#i feel like the final should be longer than the draft but. man i lined out exactly what i'd be saying in that draft. u get what u see | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

yuutx · 1 month

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ೀ ׅ ۫ . 𝐂𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐎𝐂𝐓𝐎𝐑 ? ! (𝐼𝐿 𝒟𝒪𝒯𝒯𝒪𝑅𝐸)

il dottore x f!reader ﾉ 18+ content. ﾉ nsfw + unprotected sex / raw sex ﾉ female masturbation ﾉ test subject x mad scientist ﾉ degrading kink ﾉ clit play ﾉ dirty talk ﾉ size kink ﾉ mdom + fsub ﾉ not proofread ! ૮꒰ྀི ◡ ˶ ◡ ꒱ྀི১

i wrote this a while ago 'n i just found it in my drafts 2 day so i figured i should finally post it ! i wld srsly do anything 'n everything 2 be dottore's test stubject he is soo perfect. art credits go to the lovely @/lllOhara ! ♡ + ↻ are rlly appreciated ! !

Piercing red orbs scanned the room, scrutinizing every detail. His lips curled into a slight smirk as he saw your figure curled up, encapsulated within a metal cage, and suspended by thick ropes. You looked so small and frail, like a little bird locked away in its gilded cage. The man could hardly suppress a laugh as his eyes trailed up your naked figure, stopping when he saw your head hanging low. It was obvious you were still unconscious, but it wouldn't be long before you awoke. Your breathing had evened out, and the wounds you'd received were beginning to stitch themselves back together. It would seem that you had more fight in you than he'd initially anticipated, and for a brief moment he'd been afraid that he'd made a mistake by attempting to bring you here. But alas, his worries were unfounded. The Doctor was always right.

"Y/N," the man spoke, his voice a deep baritone. His words hung in the air as he waited for you to reply. When you didn't stir, his smirk only grew. "I know you're awake, pet," the Doctor spoke again, this time more clearly, "You're a terrible liar, my dear. Now, stop playing pretend and look at me."

His command was sharp and commanding, yet soft and inviting, and it forced you to comply. Slowly, you raised your head, eyes fluttering open, and met the Doctor's gaze. As your eyes landed on his form, you felt a rush of emotions wash over you, ranging from anger, to fear, and even a sense of longing. You couldn't help but notice the way the light reflected off of his ruby red irises, making them shine like the most brilliant of gems. It was then that you realized just how handsome the Doctor was. His features were sharp and chiseled, his expression serious and brooding, yet his mouth was pulled into a devious smile that made your heart race. The man's appearance was nothing short of regal, and he commanded respect from all who were lucky enough to meet him.

The mask he usually wore was gone, revealing his face in its entirety. You noticed how his lips were set into a thin line, and the way his nose curved downward towards his pointed chin. He was tall, much taller than you were, and his shoulders were broad and powerful. You found yourself mesmerized by the man before you, unable to take your eyes off him, even as your heart pounded wildly in your chest. It was a strange sensation, this mixture of fear and desire, and you had no idea what to do with it. Were you attracted to the Doctor? Perhaps… perhaps not, but something inside of you wanted him, that was for certain.

Your body betrayed you as you shifted uncomfortably beneath his gaze, drawing his attention to your nudity. Your nipples had hardened, and your core throbbed with need, aching for release. It wasn't right, you thought to yourself, you shouldn't feel this way about someone who'd captured you, imprisoned you, and planned on experimenting on you. But the longer you stared, the more you wanted him, and the more your mind seemed to lose focus on anything else. Your vision swam as a haze clouded your thoughts, leaving you completely intoxicated with desire. And just like that, you lost control. Your legs parted instinctively, and your hips bucked upward, grinding against the bars of your prison. It was almost as if your body had a mind of its own. You'd never felt anything like it before. The sensation was overwhelming, and you couldn't stop yourself. It was like you'd gone mad, your body reacting on its own accord, no longer caring about consequences or rational thought. And the worst part was, you loved every second of it. Your cheeks flushed crimson as you writhed beneath him, the cool metal of the cage rubbing against your sex, sending shivers down your spine.

You could feel his gaze upon you, watching as your breasts bounced and jiggled while you rode the bars of the cage, grinding yourself against them. Your moans grew louder, and your breathing became labored. It was so good, you thought to yourself, too good. You couldn't help but wonder, had you really gone insane? Were you really willing to sacrifice yourself just for the sake of pleasure? And yet, here you were, doing exactly that. And the man watched, his expression unchanging, save for the slightest hint of amusement in his eyes. His lips twitched, fighting back a smile as he enjoyed your performance. Your moans echoed throughout the laboratory, drowning out the sounds of the machines and equipment around you. It was beautiful, he thought, how could something so lewd and vulgar be so breathtakingly gorgeous? You were like a living work of art, and he could watch you for hours.

You felt your climax approaching, and you tried desperately to stave it off, not wanting the Doctor to see you in such a state. However, you were powerless to stop it. Your orgasm tore through your body, causing your limbs to spasm uncontrollably. Your head lolled forward, and your jaw fell open, letting loose a series of breathy whimpers. Your hips bucked upwards, slamming into the bars, forcing your body against the cold metal. The pleasure was indescribable, unlike anything you'd ever experienced before. It was intense, raw, and powerful, and it left you panting heavily. You could feel the slickness coating the bars, and the smell of your arousal permeated the air. You were completely spent, utterly exhausted from the force of your orgasm, and yet somehow you felt invigorated. You couldn't remember the last time you had came so hard, and the intensity of it took your breath away.

A low rumble reverberated throughout the laboratory, and you could feel the vibrations travel up your spine. The machine beside you was whirring to life, and a loud clicking sound filled the room as its gears began to turn. You couldn't understand what it was doing, or what it meant, but the Doctor seemed pleased by whatever results were displayed. He walked over to you, his eyes never leaving yours, and knelt down beside the cage. He placed his gloved hands against the bars, gripping them tightly, and leaned in close. "That was quite impressive," he murmured, his breath tickling your ear, "Now, let's see what other noises I can pull from that pretty little mouth of yours."

Dottore pressed a button, and the cage was lowered to the ground. You looked up at him, and your eyes met his, and his hand moved to the lock, sliding a key inside. The door opened with a loud click, and he stepped back, allowing you to crawl out. Once you were free, the Doctor grabbed hold of your hair, yanking you forward. You stumbled slightly, and fell into his arms. He wrapped his arms around your waist, holding you firmly against him, causing your dripping cunt to rub against his groin. A moan escaped your lips as his erection pressed into you, and you felt him twitch in response. "Ahh.." he breathed, his grip tightening around you, "I'm afraid I can't wait any longer."

With one fluid motion, he lifted you into the air, and carried you across the room. He set you down onto a large, cushioned table, and began removing his clothes. You watched him closely, taking in every detail of his muscular frame, admiring the way his muscles rippled under his pale skin. The Doctor's gaze remained locked on yours, and his pupils were dilated, filled with lust. You noticed the prominent bulge in his pants, and your mouth watered as he unzipped his trousers, revealing his swollen member. His cock was massive, thick and long, and it stood proudly at attention, leaking precum down the shaft. He stroked himself lazily, and a deep growl rumbled from his throat. "Do you see what you've done to me, pet?" he asked, his voice husky with desire, "This is all because of you."

You swallowed hard, and nodded, biting your lip as he stroked himself faster. He continued pumping his fist, until his cock glistened with precum. His hand traveled lower, and he cupped his balls, massaging them gently. "Such a naughty little thing, making me hard like this.." he purred, his voice low and husky, "You'll have to pay for that.." The Doctor grabbed hold of your wrists, and forced you onto all fours, getting on the table behind you. "I'm going to break your fucking mind, pet." He growled, "You'll be too fucked up to think straight when I'm done with you." His words sent shivers down your spine, and you whimpered softly as his cock brushed against your slit. He pushed inside of you, and you gasped at the sudden intrusion. His length stretched you to the limit, filling you completely. You cried out in pleasure as his cock slammed into you, burying itself inside your wet cunt. Your walls clenched around him, and his hands gripped your hips tightly, digging into your skin. His thrusts were slow and steady, his pace leisurely, and his eyes never left yours. Your head rolled back, and your body shuddered beneath him, overwhelmed by the sensations coursing through you.

Dottore's heavy balls smacked against your clit, all while his cock reached places inside of you that hadn't been touched in a long time. He groaned as he bottomed out, pushing deep into your depths, making sure his full length was seethed inside of you. His movements were unhurried, but firm, cock swelling with need as he fucked into your cunt. Your hands clawed at the table, nails digging into the leather, leaving long scratches across the surface. You moaned loudly, unable to contain your sounds of pleasure. "Fuck.." he cursed, "Your pussy's so damn tight.." Your walls squeezed around him, pulling him deeper, causing his hips to stutter. He grunted, and began pumping his hips, pistoning into your core with renewed vigor. His cock slammed into you over and over again, until he finally released a torrent of hot cum into your womb, coating your insides with his seed. His grip tightened around your hips, and he pulled you closer, pressing his chest against your back. "That's it," he growled, his breath hot against your neck, "Take all of it." His words were like music to your ears, and you did as he commanded, letting him fill you up with his thick load. Your body shook, and your eyes rolled back as you fucked yourself onto his dick, slamming yourself back against his groin. He growled low in his throat, and began thrusting harder, using you like a living fleshlight. Your moans grew louder, echoing through the laboratory, filling the air with lewd, obscene sounds. Your juices flowed freely, mixing with his cum, creating a sticky mess between your legs. He pounded into you with such force that the table rattled beneath you, causing it to shake violently.

"Ohhh..oh fuck…fuck, mm-! L-Love it, I love it so muchhh..!" you gasped, tears stinging your eyes as he fucked your brains out, your walls milking his cock, "'m gonna cum..c- h-haahh…so-so close…w-wanna cum on y-your cock…" Your words were slurred, and incoherent, and your body trembled uncontrollably as you neared your peak. "Mm? Is that so?" the Doctor questioned, "Are you gonna cum for your dear Dottore?" You nodded frantically, a hand jumping to your clit, pinching the sensitive nub between your fingers. "Y-Yes…please…p-plea- please make me cum.." you begged, voice strained and shaky, "C-Can't wait..need to…n-nowww..!!" Your words were cut off as your back arched, body trembling as your squirted, splattering him with your juices. Your body went rigid, and your mouth hung open, a scream escaping your lips as he pumped another load of his thick cum into your used hole. "Oh, you little slut," he laughed, his cock still buried deep inside you, "What a mess you've made, Y/N." He held you in place as his seed seeped out of you, dribbling down the front of the table. You couldn't move, your legs had given out, and you collapsed onto the table, panting heavily. Your body was covered in sweat, and your cheeks flushed red, and you could barely keep your eyes open. The Doctor chuckled, and kissed the back of your neck.

"Mmh, don't go falling asleep on me now.." he chided, "We're far from finished."

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ohsunnyboy · 4 months

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against everything | shen quanrui ˚₊‧⁺˖

you know nothing about shen quanrui, duke of the north. all you do know is that you're getting married and you're winning this sword fight.

TAGS: royalty!au, cold duke!ricky, gn!reader, rivals/enemies/strangers to lovers, arranged marriage, sparring!!, a little mean!ricky for the sake of the au, gets angsty in the end v sorry haha

A/N: this has been in the drafts since debut lmao it's v long but enjoy!!! as always, purely self indulgent ! (pls imagine historical manhwa level visuals iykyk)

WORDS: ~1900

Could there be a worse fate than this? Marrying Shen Quanrui, elusive Duke of the North and Lord of Yuehua.

You knew that marriage was coming. Being the youngest in the family and the rest of your brothers off to the capital to play bachelors and sisters bartered off for titles. One by one, marriage invites piled up over your desk until it finally came time for you to write your own.

Yet still, you have yet to meet him.

What you do know of the duke, is that he exists and is not mere fragment of your imagination — according to your mother. It’s his estate you’re getting married at, but he hasn’t shown his face once in your week here. Not a letter, a word, anything! Anything would be better than this silence that plagues the grounds.

You pull your coat tighter around you as the northern chill slides under your bones. You want to begin to rethink all your feeble decisions right then and there. Or rather, the lack of your decisions that's brought you here. Wandering the Shen gardens like a ghost with an intent to haunt someone you’ve never even met.

Though, it seems like a calling of fate when you turn to an open yard.

Here, the snow clears away to worn cobble leading to a snow spackled dirt and a sparring platform. Swords line the training ground and gleam in the moonlight as you make your way towards them. Clearly standard issue and worn beyond ware, but swords, nonetheless. You can’t help but feel a little giddy, no one should be about at midnight like this, and no one should be out looking for the training grounds either. You clamber up the stairs to the wooden stage. Each board creaks lightly under your feet, almost like the decks of the galleys you used to run about on. From above, it’s easy to become entranced watching the snow spiral down as it settles.

You really could stand in marvel all night, but a figure watches you from where you came from. A bolt of fear strikes through you, dark eyes watching you freeze. Is it fate? Another ghost that haunts this place?

"Who are you?" the boy ask – or rather, demands.

You almost blink twice to make sure you aren’t dreaming. His hair is the palest of whites, rivalling the light of the moon and the falling snow itself. You’d stay in your stupor for longer, but he stares with a hard set in his eye that you know only means trouble.

"Oughtn’t you introduce yourself before you ask?" you snap.

“I asked first.”

“And it’s rude to ask and not offer your own name first.”

Your reply only ticks him off further it seems as he reaches for one of the sabres on the rack. "Then we fight for it,” mystery man says simply.

"Now? anyone could see us plain as day if they look out the windows! are you insane!" You can hardly believe it when he kicks another sabre across the stage to your feet. "What if the duke sees us?" you hiss, but it only makes him smirk further.

"Then let him," he counters with a flourish of his blade. "Or are you scared, peasant?"

Heat rises to your cheeks, and you swipe it from the floor with indignation. Honestly, he’s nothing impressive. What’s a pretty face when he’s built like a sheaf of paper? Your brothers are easily bulkier and taller compared to him, and you've swept the floor with them before. With him? it’s a matter of deck scrubbing him into the snow.

The sabre fits into your palm with a comforting weight. It's a far throw from duelling on ships and jagged seas but it's the song of duelling that sounds like home.

"Done playing with it? Or do you need a sword lesson instead?" and oh, that smirk is infuriating. "First to yield divests their name and title – should they even own one," he drawls.

All you can do is nod and settle into stance. Low and wide for balance, steady as an anchor in tide – all the more important with the ice. He mirrors with his own, a little taller, a little more forward, and with a whole lot more ego than what he should have.

A moment, slow and quiet, is spent staring down the edge of your swords. His steps, closer and closer, the howl of the air—

Then, he lunges.

When you meet, it’s mean, forceful and utterly demanding. Though, would you expect anything less of him?

It’s a game of darting and pushing. In and out of each other’s reach by just a breath. When you circle each other, his eyes follow you everywhere. It’s a gaze that would crumble you if you weren’t running on sheer adrenaline right now. You could count the sweat on his brow each time he tries to brute force his sabre down on you, but you parry just as strong.

Every strike you sweep, you channel all the pent-up nerves behind them. A week of restlessness, of anger all coming down an a willing, taunting target.

The next sweep that he dives for cuts from his left to right, instead of parrying, you decide to lunge again. You go low, essentially diving under his blade and entirely into his space. You seize your chance, blood rushing in your head and mouth twisted in a horribly cocky grin and shove him to the floor. When he lands with a thud, lips parted in surprise, you waste no time in pinning him down, forearm barred across his chest and sword staked into the wood next to his neck.

"Do you yield?" Your breath ghosts across his face, twining with his own in this cold air.

The moon illuminates his sweat like shattered stars across his skin, pale as the snow and flawless as the sky. You want to sneer it into his skin: his gorgeous devastation. Perfection and arrogance wrapped into one.

"Out with it,” you glower over the pound of your heart and the silence between you two.

He must see something because you have no idea what’s got him smiling like that.

"Shen." What? " Warden of the North and Duke of Yuehua." A thousand thoughts, and a million more revelations. No way, this isn't possible. "Shen Quanrui, though, I thought you would have known already – with your attitude and all."

You feel the heat of the situation pour into you like the sun projecting a thousand-fold upon yourself. You scramble back, desperate for some decency because you've effectively just sat on the duke, warden of the north, and, least importantly of all, your soon-to-be husband. Quanrui rises as you fall backwards into the snow, the sword clattering next to you as he reverses the position.

“My lord,” you’re babbling now. The grin on his face is sly and all too prideful but it brings an angry red to your face that would have your brothers rolling in laughter. “I…I had no idea.”

And Quanrui huffs a small laugh at you beneath him, scrambling for words. “You have made that quite clear, darling.” His silhouette eclipses the moon, and you swear the glint in his eyes twinkle along with the stars above.

“Darling?”

“Do you not like it, darling?” Quanrui says it like trying a new wine on his tongue. He tries to roll it, like one of those sopranos at the opera, all natural and beholding. Is it stupid to be so entranced in someone? You know nothing about him – no one does. But can you say that when he’s staring at you like this? Calling you darling like this? Holding you like this?

So blind to it all, isn’t he?

“No, not at all.” You shake your head getting yourself out of your stupor, trying to put your words together. “It’s just… you have not come to see me once in my week here. Why do you only turn up now, not even on purpose, when we’re to be wed by the end of the fortnight?” It comes out in a stream, past freezing lips and over piles of abandoned reasoning. “Is this the cruelty they speak of? Your empty coldness then a taunting heat? What then after this, my lord. Will you leave me to the cold another week, to haunt your palace like a fool? What then—”

An arresting hand presses over your mouth, stopping your stream of consciousness. Devastation paints Quanrui’s face when you blink past your anger. Long gone is his smirk, and all the stars in his eyes. It’s pinched with guilt.

“I never meant for it. Never – I never meant for cruelty. I’d thought you would want space, time to adjust and settle in by yourself! I thought—”

“You thought! But you never wrote, you never knew in the first place, my lord,” you sneer. “You never had a right to assume, when all you know are damned titled deeds and how many men my father will send for your blasted armies. Do you even know I’m from the eastern coasts? That I’d never even seen snow until I stepped foot into your land. And you think I wanted space!?”

“Enough.” He sits back on his heels, head facing to the falling sky; illuminated like a god ascended. What a waste of a pretty face when Quanrui looks down at you, eyes bared to confess. “I had no right. You are true, everything is true. I do not know you, but I will learn you,” he promises. “I won’t leave you to bear this cold alone. Leaving you to face against everything yourself was my first mistake and I will make it my last.”

You almost laugh, nigh incredulous at his claims. “Bold words, my lord. Are you rehearsing your vows as we speak in this moment?” Your temper ebbs and flows, this is cruel, you want to say, but you bite your tongue before he remembers that abandoned sword next to you.

“Nothing about this—“ Quanrui gestures to both your states “—is rehearsed, I swear.” The honesty is etched into his being. “You fought me – the real me. And beat me well at it too.”

Finally, you do laugh. “That I did! Doesn’t that make you even more unworthy of me?” It’s posed like a barb, but you say it with a grin. If he can fight for his honour, there’s a chance at the truth.

Infuriating as ever, his smirk is back in full force. “I don’t know. How about we settle the score properly?” Maybe you’ll come to love it – just one day. One day you’ll see past the snow and ice, remembering tumbling waves and open sun, to love a marriage wrought with him.

“Alright then.”

The night is long in the north, impossibly so. But time will come, and the day will thaw the love that was buried all along.

i ran away with this defo, but i'm glad i’m done :) thanks so much for reading!! Please leave a reblog and a like if you enjoyed ⭒ masterlist

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streamat4am · 9 months

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you got anything for blood?

perhaps even... some enko?

or you could just write wednesday being down bad for a blood-covered enid tbh

i want more blood >:)

NOO MY DRAFT GOT DELETED but sure mate, since you've come from main I'll give you what some anons over there have been asking for

Enko ✌️

Not as much blood but I had fun building them up

Tags: gay shit, Enid being confused, Yoko enjoying that confusion

Yoko is doing this on purpose.

It was supposed to be a normal day, if a normal day includes your best friend sitting on your lap and unbuttoning your shirt.

See, Enid wouldnt mind! Girls sit on other girls laps at times but this? This was straddling, this was yoko with her legs spread as the vampire faced her wolf. Remembering just what position she's in has her shifting, her hands carefully resting over Yoko's waist.

"can you hurry up," Enid grumbles, her ears feeling a bit warm when Yoko laughs and fiddles with a button for much more than she should. "I thought you were hungry?"

Yoko pats her cheek, a smug smirk on her face as she finally unbuttons another button. "simply enjoying my meal, niddy."

Enid blushes and tightens her grip in reply, a her brows furrowing. "Do you really need to be so gay? Just suck and get it over with."

Yoko rolls her eyes, nudging and pulling Enid's collar further to show more of the wolf's neck.

"you sound like a man, nid," Yoko scoffs. "just suck," she mocks before her lips curl into a smirk. "but if you insist-"

Enid closes her eyes, expecting a sharp prickle of her skin breaking instead her breath hitches when she feels lips kiss at her skin instead.

"yo-" the wolf breathes, her grip tightening all the more when Yoko suckles. A sound that Enid doesn't dare describe spills from her lips and she hears her nails rip into clothing clothing. Panic pierces through her skull and Enid tried to pull away-

Except Yoko is pressing all the more closer , her breath heavier than before as her hands tugged and clung on Enid's uniform.

"damn enid," yoko whispers, pulling back to stare at the litters of red marks lining the girl's skin. "didn't think I'd effect you so much that you'd ruin my clothing." her head tilts to the ripped remains of Yoko's pants, obviously shown to have slash marks from the hips down to the waist.

"i-" enid tries to explain except Yoko is pushing her back to the bed and looming over her before she can say a thing.

Yoko wasn't wearing her glasses and those eyes glow a pretty shade of red when she smiles, sharp fangs in display.

She leans over, kissing at the flushed werewolf's cheek as her fingers trace at the bruises on Enid's collar.

"pretty girl, you already have me addicted." enid couldn't speak and a whine is pulled from her lips when she feels a wet tongue drag along the side of her throat. "I haven't even tasted you yet."

This is so gay, is all Enid can think, her mind running so fast that she doesn't know what to do except press her thumbs deeper into Yoko's hips and try to breath.

Then those teeth pierce and Enid couldn't think any longer.

#Writing #Enid x yoko #Enid sinclair #Yoko tanaka #Smut #??

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paullicino · 10 months

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On Poverty and Comfort

Taken from, and funded by, my Patreon. Please check it out.

It’s happening again.

I just got forced back a place in line, mere seconds from being served. Another patron, presumptive and impatient, slid between me and the server working the till in a move that I would describe as all too practised, as smooth, to ask what soup flavours were available. This patron, surfacing from nowhere like a submarine, came up on my starboard side. She cut in, pitched her question across the counter, then cast a glance my way and, to use a phrase my mother would, “looked at me like I was shit on her shoe.”

While I’m not exactly shuffling about in my tracksuit bottoms today, there’s nothing special about what I’ve chosen to wear. I should perhaps have picked The Other Coat, which has magically caused several strangers here to strike up conversations with me. In particular, I feel it’s no small deal for a young woman to decide to start talking to a man she doesn’t know, but one day I was suddenly being told that I am classy and refined, being English and so smartly dressed. Perhaps on a different day I might have felt flattered, but I felt more like some sort of fraud was being committed. I was wearing class camouflage.

It’s something I try to do here, in my local fancy café, because otherwise I feel uncomfortable. But I realise that it’s also something I’ve unconsciously done for so much of my life.

I’ve got a few things that I want to write about here today, everything from sandwiches to suits to submarines, but before I go on I have to ask: Do you know that phrase “like I was shit on her shoe”? Do people say that where you’re from? Some of my lexicon is loaned from Chiswick and Southall, passed down from people who worked as labourers and long-suffering housewives, from bricklayers or from the lower decks of the Royal Navy, from homes that had no hot water and outside toilets. It’s the sort of language muttered past cigarettes on brick stairwells, or yelled across loading docks embellished with incoherent graffiti.

Sometimes these things slip out of me and no-one has any idea what I’m talking about. I make a right pig’s ear of it. And in those moments I’m suddenly somewhere else. I’m in a different time, a different place. And a different income bracket.

Or perhaps the different income bracket is where I am now. So in which do I really belong? Tell me, which would you associate me with? Graffiti and slang? Or poise and politeness?

It’s a question we can return to, if you want, because this piece of writing is in part about returning to things. When I began drafting it, months ago now, I didn’t realise just how much it echoed something I had written nine years before. I was already trying to articulate trends and patterns, without realising I had fallen into one myself.

For now, I have a different question. Did you know that one of Vancouver’s most infamous shortcuts has just closed? The three story, two hundred and twenty thousand square foot Nordstrom store that sits right between the city’s central plaza and two of its busiest stations is no more. Vancouverites will no longer be able to use it to pass diagonally through a whole block, as the crow flies, weaving dreamily amongst racks of designer handbags and thousand dollar flip-flops, before finally returning from this fantasy realm like Dante stumbling out from the underworld.

It’s a shortcut I’ve taken hundreds of times. Sometimes I would stop to inspect a shoe, or to check the price on a tie. The shoe would be upward of seven hundred dollars. The last tie I looked at was one hundred and eighty.

This Nordstrom had its own coffee shop, restaurant and even a cocktail bar. Curiously, its drinks were no more expensive than any other café nearby and, as I began drafting this in the early spring, I stopped for a drink on my way through. I asked the person serving me about her Totoro tattoo and she beamed. “Nobody who shops here recognises Totoro,” she said, and began talking about her clientele. They don’t have that kind of thing on their minds, she said.

She told me that the stations serving drinks were closing within a week and that she didn’t know if she’d have a job after that. “They’ll probably put us on the shop floor with everyone else at minimum wage.” Her colleague, selling suits that ranged from fifteen hundred dollars to eight thousand, told me he didn’t know when his last day of work would be, nor what kind of severance package anyone would have. Apparently, more than six hundred staff didn’t know when their jobs would end, but if Nordstrom did know one thing it was that it certainly wasn’t making enough money in Canada, with its thousand dollar flip-flops sold by minimum wage staff. It was time for the retailer to skedaddle.

I like talking to working people. Often, the conversations are more grounded than the kind of armchair politics you can abruptly find yourself enmeshed in at a house party, trapped suddenly in a kitchen surrounded by revellers armed with dangerously articulated glasses of wine.

The suit-seller had to go. He was run off his feet. Nearby, a rack of torn, pre-ripped jeans was on sale for three hundred dollars, more than seven times what I paid for my pristine pair. They were hung within grasping distance of some thousand dollar dresses.

I’m not an expert on dresses, but the thing about many of those seven hundred dollar shoes, those thousand dollar flip-flops, is that they were shit. They looked absolutely terrible.

Nordstrom allowed an aimless Dante, momentarily directionless in this realm, to sip their coffee and watch people buying their branded shoes and bags and clothes, and to try and perform some mental mathematics. It was a strange experience, because the conclusions you would reach would be that some of the school-age people buying things here were far too young to be able to earn the sums of money they were spending, whilst others were obviously spending many thousands as they bought items for themselves and others, nevertheless gliding through this experience with the casual indifference of a sleepwalker fumbling through a fridge.

Back in my local fancy café they are advertising for staff and perhaps they can take on one or two of the Nordstrom exodus. I look up the posting and wages start at fifteen dollars sixty-five an hour, which I confirm is the minimum wage in British Columbia. Once again, the coffee here costs about the same as anywhere else nearby, but everything else is expensive. The sandwiches are at least double.

And many of those sandwiches don’t look very good.

The staff here often talk to me. They say they talk to me not because of The Other Coat, but because I’m The Englishman Who Tips. It turns out, they tell me, that a majority of their customers do not tip. Most of these staff are smiling young women with accents from France and Romania and Peru. They are always smiling and they are always on their feet and they are always outnumbered by customers who want things and who will not hesitate to slide into a line with practised skill. They are dressed head to toe in white uniforms, but sometimes their footwear gives them away. They are not wearing thousand dollar flip-flops, or any of the sort of things that their customers are. They are much less affluent or, as we bluntly say where I am from, they are poorer.

I worked about five years of retail when I was a smiling young man and much of it was at or around the minimum wage. There were a lot of customers who wanted things and more than a few slid into lines at the till in manoeuvres that seemed all too practised. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it here again, because it bears repeating: One of the places I worked was a flagship store that made over twenty million pounds a year, a figure that the Bank of England Inflation Calculator tells me is equivalent to thirty-six point seven five million today, more than three million a month. We’d have these weekly briefings where the managers would urge us to work as hard as possible to help make those numbers as big as possible.

Later, when the Labour party came into power, the minimum wage bumped up to three pounds twenty an hour for young adults. But I wasn’t yet an adult and so that rate did not apply to me.

The great thing about young people is that you can make them do exactly the same things as older people, but pay them much worse. Because young people aren’t as important, are they? They’re not as worthy.

Sometimes these retail roles were very cold. Sometimes they were very hot. Whatever the weather, those customers would surface out of nowhere like submarines. They would glide, as if lubricated by their money, but I suppose money always has been something that helps you grease your way through life. I’m certainly slipperier these days. Occasionally I will glide over problems that might have punctured the Paul of the past. I throw money at stuff like a wizard casting a spell and it just goes away.

When I caught sight of the shoes worn by one staff member in The Fancy Café I was suddenly hurled back through time to my years in retail, and a hundred and one experiences came back to me in the blink of an eye. I still have many, many memories of how customers treat retail and service staff, because when a stranger treats you in an extraordinary and unexpected way, it tends to stay with you. I remember one furious man saying “I pay your wages,” which was not true, because Kingfisher plc paid my wages, but he really believed his money and his transactions gave him entitlements and that this was how you spoke to a sixteen-year-old service worker.

It’s been a hot minute since I was sixteen, but I still react to a nearby “Excuse me” with the assumption that someone must want something.

Nordstrom is all gone now. While I was drafting and redrafting all this, it gradually emptied the last of its inventory, first discounting its shoes and its suits and its ludicrously expensive tableware, before then going on to sell even its fittings and its fixtures. Nordstrom offered you the chance to buy a greasy, scratched glass table for a thousand dollars, for some shelves for four times that. Realising that this may sound unbelievable, I took a picture.

Around the same time, I talked to a friend about Nordstrom and, by coincidence, discovered that they used to work in one in the US. “Nordstrom deserves to close,” they said. “If you don’t make enough via commission, they pay you minimum wage. But you get a warning. You can only do that three times before they fire you. What’s worse, they have a lifetime return policy, no questions asked. If a customer returns an item within a year of purchase, it comes back out of your commission, because ‘if you did your job as a salesperson right, they’ll love it so much they won’t ever return it.’”

“I sold this guy nine hundred dollars of stuff for his daughter for Christmas and I didn’t want to because he had no idea what she wanted. Months later my paycheck was docked because she returned everything.”

Well, it has closed now, but I still wonder about those six hundred staff, much as I wonder if it will be replaced by anything kinder. I think about working a job like that, and how only a handful of circumstances or coincidences separate me from being in that position.

But why should I wonder, and why should I worry? These days, I have the class camouflage. I have the fancy coat, or the ability to speak properly and, provided I don’t accidentally let loose a school story of how one of our teachers was stabbed or talk about bored classmates crashing cars for fun, I can avoid too many strange stares from the people around me. I could pick up one of those thousand dollar flip-flops in Nordstrom and nobody acts like I shouldn’t be there, contemplating two shitty, stuck-together pieces of plastic that I could take to the checkout and buy from someone who would have to work at least sixty-four hours to be able to afford them, a length of time I doubt those flip-flops would even last.

Yeah. Why should I worry?

But these days I can’t avoid the slow swell of something I’m increasingly feeling, a kind of growing gravity that has been tugging at me from my past. These last few months it’s given me a kind of emotional whiplash, as I’m pulled in every direction by currents and collisions, by connections in my personal life, by events in the news, by conversations I share with my therapist on lamplit evenings in those generic and inoffensive spaces made from featureless pictures and neutral colours. Even by my own writing pulling the stitching out of the past as it heals, closes up and knits itself together behind me. Because when I press on the place that it was, I can still feel the contours.

All this pulling and tugging has made for an uncomfortable ride. I haven’t had enough high-g training. Usually when you’re in situations where you’ll be experiencing sharp and sudden manoeuvres there are ways to prepare you, to toughen you up. Pilots and astronauts are put in specialist equipment or precisely-engineered simulators that spin them around and shake them about until they no longer flinch or vomit or pass out. The rest of us have to hold on and hope for the best.

Here’s the thing: much of the last year has been very comfortable for me. Work has been terrific. I travelled to the United States for the first time since 2019, and then again, and then again. I was able to put money into a pension for the first time in more than a decade. I bought myself new things. I made plans for a future that could be more open than ever.

And two of the strongest feelings that I have in reaction to this are guilt and confusion. I am fidgeting awkwardly in that wrong income bracket, in the wrong tax bracket. I redraft this now in the local fancy café, surrounded by people wearing capital B Brands and carrying designer bags, designer scarves, designer hats, even wearing elaborate designer watches, because they have decided they need to spend thousands of dollars to have a second way to tell the time.

I don’t come here to write so much because I choose to be in the fancy café, but simply because it is near and it is open late and it has the most space and the least clamour. There are other places I would prefer to be, but some of those don’t exist any more, others have been pushed too far away. I don’t have much choice.

You see, the wealth that leaks from the fashionable, expensive shops downtown, right where that Nordstrom used to be, has been slowly rolling downhill toward my historically more modest neighbourhood. Like molten gold, it bubbles toward us, gentrifying everything it touches. I see it in the shops and stores that have opened after the peak of the pandemic, replacing the businesses that couldn’t survive. That which regrows is better, because it is more expensive, more exclusive. And I see the same change bubbling through the people on the pavement, the cars parked in the streets, even the photoshoot faces on dating apps.

Bubble, bubble. It’s like the rising tides of climate change.

There used to be a burrito place on the corner that would sell you your dinner for seven dollars. Now it’s a store selling designer clothes for babies. One toddler’s jacket is nine hundred and seventy dollars. Before tax.

Your child will grow out of that in six months.

Back in the spring, some time between my many Nordstrom shortcuts, I went to a party in my apartment building for its longest-serving resident. After forty-five years, this woman in her mid eighties was moving to an assisted living residence. Many people from my building’s ninety apartments turned up, including some who have lived here for decades. Without prompting, several talked about how they could never afford to move out, since the province’s rent caps mean existing residents only have to weather a very gradual increase in rates. This doesn’t apply to signing a new lease somewhere else, and so new people moving into our own building are paying at least a thousand dollars more a month than when I first arrived, and even more than other, longer-term residents. We are all sat tight on islands of safety amongst ever-rising tides. We have become surrounded in our stubbornness.

Around the corner from me, a four hundred and thirty square foot one-bedroom apartment is being rented out for a fairly typical two thousand, six hundred and ninety dollars a month. That’s over thirty two thousand dollars a year. Various contemporary census reports list the median income in my neighbourhood as being between fifty and fifty-five thousand dollars a year, before tax. Someone earning that much would be spending sixty percent of their income just to rent such an home.

I would say that this feels uncomfortably familiar, but a decade ago I was spending maybe three quarters or more of my earnings to cover my rent. And a decade ago I was starting to write something just like this, once again surrounded by notes and drafts that I hoped to shape into something not just coherent, but that people would understand.

And once again I remember what it’s like not to have money.

Those rent caps aren’t protecting us from the ever rising price of everything else. I go shopping, see a pack of bagels apparently price frozen at three dollars and remember when it cost almost half this. It wasn’t long ago, it wasn’t some childhood memory, it was less than two years past. The other week, two dollars were suddenly added to the price of yoghurt. Cereal costs a third more. The cheapest bar of budget chocolate suddenly became fifty percent more expensive. This isn’t happening to luxury brands or inessential items, but staples and budget foods. You can watch it happen almost in real time, like accelerated footage of shoots sprouting or plants budding in the spring.

Wait a second, was I saying this a decade ago, in another country, in another time?

It’s happening again.

I just got forced back a place in line, mere seconds from being served. Another patron, presumptive and impatient, slid between me and the coffee I ordered, snatching it away in a move that I would describe as all too practised, as smooth. They had ordered the same drink as me, after me, and presumably it had never crossed their mind that someone else, stepping up to the counter, could possibly come before them. They make no eye contact. Indeed, they don’t even acknowledge my existence. I’m just some slightly scruffy guy in a New England gallery, probably someone who shouldn’t really be here enjoying art, and I’m not nearly as well-dressed, as well-decked, as they are.

I don’t know if it’s my imagination or not, but sometimes I wonder if, in my scruffier manifestations, I become invisible, inconsequential.

I remember a lot of strange stuff these days. Some people say that the Coronavirus pandemic played havoc with our memories, our restriction and isolation turning our minds inward and having them engage in an odd kind of archaeology. I’ve remembered old friendships, old journeys, old habits. And lately I’ve remembered folded broadsheets on kitchen tables in richer friend’s houses, with the features they carried and the writers who wrote them. I’ve remembered the economic downturn of 2008 and how one broadsheet ran a feature where “We Asked 100 People how they’re Coping with the Credit Crunch” and how what this really seemed to have done was ask one hundred people who were antique shopping in Islington how they had cut back on au pairs and skiing holidays. I’ve remembered how this was when I first noticed the peculiar distance from which such newspapers would observe and report on people who lived on lower incomes, who were poorer, occasionally letting one of them grace their pages with authentic stories of jobsearching and social housing.

Poverty was talked about as if it was some curious other country. It existed somewhere else.

I think I remember this in part because news reporting in the pandemic followed the same patterns the same way a little music box quickly repeats the same cutesy tune. Poorer people, it turned out, were feeling the effects of the pandemic much more, said the reports, officially marking such as observation as news, as if poorer people hadn’t felt the effects of everything else much more, since the god damn start of recorded fucking history.

Or maybe I remember it because, as spring began, a CBC News report on a (the?) housing crisis described the state of some poorer people’s living states as shocking, as if it was new, novel, never before seen. And yet such things can only truly shock someone who has gone through life unaware that some of the human beings around them have much less. I was not shocked by any of the things depicted in that report, much as I am never shocked to learn that someone has mould on their walls, broken windows, dangerous appliances, leaking plumbing, freezing bedrooms, failing electrics, collapsing walls or some sort of exploitative landlord or manager (nor that these things make you sick). I am only shocked that there are people in the world who still fail to comprehend the scope and scale of the poverty around them, who have become so swaddled and spoiled that they may as well be sleepwalkers.

You know what else I remember? I remember how the pandemic turned my neighbourhood into richer people’s racetracks, how they would roar down my street at night. They rode oversized rollerskates costing a quarter of a million dollars along tight roads full of parked cars and blasted through the stop signs at every intersection. They growled in the night, grumbling down my road at three, four, five in the morning, probably achieving top speeds of thirty miles an hour but making a lot of noise as they did so. Their owners thought a good use of their money was to buy fast cars and drive them somewhere they’d be slower than a galloping horse. Most of these were not even good-looking cars. Most of these looked like shit.

When I first wrote that paragraph, a quarter of a million dollars had not quite achieved the significance that it currently has. But more on that in a moment.

I didn’t grow up poor. I grew up well taken care of and fairly safe. But I did grow up more modestly, poorer, than many of the people I came to know, the kind of people you might meet at a university, or in a New England art gallery, or a convention overseas, or who might make analogies about Dante. I also grew up knowing other kids with families who had much less, families couldn’t always surface their floors or fix their windows or fill their fridges. Wedged between two classes, I grew up knowing people who had multiple bathrooms and multiple garages, as well as those who tried to hide the rot on the walls or who didn’t know how to clean up when their disaffected, distressed dog had shit in the semi-carpeted living room once again.

I never forget that dog, though I never told anyone that before.

You know what else I remember sometimes, at random, when my brain decides to reminisce? I remember taking a bus home from work after a terrible Hampshire day, feeling awful about my life, when an old schoolfriend’s younger sister greeted me with excitement and enthusiasm. She came from the same household as the shit-stained floor. She sat on the back seat of this bouncing bus and delightedly told me how, by the age of seventeen, she was finally going to become a mother.

And then I remember how we were encouraged, pushed, expected to move beyond and away from something such as that. Don’t be like those people. Create distance. Escape.

I stopped writing this thing for a while, because each time that I opened it I became sad or I became overwhelmed, and I wondered both what right I had to write about things like this, being the guy with a pension and a safe apartment, and also who would care to read it. There are likely many reasons that people don’t want to read about some of these experiences and situations and one is that they aren’t very much fun. Why read about people with shit-stained floors when you can do anything else, such as watch a television show about starship battles or elves going on an adventure. These shows have CGI now and it’s all very exciting. It’s hard to compete in a world of CGI shows, funny dog videos and services that deliver dinner to your door.

But then it happened again.

I am trying a different fancy café (we have so many now). I just got forced back a place in line, mere seconds from being served. Another patron, presumptive and impatient, slid between me and the coffee I ordered, snatching it away in a move that I would describe as all too practised, as smooth. Again, they had ordered the same drink as me, and it either never crossed their mind to see if another person might claim this order, or I was somewhere between invisible and insignificant compared to how well-dressed, well-presented they were.

Is that just in my head?

I stepped out onto the street, past a row of sports cars and luxury vehicles. They are all over the place now, and I rarely walk a minute before seeing something that costs more than my neighbourhood’s median annual income. And then there was that whiplash, that high-g experience as I was also reminded of this half-written draft and everything else it contained.

And then I was angry.

I stopped writing this because, in part, I don’t know what it says about me that I didn’t so much leave so many of my low income experiences behind as find ways to run from them. Growing up, I was subconsciously sold a story of aspiration that was all about making yourself better than people who were struggling like this, about doing everything you can to create distance between yourself and them, about finding ways to identify with and relate to a different class. Become richer, sure, but become separate too. I think there is something in some poorer, lower-income, working class mindsets where such people are encouraged to resent themselves, to feel embarrassed, to aspire to be or to pretend to be something else, and to lose that past as soon as you can. I went and re-watched old material by the stand-up comedian Billy Connolly wherein he talked about things like his family throwing coats on the bed to keep warm, then pretending that a kids’ argument over those coats was a fight over the eiderdown (“The coats are in the cloakroom, near the mezzanine.”). I watched another where he tells a story of a person falling from a plane’s undercarriage and of a worried local calling the authorities and asking them to come and remove the body not out of concern for the tragedy or the person’s welfare, but because “I think he’s working class.” I have also never forgotten Connolly venting his frustration at someone who said to him “I was going to buy a copy of the Big Issue [a magazine that supports the homeless and unhoused], but the man was smoking.”

Connolly’s take on this was “HE DOESNAE HAVE A FUCKIN’ HOOSE. ALLOW HIM A WEE FAG WHILE HE WORKS OUT WHERE HE’S GONNA SLEEP TONIGHT.”

That’s an anger I understand, but it’s also an anger I am baffled to not see more often, perhaps even all the time, expressed as it should be in proportion to the amount of poverty and hardship I see every day. When I first moved to Vancouver, I encountered dozens of people sleeping on the streets. When I returned as a Permanent Resident in 2019 there were hundreds. There must now be thousands occupying doorways or amongst the growing tent cities that are constantly moved from place to place, an ever-growing population that is pushed away whenever they get too close to those expensive apartments or luxury cars.

When I see these people, I think how only a handful of circumstances or coincidences separate me from being in that position. Bubble bubble, go those rising waters, those rising rents and prices, and I have only climbed a little higher.

A few years ago, I sat next to a person on a train who volunteered their dismay: “It’s such a shame these people don’t want to work,” they said, as if people willingly chose to live in freezing tents without running water or safety or income. And there is valid anger to be thrown at a person like that, but also perhaps the consideration that they have never been exposed to the mathematics or practicalities of poverty, never had to worry quite enough about the cost of living, and have only ever talked about poverty as if it was some curious other country. A remote place of foreigners.

But I still don’t get how anyone can talk of the shock of poverty when it is so ever-present. I don’t understand. Do they look away? Are these the same kinds of people who, surveys have increasingly shown, see their above-average incomes as being unremarkably normal? After all, it now seems that wealth (and poverty) substantially alter psychology.

Nine years ago, in the spring, I shared an essay similar to this one called On Poverty. I talked about the rising cost of food and housing in England, as well as my frustrations around how something that for me was ever-present precariousness seemed somehow surprising, shocking, to many other people. It took me nearly a year to articulate and I only published it because I ran out of patience. To my surprise, it was shared in all kinds of places. Writers I admired got in touch, activists reached out, someone from the UK housing charity Shelter contacted me.

It was already six years after “We Asked 100 People how they’re Coping with the Credit Crunch” and nothing had changed. There was a growing trend toward not buying property in London, but investing in property, to the point that properties that didn’t yet exist were already being pre-bought with the understanding that they would become more valuable and could then be sold to others. Homes were no longer most useful as somewhere to live, but as investments that would appreciate. While I can’t say that this first started in London, I have certainly seen this practice and its consequences everywhere from Vancouver to New England to cities across Europe and Australia and… perhaps you can tell me somewhere where this hasn’t yet begun to happen.

And it is now fifteen years after “We Asked 100 People how they’re Coping with the Credit Crunch” and nine years after On Poverty and all the things that haven’t stopped have only gained momentum. Bubble bubble, the waters keep rising, because whyever would they not? We are, at least, talking more about the trends that we see as the waters reach more of our ankles. In Canada now we talk about how real estate prices that have increased up to three hundred and thirty seven percent mean that Toronto’s housing price to income ratio is now six, while Vancouver’s is ten, how twenty percent of properties are owned by investors (including half of all new condominiums in Vancouver), how the nation’s households now owe more money than the entire GDP, how insolvent an entire generation is. We now do our own versions of stories about, say, how a furnitureless room just big enough for a bed is now nine hundred dollars a month (this kind of story is so familiar… it’s happening again…). In Britain, the food bank usage I was furious about a decade ago is increasingly acknowledged, with a dialogue around how having more food banks thank McDonald’s restaurants might not be a good thing, how an ongoing cost of living crisis pushes more people toward sex work, how raising a healthy family and maintaining a basic standard of living has become increasingly difficult or downright impossible, how ill health is on the rise while life expectancy has stopped increasing and young adult mortality has risen, how almost four and one quarter million of Britain’s children now live in poverty while their parents struggle to feed them (and themselves), all against a background of increasing stagnation. In the United States there is also greater awareness of how wages have stagnated while the cost of living has increased and of how property prices have again wildly outpaced earnings, and continue to do so in no small part because more new properties are bought for the exclusive purpose of being profit-making stock, not to mention how more and more people are not taking lower paying jobs simply because they know those jobs won’t allow them to cover even their most basic needs (there is also an examination of the attempts to fill these voids by relaxing child labour laws in some states and how it might not be a good thing for ten-year-olds to be working the McDonald’s night shift). I see cost of living and inflation discussion across Europe. In South America. Even at the bottom of the world.

But it should never have got this bad, should never have spread this far, and it has done so in part because we ignored the poorer people around us who were the canaries in the coal mine, whose experiences (separated from ours only by chance and coincidence) could very well have been our own, but were instead treated as something happening at a peculiar distance. Those first people caught up in the rising tides were not like us, not our concern. It is only now, as these stories increase and as these graphs grow and as these numbers multiply, that more of us are beginning to understand that the surging waters might well engulf us all. We cannot outpace economics much as we cannot outjump gravity.

And so maybe, just maybe, a few more of you are angry too. You should be.

Two of the challenges I had over the many months that I tried to write this work were trying to start it and trying to finish it. These may sound very fundamental, perhaps even existential, and I suppose they are. Longform writing has been difficult for me the last few years. Trying to find a fresh way to articulate my anger and frustration over something that I have already written about, in one form or another, so many times was hard. There are only so many times I can say that it’s happening again before I wonder if people care. If people care about the increasingly obvious truth that, for a growing number of us, it has essentially become too expensive to be alive, and that if you can’t afford to live, the only thing you can do, either slowly or quickly, is die. And often I wonder why people are not mad about this every day, all of the time, and why much of this increasing poverty and inequality and struggle to survive is still reported and remarked upon with that peculiar distance, rather than being one of the chief concerns of our time. It certainly is a chief concern if it is your day to day life.

And then the submarine happened.

By now just about everyone knows at least something about how the OceanGate Titan submersible was lost at sea, suffering a catastrophic failure as a result of what seems to have been reckless policies and a contempt for safety standards. Tickets for a spot on this tiny, dangerous submarine cost a quarter of a million US dollars, while two nations and multiple air and sea forces invested tremendous resources in trying to locate the missing vessel. I have since witnessed what I think can generously be described as a lack of sympathy for this mixture of carelessness and privilege, as well as the enormous response that had to be deployed in an attempt to rescue rich tourists considered to have made poor choices. In particular, many people noted the contrast between the widespread coverage and intense efforts on behalf of five missing rich people versus the relative dismissal of the recent death of hundreds of refugees, including around a hundred children, in a Mediterranean shipwreck. It was an extremely transparent case of starkly different treatment based upon status.

And I had already woven my submarine analogies throughout half of these paragraphs.

This response is as important as the events themselves. It reflects a growing discontent around the wealth divide and a contempt for the rich, particularly the powerful rich, those who can make decisions that have enormous consequences that they themselves will not have to face. The past week I’ve been presented with thousands of tweets and short video essays by people explaining why they feel so little sympathy and how they’ve had enough. These are presented alongside more and more stories covering things such as the Clearlink CEO celebrating a worker selling their family dog in order to keep their job, or the increasing belief that ongoing inflation is in part caused by a transparent and unregulated desire for profit (including perhaps thousand dollar flip-flops sold by minimum wage staff). In the last few years it’s been revealed that even economic reporting itself is biased toward talking about richer, more comfortable people.

It’s almost July as I prepare to publish this work. The bagels that were, it turns out for only a brief moment, price frozen at three dollars are now thirty cents more expensive, a further ten percent price rise. I look at them and I remember what it was like to count every penny I spent when I was food shopping and I decide that I will include the following paragraph, which I was going to cut from this draft:

You know what the fresh pastries in the supermarket look like when you have only a handful of coins in your pocket? Those cherry-red centres, that glistening applesauce oozing out between crisp layers of puff pastry? They look like lights hung for a festival, they look as bright as Christmas decorations. They lose some of their sense of reality.

I’m not going to celebrate rich tourists lost at sea, but I’m glad it has lead to more people expressing their frustration, their discontent, their helplessness against economic forces that strike them, strand them, like a tidal wave, the surging waters that they cannot begin to climb clear of. I don’t think this means things will change this month, or this year, and I believe that change against forces and trends that have already developed so much momentum will require much more energy, much more pushback. I hope they continue to be angry, that they become angrier still, that they keep articulating and focusing their rage about the growing inequality and unaffordability around them as it begins to affect more and more people. That they express how disgusting it is that it is happening again.

Nine years ago I wrote that I felt we were regressing to the Victorian era, but now I wonder if we’re falling back even further than that. In my world of CGI shows, funny dog videos and services that deliver dinner to my door, almost all of the people who deliver that dinner or who will make me a coffee or who will drive me to the airport, or who perform all those tasks I can request when I throw money at stuff like a wizard casting a spell, are paid garbage and treated like they are disposable. This is usually because they are, and they have few other options. They are not lazy or stupid and we are only separated from one another by circumstances or coincidence, things we had about as much control over as weather, as rising tides, as economic forces with all the power of a tidal wave and which could still strike again and sink yet more of us. It could be happening again. Bubble bubble.

A significant factor in the success of someone like me, of the safer position I now find myself in, is luck, and we don’t talk about that enough.

People are trying so hard to survive. Last week someone broke through the latticework on the door of our building’s dumpster enclosure so that they could slide a hand through a tiny, sharp filigree of twisted metal and operate the handle. They did this in order to reach the trash inside, because their life had become so difficult that they needed to risk harming themselves in order to get trash.

Two blocks away, I finished writing in my local fancy café and stood briefly to return my cup to the counter, which is a common habit in the Pacific Northwest and takes but a moment. The patron next to me looked up from behind gold-rimmed, heart-shaped sunglasses.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that here,” she said. “They have people who will do that for you.”

#Nordstrom #writing #On Poverty #poverty #wealth #money #Vancouver #economics #Patreon

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wrencatte · 1 year

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a longer than normal snippet of bad news this place is magic af chapter 3 because it's 422 in the am and i should really go to bed but im not. (wc: approx 1,151). This is a ROUGH draft

Gotham isn’t alive.

Gotham isn’t not alive.

(It’s complicated.)

But when you have as much as ambient magic that Gotham does – festering, pooling. Nowhere to go. No one use it. It languishes, steeping into the foundations, seeking physical objects to siphon a droplet from a deep, abyssal ocean –

When you have as much ambient magic that Gotham does –

The line between alive and not alive gets a little blurred.

—

Tim lets them laugh, lets Steph’s boundless capacity for banter ease some of them tension. He glances over at Cass and sees it in her expression that she noticed it too – Jason’s shaking hands, the pinch of pain around his eyes, the sheen in them that he keeps blinking away.

It could be blamed on his injuries. Most of it can probably be blamed on his injuries. But he folds his arms over his chest, pressing close in a way that has to hurt the claw marks there, and his nails dig into his sleeves, the fabric of his sweatshirt being the only thing keeping him from drawing blood.

He closes his eyes, exhausted, and cuts in. “It’s still hurting you – the cloaking spell.”

Not a question. A statement of fact.

The banter cuts off, the light teasing dies down. Jason doesn’t look at him, nails burrowing, teeth flashing to bite his lip. His fangs – because that’s what they are no matter how often Bruce calls them elongated canines; he just doesn’t want to admit that Jason has fangs. Some things are too weird for Batman. – split his lip, blood beading up.

“No,” he says.

Steph frowns. “Jason…”

He frowns back, something gleaming beyond the tears in his eyes – and Tim thinks of sunlight through sweet tea and vintage whiskey. “We don’t have time to worry about it,” he snaps with only a quarter of his usual heat. If Tim’s already exhausted, he can’t imagine how Jason feels.

“There’s always time,” Duke says then glances at the ceiling when all Jason does is sneer in response. “Fine – if you wanna be a stubborn asshole about it we’ll let you. For now.” There’s a glow in his eyes to match Jason’s – but golden where Jason’s is copper. The hair on the back of Tim’s neck stands on end and he remembers – he never really forgot – that Duke’s meta-abilities are weird and odd and more and now he’s starting to get an idea of why. “What’s the plan?”

Jason slumps like his strings have been cut. Cass swings her arms over his shoulders, slouching in a way that’s uncharacteristic of her but makes Jason reach up and hold on to keep her from sliding to the ground.

And subsequently makes him stop pressing on his injuries.

“The plan is to figure out where his final circle is going to be and stop him,” Jason says slowly. He presses his lips together. Tim hands him a napkin that he takes without looking, dabbing at the blood almost absently. His eyes flicker across the map, following Duke’s lines from point a to b all the way to m – thirteen points. Twelve like a clock and then one directly in the middle. “That’s smack dab in the middle of the reservoir.”

“The labyrinth,” Tim says. Jason nods. “Great. Just what we needed.”

“I’m sorry, the what?” Duke asks, brows furrowed. The gold in his eyes has faded even if Jason still shimmers copper. “We have a labyrinth?”

“We don’t,” Steph says and she looks absolutely disgusted by the direction this is going. “The Court of Owls, on the other hand, did. Do we really have to?”

Duke pinches the bridge of his nose. “The Court of Owls?” Everyone stares at him. “Hey, don’t look at me like that,” he snaps. “Some of us are new to this whole vigilante business. I’m still in Jason’s era of casefiles!”

Jason groans. “Great,” he mutters.

Tim gives him a sympathetic look that’s ignored. He’s seen the reports from Jason’s time as Robin and they’re not pretty – Rogues like Kite Man and Condiment King weren’t a common place then. It was usually the Families and the darker crimes that really makes Tim wonder who thought it was a good idea to let a teenager on the streets like that. Though, he’s sure Jason had seen worse before he was Robin.

Already files on the Court of Owls are popping up on screen, courtesy of Barbara. Duke leans in, scanning the words, lips moving, his eyes getting wider and wider the further he gets, jaw dropping.

“What?” he whispers. “No, seriously. What?” He gestures frantically at the screen. “Dick? Your, your parents?” he asks Tim.

Tim shrugs. “They were in over their heads,” he says casually. And it is pretty casual. The Court never wanted Tim. They were more pissed that Janet and Jake managed to snub them so well. Tim’s had two years to come to terms with the mess his parents left him with. “It’s actually one of the reasons they traveled so much. The Court did not like them ducking out like they did. Technically they were never official members anyway, too New Money to get more than a foot in the door.”

Babs pulls the files down. “I can send the rest to your tablet,” she tells him. “Let’s focus. Jason, why is he doing this?”

Jason drags a fingertip over the desk surface. Tim watches the motion – it’s not random. It’s…It means something. He traces it out over and over again. Steph ducks down, frowning, waving her hand in front of Jason’s face – he flinches, hand going flat on the desk.

“Magic,” Jason says.

“We’ve established that,” Tim replies.

He shakes his head, drags a hand down his face, winces when he pulls at the marks on his face. “No. Listen. Magic is pretty much everywhere. There’s, like, maybe two places on this planet where magic is null and only the Sorcerer Supreme knows where they are.”

“And that’s?”

“Currently it’s Zatanna Zatara,” Jason says with a smirk. Steph claps her hands, eyes sparkling. “Yeah, thought you might like that. She’s been Sorcerer Supreme for about…five years now? After Kent stopped being Doctor Fate and Khalid picked up the mantle. Gotham is not null.”

Duke quirks an eyebrow. “But no one here uses magic.”

Jason nods. “And that’s the problem. Magicians don’t come to Gotham – not because Batman asked nicely or anything, but it’s disgusting here.” He swallows thickly, looking like he might be sick. Tim hands him another orange juice and he takes it even though he rolls his eyes. “Magic has to be used. It’s gotta flow. It doesn’t even have to be a person – or the equivalent of one. Those magical objects we’ve dealt with over the years? That’s Gotham’s magic trying to find some outlet before it explodes like a powder keg. That’s the only reason we’re not suffering a weird magical plague.”

#jason todd #hurt jason todd #my writing #i have...been sitting here this whole time thinking i didn't have polls and I do???#since when???

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galaxythreads · 1 year

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[whispers] why did loki have steve's jacket in ysfslwftca? was there a specific scene for this interaction that didn't make it to the final draft?

[whispers back] because I wanted to torment everyone.

No, it actually is from a deleted scene. There's a lot of deleted stuff from ysfslwftca that I do plan to post into Avengers: The Rubbish Bin--where all my deleted scenes for fics or abandoned fics go--when I get the aftermath chapter posted.

I might end up using this scene in the aftermath chapter, but you're welcome to look at it anyway. It wasn't ever finished. Loki was going to look over the scene from the helicarrier after Thor attacked it and have a minor panic attack about it, and Steve was going to give him his jacket to help with the panic.

This is somewhere after he leaves Clint's hospital room after they agree to remove the memories.

---

He can’t stop looking at the pictures. The dead, mangled bodies, so peaceful in death, staring up at the cameras without a care in the world. It’s haunting. He can see the burns across their skin from lightning strikes, the dull, painfilled stare of the Chitauri’s stare. The burned flesh of the gunshot wounds.

It naustates him.

What, Loki wonders with dread, did the Midgardians expect to gain by taking pictures? He finds himself almost addicted to the horrific, bloody sight, like it’s a fixation he can’t stop looking at. Violence is addictive. Perhaps this is just a way to curb the latest craving. He can’t stop looking.

He goes over the crime scene photos from the Helicarrier over and over again, as if he can gain some sort of new information by staring hard or long enough, straining his eyes until the very socket is tired. But he doesn’t stop looking.

He finds what he was looking for originally after a time, and he stares at Nathan Swenson’s dead body on the screen for longer than he cares to admit. He feels nothing for the man. He should be horrified or grieved, knowing that he’s dead, but Loki doesn’t even remember him. Not truly. Flashes of a voice, memories that feel like they belong to someone else. Loki was Nathan Swenson’s nightmare. Perhaps it’s only fitting that he become Loki’s.

The man is hidden among the dead agents. Loki knows that the Chitauri were attempting to hide the assassination of this man behind a massacure, but with the knowledge of the tether, and what it’s for, Loki finds that it’s easy to see beyond it. All of these others lives were collateral damage. Fifteen agents died. Dozens more were badly injured. Thor freed all of the Chitauri captive on the ship.

And yet, the true purpose, was Nathan Swenson, hidden among the other bodies.

Loki wonders if Swenson managed to sleep again before he died. The thought only makes his low mood manage to drag itself deeper somehow. Loki releases a soft breath, then, with careful fingers, he sets the tablet he borrowed from Tony down on his lap and takes a long swing of the alcohol he stole. It takes bitter and strangely bubbly, dragging down his throat. It’s painful.

Gods.

Who’s grand idea was it to make Earth’s alcohol hurt?

Loki grimaces, wiping at his mouth compulsively as if that will actually help, and looks back down at the photos. He finds himself going through them again, staring at the violence and trying to feel something other than numb. The bottle grows further empty, but the mind-deadening relief he hates doesn’t come.

He doesn’t want to think anymore. Norns, his thoughts are too heavy.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been hiding in this tiny washroom, drinking himself sick and staring at horrors, but it must have been enough. Steve opens the door. They hold a long stare before the captain’s mouth pushes into a thin line and he steps inside the room. The sound of the door closing makes Loki flinch.

He blinks dully.

Steve slides down along the wall next to him, accidentally bumping his knee against Loki’s. It stays there. Loki doesn’t fight it. He’s too tired. The alcohol bottle hangs loosely between his fingers by the neck.

Steve looks over at the tablet, sighs, and then plucks it from his lap. “You’re torturing yourself going over this, you know that?” he asks, flipping the cover over the front and turning it off.

Loki frowns at him, trying to draw up the energy to be annoyed but only managing to scrape up apathetic. “I’m reminiscing.”

Steve’s eyebrows raise. “About what?”

Loki smiles at him. The expression feels vicious. “How monstrous I truly am.” He gestures with his chin toward the tablet, “Look at them, captain. Have you seen the horror of it? All of them are dead because of me.”

Steve stares at him.

Loki wishes he would shout. It’s what he’s expecting. He tries to think of what his family would do if they found him like this. Odin would yell at him, certainly. Or perhaps he’d just stare at Loki in judgemental, angry silence until Loki apologized. Frigga would dote and act concerned but chide him. Thor would…Loki doesn’t know. Maybe Thor would join him. Maybe he’d yell, too.

Loki takes a swig of the alcohol, grimacing.

Ah.

Perhaps that’s why Midgardians designed it to hurt. It’s recompense. The punishment they all deserve but can’t enact upon themselves.

“This wasn’t your fault.” Steve says at length.

“No?” Loki asks, a bitter laugh bubbling out of him. “I’m the reason the Chitauri are here in the first place. My memories are what Thor is currently bound to destroy. Nathan Swenson’s life is over because I decided to attack this gods-forsaken planet over a petty grudge!” Loki blinks rapidly several times. His chest is heaving. The energy deflates from him as rapidly as it arrived. Miserable, Loki asks, “Did you know that Swenson had a partner? That he had a son?”

“Loki,” Steve says, pained. He’s shaking his head.

“I didn’t. I didn’t care to know apparently.” Loki looks at the amber liquid sloshing inside the bottle. He wishes that it helped more. He would give almost anything to feel numb right now. He sighs heavily, closing his eyes and tilting his head back against the wall.

His fingers, healed and whole, maintain their grip on the stupid, stupid bottle.

“Swenson wasn’t your fault any more than it was Thor’s. It was the Chitauri.” Steve says.

“You say that like it removes the absence of choice.”

Steve’s brow draws together. “That’s…that exactly what I’m saying. You didn’t have a choice to attack Earth. You didn’t choose to do that. You were pointed at us. Would you choose to attack New York now?"

Loki shakes his head. "No, of course not."

"And you'd say you're in your right mind?"

"As much as I ever am."

---

*steve gives loki his jacket*

#ysfslwftca #my fics #loki #steve #answered #anon

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bookwyrminspiration · 2 years

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I don't think you have talked about Bronte x Emery before, but I do love what you said about them! (I will now call them Berry)

And yes! I'd love to hear your thoughts on just Emery

(so sorry this one took me longer to answer. I got partway through and saved it to my drafts and then completely forgot about it, whoops!)

I believe you Nonsie but for some reason I feel like I have. I don't know why and I don't know when, but it's nagging at me, like the post it out there somewhere just waiting for me to stumble across it years down the line and collapse at it's feet, a memory of who I used to be, you know?

As for Emery himself, I think he's super interesting because he's the main (or one of the main) councillor who isn't dedicated to one side. He's both supported Sophie openly and given her opportunities--like with her rehabilitating Silveny--and done things that have severely hurt her--the ability restrictor. Other councillors have voted various ways in support and opposition, but we don't hear from them. They're councillors whose voices we've never heard.

There's people like Kenric, Oralie, Terik, and Bronte who are fully behind her and are/were (rip burnt nugget man) very supportive despite what the situation is, people Sophie can count on to vote in her favor regardless of the circumstances. There are people devoutly against her like Alina, but Emery exists somewhere inbetween that

And though it's inconvenient for Sophie to be faced with such an uncertainty in terms of her support, I love what it means for his character! He's not predisposed to believe one thing or another, and instead approaches everything with the same even rationality and assessment--or tries to. Because sometimes Sophie is a problem, and shouldn't be treated with the reprieve we want because we don't like to see her in trouble (most of the time). I'd much prefer someone who tries to evaluate every possibility and makes bad/wrong decisions than someone who knows what they're going to decide/support without hearing everything out.

It doesn't stop him from making questionable decisions, but I love that we can't rely on him to vote either way and that even his mistakes show signs of logic and trying to make the best decision in every situation. His reasoning for the ability restrictor was solid. Sophie had used her abilities in a severe breech of conduct, violating treaties and meriting punishment. She'd been known to break rules using those abilities before and it was getting more and more extreme regardless of her training. The ability restrictor, while untested, was to the best of their knowledge safe and a temporary situation to be remedied later. Why should Sophie continue to have her powers when she's shown such disregard to abusing them? What right does she have to continue having them when she behaves as she does? Do I agree with the final decision? nope, but I love how he justified it and can't be determined as either a support/opposition!

Having a character who could go either way in so many situations and has such influence on top of that is so satisfying, like hands down my favorite part about him. I hope we get more situations with him to see that conflict!!

#kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #councillor emery #kotlc character analysis #quil's queries #nonsie #also glad you liked what I had to say! it's always nice to hear what people think #and again my apologies for the time this took #literally was just scrolling through my drafts and saw this there and froze because I had absolutely 0 recollection of saving it there #I have no idea how old this ask is #usually when I save an ask to my drafts I remember it vaguely and it haunts me #but not this one! i completely spaced it

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tomwambsmilk · 2 years

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TomKen R+J AU

👀👀👀👀

Ooh, this is another one I have to thank @tomwambsgoose for. It's an almost scene-for-scene retelling of Romeo and Juliet, inspired by the Baz Luhrmann movie. Except, it's set in the modern day, and instead of Capulets and Montagues it's Waystar Royco and Maesbury Capital. Logan runs Waystar, with the plan being for Kendall (Juliet) to succeed him, and also he really wants Kendall to get married, ideally to Matsson (Paris) because it would strengthen the alliance between Waystar and GoJo. Tom (Romeo) works for Maesbury Capital, as does Shiv (Benvolio) and Roman (Mercutio); they decide to gatecrash the Waystar Christmas costume party. (Shiv and Roman are still Roy siblings - their going to work for Maesbury has caused a significant rift in the family). Tom and Kendall meet and fall madly in love, before discovering that they each work for the rival companies. Kendall confides in Connor (the nurse), and they all start conspiring to get them together; Tom goes to his friend Greg, who is a priest who runs a side business selling weed (Friar Laurence), and asks for his help. Greg marries them in secret, but on the way back from the wedding, there's an altercation in the street. Roman and Stewy (Tybalt) are killed, and Tom is forced to flee. Logan tells Kendall that he has to marry Matsson. Greg comes up with The Plan, where Kendall's going to fake his death; he goes to email Tom but there's a massive blackout in the power grid and he isn't able to get ahold of him. Tom shows up at the grave, kills Matsson, thinks Kendall is dead, poisons himself, and then Kendall wakes up and stabs himself. The tragedy of this finally heals the rift between Waystar and Maesbury, as well as the rift in the Roy family.

Snippet below the readmore of Kendall and Tom meeting at the party (this one is very much a first draft snippet, so if this gets posted it might look a little different in the end, lol):

It's bold, he knows it's bold - bolder than he'd usually be - but he can't help but take the hand of the man standing in front of him. Maybe it's the masks, and the fact that he can't see the man's face, or maybe it's the pre-party drinks in his system, or maybe -

... Could it be? Could it be that fleeting thing he's always chasing, that elusive joy?

Is it love?

The man looks at him, expectantly. Curiously. The two of them are frozen there, and suddenly Tom feels pressure to say something, anything, crash down over him.

"Your hand-" His voice comes out raspy. He clears his throat and tries again. "Your hand... is - like a temple."

The man blinks. "...What?"

"Um." Tom laughs, nervously. It does not break the tension. "I just - it's like a temple, because, well, I- my hands are not worthy to, uh, to visit." He finishes weakly, realizing that this might be the single worst pickup line he's ever come up with. That anyone's ever come up with.

The man blinks, and says nothing. But - he doesn't take his hand away, and Tom summons one last wave of courage to try again.

"But, you know, if you're offended..." He chokes a little on the line, and then blurts out: "My lips are right here."

It's at this point that the man starts laughing, wheezing laughs. Tom tries to snatch his hand away, tries to apologize and flee, but before he can, the man says:

"Well, dude, if you want my honest opinion, I think you're selling your hands kind of short. Besides, I've never been to a temple but, uh, I've been to cathedrals, and pilgrims touch the hands of statues all the time." He strokes the back of Tom's hand with his thumb, and then shifts, so it's no longer Tom taking his hand but the two of them holding hands, palm to palm, and Tom feels his breath hitch.

"Oh," he says, and then tries to cover for the moment of softness - "What, do they not have any lips to kiss with?"

"They have lips to pray with." An eyebrow quirks up behind the mask.

"Well," says Tom, as his heart pounds and he feels like his blood is on fire, "Maybe we should let our lips do what hands do. You know, so they can join the prayer."

The man squeezes his hand. There's a pause. Then: "What are you praying for?"

It's a moment that feels so unbelievably sublime, it's almost unreal. For a split second, his awareness of the party around him falls away, and it's just him and this man and the desire building rapidly in his chest.

"I'll show you," he says, and leans down to kiss him.

#this fic is ultimately meant to be silly but. where is the line #idk #is this a bit out of character? sure. but Im trying to keep to the original sentiments of the text as much as possible #ask games

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tendous-whore · 3 years

Note

Girl I’m now obsessed with your blog! Your writing is incredible.

Is it okay if I request a continuation to your Naoya work but what would have happened if you had gotten pregnant with his child and had given birth to it safely. Idk why but I’d love to see some fluff with this asshole where he tries to fix his wrongs (and he’s got lots of fixing to do).

Have a nice day💖💖

omg you’re my 2nd ask 🥺 and thank you! I appreciate it so much!!

and yes. I’ve only written him as a punching bag, or the reader as his punching bag. but I actually have drafts of him that is more on the sweeter side >:)

so your request lines up really well! And I lOVE the idea 🥺 so I’m gonna stop rambling and just UHGGG write this beaut out 😩🤌 yuh enjoy <3

home is with you

(Pt. 2 to do you think of me?)

summary: (request) what would have happened if you’d gotten pregnant and gave birth to Naoya's child?

notes: unedited & long af. I could have drawn this out way longer but I just wanted to get out all the rawness and UGH 😭🤌

Time felt slow. It betrayed him in this moment, amplifying the rhythmic tap of his foot against the wood floor from his seat. He held himself upright, and to the naked eye, he fit the Zen’in image. Dignity, respect, and a class of what a man should look, and act as. But beneath it all, his hands grasped his knees, the pads of his fingers thumbing the expensive material mindlessly. His eyes, always sharp and focused, faltered in the way they darted from side to side, distracted. And his feet continued to tap tap tap.

“Naoya.”

Suddenly, the door opened, and the fine figure of a woman stepped out. Her body, wrapped in a silk kimono, the color of it being one of his favorite. He stood up, straightening himself before her as she quietly padded towards him. Your voice caught him off guard at first, he didn’t expect to see you so soon.

“Well?”

It’s not a question, but the depth of the word is enough to hang in the air for what feels like more than a minute, but probably only lasted a few seconds. He hesitates to say anymore, to ask, uncertain of the outcome, and of your answer, but he knows it’s important. How else would he find out if it was a success?

“The doctor said I am healthy.”

“That now is the perfect time.”

“I’m pregnant.”

He watches the way your face moves, the way your brows knit together in deep thought as you carefully picked the right words to say. But it’s enough for Naoya to understand. His eyes slowly take in your form, dragging down, and lingering at the obi tied above your waist. He thinks to himself, imagining what these next months would look like. How you’d look like.

“I’m pregnant.” You say again. Your face peers up at him, perplexed by his silence, or lack of reaction. It’s not what you expected, certainly not something you hoped for either. This has always been something your husband wanted, driven to fulfill this expectation of his. So naturally, it spooked you. But your words did not fall to deaf ears - Naoya heard you, loud and clear.

Before you can repeat yourself, the hand that hovers above your stomach finally makes contact. The initially feeling, something so unnatural, so intimate, has you pull away. But the firm grip of a second hand stills you, grounding you to your spot. Naoya doesn’t want you to move, not when he feels the warmth of your skin bleeding through the silk, radiating into his palm. He can feel each breath you take, the way your heart quickened. You were shaken, startled, and surprised.

And so was he.

He pictured the way your tummy would grow, how it would protrude against your kimonos and how over time, your obi would loosen more and more until you could no longer wear it. He could imagine each morning and night, waking up and ending the day with you by his side, curled against his chest, and his hands soothing the ache of carrying his child. It would be the least he could do for you, to show you in his own ways his appreciation.

To show you he cared.

“Naoya.”

That soft voice of yours snaps him back, back to this moment. With your hair swept back into a loose braid, pulled to the side, resting atop your shoulder. It’s not a style you normally wore, out of the regular norm but he didn’t mind it. In fact, he quite liked it. It suited you more, giving you a more gentle and mature look, as opposed to the typical bun you wore.

“Your hair is different today.” He says, reaching out and touching your hair. You feel the way his fingers play with it, twisting it between his pads curiously.

“Do you not like it?” You ask, but Naoya shakes his head.

“Quite the opposite.” He breaths.

His fingers comb through the hair, loosening the braid from its tie until his palm grasped your soft locks, and his fingers weaved through your fallen strands. It’s not something he hasn’t done before, in fact, many times before when he’d bed you every other night. But this wasn’t like that, this was different.

Naoya's gaze shifted over your face, something in those eyes of his eyes stirred, something you couldn’t recognize. But you had a feeling, an inkling of the man and his thoughts. You knew he would never voice them to you, but the change in the air between you spoke volumes. The way his hands caressed your skin, his thumb rubbing against your stomach absentmindedly, and the way his body pulled you closer than before.

It was unlike him.

“Excuse me.”

You're pulling away, pushing yourself out from his reach. And before he can trap you again, your turning on your heels and walking down the hall, away from Naoya. He watches your figure, as you drift further and further until you’re out of sight. There’s this urge to chase, to follow you until there was nowhere else to go but he doesn’t. He stays this way for a while, his eyes still trained down the corridor in the direction you hurried off in.

He didn’t blame you. You’d been nothing but a wife to him, serving him in all ways that you should. And like a mare, he bred you, and nothing more. You knew everything he liked, the way he liked his tea, to the way he liked his food warm, made just before he woke up, and when he returned home after a long day. It was the simple things, really. But when it came to you, he drew blanks. He hardly exchanged words, let alone held a conversation, other than barking orders and giving threats when you fucked up. You were just a pretty little doll, who dressed up and played house for him.

A complete stranger to Naoya.

He never thought to ask, in fact, there were many things he hadn’t done now that he gave it some thought. Before today, he’d never touched you so tenderly or told you what he thought. He’d always been calm and collected too, but he had never been so out of it, all because of you. It was not like him, and yet he couldn’t quite explain this feeling of his that pulled at his chest, clawing to be let out. It made him want to touch you, hold, and kiss you, not in the way that he needs, but wants. Was it so strange of him to feel this way towards his wife?

For you, it was.

When the news of your pregnancy was finally announced, you’d barely finished your seventh month. Naoya hardly left the house anymore if it meant leaving you alone, and grew more present in your day to day life. At first, it was strange but soon enough, you’d become adjusted to his antics, creeping behind you, his hands always found to be holding onto you at any given chance, and if he wasn’t, he was always within arms reach.

“Don’t push yourself.”

“Leave it to the servants.”

Don’t do this, don’t do that. You hardly did a thing anymore, not without him having something to say. But even you knew that the less he asked of you, was for a reason. Not that he ever voiced his concern, but you felt it in the way his hands held you, his arms always there to support your weight, and the way the edge in his voice soothed you, no longer pricking your skin like it did before. Everything about him had shifted. Even the air of the house, before, you could hardly stand the tense and lonely quietness. But now?

It was starting to feel like a home.

Your home.

“Naoya!” You gasp.

Your body doubles over, an arm cradling your bump as the other braced yourself against the counter for support. Your voice is stuck in your throat, your breath knocked from your lungs as your eyes shut close. There’s a burning in your chest, an ache within your abdomen, and it hurts. It always did, but you never did get used to the feeling.

Naoya doesn’t hesitate to rush to your side at the sound of your voice, not when you're barely standing on your own. His face peers into yours, his arms reaching out to support you, and pulling you towards his chest. He’s worried that something had happened, to the baby and you, but when you scrunch your face, cheeks puffed out, and fingers holding your stomach, he finds himself breathing again. It seemed with each day, the kicks grew stronger.

“It hurts.” You whisper, afraid to raise your voice anymore, scared that if you do, you won’t be able to swallow down that burning in the back of your throat. You don’t want to cry.

“I know.” He breathed. In moments like these, all he can do is ground you, soothe you with his arms, to remind you that he had you. He rubbed slow circles against your back, your bodies rocking side to side, as your face tucked against the crook of his neck. He always smelled of the mountain, of the air and wet dirt after a rainstorm, the scent so earthy and free. And although he spoke few, his deep and soft voice lulled you into a quiet hush, until you’re ready to stand, to breath and look at him.

“I’m okay.” The pain has subsided, but there’s something in your eye that eats away at you. You always were good at smiling, putting others before yourself, but he’s also figured you out, read you like a book. You are okay, but beneath that surface of yours, you’re also frightened. Afraid of the future, afraid of how much life will change, and most of all, afraid of birth. Make no mistake, you were excited, happy to be a part of this little family you’d give to Naoya, but you were human too. Doubts and worries riddled your head, and you feared the what if’s.

What if you disappointed him?

That something went wrong.

If you lost the baby.

What if you didn’t make it?

“Oh wife.” Naoya hushed.

“Don’t cry.” His hands cup your face, his thumbs catching the tears.

“I’m here, always.”

When his eyes looked at you, when he held you against his chest, there’s a bittersweetness to it all, his words holding a newer depth. The man you’d come to know was not the same man that cradled you in his arms, he had changed and so have you. You remember the night after your arrangement, how you’d accepted your reality, of a loveless marriage with Naoya. You would never expect the same things that he expected of you, it wasn’t your place to. But seven months ago, you began to notice the little things he’d do, and you saw the icy exterior that Naoya Zen’in guarded himself with slowly melt.

For you.

So as he holds you now, you smile and wrap your arms around him too. Your body molds to his, accepting his warmth as you listen to the steady beat of his heart. And you stay this way, for as long as you want, as long as he wants. Because it’s here, with Naoya, where you feel safe, at home, loved.

Your hand squeezed his. Naoya watched, holding your fingers in the palm of his hand, as he listened to your labored breaths. You hadn’t let him go, you wouldn’t, not when your eyes begged him to stay and so he did. It’d happened so sudden, one moment you were smiling to yourself, sitting so shy, so full at his side as he drank his tea. Then you weren’t. He recalls the way he pulled you off the floor from underneath the kotatsu with two hands, finished with lunch. But before he could steal a kiss, as his desert, his feet felt damp and your smile fell, and the both of you looked down and watched as your water had soaked the kimono and floor. Once it registered, Naoya yelled for his servants to prepare for you, and to fetch the midwives.

Your cries were hard to bear. He hated to see you in so much pain, but he braved on for your sake, telling you how good you were doing, reminding you to take deep breaths, just like you practiced. You were doing so well, listening to him as you pushed pushed pushed. Until your wails finally stopped, and the room sat still, and then he heard it. Smaller cries erupted from below the bed, as the midwives began to clean you up. And after you’d been cared for, and the baby had settled in a cradle set beside the bed, and everyone left, did Naoya breath again.

He didn’t know what to do with himself as he watched your figure, resting on the bed with new clean sheets as your chest raised up and down with even breaths. There were no complications whatsoever, but he still worried that as you brought life into his world, he would lose yours. He was relieved that you were recovering so well. His eyes drift over your face, to the wooden crib beside the bed.

You’d given birth to a healthy boy, a son. He’d seen many babies before, most ugly, but not his. He could see parts of you in him already, so serene and gentle as he slept soundly when he peered into the crib. He imagined the day he would lead the Zen’in, to bring honor to his name, but for now, in this moment, Naoya painted this image of you and your child in his mind forever. You made him want to cherish these memories, to remember the little things, to love.

“Can I see him?” Your voice draws him in, as you’re sat up. You’re visibly tired, exhausted from it all but there’s a look in your eye as you gaze towards the crib, longing to hold your baby. Naoya stands up from his seat against the wall, carefully picking up the tiny boy, sliding onto the edge of the bed, and placing him into your arms. When you take him and hold him to your chest, does Naoya notice how good motherhood looks on you. You smile, unaware of the eyes that watch you quietly, etching the way your fingers stroke the soft cheek of his son, and the noises he makes as he coos up at his mother.

“He’s beautiful.” You whisper.

And Naoya nods, but his eyes don’t ever leave your face.

“Yes.” He breaths.

“Beautiful.”

#jjk requests #jujustu kaisen #jujustu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen naoya #jjk fluff #jjk naoya #zenin naoya #naoya #naoya zenin #naoya x reader #naoya zen'in x reader #naoya jjk #request #naoya x you #jjk

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raahosh · 3 years

Note

Hello! I saw you wrote 18+ one shots and I have a request. If you’re not comfortable that’s perfectly fine, tho!

I was thinking of an Azriel x reader where Azriel just got back from a mission and it’s been a month or so since he and reader have seen/been with each other. Reader tease him and he says something along the lines of “come sit on my face, let me show you just how much I missed you”. And well, let’s just say he missed reader a lot… 👀

Type: Azriel x reader.

Fandom: A Court of Thorns and Roses.

Summary: Azriel got back from a mission and let's just say he missed you so much, at the point he wanted to show you for how long he waited for this moment.

Warnings: This is 18+, so if you don't like it just keep scrolling, I know you'll find something that fits you.

Authors note: Thank you so much for requesting. Actually I was urging to make a Azriel x reader, I have one in my drafts that I'm working on, but I didn't know what to do and you gave me the best idea. I hope you like it, and enjoy your reading honey. Any grammar error I'm sorry but this is the first full one that I'm doing in English.

Honor mention to talk about Sarah saying that he's a freak so... Let's say I'm a bit excited for the next book.

Ok, your hate towards Rhysand wasn't even a thing before he kidnapped your mate's attention. You knew there was a lot of things to resolve and political things aren't easy, mainly because we're talking about Prythian and the High Lords aren't really the type of grown man when it comes to internal fights, but you haven't had even a full day with Azriel in a whole month.

Your relationship with Azriel was very affectionate, his love language was skin contact and it might not look like when you're around other people but behind closed doors he was the most clingy you've ever had. And now you didn't have time to even hug him properly in a whole month.

You were at the living room talking to Cassian when you saw your mate arriving. He was destroyed, he looked like he hadn't slept in days. Automatically, you stood up, Cassian didn't even try to argue because he knew his friend needed some woman help at this moment.

He got to walk to the bathroom with your help, where magically you made a bath for him. His body sat down and when the warm water touched his body he relaxed. The shadows were still there, including in his eyes where they were most concentrated, just proving that he hasn't seen a bed in days.

"You look really tired. How was your day?" You tried to turn his attention for you and make it easier for him to distract a little bit.

"Exhausting. I knew Tamlin was hard to work but not that he was a complete asshole who can't even accept help." He sighed.

Your gaze met the bar of soup next to the tub, you grabbed, wet and started rubbing Azriel's back with it, paying double attention to his wings. You knew how sensitive they could be and how Iryllians were when it's about those things.

"I told you, he's not someone... talkable. But I feel some kind of pity after all Hyberns stuff and then I remember what he did to Feyre." You made delicate circles around his back, then his chest and then you put the soap in his hands to let him finish.

You went to the sink to clean your hands and dried it with a towel. When you came back he was finished, you grabbed that soup bar again and started working on his wings. Rubbing slightly, putting less weight in your hands.

"I can't feel anything but angry when it's about him. He could have done so much and chose to be this way." Azriel’s voice was a little darker than before.

"Ok, let's change the subject. Let's talk about you've not been sleeping those days. Love, I know you have a lot of things to do but you're going to kill yourself this way." Your hands went down, and down.

"I know but-" He didn't finish, instead he let out a low moan and grabbed the sides of the tub trying to stay still. "It seems that you got to the part."

Yes, you knew what you were doing. Your relationship with Azriel was long enough for you to have memorized what you can do and where, the many times and how, but now you wanted to tease him. You let your hands move free against his wings, now just them, to make him feel your touch.

"Continue..." You couldn't contain the excitment in your face but your voice was low and husky, it just made Azriels erection pulse a little more.

"You wanna know what, Y/N" His hands met yours. You could feel the warmth on your cheeks, they were getting so red. He took the soap from your hands and adjusted himself on that tub. "What, babe?" You arched your brow.

At this point the bath was cold but it didn't matter because he pulled your hands making you come closer to him. "I think you should get in... here with me." His gaze met your lips and then he kissed you.

Hands.

Lips.

Tongues.

Touch.

You were craving for his touch in a long time. Since Azriel was busy you didn't have times like this with him and even though his presence was everything you wanted you couldn't deny you missed it too. You missed the sensation of his hands trailing your body and his tongue doing magic in your mouth.

There wasn't a thing that Azriel did with bad quality. But you, you were smarter when you just pulled away with a smirk on your face. You took some distance from him, your clothes didn't get longer to be on the floor and Azriel didn't let his eyes meet anything but you. And, if you ask me what was going through his head, you'll know soon.

You stepped ahead and entered the tub, he held your hand and helped you do it. Now, your body was on his lap, your hands tugging his hair when he finally kissed you again. He was hungrier than before, the kiss turned to a making out session, he wanted you and you only, the only thing he could see was you.

"Oh, darling. I'm going to show you exactly how I feel everytime I see you." He said next to your ear. "Did you miss me?" His hand traced your entire body. He went from your arm, to your belly, then found it down there. His fingers trailed it's way and started exploring the territory.

You couldn't even think at this moment and got worse when his middle finger found your clit and started rubbing it slowly. At first you swallowed your moan and looked at him with a heavy breathing, then he fasted the pace, his other finger found your cunt and started to explore more that area.

"Hm, I didn't hear you. You didn't answer my question, darling." His mouth was in your ear, you could handle his hand but along with this husky voice it was impossible.

You let escape a loud moan when two of his fingers started to fuck your cunt, and when I say fuck I mean it. "Y-yes, I missed... Fucking God- I missed you so much." You couldn't even finish a phrase.

"How much did you miss me, gorgeous?" You knew what he was trying to do. The Cauldron knows how bad you wanted to continue his game but it was impossible since he was godly great with his fingers.

You didn't respond, instead just grabbed his shoulder tugging your nails in it while you moved on his fingers chasing some kind of more friction. Your breath was heavy and you could feel it, when he took his fingers out of you and you panted.

"No, love, you're not going to cum now." He stood up and you wrapped your legs around his waist.

He took you to the bedroom again and shoved you to bed. First he looked at you, eyes shining with your figure right in front of him. It made you blush but he didn't swerve his gaze, he wanted to memorize every bit of you, skin, hair, lips, your curves, he loved every little detail and the way you always get nervous at those times.

"You're going to just look at me?" You arched your brow.

"Honestly? I could do it all day but I have other plans for you." He bit his lip and came to the top of you.

His hands were one in each side of you, but one of them grabbed your wrists and pushed it up to the top of your head, cuffing it there with just one hand. The other he used to grab his cock and pull it inside you.

You sobbed with his size, he was being gentle with the velocity he was administrating. He was slow, letting you adjust to it, but even like this you were so tight for him, tight enough to make him groan when he got to the base. "You're so fucking great." He whispered.

Then he dropped your hands and grabbed your ankles, he started moving inside you. Gentleness wasn't Azriel's at those times, his pace was rough, you were seeing stars with every thrust, every time his cock was deep and fast. Azriel could be whatever you think but during sex he's not the cute mate you know.

"Az- Azriel" You couldn't even think anymore.

His sight of you was delightful, his pace increased his right hand went to grab your face, with his four fingers in one side and his thumb in the other.

"Look at me, that wasn't what you wanted? Am I the only one who make you feel like this?" He stopped and started thrusting slowly, torturing slowly.

The first made you stutter and choke on your words. "Ye-yes that is what I wanted... You a- Azriel-" In each words you said he made a thrust and the faster you get the faster his pace was, the more you stutter the more he thrusts on you. But he was waiting for you to continue, he wanted you to say it. "You're the only o-one." You reunited all your powers to say it but even though you gaggle at the end.

Azriel grabbed your thighs and pulled it up to his shoulders, giving him a way to go deeper. And so he did, his invests started to get deeper and deeper, you were a mess of sweat, moan, pants and pre-cum when he released inside you and continued until you get the high too. When your orgasm hit you strongly and you creamed Azriel smiled in satisfaction and collapsed beside you.

"Well, I didn't think it'd come to this but I'm not the one to complain." You listened to him while he just laughed and then turned your face to see him. "I love you."

He smiled. When you turned your head you saw that he was already looking at you. "I love you too, Y/N."

#azriel imagine #azriel #azriel x reader #acotar x reader #acotar #imagine #azriel acotar

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pillage-and-lute · 3 years

Note

Prompt: fake realtionahip/marriage, whoever you like!

Ooohoho! This has been chilling as a draft for ages, now I have completed it. *mildly evil laughter*

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The funny thing about Geralt, Jaskier thought as he did up the buttons on his best doublet, was that he really didn’t lie. He said things that weren’t true, but they were usually things he believed, or thought he believed because he was tired or grumpy. Sometimes he told half truths. He didn’t lie though.

It wasn’t even as if he didn’t have a poker face, Geralt’s face was all poker face, he just hated lying. Normally it wasn’t an issue, but tonight, Jaskier reflected, it wouldn’t be ideal.

Jaskier had heard through some whispered words at a pub that a bunch of Nilfgaardian nobles were having a gala, and the temptation of finding out what political secrets they could was two strong for their odd little family. So Geralt and Jaskier were going undercover.

There had been quite a bit of debate about that. Jaskier was obviously going. He’d grown his hair longer and had a bit of scruff going, and to be frank, all a bard really needed to disguise themselves was a new name, people saw the clothing and heard the music, but rarely remembered the face. Yennefer would have been the ideal partner in crime except for a crucial thing.

When Yennefer had been changed by magic, her eyes had been left the same. Somehow, the transformation had solidified them, and no spell would change them. Her eyes were too distinctive, and so she would stay behind with Ciri. That left Geralt, and since the ball was only for the nobility, he would be the fiance of Julian Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove.

Damn.

See, Geralt didn’t lie, and that was bad enough. Jaskier wouldn’t be able to rely on Yennefer’s in-depth knowledge of the nobility and that was worse. Worst of all though, was the fact that Jaskier would have to spend a night full of wine and dancing pretending to be in love with, and engaged to, Geralt. Who he loved.

And who had, not three months ago, blamed Jaskier for every bad thing in life.

Since then Geralt had caught up with him half-way down the mountain and there had been some grumbled words about how Jaskier ‘wasn’t actually, exactly, a total curse’. Not a glowing review, but then Cintra had fallen, and they had Cirilla and they’d found a wounded Yennefer and it had all gotten so very busy.

Jaskier cast a last look in the mirror as the door to his room creaked open. He turned, expecting Geralt, but it was Yennefer.

“I suppose,” she said, eyeing him. “That this is as good as you get.” It could have been said cruelly. A year ago it would have been. Now, though, the words were fond.

“I like the kohl, it goes well with the wrinkles at your eyes,” she winked. He smiled. There were no more wrinkles now than had been twenty years ago, and they both knew it.

“I wasn’t sure about the eyeliner,” Jaskier said, trying to sound haughty. “Overdramatic eye looks are your thing.”

Yennefer chuckled and sat on the end of the bed. “A tiny smudge of eyeliner is hardly overdramatic.” She studied him approvingly, then looked at him. Her expression was frighteningly soft.

“Have you told him that you love him?”

“Never,” Jaskier said, fiving his cravat in the mirror.

“Why ever not?”

“It would only be the mountain all over again,” Jaskier sighed. “I tried, you know. I spent years trying, and then on the mountain, I thought I was being clear...”

“What did you say?”

“I asked him to leave it all, just for a little while, with me. I thought we could go to the coast.”

“The coast,” Yennefer said from her spot on the bed. “As in Lettenhove? You wanted to show him where you grew up?”

“Partially. I could explain the immortality business easier if he met my sister, but mostly I just thought it would be peaceful.”

Yennefer snorted. “With Geralt? Peaceful? He’d spend the whole time fighting drowners and telling you not to write about mermaids because they’re vicious.”

Jaskier smiled wanly. “That’s pretty peaceful for him.”

“But he said no?”

“He didn’t say anything,” Jaskier said. “Then he, well, you know, he spent the night in your tent.”

“Ah,” Yennefer said. “For what it’s worth, I hate that it happened too.”

“He doesn’t though!” Jaskier cried, whirling around to face her. “He wants it to happen again! And you! You don’t want him but he wants you while I want him!” The frustration of the whole situation and nerves for what was to come were overwhelming. “And you’re here, trying to help me,” he said more quietly. “Why?”

“Because I like you,” Yennefer said, simply, standing from the bed. “And I like him. I also never, ever want to kiss him again. The djinn is sitting, somewhere in my chest, telling me I love him, but the feeling is...sick. It feels like love, as well as I can remember, but it’s poisoned and twisted and I want no part in it.”

Her purple eyes pinned Jaskier to the floor.

“And that poison pales in comparison to how much you love him. He deserves that.”

She swept out the door, tossing a “Sort it out,” over her shoulder.

Well.

The next knock at the door was Geralt, Ciri in tow. Jaskier hoped the witcher hadn’t heard any part of his and Yennefer’s conversation, but he suspected that no one overheard conversations that Yen didn’t want them too.

“Dandelion!” Ciri said, leaping at him and using the name she’d first met him under. “You look nice! Like a prince in one of your stories!”

Jaskier blushed and thanked her quietly as he scooped her up and tossed her, laughing, onto the bed.

He looked at Geralt for his opinion.

Oh he looked so good too. Yennefer had charmed him so that anyone else would see a different man in Geralt’s place, but to Jaskier he looked just the same. But he was wearing white.

A white chemise, the collar and cuffs with fine red embroidery, with a cream colored cape, half length so it fell just to Geralt’s hips. It was embroidered too, green and pink and so many other colors, despite being overall still mostly cream. The pants were the same creamy fabric with a stripe down each side. Dark boots and a wide, decorative, dark belt completed the look.

“Wow,” Jaskier said.

“Rivian traditional clothing,” Geralt muttered.

“I thought you’d hardly actually been to Rivia,” Jaskier said,.It was a better choice than the other thoughts in his head, which were half-formed screams about how absolutely skin tight those pants were.

“I haven’t been, but my...character is.”

“Right,” Jaskier said, dragging his eyes above Geralt’s shoulders. “My fiance, Ludomir of Rivia.”

Geralt said nothing.

Jaskier kicked himself for mentioning the fiance thing.

“We should go,” he said.

And they went.

The lord’s castle was small, as castles go, and the guards at the gate didn’t even bother to check their invitations. With all the other lords and ladies streaming past, no one would guess that the pair were out of place. Jaskier and Geralt enterred the ballroom and Jaskier felt his stomach drop straight through to his shoes.

The walls were positively lined with Nilfgaardian soldiers. Geralt’s shoulders stiffened too, but they steered themselves to a feast table as if nothing was wrong.

It took them almost a full circle of the tables to find the two little cards for ‘Viscount de Lettenhove’ and ‘Guest’. Getting onto the guest list had been laughably easy, and Jaskier just sent up a silent prayer of thanks that the stupid title was finally useful for something.

They sat in their places and guests populated the seats around them. There was a lady next to Jaskier who already smelled of the strongly alcoholic sherry that was being served. Her hair, probably a wig towered, and was strung all over with so many pearls and little tiny golden ornaments that when she stepped outside she must surely be attacked by magpies.

“My lady,” Jaskier said, as chivalrous as he could around a mouthful of her rose perfume. “I’m afraid we haven’t had a chance to be introduced.”

“Oooh,” she giggled, “You’re sweet, I’m Dame Au’Vigne, and I can see by your card that you are the Viscount de Lettenhove, I knew your father.”

Yes, Jaskier thought. I remember, he turned down your proposal. Jaskier had been a lad then, barely eight years old, but he remembered through a child’s eyes a mountain of lace and perfume who had offered to marry his father while actually at his mother’s funeral.

“It’s a pleasure,” he said. Heinous bitch, he thought. He remembered rumors too, which are always a bard’s stock and trade, that Dame Au’Vigne’s husbands were always wealthy, usually handsome, and all of them had shockingly short lifespans.

Rumor also had it that she was backing Nilfgaard financially and had been playing the shipping stock with insider knowledge of their movements. A very good person to be seated next to tonight.

“May I introduce my fiance, Ludomir of Rivia,” Jaskier said, gesturing to Geralt. Geralt nodded and hummed, somewhat politely.

“How handsome,” Dame Au’Vigne stage whispered. “Where ever did you find him?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Jaskier said.

The lord of the castle stood up and gave a droning speech. It was full of euphemisms about ‘upholding standards’ and ‘fostering strong relations’ that boiled down to ‘I’m an untrustworthy bastard who believes that allowing the deaths of my people en masse is fine so long as I make money.’ It was depressing, too, as Jaskier looked around the ballroom to see so many people nodding in agreement.

Traitors and bastards, the lot of them.

Geralt’s face hadn’t changed even an inch.

“So,” Dame Au’Vigne said as the appetizer course was served. “You two aren’t exactly in a honeymoon phase, are you?”

And she was right, for a couple, newly engaged, Jaskier and Geralt hadn’t acted the part yet at all.

“I’m afraid,” Jaskier said, inventing wildly. “That we’re both just a touch nervous, the engagement is so new, you see, and this is our first event,” he took Geralt’s hand, above the table, so Dame Au’Vigne could see. “As a couple.”

“Oh how sweet,” she said airily. “You know, they’ll have dancing between the courses, it’ll be a great way for you to wet your social feet. Sir Erdin and the lady in the lavender dress,” she pointed across the ballroom. “They’re newly engaged as well.” She lowered her voice.

“Sir Erdin is very supportive of the cause, word has it he’s in with the very inner circle,” Dame Au’Vigne giggled, as if being in the inner circle of a murderous group of intruders was as delightful as a recent engagement.

“How interesting!” Jaskier said, affecting a jealous and impressed tone. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Geralt’s eyebrow twitch, the way it did when he was listening hard.

“Oh yes,” Dame Au’Vigne said. “And Lord Snapcase, in the corner, he...” and she went on, was the marvelous thing, she couldn’t seem to help herself but gossip about everyone. And she had all these details about how they were helping ‘the cause’. Destiny must have finally decided to throw Jaskier and Geralt a bone.

Then the appetizer course was finished and Jaskier felt much less lucky. Dame Au’Vigne was ushering him and Geralt out of their seats to dance. It wasn’t one of the quick, hopping around, switching partners dances either. No, the band seemed insistent on only slow, romantic music.

Awkwardly, Geralt slid one large hand around Jaskier’s waist and they turned in slow circles on the dance floor. The witcher’s face looked like a thunderclap.

“Try and look like you’re having fun, darling,” Jaskier said. Please don’t look at me as though holding me is torture, his inner self begged.

“Hmmm,” Geralt said. Jaskier leaned in.

“Really dear heart,” he leaned in even closer, lips almost touching Geralt’s ear. “People are going to suspect something,” he said in the barest of whispers.

“Let them,” Geralt hissed back in the same fashion. “We’ve got the information, we can leave.”

Jaskier, keeping up appearances, tossed his head back and let out a delighted shriek of laughter, as if Geralt had just told him a joke or, perhaps, made a wonderfully indecent proposal.

“Later, perhaps,” he said, stage-whispering for the sake of those around them. Leaning in again he whispered for real, “We can’t leave until the party’s over, no one else will, they’d send some of those soldiers after us for sure.”

The music changed, and Geralt and Jaskier’s slow circles changed speed with it.

Geralt hissed in his ear again, “I don’t see why I had to be your,” this close Jaskier could see Geralt’s jaw working with distaste. “Lover.”

“Fiance,” Jaskier said, trying not to let his heart sink. It couldn’t possibly go any lower. “There’s a difference.”

They said no more to each other, and after the second dance, declined the third to sit back at their seats and await the arrival of the soup course.

The man sat beside Geralt was some old military man, mostly mustache and the rest of him was a rather musty and very old fashioned uniform. It had gold braid and a colonel’s insignia. The hat that sat next to his chair had a plume.

He leaned over to Geralt and said, rather loudly, in a voice that implied tone deafness, to both volume and social situations, “Just marrying him for the money, eh?”

People to both sides of Jaskier and Geralt looked around. Dame Au’Vigne looked at them askance.

“Hmmm,” Geralt said. It was a negative answer to the colonel’s question, but the man didn’t take it as such.

“Often is the way,” the man nearly bellowed. “My missus hated me right up to the day she died.”

Jaskier curled in on himself. The role of Viscount wasn’t a big one, mostly administrative and, these days, completed by his sister Rowena, who was better at sitting behind a desk. Still, argued a battered part of his long ago but still proper upbringing. The name of Pankratz was being dragged through the mud. Lots of these people would know the name too, these sour, vindictive, unpleasant, murderous people. And they’d know the gossip, would have taken part in the gossip about ‘Young Julian running off to be a bard,’ (this generally said with the same tone as is usually leant to slave trader) and how ‘he’ll never find a good marriage now,’ how he was ‘a disgrace to the name.’

And here was their long awaited confirmation. Jaskier-Julian, couldn’t find a good marriage, was being wed only for his money. Of course, more than half the pairings here were only in it for the money, but to have it said, so loudly too, and before the wedding had even happened, it was social condemnation.

Jaskier looked down at the table cloth, his face hot. He’d faced social condemnation before, of course, he’d survive. What hurt was that Geralt wasn’t really protesting, Geralt couldn’t even pretend to like Jaskier, not for a single evening. Twenty years he’d done a good enough job of acting to convince even Jaskier, mostly, apart from the punches and the insults and...maybe Jaskier had been a little blind to the truth but still.

It was ruining their cover though, so he protested quietly. “Not just for the money,” he said, patting Geralt’s hand where one fist wrapped around his goblet. “My fiance is just shy, that’s all.”

The damage was already done, but the old colonel hiccupped. “Well lad,” he said, giving Geralt a slap on the back. “This ale’s pretty good so drink up. Got me through three years of happy marriage, strong ale did.” The man took a slug of his own drink. “And fourty seven more unhappy years.” He guffawed hugely and unpleasantly, little drops of ale flinging from his mustache.

Wherever the soul of the unpleasant man’s dead wife was, Jaskier felt sure she was happy to be away from this miserable old drunk.

Geralt, however, was looking at Jaskier. Their eyes met. Jaskier knew he probably looked as hunted as he felt, and his cheeks were probably still burning from the embarassment. Still, it seemed as though Geralt was about to say something. His golden eyes were full of emotion, but Jaskier couldn’t parse out what kind.

Whatever kind it was, it caused Geralt to take the colonel’s advice and drink like there was no tomorrow.

Great. Jaskier had driven his companion to drinking.

He felt a little like doing so himself.

The soup course was good, hot and savory, but underspiced. Geralt slurped it up gratefully. Jaskier knew that rich food was usually too much for his senses if it was spiced to Jaskier’s taste.

More dancing. Jaskier didn’t stand, at first, assuming that Geralt would rather sit and drink more. There were some snickers as people judged him. Geralt stood though, and he offered a hand and led Jaskier to the dance floor.

“You need to act drunk,” Jaskier whispered in his ear. “If you were a normal man you would be.”

“I am acting,” Geralt rumbled.

“You’re very steady for a drunk,” Jaskier sniffed.

“You said I was shy, now I’m less shy,” Geralt whispered. “And I’ve been drinking. So...drunk.” It was torture, being held like this, having that voice in Jaskier’s ear. That hand, so warm cupping his own. He wanted to cry.

A couple whirled past them. It was the Dame Au’Vigne, gossiping to some new dance partner. A snippet of her words caught them.

“-de Lettenhove. Entirely loveless of course. Unlovable, his father said once, of course as a bard-” then the tide of conversation and other dancers stole the rest of the words.

Jaskier sagged. His father hadn’t been a nice man, and unlovable wasn’t the worst of what he’d been called in his life, but now, with Geralt so close and so disgusted by the prospect...well, it hit a little close to home.

“Laugh,” Geralt whispered in his ear.

“What?” Jaskier hissed.

“Like before, laugh like before, but...more so. Pretend I said a dirty joke.”

Jaskier did, heads turned as he pretended to laugh, half scandalized and half delighted at something Geralt said.

Geralt even chuckled along with him. Then his hand crept down Jaskier’s back to his hip. It wasn’t dirty. It was just so,so spine tinglingly close to dirty.

It was almost worse. If Geralt had gripped his ass that would have been bad, but this, Jaskier was left to speculate. He had a very active imagination. The couples next to them were giggling and tittering, scandalized, but not too much, at the pair.

They danced all three dances. During the second dance Geralt spun Jaskier out and then back in flashily, dipping him over one arm like a dainty maiden. Jaskier, who was no dainty maiden, knew the strength that elaborate dip must have taken and his head spun. The third dance was slow, and once again they simply held one another and turned in slow circles. Except Geralt pressed their cheeks together in a way that was so intimate that Jaskier finally gave in. Just tonight he had Geralt, all of him, his attention, his warmth.

There was only so much a bard could take, and Jaskier gave in to the fantasy.

“I wonder how Yennefer is,” Geralt whispered. “And Ciri.”

It was like having cold water poured all over him. Jaskier’s fantasy shattered as soon as it had formed. Of course Geralt wasn’t enjoying this, of course his mind was elsewhere. He had a beautiful sorceress to think of, even if they weren’t sleeping together. Geralt and Yennefer and Ciri made the perfect, happy family. Where did Jaskier fit in to that?

He pulled back a little, already missing the warmth of Geralt’s cheek against his own. They finished the dance stiffly.

Back at the table, squished between Dame Au’Vigne and the colonel, the main course was awful. Jaskier couldn’t judge it on the food, which he barely tasted. Dame Au’Vigne and the colonel, however, had apparently come to the conclusion that Geralt or, Ludomir, rather, was marrying Jaskier for the money and the sex. They tittered, loudly and drunkely, to those around, and Geralt leaned in.

“Surely we can leave after this course,” he whispered.

Desperate to be rid of the charade, Jaskier thought. To not have to be engaged to me. “Can’t,” he whispered. “Have to stay for dessert and more dancing, else it looks suspect.”

“Hmmm.” It was a displeased hum.

“And, there will be small talk, with dessert. You need to say something, people will think you’re mute.”

“You two twitter into one another’s ears all the time,” Dame Au’Vigne said loudly. She was fully drunk off the sherry and very loud. “But not one kiss,” she lowered her voice, as if trying to be discreet. It didn’t work. “Is it truly as loveless as they say? I know you aren’t waiting until marriage.”

As who say? Jaskier thought. The only person quite that invested seems to be you.

“Not loveless,” Jaskier said. It seemed weak even to his ears.

“Surely you’ll join the dancing again, then,” Dame Au’Vigne said.

“No,” Jaskier said, fiddling with his napkin. “I’m feeling quite too full to dance, ate too fast, I’m afraid.” He hoped she was too drunk to notice he’d picked at his plate. It seemed she was.

“Lovely little veranda, get some air there,” said a man who, according to Dame Au’Vigne, was shipping weapons to Nilfgaard behind the backs of multiple heads of state.

Jaskier nodded,stood, bowed, and made his escape. He sighed, but wasn’t surprised to find that Geralt had followed along behind. Of course he wanted to escape the party too, but Jaskier wanted to escape...him.

To his shame and surprise, he found tears in his eyes. The pressure of sitting in a room chock full of people who wanted to kill him, combined with the fact that every last one of them reminded him of being bullied in school, and add to that that he was supposed to be fake engaged to Geralt...it was too much. Fake engaged and even in their fake engagement Geralt didn’t like Jaskier.

Jaskier’s rational brain knew that Geralt did like him, mostly. He just didn’t love him.

Jaskier leaned his elbows on the railing, overlooking some moonlit gardens, and felt the tears roll down his face.

“They think I don’t like you,” Geralt said quietly.

“Yes,” Jaskier said. He knew Geralt could smell the salt of his tears or whatever, but still turned his face away so the witcher couldn’t see.

“I danced with you though.”

Jaskier chuckled wetly. “Nobles dance with people they hate all the time.”

Geralt was quiet for a minute then, very gently, he took one of Jaskier’s hands. “I don’t hate you.”

It was too much, Jaskier started crying in earnest, sobbing.

“C’mon, Jaskier, I like you. A lot.” Geralt was, for him, panicking clearly. Jaskier almost smiled. He was so bad at dealing with other people’s emotion. And his own.

“You’re my friend,” Geralt said, a little stuntedly. “You know I’m not a good liar.”

Too much. Twenty-two years and he finally said the word ‘friends’ and Jaskier wanted more. He whipped around to face Geralt.

“Tell me the truth, then, Geralt. Tell me you love me, it doesn’t have to be the truth for forever, but can you love me just for a night? Can you make it the truth for tonight?” Jaskier’s tears were ugly and blobby and drying up fast but he continued.

“Because I’ve loved you so long I don’t know any other truth,” He leaned forward and planted his forhead on Geralt’s collarbone and sniffled through the last of his tears, curling one, shaking fist into Geralt’s lovely pale cape as he cried. “Just this one night, Geralt, love me back.”

He hadn’t meant to say any of it, was half expecting Geralt to toss him off the low balcony into the bushes below.

Instead Jaskier was lifted by two strong arms and sat down on the railing. Warm, delightful lips pressed against his and suddenly he was being kissed within an inch of his life.

“The truth, you want,” Geralt said, pulling back and panting. “Is the only one I can give. I can’t pretend to love you.” Here Geralt looked into Jaskier’s eyes, like being struck by lightning. “I only love you, no pretending, I swear it.”

“But-” Jaskier was cut off.

“They think I don’t like you,” Geralt said, furiously. “I think you think I don’t like you, Jaskier I like you, I love you so much I don’t know what to do and I’m...I’m not good with words. Or emotions.” Geralt’s shoulders dropped a little. “I just am, and the way I am is... The way I am is better with you.”

Geralt’s face screwed up with anguish. “And I’m the reason you think I don’t like you, it’s my fault and that feels so...so bad. Yennefer’s been working with me on the feelings thing and always says ‘bad isn’t a feeling’ but I can’t tell you what all the feeling is.”

Jaskier was staring, mouth open, as frustrated, stilted, fumbling words left Geralt’s mouth. They sounded angry, but only at himself. Geralt was looking up at him as if seeking benediction.

“Tell me you love me again,” Jaskier said.

“I love you.”

“Again.”

“I love you.”

“Again.”

Jaskier giggled as Geralt lifted him and spun him around before tucking him in close and kissing his forehead.

“I,” he said.

A kiss to Jaskier’s nose. “Love.”

A deep, breathtaking kiss to his lips. “You.”

There was nothing left for Jaskier to say except, “wow.”

Geralt smiled, that lovely warm little smile he saved for special times and offered his arm to Jaskier. “Shall we?”

They paraded back into the ballroom and danced the final dance of the set. Geralt whispered a suggestion of what he’d really like for dessert and this time Jaskier didn’t have to fake the scandalized giggle. “Back home, perhaps,” he said.

Dessert meant more conversation with Dame Au’Vigne, which was of course unbearable. There was plenty of Champagne though, which was pretty good, and the bubbles seemed to fill Jaskier all the way up. He took pleasure in picturing the downfall of all these horrible people when Nilfgaard was finally defeated for good.

He especially enjoyed sticking it to her gossip when he fed Geralt a strawberry with cream from his fingertips and recieved a kiss in thanks. Geralt was clearly enjoying himself too. He had a sweet tooth, and that certainly helped, but his hand that never left Jaskier’s under the table was a much better clue.

They walked back to the inn, flushed and warm in the cool night air, bidding farewell to the other drunken lords and ladies all filtering to finer inns or grand coaches.

Then they were alone on their path back, Geralt’s witcher senses confirming their isolation. Then, Geralt, who never told lies, whispered sweet nothings into Jaskier’s ear the entire way home. Jaskier believed every single one.

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It’s done, this one’s quite long and I loved writing it. Geralt is useless at playing pretend, but very good at loving Jaskier in his own way. I imagine his emotion lessons with Yennefer must have been rather intense.

#the witcher #geralt x jaskier #geraskier #fake dating #getting together #fluff #fluff and angst #tiny amount of horniness #read with caution

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haileygarciasunshine · 3 years

Text

You’ve Been Hacked

Pairing: Loki x Fem!Reader

Written: July 18th, 2021

Posted: July 18th, 2021

Warning: Swear, Kidnapping, Use of Chloroform, choking description, Noncon make out (Not Loki)

Word Count: 3,179

Author’s Note: I’m planning on making a Pt. 2! :) Not me writing a new fic when I have 125 drafts and like 5 WIP :) Feedback is welcome!!! Send it Here

Summary: Loki pushes away those who care about him in attempt to protect them. What happens when he pushes away the only avenger that is on his team in attempt to protect her?

Loki Masterlist

“How much longer until Jarvis, is ready to go?” Tony questioned as he placed a hand on the back of your chair.

“Huh?” You questioned before remembering what his question was. “Oh, it shouldn’t be much longer.” You shrugged without taking your eyes off the screen before you.

”Good.” Tony spoke. ”Is there a reason why Rock of Ages is in here?”

”Huh? Oh.” You spoke tilting your head to get a better look at the Asgardian God at the other end of the room. “I didn’t notice.”

“Uh huh.” Tony muttered quietly as he began towards the exit. “Come and see us in the Lab when you’re done.”

Nodding your head, you gave him a silent agreement. Once he was gone, Loki appeared beside you. Tilting your head, you gazed at the Raven haired man. He returned your smile allowing you to share an innocent moment. Somersaults formed again in your stomach. Your heart began beating rapidly the longer you observed your close proximity. Clearing your throat, you turned back to your computer screen. “I, uh.”

“What’s wrong, pet?” Loki questioned, his breath swirling around the shell of your ear. Closing your eyes, you allowed yourself to be in the moment. Shuddering, you clenched your hand into a fist in attempt at keeping yourself grounded.

Before either of you could respond, your computer let out a beep. Snapping your attention towards the computer, a thin layer of ice enveloped you. Upon the screen displayed the dreaded words you had been attempting to fight off.

’You’ve been hacked.’

Gasping, your jaw fell slack as you rushed to begin fighting off the cyberattack. Your heart raced as you felt a sheer layer of sweat beginning to form along your skin.

It wasn’t long before you had fended off the attack. Once you were sure that the Avengers cyber security was secure again, you turned back to where Loki was. Frowning, you scrunched your eyebrows together. Your heart felt into your stomach as you were met with an empty space.

Glancing down, there was a small note left in Loki’s seat. Grabbing the paper, you read it.

Meet me in my room.

Grinning to yourself, you left your desk stopping at a nearby coffee station to bring to Tony and Bruce, on your way through the compound.

“Finally decided to join us, I see.” Tony snarked as he glanced at you atop his computer monitor.

Giggling to yourself, you placed one of the two extra cups of coffee, you had walked into work with, upon his desk. “Good morning to you too, Tony.”

“I smell coffee-“ Cutting himself off, Bruce greeted you with a quick smile and hug. “I should’ve known it was you.” He chuckled softly. “Tony, never does anymore.” Raising the cup to his mouth, he gulped some down before he raised an eyebrow at Tony.

“Ouch, jolly green.” Tony smirked, knowing how Bruce felt about the nickname.

Sighing to himself, Bruce quickly moved, what felt like, as far away from Tony the lab would allow. However, a whispered ‘I hate you,’ that was directed at Tony, didn’t escape you. Snickering to yourself, you lifted your own cup to your lips before swallowing the now lukewarm caffeine.

“See you guys later.” You spoke turning on your heel making a hasty getaway not wanting to be roped into another buttering battle between the two science bros. “Try to get along today, shall we?”

“Don’t tell me what to do! You’re not Pepper!” Tony yelled before you left.

The corners of your lips lifted slightly in a smirk. Rolling your eyes, you shook your head as you continued making your way out of the lab.

Venturing through the compound, you were in search of one resident.

“Well, hello again, lady Y/N.” Thors booming voice echoed off the walls in the hallway.

Your lips promptly turned into a toothy grin as your best friends brother sped walked toward you.

Turning your head, you grinned up at the God. “Hey, Thor.”

“I presume you’re looking for my brother.” He spoke clasping his hands behind his back, matching his pace with yours.

Jokingly, you placed a hand over your heart as you gasped halting your movements. “Why Thor, how did you know that?” You teased raising an eyebrow. Placing your hands on your hips you giggled breaking character momentarily. “Did you look in my head?” Your tone resuming it’s previous tone.

Standing before you, he rolled his eyes as he shook his head slightly. “No wonder why you and Loki get along.” He sighed. Reaching up, he pinched the bridge of his nose.

Gasping, you stomped your foot. “How dare you!”

Your sudden shriek caused the shield agents in the hall to bring their attention towards you and Thor. Gazing around the hall, Thor groaned more audibly. “Okay, okay.” He spoke raising his hands in mock surrender, hushing you all the while. “As you were.” He spat at the rest of the agents.

Giggling, you batted your eyes at Thor, giving him your best innocent puppy dog eyes.

“He’s in his room.” He sighed as he rolled his eyes. “Go on now.”

Without waiting for Thor to continue speaking, you ventured towards the elevators before getting in and pressing the number for Loki’s floor.

Once the doors open, you practically skipped down the hallway. Your mind clouded with thoughts before you walked into something firm and strong. Wobbling slightly, arms gently gripped your biceps keeping you steady. “Easy there, petal.”

“Loki!” You exclaimed, feeling somersaults forming in your stomach. Your heart fluttering slightly, as his scent wafted in your nose.

His chuckle danced through your ears. “Hello, love.”

Throwing your arms around his shoulders, you gently tugged him downward allowing you more leverage to keep him tucked against you closely. Your eyes closing allowing you to savior the moment.

Loki stiffened at initial contact, however he quickly recovered wrapping his arms around your waist, burying his face in the crook of your neck.

It had taken you awhile, to get to where you were now with Loki. He wasn’t one for touch and everyone in the compound knew that. It wasn’t until you had formed a friendship with Loki, that he was more keen on the idea of being touched. Everyone was surprised at his sudden change in nature along with seeing the amount of times you shared casual touches. What took you by surprise, was the sudden daily increase of “casual,“ touches Loki shared with you.

Nuzzling your neck, Loki was quick to pull you out of your daydreams. Your opened your eyes, only to gasp at your different surroundings.

Opening and closing your mouth, you were slightly taken back at the sudden change.

“Loki-“

“Sorry, petal.“ Loki shrugged, as a grin danced along his lips. “I wanted you to myself.” Lifting his hand, he cradled your jaw allowing his thumb to trace along your face.

Raising your hand, you gently grasped Loki’s wrist. Gazing at him, you saw a flash of a frown. It was gone before you could question him. Closing your eyes, you turned your head slightly, you placed a feather light kiss upon the digit. Loki‘s gasp filled your ears. Your eyes flying open at the sound, as thoughts of how you might’ve crossed a line in your friendship took over.

Scrunching your eyebrows together, you opened and closed your lips while gazing at Loki. “I-“

Manuvering his hand, Loki’s thumb followed the plains of your lips. Tracing your top lip gently, before traveling to your bottom one. Lightly, he tugged at the appendage as his eyes were trained on your lips. Your eyes popped out slightly while your heart beat picked up. Your breaths becoming hitched in your throat.

Lifting his eyes back up to yours, he held a slight question neither of you bothered to ask. Somersaults forming in your stomach as Y/E/C ones locked with his icy ones.

“Petal-“

The sound of someone knocking jolted through you. Jumping away from Loki, you gasped as your mouth was suddenly drier than the dessert.

“I…I should…go.” Your cleared your throat. Nodding to yourself, you scurried towards the door. Yanking it open, Thor stood before you with his hand raised as he was about to knock again.

Gazing between you and his breath, a sly smirk made it’s way to his lips.

”Nothing happened.” You grumbled cutting him off as you left Loki’s room.

”Wait!” Loki raced to the door frame, leaning against it as he called after you.

Letting out a sigh, you rushed to the library. Once inside, you leaned against the door as you attempted to wrap your mind about what almost happened.

As the rest of the day flew by, you kept yourself busy in the library. Piles of read books littered a table you sat at all day. Sighing, you reached for another book you walked back towards the area you claimed. Lifting your eyes from the book in hand, you gasped.

“Hello, Petal.” Loki smiled, as he gazed at you. His eyes holding a softer emotion, you’ve become acustom to over the past few months.

Opening and closing your mouth, you frowned. It was the first time you had found yourself at a loss for words.

“H-Hi.”

Standing before Loki, you shifted from foot to foot. Heat danced along your cheeks.

”I think we should…Forget it.” He spoke, his shoes coming into your peripheral sight.

Furrowing your eyebrows together, you heat expand in your chest. Your eyes snapped up gazing at him, searching for a sign.

”What?” You whispered, your heart falling into your stomach. Tear began forming in your eyes. “W-Why would I want to do that?”

”Because...” His voice trailed off. “It was just a joke.”

Snapping your head up, you gazed at Loki. Searching for any hint of a lie. Before you could catch them, tears began cascading down your cheeks. As you gazed at him, Loki’s features flashed sorrow before quickly replacing it with a hardened expression. Clenching his jaw, he knew he had to uphold his persona.

”I..I..” Your mind was going a million miles a minute as you attempted to soak in what Loki confessed. Tears began dripping onto your hand calling you back.

”I trusted you.” Your voice coming out hoarse.

”That was your mistake.” Loki spat, glaring down at you.

Flinching at his sudden harshness, you couldn’t stop the sobs that passed through your lips.

”Fuck you.”

Tossing the book onto the table, you whirled around on your heels rushing out of the library. For the second time that day, you heard Loki call after you. And for the second time that day, you neglected to turn around and acknowledge him.

As you rushed out of the library, you hadn’t been paying attention to where you were going. Colliding with muscly wall, you hadn’t bothered to identify who you walked into. Wrapping your arms around their waist, you buried your face into their chest allowing their shirt to soak up your tears. Sobs continued to wreck through your body as you began to tremble.

”Woah, doll.” Bucky’s voice rang through your ears. His arms quickly wrapping around you protectively. Placing a hand on your upper back, he began rubbing the area. “It’s okay.”

Shaking your head, you continued crying not caring to use your voice.

”Do you want to talk about it?” He questioned gently.

Shaking your head again, Bucky nodded to himself.

“Come on doll, let’s get you to your room.”

Nodding your head in agreement, you didn’t budge. Letting out a chuckle, Bucky maneuvered himself which allowed him to pick you up bridal style. Burying your face in his neck, you allowed the slight say of being carried lull you to sleep.

Once he reached your room, Bucky placed you carefully on the bed before pulling blankets over you. Moving to leave, your hand grasped his wrist preventing him from leaving. Glancing over his shoulder at you, he let a smile tug his lips.

”Stay?” You questioned meekly.

Nodding his head, he crawled over you, and pulled the blankets over him. Once he was comfortable on his back, you rolled onto your side. Throwing a leg over his hips, you laid your head over his heart allowing the steady beating to lull you back to sleep. Placing a kiss to your hair, Bucky tracked patterns on your back.

After that night, you told yourself, you wouldn’t be the one to break. In your mind, you wanted Loki to suffer slightly like you had. As you went out of your way to avoid him, your heart slowly mended itself back together, allowing you to form a friendship with Bucky.

Walking back to your room, you toed off your shoes once you were inside. Letting out a content sigh, you shrugged off your jacket.

“Petal.” Loki’s unfamiliar voice rang through your ears.

Halting your movements, you froze gazing at the space in front of you. Once you collected yourself, you whirled around to face the God. “Don’t call me that.” You snarled.

Frowning, he nodded in understandment. His hands were clasped behind his back, aiding him in puffing out his chest. “You don’t get to tell me I was a joke to you, leave, and then try and come back into my life months after!”

Loki continued holding a stoic expression along his features. Heat rose in your cheeks as your chest began rapidly rising and falling.

“Get out.” You spat crossing your arms along your chest.

”Don’t-“

”No, get out.”

Nodding his head, he let out a sigh. Once he was out of the room, relief washed over you. Letting out a huff, you plopped down on your bed before laying down. Throwing your arms across your eyes, you let out a hefty sigh.

The next day, Tony had sent you out on a solo grocery shopping trip. Reluctantly, you agreed. You had wanted to get out of the compound in attempt to gather your thoughts, however you were skeptical as Tony usually had ulterior motives behind his actions.

Pulling into the parking lot, you leaned your head back against the leather head rest. Closing your eyes, you attempted to clam yourself.

Once you felt that you were ready, you exited the car. As you began walking away from the car, you shoved your hand into your purse in search of your phone.

”Excuse me, miss?” A male voice questioned closely.

”Yes?” You questioned turning to face him.

“Are you…Y/N Y/L/N?” He questioned attempting to offer you a comforting smile.

A sudden eery feeling overwhelmed you. Your heart began beating rapidly, as the hair on your arms along with the hair on the back of your neck, stood at attention.

Raising an eyebrow at him, you turned towards the man more. “Y-Yes-“

Barely finishing your sentence, a cloth was placed over your mouth and nose. Gasping, you scratched at the strangers arm. The other man yanked you backwards. Your back colliding with their chest. With widened eyes, you attempted to dig your heels into the cement in hopes of troubling the man who began dragging you. Your keys were long gone from your hands before the thought of using them crossed your mind.

Thrashing in the man’s arms, you felt yourself becoming weaker and weaker as consciousness was fading. Your grip on his wrist quickly loosening as you felt the word fade to black.

Jolting awake, you squinted your eyes as you adjusted to the shining light above you. Groaning, you lulled your head to the side as your body ached. Tugging at your hands, you were quick to realize they were bound as plastic dug into the skin around your wrists.

”Well, well, well.” One of the men from the grocery store parking lot spoke. Gazing up at him, you felt a flutter in your stomach. A sly smile made its way upon his lips. “Welcome back to the world of consciousness, Y/N.”

Grimacing at his words, you gazed around the room. Shivering, you realized you were in a dark and fridge place. As you were going to bite back at the man, you realized there was a cloth makeshift gag prying your mouth open slightly. Scrunching your eyebrows together, a soft whine left your lips as you tugged at your restrained hands.

”Don’t worry, sweetheart.” The man taunted, leaning in to place a hand upon the back of your chair. His nose tracing your jaw line before traveling down your neck. Inhaleing your scent, he chuckled. “You smell like Lavender. I can see why Loki likes you.”

Lifting his other hand, he twirled a strand of your hair around his finger. “Soft too.” He taunted.

Placing a kiss to your cheek, he chuckled darkly. Moving your head away from him, you squeezed your eyes shut. The hand that was twirling your hair, quickly clasped your throat that was directly under your jaw. Forcing you to look him, he began squeezing cutting your airway off. It wasn’t long before you began gasping for air. Attempting to shift in your chair, you continued gasping.

Once the man felt you had suffered long enough, he released you. The supply of air racing back into your lung forced you to cough.

Moving the cloth gag from your lips, he clasped his hand over your mouth. “If you bite me, you’ll live to regret it.” He spat.

Furrowing your eyebrows together, you were perplexed as to what he meant. Releasing his hand, his lips were quick to replace it. The man’s lips were harsh and unforgiving.

Clenching your eyes shut, you kissed the man back in fear of what the repercussions would be. He took your bottom lip between his teeth, giving it harsh bite. A whine escaped your lips as you flinched. Taking the chance, his tongue poked past your lips and traced over your tongue. The hand he choked you with, promptly reaching the back of your head, anchoring you firmly against him.

Another whine, sounded from you. His tongue traced the room of your mouth before wiggling around and tracing your teeth. Your air supply was quickly running out, as you felt your chest heave.

The man seemed to be on a mission to have the inside of your mouth committed to memory. His tongue tracing the underside of your tongue before returning to the top and sliding as far down as it could. Your teeth clashing slightly, as the feeling of his saliva dripping into your mouth overwhelmed you.

As the man pulled away from you, there was a line of saliva that connected you. Using the back of his hand, he wiped the access from his mouth. Panting, your chest rose and fell rapidly. Leaning back against the chair, you attempted to gather yourself.

”Did you get it?” The man questioned, his lust filled eyes not leaving you.

”Yep.” The second man stated, emerging from the shadows. A callous smile made its way to his lips.

”Good, send it to the Avengers compound.” The first man spoke. “Make sure it’s addressed to Loki.“

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sugako · 3 years

Text

sweetness

osamu xf!baker!reader sum: your unrequited crush on the man you sell to is weighing heavily on you until one little party later it isn’t an issue cw: 18+ minors dni, a lil fluff, a lil angst (reader is sad bc they don't think samu feels the same), mentions of drinking/alcohol/party (no one is drunk during), kinda confessions, first time with each other, nipple play, oral (receiving) wc: 3.5k a/n: hi !! uhh i have had this is drafts for months bc i struggled to post it and idk why,, it's def a little longer than usual and little more plot-heavy(ish) but i hope you all enjoy pussy king samu <3

It felt as though you were admiring him from a distance even when he was standing right beside you.

The afternoon that the owner of Onigiri Miya had called up your small bakery to partner with his business you had been overjoyed. Honestly, you were still happy, it was just tinged by something deeper or different now. You were certainly still happy to sell your goods through the business, but your feelings had really gotten the better of you.

The day, actually the moment you met Osamu you told yourself to get over the petty crush you had developed within minutes of meeting him. His big, tall frame made you feel as though he could wrap his arms around you and everything would be okay. His pretty, steely eyes and soft features relaxed you, made you feel at home.

A week later you were groaning into your pillow when he texted a simple, polite compliment about your baked goods. Desperately, you hoped that the fuzzy feeling would melt away any day now.

Every single time you had to see him again and again to drop off your bi-weekly delivery, the feelings didn’t fade. If anything they grew stronger. The quick, comfortable banter you shared made your chest fill with molten gold that always seemed to harden into a tough little peach pit, strangling the words from your throat whenever you got back into your car.

A month later you were crying to yourself at 2 AM about how you couldn’t get over him even though you hadn’t even been close to a relationship. It was impossible. How were you supposed to get closure from someone you were merely business partners with.

You cursed the way your heart sped up when you got a new text from him. Over and over again you had to remind yourself that it was purely business.

Onigiri Miya (Osamu): Hi, do you want to swing by tomorrow? Lunch is on me

Fingers swiped over the keyboard, groaning as you asked what you should bring for the restock, not realizing it had been two weeks already.

Onigiri Miya (Osamu): Everything is selling fast, but I won’t need anything for a bit, just wanted to chat not about business

Without hesitation you agreed. Even if you were sure he didn’t feel the same, it wouldn’t hurt to keep up a personal relationship with a business. The fact that he had texted you deep into the night without prompt didn’t make it into your busy mind.

Those two little texts were how you found yourself taking a deep breath outside the Onigiri Miya a little after the lunch rush. You stepped into the nearly empty building, immediately greeted by Osamu’s soft, low voice.

“I have to run to the back, but I put a plate for you out.” He calls, disappearing just as the door closes behind you.

It’s painful to admit how your heart swells at the gesture. Your favorite onigiri of his is neatly plated in front of a corner seat at the bar. The two other people on the opposite side of the store are quietly chatting, paying no mind while you settle into your seat. Before you can take a bite he’s bustling back in.

“Sorry ‘bout that, got a call.” He says, leaning over the counter in front of you. The way his broad chest is squished by his shoulders.

“No worries.” You say just before biting into the food. He snatches one of the rice balls from your plate, but your mouth is too full and you’re too grateful to protest. “So,” you begin after you swallow, “what did you want to talk about?”

You can’t tell whether the air is thick with awkward tension or if it’s just you.

“I mean, obviously not business.” As you speak, a strangled, little chuckled forces its way out of the back of your throat, but you take another bite of food before it gets out of hand.

He’s silent for a moment, slowly chewing his food. Maybe savoring it or maybe thinking, you can’t quite tell which.

“Can you take nights off from the bakery? I remember you saying ya do a lot of baking and prepping at night.” His expression is impossible to read and you want to tell him that this is, at least for you, business talk, but you hold back and simply answer the question.

“Well, yeah, if I needed to. Uh, why?” You catch how his shoulders tense and lower, his eyes shifting across the windows in the front. Unfortunately, his own anxiety does very little to quell any of your own.

“My brother is having a party and I’m… obligated to go, but I won’t know many people there, they’ll all be his teammates, so I was wondering if you would like to go with me? If you don’t have a… I mean, if you don’t have any plans.” His expression remains still, but there’s a small flush in his cheeks that you catch on immediately. Something in your heart softens with hope.

“You’re twin volleyball brother?” You ask, biting back a smile. “Also, you’ll have to tell me what time the party is and then I’ll let you know if I have plans, but I’m probably free.”

The flush deepens as he recognizes his mistake and slowly blinks, shaking his head. “Yes, ‘Tsumu, the volleyball brother. And the party is next Friday. Around nine.”

Within the limited time you’d spent with him he’d told you about his brother and his old friends. Confidence growing, but not quite steady, you uneasily treaded into your next words.

“Yeah, I’m not working next Friday actually, so that sounds good. Should I text you for the address or…?”

“Meet me here, I can take you. Best to take the train, but it’ll be easier if we go together.”

Deep in the center of the city, standing close enough to smell the soft fragrance of cologne, you still weren’t sure how easily you had ended up here at the house party filled with strangers hosted by your customer’s pro athlete brother. It was a little much to think about if you took too much pause. Before you could slip into your own brain too much your cheek smushed into the thick muscle of Osamu’s solid back that had suddenly stopped moving, and as you sputtered out an apology the door swung open without him even knocking.

“Hey! Did you really not a-” The blonde mirror image of the man standing directly in front of you eats whatever words are about to spill out of his mouth when he notices you peeking out from beside Osamu. Realizing how ridiculously childish you must look tucked away behind him, you clear your throat and step out so you’re by his side instead.

“Hi, I’m y/n.” You say politely, extending a hand for him to shake. Atsumu’s eyes flit between you and his brother, not bothering to hide a smirk.

“Oh, I know.” He finally says when he takes your hand. Out of sheer embarrassment or maybe anxiety, you feel pricks of heat chase out to your fingertips. The sensation is only compounded by Osamu’s feather-light touch that grazes the small of your back as he tries to lead you past his brother.

“Really,” you start, with a sly little smile, “he’s told me about you’re very impressive-”

“Okay.” Osamu says a little too sharply. He’s glad you’re at ease, but less glad that you’ve immediately taken to lightly teasing him with his brother. “Let’s head in.” The warm breath of his whisper jolts through you and you find yourself nodding, letting his touch lead you.

Just as the door is closing behind you and the excruciating reverb of the music seeps into your ears, you barely catch what Atsumu mumbles before he slips into the crowd of people. “Maybe you’ll finally show her how much ya like her.”

Osamu doesn’t respond, and for a second you think maybe he didn’t hear him, but the way his fingers dig into your back tells you otherwise. You simply pretend that you heard nothing, pointing to the drink dispensers lined up on the kitchen counter across the room. After a quick drink of the sweet, burning mystery drink and after Atsumu started to keep his distance - too busy hounding his one teammate with the dark curls whose name you couldn’t quite remember - things went smoothly.

Time passed quickly, helped on by the dozens of new people you were introduced to. The small talk and repetitive questions had you mentally winded, but Osamu’s constant touch whether on your elbow or back or shoulder grounded you. Instead of feeling your heart race as it usually did when he was near, you only felt calm.

It all came crashing down sometime deep into the night when most of the guests had headed home and those left over passed out, scattered everywhere about the house. Well, everywhere aside from the neat guest bedroom tucked away toward the back that Osamu had pulled you back to when the last man (who had drunkenly tried teaching you how to say ‘volleyball’ in Portuguese) had finally passed out.

The single drink you had gulped down hours ago was long gone from your system, but even without it you still found it easy to speak with him, even as his arms inconspicuously wrapped around your torso and brought you down to lie beside him on the bed. Staring up at the ceiling for a moment while the two of you remained in short silence, a thought came to your head, another thing you want to tell him or ask him. You’re not sure which because in the next moment, when you whip your head to face him, he does the same.

If you had been any closer your faces would’ve smashed together. Any farther away and you wouldn’t be brushing lips. Just as soon as the touch begins, it ends with you scrambling away, stopped from falling off the bed by his strong arm wrapping around and pulling you back to his chest. The silence thickens with every second that neither of you speak, but he thankfully breaks it within the minute.

The words fumble around the front of your mouth like your mouth is numb. “I’m so sorry that-!”

“Well, that wasn’t really a proper kiss.” He says plainly, a smile barely etching its way onto the corner of his lips.

“N-no, it was not.” You whisper. It doesn’t quite feel real when he kisses you for real, and for a second you’re worried you’ve deluded yourself. You sigh into his firm touch, finally releasing the tension in your chest and letting your own lightly trembling hands trace up the space between your chests to settle against his. His body is softer than you had thought it would feel, somehow so much more comforting and homey than you could have imagined.

After an endless moment, his mouth strains against yours as he forces himself to pull away with a little huff. Your eyes find his, bright and hopeful, and still a little bit surprised. Between all your personal longing and resignation that he didn’t feel the same, you hadn’t noticed the way he smiled more when you were nearby, the little blush that dusted his cheeks when you complimented his cooking that first time, and so much more.

“Wanted to do that for a long time.” He sighs, leaning his forehead against yours and letting his heavy eyes close. Hiding your grin in his chest, you nod, wrapping your arms around him and snuggling in closer. When your knee glides against his thigh in an attempt to get more comfortable and flush to him, he clears his throat. “We should get changed if we’re going to sleep here. I have extra clothes in the dresser.”

“Okay.” You nod slightly, not wanting to move just yet. He seems to be with you because, despite his own words, he remains exactly in place with his grip just as tight as ever around your waist. “...Samu?” You finally ask, pulling back far enough to look up at him.

“I wanna kiss you again.”

“Okay,” you repeat, “then kiss me again.” The crooked, giddy smile you’re giving him seems to tense him up even more.

He inhales deeply through his nose, eyes darkening as they flicker across the planes of your face. “I wanna, but I don’t want to push this unless you feel the same.”

If your tired heart could vibrate any harder it would probably be bursting out of your chest.

“Well, I feel that we should kiss again,” you press a peck to his cheek hoping it’ll steady your next vulnerable words, “because I’ve thought about you a lot, and I really like this.” You emphasize your words by glancing down at the negative space between your bodies and running your hand up the built expanse of his shoulders.

Humming, he cradles the back of your head, gracefully moving to straddle you and ghost his lips over yours. “In that case, tell me when to stop.” The hot breathy fan of air from his whisper barely hits your cheeks before he’s pressing a deep kiss against your lips.

You slot together like perfect puzzle pieces, limbs finding the just the right spots to fit into. Mouths move desperately, passionately and without thinking your fingers start dancing under the hem of his shirt, brushing against the hot skin beneath. With a tempered groan, he uncouples his lips from yours, kissing along your jaw and quickly moving to trace down your neck. The kitten nips and licks against your collarbone send electricity through your bones, forcing you to flex into him, hips awkwardly jutting forward for something more.

“You… you, ah, are so perfect.” You pant, eyes blinking wide open when the calloused tips of his fingers roughly trail under your shirt, up your sides, stopping just short of your chest to flip your shirt up.

Groaning so quietly you barely hear him, he buries himself between your breasts and sighs against your skin. “Yer even more beautiful up close and without all this,” he pauses for the briefest moment to undo your bra and lift it over your head with the shirt, “extra stuff on.”

Scoffing out a short giggle, you relax back, watching how his eyes drink you in as though they’ve been starved. “By extra stuff you mea-!” The quip is promptly cut off by the feeling of his mouth latching around one breast, the other being tended to by his opposite hand. Not a moment later he pulls away, smiling as you let out a pitchy whine.

“Yer pretty mouthy when yer comfortable, huh?” He mumbles, lips ghosting over your nipple while the one in his hand continues to be teased.

“N-no,” you rush to disagree. Judging by the eye roll he gives you, he doesn’t seem to believe you, but he doesn’t say anything more, simply bringing his attention back to your chest.

The way his suckles tiny, bright purple marks into your skin sends heat pooling into your stomach, hips noticeably grinding up against him now. As the seconds drag on, he doesn’t seem interested in anything other than your tits, enamored with the way they feel in his hand and mouth. It’s almost too much, and you feel your stomach tightening with every moment the teasing continues.

“Samu,” you whine softly, “samu, please, can’t s’too much, really need…” The words are jumbled and garbled. You can’t quite sort your brain to come up with anything coherent, distracted by the wet pooling in your underwear and the weight of his body crowding over yours.

“Sensitive tits?” He coos with a sharp glint in his eyes, gears obviously moving in his head for the future. “That’s okay,” he continues while pressing a soft kiss to each of your breasts, “What do you really need?”

“Need you to touch me.”

For a second, his mouth opens but he doesn’t speak. You fear he’s going to tease you, make you explain in lewd detail how bad you need him and where you want him to touch you, but he doesn’t. He simply nods, truthfully too caught up in the intoxicating feeling of your body and too impatient to feel you for the first time to drag this out.

“Good girl, I’m gonna take these off.” He starts, hooking his fingers under the waistband of your pants and underwear to take them off together. Without hesitation, his eyes travel between your legs. “Such a pretty, little cunt.” He hums already squeezing in between your thighs. Obviously distracted, he peppers little kissed up the sensitive skin on the inside of your thighs, still caught up staring at your soaking mess.

“Samu, please…” You whine. While you know he isn’t purposefully teasing, well you don’t know but you don’t think at least, it’s just as frustrating. Your knees lock around his thick shoulders, pulling him closer to your heat.

“Okay, okay, pretty girl.” He grumbles, lapping right at the crook of your thigh and hip. There’s a split second of tense silence wherein he carefully spread your lips admiring the glisten of your slick under the dim light of the lamp. Your entire body is tense with anticipation, legs shaking as they struggled to spread around his wide frame.

And just like that quiet moment is over - he laps you up so desperately and greedily you’re twitching under his grasp, clawing at the wrinkled bed sheets below you for anything to ground you. He doesn’t stop when he shifts your legs over his shoulders and wraps his hands around the bottom of your tummy to keep your jostling hips in place.

When you finally look back down to grab his hand, keeping a vice grip around his fingers, you also glance down for the first time. His dark, hazy eyes meet yours and you completely relax at last.

The feeling doesn’t last long, not when he pushes his tongue into your tight, unprepared hole, slurping all he can get and pushing in as far as he can go. Osamu’s eyes roll to the back of his head at the sensation, your cum dribbling down his chin and coating up to his nose that keeps brushing against your throbbing clit.

With a solid, squelching pop he tears away from you. “Taste so good,” he heaves, lips coming back even as he’s speaking, ghosting over you. He buries himself in your cunt again, this time focusing solely on your clit, cycling through different motions until he finds the one that makes your hips strain under his sturdy hold.

“Feel so good!” You sigh. “Please, please wanna cum.”

Smirking against you, he takes the hand you’re not clinging to back under your thigh and props it against your ass, slowly teasing a finger in. Absolutely gushing now, it slips in easily. You can feel his smile grow again for a moment before he refocuses on your clit, motions speeding up and increasing the pressure with which he worked. It’s impossible to not shudder under him now, especially with one arm only holding you down.

“C’mon, pretty girl, cum.” He murmurs, easily hooking a second finger into you, pumping and curling them in time with his tongue. As he feels you flutter and cream he can’t help but rut into the mattress, cock swelling from the taste of you. The pressure inside is too much and your want to let go is pushing you closer and closer, although it’s his mouth and fingers that really push you forward.

“C-cu-!” The words get trapped in your throat, overtaken by a hushed moan you struggle to bite back, trying - but very much failing - to be mindful of all the half-sleeping people strewn through the house. He slowly brings you down, fingers winding down and tongue lapping up your swollen clit while you convulse at his touch in time with the fluttering of your cunt.

At last, you have to drag him off, needily tugging up on his hands until he lets go. You try to pull him in to kiss, but he hesitates, his strength far outweighing your weak, blissful one and he hovers above you. There’s no reason to ask because almost immediately his fingers that were inside of you, absolutely drenched, come up to his mouth so he can make a show of sucking them dry for you.

“Taste even better than the stuff you make.” He sighs, letting you drag him down to your face. You can smell and taste yourself so strongly on his damp lips, it clouds your already hazy senses.

“Hmm,” you manage out, when he rests his entire body weight against yours, lips pressed into the side of your head. It’s only when you go to shift that you feel him pressing so incredibly hard and flush to you exposed skin through his soft pants, that you perk up. “Samu,” you begin brushing your fingers through his soft, dark hair, “can I...wanna help you.”

“Mhmm,” he nestles against your neck, kissing over the spots he left behind earlier, “in a minute, pretty girl, we have a lot of time ahead of us.”

#osamu x reader #miya osamu x reader #osamu miya x reader #osamu smut #miya osamu smut #osamu miya smut #hq smut

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firefly-in-darkness · 3 years

Text

Worst Idea Ever [Part Four]

Characters → Y/N & Bucky Barnes, Other Marvel Characters.

Series Summary → Wedding Season is brutal as it is but throw in two friends that decide to be each other’s plus ones and a mixed bag of feelings, what’s the worst that could happen?

Part FourSummary → Y/N takes Bucky to a place from her past, meeting people that he never imagined Y/N to be friends with and someone else from her past tries to come back into her life.

Word Count → 3k.

Part Two Warnings → 18+, swearing, angst, jealousy, illusion to sexy things. Two idiots.

Beta → @kalesrebellion // all mistakes are my own.

Series Taglist → Open, just drop me an ask!

A/N → And once again, I wrote the first draft and left it in my docs like I’d posted it... thank you @whitestarbucky for being late to the party and reminding me that I actually hadn’t posted it.

Series List // Marvel List // Masterlist

Previously in Part Three: He sunk back into the pillow, his hand dragging down his face. Bucky wasn’t sure what the billionaire genius was referring to, but he felt guilty for whatever Y/N had to witness of him and Jackie. He thought going home with someone else would help quash his feelings but now that he was sober, he knew that it was a stupid idea. He only felt guilt and remorse for what had happened the previous night.

Hooking up with a woman in front of Y/N was the worst idea ever.

The breeze from the rental car window was just enough to keep Y/N alert as she drove the last stretch of their five-hour journey, well maybe a bit longer if you counted going through the whole airport process. Y/N had felt tense the second she met Bucky at JFK and the thought of being confined to a small space that was thousands of feet in the air.

Y/N didn’t want to talk about how things had become uncomfortable after Peter and Gwen’s rehearsal dinner. She was embarrassed but she also had avoided the subject completely when she met him the next day for the wedding. Bucky’s familial duties took him away from her which, to her benefit, meant that she hardly saw him.

The celebration was enjoyable but there was an annoying voice in the back of her head telling her to talk to Bucky about everything. But she couldn’t, he was her friend of over a decade. Plus, now that they were on their way to another wedding, it had already been three weeks since they last saw each other.

Bucky had probably forgotten about the incident, and he was too drunk to see that he and Jackie hurt her. She should just brush it under the carpet, right?

The journey wasn’t as bad as Y/N thought; she was able to lose herself in her book or the music playlist that Nat had sent to her a few days ago. ‘Perfect for long journeys’, she’d said. All the while, Bucky lounged in the seat beside her, reading on his kindle or chatting about the usual nonsense that was his dating life.

It was as if nothing had happened, nothing had changed, and Y/N knew that she was just overthinking the possibility of them crossing the line of friendship. It was only a side effect of their fake dating arrangement and being in romantically charged places.

The motel parking lot gravel crunched under the tyres as Y/N pulled in. Relief flooded her and she sluggishly climbed out, stretching her arms high and shaking out her legs. The freedom from the cramped space behind the wheel didn’t alleviate heaviness in her muscles and all that she craved was a nap.

Bucky headed to the reception to pick up the key, and within minutes they were able to access the room, and Y/N instantly flopped face-first onto the bed. Kicking her shoes off and shuffling up the mattress, she pulled the side of the duvet and rolled over into a cocoon and let the nap take hold of her.

Bucky clambered through the door with Y/N’s luggage as well as his own, muttering to himself about her being a lazy pain in his ass. But when he saw her peacefully sleeping form on the bed, he couldn’t help but smile. The way she had cocooned herself in the covers, and how her soft snores puffed out her lips; it was adorable.

Then the guilt reared its head. He’d tried to approach the subject of the rehearsal dinner at the airport but from the tension in her body and the intense focus on reading her book, he knew that she wouldn’t talk. She was embarrassed, and he would have been too if he’d been caught with a sex toy at a rehearsal dinner.

Deep down, he knew something else was bothering Y/N. She was too focused on the road ahead instead of listening to his woeful attempts at dating. His thoughts kept reverting to the moment he kicked Jackie out after awaking to Y/N’s text messages; he felt like he’d upset Y/N, disappointed her but wasn’t that what this was all about? They were being one another’s company until they found someone they wanted to date. That’s what this was.

Since Peter’s wedding, fond moments Bucky had shared with Y/N had started to dance behind his eyes. Their shared memories from over the years playing on repeat at night. Making breakfast together while the rest of their friends groaned about their hangovers in the other room, the candid way she’d grab his prosthetic arm and he always felt a rush of warmth when he realised that once again, it didn’t bother her.

That was before all the technological adaptations to connect to his nervous system. She touched his arm like it was real. And once those adaptations were made, Bucky felt her tender touch and the soft skin of her palm. He felt at ease, calm, at peace even, with her compared to the rest of the people in his life, the world. He was whole with her.

A horn blasted in the parking lot and caught Bucky’s attention before he refocused on Y/N’s sleeping form. Bucky wasn’t sure about his feelings anymore, and he couldn’t tell if it was because of their pact or whether Y/N felt something more. He could be just imagining it. She had never judged him, had always been by his side at college.

They were partners in crime, as thick as thieves. And since then, they’d drifted into a more casual friendship but maybe there could be something there. Stop it. He berated and carried on unloading the car, focused intently on collecting their belongings.

Y/N felt better than before but she still felt drowsy, and the flickering television showing an old western film lulled her further into the bed. Absentmindedly, she pulled Bucky’s arm around her shoulder and nuzzled into his chest. The smell of his cologne added to the comfort she already found herself in, then she realised what she had done.

Now that she was there, she didn’t know what to do, she was frozen in place. She could remove her arms from his waist, or maybe pretend she was still asleep and roll away again. The embarrassment tingled at her cheeks and the feel of his toned stomach under her forearm made her core ache with want. She snapped out of it when she felt Bucky shuffle away from her.

“Erm, what are you doing?” Bucky frowned at her, seriousness in his features.

“It’s just a hug, I’m half asleep, chill out.” Y/N pretended to not let the hurt of rejection show and put it back onto Bucky, “Do you not like cuddles or something?”

Bucky unfurled his arm and shook his head at her, “I don’t wanna cuddle you.”

Y/N sighed dramatically and flopped back onto bed dramatically, “Fine, don’t crawl over to me when it gets cold in here tonight.”

Bucky had lied, he did like cuddles. He wanted to cuddle Y/N with every fibre of his being. He didn’t want to get used to it, to the feel of Y/N’s warm body pressed against him, only to have it be taken away. He didn’t want to miss her touch once he had been graced with it. He wasn’t good enough for her, anything more than friendship wouldn’t work. It surely couldn't?

He turned off the television and decided to leave her to sleep in peace. He knew for certain that the next time she woke up, she’d be cranky because she hadn’t eaten. With the fear of Y/N throwing a tantrum like a two-year-old, he headed out into the town to find some food for the drama queen.

Bucky threw on his jacket and grabbed the keys, Y/N’s phone flashing drew his attention. A notification: an envelope with Dean bolded beside it. He knew that he wouldn’t read it, no matter how tempting the voices in the back of his head were telling him to see what had happened since Y/N and Dean’s rendezvous at Darcy’s wedding.

Bucky, annoyed at the taunting notification, he knew Y/N’s password, it was the same for everything and he’d constantly scolded her for that. But he’d never invade her privacy. And right now, he needed to get out of the room. It was stifling and it felt like the walls had closed in around him. Y/N’s soft snores had become irritating as the recurring feeling of jealousy took over and he stormed out of the room.

A group of large men covered in tattoos with long beards, unmistakably their Harleys resting in the parking bay out the front of the venue made Y/N feel like she was finally home. It wasn’t the usual aesthetic for a wedding reception and maybe Y/N should have warned Bucky. Where’s the fun in that? She thought as she reached the entrance, but Bucky was no longer beside her.

Y/N turned to find his confused face across the sidewalk, “Come on, we’re here.”

Bucky jogged over to her, he frowned as he read the sign on the wall, “Right, we are going to a bar called Hell House that used to be a Catholic boarding school for a wedding?”

“Yes, I told you, it’s for some dear friends from when I lived here.” She ushered him inside with a giggle. “I know my way around, just follow me.”

“You said you lived in a suburb,” Bucky muttered as he walked into the dimly lit bar.

The number of people dressed similarly to the men outside was growing tenfold and Y/N could feel the tension reeling off him. She knew he wouldn’t be scared, but probably surprised by the company she kept in her hometown. They were a different, very different group of friends to those she met at college.

“Hey Chocolate Puddin’!” Y/N screamed and threw her arms around the man wiping down a table. The man reciprocated with the usual awkward hug; not holding her too tightly in case Y/N clocked him one for feeling her up on accident again. She pulled away and gestured to her date. “And this is Bucky.”

He shook Bucky’s hand and introduced himself, “Weasel. This one just mocks me for not knowing what emojis mean.”

Y/N tugged on Bucky’s jacket to bring his ear closer and whispered, “He thought the poop emoji was chocolate ice cream or somethin’.”

“What can I get you to drink?” Weasel asked as he wiped the glasses and placed them on the bar.

“Blowjob!!” Another man shouted and spun Y/N around, pulling her away from the bar and out of Bucky’s hearing range. “Well, look at you Care Bear. Looking like a fuckable plushie.”

Weasel muttered under his breath and fixed the bailey and whipped cream shot while jealousy brewed in Bucky’s chest as he watched Y/N being picked up by the handsome man. He couldn’t react, how could he in a room full of giants and he’d hardly admitted his feelings to himself yet.

Instead, he clutched the bottle of beer that Weasel handed him. Y/N knew these people, if she didn’t want to be manhandled then she would have done something about it. And Bucky wasn’t sure why that annoyed him more; that she was more casual with affections or that she didn’t do this with him.

Bucky turned away for a second only to turn around to see a woman grabbing Y/N’s face and pushing their faces together in a smacking kiss. His mouth dropped agape, as the women giggled and hugged one another. He needed to talk to you about what kind of place you grew up in because this was not what he pictured.

“You get used to it.” Weasel commented and held up two crossed fingers, “those three are like that. Never known a throuple like it.”

Bucky frowned, “a what?”

“He’s messing with you Buck, he’s just jealous that he never got to tap any of us. Bucky, this is Wade and Vanessa.”

It then dawned on him that the man that ordered a blow job and the woman that snogged his fake date were the newlyweds. Vanessa was one of Y/N’s oldest friends from high school and had introduced her to Wade, but never explained how. Maybe the venue had something to do with it but now he was even more curious and a little less jealous.

The four of them drank round after round at a table that had been set aside for the special couple. The table didn’t look any different to the others apart from the fact that it was probably the cleanest and the only distinguishable feature was the folded piece of paper with the words ‘reservation for wade & ness’ scrawled on it.

“So how did you two meet?” Bucky asked the couple.

“Y/N and I went our separate ways after school.” Vanessa held out her hand on the table, Y/N immediately grabbing it. “One of us sold themselves to the world of men and the other became a stripper.”

Y/N cackled, and Bucky enjoyed the carefree nature that Y/N had around this pair. She was uninhibited and more herself than he’d seen in a long time. Growing up with someone is a different type of friendship with the ones you meet at college. Bucky’s mind drifted to Steve Rogers, his childhood friend and how they were practically brothers, always getting into trouble.

“Wade came in after finishing a job, courtesy of me.” Y/N dramatically placed her hand on her chest then looked at Bucky, “Oh right, you don’t know what Wade does for a living. So erm, basically he can be hired to help people with difficult situations rather than calling the police.”

Bucky paused and dropped the bottle onto the table with a thunk and immediately found Y/N’s eyes. He wasn’t sure where this story was going but he didn’t like the sound of it at all. Not one little bit.

“My ex was causing me some hassle and Wade gave him a little scare.” Y/N beamed through her drunkenness and turned back to the couple, “and because Wade came the next night to pay his merc fees, he met Ness.”

“Oh yeah, it was that douche, Francis. Francis. Stalker shit his pants when he saw me.” Wade barked out a laugh and turned to Vanessa, muttering words into her ear. The couple becoming completely lost in one another.

Bucky turned to Y/N, “Didn’t you date Francis in college?”

Y/N hiccupped and nodded, then vacated her seat before Bucky could respond. He watched her fiddle with the dials on the jukebox while he mulled over his thoughts; why hadn’t Y/N come to him or Sam about Francis?

He’d have to ask her when she was sober because there was no way he was going to get the information from her now or the newlyweds. They were almost tearing each other’s clothes off as they made out.

Y/N had finally picked a track and it boomed through the speakers. Her and a group of others dancing along to the beat. Bucky left the passionate display of intimacy and joined Y/N on the makeshift dance floor which was just some tables pushed to the side.

“Buckaroo!” She crooned and pulled him into a formal hold for such an upbeat song, “So who are we hooking you up with tonight?”

Bucky was completely surprised at her comment, he had hoped that she didn’t like what had happened on their last date and how it turned out with Jackie. Then again, Dean had text her earlier. He must have read this situation completely wrong, and he didn’t want her to know that. She couldn’t know how he felt, he wasn’t sure about it either. That’s what he kept telling himself.

He decided to play along and nod towards a young woman, “what about her?”

Y/N checked over his shoulder as they spun around the small space, she rolled her eyes at the sight of Hope Summers, “I don’t think that’s a good idea unless you want to get beaten up by her dad.”

He followed Y/N’s line of sight and spotted the man glaring at him as if he knew exactly what Bucky had thought or said about his daughter. He immediately shifted Y/N around, spinning her out and back in to avoid looking into the creepy old man’s death stare.

“I need a drink,” Y/N stopped dancing, gathering her breath.

Bucky led the way to the bar and Y/N happily held onto his hand until they were met with Weasel’s agitated face as he held the corded phone to his ear before placing the receiver to his chest.

“It’s for you.” He gestured to Y/N who rounded the bar with confusion etched across her face. Nobody who knew Hellhouse's number knew she was here or would be calling because they’re all here as far as she could tell.

Weasel kept his hand over the mouthpiece as she approached, “It’s Tyler.”

Y/N glanced to Bucky who sipped on his beer and talked to Neena, another of her high school friends that had ended up in similar work as Wade, she was nicknamed Lucky for all the ways she miraculously got out of tricky situations.

Bucky ducked closer to Neena’s, whispering into her ear and a wave of anger erupted in Y/N. She was done with being second best, Bucky was only doing this to meet other women. She wasn’t what he wanted.

Finally, she put the phone to her ear and prepared herself to listen to whatever her ex-boyfriend wanted to say. With a deep breath, she answered the call as coolly as she could.

Bucky turned back to the bar and saw the frustration on Y/N’s face growing, it wasn’t a pleasant phone call. Plus, surely, they would have rung her mobile. He scooted around the bar and approached Y/N, her back now turned from him and her fingers wrapped and unwrapped from the coil of the phone’s cord.

“Tyler, please just listen to me.” She hissed. “I am not interested. I’ve moved on.”

Bucky froze at Y/N’s words, when did she move on? And who had she moved onto? Was it that guy that she met at Darcy's wedding? Dean. The name grated his nerves. He couldn’t blame her; she was allowed to move on. Worry filled his thoughts, could he have caused Y/N to run into the arms of someone else because he hooked up with Jackie.

Y/N slammed the handset into its holder on the wall, spinning to Bucky and the moment he saw her unshed tears, he pulled her into his arms. Pushing his feelings aside, he knew that he needed to be there for her regardless of if she had moved on to someone new.

Continue Here...

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#Bucky Barnes x Reader #Bucky Barnes #Bucky Barnes Fic #Bucky Barnes Series #Bucky Barnes Fanfic #Bucky Barnes AU #Bucky Barnes Fanfiction

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loverholland · 3 years

Text

sunrise. pp x reader

summary: y/n finally arrived back in new york after a year in cali. not only does she find that her little corner of the world is disappearing, but that he little crush just so happened to not have disappeared. word count: ~1,900 warnings: none that I can think of. a/n: i hope you like this. this has been in my drafts since 2019 i think.

✨☁️💭🪴🪐🧋🛼🎐

Y/N’s hand touched the railing of Peter’s balcony. It was a simple apartment, one that she would expect for him to have. It was a small, one bedroom and one bath apartment that sometimes had hot water and sometimes had mice, but nonetheless, Y/N loved it. It was the first time she had ever seen his apartment other than in FaceTime, which were far and few between. He had such a perfect view of Queen’s where the tree’s sang beautiful songs and the bird’s would join in with harmonies. It reminded her of those times when she would go to Aunt May’s apartment and sit on the fire escape. She missed the yellow chipped paint and the abundance of plants. It was small and minimal but it was home. Pictures would line the walls and almost every surface that she could fill - many of them were Peter and her or Peter and his parents, but when he began bringing home Ned and Y/N, the pictures became more inclusive of their friendship.

Y/N always brought a Kodak camera everywhere. Those pictures felt the most authentic. The most real, so those were the ones she gave Aunt May. Every Christmas, every birthday, were just months worth of pictures that she could put anywhere she imagined.

Everything felt so normal, but they weren’t. Of course, they weren’t. Washington Heights experienced a blackout, one that hadn’t hit for ages. Everything was going away from her in so little time. Nail Venom was moving, shops are closing down, people are leaving. Her humble abode is leaving and it was getting close to her parent’s closing up their ?? and leaving Washington Heights for good. Leaving what she knew for good.

“Y/N?” Peter yawned. She turned her head to look at him in all of his glory. He jue woke up but he looked so stunning in the rising rays and he looked like a Renaissance painting. His curls were much messier than they were last night and his beautiful chocolate brown eyes looked like the perfect coffee that she would get back at UCLA. He was shirtless and only wore a pair of gray sweatpants and my Gods he was made right out by the Gods themselves.

“I’m here.” She whispered before turning her head back to the world in front of her. Not wanting to give it up for just a moment longer. They had practiced some Spanish, drunkenly, she must add. He was good at it, not that she would ever tell him that. Never would she imagine giving him such a big head like that.

“Are you ready to try again?” Y/N asked, implying to the previous Spanish lesson. It was so early, but she felt so at peace. The corners of her lips rising a bit more when Peter answered:

“I think I’m ready.”

“Okay,” Y/N paused, turning to leverage herself on the railing, pushing back for a moment, a wide smile spreading across her face as she looked at Peter. “Let’s go.” There was a moment as she thought of what to say. Something that he knew? Give him something hard. A curse word? She would laugh if given the chance but then the idea of her home. En Washington Heights. Her esquina was slowly leaving this earth for good, only few being able to tell the story of Washington Heights.

“Esquina?”

“Corner.” Peter answered correctly, a short lived smile creeping towards the corners of his lips. He knew he was right.

“Tienda?”

“Store.”

“Bombilla?”

“Lightbulb!”

“Too easy” she thought to herself. She turned her head to look over the horizon. The world was wonderful with how the sky was painted orange and pinks. The moon was still out, it was beautiful. And not only that but this world had Peter, the most wonderful man she had ever been lucky to know. Well, shit. Maybe not wonderful.

Last night was a lot. The lights were brighter then than any light now. The screams of joy and laughing from everyone around her, we're nothing like her experience. A drunken Peter was angry that Y/N’s father didn’t accept their relationship. He was so angry and the way he threatened his internship at Stark Industries (not that papi would get anywhere). The world felt like it was ending and it kind of did. All of Washington Heights suddenly became dark, a forgotten and hidden place in the world. The once joyful noise turned into horror and fear, everything quickly declining. And then she was alone.

In the middle of chaos, she was alone.

But now, here she is on Peter’s fire escape. The beautiful and peaceful world going on around her. Sure, it was hot. But the world was so much better. The people were quiet and asleep while the sunshine danced along the buildings. Animal’s running the streets freely before everyone woke up. Everything was right.

“You’re sure?” Y/N questioned after a moment of reminiscing. She gave him a smile after biting her bottom lip for a moment. He was right and she knew it but she just wanted to see if he was confident in himself and his answers. He hadn’t taken Spanish since high school and he claimed that he forgot a majority of it, but she always questioned it but never pushed him to speak in her native language with her.

Peter paused and pushed himself off the brick wall, taking a step towards her. His eyes searched for a reason to stop, but he couldn’t find one. Hell, he wouldn’t be able to ever find one. “I’m sure.”

“Three out of three, you did alright.” Y/N pushed herself off the railing and took a step towards Peter, her head tilting back to look up at him. She couldn’t help but be infatuated with Peter. She had only been back for a few days and all of the past feelings came flowing back. She spent so long believing that she would never be good enough for Peter that she just hid the idea of ever being with him or him sharing the same feelings. Oh, how she was wrong.

“Well teach me a little more…” he trailed, his hand going to touch Y/N’s cheek. He didn’t immediately touch her however, he wanted some form of consent and when Y/N leaned her face to touch his hand, he took that as an ‘okay’ before brushing her cheek with his thumb.

“Calor?”

“Heat.”

“Anoche?” Y/N raised her eyebrows.

“Last night.”

“Dolor.

“Pain?”

“That’s right.” She confirmed, eyebrows knitting together. She lifted her right hand and laid it on Peter’s chest, staring at it as the words left her lips like endless lullabies. Not taking any longer to think of what to say, she knew what needed to be said for both of them. “Llámame?”

“Call me.”

“Ámame”

“Love me.”

A breath escaped Y/N’s lips. They felt so close yet so far away from one another. Her eyes lifted away from being set on her hand on Peter’s chest to look at his beautiful, comforting eyes. “Perhaps I do-”

“Well, how do you say “kiss me”?”

“Besame.”

“And how do you say “hold me”?”

“Abrázame.” Y/N inevitably whispered, the words all making the flutter in her chest more intense. Her eyes were filled with so much joy yet so much anxiety at the same time. “Al amanezer. At sunrise.” [need to look up]

“Anything can help at sunrise.”

Y/N looked up at Peter’s eyes, she just wanted to kiss him right then and there. They held eye contact for a moment before her eyes dropped to his lips, leaning in a bit closer. She could feel how clammy her own hands were. She hated the feeling of it, but she knew this could dictate so much more especially considering her future. This action could change so much between them and she wasn’t sure if she was ready for it. But maybe she should just dive in head first. Her heart thumped against her chest, eyes closing for a moment as her lips parted, allowing air to escape and to his Peter’s lips.

“What will he say?” Peter pulled back, removing his hand from her cheek and dropping it down to his side, fiddling with the pocket that was hanging out of the sweats.

What a dramatic ass.

“Que dirá?”

“When he sees me around you?” He asked, eyebrows knitting together with concern. Y/N understood exactly how he felt. The fear of losing one another to her father. Losing this connection again. Y/N always believed that the time wasn’t right and that if it were destined to be, it would be.

“How do you say “Promise me?”” Peter asked, quieter than before. His forehead was pressed against hers, eyes closed as they took in the moment, hands briefly touching as a spark traced up their arms.

“Prometeme.”

“Promise me you’ll stay beyond the sunrise and that we won’t care what anyone has to say -”

“Beyond the sunrise.” Y/N cut off Peter. Their eyes met, searching for an invitation to kiss one another. The world seemed to stop at this moment. The trees' sweet songs slowed down as Peter leaned into the small space between he and Y/N. The birds stopped their harmonies and the cars stopped the melodies, it felt like the perfect interlude to any great story.

And then it just happened. Peters hand cupped her cheek like an angel cupping a baby for the first time. He softly guided her lips to his; it felt so soft and secure. His lips touched hers and in the moment she swore she was infinite. She was so alive and free in this moment. His lips melded with her like a beautiful piano melody being played. Everything that she could ever love and more was right here. Her heart pounded to the thought of him. To the action that was being played out.

Never in her wildest dream did she think she'd be kissing Peter Parker. During the sunrise. In Queens. She always thought that maybe one day, when they're older and they finally come to the conclusion, or maybe her accepting it more than she did before. She wasn't too sure how it would happen, but this was never the plan.

As quickly as it started, it ended. Peter pulled away, breathless

“Promise me you’ll stay.” Peter whispered against her lips as he pulled back. There was a moment of hesitation. Stay… how? With him? In New York? She wasn’t too sure what he meant, but those were the words she’s always wanted to speak to him. Just the act was something she thought about many times in high school. She had told herself that if she didn’t go to UCLA she would finally man up and tell Peter about her little crush and go to a school in NYC. But then she left.

“I’ll stay.” Y/N promised, her fingers interlinking with Peter’s. The pad of his thumb rubbing across the top of her hands. A promise that she would swear to fulfill. If not for her, then for him. She couldn’t imagine the world that he has around him but that world would be her’s. He would become her world in such a short amount of time.

Beyond the sunrise.

#Peter Parker imagine #Peter Parker x reader #Peter Parker x fem reader #Peter Parker oneshot #Peter Parker x you #peter parker headcanon #Peter Parker fic #peter parker smut #Peter Parker au #mine #Tom Holland imagine #Tom Holland one shot

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