor of a wildly sketchy building with your spouse that you are head over heels in love with?” 

Natasha’s smile was equal parts amused and endlessly fond as she took the almost empty bottle from Bucky, took a long drink and then passed it back so he could finish it off. “What do you know, we’ve both done that.” 

“Hell yeah, we have.” Bucky tossed the bottle into the bushes behind them and stretched out on the sun warmed sand, opening his arms so Tasha would curl up over his heart and they could rest together. “Y’know we’ll need another bottle or three if we’re gonna get drunk?” 

“I can’t believe I didn’t notice that first night how much it took to get you tipsy.” Natasha mused, drawing idle fingers over the myriad of scars on Bucky’s bare chest. “But to be fair, I was two bottles deep myself before I was even tipsy, so that probably explains it.” 

“Probably.” Bucky agreed easily, and ran a gentle touch over the newest scar on Tasha’s body, jagged and still raised a little bit from where they’d gone through the window together. “Sorry about this one, doll. I should’a covered you better.” 

“You made sure the commandos didn’t shoot me on the way down.” Natasha pointed out dryly. “I think that’s covered enough, don’t you?” 

“S’more covered than you are right now.” Bucky plucked at the strings of her teeny weeny, itsy bitsy, bright white polka dot bikini. “Not that I’m complanin’, m’just saying this thing is literally a health hazard.” 

“Mm-hmm.” Natasha bit at her bottom lip and hummed softly when cool metal fingers dipped under the rather scandalously low waist of her bottoms. “And when did you become an expert on bikinis?” 

“Haven’t you heard?” Bucky jostled her lightly, scooted her up his body so he could get a firm grasp on that delectable booty. “I’m part of the FBI, sugar pie. Female Bikini Inspector. This particular item isn’t a danger to you, but boy howdy is it doing fatal things to my blood pressure.” 

“Ah, well we wouldn’t want anything fatal to happen.” she giggled softly and sat up, jiggling just enough to be obvious as she undid the barely there ties holding her top together. “What if I get rid of half the danger?” 

The bikini top came up and off, flung away to the side and even though Bucky jerked forward to grab her, Natasha was faster, lighter on her feet, laughing out loud as she raced away down the beach towards the water and away from her husband. 

“Tasha!” Bucky scrambled to his feet and took off after her, shouting, “That didn’t eliminate half th’danger babydoll, my hearts in danger of just outright stoppin’ now! Come back! I need CPR!” 

Natasha was still laughing when Bucky caught up to her and tackled her into the clear blue water and gentle waves, still laughing when they resurfaced dripping went and clinging to each other, and only when Bucky drew her in close for a sweet sweet kiss did Natasha’s laughter quiet to a satisfied moan. 

“Cmere.” Bucky hoisted her up to his waist, and Natasha wrapped her legs around him obligingly, shivering when bare skin met bare skin. “Yeah,. There you are wife.” 

“Husband.” Natasha blinked water out of her eyes, twisting a piece of dark hair through her fingers. “Did you know my world famous peanut butter pie was from the bakery down the street? I had to pay her two hundred and fifty dollars every time you wanted a goddamn pie just so she wouldn’t sell me out.” 

“I had to learn to cut grass from a YouTube video.” Bucky admitted. “Never even seen a weed whacker before, I full on thought it was some sorta gun.” 

“You thought a weed whacker was an assassination tool?” Natasha said blankly, and Bucky defended, “It’s called a whacker, Tash!” 

“Christ, you are a doofus.” Natasha shrieked with laughter when Bucky dunked her beneath the waves, and came up sputtering, “Damn you! You’re going to ruin my hair! I just had it colored and sea water is terrible for it!” 

“You look like a goddamn mermaid, and that’s th’honest truth.” Bucky decided, and for a moment they just floated there, bobbing in the waves and sharing kisses as the warm wind blew in from the south and dried the salt on their skin. 

“I think I fell in love with you the first night we were together.” Natasha’s confession was whisper soft, and anyone other than a super soldier would have missed it all together. “I never once faked it. I took the mission because I wanted to be with you even if were just pretending. For once in my life, I knew I loved someone and I didn’t want to let that go.” 

“That’s real good, Tash, cos I’m not gonna let you let me go.” Bucky promised. “You’re like a shot to the heart, and m’sure there’s a whole lotta people out there that think we don’t belong together but we do.” 

And then with a lecherous look slightly below the waves where she was topless and all sorts of distracting-- “And by the way, if you would’a been like this in the suburbs I would have gladly lived there for the rest of my life.” 

“I love you too much to let you wear high waisted khakis and play golf the rest of your life, darling.” 

“Oh thank god. I mean, your tiddies are worth it, but--” 

“BUCKY!” 

“Hey now, they don’t call me Bronco cos I’m--” 

“Oh my love, everyone knows why they call you Bronco.” 

***********

SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE FIC!

***********

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#ncts fics #winterwidow #bucky barnes #natasha romanov

[axther]

where the lord does not look

todoroki shoto/female!traitor!reader 

In which Todoroki Shoto blackmails a classmate and pays the price. 

warnings: blackmail, violence, questionable kiss

It felt wrong. It always did. 

YN L/N watched Aizawa Shouta talk about the importance of pack thinking, of teamwork, of loyalty, and it felt cruel. The sun was shining through the door window, Sero and Denki were passing notes about something, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ochako casually glancing at Midoriya. There was the smell of spring in the air and the taste of hope on the tip of everyone’s tongues. 

And YN wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. 

She didn’t know how she got involved with the League of Villains in the first place. Her quirk, while powerful, wasn’t necessarily villainous. She was never teased, never abused for anything in her life except for insignificant bullies. She had no obstacle or hindrance. She just remembered asking for power to a man with no face. 

And here she was. Helping plot the downfall of the pillar of the hero youth. 

She knew it would crush so many. Midoriya was the first to come to mind, with how hard he worked to enter if the rumours were true. But everyone else who decided to throw their lives on the line for a job that fatal at worst and exhausting at best would be forced to relocate, reconsider. 

YN held her head up a little bit higher when she realised that she was slouching. The last thing she needed was for anyone to ask her if something was wrong. She knew that she would burst like an overfilled dam. 

The bell rang and YN almost shakily rose to her feet. Her bag was in her hand when Mina and Tooru grabbed her arms on either side, tugging her away. 

“Hey, hey, hey!” Mina yapped, poking a finger into YN’s cheek. “What’s got you so upset?” 

YN felt panic rise in her chest but masked it with a concerned look. “What are you talking about?” 

“You were all wimpy during class. What’s up with that?” Tooru chirped. 

“I was thinking.” YN raised an eyebrow. “That’s you’re supposed to do in class. Though, I suppose you wouldn’t know that.” 

“Hey!” Mina let a mock frown grace her cheeks. “That’s mean!” 

“It’s true.” YN smirked, letting the panic start to flow away. 

“Well, what were you thinking about?” Tooru began, a teasing tone on her voice. “Was it...Todoroki?” 

YN jumped, nearly stopping the two in their tracks. “What? That’s-!” 

“Ha! We were right!” Mina howled, puffing up her chest and thumping her fist against it. “Ah, young love~!” 

“Mina, we’re the same age-” 

“Doesn’t matter! So, where are you gonna confess?” Tooru pitched in. 

They had a point, of course. YN had a crush (albeit a small one) on Todoroki Shoto. It was bred out of unspoken respect; he had every right to be a villain if what YN had heard was right. He had a terrifyingly powerful quirk, a terrible childhood, and little social skills. And yet, he did the one thing that YN could not. He prevailed and walked on the path of light. 

YN sighed. “I’m not going to. I don’t stand a chance.” 

“No way! He was staring at you all throughout class today!” Tooru giggled. “He couldn’t look away.” 

“What?” YN stared wide-eyed at the space where she guessed Tooru was at. “Bullshit.” 

“Nope! I even got a pic!” She pulled out her phone (with a cute Mount Lady charm on it) and showed a picture of Todoroki that was clearly taken underneath her desk. He indeed was staring at YN’s back, but it was more the look of glaring daggers than anything.   

“That...doesn’t look positive.” YN murmured. 

“He’s emotionally constipated! He’s probably head over heels!” Mina said, entering the cafeteria. 

“Uh-huh…” YN was about to break off when she felt a tap on her shoulder. All three girls turned only to see the young man they had just been talking about. 

“T-Todoroki!” YN yelped, literally jumping when she saw him standing there. He looked neutral, watching her intently.

“May I have a word with you, LN? There is something I’d like to discuss.” 

Both Mina and Tooru squealed as YN nodded, clasping hands and jumping. Though they didn’t say anything otherwise, the message was obvious. 

YN followed Todoroki through a side hall, keeping a bit of distance between herself and the student. Though she hated to admit it, she felt hope grow. All the talk of him liking her back was getting to her, and she just hoped that Mina and Tooru were right. 

He stopped just outside, where no one was around, and YN nearly ran into his back. She stumbled as he turned. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-” 

“I’ve been watching you.” 

YN stopped talking, blinking up at him with wide eyes and a blush rising on her cheeks. “Pardon?” 

“You take a lot of calls, late at night. And you send letters.” 

YN froze. “I’m sorry?” 

“One of the letters fell out, and I planned on putting it back in the mailbox for you. But there was no address on it.” Todoroki looked deathly serious like he would try to kill YN if she tried to move. His bangs made his face shadowed, and it was enough to make YN’s heart stop. 

She felt bile and panic rising. The letters were shipped to the League, through someone they had in the post office. And the calls were given to Toga, who would change into someone else every time so that if anyone heard, there would be no vocal leads. 

“During the USJ attack, you and I were placed in the same division. While, yes, the villains attacked you, they put in noticeably less effort, and you never made any attempt to actually hurt them. With your quirk, you could have easily put them all to sleep. But you made it hard.” 

YN started hyperventilating, eyes flicking left and right in hopes of looking for an escape without having to hurt Todoroki. “What are you trying to say?” 

“You’re the traitor.” Todoroki put it bluntly, and yet, YN felt as though he hadn’t said nearly enough. It felt like the world froze, with YN’s eyes glazing over in terror. Her breathing was laboured and she even felt a little faint. Her world was collapsing, she wasn’t ready to go to jail, she was terrified. There was a white-hot rushing in her veins, and she fell to her knees. 

“I won’t sell you out.” Todoroki looked down at her like one would look at roadkill-intrigued, but disgusted. “For a price.” 

YN looked up, tears ruining her vision. “What is it? I’ll do it.” 

“I have favours. First, I don’t really feel like doing this week’s homework. I already know of all it.” He paused, looking neutrally cruel. “Actually, this entire semester. I don’t feel like doing it. Understand?” 

YN mutely nodded. 

“Good. If any one of the assignments fails, then it’s over.” 

Todoroki left, purposing hitting her shoulder with his knee so she would fall over. She couldn’t get up, nor did she even move, until Mina and Tooru came rushing out. 

“Oh my god!” Mina knelt, grabbing YN’s face with care. “Are you alright?”

“We saw Todoroki leave, and he didn’t look...happy…” Tooru started but trailed off when a fresh wave of tears overcame YN. “Oh, no...sweetie…” 

All three girls stayed huddled together, the two cooing at YN until Mina paused.

“So...did you get...you know…?” 

“Rejected?” Tooru finished. YN sniffled loudly, before nodding. After all, there was no way in hell that Todoroki would love someone like her, now. 

“Oh my god...I am so sorry…” Mina wrapped YN in a hug, while Tooru was fuming. 

“What a jackass! He should’ve accepted you! He has no taste!” She stood up, crossing her sleeves. “I’m gonna have a talk with him!” 

“Tooru!” Mina called out. “Don’t. Not right now.” 

Tooru relaxed, watching YN break down even more. “...You’re right. Sorry.” 

“And we’re sorry...for telling you that…” Mina fell silent. “We’re sorry.” 

“It’s not-” YN managed to get out, trying to talk past her sore throat and sobs. “It’s not your fault.” 

And there they stayed, even with Midnight offering condolences for a rejection that never happened and offering the rest of the day off. 

The sun set low, and Mina and Tooru had to leave as the stars came out. The cold came creeping up YN’s arms, and yet, she stayed. 

And in the distance, a young man watched. 

YN paced the length of her dorm, holding the phone to her ear. 

“Himi...Himi, please, it’s me.” 

“Oh? YN-chan? What’s wrong?” The voice was initially a deep baritone, a man’s voice, but it dripped into a sweet honey tone, that of a schoolgirl’s. “Were you crying?” 

“Himi, they know. Someone knows. They...he isn’t telling right now, but…” 

“What?!” She heard from the other side. “Someone knows?!” 

There was more shouting from past the phone, some from Shigaraki, others from Twice. They were talking before Toga went back on the phone. 

“How long can you shut him up? Who is it?” 

“T-Todoroki Shoto. He...he’s blackmailing me into doing stuff for him in exchange for him keeping quiet.” 

“Stuff?” Toga yelped. “What stuff is making you do? It’s nothing creepy, right?” 

“Creepy?” YN heard Twice yell. “We can’t even let him touch her! If he tries anything then-” 

“Oh, would you shut up?” Shigaraki sounded strained. “She slipped up. She has to pay.” 

“The little bitch just exposed the whole operation! Fucking kill her!” Twice hissed. “She needs to be pulled out and saved!” 

“YN-chan, what stuff is he making you do? It’s not talkin’ about us, right?” Toga said. She sounded worried, but coming from her, it wasn’t comforting. 

“No...homework is what he’s starting off with, but I have a feeling he’ll go further. He won’t be satisfied. I know that I’ve already exposed the breach, so if there’s any way to hurry up the operation…” YN glanced at her door when she saw a shadow pass by, and lowered her voice to a whisper. 

“Ughhh. This is trying to do a speedrun! This is unacceptable!” 

“Shigaraki, it is only a matter of time…” Kurogiri said. “It is almost complete.” 

“What, we rush the whole thing and fuck it up? No, no, no, no, no…” 

“YN! We’ll come and get you and we can play a game together!” Twice yelled. “I hope you fucking rot, you slimy-!” 

“How did they find out?” Kurogiri’s voice came clearly over the phone. YN took a deep breath. 

“He said that one of the letters...the postman dropped it and saw there was no address. He…” YN stopped. She was already lying to save her own skin on both ends, so what was another lie in the wall that of half-truths and deceit that would save her?  “He opened it and read some before accidentally burning it in anger.” 

Kurogiri sighed. “Then I suppose it couldn’t be helped on your end.” 

“Fucking useless piece of shit!” Shirgiraki bit. “I knew he’d fuck up!” 

“Shigaraki, please.” Kurogiri’s voice had turned away from the phone before turning back. “We will try to speed up the operation. Can you give us two weeks?” 

“I’ll try.” YN whispered. “Thank you.” 

“Stay safe. Do not disappoint us.” 

“Love ya’, YN-chan! Make sure to come back to us!” Toga yelled, probably from over Kurogiri’s shoulder before the line went dead. YN let out a shaky sigh before deleting the call log and moving to her desk. Both her homework and Todoroki’s was out, and that meant that she had to forge his writing in order to make it work. 

She was writing away, late into the night, taking no pause out of fear that Todoroki would find some flaw and alert the whole school. She worked and she worked until the clock hit two A.M. She looked up, feeling almost woozy when there was a knock at the door. YN jumped in her seat before walking over and answering it. 

On the other side was a wide-awake Todoroki, who glared at her through the crack in the door. 

“The homework. Hand it over, while everyone else is asleep.” 

YN nodded, sulking over and grabbing the sheets of work. He snatched them out of her hands, reading it over and checking that it was all done. 

“Alright. Today, I want you to be the one to tell my father that I will not be seeing him this week, but instead doing such things as hanging out with friends and attending parties.” 

“But...but how do I contact your father?” YN felt her head pound. Todoroki met her eyes with a raised eyebrow. 

“Figure it out.” 

He turned and left, and YN gave a heaping sigh. She turned to her bed, her own homework only half-finished. She was exhausted, rightfully so, and collapsed into the pillows. Regret pooled in her gut. Some part of her still loved Todoroki, but it was quickly dying. 

It was dying, along with the rest of her. 

The next five days were hellish. 

She supposed the second day, where she had to approach Endeavour, was kind. While he was upset about his son not even bothering to talk to him, he didn’t lash out onto YN, nor send a message back. It could’ve gone much worse, she was well aware. The next day she was forced to make his meals, though it wasn’t that hard. And after, she was to do his laundry. All were relatively easy deeds. 

But the day after that Todoroki ordered her to clean his room. And when she entered, it was so torn apart that she was sure he ripped everything out of the drawers on purpose. And the day after, she was told to take up all of his chores for the dorm, confusing both Sato and Midoriya. 

Mina and Tooru took notice of YN’s behaviour but didn’t ask. Mina was still beating herself up for hyping up YN, and Tooru was still furious at Todoroki’s supposed rejection.  

And for YN’s feelings for Todoroki, they were absolutely and completely quashed. 

She had no idea he could be as heartless as he was acting. Anything positive that she had for him was gone, replaced with deep scorn. 

And the only lifeline she had was calling the League every night. Toga, while crazy, did provide some comfort, with the promise of doing each other’s nails and hair when the attack arrived and YN was taken to the home base. The regret and fear she had of being a villain before was slowly disappearing with every night that she fell asleep to the sound of Toga and Twice babbling about video games. 

On the sixth night, YN called to Toga specifically, venting left and right about the things that Todoroki was making her do. 

“And then, he told me that I had missed a spot, and when I went to look, he went and picked up a tissue that definitely wasn’t there before!” YN hissed into the phone receiver. 

“No way!” Toga barked. “What an asshole!” 

“I know, right? He just wants to make my life hell. I can’t wait for you guys to get here.” 

“Ugh! Same! Me ‘n’ Twice have been stocking up on the goods so that way when you get here, we can have loads of fun!” Toga laughed loudly, and YN heard Twice laughing, too. “We’re getting excited! It’s only a week away!” 

“Yeah,” YN murmured, a soft smile on her face. “Thanks. I’m gonna go and get some sleep. You guys make sure to rest up, too.” 

“Maybe~! Love ya’!” Toga hung up and YN felt the silence of the night draw in. She felt oddly content, and she let out a soft sigh. 

There was a feeling of content that she hadn’t felt in days. With all the work that Todoroki had piled on and the stress of keeping it all under wraps, she could feel her eyebags during the day and wish for the sweet release of sleep during the night. 

YN rested her arm on her forehead, letting the darkness consume her eyes and try to soothe the headache that was coming on from even thinking about Todoroki. 

“Yikes,” She sighed, rubbing her temple with her spare hand. “I’m screwed.” 

Meanwhile, Todoroki was no better off. 

While he had no headache, he was staring at his ceiling with the covers of his bed pulled up to his chest. His arms were folded, but his eyes were narrowed in thought. 

Before he had learned about YN being the traitor, he hadn’t thought much of her. She seemed like a meek girl, with a terrifyingly powerful PSI quirk. She stuck to her friends and stayed in her lane. 

‘The perfect candidate for traitor,’ Todoroki thought. As far as he knew, she had no terrible history or actual motivations to become a villain. So when he found the letter and put and two and two together, he was shocked. He wanted her to vehemently deny it, to say that it was maybe a love letter or a secret note to somebody else. 

But all she did was cry, and Todoroki had his answer. 

He didn’t know why he chose to blackmail her, of all things. He should’ve turned her in, as a hero would have. But he didn’t. And at first, he didn’t know why he wanted to spare her so. Was in how miserable she looked while she was crying? Was it how she didn’t even look angry, but just scared? He didn’t have an answer. 

Until he made her clean his room. 

To be honest, he tore it apart just to see what her reaction was. He wasn’t a messy person but he wanted to make it tough for her. So, periodically throughout her cleaning, he would check up on her. At first, it was to make sure she didn’t throw away anything important, but once he realised that she was doing something so domestic, it made him feel warm on both sides. She had a broom and trash bags, and a bandanna to hold back her hair. She worked ferociously, determined to finish quickly. The hair came loose at times, and sweat grew over her as she lost herself in the cleaning and her thoughts. 

He realised that it was exactly what she would look like if she was a housewife. 

He realised that the entire time, he had her doing things a lover would do-calling the parents, helping with work, cleaning, cooking. None of them were dangerous, and she had them all done in three hours at most. And as Todoroki laid there, he started thinking less on the favours than it was YN herself. 

She was a girl. That was the first thing that came to Todoroki’s mind. Even though no one was around, he nodded with confirmation. It was a safe thought. It was a fact. 

She trained well, sometimes even out of school time. He had come across her in more than one situation where she would be using her quirk to make Bakugou levitate, with him howling the entire time. Her eyes would glow too, like changing lights in a pool. Todoroki always thought it was pretty. 

That, too, was a fact. Her eyes were pretty. 

Todoroki’s eyes snapped open. Yes, it was a fact, but it was not a safe thought. He imagined shoving it into a box and kicking it far away, into the depths of his mind. 

He closed his eyes again, sighing. 

She was strong. That was a safe thought. 

She had nice arms. That was not a safe thought. 

She did her best to take care of her skin, judging from the occasional skincare products he’d find lying around. Was that a safe thought? He wasn’t sure. 

She was smart, but not terribly so. That was a safe thought. 

She looked nice in her tights. That definitely wasn’t a safe thought. 

And as Todoroki thought more and more about YN, he began realising that he thought most things she did were good, technically speaking. She helped Denki with school sometimes, was positively receptive when Midoriya wanted to write about her quirk in his notebooks, and always supported the girls in any of their endeavours. She was kind and pretty, and smart and strong and sweet. 

And then, with wide eyes and a quelled feeling of horror, Todoroki thought, ’Oh my god,’ 

’I’m in love with the traitor.’ 

“What now?” 

Todoroki stood in front of YN’s door, hands in front of him and looking strangely innocent. His hair was combed, which was weird, and if YN took a deep breath, then she would smell some sort of cologne. 

“There is a girl in the General Course. Ai Suzuki. I want you to reject her for me.” He said it was a completely straight face, as though he was telling Aizawa that he couldn’t come into class the next day. YN blinked, processing the order, before jutting her head out in shock and recoiling again. 

“What? That’s terrible! You need to reject her yourself, for her sake!” She looked appalled and was about to slam the door shut when he put his arm and foot in. 

“Remember...YN.” 

From behind the door, YN stopped, before groaning and opening the door again. 

“Fine. And when the poor girl is miserable and goes around slandering you, don’t come after me. And we’re not friends. Don’t call me YN.”  

She shoved past him and locked her door, storming down the hallway and making tracks for the General Education dorms. 

“What floor, jackass?” 

“She’ll be in the greens,” Todoroki called back, sounding ready to laugh. YN turned and walked through the doors, keeping an eye out for a girl standing alone. 

Sure enough, a student who reminded YN of a doe stood with her hands in front of her, looking side to side. It broke YN’s heart that Ai would have to be rejected in such a cruel way, but it was her or YN’s entire wellbeing. 

“Hey, are you Ai Suzuki?” YN approached the young woman, who jumped. Ai’s brow furrowed. 

“Y-Yes. Where’s Shoto?” 

YN sighed. “There’s no easy way about this, especially since he’s such a coward.” 

Ai’s entire body seemed to slump, her eyes watering and hands shaking. YN felt the guilt bubbling in her stomach, but she continued.  

“But he wanted me to tell you that he’s not interested. I’m really sorry that it had to be this way, but-” 

Abruptly, Ai reached forward and slapped YN across the cheek. Tears were streaming down the young lady’s face.

“You-! You-! I…!” Ai seemed to be grasping for words while YN nursed her stinging cheek with her hand. YN didn’t retaliate but tried to help Ai sort out her emotions. 

“I know it’s terrible, and if you want, I take you to him so that way you can work out what you need. I get that-” 

“Just shut up!” Ai snapped, before flushing. “Please. I…” Fresh tears made their way to Ai’s face before she ran off. YN turned to head back, only to see Ai run headfirst into Todoroki. He seemed surprised, glancing up at YN before looking down at Ai. Ai stared at him, eyes wide before sobbing again and running to the General Education dorms. Todoroki watched her run with curiosity, while YN watched with pity. 

“I see it went well.” Todoroki turned back to YN, about to say more when he realised the red mark on her cheek. “Did she hurt you?” 

“Why would you care?” YN snapped, glaring at him. “You’re fucking terrible, and that’s bad, coming from me.” 

She stormed off, letting Todoroki watch her leave. He seemed stunned, standing and blinking dumbly at her retreating figure. 

“...”

YN held an ice pack to her cheek, staring at her ceiling, watching the blades of the fan spin. She wished that her mind was empty and aimless, but concerns surrounding Todoroki arose. 

He had become more casual than he ever was, something that didn’t happen even before he found out about her ties to the League. It was as though he was trying to seem pleasant, but it all seemed like a trap. 

“Fucking ice-for-brains.” YN pouted. “Bitchboy.” 

YN’s phone abruptly rang and she jumped. It was several hours earlier than the League usually called, so when she picked it up and saw the contact ’L’, her brow furrowed. 

“Hey, everything okay?” She asked, worry lacing her tone. She heard broad laughter, and then Toga giggling. 

“More than okay! We can come sooner!!” 

“Wh...what?” YN blinked, flabbergasted, before rushing to her door and locking it. She held the phone to her shoulder while stuffing towels along the bottom so no one could eavesdrop. “What’s going on?” 

“Shiggy found a way to mass-produce the Nomu so we can get to you in, like, two days!” Someone spoke, but it was too distant to hear who before Toga started talking again. “Tomorrow! We can get to you tomorrow!”  Toga was audibly jumping, and YN felt her shoulders go slack. 

“No way.” She breathed. It was like the world was on her shoulders, and that it had been slowly lifted. “Are you serious?” 

“Yup! I wouldn’t joke with you on this,” Toga said. “Probably.” 

“Probably?” YN laughed for the first time in what felt like forever. “You have no idea how happy this makes me.” 

“Well, we’ve got a bonus for you! For hangin’ on!” 

“Yeah? What is it?” YN fell onto her bed with a grin. 

“Well, according to Shiggy,” (Shigaraki, in the back, howled ‘Don’t call me that!’) “Had everyone accounted for except for one! And, well, he just so happens to have been doing some no-no stuff lately…” 

“I get to kick Todoroki’s ass?” YN sat up from her bed, excitement on her face. A deep part of her felt disgusted at the glee in getting revenge, but it was quickly put down at the thought of Todoroki begging for forgiveness. 

“Yup!” Toga tittered. “And then Kurogiri can take you back with us and we can do whatever! It’s not like we’ve got any parents to regulate us there, anyway.” 

“That was a twenty-five cent word, Himi. I’m glad. What’s the time of the attack? I wanna set an alarm.” 

“Hey!” Toga yelled over the phone, and YN winced. “Shiggy! When are we gonna see YN-chan and Deku and Ochako?” 

“If everything doesn’t get fucked up, then we should get there by six in the afternoon. Don’t fuck it up.” The phone was clearly pointed in Shigaraki’s direction, but he still sounded a bit distant. 

“Yessir,” Though he couldn’t see it, YN saluted. “You got it.” 

“We’ll see you soon, YN! I looove you!” 

“See ya, Himi.” 

YN hung up, laying back down on the bed with a giddy smile. She rolled left and right, hugging the phone to her chest as she laughed. She knew she was being loud, and if Todoroki heard, then he would be suspicious, but she didn’t care anymore. She was so close to freedom, so close that she could taste it. 

So close. 

Classes were unbearable. 

YN felt like a kid on the last day of middle school, right before they go to Disney or some other amusement park. The day trudged on, and no matter what Mina and Tooru did to try and get YN’s attention, her thoughts always returned to the League and the attack. 

Sure, she was nervous. It was entirely possible that everything could go wrong and it all fail. She could be arrested for treason, Todoroki could decide to expose her, and the League could choose to leave her behind. It could end in absolutely disaster for her. 

But YN had hope. 

And that hope remained after classes had finished. YN was near skipping, waltzing past Todoroki on her way to her dorms. 

She knew she needed to pack her things. It was all simple stuff; clothes, her toothbrush and toothpaste. She had to leave her phone behind, which was regrettable, but it had a tracker in it that her parents and select friends could see. 

And speaking of friends, YN needed to get Tooru and Mina out of U.A. before the attack, and have them be gone for long enough that they would remain safe. There were ways, but YN knew she needed to keep discreet. 

So, when she walked to her dorm, she eyed the clock. It was five fourty-three, which mean that she could have them take a relatively short trip and still be kept in the clear. YN caught Mina and Tooru on her way. Mina near jumped, nervously grinning. 

“Hey, are you okay? You’ve been weird all day!” 

“Yeah, yeah. Um, I have a favour to ask you two.” YN pulled them aside, taking out her wallet. 

“What is it? Is something wrong?” Tooru presumably tilted her head. 

“Ehh, sorta?” YN faked a grimace. “I, uh...my period started.” 

Mina blanched, and Tooru placed a hand on YN’s shoulder. 

“What’dya need?” 

“Yeah! We’ll go get it!” 

“God bless, you two. Uh, you know that mart that we came across that had the best f/s? It’s like, fifteen minutes by the train?” YN shelled out the cash, making sure there was extra. “I’m craving that, to be honest. And you guys can get something else, of course.” 

“Sure!” Mina took the money and shoved it into her pocket. “Let’s go, Tooru! We’ll see you later!” 

YN waved as the two dashed out, knocking Todoroki on their way to the doors. Mina shot him a half-hearted apology before they were gone. YN gave a languid wave back, feeling almost sad. She wouldn’t see them again. It pulled against her heartstrings, but she knew that she was too far in to back out. 

“They’re certainly energetic.” Todoroki walked up to YN, eyeing the doors with his hands in his pockets. 

“Yeah. Whatever.” YN’s peacefully happy demeanour changed. She glared at him before walking away. Before she could successfully escape, though, Todoroki put a hand on her shoulder. 

“I want to talk to you.” 

YN glanced at the clock. It was ten before six, and she felt nervous. “Not right now. I’m busy.” 

“Please, it’ll just take a second. I’ll come with you.” He took his hand off of her shoulder, and she rolled her eyes. 

“Fine. But make it quick.” YN began speed walking to her dorms, not caring if she looks suspicious. “I have shit to do.” 

“I wanted to actually ask you in private. It’s something...a bit personal.” 

YN stopped walking, eyes wide. “You’re not going to…?” 

Todoroki recoiled, shaken. “No! No, it’s not. It’s an emotional matter.” 

“Oh, joy.” YN rolled her eyes again before almost jogging to her dorm. She eyed a different clock, and it showed five fifty-two. 

“I’ve been thinking about it. About you,” Todoroki began as they walked into her dorm. YN grabbed a backpack off of her wall and began throwing whatever she could find in there that she would deem necessary. Todoroki shut the door, but stood by it as YN spun around. 

“I know that I’ve been...complicated towards you.” Todoroki said, rolling his hands to help elaborate. 

“Uh, yeah. That’s a nice way of putting it.” YN threw eyeliner and mascara into the front pocket of her bag. Todoroki huffed, upset that it backfired. 

“I think you’re pretty,” He tried again, leaning a bit towards her and sounded hopeful. “And smart.” YN said nothing, but paused and gave him a look that was a mix of confusion, disgust, and ‘duh’. “And I know that I’ve been making you work because of circumstances that were out of your control.” 

“What’s your point, Todoroki?” YN threw the last of her underwear in the bag and zipped it, spinning around with her hands on her hips and the bag over her shoulder. “Get to it.” 

Todoroki faltered, eyeing the bag. “What are you packing for?” 

“None of your goddamn business. Speak, or else I’m ignoring you.” 

This snapped Todoroki out of his staring contest with a video game pin on your bag, and he swallowed. He was stiff, and anxious, and hid his face with a ninety-degree bow. 

“Please be my girlfriend.” 

YN froze, shock on her face. “What?” 

“Please date me.” YN shook her head, snapping out of it, before her jaw dropped and mixed emotions came over her face. “You’re fucking…” She trailed off, unable to finish her sentence. 

“I know that you must hate me. But I’m sure that you’re not the traitor by choice. If you choose to date me, my father and I can help you leave the League. We can protect you, and we can-” 

“Protect me from what? Wait, wait, wait. You’re saying that they guy that fucking blackmailed me wants to protect me from people that have done nothing to me?” 

“Done nothing?” Todoroki rose from the bow, looking both confused and hurt. “They’re villains, YN. They are absolutely going to hurt you!” 

“Bullshit. They...they’re the only ones that gave a damn the whole time!” YN threw her bag on the ground, throwing her hands up in the air. “I fucking-! I can’t believe-!” 

“And what about Mina? And Tooru? And I could have sold you out at any point!” 

“Oh, so that’s how it’s gonna go?” YN felt heat rise to her cheeks and her stomach turn in rage. “Yeah, okay. Mina and Tooru were great. And that’s why they’re not here right now! But you wanna fucking hold it above my head that you could have had me fucking arrested?” 

“That’s not what I was trying to say!” Todoroki’s voice lowered from the shout, desperation in his tone. “No, I..! I was trying to say that I love you! And that I didn’t want you to get hurt. Please. We can get you out of this.” 

Todoroki grabbed her shoulders, not forcefully, but intimately. He could feel her breath on his face, and the tears beginning to show in his eyes. 

“You...unbelievable!” If Todoroki looked close enough, he could see traces of betrayal. “I have no idea what you think asking someone out is. You can’t just walk in an-and expect love!” YN voice rose with every word, until Todoroki leaned forward and placed a kiss firmly on her lips. She let out a muffled yelp, frozen, but Todoroki didn’t move. 

He savoured it, because for just a moment, when he closed his eyes, he could imagine you loving him back. 

But then a blaring alarm from YN’s phone went off. 

YN shoved Todoroki off, coughing and rubbing at her mouth furiously. Todoroki stood still, a blush on his cheeks. YN licked her top teeth as the alarm sounded, hearing the constant, stinging ring, taking a moment before a sick joy rose in her.

“YN, please...We can work this out together. We can get you into the witness protection program, or something-” 

“Too late,” YN hissed. Todoroki faltered, taking a step back. 

“What?” 

“I said, you fucking reject,” She muttered lowly, looking up at him with her head hung. “Too. Late.” 

“W-What? Why?” Todoroki began to puff his chest in some indiscriminate mix of rage and sorrow when he felt something close around his throat. It was as though he was being choked, but no one was touching him. His hands flew to try and relieve the pressure only to be able to claw at his own neck. There was the sound of glass breaking outside, and people screaming. He could hear Present Mic calling for help. 

“You really thought...” YN began as furniture began floating, along with Todoroki himself. He kicked his feet and struggled, but he was thrown back through the dorm door and into the hallway wall. YN was sweating, the alarm still going off on her levitating desk, and she looked thrilled, with her eyes pulsing out of her skull and her hair flying in front of her face. Her bag levitated towards her, and her jacket fit itself onto her shoulders before the backpack followed. Todoroki could only watch in pain as she approached. 

“You thought you could control me forever?” YN wheezed. Todoroki turned to see Midoriya and Bakugou running towards them before a smoky, inky black portal consumed them both. His eyes went wide when he realised what was happening. 

“I thought heroes were supposed to do the right thing, Todoroki.” YN spat, grabbing his chin so he could stare her in the eyes. They had begun sparking all sorts of colours, even ones that he had never seen before. More furniture in the living room and open dorms were floating and Todoroki felt his heart in his throat. 

“You…” He choked, one eye closing from the pain in his spine. “You bid your time…” 

“Abso-fuckin-lutely.” She grinned, eyes crazed, before using her quirk to pick him up again. This time, he wasn’t choking, but he couldn’t move. “And now, you must suffer the consequences.” 

She waltzed from the dorms to outside, dragging Todoroki behind her. When he passed the doors, he had to look away from the heat and the light, but when he opened his eyes, he felt tears swell. 

The main building of U.A. was up in crystal blue flames, with students and staff alike running out screaming and crying. Someone fell out of the windows, on fire and wailing the entire way down, and there was a sickening crack when they landed. The heat scorched his cheeks, and embers flew into his eyes and hair. When he opened his mouth to yell, he could taste the copper of blood on his tongue. He could see Midoriya and Ochako trying to fend off Toga, and Kirishima and Sero trying to restrain a Nomu, only to fail. 

He knew that even if he could make any noise, if he could move, if he could use his quirk, he wouldn’t be able to. The shock set in his bones, and he felt the weight of the world.  

“You know, they were supposed to come about a week from now.” YN waltzed across the burning grass, putting it out before she could burn her shoes. “But when they heard you were blackmailing me, they sped it up. Isn’t that sweet?” 

“How could you?” Todoroki managed to spit out. He saw the gentle smile on YN’s face, and he felt his heart snap. “They were...our friends…” 

“No. I mean, at first I was guilty. Actually, I really was guilty right up to when you found out. Then I realised that they didn’t really notice me.” She hummed, clearly in a good mood, with the terror and chaos around her. “Mina and Tooru kinda noticed. But they bought whatever I told them. They’re still good people, but they didn’t care that I clearly had something on my mind. Least of all you?” YN turned her head to look at Todoroki. “Did you know I used to have a crush on you? You didn’t so much as glance at me for the entire time before you found out.” 

She looked back forward, making her way to the swirling black mass. Kurogiri and Shigaraki stepped out, and when Shigaraki saw YN, he took to scratching his neck. “You didn’t fuck up.” He sounded surprised. 

“Nope!” YN chirped. “I’m ready to roll once this place is dust.” 

Shigaraki let out a dry laugh at her choice of words before looking over at Todoroki, who was trying to struggle. “You already had him?” 

“He was trying to ask me out.” YN crossed her arms. “So I just took advantage of the opportunity.” 

“Cool. Dabi’s already gotten the main school-” 

“Clearly.” YN piped in. 

“So the damage has been dealt. I just need to recall everyone.” Shigaraki gestured at Kurogiri, waving a lackadaisical hand. “Originally, I was just gonna leave you, actually.” 

“Wait, seriously?” YN grimaced, completely ignoring Todoroki’s squirming. 

“Yeah. But then he found you out.” He turned to Todoroki, who froze and glared at Shigaraki. “When are you gonna fight him?” 

“I dunno. I kinda wanted everyone to be here, but if we can’t make that work…” 

“Get it over with.” 

“You’re the boss.” YN shrugged, giving Todoroki only a moment to be afraid before crushing him against the nearest wall. His eyes were overshadowed by his hair for a moment when his entire body curled in pain, both against his will and YN’s quirk. He felt bile crawl up his throat, and spit came out when he coughed. 

“Y...YN...please…” He looked up at her, tears flowing down his cheeks and crushing sorrow on his face. “I know there’s good in you…you’re not a villain…” 

YN winced, and for a moment, she looked conflicted. Todoroki felt hope, his eyes widening, until the conflict was abruptly gone. In its place was rock-hard disgust and he was picked up again, before being smashed into the dirt. YN began throwing him violently, increasing the strength and rate of the hits. She didn’t stop until his head hung and he was panting. Blood was everywhere, and when he looked up at her, it was flowing into his eyes. 

“It’s not about good or evil anymore.” YN whispered. It was potent, even amongst all the chaos and noise. “There is no good or bad anymore. Just power.” 

YN looked almost deranged, eyes blown wide and panting heavily. Her hair had fallen into her face, and Shigaraki looked surprised, again. 

“Wow. Didn’t expect you to go loose.” 

“I hope it’s okay, sir.” YN let Todoroki fall, blowing the hair out of her face and composing herself. 

“Yeah, sure, whatever. I don’t care.” 

YN nodded and Kurogiri placed a hand on her shoulder. 

“You did well. Welcome to the League.” He watched YN give a huge smile, as though she didn’t just help slaughter an entire school, and rather had just been given a star spot in a play. 

“Thank you, sir! You won’t regret it!” 

“I’m sure we won’t.” Kurogiri nodded, looking sagely at the destruction and the approaching forms of Toga, Dabi, Spinner, and Twice. 

“I’m sure we won’t.” 

a/n: hi this took WAY too fucking long i am so sorry 🥴 i sabotage myself but anyway!! this was interesting to do bc i never really did a traitor!mc but i am a sucker for angst 🥴🥴

#todoroki shoto x reader #traitor!reader #Todoroki/reader #angst! angst! angst!! #traitorreader #bnha x reader

[artificialqueens]

That's So Us (Crystal x Gigi) - Frankenvenus

a/n hi everybody. tysm for the love on the last fic! here’s a little fluffy angsty thing i wrote whilst i was soft over a pr*tty g*rl! enjoy ;)

.

Heidi cryssie, why aren’t u coming out with us tonight? It’s gonna be so much fun. the whole gang!! :(

Crystal sighed and glanced at the text from her friend for a while. The truth was, she didn’t exactly feel like being surrounded by everyone in her friendship group and their significant others. It would just increase the riddling loneliness in her chest.

Crystal sorry girl i am so so tired. i’ve been working on this thing with lux all week and i’m just not feeling it. maybe we can do it another time?

It was a lie. She was just making up excuses, but she was running out of them. She had spent her entire day on her couch with popcorn and Hulu, and she would continue to do so into the night whilst her friends got inebriated all over Instagram stories.

Heidi but girl it’s gigi and caleb’s 6 month anniversary! caleb is putting all our drinks on his tab. what a gentleman.

That was the problem. Caleb was the problem. Crystal and Gigi had been inseparable best friends since freshman year, but then the latter met Caleb at college, and then suddenly Crystal was no longer her beck and call. Crystal was always behind on what was going on in Gigi’s life now, because the girl would only ever tell her boyfriend.

However, Gigi seemed happy, and Crystal wasn’t such a terrible person that she would consider ruining her friend’s relationship. She supported them, but sometimes she would skip out on certain get-togethers and night-outs, for her own sanity mostly.

Crystal i really cant heidi. another time. have fun. send pics x

Thankfully, Heidi left it there. Crystal loved the girl with her whole heart, but doing free shots with her friends wasn’t worth having to watch Caleb touch her best friend all over for an entire night. It wasn’t that Crystal was an over-protective best friend, because that wasn’t true - Crystal was always willing to add another girl to the friendship group. It was when someone would jeopardise the magnetic force that caused her and Gigi to be attached by the hip that she would grow frustrated. Caleb just barged in and snatched Gigi away, and it stung.

It had only been an hour and Jan had already posted many Instagram stories of Gigi doing body shots off Caleb, her long, dirty-blonde curls brushing his skin as her tongue licked across his neck. Crystal stared at the images for longer than she should’ve, watching the way her friend’s eyes rolled back as she pressed her lips against her boyfriend’s jaw. It took everything in Crystal to press the off button on her phone, and she let out a breath of relief when the screen turned black.

Her expression was reminiscent of someone who had just bitten into a lemon, and she caught a glance at the look in the mirror. Her own face caused her to question why she was so bothered. P.D.A wasn’t the issue. The issue was that Caleb had come between her and Gigi’s friendship, that was all. Crystal scrutinized herself in the mirror, attempting to run her fingers through her large tuft of red curls and failing after getting tangled up at the ends. She sighed at her own appearance, noticing that the happy glow she usually sported had faded. She used to look radiant with crazy hair, and now she simply looked burned out with a tangled mess on her head.

“Fuck this,” she muttered to herself, slowly pushing herself off the couch and towards the bathroom. A wash was very much necessary at that moment. She had been too drained to shower for the past three days, and her hair had become greasy and matted - so much so that even Jackie had pointed it out, and the Persian was never one to criticise.

She turned on the shower dial to a warm setting and stepped in, grabbing her curly shampoo off the small bathroom shelf. Almost instantly, it slipped through her hands, hitting her foot with a loud thud. She shrieked and grabbed her foot with pain, trying to massage the sharp feeling away, to no avail. She watched as her skin reddened and knew that it would soon turn purple. Could things possibly get worse?

Apparently yes, they could, because Dahlia from upstairs decided it would be fun to run a bath right as the redhead stepped into the shower, and the bath always fucked up the water pipe. Crystal’s shower water suddenly turned chilly, causing the girl to quickly hop away from the head and towards her heated towel rail.

She limped to her bedroom, sat by her dresser, sprayed an ungodly amount of dry shampoo in her hair before placing curl serum on a comb and brushing her hair through. The serum made it less impossible to bring a brush through her hair without snapping the handle or getting it stuck. A downside was, it would add even more grease to her hair, but it wasn’t her fault that Dahlia decided to have a bath at eleven at night.

Whilst Crystal was blow-drying her hair, she heard her phone begin to ring from the living room. She overlooked it at first - assuming it’d be a drunk facetime from Heidi - but then it didn’t stop, and the redhead grew concerned. She placed the hairdryer down and padded to the living room, her foot still aching. She made a mental note to place frozen peas on it as she picked her phone up.

Incoming call from Gigi Goode

As much as Crystal wished to distance herself from the blonde that night, she still couldn’t ignore her completely, especially when there could be something wrong. In her mind, the predominant thought was ’What does she need to ask me so bad that she can’t ask him?’ She picked up the phone before it was too late, and was instantly met with the sound of heavy breathing and sniffles.

“G?” Crystal asked, her voice laced with concern, “Are you there?”

”I don’t like him, Crystal.” - her voice was shaky, but not the kind of shaky that was caused by poor mobile reception. No, this shake was triggered by tears.

“Don’t like who, G? Caleb?”

”Yeah. I was just watching him from across the bar, and I was watching his face and I- I guess I just realised that I can’t be with him cause I don’t like him,“ the blonde began whimpering, and Crystal instantly made a beeline for the set of car keys hanging on her wall. ”So I told him that I didn’t like him and he shouted at me, so I left.”

The redhead was relieved that she had chosen to drink lemonade instead of cider that night, and she was limping her way towards the underground car park before she even had the chance to ask Gigi for her location.

“Where are you, Gee?” she inquired, frantically fiddling with her keys to unlock her Skoda. Her hair was still lightly dripping over her shoulder, and she was practically in her pyjamas, but that was the last thing on her mind at that moment.

”I kinda wandered off and now I’m at Grand Hope Park on the swing set. I don’t know where the others are.”

“It’s okay. I’m coming.”

Crystal began to drive and saw the streets bustling with people. The roads were almost empty, but the streetlights were against her. She had caught almost every red light on route, and every time she saw another one she would curse at it like a sailor.

She parked her car a block away from Grand Hope, soon noticing that she had forgotten to bring her purse with her. Briefly, she scanned her surroundings for nearby meter maids. When she was sure the coast was clear, she made her way towards the park, and spotted Gigi almost instantly. The blonde was sitting at the bottom of a plastic slide, face illuminated by her phone screen. Crystal called out her name from a few metres away, and the blonde’s head instantly shot up. It was then that Crystal saw what a mess she had made of her eyeshadow. She must’ve cried then rubbed her eyes because now the mocha-coloured powder that she had so intricately applied to her lids was spread across her cheeks like Halloween makeup.

All the words became unspoken. Gigi’s eyes became hooded as Crystal drew closer and closer, soon towering over the former. The redhead held out her hand and the blonde took it, hoisting herself up and instantly embracing her in a cold hug. Gigi’s arms were bare - she was wearing nothing but a flimsy jumpsuit - so Crystal found herself gently stroking her upper arms with her own warm hands.

They were silent when Crystal took her hand, and they remained silent when the girl led Gigi to the next block, into the car. Crystal didn’t ask questions when Gigi flicked on the car stereo and leaned her forehead against the passenger window, and she didn’t question the blonde when she quietly began to sing along to the tune that played quietly through the speakers - Sign of the times by Harry Styles.

Had Crystal been alone, she would’ve belted the song in its entirety, but she refrained from doing so for the mental state of her best friend. Instead, she took one hand off the wheel and placed it on Gigi’s thigh after noticing it beginning to bounce anxiously.

“He was so mad, Crys,” Gigi spoke up suddenly, her mumbled words nearly inaudible under the buzz of the engine. After a pause, the blonde lifted her head off the window and turned to Crystal, tears spilling from her eyes.

“He didn’t hurt you, did he?” the redhead raised a brow.

“No, but I was scared that he would. He has a really really short temper and he- well he reminded me of my dad so-”

Crystal swiftly pulled into a rest area after hearing Gigi utter that final sentence. She halted the car once they had exited the main road, and pulled the blonde into a much more meaningful hug this time.

“Oh, Geeg,” she sighed into the blonde’s curls, listening painfully as the sound of Gigi’s sobs filled the car. “You don’t owe him your love. It’s better that you told him not before it’s too late. You can’t force attraction. At least you knew better than to pretend.”

“Yeah. You’re right. Can you, uh- could I stay over at your place tonight? I just need a change of setting and I mean… I haven’t slept over in a while.”

She was right. She hadn’t slept over in a while. In fact, they hadn’t spoken this much in quite a while. Although Crystal was nice enough to keep it to herself, her brain was in overdrive of gratitude that Gigi and Caleb were now over. Perhaps now she could get her friend back.

The redhead agreed to the girl staying over, and soon they had set off again and were pulling in to the car park beneath Crystal’s building. Realising that Gigi was still quite drunk, Crystal assisted her up the staircase. They could’ve taken the elevator, though both of them had forever vowed to stop doing that after once getting trapped there for three hours together.

“I don’t know why you helped me. I didn’t even have to ask. Even though I have treated you like shit for the last half-year. You had every reason to decline my call,” the blonde rambled as Crystal pushed open the door to her apartment.

The redhead turned to Gigi with a confused look on her face.

“That’s not true. Sure I missed you a little bit, but I’m not a shitty friend and I would never leave you hanging,” Crystal assured, pulling Gigi in and closing the door, “Go sit on the couch and I’ll grab you some makeup remover, okay?”

Gigi nodded and disappeared into the living room, leaving Crystal to steady herself. The blonde was an honest drunk and she had drunkenly rambled to Crystal on her couch after clubbing countless times before, but this was different, somehow. The redhead tried to think of ways she should comfort her friend whilst she searched for cotton pads, but the truth was all she wanted to say was ‘He was never going to treat you right. I’ll always treat you right.’ She instantly became disgusted with herself at the prospect. What kind of friend was so obsessive?Her ex-boyfriend was right. She did need therapy.

She entered the living room where Gigi was sat in her green velvet armchair, clutching her knees to her chest. Surprisingly, the blonde had the hint of a smile on her glossy lips.

“What?” Crystal asked as she approached the girl, squeezing the makeup remover onto the cotton pad and dragging it across Gigi’s caked cheeks. The blonde pushed her hair to the side, giving Crystal more access to the product-covered parts of her face.

“It’s just crazy. I didn’t like him so I got sad, and you were the only person I knew wasn’t drinking tonight so I called you, but I don’t like him because of you,” Gigi smiled like it meant nothing, but Crystal’s breathing came to a halt.

“I’m lost…”

Gigi breathed and sat forward so her and Crystal’s faces were close enough to radiate heat off one another.

“I just mean like… every time he fucked me, I just thought about you. I mean, it’s not my fault though. The times I didn’t think about you I would have to fake it. Ugh.”

Gigi said those words with such confidence that Crystal wasn’t sure if she was drunkenly telling the truth or merely pulling her leg. The redhead dropped the makeup remover and stepped back.

“Are you fucking with me, Gigi?”

“God no. I wish I was, I mean I’ve liked you since I was what? Fourteen? God knows how long. I’m only telling you this cause I have nothing else to lose. I know you like guys though.”

Crystal bit her lip and sat herself down on her couch opposite her armchair, “You are so beyond drunk right now, Geeg. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

Gigi stood up from her seat, nearly tripping over as she made her way towards Crystal, her brows furrowed and her lip pouted, “I promise I’m telling the truth.”

The redhead stood up so they were face-to-face once more. They were usually the same height, but Gigi stood a little higher due to the platforms she sported that night. Crystal leaned upwards and tapped Gigi’s nose softly before pulling out the sofa bed.

“Go to sleep. If you’re not bullshitting me, then you’ll tell me in the morning exactly what you told me now. Okay?”

“Okay. I’ll make a note.”

#rpdr fanfiction #crystal methyd #gigi goode #crygi #lesbian au #fluff #angst #friends to lovers #frankenvenus #concrit welcome #s12

[theworldsoul]

Uhh warning VENT!!! Talks about self harm and shit... also religious bullshit and gender bullshit??? Like I'm really trans and also Catholicism really fucked me up so if ur uncomfy with that just... skip this post. Also if ur Christian and can't handle seeing ur shit defaced then skip this post. Also if ur gonna clown on this post as "cringe atheism" then fuck you because I'm literally coping with pain lol

:readmore:

Anways now that the disclaimer is over... here comes the real shit.

I... have been going through a LOT lately, jesus christ. I was HAPPY today, yknow? I thought I was gonna be happy the whole day.

I was dancing today. That's how happy I was. For the first time in like... a whole year... I was really so happy. I thought I was gonna cry. But then I got home. And well,,,, I did cry. But not from happiness. I just got my math grade back. A fucking 49 percent. MY AVERAGE RIGHT NOW IS A 57 PERCENT. I MIGHT FAIL MATH 20. I MIGHT HAVE TO RETAKE IT. oh my god I'm such a failure I cant do anything ever i try SO fucking hard but honestly??? I cant fucking do this. I can't, I'm not mentally capable. "Just work harder"... BITCH I AM WORKING AS HARD AS I CAN. I AM SPENDING HOURS AND HOURS OF MY LIFE STUDYING AND PRACTICING. I'm starting to think that how hard i try doesn't even fucking matter because I'm STUPID and all i know how to do is PAINT SHIT!!!! NOBODY CARES ABOUT ART!!!! IF I FAIL THIS CLASS I MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO HAVE A HOUSE IN THE FUTURE!!!! A HOUSE!!!!!

I dont even want to be a fucking orthodontist. Okay??? I wanna do what I love: painting. But NOOOO. I have to get a "respectable" job that will "pay me enough money to live". WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO MAKE MONEY TO LIVE??? WTF??? THATS LITERALLY SO FUCKED UP. everyone deserves to live (unless they like murdered someone? I guess? Idk) BUT LIKE I DIDNT KILL NO ONE SO WHATS ALL THIS BS ABOUT WORKING TO LIVE???? WTF??? I rly gotta do all this shit I hate, all this shit I'm mentally incapable of doing... so i can have a house. Fuck this. Yknow with my average at a 57... I might fail this class even if I get a really good grade on my next quiz. Can you fucking believe it??? I'm literally so fucking stupid I cant even pass a dumb fucking math class god i hate myself. I cant fail this class. I've NEVER failed a class. Almost failed... but never HAD TO RETAKE A CLASS. that's the ultimate failure. I think my parents would hate me if I failed this.

And on top of that... I'm really struggling with uhhh, dysphoria and body image... and it's so fucking horrible man I want to rip all my skin off I want to suffocate god I want to KILL him I want to MAKE HIM SUFFER. I want to gouge his eyes out and force him to eat them. WHY WOULD HE MAKE ME LIKE THIS????? WHY????? WHATS THE POINT IN MAKING A CHILD SUFFER SO MUCH???

What did I ever do that was so wrong I deserved all this punishment???

Well FUCK YOU and fuck your stupid book and FUCK THESE STUPID FUCKING SAINTS. WASNT THERE SUPPOSED TO BE A WHOLEASS ANGEL WATCHING OVER ME?? PROTECTING ME??? WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT BITCH NOW?? WHERE WAS THAT BITCH WHEN... when I was being bullied? When I literally wanted to kill myself?

Where was that guardian angel when I kept making THE SAME MISTAKE over and over again and I KNEW it was wrong but I kept doing it anyways because it was the only way I could feel like soemone cared about me????

I bet that angel motherufcker KNEW they didnt care. DID THE ANGEL EVER ONCE HELP ME??? NOOOO. all those times I was bruised and broken... all those times...

Man, I was just a kid. I was SO fucking young. And I would come like a lamb to the slaughter and kneel. I would pray... ask for guidance. I would pray the rosary too, I would read the bible and try my very best to understand it, I would go to church and volunteer at church and do my best to be a Good Boy and never sin. I did EVERYTHING right. I literally fasted at some point, like a religious fast. I was devoted...

Honestly though? I think it was the same mistake I make over and over again, except not with a real person.

And you have me NOTHING. GO GIRL, GIVE US NOTHING!!!!!!! I literally used to self-punish for the sins I couldnt bring myself to confess. At my communion, there was one sin I didn't tell because I knew it was unforgivable. I still hate myself for that. But man, I used to try and do all sorts of things to somehow cleanse myself of it. I figured THAT whole ordeal was why I was constantly being tortured.

But I was stupid and I am stupid and that makes NO SENSE because if the thing I'm being punished for happened when I was a child, WHY DID THE PUNISHMENT BEGIN AT MY BIRTH????

They used to tell me that god handcrafted every part of me specifically for some sort of grand reason.

Why.

Really? This bitch really "handcrafted" me just so I could cry and cut myself nearly every night??? Fuck that. Like why would you make me this way. It hurts more than you can IMAGINE. The only reason I'm not dead yet is because of ME, MY strength, not any of the bullshit YOU gave me. I hate when people say "oh, god made u so hardworking" or "oh, god made you so passionate/hopeful/full of love/fiery/whatever" LIKE STFU BITCH THAT WAS NOT SKYDADDY THAT WAS ME!!!

you wanna know what he made me?

dysphoric, ugly af, yeah.... but the worst part?

He made me feel.

That doesn't sound bad, right? Well it's the worst thing on the list. It is my downfall, my Achilles heel or whatever. This emotions shit??? It RUINED my life. My whole life I was cursed with a fucking monster inside me. I kept trying to tell everyone that it wasnt me!!! I kept telling them that it felt like I was being possessed. But adults are SHIT. I hate adults. I want to kill them all. They failed me and their god failed me. None of them every listened to me. All they knew how to do was punish, punish, punish.

It's like giving an allergic kid some peanuts and then getting angry at them for going into anaphylactic shock or whatever. Nobody ever thought "hey, why don't we stop giving the kid peanuts?"

ALL THE ADULTS AROUND ME ACT LIKE CHILDREN AND THEY ALWAYS HAVE ACTED LIKE CHILDREN FUCK ADULTS

Anwyays that's how I ended up with all these unresolved issues,.... emotion is a tough one, like I literally dont have the ability to control my emotions at all, I can try and like, repress them but I cant make myself actually feel less.

My emotion hurts more than anyone else's and nobody ever understood that. I would tell them that it hurts, it PHYSICALLY HURTS, and they would say I just wanted attention. I would tell them I literally couldnt control what my body said and did, I would tell them I felt like A PUPPET ON STRINGS and no one believed me. Fuck them.

Healthy coping mechanisms? I literally self ship with Snape to cope. I literally self ship with characters my brain made up and put in my dreams to cope. I used to hurt myself so much trying to feel loved and cared about irl. Fiction is so much better. I sound like a loser but its TRUE. The sort of thing I need, the sort of love I need is like... a parent. You can't go looking for a parent in a romantic partner, it fucks everything up and you end up... well, let's just say it proabbly wasnt the most legal thing, but I wasnt thinking strisght at all I mean dude I was So fucked in my head when I did all that...whatever...anyways so thank u for fiction!!! I love fiction. Want to kill someone? Draw it. Then you'll feel much better!!! And you dont go to jail!!!

Well the pics here... idk, it was really calming to do this. It's new, painting over religious shit. I was gonna do the whole bible but I already burnt that shit so.... and I was going to cut but I'm trying really hard to stay clean... like really hard. It's so weird and like, addicting, once I hit styro I don't want to stop, but also it kinda transfers the emotional pain to physical pain, making it way easier to deal with. I just can't keep doing that because I KNOW it's bad and look I thoguht I was clean for a whole year but then I fucked up and WOW, GUESS WHAT MADE ME RELAPSE??? MATH CLASS!!!!

Whatever anyways here are my wonderful works of art I made while crying and cursing god (like I'm so pissed at all this catholic bs I believed in him again just to swear at him lol)

.... but imagine for a moment, a better world. One in whcih these saints whose images I've defaced are actually good people... a world in which they SEE ME AND THEY HEAR ME... and I go unpunished.... and I am embraced by someone who UNDERSTANDS.

I think I would cry.

Too bad that world doesnt exist and I just made it up to try and feel a bit better. Whatever, whatever. I painted the things, they're gonna dry. I work hard, I'm gonna do good on my quiz, I hope. I just have to be making it through, that's all it is, work work work without a break but I can proabbly do it. I'm really slipping I admit like the mental health is slipping it's getting worse like I havent had a "fuck I am afab" moment in such a long time so yeah...

Anwyays I feel so much better now that I did my little art project yknow???

#ughhh #parent your fucking kids #religious bullshit #adults dont fuck up the children you are in charge of challenge #religion don't fuck up trans kids challenge #good dick really breaks a motherfucker #vent

[violetnotez]

Disneyland and Lightsabers- Kaminari x Reader

Because there is never enough Kami fanfic and Im missing Disneyland ;(

Also, Kaminari and Izuku are definitely Star Wars nerds. Fight me not really pls i have noodle arms

Kaminari x reader

Genre: Fluff

Word Count: 1250+

Warnings: some cussing

Summary: Kaminari and you visit Disneyland with Class UA and your boyfriend becomes a mega nerd in the middle of TomorrowLand

One Shot

Everyone had been so excited for the trip to Disneyland-especially you and Kaminari. You being the mildly obsessed Disney freak that could sing every song without fail and Kaminari never have gone, you both were psyched to experience the magic of Disney. You spent weeks planning, researching, and discussing what rides to ride on, what group pics to take, and what yummy foods to gorge yourself with. 

Now you were here, and you couldn’t be more ecstatic.

All morning you were having the best time of your life. Your group, which consisted of Shouto, Midoriya, Uraraka, Sero, and Mina, were having the best time running into rides and taking dumb pictures around the park. But as the midday rush came and the sun was beating down on your group, you all felt like you were living in a sauna.

“No gonna lie,” Mina huffed out under the sheen of sweat trickling down her face, “I don’t think I can do this-how are wearing black Todoroki?”

Todoroki shrugged, not a drop of sweat evident on his face even with an adorablely clingy Izuku latched on to him as your group walked down the packed lanes of Tomorrowland.

“I’m cold blooded.”

“Wish we were back in Space Mountain,” Uraraka added tiredly, her bangs starting to stick to her forehead, “it was so cold.”

You looked at the tired faces of your friends and sighed. You were trying so hard to be the optimistic, happy one of the group that kept everyone on their feet and moving. But you had to admit that you were extremely hot too. You looked around as you dodged strollers full of children, hoping a nice quiet spot to rest in the shade was open-to no avail. It seemed like every family had taken a spot that was out of the hot California sun.

You sighed.

 “Why don’t we just go into a store? There’ll be some air conditioning in there.”

“Can we please?” Mina begged, Sero nodding frantically as his bangs, too, began to stick to his skin.

You laughed exhaustedly from their childish desperation.

“Hey look,” Kaminari pointed, “that store sells lightsabers!”

Kaminari and Izuku looked at each other, a common love arising on their faces. Izuku finally clung off of Shouto and Kaminari let go of your hand, leaving you and Shouto to watch the two nerds run in like 5 year olds.

Shouto looked at you and shook his head.

“Nerds.”

The store was a noticeable few degrees lower than outside, even with the hoards of families walking inside. The whole group sighed in relief, allowing the rush of cold air to sweep over your bodies. 

After that relief, you began to look for your fanboy of a boyfriend.You walked past bundles of children and Star Wars merchandise, puzzled on how you couldn’t find either boy.

You turned to Uraraka (who was obviously in awe by the store), confusion plastered on your face.

“Where do you think they-“

“OH MY GOD DUDE THEY HAVE COUNT DOOKU’S LIGHTSABER?!?” 

You heard Kamianri yell a few octaves too high as he pointed frantically at a wall of lightsabers.

You smirked. 

“Never mind.”

You walked over, a sly grin plastered on your face as you snuck up on Kami as he was gushing over the toys with Izuku, tapping your finger against his shoulder lightly.

“Having fun over here?” You asked, a smile playing on your lips.

Kaminari slightly jumped, surprised his quirk didnt go off and shock you from the scare. He felt his heartbeat go up, chuckling at your obviously smug face.

“Yeah,” Kaianri sighed, breathless with excitement, “it’s just-these are so cool! I’ve always wanted one of these since I was a kid.”

“Really, Kami? I thought you had a bunch of those things,” you said, remembering the bucket of old toy lightsabers you found at the back of Kaminari’s closet.

“Yeah I know,” he agreed,” I just-always wanted a real one-one I could build myself, ya know? Be a real Jedi and do what they did.”

“Oh,” you nodded as you agreed, giggling at his adorableness.“Should I sign you up for the Jedi Training here too?”

Kami’s face light up, grabbing your shoulders and shaking them slightly.

“Oh my god could you please?!”

You laughed, brushing your finger on the bridge of Kaminari’s nose, something you loved to do because it made him a blushing mess.

To no surprise, his checks turn a soft shade of red. 

“Believe me Kami, I would  if I could.” 

You both look at the lightsaber station and the group of crazy kids becoming their own Jedi as they meticulously built their weapons.You turned back to Kami, the softness in your eyes making his heart thump. He loved when you looked at him straight on-he could look and appreciate every facial feature that made you you- the color of your eyes, the shape of your nose, the outline of your lips: everything about you he found cute, beautiful, and attractive, and he loved to absorb it all in.

“What color do you think you’ll pick?” You asked.

Kami blinked his eyes a couple time, his daze being broken. “Huh?”

You giggled, making his checks warm. He always felt sheepish when he realized he had been staring at you.

“I said, what color are going to get?” 

You bopped his nose again, making his checks go redder, making his bright yellow eyes stand out.He fumbled with his hair, giving you a cheecky grin. 

“The blue one, obviously!”

“That’s so basic Denki!” You laughed.

“It’s the best color though!” He argued happily. 

“Obi-Wan used it-well, until Darth Vader killed him-oh and Qui Gon-until Darth Maul killed him too…Anakin- he turned into Darth Vader and got a red one-and Luke…except when Vader cut his hand off he got a green one…”

You looked at him, you eyebrows raised in concern and amusement, a comment on your lips that you were holding back to spill.

“What?” Denki asked, Noticing the look you were giving him

You smiled wide. “Nothing….”

“What?” he chuckled, trying to get your thoughts out of you.

He grabbed your hand as you turned away to hide your smile, making you look at him as a laugh escaped out of you.

“No, I’m not gonna tell you!” You shouted, crinkling your eyes closed. Kami’s face was right next to yours, your hands on his chest. Being so close to Kaminari was nerve racking, and the feeling made you feel like being dropped from a 4 story building, the smell of his cologne making you feel warm.

“Come on-please tell me,” He asked as his fingers sat dangerously near your ribs-your tickle spot. His fingers brushed against your skin, sending rivulets of energy up your spine, making your head shoot up.

You looked at him, eyes wide. 

“Denki I swear to god-“

“Hey love birds!” Sero yelled as Mina raised her chin as a greeting to you two, “come On! Our Fastpasses to Star Tours are almost up!”

You looked at Kaminari, an evil grin on your face as you poked his stomach on the side.

 Kami grabbed his stomach instinctively, even though it didn’t hurt at all.

“You’re mean.” He said with a fake pout.“

“And you’re a nerd.”

“But you already knew that about me,” he replied, making you shake your head.“

”I guess,” you replied smiling,

 “Wait-,” you asked, “didn’t you want to buy a lightsaber?”

“Yeah… Maybe I can-“ Denki began, but the sight of Sero frantically waving him down and pointing at the time on his phone made him think otherwise.He sighed. 

“I guess I can get it later.”

“You sure?” You asked, knowing how much Kami wanted that toy.“

“Yeah, Yeah,” He reassured you, “I can get it later. Besides- we have all day.”

You looked back at the table, trying to make a plan that would satisfy everyone.

“Well what if I stayed back and got you the lightsaber?”

“Wait no y/n I can’t let you do that!” Kamianri protested. “We said we were going to do Star Tours and try to get one of us to be the spy, remember! I dont want to ruin our plans because of this.”

“But-” you protested.

“Please, I don’t need it-lets just go-I’m fine, seriously!”The more he talked, the more desperation played in his voice.

You gave him an unconvinced look. “Are you sure??”

“Yeah, Yeah,” He said in a fake airy manner, “I’ll be fine-I’ll just-get it later.”

He shrugged his shoulders and grabbed your hand, leading you to the group, Izuku back to being latched on to Shouto and everyone looking way more energetic than before.

“Lets go fight some space baddies!” Mina yelled, Uraraka and Sero cheering as they jogged out of the store, you four following behind.

————-

Later never really came. Ride after ride after ride, and it seemed Kami was never going back to that shop.

Night had now fallen, and you felt Kami’s hand fidget in yours.

“Do you think we’ll be able to go back?” He asked, his big puppy dog eyes boating into yours.You wanted to go back, but your call back time for the adults to drive all the students to the hotel was in 10 minutes, and you were a whole 2 lands away from the designated meet up spot. There was no way you could convince the group to walk more, and no way to expect to buy that lightsaber in that time.“I don’t know…” you said, not wanting to bring his hopes down. 

You know Kami would try his best to not look disappointed, but he never was very good at covering his emotions up.

As expected, you watched his face fall a little.“Awwww...I guess I’ll just have to do it next time…”

Even though you thought it was slightly childish to want a toy so badly, you thought it was cute and adorable, and it broke your heart a little to see the one thing he wanted to go unfulfilled. It was like watching a kid on Christmas not receive the one gift their heart desired so desperately-it was heartbreaking and little guilty to watch.You grasped his hand, rubbing your finger against his skin, wondering how you could fix the situation. That’s when a light bulb went off.You turned to Denki, false distress on your face. You let go of his hand, turning to the group as you yelled, “I gotta go to the bathroom-I’ll met with you guys later!” And instantly running off, completely startling Kami and everyone in the group.

 Everyone was focused on their bloated bellies, tired feet, and sleepiness, so the sound of your voice breaking their quiet self muddling completely startled them shit less. Kami shook his head as he tried to comprehend what happened in his worn out state,watching your back as you ran off.

Uraraka walked up between Kaminari and Sero who had took your place next to Kami, pointing at a crowded corner a few feet away from the trio.

Uraraka cocked her eyes, asking, “She knows the bathrooms there, right?”You were nowhere to be seen, and Kamianri looked around confused. “Where did she go?” He asked, completely bewildered by your actions.

After Izuku  reassured Kami that you would come back after a few minutes of him yelling frantically for you like you were a lost child, they rushed back to the assigned meet up spot. The night air drifted coolily through Kamianri’s hair and clothing, cooling his warm body. The sound of crickets chirping on the ground and the soft blinking of lights in the trees made him feel like he was in a dream like state-until he thought of you. When he finally realized you hadnt made it back, his heart rate shot up, his senses going into overdrive. Instinctively, he began to think of every possible bad scenario-you somehow getting so lost you wouldn’t make it time and get in trouble, you getting hurt, someone Kidnaping you… the scenarios went on and on, becoming more ridiculous and more scary nevertheless. He stood there, deciding to call you and ask if you are okay, until he finally saw you running up, a Disneyland bag in your hand as you desperately tried to shove it in your backpack with little success.

He jogged up towards you, smiling slightly as he breathed a breath of relief. His face took in a serious note as he asked, “Where did you go?”

You cocked your eyebrow mischievously, giving him a slight grin. 

“Nowhere-Just the bathroom.” You stated matter of factly, disguising your smile by tying up your hair.

Kami could tell you were lying just by the pitch of your voice-it always went up slightly because you were excited or nervous to tell him something.

He chuckled as he shook his head.

“You are a-terrible liar,” he laughed.

“Oh don’t act like you’re any better Denki,” you smiled as patted his cheek.“Now come on,” you grabbed his hand tenderly, “we got a bus to catch.”

————-

He didn’t see you the rest of the night after roll call. Kami sat next to Sero the whole ride back due to the stupid “gender-with-gender” rule they have on school trips, and checked into his hotel room with him. He sat on the bed, sending you a good night text as Sero changed out of his clothes and fell asleep in seconds.

Denki stayed up, waiting for your reply. He wasn’t worried that you were taking awhile because he expected you were taking a little more time going to bed. His eyes began to become more droopy, and before he knew it he was fast asleep.

Morning came, Kaminari stretching up with a loud yawn. The warm California sun flitted through the curtains, blinding him. He rolled over, checking the time on his clock: 6:15 am.

He groaned, rubbing his eyes: damn this bright light waking him up so early. He debated whether on not to just suck it up and close the curtains, but he knew if he did he would wake up and be screwed the rest of the day.

He laid on his back, thinking quietly as Sero snored in the bed next to him. A smile dawned on his face- if he could sneak into your room, he could go and snuggle with you and go back to sleep. He knew that you were bunking with Uraraka- but- she wouldnt mind right? Nah.

He got up, stretching, and grabbing his pillow as he opened the door. To his surprise, though, right in front of the door was a blue Disneyland bag, the castle adorning the front as Tinkerbell happily tapped the tallest tower with her wand.

He looked down, confused- the hell left this here? He looked at his sleeping friend, racking his brain to remember if maybe Sero bought something yesterday that he left on the floor when he feel asleep. Kaminari couldnt remember, confusion plastered on his tired face.

He bent down, feeling his sore feet as he checked the bag. There was a single note on it, the stationary having the name of the hotel at the bottom. He noticed it was your handwriting, immediately recognizing the loops and angle of the words that made it yours.

The note didn’t have much to read. The only words written on it were-“Sorry not sorry ;)”

He smiled, shaking his head, setting the note down as he pulled out a blue lightsaber out of the bag.

Kamianri gasped in shock and excitement. He already had a feeling what was in the bag you had earlier, but he was so tired he didnt even think twice to prod you anymore about it He bite his lower lip, his heart swelling with love. He didn’t know why you went through all that trouble for him. His smile widen, his body giddy with excitement.  

If he could, he would go and propose to you right then and there.

————-

Should I write more Disneyland stories for the boys? Cause this was fun!

(RULES  | MASTERLIST| REQUESTS OPEN!!! :))

#bnha #bnha hc #bnha x reader #bnha kaminari x reader #mha #mha x reader #mha kaminari #Kaminari Denki #kaminari denki x reader #kaminari x reader #denki x reader #bnha denki x reader #bnha denki x y/n #denki x y/n #mha kaminari x reader #mha kaminari fluff #mha denki #bnha kaminari fluff #bnha kaminari x you #bnha kaminari

[ziracona]

Not That Kind of Person Who

[My half of an art trade with @speckeltail , who requested a fic for the time Joey went to Lerry’s between trials and found Quentin there completely blitzed on morphine he’d taken accidentally, and helped him get back to the campfire that has been refferenced from Quentin’s pov in his lovely ask blog @badham-bedhead (Speck, I want you to know this pic of Joey you did on the blog is directly responsible for much of what you’re about to read >: D .)]

  This was always fun. Fucking with Herman.

A top twelve pastime, here in the fog. There was training, and bumming around with the gang, stealing shit from the Clown, spying on whoever was new, collecting cool new stuff for the lodge, but going to Lerry’s was up there. Honestly, it would have been higher if it wasn’t for the fact that he’d been caught doing it before, and while you got in some real trouble if you killed a survivor or another killer outside of trials, it uh, it sure as hell wasn’t enough to deter everyone from doing it. And Joey had been on the receiving end of that with Herman once.

Still, that was a long time ago, thought Joey, ducking under a fallen chunk of what had once been wall, and slipping deeper into the institute. Herman didn’t scare him.

A noise somewhere down the hall he was creeping along startled Joey, and he jumped on impulse, and then cursed himself silently, placing the noise as he watched a crow that had gotten in take flight far up ahead, and tried to slow his heart back down. …He doesn’t! I’m being “wary”—that’s just smart. I’m not fucking scared of him. If I was, I wouldn’t be here.

Herman was fun to annoy. Because he got angry over the weirdest shit, and had big reactions, and also because if he did catch you, it wasn’t pretty, so it always felt good to win one. And the institute was so big, it really wasn’t hard to get in and out unscathed, so long as you were quiet. If you were quiet, Herman would sometimes even ignore you when he knew you were there—especially if he was distracted doing shit, and had no reason to suspect you were there to ruin his stuff. Joey was sure that wouldn’t have been the case if he was actually allowed to keep anyone he caught, but he wasn’t. If he grabbed a trespasser and strapped them to a chair to see how the inside of their brain worked with barbs sticking out of it, the Entity would make him pay big time.

“Probably has made him pay,” whispered Joey to himself, following the hall and looking for a good place to do what he’d come to do. Library would be choice, but he’d heard what sounded like warning signs of the Doctor himself in that direction when he got here, so he was going to have to settle for somewhere else.

He was willing to bet Herman had grabbed someone back in the day and gotten in a lot of trouble over it. Actually, Joey felt pretty sure that that’s what it would have taken to get The Doctor to not be grabbing someone to experiment on every time he saw a trespasser now. And he was kind of thankful, because the time he’d been killed had been really fucking shitty, even though it had been pretty quick. Honestly, that was part of why he liked coming here so much and fucking with the guy’s stuff. Mini-revenge. That, and boredom. Between trials, there wasn’t so much to do sometimes, and since with…everything really, being the way it was, Joey wasn’t super into sitting down and thinking about how life was going. He needed to constantly be distracted, and if someone else wasn’t there to help, it meant finding something like this to do. Especially after a trial where he’d barely gotten one last-minute sacrifice and been given a pretty harrowing warning about not fucking up again next time. …Shit.

Yeah. It wasn’t great. He was going to be seriously in trouble if he didn’t do a lot better next trial. It was so fucking annoying, too! Stuff always worked out like this for him! He’d gotten Claudette hooked right near the trial’s start, and then literally tripped over her like fifteen seconds after someone had gotten her down, when he hadn’t even been looking for her, and he’d felt kind of bad, even though he knew how stupid that was to do, and how dangerous. They had to hunt, and suck it up, and the survivors would try to live, and if they failed, they failed, and that wasn’t his fault—it wasn’t like he’d asked to be here doing this. It was just how shit was, and it was rough for him too, and it wasn’t his job to feel bad for them. It was him or them. If they couldn’t hack it, and they died, then too bad—that was rough for them, but it wasn’t gonna be his problem. But. He’d been doing well in the trial so far, and feeling confident, and-a-and she had looked so sad—like not even just scared, but sad, because her luck had been so shitty probably, and so he’d been fucking stupid, and felt bad, and left her on the ground instead of sacrificing her, and chased off the person he’d been going for originally instead, and in return for answering that stupid impulse to show a little mercy, he’d lost her completely after that, gotten run around by Zarina, and then only barely managed to down and sacrifice the newest girl who he’d never heard anyone say the name of yet right by the gates at the last second, and now the Entity was pissed at him, and everything sucked.

That’s why he’d come to do this. To blow off steam. Bad day, friends tired and asleep, need to feel a little better? Go sneak into Herman’s place and deface some of his shit. It always made him feel better to do it.

Oh! Here we go, thought Joey, spotting a nicer section of lab up ahead, hospital beds, one of the storage rooms beyond. He took the can of black spraypaint he’d brought with him off his shoulder strap and primed it as he slipped along the hall towards an open doorway. This would be perfect. Far enough away to be safe and give him time, super noticeable, and a big fuckin’ annoyable to the Doctor when he was gone. Joey carefully cased the area inside, planning what he wanted to do, picked a center point on the floor, marked it, thought for a few more seconds, and then started spraying. It took a couple minutes to do, because he’d picked something a little bit fancy, but when he stepped back finally from his last line, he was surrounded by what looked like chaotic nothing. That was, until you stepped about five feet back right down the middle of the rows in the room to the spot he’d marked on the floor, and the pieces would all line up from that perspective to become a grinning skull. Nice, thought Joey, proud of himself because that kind of tagging was a little tricky to do and he really enjoyed doing it, it looked sick as hell, and also largely because he knew it would make Herman furious. “Okay, what now?” whispered Joey to himself, shaking the can again. He glanced over his image, considering.

“You should be saying something,” he decided, liking the idea very much. He picked out an insult in his head and started to form what would be a speech bubble, when the world’s loudest clang sounded from so close on his left that he almost jumped out of his skin and died with alarm, fucking up the line he’d meant to lay down and jerking back, then ducking and sliding beside one of the cots nervously, heart thudding. He ripped his hunting knife out of its sheath and held it clutched tight in his right hand.

Fuck! What was that? He left the library?

There was no electricity pulsing along the wall though. The Doctor was kind of a walking AOE, so you could at least generally sense him coming, and there was none of that.

Fuck, then, thought Joey, slowly standing up again, cautious but calming back down just a little as seconds went from two to nine and nothing appeared to cause him trouble, What was that just now?

It had been on his left, hadn’t it?

Carefully, Joey slipped out of the partially-tagged room and glanced up and down the hall on the left side. Nothing weird in sight. Just empty hall, debris, doors into other rooms. No movement, no more clangs. Nothing. The sound had seemed like it could have come from the next room over though, he thought, looking back, but that one was just one of the big, open, trashed ones—Joey had passed twenty just like it on his way down. Not nice enough to be worth tagging, because the dude might not even notice. What would have made a noise like that in one of those spots?

I guess…maybe part of the roof just caved in? Or something?

That was a weird thought kinda. In reality, for sure it would be an option—buildings broke and shit fell apart eventually. But he kind of didn’t think deterioration worked the same way here. There was one really annoying broken massive window panel in Lerry’s that was always hanging by a thread and banging against the wall in the wind every trial, and every trip out here, and it had never snapped and fallen to the ground like he wished it would. Nothing in Ormond had ever rotted through or something either, even though the lodge was super old and kind of falling apart. So. So maybe that was what it was, but Joey was kind of unconvinced.

Still, I can’t spend forever doing this, thought Joey, mildly frustrated, but hesitating. Whatever it had been, Herman might have heard it too, and uh, he did not want to be here when Herman showed up to find the fantastic work of tagging art he’d just done all over his hospital beds. He had a cool ‘fuck you’ to add to the skull before bouncing, and whatever it had been—

Thunk.

Okay, what the fuck, thought Joey, freezing again on instinct, and then turning his head very, very slowly to the right. It hadn’t been the big open room—it was the one just past it. He was sure this time. Whatever the noise was, it hadn’t been as loud this time, but it was definitely something. Something alive. That wasn’t the sound of a building breaking—that had been the sound of somebody dropping a kind of heavy object—he was like—was really close to 100% sure.

If he’s playing mind games to lure me into a trap because he saw me sneak in, I’m gonna be so pissed, thought Joey, mildly distressed by that hypothetical but sneaking over slowly anyway, curiosity too strong to be beaten down by paranoia now.

When he reached the room in question, he saw through the open doorway ahead that it was some kind of supply room. Small, and as decrepit as everything else, and Joey took it with a lot of caution, ears straining for sound. There was something in there for sure, he could hear it clearly now, but he couldn’t tell what it was. Feet on linoleum, for sure, and shuffling around—he heard things being moved too, and- Wait, was that a voice?

What the fuck? But no, he hadn’t imagined it—whoever was in there was talking to themselves, and not in a God I better be careful to be quiet whisper either. And it wasn’t Herman. It had to be another killer then, breaking in like he was, because whoever it was clearly wasn’t afraid of pissing off the Doc and getting their ass handed to them, but which one? One of the more powerful ones, had to be—it—

Sliding far enough into the furthest entrance from the noise to get a visual of the far end of the little room, Joey froze. And then just stared. Because it wasn’t a killer at all. It was a survivor. He recognized him instantly, but took a second to remember his name. One of the younger ones, one of the guys—Quentin—that’s right. The one who always came back to try to help a teammate even when it was ridiculously stupid, and was an easy kill. Although kind of an exhausting one at the same time, because he fought hard as fuck. It was him, though, plain as day, stumbling around the edge of the room with an armful of junk.

Wh. Joey watched the guy take a couple wobbly steps and bump against a wall he just didn’t seem to see in time with extreme confusion. Did he—did something hit him on the head? Whatever was up, the guy kept going on the other end of the room about fifteen feet away, muttering to himself and trying to pick up various scattered items from the floor and replace them in an open drawer in one of the medical cabinets. He was moving around super unsteadily, but he didn’t look worried about it at all—he was actually smiling to himself.

This is so fucking weird, thought Joey, too distracted by the sight to go back and finish his own work or to actually go over and find out what was up, and not sure he’d have wanted to.

“Okay, that’s the last one, right?” the guy asked himself quietly at the end of the room, but nothing like quietly enough for someone sneaking through Lerry’s and hoping to avoid the Doctor’s wrath, evidenced by the fact that Joey could hear him 100% fine from 15 feet away.

The guy held up a little bottle and blinked at it, then looked at the drawer by him. “No…there’s an empty space. Missed…one…somewhere.” He grimaced at the drawer and then looked around himself, turning in a little circle in the hopes of finding the last bottle, and then sighed exaggeratedly when he didn’t see it. “Where the fuck—” he started to ask himself, raising his hands in exasperation, and then he looked down at his hand again and the bottle still in it and said, “Oh,” sheepishly and set it down in the drawer.

The…hell?

“Okay, okay,” said the survivor to himself, drumming his fingers absently on the cabinet, “What else?” He started humming—of all the wild fucking things to do, humming to himself, and Joey just stayed where he was, staring and lost. The guy kept going through stuff, moving on to the next cabinet and swaying unsteadily as he did, still humming.

Okay, that’s just not normal. Is he…Wait, is he high?? thought Joey, watching the uncoordinated movements and completely out of it disregard for his own safety in the person across from him with something approaching wonder, Oh my God, I think he is. He—

“I took the blame,” came the survivor’s voice from across the room, and Joey’s head snapped up and all he could do was gape at the guy as he kept going. “Directionless so plain to see, a loaded gun won't set you free. So you say.”

Holy shit.

He was. He was fucking singing. Singing in Lerry’s Memorial Institute in the wreckage of torture chambers while rifling through drawers and making a huge fucking racket the owner of this little patch of hell might hear. Oh fuck. He’s gonna hear that for sure. This guy’s gonna die. The Doctor’s gonna come storming in, super pissed he’s being loud as hell while he’s trying to concentrate—I gotta go, or he’s gonna find us both—if he even sees me, he’ll know why I was here—I gotta—

He started to turn and book out the side door again, planning an escape route in his head, and then hesitated, and turned slowly, and looked back at Quentin again. Still humming to himself, between verses now, the teenager was opening a cabinet, and then, seeing nothing immediately promising inside, stooped to go throw open a drawer beneath it. It was so weird, watching that, and for a second he got lost just staring at the guy’s face, and forgot what he’d been going to do at all. He couldn’t look away. And for a moment he wasn’t sure why, and then Joey realized that it wasn’t just that this was such a stupidass place to be being loud that was making this whole moment surreal, it was also that he hadn’t actually ever seen a survivor look…happy, before. Like, okay, well, he’d seen them grin or be pleased or whatever if they won in a trial, or pulled off something smart in one, but like, carefree? Normal happy? Happy like this? Never. Not once. Not happy like they weren’t where they were. Like they weren’t going to die horribly in a couple minutes every day for the rest of their life. And the guy looked so…so happy for real, so chilled out and okay, but. He wasn’t. Something was wrong with him, and he only felt that way because how he felt was out of his control and he just didn’t know that yet, or how bad that was gonna be in a minute here when the Doctor heard him. He had no idea. And he wasn’t gonna. He was just humming and absently keeping time with his fingers to the beat of the song between verses, looking so fucking chill and at peace, and he was going to stay that way until the Doctor showed up and. …

Shit.

A few feet away, the survivor started to sing to himself again, nothing but happy in that little moment of being free from the reality of what was really going on in his life. “We’ll share a drink and—”

“Hey!” hissed Joey, listening to what he really wasn’t sure if was his better or worse judgement, and stepping back into the room.

The guy jolted and slammed his head into the cabinet door he’d left open, cursed in pain, stumbled backwards, tripped over his own medkit, which Joey hadn’t even seen on the floor, and slammed into the ground on his back with a muffled yelp.

“Whoa,” said Joey quietly, holding up a hand and stepping closer, “Are you—”

“-Shit!” said the guy, scrambling up to his elbows and looking for Joey, finding him almost instantly. “Legion?” He froze where he was, on one knee, staring at Joey with huge, unfocused eyes. “W. What are you…?” Something seemed to occur to him then, and his expression changed, and got frantic, and he snatched his medkit from the floor and stumbled to his feet and back two steps, clutching it in front of him like a blunt weapon, eyes fixed on Joey still, but wide with tension and mistrust now. “Look—just back off. I’ll fight you if I have to.”

“Relax,” said Joey, keeping his hand up and stepping cautiously a little closer, “Not here to fight.”

The guy looked surprised, and lowered the medkit a little, believing that way too fast for any remotely sober person.

Jesus, how much of whatever you took did you take? If he’d been close to sure before, he was certain as fuck now that the guy was high—and like, almost completely out of it kind of high too. He was already swaying a little, and his kept blinking and working to refocus his eyes like he was having a lot of trouble doing that. Movements just a little too slow, too off, too uncoordinated and loose to be anything but high.

“O-oh,” said the guy after a second, “Why then? You can’t…” He looked over his shoulder at the cabinet behind him, “Need. Medical supplies?”

“No,” agreed Joey, holding up his can of spraypaint, “I came here to tag. And then heard you sounding like a fucking elephant in here and came over to get you to quiet down.”

“What?” said Quentin, offended, “I’m not—”

“—Yes you are!” argued Joey, taking another step closer and lowering his hand, “You’re making a ton of noise. The Doctor’s gonna come and kill you if you keep it up, dumbass, and he’ll find both of us. Keep it down!”

Quentin stared at him for a second, and then looked to the side at nothing and blinked, thinking hard, then back at Joey. “I was making a lot of noise?”

Uh. Yes??? “You couldn’t tell?” asked Joey, exasperated on his behalf.

“I-“ started Quentin uncertainly.

“—You were singing, in here! Why were you singing?” hissed Joey. He’d gotten close enough that he was a quick lunge away from the survivor now. He wondered if it was weird that his mental units of distance now were all related to hunting people down for sport…

“I. ...It was stuck in my head,” defended Quentin a little uncertainly, looking confused, “Does it matter? Wait—were you watching me?” He took a half-step back, medkit gripped like a weapon again.

“No, you were just super fucking loud—I could hear you in the next room,” whispered Joey.

“…Really?” asked Quentin again, shoulders relaxing a little, thoroughly distracted and caught somewhere between being insulted and kind of worried or ashamed about being a nuisance.

Joey nodded.

“Oh,” said Quentin awkwardly, taking his word for it and pretty visibly out of it and having a pretty hard and disjointed time keeping up, but doing his best through whatever the fuck was in his system. “Uh. Sorry, I guess. I’ll stop. –And you’ll go, then?” He double-checked. “–We’re not gonna fight?”

“No,” assured Joey, relaxing a little.

“…Okay,” said Quentin after considering that for a second, and seeming to find it reasonable. Trusting that for the second time way too quickly for anyone with normal judgement, all things considered. If Joey had caught him stealing supplies from Ormond, he probably would have fucked with him a little before trying to scare him off. He didn’t look scared of him at all right now though, just kind of confused and unsteady. Waiting for Joey to say or do whatever he’d do next, or to leave maybe. When he didn’t make a move, the guy blinked a few times, and then just went back to trying to dig through supplies in the cabinet by him, movements shaky and uncoordinated. Like he had no depth perception or balance or focus at all, even though he was clearly trying really hard to focus. And getting back to his scavenging the guy just—just turned his back on him—on a killer, in a killer realm, in easy melee distance, like that wasn’t a stupid and dangerous thing to do, even if Joey genuinely did have no plans to bury a knife in his back. He couldn’t know that.

Shakily, the guy reached over and pulled open a drawer and started to sort through it, almost collapsing when he took a step to move to get a better view of the contents, and looking confused by the failure of his legs to do their job more than anything else as he righted himself, Joey all but forgotten the second he was out of sight.

God. It. It was super weird to watch this--to see Quentin this way. Why? It shouldn’t have felt so unsettling to him, right? Joey just—he’d never—well, okay, Joey had been around people high before, but this wasn’t even high, this was like, bordering on blitzed completely out of his mind, and usually even seeing someone at a party who had done way too much of whatever was just chill and kind of funny to be around, but here? It wasn’t that at all. It was like…

Joey stopped moving, lost in a memory he hadn’t seen in ages, and forgot everything else. Thinking about a bird in a little wooden pen.

Of all the stupid things to… He tried to stop, tried to re-focus on the present, but he couldn’t shake it. Couldn’t look away. And once he’d remembered that trip a lifetime ago at all, he couldn’t turn off the flood of old images in his head. They just came, and came, and he got lost in them. Once, a-a long, long time ago, there had been a trip he’d gone on, where he’d been driven on a long car ride to go see extended family off in the country away from Ormond, off in a different part of Alberta altogether. Very different. The cousins there were ones he hadn’t seen much before or after, but he’d been excited, he thought. To be doing something new. He’d been a kid at the time—really little, like five or something, and all the cousins out there were all older than him—teenagers, closer to his brother’s age, but he had followed them around everywhere out there just the same, wanting to be included, and they hadn’t forced him to go away so long as he could manage to keep up. It had been new, and exciting, and fun. And the second day he’d been there, they’d gone and met up with some friends, him trailing after, and headed off into someone’s house to play alone out in the backyard with a bunch of other kids they knew, and there had been a chicken. Just a dumb little bird, and Joey had never liked the things, because he was little back then, and chickens were mean, and they’d chase you, and try to peck you, so they’d kind of scared him.

One of the boys had gotten a chicken from somewhere though, and brought it over, and he’d given it something. A sedative maybe, Joey had never found out. But whatever it had been given, it had been disoriented, and confused, and moved slow, and loopy, and he’d watched it as a little boy, hugging the bottom rail of the wooden pen they’d set it in and in a way closer to the action to anyone else there, and seen it suffer. The older kids had gone into the pen and kicked it. They would chase it, and scream at it, and laugh, and sometimes drop stuff like bunches of tangled fishing line or stuff in its way so it would panic, and run from whatever had just scared it, and tangle itself up so bad it couldn’t get free. They had thought it was really funny, watching that stupid little animal try to escape and hurt itself and then forget it was even scared because of how fucked up it was on whatever it’d been given. It would bump into stuff on its own after a little bit—they didn’t even have to help it to get it hurt. Trip around and squak and pull itself up, then run into the same box again head-first. And it hadn’t been funny. He had laughed, before he’d known what was going on, and just thought the older kids were playing some game and gonna run around after one of the mean chickens to spook it, but when he’d figured out it was hurt, and thinking wrong, and never even had a chance, it hadn’t been funny at all.

Things had escalated, bit by bit, while he watched. Gotten worse.

Joey hadn’t done anything to try to save it. Just stood there at five, watching it with huge eyes in silence as it stumbled around in a loopy fashion, trying to avoid old nails the older kids had embedded all over the path ahead of it tip-up in the hope it would eventually step on one, or something else, or simply be betrayed by its own balance while running from them, and fall, and had rooted for it in silence to make it through. It hadn’t. It had made it about two feet.

He didn’t think the boys had been planning to kill it, but they had. And he hadn’t stopped them. Probably it hadn’t been too hurt to save after taking a couple nails through its side. Joey didn’t know—he’d never known—he didn’t know really anything at all about birds. But it had still been very alive when they’d been cursing in a panic and talking about what animal to pin the death on, and a boy had stepped on its head. He hadn’t thought about that day in years, after he’d finally been able to stop thinking about it at all, maybe a year later when the nightmares had finally gone away. He was fucking terrified of chickens. He would never tell anybody that, not ever, but he had been ever since. Which had to be like, the stupidest possible fear a person could have, and made no sense to him at all as a response to that even—he’d seen how dumb and easy to fuck with and little they were! Which should have made him anything but afraid! But. …But any time he saw one, he was always struck by this intense feeling that if he kept looking at it, it would be able to look up into his face with those tiny dead empty black eyes, and see in his own what he’d watched and that he’d just stood there, and that those awful little bead eyes with nothing past them seeing that truth inside him would mark him like a curse forever, and it would only be a matter of time before he met whatever awful punishment the universe laid out in wait for him to make him pay for the judgement it had passed, and as fucking stupid and irrational as that thought was he had never been able to shake it.

Joey hadn’t ever associated doing drugs with that sight from a lifetime ago, not once, but he was seeing it now, and he lost about seven seconds of time doing it, feeling that very specific, long-forgotten fear again, and then he heard a clang and was snapped back just in time to see a drawer the survivor had been using as a foothold to reach a high shelf in the same cabinet must have been pulled out too far to be stable anymore, because it had splintered under the guy’s weight, and as he watched, it ripped out of the cabinet and the survivor went pitching backwards on a collision course with the edge of the heavy desk four feet back with a surprised cry.

Snapped into action, Joey shouted something not very intelligible or useful like “Whoa!” and shot out on impulse to catch the guy and just made it. Knocked to his knees on impact, Joey wrapped his arms around the guy, ducked his head down to minimize damage, braced, and then slid to a stop just shy of the desk he’d expected to ram into breathing hard.

For a second, he held perfectly still like that, listening to things from the drawer go rolling around the floor, waiting for the sound of the Doctor coming to kill them, but the Institute slowly returned to silence. Nothing but the sound of two people breathing.

In his lap, the survivor kind of shakily held out his arms like he was testing his balance, and then tried to turn, and Joey let go so that he could. He moved back and onto his knees to face Joey and blinked, then squinted at him in confusion, like he’d forgotten who he was or that he was there.

“Uhm… Thanks,” offered Quentin. “…Are…?”

Joey didn’t have any idea what to say so he didn’t.

“Uhm…” said the guy, looking to the side and then back at him, kind of at a loss, “W. Where did you?”

‘Where’? Where what? Come from? Learn to do that? He couldn’t even tell if the guy was really recognizing him right now, from the look on his face. God your eyes look glazed over. That can’t be a good sign. How much of whatever had he taken?

Quentin raised a hand like he was going to gesture at something specific, and opened his mouth to speak, and then seemed to forget what he’d been going to say, looked a little troubled by that, and then blinked again and looked to the side, thinking hard, and then back at Joey. “I-I don’t. Uh.” He paused and looked up over his shoulder at the cabinet he’d just fallen from and took in the damage, then back at Joey. “I’m not…sure…why that happened,” he offered unsteadily, “I think—I think it. Broke. Are you okay?”

“Uh. Yeah,” said Joey, not sure how to respond to that at all. It was surreal, because for a moment, the guy looked so genuinely concerned about him, like he hadn’t been the one to almost get brained on a desk. And also because. It. Well. That just wasn’t a way survivors looked at you. Or…anyone did, really. Not in a…long time at least… “Are you?” he asked, trying to tell. The guy didn’t look hurt.

Quentin looked down at himself, and turned his palms over, checking them, and then nodded like that was sufficient to account for any injuries possible. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

He stood up shakily and almost fell again, and Joey half-shot to his feet before Quentin caught himself on the wall. The guy looked surprised his legs weren’t behaving normally, and glanced down at them in confusion, then back at Joey after a second when he remembered he was there, and offered him a hand. Not sure that was a good idea, but acting kind of on impulse, Joey took it and let the guy help him to his feet—which uh, was actually more like Joey standing up with way more leg-muscle-effort than usual so the guy could feel like he was helping him to his feet.

“Look, uhm,” said Joey as he straightened up, watching the guy with something close to concern at this point, “Did you maybe take something in here on accident?”

Quentin looked incredibly confused. “…Uh. No. Not on…accident. I-I told you I’m collecting supplies, right? Medicine stuff?”

“No—I mean, not take like ‘pack up’—take like, did you do any drugs,” corrected Joey, “Like, while you’ve been here in Lerry’s—did you use anything on yourself, or accidentally jab your hand on something—or maybe up, I don’t—inhale some fumes, or?”

“Uhm. Yeah. I. I guess,” he said, very confused.

Okay. Well. That sure track. “Do you know what it was?” asked Joey hopefully.

“Uh. I mean—there’s only two options. The bottle’s here somewhere though,” said Quentin.

“Okay,” said Joey, “what are the two—” WAIT. Oh my GOD. Th—You took it on purpose?! Why! How stupid are you! “-Hang on, are you saying you—you took something, like, you on purpose took a drug? Here, in Lerry’s?” asked Joey, and the guy stared back at him and the incredulity in his voice with such an open look of surprise that he knew for fucking certain without him even answering that he must have. “Oh my GOD you did! You dumbass! What the hell were you thinking! That’s crazy!” snapped Joey in disbelief, gesturing broadly, “Who would do that! Did you even read the bottle first?! No wonder you’re in here stumbling around like a blind rhinoceros. What’s wrong with you!”

“I—what? No—I—I’m not blind,” defended Quentin, confused and looking a little attacked, “—or a—Why are you angry? You said you didn’t need supplies. We do. It’s not like I use them all. I bring most of it back, just, I usually take one or something when I find them, especially if I’m—”

“—WHAT! You go get high in killer realms and do drugs all the time?” exploded Joey in a very angry hissed whisper, some of the sympathy or concern or whatever it had been he’d felt before turning into a surge of blind disbelief and irritation. What kind of fucking dumbass? “Why would you do that! You’re gonna get yourself killed!” he snapped, waving a finger and stepping forward. “You unbelievable dumbass! Do you just not care if that happens?!”

Quentin took a step back as he advanced, looking a little threatened by the sudden burst of anger along with confused now, and he glanced around for where he’d left his medkit, then back at Joey as he defended himself. “No! Of course I do—I do that because I don’t want to get killed out here!” He finally spotted the case back inside the cabinet he’d fallen from and started backing nervously towards it. “The only injectables ever in Lerry’s are adrenaline and hemorrhagics. And I always need both of those! I don’t take too much of them—I use one and take everything else back to the campfire. Or, maybe on a really bad day if I’m out a long time and need it, I use two. Usually if I’m—I’m out scavenging, I’ve been out for a while—and—”

“—And? Why the fuck would need to jam a hemmor—” started Joey, and then he stopped mid-sentence, only just then actually looking at Quentin for real. He’d noticed the blood on his jacket and shirt as soon as he came in, but. …Is…? Joey stopped and looked down at his own arms and hands, and his gloves and black sleeves were wet. He stared at them for a second, then back up at Quentin in confusion as the guy stared back at him with the same completely lost expression he must have had on.

“Are you bleeding?” asked Joey in a totally different tone of voice, stunned.

Quentin stared at him for a second, eyes big and sort of glazed over, but trying to stay trained on him and focus through that fog, and then he looked to the side for a moment, thinking and confused and a little nervous still, and then finally he looked back at Joey, and his expression was completely different when he did, like he was…wary suddenly, for some reason. “…Yeah,” he said really quietly, eyes on Joey’s.

“Why?” asked Joey, totally lost, “Did the Doctor see you on the way in?”

For a second, Quentin was silent again, just watching him, expression unchanging. Then the line of his mouth set a little and he glanced down and away. “I’m always bleeding,” said Quentin very quietly.

“W—you’re always wounded?” asked Joey. Had he been? He’d seen him in trials, and he did kinda always look like this, but he’d thought those were blood stains. Not still-bleeding wounds! Why the fuck would—? Didn’t they heal? He—he could have sworn that— “I thought you guys healed when you got killed and brought back?” said Joey.

“Yeah, but,” started Quentin, and then he stopped. He glanced down, and then up at Joey again and swallowed. “Uhm. Why?”

“Why?” echoed Joey, arms lowering at his sides now that the anger and irritation was gone, and feeling about as confused as Quentin looked, “Because you’re fucked up outside a trial apparently all the time, and that’s not really supposed to happen. Are you okay? Are you dying?”

“…Uh,” said Quentin, looking harried, “No. I just.” He thought for a second and looked out the nearby window at nothing past a far hallway wall, then back at Joey. “You know how…we—all of us, uhm, we go into a trial looking like we look, right? L-like we do naturally?”

“Yeah,” said Joey, nodding.

“Well, if we get hurt outside of a trial, we have to have time to heal right. And. If you die, you get reset to how you were before the trial began. And if you…” He stopped for a second and looked down, kind of sad, and quiet. “…Die. In almost all of your trials. Or all of them. Then…you lose a lot of. Of time. And things don’t. They don’t really have much chance to heal. Not at a normal rate, at least. Because you keep being…set back. So it might take—might take a whole month, to heal like a week should have done, back home. And…the Entity. It. The way it sees us, and ‘puts us back’ when we die. That can-can change, over time. You. You get a little older, in here. Eventually. If you start running between trials, you get better leg muscles—lift weights, better arm strength, that kind of stuff,” offered Quentin, glancing back up, “But other things change too. My uhm. I uh. I die a lot, in trials. And I…get hurt sometimes, out doing this. One time really bad. And. Somewhere along the line the Entity just decided I was, uhm, a little bit older than when I got here, and that I…” His shoulders lowered, and he looked away. “…Just. Spend all of my time. Kind of injured. Because I just kept being injured. All the time. From out here, and for way too long from that one time, and in trials, over and over in a lot of the same ways. More than is uhm.” He risked a glance at Joey’s face. “Is normal. In too many trials. So this uh.” He gestured vaguely at himself. “This is what it th…what it sees as my Default State, now. Hurt become more how it remembers me than…how I…was when I was okay. So. Now it’s how I heal back.”

What the fuck?

Joey gaped at him in a kind of slow building horror. “So…You’re just injured all the time now?”

Quentin considered for a second, and then nodded.

“Is—are all of you like this?” asked Joey.

“Nnnno,” said Quentin slowly, thinking about it, “Uh. Some of us are a little bit. Jake’s leg is always hurt. I think so is Laurie’s arm. Minor stuff. But uh. This whole,” he gestured at himself and gave Joey a kind of smile, like he was making a self-deprecating joke about this situation that Joey wasn’t really finding funny at all, “uh. Mess thing. With like—fifteen injuries and always about to pass out—that’s just me.” He grinned, and then when Joey didn’t smile back, the expression faded and went neutral, and then suddenly looked almost panicked.

What?

“Uh,” said Quentin nervously, suddenly seeming agitated and for the first time since Joey had walked in like he might have some small awareness suddenly that he wasn’t totally thinking straight and was concerned about that, “You’re not gonna use that, are you?”

“Use it?” echoed Joey, lost.

“I-I –I already die so much,” said Quentin, almost like he was appealing to Joey’s humanity or his honor or sense of decency or something. He brought his hand up to his left eye, which Joey had noticed for a long time had slash mark scars across it like he’d been raked by a claw, but was only just now realizing didn’t open all the way anymore too. “I’ve only got like 50% vision on my left side already—please don’t like, start fucking up my other one every trial to try to get it to stick too. I don’t know what I’m gonna do if I see even worse. It took me so long to get used to fucked up depth perception. And I just—I’m so tried, all the time, always, I-I—I know that you—”

“—No!” said Joey, kind of horrified and holding up a hand to stop him there, “I-I’m not gonna—fucking rip out one of your eyes every trial to try to get the Entity to make you go blind—why would you think that?”

Quentin looked at him for a long couple of seconds just a little sad, his deep blue eyes holding Joey’s brown ones, and not saying anything, and Joey felt a kind of sinking feeling in his stomach as he actually thought about the question he’d just asked the other person and the way their relationship—if you could even call butchering someone every time you crossed paths a relationship at all—had only ever been.

“I wouldn’t,” said Joey, lowering his arm when Quentin still didn’t answer, feeling shitty in ways he really wasn’t used to. “I’m not gonna do that. I’m…not that kind of person.”

For a second, Quentin watched him in silence, too unguarded under the influence of whatever he’d taken to be thought of exactly as ‘studying’ him in the way Joey was used to thinking of people trying to read you and sense sincerity, but he thought trying to tell if he meant that, and then he smiled at him. “Okay.”

That would have felt good. It started to, and then Joey remembered it was just the…LSD, or Opium, or whatever the fuck was in him talking.

“You’re not as murderous as I thought you’d be,” offered Quentin like a genuine friendly compliment, giving him another smile before turning back to the cabinet, and then looking down at all the scattered supplies on the floor blankly, lost and distracted immediately in figuring out what to do about them.

Yeah, thought Joey kind of sadly, watching him, Only. I don’t think you’d even be looking at me long enough to know which one of us I was if you were yourself. We’re only having a conversation at all because you’re too fucked up to remember you should be scared of me.

“Uh—you said you did take something though, right?” said Joey, clearing his throat and circling back, needing to say something, and that was kind of important to pin down.

“Huh?” said Quentin, glancing back at him. People looked weird when they were high. Had they always? Or was it just whatever he was on? It was…uncomfortable. Joey hadn’t noticed it before on other people he’d been around, the couple times people had done drugs at parties, or out behind the school late at night, and he’d been lucky enough to be invited to the event. But Quentin’s eyes were glassy, and he was looking at him, and not looking at him at the same time. It made him almost sad for some reason. Why the fuck do I even care? Why am I talking to him at all? I should get out, and fuck off, and let whatever happens happen. I’m not supposed to buddy up to a survivor. If he wasn’t blazed out of his mind, he’d run away from me, and hate me, and there is no way this could possibly go but badly! I don’t need to help him. He can help himself. I’m just gonna get myself in trouble and get nothing out of it if I stick around. It’s not like he’d help me if he found me tripping balls in here. He’d probably kick the shit out of me and steal my knife and maybe kill me like the Doctor did.

“Oh!” said Quentin, remembering and turning back to face him for real, still acting really friendly like he had been a second ago. Whatever had flipped the buddy switch in him seemed to have taken root and stayed. “Yeah—yeah, uh. I didn’t even look to see if it was adrenaline or a hemorrhagic. My shoulder’s always fucked up now, and if I inject adrenaline into the muscle there, it’s as good as anywhere else, so if I find a syringe to use, I just plunge it in half the time, because it’ll work for me either way, and I’m usually in a rush.” He glanced around the room like he was casing it and passing on some little-known information to Joey. “You don’t want to stay around Lerry’s too long. Or any of the killer realms. Gotta be fast and careful.”

Yeah, I know, dumbass, but you’re not being either.

“Do you still have what you took?” asked Joey, choosing to be nice this time because he was pretty sure he wouldn’t sound too smart that fucked up on drugs either.

“Uhh, yeah, I guess—I mean, I don’t have the stuff—I took it, but I saved the syringe. Even when they’re empty, they can be pretty useful sometimes—might need ‘em later,” offered Quentin. He took his medkit out of the cabinet and opened it and took from it a small cardboard package with an empty plastic syringe hastily jammed most of the way back into it from on top of a kind of depressing and meager supply of gauze and little boxes and bottles. It had been such a big medkit case, Joey had expected it to be full of stuff. I guess he brought it to fill up.

“Here,” said Quentin, handing him the syringe, and then as he watched him take it curiously, “What do you want it for?”

“Oh—I’ll give it back,” said Joey, glancing up at him and then turning the syringe in his hand, looking for a label, “I just want to know what you took.” It took him a second, but he found the old faded print on the tiny label, topped, squinted at the decayed words for a moment, and then succeeded and felt his eyes bug out. Ah geeze no wonder you’re a fucking mess. You stupid dumbass! It’s a wonder you’re still standing! 50mg/mL concentration?? Holy FUCK that’s high. Dad was on 10 after surgery! He’s right—the Entity’s fucking with him—goddamn. FIFTY. Jeeze! Poor guy. Damn that’s a lot of opium to take. He’s lucky it wasn’t worse. I’m amazed he’s still standing! –wait, I wonder if that just means it hasn’t really taken effect yet…

“What?” asked Quentin, interested, trying to read the label too, upside-down and from a distance.

Joey held it up for him. “It was morphine.”

“What?” asked Quentin, blinking like that might help him process the news. He took the syringe and cocked his head, studying it.

“You took morphine,” said Joey, “A shit ton of morphine.”

“…Oh,” said Quentin with a note of worry now, face falling. He stared at the syringe without moving for a few seconds reading it, and then exploded and swung a hand angrily at nothing. “Fuck!”

“I don’t think it’s gonna kill you,” offered Joey, trying to dial him back.

“No—it’s not that,” said Quentin, turning to him distressed, “It’s morphine! That’s what fuck’s about! It’s a painkiller. A great one! Do you have—have any fucking idea how rare those are? Finding a bottle of Advil is like scoring a fucking gold mine out. A-and I had a whole syringe worth of morphine and I just used it all? On me? B-because I was too rushed to read the fucking label?” He’d started pacing and gesturing compulsively as he talked, and when he backed up far enough he bumped into the wall by the cabinet, he just slid down against it all the way to the floor and put his arms up over his head and folded in towards his knees miserably. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I wasted that. I-I could have saved it. We should have been able to split it! Fuck! …fuck…”

Not sure what to do but feeling bad for him, Joey watched for a second, trying to think, and then walked over and slid down carefully beside him. When he got there, Quentin glanced over at him from beneath his arms.

“It’s not so bad,” tried Joey encouragingly, trying to think of what might be good to say.

“No, it is,” said Quentin, depressed, and with his voice muffled from his sleeve. He lowered his arms and folded them over his knees instead, then buried his chin and half his face in them. “Morphine’s such a … …. ….fuck!”

“What?” said Joey, confused.

“I can’t think of the word,” said Quentin, visibly distressed.

Yeah I’ll bet. I’m amazed you’re still kind of coherent at all, considered Joey, who thought better of saying that out loud and instead said, “…Important? Uh. Useful?”

“No,” said Quentin, hung up on this, “Not easy to find—like rare—OH! Fuck! Rare—that was the word.” He went right back to overwhelmingly depressed the second the word was found, like he’d flipped an internal light switch, and kept plowing straight ahead down the depression line, gesturing as he spoke and looking miserably over at Joey. “It’s such a rare find! I’ve never gotten morphine before. Or opium, or anything really good for pain. I could have saved it; we could have taken a little bit to make really bad days better when they hit—it should have been for all of us! Or saved for an emergency! I-I –fuck, a, a whole syringe full? A lot of us could have gotten enough to help at least once. But I fucked up. That’s all gone, and I’ll probably never find one again.” He stared forward for a second and then smiled sadly and leaned his head forward against the side of his arm and stared unfocusedly at nothing. “I wasted the whole thing on myself and, I don’t even feel good.”

Joey watched him and swallowed. He had no idea what to say. “…Maybe, since it left some once now, that means the Entity will put more morphine in the realm?” he suggested after a second.

Quentin looked over at him somewhere between a tiny bit hopeful and about ready to cry over how little he thought it was true.

“It might be,” said Joey encouragingly, hoping the one plus side to being absolutely wasted on morphine might be that he’d be easily swayed into avoiding a depression spiral. “You said you never found one before. The Entity adds stuff sometimes. I bet it’s just a sign you’ll find more now.”

For a second, Quentin watched him, expression unchanging, and then he smiled at him and looked a lot better. “You think?”

“Yeah, for sure,” lied Joey.

“…Yeah, maybe,” decided Quentin after a moment, cheering up. He glanced over at Joey and smiled at him again and then started to uncoordinatedly pull himself back up. “You’re right. I’m being stupid and just wasting time feeling bad for myself like an idiot—I should keep looking.”

“Uhhh---I don’t think that’s such a good idea!” said Joey quickly, hopping up after him.

Quentin gave him a confused look.

“You heard what I said, right? –Before the more morphine thing. You’re super fucked up,” said Joey, “You’re on like, a fuck ton of morphine and making a bunch of noise in the Doctor’s home base. If you don’t leave, he’s gonna come find you.”

Quentin waved the concern away with a hand and turned back to the mostly ransacked cabinet. “Nah—I’m fine. Just don’t feel pain right now.”

“Dude, you are not fine,” argued Joey, following after.

“I really am,” said Quentin in the voice of someone who was definitely not not 80% out of it on drugs. He turned around and put a hand on Joey’s chest, started at it for a second, and then moved it up to the shoulder he’d been trying to aim for and missed, and patted it reassuringly. “I’m good. Thanks though.”

Joey just stared at him as he turned back to the cabinet. Quentin looked down at the drawers and noticed the broken one and its scattered contents and blinked at it in surprise.

“Oh yeah,” he said to himself after a second, “I guess I should pick that up.”

He took a step forward, lost his footing, and rammed headlong into the cabinet. Joey winced as Quentin bounced off it and fell to his knee, and then looked at the big wooden thing in confusion. The guy held up his hands and watched them shake for a couple of seconds, and then, looking supremely lost by all of the things happening, made it to his feet again and tried to get his wobbly body to stay still, confused and clearly trying to remember or figure out something in silence as he did, and having a hard time doing it despite the absolutely complete focus he was giving to the task.

“See what I mean?” asked Joey.

At the sound of his voice, Quentin glanced over with a look on his face like he’d completely forgotten Joey was there.

“You’re not fine,” said Joey again.

“I’m good,” promised Quentin, not even really responding to what he’d said in a way that made complete sense. He looked even more fucked up now than he had when Joey had come in there. More than a couple seconds ago even. Shit, I was right about it having not totally set in before, I think.

Joey stared through the floor for a second, trying to guess how long he had before the Doctor had them both, and to figure out what to do. He felt something bump his chest and looked up.

“Hey, Joey, could you hold this?” asked Quentin, holding out the broken drawer.

How the…fuck? Where did-? I’ve never said my own name in a trial, so who did he hear it from?

“Uh. Why?” said Joey, taking it anyway because he didn’t think not to, still kind of stuck on the fact that apparently at some point Quentin had learned his name.

“I can’t get it to go back in, and I don’t know where else to put it,” said Quentin as if that made perfect sense.

“You want me to hold it forever?” asked Joey in disbelief.

“Can you?” asked Quentin, surprised, taking that for some reason as a 100% genuine and doable offer.

“No!” said Joey.

“Okay,” said Quentin, seeing the choked back urge to laugh on Joey’s face and grinning in return, even though he pretty clearly didn’t get what had been so funny to him, “Then just find somewhere good to put it, I guess.”

As soon as Quentin turned his back, Joey hocked it onto a nearby hospital bed to deafen the thump.

Over by the cabinet, Quentin opened the second-to-bottom drawer, and gave a tired sigh. Joey scooted a foot closer and saw it was completely empty. He watched as the survivor tried again with the last one, and got the same results.

“Is stuff usually empty?” asked Joey, genuinely curious. Other than stealing alcohol from the Deathslinger, he’d never like, actually really gone somewhere looking for supplies.

“Uh, kinda,” said Quentin, glancing up, “I mean. There’s always good stuff somewhere, but it can take a long time to find it.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” asked Joey, watching and then following as Quentin made it shakily to his feet and took several swaying paces over to a little desk about six feet to the right and started to go through its drawers too. “I mean—don’t people usually find you and…” He made a slashing motion over his throat, but Quentin turned away just as he started to do it and didn’t see, so he added, “uh—kill you? Or. I know we’re not really supposed to kill you if we find you out here, but. I’m sure some of them do. Or at least fuck you up.”

“Hmm?” said Quentin, auditory-processing on a delay, and then before Joey actually had a chance to repeat himself, “Oh. Yeah—they do.” He picked up what looked like an empty can of something and gave it the world’s most displeased look, then kept digging. “Uh, I mean, it’s risky. But if we don’t come get good supplies where it’s dangerous between trials, we’ll only have shitty ones in the trials to use when we get hurt. And I’m kind of a medic, so it’s my—” He paused, holding up a little package and turning it over a few times trying to figure out what it was, seemed to recognize the object that was completely foreign to Joey, opened his medkit on top of the desk, dropped whatever it was inside with the other meager supplies he’d collected so far, and went back to searching. “—Uh, my responsibility kind of, to have stuff to help people,” he finished, “Sometimes you die out here and lose everything, or you get hurt, and slowed down in trials for a bit because of it, but.” He shrugged. “The alternative is…”

“…Not great?” offered Joey, seeing him struggle to recall a word again.

Quentin glanced up at him and nodded, then flashed him a little smile and kept going.

It still felt so weird to get smiled at by a survivor. It…made him feel guilty, like he was tricking someone into doing what he wanted while they were fucked up. Which he didn’t—he wouldn’t have…

“Hey, gauze. Not great, but I’ll take it,” said Quentin to himself, taking a big roll of gauze from the last drawer on the desk and putting it in his still mostly empty medkit. He stood up and swayed, then caught himself on the wall, looking almost too blitzed to even be confused or surprised by that this time, and glanced over at Joey. “You see anything good on your way through here?”

“Uh—” he actually tried to remember. Had there been? I didn’t look in anything. I have no idea. “Dunno.”

“Okay, well, good luck tagging,” said Quentin, words friendly and a little slurred, coming in at the wrong cadences as he started to walk past him. “You know—Nea really likes that. I bet you two would have fun doing that sometime,” he offered, pausing to glance at Joey again. “You should ask her.” He stepped on past then, heading for the hall, and almost immediately his foot hit a little jut at the place the floor of the hall and the floor of the room met and didn’t quite connect right, and that was enough to take him down again, but Joey shot forward and caught him this time, saving him from crashing headlong into an old cart out in the hall.

“Whoa—” said Quentin, trying to get his balance back a little. And then, flashing him a smile, “Thanks.”

“Dude, you have to stop,” said Joey urgently with his voice hushed, “You’re gonna—”

“It’s okay, really,” said Quentin with great assurance, thumping him on the shoulder again as he tried to straighten back up. “I feel fine.”

“You are not fine, dumbass!” hissed back Joey.

“Wow. Rude. Seriously, though—I’m pretty sure I’m good,” said Quentin, not worried at all. He started to walk again, thoroughly nonplussed, and began humming to himself, a melody Joey had never heard, swaying a little as he walked, and seeming about the most happily contented Joey had seen somebody in years. Joey stayed frozen, gaping at him as did a few really bad what Joey was pretty sure had been dance steps crossing to the next room, and started singing, “Oh my God we’re back again. Brothers, sisters, everybody sing—gonna bring the flavor, show you how. Got a question for you, better answer nooow.”

He made it into the far room and started getting louder. He’s lost his mind! thought Joey in a panic, breaking out of his initial shock and sprinting after him.

When he made it through the doorway, the dude was still kind of uncoordinatedly bobbing while he turned in a circle and scanned the room for potential storage areas, blissfully carefree as fuck. “Am I original? Yeeeah. Am I the only one? Yeaah. Am I s—”

“—What the fuck are you doing!” hissed Joey, bolting in and catching the surprised teenager by the arm.

“Uhm. I—wait. Didn’t we have this conversation before?” asked Quentin, like he was genuinely trying to parse some surreal deja-vu.

“Yeah! And you said you’d stop singing!” said Joey.

“…Oh yeah,” said Quentin in surprise, remembering. “Huh.” He immediately started to sing again, eyes focused on nothing at all like he’d gotten so lost in his head in the 0.4 seconds since agreeing that singing was off the table that he’d forgotten Joey was even there. “Am I sexual, ye—"

“—No you’re not!” shot back Joey, and Quentin stopped singing and looked at him kind of betrayed.

“It’s—that wasn’t a question—it’s a Backstreet Boys song,” said Quentin, a little hurt.

“A what?” said Joey. No idea what the fuck he was talking about.

“What?” asked Quentin with a huge amount of intense incredulity in his slightly slurred tone. “Y. You don’t know them?”

Joey just have him a disbelieving look.

“Everybody? I Want it That Way? As Long as You Love Me?” When Joey said nothing, he tried, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart?” like it was the last bastion on earth and Joey would just have to know that one. Quentin waited a second for an answer that didn’t come and took in the completely lost look on Joey’s face. “Holy shit, really?”

Joey made a hopeless gesture, not even sure which part of this to respond to.

“Ah, that sucks!” said Quentin with incredibly genuine sympathy, “I wish I had an album. I guess it’s kinda fun though,” he added with a grin, like something amazing had just occurred to him, “because that means you get to hear them for the first time now.” He looked up at nothing, thinking. “They’re not really the kind of music I listen to, but Everybody and I Want it That Way are catchy, and I’ll give them that, and I wouldn’t usually tell people this, but I actually really like Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.”

“Dude, you have to stop singing,” pleaded Joey.

“Well, I will now,” promised Quentin, “Sorry—didn’t know I was spoiling the song. I thought everybody’d heard it.”

“That’s not really the problem!” whispered Joey.

“It’s—that’s cool,” decided Quentin, not listening at all. He looked off at nothing and then back at Joey, smiled, and slung an arm over his shoulder. “I like people who want to hear songs for real the first time they hear it—man, music’s so fucking cool. I have a record player back home—there’s just nothing like hearing a vinyl for the first time. Really! It’s like, magical what a difference it makes! I wish I could show you—”

Joey pulled Quentin’s arm back from over his shoulder and moved back a half-step. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“W…” Quentin looked at his arm, and then Joey in confusion. “It’s a friendly gesture,” he offered. “You were nicer than I thought, and we were talking about music, so—”

“—Yeah, we’re not friends,” said Joey, crossing his arms and feeling a way intenser reaction to this than he’d expected. His heart was thudding. Why the hell did you just blow up at him? He doesn’t even know what he’s doing.

“… I know,” said Quentin, drawing back his arm slowly and smile fading, looking kind of genuinely hurt for a second, “I said ‘friendly’ gesture, not a friend one. Like. When you meet a nice classmate and you’re hanging out the first time. So people can tell you don’t want to stab them in the back.”

“What?” said Joey.

“Yeah well, maybe not at school,” said Quentin, following his own logic path, “But you know. Here people are…harder to be sure—because half of them are always trying to kill you. Well. If you’re one of us.”

I guess, thought Joey, saying nothing.

“You know,” said Quentin, glancing up at him and smiling again, earlier hurt forgotten, “I’m really relieved, actually. I thought when you showed up, I was gonna have to fight you off with my medkit and probably get killed again.”

“Does every killer you’ve ever met out here try to kill you, even though we’re not supposed to outside trials?” asked Joey, genuinely surprised, and un-crossing his arms.

“No,” said Quentin, thinking about that, “But I figured you would. You hate me.”

“What?” said Joey, taken aback, “No I don’t. Why would you think that?”

“W…because you always kill me,” said Quentin, confused, working hard to find the right answers through the fog in his head.

“Don’t all of us?” said Joey, almost insulted. I’m not worse than anyone else! I’m probably one of the nicer killers! I’m not super cruel, or—

“Yeah, I mean, none of you are really merciful or anything, you’re all kind of monsters,” answered Quentin very serious and sincerely, “But most of you let the last one go at least sometimes. All of Legion does. But you’ve never let me take the hatch. Julie lets me take hatch sometimes if I did well in the trial and she’s in a good mood. Susie lets me take it. Even Frank’s let me go before if I’m the last one. But you never have. Not even one time out of so many trials, so you must really hate me. I’ve never known why you do. …Did I do something? That I just don’t…remember? If I did something really bad to you to make you hate me, I’m sorry.”

“I—” Joey stared at him, kind of bowled over by a feeling it took him a second to realize was a mixture of distress and horror. “No. No, you—I don’t hate you—I. I do that because you’re so easy to catch,” he tried to explain, stepping a little closer. Quentin watched him take the step and didn’t back up, but he wasn’t looking at him like he had been before anymore either. Not at all. “That’s all. You come back in at the end in trials if anybody else is still in there—always, no matter how stupid it is, or how obviously it’s a trap. Even if you know you’ve got no chance of saving them, you’ll try. So when you’re there, even if I have a really bad trial, and no sacrifices at all by the time the gates are up, I always know I can get at least two kills if I can just manage to down even one person before you’re all out, because you’ll always come back for anybody I get, no matter how suicidal it is, and then I’ll be okay. Free kill. It’s like a safety net. I can always count on you to try to come sacrifice yourself to save someone, and I pretty much always get both of you, too. I don’t kill you all the time because I hate you, I just do it because it’s…easy.”

He lost steam on the last word, thinking for the first moment for real about what he was saying.

Even with the haze of drugs in his system, Quentin was working hard to listen, glassy eyes fixed on his, and Joey could tell that he’d heard it all and understood what he’d said, but the guy didn’t say anything at all. Just looked at him in silence. Looking kind of sad, or wounded, or some other emotion Joey didn’t even know the name of that was hurt and sad and lonely and a lot of other quiet, painful stuff all at the same time, and he just held Joey’s gaze with that emotion in his eyes and said nothing. Just looked at him.

Fuck. Fuck! I—

After a few long seconds, Quentin looked slowly away and nodded.

What did I say? I—shit. I. Joey had thought it would make him feel better—why the fuck did you think that? Fuck! Idiot! He wanted to say he was sorry, but there was no way he could. He didn’t even know if it was true. It—it was just practical, killing him. Joey was alright, but he wasn’t the best at hunts, and sometimes shit went south in trials. He liked getting Quentin in his trials, because that always made them easier. Even a worst-case scenario was pretty much always gonna be a 2-kill for him. But he-

“I’m gonna go back to searching,” said Quentin very quietly, finally glancing his way again for a moment, but he was barely looking at him anymore, “You can go back to tagging now. I’ll be quiet. …Thanks for…giving me a warning, instead of murdering me this time.”

“Quentin-“ started Joey as the survivor turned and began working towards the other end of the room unsteadily, using the back of a long bench for support, but he stopped, and let him go. What would he have said anyway? Joey looked at the ground for a second, not seeing the dirty carpet at all. Shit. Shit! Why-? I didn’t. It’s just—I-I don’t have a choice—I. Fuck! Why did I even follow him in here? Why did I talk to him at all! I should just go back, and finish up if I have time, and then get lost, or book if I hear him making noise again. If he wants to get found by the Doctor and tortured for a couple—

He stopped, mind flashing him images of a death he had been working hard to repress since the day it happened. That had been the first time Joey had ever died, and it had been awful. Usually he could just not think about it so much, and just be angry it had happened, but he was feeling electricity run up his backbone like a shiver, remembering the way that smelled, and burned. He had thought he knew what the sound of his own voice screaming sounded like before that, but he hadn’t. Not a real scream. He just hadn’t known how different the sound could be. Joey felt sick with the memory, seeing the Doctor’s grinning face in his head and shuddering involuntarily at the sight of it so close to his face in his mind’s eye, and then hating himself for doing that like a fucking coward—like the guy was better than him, or stronger, or anything. He’d just gotten lucky that last time—they were all strongest on their own turf. But, fuck. It—

Joey turned his head and looked for Quentin, and saw him easily, walking unsteadily towards the far end of the room. Something more off about the walk than before. He was moving…it was almost like he was nodding off on his feet or something. Quentin made it to the end of the bench, though, and behind a big secretarial area against the wall near it, and started to try and look through shelves, and Joey heard him start singing again, very quietly this time, words barely decipherable from where he was about fifteen feet off.

“…step outside. An angry voice and one who cried, ‘We'll give you…everything and more. The strain’s too much, can't take much…more.”

Oh come on, thought Joey desperately, You’re gonna go sing a sad song now? You’re doing this on purpose!

“…Oh I’ve…” Quentin stopped singing and took a couple deep breaths like he was short on it before he kept going again. “Oh, I've walked on water…run through fire. Can’t seem to…feel it. Anymore…”

Wait. Something was wrong.

“Can’t seem to feel it anymore,” whispered Quentin again, staring blankly at nothing, struggling to keep his eyes open. He looked down at his hands and held one of them up in confusion and tried to focus on it.

“Quentin?” asked Joey. He didn’t even glance up, just stayed staring at his hands. Joey didn’t think he was even aware he was still in the room with him anymore. Wait, were you sweating before? What the fuck? What was he looking at?

Quentin didn’t move at all. He just stayed standing there, breathing shakily, eyes fixed on his fingertips. Joey took two steps closer carefully and tried again.

“Quentin?”

He turned this time, surprised—no. Afraid. And found Joey, and his eyes—what the fuck? “Oh no,” whispered Joey. Gaping. Quentin’s pupils were so small he could barely see them at all, like they’d drowned in his huge blue eyes. He didn’t think he’d ever seen someone’s pupils that vanished. That was wrong—that was really, really wrong, especially from someone who was scared. Okay-okay—he was staring at his hands—why. Joey looked frantically and saw why immediately. His fingertips were blue.

Joey started to bolt forwards, and Quentin reacted with alarm, stumbling back from him and losing his balance immediately, falling against the back wall.

“S-Stay away from me!” managed Quentin frantically through desperate breathing Joey didn’t think had anything to do with fear. Joey didn’t stop. He vaulted the low wall sectioning off the secretarial area and landed inside it only a few feet back. Quentin tried to struggle up and get away from him, and collapsed halfway though the effort, arms giving out, and rolled onto his back and crawled back on his elbows instead, looking up at him with such intense panic and terror it was kind of sickening. It was like he wasn’t the same person he had been a minute ago at all.

Fuck—fuck—he’s really fucked up—this is really bad.

“Calm down,” tried Joey, starting to go towards him while holding up his hands, palm-out, “I’m just trying to help you.”

There wasn’t even a fraction of belief this time in the person opposite him. He just kept trying weakly and horribly to get away. “No you won’t!” he shot back desperately, pupils tiny pinpricks of black in vacant eyes as he tried to keep away from Joey without the ability to really do it anymore at all.

“I am—I am,” promised Joey, keeping his hands up, “Remember? We were just talking a minute ago—I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“You always do!” argued Quentin, hitting the side wall of the little secretarial area and, with nowhere else to go, desperately reaching blindly for a weapon and comping back with a pen leveled at him like a knife, “Don’t come near me!”

Fuck, he’s getting too loud! The Doctor’s gonna hear that! His impulse was to jump him and get a hand over his mouth to shut him the fuck up before it was too late—that pen wasn’t gonna do shit. But. But he could tell that was exactly what Quentin thought he was gonna do, and he had no fucking idea what morphine did to you if you overdosed, but what if he had a heart attack, and—

…and he’d just come back, wouldn’t he? Like he did any other time he died. So it wouldn’t really matter. Right? What was one more. What were any of the deaths. No, thought Joey, feeling overwhelmed and sick in a way he’d never felt before, remembering the one and only death he had experienced so far, No. What were all of them.

“Okay,” said Joey quietly, stopping about three feet from Quentin, crouched, hands still up. “Okay. I’m just trying to help. I know I’m a killer, but we met a few minutes ago, remember? We’re both in the Doctor’s realm, so we’ve got a kind of temporary alliance thing going. Both have to be quiet, or we’ll both get caught, and we’re both gonna die.”

The shaking teenager opposite him watched him in confusion, breathing raggedly, pen still leveled like he really thought that could protect him.

“W-what?” he asked, searching Joey’s face desperately, “I-I don’t—”

Right. Okay—okay maybe… He held up his right hand, and with his left, slowly pulled his mask off. Quentin stayed still, constricted pupils locked on his face, trying to find some sign of familiarity he wasn’t going to find, because he never had seen Joey’s face before, but at least it was a face.

“See?” said Joey calmingly, hand still up. “Remember me? Joey?”

“…Y-yeah,” said Quentin after a second, lowering the pen a little. He swallowed hard. God, he looked so bad. He couldn’t have been sweating for very long, but he’d sweated so much since it had started that he was soaked in it now, and disgusting. This is really, really bad.

“You need help,” said Joey, gesturing towards him, “Look at your fingers.”

Quentin did, and then looked confused and worried to find them blue again and shaking. “Sh-shit,” he managed. He looked up back up at Joey worriedly. “A-am I dying?”

“I-I don’t know,” said Joey, “You took morphine. I think you must have overdosed. Do you know if there’s a way to fix it? Do you—do you need to throw up or something?”

“Oh. Oh, that’s right,” said Quentin shakily, blinking, “I-I. No, I. I took it in a syringe. I can’t throw that up. It’s in my blood.”

“C-can I help you?” offered Joey, a horrible feeling in the pit of his gut. Fuck. Fuck—I’m gonna watch him die from an overdose. I don’t want to know what that looks like.

“I-I don’t. I don’t. I don’t….I don’t know,” said Quentin, voice deteriorating as he went, like he might cry.

Joey looked around, as if he might spot something that would miraculously help, but there was nothing—he wouldn’t have even known a cure if he’d seen one. He didn’t know what that was! He had no idea what to do.

Quentin was breathing more desperately now, and his arms went lax at his side, not fighting anymore at all. He looked up at Joey and he was scared. Really, really scared. “I,” he tried, struggling to talk through shallow, frantic breathing, “I can’t breathe right. I’m-I’m choking. I can’t. I can’t breathe. And. And I can barely see you at all.” He teared up, and Joey felt sick. “With either eye. Not just my left one. I’m-I’m…”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” promised Joey, moving close to him and putting his hands on his shoulders. He didn’t shudder or try to pull away, just kept trying desperately to breathe, and when he looked back at Joey, he was looking at him like a friend, and that just made everything so much more awful, and somehow he was glad for it at the same time as if felt like a knife in his gut. “You’re gonna be fine.”

Quentin shook his head.

“You don’t know anything about what to do?” asked Joey, desperate for the answer to change.

“I…” Quentin swallowed hard, thinking. “I’ve. W-we don’t ever get painkillers. It’s. It’s supposed to come with an antidote, m-morphine, in case you do what I did, b-but I don’t remember any when I got it.”

“Okay! Okay—Where did you get it?” asked Joey.

Quentin tried to point to something, and when he saw that his arm was shaking too badly to obey him, he said, “There’s a—another. Nother room. I…”

“The one I found you in first?” asked Joey.

Quentin shook his head.

Fuck! “Which one? What did it look like?” pressed Joey.

“…A hospital room,” said Quentin in a whisper, eyes filling up. Which had to mean he was too out of it to think right and remember, but still there enough to know that wouldn’t be enough for Joey to ever find it, and failing to remember meant there was no way he could be saved. Which was so fucking cruel.

“Maybe it’s not so bad,” tried Joey, taking his hand and closing his fingers around it, “Maybe it’s not a fatal dose.”

Quentin looked up at him for a few seconds, struggling and sick and shaking, and then looked slowly away at nothing past the floor. “…What does it matter,” he whispered, expression changing. Despairing. He grimaced then and choked back a sound of pain, wincing and pressing an arm to his stomach, and then looked up at Joey again with something between hope and desperation in his eyes. “Y-you have a knife?”

“Yeah,” said Joey, reaching for it, ready to try anything.

Quentin watched him for a second, breathing shakily, eyes becoming increasingly glossy and wincing at pain that hadn’t got bad enough yet that he had to vocalize it, then choked out, “Kill me?”

“What?” asked Joey, horrified, drawing the knife back like he thought Quentin would reach out and snatch it from him to do it himself.

“It. Please,” Quentin managed. So fucked up and out of it and lost. “It hurts so much. It’s getting worse. I. I can’t…I can’t see anything. It’s all blurry. I can’t breathe. I-“ He looked up and took a second to find Joey’s eyes, then held them, fingers digging into the hand Joey had given him to hold. “I’ve died before, but I. I don’t even feel like me. It’s all…It’s all wrong. I don’t—I don’t like feeling like this. I don’t wanna die like this. Please.”

“I-I. I can’t,” whispered Joey, sickened.

“Why not?” asked Quentin brokenly, “You have. But you—?” He looked so hurt and betrayed and hopeless, and Joey felt his grip on his hand slacken. “You won’t? The one time I. I want to…” He started breathing horribly then, like he couldn’t get his body to do it at all, and looked panicked, and started gasping, and then as fast as that had started, he was suddenly barely breathing at all, chest refusing to rise and fall like his brain was only getting the signal to breathe on a delay, picking up one-tenth of the signals he was trying to give it. It would be nothing for several seconds, and then a ragged shallow gasp, and he could see him trying to breathe through all of it, trying so fucking hard, and failing.

“Fuck! Fuck—I want to help!—Isn’t there something I can do?” Joey pleaded, grabbing his hand and trying to think, but Quentin couldn’t answer him anymore. His skin was changing color, and he was shuddering, struggling to keep his eyes open. FUCK! Fuck! Isn’t there something I can do? Anything? He was fine a minute ago! What the fuck!

Joey felt the fingers on the hand he was grabbing close around his, and looked down to see Quentin clutching it weakly. He looked at Quentin’s face and for a second they met eyes and the other guy looked so out of it he was barely there at all, but he was there enough—enough to be aware how wrong it was, and to be terrified.

“No-no, come on,” said Joey frantically, “You said there’s medicine to fix it—right? Just tell me what it’s called! I can—”

Wait! Wait—when he walked in the room—the first time he saw him today—Quentin had been looking for a bottle he was already holding, right? Maybe. No—but that was a pill bottle. No way it’s what he needs. Fuck! No—no wait, but—but he is remembering badly. And maybe if he’s remembering badly. He’s scavenging, right? H-he could have taken it—he would, right? He doesn’t think so, but he f-forgot the bottle, and he forgot me! It has to be there, right? He said he didn’t even check to see what he was taking was, because there’s only ever two kinds of drugs in syringes he finds here, and he keeps both, so it has to be there it has to be, right? He would keep it! Right? thought Joey desperately.

Moving urgently fast, he tore his hand away from Quentin and shot the two-feet over to where he’d left the medkit on one of the shelves in the secretarial area beside them. He felt him try to hang on to his hand when he ripped it away, and thought he tried to say something, but there was no time—he—

“Hang on, hang on,” called Joey without looking, ripping the case open, “I think—” Fuck—fuck. Syringes, pill bottle, gauze, band-aids, thread, thread, fuck! –there—package—no—bandaids again—shit! It would be near the top, it!

Desperate, he snatched the same container Quentin had taken the used syringe he’d given him earlier from, hoping for a miracle, and it had weight to it. Weight he thought might be beyond just the empty syringe Quentin had put back in there, and— Fuck! Yes! There! The top was ripped open, where he’d gotten the syringe out, but there was a partition about 2/3rds of the way though the case, and the last third was still sealed, and Joey ripped it open with a vengeance and snatched up the little syringe waiting inside—there—on the label. ‘Naloxone. 2mg.’ Fuck! Is that the right drug? He had no idea, but it had to be, right? What else would have been in there? There were no instructions on the stupid fucking box or the label or in the container at all, but it had to be, it had to. It is—I know it is.

“Okay,” said Joey, hurrying above Quentin again, ripping the cover off the needle tip and trying to figure out where the fuck to inject him. F-fuck, a vein, right? That’s where doctors do it—in your arm, right? Kinda by your elbow, or up by your wrist? He couldn’t see a fucking visible vein that wasn’t tiny in his wrist, so he grabbed Quentin’s left arm and tugged it straight and readied the needle, eyes on the thick blue vein there on the inside of his elbow, praying to God that he’d do this right. Not too deep not too shallow fuck fuck fuck come on, you can do it.

Below him, Quentin’s skin had gotten tinged with purple and blue, and he was choking but too weak not to be doing it frantically anymore, just weakly, and it was like watching someone drown, except it was so much fucking worse, because he couldn’t just pull him out of the water—there was no water—there was air, and he just couldn’t make his body take it. He was soaked in sweat and looking at Joey with pinpoint pupils and glossy eyes, and he tried to say something, but Joey couldn’t tell what it had been, only how distressed it was making him that he couldn’t.

“It’s okay,” promised Joey, sliding the needle slowly into his arm and trying to force his own hands to quit shaking, “I got the drug—you’re gonna be fine.” He pressed down on the plunger, and watched the liquid go in, desperately hoping for a miracle.

Beside him, Quentin stopped breathing.

Joey didn’t register it at first, because he’d been struggling so hard, and he was focused on getting in all of the drug, but when the tenth breath that should have finally gone through and given the teenager a gasp of air didn’t come, and then didn’t come on an eleventh, a twelfth, a thirteenth beat, Joey felt it. He turned his head and stared at Quentin in frozen shock, almost as still as the body beneath him had suddenly gone.

“No,” said Joey quietly, not ready to believe it, watching, waiting for him to breathe again. Fuck. What if it was. What if that’s another pain killer? What if he could have made it through that if I’d just helped him and done nothing. Fuck! I thought—I.

Slowly, he pulled the needle back out of his arm, feeling sick, eyes still on Quentin’s face, and then there was a motion—a—he hadn’t been looking, but he thought his hand had twitched. Wait—

“Are you not dead?” asked Joey desperately, feeling a tiny spark of hope. The body didn’t respond. But he— “No! No way! Fuck it!  I did everything right! I saved you!” argued Joey to the form beneath him he refused to believe was anything but unconscious, “You’re not dead!”

He’s just not breathing! If the drug works, it probably takes it a minute—I can keep him breathing for a minute. Fuck you! You’re not dying now—not after all of that! Come on!

Joey shoved Quentin’s jacket and necklace aside, wincing at the fresh claw marks still there, placed his palms over each other in the center of his chest like he’d learned in highschool, and started compressions.

“Come on come on come on,” he whispered, keeping time to a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, all the way up to 30. He hit thirty, moved an inch to the right, tipped back Quentin’s head and held his nose, then breathed into his mouth twice. Come on come on. Again. Back—1 through thirty. Mouth open, breathe for him, again. Again. He hit 120 and kept going. Again. 27, 28, 29, 30—breathe. Head back, mouth open, nose closed. Breathe. Take a deep breath, blow in. Breathe for him. Th—

He was halfway to ramming the full force of his palms against the guy’s ribcage, already mentally ticking off 1 in his head again, when he saw it was moving shakily up to meet him, and he stopped, staring. The chest lowered weakly, and rose again, and he looked over at Quentin’s face and saw the tiniest mist in the cold air of Lerry’s Memorial Institute as he exhaled.

Joey fell back onto the floor and sat still, watching, a huge smile spreading slowly across his face, and then he laughed, overcome with relief. He looked at Quentin’s still features and smiled at him. “You scared the shit out of me.”

For a few seconds, Quentin just kept breathing, and then he coughed weakly and groaned, and slowly opened his eyes to little cracks and blinked weakly, trying to make out the ceiling above.

“…Ow,” whispered Quentin to no one and nothing, still out of it.

Joey grinned.

“Hi.”

Quentin heard him this time, blinked again, and slowly turned his head and looked over at Joey. For a few seconds he just squinted, no recognition or emotion attached at all, no familiarity, or fear, or gladness, or hate, just trying to figure out who he was. Then he said, “…Lee.g…J..Joey…?”

“Yeah,” said Joey, smiling at him.

“Did you kick me?” asked Quentin hoarsely.

“What?” asked Joey, trying not to laugh because of the absurdity of that question to him.

“My ribs feel like shit,” groaned Quentin, turning his head and looking back up at the ceiling again.

“Yeah, well, you quit breathing,” said Joey, proud of himself, “Before the antidote kicked in. I had to give you CPR. It’s better to push too hard than too soft if you’re trying to get someone to breathe. Sorry it hurts—I don’t think I broke anything though.”

“…What?” asked Quentin, turning his head to look at him again.

Joey grinned and opened his mouth to echo himself, and then stopped, a sinking feeling stabbing him in the chest all of a sudden. Oh, Joey, you fucked up here. You should not have done this. This was bad.

What the fuck was he doing? And why? Why—I mean—okay, sure, they were supposed to not kill a survivor outside of a trial. Leaving him alone was fine, shutting him up so the Doctor wouldn’t come—totally normal. M-maybe even trying to warn him off—after all—they weren’t supposed to be friends, but like, that didn’t mean he had to like watching them die. Didn’t have to…to not let a guy so fucked up he didn’t even realize he was high know he was going to get electrocuted to death really slowly for making so much noise, right? Yeah. Yeah—that—that was fine. Anybody might have done that. But. But this? He’d been about to die, hadn’t he? Probably? He’d been unconscious, so if he’d just done nothing, Quentin would have just ended up dead on the floor here and gone back to his campfire again without his meager supply of medical shit he’d collected so far, and start over. No harm done. He hadn’t even been—been like, saving him from pain. The painful part had been over. He’d been out. Why did you do this? Why not let him die this time? What did it matter?

Right. …Right, Quentin had. He’d said that too, hadn’t he. Asked what it would matter if he died one more time.

Shit. … Shit! Was it—was it always like that, for—for all of them? He couldn’t…couldn’t imagine watching Frank get ripped up by a chainsaw, day after day—his best friend? While he—he couldn’t do anything, or knew he was about to be next? Trial after trial after trial? Could something like that happen so many times it didn’t even matter anymore? Could you get used to that? And if so, then why? Why do you always come back for the people I catch in trials, if it doesn’t matter if I get them one more time anyway? If death is just—just fucking nothing anymore. God, it couldn’t be nothing anymore, could it? He was scared of it, and he’d died—only once, but. But.

But you were too, thought Joey desperately, remembering the terror in the other teen’s face when he’d been choking to death. You were scared. You were so scared you wanted me to mercy kill you, because it would be quicker, even though you were scared of me killing you at all a few minutes ago. So it has to matter to you, doesn’t it?

But maybe it didn’t. Maybe it couldn’t. And he was suddenly, immensely, deeply afraid of that. Not all the deaths themselves. Joey felt like…like those could only matter. He’d only been killed one time so far, but he didn’t think he’d ever have be able to get used to the way that had felt—there were just some things in life you couldn’t—like getting punched. It didn’t matter if people fought you a lot, or you got picked on and beat up every day at school—maybe you got used to the idea of bullying, but you never got used to the way a fist stung against cheekbone or felt rammed into your gut. You just didn’t. Other things too… But. But maybe this didn’t—hadn’t—not at all. Maybe it couldn’t anymore. Maybe if you died so much, got cut down and carved up and electrocuted and drugged and burned and eaten and ripped to shreds one too many times, it stopped mattering at all if there was ever a time that you didn’t. Because why would it? Death would just be back for you the next hour. So it. It probably hadn’t even done anything at all. Except fucking made him all confused and angry and—fuck! He didn’t even know how he felt except bad. How could it not matter, he thought desperately, still saying nothing, and watching a semi-conscious guy his age who might have been a classmate or a friend or anything at all in another life blink back at him in confusion, still waiting for an answer he no longer knew how to give. How could it not matter that I saved you! It should! It should…

But fuck. It didn’t. And he got that now.

I never should have done this, thought Joey, feeling a little nauseous suddenly and like the room was swaying around him, I didn’t do anything at all for you, and I fucked up my head doing it. I should have just kept walking and let what happened happen. I should never have talked to you at all.

“Are you okay?” asked Quentin. He looked concerned now. Of all the possible stupid things. Concerned. Voice all cracked and dry and weak and scratchy from choking to death, and he was asking Joey if he was okay.

When you think I hate you, thought Joey hopelessly, I didn’t even think I was one of the mean ones, but I’ve been making you miserable for months, and didn’t even see it, because I didn’t have to care or to even know. I could just do anything I wanted, no repercussions, unless I fucked up killing people too much. What the fuck. And.

“What happened?” asked Quentin. Slightly more awake now. Still out of it, but pupils slightly larger than the tiny specks they’d been before, and struggling to focus on his expression. He tried to push himself up onto his elbows and grimaced and stopped only partway there and looked over at Joey again.

“You almost died,” said Joey barely audibly, because he couldn’t keep not answering him at all, and there was nothing else he knew to say.

Quentin looked confused by that, and thought for a second, looking at nothing, brow ridiculously furrowed. “…morphine?” he asked after a moment, glancing up at Joey very unsure.

“Yeah,” answered Joey, no energy in the word.

The survivor thought for another moment, trying to pick up pieces in his head, Joey thought, then met his gaze again. “…You found the antidote?”

“Nah,” said Joey quietly, not looking at his face, “It just wore off.”

For a second, Quentin was quiet. “But…you said you did,” he said after a moment, “You said you…gave me CPR.”

Joey stared at him, feeling cornered. Fuck—I thought you didn’t hear that all the way. Quentin was watching him in unfocused confusion. What am I supposed to say?

He didn’t know, so he didn’t say anything, and Quentin glanced at the ground around him after a few seconds with no response, and saw the syringe and the package where Joey had left it, and picked up the empty needle and shakily brought it towards his face to read the label. “Nal…Naloxone—you did,” said Quentin, glancing back at him.

Joey shrugged. For a moment, they just stared at each other in complete silence, Quentin still only half propped up, Joey maybe a half foot back, sitting above him on the ground. Joey didn’t really know what either of them was waiting for, but he was afraid to be the first one to speak, or move, so he didn’t.

“…Thank you,” said Quentin finally, and he smiled at him. Like he meant it. And Joey knew it was really the drugs that were still in there that meant it, and not the teenager at all, but the guy thought he meant it so much that it was hard not to smile back, and so he did for just a second before he could stop himself.

Quentin looked at the ground for a second then, blinking slowly, breathing more regularly now, but eyes still glassy and movements irregular and off, and Joey tried to guess from a distance how high he still was. Not dying at least. His skin isn’t blue anymore, so. That’s the big one. That and uh, breathing.

“Why did you do that?” asked Quentin, looking back up. Just curious. No accusation or suspicion, or anything in the tone but the desire to know. “-Save me?”

“…I don’t know,” said Joey quietly, because he didn’t, and he knew that another fifteen seconds of thinking before he answered later, he still wasn’t going to. And he didn’t want to lie. Not here, not to that question.

Quentin tilted his head and watched him for a few seconds curiously, and then laid back down on the dirty floor and smiled at the ceiling thoughtfully. “Well, thanks. I don’t remember all of it, but that seems really good of you,” he offered.

Joey didn’t say anything.

After a second, Quentin shut his eyes and took a few deep breaths, then started mumbling something to himself, hummed a few bars of one of the songs he’d been singing earlier under his breath, and then sat up. He made it this time too, still a little unsteady, and he turned and glanced over at Joey and offered him a friendly smile and said, “Thanks again. I think I can get up now if I go slow, so I’m gonna go ahead and try to get back to searching,” then grabbed the side of the desk by him and started to attempt to pull himself up.

“WHAT?” exploded Joey in barely hissed indignation, shooting halfway to his feet because he expected the other guy to collapse in about 2.4 seconds at most.

“Supplies,” said Quentin, who had made it up to one foot and one knee with the help of the desk, wobbled a little with an arm out, and then glanced back at him once he got his balance, “I should look for some more before I go back to the campfire.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” hissed Joey, losing it, “You—you fucking unbelievably stupid dumbass! No! You’re still high, you just almost died, you’re already making too much noise again, and you’re gonna get caught if you stay! –And you want to keep going? You’re fucking insane!”

“I am not,” replied Quentin kind of indignantly, “I’m okay—you gave me an antidote, so my head will clear up—is clearing, and I’ll be good to keep going.” He started trying to make it all the way to his feet with a lot of arm strength and effort because his legs weren’t super dependable right then.

“Why!” asked Joey, “What’s wrong with you! Why are you so set on killing yourself to get stupid medical supplies! They won’t even help you much anyway!”

Quentin stopped. He turned his head and looked at Joey and he had a look on his face like a friend of his had just smacked him and he didn’t even know why. Shit—I shouldn’t have—

“They do help,” said Quentin quietly, like he was trying to make it more true just by the way he was saying it.

Joey thought about saying nothing, because he was pretty sure he’d sort of hurt his feelings before, but the stupid fucking dumbass survivor was going to stick around and get himself killed, and then come out again the next day and the next, and for what? It just—It wasn’t worth it! He was wrong!

“They don’t,” said Joey, shaking his head, “Not enough. You’re risking your life out here all the time for no reason.” He picked up the medkit from the floor, and Quentin watched him in what was almost alarm, and tried to reach out and grab it back, and just about lost his balance without both arms propping him against the desk, and had to stop to keep himself standing. Joey held up the case, watching the kind of frantic look on the other teenager’s face as he watched him, obviously afraid he was going to chuck it across the room or something, or break it. Like people looked at you if you had their paper and were holding it up above a running sink at school. Like he was going to take this one stupid flimsy fucking piece of nothing the other guy had and break it for no reason. And you would care. That would hurt you—it’d be so easy. Why the fuck do you care? You shouldn’t! God it’s—it’s nothing!

“Joey, please, I—” asked Quentin, eyes still on the case.

“—It’s not worth it,” cut in Joey, shaking his head again, “It’s not gonna help you. Coming out here all the time? It’s a waste. None of this is gonna be enough to really matter.”

Quentin stared at him.

“Come on, Quentin, think!” said Joey, “What’s one more roll of thread gonna let you do? Stitch up your leg a little bit better so it’s fresh for the next beartrap? Extend how long it takes you to bleed to death? That’s nothing! It’s fucking nothing! You could have gotten caught by the Doctor out here and tortured to death—it’s not worth the risk!”

“—It is!” said Quentin.

“Why?” shot back Joey, desperate for him to reassess the situation and just fucking go home. “How is this possibly worth it?”

“…Because… I don’t have anything else I can do,” said Quentin. He didn’t look great. His expression was hurt, and his voice was kind of…broken, when he spoke. “Y-you don’t understand,” he tried, still looking from Joey to the case like the worst possible thing in the world would be for him to take that shitty little piece of metal and crush it under his foot, or hock it out a window into somewhere he would never be able to get it back. “We. We go into trials every day, and you—you can’t get used to that. To being hurt. To-to dying. And it’s not fair—it’s stacked so we can never win against you, even when we try—even if all of us try—not in a fight. We can only live if we run away, and make it out in time, and even on a day all of us have a great trial and all four make it out alive, there is never gonna be a day where there’s a trial where you don’t end up hurt. You can’t save anybody. You can’t. Can’t kill, or hurt, or punish any of the things hurting them. You can’t really escape, or go home, or even have time to recuperate and heal enough for that to actually mean something—it’s hell.” He looked up into Joey’s face and held his eyes kind of desperately. “It’s. It’s not much but suffering, not ever. So I—I always go back in, because I might be able to save somebody, even if it’s a trap, and I go out here to get meds, even though y-you’re right, they won’t ever do much—It’s cause I have to. I have to. I have to try. If I’ve got tape and gauze and a needle and thread, I can find somebody hurt in a trial, and tell them we’re gonna make it out together, and I can help them—I know it’s nothing—I know it is, but I. I can try. I can say that, and I can sew up a wound, and let them know they’re not alone, and if I’ve got good supplies, I can make that a little less painful—I can stitch it up faster, I can—I can go more even, so it hurts less. I can stop the bleeding a little faster. I can give somebody hope, maybe—maybe that at least. I have to.” He was struggling to talk, and the look in his eyes and the way he sounded choked up made Joey feel sick in a way he hadn’t known before. “I have to do that, at least, because it’s all I can. I go back, because it might work this time—I might save them, I c-I can’t do anything else. I’ll attack any killer I see, and I’ll try to make them pay, and try to stop them, try to be the one who dies instead, but it’s never enough. I have to—have to try though. Because the second I stop. … The second I stop, none of it’s gonna matter anymore. And I c—” He couldn’t for a second, and he looked away, and swallowed, and tried again. Tried to look at Joey again. Pleading with him for the little box of rusted nothing in his hand. “I can’t…keep going, once it doesn’t. I need it to. We all need it too. Fuck, it—it’s the only thing we even have left. We can’t run, we can’t hide, we can’t fight, or win, or rest, or go home—if we can’t even matter anymore, we’re just.” That was too much, and some of the tears he’d been choking back spilled over and he stopped, broken down and angry and hopeless and ashamed at not having stopped himself from that in front of Joey, and he looked away again, breathing shakily, trying to pull the emotion back inside where it was livable again.

Joey didn’t look at him, because he could see Quentin didn’t want him to, and he would have felt the same way if he’d been the one crying, so he slowly lowered his arm and looked at the medkit instead. These things always looked the same, pretty much. Basic objects. A few different sizes, and shapes, but with little variance between them. But this one was different. He’d painted over the little Medic + that was always on the outside of these, and put a red heart there instead. Like that might somehow fucking matter too.

“Here,” said Joey quietly, holding the case out.

Quentin looked over at him in surprise, and then took it shakily. Once he had it securely, he glanced back over at Joey and took an unsteady breath and then smiled at him again. Like all of that shit that had just been said and the side of it he was on had just been forgotten. “Thank you.”

“Are you sure you can… Are you sure that the morphine wore off enough you can get it done, though?” asked Joey.

Quentin nodded.

“—Look, I understand you need it to matter, and why you think you have to do this,” said Joey kind of desperately, and he actually did, probably not the same way, probably not really at all, not like Quentin, not like any of the survivors—probably he couldn’t, but he’d at least understood it barely enough that just minutes ago he’d thought almost some of the exact same things he’d just heard Quentin say, and God, the alternative was too fucked to really even understand, but… “—but it really doesn’t have to be today. You’re kind of hurt, you should go home. Try again tomorrow instead.”

“I’m doing much better,” promised Quentin, appreciating the sentiment and trying to reassure him, “I’m thinking fine now; I’m sure.”

“How sure?” asked Joey nervously, watching him test his footing and prepare to take a step on his own again, “You know it-it won’t help you to find more supplies if you get killed on the way back.”

“I know, but I think I’m okay,” said Quentin sincerely, glancing back at him. “The antidote must be working really well, because I don’t think I’m high anymore at all.”

“Really?” asked Joey.

“Yeah,” assured Quentin, “I feel fine now.” He took a step and immediately slammed face-first into the floor on top of his medkit with a surprised cry, and Joey winced at the impact.

“Yeah, uh, you sure about that?” asked Joey, trying not to find that funny just a little bit, and failing somehow in spite of everything. His legs hadn’t even held his weight long enough to buckle.

“Uh,” came Quentin’s muffled voice from the floor.

He stayed there for a second. Joey cocked his head and watched him.

“…If you’re high, while you’re high,” asked Quentin, voice still muffled. “how can one tell?”

Joey rolled his eyes and smiled, then walked over beside him and crouched down. “Hey Quentin?”

Quentin turned his head to the side so he could see him and blew some of his curly brown hair out of his face, then sighed. “Yeah?”

“You’re still really fuckin’ blitzed,” said Joey.

“…Fun,” said Quentin miserably. He pressed his face against the floor again. Joey tried not to smile.

For a moment, he let him just deal there on the gross Institute floor, then tried again. “So uh, how about this,” offered Joey, “We go ahead and get you out of here before the Doctor comes and kills us. Huh?”

“But I barely got anything. All I did was waste a bunch of fucking morphine,” came annoyed Quentin’s muffled floor reply.

“Well, some is better than nothing,” offered Joey.

Quentin made an incredibly unhappy sound.

Joey considered that, thinking hard. “…Okay. What about this. We go back now, and on the way, anything good you see in a cabinet we pass or something, I’ll run and snag for you. Does that seem fair enough?”

“…Really?” asked Quentin, turning his head to see him again.

Joey nodded.

Quentin squinted at him for a second. “Why are you being so nice to me today? It’s weird. I mean. I. I appreciate it, and I don’t know if it’s normal me thinking normally doing it, or the morphine making me paranoid, but I’m also kind of…I don’t know. Expecting you to be pulling some big trick to make me think we were friends before you stab me in the back.”

“What?” said Joey, too many points in that sentence to hit at once and mostly just stuck on the last one. Smiling at the ridiculousness of doing that to him right now. “No.”

“We are then?” said Quentin, propping himself up a little on an arm and giving him a hopeful look when he saw Joey had smiled.

“Are?” echoed Joey.

“Friends,” said Quentin.

It felt like being punched in the stomach. Joey felt himself starting to lose the smile, and was suddenly afraid for some reason of how this fucked up on morphine stranger his age would act if he saw the smile go, and tried to keep it instead. Feeling sick. You are lying now if you say yes. You’re a monster. Don’t do that—I know it’s complicated. I know we can’t stop. But you can’t tell him we’re friends it’s too fucked up—you can’t.

“Yeah,” said Joey, managing to keep his smile.

And Quentin believed it. He smiled back, in a way that, fucked up on morphine or not, was so much more real than Joey’s was, and said, “…Wow. Good. I-I hoped so. Huh. I never thought I’d say that to a…well, a killer. Are you coming over to our side?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” managed Joey, struggle to freeze his smile and keep it there. He offered Quentin an arm, desperate to change the subject to anything else. “Come on—let’s get going before we’re in trouble.

Quentin took the arm and Joey pulled him up. “You should,” continued Quentin, unfortunately not having been distracted into missing a single beat, “I mean—you’re…weirdly cool, and, good, and it’s not like you can keep killing people and, uh,” he gestured to himself and the arm Joey was supporting him with, “This kind of stuff too.”

“…Yeah,” said Joey. He put one of Quentin’s arms over his shoulder to more easily help support his weight.

“I’d—” Quentin started to offer.

“—And uh, maybe actually keep it down a little this time, dumbass?” Joey cut him off, trying to sound jokey, but desperate to stop whatever he’d been about to say, because none of this was fun. It was fucking unbearable. “You do remember there’s a sadistic serial killer somewhere in here, right?”

“You mean another one, right?” grinned Quentin.

“Thanks,” said Joey sarcastically, giving him a look and pretending to be miffed. Losing that and smiling at the rib in spite of himself too then, because it had been kinda funny. He’d really walked into that. “Okay, let’s get you back to the campfire,” said Joey, in position to be ready to help him walk and ready to bear pretty much all of Quentin’s weight now if he had to. They took a first step and started off together then, and it was pretty easy. Quentin was bearing some of his weight fine this time, it felt like—just couldn’t steer on his own. He flashed Quentin a teasing look, “And do you think maybe you could stop ripping me apart at least while I’m being your volunteer taxi service?”

“Wow,” joked Quentin, grinning at him, “I didn’t know you had such thin skin.”

“At least I have the common sense not to jab myself in it with every single drug I trip over,” shot back Joey with a half-suppressed smile, “Unlike a certain local maximum dumbass I know.”

“Owww,” said Quentin, not really hurt at all, “In my defense, every time until now that I’ve done that, it’s worked out really well for me.”

“You’re such a fucking dumbass, you know that, right?” said Joey, shaking his head and grinning, “You’re really not gonna take the two seconds out of your life you would need to read a label, and just play God with your ability to be alive like that, then defend it?”

“Okay, okay,” said Quentin, smiling back at him and starting to get a little bit goofy-high, “I should not have done that. I will be more careful now that I have to, apparently. And I’m sorry for hurting your feelings—it’s not totally true anyway; you’re not sadistic.”

“That partial redaction’s not as nice as you think it is,” said Joey, amused and trying not to grin as he glanced over at him.

“I mean, I feel like all things considered I should get to tell a couple kind of mean jokes at your expense,” said Quentin, “You have killed me before.”

Joey snorted. They made it back into the hall and Joey began retracing his own steps, because Lerry’s was kind of a fucking maze, and going out the way he’d come in like an hour ago was the surest way to not get lost. “Okay, fine—but put a hard limit on the number.”

“…Thirty?” offered Quentin after a second.

Wow, kind of a low-ball if you think about it. “Yeah, okay, thirty,” agreed Joey.

“Thirty,” echoed Quentin quietly as they went through the far end of the room he’d first found the guy in, “…I better think of some really good ones to use that on, then. …Thirty starting now, or am I at twenty-nine?”

“Thirty starting now,” said Joey, not caring either way, “Be easier to remember.”

Back in the room he’d not quite finished tagging, Joey found the center isle between the hospital beds and started down it. At his side, Quentin hummed quietly and turned his head slowly to watch their surroundings go by.

“This is where you were spraypainting?” asked Quentin.

“Yeah,” said Joey, kind of surprised he was lucid enough to notice, the way his voice sounded all out of it and he was still blinking at everything and smiling contentedly the whole time like he was hanging out pretty close to blissfully high.

“What where you making?” asked Quentin, studying one of the squiggly lines on a bed with great fascination as they passed, “A bunch of chaos?”

Joey snorted again, insulted. “No. It’s a picture.”

“Of what?” asked Quentin, looking around them at the completely unintelligible back smudges and lines on things, “It just looks likes you came in here and were mad.”

RUDE. Well. I guess he’s not wrong, but he’s just not looking at it right. “That’s because it’s an anamorphosis,” said Joey.

“A what?” asked Quentin, gaping at him. “An animorph?”

“No!” said Joey, “Dumbass! I said ‘anamorphosis’—it’s an anamorphic picture—only viewable as what it is from like, one specific angle.”

“Oh—a perspective art thing,” said Quentin, excited at getting that, “Can I see it?”

“W—see the picture?” asked Joey, stopping.

“Yeah! I want to see,” said Quentin with incredible interest.

Really? Nobody was ever excited to see shit like that. It was fun to make, and Joey was good at it, and the things never lost their charm for him, but most people, they saw one once, they’d seen them all, or something—he didn’t get it, admittedly, but it was true. For whatever reason, for most people, anamorphic art seemed to be something they lost interest for pretty fast. At least, any of the times he’d made it. But then, I guess he hasn’t seen his one. Joey glanced over his shoulder, trying to tell how far back he’d have to go to be in the right spot again to see it right, and Quentin started to too, and Joey saw him going for it and reached over and covered his eyes with a hand. “Stop!—Don’t do that! It’s cooler if you walk into view from the side than the back,” said Joey.

“Uh. Okay,” said Quentin, “I can shut my eyes on my own, though.”

Joey moved his hand, and Quentin obliged and kept his eyes closed. Joey squinted at him suspiciously. “Yeah, but are you gonna peek, though?”

“Pff—what am I, four?” asked Quentin indignantly, “I don’t want to spoil the art for me either.”

Satisfied, Joey turned them around and walked back, found the perspective point easily since he’d marked it on the floor earlier, and then took a step to the right. “Okay, open.”

Quentin did, and blinked, then squinted at the almost comprehensible shape he was just out of line with. “Oh—you weren’t kidding,” he said, kind of excited, “They—is it a face? It’s almost like one.”

“You’re close,” said Joey, moving to the left again and stopping them so that Quentin was dead center.

“…Whoa,” said Quentin. He stared at the skull with his still morphine-influenced over-glossy eyes and too-constricted pupils, trying through that fog to take it in. He watched it for several seconds, absorbing the lines and detail, and then leaned as far as he could to the right, and then back to the center again, snapping the image in and out of perfect alignment. He turned and gazed at Joey in excited wonder. “Holy crap—I knew it would be cool, but that’s amazing.”

Joey felt his face get hot and looked at the skull picture too, to be looking away from Quentin. It wasn’t bad, for sure—he liked it. A nice skull. He’d never gotten to do the speech bubble though. It wasn’t even finished.

“No, really,” insisted Quentin with conviction, taking that reaction to mean he didn’t believe him, “How do you do that?”

“Uh, the—perspective?” asked Joey. The other teen was looking back at him with huge eyes and so much interest he didn’t know what to do but answer. “Uhm. Well, you pick an area first, and visualize what you want, and you’ve gotta be able to remember that image, and then move the image in your head kind of 3D so you know how to paint it when you look at it from another angle—or—if you can’t do that, you can draw pictures, starting with how you want the end result to go, and work from there. It’s kind of mental math stuff, I guess, but once you’ve done it a bunch, you can mostly sight-read what you need for stuff unless it’s super complicated.”

“That’s…incredible,” said Quentin really sincerely, kind of gaping in wonder at the skull, and looking from it to him with big eyes, and even though the guy was high enough his speech was still a bit slurred, and probably he wouldn’t have been so impressed sober, it felt pretty nice, and Joey smiled. Quentin gazed at the skull for a couple long seconds. “Wow,” he whispered finally. He turned his head back to Joey. “Could you teach me?”

“T—what, to do that?” asked Joey, stunned.

“Yeah! I mean—I’d probably be really bad at it,” said Quentin quickly, probably morphine-induced oversharing a little bit while trying to get to his point, “I did art before, like drawing—drawing type art—uh—took some classes, in high school—I was never super good at it, but I haven’t done nothing—like with art. I could try. I could—I bet I could at least do a shape! Like a triangle. Or a cross, or a circle—or—or like your little smiley face on your pin,” he suggested, tapping the pin on the belt Joey had thrown over his shoulder, “I mean—if—if I could learn,” added Quentin, still talking at break-neck speed, “I don’t know how hard it is, and I haven’t even really used spraypaint before, but I’d like to. It’d be cool to-“ He glanced back at the skull again and smiled at it. “-make something. You know. Something good. If you think you could teach me.”

“Yeah,” said Joey, excited and happy at the prospect, “I could—” He stopped. Fuck. Stupid—you-

Quentin glanced over at him, curious about the sudden pause.

“Sorry. Thought I heard something,” lied Joey, trying to make his voice sound urgent, “Doctor. We better go quick. Stay quiet, okay?”

“Oh,” said Quentin, lowering his voice drastically, super out of it and probably not actually feeling the fear through all that morphine, but doing his best to look and act urgent too and giving Joey a fervent nod. “Okay.”

They kept going, winding quickly back through the room the way Joey had come originally, passing hospital beds and cracked floors, blinking fluorescent lights, on their last leg. Quentin stayed quiet through that room and the next, but Joey also started to have a harder and harder time keeping him upright. Mostly he would do fine walking, but every so often he would just kind of forget to use his legs, or trip over nothing, or something, and they’d both almost go down, and they actually were getting a little closer to the last place he’d heard the Doctor on his way in, so he didn’t want to end up crashing into something. Well, it’s not far, anyway. Joey glanced over, trying to tell how coherent the other guy was. He looked like he was having trouble not falling asleep now—kept kind of slow blinking, and nodding off, then jerking his head back up and looking around.

“Not doing so hot?” asked Joey quietly.

“Mmm? Oh,” said Quentin, “Uh. I don’t know. I’m just tired.”

“You look…more high than a few minutes ago. Uhm. Does the stuff I gave you wear off?” asked Joey.

“For morphine? Yeah,” said Quentin with a thoroughly unworried look on his face, smiling sleepily over at Joey as they went, “It uh—it blocks your head receptors from absorbing the opium, but once it stops, if the opium is still there,” he made what Joey could only guess had been meant to be some kind of gun firing motion with his free arm and a matching Pshooo sound with it. “It comes back.”

“…” Joey stared straight ahead, low-key panicking. Fuck. So. In fifteen minutes or something he’s just gonna start to die again? “Uh. Okay. How long does the antidote last—and the morphine?”

“I dunno,” said Quentin, thoroughly unworried, watching the room they were going through with interest. “Oh—hey—cabinet! Bottles on the top shelf.”

“Bottles of what?” asked Joey, “—Something that’ll help?”

“No—what?—‘help’? I mean, I guess they’ll help somebody. You said you’d get stuff,” said Quentin. He waited a second, but Joey still didn’t get it. “On the way back? If I—”

“—Right, right, right, right,” said Joey, “Yeah—okay.” This might help anyway. He got Quentin against a wall with a windowsill for him to lean on and let go. “Uhm—about the morphine. Is there anything other than naa…naaa-whatever-it-was that I gave you that would help a morphine overdose—something that’d last longer?”

“Uhhh, I guess,” said Quentin, thinking hard, “There’s activated charcoal.”

“There’s charcoal?” asked Joey in disbelief, turning his head to gape back at him.

“No—activated charcoal,” said Quentin, giving him a look, “It’s not the same thing.”

“Then why the fuck do they call it that?” said Joey, going over towards the cabinet to fulfil his promise and check for useful shit, apparently hoping to find whatever the fuck ‘activated charcoal’ was too now. “That’s just confusing. Because charcoal is already a word. What is it, then?”

“Uh. It’s a powder. It’s super porous, and it stops toxins by like, sucking them up in it like a sponge if you swallow some,” said Quentin, struggling to remember, “You make it by burning stuff at a really high temperature—”

“-Wait,” said Joey, whirling on him and incensed at the scientific community at large, “So it is charcoal?”

“Uh. No, it’s—it’s burned way hotter and—” started Quentin.

“—It’s just fucking superheated charcoal?” said Joey, “Superheated fucking barbeque, campfire, burned wood shit?”

“…I. …I guess it is,” said Quentin after a second as if the most mind-boggling realization was dawning. He stared at nothing, and then grinned and looked at Joey like his discovery was the funniest thing in the world.

“Then why’d you look at me like I was a dumbass when I asked if it was charcoal?” said Joey, as he opened the cabinet and took things out to check.

“Because I didn’t think about it,” said Quentin, “I just. But you’re right. It’s just fucking superheated charcoal. I can’t believe it.”

Joey watched him for a second and then smiled too at the mind-blown look on the other dude’s face.

“Medical science in the modern era sure has advanced into wondrous new territory, huh?” said Quentin, grinning at him.

Joey snorted.

“Anything good in there?” asked Quentin, indicating the supplies.

“Uh. Package of medical tape, some old scissors, a bandage that’s super gross and I’m not bringing over to you, and three bottles. We got Aspirin,” said Joey, holding up a fairly large bottle, and he saw Quentin’s face light up and instantly felt guilty as shit because he hadn’t been trying to lead him on in the way he’d phrased the sentence he was saying but he super had, “—which is empty,” he added quickly, trying to indicate he was sorry about that in his tone.

The happy look on Quentin’s face instantly became a disappointed, tired one instead. “Bastard. I swear to God, the Entity does that shit all the time just for fun. Fucking hate finding empty bottles of good stuff.”

“Well—the other two have stuff in them,” said Joey hopefully.

“What are they?” asked Quentin.

“C… Cipro…floxacin?” tried Joey, “It’s a little bottle, and it’s only got two pills left in there, but it’s not empty.”

“Huh. I don’t know what that is,” said Quentin.

“You don’t know?” asked Joey, genuinely taken aback.

“Hey,” said Quentin, “I’m trying my best—I’m not a real doctor or anything. I’m figuring this out as I go. But yeah, I’ll take that—maybe Adam will know what it is.”

“Alright,” said Joey, filing that information away, “The last one says on the bottle that it’s burn ointment. It’s pretty full.”

“Oh—hey—that one’s actually a pretty good score,” said Quentin, cheered up a little, “Burns aren’t the most common wound, but it’s good to have just in case. I’ve only found one of those a few times. Usually if we need something like that, we just have to hope Claudette can make some with whatever plants she has on hand.”

“Cool,” said Joey, walking back over. “Give me the medkit.”

Quentin immediately looked concerned, and did not. “Why?”

“Look I’m—not gonna take it again,” promised Joey, “I’m just gonna put this stuff inside. You try to do it, and you’re gonna drop shit and make noise.”

Finding that believable, Quentin relaxed and handed him the medkit. Joey took it and set it open on the back of a bench and put stuff inside haphazardly, looking for the little box from before again. He found it immediately and picked it up, checking for anything he might have missed, like the package of activated charcoal he was hoping to miraculously find. Shit. Nothing this time.

He became suddenly aware of another presence very much in his personal space and looked to the left to see Quentin had leaned waaay over the kit from the other side and brought his head right night to Joey’s to try to see in too.

“What are you looking for?” asked Quentin turning his head to look over at him, and suddenly like half an inch from his face.

“Nothing!” said Joey on absolutely nothing but panic impulse, almost smacking his head on the windowsill behind him with the speed he jerked backwards away from Quentin and back into his own personal space again. His heartbeat was running a mile a minute. Oh—geeze, fuck—what? He—the. What had just-? He tried to swallow. Still over the medkit Quentin was watching him with surprise. “Uh—activated charcoal, I guess,” corrected Joey, regaining his ability to think and feeling his heartbeat calming down again.

Quentin blinked at him, trying to process that through the fog in his brain. How the fuck were his eyes so big?

“Oh. Right—you were asking about it,” said Quentin, “I don’t have any.”

…fuck.

There was just nothing, then. He would die anyway, and he’d have to do it twice now, because Joey had tried to help. Fuck. …I…

“Do you need some?” asked Quentin, seeing the distress on his face and looking confused and kind of worried about him.

You are so fucking stupid on morphine bro—like I appreciate it but you’re like the dumbest piece of shit when you’re high—you’re gonna get killed if I look in the other direction for six fucking seconds. How the fuck did this happen to me? Why was he so upset? “Yeah. I kinda do,” answered Joey, subdued.

“Well, I can get you some if you really need it,” said Quentin with concern.

“Wait, really?” asked Joey, hope blossoming again.

“Yeah—Adam has some,” said Quentin, nodding.

Ad—oh—the—okay. “You mean back at your campfire?” checked Joey.

Quentin nodded. “I’m sure he’d let you have some, though. If you need it.” He looked like he really thought that, too. Joey wondered if Adam would, if he’d needed it. If having done them one good turn would be enough for that kind of small favor. If Quentin would have even offered if he’d really been aware enough in there to know what was going on.

…Probably not.

Didn’t matter though. If he got fucked up on morphine again when stuff wore off because the antidote hadn’t been enough, or the overdose had just been too high for it, then his friends would be smart enough to give him the medicine he needed. So long as he got him back to the campfire, he’d be fine.

“Nah—I don’t need it,” said Joey, “I was just curious what it looked like.” That was the beset fucking lie you could come up with??

“Oh,” said Quentin, buying it completely. He smiled at him. “I can show you sometime.”

Joey closed the medkit and got his arm around Quentin again so they could keep moving.

“I could teach you how to patch up wounds too,” offered Quentin as they started off again, “Trade you, for lessons doing spraypaint.”

“Yeah,” said Joey, looking straight ahead, “That sounds nice.”

They were getting close to the edge of Lerry’s now—almost out of the danger zone at least—fucking blessing. Though then he’d have to navigate the fog all the way to the campfire. Or. However close to the campfire he could get. He hadn’t actually tried before. He had no idea how close he would be able to go. I wonder if I actually could go all the way up there? Nah, that was stupid, though. It had been a fun idea, but no way the Entity would make it so killers could get withing range to take a shot at survivors outside trials in their home base at all. And. Well. I am a killer. And I still will be in an hour, after I’ve dropped him off. ...

And then forever after that.

“There.”

Joey had been walking on auto pilot, but he came back out of his head at the sound of Quentin’s voice and glanced where he was pointing. “What?”

“Supplies,” said Quentin, pointing at the desk by the entry way they were coming up on.

Joey looked at the desk. “…Where?”

“There!” said Quentin. “By the—phone thing.”

There was nothing on the desk except the old phone and a Styrofoam cup and some old pens. “…The coffee cup??” asked Joey.

“No. What?” said Quentin, “The—needle….and the—the bottle…it’s…”

Uh. “There’s nothing on that desk but a coffee cup and some pens, man,” said Joey.

“Really?” asked Quentin, staring intently at the desk.

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure,” said Joey.

“No. But…I saw them. They were just there,” said Quentin, huge eyes fixed on the desk. “I know they were. I just saw them. They.” He looked up at Joey. “I saw it—I did. I’m so sure!”

“I mean…?” said Joey, relenting a little and walking them closer. Yup. Definitely nothing there. Beside him, Quentin turned his head from left to right, scanning the whole desk with intense, almost frantic scrutiny.

“...Where did they go?” he asked Joey with 100% sincerity, like the most insane thing in the world had just happened and some medical supplies had walked off.

“Okay,” said Joey, turning them back around and making a B-line for the exit, “That’s enough hanging out at Lerry’s for you. Hallucinating’s never a good sign. Its’s time to go.”

“No!” said Quentin quickly, “But I barely got anything on the way back! I-I forgot and I kept almost falling asleep, and talking to you, and not looking.”

“We’re not going back in,” said Joey, pausing in the doorway because Quentin had started trying to go back the other was and was pulling against him and suddenly making it really hard to walk.

“But I can’t go back with nothing,” pleaded Quentin, “I wanted to do a good job.”

“You got some stuff and you didn’t die—that’s a pretty good job,” contended Joey. That argument did not seem to do it for Quentin, who kept weakly struggling to tug Joey back into the terrifying old institute with its long hallways and flickering lights and horrifying owner somewhere deep in the bowels, but he was making about as much headway in that as he would have trying to drag a cement support column. God damn it, you have the tenacity of a bulldog, you know that! You’re really not gonna stop trying, are you? He was certainly showing no signs, despite the impossibility and complete lack of success he was having. Joey sighed. Okay, if he won’t stop, then it’s either find a way to get him what he wants so he’ll leave, or just pick him up and drag him off fighting, I guess. And Joey was pretty sure which of those two options he definitely did and did not want to do.

“—Okay, look. What would be a good enough find to leave?”

Quentin paused in his efforts to get Joey to move and looked at him hopefully. “Uh. I don’t know. Pain medication, a couple hemorrhagics, or some gel dressings? Something we don’t get much.”

Joey considered that, giving the institute past Quentin a dubious look, and then shook his head. “That would take forever.”

“Please?” said Quentin, looking at him with his huge fucking eyes. God, and he was giving him the world’s saddest, most sympathy inducing face too. How the hell was he doing that so well! That look was miserable! It made Joey want to die—he felt like he’d just accidentally kicked a dog—t-the only thing that had ever been able to give him a look as critically effective at pleading as this before had been a dog! This was pressure levels on par with his pet lab putting his head in his lap while he munched on a burger and somehow conveying in its big sad eyes the message that it hadn’t eaten in four years and if he would please just pass some of that burger on down here, even just a crumb, it might live and be eternally grateful, and would cry and sadly starve miserably to death in his lap if he didn’t.

Beside him Quentin was still just standing there, waiting for a response and looking at him like his heart was gonna be crushed to dust if Joey didn’t say yes. Fuck—come on! That’s not fair! How the fuck are your eyes so big? We can’t go back into Lerry’s—I’m not trying to be an asshole!

“You don’t understand,” said Quentin when Joey stayed quiet, fighting an intense internal battle to not be swayed by the most pitiful puppydog eyes he’d ever seen, “I need this stuff to be able to help people. It’s important.”

“—No, I get it,” managed Joey, clearing his throat and looking away because he finally couldn’t take the face any longer, “You explained it before.” He risked a glance back over again after a second, and Quentin still had the exact same expression and it was like getting suckerpunched in the ribcage by a bowling ball. FUCK! “Okay, okay—uh,” said Joey desperately, turning back to him, “Look. Uh.” Fuck fuck fuck—think. “We can’t go back in there—we’ll both die—but you just want supplies that make your people die less, right? And even if you don’t find much stuff, if you get even one or two super rare things that help your people really well, you did good, and you can go home.”

Quentin considered that, a little confused, huge eyes still on Joey’s face, and then nodded.

“Okay. Then how about this,” said Joey. He reached up with his free hand and unfastened the little smiley face pin on his shoulder strap that Quentin had tapped earlier and got it free after a bit of a struggle, then held it out.

At his side, Quentin blinked down at the object, then looked back up at him in confusion.

“It’s a token,” said Joey, “You take that, and then, any trial you choose to give it to me in, I’ll quit chasing whoever I’m on for two whole minutes. Seem fair?”

Quentin stared at him.

“—I-it’s a really good deal!” argued Joey, because it was, “Think about it! Two whole minutes? That’s a lot of immunity in a trial. What’s the best you’d get out of a hemorrhagic? Stop some bleeding faster? If you think about this as a health item, it’s better than a whole pile. You could prevent somebody the pain of a whole bunch of wounds entirely, instead of just fixing them faster.”

“O…okay,” said Quentin, following that slowly. He reached out and took it, cocked his head and looked at the button, and then tried and failed several times to clip it to his jacket, before finally getting it to stick, and Joey tried not to grin watching. Once he had it in place, he looked back at Joey and gave him a reassured smile.

“We can go?” asked Joey.

“Yeah. Let’s go home,” agreed Quentin.

Immensely relieved, Joey lead him out of Lerry’s and to the edge of the surrounding border, where the fog waited. Hmm. I haven’t gone to the campfire before, so it might take me a little while to navigate in the fog. The fog was tricky. It was how they navigated between mini-areas in the realm. Killer home bases, unused trial areas, the campfire. It was this murky patch of foggy woods that was at the border of everything, and it would just kind of, creep up and render in when you got closer to it, leaving somewhere else—like a video game. Once you went into the forest and started walking, you’d get wherever you meant to go eventually, but it was kinda complicated, and it was easier to go home than anywhere else. It was…sort of like swimming in an ocean, to get from realm to realm--if like, walking was swimming, and the fog was the ocean, and the realms were islands, except that ocean was a whirlpool that changed directions all the time and was confusing as fuck, so it took a little bit of work. The actual direction you went in the woods didn’t matter. Maybe if walking was swimming in that analogy, it would be accurate to say there were tethers in the whirlpool too, swirling around and past you, attaching to all the realms and each a little bit different in shape and size and feel, so you could learn to recognize which was which to help you where you wanted to go. Because if you focused on where you wanted to go, you would get there eventually, walking through the fog. Like you were pulling yourself hand over fist along a rope towards where you wanted to go, intent and experience making you get there faster. But it was always easier if you knew the place than if you just like, kinda knew of it. And how long it took you to travel tended to correlate pretty directly to how well you knew the place you were heading. Joey had never been to the campfire before, so he could definitely find it—he’d had to find everything but Ormond for the first time once—but it might take him like ten—fifteen minutes to navigate like that route on his own. I guess I could ask him to lead us. He looked over at his travel buddy. Quentin had his head bent over ridiculously far, trying to look at the pin again and not considering that moving his jacket collar to a different angle would have been the easier option as far as giving him a close up view, and he was humming that Backstreet Boys song from earlier again while he was at it. Yeah, no, that could only go terribly. Me it is.

“Alright, let’s get you home, dumbass” said Joey in the same friendly way he would have said it to Frank if he’d been helping him home sloshed after a wild night, and it felt nice, saying it and seeing Quentin glance over and smiled back in the same amicable way he’d been spoken to, and Joey stopped thinking this time before it could change, and feel rotten, and he stepped into the mist.

After only about three steps, Lerry’s was gone, de-loaded in like it had never been, and they were in deep woods. The massive, ancient kind of deep woods that was so big it was heavy with silence. So dark you couldn’t make out more than about three feet in any direction, and full of fog. It had kind of unsettled him the first time he walked it, but Joey was used to the Fog now, and really, he was just incredibly glad to be out of Lerry’s. This place was much more familiar, and less hostile.

Quentin went down hard with no warning, and Joey had been mid-step, so he lost his balance too and went with him, slamming forward into the hard ground with a cry, and not thinking to let go of the other guy in time to save himself. No idea what had just happened, but fairly unhurt at least, he dragged himself up to his arms as fast as he could.

“What the hell?” he asked the survivor laying on his chest next to him.

“Ow,” came Quentin’s muffled voice.

“What happened?” asked Joey, sitting up.

“Your pin is stabbing me,” came the reply.

“No, to your legs, dumbass—why’d you go dead-body on me?” said Joey, kind of relieved because the fall didn’t seem to have hurt him at all either.

“I don’t know,” said Quentin sadly with a sigh, turning his head and looking over at Joey.

“Like—you don’t know why you did that, or it wasn’t on purpose?” asked Joey.

“Not on purpose,” said Quentin, “They just stopped working. I have no idea why. –Sorry about that. Did I fall on you?”

“L—three seconds ago?” asked Joey, “You don’t remember? No—I—you haven’t moved yet–how could you have fallen on top of me when you’re on the ground?”

“I dunno,” came the muffled reply as Quentin put his face against the earth again, “Can we stop and take a nap maybe?”

“No!” said Joey. He reached over and got him by the shoulders and flipped him over, and Quentin squinted up at him and grimaced, then looked up at him for a couple of seconds with interest and got a goofy grin on his face. “What?” said Joey.

“I just like your face,” said Quentin happily, “It’s not scary at all. And it’s really funny, because nobody at the campfire’s gonna recognize you. They’re expecting a skull face.” He started shaking his head, still smiling contentedly up a Joey, “Not a guy.”

“Oh my God,” said Joey, feeling his face get hot and trying to power through, “Come on—we have to keep going!”

“But I’m super tired,” said Quentin, shutting his eyes, “I’m just gonna take a quick, like, three-hour nap.”

“No you’re not!” said Joey. He tried to pull him up by his arms, and Quentin didn’t stop him, but he was 110% dead weight now, and that was so much fucking harder to lift than anything else. “Come on!” said Joey, “Work with me a little.”

Quentin opened his eyes and looked back up at Joey and started to say something, then his brows furrowed. “…Wait.” Whatever he was thinking, it took some time to make the full circuit with it in his head, but he had sounded almost worried or something when he said ‘Wait,’ and still did when he spoke again—Joey thought even more than before. “Your button.”

“It’s still there,” assured Joey, “It didn’t come off.”

“No. You. Said you’ll leave somebody alone, if I give it to you,” said Quentin, his words spoken with even more difficulty and slurring on the ends than before, eyes still glazed over like and just as out of it as he’d been all day, but still working as hard as he could to connect dots.

“Yeah?” said Joey.

“…W…you’re still…doing trials?” Quentin asked. He looked up at Joey with those huge blue eyes, nothing but open confusion on his face, like he had just said something that just couldn’t make sense. Joey stopped moving.

Fuck.

“…No…” said Quentin after a second, looking away, thinking even harder. “…No, okay. Right. You said we were friends. For sure. We’re good friends now, and we’re gonna do painting stuff. And I’m supposed to show you how to stitch a cut up. So no.” He looked back up at Joey again then and smiled in a relieved way, like everything was fine. “Sorry. I guess I’m still kinda high.” Joey couldn’t say anything, so he hurried to add, “—not thinking right,” trying to explain his actions in case he’d hurt Joey’s feelings by saying the first thing, and looking up at him so clearly worried that he had.

“…It’s okay,” managed Joey after a few seconds, his voice barely audible.

And Quentin looked so relieved. And happy about that. And smiled up at him again. “Thanks.”

“Do you think you can walk?” said Joey, trying hard to keep his mind blank of any thoughts at all.

Quentin tried to sit up, and made it, then teetered, looked confused by that, and started to collapse sideways with 0 attempt to save himself, and Joey shot out his arms and caught him in the nick of time.

Quentin blinked down at his body in surprise, then looked up at Joey. “So that’s a maybe.”

“Okay,” said Joey, trying not to smile, “I’m carrying you.”

“Is that really—” started Quentin, and then Joey got the guy’s arm over his shoulder and hefted him up in a fireman carry, so that Quentin was held up across his back and shoulders, one arm keeping hold on Quentin’s right arm, his other around his legs, to keep him from slipping, and Quentin stopped talking as Joey stood up, using his leg strength to make it to his feet with the teenager slung over his back. “Oh. Okay,” said Quentin, and he gave up and just went ragdoll again on Joey’s shoulders. “Wow,” he observed in a slurred voice, “You’re really strong. Am I heavy?”

“Not compared to a lot of you,” said Joey, starting to walk again, and kind of proud of himself because of the compliment.

“Good. Don’t want to break your back,” said Quentin. He hummed to himself for a second and then said, “This isn’t super comfortable. Did you know that?” like he was sharing a genuine discovery.

“Uh—I’m not surprised,” offered Joey.

“Backsteet’s Back Alright!” sang Quentin loopily to no one, not even listening to the answer to the question he’d asked.

Joey grinned at what he could see of Quentin’s face. This was kinda familiar—like taking a buddy who’d got super plastered home after a party. The fun kind of fucked up—the kind he was used to seeing.

“—Hey—do the verse with me,” said Quentin.

“I don’t know the lyrics,” said Joey.

“It’s super easy,” insisted the thoroughly wasted teenager, “It’s uh—'brother sister everybody sing.’ Uh. ‘Something something, bring the flame’—no wait—‘oh my God we’re back again, brother sister everybody sing, gonna bring the flames and show you now, have a…have’—okay that’s most of a verse.”

“You go ahead,” said Joey.

“Come on,” pleaded Quentin, “It’s…ssuuper. Easy. ‘Brother sister’—no. ‘Oh my God, we’re back again.’” There was a very definitely Now You flavored pause.

Joey gave in. “Oh my God, we’re back again?”

“Yes!” said Quentin ecstatically with all the energy he had left, hanging limp over his shoulders, “Yes! Perfect! Okay, now it’s ‘brother-sister-everybody sing.’ But like sang so it—for rhyming reasons.”

“Yeah, I heard you doing it,” said Joey.

“K. You got it, or need to hear it again?” asked Quentin.

“I think I got it,” said Joey.

“Same time,” said Quentin.

“Brother-sister-everybody sing,” sang Joey with him at roughly the same time.

“Yes!” said Quentin excitedly halfway through the word ‘sing’, “Ah! You learned it so fast! Then just ‘Backstreet’s Back, Alright!’”

“That’s the whole song?” asked Joey.

Quentin thought about that for several seconds. “No. But we’re gonna go one verse at a time.

“Okay,” said Joey, trying not to laugh.

“Everybody sing,” repeated Quentin, setting them up, “Ready?”

“Yeah,” said Joey.

“Okay,” said Quentin, “Backstreet’s-“

“-Back, alright,” sang Joey with him, grinning.

“Yeah!” cheered Quentin happily over his shoulder, “Hell yeah! We’re awesome. Fucking nailed that! That was really good. You’re cool. Cool at…stuff. And singing.” He was losing coherence real fast now.

Joey would have started to feel worried about that, considering the OD had almost killed him earlier, but he had just spotted light up ahead in the distance, and that could only be the campfire. That meant they were close. Almost there. Maybe just a minute now. And with that worry gone, he just took in the compliment and grinned at it. “Thanks. You too,” said Joey.

“Thanks!” said Quentin, mumbling now, “Man. I never knew you were nice.”

“Yeah, well, don’t tell anyone,” joked Joey.

“I’m gonna tell everyone,” slurred Quentin happily in reply. After a second, he asked in the voice of someone who’d forgotten something they were supposed to know, “Why did you decide to walk me out of Lerry’s?”

“Because I thought you were gonna die,” said Joey, eyes on the light up ahead.

“Why?” said Quentin curiously.

“Because you’re super fucked up on morphine, dumbass,” said Joey, “Okay, we’re getting pretty close now. How close do you think I need to get for your friends to hear you if you call?”

“Uhm, I don’t know. Depends on how loud you yell,” said Quentin, smiling and shutting his eyes.

“Hey! Don’t fall asleep on my shoulder!” said Joey, trying not to smile, “Wake up and call your friends.”

“Right now?” asked Quentin, super confused and only half conscious, “Why?”

“To come get you,” said Joey.

“Why don’t you just walk up to the fire,” said Quentin, shutting his eyes again.

“Because I don’t think I—” Joey had been going to say can, but he smacked headfirst into an invisible barrier he hadn’t had any idea was there and pinged off so hard he went ass-over-tit backwards and slammed into the ground with the breath knocked out of him and the fear of God in his heart.

Holy SHIT—what the—oh my God. Ow. Fuck—oh!

“Quentin!” he called, sitting up, looking for where he’d dropped him. He didn’t see—Wait. Joey looked behind himself and saw Quentin laying in the dirt where he’d just landed and realized he’d slammed ass-over-tit hard into the cold unforgiving surface not of the ground but of Quentin. “Oh my God! I’m so sorry—are you okay?” He asked.

On the ground, Quentin let out a desperate wheezing sound, and Joey was horrified for a second thinking he was fighting to breathe again, and then he realized he was just trying to laugh with no air in his lungs. The dude barely had any air in there at all, after Joey slamming the shit out of his ribcage, but he just started wheeze-laughing uncontrollably anyway and didn’t stop for a good fifteen seconds, completely losing it down there in the dirt, and then he looked up at Joey with tears in his eyes from how hard he was laughing, and Joey started to laugh too.

“What!” said Joey with a grin.

Quentin tried, couldn’t get a word out, wheeze-laughed for another six seconds, and then tried, “How d—” He lost it again, and struggled to keep going, “—how did you do that?” He completely lost his ability to speak for another few seconds and couldn’t say anything, tears rolling down his face, then gasped out, “Did God just come out of nowhere and backhand you in the forehead? What the fuck! That was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!”

“No,” said Joey, grinning at the sight of absolute merriment on the other dude’s face, and relaxing a little and slumping to a more comfortable sitting position behind him. “I hit your stupid fucking campfire barrier—it’s just invisible. Apparently.”

“So you can’t go over there?” asked Quentin, finally choking back the laughs a bit.

“Yeah, you’re on your own,” said Joey, “Think you can walk it?”

“Uhm,” said Quentin, looking in the direction of the fire. He pushed himself up on to his arms and then started laughing again and collapsed. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry,” he managed after a second, “I can’t stop now. I’ll get up. Just give me a second.”

Joey waited, smiling. Quentin took a few deep breaths, then tried again, and again immediately started to laugh and collapsed. “Dude,” said Joey.

“I’m trying!” pleaded Quentin, managing to choke the laughter back again, laying on his side, “God—what did you say I took again?”

“Morphine,” said Joey.

“How do you know that?” asked Quentin with curiosity.

“I looked at the label,” said Joey, “You don’t remember?”

“No,” said Quentin thoughtfully, “I remember singing with you though.”

Joey stopped and looked over at him very carefully. Feeling a very, very intense emotion at painful levels that he had no idea how to describe. “…You. But you remember stuff before the singing too, right?”

Quentin took a deep breath and smiled and thought about that, staring up at the sky, and then back over at him. “You called me a ‘dumbass,’ a lot,” he offered in a friendly way. He watched Joey for a second and then smiled at him with those huge fucking blue eyes, all glossy, and not seeing anything, like Joey was realizing for the first time now they hadn’t been all night. “When did you take your mask off?”

Fuck.

“Don’t remember,” lied Joey, not sure he could say more the right way just that second.

“Oh. You too?” asked Quentin.

“No,” said Joey quietly, “Not like that. I remember the rest fine.”

“That’s good,” said Quentin, shutting his eyes. “Why did you help me?”

Joey didn’t answer.

After a few seconds, Quentin opened his eyes and looked up at him again.

Joey met his gaze and swallowed hard, then said very quietly, “I thought it mattered.”

Quentin just looked at him for a few seconds, then gave him a little smile, and said, “Thanks. It does to me.”

“You better get going,” said Joey, “Back to your campfire. Before you get yourself into even more trouble, dumbass.”

“Okay,” said Quentin in a friendly way, “You don’t have to be mean about it.”

Joey offered him a hand, and Quentin took it, and Joey pulled him to his feet. They went forward together again, Joey supporting Quentin with one arm and with his other hand out this time, very careful approaching the place he’d been taken the fuck out before, and when he found it, he stopped, and shoved Quentin gently across the barrier that was only there for him. The guy almost lost his balance when he did that, but managed to keep his footing this time, and glanced back at him in confusion.

“I can’t go any further,” explained Joey. He pointed to the light not far now, past Quentin. He could ear voices coming from there. People talking together. “Get going. It’s a straight shot.”

“You’re not coming?” asked Quentin, looking kind of surprised and hurt, and for a horrible second Joey was sure that he did remember, and he was painfully happy about it, even knowing how stupid that was, and how it didn’t matter, because remembered or not, the little fake friendship they had had tonight was over the second he was sober again. But then Quentin tilted his head and added, “I know you gotta go back to your place, but you could come chill out for a minute first, and I could give you a flashlight or something for walking me back,” and he knew that he didn’t.

“I told you,” said Joey, struggling to smile, and hoping to God Quentin was fucked up enough to see the look on his face and buy it for what it was pretending to be, “I can’t go past your invisible wall. It’s survivors only over there. Now get going, and don’t be a dumbass and get into trouble like that again! Or you’ll die of a morphine overdose or something. I don’t want to have to bail your stupid ass out of a bad trip again—I have my own stuff to get done. And I might not even be there next time! So don’t have one.”

“Okay—I’ll try,” said Quentin, still smiling a little. He gave him an unsteady wave. “Thanks again.” Goodbye said, the survivor turned to go and started staggering unsteadily towards the light waiting for him up ahead.

Joey watched him go for a second, then started to turn to head home himself and caught a flash of moonlight on something, and stopped. There in the dirt by his feet was the little smiley face pin he’d given Quentin as a bribe—it must have come off when they fell or something—must have rolled, and—

He opened his mouth to call out “Hey! You left your button” at the retreating figure ahead of him, and then stopped, and slowly closed it instead. It wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t even know what it was. Besides. It was probably better this way. Maybe definitely better. This way, he doesn’t know I lied to him. I’m still a killer and a monster, but at least I’m not somebody who betrayed him when he thought they were his friend.

Yeah. That was better. It would be better. Maybe things would be normal again. And he could forget about this. It had all been stupid to do anyway. He still didn’t know why he had—why he’d made bad decision after bad decision over and over tonight. Why he’d thought any of it would matter, in the end. The guy didn’t even remember it now. It was hard to think of anything that could matter less than that. You should go home. It’s been a long day.

He took a breath and turned to go, then paused, reconsidering, and reached down to retrieve his pin, and his hand hit the invisible wall he’d already forgotten the location of hard enough to sting. Shit. He took a knee, hoping maybe close the ground he’d have just enough space to reach it, but it had rolled maybe just six inches past where the realm would allow a thing like him to go, and it was stuck there now, just past his fingertips, out of reach, and where nobody would ever find it or use it or want it again, even if it was there, and there was nothing he could do about it.

“Hey!” It had been Quentin’s voice, coming from ahead of him, towards the fire, and Joey looked up. The survivor had paused and glanced over his shoulder, still just in sight, and was looking at him. He sounded happy—almost excited. And even from a good twenty feet off in the darkness, Joey could see he was smiling at him like he would have a friend. “I’ll see you around, Joey.”

Joey watched as Quentin turned and headed for the campfire again, and then very slowly stood up, leaving the pin where he could never get it, and watched the survivor disappear until he was well and truly gone, lost to sight through the nearest line of trees, and then he turned back and headed towards his own home, off through the fog, back to the old rotting lodge in Ormond with three other killers where he belonged.

No, thought Joey, No, you won’t.

#dead by daylight #dead by daylight fic #dbd #dbd fic #writing #speckeltail #art trade #my writing #quentin smith #the legion #dbd Joey #Joey Harmin #fan fiction #joeyquen #This was so FUN but also sorry I put in so much angst in my defense that sad Joey art #and I hit the canon comedy beats so #I hope you enjoy!!!! #harminsmith #tw animal death #tw animal abuse #(witnessed in the past & remembered briefly once) #tw drug use #tw overdose

[sherrybaby14]

Casual Sex

This is for Fvckingavenger’s writing challenge. Thanks for hosting!  

Prompt:  I’m never gonna fall, but I’m never hard to catch // My heart will never break, I’m just here to break a sweat // We’re wild under the covers, crazy for each other (Casual Sex - My Darkest Days).

Summary:  You have some casual sex with Captain America.  

Pairing:  Steve x reader

Warnings:  Smut

A/N:  I had never heard this song when I picked the prompt…I gave it a listen and the music video is very odd!  

                   The TV switched from captivating to boring without you even noticing.  You were glued to your phone, unsure what you were watching at this point.  What a boring Thursday night.   You had to get up in the morning, but there was still time for something fun.  

                 You debated on calling a friend, maybe heading to a bar to try and find some random ass.  But that sounded like a lot of work.   As you looked out the window of your apartment you noticed it was raining. Definitely not leaving now, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t order in.  

                 As you flopped back down on your couch you went back to your phone, opening the hook-up app.  

                 “Let’s see…men…within one mile…currently online.” You set the filters and watched the tiny dots dance.  

                 You rolled your eyes as you were hit with over 1000 results.  New York was such a crazy place.  You slid the distance meter down until you got to .4 miles, knocking your prospects down to a much more manageable fifty.  

                 “Nope.”  The first picture didn’t do anything for you.  “Un-un.” You swiped the second away.  

                 All of these guys looked the same.  You wanted something different.  Exotic even.  Something you’d never tasted before.  

                 A super-hot guy appeared on your screen.  Tall, dark and handsome.  You licked your lips about to message him when his icon went black: USER NO LONGER ONLINE.

                 “Fuck man!”  You sat up frustrated.  “You were a second away from maybe getting some.  Unless you got swiped up by some other user.”  

                 The next icon appeared and you smiled at the familiar image.  Steve Rogers. Captain America.   You liked a guy with a sense of humor.  And what could be more exotic than meeting a complete stranger? You tapped the icon to direct message.

                                 YOU:  Hey stranger, what’s your name?                                

               The little bubbles showed up.  He was responding right away.

                                 STEVE:  Steve.

               You crunched your nose as the response.  

                                 YOU:  Very funny. Why don’t I just call you Captain? Would you like that?  I can dig out some fourth of July panties for you?    

                 You giggled, watching the typing bubble appear and disappear.  He was flustered.  

                                 YOU:  A newby on this site?  I’ll help you out.  First, don’t use a fake picture.  Nobody will respond to it.  Second, don’t be so shy.  Everyone on here is looking for a quick lay.  There’s no need to hold back.  

                                 STEVE:  You can tell? First night.   I guess I still have things to learn.  

                                 YOU:  Well I am a great teacher.  Do you want to come over?  Once we’re done I can help you set up your account better.  Keep the Captain America pic for now.  I enjoy a good surprise.  

                                 STEVE:  Alright.

               You tapped the icon that sent your GPS and address to the mystery man.  He accepted and the screen turned into a map.  He was at the coffee shop around the block.  You had five minutes to freshen up.  

                 Your apartment was clean enough and you were going to be undressing anyway, so the lounge pants were fine, but you went to your underwear drawer and started to rifle through it, unsure if you had any red white and blue undies.  

                 A knock sounded through your apartment.  Shit! That guy was fast.  You left your bedroom and went for the door where the knocking continued.  

                 “Just a sec.”  You pulled open the door, what you saw made your mouth fall open.  

                 You weren’t sure what you were seeing and had to pinch your thigh.  He was more beautiful in person, his thick hair and trimmed beard, let alone the sparkling blue eyes.  

                 “Hi.  Do I have the right apartment?”  He looked a little nervous.  “I’m looking for Y/N. The girl on the app whose photo looks just like you?”  

                 You realized you were staring and shook your head out, moving so he could walk into your apartment.  

                 “So Teach, you do this sort of thing a lot?” Steve brushed some raindrops off of his jacket.  

                 “Yes.  I mean, holy shit! That was your picture?”  Your initial instinct was to profess your love for the man and thank him for all his service to the world, but that would work against your now new goal:  casual sex with Steve Rogers.  

                 “What if I was a serial killer?”  Steve looked around.  “Or tried to rob you, it’s not very smart to let strangers into your home.”

                  “Then I would be dead or you would be a disappointed thief.”  You shut the door.  Ordering yourself to treat him the same way you would treat any other random from the hookup app.  “It’s worth the risk for some good sex.”  

                  “Why casual sex?”  Steve cupped his hands in front of him.  “Why not a relationship?”

                 “Don’t do relationships.  I’m busy. I’m happy.  But every few months I need to get laid.”  Your eyes took him in.  “What about you? Why casual sex?”  

                  “Thought I would try something different.”  He didn’t seem as confident in person.  At least not about this.  

                 You licked your lips as you walked up to him, so you were only inches from his face.  

                 “Am I…different enough for you?”  You reached out and cupped his cheek.  

                 He followed your cues and dipped his head, pressing his mouth to yours.  Inside you were screaming!  You were making out with Captain America.  In your living room.  But externally you played it cool.  

               He wasn’t a bad kisser but moved a little slow. You tried to coax his tongue into more action, teasing yours into his mouth.    You brought your hands around his neck, but noticed he kept his in front of him.  

                 “Mmmm.” You pulled away from the kiss.  “You have to relax.  You’re not going to break my heart.  You’re going to break a sweat.”  

                 He smiled as you grabbed his hand and led him into the bedroom.   This time he put his hands on your waist when he resumed kissing you. There was a dominance to his lips now.  One that you welcomed as you started to tug on the hem of his shirt.  

                 Steve broke the kiss and tugged off his top. Your eyes glossed over at the picture of perfection in front of you.

                 “I don’t mind admiration.”  His hands went to his belt as he kicked off his shoes.  “And yes, I’d like it if you called me Captain.”

               It felt like someone cranked the thermostat, your clothing more than unnecessary.  You pushed and pulled it off as fast as you could.   Then found yourself in your underwear with Captain America.  

                 “No Fourth of July?”  Steve kissed your neck. “I’m disappointed.”  

                 “You came too quick Captain.”  You brought your arms around him and nipped his ear.  

                 “I wouldn’t worry about that Teach.”  He scooped you up, hands under your ass and tossed you on the bed, falling down on top of you.  “I have super stamina.”  

                 “Let’s find out.”  You ran your hand across his chest, turning it around when you got to his boxers.  

                 When you went under the waistband you gasped at the size of him.  Tonight was going to be amazing.  He was sucking on your neck, when you moved both hands to his boxers and pushed them down, raising your foot so it caught them and pulling them down the rest of his legs by straightening your leg.  

                 “Nifty trick.”  Steve raised his head.  

                 “Nifty?”  You giggled. “I’m full of them.”  

                 “I bet you are.”   Steve rolled over, pulling you with him.

                 His hands went to the sides of your panties and he gave one tug.  The fabric ripped without hesitation.

                 “Hey, I liked those.”  You wiggled your hips as Steve tossed the ruined panties aside.  “But, I have to say nifty trick.”  

                 His hand came behind your head and pulled it down for a kiss.   When your lips met you crawled upward, repositioning yourself to take him. There was no chance you were going to miss the opportunity to ride Captain America.  

                 With your hand on his head, you ran it over your slit. You were horny before he got here, but having the chance to live one of your fantasies was too much and now you were soaked.  

                 That was a good thing though because when you held him at your entrance and started to lower yourself you needed the lube.  

                 The kiss broke as you sank lower, your pussy stretching around him to an almost painful level.  

                 “This is so hot.”  Steve’s hands were on your hips, but his eyes were watching your body take his.  “The hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”  

                 His reaction increased your desires.  You parted your legs further, taking him all the way in, back arched forward.  

                 “Lick your hand.”  You sat up all the way.  “I want you to rub my clit while I ride you.”  

                 Steve’s blue eyes looked like they were about to shoot out of his head, but he put two fingers in his mouth and then wasted no time putting them on your clit.  

                 You started to roll your hips first, waiting until he got a good pattern going on your pleasure center.  

                 “A little harder.  Set the pace.”  You looked at him.  “I’ll go as fast as you’re going.”  

                 “I’ve never been instructed like this.”  He tilted his head.  “I may have lied about that stamina thing.  This is so hot.”  

                 “I told you.”  You smiled since this was how you almost always had sex.  “I’m a good teacher.  Now rub.”  

                 Steve put more pressure down and started moving in a circular pattern.  

                 “Good.”  You licked your lips.  “Real good.”

                 You began to rise and lower your body, sliding up and down his shaft, trying your hardest to keep pace with his hand.  He increased and you bit back a moan, loving how he was bringing your clit to life and how stuffed you were with his cock.  

                  “Move to this motion.”  You raised your hand made the come hither motion.  “Do that while rubbing.”  

                 “Yes.”  He did just what you instructed.  

                 “That’s a good student.”  You were taking him with ease, his cock and fingers both bringing you immense pleasure.  “Captain. If you keep that up I’m going to cum real soon.”  

                 Steve let-out almost an inhuman noise as he started moving his fingers faster, flexing his cock inside of you while you bounced up and down.  

                 A long moan left your mouth as the orgasm shattered over you.  

                 “Are you on birth control?”  Steve’s voice was shaky.  

                 “Uh-huh.”  You had an IUD from the last relationship you never bothered to take out.  

                 You realized this was the first time you’d had sex without a condom since then and that ended years ago.   He grabbed your hips and pushed your body down hard.

                 You cried out and fell forward at the loos of his fingers, your orgasm still fresh in your limps.  His cock twitched inside of you as he followed you into orgasmic bliss.  

                 “We should have used protection.”  You curled up on his chest.  “Don’t do that with anyone else on here.  You don’t want to get a disease.”  

                 “I can’t.”  Steve looked at you.

                 “Can’t?”  That seemed like a rude remark.  “Allergic to latex?”  

                 “I am immune to diseases.”  Steve looked at you.  

                 You shook your head.  Of course, he was.  You pushed yourself up from the bed and looked at your ruined panties.  

                 “Where are you going?”  Steve turned on his elbow.  

                 “Bathroom.”  You winked. “Do you have another one in you this evening or do you have to hit the road?”  

                 “What do you mean?”  Steve had a quizzical look on his face.  

                 “I mean, casual sex.  Do you want to do round two or leave now?”  You stopped in the doorway.  “I have to get to sleep around ten, but you can stay until then?”

                 “Oh right.  Casual sex.”  Steve gave a pressed smile.  “Ten works.”

                 “I’ll be right back.”  You winked and headed for the bathroom.  

                 Once you were out of sight you did a little happy dance.  A night of sex with Captain America.  How in the world were you this lucky?  

~~

                 Break a sweat had been the right choice of words. Your breath heaved in your chest. Both of you reeling from the latest finish,  but you weren’t sure if yours was a new one or just a long continuous one.   You turned to look at Steve when your eyes caught the clock.

                 “Shit.  It’s almost midnight.”  Even though everything felt like jelly you popped up in bed.  “You’ve gotta get out of here.”  

                 You went to grab his clothes off the floor.  

                 “Or I could just stay the night.”  He wiped the sweat from his forehead.  “You can kick me out in the morning.”  

                 “Ha, nice try.”  You handed him his clothing.  “That’s too relationship-esque for me.”  

                 “Right.”  He started to get dressed.  “You didn’t teach me how to use that app though.”  

                 “It’s not hard.”  You laughed. “I think you’re doing fine. I mean, you found me. That picture is going to confuse some people.”  

                 “Honestly, you’re not the first one I tried to meet up with.”  He stood up from the bed.  “The rest, um either thought I was lying and swore at me, or when I did meet up with them stared at me awkwardly until I left.”  

                 “Not going to lie, I had about five seconds of that.”  You wrapped a towel around yourself, hating how tired you were going to be tomorrow, but needing a shower.  “Good luck with that.  No advice there.”

                 “Well, what I am trying to say is.  Would you want to do this again sometime?”  Steve was pulling on his shoes.  “Maybe I could get your phone number?”  

                 “That’s sweet.”  You smiled.  “But no. I mean sure, we can do this again sometime if we’re both on the HookUp App at the same time and you’re close enough to me.  I set it my radius.  But A friends-with-benefit relationship gets messy.  What if you call me and I’m not in the mood?  Then I feel guilty and like I have to since you’ve been there for me when I was feeling horny?”  

                 “Oh.”  There was no hiding the disappointment in his voice.  

                 “But I did enjoy tonight.” You smiled. “Really. Thank you. Maybe lightning will strike and I’ll find you again?”  

                 He almost looked like a bruised puppy.  It was tempting to give him your number, but you weren’t looking for anything.  You had been honest.  

                 “Have a good night.”  Steve nodded and you watched him leave, locking the door behind him.

                 Once you were sure he was out of earshot you did a happy dance.  Banging Steve Rogers.  Tonight was one for the books.

~~

#Steve rogers #steve rogers x reader #steve x reader #marvel #marvel fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #captain america #captain america fanfic

[punkscowardschampions]

China & America

China: [After School] China: Where are you? China: You left your clothes on the bathroom floor and he's threatening to ✂ them up and she's just sitting there nodding America: ✂💳 after buying new 👌 China: Hilarious China: but you'd have to pry his wallet out his tight arse first and he's waving the ✂ about like right now America: 😐 America: terrorist negotiations are a no no China: Oh, believe me, if he knew you were on the 📞 he'd be straight on to shout at you himself America: if he wants me to walk around naked that's his damage America: she's guaranteed not sitting there 😶 when I do China: They're your best jeans China: you already don't have enough decent gear, you're seriously going to risk it? America: they'll be my best denim cut offs America: I don't come running for him China: Because it's not freezing 11 months and a half out of the year, Ricky China: I don't either but like fuck would I let him trash any of my stuff America: move us 🏝🧉 Gaz 👏 China: You want to fake as delusional as her? China: Fine, I'll be the only one living in reality, trying to talk some sense back into the woman and stopping him from ruining literally everything we've got America: back into? America: you've got jokes China: Please China: She was never this bad before China: or at least for this long, it'd be three weeks max of the lovesick bit and then she'd always come back and be mam again America: from your 🏰 that's the view China: There's nothing about this house that's castle like but he's definitely taken the only appeals it had away China: you miss having the parties and the hangs too America: they're still happening America: Gaz doesn't run the 🌏 America: can't roll out of 🛏 onto a dance floor but it's not 😢 China: But it was better when we could throw them China: and there was no rules around here, period China: You're just giving him reason to stay, the man's a raving lunatic, instead of saying no tah it's like his new cause to fix this family and save us both China: Must've been a fucking general in a past life America: there still aren't, his don't count America: & you're not giving him a reason to fucking go so 🤫 China: You say that but any time we have to be here China: and we do, at least some of the time, we can't do what we always did before and he's calling the shots China: I'm trying to figure out what the hell that would look like, what are you doing? America: watch me America: I'll throw a party right now China: Really China: Good luck with that China: Jesus, he'll lock you up, you know he will, if he doesn't do worse beforehand America: What's Daddy Garry gonna do? Hit me? America: They'd lock him up America: & his head'll 🤯 before mine does China: You don't remember some of the boyfriends she's had China: it's not funny, for fuck's sake China: I want my life back America: the trauma hasn't run deep enough to give me memory loss & you're not old enough to play that card America: it can be anything I want, it's my life America: I remember when we had live laugh love on the kitchen wall China: You know what? China: Let him rip up all your sketty clothes China: you're being selfish, why should I help you America: now the 👖 don't know whose side you're on America: they were THE BEST when you wanted me to come back China: I'm on the side of this family China: but you only care about yourself, apparently America: you're on your own side America: you care about having your life back, not what mine looks like China: I'm the one here arguing with him for your stuff right now China: and I just want things back how they were, for all of us China: him gone and her like an actual person with thoughts and emotions about anything that ain't what he wants America: you said yourself he won't leave if I act any kind of way America: he's crusading America: & I don't look old enough to get high enough to do a mam impression America: what do you fucking expect me to do, Chi? China: Help me work this out! China: Together China: you're still here, you don't get to wash your hands of it and ignore it like Zsa does because it doesn't really matter to her China: as long as he isn't hitting any of us and maybe even then, who the fuck knows with her America: don't ! at me America: if it were that simple, togetherness could get fucked China: It ain't, that's the whole problem and what no one else seems to grasp right now China: we act up, he's got more cause to stay and get progressively worse until we can't do anything and go anywhere China: we do what he wants and stay in line, he'll probably get such a boner he'll try to marry her and adopt us America: the audacity of me taking a 🚿 in my own home China: I know China: why is he not telling her to do more washing? America: be a controlling fuckwit but make it useful America: you could be wayyyyyyyy more productive with this, sir China: I'm not saying that's right either but it's all about how WE have no respect China: she's stopped doing anything that isn't doing her 💅💄👗 for him and we're meant to do it all, apparently America: Mam has respect for his 💪🍆🍑 China: 🤮 China: It goes without saying, but he's literally fuck ugly America: but I DEMAND it's said America: he needs to know on the regs China: He's got this one wrinkle on his forehead that's so deep I reckon it could hold a ✎ China: I hate him America: if you put your 💄 in there next time he's 😪💻 , I'll let you use a DIFFERENT ONE on me China: Alright China: I'll use one of hers America: would she end it if he had 0 hair? America: or eyebrows China: His hairline is dead and she acts like she don't notice China: It's like a spell, or something America: I know someone who'd come over for a face tattoo America: or 🍆🍑 if that's all she cares about China: You do not China: and he doesn't have enough of either to cover, shh America: I do TOO China: Who? America: Si is bored enough without your parties he bought a tattoo gun online China: Oh God China: do not do it he'll be so bad, never mind the hepatitis America: & he's dyslexic China: 😂 China: I can't wait to see what bullshit he decides to misspell on himself then America: [sends her some pics because imagine] China: He's so lame China: I can't believe Gary has wrecked my chance with Jake America: his da is a fuckwit too you'd think he'd be more understanding China: like I wanna tell him anything about this China: it's shaming enough we can't throw the parties no more and everyone knows why America: he's part of the everyone, he already knows China: doesn't mean I want to go and cry about it China: I've got some pride, thank you America: he should have some America: never throws a party at his own house China: That was one of the only things we had going for us America: weakkk America: you have things going for you, ask mam when she recovers from this illness China: Okay, the main thing China: but he's going to start going out with Lucie now instead, I know it America: Lucie's been out with half his friends before him America: not a ringing endorsement, like China: Yeah, she's a right slag, and she'll do it anywhere so she don't even need the free house America: get nan out of hers, she'd do it for the sake of your love life China: We have bigger problems China: sort that one and the rest will fall back into place, yeah America: biggest problem that we don't know how to sort it America: I'll get him to hurt me 🚨🚔 we're almost there China: That's not a solution China: and they won't do fuck all about it until it's serious China: too serious to control America: is if it works America: we know he wants to throw me out the window with the 👖 America: & maybe all the boys will think I'm into some hardcore bdsm shit China: Shut up you don't know anything about that America: 👌 Jake's vanilla that's a shame China: You're 12 and that's not the kind of reputation you want or are gonna have China: that's for girls like Lucie who have fuck all else to offer so they have to go hard with that degrading shit America: told you there was more on offer from us than a free house 😛 America: but stop walking into all my traps that easy China: You're such a dick 🙄😏 China: I didn't mean that was all but fucking hell, it was clearly a big draw China: so many people are airing me right now America: you know who doesn't care about parties? America: the people you air China: Who??? America: [a list which obvs includes Bobby and Libi on it and probably Beck as well] China: So you're just going to list every random loser in school for what? America: 😐 America: & you're gonna kid yourself that there's not at least 3 boys on there hotter than Jake America: get out of your fucking ⬛ China: it's not JUST about hot though, is it China: it's all the rest America: what else has Jake got? China: He's cool America: he's not cool enough to throw a party for you America: you're bored China: I am bored right now America: What's the point of Gaz if he doesn't take her anywhere anymore? America: why's she not bored? China: Yeah get this China: they're talking about redecorating America: what.the.fuck. China: I know China: it's looked like this our entire lives because she can't afford it China: now he thinks he can come in and whitewash everything America: remember when that one before offered to put up a roll of wallpaper and she looked at him like he said he wanted to beat you to death with it America: she'd let Gary kill us China: say goodbye to live laugh love China: it'll be RESPECT RESPECT RESPECT America: he needs to fuck off or I am China: Where to China: no one's got a sofa comfy enough or the desire to do any more than offer a night America: I know plenty of people I can get to desire me China: 🖕 China: not falling for it again so soon America: no 🕷🕸 America: they're not people I want, I didn't say that China: That's not a solution, again China: this is our house China: and our mam China: we need to sort it America: I know China: I can't think around them though China: I need to get out America: meet me [wherever the hell she is rn] China: Okay China: as I have nowhere else to be rn America: bring me a jacket China: assuming you've got one left after his tantrum China: that WILL be resumed, when you're relocated 🙄 America: if he's that desperate to text me China: He's that desperate to shout 'til he looks like a 🍅 America: 😋🤤 China: If you liked it or him at all, you'd be here America: I'm waiting here for you America: with ☕ China: I'm on my way America: I'll text Jake to be here & 🏃👌 China: You will not America: you wanna see him & you're not gonna hit send China: Because I have dignity, I don't know why that's a foreign concept to you China: and I don't even want to see him America: you do, you're losing it that he doesn't wanna see you China: Don't be dramatic on my behalf China: and getting my little sister to beg for me, that's hardly going to win anyone over America: I was gonna pretend to be you China: Ha! China: I'd love to see that, not America: party trick America: if we ever have one again China: If anyone wants to come by the time we've worked this out, it'll be a miracle America: it is getting 🥱 China: Seriously China: not getting aired for no reason America: you should listen to me about nan America: have one there China: The only person who would have a party at their nans house is Libi Foley America: it is mint there China: 🙄 America: it is China: Why? She got a trampoline? 👌 America: getting low if you're getting jealous America: [but whatever pics or vids we have from being there however many times we have like] China: I don't know what you reckon is cool in [whatever year they're in] these days America: her 🏠 America: some of her friends America: but I think I scared her off China: Well forget her China: She thinks she's something special but she's so not America: you're not describing her China: Sure China: If she's making you feel shitty she's hardly the 😇 everyone thinks she is America: how did you twist it to be her fault from what I said? America: 🤯 China: You aren't scary, she can't hang America: she didn't have you green lighting her on what cool is America: that's why I can China: She's super immature America: that shit must fly cos she's super well liked too China: With other people on your list, maybe America: you know she's got friends on friends, we don't have to downplay it America: it's not gonna make us feel a new way about any of the 💩 going on China: Literally why are we talking about her China: I've got so much more on my mind America: You brought her up to veto nan's house as a party place America: cos you don't want her to hate you too China: It isn't a party place, she's an old lady China: that would be so lame China: she doesn't have a boyfriend, where are we sending her? America: bingo America: use Zsa's flat then, she has a boyfriend, he's all she ever talks about China: Her tiny one bed China: I could have a few main people, potentially America: Princess and the pea isn't a sexy story America: if you're gonna kick it like that with Jake he will fuck Lucie in the PE block China: That's his prerogative if he wants to catch herpes America: everything doesn't have to be perfect America: you 🔊 like Gary China: If Asia is going to stop talking to me, it needs to at least be worth it America: you could trash the place and she'd think she did it 🔎 for her fake gucci belt China: 🙄 China: at least we don't have to worry about her man lasting America: ✂️💖 China: I don't know why they do it America: what are you doing with Jake? China: I'm not China: not like them America: I don't believe you China: Well first off, he's actually decent looking and cool China: and that's the difference China: Gary isn't, and whatshisname isn't either China: and I'm not throwing myself at him America: he isn't cool to me America: if it was so different you'd care about that China: How is he not? America: 🤡 China: What the hell does that mean? America: he thinks he's funny and he's not China: You don't have to think he is China: you're not interested and he's not interested in you China: that's a bit different to Gary fucking up our lives and taking over our mam America: he doesn't need to talk about me ever then China: I'm sure he won't...? America: 😐 China: He's not talking about either of us right now America: 🎊🎉 China: Happy for you America: I'd be happy for you if you used the Gary situation to get a boyfriend who's less of a dick China: Like who? China: [list boys from that list] China: LOL America: 🖕 America: [because we know the boy she likes is on that list honey] China: Who do you fancy then? America: dream on, shady bitch America: I'm not revealing my secrets now China: 😂 China: Omg go on China: I'll work it out America: if Gaz keeps treating me like a little girl without the choking, spitting in my mouth or giving me euros to spend, it's not gonna matter America: he'll think I'm immature China: You're such a dick China: but he's older then China: narrows it down America: as old as you, not as old as daddy Gary China: Well I can work out who it isn't then America: you've got other shit to prioritise China: You should get a boyfriend your own age America: I'm not getting one China: When you do, then America: when I do I won't be doing a poll of our year America: he's fun that's why I like him America: the 2 years aren't what's making me 🤤 China: What's fun mean America: he can hang China: I know who it is America: happy for you China: He's okay, I guess China: if you like that sort of thing America: what the hell does that mean? China: He's a bit China: but if you like him America: a bit? China: Annoying China: but you don't have to see him around school America: I thought you had a real concern! China: I'm not mam, we've still got one China: I just don't think he's cute but he's not like, the worst China: I don't know why he hangs around with who he does though, maybe he's weird America: Jake is who you think is cute & cool so 🤫 China: He's the hottest boy in my year China: who isn't like, the preppy sporty type America: & he acts like it America: talking down to everyone China: You're dramatic America: 😐 America: he is, behaving like 👑 China: You're acting like I'm married to him, for starters China: we were never even officially going out America: cos he wants to fuck around & find out who else is 🤤 China: He can do what he likes America: with Lucie & you won't care at.all. China: 🖕 America: me getting 🍆 could bring mam out of her coma China: If she finds out before Gary China: that might actually be a decent way to look into it China: 'cos clearly, 👑 has failed to save us all America: 👌 I'll do what I can China: all you have to do is heavily hint you are, in the 0.2 milliseconds he leaves her alone America: I'll stand on the 🚽 while she's 🛁 China: Take a piss test China: that should trigger the fear response America: they're expensive America: be going in Gaz's wallet again China: nah, you can get them for a euro in dealz China: market for the skanky slags like Lucie, duh America: I'll go after school tomorrow, he won't be leaving her alone tonight after ✂👖 China: Ew China: I'm definitely finding somewhere else to be America: seconded China: This is ridiculous China: Nan's going to get fed up of us crashing at hers America: that day came a month in China: but like, fed up to the point he'll talk her out of letting us because we should 'be at home' or whatever the fuck China: 🕠 running out America: What a flirty little game of 🐈 & 🐁 America: game on, Gaz China: 🙄 China: We've got no choice so, yeah America: Where are you gonna go? China: 🤷 China: I don't know America: come with me China: Where are you going? America: When you've got nowhere else, 3rd degree questioning's pointless China: Why is it hard to answer a question? America: I don't have an answer yet China: Right China: well, whatever then America: whatever yes or whatever no? China: So you need a dedicated answer, do you? China: You invited me, shouldn't make any difference if I do or don't come, as you've got no idea where you're going America: & you think my pretend babydaddy is annoying China: He very literally is China: if you wanna talk about thinking you're funny, Jesus America: he has a basis for it America: he's got jokes that aren't about what every girl at school looks like China: He's got adhd China: I think America: When he said he was on 💊s not what I thought he meant China: He must have it bad he's so twitchy still China: and he never shuts up China: which is probably why he's friends with the deaf kid America: I take it back, you and Jake are well suited 🤡 China: What? That's not a joke China: it just makes literal sense China: he's so loud America: You're being a dick China: Oh I am not China: it's not like I'm saying it to his face America: you know I like his face & you're saying it to me China: Well you know I like Jake and you're being a dick about him so in that case, we'd be even America: he can help having a shitty personality, that's not the same as an adhd diagnosis China: okay then China: an excuse to have prescribed speed America: what's your excuse for not calling the deaf kid by his name? China: Why does it matter? China: You knew who I meant America: it matters that you're back in your 🏰 China: 🙄 Shut up China: again, not talking to him, just you America: no shit, you don't talk to anyone outside of your ⬛ America: just me China: We're sisters so China: we have to talk, so sorry America: I know how to do a smoky eye & take a drink, that's your main criteria for what a cool girl is China: You wish America: it's not something I'm prioritising pre or post Gary America: you're stuck with me anyway China: And you're stuck with me China: at the minute, that's basically all we've got China: Zsa is literally not taking it in, no surprise there China: and nan is drinking the kool-aid on him now so America: I'll bring mam back with my 🤰 it'll be fine China: **fake 🤰 America: I assumed that was clear cos of having no real 🍆 inside of me before tomorrow America: Gary probably doesn't want to kiss & make up like that, I'm only 12 China: What do you mean tomorrow? America: assuming I do the test in front of her then China: Don't require you to actually do the deed, idiot China: s'all fake, we don't need you to go have a fake abortion, Jesus America: I'm just saying we don't need to waste time typing out a distinction like **fake when it's obvious China: Don't be a twat, I was just saying China: you're so bloody pedantic today, my God America: Don't be putting some kind of tempting fate 🤰 hex on me before I've even done anything with any boys China: Don't be a little slag and nothing will happen China: not going to be me or fate doing anything about it, you're in control America: right now Gary is America: 🚫🍆 China: It's about more than that America: I know China: You don't get it America: What don't I get? China: I've lost loads of friends China: maybe all of them America: you'll get them back the parties are America: when* China: yeah America: I'm fixing it China: **WE are America: did you save my 👖? China: Yea China: I put a load of washing on China: so now you're gonna owe me a thank you China: didn't know what else to do, he likes pitting us against each other I reckon America: I bought you ☕ ungrateful bitch China: UM, I meant you're going to owe me a grovelling thank you arselick because Gary says so China: I'm behaving and you're not, right now, cheeky cow China: anyway, I'm nearly there so don't fucking bin it America: I'll put washing on when my newborn is sleeping China: Fucking hell 😂 China: It's tragic, isn't it China: I can't think of anything more tragic China: poor mam China: poor nan America: how old do you have to be before they let you get sterilised? China: Oh, so old China: tell 'em you want to live off the state forever and have 14 of 'em and maybe they'll change their fucking mind America: Gary would do it for me if he was any fucking use China: If you ever really get pregnant, the botched abortion would do it America: I'll pitch the idea to my 1st boyfriend China: Good luck America: we're in the right place 🍀 China: Are we? China: Doesn't feel like it America: for a backstreet foetus killing scheme anyway China: Whatever brightside, I guess America: you sound as tired as I feel America: how early did he wake you? I think it was still fully dark out China: I swear, only solid he's done me China: loads of time to do a full hair and make-up routine America: What classes do you even have with Jake? Like 2 China: Oh, so now just 'cos I don't want to look like a bag of shit that's all about him too? China: Are you sure YOU aren't like them? China: Ugh America: you don't look like 💩 America: it's about him if you suddenly think you do China: I don't think that I just China: I'm not winning anyone back 'round if I do America: it's about the lack of parental supervision not your lack of split ends America: on every level you know that China: It is not China: that's a big part of it, but it is not all of it America: if it's not all of it where are they all? China: There's plenty of boys who care about pretty China: even if Jake isn't one of them China: if I have a desirable boyfriend, that's fucking something America: Jake does care about pretty, that's his main priority America: & why he's a dick to me China: You should've said China: you fancy him America: I'd fuck Gary before him, you delusional cow China: Ha, okay China: you're the one who's so hung up on how he treats you China: I'm so sorry he doesn't fancy you back but I'm actually not because you know I like him America: cos I want you to give a shit that your not boyfriend is like bullying me China: Wow, bullying now, really? America: you're asking for me to throw this ☕ at you China: I won't even come if you're going to be this China: melodramatic China: what do you mean bullying you? America: I mean every party you've thrown he's said something unnecessary to me China: Can you be more specific or America: can you not take my fucking word for it? China: Well not really China: like, if he's just made some passing comments it's not really bullying, is it America: 😐 America: 👌 make excuses for him & keep telling me you're doing things different China: For God's sake China: since when are you so sensitive? America: I've kept my mouth shut until literally now China: As you said, literally, he's joking America: I'm tired & I've typed the name Jake more times than I've ever wanted to China: You can't just accuse people of shit they haven't done China: if it was that simple, we'd say Gary was touching us and ta-da, problem solved America: I'll go down that route if the 🤰 fails China: It's not a fucking joke China: fuck this America: it is if you think I'm living like this for the next 6 years minimum China: You think 4 makes it any more palatable? America: telling a lie to get rid of him is the least of what I'm prepared to do China: I can't think straight right now China: save your ☕ I'm gonna go somewhere else America: Chi China: It's fine America: you're basically here China: I'm going China: I've got plans now America: you do not China: I do now America: with who? China: None of your business America: with who China: Who do you think China: happy now? America: what.the.fuck. China: Leave it alone America: Have you been talking to him all along? China: No, actually China: though I'm sure you won't believe me America: can't believe a word any of you say America: I hope he gives you herpes China: Nice America: You're not, why should I? China: You started this China: and for your information, I've never slept with him, or anyone else America: I did NOT China: then you got in my head America: not on purpose China: I've got my own life America: that wasn't in question China: I don't need your pity America: I don't feel sorry for you China: Good America: I'm fine too, thanks for asking China: You've got friends, who don't just use you for parties China: as you've been so keen to rub in America: & you're calling me over sensitive China: Joke all you lie China: k* America: you think Jake's are better China: Yeah, I do America: 👌🍆😗 China: Jealous much America: LOL China: Enjoy pining after Tweak America: 🖕 China: Enjoy your evening, that's my plan America: talk yourself into it harder America: maybe you will China: 👌🍆😗 America: 🤮🤮🤮 China: I'm not faking a pregnancy America: Lucie's not fake swallowing China: Ugly girls have more to prove America: you 🔊 like Jake America: he'll be excited as hell China: yeah he will America: 🎊🎉 he can stop trying to suck his own dick 🥳 China: you're just a kid China: let me know where you end up, Zsa's or nan's China: and I'll take the other 👌 America: you can take either cos I'm doing neither China: You know what, fine China: I shouldn't be the one doing this America: What this do you mean? Whoring yourself out to Jake or pretending you care what I'm going to do China: Looking after you China: are any of them in your messages? doubt it China: he's got no right and he goes too far but at least he'll be giving a shit where you are America: I don't need tabs kept on me, I'm going to MJ's not to 🍆 or 💊💉 China: 👍 America: I had a feeling Gaz wouldn't be stepping up to make 🍝 China: I can thank him for the diet too America: he'll be thrilled to hear about the 🍆😗 part of it China: I'm not planning to regale him with it China: 'cos not tempting an assault tah America: Mam & Zsa will have more useful tips China: I don't need them China: thank God America: just Jake telling you what he likes 💖 China: Piss off America: 🏰👑💖 China: Yeah, really feel it America: he'll make you feel really good about yourself China: What would you know about it, Ricky? America: it's what you want him for, I know that China: Why wouldn't I want that? China: Just because you've not had it ever America: Why can't you get it from someone else? China: Because I like Jake China: end of America: 😐 China: and every girl but you does too America: [lists all the girls that don't aka the lesbians, other girls he has shaded and girls like libi who are shamelessly in love with someone else/have boyfriends they care about even a little bit] China: 🙄🙄 China: You've got too much time on your hands China: not going to list every girl that does China: you know who I meant and that it's true America: I just spent a decade I won't get back waiting for you China: I wasn't about to come to MJ's and beg for food with you so America: I didn't invite you there, it's where I'm going now since you're on a Jake's jizz diet China: Don't be gross America: It's you who likes him 🤢 China: It's you who keeps talking about his dick China: like, stop America: I'm desensitising you America: so you can bear to look at & touch it China: I don't need that America: then this is me 🤫 China: 👍 China: Thanks China: Guess I'll see you in school tomorrow, or just before, pretending we've been 🛏 or purposely showing we're just coming in China: who knows what will be more effective in the AM America: you do one, I'll try the other China: Yeah China: know which one you'd prefer China: I'm not playing nice so you don't have to, like I always have America: you weren't playing when it was just you & mammy America: neither was I China: She was fun China: before America: I know China: What's not to like America: as her favourite, you would say that China: 🙄 America: & it doesn't matter who she was America: she's a zombie now China: we'll get her back America: What's the cure for swallowing Gary's bodily fluids? China: She's had worse China: equally as bad America: built up immunity China: There's no immunity to shitty men America: as you've proven China: pot kettle America: I don't like Jake, you're deluded China: I wasn't talking about him, moron America: 🖕 China: No, he seems like SUCH a cool, chill guy America: you'd be a shady bitch whatever you think he's like cos you're mad I don't wanna hop on Jake's 🍆 China: Yeah, SO mad China: you're twisted China: and delusional if you think it'd be any kind of competition America: you admitted you want me to be jealous & that his appeal is everyone likes him so yeah America: your priorities are twisted China: When did I? America: read any of this chat back China: 👍 Good one China: I really don't care what you think China: your taste is clearly trash America: I'd follow your ☕ into the bin but it'll make me late for 🍝 China: 😱 China: Can't have that China: I'm waiting for my bus, talk later America: 👋

[maliby]

Dom (M)

↬ Pairing: Jungkook x Reader ↬ Story Genre: smut, fluff at the end, dom!reader, sub!jungkook, PWP ↬ Warnings in this chapter: unprotected sex, face riding, deepthroat, marking of the body (hickeys and scratches), very light petplay, cum eating, noona kink ↬ Word count: 2.9K ↬ Summary: Your day is going shitty and you just want to fuck the shit out of your boyfriend after he posts a very sexy pic online.

a/n: this is pure filth, I just had these feelings inside of me after some pictures I saw of Jungkook and I just had to let them out somehow, lmao.

9 PM and you were still stuck at work; your feet hurt from wearing high heels all day and you were starting to get a headache from staring at the computer for too long. You wanted nothing more than to just pick up your things and go home to your loving boyfriend Jungkook, but instead, you had to finish a load of paperwork your boss had given you.

Today had been one of those days where everything had ticked you off. You couldn’t quite explain it, but you thought that the added workload, the lack of sex (due to that same workload) and your approaching period were making you extra bitchy and horny, bringing your dom persona straight to the surface.

You usually liked to be the submissive one, going to heaven and back every time your boyfriend choked you out with his cock buried deep inside you, but sometimes you liked to be the one in control. Jungkook loved it when you brought your dom side to play; as soon as he would see that look in your eyes and heard your bossy tone his cock would immediately start getting hard for you.

You were keeping it fairly in control, thinking that you were almost finished and could finally relax, but it wasn’t until you decided to check Instagram that it all went down the drain: Jungkook had posted a shirtless picture of him from your vacation in Hawaii.

You wanted nothing more than just lock your phone and get back to work, but your eyes kept wandering over his naked torso. He had just come out of the water when you decided to take a picture of him; he looked like a god amongst men with his toned golden muscles glistening in the sun and his wet black hair being pushed back. Damn him and his perfect looks. You wanted to wreck him; you wanted to hear him plead for you to give him what he wants, what only you could give him.

Not being able to hold it in any longer you turned off your computer, picked up your purse and started driving home, telling your boss you had some family emergency. At this moment you didn’t care anymore, you would worry about your work tomorrow, for today you had other sticky situations to worry about.

As you parked your car in front of your building you looked up and noticed that the light from your living room was lit up, telling you exactly where your prey of a boyfriend was. You went inside the building and called for the elevator, the ache between your legs being so big that you had to press your hand to your cunt to relief it.

“Come on you stupid elevator, where are you coming from? The moon?” You cursed as you looked at the numbers slowly counting down, the thought of climbing up the stairs briefly passing through your mind.

As soon as the elevator arrived and opened its doors to you, you went inside and quickly punched the button to your floor, checked yourself in the mirror right after; your makeup had run off a little bit, so you applied a bit of concealer to hide your dark circles and an extra coat of your red liquid lipstick that would stay on your mouth even if you were giving the sloppiest of blowjobs.

When the elevator reached your floor you marched down to your door, your hand already inside your purse trying to find your keys; you searched and you searched, but it seemed like they had disappeared into another dimension.

“Fuck this shit.” You cursed to yourself once more, giving up on the hell hole that was a woman’s purse and deciding to knock on your door.

“One second,” you heard your boyfriend say from the other side.

“Hurry up,” you demanded.

“Y/N? Did you forget your keys?”

When he opened the door you swore you could feel the extra slick moistening your underwear - he was wearing nothing but his grey sweatpants that hung oh so nicely on his hips. You couldn’t handle it anymore, you walked inside, closed the door and pushed him to a wall, kissing him fervently.

“Did you miss me that much babe?” He said as he broke the kiss for air.

“Shut up. Get on your knees.” It was at that moment that he knew exactly what he was dealing with, the corner of his lips rising up in a smirk. “What are you smiling at? Do you think this is funny?”

“No,” he rapidly got on his knees and glued his eyes on the floor. He knew that dom Y/N was in the house and that you weren’t gonna take any shit from him.

“Let me tell you about my day. I had to work for twelve hours in front of a computer, wearing tight and uncomfortable clothes, and hearing shit from my boss about being behind on work. I worked so hard, wishing nothing but to finish early so I can come home to spend time with my boyfriend, but when I decide to take a little break to check Instagram what do I see? I see a photo of my half-naked boyfriend looking all mouth watering with all his glorious abs shining in the sun.”

“I’m sorry noona,” he said with his eyes still glued to your feet.

“Did I tell you you could speak? You’re so fucking insolent.” He didn’t say anything further, only bowing his head further down in a sign of submission.

“Do you have any idea of what you did?” You lifted your right leg up and placed your foot on his shoulder, your heel digging into his flesh. “Look up.” When his brown doe eyes met with your drenched underwear you swore you could see his cock twitching, making your desire grow even more. “You see what you have done?” You slightly pulled your panties off to show him the string of your arousal that connected you to your underwear. “Because of you, I couldn’t finish my work. Because of you, I had to come home running. Because of you, I had to almost pleasure myself while waiting for the damn elevator. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I-I’m sorry noona,” his eyes were still fixed on your glistening cunt, probably thinking of all the things he could do to it.

“Sorry doesn’t cut it my little kookie,” you pressed the back of his shoulder with your foot, forcing him to now be on his hands and knees, “you’re gonna have to beg. Now, be a good boy and follow your noona on all fours like the obedient dog you are.”

The way from the entrance to your bedroom was a short one, but you just wanted to fuck with him a little bit, so you decided to make him crawl around the living room and only then take him to the bedroom. You sat at the edge of the bed with your legs crossed and watched as he waited on his knees for your further instructions.

“Come over here baby,” he crawled a bit more and stopped right in front of you, his face giving signs of the discomfort he must be feeling in his knees. “You are so beautiful,” you said as you observed his features for a moment. “I want you to stand for me.” Once again he didn’t wait a millisecond to obey your commands, immediately standing, his prominent bulge pointing right at your face.

You loved it when he wore those sweatpants with nothing else, it made you go wild, but now you were ready to see them on the floor, so you reached for the hem and yanked them down, leaving him with nothing but his black Calvin Klein boxer briefs that hugged him perfectly.

“You are so hard already from just crawling around the house?” You said as your hand massaged his junk over his underwear making him release tiny little moans. “Look at you, you can barely fit in your underwear anymore.” You slid your hand underneath his underwear and started pumping his cock very slowly, making him moan louder. “Shut up, I don’t want you to make a sound.”

“I-I can’t noona, it feels so good.” He closed his eyes and bit his lip in a state of pure bliss.

“Well if you can’t…” you took off your soaked underwear, turned it into a little ball and put it in his mouth, “I’ll have to find another way.”

You thought that you’d be indifferent to your actions, but watching Jungkook happily sucking on the piece of fabric soaked with your arousal like it was candy made you so excited that you wanted to end all this and just fuck him then and there.

“You can sit in the bed now baby.” When he did as you asked, you hoisted your skirt up and straddled him, your cunt meeting with his bulge. The pressure his hard cock made on your pussy felt so good that you couldn’t help but moan out loud.

“You like that baby? You like how I make your underwear all dirty just like you made mine today at work?” Since he couldn’t talk, he nodded his head 'yes', his hands grabbing at your ass cheeks.

“Why won’t you be a good little boy and get rid of noona’s clothes?” You didn’t have to ask twice, as soon as the question was out of your mouth he ripped your shirt open, buttons popping all over the floor, and reached behind your back to unhook your bra; you let your ruined shirt and bra fall to the floor, the only piece of clothing on you now being the skirt at your waist.

With no layers of clothing standing in your way now (except for your skirt), you moved a bit closer to him, skin rubbing against skin, and attached your mouth to his neck - a spot you knew had him weak. You started sucking on him, having no mercy on his beautiful skin; you wanted to mark him all over, you wanted everyone to know to whom he belongs to - you. Afterwards, you pressed both your hands on his chest and pushed him back so he could lay on the bed and you could have his body as your canvas. You marked his neck, then his chest and his delicious chocolate abs, and then you moved onto his crotch area and pulled down his boxers, freeing his cock.

You teased him and you teased him, leaving kisses everywhere except where he wanted them the most, making him a whimpering mess. “You want me to suck you off baby?”

“Hmm-hmm,” he moaned while nodding his head ‘yes’.

“Mmmm,” you let your mouth get closer and breathed into his dick, teasing him once more. “I will baby,” you grabbed his red tip and slowly started moving your thumb in tandem over it, spreading his pre-cum all over it, “but first you have to do one more thing for me.”

He mumbled something you didn’t understand due to the underwear that was stuffed in his mouth but you imagined it was something along the lines of ‘I’ll do it’.

You moved to meet his face again, your thumb still working on his tip. “I want you to eat me out.”

Your free hand removed your underwear from his mouth so you could hear his sweet voice. “Fuck, yes. I want to taste you so bad noona.” He whimpered, still falling to pieces from your touches.

You let go of his cock and moved your body so it could meet with his mouth, and without any warning, you sat on his face. You almost came on the spot as soon as his tongue met with your clit, the pent up frustration no doubt at fault for that. It all felt so heavenly that soon you were riding his face, your clit hitting his nose and his tongue just running along your folds.

“Oh fuck, that feels so good.” You were nearly there and he knew that, so to give you that extra edge he lifted you a bit with his strong arms and started tongue-fucking you. “Oh yes, don’t you dare stop.” Jungkook’s tongue, as well as all his other muscles,  were very strong, so with the frenetic rhythm that he was going at it didn’t take long for you to cum all over his mouth.

You couldn’t move for a few moments, but after he started to lick you all over again you had to back away, the overstimulation making you shake all over.

“You did so good baby,” you petted his hair like he was a little child, “I think you deserve a reward.”

You didn’t even bother moving down, you just turned around and started going down on him in a fake 69 position (due to you being the only one doing oral sex). You started off soft, just giving little licks here and there until eventually, he was deepthroating you as you massaged his balls. You wanted him to reach near his climax quickly, which thankfully wasn’t hard due to the teasing you did before, so you went all out and let him fuck your throat like there was no tomorrow, but when he was about to cum you backed away making him curse.

“What the fuck did you just say?” You turned around once more, grabbing him by his chin.

“I’m sorry noona, it’s just that I really wanted to cum.”

“Listen here, you belong to me. Your cum belongs to me. I decide when you get to cum, is that understood?” You looked deep into his eyes for you knew that this would get to him since he would say this to you all the time when he was the dom.

“Yes,” his eyes were also on yours, but they looked at you in a way that screamed ‘I submit’. If he wanted to cum, he would have to beg for it.

“Don’t you dare move.” You aligned your pussy with his cock and slowly sank into it, the feeling making the both of you moan.

“You feel so good noona,”  he was fully grabbing your thighs, his short nails digging into your flesh. He was trying really hard not to move, but he knew that if he disrespected your orders he wouldn’t get the cum.

You started off by swirling your hips and only then did you start to bounce on him, the sound of skin slapping on skin filling the whole room.

“Noona, please let me cum,” Jungkook said in a pleading tone, the poor guy having been tortured with all the teasing.

“Not yet.”

“Noona please,” he insisted.

You completely stopped all movement at his second time pleading. “Fine. You want to cum? You can cum, but only after you make me cum, get it?”

“Yes noona,” and just like that he suddenly picked you up and turned you over so he now was on top of you. Then, without losing any more time, he started fucking you at an inhuman speed like he was a young wild animal that had been locked in a cage and had just now been sent out into the wild to play.

“Oh fuck, yes baby, just like that. You’re doing great.” You were nearing your end and so was he so, wanting to comply with your wishes of making you cum first he reached for that magic little bud that just never fails - the clit. As soon as he started rubbing your little bud you felt your orgasm coming down on you like never before, making you claw at Jungkook’s back.

After your orgasm Jungkook never stopped though, desperately wanting to reach his own high. It didn’t take long for him to be spilling his load inside of you though, his sweet moans that you loved so much reaching your ears.

“You did so good baby,” you said after both of you recovered your breaths. “Sorry about the scratches, I couldn’t help it.”

“No worries baby, I like it when you’re wild like that with me.” He gave you a soft kiss on the mouth before he got up to go to the bathroom.

“Hey, don’t you dare! Aftercare is on the dom, you know this!” You said as you realized what he was about to do.

“Come on let me do this for you, you’ve had a rough day and week,” he returned from the bathroom with a wet washcloth and a dry one ready to clean you up.

“You’re the sweetest, I love you.”

He cleaned you all up and then gave you a little kiss on the nose. “I love you too baby.”

As soon as he turned around to go to the bathroom again and you saw his scratch marks again you had an idea. “Hey, before we take care of those scratches can you just do me a little favour?” You asked batting your eyelashes at him.

“Anything.”

“When you asked me if we could take a photo of us to put on my Instagram, this was not what I had in mind,” he said teasingly while looking at the photo of you two naked and hugging, the only thing visible being your face and his clawed back.

“Well, it’s just in case people go to your profile and start drooling over the photo I took of you on the beach. Then they look at this picture and realize that you are well served and that they can back off.”

“Well then, next time that I’m dom I demand the same type of photo for my love bites,” he said as he playfully bit your lip.

“Noooo, my mother has Instagram kookie! I can’t post that.”

“Too bad, the sub doesn’t make the rules.”

#jungkook #jeon jungkook #kookie #bts jungkook #bts #jungkook smut #jungkook fluff #bts smut #bts fluff #jungkook scenario #jungkook fic #jungkook fanfic #bts scenario #bts fic #bts fanfic #kpop #jungkook fanfiction #bts fanfictio #kpop smut

[michiamotippete]

SHE WAS BORED

Hi! This is my first attempt writing a smut one shot!

Enjoy it!

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Natsu had just got home from the firehouse, he was the department chief and he had to go through a lot of paperwork during his day at work. He loved his job but having to make sure everything was always sorted was exhausting. He sighed tiredly, happy to be home and have some time to relax.

-Hi buddy!- said him to the blue Chartreux that was headbutting his ankles. He bent over to pet his little friend, scooping him up into his muscular arms. The little cat started purring and closed his black eyes. Natsu chuckled, ruffling his salmon hair with his hand.

-I know Happy, this day was long!-

Natsu put the cat down on the large white bed in the bedroom, searching for some clean clothes. He sniffed himself and cringed, he stank really bad. He went to the bathroom to have a shower, but when he was about to put a foot into it, he heard a little bling.

Lucy (key and stars emojis): Natsuuuu I’m bored!

He smiled at the screen. Lucy is his best friend and girlfriend. They had been friends since Lucy’s sophomore year at the high school, but they started dating at her first year at college. He always thought to be extremely lucky, Lucy is a curvy blonde with big brown eyes and plump rosy lips. She’s clever, smart, kind and weird; she could have had everyone at her feet. Every boy at school wanted to go out with her, but she chose him. He didn’t know why; he was reckless and goofy, and she was too much for him. She was like the brightest star in the sky, with her fair skin and her golden hair; she was amazing, and he vowed to himself that until she wanted to, he will give everything he got to her. He loved her and his mission was to make her smile, because her smile was the most beautiful thing in the entire universe.

Natsu: Too bad, I can’t help you :P

He looked at the screen, the phrase “is writing…” appeared and he waited, looking at the profile image of his girlfriend. It was a picture of them, Natsu had his arm around Lucy’s shoulders and was grinning at the phone while Lucy was kissing his cheek with her manicured hand cupping his other cheek.

Lucy (key and stars emojis): But Natsu! I don’t know…Can we play at something?

Natsu chuckled, imagining the pout on Lucy’s lips.

Natsu: Lucy, you’re in Alvarez at the moment and I’m home. In Fiore. In Magnolia. About to take a shower.

He waited a few seconds for her answer, but it didn’t arrive, so he entered the shower. He was washing his hair when a bling came and soon another followed. He rinsed his hair under the rain of the shower and checked his phone. “Thank God it’s waterproof!” thought him checking his conversation with her.

Lucy (key and stars emojis): I know I’m in Alvarez dummy, but I’M BORED! I finished the conference early today and now I’m in my hotel room.

Lucy (key and stars emojis): Sooo….you’re naked now?

He blinked once, then twice at the second message. What a weird question, well she’s weird so what did he expect?

Natsu: Yeah? I’m showering so I need to be naked or are you saying that we did this thing wrong our entire life and we need to wash ourselves with our clothes on?

He resumed cleaning himself, rubbing the soap bar onto his tan skin. Bling. He groaned. He loved her, but damn he wanted to finish to wash himself. He finished what he was doing, deciding to check his phone after he exited the shower box. Bling. He huffed, tying a towel slightly under where his hips formed a “v”. A pink happy trail poking above the white cloth. He took his phone and looked at the notification. Lucy has sent a picture. He furrowed his eyebrows and checked the image, when it opened his breath itched in his throat. Lucy was wearing a loose silky pink tank top, her cleavage deepened by her arms pressing together. Her blonde hair was caught in a messy bun. Her eyes were looking at him with lust, cheeks slightly pink and one finger was caught between her teeth. He felt heat pooling in the pit of his stomach. His eyes grazing her figure, absorbing every detail.

Lucy (key and stars emojis): That’s a pity. I’d like to take a shower with you…

Natsu coughed, trying to regain his breath. A thought of her watching him like that, while straddling his lap, crossed his mind. He shook his head and started typing.

Natsu: Luce, what are you doing?

He was confused, amused and let’s be honest: he was starting to be fired up. She left for her business trip a week ago and the trip will last two more weeks. It was hard. They were never apart for long and this period without her was going to be the hardest in his life. Especially, if she kept be a little minx.

Lucy (key and stars emojis): I don’t know what you mean Natsu. I just need to take a shower, you know…let the water drip down my body, lather my arms, my stomach, my breast…

Natsu’s eyes widened. He knew very well that image. He helped her a lot doing that kind of task, maybe slipping his hand between her thighs and feeling how much she wanted him to...

-No! Calm yourself!- he said to himself slapping his cheeks. He watched himself in the mirror and a slight bulge caught his eyes. He sighed. She always made him feel fired up really quickly.

Natsu: oh really? You don’t know? Well go on, I’m sorry I already took a shower

He replied, adding an image of him in front of the mirror. Towel tied up onto his hips. Bangs down still dump. A hand was ruffling his hair while flexing his arms muscles. A grin on his lips and eyes cocky.

It took Lucy several minutes to replay and Natsu took advantage of the pause on his hormones to get dressed. He wore a pair of grey tracksuit bottoms and a black muscular top. He went to the kitchen to cook something to himself. Bling. He was getting some bread for a sandwich when he heard it. Natsu retrieved his phone from the pocket and saw that Lucy had sent a video. He swallowed noisily and opened the video. Lucy was pointing the phone at the mirror in her bathroom. Her hair was down, and she was playing with a strand between her fingers. A sly grin pulling at her lips. Natsu was having problem at breathing. Her body was clad in a tiny pink towel that reached her mid-thigh. The towel was slightly open on the front, giving him a peek of her toned stomach and a part of her groin.

-You’re right Natsu. I’m gonna take a nice hot bath instead- she winked at him, licking her lips and started untying her towel. Natsu’s eyes widened. His bulge returning at full speed. She was painfully slow and when she was almost done…the video stopped. He groaned. “That little minx!” he thought.

Natsu: Luce you’re playing with fire, you know that, right?

A growl escaped his lips. He wanted so bad to bend her over the sink and make her beg to fill her with…

No, bad Natsu. Keep calm.

Lucy (key and stars emojis): What’d you do to make me understand what I’m doing?

And another pic. That woman was gonna be the death of him. She was in the bathtub. The water reached just above her nipples. Her long dump golden hair was floating around her. Her eyes hooded with lust and the lower lip caught between her teeth. A hand was on her cleavage.

Natsu licked his lips. He wanted to taste her. This was unfair. His boxer was beginning to be tight.

Natsu: I’ll make you beg

He had completely forgot about his sandwich and was now massaging his length through his pants.

Lucy (key and stars emojis): beg for what?

She was doing the innocent part, but Natsu knew she was a perverted. He knew what she wanted. His pants hurt at the thought.

Natsu: For me. For my cock inside you. You will beg me to fuck you so bad you won’t walk for a week

Lucy (key and stars emojis): Maybe you will beg me

He chuckled. His eyes beginning to darken with lust. She was playing so well with him. He lowered his tracksuit bottoms and his boxer to grasp his length. Pre cum was spilling from the tip. He hissed at the feeling of the cold hair kissing he’s heated skin.

Natsu: No you won’t, cause you’re being a bad girl and bad girls need to be punished

She answered. With and audio. “Oh God, what if she’s touching herself?” he thought, grunting. He started pumping his shaft faster, imagining Lucy a moaning mess while he’s thrusting into her from behind. Her hair held by his hand, the other firm on her hips. He groaned and listened to the audio.

-Why am I a bad girl, Natsuu?- her voice was airy. She moaned his name and he heard the water moving. So, she was touching herself. A growl escaped his lips, picturing his goddess of a girlfriend touching her slick folds. The water making her wetter and helping her pump her pretty dainty fingers inside her. He had to grip the counter, his cock twitching. He needed to feel her tight pussy around him, clenching him.

-Oh fuck, Lucy- he answered her with a vocal message -you keep doing this little play and I’m gonna tie you and oblige you watch me get off- he groaned at the phone.

She was calling him. Lucy wanted to have sex on the phone with him. They never done it. Yeah, they had sexted a lot, but they never had done that. Lucy had always said she was embarrassed, she’d get flustered and the mood would be ruined. However now she wanted to do it and he was all fired up. Who was him to neglect this thing to her?

He answered the phone. -Lucy- growled him. His grip on the counter making his knuckles turning white. She was panting heavily.

-Natsu- she breathed -you’d want me to watch you touch yourself?- her voice was airy. He grunted her name, tightening the grip on his shaft and slowing his movements.

-You’re not being my good girl Luce. You want to be punished, don’t you?-

She mewled his name. She appeared in his mind. One hand to her breast, pinching her rosy nipples, the other one between her thighs. Two fingers pumping inside her, while her thumb giving quickly strokes to her clit. Her head rested against the bathtub.

-Yes, yes, I want to- her voice was a whisper and Natsu fought to not cum right away.

-You’d want to be fucked senseless Luce?- his finished talking with a grunt. His dick twitching in his hand, he thumbed his tip where pre cum was spilling and he dragged the slick substance along his length.

She moaned again. -Yes Natsu, I want to feel you inside me- she said.

-Well Luce, you gotta wait cause you need to be punished. You know, I said you were a bad girl and you didn’t receive it yet…- he told her chuckling. He was sure she was pouting, a whispered “but Natsu!” escaped her pretty lips.

-You need to be spanked. You pretty ass high while I stay behind you. Your wrists tied with my scarf. Tell me Luce, you’d like that?- his voice low, loaded with lust. Several minutes passed. Lucy moaning loudly. She was a mess just with his words. His hips were thrusting in his hand, imagining it was his girlfriend womanhood.

-Yes, yes, yes! Oh Natsu I’m ngh close…-

-My dirty girl. You’re getting off just with my words. You can’t wait to be punished, Luce? You need it badly, don’t you? Do you want me to make you cum just spanking you, eh? You’ll be so beautiful; with your hips high. You’ll be a mess and after you cum I’m gonna put my dick into you and make you cum again.- he didn’t know why but talking dirty was one of his biggest turn on and he knew it was Lucy’s too.

He heard her cum. That was so hot. He felt something break inside him, pleasure shot through his veins. A low growl resonated in his throat. Her name escaped his lips. He came with three spurts; a white and sticky substance was now visible on the side of the marble kitchen counter.

-I regret not doing this before, it was…- she said out of breath, still recovering from her high.

-Yeah- he said, cringing at the counter and taking some napkins to clean the mess.

-Natsu? What’s wrong? You thought it was weird? We don’t have to do it again, you know…- concern filtered from her voice.

-Luce, no! I liked it! Imaging you, touching yourself and getting off just from my words…that was hot! I just…I came and…uhm…I’m in the kitchen…- he scratched the back of his head sheepishly.

-Natsu Dragneel! You came on MY kitchen counter, didn’t you?-

She was angry. Really angry. “And here I thought we could do it again…” he told himself.

#smut #fan fiction #Nalu #fairy tail nalu #nalu fic #nalu fanfic #smut fanfiction #natsu x lucy

[arlakos]

Why Miracle Queen doesn’t make sense. (SPOILERS just in case)

As most of you who have seen my blog know by now, I have found Season 3 to be somewhat of a mess. While having bit of a better writing and episodes overall compared to the rather boring season 2, it also had a lot of disappointing mistakes in terms of character writing and focus, and most episodes which could have been good often had a rather awkward or cringe moment that ruins the episode for me, such as the statue scene in Puppeteer 2. For fans who don't remember, let me remind you:

Now that I’ve mentally traumatized myself looking for this pic, let us continue:

On the topic of episodes, despite any cringey scenes that might be in the episodes, a lot of them are at the very least concise. Sure, the episodes usually have the same generic plot, non-hero moment, angry person, Akuma, hero fight, reset and repeat, but for the most part, they are ok... But even this season, there have been some episodes that have the most stupid plots that don't even make sense. From the horrifying Chameleon episode that had all class characters drop in IQ for the story to work, to the Feast Episode which restored the order of Guardians, but didn’t have them come to Paris to get the box back, there have been some rather stupid episodes...

...But none are more stupid than the Season Finale - Miracle Queen

For an episode that is not only confusing but bad, I could talk about the hundreds of mistakes that are present in episode, but other people can talk about that, or perhaps ill make another post regarding the episodes when I feel like breaking my fingers on my keyboard again, but right now I would like to focus on the 2 main plot holes that absolutely made no sense but ASS-TRUC, the man, the idiot, the infamous twitter legend, decided to do anyway.

So the first plot point I'm gonna talk about is.....

Chloe Bourgeois, aka Miracle Queen

For anyone who hates Chloe bourgeois, this episode would have probably left you jumping for joy, given the fact it pretty much gets her removed from the miraculous team.

For the rest of us, who I assume either like Chloe or find the episodes plot to make no sense, or both, this episode is quite contradictory to the entirety of the season, both because the seasons abnormal focus on Lila and her antics, and because of the fact that previous episodes had Chloe accept the fact that she couldn't become a hero.

In Miraculer, Chloe accepts the fact that she can’t become a hero again. Sure the episode has Chloe be upset at Ladybug, but in the end, she accepted that it was mean to be this way, and definitely shows no trace of wanting to join hawkmoth in any sort of capacity. 

Also, a small bit added in from my friend @twin-books​, who said this gem of a message:

“ Ah, in Miraculer what she displayed was confidence where she knew she would be Queen Bee again, she didn't doubt herself for a second. Chloe used to doubt herself, used to play the damsel, let others take care of her but this time she said, "No. I am Queen Bee and just because you won't give my comb doesn't make me anything less." Or at least, how I interpreted it.  By tearing the photo she was excepting that Ladybug didn't have faith as her as a hero, nor did she ever. That Ladybug ignored her in favor of someone she deemed worthy but Chloe knows she's worthy. She proved her worth and just because Ladybug can't see that doesn't mean she should believe it. It's also interesting how she completely takes it out on Ladybug but is fine with Chat because she knows where she stands with Chat and she may have never liked him but he displayed faith in her. He knew and that might just be what kept her going so she could gain her own confidence. “

So when Chloe is left angry in Miracle Queen because she wasn’t chosen and immediately joins Hawkmoth, it just doesn't make any sense because previous episodes contradict it.

NOW, to be fair, I would have been fine with Chloe joining Hawkmoth if there was a buildup to it. If they Had Hawkmoth come in between the episodes from Miraculer to Miracle Queen to try and persuade Chloe and/or have her doubt Ladybug, then the turn from hero to villain would make sense. Unfortunately, thanks to Ass-truc and his have-every-episode-be-a-single-story-episode-and-have-every-character-reset-fuck-you-continuity episode design, this doesn't happen and having Chloe go from a person who is selfish but at the very least is a hero to a full-on 2-d villain is jarring as shit. It would have made more sense for her to just take the miraculous and go rouge with it, but a full-on villain? C’mon.

Also, there's the fact that for the entire season the show has been pushing Lila to be this over the top manipulator and villain in the day to day lives of the heroes. If they really wanted to have someone be Miracle Queen, why not Lila. It would make sense considering a Miracle is something that happens that it seems so unreal, and given that Lila would probably like her lies to become real it would make sense for her to become Miracle Queen. 

Also where the hell was she all episode, she just disappeared out of existence for the entire episode. At least have her come and take the fox miraculous from Alya and have her be a secondary antagonist.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, now for the second plot hole...

The Miracle Box

It. Just. Doesn't. Make. Sense.

But to understand why, let me break it down.

- So due to Hawkmoth almost breaking through the barrier (and for whatever reason decided not to just jump away) Fu transfers ownership of the box to Marinette

-Because of the idiot logic of the show, there can only ever be on Guardian at a time, and because of the transfer, the previous Guardian loses their memories.

-The box also turns into an egg, for whatever reason.

Now, the only thing I dont mind about the whole scene is that the whole Guardian thing is magical in nature. Since Fu can do stuff like detect other Miraculi, it would make sense that the Guardian is more than just a title and has a magical aura around them that makes them a guardian. That being said, there are still a lot of trouble with this scene that rustle my jimmies to heck.

So lets go through the main problems with this plot hole.

-’There can only ever be one Guardian’

Bollocks. The flashback of the order clearly shows multiple individuals. And with the Sandboy episode showing Fu being haunted by a guardian with a female voice (yet also showing a male Guardian in Feast), it clearly shows that there are more than one Guardian in the order.

-’Upon transfer, the previous Guardian Loses their memories’

Again, this also doesn’t make sense. Even assuming that the Guardianship of box needs to have a magical transfer, making the previous Guardian lose their memories because of it makes no sense in the plot of the Miraculous Universe. Maybe it would make sense if the Guardian was but a single man (like in Fu’s case), but it doesn’t make as much sense when you remember the order it comes from.

See, the Order was located in Tibet, high away from the outside world, and the people who were there probably lived there all their life. So knowing these facts, why would it make sense for the previous owner to lose their memories? I can understand someone being a head guardian and then transferring the ownership when their time is up, but it doesn't make sense for them to just forget the order, they live there their entire lives, and would likely do so until their death. And the show implies that this is the actual way the ownership is transferred, and Marinette’s case wasn't a special case of an emergency transfer. It does make sense that the Guardians can remove memories of the order for people who have gone rogue or are expelled, but it doesn't make sense that the memory forgetting is entwined with the transfer of Guardianship.

-’The box turns into an egg, for whatever reason’

I'm not gonna explain it. Its a freaking box. A box that, while well designed, showed no capability of magic power at all for the entirety of the show. ITS A GODDAMN BOX AND IT MAKES NO SENSE FOR IT TO TURN INTO A POLKADOTTED EGG.

Though to be fair, in hindsight, a lot of this plot hole induced stupidity does have  a logical explanation for this:

Thomas Astruc and Zag

Or rather, Thomas Astruc and Zag quarrel.

See, when it comes to Ass-truc and his ideal show design, it would have been just simple about Marinette and why she is quote on quote  ‘awesome’. thats it. Pretty much every episode would be about Marinette being amazing, everyone loving her and kissing her feet, and nothing goes wrong for her in the same way as every Mary Sue ever written in a fanfic. The only difference being there was no main character to replace.

But Zag was having none of it. While Ass-truc wanted to just show off his OC, Zag wanted an actual show, and so made a lot of changes to it. Chat Noir, who in Astruc original comic idea was a one off character (and possibly a villain) got repurposed by Zag to be the second main character in the show. It also makes sense for every hero to have a mentor, which led to Zag creating Fu. Zag was also responsible for a bunch of other stuff to be added into the shows, such as additional heroes, Chloe becoming a good Guy, etc.

Of course, this made ASS-truc mad because that meant no 100% focus on the ‘goddess’ that is Marinette. So after bullying Zag off twitter via the use of his Stans (rip Zag twitter account- no posts since 2017) and forcing him off the Miraculous team after Season 1 (although this could also just be Zag focusing on other shows), Astruc had free reign to undo all that Zag had done. While Astruc did follow Zag's request due to owning half of the Miraculous license (being the guy that co-produced the show), he often twisted them so that they were skewed or couldn't last. The flashback of the order being destroyed? That was due to Fu being hungry and creating a monster in a plot induced stupidity. Chloe being a good guy? Yeah right, she sabotages a train just to save it and make herself look good, is an asshole regardless and then goes full-on villain. The other new heroes that help Ladybug? Gone, due to the same episode which prompted me to make this post.

Of course, this would impact the ratings of the show, forcing Zag to come back and fix Astruc’s mess in Season 4. Astruc knew that Zag returning would undo all the damage Astruc done to the show. So in a final bid attempt to keep this his way, he rewrote the finale, causing things in the show to actually become permanent and leaving Zag unable to fix anything. Thanks to Ass-truc, Fu is now gone forever, making Marinette the Guardian permanently, all the heroes aside from Ladybug and Chat Noir can’t be heroes anymore (leaving the focus entirely on Marinette), and Chloe now has become an irredeemable villain. All so that Astruc can brag on twitter about how Chloe ‘always was a villain’ and how ‘he was right all along’ despite being the one who wrote the character into existence.

And I’m not lying about this either or making it up. Even in the finale of the season 3 (particularly miracle queen) a lot of the time involves most of the characters standing around listening to dialogue and exposition rather than acting in ways they actually should (such as trying to save Fu or attacking Miracle Queen), no doubt due to the rewrites Astruc did before the finale was released, causing the animation to be very minimal or not making sense as there wasn't time to redo the animation. You can even see it in small amounts in episodes such as Glaciator and Troublemaker.

For me, this will probably go down as one of the worst episodes in the series, even worse than Stormy weather 2, because of its horrible writing, the plot holes it creates, and how much of the episode was designed to cater to Ass-trucs desires rather than designed to actually be a good finale to a season. That's not to say it didn't have good moments (such as dragon Bug and Snake Noir), but the overall episode was just so bad that the bad outweighed the good moments, at least for me. I wonder what Zag will do to fix season 4, but considering the suicide impact on the show Astruc made to make sure the show would remain ‘his way’, i don't have any doubts that it will be a hard challenge ahead of him. Good luck Zag, hope you can fix the mess Ass-truc made.

#Miraculous Ladybug #Season 3 #Miracle Queen #A fair bit of salt #Goddamit Astruc you nuked your own show #Virgin Astruc vs Chad Zag #Plot Induced Stupidity #Plot Holes #Heres to hoping for a better season 4 #Miraculous Ladybug salt

[spacyparker]

Perfectly imperfect || t.h

MASTERLIST - PROMPT LIST

Summary : You had broken up with Tom 2 months ago, but that doesn’t mean there is no more love between the two of you. But maybe it is still too late.

Characters : Tom Holland x reader

Word count : 2.3k

Warnings : Words !! I am not the polite type haha !Also I think it is just some kind of sadness and fluff !

A/N : I gotta say I am mostly proud of myself for this one ! Can’t wait for your feedback :) gonna write a part 2 if you guys want one !

There was once a promise, then there was a ring, and now only remained the last one. But that, Tom didn't know. He actually didn't know a fucking thing about you that would have had happened in the last two months. Because why would you two even speak ? You were split, broken up, fallen. And even though he asked Harrison many times about you, because damn he knew too well you both kept contact, the blonde guy had never told him a single thing. He was lost, hopeless and alone. Alone ? Was it really a word to use to describe Tom at that time ? He thought so, but no. Why would he even be alone ? He was Tom freaking Holland, and he could be partying and hooking up whenever he'd want. Which in fact he was actually doing.

There were moments were he cried. He cried because he missed you, because he had never given back your stuff in two months just like you didn't either. How many times did his brother caught him in the dark in his room, only holding your shirt that didn't even smelt like you anymore with red puffy eyes ? He cried because no one in the morning would make his eggs as crunchy as you as you were never a chef and always left pieces of eggshell in the plate. That thing was so fucking annoying when it happened back then, but now he was only nostalgic of your imperfections that got him so up on heels for you. He missed the scent of your hair and skin, the feeling of flesh against flesh, your bright Y/E/C eyes and that smile, that fucking smile that would always put one on his own lips.

He had screwed everything up, and he knew it. But Tom never saw or understood what he was doing wrong when you two were still together. He took you for granted, he played and he lost. Now remained emptiness in his chest even though he tried not to show anybody. But everybody knew. And every time he'd bring a girl to a date, or spent the night with someone, everybody stayed quiet. Because he was broken, and no one wanted to calm his enthusiasm. Nothing made sense. Not a fucking thing he did made sense. And not only his family and friends could see it, but the whole world. He was Tom freaking Holland, and paparazzi got his ass. Every time he'd move, every time he'd talk, there were here, just waiting for him to explain why he was seen with that many girls out there while he never seemed like this kind of person before he got with you. But everything had changed and he was just trying to cope with the feeling of abandon.

Which was totally hypocritical. Because Tom was the one who abandoned you though he wasn't paying attention. In fact he wasn't paying attention to anything. He was always too busy, always too tired, always too far away, always too grumpy or too not in the mood. As days and days passed, you felt like you didn't have any more boyfriend. And you stayed in that position for a good month before you decided that yes, your friends were right, and you needed to leave his side. You had nothing to feel guilty about : you deserved better and he was the one who started all the shit. But still it broke you. It broke you because you missed his laugh whenever you'd tell a joke, and god you were always telling jokes. It broke you because you missed him sending you his shirts just so you could have something to sniff at night whenever he wasn't home. But it most of all broke you because you loved him, you loved me like you never loved someone before and knowing he wasn't “yours” was terrific. So when you started seeing all these pictures of him hanging out with different girls, you were both angry and released. You didn't want want to be associated with such a womanizer, but how could he start dating other girls only weeks after your break up ?

The truth was that Tom was only desperate. He always thought you were the one, and he had to force himself to get to the point where this wasn't an absolute truth. He didn't want to believe it, but what could he do ? He tried reaching you so many times with not a single answer to his calls, texts or indirects on instagram. There was only his memories and pictures that kept your relationship alive. And sometimes, sometimes Tom wondered if you still got those pics, because you used to take a lot together, and even these presents he bought you. He wondered if you kept the ring, the much talked about ring that got the internet craving for some more infos.

“Why are you staring at me like that ?” You asked with frowned brows as you chewed your nutella croissant. Tom couldn't get his eyes off you, and he got this big silly smile curling his lips. Which was kind of cool, but not when you wanted to eat your breakfast in peace. You were never a morning person.

“I have something for you.” He said in a high-pitched excited voice, higher than usual.

“Tom, I swear if you're going to fart again I'm leaving this house.” You relationship was… totally complex-free. At least it became that way the first time you burped by accident around him. He has always been his true and entire self ever since. Which was weird sometimes, but you loved how you two never had to hide anything from the other. Still, it was not like this happened everyday.

“Whuuut ?” He got a fake offended look stuck to his face. “I was trying to be romantic, you just ruined it !”

“How is saying 'I have something for you' romantic ?” You asked with frowned brows, again. It seemed to happen a lot when you were with him.

“It is romantic because the present I got you is romantic, can't you wait and see ?!” A small chuckle escaped his lips. Tom knew you weren't the desperate and delicate sentimental kind of girl, so he wasn't surprised this just seemed weird for you. Anyways, he really wanted to do that.

“Ok, go on.”

He gulped before a big bright smile got on his lips again, and he got a small square box from under the table. But you gave him no chance to open it. “No.” You said out of breathe, because you couldn't seem to do inhale anymore.

Tom knew it was a risky move. So many people already broke you before, and he already had so much trouble to release you from this shell you had built around you and your heart. He knew how much you had suffered, how much you promised yourself to never fall in love again before you met him, and how much you were still scared of engagement. Because you thought that letting someone come into your life was giving them the power to leave you. And God you didn't know at that time, but you should have had listened to your gut and just stop relationships for a while.

“This isn't a proposing !” He immediately reassured you, himself now panicking. Maybe it was a bad idea, after all. He just wanted to make clear to everyone how much he loved you. A sight of relief fell off your lips, and he continued with now a trembling voice. “I know a ring always seems so official and stuff, but… I want this to be a promise ring, and-”

“A promise ring pretty seems like a proposing to me.” You cut him before pinching your lips together, ruining the moment as you always did when everything was becoming too cute and fluffy. You just couldn't help yourself, you just couldn't let him get that fucking terrifying power.

His eyes seemed so affected it broke your heart. You weren't proud of yourself, but you worked this way. He knew it, and he was totally thinking the situation would turn this way when he thought about it. He had just hoped maybe this time it would work.

“I just… I want you to see the ring as a present, the image of the love I hold for you. We've been together for almost a year, now, and you really helped me with both my personal and professional life. I just thought I could give you that to thank you, and so it could remind you everyday I love you more than anything even if that sounds fucking cliché. I want to see this ring as the proof of the love we share, and we will always share. So what you say ?”

When he opened the box, your look fell on the ring it was previously hiding. It was a beautiful masterpiece, and you could tell this cost more than your car. It looked very simple and yet so beautiful, with a diamond in the middle that seemed rough instead of perfectly shaped and plain, and four gold branches were holding it, looking like real very small tree branches to you, before joining in a perfect circle so you could put it around your finger.

“It looks so perfect.” Was the only thing you managed to mutter while you couldn't look away from the jewel.

“Perfectly imperfect.” Tom added with an unsure smile. “Just like you say everything needs to be.”

“Okay.” You slightly nodded before looking back at him.

“Okay ?” His smile got bigger, as if he was going to rip his lips up from all the happy stretching.

“Okay.” You smiled back. A genuine smile. No one had ever proved you they loved you before, and maybe it was time to accept you were lovable too.

Now all he got was this memory, and the many articles that talked about that ring when everyone thought you were engaged. And to be honest, it really felt as if you were. But time changed and he lost that too.

After the breakup, Tom had started posting a lot of pictures, which wasn't really his type before. He just wanted you to notice him, to see him. He was losing himself too, faking being happy and sometimes going all mad and posting a quote over a black screen as any teenager would do nowadays. He wanted you to know he still lived without you, but that sometimes it wasn't enough. He was craving your touch, you voice, your laugh, your scent, your words, everything that made you you. He was craving you. So much he started stalking on your social medias, but you never posted anything. No picture, no video, no text, no story. Nothing, just a radio silence he hated.

Until this morning. But it seemed to happen so late he couldn't do anything anymore. Two months had passed, he had done so many shitty things, and there was finally a proof of you still being alive. When he opened instagram that morning, his heart missed a beat so fucking quickly he thought he could have died of it. But he was still alive. Kind of. He rushed, urging his thumb to press your profile picture that appeared in the top left corner of his screen, and soon your story appeared before him. He stopped breathing without even noticing, because you were simply breathtaking and he almost forgot how beautiful you could be. He looked at the video three times, making sure he wasn't hallucinating. But no, he couldn't get it wrong. This ring, this specific ring, this promise ring was still taking centre stage on your finger. And suddenly, suddenly Tom felt alive, with that fucking butterflies in his stomach.

“What time is it ?” Moaned a feminine voice beside him. He jumped by surprise. Fucked. He was so fucked. All of this was a mistake, and he was just realizing it now he had seen that fucking ring still on your fucking finger.

Truth is Tom had started dating a this blonde girl a few days ago. She was totally over him and he needed to feel loved. It wasn't that serious for him, but still he had decided to get into a real relationship with her, thinking that feelings would follow with time or he'd just leave her when he would be tired of her. But that just made a week they got together, and now he felt trapped. Because he wanted to try to talk to you again now that he saw this, but at the same time he didn't want to seem like a cheating boyfriend. He had never done that, and he didn't want to become one. All his previous hook ups were nothing serious, so he thought it didn't count. In fact, he always told the girls it was just a one night thing, so they couldn't say they weren't aware.

“It's ten.” He simply answered. And the girl moaned again before stretching her body.

“Kay, gonna go make breakfast then.” She leaned on to kiss his bare shoulder, not even bothering to look at his phone screen before she got up. This girl trusted Tom, and this was her mistake.

She left the room, certainly to go to the kitchen as she had just told, but Tom couldn't care about that. He didn't even bother to look at her leaving as he always did. Instead, he got to your profile and opened the chat, his heart beating way too quickly as he managed to type a fucking idiot sentence he sent you without even really thinking.

Text from TOM : You're still wearing it.

And with that, if you didn't answer, then maybe it was really not meant to be.

#tom holland #tom holland one shot #tom holland fanfic #tom holland imagine #tom holland x reader #tom holland x you #peter parker #peter parker one shot #peter parker fanfic #peter parker imagine #peter parker x reader #peter parker x you #spiderman #far from home #peter parker writing #tom holland writing #peter parker fic #tom holland fic #peter parker fanfiction #tom holland fanfiction #tom holland fluff #peter parker fluff