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tange-my-rine · 2 months

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Temporary Fix || Tangerine x gn!reader

Summary: You and Tangerine weren't complicated, sometimes you'd see him on the job and he'd provide you... stress relief. It was easy, so easy. It wasn't supposed to be anything else, just friends (barely acquaintances really) doing what you both needed. It wasn't like you could have someone on the job anyway. You didn't think it was anything that would change. But, he had never seen you hurt before, and when a job goes wrong, well... everything changes.

TW: friends with benefits (for now), mentioned sex (but nothing graphic), protective! Tangerine, possessive!Tangerine, violence, blood, murder, guns, gunshot wounds, mentioned death, cursing (it's Tangerine), and all things bullet train.

[[A/N: yes this is a one direction title, what about it??? also the reader's codename is 'Mouse', you work with Ladybug. Tan calls you pretty but who doesn't to be called pretty?? This is got really long, sorry !!!]]

You were pretty good at your job, your messes weren't messy and your kills were organized, clean really. (Your agency did have a cleanup crew for when things got out of hand, so your work still stayed pristine even when it did get messy.) That's how you got your code name, Mouse, because you were in and out of a location as quiet 'as a mouse'.

You're not sure when you met the twins, but you do remember it was bloody. Something about you showing up to your gig and a trail of blood led you through the building right into their presence. You'd somehow known it was the twins (kind of because of the mess) but otherwise because there was two of them -stuck like glue.

The barrel of two guns pointed at your head, and you shared your mission, and they theirs, which were actually totally unrelated. Needless to say, you got out of there with your USB drive. (Mostly because of Lemon, Tangerine wouldn't have flinched if he pulled the trigger.)

It just kept happening. Undercover missions, hits, and even work you had to travel to, somehow they ended up in the same place. Not always for the same work, you should say, but same destination. You'd originally thought it was some sort of coo, that they were trailing you but after confronting them (and Tangerine saying he didn't 'give a fuck about your whereabouts'), the idea was void.

The first time your... situation had started was one of your missions where you went undercover. Some sort of fancy charity gala, if you remember correctly, and Tangerine was there. Just Tangerine, he didn't tell you why -he hardly even wanted to speak to you.

You'd offhandedly said something about all the rich people being attractive, and how it wasn't fair. He'd promptly said, "You don't have to worry about bein' attractive, love, you're the prettiest one here."

He wasn't flirting, or you didn't think he was -he didn't even smile, or smirk, or anything- just spoke over the rim of his cup and took a long drink after. Your eyes darted to his Adam's apple for a second, you'll admit it.

Nothing else happened that night, you didn't flirt. You don't know what did it, not at all, he just kept looking at you -small little, intense, glances. Once again, you thought nothing of it.

Well, until he pulled you into a closet and kissed the literal breath out of you.

And, well, the rest is easy to figure out.

It didn't happen all the time, not every mission, but sometimes, when the adrenaline was high. You called each other when you weren't on the same mission; he'd done it after the first time, and you followed suit. It was easy, so easy.

That brings you to today, it was supposed to be a grab-and-go, easy. Except for the whole full building of people part, it was an office actually and you needed the CEO. There were so many civilians, but you were Mouse -you'd be in and out so quick, they wouldn't even see you.

Your intel was wrong.

The whole place was filled with bodyguards, and security, head-to-toe, filled. You were good at your job, but you were outnumbered -so incredibly outnumbered.

Needless to say, your disguise of an office worker didn't work.

There was blood tainting your skin, your head on a swivel -fuzzy and pounding. Your were on the third floor, hidden in a janitors closet -the smell of cleaner burnt your nose and made your eyes water.

Your chest heaving and your hands shaking, you were overwhelmed -you couldn't do this alone. God knows how many men were on the last two floors. And you were 90% sure your ribs were broken on your right side, your leg was shot, and your shoulder was shot -you couldn't move. No way you were going up the stairs. You weren't even sure you could leave the building at this point-

You were bleeding out, actually, if the wooziness in your head meant anything.

Your comm was broken on the first floor, you'd cussed and thrown it to the ground. So, even if it still worked, it was lost -long gone of the concrete floors.

You were totally and completely fucked.

Then, you felt something in your pocket, rubbing against your clothes -scratching against the fabric. It buzzed then, low and under the hollowness of your breath; you barely heard it -a pounding in your ears so loud, you think it was your heartbeat.

You breathed out, pulling your phone out with your hand that wasn't lax on the floor -your shoulder wasn't fun to move.

The text flashed across your screen, Tangerine. It was a little blurry, your head spinning but if you focused you could read it.

'You home?'

Something in you sighed, deep and broken; maybe this was the last time you'd ever speak to him. You'd kind of become fond of him, all blue eyes and broad shoulders -his accent and the way his lips would creak up when he smiled at you. You ached for something you didn't have, you realized.

What a fucking time to realize it-

You typed out a message, painstakingly, a single finger -slow and deliberate, 'No. Job. Bleeding out, hidden. Too many.'

Your head was pounding, but you pushed through it, typing, 'I'm sorry, Tan.'

Your hand loosened, laying slack on your lap -your head hurt, maybe you could rest your eyes for a little bit. Not long, just a second to get the pounding out of your head.

Before you could fully do it, the phone in your lap jostled vibrating -it nearly fell, clattering onto the concrete floor but you grabbed it. Not eager to be found, you could die now but you would die if they found you.

Your eyes flickered across your screen, Tangerine flashed along it, shaking in your hand; he was calling you.

Something in you made you gather the strength to swipe and answer it -maybe to hear his voice again, or to say goodbye. You weren't sure, god you were so tired.

"Mouse," his accent spilled out, pointed, "-fuckin' Mouse, can you hear me, love?"

"Hey, Tan," you croaked out -voice rough and low, still not wanting to get caught and wanting to laugh -you didn't want to die sad, "-funny hearing from you."

"Mouse," he didn't react, seemed to be moving, you could hear his footsteps -loud, loud, "-where are you?"

"On a job," you sighed out, words a little breathless and slurred, "-'Supposed to be an office building, but it wasn't. Security, so many security- Think the CEO was bigger than fucking officework-"

"Darling," he spoke softer, but still loud, direct, "-focus on my voice, yeah?"

"Okay," you hummed, more focused -you wanted to do whatever he wanted, "-I will."

"Now," he spoke, gently, and you heard a car door shut -absentmindedly, "-where are you? Can you remember?"

"On the docks," you answered, slow -trying to process the words you were saying, "-tall, so many windows... Company, it's a... glass company, I think. J-Johnson something."

Tangerine hummed low and warm, you recognized the tone -somehow you knew it, "Okay, okay, love. Good- Good job."

"Third floor," you echoed out, "-There's two more, people still in them, I didn't get far enough."

"Can you hear 'em, love?"

"Sometimes," you let out a long breath, "-I'm staying quiet, they'll kill me, Tan-"

"Relax, darling," his voice crept up to your ear, "-breathe, keep focused, yeah? Keep talkin' to me."

'Lemon, fuckin' drive faster, will you?'

"I'm in a...a janitors closet, it's dark in here, I-I can't see. Think I'm bleeding," you mumbled out -a little slurred, you weren't sure he could hear you.

"Fuck..." he sighed, swallowing something in his throat -you could tell you weren't supposed to hear it, "-Where are you hurt, love? They cut you, shoot you, what?"

"Broken ribs," your breath stuttered out -it stung, "-shot me in the shoulder and the leg, I can't fucking move."

"Right, yeah," he exhaled and you thought for a second it was shaky -something sour in his tone, "-You got any pressure on it? Can you?"

"'Can't move, Tan."

"Try for me, love," his voice shook a little, you couldn't think about it, "-Try the... Try the leg."

You did, moving the arm where your shoulder bled -it ached so heavily your head started to pound, but you pushed through. Pressing your palm hard against the skin, you hissed into the phone -eyes bleary, you think you might've been crying.

"I'm sorry, love," he whispered, his voice rough, "-'So sorry, love. I know it hurts like hell, I know."

Your breath shook out through your throat, tone lighter, "'Been shot before?"

"Fuckin' yesterday," he huffed out, all angry and Tangerine, "-some bloody prick grazed my side."

You laughed, and it hurt a little, but you didn't care -not then, "'Always so angry."

"Not at you," he corrected, hardly letting your words slip out, "-Never at you, love."

The hum of the engine stopped, and you heard a distant voice -Lemon, you recognized. It was a sort of murmur to you, you couldn't hear the words. You weren't sure you wanted to.

"Mouse?" He spoke out, slow words but urgent, "-You said the third floor, right? Janitors closet?"

"'s where I'm hiding," you clarified.

"Yeah, right-" you heard the patter of his footsteps, slaps across the sidewalk -some crinkling of fabric, "-I'm on my way, okay? Goin' as fast as I fuckin' can-"

"Be careful," it slipped out of your lips, low and slurred, but you know he heard it.

A sharp inhale of his breath told you so, wordless on the other side of the line -you could only hear the slap of his footsteps, so fast.

"You..." he started, something shaking in his voice, "-You stay alive, yeah? Keep breathin'-"

"Tan-"

"No," he echoed, direct and strict, "-no, you can't die. Not now, okay? You stay fuckin' alive."

"Tan-"

He continued, not slowing down -words frantic, "'Ave so much to say, love, so much. You gotta stay alive to hear it."

"Okay," you breathed out, fighting back the slip shut of your eyes -they burned and you were so tired but you couldn't leave him, not when he was so close, "-I'll stay alive. Promise."

"Promise," he echoed like it helped him understand it -believe it.

Before you knew it, your phone went silent -echoing out into the air. You squinted at it, taking a deep breath -feeling it rack through your body. Dead. Your phone was dead.

God, you'd never hated yourself more. It was so easy to breathe when he was there on the phone, so easy to remember why you were fighting and what you were fighting for.

The silence was overwhelming, a low whimper pursing through your lips -you couldn't see anything but you could feel the blood, sticky on your hand. Something in your stomach twisted, tongue heavy in your mouth; what if you died before he got here?

You can't imagine-

"Lemon," a voice echoed outside the door, "-you deal with the upstairs, keep your eye on it. I'll check every fuckin' room on this floor-"

"Tan," Lemon spoke quieter, a crinkle of fabric, "-they'll be alright. We're 'ere, remember?"

"Right, yeah," Tangerine let out a shaking breath, "-I just..."

"I know," Lemon interrupted, voice stronger, "-I think they know too. 'Just go and fuckin' find 'em, yeah?"

"Don't even have to ask-"

And then, the footsteps grew louder. You knew the closet was close to the stairs, he'd be here soon -god, he'd be here soon. You let out a deep breath, shaking against your chest -a sob racking through your lips, it wasn't loud, not really, but it was noise.

The footsteps stopped in place, and you could hear the harbored breathing for a moment, before it echoed out into the hallway -shaky and full of hope, concern, so much, "Mouse? Mouse? Can you hear me?"

Your breath stuttered in your chest, and the sting of your lungs overwhelmed you for a moment. You breathed out, slow and trying to numb your pain, and talk. But it hurt-

"I-In here-" you breathed out and it was shaking and it was quiet, but without a doubt, the footsteps quickened, so fast you could almost not even hear it.

The door, close to you, sneaked open -light pouring out into the room, it blinded you for a moment. All you could see was the shadow of a figure, you knew it though, knew the shadow. You smelt his cologne, and you had missed it-

Without a single breath shattering out of your lungs, he was standing for a moment frozen -door lazily opened and hallway out of the corner of your eye's view.

Tangerine slunk to your side, eyes dashing across your body, the stains, the blood-

He swallowed, dryly -concerned; you could see the emotions pass through his face. Something in you wants to calm him, tell him you're okay. But you didn't actually know that.

His hair was out of place, curly and ungelled, but still wearing a suit -the blue one that matched his eyes. You like that one, you mindlessly thought.

And without a word, he began to move -shrugging off his jacket. You merely watched on, as he tugged at his sleeves -unbuttoning the cuff (it was all a little familiar actually for very different circumstances), and without hesitation, ripping the fabric off his arm.

The noise echoed through the hallway, startling you slightly. Tangerine flinched a little, frowning, before going back to the fabric.

Hands tenderly gathered at your leg, he gently replaced your hand and wordlessly tied the fabric around your calf. He paused, looking at you, voice soft and gentle.

"This is gonna hurt, love. I'm sorry in advance."

And it did. Who knew?

Your head was bleary, eyes a little hazy and teary from the pain -breaths hollowed out of your chest.

"'Should be the worst of it, love," he hummed out, before sliding a hand behind your back -carefully pulling you up, "-lean on me, okay? I 'ave to get to your shoulder."

You nodded, slowly pressing your head forward into his right shoulder -his cologne filtering through your nose, and the warmth of his body fluttering over your skin. It was comforting, so much that your eyes almost closed on instinct; heartbeat in your ears, the sensation grounded you -brought you back in your body.

Tangerine was moving, looping the fabric under your arm -carefully keeping your arm steady and in place. Fingertips gentle like he was holding the world in his hands -careful and considerate.

"Stay awake, love," he spoke, his voice rumbling into your ear, "-I know you're tired, but I need ya to keep your eyes open for me."

They fluttered open at his request, forehead pressed into his shirt -you could see the thin lines in his vest, tracing the crinkle over his shoulder. You focused on the feeling, the fabric tight around your skin, and the buzz of his skin against yours.

You'd been closer really, but this was a new kind of intimacy -something that made you pleased somewhere deep in your chest. You had always wanted this you realized, this closeness with Tangerine.

How did you not notice?

Even when he stopped, hands still, you stayed there a moment like you'd never get it back.

And maybe you wouldn't. Maybe this changed everything and Tangerine would run for the hills-

Without a word, he laid you back down -gently placing your head on the ground with an attentive hand, a bit like you were breakable. Fragile. You supposed right now you were.

His eyebrows furrowed as he leaned over you, eyes hitching on the makeshift bandages, "We 'ave to get you to the hospital, shirt can only do so much, love."

You thought of the pain in your leg, the pulse of your heartbeat when you walk, but even still, you tried to push up -get on your feet. You promised you'd stay alive.

Tangerine immediately put his hands on your shoulders, keeping you in place, "What are you doing?"

"Trying to get up," you answered, simply.

"Right, no, not happenin'," he let out a laugh in disbelief, "-you are not fuckin' walkin'.

Without another word, he stood -turning around and looking down the hall, assumedly for Lemon. When his eyes caught you could tell, something straightening in his posture with one succinct nod.

They always had their language, it was so interesting to watch sometimes. Lemon would raise an eyebrow, Tangerine would squint his eyes and they'd both not move for 20 seconds like they were communicating through looks.

Before you could think about it too hard, he spun back to you -sinking to his knees. Mumbling, "Think you're fuckin' walkin', ridiculous." No hesitation, he slipped his arms under your back and knees -careful of your calf, and stood.

In another world, you'd probably be shocked at his physical strength but lucky for you, you already knew a lot about that.

Not now, your mind hissed.

Tangerine's steps were quick but careful to not jostle you at all. At some point, you heard Lemon -frantic and loud but you couldn't make out what he said. That was your first sign. The world after that began to spin, the stairwell becoming dizzying -your eyes just wanted to shut. You were so tired.

You heard Tangerine then, you knew he was speaking to you but you couldn't make out what he was saying. You tried so hard to listen-

Then, it all went black.

The first thing was the smell of sterilization hitting your nose, it made you scrunch it up on instinct and then you heard some ruffling.

"Mx. Williams?"

You did not know who Mx. Williams was, but you still squinted open your eyes -the bright lights making your head spin for a moment. You settled across the room, nothing special, just a typical hospital bed -stiff bed, thin covers, and all.

It was a woman speaking, you realized, in scrubs with a warm smile on her face. Ah, you thought, an alias.

"Hi," she spoke softly, carefully, with a smile, "-you're in a hospital, you're safe. Do you remember anything?"

"No," you answered, unsure of the story concocted to get you here.

"You were involved in a robbery," she began, slow to introduce it, "-you had a few injuries from it but you're all fixed up now, okay?"

It was surprisingly calming, "Okay."

"Your husband," she motioned to your right side, "-brought you in."

Your eyes darted to your side -because husband?!, but they just settled on Tangerine -laid back in a chair, arms crossed and chair pulled as close to your side as he could.

Something in you softened, and you smiled.

His clothes were still ripped and stained, but it was dry now. You briefly wondered how long you'd been there, how long he'd been waiting.

"Been a rough couple of days," the nurse hummed, "-he hasn't left since you got here."

You hummed, reaching out and brushing your skin against his hand -just to feel him, know he's real. It didn't wake him up, but you weren't sure you wanted him to just yet. You wanted to enjoy this before everything went... however, it went.

"You've got a good one," the nurse hummed, scribbling on a chart -eyes lounging over the machines.

You smiled a little brighter, imagining it for a second, where he was yours, "I know."

"Alright," she spoke, pushing the clipboard back into her chest, "-your doctor will be here soon."

You nodded, eyes languidly tracing over Tangerine -his head was leaned forward now, curls hanging over. Something in you wanted to brush through them, and you would have honestly, but you couldn't really reach.

You pursed your lips, throat dry, when you spotted water on the little table by your bedside and a thing of jello maybe, probably in preparation for when you got up. Pulling it toward you, maybe a little too fast, because the plastic spoon clattered to the floor; you flinched.

"Shit," you mumbled.

It definitely wasn't loud enough to wake him, but he must've been sleeping very lightly. Sudden and brash, ready to fight something -protective, he didn't even notice you.

"Woah, hey-" you laughed a bit in disbelief, and sipping from the bottle, "-calm down, cowboy."

His eyes immediately flicked to you, blue and darting all over your face like he was taking you in. Wordlessly, he stood there frozen -almost in disbelief.

You paused, looking over him -softer, "You okay, Tan?"

"Am I fuckin... Am I okay?" He echoed out, "-Really?"

"Well, yeah," you responded, slow, "-you seem... riled up."

"Love," he spoke, softer but still so direct, breathless, "-you're in a fuckin' hospital bed. You almost died-"

"Seriously, Tan," you interrupted, you hadn't seen this side of him before, "-are you alright?"

He stood completely still, eyes flicking to yours -hair sticking up in a mess, shirt still ripped. He looked a little deranged, not the worse you'd ever seen, but... there was something in his eyes -a gleam.

You couldn't tell what it was.

"No," he finally answered.

"Are you-" you started, now suddenly darting over the blood (was some of it his?) "-Are you hurt? Did you get checked by-"

"Love," he sighed out, hands raking through his hair, "-you almost died. Do you not hear that? Fuckin' dead, gone-"

"Tan-"

"No, no, no-" he shook his hand, exasperated, in disbelief, "-if I hadn't called, you would be fuckin' dead, Mouse."

"Tangerine."

"What the hell were you bloody doin' there?" He finished succinctly, eyebrows gathered -frustrated.

"A job," you spoke, tone questioning, "-What the hell is your problem?"

"You shouldn’t have fuckin' been there," he nearly growled out, "-that's my problem."

"My intel was wrong," you exhaled, stiff -if he was angry, you would be too, "-I couldn't have known. You think I wanted to solo a whole building of security?"

You trailed off, settling back into the bed -your head was starting to hurt; this was not what you had wanted. Far fucking from it.

He sighed, a big long sigh, briefly pressing his fingers on his temples, "Look, Mouse-"

You didn't look at him, eyes trained on your hands, and the blanket spanned across your lap. You wouldn't give him the dignity of looking at him, not when he was just being a dick.

"I'm not mad at you," his voice was lower now, "-just whoever sent you on that fuckin' suicide mission."

"'Could've fooled me," you scoffed, twisting your arms into a crossed position.

Tangerine sighed again, roaming closer to your bedside and falling to his knees to meet your face better, "Mouse, love, look at me."

You kept your eyes on your hands.

"Mouse, please."

You pursed your lips, he hardly pulled out the please -this was bigger than what you thought it was. Your eyes landed succinctly on his, blue -so blue- already looking at you with something of remorse. Huh.

"I'm sorry," he started, slow with one hand reached up to run through his hair again, "-I know I'm being a fuckin' dick."

"Good guess," you hummed.

"Right, yeah," he shook his head, lips curling up at the corners, "-Look, I... Fuck, I..."

"Tangerine," you put a hand on his shoulder, he was close enough now, "-seriously, what is wrong? I've never seen you like this."

He swallowed, dryly, and you almost offered him your water -he'd been doing that a lot lately.

"You almost died," he repeated.

"Tan, we're not talking about me," you responded, "-I think we both know what happened-"

"Love," he interrupted, repeating again, "-you almost died."

You raised a brow, questioning -confused really, "What does that have to do with-"

"I wouldn't have known," he breathed out, shaky and tone the same, "-you were going to fuckin' die and I wouldn't have known, ya know 'at?"

This was new to you, Tangerine looked shaken, scared. When had he ever been so broken open in front of you, so... so desperate? It was like he cracked open his ribs and you were staring at his heart.

"Tan, I didn't mean to-"

"I would've fuckin'-" he laughed a little, and it was wet -there were tears in the corners of his eyes, "-I'd 'ave heard it through the fuckin' grapevine."

"Tan," you were too soft to stop him.

"Do you know why 'at's fucked up? Truly, do you?"

"Because we're... friends?" You asked, with a lilt -you weren't sure, and even though you felt something you couldn't push that on him. No matter how bad it hurt.

"Fuckin' friends," he laughed, looking up at the ceiling -his eyes were definitely teary, you realized.

"Why are you-"

"Darling, tell me this," he spoke, looking at you now -blue eyes intense on yours, "-do you think I would've grieved you as a fuckin' booty call or a... a friend?"

"I don't..." you spoke, "-I don't know, Tan."

"No, truly, love," he echoed, voice quiet and barely there, "-do you think I would 'ave?"

You fell silent, eyes sliding over his face -the storm of his eyes. It wasn't like a thunderstorm, not angry, just a rain -a dark, heavy rain. You wanted them to be light again, sunny.

You pursed your lips, flicking over his face -there was something different there, something smoothed across his features that you had never seen before. It was something.

"No," you answered finally.

"And you ask me, you ask me-" he started, tears built up now -he blinked them away, "-if I'm okay?"

You didn't say a word.

"You almost-" Tangerine continued, voice breaking as he tilted his head down and took a deep breath.

"Tan," you spoke, softly -something burning in the backs of your own eyes.

"You almost died in my fuckin' arms, Mouse."

"But I didn't," you echoed, "-I didn't. I'm alive, you saved me-"

And then in the tiniest voice you'd heard from him, he looked at you, teary-eyed and exhausted, "Why didn't you call me?"

"Tangerine, I-" you started, "-I didn't know if it... if you-"

"I would've picked up," he spoke, firm and decisive, something biting in his tone, "-If you were halfway across the fuckin' world, I would've found a fuckin' way."

"That's not-" you started, before sighing, "-I didn't know if it mattered to you."

"Mattered to me?" His voice echoed in disbelief, "-If you... You didn't know if your death would've mattered to me?"

"No," you answered, "-I really didn't. I thought... Well, I thought both of you would be fine-"

"Fuckin' fine?" He spilled out, "-You think I would've been fine?"

"I didn't know," you reasoned, "-it wasn't... none of it was... We never talked about it."

"God, I'm the fuckin' stupidest person on this goddamn planet," he breathed out -a mutter, but you still caught it. He was really close to you in this position, you could hear the inhale of his breaths.

"Darling," he spoke, something pent up in his eyes -ready to spill, "-I can hardly function without you. And you think- You really fuckin' think that I wouldn't have cared if you died?"

"I didn't know," you explained, "-I didn't know anything, Tan. We never- We never talked about this, it was simple, easy."

"Well, it's about to get really fuckin' complicated, isn't it?"

"What are you-" you started -confused.

"Consider this me talkin' about it, yeah?" He spoke, looking straight at you -not waiting for an answer, "-The idea of you dying makes me fuckin' sick. 'Makes my whole body feel like my heart fell out of my fuckin' chest, and left a cold, empty shell of a man. Yeah? If you died, I think I wouldn't be able to breathe anymore-"

"Tangerine-" you swallowed back tears.

He continued, "And frankly, the idea of it happenin' has kept me up at night. The idea of it happenin' and me not knowin', not even bein' there- I can't even begin to fuckin' fathom."

"Tangerine-"

"I can't be here without you," he finished, softer and quieter, "-I can hardly fuckin' leave you without it feelin' like I've left a fuckin' limb. A piece of me."

You couldn't speak, tears bubbling up your throat. He stared at you, and all you could do was stare back -eyes unwavering; you wondered distantly where his head was at.

"So, yeah," he cleared his throat -righting himself, "-I would care if you died. 'Would care a fuckin' lot."

"I didn't..." you began, tears burning your eyes -something heavy in your chest, "-I didn't know that."

"Yeah, I know," he replied, a little bluntly, "-you ever see me as fuckin' feelings guy? No, but even still I should've told you a long fuckin' time ago because this-"

His hand motioned to you in the bed.

"This was a fuckin'... worst-case scenario for me."

"I'm sorry," you whispered -you couldn't imagine the pain, if he... if he meant all that.

"You're sorry?" His eyes were attentive on you again, big blue and concerned, guilty, "-no, love, there's nothin' to be sorry for. I... I should've said somethin', I doubt you would've ever been in this state if I had."

"I'd-" you echoed out, "-I'd still have the same job, Tan."

"I would've gone with you," he spoke, "-or been closer... I-I would've fuckin' driven the getaway car if you'd let me."

You paused, eyes flickering over his face -that unnamed thing, you knew it now. It seemed so obvious. Every word he said bounced off your head as it echoed in your mind; he'd said so much, you could read in-between the lines for the rest of it.

"Tangerine?" You hummed.

"Yeah?" His voice was gruff, spent.

"I love you too."

He grinned then, all crow's feet and upturned lips -you'd never seen something so bright. Not from him. Maybe it wouldn't be the last one.

"Thank fuckin' god," he groaned out, "-I really don't know what I was goin' to do if you didn't."

You laughed, a little shy -this was all so new, "Well, good thing you don't have to, yeah?"

"Yeah," he finished, still smiling -his hand came to hold yours for a moment, careful even though you weren't hurt there.

Tangerine seemed thoughtful for a moment, before raising your hand to his lips, "I'm really fuckin' glad you're alright, love."

"Yeah, me too."

He opened his mouth to say something else, but the door swinging open cut it short.

"You lot done yet?" Lemon asked, head sticking in the door, "-I've been waitin' out here like 20 minutes. The nurses are startin' to look at me weird-"

Tangerine sighed from beside you, as you spoke, "Come on in, Lemon. Lovely to see you by the way."

He stepped fully in then, your eyes catching on the takeout boxes in the bags he held, "So polite, unsure why you ever liked him."

"Right," Tangerine rolled his eyes, "-Do we 'ave to start this now?"

"You see?" Lemon raised a hand, "-This is how he treats me, yeah? I bring 'im food and I'm fuckin' shot do-"

"Is there something for me?" You questioned, you had honestly never been so hungry in your life -probably your body healing and whatnot.

"'Is there something for you?' Of course, Mouse, I'm very thoughtful like 'at," Lemon smiled, "-unlike this bloke, yeah?"

"Lemon," Tangerine hissed.

"Told ya," he responded, taking a seat in one of the extra chairs on the other side of you.

"I'll fuckin' bite your head off, you know 'at? Rip you limb from limb-"

"Boys, seriously," you groaned, "-can you agree on anything?"

"You need a new handler," Lemon spoke -already eating his meal, to which Tangerine reluctantly nodded.

"Well-"

"And you're with us now," Tangerine offered up, "-anywhere you go, we go."

Lemon nodded, pointing to his brother like in solidarity, "Agreed."

"Guys, really? That's what you-"

"You know how pouty he's gonna be if you aren't?" Lemon retorted, handing Tangerine both his and your boxes -movement fluid right over you.

"I don't fuckin' pout," he murmured, opening the box and setting it on your table -before settling into his chair with his own.

"No, don't even start that shit," Lemon replied, "-you haven't said a full word to me in the last two weeks!"

"That wasn't pouting-"

"What would you call it then, sulking?"

"I'll kill you, Lemon, don't fuckin' start it-"

"Enough you two," you yelled out, not loud enough to attract any unwanted attention, but enough to shut them both up.

You sighed out a big long breath and righted yourself -grabbing a forkful on the food.

"Now," you hummed, grinning at the two of them, "-where are we off to next?"

They raised an eyebrow.

"If I'm staying with you," you repeated, "-where are we going next?"

Tangerine furrowed his brow like it was common sense, "Nowhere, love, you're healing."

"Tan-"

"Seconded," Lemon raised his hand, "-he's already got a place and everythin' might as well give it to 'im."

"When did you-"

"Not important," Tangerine clarified, before turning to his brother, "-See, how hard was that? To fuckin' support me?"

"You're one to talk, mate."

You were really gonna have to get used to this.

Then Tangerine, almost instinctively, scooted his chair forward -placing his box next to yours on the table and with the confidence of a million men, intertwined your hands.

It couldn't have been comfortable, both with the hospital bed barriers and eating with one hand, but he treated it like it was nothing at all. Like he'd do it 100 times over for you.

Okay, you thought to yourself, you could definitely get used to this.

#temporary fix #tangerine bullet train #tangerine x reader #bullet train #tangerine x y/n #tangerine x you #tangerine #tan's things

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ckret2 · 5 months

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On chapter 30 of The Writer Uses Misleading Graphics To Trick You Into Looking At This Fic About Human Bill Being The Shack's Prisoner: Summerween part 2! Bill wheedles Mabel into helping him make a costume. Mabel wheedles Bill into spilling some of his preciously-guarded secret backstory. Ford is kind of in awe.

Also there's like 4.5 drawings in this chapter. They're all very silly drawings.

####

Bill wouldn't tell Mabel what his costume was—"I want to see who can guess it"—but all it needed was a brown bedsheet, a long red wig, cardboard (to be drawn upon), and flip-flop sandals.

The bedsheet was the easiest to acquire. Dipper's barely-worn brown sandals were just slightly too big for Bill but Mabel helped tie them on with yarn. the shack's cardboard supplies were still depleted from making Bill's triangle mask, but they could make do with paper and popsicle sticks. Mabel didn't have a red wig but she did have a blonde wig and red markers. Since Bill was, by his own reporting, terrible at drawing, Mabel offered to do the fancy artwork if Bill did the tedious task of recoloring the wig. He claimed he'd feel like a mortician putting makeup on a car wreck victim, but nevertheless accepted the deal, and they settled in around the living room table to get to work.

"So just a bunch of houses, right?" Mabel asked, starting on the first drawing.

"Ancient Greek-looking houses," Bill said. "So, marble and columns. Don't think too hard about the details—this is a 21st century American costume holiday, not a historical reenactment. You can slap columns on anything and call it 'Greek' and every human in town will buy it."

"Do ancient Greek houses have chimneys?"

"No," Bill said. "But adding one would be funny."

Mabel considered that, weighed up the value of historical accuracy against entertainment value, and decided giving one house a chimney would be funny. She gave the whole house a thick black outline in marker, and pulled out crayons in black, white, and whale blue to quickly add some light shading to the marble.

Mabel didn't think she'd ever seen Bill focus so hard or so quietly on anything the way he did on coloring that old wig red. He was giving it more attention than he did his own hair: while his golden locks were a tangled, uncombed, soggy mass shoved dismissively over his shoulders, he was dying the cheap wig (and his fingertips) strand by plastic strand with the bright-eyed morbid fascination of a third grader studying a pack of ants as they disassembled a bird's corpse.

This was the longest she'd been around Bill without conversation—usually, you couldn't even walk into a room without him immediately chattering at you like the motion-activated animatronics at the Summerween store. It was hard to think around him. Bill didn't give you room to think.

What did Mabel think about Bill?

He was right, she was still mad about the mall. No—mad wasn't the right word—mad was his word—she was scared. She'd never really stopped being scared of him, if she was honest with herself. But everything he'd done that day, from tricking her into trapping herself to reminding her of almost dying, had just reinforced why she should fear him.

But. She thought he felt bad about it. And she didn't think she'd ever seen him feel bad about anything before.

Maybe that meant her experiment was working. Maybe he was changing. Yeah, he was still scary—but he was Bill Cipher, he had a lot of scariness to work through. He was moving in the right direction, and she wanted to encourage that.

He hadn't apologized for the mall; but, since he'd tried to make up for it at the time, and that was a sort of apologetic action, Mabel decided she could tentatively forgive him for that day—provided he continued to improve. Put him on forgiveness probation. And that meant they were on friendly speaking terms again.

Which was good, because the quiet was starting to get uncomfortable. She surveyed her art for something they could talk about.

After a couple of as-historically-accurate-as-she-could-imagine houses, Mabel had started varying up the designs by redesigning houses she could remember off the top of her head with columns and white marble. She'd made a stately marble Mystery Shack, and a columned-covered doppelgänger of the house with the terraced yard across the street at home, and then she'd decided to make a Greek-ish version of her own home. "Hey Bill. Have you ever seen my house?"

"In person? No. But it came up from time to time in you kids' dreams, so whether I've seen it depends on how accurate you think your dreams are," he said. "It has less plants and more windows in your brother's dreams than in yours."

Mildly disturbing answer, but not disturbing in the direction she'd expected. "What! You mean you haven't haunted our neighborhood or anything? I don't believe it."

"Do you think I spend all my time stalking random humans? Don't flatter yourself."

"Well, seeing it in dreams isn't good enough!" Mabel pulled over a blank paper. It was hours until trick-or-treaters showed up, they had a little time to waste. "I'll draw it!"

"Wow, really?" Bill looked up from his wig. "You're not worried about letting the big bad triangle see your house?"

"Come on! You already know where I live, right?"

Bill immediately rattled off, "1337 Fairview Drive, Piedmont, California, on the northeast side of the street where it's less hilly."

"Exactly—you creep. So who cares if you know what it looks like, too?"

A square, sky blue house with two stories and a triangular roof; a big living room window on the left, a covered door on the right, three windows on the second floor, and a chimney. Mabel had drawn her home plenty of times—but doing it for a friend (?) was different from doing it for a teacher or a librarian, and she put extra effort into the rose bushes under the living room window. She added her and Dipper's smiling faces in the upstairs windows and Waddles's face downstairs in the living room.

"Waddles sleeps in the kitchen, but he basically owns half the yard to wallow in. This is my room, and here's Dipper's—I get three windows, but Dipper has the biggest window and a bigger room, so it's fair, no matter what he says—"

"Oh, you two have separate rooms now?" Bill was leaning halfway around the table and craning his neck to see the image right side up.

"Uh, yeah? Since we were ten?"

Loftily, Bill said, "I don't know how you'd expect me to know that. You both still dream about sharing a room."

Mabel paused and tried to remember how often she dreamed about Dipper in his new room. Sometimes she woke and was still disoriented to find her bed in the middle of the room instead of against one wall with Dipper's on the other side. "Huh."

She added a few more details—the front steps, the gate, the shingles. (Bill watched nervously as she pulled out the gray crayon to color the driveway—but she didn't notice how it had been tampered with.) She talked about her home, and in turn Bill told her weird things, like that Dipper often dreamed of monsters coming out of the fridge. When she finished, she autographed her name with a star on the "i" in Pines, offered it over grandly, and said, "Here, you can keep this!"

Bill accepted it without the customary effusive gratitude with which one ought to accept a generously-gifted original artwork from a 13-year-old prodigy. "What am I gonna do with it?"

"That's your problem!"

"Fair enough!" He checked his leggings for pockets and, when he didn't find any, set the page on the table by his elbow.

Offering accepted. As Bill resumed coloring his wig, Mabel picked up another piece of paper and got to work on the next columned house. "What does your house look like?"

Bill stopped dead, looked straight at her, and said, "My what?"

What was weird about the question? "Your house! Or whatever you lived in before you came here. You came from somewhere before you tried to invade Earth, right? You didn't just pop out of somebody's dream."

Bill laughed. "Yeah I did!"

"Bill."

"4500 years ago the construction workers of Egypt had a shared nightmare about the immense tombs they'd spent the last century building—"

"Biiiill."

"—and when they awoke they found the combined psychic energy of their terror had spawned a sleep paralysis demon more powerful than Ra! So then I ate their souls—"

"Seriously, Bill."

"I'm being so serious right now."

Mabel rolled her eyes. "Okay, fine! I get it. You're embarrassed." She shook her head and returned to coloring.

She felt the combined spiritual energy of hundreds of imaginary Egyptian construction workers beating down on her face from Bill's eye. Like a laser. "'Embarrassed'?"

"Because you don't have a house," Mabel said. "I think it's okay, you don't need to be embarrassed! I don't think you're a loser or anything. It's just kind of sad—"

Bill snatched up a blank piece of paper. "You want a house? Fine! I'll show you a house." He grabbed up an orange crayon, muttering, "It'll put your stupid overpriced shed in California to shame— Where's the ruler—?" Mabel tried not to grin.

For several minutes, he was perfectly silent. Mabel glanced over to see him coloring with three crayons at once, only for him to shove a hand in her face and snap, "No peeking."

Mabel got through two more drawings before Bill slapped down his paper over Mabel's. "There! How about that?!"

She looked at the drawing, which Bill had helpfully labeled "Party Central!" in red crayon. A great stone pyramid so dark brown it was nearly black, with bricks outlined in brilliant gold and molten orange and fiery red, and a sharp multicolored X hovering above it—

Mabel gave Bill a flat look. "This isn't your house, this is your Torture Temple."

"The what? Hey, is that really what people are calling it?! It's not the Torture Temple, it's the Fearamid!"

Despite herself, Mabel burst out laughing. "You named it the 'Fearamid'?!"

"It's a pyramid and humans fear it! It's genius. Portmanteaus make great names."

"What's a portmanteau."

"It's a word made from the unholy Frankensteinian fusion of two other words. Like getting 'electrocute' from 'electricity' and 'execute'!"

"Or 'romcom'?"

"Yeah, or that."

Mabel considered the drawing. "If you want to scare less people, you could call this your Bill-ding."

"HA! Oh, I'm saving that."

"Anyway, this isn't where you live," Mabel said. "You were there for like a week tops!"

"Yeah, before your great-uncle killed me. I'd still be living there if it weren't for you jerks." He stuck out his tongue.

"Come on, Bill. I showed you my house. Draw where you grew up or something!"

"What's wrong with the Fearamid?"

Mabel crossed her arms. "Why don't you want me to see your real house?" She raised her eyebrows at him.

Bill opened his mouth to protest, but then stopped, a thoughtful look on his face. "Eh, you know what? Why not. If you're gonna be so ridiculous about such a silly thing." He pulled over another piece of paper. "But if I don't have enough time to finish coloring this wig, you have to help me."

"Fiiine." She returned to her own drawings as Bill got back to work.

After a long silence—longer than he'd taken to draw and color the Fearamid—he said, "Okay, done. Here." And he pushed over the paper with one dismissive finger.

She eagerly accepted the drawing—and frowned. There was nothing on the page except for a straight flat black line, interrupted by three line segments of bright blue and a cluster of red and green dashes. "What is this?"

"Where I grew up," Bill said, innocently, already back to coloring the wig. Mabel could see his mischievous smirk. "As seen from the front. Just like your drawing of your house. So we're even now."

Mabel's brows furrowed as she stared at the page in confusion. "What...?"

"You do know I'm from the second dimension, right? A universe that's flat like a piece of paper. I figured Sixer would've told you all about it by now." Bill picked up the drawing and held it between his and Mabel's faces, so that, viewed from the edge, all Mabel could see of the paper was a thin flat line. "What do you think the second dimension looks like to somebody in the second dimension?"

Mabel took the paper back, looked at the underwhelming flat line representing the front of Bill's house, and said, "I hate you."

"We had the prettiest roses in the park," Bill said, pointing at the red dashes. "Crayon really doesn't do them justice."

"Shut uppp."

Bill laughed at her; but then, to her surprise, he said, "Okay, all right, I guess a big fancy 3D creature like you can't understand the nuances of two-dimensional sight. So, here." He flipped over the page. "Top down view."

The back of the page had what looked like a floorplan. A narrow room on the left, a large L-shaped room, a tiny room nestled into the L's top right corner, and a medium room on the right. Little shapes filled the rooms—furniture of some kind?—but she didn't see anything immediately recognizable like a top-down bed or table and chairs. Green and red spirals dangled off the bottom of the floorplan.

"I'm no Edward Bishop Bishop, but it gets the idea across," Bill said.

She studied all the strange little figures in fascination, looking for anything familiar. She pointed at a few shallow bowls filled with blue sticking out of the wall between the L-shaped room and the tiny room. "Are these sinks?"

"Hey, you're pretty sharp. Sinks and the tub."

"So the little room's the bathroom."

"Right again." Bill pointed out the rooms on the floor plan. "Master bed's on the right, kitchen and living room in the middle—and you found the bathroom—and second bed's on the left. That was my room! The one with a million books," he pointed at a wall with countless tiny multicolored lines coming off of it. "I was a big reader as a kid. I've always been an intellectual."

"Who was in the other bedroom?"

"I never really went in there, who cares." Bill made a dismissive gesture. "I think there were some desks and stuff in there too, but I didn't bother to draw them since I never used them." He picked up a yellow and a black crayon and added on to the drawing, dexterously turning the crayons in his hand to switch between colors without setting either one down. "I spent most of my time in my room." He'd drawn a little yellow triangle with an eye. He picked up a red crayon to point an arrow at the triangle and label it "Me!" "I didn't even have to leave the room to see the TV. The perks of psychic powers!"

Mabel wondered which of the weird shapes was the TV; but before she could come to a decision, she was distracted by the scale of Bill drawn in his room. Maybe he'd just drawn himself big, but he seemed cramped in that narrow space. And he'd hardly have room to turn around in the bathroom without his corner smacking something. "It looks pretty small. Is that normal on your home world?"

"Ah, I rarely spent time at home—it was just a place to sleep between speaking engagements," Bill said. "I was always on tour. Living the life of the rich and famous! Hotels, jet planes, and tour buses!"

Mabel shot him an irritated look. "You said this is where you grew up."

"This is where I grew up! I got an early start making my fortune. I was already famous by the time I was, uh..." he pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Developmentally, I think I would've been about equivalent to your age. Maybe a bit younger."

How much of all this was true? It didn't feel like a lie—and she couldn't see how he'd benefit from lying about any of it, except maybe claiming to be famous. So it probably had to be true. He'd actually made her a drawing of his house. Even after he'd complained about being so bad at art. She beamed at him. "Thanks, Bill. Your weird alien house is neat! I like the squiggly spiral flowers! Are they actually roses?"

"They were the flower that everyone mentions in poetry and that you have to bring home when your wife is mad, so, same basic function as roses," Bill said. "Fun fact, they grow in spirals so that they're pretty on the outside, but—"

####

"—but have more surface area to absorb sunlight on the inside," Mabel said, pointing at the flowers. "Alien biology! And the orange things are couches and the colorful box in front of them is his TV, and Bill says he could watch TV through the wall but he never really liked TV, he preferred live performances—maybe we should take him to a musical! And the little sideways cushions on the walls are their beds because gravity goes to the left because their house faces east—I have no idea why!—so, I guess that's their 'floor'? But if that's the 'floor,' Bill didn't explain why all his books were on the 'ceiling' without them falling off, and..." Mabel trailed off, giving Ford a concerned look. "Grunkle Ford? Are you okay?"

He was gaping at the drawing. "Wh—? Yes. Sorry. I'm just..." He shook his head in amazement. "I never even got that slippery eel to admit he has a calendar system, and you got the blueprints to his childhood home?"

Dipper said, "Yeah, this is amazing. How did you get this out of him?"

"Oh, I didn't do anything special," Mabel said casually. "Just drew our house and then suggested he was too scared to let me see his."

Dipper grimaced. "You showed him our house?"

"Don't worry about it! He already knows where we live."

"Of course," Ford said, taking a quick note in his journal. "Exploiting his ego. He's very proud; undermine that pride and he'll feel compelled to defend his honor." Ford had started goading Bill into giving away more than he meant to the same way. He wished he'd started doing it far earlier; but he'd spent so many years foolishly assuming Bill's pride was objective and justified that he sometimes forgot what an egomaniac Bill really was.

As Mabel had spoken, Ford had filled several pages with bullet-pointed half thoughts: dodges questions about the master bed—his parents' room?; no bed or bedroom for a sibling, he seems like an only child; "speaking engagements" is probably a euphemism, what was he doing to become a child celebrity; were his books his only childhood possessions or just the only thing he valued enough to draw; did he gain his "psychic powers" while amassing the power he needed to "liberate"/destroy his dimension? "Can I borrow this drawing to make a photocopy?"

"Sure! Don't forget the line on the back," Mabel said. "And you can copy the Fearamid, too! Did you know he named it the 'Fearamid'?"

"Oh yeah, I heard him call it that," Dipper said. "I think I recorded it in Journal 3?"

"I should've read that before we threw out all of Grunkle Ford's Bill stuff," Mabel sighed. She slid over the Fearamid drawing to Ford. "Bwop! He drew it tilting all weird to the left? He wasn't kidding when he said he's bad at drawing."

Ford studied the drawing and frowned. He lay his pen on the drawing to use like a makeshift ruler. "It's not 'skewed'—he drew the front face as a perfect equilateral triangle, and then extended a side on the right to turn it into a pyramid. It's poor perspective—there's no point of view from which one side would look like a perfect equilateral triangle and you could see another side, but..." He trailed off again as he made a note to himself about what this might mean about Bill's ability to perceive the third dimension and his artistic sensibilities.

"So he draws like Picasso!" Mabel concluded. "Oh! Bill mentioned a name when he gave me his house, he said he wasn't like Edward Bishop Bishop—and I remembered it because it sounds funny. Bishop-Bishop. Maybe he's another artist Bill likes? Or somebody who makes blueprints?"

"I'm sure I've heard that name. I think he was a mathematician?" Ford frowned. "I can't recall, though." He wrote down another note: Edward Bishop Bishop – mathematician/artist? Something to look up later.

Dipper glanced back and forth between Ford and Mabel as they talked, feeling his stomach sink at how excited they were and how easily they got along. First the mysterious disappearing crystal shop in Portland, now Mabel made this huge discovery about the guy Ford had spent years trying to learn about... Dipper swallowed hard and tried to tell himself he shouldn't feel jealous after he'd gotten Ford to himself for basically the past year. "I can't believe you found out all this."

Mabel immediately looked at him. "Hey, what's that supposed to mean?"

Dipper winced. He'd realized a moment too late how he must have sounded. Quickly, he said, "I mean, it's great that you did! Finding out more information about him is great. But, like... investigating the paranormal is my thing. It's what I spent all last summer doing, and it's my dream job, and... and now, the biggest paranormal mystery in human history is in our house, and you're the one getting all the info out of him?"

"Well, yeah," Mabel said. "I'm our official Bill spy, remember? I'm the one who made friends with him."

"I know, I know." He shrugged jerkily. "I'm just... kind of disappointed that I'm not prying eons-old secrets out of an alien demon. You know?"

Ford had paused in his writing to listen to Dipper thoughtfully. "I understand. When you're exceptional at something, it can be... difficult to share the limelight," he said. "Not because you don't think anyone else deserves it. You just don't know if you'll ever get it back."

Dipper's face heated up—he didn't want Ford to think he was bad at sharing, of all things—but he mumbled, "Yeah, I guess." Ford patted his shoulder understandingly.

"Aww," Mabel said. "Didn't you say that if we're running an experiment on being nice to Bill, you want to be in the control group?" She punched his arm. "Welcome to the control, bro!"

"Ow!" Dipper rubbed his arm and laughed weakly. "Yeah, okay, you're right. This is what I get."

Mabel said, "You should try talking to Bill! Maybe he'll tell you stuff too. He's really easy to talk to as long as you don't mind him sometimes saying creepy nightmare things."

"And as long as you're prepared for his mental tricks," Ford said.

"Yeah! Grunkle Ford's got a whole class for that," Mabel said. "He'll teach you about the BITE model! It's how cults sink their teeth into you!"

Dipper chuckled. "Sure. Maybe I will. We're gonna be at home handing out candy for a few hours, maybe I'll find an opportunity to interrogate him."

"You're not going trick-or-treating?" Ford asked.

"No," Mabel said, with an exaggerated sigh of disappointment.

Dipper elbowed her for her theatrics; they'd already agreed on what they'd do tonight. "We've got plans with friends. But we do get to wear matching costumes again."

"Creepy ghost children!"

"Ah," Ford said. "That explains your..." He gestured at them. They were wearing a suit and a dress, old-fashioned and gray, with tattered hems and dusty black dress shoes.

"Barty helped us put the outfits together," Dipper said.

"We still need to do our makeup," Mabel said. "What about you, Grunkle Ford? What are you doing for Summerween?"

"Ah." He glanced toward the ceiling ruefully, as though he could see The Enemy in the shack through the many layers of dirt above. Summerween had been one of the things he'd missed most about Gravity Falls; even during his years as a reclusive scientist in the woods, he'd usually taken off Summerween and Halloween to hand out candy to the children bold enough to visit his house.

But Bill's eagerness to participate had sucked the fun out of the day. The thought of celebrating Summerween in the same house as Bill felt too much like celebrating with him. "Nothing, I suppose. I was planning to stay down here." He gestured at his desk. "Continue my research."

"What are you working on right now?" Dipper asked.

Ford quickly said, "Nothing. Just—the same research," and was immediately hit with a pang of guilt. Remember what happened last summer when you tried to keep secrets about Bill out of embarrassment? Reluctantly, he said, "I've... split some research duties with Fiddleford. While I'm waiting to hear back from him, I'm looking into—some magical knowledge Bill revealed. To determine how much of it's true."

Dipper looked puzzled. "Revealed when?"

Mabel slammed her hands on Ford's desk. "Grunkle Ford, you can take a break from gathering intel on the enemy for one day! It's Summerween! Promise me you'll do something to celebrate before the day's over."

Ford let out a huff, but smiled. He wanted to do something. Surely he could come up with something that would let him avoid Bill? "All right, I promise. I won't invoke the Trickster's wrath tonight. Could you leave your costume makeup in the bathroom when you're finished? I'll find something to do with it."

"Perfect!" Mabel hugged him; then grabbed Dipper's hand. "C'mon, let's finish getting dressed. The trick-or-treaters will be here any minute!"

"Okay, okay." Dipper waved at Ford as Mabel dragged him to the elevator.

When they were gone, Ford turned back to the papers Mabel had given him. Bill's childhood home... Assuming he wasn't lying, at least. But an entire blueprint seemed like a complicated spur-of-the-moment fabrication even for him. If Bill was lying, it was a lie close to the truth.

It was strange to imagine Bill as a child with a bedroom full of books. Strange to imagine Bill as a child at all. What did a young triangle look like? He couldn't imagine anything different from how Bill always looked.

The floorplan did look small. Smaller even than the apartment over the pawn shop had been. Ford tried to remember what the homes he'd seen in Exwhylia had looked like...

He raised his head as something the kids had said registered. "Barty? Who's Barty?"

####

While Mabel was downstairs, Bill inspected her box of crayons.

The wrapper around the gray crayon was coming loose.

He took the glue stick they'd been using to reinforce the paper houses with popsicle sticks and carefully stuck the wrapper back on.

The house was too quiet without anyone around to talk to. He hated the quiet.

From the corner of the living room behind the table, when Bill leaned on the wall, shut his eyes, and listened closely, he could faintly hear the hidden elevator. He headed upstairs to stow the drawing of Mabel's house somewhere safe, and then went to the downstairs bathroom to finish dressing for Summerween.

####

(Y'all I worked hard on those fake crayon drawings. Anyway I know we're all collectively going insane today over the book news but if you took time out of your day to read this, I'd love to hear what y'all think!)

#bill cipher #human bill cipher #gravity falls #gravity falls fanart #gravity falls fic #fanart #my art #my writing #bill goldilocks cipher

203 notes · View notes

viking-raider · 1 year

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The Golden Egg - Cotton Candy Fluff

Summary: It's Easter! So, you and Henry have an Easter Egg Hunt. One for Kal, then go head-to-head against each other, to see who can find their eggs the fastest.

But what happens, when Henry finds the Golden Egg, you left him.

Pairing: Henry Cavill/Reader

Word Count: 2.1k

Warning: G - Cotton Candy Goodness, Soft!Henry, Fluff, Kal, Short Person Joke, Competition, Easter, Competitive!Henry, Domestic Bliss, Instagraming, Surprise Ending

Inspiration: It's Easter. I wrote this in an hour. This video of Good.Boy.Ollie on instagram.

Author’s Note: I hope you enjoy this! Line divider by @FIREFLY-GRAPHICS!

If you would like to get notifications for my writing! Just follow my Tag List blog, @VIKING-RAIDER-TAGLIST and turn on the notifications for it! It’s that easy! @VIKING-RAIDER-LIBRARY

“So, explain this to me again?” Henry laughed, folding his arms over his heaving chest, as he laughed.

“I wanna do an Easter Egg hunt for Kal.” You repeat to yourself, narrowing your eyes at your near hysterical boyfriend.

“The Bear doesn't get the concept of Easter, let alone an Easter Egg hunt, babe.” He howled, his curly head rolling back with its mirth.

“So!” You huffed, pouting at him. “I think it's cute. I also want us to do one. To see who can find the most. The fastest.”

Henry sobered up a tad at that. “All right, babe. You're on.” He smirked, cupping your face in his hands and gently kissing your forehead. “Which do you want to do first?”

“Kal.”

“Done.” He nodded, dropping his hands and looking over the colorful sea of plastic eggs and prizes to put inside of them, that you'd come home with a short time before. “You know, my fans would absolutely eat this all up.” He remarked to himself, biting the corner of his lip and thinking it over, then glanced at you.

“Can I film it?”

“If you want to, Puppy.” You replied, grabbing a four pack of jumbo eggs and ripped it open.

“Sweet, I'll be right back. While you figure out what you're doing--” He waved his hands over the cluttered dining table. “Here.” He chuckled, before rushing off.

Looking over the prizes, you picked out a cute dog toy. It was made of rubber and looked like a throwing stick. You had gotten it cause Kal was a beast of a chewer, when it came to his toys, and this one was supposed to be nearly indestructible. Fitting it inside the bright yellow, jumbo egg, you dropped a couple of Kal's favorite peanut butter and blueberry treats in with it, so he had something to sniff out, then closed it.

You had a reasonable amount of the eggs filled up for the hunts, when Henry finally came back into the dining room, kissing the back of your bent head.

“Everything is set up.” He informed you, casting his eyes over the booty. “You want some help?”

“That would be nice, thank you.” You replied, tilting your head back, smiling appreciatively at him.

“Is there a method to your madness?” He asked, pulling up a chair beside you.

“The eggs on the right are Kal's.” You motioned to the cluster. “I don't fancy getting a squeak toy or dog biscuits, during my hunt.”

Henry's face twisted and he shook his head. “No, I don't either.” He snorted, dropping some chocolates into the egg he grabbed.

“All right, here we go!” Henry exclaimed, grinning, as the two of you finished hiding the eggs, all while his phone recorded on a tripod, he planned on editing everything down later on. “Kal!” He called out and smiled, as the Bear came charging through the open slider and into the backyard.

“Are you ready to do your hunting?” He asked, bending over to scratch the Akita all over.

You and Henry had made sure to hide his eggs in, more or less, obvious places. But a couple had Kal working for them, like one small egg slipped between the braided fabric of his rope pull. Kal was slow at first, sniffing at the eggs, letting out little snorts as his nose picked up the scent of his treats inside of them. You were worried for a bit, that it was a flop. Making your heart sink. But when Kal found the stick toy, it was as if something magical sparked inside the Akita.

And he went wild.

Kal started zooming around the entire yard, diving into the manicured bushes and making them shake as he ran between them and the border fence. He rooted around the patio furniture, nearly knocking over Henry's big, green grill for a hot pink egg that was there; containing three different treats. He finally tackled the last egg, one of the jumbos, behind a large stone planter.

Bouncing around it so ecstatically, Henry couldn't take it from him to open and reveal what was inside.

“Kal.” Henry cracked up. “Let's see what Mama put in it for you, Bear!” He finally managed to swipe it away from the pup and crack it open, discovering the surprise. “Oh my god! Look, Kal!” He dissolved into a fresh fit of laughter, holding out a plush, taffy-pink, pig.

Kal bounced on his front paws, so he stood on his back legs and took the toy out of Henry's hand, finding the noise maker with his mighty jaws and causing the lightly stuffed pig to scream out a stream of oinks.

“Do you like it, Bear?” You giggled, grinning at him, relieved that Kal's egg hunt had ended so well.

“That pig is going to drive us bonkers, until he murders it.” Henry said, wiping tears from his bearded face.

“I know it is, but I couldn't help buying it.” You confessed, watching Kal go to town on the poor thing. “Look how cute it is, and he clearly loves it.”

“Right, well.” Henry sighed, composing himself. “Kal's hunt is over. Now, it's time for our Battle Egg-royal!” He proclaimed, a competitive expression coming over his face. “You're going first. So, go inside and I'll hide your eggs.”

“Very well.” You nodded, kissing his cheek.

“Mind yourself!” He called, as you headed inside with Kal. “No cheating!”

“I would never!” You huffed back at him, feigning insult.

Henry grabbed the basket of eggs he had made for you and got to work hiding them all over the backyard, pausing in front of camera for a moment, a cheeky look on his face, even though it wasn't live, he couldn't help it.

“No, watching my stream, babe!” He laughed, then went back to hiding the rest of his eggs.

Satisfied with where his eggs were, Henry opened the slider and called you back outside.

“I have the stopwatch pulled up on my mobile.” You said, handing it over to Henry.

“All right.” He nodded, taking it from you. “Ready. Set.”

He stood there for a moment and you stared at him.

“Henry!”

“Huh? Oh, right. GO!”

Rolling your eyes, you shot off the patio and started searching the area. Henry trailing after you. You found the first egg balanced on a stone column that a pot of flowers were situated on. Shaking it, you heard the egg-shaped chocolates inside. Henry held out your Easter basket, so you could store your found eggs and not worry about holding them or accidentally rediscovering them. You found a jumbo egg next, inside Henry's grill, which had you giggling.

“Oh, that's so cruel, Henry.” You huffed, finding your last three eggs lined up in a row, on top of the fence, out of your reach.

Henry smiled at you, triumphantly, his nose wrinkling cutely. “Hop, short stuff.”

“You'll pay for this later, Cavill.” You warned, narrowing your eyes at him and jumped for the eggs, just managing to grab them, without knocking them into the neighbor's yard on the other side.

“I doubt you can put anything out of my reach, Bean.” Henry quipped, winking at you, then glanced down at your phone. “Eighteen minutes.” He smiled, kissing your cheek. “Not a bad time, babe.”

“Thank you, now get your butt out of the yard!” You said, pointing towards the house.

“Yes, ma'am.” He nodded, obediently. “I'll take your basket inside with me.”

Biting your lip, you glanced around the yard and quickly got to work, trying to find the hardest places for him to find his eggs. Wanting payback for the shenanigans of those eggs on the fence. You even moved a few eggs a couple times, feeling like they were too easy to find, before you finally let Henry come back into the yard with you.

“It took you longer to hide them, than find them, sugar butt.” Henry commented, amused as he scanned the yard, trying to give himself a head start.

“I wasn't making it easy for you.” You said, setting up the stopwatch. “Ready. Steady. Go!” You barked, jumping up and down.

Henry quickly hurried off the patio, his first target was his grill. You had put an egg there for Kal and he had put one there for you. So, he had felt you'd follow that theme. But, alas, when he opened the hammered dome, he found it egg free. Eyes narrowing, he looked around and under it as well.

Still, no egg.

“Come on, Puppy.” You laughed, wickedly. “I said, I wasn't going to make it easy on you.”

“True.” He hummed back, shooting a narrow eyed look at you, before slowly scanning the yard again. “AH-HUH!” He exclaimed, spotting a small point of neon yellow under the hedge, that led towards the side of the house.

Making for the egg, Henry happened to catch the flicker of something out of the corner of his eye in the process and came to an abrupt stop. Turning towards it, he gently parted the flowers in the stone planter and reached inside, plucking out a pastel green egg. He held it up with a smirk, his blue eyes sparkling in the mid-afternoon sun.

“Two already!” He said, dropping the egg in his basket, and grabbed the other one.

From there, your strategy steadily went downhill. He found three more eggs within a span of a minute and five after that. You looked down at the stopwatch and felt your stomach clench. Henry's hunt was six minutes in and he had found almost all his eggs, leaving him on course to beat you.

“There you are, little bugger.” Henry grinned, finding the turquoise egg in the drain spout. “What's the time, love?” He asked, dropping it into the basket with the rest.

“Fifteen minutes.” You informed him, sighing.

Henry's arms shot up into the air. “Yes, I win!” He grinned, wiggling his muscular body in a victory dance.

“No.” You shook your head at him.

“What?” He frowned at you. “You found your last egg in eighteen minutes and I just found mine at fifteen, baby.” He explained to you, his arms falling back to his sides. “I beat you by three minutes.”

“But you missed one, Bear.” You told him, calmly.

“Where?” Henry snapped, blinking at you.

“Right there.” You said, pointing to a gold egg resting peacefully in the grass, at the edge of the paving stones, near his grill.

Henry's eyes narrowed at you. “What is this, babe?” He asked slowly, cocking his head at you. “There wasn't one there, when I started my egg hunt.”

“I don't know what to tell you.” You remarked, biting the inside of your cheek, fighting the twitching of your lips. “Perhaps you need glasses, old man.” You teased, as he crossed over to the egg. “Why don't you open it?” You suggested, once he had it in his hand.

“You do know it's Easter and not April Fool's day, don't you, honey?” He asked, narrowing his eyes suspiciously at you.

“Oh, I do.” You nodded, finally allowing yourself to smile at him.

Henry looked at his still recording phone. “If this thing blows up, you know who to blame, guys.” He quipped, popping open the plastic egg and found a folded piece of paper inside. “What, are you proposing to me?” He chuckled, saying it for shock value.

That was until he finished unfolding the paper and concentrated on what it was.

You move to stand before Henry, smiling up at him, while his mouth gently fell open and his eyes grew. “Happy Easter, Henry.” You cooed at him, resting your hands on his hips.

“Is this-” He gulped thickly, looking between you and the paper. “Is this—real?”

“Mmhm.” You nodded, tearing up, seeing his blue eyes start to glisten and his breathing shutter as he became choked up, emotional. “I found out last week.” You explained to him, taking the sonogram from him. “So, I thought this would be the coolest way to tell you. To train you for future Easter egg hunts with the help of our four legged son.”

Henry caught you up in his arms and spun you around, his blue eyes blurred with tears of overwhelming happiness, while burying his face into your neck as he held you tight against his body. He sniffled into your neck and you hugged him tight, feeling content.

“Christ alive, I love you.” Henry cried, tears dripping down his bearded face, as he set you back down on your feet, then looked over at his phone, just then remembering it was recording. “We're pregnant!” He announced, beaming.

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nicoline1998enilocin · 8 months

Text

Expect the unexpected

PAIRING | Bucky Barnes x Avenger!Female!Reader

WORD COUNT | 2.7K

SUMMARY | At the start, you and Bucky were colleagues and good friends. This all changed drastically when you had a fun night together, and both got more out of it than you'd bargained for. Unsure of how Bucky would react, you keep it to yourself until you can't take it any longer.

WARNING(S) | This is your official trigger warning. Do not proceed if any of these topics upset you. Angst, smut [ unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it!), dirty talk, quickie ], unplanned pregnancy, talk about abortion (non-descriptive), a blood test (non-descriptive/no talk of needles).

A/N | I want to give the full credit for this fic and all its wonderful ideas to @jamesbuckybarnes1917 for coming up with this and proofreading it countless times! I couldn't have written this without your help, so thank you so much; I really appreciate your help with this one 🖤

Likes, comments and reblogs will be very much appreciated 💚

Divider is made by @firefly-graphics | 18+ only banner is made by yours truly

Main Masterlist | Bucky Barnes Masterlist

Tony is throwing a party in honor of the Avengers, and since you're part of the team, you're obligated to go. Even though you didn't want to go initially, you've changed your mind after a few drinks.

You've dealt with social anxiety for most of your life, so you have dreaded attending these parties since Tony announced they would happen. To temper your anxiety a bit, you asked Nat to help you get ready, and she brought vodka as a starter for the evening, starting to get you a little more loose before you even arrived.

Nat helped you into your dress and did your make-up before curling your hair and making an updo so it wouldn't take away from your gown.

''Wow, Nat! what have you done to me?! I almost don't recognize myself right now,'' you say, with a huge smile.

She rolls her eyes and mutters, ''maybe now Tin Man might make a move on you.''

''Come on, let's go to this party before you're too drunk to even walk through the doors,'' Nat says, and you can't help but laugh at her comment. You know she's right; you would never attend the party if you kept drinking.

Most of the Avengers arrived simultaneously, and you couldn't help but steal a couple of glances at Bucky, who looked dashing in his all-black suit and short hair.

When it's time to go in, you're accompanied by both super soldiers, Steve walking on your left and Bucky walking on your right. It makes you feel like a princess and eases your nerves even more than the vodka shots Nat gave you earlier.

After Tony's speech in honor of all Avengers, the party starts officially, and you start to mingle with the guests at the party, whilst subconsciously keeping an eye out for Bucky.

Your judgment has already been slightly lowered by the vodka shots, and the champagne on top is helping you to let loose a little more, so you're staring at the super soldier once you finally spot him, remaining professional at the same time since you're still at a work event.

You constantly talk to someone; whether or not you know them doesn't matter. After a while, you find yourself at the bar, and after two glasses of champagne, you crave something different, so you order a cocktail.

The fancy drink has really lowered your inhibitions, and you are on your way to order another when you spot your reflection in the mirror; you can't help but feel very good about how you look in your gown, which hugs every curve on your body to perfection.

You walk over to it, grabbing a full glass along the way, and admire yourself in one of the mirrors on the wall of the hotel's ballroom, eyeing yourself in your dark blue gown while you sip your cocktail.

Bucky has been watching you from the bar and has finally worked up the courage to approach you. As he walks over, your eyes meet in the mirror as he stands behind you, his metal hand finding it's home on your waist.

''Whatcha doing, Buttercup?'' he asks, and you can't help but smile at the nickname he gave you when you first started working as an Avenger.

''Checking out how hot I look in this dress,'' you say, keeping your gaze locked onto his steel blue eyes.

''I have to agree, you look pretty fucking hot in this dress.'' He stands there, drink in his hand and not so subtly looking you up and down.

You'd been an Avenger for nearly seven years and had felt a connection to Bucky from the moment you met. Lord knows you found him very attractive, too. You'd always been worried about acting on your dirty thoughts and wet dreams about the super soldier. You are good friends, and you don't want to ruin your working relationship with complications.

However, the alcohol combined with these circumstances has dramatically lowered your ability to think about consequences, and you find yourself upstairs with Bucky not long after.

You're on your hands and knees on the bed, your dress bunched at your waist. Bucky's pants and boxer shorts are around his knees as he sits behind you, pounding into you.

''Hmm, such a fucking slut for this cock huh? Couldn't wait to be stretched out by me, could you?'' he purrs.

All that comes out of your mouth are broken moans and whines at the feeling of Bucky stretching out your cunt.

''P-please, harder! Can take it, Sergeant,'' you finally slur out as Bucky grips tighter onto your hips, almost jackhammering into you relentlessly, constantly hitting your sweet spot deep inside.

He can feel you clenching around his cock, and before you know it your arms give out, and you cum on his throbbing member, slick dripping down your thighs as he rides out your orgasm, following with his close behind.

He pulls out when he is done riding out his climax. Bucky cleans both of you up before you return to the party, sneaking in a few cuddles before you re-enter society.

When the party is over, Bucky makes sure you arrive safely back at the Compound and even goes as far as to drop you off in front of your bedroom door. He may be old-fashioned in some ways, but he would not change it for the world, seeing how happy it makes you when he acts like a true gentleman.

''Thank you for everything tonight,'' you say, standing on your tiptoes to softly kiss Bucky's cheek before walking into your bedroom and getting ready for bed.

Both of you wake up in your own beds after an excellent night's sleep, and when you've stretched, you still feel a little sore from last night, but you don't mind.

Your day starts like any other, and you and Bucky fall into your old rhythm like nothing has happened, for which you're very thankful.

Something about the last few weeks felt different, but you couldn't exactly pinpoint what. You and Bucky have returned to normal after the night of the party, and some might say your bond got even stronger.

Your body isn't as cooperative as it once was, though. During missions, you've felt nauseous now and again, but you figured you just ate something bad the night before, and that's why your stomach has been giving you some issues.

But then there's something else: your breasts have been feeling more tender the past few days, and wearing specific bras even straight up hurts. You've chosen to stick to sports bras for now because they don't feel like they are setting your nipples on fire from the friction.

''God, I think I'm gonna need some new bras soon; the ones I have are definitely getting worse for wear,'' you tell Nat and Wanda one afternoon after adjusting the one you're wearing for the fifth time that day.

''Yeah, you're going to need to size up. Your bras look like they're shrinking in the washing machine or something,'' Wanda says, and even though she doesn't mean anything by that comment, you can't help but blush lightly at her comment.

Paired with your period being late, you decide to leave it for now, and you're probably just going through PMS. You did not know how wrong you would be about this, though.

It would appear the male agents have also caught onto the fact that your breasts are growing, some even going as far as staring at their size. You've never had a small chest by any means, but when your already tight shirts are starting to get uncomfortable, you are beginning to think about a particular possibility you're not sure you can face.

Tonight is your evening with the Avengers, meaning you all order take-out together and have a movie night right after. Most of them have decided on Indian food, which usually is one of your favorites.

When the food arrives, your stomach turns at the smell, and Nat notices you running away, but she decides to leave it for now, instead checking up on you later.

When all of your stomach's contents are finished flying into the toilet, there's only one thought swirling through your brain, aside from the fact that you're wondering how you're not empty yet.

When your stomach finally calms down, there is still one thought in your brain, especially since the realization dawned on you that your period is a little over three weeks late.

At the thought alone, your stomach turns around again, but at this point, you're just dry heaving above your toilet.

Tears start welling up in your eyes now that you've finally calmed down again, and you're trying to figure out the next steps without making it obvious what's happening. The first step? Getting a pregnancy test before jumping to conclusions that might not be correct.

That might sound easy, but being an Avenger has its downsides since everyone in your local area knows who you are. Asking someone else isn't an option since you don't want to tell anyone about your irresponsible actions; your anxiety is already getting the best of you.

When your mind jumps to Bucky, you realize you have to tell him what's going on since he's the only person who could've gotten you pregnant; you're not precisely fucking everything that moves around the Compound.

''No, I can't tell him yet,'' you whisper to yourself as you place your hand on your stomach. Even though they're still hypothetical, you would love them unconditionally and do anything for them without hesitation.

You finally got up from the bathroom floor. You go to your bed, sitting against the headboard to calm yourself down with your shirt raised above your stomach and your hands placed protectively again while you let yourself think about the possibility of raising a child.

When you hear a knock on the door, you quickly lower your shirt and pull your knees up before telling the person on the other end to come in.

''Hey, how're you feeling?'' Nat asks as she walks into the room and sits beside you on the bed. ''Could be better,'' you sigh as you make yourself even smaller.

''Are you pregnant?'' Nat asks straight out.

''How, why, HOW?!'' you stutter with wide eyes as you turn to Nat, and she can see all she needs to know as she looks at the tears starting to form in your eyes.

''Sweet cheeks, all the male agents have noticed your C's are bordering E's,'' she says as she motions at your breasts, and you know she's right. You've seen them stare, too, much to your discomfort.

''So, have you told Bucky yet?'' Nat asks, and your eyes fall shut at the idea of telling him, afraid of how he will react if you are pregnant.

''How do you know it's Bucky? For all you know, it could be anyone in all of New York,'' you try, but she laughs and shakes her head.

''Oh honey, please. You two only have eyes for each other,'' she says in an almost pitiful tone, and you feel your cheeks warm up after her comment.

''Have you figured out what you're going to do? Keep it, terminate the pregnancy?'' she asks, and you quickly shake your head. You've already decided that if you're, in fact, pregnant, you're going to raise it. Alone or with Bucky in their life is debatable, but you will not terminate a pregnancy.

''Well, should I not figure out if I'm pregnant before I even think about that stuff? Although I definitely won't terminate if I am pregnant, I can take care of the kid by myself,'' you sigh and place your hand on your belly again, rubbing softly.

''You know what we're going to do? We will sneak you into the lab, and I will draw your blood anonymously to confirm that you're pregnant,'' she offers, and you nod.

The next thing you know is that you are sneaking into the lab, trying not to be seen by anyone since it's after hours, and all the scientists and other people working there have gone home already.

''Alright, please sit still while I draw your blood, and wait until we have the results. It shouldn't take more than 10 minutes,'' she says, and you keep tapping your foot out of nervousness and anxiety.

As much as you hope the test will say you're not pregnant, a little voice inside you hopes you are. You've always dreamt of becoming a Mom, and this might be your chance to have that lifelong dream come true.

When the system checks your blood, Nat sits beside you and takes your hand, squeezing it softly to reassure you. Neither of you says anything until the results comes back, and she tells you the words you've wanted to hear.

''You're pregnant,'' she says, and a big smile appears on your face. Now, all that's left to do is tell Bucky and figure out where to go from here on out.

The moment you find out you are, in fact, pregnant is still fresh in your mind, even though that happened a few weeks ago now. You're thankful you can still wear your regular clothes (aside from bras that had to be sized up), but you're dreading the day you'll be showing in a few months, assuming everyone will treat you differently once they know.

And then there is the part where you still have to tell Bucky, which you've been constantly thinking about, trying to find the right moment to say to him, but it appears there isn't one.

These last few weeks, Nat has been picking up your missions whenever possible, and that's a true lifesaver because your morning sickness has been a real rollercoaster.

You're sitting on a fluffy couch in the library, your favorite place on your days off. Right now, you're alone with your thoughts, and even though you want to have Bucky involved in the life of your little peanut, you think it's important to give him the choice to be involved.

Neither of you is in a relationship - either with each other or other people - but you also know you can't expect him to drop everything and start a relationship so that you could be a picture-perfect family.

You're so deep into thought as you're looking out the window that you don't notice Bucky walking in and approaching you.

''Hey there, little bookworm! Penny for your thoughts?'' he says, and it snaps you back to reality.

''Hi, sorry. Yeah, uh, we're friends, right?'' you start, figuring it's now or never.

''Yeah, of course; what kind of question is that?'' Bucky asks, worried about the following words coming out of your mouth.

''It's just- I want to make sure we can talk about anything,'' you say, and your hands are starting to get sweaty, so you wipe them on your pants to distract yourself a little from your thoughts.

''What did you want to talk about, Buttercup?'' he asks, and he steps a little closer to ensure his full attention is on you.

''That night at Tony's party,'' you sigh and squeeze your eyes shut, not sure you can look at Bucky when you're going to confess that you're carrying his baby.

''Still thinking about that night, huh?'' Bucky smirks and expects you to smile back, but he frowns when he sees you look away from him, your face almost blank.

''Do you regret what happened...?'' he asks apprehensively, and your eyes snap up to his immediately.

''Oh, no! Bucky, I- it was special. It's just-,'' you start, a lump forming in your throat, and tears appear in your eyes. Damn hormones, you think.

''What's wrong, Buttercup? You know you can tell me anything, right?'' he reassures you.

''Bucky, I'm- I'm scared,'' you finally admit, and the tears that formed in your eyes are starting to roll down your cheeks, showing how you feel about the situation.

''Scared about what?'' Bucky still needs clarification about what you're trying to tell him.

''Bucky, when we- we didn't- I-,'' you say, sniffing loudly, trying to stop the tears from rolling down your cheeks as well.

Bucky grabs your hand and sits himself on the couch next to you. His being so close and comforting does calm you down, making you feel like nothing bad can happen when he holds you like this.

Despite the tears, a small smile forms on your face, and you finally confess what's been on your mind for two months.

''Bucky, that night when we... I'm pregnant.''

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes one shot #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes angst #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes smut

331 notes · View notes

princessmisery666 · 10 months

Note

Please don't leave. Jensen Ackles and reader

Please Don't Leave

Summary: Friends to lovers to friends, that can work, right?

Warnings/Genres/Troupes: angst, fluff, Jensen in his thicc Soldier Boy era (that’s a warning in itself!)

W/C: 4.3k

Characters: Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki. Small Parts/Mentioned: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Gen Padalecki.

Pairing: Jensen Ackles x reader (you - no descriptions of body type or ethnicity).

Notes: For the purpose of this fic, Jensen is not and never has been married.

A/N: This drabble got way out of hand.

Betas: @deanwinchesterswitch // any mistakes belong to me.

Graphics: Title card Jensen photo credit - https://twitter.com/_AlanaKing_ Soldier Boy image from Variety. Fly video belongs to me.

Master Lists: Dean Winchester // Main // Made Up Fic Titles

“Help me understand,” you implore.

The first domino to set off the chain reaction was in the form of a famous and beautiful actress, Mae Nova, sliding into Jensen’s DM’s—a very detailed offer with an accompanying photo that you saw by no fault of your own. How is irrelevant. Why is the issue. Why didn’t he delete it or immediately set her straight?

“You’re the one that wanted this, Jay,” you say when he remains silent. “You're the one who pursued me, convinced me we should try and turn the ten years of friendship into something more.”

“I know.” He sighs, pushing a hand through his longer hair. “And I don’t regret a second of the last six months we’ve been together…” he doesn’t say it; however, the ‘but’ demands attention like a flickering light.

“But you're having second thoughts?”

“No!” he denies vehemently, finally looking you in the eye. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“Well, one of us has to!”

He shakes his head, exhaling loudly. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, sounding like a broken record. His heart rate is running high, and his chest heaves with every breath, but his vocabulary appears to be running low.

You tsk, fighting back a scathing comment about needing a script writer to make him talk. But it wouldn’t be fair. He’s not a man who runs from his emotions. He’s just trying to make sense of it all like you are. You have to remind yourself he’s not Dean Winchester. He doesn’t look much like him anymore either; longer hair, beard growing almost wildly, no plaid in sight in the Soldier Boy wardrobe at the back of the fancy trailer.

Is that where the lines blurred? Working together for so long on Supernatural, have you both confused the other for your characters and their feelings toward the other?

“You can stop saying your sorry. I forgive you,” you say, and he turns a watery gaze your way. It almost breaks your resolve, but you realize it’s down to you to be the strong one. “I just need to understand why? Why didn’t you reply and tell her you're in a relationship? You’ve done it a hundred times before.”

“I don’t know.”

To make matters worse, Mae had landed a role on The Boys and would be working alongside Jensen.

“Jensen, you spent fifteen years of your life devoted to Supernatural, ten of those with me around. I think you were scared of the end, afraid of losing such a big part of yourself.”

“I was,” he agrees, in a whisper as if you speaking the words is the reason for his realization of it being the truth.

“Maybe us being together was a knee-jerk reaction?” you suggest, “a way to cling onto the past.” You take a deep breath, and your chest tightens as if begging yourself not to say the next part. “Maybe you need a clean break, see what the world looks like without Supernatural… without me.”

“What? No.” He looks offended but can’t hold eye contact and doesn’t offer anything further.

You can’t keep going around in circles, so you make a decision, sitting down at the small table and firing up your laptop.

“What’re you doing?” he asks, rushing to look over your shoulder, perhaps worried you’ll take it upon yourself to reply to the woman. “Searching for flights back home?” Jensen says, panic clear in his tone. Harshly he slams the laptop shut, and you look up at him. “You can’t leave.”

“Give me a reason to stay.”

“Me, us!” he yells, “we can work this out.”

You stand up and gently press your lips to his. Jensen’s hand automatically goes to the small of your back, guiding you around the chair to better press himself against you.

The kiss is natural and unhurried, but there’s too much tension in his body, and you know it’s because he feels it, too. This is your last kiss.

A little breathless, you pull back. “I don’t wanna fight, Jensen.”

“Me neither.”

“So let me be the bad guy,” you say, heart aching but trying to hold it together. “Let me walk away before the wound is too big to save our friendship.”

He grimaces as if tasting something bitter but nods once, “I’m sorry.”

It’s been a long day. All Jensen wanted to do was take a shower and crash, but Karl convinced him to go for dinner with the cast and crew.

The conversation is light, everyone enjoying their food and making small talk. It’s nice enough, but it’s incomplete because you're not there.

He wishes it was you beside him instead of Mae. The seating arrangements have no rhyme or reason. It just happened that way. But still, he almost resents that she’s the one next to him. So much has happened in the weeks since he last saw you. He wants to share it all with you, and wants to know how you are - if you’re struggling with his absence as much as he is with yours.

“Okay there, Ackles?” Jack asks, “You're a world away.”

“Yeah,” he lies, sitting up straighter and smiling. “Just thinking…”

Karl must know the look of a man missing his significant other because he asks, “About your girl?”

“Yeah,” Jensen admits, sighing heavily. He hasn't told anyone you broke up, and there’s been no speculation in the tabloids.

“Tell us about her. You never did tell us about your first date,” Jack says, “we all know you met on Supernatural, but not the story of your first date.”

Jack’s an awesome guy, sweet and kind, he doesn’t know the reminder is like a kick in the teeth, but Jensen obliges.

Jensen hurried across the lot, a coffee in each hand, the brown paper bag containing two cinnamon rolls dangling from his mouth. He was late, and Jared would give him shit for it, but it would be worth whatever Jared threw at him if it improved your morning.

Your latest Instagram post was a photo of a fly swimming in your coffee with the caption: “It was my last coffee pod. This just topped off a crappy weekend😭. #HappyMonday”. You were one hundred percent a coffee snob. You made it in a particular way using a fancy - and stupidly expensive - machine. You wouldn’t settle for the coffee on set. You’d rather go without. However, Jensen knew when you didn’t get her morning beverage, you’d be grumpy all day, and he hated to see you without a smile.

He headed for the makeup trailer, knowing that’s where you’d be. He kicked the bottom of the door gently as a way of knocking, then waited.

He didn’t expect Jared to be the one to open it. He wasn’t due in makeup for another half-hour, but his lanky frame filled the space of the open door. “Look who decided to show up,” Jared jeered playfully.

“Shut up,” Jensen mumbled around the bag, walking past him.

You were already there, looking through clothes on the rack, but stopped to smile at him. “Morning, Jay.”

“Here,” he said, handing over the coffee that was for you. “Hi, hey, morning.”

Confusion wrinkled your brow, but you took it. “Um, thanks.”

“I saw your Instagram, and I know how cranky you get without your coffee, and you said you had a shit weekend, so I wanted to try and make it better,” Jensen vomited words without thinking. “I don’t like seeing you upset, and you’ve been down a lot lately, and I just thought maybe this would help, some, a little, maybe.” Breathlessly he shrugged and prayed the floor would open up and swallow him.

Your smile beamed, and you lifted the cup to your nose, inhaling the aroma, and hummed contentedly, “Mmm. You even got my order right,” you said and stepped closer to him to place a kiss on his cheek.

“That’s cause you're always posting about it on social media,” quipped Jared.

You tutted, rolling your eyes at your co-star but kept your eyes locked on Jensen. Dropping back down from your tiptoes, you said, “Thank you for this. It means a lot that you thought of me.”

“It’s nothing,” he lied. It was everything, and as your kiss dried on his cheek, it reminded him of your evening plans. “I know you’ve got a long day ahead, especially with your date later.”

As part of a charity event, you had agreed that they auction off a date with you. The auction had been silent, so you had no idea who had hired you for the night. Though the studio had assured you they had vetted the winner, you’d asked that he and Jared be in the bar next door in case of emergency.

“Oh god,” you groaned, “don’t remind me. I wish I never agreed to that stupid silent auction.”

“Ah, don’t be such a downer,” Jared said, winking. “You never know. He might be the man of your dreams.”

Oh god, I hope not. Jensen thought. He’d already had to watch you be in a relationship with Chad, a man who neither deserved you nor treated you well. He couldn’t bear to watch you be with someone else again. He wanted to be next in line, and he would treat you as you should be, like a Queen. He just needed to work up the courage to tell you.

“I doubt it,” you sighed, and Jensen swore your eyes flicked to him and away again. “Besides, who said it’s a man who hired me?”

“C’mon, you two,” Zara, the makeup artist, said, waving them toward the door, “out! I’ve got to get this one ready.”

Amongst a chorus of goodbyes, Jared and Jensen left. “What is it with you when you’re around her?” Jared asked as soon as the trailer door was closed. “You’re a bumbling idiot, and she’s starting to notice.”

“What?”

“Yeah, she asked me what’s wrong with you. Thinks she’s done something wrong ‘cause you either avoid her or barely speak to her.”

“I know, man,” Jensen groaned, scrubbing a hand down his face. “Ever since you put it out there that we could be more than friends, I can't stop thinking about it. I don’t want to blurt it out at the wrong time, so I try to be careful about what I say, but I just end up tripping over myself.”

Jared clapped him on the back, “You just need to fake some of that Dean Winchester confidence.”

“Maybe.”

“You better find a way to be around her ‘cause you’ve got a date with her tonight.”

“What?”

“The silent auction,” Jared explained, “I paid for the date with her for you.”

“Jared, what? No!”

“I think Gen will have an issue if I show up for a date with her, and are you really going to leave her sitting on her own?”

“No, but Jared, I can’t,” Jensen panicked, “I’m going to make a fool of myself.”

“You’re an actor. Just act normal.” Jared suggested before walking off.

Seeing you through the restaurant window, Jensen wanted to hug Jared so tight to thank him he’d crack a rib. But he also wanted to punch him so damn hard in the arm it’d be limp for a week. Why had he agreed to this? Okay, he hadn’t agreed. He’d totally freaked out, drank two beers, took three shots of whiskey, and then forced himself into the waiting car.

He was going to mess this up. He knew it. He was a fumbling, mumbling idiot around you, and dread settled firmly in his gut as he watched you scanning the menu. He regretted the whiskey and allowing Jared to talk him into this.

He swore he was having an out-of-body experience as his feet took him closer to you. You glanced up when he got to the side of the table, and your face glowed with a smile. “Come to check in on me?” you asked, rising and pulling him into a hug.

He held you a little tighter than he usually would, savoring the moment before releasing you and taking a seat. “Not exactly checking up on you,” he said, “this wasn’t my idea, but Jared brought you for me.”

“What?”

“The silent auction, Jared was the highest bidder.”

Confusion took over your features. “Why would he do that? I mean not that I’m not grateful, I’d much rather be here with you, but I don’t understand.”

He realized it was now or never. “‘Cause he knows how I feel about you,” he admits, holding his breath for a reaction.

“Care to elaborate?” you ask after a long silence.

“The truth is, I like you... a lot.”

“I like you too.”

“No,” he shook his head, “you don’t get it. I cherish our friendship and don’t want to lose it, but it's more than that. My feelings for you go beyond friendship, and I want to see if we could be more.”

“I was so nervous,” Jensen chuckles. “I felt like I was auditioning for the rest of my life.” he contemplates it for a moment, “maybe I was.”

“Well then, it’s good she reciprocated,” Karl laughs.

“It took her a minute,” Jensen remembers, “but yeah, she came around.”

Your phone rings as you slot the key into your door’s lock. You’re juggling coffee, a pile of scripts to read, dry cleaning, and a bag of groceries. You have no hope of answering without dropping everything, so leave it to ring. You assume it’s Jared checking in on you after seeing the photos on TMZ. Jensen and Mae were pictured at a restaurant in Ontario.

The phone stops as you enter the kitchen and set everything down on the countertop.

Gen had already checked in to make sure you were okay, and you’d been anticipating a call from Jared to yet again invite you out to the set of Walker to meet one of the crew he was insistent you’d “hit it off with.” You’d politely declined, having already been on a date that had been pleasant and ended with a goodnight kiss, but you’d told the Padalecki’s it had left you feeling guilty as if you were cheating on Jensen. You needed time to let that feeling pass and allow the wound to heal completely.

You set about emptying the bags of groceries, and your phone rings again. You shuffle the contents of your bag, looking for the device, sure that it will cut off to voicemail before you find it.

“Hello,” you answer, pressing it to your ear.

“Hey.”

Jensen’s voice freezes you to the floor, and you hold your breath. It’s been more than a month since you left him in his trailer, and you’ve only exchanged a few text messages. Why is he calling now? Does he want to be the one to confirm that he and Mae are together?

He says your name when your silence stretches.

“Um, yeah. Hey, hi,” you say, clearing your throat to rid yourself of the shock.

“You sound out of breath,” he notes, “is this a bad time?”

“No, no, I just wasn’t expecting it to be you,” you explain, “caught me off guard.”

“Who were you expecting?” he asks, sounding accusatory.

“Jared,” you sneer, unable to stop the ire you feel.

“Sorry,” he says, and the apology tightens your jaw with the frustration it evokes. “I should have called sooner.”

“I haven’t called you either.”

No one is to blame for the lack of communication. You both needed some space, so you were both right not to call.

Neither of you speaks for a moment, and you debate whether to tell him you're busy so you can end the call and be done with the awkwardness. But he obviously put his awkwardness aside to call, so you might as well rip the stitches out and reopen the wound if that's what this is about.

“Why are you calling now?”

“I need you to know that me and Mae aren’t together,” he says, firm and direct.

You try to interrupt, “Jensen, it’s fine.” but he determinedly continues.

“The picture they posted was cropped,” he explains. “The whole cast and some of the crew were there. The photo made it look like it was just the two of us, and that’s not the truth.”

“Even if it was, it’s okay.” It’s not okay, and from the moment you saw it, you’ve felt nauseous. Still, you assure him, “You’re free to do what you want. You don’t owe me an explanation.”

He sighs, and you can hear the scowl in his tone, “It’s important to me that you know.”

You think it’s sweet that he’s taking the time to explain himself, even if it’s not what you expected. But Mae was never the problem. The situation she presented only shone a light into the crack that you had both been ignoring. Yet the information that Jensen has shared is a welcomed relief in the wake of the storm, but it’s just the eye. More questions are coming, questions that will likely only cause more hurt and confusion.

“Why?” you ask, “why do you want me to know?”

“Because I wanted it to be you next to me…” he pauses.

You're not sure if he wants you to say something or read between the lines, but you can’t let yourself trust the spark of hope that jabs your heart like a pinprick.

“Even if we’re just friends,” he adds.

That pinprick pierces the thin shell you’d managed to build, and it feels like a thousand jagged pieces of glass lacerate your heart, and you chew your top lip to stop the emotion from escaping in a sob.

There’s a loud bang on his end of the line, and someone calls out, “We’re ready on set, Mr. Ackles.”

“I gotta go,” he says.

“Okay,” you say, and immaturely add, “Bye, buddy,” before hanging up.

The party has been a monumental success. You helped Gen, along with a professional party planner, to pull it off.

“So you really had no idea?” You ask Jared once everyone seems to have greeted him and wished him a very happy fortieth birthday. Technically it's not his birthday for another four hours, but the surprise party had needed that early element to make sure it went off without a hitch.

“None,” Jared says, smiling. “I was fully prepared to fly home tomorrow to spend my birthday with Gen and the kids. I was looking forward to it, actually. I didn’t want a big fuss,” he chuckles, looking around the room, “but I’m glad you helped Gen make a fuss. It’s nice to see all the old faces.”

“Not all of them,” you note sourly, commenting on Jensen’s absence. “He wanted to be here, but you know how tight filming schedules can be.”

“I know,” he nods with a tight, sad smile. “It would have been good to see him. For me, at least.”

“Don’t.”

“It’s my birthday. I’m allowed,” he teases.

“It would have been nice to see him,” you agree before Jared can start in on the lecture. “I think. I don’t know. It’s weird and painful, and maybe I'm better off not seeing him until it’s not weird and painful.”

He laughs, pulling you into a hug. “Sounds like you have it all under control.”

“Absolutely.”

You mingle with old friends from Supernatural and new friends from the Walker set. The crew member, a camera operator named Vince, is as cute as Jared promised him to be, and you find yourself tucked in a corner talking with him as the night continues.

You hear the cheerful reunion before you see it. People applaud and shout greetings as Jensen crosses the room and embraces Jared in a tight hug. They hug for a long time, whispered words exchanged between brothers, and you see Jared’s eyes tear up. His night is complete now that Jensen is here.

A few people greet Jensen with hugs and shakes of his hand, but his eyes never seem to focus on them. He distractedly looks around them and seems disappointed when he sees the next person waiting to greet him.

You mostly manage to keep your focus on Vince, but you can see Jensen in your peripheral. You don’t react, but you notice when he finds you. He stares for a long moment, maybe hoping you’ll feel his eyes on you and look at him, but you don’t, and he doesn’t approach.

You're doing nothing wrong, but an uneasiness sneaks up on you. It’s not that you feel like you're somehow betraying Jensen. It’s that you're betraying yourself by denying how you feel. It wouldn’t be fair to start anything with anyone new right now. They’d be a rebound.

Vince seems to notice your focus has shifted and politely parts ways with you.

You spy Jensen across the room, catching up with Brianna, and head for the bar, needing something more potent than wine to make it through the rest of the night.

If possible, Jensen seems to have grown broader, arm muscles bulky beneath the material of his shirt, and you're definitely a fan of the Soldier Boy look. He looks good with a now-trimmed beard and long hair. The sight sends an ache of loneliness through your chest, remembering how it felt to be wrapped in those arms.

A shot turns into two, and when the bartender steps away to refill your wine glass, you feel the air next to you shift. You don’t have to turn to see who it is, the cologne gives him away, and as it arrests your senses, he nudges his shoulder into yours. The familiar heat of his body makes your chest tighten. You so desperately want to turn and embrace him, but you know your fragile emotions would crumble under the weight.

“Whiskey, neat,” he tells the bartender, his voice deep and gruff. He turns his body towards you, one arm resting on the bar, and you sip your drink, silently wishing it was hard liquor again instead of wine.

“Hey,” he says when you don’t look at him.

“Hi,” you respond blandly.

“How are you? You look good.”

“So do you. Really. You look incredible,” you say, without actually looking him in the eyes.

“I hate having to do the diet and exercise thing, though,” he chuckles, “it was so much easier when all I had to do was wear flannel.”

You laugh, but it's bittersweet because everything was easier when he was wearing flannel. “How’s it all going? Stepping into the shoes of a new character?”

“Daunting, but fun.” Jensen talks, and you do all you can to listen and engage but can’t bring yourself to fully meet his eyes.

He says your name so delicately it feels like a caress that sends a shiver through you. You close your eyes and know what he’s asking before he pleads, “Please look at me.”

His eyes have always been mesmerizing, and you know if you gaze into them, the spell will be cast, and there will be no escaping him, even when he’s miles away again. He waits for a beat, but your eyes remain firmly shut, and he closes the space between you, demanding attention.

His exhale wafts through your hair. It’s too close because it's not close enough, and you feel the heartache rising in your chest.

“It was good to see you, Jensen,” you flash a smile in his general direction, picking up your glass.

“Wait,” he says, grabbing your wrist as you turn your back to him. “Don’t leave.”

You freeze in place and turn to look at his hand cuffing your wrist. Slowly you raise your gaze from his hold to his face, preparing yourself for the enchantment of his eyes, but his sad expression is downcast. His chest heaves with a deep breath before he finally looks at you, despondence turning to tentative hope.

“I know I should have said it back then, but I’m saying it now.” His voice is nearly a whisper beneath the muted conversation and ambient music, but it’s clear as a bell to your ears. “Please, don’t leave.”

You turn back to face him, and he takes two deep breaths before he finds the words.

“The last couple of months, I’ve been miserable without you.” He admits, “I’ve had to fight myself to eat, to work out, to do anything that didn’t involve staying in my trailer with a bottle of whiskey. I know that things are weird, but I realized my hesitance had nothing to do with the ending of Supernatural. Yes, I was scared. But I was scared of how easy it was with you, how much I cared for you, how quickly I realized that I am head over heels in love with you.”

You choke out his name as tears well in your eyes, and he steps forward to swipe the first droplet from your cheek.

“I was ready to tell you I’m in love with you, and you were booking flights home,” the heartache of the reminder dims the light behind his eyes, and he drops his gaze to battle whatever emotion he’s feeling. “That scared me more than anything. I didn’t want to say it in the heat of the moment or on the phone, and I was terrified you didn’t feel the same. It doesn’t matter if you don’t. I need you to know that I love you.”

You don’t have words, unexpectedly wishing you had a script so you don’t say something stupid. Then, just as surprisingly, you realize you don’t need words. You take a half step forward and kiss him. Jensen responds immediately, a hand caressing your cheek and drawing you closer as the other slips around your waist to tug you flush against him.

You tangle your fingers in his hair, and he groans into your mouth. His kiss gets you drunker than any alcohol ever could, and after a moment that could have been a minute or an hour, you feel lightheaded.

Jensen chases you as you pull back, placing swift kisses on your lips and pressing his head against yours.

“Damn, I’ve missed you,” you sigh.

“Well, don’t get used to it,” he says, “I’m never letting you leave me again.”

Tag List Info

Tagging Dean Winchester and Supernatural List. Sorry if you don't like RPF.

@alexxavicry / @b3autyfuldisast3r-blog / @deandreamernp / @deanwinchesterswitch / @fandom-princess-forevermore / @foxyjwls007 / @jc-winchester / @justagirlinafandomworld / @katbratsupernaturalwhore / @leigh70 / @letsbys-library / @lyarr24 / @mrswhozeewhatsis / @nancymcl / @shanimallina87 / @stoneyggirl2 / @waywardbaby / @wildbornsiren / @writercole / @dean-winchester-is-a-warrior / @deans-spinster-witchs-favorites

Master Lists: Dean Winchester // Main

#Jensen Ackles #Solider Boy #RPF #RPF FanFic #RPF fanfiction #Jensen Ackles fic #Jensen Ackles RPF fanfic #fluff #angst #dean winchester #spn #supernatural #Jensen Ackles x Reader #Jensen Ackles x You

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wuntrum · 6 months

Note

do you have any tips for an artist who wants to start making one off comics? i really enjoy your artistic direction and style of story telling so i’m very interested in your thoughts on it

yes, definitely!!

-read lots of comics! and a variety of them, too--both ones in the sort of genre/style you'd like to make, but also ones in completely different genres, lengths, places of origin, traditionally/indie/digitally published, simple to experimental formatting, etc

-in relation to the last one, if a comic you read really speaks to you, take some time to study some page layouts from that comic! how do the panels vary from page to page? how much space is the text taking up? what sort of "shots" (to borrow from cinematic language lol) are they using? these shouldn't be fancy, just little thumbnails, but i find it really helps. here's a few i did from a guest in the house by emily carroll

-start smalllll. its really important to build up your stamina, just like with any new sort of skill. if you wanna make a graphic novel thats 200+ pages long, you should make some comics that are 1, 20, 50 pages long and see them through to the end before taking on a super big project.

-this is related to the last point, but i think keeping your cast of characters small at first can also help build up your comic stamina. signals was the first longer comic i made, so i specifically really wanted to focus on just jeanne (and occasionally her parents and peers when they showed up)

-character sheets are helpful, but i also think the easiest way to start getting your characters drawn consistently is through actually drawing the comic! there's also gonna be panels where they look "off" or whatever, and its literally fine, i promise

-through the smaller comics, experiment with how you go about writing your story! theres no right or wrong way to write/plan out a story so, it takes some trial and error to figure out what will work best with your work flow. for me, i've found success in making a timeline of events for the story -> loosely guessing how many pages i'll need/want per section of the story -> freewriting (trying not to edit too much, just dumping all the words out) -> thumbnailing/loose sketching/editing text (all sort of happens in the same step; i find i need the layouts in front of me to understand what i need/don't need from the text i wrote) -> tight sketching -> final . but, if that flow doesn't work for you, try something else! i know a lot of comics people find success in writing a script first, with indications of page and panel-by-panel breakdowns

-take shortcuts often and without guilt. its a lot of work to make a comic! theres just a lot of drawings involved, that most people aren't gonna look at for very long! i especially recommend for infrequent/difficult things, like buildings or crowds or cars or bookcases, using some sort of 3d asset/brush to make your life easier. if you can reuse a drawing and change the crop/expression, do it!

-use some sort of tracker to track your progress on how many pages you've sketched/inked/finished. even if you don't have an external deadline, i think it's still good to give yourself some sort of timeline to work on (i recommend setting "ideal" goals and "realistic" goals, especially if you're working/still in school/etc). for signals, i used google sheets, because you can set up columns to be attached to little circle charts, so as you check off your progress, you can really easily see how much you've done/how much you have left to do (as i type this i highkey forget how i did that before, with signals, so...you might need to do some sheets experimentation to actually do this lol. but there's probably other trackers you can use too)

-understanding comics and making comics by scott mccloud are both great books, highly recommend them (easy to get second hand/from your library/🏴‍☠️)

-lastly, haveee funnnnn

#asks #art ref #and ty for the kind words i appreciate it <3

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acupofqueercoffee · 1 year

Text

“A healer, a lover, a killer”

Unohana Retsu x Female Reader

wc : 6700+

cw : arranged marriage // sexual assault towards the very end // ***non-con is NOT between reader and retsu*** // blood and gore // graphic description of corpses // hurt-comfort // fluff and fluff and fluff and fluff // flirting // wives // minazuki is a gentle-giant 🥺 // murderous milf // older woman x younger woman

ffs i just want to spoil my mommy rotten (and be spoiled rotten) is it too much to ask for ಥ◡ಥ i’m desperate to do her justice but bruhh she sure is difficult to write 🥲

▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃

Marriage, in essence, is a sacred binding of two people, or rather two lovers during which they vow as one to cherish the beauties, to endure the burdens of life.

There may have been a time when you have fancied such foolish fantasies, entertained little hope of finding a love so profound that it will bleed colours into your lonely, miserable life.

Alas, fate does not favour you. But of course, it never does. Likely will never do.

You were born earning the resentment of your father, for his beloved wife perished as you came to be. She was the apple of his eyes, the one possession that he dearly cherished, and swore to cherish in perpetuity. With fingers entwined and two hearts as one, they had endured the burdens of life in tandem, and just when it was beginning to thrive, a promising future stretched out ahead of them like a perpetual sunrise, a curse befell them in the form of you, oh evil, despicable you.

Bearing the brunt of the mother’s death is the child as your father treats you with much hostility. Within him resides not a dot of affection for you, and he makes a point of rubbing salt into your wounds, reminding you in every possible way that you are a murderer, an abomination, a hellspawn on a sacred land. Your life is no better than a slave’s, easier perhaps without the need to exert yourself, but certainly not kinder without anyone to converse with, much less to confide in. Even a slave has companions whereas you who is abhorred and forsaken by your own flesh and blood, have no one in this world but yourself.

Thus, in your father’s resentful hands, the flickering light in your heart eventually, completely dies.

When you have finally come to terms with your life as it is, marriage comes to you in the form of a cruel joke.

If you have been none the wiser, you may have believed it to be a chance at a better life, a crack of sunshine through a sky full of gloom. And for a while, you have. Naive enough to hope. Foolish enough to dream. All it takes is a flick of your father’s merciless tongue, and the fool’s paradise, in which you have been taking sanctuary, comes tumbling down.

“You do not deserve to feel happiness as ephemeral as it will be. So, listen to me. And listen carefully. The Gotei 13 wanted me to hand you in saying that while you may not presently look the part, you are a menace to soul society. You should have never been born to begin with. Instead of her, it should have been you.”

“Despite everything, in the end, I very generously agreed to relinquish you under only one condition. That you will be wedded to one of the captains. Such an outstanding opportunity is hard to come by and apparently, they were desperate enough to get their hands on you whatever the cost. I requested that the wedding be held to the nines for the sake of publicity. People need to witness it with their own eyes in order for them not to talk foul of my family.”

“I can’t have the whole boat going putrid because of a single carp, can I? So, enjoy it while it lasts, dear daughter because I can’t promise that you’ll come out unscathed once they’re done with you.”

════════ ∘◦ ✾ ◦∘ ════════

Your soon-to-be other half is a stranger. You know about her as much as you know about the outside world: in other words, next to nothing. Except that her eyes are reminiscent of azurites, and her hair, a moonless night, the woman with whom you will be spending the rest of your life is merely a stranger to you. But then again, with their motives kept under wraps, you will be lucky to survive through the night.

Fleeing is out of the question for you understand the extent of your capabilities, and to flee right now will be tantamount to dicing with death. Despite your father’s despicable attempts to trap you in despair, you decide that playing docile is quite possibly your best bet. Come rain or shine, you will survive. You have not endured the torments of your wicked father after all this time simply to be trampled like a weed. What an insult it will be to your painstaking efforts.

So, when you are asked if you will take the stranger before you as your lifelong partner, without hesitation, you say, “I do”. Legions of people bear witness to your false union as your wife echoes your words; her dulcet voice, like the first trickle of rain, slakes your drought.

“Won’t you seal the deal with a kiss, Captain Unohana?”

Amongst the circle of people who are uniformly dressed in white overcoats, the one whose voice has sounded mischievous has been a man with a straw hat and an additional pink garb.

Unohana. Unohana. Unohana.

A pretty name indeed, as befits a pretty woman.

The first half of his statement is entirely lost on you as you repeat the name in your mind over and over and over again. It is the delicate crawl of fingers on your face that rectifies your lapse of concentration. First thing you notice, once you have blinked the haze away, is her violet gaze that is caressing your features and her face that has unexpectedly appeared under your nose, leaving little to no space to the point that your breaths mingle.

The warmness of her breath that ghosts along the apple of your cheek smells faintly of wild flowers and herbs; then comes the silky press of her lips atop the corner of your mouth. Given the circumstances, the kiss is not entirely unpleasant. If nothing else, it is kind, and although you loathe to admit it, your heart sings under her touch.

You fail to mention before that she has rose buds for lips, and now, upon departure, they bestow upon you a beautiful pink blossom smile. It is serene, strangely soothing, and you feel at peace with the woman who is your wife, all kind eyes and saccharine smiles, but whose full name you have yet to learn.

As inclined as you feel to assume that the kiss has somehow irreversibly put you under her spell, the more logical part of you know that neither your mind nor body is tampered with; your admiration for her beauty is born purely of your unadulterated self. Since the dawn of your life, it is ironically in the hands of a stranger whose intentions with you are still unclear that you experience tenderness for the very first time. Some semblance of affection has visited you in the form of a palm cradling your cheek and lips caressing your skin, and although you know it to be nothing more than a performance, it is undeniably the closest that you have ever felt to being loved.

Her gesture has understandably moved you in the warmest of ways, and it is only given that, as she continues to drench you in gentleness and swaddle you in kindness, you will grow to forget the true nature of your marriage.

════════ ∘◦ ✾ ◦∘ ════════

“Follow me.”

Such has been your wife’s first words to you, a command that leaves no room for rejection, as she comes to meet you in her, or rather your shared quarters. In her absence, unsure of what to do with yourself, you have been sitting on your heels by the side of a tea table, anxiously awaiting her arrival, but immediately on her command, you arise to your feet. And then, follow her you do as she leads you outside.

In the middle of the veranda, a wooden tray lies in wait, holding on it a ceramic pot and two ceramic cups. The side of the veranda, towards which the pair of you are heading, lacks the railing, and it overlooks the other buildings in Seireitei. When she goes to take a seat beside the tray, you silently watch her. Only upon being motioned to do the same do you mirror your wife. The night is tranquil and the sky, brimming with tiny twinkles. The flickering lights from the buildings below and the glittering celestial bodies above; together, they give you the illusion that you are being swallowed into an infinite pool of stars.

In the quietness of the night, she speaks with a gentle lilt that is carried to you by a zephyr.

“You have questions for me, I take it?”

Simply sitting still in leisurely contemplation of the stars, she oozes charisma, and you cannot help but admire her. Due to the moon bathing her in its silver glow, her long hair that is tied loosely around the small of her back shines with an otherworldly sheen. She is the juxtaposition of darks and lights as the charcoal of her strands that elegantly frame her angelic face accentuates the milkiness of her skin.

“Am I that dangerous of a person for you to willingly go through with this folly?”

It is more or less a slip of your tongue. There are many questions to which you seek answers, and at the first chance, without really thinking, you end up blurting out the one thing that is on the forefront of your mind.

When her eyes seek your face and your eyes subsequently are greeted by her face, to your surprise, a smile crawls onto her lips.

“My, what gives you the impression that this marriage is a sham?”

“I was told by my father that I was to be surrendered to Seireitei, and that all he had asked in exchange was for a captain to wed me very publicly, because he hated the idea of his family name being tarnished by the likes of me.”

“The likes of you?”

Tea is poured equally into two cups; one finds itself in your hand whereas the other is taken into elegant fingers. The warmth of the liquid as you take a delicate sip thaws the chill in your bones. By the time your voice makes an escape from your lips, it is accompanied by the billowing steam from your cup.

“A menace to soul society.”

“Hmm, is that what he said?”

Your response has been a nod, and she receives it with a hum.

“I see.”

Cradling the cup in your palms, you twiddle your thumbs over the rim, lips caught between your teeth.

“Is it true?”

“Partially, that is.”

At her words, confusion reigns. However intrigued you are, you wait patiently, poising for elaboration as she takes a languid sip of her tea.

Once again, she holds your stare before she speaks. The tilt of her lips that settles back into a line indicates solemnity.

“What I’m about to tell you is highly confidential, but since it concerns you, we’ve come to a collective agreement that it wouldn’t hurt to inform you of it. That, and we necessitate your cooperation.”

“You are not inherently a peril, although if fallen into wrong hands, you will inadvertently prove hazardous to Soul Society. You have innate powers that, while you may not be able to use them, make you a catalyst of sorts. It is not Reiryoku as Shinigami possess which therefore makes you a peculiarly. Even amongst the Gotei 13, only four of us is made aware of this phenomenon, meaning that your father, too, was kept in the dark. We thought it best to take you under our wings before any of the risks become a reality.”

“Simply put, after thorough investigation of your father, we exploited his hatred for you so that you will be relinquished to us without him making a fuss. Additionally, in order not to arouse suspicion, we’ve made a false announcement to our fellow captains and subordinates. They know you to be my longtime lady-love whom I’ve decided to tie the knots with. A flourishing merchant such as your father would surely lust for publicity. He was only playing right into our hands by stating his one condition.”

Even though the bombardment of information is too much to process, now, you know with certainty that you are not necessarily rotten to the core, and that your stranger wife alongside her companions harbour no ill will towards you.

As she takes another dainty sip of the tea in her cup, you silently mirror her, mesmerised all the while by the grace and elegance with which she carries herself.

“Although an apology is in order for my sudden behaviour at the altar, as I’ve explained to you, displays of affection and physical touch are mandatory for the believability of our story. This marriage isn’t merely for show in that we have to talk and act as married couples do. Do try to put up with it.”

Talk and act as married couples do?

The implication alone has your cheeks ripening into cherries, the redness of which is only amplified by the unexpected words that go tumbling down your lips.

“I didn’t particularly mind the kiss, so an apology isn’t necessary.”

“Is that so?” The delicateness of her voice has a playful lilt to it, and it pleasantly tickles your ears. “Then, my dear wife, I’ll be counting on you from now on.”

“I- I’ll do my best.”

“My, my, aren’t you a good girl.” She wears a smile on her face that drips delight while you are painted red to the tips of your ears.

Good Girl.

Those two little words alone has single-handedly put you in a trance that the rest of the night passes in a blur. As far as you remember, the pair of you sip tea in silence until when she suggests retiring for the night, like a lost puppy, you follow her. Her quarters become your quarters and her futon, your futon because, as far as a married couple is concerned, living separately is out of the question.

Suffice to say, on the night of your wedding, you lie awake in bed, unaccustomed to the warmth of another body just inches away from yours. Amidst counting the tiles on the ceiling, you peek a look at your partner to find her at rest. Even asleep, she truly is a sight to behold. However, unbeknownst to you, she shares the same sentiment, and it is proven soon by the voice that calls out to you in the death of night.

“I’m surprised that you took me at my words without the faintest hint of scepticism.”

“Call it a gut feeling if you will but you seem to mean me no harm. Besides, I have nothing to lose by taking a chance.”

On the night of your wedding, you wear a smile to sleep.

Maybe,

Just maybe,

your chance at a better life, after all, is not entirely an impossibility.

════════ ∘◦ ✾ ◦∘ ════════

Unohana Retsu.

The name of your wife which you have forgotten to ask her directly has been revealed to you by her Lieutenant in the name of Isane Kotetsu.

Captain Unohana, as her subordinates address her as, is surprisingly a natural at playing lovers.

Likewise, touch-starved and thirsty for endearment, aside from shyness that stems from inexperience and her offhand compliments, you take on the role of a love-struck wife with much ease.

“My, my, darling, is that a proper way to see your wife off? How cold.”

She does a convincing job of sounding crestfallen as you walk her out of her estate, sending her off to work with only a wave of your hand.

Upon hearing her sigh, you walk up to her, letting your palms glide over the chest of your finely-dressed Captain. A kiss is demanded of you, and so, in the presence of her Lieutenant and a few other subordinates, you drop your lips to the apple of her cheek, murmuring your utterances into her fragrant skin.

“Do your best, Hana. I’ll be awaiting your return.”

Genuine surprise can be found in the widening of her eyes, albeit lasting only for a fraction of a second. And then, her lips are curving skyward, settling into a saccharine smile.

If the kiss that finds you on the tip of your nose, like the gentle flap of a butterfly’s wings, is not enough to sweep you off your feet, then the pad of the thumb that caresses the bone of your cheek certainly is. Ample, in fact.

“See you later, little flower.”

════════ ∘◦ ✾ ◦∘ ════════

Your wife has an unusual way of styling her beautiful long hair.

She tends to wear it in a thick braid, but instead of letting it dangle behind her back, she lets it hang below her chin almost in the form of a necklace. You will go as far as to say that it is one of her idiosyncratic features, for without it, her attire for work is incomplete. On idler days when she remains at the estate, her hair can be seen tied loosely at the small of her back.

When you have noticed how difficult it is to care for a hair of such thickness and length, you have expressed your desire to do it for her. To your delight, she has let you, and so, here you are, gingerly applying essential oil to a mane of dark hair as you comb it with great reverence.

You admire the way she sits, spine always straight, perfectly poised. The same goes for the voice that softly caresses your ears, warm and tender.

“How was your day?”

“Infinitely better than what I was used to,…” For an answer, it should suffice. And yet, “…but I’ve missed you, Hana.”

It may just be one of your flaws; you never know when to keep your mouth shut. Thankfully, she receives your divulgence with a sweet smile.

“My, you’re quite the charmer.”

Cheeks painted pink and heart thrumming giddily, you continue combing her hair. Surely, she is graced by the gods themselves; lush and healthy, her charcoal mane slips through your fingers like expensive silk.

“You called me Hana.”

“Oh! I- I did, yes. Since we’re supposed to be long time lovers, I thought it was only fitting for me to call you by a unique name. If you don’t find it agreeable, I’ll refrain from-”

“None of that. I’ve never been called a pet name, is all. It’s refreshing.”

Then, after a beat of silence, she chuckles. Until now, you have only seen her smile, having never heard her laugh or chuckle for that matter. It is the most wonderful sound, rich, warm, and the culprit behind your breath that has suddenly been stolen.

“Yachiru would like you.”

You do not know whether to rejoice or lament that such a precious sound stems from the thought of someone else. In the end, you settle on savouring it all the same.

Yachiru, whom you have the pleasure of meeting during your visit to your wife’s Ikebana Club, is quite the boisterous little lass. You feel silly and selfish in equal parts; silly for going green because of a child and selfish because you want to be the sole reason behind all the lovely sounds that she makes. On the other hand, as your wife has expected, the pink-haired girl takes an instant liking to you, sticking like glue to your side. Meanwhile, instead of paying attention to the real task at hand of arranging flowers, you end up being entranced by your wife’s gentle cadence and her distractingly gorgeous face.

When the name which you have uniquely chosen for your wife leaves your lips, Yachiru mimics you.

What you have not been expecting is for your wife to intervene.

“If you could refrain from calling me by that name Yachiru, I would appreciate it. I don’t mind you giving me a new nickname but this one is reserved for my wife. She alone calls me Hana, and I would like for it to remain that way.”

“My, Captain Unohana is very romantic!”

If you are not mistaken, the dreamy sigh comes from Matsumoto, the Lieutenant of the 10th division.

“I understand, Captain HaHa. Can I call you Captain HaHa?”

“By all means. As long as it isn’t Hana, I don’t mind.”

════════ ∘◦ ✾ ◦∘ ════════

More often than not, your wife’s placating smile is the testament to her benevolence as a healer, but there are times when she wields them as a weapon.

Having cultivated the habit of preparing lunchboxes for your wife and her Lieutenant, you deliver the homemade meals personally to her division. One of the things that you look forward to every day includes admiring your wife in her elements. Such little glimpses into her work life allows you to understand just how much of an influence she has on her subordinates.

Soft-spoken and kind-faced as the Captain of squad four is, even the rowdiest of Shinigami fear her; they regard her with much respect. You have yet to hear her raising her voice to someone, and even still, she has never had to repeat her will more than twice for the other person to obediently comply with it. There are people from the 11th division, who, according to the information that you have gathered, are supposed to be the most battle-hungry Soul Reapers in Seireitei, that at your wife’s gentle warning and excessively sweet smile will flee with their tails between their legs, leaving a trail of apologies in their wake.

“Oh my, treating me as if I’m some kind of ghost.”

Puzzled, she has wondered aloud, and you have found her expression heart-meltingly adorable.

During one of your visitations to her squad, you have also had the pleasure of befriending a special someone.

You remember marvelling at the giant sage green creature that is aloft; its form, very reminiscent of a manta ray. However, when you see someone climbing effortlessly down the back of the creature, you have been surprised, to say the least, to be greeted by the unmistakable voice of your wife.

Upon striding towards the pair of them, you fall prey to the surprise attack of an extremely wet tongue. Even though it leaves you resembling a drowned rat, what simmers inside you is the farthest from annoyance. If anything, you find the one-eyed giant quite lovable.

“Why, will you look at that.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means, sweet girl, that she likes you.”

Before you hug the bizarre creature, you peek a look at your wife. Only when you see the nod of her head do you advance.

“Oh! Right back at you…?” Another questioning look at your wife earns you her name. “Minazuki.”

“Miki, you adorable little munchkin!”

At your words, she emits a crooning sound that you are inclined to believe is her way of purring in pleasure.

════════ ∘◦ ✾ ◦∘ ════════

When your wife has some time on her hands, she has a habit of climbing mountains. It is as much a recreational activity as it is a hunt for medicinal herbs. Having been longing to accompany her during her excursions, you have, after much consideration, raised the question, only for her to readily agrees.

“Can I come?”

“I don’t see why not.”

The silence that cocoons the two of you is anything but unbearable as you amble abreast. Taking it as your opportunity, you voice the query that you have been mulling over for some time now.

“There’s something I’m curious about.”

“What are you curious about?”

“Why you?” When you steal a glance at her, you find her eyes on the track, face impassive. “There were four of you who were privy to the truth, correct? So, how come you were the one to marry me?”

Her response does not come until after a while, voice sounding serene as it usually does.

“The Captain-Commander is out of the question, and among the three of us, I was deemed the most suitable candidate. One doesn’t go out much due to how sickly he is and the other is- well, it’s unthinkable that he’ll settle for one person.”

“And what about you, Hana? Have you got no qualms?”

“Whatever the Captain-Commander asks of me, I do without question.”

Oh.

You have asked, and so she has answered. It certainly is not meant to hurt.

And yet,

“I see.”

“That, and I also happened to be the first person to learn of your existence.”

At this, you perk.

“You did? How?”

“Purely by chance, but that’s a story for another day. Now, come. The herbs I’m looking for are just up ahead.”

She teaches you about different herbs and you help her collect them, preening under her complimentary head-pats when you find the right plants, and becoming all the more hell-bent on seeking rarer herbs, for only then will you be rewarded with honey-dewed whispers. Upon stumbling across one such plant, in your excitement, you fail to see a hole in the ground as you briskly make your way through the thickets.

Needless to say, your recklessness leaves you with a strained ankle. It is your pained grunts that garner the attention of your wife. When she finds you limping, the discomfort apparent on your face, she helps you to a tree trunk. You are thankful for the arm that is stably wrapped around your waist for it halves the effort that you will otherwise have to exert.

No sooner has she sat you down onto the mossy trunk than she is kneeling before you. Taking your wounded foot into her hand, she gingerly lets it rest atop her thigh. Forefinger and thumb pluck your sock, peel it down, and doing so reveals your ankle where a bruise is already beginning to bloom.

As she works on your wound, you can feel the pads of her digits ghosting across the naked base of your calf. Her fingers, dainty in appearance, have strength in them along with callouses that you suspect are the by products of her years of sword training. Speaking of which, Minazuki, her Zanpakuto as she has taught you, Miki as you like to call her, is slung over one of your shoulders. Since her Lieutenant is absent, for today’s trip is you and your wife’s alone, you have happily taken the role of the Captain’s blade bearer.

Due to the injury that you have sustained, despite your reassuring that you are fine, your wife does not take no for an answer, and so, the expedition is cut short. Soon after the pair of you have mounted Minazuki, you fall victim to exhaustion, surrendering yourself to the clutches of sleep.

The first thing you notice upon opening your eyes is the shimmering sea of stars, with the first thing you hear being her voice that pulses warmly in your ears.

“Are you awake?”

“Hmm, where are we now?”

When you shift, you discover that your head is cushioned by her thighs.

“Not very far from home.”

You are suddenly awestruck by the vision that appears in your line of sight. Backdropped by the starry sky, she is truly a sight for sore eyes.

“How are you feeling?”

“My eyes feel hot.”

A palm finds home on your forehead. You cannot help but sigh dreamily at her cool touch that seems to instantly soothe the ache in your head.

“You have a touch of fever, I fear. Rest. I’ll wake you when we arrive.”

You can only hum, ready to succumb to slumber again. However, when you feel the withdrawal of her hand from your forehead, your fingers catch her wrist, emboldened by a feverish haze. You press it against your neck where the coolness of her flesh offers you sweet reprieve from your body’s heat. If you are not mistaken, you have felt the faintest sensation of a fingertip tracing the length of your nose before you drift.

She does, in fact, not wake you.

By the time you open your eyes, you are already under the comfort of a futon that smells distinctly of her.

════════ ∘◦ ✾ ◦∘ ════════

You do not know when it changes, but at one point, it does. Your marriage stops being an elaborate masquerade and starts becoming something more by the time you no longer need reminders to exercise intimacy. A kiss on her cheek, a palm on the small of her back, sweet-nothings dripping with honey; they come to you as easily as breathing, and she responds to you in kind as she always has. But then again, to be unreservedly honest, your actions, from the beginning until now, have never been absent of sincerity.

From sleeping entwined in each other’s arms to walking with your fingers intertwined, even in the absence of onlookers, in the privacy of your quarters, you behave as lovers do. Neither of you seem to notice the change, and if you do, neither of you bother to comment on it. It simply is the way it is.

“Oh, Hana, you’ve returned! Come here. Sit.”

“What is this?”

“I just thought that your feet could use some pampering after walking around all day.”

“My, you need not trouble yourself-”

“But that’s what married couples do. They look after each other.”

“Very well, then, if you insist.”

Adoration, ardour and nothing in between; that is how you sink to your knees before your deity. Raising her feet off the floor, you gingerly place them atop your thighs. When you slip the socks off her feet, you exercise both care and tenderness, barely suppressing the urge to press delicate kisses to her exquisitely dainty ankles. Once her feet are completely bare, you guide them into the bucket that is sitting in front of you. Under the warm water, you trace the little notches of her bone, run your fingertips along every dip and hill the way you want your lips to caress them.

Then, all too gently, you gather them once again into your lap where a towel awaits. You take your sweet time petting them dry, the desire to drench her porcelain skin in kisses now coming back with a vengeance. As if possessing a mind of their own, your hands slips beneath her uniform, fingers leaving playful caresses along the length of her shin.

Suddenly overwhelmingly thirsty, you wet your lips with the tip of your tongue before chancing a look at her. There is a silent question in your eyes, and she answers you with a nod of her head. As soon as the green light has been given, you carefully hike the skirt of her Shinigami uniform over her knee, allowing your fingers to knead the muscles in her calfs without interruptions.

It is true that when you have decided to give her feet a wash and a massage, you have no ulterior motives.

But now,

Now, it is entirely a different story.

The collision of your gazes sparks a flame in you.

Has the blue of her eyes always been this dark, you wonder.

*Knock*

“Captain Unohana, may I please come in?”

Hastily scrambling to your feet upon hearing Isane’s voice has you tripping over your own two feet. Your forthcoming fall is prevented by willowy fingers that latch onto your wrist. One thing leads to another, and before you know it, following a breathless “oomf”, you find yourself seated on the pillowy thighs of your wife.

Seemingly unfazed, she commands, an arm around your waist cradling you close to her chest.

“If it’s nothing important, Isane, I suggest you leave us be. My wife and I are currently in the middle of some important matters that urgently need attending to.”

“U-understood!”

It is beyond your control; your hands finding purchase on her shoulders, even more so the amicable slap that you deliver to her arm.

“Did you really have to phrase it like that?”

“Like what?”

Ah. There is no denying it. From the very first moment you behold this woman, you have fallen irrevocably in love with her.

“Hmm? Care to enlighten me?”

You do not. Care to enlighten her that is, for your lips have found hers, sampling her smile to see if it tastes as sweet as it looks. You have taken a bite out of the forbidden fruit, and there is no going back, although when you feel no reciprocation from her part, you pull back with a heavy heart.

The look on her face is indecipherable; she has always been difficult to read. Completely at a loss, you are tempted to blurt out that it has been a momentary lapse of judgement even though you know very well that it is anything but. The loudness of your rampaging thoughts is instantly lulled as soon as her lips seize yours, the fervent collision prompted by the hand that is holding you at the peak of your nape while wandering digits curl deliciously into your hair.

Likewise, greatly galvanised by the ravenous mouth that is feasting upon your lips, your fingers wander beneath her braid, and further still beneath the lapels of her uniform. It is as you are ghosting along the jut of her collarbones that your fingertips feel a patch of uneven skin just below the dip in her throat. As if electrocuted, she jolts, subsequently discarding you in the process of rising to her feet.

“You should leave.”

Leave? Leave where?

After all, this has become as much your home as it has been hers.

“Hana, I- did I do something wrong?”

“You should leave.”

Ah. Never have you thought that you will find yourself at the receiving end of the generous Captain’s genuine irritation.

As the last vestiges of warmth is entirely replaced by the chill of her stare, you decide that you will smile. You will smile for the both of you, as wide and as big as you can, a farewell to what could have been.

“I understand. I’m sorry.”

Delivering your utterances in the cheeriest voice that you can muster, you smile at her. You smile so broad that the uncomfortable stretch of your lips hurt your face.

But as soon as the door to her chamber closes with a thud behind your back, the first droplet of tear begins to fall.

════════ ∘◦ ✾ ◦∘ ════════

In a wicked twist of fate, you fall into the hands of malicious men who have all the intentions of maiming you beyond repair. It is drizzling, a night befitting your mood, as the cold droplets mingle with your warm tears.

There are hands, hands everywhere, tearing your clothes haphazardly off your body, hitting you when you struggle; your foot has caught one of your assailants in the crotch, and his payback comes in the form of kicks to your ribcage. Blood is leaking out of your nose from being brutally backhanded across your cheek. It forces you into a daze.

A whore. A wench. A witch.

Awful names have been called.

Four versus one; you are helpless against them. Your suffering is their satisfaction, but a rag doll in their heartless hands, as they manhandle you with a single minded purpose of ravishing you.

You feel hands on your thighs that are manipulating your body as they see fit.

You hear the rustles of fabric, frantic and foreboding.

In the face of danger, it is her face that you picture.

And then, you hear screams.

Alas, the raindrops are red, eerily reminiscent of blood.

Hands are retreating. Feet are scrambling.

And suddenly, you are alone.

With much difficulty, you sit up. When you bring your palm up to your face for examination, you find blood. Your eyes follow the scarlet trail on the ground only to be greeted by the lifeless eyes of the man who has kicked you with wild abandon. His body lies a few steps away from his head. Scattered messily across the ground are his companions, and mixed within them are parts of their bodies; a leg here, an arm there. In the middle of it all stands she, holding her blade with a head impaled on it like a grotesque skewer.

Ah. So, this. This is your Hana in her purest form, who has butchered them in cold blood as though they are mere cattle.

Such empty eyes. How merciless. How magnificent. You are not so much surprised as mesmerised. Such macabre display should scare you except that she has killed in order to save, and if nothing else, you feel cherished, you feel protected.

Sore all over as you are, you attempt to stand, immediately shaking on your legs like a newborn fawn.

“Hana.”

It is but a feeble croak that manages to bring her eyes to you all the same. In an instant, she is by your side.

Her hair is unusually undone, and it leaves the scar in the middle of her chest exposed. Surprise colours your features when her sword is unceremoniously dropped to the ground in order for her to slip free of her Captain Uniform. The white cloth is then gingerly draped over your frame which is as good as bare. Your clothes are in tatters, tears and bruises marring your features, and for once, she seems to be at a loss for words.

Although her mien betrays nothing, behind those unfeeling eyes, you can practically see the cogs turning in her head. While she appears to be in a dilemma, you take the initiative to approach her, fingers gripping the dark fabric of her Shinigami uniform white-knuckled tight.

Your forehead collapses onto her shoulder before you whisper against the hummingbird flutter of her pulse.

“Hold me, Hana. I need you to hold me, please.”

And hold you, she does. Oh, how she does, as you weep and weep and weep until with the drying of your tears, your consciousness, too, fades.

════════ ∘◦ ✾ ◦∘ ════════

“Whatever you do after the wedding is no concern of mine. Didn’t you say it so yourself?”

“Only because I thought she’ll be trea-”

“Whatever you do after the wedding is no concern of mine. Didn’t you say it so yourself?”

“Please. Please, spare me. I beg of you. Please.” The man before Unohana grovels at her feet. “I’ll give you whatever you want. Please.”

“Whatever I want?”

A series of frantic nods ensue. She cannot care less if he looks a crying mess. His state of dress: posh and pristine, his state of being: without a nick, only reminds her all the more of you, bloody and bruised, and her blood boils. Oh, how her blood boils!

“What I want is your head!”

“What I want is your heart!”

“What I want is you sliced in half!”

Looming over the cowering excuse of a man, she sinks her sword into his chest, inch after inch of blood-drenched blade penetrating his flesh.

“Well? Do you think you can give me what I want?”

“Please. I- I’m sorry. Have- have mercy.”

“Mercy, you say?” The moonless night echoes with a maniacal laughter, dark and haunting. “How laughable!”

“No matter, you will die at my hands. And you will die tonight. My bloodlust will not be sated unless you die. So, die you will whether you like it or not.”

════════ ∘◦ ✾ ◦∘ ════════

“I received a letter this morning.” You speak into her chest as you lie cocooned in her arms. “Father has passed.”

“Does it upset you?”

A fervent shake of your head should suffice for an answer. Still, you voice your reason.

“He may have been my mother’s devoted husband but he was never my father.”

Silence reigns. Her fingers trace patterns on the small of your back while your face nuzzles the little notch of her throat.

“Thank you, Hana, for being my sunshine after the rain.”

In a show of sincerity, you press a delicate kiss to the scar beneath your lips. When your face is brought out of its safe little cocoon, it is only so that she can take a bite out of the sweet, succulent fruit. She conquers your lips in the same way she has conquered your heart, and all too happily, you let her consume you. Body, mind and soul.

By these hands that are no stranger to bloodshed, you have been healed. In more ways than one.

In these arms that are capable of destruction, you have found solace.

A healer or a killer, Retsu or Yachiru, she is your beloved wife all the same, and you intend to cherish her for all that she is.

In sickness and in health.

In good time and in bad.

In perpetuity. In tandem.

▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃

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snek-panini · 8 months

Text

It is Monday, and Monday is for books. Look at these beautiful things! They took me five months to make. I tried so many new things in the process and I am extremely proud of them. This is a binding of @racketghost's amazing Good Omens fic Strange Moons (Hi. I hope it's ok I tagged you in this. Your fic has been one of my favorites since I found it in 2019.) The story is a series of short fics (and one long one) that really need no introduction from me. They're set throughout the 20th century, and they are beautiful and sensual and moody and you should definitely read them if you haven't already. This is the longest work I've bound so far, but I was fortunate that the word count on the shorter fics added up to almost exactly the length of the final, longest one, making them the perfect choice for a two-volume set. I tried very hard to get them to be an exact match, and they turned out even better than I pictured.

More pics under the cut! Two books means twice the pics, and all the stuff I tried here means it's a very long post, so be warned.

Individual images of the covers. The titles are done in silver htv over brown faux leather, edged in charcoal bookcloth. The graphics are the same on both, except for the title text, and they have the same image of the reaching hands on the back. All the art assets are from rawpixel, I just flipped and rotated some of them to make the back image.

The cover materials were an interesting challenge. I'd worked with both before and wanted to incorporate them both in the design, but after measuring and checking grain direction I found I didn't have enough of either of them to do a full book, or even a half bind. So they're actually made by affixing the faux leather to the book board, then layering strips of book cloth over the top. The corners are actually mitered at a 45-degree angle. Here's a close-up:

It's two long strips of cloth (spine and fore edge, not mitered) with two short strips (top and bottom, mitered) glued over the top. There was so much measuring, omg. I bought a new tool to make sure I got it right. Hilariously, I still didn't have enough leather and had to order another roll anyway. Also hilariously, I got the idea to do this after seeing an image of a leather-bound book made by a professional that appeared to have the same feature, i.e. multiple materials with an inset and mitered corners. Wow, I said, looking at a video thumbnail, I'm going to do that! So I did, even though I didn't watch the video. Much later, after I watched his tutorial, it was clear that the design was from leather dye and tooling, not the thing that I did at all. But I do like the effect, and now I know it's possible I think it'll be great for using up weird offcuts from making other covers.

Look, spines! With TITLES on them! And LITTLE RIDGES! Both firsts for me. I'm a little obsessed with them. The cricut has opened up entirely new worlds, though I suspect the little silver lines might have been easier to do with a foil pen (which I don't have) than they were with a heat press. I did them by making the cricut cut out several "=" symbols that were the same width as the spine. The raised bands are false bands; I made them by layering little pieces of chipboard on the spine stiffener, then molding the book cloth around them when I covered them. I was worried it wouldn't work, since this is usually done with leather and book cloth is apparently way less stretchy, but it worked fine. Probably because it's a small straight design, no curves or fancy bits. I'd layer the chipboard thicker next time so they stand up higher (this is 2 layers, I'd do 3 in future) but I'm delighted by how this turned out. They look so professional.

The endpapers on both books are a constellation print. I had a really hard time trying to find something to go with the typeset, and the only ones I liked were from an etsy seller who kept selling out of them. I got lucky eventually but it was one of many hassles that befell this project. I also made my own end bands using a tutorial from the Renegade Bindery discord. I had some issues and I didn't quite nail them but I think they're pretty good for a first time (ok, second time, the first one was on a practice text block, but my point stands). I had originally intended this to be a split boards binding, my first time trying that, but when I got the boards glued on I found that they were crooked. Really crooked. Completely misaligned. Much swearing followed this discovery. I ended up having to cut the boards free, cutting the mull and tapes in the process. The mull was easily replaced, but the parts of the tapes that are usually glued to the boards were a lost cause. I reused the boards, but flipped them so the edge with the cut tapes inside is at the fore edge so I could have a cleaner hinge. You can see in the last photo that the cover board is a little wider at the fore edge. On the plus side, there are no tapes to wrinkle my pretty endpapers and it combated the small bit of spine swell I had. On the downside, the hinge has less support and the only thing I learned was How Not To Make A Sewn Boards Binding.

I may have gone a little nuts with the images in this typeset. In my defense they look very pretty. In order, that's the title page, table of contents, section break image (same as the back cover, just tiny), chapter header and ender (each chapter has one on its first and last pages, they just look particularly cool when you can get a full page spread like this), and the image on the last page of the book (same as the cover image, almost). The cover image was also supposed to have little rays coming off its moon like this one does, but the lines proved too thin for the cricut and it ate them. I still like how it looks though. The prose in this story is really rich and I was in the mood for opulence when I did it. I have absolutely no regrets.

Here's a feature that's unique to this typeset. One of the chapters in the second volume has three alternating, interwoven timelines. I read them fine on Ao3 but had trouble following them when I formatted it for printing. Usually I'd use the section break image to denote when there's a scene skip but there are literally dozens in this chapter, like 40-60 breaks over the course of 10 or so pages, and it looked very busy with images in it. So I left them out, made the line skips single instead of double like they are elsewhere in the book, and I color-coded the text instead. One timeline is printed in black, one is dark gray, and one is dark blue. And it's a very surreal chapter, with the characters having some very confusing and conflicting emotions, so I feel like reading multicolored text when you're not expecting it (the rest of the book is all normal black and this bit is near the middle) sort of reflects that unbalanced feeling? I hope so anyway, because I love the way it looks so much.

I learned so many things in the course of making these. I'm absolutely doing all of them again. Part of the reason it took so long was that I wanted it to be perfect, or as near as I could get, and I had to take the time to solve all the puzzles it threw at me. But it stretched my creativity and ingenuity and I could not be more in love with the finished product.

#bookbinding #fanbinding #snek makes books #good omens #fic rec #this got super long #and considerably more journal-like than I planned #i guess when you work on something for five months it becomes part of you huh #there were more images too #i took so many photos of these

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writingcold · 28 days

Text

Hello! Welcome to Chapter 6 of CD&FE.

Pairing: Jake X Female Reader

Summary: This is an AU that starts with the release of GVF’s first EP, Black Smoke Rising, and follows along life paths over the course of twenty plus years. So… It’s just messy. Fortunately, it’s also kind of a shorty as far as length goes.

Content warnings: Uncomfortable moments in adult relationships, but smut free.

Word Count: approx. 4.4K

I am so thankful for @edgingthedarkness and @takenbythemadness. But you all better know that by now, but I’ve said it with every damn posting how brilliant they are.

CD&FE, Part 6.1: Her POV

To say that I had gotten comfortable in my relationship with Frankie was an understatement. I felt like we were flourishing. I began to slowly migrate from my office into our home, working one and two days a week away from the office. No one died. No projects failed. Fancy that. I was able to distance myself and yet still get the job done. Life was good. I couldn’t lie about that.

I had gotten a call from my friend Maurice Flanders from Chicago who owned several galleries. I had been handling his accounts for years, but he reached out on this one in particular as it would be a rushed job. He had a show fall through, but found an up and coming artist that had agreed to a limited run on short notice. Of course, I’d never leave him in a bind and agreed to step in right away to handle the advertising for the event, and all of the main graphic needs for the opening night. I didn’t think of the person until well after I had hung up and a few days had gone by. The featured artist would be Clara. His Clara.

Echoes of times and interludes with Jake haunted me from time to time. Stray thoughts lingered longer than they should have. Bits and fragments of dreams would wash a tide across me when I felt weak. Always at my fringe, I could feel Jake’s presence. I could be dicing up vegetables for dinner, or have a song coming on across my feed, or hell, sitting and talking with friends, and all of the emotions of loss of him would come roaring back only to stop short and fizzle out. I supposed that was because it ended how it did. This lingering uncertainty of ‘maybe’. I felt like a corner of me longed for him still.

We were two weeks from the event when Maurice called me personally to check in and to invite me down - after all, it had been ages since we had been together in person. I knew there would be many current clients in attendance. It would be smart for me to be there. Frank was willing to take the weekend trip, so it was a go. Although, part of me was hesitant. Would Jake be there? How was I going to handle seeing him - in person after all this time?

We flew down a few days early to take in the museums and the jazz and blues scene of the city. Frank kept his distance when I needed to work, but he was more than happy to entertain himself. The opening was Saturday night and we were ready to go. It wasn’t like we had to be glamorous, but to say my man looked hot as sin would not be lying. He held me close as we approached the gallery. My stomach did a little flop as I realized that I was looking right at Clara when we walked in before the actual opening. Maurice was lovely, wrapping me up and welcoming us in.

I silently sloshed through emotions whilst keeping my professional appearance while weaving through the introduction to Clara. She gushed over our work - impressed that it was all completed on such a short timeline but so beautifully. She walked me and Frankie around showing us some of her more recent works. All of my internal organs were twisting with fury as I caught glimpses of love and Jake and their time together. I held tight to Frank’s hand, but all the while, my brain was conjuring venom towards the very unaware Clara.

My eyes were darting around when the doors officially opened. He was nowhere to be found. I picked out Jake’s parents right away. They were fawning over Clara, but their son was completely absent. I could see the glint of frustration in the woman’s eyes as they were talking. I dug myself deeper into the gallery. It wasn’t like any of that scene was my business.

I spent the better part of two hours connecting with clients and meeting potential new ones. Frank was my stalwart spirit, smiling and looking incredibly handsome. He seemed totally relaxed in his easy self that just seemed to draw people in instantly. Our last forty minutes was spent with Maurice in a cozy corner going over new contacts that he wanted to share for our valiant effort and success together.

As we started to say our goodbyes, I took note that Jake still was not in attendance. My heart squeezed a bit. I’m unsure if it was because he was not in attendance, or if there was a personal issue that was lingering behind the pretty woman’s smile. A small portrait towards the front caught my eyes and held it as we meandered towards the door. It was Jake, but his face was down, the brim of a hat covering most of his features. I felt removed. I had no right feeling this way, but my whole focus seemed to be parked on a man that I had not physically seen in six years. Six. And he still commanded my thoughts like we had just parted the day before.

The rest of summer rolled through quietly. Frank had been gone a few weeks due to conferences, to which I took advantage to catch up with friends. Patrick and Sidney took most of that time, but I so enjoyed our time together. In October, I found myself in Paris, accompanying Frank for one of his academic conferences. While he was buried in work, I was gracing the balcony of a beautiful little room, sipping coffee and soaking in the ancient city around me. Our evenings were our own. We walked everywhere until we couldn’t walk any more. We laughed over food and cried over art. I wanted more time. Always more time, but life was calling us back.

By December, I had somehow discovered that the bulk of my work week was spent in my pjs in my home office. And I didn’t feel bad about it. Christmas brought around news I didn’t expect.

“You’re procreating?” I asked, unable to hide the shrill note in my tone.

Patrick and Sid were sitting with huge smiles before me. “Aunt Y/n has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” Pat said finally, letting me fully digest the moment.

It was unreal to think that my oldest friend was going to be a father. But they were happy. Beyond it, actually. The babies would arrive in the summer - fraternal twins no less. I was secretly planning on buying every obnoxiously loud, bright, annoying toy possible to fill their lives with such joy. Pat deserved a little more chaos in his life, right?

Spring arrived with a definite bang. We seemed to go from ice and wind and ten foot high drifts of snow to green overnight. I had come home from a client dinner party to find the apartment quiet. I went to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water, discovering that Frankie was out on the deck. The faint glow of a cigarette rested between his fingers, while a glass was nestled into the palm of his other hand. It was an odd sight. Frank didn’t smoke unless his mind was troubled.

I walked out onto the deck and wrapped my arms around his waist. He was quick to crush the smoke, but I had seen it was not just the one he had imbibed in. He had been outside for quite some time.

“How was your meeting?” he asked as he turned to welcome me proper.

“Good. I would say we landed another solid client.” I allowed myself to be wrapped up in his dense frame and scent. There was an air of removal that I did not understand. “Something must have happened, huh? Tough day?”

He hummed as he let me go. “Actually, something that I wasn’t expecting came up.”

I frowned when he paused. His whole aura seemed shifted. He was holding back. I frowned all the more as he lit another cigarette and leaned away from me. My gut blazed with a stab of anxiety. I was left wishing I would’ve poured something harder than the water.

“I’ve been invited to teach in Paris,” he said, his voice void of what made him sound like himself. It was weird.

I could see that he was happy about it, but he wasn’t allowing himself to be. I must’ve flashed an expression that he didn’t like. He turned away from me, with his face turned to the sky. “Are you not happy about this?”

“I am actually really fucking happy about it,” he muttered, his voice full of an edge.

“But-”

He let out a long stream of smoke after lighting up another cigarette. “I’ve been out here for hours trying to guess how you would answer my question if I asked you to come with me. However, I think I already have my answer.”

“That’s not fair,” I whispered.

“Would you go?”

It was like I was going a hundred miles an hour and someone just threw my ass into park without the benefit of hitting the breaks. My insides felt like they were liquefying as he seemed to fight himself from looking at me. I knew what he was asking. I had heard this question in a different, unspoken form before. And the answer was the same.

“Frank,” I hiccuped.

“It’s all right. I get it,” he said, voice hushed. “I need some time out here. Alone. Please.”

My jaw softened as I felt all those liquid guts swirl just under my skin. I felt like I was going to throw up as I pushed my way back into the apartment. My legs were declaring a mutiny as I tried to climb the stairs. I found myself melting onto the fourth step. I was in a ball while the man I had made a life with for the better part of six years was hurt outside.

I went to bed alone and I woke up alone. Frank was not in the apartment when I padded down the stairs. The knot that had strangled my innards the night before was limp from bleeding out. I was too tired to search for a note. I was sure eventually, we’d discuss the situation. I wanted to say I’d go with him. I wanted to say that I would be able to leave my work behind. But in truth - I just couldn’t.

I sat curled on the couch, waiting for him to come home. I saw a text from Pat, but I couldn’t find it in me to pay attention beyond who it was from. The parallel was not lost on me as I looked around my home - our home. It was true that I was slowly creating distance from my work, but by street blocks only. To completely leave it behind? Wasn’t that what he was silently asking of me?

It wasn’t until early evening that Frank returned. He looked hollow as he set his keys down on the table. I felt gutted as he sat down next to me. I threaded my fingers into his, but made no move closer to him. It was like a division was already between us. It hurt to breathe the same air, let alone be in the same space.

“I can’t say ‘no’ to this, Y/n,” he said quietly. “I refuse to be that guy to tell you to quit your job. I just don’t know where that leaves us.”

I tucked my chin to my chest. All the love, all the life was slipping away like a threadbare scarf. I hated this. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. And yet, I couldn’t force my mouth to wrap around the words that I needed to speak.

“Distance doesn’t work for me,” he whispered. “I’m a jealous man, if I was being honest.”

“And if I’m not ready-” My words dried up in my throat, crackling like brittle paper.

“I’m not ready, either,” he replied, tightening his hold on my hand. “Could you leave your company behind? Honest. As honest as you can be.”

No matter how much I wanted to say ‘yes, I can leave’, I just knew it was wrong. I looked at him as my eyes filled and spilled across my cheeks. I shook my head ‘no’ as my throat refused to function through the emotions.

“Didn’t think so,” he whispered.

I fell into him as I couldn’t hold back my tears. He made no move to hide his own. We mourned together. We found comfort in each other’s touch. It was like we knew it was the end.

CD&FE, part 6.2: Jake’s POV

“It’s been coming for a while, Jake,” Clara said, after I finally got her to sit down at the dining room table.

“Really? I thought everything was just fine,” I said, not trying to hide the bitterness from my tone.

She puffed out her cheeks with a hard breath. “Come on. Surely you don’t think everything has been all right?”

“Enlighten me.”

I was mad. I was mad more at myself. She did not seem to really want to answer. But that was Clara. I wanted to know. I wanted honesty. She wanted to hide from conflict. If she wanted out, I was not going to stop her, however I needed to know what the hell I did wrong.

“Chicago wasn’t my only show you missed,” she said quietly. She shook her head. “No. I shouldn’t say it that way. It was my choice to be on tour with you. I loved traveling with you.”

“But.”

She squirmed in her seat. I did not like making her feel uncomfortable, but I felt like I could at least understand. “I turned down two galleries this past year because they conflicted with the tour. I turned down working with others last year because they conflicted with the tour. When Chicago came around, and I saw it fit between shows, I thought maybe you would see my passion was as strong as yours. Perhaps it would be a way for you to see that I was as good-”

“Fuck,” I whispered against the anger that flooded my system. “You can’t put that on me. Just because you chose not to take an opportunity…?”

Clara slapped the table and jumped from her chair. I followed her as she fled to the bedroom. This was her pattern. Run. Run from any kind of conflict and let it fester until it was a hundred more times hurtful as it became a torrent flooding out of her.

“Talk to me! How can you think I felt your work was ‘not good’? I’m just as excited as you are that this is getting somewhere for you,” I said, fighting to keep my tone from hitting a harsh line.

“Really? Could’ve fooled me,” she grumbled, coming to a stop. “I have followed you around this planet with you for years, Jake. On tour, you take no notice of how I struggle to keep up. I need more time in these spaces. I need more time to create. But it’s like you have blinders on and it’s always only about the tour. Only about your work and never about anyone else.”

“It’s kind of what I do. My job. I can’t apologize for working to keep us to the level that we are. Many people depend on me, on us, to live on. It’s more than just about me. If I don’t do a good job, if we aren’t out there, families are affected.”

She rolled her eyes. “And you don’t really think about the effects on your own family.”

“We’re all working our asses off-”

“I wasn’t talking about your brothers, Jake! Me! Your family that you won’t marry?”

I stopped moving. Clara threw her hands up out of frustration and proceeded to stomp back into the bedroom. A tiny fraction of me did not want to pursue the argument. It whispered to let it go. Let her go.

“That can’t be it,” I found myself saying out loud. She scoffed as I walked into the bedroom after her.

“What - a commitment? I’m fucking human, Jake.”

I felt my brows pinch as I watched her wrestle her bags from the bed only to grab another empty suitcase and fling it open. “I-”

“I want it. I have wanted all of this. All of you. Don’t you see that?”

The corners of my mouth turned down. She was throwing her clothes into the case without consideration. It was then I realized that her ring was gone. That little whisper was rising in volume, but still not sharp enough for me to listen.

“What I see is someone who doesn’t trust me enough to let me go on tour without her,” I said, unable to really recognize the flatness of my own voice.

The laugh that slithered from her mouth made me cringe. “Trust? Fuck yeah, I don’t trust you. I see how others are out there. Leaving their wives at home so they can fuck anyone that comes across their plate! Fuck that.”

“That’s not me,” I whispered. “You’d know that if you gave me the chance.”

She started to say something but stopped. She dropped the clothes from her hands and took a step back. “Still doesn’t change the fact that you do not want to marry me.”

I nodded. She was right. I may have at one point thought that marriage in my profession was impossible, but that wasn’t totally it. I believed if I made a commitment, I didn’t need anyone else’s approval, a little paper, or any other archaic belief to say that I am with someone. That voice had gone from a whisper, to nearly a full voice, was now shouting at me.

“I’m sorry you thought you had to live around me,” I said, retreating back to the doorway. “That was never the case.”

“It was always the case, whether you realized it or not. I was given a schedule and felt like I had to live by it. I put myself in that schedule where I could.”

“That was your lack of faith in me, Clara. That’s not something I can fix.”

I walked away, allowing her to finish collecting her things. So much of this house was her. So much of the life within it was her. Was I sad about it? Yeah. It hurt like a fucking punch to my chest. But it was done.

I poured myself a whiskey and wandered out to the patio with my phone in hand. I called Josh, only to be sent to voicemail. Dick. I called Mom, but then forgot the folks were on a flight home. My brain was formulating plans. I listened to the rambling playing of the neighbor kids and the distant practice of someone on a piano. I must’ve been out there no more than an hour before I heard Clara behind me.

“I called an Uber. I’ll stay with my friends for a few weeks to figure this out.”

Her voice was void of warmth. There was nothing to figure out. It was just done.

“I leave on Monday,” I replied, looking up at her. “I’ll be gone for two weeks. If you want, you can clear out while I’m gone.”

“Wow,” she sighed. “I say done and you mean it. Kinda cold, Jake.”

I shook my head. “I cannot be with someone who has no faith in me, and cannot trust me. I will not be with someone who thinks so little of my commitment. You shouldn’t want to be with me if I make you live by my schedule. Or think that I am holding you from what you love. Those are some pretty big stopping points.”

She sighed. “I suppose you are right.”

I heard her leave, but did not watch. I reached for my phone and began an attempt to text my twin, but he was strangely radio silent. I realized in the silence, that I had not gone to actually see Clara’s showing postings. For that I was a real prick. I opened up the socials and got to her professional page. She looked happy in the first picture - she stood in the middle of the small gallery with her works all around her. I scrolled through the pictures slowly, taking in each shot of the paintings I knew well. Each one seemed to look different under the lighting, but they were all here.

I stormed through the first dozen or so before I stopped. At the edge of the frame was a familiar face. Y/n was standing with a small group, all wrapped up in her professional armor and disarming smile. I frowned for a moment. I started scrolling down and looking at the actual description and noticed a small ‘thank you’ note that included the owner of the gallery, the management team and… oh hell. Y/n had personally taken care of all the advertising and graphics within the gallery. I went back to the picture and stared. It was like all the hurt, all the guilt was paused.

I wondered if she knew who Clara was. I wondered if she was aware of our connection. Surely she had seen my post about Clara. Oh… fuck. Did Clara know? Surely not. A knot of anxiety twisted through my chest forcing me to stand up and fly into the house, phone clutched tightly in my palm. I was spooked. I was realizing that the last day was beginning to filter through. The final moments especially - I hadn’t even said goodbye. Who does that?

I decided to give her the space she asked for, going out on the next stretch before reaching back out to her. When I returned home, it was an empty house. She had taken all of her things, her artwork, the pieces that she had wanted to be in our shared space. I texted her that I was back, knowing that the last part was to get the keys. I made a nice dinner of all her favorites, along with her choice of wine. I had flowers delivered that reminded me of our time in Rome a few years back. It wasn’t meant to be romantic, but I’m sure that was what it looked like when I finished getting everything ready.

She smiled when I invited her inside. Her eyes latched onto the table and started to shake her head with excuses to leave.

“Just come and talk with me.”

I took her purse and set it to the side as she reluctantly walked past me. “Jake, I’m not sure if this is a good idea.”

“Just talk,” I promised, waving her towards the table.

I poured a glass of wine while she sat down. I took a drink of my beer before pulling serving dishes out of the warming oven. I plated up and joined her.

“I know I’m springing this on you, but,” I started, setting down her food before her, “I just thought it would make this a little easier.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “It looks delicious.”

We picked at our food, and it was silent. It was not what I was hoping for in the slightest, but it was a start.

“Have you been staying with Grace and Tucker?” I asked, hoping to break the ice.

“I haven’t left Nashville, if that’s what you’re searching for, Jake,” she answered.

I ate the hard tone and tried to let it go. Sitting back in my chair, I wiped the corners of my mouth. “I’m not looking for a fight, Clara.”

“Then what is all of this? A grand send off?”

I rolled my eyes. “If that’s what you want to call it, fine. I just want to part as friends. We were such good friends towards each other - why leave it with all that hurt out there?”

“Pretty one sided friends, if you ask me.”

My eyes rolled closed. I sucked in a long, slow breath. “I saw the pictures from Chicago - on your socials. Mom shared a few more as well. No matter how you think of me, I am proud of you. It was wrong of me to miss it.”

She set her glass down and finally made eye contact. “Why didn’t you want to be there?”

“Who said I didn’t want to be there? I made every attempt to get there. I won’t be an ass and blame the weather, but… I really am sorry I missed it,” I replied honestly. “You know how I am when we’re out there. If I don’t focus on what I’m supposed to be doing-”

“You were supposed to buy that ticket and be with me.”

I frowned. “And I am upset with myself over it, Clara.”

“Sure you are.”

“Of course I am. It was my mistake, but it showed us that you are to move in this other direction,” I said, tapping my fingers on the table softly. “I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to follow me, Clara. It was never my intent to keep you from your art.”

She flashed a sad little smile. “I didn’t mean to make it sound like I didn’t trust you. I was scared. I saw what happens out there. It’s not pretty.”

“It’s very easy to get caught up,” I admitted, keeping my voice level. “It hurt that you wouldn’t allow me to try, at least. At least prove that I could be faithful to us. There are more on the road that can be faithful than not.”

She nodded. “I’m not sorry for our time together, Jake.”

“Neither am I,” I whispered as she touched my hand.

Closure. It was not stomping away in anger. It was not lighting my days on fire just to show her what kind of man I could be. It was quiet and reverent of our time together. I hugged her goodbye and it felt good to watch her walk away knowing that she was going to be just fine without me. What more, I knew I was going to be just fine without her.

So, I’m unsure if I want to break our final part, part 7, into the three postings, with a fourth posting for the epilogue, or to post 7.1 with 7.2, and have 7.3 with the epilogue. 🤔 I’m leaning towards having two more posts after today’s, instead of four.

I’ve had quite a few new people join the taglist. However, if you are one of those who do not participate and post, it’s hard to tag you. I’m sorry. I’ve tried, but tagging in posts is shoddy as it is, so if you are not getting the notification that I’ve posted, but you’re on the taglist? It’s just the world that our tumblr is. I’m trying though - I’m trying to get these tags to work! Promise

I do have a tag list here, or you can just let me know in a reply to add you.

@lvnterninthenight @doodle417 @luverleaver @jakesgrapejuice @fictional-duchess @milkgemini @positivegvfthings @songbirds-sweet @gretavanbitches @gardensgatedaisy @babyhoneygvfarchive @myownparadise96 @josh-iamyour-mama @starcatcherc @loveisonaroll @jakesstarlight @reesetrippingthelight @builtby-gvf @ignite-my-fire @wetkleenex-gvf @gold-mines-melting @starsasone @mysticalstarcatcher @montenegroisr @takenbythemadness @way-to-go-lad @cal-a-bungaa @thewritingbeforesunrise @leftjudgeempathsuitcase @brokenbells11 @imborrowedshesblue @vanfleeter

#jake gvf #jake kiszka #greta van fleet #gvf #cd&fe #greta van fleet fan fiction #gvf fanfiction #jake kiszka smut #jake kiszka fan fiction #greta van fleet fanfic #greta van fleet AU #jake kiszka AU

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ayyy-pee · 2 years

Text

Bloody Matrimony

Discord 18+ - Twitter - Kofi

(I had a sudden urge to do something very different and write a spooky season one shot).

Pairing: Gojo Satoru x Female Reader

Summary: On the night of your anniversary, your sweet husband's dark past comes back to haunt you.

Genre: Thriller

Story Warning: Smut, Vaginal Sex, Toxic Behavior, Murder , Oral Sex, Unprotected Sex, Breeding, Creampie, Possessive Sex, Possessive Behavior, Blood and Gore, Serial Killer, Death, Mutilated Body (not super graphic)

The sound of the pan sizzling fills the kitchen. You slide the spatula under the lopsided pancake in the pan and flip it over. You never could get the fucking perfect circle like Satoru could. He was always the better cook. You hum happily as you move the finished pancakes onto a plate next to the stove. Everything is starting off perfectly today.

You pick up the plate and move to the formal dining room, setting it down next to the assortment of all your husband’s favorite things scattered along the table – eggs, bacon, a variety of fruits and a large pitcher of orange juice. You step back, smiling to yourself as you admire your work. Hopefully, he likes this.

You startle momentarily when you feel a pair of arms snake around your waist from behind.

“Mmm, it smells great. Is this all for me, baby?” A deep voice purrs into your ear.

“All for you, baby,” you say as you turn to face the owner of that voice you love oh so much.

Dazzling, glacial blue eyes gaze into yours as you face your husband. He’s dressed in his finest corporate attire because despite today’s special occasion, he still has to work. You’re a little sad about it, but you’d both agreed to treat the day as normal and then celebrate together tonight.

“It will make everything all the more special,” Satoru had said.

You lift your hands up to his tie, adjusting it slightly when you see it’s a tad crooked.

“What time do you think you’ll be home today, Toru?” You ask him before he gives you a sweet kiss. He lets you go, pulling out a chair at the dining table for you to take your seat. You sit, letting your husband push your chair forward and then he takes his seat next to you.

Carefully, you both pile your food onto your plates, idly conversing over breakfast.

“I’ll be back around 6 tonight if you want to meet back here. I made reservations for us at that new fancy restaurant uptown,” He says, mouth full of pancakes. You nod and Satoru chuckles lightly as he inspects the misshapen flapjacks. “I can’t believe you’ve made pancakes in every shape but a circle.”

You smack his arm lightly, snorting at his jab. “Stop, Toru. Next time you point it out, I’m gonna cry.”

Satoru throws his head back and laughs. “Okay, okay. They’re perfect, though. This whole breakfast is perfect. Thank you, love.”

He leans down and presses a kiss to the top of your head. You both resume breakfast in a peaceful silence, simply enjoying each other’s company before you have to leave for work. Satoru is the first to finish of course, checking his watch as he stands up. “Shit, I’m late.”

“What else is new?” You joke. Satoru leans back down and kisses your lips one, two, three times before he stands back up. “Happy anniversary, babe. I’ll see you tonight. I love you!”

With that, he’s rushing out the door, yelling for you to have a great day at work.

……..

Your fingers fly across the keyboard as you type up your email to a client. You want to make it home in time for your anniversary dinner with Satoru and with the way things are going, you don’t know if you will. A light knock on your office door frame makes you look away briefly, calling your friend in to have a seat once you see who it is.

“Hey Shoko, what’s up?” You ask, your eyes glued back on your computer screen.

“You seem stressed,” Shoko points out. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you work so hard. What’s going on?”

You sigh, clicking send on the email and rubbing your eyes now that that was finally done. “It’s mine and Satoru’s anniversary today. I want to make it home for dinner. You know how hard we’ve worked to get here.”

Shoko nods quietly. “I mean, I don’t know the details, but I know you two have worked hard to be happy together.”

……..

There was a time when you didn’t think you and Satoru would make it this far. College sweethearts, destined to inevitably part ways. And you had a few times, taking breaks here and there to explore other options, to travel or try and get your shit together. But time and time again you’d find your way back to each other.

It was as if there was this magnetic pull that just kept bringing you back together. No matter what Satoru did, no matter what you said, you could never leave each other alone.

In the early days of your relationship, you came to learn Satoru had his own…demons he was dealing with. The first time you’d discovered his problem, it had completely rocked your world, shattered you into a million pieces and then some. You’d ended things immediately, telling him to find someone else, anyone else to deal with his shit. And that as long as he left you alone, he could date whoever he wanted and no one would know about his terrible habit. At least…they definitely wouldn’t be hearing about it from you.

But from the moment you’d separated, you had come to regret it. You yearned for him, thought of him day and night even when you didn’t want to. You had fallen for him fast and hard and one day, against your better judgment, you’d picked up the phone and called him a few weeks after ending it. He answered on the second ring and you could immediately tell something was off.

It was odd hearing his voice, panicked and shaken when he had answered your call, whispering your name.

“I have to be honest with you…” he had muttered into the phone in a hushed tone. “I messed up again. I understand if you never want to see me again after this.”

You let the silence hang in the air for a moment before you took a deep breath. “Where are you, Satoru? I’ll come help you.”

You’d been inseparable since. Satoru had promised to do the work to do better, to be better for you and he had. Though over the years, he’d had a few missteps, he really did do his best. It was all you could ask for.

………

“You know what? It’s almost two o’clock. Why don’t you go ahead and go home for the day? Forward me the work you have left to complete and I’ll take care of it,” Shoko offers.

You shake your head profusely. “No way! I can’t ask you to do that for me, Shoko.”

She waves her hand dismissively. “It’s fine. I want you and Satoru to go out and have fun tonight. You two lovebirds deserve it.”

Shoko doesn’t wait for you to agree. She simply stands and leaves your office, wishing you a happy anniversary as she disappears around the corner. So you quickly send over your work to her, grab your things and race home.

……..

You close the door to the house behind you after entering, locking it before you set your keys down on the entryway table. Your eyes shift around the entryway because something suddenly feels…strange. The lights are all on which is odd because you know you turned them off before you’d left for work. Satoru usually tells you when he’ll be home and it’s only 2:45pm, nowhere near six yet, so it can’t be him.

You brush it off. Maybe you did forget to turn the lights off.

Setting the rest of your things down on the table and slipping your shoes off, you begin to make your way to the kitchen for a glass of water.

Then you hear it – loud grunting noises and the sound of a bed creaking echoes down the hallway that leads to the bedrooms. You pause, hoping you’re just hearing things. After some time, the noises stop suddenly and you decide that maybe you are hearing things because you don’t hear the sounds again.

You turn to resume your journey to the kitchen when the noises start back up, this time the loud sounds of squelching joining the grunts and bed creaks. Is Satoru home? You hope he’s not because if these noises are what you think they are…

Quickly, you go back to the front entryway, sifting through your bag to pull out your phone. You head back to the hallway where the noises are still going and dial Satoru’s number. Maybe it isn’t Satoru. Maybe he’s not in the bedroom doing what you think he’s doing. Maybe your house has been broken into by some losers who are fucking in your bed. Your mind is racing as it finally starts to make the outbound call to Satoru.

Don’t pick up. Please don’t pick up. Don’t pick up.

There are two rings on your end, but you don’t hear anything coming from down the hall. You feel a sense of relief wash over you and you take the phone away from your ear to hang up. You’ll just call the police and have them come arrest these dumbasses, then you and Satoru will go about your lives and enjoy your anniversary dinner tonight.

Your thumb hovers over the red circle to end the call and then you hear the sharp ring of the special ringtone Satoru has set just for you cut through the noises – the creaking, the squelching and grunting and groans – it all stops in an instant. The silence is deafening.

“Fuck, fuck, FUCK! Okay, we gotta hurry this up,” you hear Satoru’s muffled voice from down the hall as the sounds pick back up.

In the hallway, you simply stand there, body trembling and you squeeze your phone tight to keep yourself from dropping it. Your feet move before you can stop them.

Lightly stepping forward, one foot after the other, you make your way down the hall towards the bedrooms. You stop at the bedroom you share with Satoru first, quietly pushing the door open and peering inside. The lights are out. No one is in there.

You sigh, relieved. At least if he’s doing this shit, he has the decency to not do it in your bed. Part of you is grateful given how messy Satoru always is. But that means he can only be in one other room.

You follow the noises toward the guest room down the hall. As you approach, the sounds get louder, more disturbing. There’s more squelching, more squeaking, more grunting and you feel like your heart is about to crawl up and climb out of your throat. You reach a shaky hand forward, gripping on to the doorknob and steeling yourself for what you know you’re about to see; your husband and his bad habit resurfacing.

The door swings open and your eyes immediately widen at the sight before you– a pair of men’s legs still dressed in black slacks on the bed, Satoru hunched over the side of the bed as his arms move frantically in a back and forth motion. It’s definitely the cause of the banging you were hearing earlier. You’re frozen in place, watching your husband in action as he tosses what you now see is a small saw to the floor beside his feet.

Satoru sighs, standing up and swiping the back of his hand across his forehead and then you finally see it. Blood everywhere. There are pools of it on the plastic tarp you now notice is spread along the floor of the guest room. There are specks of red splattered throughout Satoru’s snowy white hair and a few splotches of blood on your newly wallpapered wall (you might kill Satoru for this one).

You’ve been the very picture of stealth up until now, the sounds and visual of your bloodied husband only pulling silent reactions from you, but it’s the sight of your expensive stained wallpaper that makes you gasp and hiss Satoru’s name. He whips around, blue eyes almost glowing in contrast to the crimson blood smudged across his face. He looks at you like he’s been caught red handed…because he literally has.

You’re shaking, facing your husband and watching as his mouth opens and closes with no sound coming out. He can’t find his words, which is fine. It gives you enough time to focus on the pair of legs lying on the bed when you realize that’s all there is. The upper half of the body is gone. There is half a dead body on the bed of your guest room.

You clench your hands at your side, trying to calm yourself because right now you feel yourself trembling so hard, you fear you may vibrate out of your skin. Satoru seems to have found his voice again because his long legs carry him across the room where he grabs your face in his large hands.

You feel sick, so fucking sick right now. All you can see is the blood smeared across Satoru’s face. So you turn your head, only to see the two legs lying lifelessly in the bed. All you can smell is the pungent copper scent of the blood in the air. All you can hear is your husband’s pleading.

Satoru shakes your head in his hands, trying desperately to bring you to focus on him. “Baby look at me, look at me baby, don’t look over there.” He turns your head to look at him.

You stare into your husband’s eyes and quietly murmur, “Satoru, what is this?”

Satoru says nothing. You see the wheels turning in his blood stained head. He can’t even find the words to explain this to you. It was the least he could do – tell you what the fuck this was.

The quiet is unbearable. Satoru isn’t speaking, no explanations, no excuses, just holding onto your head like you’ll run away if he lets go. And you should run away. If you were a better person you would run away, but instead you whisper, “You said you wouldn’t do this anymore…after the last time. You promised me.”

Your mind plays back the entirety of your relationship with Satoru. The first time you’d stumbled upon him after a fresh kill in college. The shock sent you running for the hills, declining every call from him that came through to your phone, avoiding every place you knew he frequented on campus, debating on dropping out and moving to another country in case you were next on his list.

Then you called him weeks after you’d ended things and he confessed to you that he had made the same mistake again. And you stupidly rushed over to help him dispose of the body (poor old Professor Gakuganji…Well, not really. He was a fucking asshole).

Despite your better judgment, you stuck around, helped clean up Satoru’s messes whenever he “relapsed” and supported him through starting back at square one. You love Satoru. You love him even though you know you shouldn’t. You know something is so incredibly wrong with him. He should be in prison awaiting a death sentence, but the thought of never seeing him again is too painful to bear. So when these things happen, when Satoru has another slipup, you do everything you can to buy you both more time together – burning victim clothes, bleaching every crevice of the house and the car, planting a new flower bed to mask the smell of the fresh corpse that’ll soon be rotting in your backyard. It’s almost like a reflex now, you’ve done it so many times.

But this time stings a little more than the others. It’s been so long since Satoru has done this (that you know of), and now you have to pull it together to get this mess cleaned up. This is such a huge step backwards for you both. Now it feels like you’re back at square one, scrubbing, digging and hiding.

You don’t know how long it takes to clean everything, to erase all traces of what took place today. The clock just ticks until you’re both standing in the shower as Satoru helps you wash off the smell of death.

……..

You’re standing under the water, watching the soap bubbles, tainted red, swirl down the drain. You make a mental note to bleach the shower too when you’re done. Behind you, Satoru loops his arms around your waist and buries his face in the crook of your neck, pressing soft kisses to your wet skin. It’s so reminiscent of how this morning started. It’s not how you pictured the day going.

“I’m so sorry, love,” he whispers to you. “I know I fucked up again. You’re always cleaning up my messes. Thank you. I love you so much.”

You want to be mad at him. You want to turn off the shower so you can run to your room, lock the door and cry in peace. But you also want to be with Satoru, the only person in this world who understands what you’re feeling right now. It always feels like this afterwards – like your body is a tangled knot and only Satoru can undo it.

He’s still kissing at your neck, the hot water beating down on you both and filling the bathroom with steam. Satoru’s hands glide up your torso and to your breasts where he cups one in each hand. He kisses a trail from your neck, along your jawline and to your ear where his tongue darts out to drag along the shell and you sigh, feeling a bit of the weight of tonight start to come off you.

“I love you,” Satoru says again. “Let me make you feel good.” He squeezes your breasts and moans softly in your ear. You can feel his growing length pressing against your ass and it makes you moan with him.

You're so weak for him, it’s pathetic.

Satoru brings his mouth down to kiss your shoulder, his teeth barely grazing your skin as his thumbs toy with your nipples.

You shudder when he lets go of your right breast, sliding his right hand down over your belly and between your legs. You can’t help the groan that escapes you when he slides his fingers between your folds and finds you already slick with need.

This is how you knew that somewhere deep down inside of you was just as broken as Satoru. It always went like this: Satoru kills, he either confesses to you or you find out on your own, you both clean up his mess and then you fuck the guilt away. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Satoru pushes two fingers into your pussy, his left hand still squeezing your breast, and his mouth still busy on your neck and shoulders as he kisses, licks and bites. Everything he does makes you feel the coil in your belly tighten, each pump of his fingers bringing you closer and closer to your undoing.

And it doesn’t take long at all for all of the adrenaline of the day to build up and bring you to your release, your walls clenching down tightly around Satoru’s hand as you come hard, moaning Satoru’s name into the steamy bathroom air. Satoru’s free arm wraps around your waist, holding you up as your legs buckle from the force of your orgasm. He gives you maybe a minute to come down from your high before Satoru pulls his fingers from you, spinning you around to face him as he kneels before you. He eases your thighs apart again and leans in to draw his tongue up through your slick folds, groaning against your clit when he tastes the fresh juices of your release. The vibration sends a chill straight up your spine, pulling a loud gasp from you.

He lifts one of your legs to rest on his shoulder, seeking easier access to push his tongue deeper against you. Your fingers slide into his hair, clutching at the freshly clean white locks to keep your balance, your hips pressing forward as Satoru’s tongue pushes you over the edge to another orgasm.

“Shit, Toru, gimme a second,” you plead, chest heaving with every breath. You’re panting, hands holding Satoru’s face to your pussy to keep him from moving until you can breathe again. The steam of the bathroom isn’t helping. It’s dizzying, only making your orgasms more intense as you’re gasping for air through them.

When your grip loosens, Satoru stands, wasting no time crashing his mouth into yours, both of you gasping and moaning when your tongues collide. You wrap your arms around his neck, Satoru’s hands coming down to cup your ass. He lifts you up, taking a few steps forward before he’s pressing your back against the shower wall.

Satoru pulls back, his eyes full of love as he gazes at you. “I fucking love you. You know that, right?”

You nod because you do know that. You’ve never doubted that.

Satoru dips his head into the crook of your neck again, kissing and sucking as he holds you still, lining his cock up with your entrance before he begins to lower you down, slowly. “You’re always – ngh – y-you’re always so f-fucking good to me, baby,” he grunts as he eases into you. He pulls back just in time to watch your mouth fall open as your eyes roll back in pleasure. “I can’t imagine life without you.” A deep guttural moan rushes past his lips when he finally fills you, giving you a moment to adjust.

“Satoru,” you moan quietly as you wrap your legs around his waist. He’s kissing up your neck, along your jaw, your cheek, your lips, anywhere he can reach that will keep him close enough to easily see the fucked out look on your face.

“Yes, baby,” he whispers into your ear, pulling his hips back slowly before he thrusts back into you.

“I love you,” you tell him. And it’s the truth. Despite it all, you love him more than anything on this earth.

Satoru moans loudly, his own worries finally leaving him as he pulls his hips back just before he thrusts forward, pounding into you deep and hard and fast. There’s desperation in Satoru that you were all too familiar with. His fear that this time would be the last and that he’d lose you permanently. He pounds into you, giving you everything he has to offer and you take it from him, whispering his name mixed with “I love yous” over and over. You cling to him, angling your hips so that each thrust has his body grinding against your clit.

He drives himself into you, every breath becoming a stream ‘fucks’ and ‘oh shits’ as he fills your pussy repeatedly. He presses a sloppy kiss to your lips before he’s grunting in your ear, “Tell me you won’t leave me, baby. I need you. I need you. Don’t ever leave me, please,” he whines. And you’re moaning, your body going into overdrive as you feel yourself approaching your third release.

“I won’t leave you, Satoru. I love you,” you reassure him. “I love you. I’m not going anywhere.”

You can feel Satoru tense, his hips jerking erratically and your head rolls back as you dig your nails into his muscled back. “Fuck!” Satoru cries out, the word echoing throughout the bathroom as he spills himself inside of you, filling you with so much of his seed you can’t tell if it’s his cum or the shower water dripping from between your legs. You roll your hips against him, whimpering when your third orgasm of the night has your walls fluttering weakly around his cock.

Satoru presses another kiss to your lips then rests his forehead against yours, your panting breaths mingling in the space between. “I know I fucked up today, but I’ll make it up to you. I swear.”

……..

Later that night, you’re wrapped in Satoru’s arms as you both lay in your bed. You snuggle closer into his chest, his embrace tightening. Neither of you says anything, the silence finally feeling comfortable. That is, until you suddenly remember to ask what you’ve been wondering since you got home earlier.

“Satoru?”

“Hmm?” You can tell he’s already dozing off. You’re sure he’s exhausted after everything that went down today.

“Who was it? On the bed earlier…who was that?”

Satoru is quiet for a moment, before he sighs and answers, “That annoying fucker from accounting, Mahito.”

You gasp, “The one who never showers and walks around the office barefoot?”

“Yeah,” Satoru confirms. “Really set me off today and before I knew it, I had him stuffed in the trunk,” he mutters quietly.

You let that information sink in, matching what you know of Mahito to the specifics of today. You liked to keep mental notes of the dates, the victims and specific details in case the day ever came where you’d need to get you both out of trouble. You never wanted to risk getting these details mixed up.

“Won’t they notice he’s gone?” You ask.

Satoru shrugs. “We were planning on firing him anyway. He was shit at the job. Doubt he’ll be missed.” He kisses the top of your head, “Happy anniversary, baby. I’m so tired, I can barely keep my eyes open.” He quietly whispers “I love you” and “goodnight” before you hear his light snores fill the quiet of your bedroom.

You feel your own eyelids begin to grow heavy with exhaustion. When you woke up today, you had not imagined it going the way it did. The day started with the smell of pancakes and syrup. Now, the house reeks of bleach and other cleaning products and you’d missed your dinner reservation at that fancy restaurant uptown. Even so, something about the day’s events brings you a sense of comfort. It’s almost nostalgic.

This…sickness in Satoru (and you, if you were being honest with yourself), is what brought you two together in the first place. It’s what solidified your relationship and bonded you for life. You take one last glance at your beautiful, sleeping husband and you know you’d do anything to stay by his side, that you’d do it all over again if it brought you to this moment every time. You murmur a quiet “I love you too, Satoru” before your eyes drift closed and sleep carries you away.

TAGS: @Sacvh @suguju @pink4lili @watyousayin @nothisispatrick300

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locusfandomtime · 9 months

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Fake logo designs of various districts/companies in Hermitcraft S8! Something about Hermitcraft brings out the graphic designer in me (*cough* it’s because I love worldbuilding and making tiny details in a world) anyway!

Design notes under cut! (Alongside some headcanons - it is quite long)

Horse Head Farms: this is the logo that started this idea basically. I got such a cool image of an eclipse with a repeated b+w horse head pattern and I really wanted to make it happen. M.C. Esher has done designs like these but as tiles, which I used as inspiration. I think I could have made it look a bit clearer but for my first time drawing something like this I’m pretty happy. The text is from one of the default Procreate fonts and kinda makes HHF look like a law firm (which is the vibe I was going for, soul-stealers and lawyers are often sorta linked in fiction, and supposedly xB and Hypno are their own legal team). xB and Hypno are the only employees other than the people they blackmail into doing stuff for them.

Big Eyes: I wanted a red eyeball as a reference to Tango’s amazing prank on Boatem and I imagine it’s a goofy little mascot for the company. Some big goofy text felt fitting alongside this. I wanted to make a Pass n Gas specific logo too but I wanted to focus on the main “districts” rather than specific shops. I feel like this is kind of obvious but in-universe Big Eyes are VERY unsuccessful and actively losing money.

Hohenzollern Castle: not really a company but Joe and Cleo are cool so I wanted to include them and I had a tiny bit of blank space left on the page so here we are. I actually really love how the sign looks, the wood texture came out nice. They don’t have a logo as much as they do a sign outside their area, created by Joe, with the text written by Joe’s dyes. The “Hohenzollern” is kinda squished because he began to run out of room but was too stubborn to split the word in half. Cleo argues that it isn’t a logo and is just a sign with the castle’s name on it. Joe argues back with a deconstruction of “what is a logo, really?” and something about companies and capitalism and Cleo doesn’t care enough to respond.

Octagon: I am a fool who initially thought it was spelt “Octogon” and had to fix it well after I finished. Oh well. I wanted this to have a very evil look about it. You can instantly tell they’re the evil tech company running experiments on the quantum realm or whatever in a Hollywood movie. Between the unsafe work conditions and the tax fraud, it is a miracle they haven’t been shut down (reason: the government is scared of Doc)

The Evil Empire: the “the” wouldn’t fit so I had to make some sacrifices. Evil Xisuma is dramatic and edgy so he wanted the logo to be in fancy black calligraphic medieval looking text. It fits the evil castle aesthetic the whole area has pretty well too. The Evil Empire is kinda like a Hot Topic store and a Renaissance Fair combined, but it is also involved with Crypto. Despite being so weird it has a perfect niche of marketing to edgy teenagers so it is quite successful. The employees hate it there because their work mandated uniform is to “dress like an evil minion”. Jevin is a slime monster, Wels cosplays a knight and Beef turned into an alien so they thankfully didn’t have to change.

Boatem (BTM): heavily inspired by Grian’s simplified logo he made in Minecraft, where he shortened it to BTM. Despite already having a reference to work off, this was the hardest design. I knew I wanted it to be simple, all-white and leaning back dramatically but I spent ages fiddling with it. Boatem is the most successful company, being perfect for the general public and their shopping district a tourist destination in of itself. It nearly went into bankruptcy when Mumbo was CEO but has been very successful since his Robot took over.

Zedaph Laboratories: my favourite design. Hand writing the text was a nightmare but it came together nicely other than that. Sheep symbol because sheep are his brand. I used the same colour palette as his laboratory. “Laboratory” is misspelled for two reasons: 1) I realised my mistake too late to change it, 2) I think it is completely in character for Zedaph to not know how to spell laboratory and only realise after Tango points it out and be forever haunted by his mistake. Don’t let the sleek corporate design fool you, Zedaph is still wild and is the only person in the “Zedaph Labratories”.

#btw I did this on procreate rather than photoshop #and it was such a pain. Procreate is better for drawing imo but text editing and transformation options are so limited #locus fandom time #locus art time #long post #how the hell am I supposed to tag this lmao #Hermitcraft #hermitcraft s8 #hermitblr #Boatem #horse head farms #Zedaph #logo design #graphic design #fanart #hermitcraft fanart

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munsonownsmyass · 4 months

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Frank Castle x OFC! Abigail Miller

Summary: After his first visit, Frank comes to town more often. As the days go by, him and Abby get closer.

Notes: Still just some good ol' pining for this one folks. It's a slowburn, I'm sorry 😆

But we get way more Frank in this one and some not so pure thoughts. But really... who could have pure thoughts around Frank Castle? 🥵

There's also a little nod to Matt Murdock in here 🤭

Dividers by @firefly-graphics

Words: 3.3K

Part 1 - Masterlist - Part 3

Two weeks. It had been exactly two weeks since Abby had last seen Frank. Some days she caught herself looking at the door, hoping he would walk through.

Which in itself is really silly. First of all, Mildred said he rarely comes to town, always keeping to himself. Secondly, she had barely talked to him. So why did she think about him?

Well, she had to admit his eyes were kinda pretty. Okay, they were downright beautiful. And thinking about it, his lips were kinda plump and… really kissable.

God, was she really thirsting over a man she barely knew? It really had been too long since she had gotten laid. And how old was he anyway? Definitely older than her, but the beard probably made him look older than he actually was. Abby shakes her head, finishing putting some freshly baked muffins in the display.

Thankfully it’s a slow day, so Abby has lots of time to do some much-needed chores around the store. Browse for new recipes, put the delivered goods in the cooler or storage. Just as she puts the empty boxes away in the backroom, she hears the bell from the door.

“I’ll be there in a sec” she yells cheerfully. When Abby re-enters the store, she sees him. Frank Castle. Well, you know what they say. Speak of the devil and all that. Without thinking, she instantly smooths down the folds of her apron, before she walks towards him.

“Mr. Castle, what can I do for you today?”

“I wanted some more bread. And maybe some cookies too.”

“You came to the right place then.” she smiles softly, hoping he takes no offence by the playful tone to her voice. She walks towards the counter, gesturing to the selection she has, waiting for his order. When he walks closer, she is reminded of just how tall he is. And broad. God, he is broad.

She forces a smile, looking up at Frank with an innocent face, like she didn’t just think about him. “So what tickles your fancy?”

He doesn’t answer, just looks at her with an intense gaze. His eyes trailing down her body and up again, where they once again meet hers. Abby suddenly feels shy, strangely exposed under his gaze.

“Do you have more of that corn loaf?” He asks, his deep voice calm and soft.

Surprised, Abby’s lips quirk up into a smile. Figures he would be a man of habits. “The same bread again, Mr. Castle? You don’t want to try something new?”

“Just call me Frank.”

A sudden warm feeling washes over her at the prospect of getting to know Frank better. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

“I do have one left.” Abby says softly, as she walks to the bread and put it in a bag. As she types the order into the register, Frank just looks at her, studying her quietly. Once she had added the cookies, she looks at him again. Not wanting him to go yet, but still not wanting to push too much, she gestures towards the coffee machine.

“You want a cup of coffee before you go?”

“No.” He says a bit too hard. He frowns quickly before his face turns softer. “No, thank you.”

It’s strange, as if he’s been alone for so long that he’s forgotten how to interact with people. Abby doesn't mind, though, but the thought makes her sad, makes her wonder why he keeps to himself.

He lingers for a moment, looking to the display, before his eyes find hers again. “You don’t have any red velvet cupcakes?”

“No, but I can make you some.” Abby smiles softly, suddenly eyeing an opportunity. “If you leave your number, I can call you when they’re done?“

Frank nods softly, taking one of the notepads on the counter. As he scribbles down his number, Abby notices how small the ballpen is in his hand, how small the notepad is against the other. God, his hands are huge. Just like the rest of him. Before she can stop herself, Abby looks him up and down, before scolding herself. Down girl. She doesn’t even know him yet. And even if she did, she wouldn’t know what to do, hopeless around men. Truth be told, she’d never had a serious relationship, always been a little shy. Or she just never found the right one. But… Doesn’t hurt to look, does it?

She forces herself to look away, biting her lip in shame.

Frank hands her the block, before he puts his hands back into the pocket of his coat. Silence falls between them. Abby fidgets with the block, while Frank looks at her. He opens his mouth, as if he’s gonna say something, but no words come out. He looks away, nods and turns towards the door.

“Have a nice day, Frank.”

He gives her a quick wave and leaves the store. Abby looks after him until he reaches his car, wondering what he wanted to say. She looks at the block in her hand, smiling, before she returns to her chores.

The next day, Abby and Mildred are sitting in the couch area, when Mildred spots something outside.

“Well, will you look at that? Frank is in town again. Twice in one month.” She takes a sip of her coffee, her eyes following him as he walks towards the shop. “Don’t think that has ever happened before.”

“Actually…” Abby starts softly, biting her bottom lip. Mildred looks at her, scotching closer. “He was here yesterday.”

Mildred looks at Abby softly, raising her brow, as a shit eating grin spreads on her face. “Hmm… I wonder what’s suddenly causing him to visit more.”

She nudges Abby’s shoulder playfully, before she puts her cup down, walking towards the back room.

“What are you doing?” Abby asks, confused.

“Leaving you alone with him.” Mildred blinks, before she disappears behind the kitchen door, just in time for Frank to enter the shop. Abby turns to face him, a blush slowly creeping up her cheeks. Frank walks towards her slowly, a faint smile on his lips.

Huh. A smile. Would you look at that? Abby can’t help but imagine how he would look with a full-on smile, how it would light up his face.

“I was wondering if my cakes were ready. Was heading to town anyways, so…”

“Oh, yeah. I… I was just about to call you, actually.” She smiles softly, fighting the urge to smile too much. Mildred couldn’t be right, could she?

Abby gets up to get his cakes, already packed up nicely in a little box. As she hands him the box, he has a faint smile on his face, his features softening ever so slightly. Looking softer, he’s not that intimidating. Sure, the hair was a little long, and that beard could use a little trim, too. But it really wasn’t that bad.

As he walks to the door, Abby softly wishes him a good day, even though he never reciprocates. Frank stops in the door, looking out into the street, before he looks back at her. His brown eyes are soft, as they look into her green ones.

“Have a nice day” he says quickly, before lowering his gaze and walking out the store.

Once outside, he looks through the window, but when he sees Abby watching, he blushes and looks away. As Frank walks to his car, Mildred comes out of the backroom, practically snickering. She puts her arm around Abby, a wide smile on her face.

“That is something I never thought I would see. You got more than 5 words out of him. He must like you.”

She gives Abby a little squeeze, before she returns to her coffee, already talking about the county fair, even though it’s still a month away. But Abby’s mind is still on Frank. He couldn’t possibly like her, could he?

She shakes her head, walking over to Mildred, trying not to smile too much.

The next few weeks flew by. Frank had come into the shop 3 more times. Once to pick up more cookies and twice for… Well, Abby wasn’t sure. He said he just wanted coffee, but the coffee couldn’t be that good, could it?

He was still very quiet, not talking much at all. A few sentences here and there, but one thing she noticed was his voice. He sounded warmer, more comfortable. Even his body language changes. He looks more relaxed, the tension gone from his shoulders, as he sits on the couch, enjoying a coffee while looking at the small bookshelves.

One day he casually mentioned he was reading Moby Dick as he was browsing through her collection of classics. It was nice to know they had that in common.

Sometimes they don’t even talk at all, just relax in each other’s company. Every so often, Abby would look up as she’s finishing up a cake, only to find Frank’s eyes already on her. And for every sweet smile she gave him, he would give one in return.

The bell to the shop rings. When Abby looks up, she is in shock for a second. Frank is there and in his hand is a bouquet of Gerber Daisies. Smiling widely, surprised by his gesture, she takes the flowers from him. “What is this for?”

“The shop's three-month anniversary.” His voice soft and… nervous? No, she must be mistaken. “It’s from my garden.” He continues softly, looking at her. Abby is one big smile, as she finds an empty vase and pour some water in. Once the flowers are in, she puts it right on the counter.

He couldn’t have picked a better flower, the Gerber Daisy being one of her favorites. She had always loved colors and could remember how her dad would always bring her mother a bouquet every Friday, filled with Gerber Daisies in all the colors the florist had.

“It… It reminded me of you.” He says softly, a gentleness to his voice that almost makes her heart ache.

“How so?” Abby asks softly, almost certain her face was flushed red at this point.

“You’re colorful.” He huffs softly, before looking down at his hands. With a shrug of his shoulders, he looks up into her eyes again. But before he can say anything, they’re interrupted by Mr. Peterson, the guy who owned the flower shop next door.

“Hello Miss Miller. Here with your flowers.”

When he sees Frank, he instantly smiles wider. “Mr. Castle, it’s such a pleasure you’ve been coming to town more.”

Frank nods and smiles, before he walks to the door in a hurry. Mr. Peterson just shrugs it off, before he begins replacing the flowers around the shop.

Abby looks down at the Daisies, gently taking one of the petals between her fingertips. So he thinks about her, huh? A warm feeling runs through her, her heart beating faster. Abby wondered what he was about to say, when they got interrupted? God, she wishes she knew.

Still caressing the soft petal, she barely hears when Mr. Peterson speaks to her. “I’m sorry, Mr. Peterson. What?”

“Just said I was done, Dear. Have a good day.” He looks at her hand, before shooting her a knowing smile. He snickers softly as he leaves the store. Great, now that’ll be all over town. But somehow, she really doesn’t care. She turns to the flowers again and then notices something on the counter. A wallet.

Confused, she picks it up and looks for an ID. A huge grin spreads as she reads the name. Francis Cast-… Castiglione? Italian? And a Francis, huh? Curious, she reads the rest. His address, birthday and… Wait… His birthday was only a few days away. Should she…? No, that would be crazy, wouldn’t it? He would probably hate it if she did anything.

If he wanted to celebrate his birthday, he would say so, right? But maybe he didn’t say anything because-

Before she can finish the thought, some customers walk in. As she helps them pick out some cakes, Frank comes back. He sees his wallet and gestures to Abby that he found it, before leaving again.

A week later, Abby is sitting in her car, heading down a small forest road. This was probably crazy, but she really wanted to do something nice for Frank.

The last few months they had gotten closer and dared she think, had become friends? And friends didn’t let another friend be alone on their birthday.

Finally, after 4 wrong turns and 50 checks to many with the GPS, Abby finally pulls into the driveway. As she looks around, she is at a loss for words. The cabin is beautiful, taken straight out of a travel magazine. Beautiful wood and stones, perfectly matched, looking gorgeous against the green of the woods. Near the treeline, there are huge stacks of lumber.

The whole place is really quiet, peaceful. She gets why Frank loves it up here.

From a small gap in the trees, Frank emerges, followed by two pitbulls. When he sees Abby, he drops his axe on a log and walks towards her car, a frown on his face.

Shit. Maybe this was a bad idea. As he strides towards her car, she braces herself. Ready to be scolded, told to fuck off. She slowly exits the car, smiling gently at Frank.

“What are you doing here?”

She can’t quite decipher his expression. A mixture of anger and shock is painted on his face. Maybe even panic. Abby gets it. She’s probably the first one up here in years, maybe ever. “Sorry, I… It’s your birthday, so I wanted to-”

“How do you know?” He demands, looking into her eyes, confusion written all over his face.

“I… I looked in your wallet. To see who left it.” She bites her lip, looking at the ground like a scolded child. When she looks back up into his eyes, his expression has softened.

“Sorry, I… I never have visitors.”

“And now I see why.” Abby smiles nervously, gesturing towards his intimidating posture. Frank instantly relaxes.

A small wine comes from behind him, and they both look at the dogs, sitting nicely, waiting to be called over. Frank whistles and the dogs rush to Abby, almost knocking her over. She’s always loved dogs, grew up with them and had actually been thinking about adopting one after she moved out here.

“Easy boy.” Frank says softly to the eager dark one. God, his deep rich voice always makes her heart flutter.

“They’re cute. What’s their names?” Abby asks curiously, her eyes never leaving the dogs. Always been a dog person, maybe even liking them more than humans. Dogs are honest, their emotions and intentions always clear. She liked that.

“This guy is Max.” He points to the dark grey Pitbull, before turning to the red one. “And this little boy is… Red.”

Frank shuffles slightly, scratching the back of his head, as he looks down at the two of them. “Max I rescued, and Red I got at a shelter. Named after someone I knew years ago.”

He smiles softly as he pats squats down and pat the young Pitbull’s head. Abby couldn’t help but wonder who this person was. Must’ve have meant something to Frank. Abby stands again, brushing the dirt and dog hairs of her fingers. Suddenly nervous, she smoothed down her dress, before gesturing towards her car. “I actually brought you something.”

Abby excitedly opens the door, pulling out the cake and a present. Her smile falls slightly, when she sees his face. Abby was expecting him to be surprised, but she never would have expected this.

He looks overwhelmed, like he can’t believe what is happening. Abby’s heart clenches at the thought. How long had it been since anyone had done anything like this for him?

He gestures for her to follow, leading her to the backyard. While he goes inside to get plates, Abby sits down in a lounge chair. She didn’t know what she expected his place to look like, but it wasn’t quite this. New stylish furniture that complimented the wood of the cabin. It was all very clean and minimalistic, but still somehow had soul. She looks towards the terrace door, dying to know what it looks like on the inside. Maybe next time.

Frank comes back with a tray, holding plates, cups and a teapot. But that’s not what has caught Abby’s attention.

While inside, Frank has taken his jacket off and holy fuck. Abby had never seen arms as his, suddenly feeling her throat dry up. Toned muscular arms, flexed, so thick. And God, the shirt. Until now, she had only seen him with a jacket or sweatshirt on, never really knowing what kind of body was underneath. But now, as his tight t-shirt clings to him slightly damp skin, nothing is left to imagination. A broad, muscular chest. Nipples perked in the cool afternoon air. Abs dancing under the thin fabric. She bites her lip, wondering what he would look like without it, sweat dripping down his chest as he chops wood?

It takes every ounce of willpower for Abby to look away, before she gets caught. Her head now filled with images she wouldn’t forget anytime soon, she clears her throat, pushing the cake towards Frank.

“I… I-“ she coughs, stumbling over her words. Damn, how could he affect her so much without even doing anything. “I didn’t know what flavor you liked, so I made carrot cake.”

“Well, lucky for you I love cream cheese frosting.” A wide smile plays on his handsome features. Just when she didn’t think he could be any prettier, he smiles.

Frank carves them both a piece and then they eat in silence, looking out over his grounds. A big field of grass surrounded by trees. To one side, there’s a big greenhouse filled with plants and raised beds with herbs. To the other side there’s bushes with berries.

All over the yard there’s flowers, making it a colorful space. But closest to her, in many pots on the terrace, there’s Gerber Daisies. Just like the ones he gave her, in all colors of the rainbow. “This place is really wonderful, Frank.”

He just smiles and mutters a quiet thank you through a mouthful of cake. Abby giggles softly, the sight of Frank with his mouth full priceless, his cheeks filled out like a chipmunk. “So, I take it the cake was a hit?”

“Best damn cake I’ve had in years, sweetheart.”

She’s so damn easy. One ‘sweetheart’ leaves his lips and she’s a puddle. But to be fair, that voice of his is something else.

Abby gently pushes the present towards him. Frank tears the paper away, smiling when he sees the book. Okay, sure, maybe she should have gotten him something else. But she didn’t know him well enough, and he did seem to love books.

“Looking at what books you eyed at the shop, I thought that you might enjoy ‘The Call of the Wild’.”

“I love it, thank you.” Frank smiles softly, opening the book, inspecting the pages. Suddenly captivated by the way his fingers gently dance over the pages, Abby can’t help but wish she was that book. To have his fingers dance over her skin like that. She swallows a huge lump, looking at his hands. How could such a big book look small in his hands?

After a moment's silence, he looks into her eyes, suddenly looking a little nervous. “Abby, you’re going to the county fair, right?”

Slightly surprised by his question, she tells him how Mildred coerced her into helping set up. “But my evening is free. Why?”

“Maybe… You’d wanna go with me?”

Abby isn’t sure he heard him right. But the way he smiles, she knows it’s true. She can’t hold back her smile, as she happily agrees.

She was already tripping. Did he just ask her on a date? As she looks up into his beautiful chocolate eyes, a soft smile on his face, her heart flutters. Saturday couldn’t come fast enough.

Tagging: @e-dubbc11 @itwasthereaminuteago @chvoswxtch @theradioactivespidergwen @danzer8705 @lucy-sky @yanna-banana @murdock-and-the-sea @mattmurdocksscars @boliv-jenta @darlingshane @pedrito-friskito

And some no pressure tags 🙈: @anna-hawk @feelmyskinonyourskin @chellestrash @chelseasdagger @loveroftoomanyfandoms

#lumberjack frank castle #frank castle fanfiction #frank castle #frank castle AU #frank castle x abigail miller #whisk me away

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jeanbie · 1 year

Text

WORDLESS #4 ★ masterlist.

pairing: levi x reader

genre: sugar daddy & contract killer au | warnings: toxic relationships, non graphic sex | wc: 4.9k

note: hey guys, who's reading? *silence* *tumbleweed* hope u guys like it :)

★ ch1. ch2. ch3. ch4. ch5

⏤ Sometimes, saying “I love you” is inappropriate, and given your circumstances, you think it might send Levi over the edge if he hears them again.

(31) Pulling a chair out for them to sit down at the table.

Levi’s not a gentleman.

Everybody knows it, and he’s not ashamed of admitting it. Half of the time, he thinks that it’s what makes him unique, at least. If you (or anybody else, even though since you walked out on him that one time, he’s been seeing all the others less and less) were going to be with somebody, then you might as well just make it different. Spice it up a little bit.

“It will be nice.” Levi, because he’s not a gentleman, is not really listening to you. He sits behind the steering wheel and tightens his hand against the wheel, the other is on the clutch.

“Are you listening to me?”

“No,” Levi replies. He turns the corner, and the car slightly leans you to the right.

A sigh fills the car as he pauses as a set of traffic lights further down the street.

This red light drags forever, and Levi sighs instead and looks at you pointedly, “What, then?”

It takes reluctance to pull your gaze away from the pigeons near the bins on the side of the road, but you do, and you look at Levi. “I just think it will be really nice to grab dinner together.”

“We do that all the time,” Levi says.

“Yeah, but I don’t mean us, or just us,” you affirm, “I mean, like all of us. Family, I guess.”

Levi bristles. “Family? We don’t have any family, baby.”

“We do,” you moan. “I mean. Not family-family, but family. The kind of family we get to choose. Erwin, and Sasha and whoever.”

Levi nods sarcastically, “Oh. Wrong F word, Y/N, those people are called friends.”

“Oh, whatever then,” you huff, turning back towards the window. “Forget I said anything.”

Levi wants to forget, but he doesn’t. Something about that line, about the way that it stuck with him: The kind of family we get to choose. He thought about it all night, groaned, and then swore and called Erwin. Alright motherfucker, we’re going to dinner with Y/N so you better shut the fuck up, get a suit, and meet us at that fancy Gangnam restaurant.

So, it’s a Friday evening, and it feels like a Disney Channel crossover episode. Sasha definitely feels out of place in this restaurant, and Levi acts uncomfortable about the way Erwin sits opposite you, gauging your every move and word with overacted enthusiasm. Actually, all Levi is thinking about is the moment that they got here.

“Here, honey, let me get that for you,” had appeared to be Erwin’s favourite sentence to say to you; he used it when he opened the door for you, and again with the chair to the table. Erwin sat seething, almost red like a ruby. Sasha sips nervously from her glass as Erwin laughs again at something you said.

Dinner went great, he would have to admit that.

“Oh, we booked the patio for desserts,” Erwin says. One of Levi’s other friends, Mike (who honestly came to observe rather than to fill in for the surprising lack of family at this family dinner) looks left and right to each person on the table and follows the crowd as they leave for the patio once the main courses are done.

Erwin once again reaches for the door and lets you walk outside. As Levi passes Erwin at the door, he glares at Erwin with eyes that could murder. Erwin doesn’t waver but he does get the hint, even more so as you stroll towards the table. Before Erwin can even move towards the table, Levi curves in front and puts his hand on the back of your chair.

“Here you go, baby, let me sit next to you,” Levi says, dragging it out for you to sit. You watch him with one raised eyebrow but say nothing. Erwin says nothing for a few minutes but decides to get right back to it as the desserts begin. It pisses off Levi to the point where his hand leaves fingerprints in your thigh, but you can’t find it in you to be mad about it.

(32) Wrapping a blanket around them when they are sitting on the couch and watching a show.

“You gotta stop letting yourself in here, it scares the shit out of me.”

“I own this dump.”

You gape over your shoulder, “Fucker, you own this dump that you call a dump but you gave me this dump, it’s my dump, don’t call it a dump.”

“Say dump one more time,” Levi warns, shrugging off his jacket and ruffling his hair. It’s wet thanks to the torrential rain outside. His socks squelch across the floor because he left his slippers back at his place, and he’s not here often enough to have his own pair at your apartment.

The apartment is toasty and warm, the heating on high. Except the living room is chilly and dark, dark blue almost.

“What are you watching?”

Levi moves towards your bedroom but can still hear you as he moves.

“Just this show I found,” you reply, watching the screen. “Dead To Me.”

“Never heard of it,” he yawns, and emerges from the room. He’s holding a heavy blanket in his arms, moving to the living room to sit next to you. He plops next to you and glances at the screen, wrapping the blanket around your shoulders, over your head like a cocoon.

You laugh softly, shifting it off your head and leaning up against him. “It’s American. It’s got Velma in it.”

“Linda Cardellini?” Levi asks, settling back. “She’s hot as fuck.”

“I know, that’s why I thought I’d watch it, I love her,” you say.

Levi wraps an arm around your shoulder and smushes closer towards you.

“Good day?” you ask quietly.

He takes a few seconds, like he’s truly trying to think about whether he wants to answer or not.

“Okay,” he admits. “Don’t care, it’s over, I’m here, don’t wanna think about work.”

You don’t push him to talk, and instead, let him sit next to you. He likes the darkness because there’s no way you can see his discomfort, his pain, the blood under his fingernails.

(33) Throwing away their piles of tissues when they have a cold.

Levi travels for work a lot, and it’s no secret to anybody he knows. It was midday when he got a call, just a few words over the phone, and then he was moving out of the shower and into the bedroom to get ready.

He had told you to stay, stay until he got back. Unfinished business, he said, that would need dealing with when he got home. So you did, you stayed and he left, and that was that.

Levi sighs and shuts the car door. Until next time, he thinks to himself as he watches the car pull away. Frowning, he straightens his blazer and walks up the steps to the complex he lives at and enters. When he gets to his apartment, he kicks his shoes off right away and as he steps inside, he notices that the apartment is unusually silent.

Normally at his home, his big mansion that he loves up in the hills, there’s some sort of noise. Maybe it’s the sound of the TV on in the kitchen, or the bubbles in the hot tub, or the sound of Elio prowling around the bedroom. This apartment is in central Seoul, closer to work and closer to school. He hates how silent it is, how empty it feels.

“Y/N?”

There is no instant reply. He moves across the apartment, searching silently.

“Babe, you here?”

Worry bubbles in his stomach and he moves in search of you. After searching everywhere, Levi scoffs like it’s a sick joke that you’re not here, until he hears a noise, a croak and a cough from the spare bedroom.

“Y/N?” calls Levi. He moves to the door and twists the handle, and is a few shuffles inside when a grottal, gross noise emerges from the darkness.

“What?” he asks.

“I said don’t come in here,” you croak out in reply, because it’s you, and who else would it be in his apartment?

Levi enters and reaches for the light, pausing when you grunt in his direction. He can see you in the dim light of the spare bedroom, the sun outside the curtains, and he suppresses a smile.

“What happened? I said we had unfinished business.”

“I know,” you rasp. “But one of the kids in my class came to class with a sore throat, I thought I’d be fine. But, ta-da.” He can see in the light that there’s a plethora of tissues around your body, like a barrier. So many, snotty and probably damp and scrunched into balls. “Guess he had a cold.”

He grimaces, shuffling into the bedroom despite you telling him otherwise. It’s unsurprisingly stuffy in the room, a given since the room is closed off from the sunlight that bleeds behind the curtains. Like you requested, he doesn’t turn on the lights, keeping you safe in the darkness.

“Shitty kids,” Levi grunts. Finding a lack of interest in the germs that breed in the tissues scrunched into balls, he moves them from the covers and tosses them towards the small bin next to the bedside cabinet. You sniffle, snotty and stuffed, and peer from over the duvet at him.

Levi looks tired, as he always does when he gets back from work. He sports a brand new cut on his lip, one that will probably scar when it’s done showing crimson. There is blood on his shirt, and you know that it’s probably not his. That doesn’t make you feel better.

“How long you had it?” Levi asks.

“Two or three days,” you estimate. He’s been gone almost a week, the seventh day being tomorrow. “Should go soon, don’t worry.”

He smiles, “Not worried. Did you get medicine, or something?”

You sniff once, the air hot in your nostrils. “Nope. I haven’t managed to leave since I came down with it. I only went to the door to collect soup and then I went back to bed in here. And I went out to see who it was when Mike came by to get your big kitty.” Another sniff and Levi’s eyebrows raise with amusement, “Didn’t want to infect your bedroom, so I came here instead. Hope that’s okay.”

“Sure, it’s okay,” he replies. “I’ll find something for you, I’ve got a bunch of shit that might help.”

“Really?”

Levi nods, “Yeah. Stay put, buttercup, B-R-B.”

(34) Mending an item of their clothing that was ripped.

“Who even takes the subway anymore?”

In reply, Levi gets an appalled scoff. “I’m sorry, not all of us are rich enough to have fucking chauffeurs taking us places.”

“What’re you talking about, you’re rich,” Levi says, his voice kind of muffled due to the sewing needle between his teeth. He sits on the edge of his sofa, your skirt spread over his lap like a napkin at dinner. Down the leg, the seam is torn, showing what could have been an erotic amount of leg. Unfortunately, he’d only got a glimpse of your skin when you shuffled into his home.

As the CEO of ripping his clothes, Levi became familiar with sewing over the years, figuring it was less expensive to sew than it was to replace. So, of course, when your skirt got torn on the subway home, Levi tested his skills and dug out the sewing needle.

“No thanks to you,” you sigh. “You didn’t need to, by the way.”

“Need to what, pay you?” Levi laughs, sewing the seam. “Come on, Y/N, it’s overdue.”

“True, but I don’t really need your money that much anymore.”

“Funny, since you needed it when you didn’t have it,” he sighs dramatically. “Anyway, it’s barely a dent out of my bank account, I wanna spoil you. You’re welcome.”

You frown, shuffling to the couch and throwing yourself over the back so that your head is by his legs. Levi spares you a glance from the skirt and smiles, returning back to the work.

“Thanks,” you mumble. Nothing is said, but he appreciates it.

(35) Running out in the middle of the night to get a food item they’re craving.

“I think I’m pregnant.”

“What the fuck?”

Levi shoots up from bed into a sitting position, his eyes blown wide as he stares at you. Whenever Levi invites you to stay at his apartment, he always keeps a light on in the evening. His apartment is in a somewhat busier area compared to his house, which is stationed in a private neighbourhood only touched by the wealthiest of the wealthy. His apartment was supposed to be for ease, for if he had to do dirty work in the city and didn’t want to tie his name to a hotel. It wasn’t often that you stayed the night here.

In the light of the dim lamp on your side of the bed, Levi can make out your face. You’re still lying down, staring up at the ceiling. After he stares long enough, you look over at him.

“Why the fuck would you say that,” he breathes, like it’s an insult.

“Wow, would it really be so bad?” you ask, curious now.

He blinks like an owl. “Obviously, dipshit.”

Sigh. “And here I was thinking it would be like the movies and you’d love me.”

“Even if I loved you, do you think I wanna have kids?” Levi questions rhetorically, because he’s actually already talked to you about this. Levi never wants to have children. His life is constantly on the line. There is no way he’d bring a child into the world, just for them to either be used as bait, or grow up in a world without their father. He knows how that feels.

“Fair,” you reply. “Still.”

Levi shudders, it’s cold in here. “Wait, are you for real?” He shifts, the covers make a disruptive noise in the night, “what makes you think that you’re…you know…”

“I keep getting weird cravings,” you explain, like it’s the craziest science that he won’t understand. As soon as you say it, he feels almost instantly better. It’s not like cravings are the most reliable symptom of a pregnancy. Besides, you’re on the pill, and when you’re not, he’s safe. He’s not an idiot, he’s not about to accidentally ruin both of your lives with a few squirts.

“Like what?”

You shrug, “Really craving the Fairway to Heaven ice-cream.”

Levi scoffs. Actually, it’s almost a tch under his breath. “Yeah, of course, you’re craving the most expensive ice-cream. Predictable. Cute, almost.” He pats your leg over the covers, “We all know Phish Food’s the better flavour, by the way.”

“Tell that to the cravings, sir,” you reply. You frown, then, “I’ll pick some up tomorrow. Maybe I’ll dream the cravings away…”

“As if,” Levi barks, knowing you better. If he knows you at all (which he confidently does), you’ll press about this for the rest of the night until you fall asleep bored of trying. So, Levi enjoys the last few seconds inside a warm bed before climbing out, switching on the light so it burns your eyes as the room fills with it.

“Ouch, too bright!”

“Pussy,” he smirks. “Move, get your coat, we’re going out.”

“Oh yeah, at midnight?” you ask sarcastically, sitting up. “Where’re we going?”

“Ice cream,” he replies, like it’s obvious. To him it is. “That store down the road sells it and it closes at 2, so get your big coat and let’s get moving.”

“Are we seriously going to get ice cream at midnight?” you laugh, doing as he says.

“We both know you’re not gonna shut up about it if we don’t.”

Levi grabs his own coat and zips it up. Nobody’s gonna care that he’s wearing PJ’s, and even if you’re sleepy and grumpy on the way there, it’s better than keeping you at the apartment alone. He’d have to be crazy to leave you here than he is going out for ice cream at midnight.

(36) Helping brush their hair after a shower.

You’re the best he’s had, really.

Levi knows this, because he’s not stupid or blind or oblivious. Compared to the other girls he’s had, and the ones he left not too long ago, he knows how lucky he is to have someone like you. Someone who doesn’t just want him for the sex and the money. Although scary, it’s reassuring.

Levi comes out from the kitchen to the bedroom where you’re sitting, hunched over a laptop watching a YouTube video for your class that bores you to sleep. Your hair is damp and matted, left to dry as you watch. Forty minutes into an hour video. Levi narrows his eyebrows, wondering if he’d ever have the patience to watch something like that. Probably not. He barely has the patience when he works, and he has a job that demands it 99% of the time. When he can be hasty he is, but when his job is to kill and protect, patience is a must.

As you watch, Levi moves to sit behind you and he sets his chin on your shoulder, boredly looking at the screen. Your eyes are glossed over, possibly not even watching at all. Regardless, he stays there and slowly rakes his fingers through your hair, straightening out the curls that are close to knots.

He still blames the video for you falling asleep, although it’s probably his fingers. He won’t admit it.

(37) Making sure to be quiet while they’re taking a nap.

It’s not just that. Levi enjoys being gentle, but only when nobody can see him doing it. When you fall asleep, slouched over like a zombie, he smiles and gently closes the screen of your laptop. Whatever garbage your Uni have you watching can be watched tomorrow.

Until then, you must sleep. He moves the laptop away to the cabinet across the room and comes back, collecting you in his arms and moving you into the bed. Once the covers are draped across your body, he takes extra care to be quiet leaving the room and shutting the door. There’s some food leftover in the kitchen from dinner that he’ll eat before joining you, and you don’t wake up, not even when the bed dips as he climbs into it.

(38) Letting them warm their cold hands under your shirt.

Despite his work often demanding him to be around people, Levi isn’t really a big fan of crowds. If he can get out of going out in public, he will jump at the opportunity. He just can’t see why you’re so miffed about not being with the crowds of people along the Han river waiting for the fireworks- he’s got a balcony that looks out over the city and the river, so what’s the big deal?

“It’s all about the vibe,” you say with a slight sigh. Your arms are draped over the balcony banister, legs slowly vibrating in the bitter winter air. “As a broody killing machine, I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“That stings,” Levi replies, closing the door behind him as he wanders back towards you with a blanket. His eyes glaze over your face as he arrives and Levi rolls his eyes, “Hold your face that way and it’ll stick.”

“Heard it all before from my Mom,” you reply boredly. A quiet thanks is spoken as you take the blanket shield and snuggle closer to his chest, staring expectantly at the black sky. “What time will they start?”

Levi presses his cheek to your hair. “Considering three minutes ago it was only ten to midnight, I can safely assure you that it is not time yet.”

“I’m bored.”

“Why are you so hard to please today?” Levi groans. He wriggles around, “And don’t try me with that ‘I think I’m pregnant’ bullshit. Spare me the moody bitch performance for today, please?”

You pug to yourself. “Sorry. Sorry, you’re right. And I shouldn’t be so…I don’t know. I’m sorry. Thank you for tonight.”

Levi shakes his head slightly. He may never understand women.

“You really that mad over the bridge?” he asks quietly, his mouth against your head. It’s hot, and you lean back towards his minimal body warmth. “I’m sorry I didn’t pass your vibe check for tonight, but I thought it might be romantic or something for us to be up here.”

You almost laugh. “It is romantic. You’re right.”

Levi brushes it off. Lately something has shifted, a comfort in the air that grants you permission to be in his life as someone more important than a ‘sugar baby’. Dare he say it, but Levi actually considers you a friend. Now, you’re at the point where neither of you give much of a shit about the sugar clause you wrote yourselves into quite some time ago. An unspoken thing hangs there like Christmas mistletoe, seen but prayed away.

Distant laughter and a bang grows near the direction of the river and bridge, and Levi feels you perk in his arms. As a small warmth bursts across his chest, Levi hisses in the cold and stuffs his hands up your shirt, where they curve around your body to cheekily hold both of your boobs. You jump, because his hands are freezing.

“You’re cold!” you whine. “What are you doing?”

Levi shrugs, “My hands are freezing. I’m keeping them warm.”

You briefly glance down at his knuckles outlined by your jumper. “Oh yeah, because I’m sure that’s the reason why you’re literally groping my tits right now.”

“They feel warmer already,” he continues.

(39) Giving them your dessert when you eat out because it’s their favourite

On the rare occasion that guilt really overwhelmingly consumes Levi Ackerman, he allows his guilt to control his feet. Usually, they end up on a pathway to the bedroom, or in the car where he drives you somewhere nice, or perhaps he picks you up from school instead of cruelly leaving you to take the subway. Now that things have shifted slightly in your dynamic, Levi isn’t sure what flies as romantic anymore. He doesn’t want to leave you with the wrong impression. You’ve had the talk together, the one that touched upon what the future looked like and how quite definitely it looked as though you wouldn’t be with each other, but surely, dinner overlooking the sea in Busan isn’t too fancy or romantic, right?

“Here is your dessert.” The waiter circles around the table and gently lays a dish in front of you. Levi carefully watches over his glass of wine as the waiter also announces his own dessert, the exact same. His eyes move down to the display set before him.

He’s never really been keen on dessert, but Levi is the type of person who doesn’t enjoy the idea of one person eating when the other isn’t. So he had just ordered the same thing as you had, nice and simple, without giving it much thought.

“I love this,” you sigh happily, fiddling the metal spoon in your hand and peering up at him, “This is sick. Thank you.”

“I didn’t make it,” he replies.

You roll your eyes, spooning out some of the dessert, “you know what I mean.”

Something in the beach-fronted restaurant shifts as the sun sinks deeper into the ocean, and Levi twirls his spoon anxiously whilst observing the dessert. He’s never been a huge fan of bingsu in general, and he looks with slight distaste at the green blob on top of what looks like cornflakes. He doesn’t get it.

He dips his spoon into the dessert, taking a polite amount and very quickly taking a bite. For around twenty seconds, he thinks it’s okay, but the aftertaste makes his whole body shudder. Fucking hell, he really hates desserts.

After a few minutes, you finally move your attention away from the scraped clean dessert dish and take a glance over at Levi, who is already watching you with a lack of interest for his own dessert.

“Is everything okay?” you ask, subtly wiping around your mouth just in case. You take in the sight of his unfinished treat, “not hungry?”

Levi shrugs awkwardly, “I don’t really like bingsu.”

“Then why’d you order?” you question quietly.

“I panicked,” he replies, “you ordered it and I don’t like desserts but I didn’t want you to be eating alone.”

You pause, eyebrows quirked: “I don’t mind.”

He sighs. Of course. “Well…” He twirls the dessert dish and pushes it in your direction, “Since it’s your favourite, or whatever, you can have it.”

Your eyes light up, “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool,” you squeal, happily taking it from him. “Thank you!”

Levi rolls his eyes playfully and sits back in his chair. Whatever he didn’t eat from the dessert he instead eats up in the sight of you.

(40) Making a goofy face until they notice and laugh.

You don’t quite know how you ended up at Levi’s work, but here you are. You could probably trace it back to Erwin swinging by to get you from school since Levi felt bad he couldn’t, and to be honest, you had been confused when Erwin drove past the turning to your apartment and kept going further into the city.

Levi’s workplace is pretty big, but still significantly hidden inconspicuously to avoid attention. As you slowly wander around the hallways, you begin to daydream about where Levi’s office may be, what he might be doing and what he might think if he sees you.

Quietly passing through what appears to be a recreation room, filled with tired faces who blink curiously as you brush by, you finally step out into a web of hallways that connect to small rooms walled in glass. Each is empty, besides one at the very end that bustles with tense conversation, and you’re drawn to the sound of Levi’s voice as it carries through the silent hallways.

You push forward, stopping not too close to the doorway so that if somebody who isn’t him happens to see you, you can make a hasty escape.

The room is filled with strange faces, strange men in tight suits and briefcases next to their feet. A man stands up beside Levi at the head of the table, his hands animated as he presses on about something you’re not well read on. Hell if you know a single thing about gun models and firing ranges. You can just about tell apart Fortnite weapons and that’s only because they’ve got colours.

Levi, however, is a sight that captures your gaze. For a while, he sits with his back turned to the man standing, his eyes observing each individual around the table, of who squirm under his watch. He eventually looks back at the man, his jawline sharp and his hair styled so that it only slightly falls into his eyebrows. God damn it, he looks sexy as hell; his shirt is black, cuffed, unbuttoned at the top revealing his skinny collarbones. He’s probably wearing the tight trousers too, the ones that make his ass look good.

A thought strikes you: how would he feel if he saw you outside? While it shouldn’t, the thought fills you with adrenaline. The idea of not him but somebody else seeing you, a girl dressed in white jeans and a red shirt, your coat discarded somewhere on an office chair. Would he be mad? Would he be turned on?

Would you die?

Deciding that the worse case scenario only involved you being yelled at, you decide to dip your toes into the water and tease the sharks; you wonder how long you can hold this silly face for until he finally notices you out there.

It seems like a long shot, and you’re quite close to giving up when finally Levi returns his attention to the table. Heads begin to move in conversation, and Levi’s gaze passes from gentleman to gentleman until they pause abruptly, locking onto you behind the glass. For a moment, he does nothing besides stare. Perhaps he doesn’t care. Then, his eyes widen, like he’s confused and alarmed and slightly impressed. Before his disturbed posture is noticed, you laugh to yourself and run away, back in the direction you tiptoed through.

(Later, Levi finds you in Erwin’s office sitting on an uncomfortable and torn armchair, a Rubix cube moving back and forwards in your hands. You’re not matching any colours. It’s going nowhere. He smiles.

“Field trip?” he questions, making your head snap up suddenly. He slides next to you on the free chair, “I’ll skin that prick alive, you know you’re not supposed to be here.”

“I know, but I’m here against my will!” you promise, putting the cube down. “I really wanted to go home. Dead To Me episodes don’t watch themselves, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” he sighs. “I gotta go to a meeting again, then I’ll drive us home, okay?”

You nod. “I’m sorry I distracted you, by the way. I realise now I’m actually very lucky that it was you who saw me and nobody else.”

Levi laughs, kissing your forehead as he rises to leave. “Yeah, well, I’m the most dangerous guy in there, so consider yourself very lucky.”)

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