#oscillates like a fucking desk fan

[goodeapple]

be nice to your neighbors.

i have a million and two wip's in my Ysilla folder and somehow, i have to add one more.

i am an exhausting person. love y'all lots!

pairing : Aemond x Ysilla (Rhaenyra'sDaughter!OC)

warnings : Aemond is a simp & Ysilla is a plant nerd. Awkward flirting. Fluff. No smut :(

word count : 2,500+

It’s so fucking early. What self-respecting tattoo shop is open at 7AM on a Sunday? On God’s day? Aegon hasn’t stepped foot in a church since he was thirteen which explains the hours, but why the fuck is Aemond here and not him?

Aemond wasn’t exactly planning on going to church today, but maybe if he had the option, his ass would be in a pew next to his mother right now instead of perfecting a sketch for an appointment that isn’t even until next week. His Americano is lukewarm, steam long blown away by the small oscillating fan tucked up on a high shelf. A row of overstuffed books, on everything from Classic Americana design to Valyrian legends he wants to detail on paper, fill up the rest of the ledge. The next one down houses a line of knick knacks he could never force himself to part with- a tiny tacky snowglobe from Harrenhal, his grandfather’s Hand of the King pin from when he was in the courts, 8-tracks from his mum’s rebellious punk phase before she went to college, and at the end, a framed photo of him and his siblings the day they opened the shop. Three identical terrified grins are spread over their faces, nervous anticipation bleeding through the black-and-white snapshot. Little pieces of his life in his little corner of the world, where he gets to do what he loves. 

And the most important little worm to him sleeps the day away in her glass vivarium by the door. Vhagar lounges under her UV bulb, baking on a large smooth stone after inhaling her breakfast. His little crocodile without the teeth. The soft garden green bearded dragon with her yellow belly has been his constant companion since he rescued her from a Oldtown pet shop when he was a pre-teen. He hid her under his bed for a full seven months before his mum found her one day when she was searching for missing socks. It was an impressive feat, one even she had to acknowledge after blowing her fucking top. 

Aemond darkens the curve of the kraken tentacle he’s sketching, a piece for a client coming all the way from the Iron Isles. The little suction cups still need more depth and he hasn’t even begun to flesh out the texture of the skin yet when the bell hanging above the shop door tinkles, signifying an end to his blissful solitude. 

“Hello? Helaena, you here?” 

Aemond drops his pencil, shoving off from his desk, grumbling as he goes. There’s still a hint of sleep in his eye and he rubs it away as he walks up the hall to the lobby. 

“We don’t take walk-in’s on the weekends and we don’t have any appointments scheduled ‘till 9. So, are you sight-seeing or are you just overly punctual?” He doesn’t mean to sound like a dick, it just comes second nature. 

The back of the head that greets him as he blinks open his eye is a pretty one, thick brunette curls pinned up with gold butterfly clips. The girl abandons the magazine she’d been leafing through, turning at the sound of his voice. The wide-eyed look that’s spread over her face emphasizes plum-shaded irises, framed by palm leaf eyes. There’s a pair of beauty marks peppered on the dawn of her cheekbone. A rosy mocha mouth is pouted before it curves up into a charming bend of itself. 

“I’m sorry, I'm not here to get any work done. I was just coming in to give something to Helaena.” The woman shimmies the large gift bag held tight in her fist as proof. “I’m a friend.”

Aemond shrugs off his disappointment. “Oh, my bad.” She’d be a gorgeous canvas. The golden brown of her skin would take color like a fucking champ. Black would be even better. Really make the contrast pop. The smooth peak of her shoulders from underneath the oversized cream cardigan she wears is a tantalizing taste of something he wants to indulge in. “She’s not here yet.”

Her expression collapses and Aemond regrets causing such a look to dim her face. “Oh damn, she told me she’d be in at this time.” 

Aemond thinks maybe he should call his big sister, considering he hasn’t received her standard “i’ll be there in 10, I PROMISE 10 MINUTES AEMMY!!” text today, when the girl’s face blooms into one of recognition.

“You’re Aemond, right?” 

“Uh, yeah- yes, yes I am.” He coughs, straightening up a bit, manners braided into every core memory he possesses. His mom is, in Aegon’s terms, a “tightass”, but damn him if he doesn’t know how to treat a woman.

“I always see you coming in and out of here, and well, you and Hel and Aegon all look alike, so I put two and two together and made four that you’re the missing piece of Three Headed Dragon.”  She gestures to the air, implying she’s speaking about the name of the shop. The gold chains layered around her neck, some with pendants and some without, jingle with her movement. Aemond likes the softness of the sound. “And when she came in for a succulent recommendation a few months back, I asked about you and she told me your name, and… yeahhh. I just didn’t want you to think I was some weirdo who’s been waiting for the perfect moment to get you alone.” 

“Oh no, I wouldn’t think that.” Aemond looks very serious, even knitting his brows in a thick, no-nonsense line, but he has to bite his lip to keep from snickering, which she notices. 

She breathes out a laugh, dipping her head in surrender. She turns to the entrance, and Aemond is worried she might leave. He doesn’t mind her company, which is a miracle considering the hour. 

“Hey-”

“Is this your’s?” She points to the hyperrealistic direwolf stencil he’d cranked out last year during an artist’s block that he couldn’t shake for the life of him. The piece is gruesome, wicked lines and keen edges that intimidate even him, and he drew the damn thing. 

“Uh, yeah. Good guess.” The black frames adorning the gallery wall are a mixture of his and Aegon’s work, all in varying shades of grays and blacks. His brother’s signature new school style is easily distinguishable to Aemond, but he admits some of their earlier sketches are more uniform than not.

“You do beautiful work.”

Aemond’s eyebrows raise and he lets the compliment warm him.

“I appreciate that. Many wouldn’t call that beautiful, but I think it has a certain magnetism to it.” He looks the woman over, using the excuse of actually searching for ink so that he can appreciate her willowy arms and the peek of shapely legs through the dash in her skirt. “Do you have any?” Aemond gestures to the wall, before gesturing to her. She shakes her head no, freeing an errant curl that falls over her forehead. Aemond picks at his joggers to keep his fingers from doing something stupid. 

“Oh no. I’m not the biggest fan of needles. Self-admittedly, I can also be a bit of a flake, so permanent artwork on my body kind of gives me hives.” She shivers and Aemond thinks her modesty is adorable.

“That’s a shame.” 

Mystery woman snaps her fingers, spinning on her toes to pin him with a look, and Aemond basks in the scent of jasmine and sea salt that wafts his way.

“If I change my mind, I know who to go to.”  She blinks suddenly, her pointed hand gliding behind her to rub at the back of neck in a bashful way. “That is, if you’d ever want to. Or, if you’re like, accepting clients.”

“For you? I think I could make an exception.” Aemond leans into the counter, settling to her level. The way the flush of her cheeks drips into the creamy sweep of her chest makes him hungry. She drops her hand, edging forward on timid toes.

“Well, aren’t you sweet.”

He doesn’t really know how to reply to that. He can feel the tips of his ears heat up, and when she tucks her lock of hair back in place, Aemond wishes he would’ve done it for her. He can see a thin line of dark walnut bracing the white of her eyes with how close he is, so close now he can smell the cinnamon on her breath from the condensating chai latte she holds in her other hand. 

“Aemond!” The back door slams and his sister’s voice floats up the hall. 

“Fuckin’ A, I’m sorry I’m late. I hit construction traffic and I had to get gas or I would’ve been pushing my Volksy here, and then I needed a coffee, believe me.” A white-blonde head of super short hair is unleashed when his sister yanks off her crocheted bucket hat, and she gasps as she catches sight of the shop’s first patron of the day.

“Good morning, muffin, I was trying to get here as fast as I could!” Helaena is a tornado of violets, lavenders, and magentas, purple her chosen color of the day as she spins into the room, tucking her backpack into the lockable cabinet by Aemond’s knees. 

The girl’s smile is a thing of beauty and even if it’s for Helaena, Aemond will keep it for himself. 

“Good morning, Hel. No worries, your brother’s been keeping me company.” 

Helaena spares him a look, sending a delicately sharp elbow right into his ribs. 

“Has he? It must be your lucky day- he usually scares off the customers that aren’t on the schedule.”

Aemond throws a sturdy blunt elbow into her shoulder and revels in the wince that she tries to hide. 

“Mmmm, not scared off yet. But if you would’ve given us a few more minutes, who knows?” A wink is sent his way, showing she means it in all good fun. Aemond fires a smile back at her, curling his lip up in a smirk he knows carries some weight to it. She swallows- he can see the jump in her throat, before she damn near flings her reason for coming in onto the counter.

“Here! She came in yesterday towards closing time, a special delivery just for you.” 

Hel snatches it with greedy hands, unknotting the twine laced through the handles so she can stick her whole face into the bag. 

“Oh my word, it’s beautiful!” Helaena exclaims, wonderment turning her tone soft and breathy. Aemond can’t stunt his curiosity, knocking his sister’s head out of his way to peer into the gift bag. 

“It looks moldy.”

Mystery woman looks mildly offended by his assessment, but it’s his sister that thwacks him in the chest.

“Shut up! You and Aegon practically drowned my cactus when I went on holiday last summer; what do you know about plants? It’s stunning and wonderful and all mine!” Helaena pulls out the plant with careful hands, gathering up the trailing vines like she’s lassoing a rope. 

Hel oooo’s and ahhh’s , rubbing the silver spotted leaves between her fingers, smelling the somewhat heart-shaped sprouts for any lingering fragrance. Aemond’s surprised she doesn’t pop one in her mouth and give it a taste. 

“A cactus?” 

Aemond shrugs, happy to have the woman’s attention back on him, even if it is at his expense. “It looked thirsty.” 

The giggle she gifts him makes his 5AM alarm worth it. 

Helaena claps her hands together twice, calling attention to her like she’s a nursery school teacher. “Tell me about it- what’s its name and how do I keep it alive?” 

“It’s a Scindapsus pictus, but satin Pothos or silver Philodendron is easier to remember. Even though it’s not technically a Pothos or a Philodendron, it’s in the Araceae family, which can be confusing, y’know? It’s naturally from the Hills of Andalos but it can also be found from Tyrosh all the way to Pinkmaiden.” 

The siblings blink at her, both enjoying how she waxes on about something obviously interesting to her, even though it sounds like Dothraki to them. The brunette takes notice of the silence, tapering off her anecdotes while wearing a quiet, bemused grin.

“Anyways,” she twists the ring around her pinky in circles of nervous energy, “lots of light, water her like once a week, and she should thrive.”

“She’s perfect! Oh thank you for picking her out for me, darling. I’ll take such good care of her. ” Helaena has a way of hugging you with her words. It fills you with the warm and fuzzies, and the girl looks filled to the brim with them. She sighs though, shouldering the strap of her bag into place. 

“I gotta get back to the shop- my early lunch break can’t go past 7:20, or Miss Olenna will be pissed if I’m not there to let her windowshop the roses.” 

Helaena flutters around the counter, gushing promises of midday coffee dates and takeaway dinners before sweeping up the other girl in a rocking embrace.

The woman beams, happiness a good look on her, before pecking his sister’s cheek in parting. She pushes open the shop door, ducking out before catching it right before it closes. Her head ducks back in, and the same stubborn curl from before has come loose again, twisting around the corner of her eye. 

“It was nice meeting you, Aemond.”  

“Likewise…” Did he not catch her name once the entire time? Fuck him and his so-called manners. 

Her smile is so bright, it burns itself behind his eyelids. “Ysilla.”

“Likewise, Ysilla.” Aemond rolls her name off of his tongue, discovering he quite likes the taste of her. A gorgeous name for a gorgeous girl. 

She bids him a little wave of her hand before shutting the door softly. She looks both ways before darting across the roadway and into roots., an aptly named nursery that bursts at the brick with vegetation and flowers. 

Aemond turns on his sister with alarming agility. 

“Alright, share with the class. Who was that?” 

“That’s Ysilla, Aem. Duh. She runs the plant shop across the street.” 

He resists the urge to flick her in the forehead. His trainers are new and he doesn’t want her size seven foot print scuffing them up. 

“I’ve never seen her before.”

“Well you would, if you ever bothered to come out of your room and meet our neighbors. She’s been in charge for about a year and a half now. Mr. Forel is an old flame of her grandma’s, or something like that, and she needed a job when he was thinking of retiring. So, perfect timing, I guess.” Hel fluffs the leaves, turning the plant pot this way and that, trying to decide which angle is most appealing. She carts it around the shop, holding it up to the spaces she’s thinking of occupying it with. 

“What are you two, besties?” Aemond is so not jealous. Nah, never. Nope. No way, no how. 

Helaena pauses, looking thoughtful before resuming her decorating.

“I’m kind of trying to be, but she goes to class after she’s done at the shop and if she’s not doing that, she has three brothers she helps take care of when her mum is working. So I stop off when I can and chat with her so we can catch up.” 

Helaena cheers as she steps off the footstool she keeps around for high reaching access, admiring the vines cascading from the partition wall that divides the waiting room from her piercing studio. 

“She’s pretty, isn’t she?” His sister is obviously speaking about the plant. 

Aemond stares through the window across the street, the tan stucco building a bright bustle of life next to the high brow boutique to its left and Hot Pie’s bakery to its right. The numerous hanging pots from the ledge above the doorway would 100% split his skull if he wasn’t paying attention to where he was walking. Big glass windows are crowded by giant emerald fronds and stalks of leafy sprouts. The flower pots mirroring each side of the doorway are starting to wilt with the season, but the vibrant highlights of color splash a last breath of life against the stone. 

If Aemond squints, he can catch a dark head of curls bouncing behind the register. 

Maybe a plant wouldn’t be a bad addition to his shelves. 

“Without a doubt.”

.

.

.

ps: i have another modern!au in the works of these two little fuckers, which is much longer, much angstier, and much more fun to read. should be out very very soon ;))

#hotd #aemond targaryen #ysilla targaryen #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen x oc #modern hotd #modern aemond targaryen #my writing

[jiminiecrickets]

seven days a week couple having sex in the dorm (where jungkook lived with his hyungs) and almost getting caught drabble?

Thank you so much ❤️

nsfw. warnings for intentions of oral

"i still think this is a terrible idea."

"really? should i get off my knees, then?"

"no." you suck on your teeth, glancing up at his closed door. "maybe we can do this elsewhere? you have a roommate. it feels improper to do this when it's also his room."

jungkook scoffs. "jiminie-hyung doesn't care about being 'proper' even when i'm in the house. he comes in with his new boytoy, kicks me out, and makes me study at the kitchen table with my noise-cancelling headphones turned up to max. most of the time i end up sleeping on the couch 'cause there's no way i'm going back in there after they've contaminated the whole place."

"so this is revenge," you muse. "you don't really want to fuck me here, do you? i'm so hurt."

he pouts, reaching for the front of your trousers. "please don't be sad, baby. whatever can i do to make it up to you?"

"oh, i can think of a couple of things..."

he grins cheekily and places a kiss on the side of your neck, unbuttoning your shirt and kissing each new reveal of skin until he reaches your belt. he gazes up at you through his dark lashes, tossing your shirt aside.

"you always give me the best gifts," he whispers. "i want to give you one, too."

he mouths at your bulge through your black underwear, giving you a dirty little grin as you reach for his hair and comb your fingers halfway through his locks. he hums softly and leans down.

the front door opens with an echo through the walls. laughter and chatter bursts through. muffled just enough to blur the edges of words.

jungkook shoots up while footsteps rampage through the house, with several sets coming near the hallway. jungkook grabs your wrist and tears open his closet door, stuffing you amongst them.

"oh, seriously—?"

his hands pause against the edge of the sliding door. "shh! get dressed while you're in there," he orders, shoving your jacket and shirt to your chest. your belt clatters on top. "if you make a noise, i'm never having sex with you again."

"hey, that's pretty harsh—"

he shuts the door in your face and throws himself on his messy bedsheets, scrambling for the book on his bedside table as the voices clear with proximity. he opens to a page that his bookmark isn't marking.

the door opens in the middle of hoseok's laugh, jimin giggling alongside him.

"—probably just a mistake." hoseok glances forward, eyeing jungkook's half-naked body on his bed. he lifts a brow. "you didn't come say hi. are you upset with us, jungkookie?"

jungkook lays his cheek against his sheets and huffs. "you want me to get up in this weather? if i try to get up, i'm stretching off of it like melted cheese."

hoseok purses his lips and shrugs. "i guess you're right. jiminie, drop off your bag, already – i can hear the ice-cream singing to me."

jimin rolls his eyes with a laugh and tosses his bag near the foot of his bed, slapping the back of jungkook's calf in wordless greeting. "mhm, coming. join us if you want later, okay, kookie? jin-hyung let us buy the expensive gourmet ones today, so you better snatch one up before the rest of us come back for seconds. enjoy your melting!"

on the way out, hoseok reaches over to the dresser and clicks the 'on' button on the desk fan. he grins and waves as it lurches to life and begins its wobbly oscillation over the room.

the door shuts. jungkook remains there for another moment before he lets out a silent sigh, eyes closing in relief. he stands, tossing his book aside, and opens his wardrobe door.

"hello," you say with a grin, fully-clothed with your jacket slung over your arm. "i have something really important to say, and i hope you won't think any different of me after it. i'm about to come out of the closet. i'm—"

"don't you dare," he interrupts when you open your mouth. "c'mon. i want an ice cream."

he drags you out by your wrist swiftly, denying you your chance to make your joke. "well, how are you going to explain my presence here? i always come out to say hi. ha – come out—"

"stop."

#asks #jungkook x male reader #seven days a week

[thornsnvultures]

too hot for this ♤

Andy Barber x fem!Reader

Summary: Andy's staying late at work so you decide to give him a call and show him what he's missing out on

Words: 1.1k

Warnings: video/phone sex, mutual masturbation, fingering, dirty talk, pet name (babygirl), slight daddy kink + possesive!Andy, sort of semi public sex

unbeta’d, edited by me. if you see any errors, no you didn’t :)

18+ BLOG, MINORS DNI. IF YOU INTERACT AND YOU DON’T HAVE YOUR AGE VISIBLE ON YOUR BLOG YOU WILL BE BLOCKED. 18+ BLOG, MINORS DNI.

"Andy, it's too hot."

"I know, baby, know."

Your man sighs into his end of the line. It's not his fault the ac suddenly stopped pumping out cold air but you know he's upset. Andy won't be home for a few hours at least and he doesn't like when his babygirl is upset or uncomfortable.

You might be laying it on a bit thick with your whining into the phone but you're feeling extra cranky and sweaty.

When the day began you wore a light sundress over the cute new bra and panty set you bought. Perfectly suitable for a hot day.

As the day went on the temperatures climbed and you grew more uncomfortable. Soon you'd eventually stripped to take a cold shower and not bothered to get redressed after.

So you've spent most of your day alone at home, bare as the day you were born, trying to keep yourself busy with work but ultimately failing and laying in bed, surrounded by as many oscillating fans as you could find.

"Can't you get out early? It's your business, for fucks sake."

Andy laughs. The telltale skritching sound of him scratching his thick beard can be heard as well. He's considering it.

"It's important business, babygirl."

Andy's voice trails off with a hum. He's definitely considering it.

You know just what to do to push him over the edge.

"Hold on, Daddy. Let me call you right back."

Before Andy can say another word you've ended the call and jumped out of bed.

You run to his walk-in closet and drag the full length mirror out to face the side of the bed. Situating yourself right on the edge facing the mirror, you press the button to call Andy back, this time on video.

"Where'd you run off too?"

This man and his stupid, pretty smile gives you butterflies every time you see him. You're nervous suddenly to flip to the other camera.

"Nowhere, Daddy. Waiting right here for you."

You muster up some courage and switch cameras, watching Andy's face on your screen turn from smiling, cheeky, to pure need.

His jaw drops a bit when he sees you perched on the edge of his bed, you hair fluttering slightly around you from the breeze of the rotating fans. Every dip and curve and stretch of your skin is on display for your man and even through the phone he's eating it up. You could swear he was salivating.

"Where are your clothes, baby?"

Andy's voice is tight and you can see from the background that he's walking the near empty halls to his office.

A shiver runs up your spine when Andy closes the door, finally alone with you.

"It's way too for clothes, Daddy," you shrug like it's obvious, scooting forward on the edge of the bed more and spreading your legs so your man can get a clear view of what lies between them.

"She needs to breathe. It's too stuffy under all that lace and cotton," you pout, running your hand not holding the phone up your tummy to cup your breast.

Andy settles his phone in his desk in front of him. Quietly watching you tweak your nipple as he undoes his tie, loosens the top few buttons of his dress shirt and rolls up his sleeves.

You can see his hand stroking over the prominent bulge in his slacks as he leans back in his chair.

"Is this what you've been doing all day? Touching Daddy's pretty pussy while he's away at work?"

"Not...*all* day."

"Show me," Andy growls. "Show me how you touch your pretty little pussy."

You bring one leg up on the bed and angle the camera at your cunt in the mirror.

With a slow, gentle touch you run your fingers through your pussy lips, collecting the wetness there. Andy groans at the same time you do when you brush your clit.

"That's it, baby. Show Daddy how you make yourself feel good."

You work your fingers over your bud, gasping and whimpering as they move faster and faster.

You almost forgetting Andy's there watching you, so lost in sensation, until you hear the telltale sound of his zipper lowering.

Your fingers don't slow down for a moment as you watch him pull his thick cock out of his pants.

Andy chuckles when you groan at the sight of him give his length two quick pumps before pulling out his balls as well, resting them against the elastic of his boxers.

The heft of them, the oozing tip of Andy's cock, it's such a delicious sight, your mouth waters.

Your pussy clenches around nothing, desperate to be filled.

The best you can do for now is full yourself with your fingers. They pale in comparison to anything andy could give you, not truly long or thick enough to fully satisfy. Not in the way that Andy can. Fuck you miss him, miss the way he makes your legs shake with a few quick pumps of his fingers in your hungry cunt.

"That's it, baby. Fuck yourself faster. I wanna hear that sloppy cunt."

You cry out as your fingers pick up their pace, curling up and desperately searching for your sweet spot.

It's absolutely vulgar how wet you are, your juices sloshing from your pussy as you watch Andy at his desk, fisting his cock like a machine.

The muscles in his arms bulge under crisp white sleeves as he pumps his fist.

He never stops praising you, telling you how beautiful you are, how good you're doing for him, how he can't wait to fill you up with his fat cock until you're screaming his name.

You can barely hold the phone straight as you shake, you can feel your pussy clenching around your fingers, pulsing with the need to come.

"Please, Daddy. Fuck, I need your cock."

"I'll give it to you, baby. Daddy will give it to you. But I need you to be a good girl and come for me. Come for me, babygirl."

You cry out, slamming your fingers into your cunt, the heel of your hand rubbing against your clit.

"That's it, baby. Come for me."

Andy's close behind.

Your eyes snap open as you come, watching through the phone as your juices spurt onto the bed under you, watching as Andy shouts and comes all over his chest, his shirt absolutely ruined.

"Fuck."

"Fuck is right, baby."

You laugh as you fall back on the bed. Switching back to the front camera, you stare at a heavy breathing Andy as you lift your sticky fingers to your lips and suck them clean.

"Mmm."

"How do they taste, babygirl?"

"Why don't you come home and find out?"

#andy barber fan fiction #andy barber smut #andy barber one shot #andy barber x reader #andy barber x plus size!reader #andy barber x you #andy barber x y/n #andy barber headcannon #plus size!reader #one shot #my fics

[krushkreates]

linen

day 6 of the 30 day writing challenge but i got really busy and sad so it’s like 2 months later

prompt: write about a blackout

asher x babe

tw: vomiting, mentions of alcohol

https://archiveofourown.org/works/40577394

he’s not even in a relationship with them, but after getting completely shit-faced and throwing up in a trash can in their bed and not kicking him out, he thinks they might not mind him too much.

or

asher got drunk and woke up in babe’s bed, and now it feels weirdly routine to wake up and see them.

—

the sun slammed through the blinds, the heat already intensifying too much for the 30 seconds he had been awake. the fan oscillated lazily, rustling the few pieces of paper that sat on the desk.

asher stirred slowly, his head pounding and his eyes burning. he screwed his already shut eyes as he threw an arm over them and groaned. he could feel his skin threaten to sweat under the linen sheet. wait, linen?

“morning sleeping beauty” a quiet voice shattered the silence and startled him. “it’s about 8 in the morning. there’s an extra toothbrush and tube of toothpaste when you’re done throwing the rest of your guts up.” they laughed gently, the sound dancing through his ears.

he sat himself up, running a hand down his face before looking at them.

they seemed so radiant in the morning light. soft, illuminating, gentle. were they an angel? did he die from too much alcohol? where did these clothes come from?

his head swam as he groped around for the garbage can on the nightstand. they merely shook their head as they padded out to the kitchen, leaving him to retch by himself. he’d be fine for a minute.

asher was more than fine last night, they thought briefly, throwing a couple slices of toast onto a plate. they stayed silent as their socked feet tapped the hardwood floor. three gentle knocks with their knuckles were met with a raspy “i’m good”.

setting the plate down in front of him, they took the washcloth from the bowl on their nightstand and rung it out.

“here’s a washcloth. it helps me when i’m hungover and feeling gross but can’t shower just yet.” they kept their voice low as he turned to them with a piece of toast dangling from his mouth and took the rag from their hands. they perched on top of their sheets, almost sighing in relief as the rickety a/c turned on.

asher finished the bread before turning to them.

“thank you,” he started before gesturing to their hand. “may i?”

they nodded, unsure of what he was going to say.

“i know we haven’t known each long, like at all,” he laughed as they giggled, “but you truly do make me feel better. i mean, fuck, i felt like extra shit when i woke up, but seeing you? now i only feel like shit.” his tone became bashful the more he spoke, and they felt the fondness for him grow three times that morning.

“it’s really no trouble” they spoke, their thumbs running across his knuckles. “i like seeing you, in my bed. not in that way, but sleeping and being sleepy. makes me feel, better.” they mumbled feeling their cheeks grow warm.

they couldn’t look him in the eyes right now, but if the feeling they felt for him was mutual, they knew exactly how he was looking at them.

#i love them #so so much #there’s gonna be a fic that shows the night before #it’s just taking a while #redacted asmr #redacted asher #redacted babe #fanfic #krush fics

[dreamescapeswriting]

BTS Reaction || Too Hot To Cuddle [Request]

A/N: Having a heat wave so can relate! I want this heat gone pleaseeeee that being said the temp is being measured in celicious

Seokjin:

When Jin came home from tour he'd expected to be welcomed with open arms which had happened at the airport when it was cooled and air-conditioned but the second you got home to your apartment to sleep it all went away. He tried to hold you close to him but you backed off from him, not wanting anyone to touch you when the heat was this bad. You'd never been a fan of the heat so having an extremely hot summer was awful, not to mention having a boyfriend who wanted to hug and hold you through the night,

"I haven't seen you in months," He whined as you told him for the seventh time in the last fifteen minutes that you didn't want to cuddle with him tonight.

"Jin...It's 35 degrees inside and outside forgive me if I don't feel like cuddling." You grumbled at him and he whined out about how much he'd been missing you since he went away and all he wanted to do was come home and spend time with you.

"I love you Jin but please, it's so hot I can't breathe." He grumbled something at you and turned to lay the other direction.

(X)

The next morning you woke up and it was cooler in the house, you snuggled up against Jin's back put he pushed you away, claiming it was too hot and how he didn't want to.

"You're such a baby!" You pouted looking at him and then pouting out your bottom lip, you knew he could never resist you being like this.

"No, stop it! I won't give in this easily!" He yelled covering his eyes but you started to whine about how much you'd missed him, doing the same thing he had done to you the night before only louder and more annoying.

"Fine!" He wrapped his arms around you and you giggled in excitement.

Yoongi:

For the fourth night in a row, it was too hot in your apartment to sleep so you made your way to Yoongi's studio, you knew he had air-con and you were going to be able to get a decent night sleep for the first time in a while. Yoongi smiled seeing you walk into the studio but it faded when you got onto the sofa and closed your eyes, he assumed you'd come by to see him so he went to go up and spoon you only to be shocked when you told him not to touch you.

"It's too hot, even with your fancy air-con, don't even think about it." He laughed at how you were acting, as though this was the worst thing in the entire world.

"It might be funny to you Yoongles but I haven't had a decent night sleep in days, I'm tired, hot and want to sleep for a week." He kissed the top of your head and began playing with your hair, trying to be the nice kind of boyfriend to help you drift off but it was having the opposite effect. It only made you want to push him away,

"I just want to cuddle you." He whined and you sighed turning over on the sofa so you were facing him and he couldn't try to spoon you.

"Too hot." You mumbled to him and he started pouting, physically pouting. No one would ever believe he acted this way unless they came in right now and he only ever acted like this with you.

"Yoongi, I can't, I feel like I'm going to melt to death," He tried not to laugh at how dramatic you were being but he left you to it, going over to his desk to silently work while you got some well needed sleep.

Hoseok:

You hadn't slept right in days and if falling asleep in the bathroom was the only way you were going to manage to be able to do it then so be it. It was the coolest room in your apartment that you shared with Hoseok and you didn't care, you put your pillow in and laid down with a small very thin sheet covering your body, it wasn't as though someone could walk in on you. No one except Hoseok who came in to find you sound asleep.

"What the fuck," He chuckled coming into the room and picking you up - it was a struggle considering you were sitting in the bathtub. He laid down beside you in the bed and pulled you close to him, snuggling his head into your neck and smiling.

(X)

An hour later you woke up sweating and panting heavily from the new heat that had been added behind you.

"Hobi." You whined moving away from him and wanting to cry, you'd been having one of the best dreams and best nights sleep you'd gotten in a while and it was all ruined now.

"Sorry baby, I can't sleep without you next to me." You scoffed at him and went back to the bathroom,

"Learn to! It's too fucking hot." You snapped at him, he followed you into the bathroom and laid on the floor, if you were going to sleep in there then so was he but he wasn't talking to you, he laid facing the wall with a pout on. He just wanted to cuddle you and didn't see the big deal with the heat, it never bothered him.

Namjoon:

The frozen hot water bottle was moved from the bed and you woke up instantly, wanting to know who had the audacity to move the only thing that was keeping you cool in the disgusting heatwave you were experiencing.

"It's too cold baby, you'll get sick." You glared at Namjoon even though it was pitch black in the bedroom and you couldn't see anything in the room.

"Namjoon, it's the only thing stopping me from dying-"

"Stop being dramatic it's only a little heat." You huffed at him and rolled onto your side ignoring him. He'd come home late from the studio to find the living room fan was missing from the living and in the bedroom, alongside the bedroom fan both of them oscillating around the room to keep you cool but nothing was working. The humidity was too much for you and you already felt like you couldn't breathe, the frozen hot water bottle trick had been sent to you by a friend and you'd lived by it ever since.

"Come here," Namjoon grumbled now stripped of any clothing except a pair of shorts, he pulled you into his arms and you groaned trying to get out of them. Already feeling sweaty from the brief contact you'd had with him.

"Namjoon no, too hot." You mumbled wiggling from his arms and going over to the other side of the bed, he stared at you.

"I want to cuddle my partner," You rolled your eyes at him but didn't bother to turn over and cuddle him. It was far too hot, normally you loved cuddling with him but not tonight, not like this.

"I see how it is, you don't want to cuddle me...I get it." You heard the pout in his voice although he was playing it off as a joke you knew he was upset about not getting to cuddle you.

"Namjoon please, I don't sleep much in this heat as it is...Just let me sleep." He started whining about how you never wanted to cuddle him and you sat up in the bed, switching on the bedside lamp and stared at him. He was actually starting to pout and looked genuinely upset that you wouldn't hug him, you smirked at him before quoting what he had said previously.

"Stop being dramatic Namjoon," You hit the light off but he continued to pout throughout the night when you wouldn't hug him.

Jimin:

Jimin tried once more to hug you but you pushed him away and put a blanket in the space between you and him so he couldn't get closer to you. He grumbled something at you and you ignored him, wanting nothing more than to be able to just sleep in this uncomfortable heat but it was as if someone was holding a radiator above your apartment and blaring all the heat down directly onto you.

"I just want to hug you," You groaned at Jimin, you didn't mean to snap but the heat and lack of sleep were getting to be too much for you.

"Look! I can't take off my skin to get any colder, I'm naked Jimin and I still can't breathe, just leave me alone." He was taken back by your sudden outburst and you sighed not wanting to be mad at him.

"S-Sorry, I just..The heat Jimin, I can't." You whispered finally feeling defeated enough, it was clear you weren't going to sleep in this heat so you sat up.

"I know a way to cool you down," Jimin got up and walked into the bathroom, you heard the water turn on and he appeared back in the room,

"Cold shower, while you're in there I'll go and get some iced drinks, okay?" You nodded and kissed his lips as you passed him to get into the bathroom.

"Sorry for snapping," He shook his head and kissed you again<

"Just go and shower baby."

Taehyung:

Taehyung hadn't really been bothered by the heatwave, he knew it got hotter but it didn't seem to bother him as much as it was bothering you. You were laid in bed with nothing but a thin sheet covering your naked body, your pillow had been kept in the freezer all day and you even had all of the windows and doors open to try and bring some cold air in but there wasn't any. The air was dry, and gross and too hot for you to be able to breathe,

"Quite glad we didn't go on that holiday to Spain," Taehyung joked as he saw you looking at him, it was 4 am and you hadn't slept at all, you could only sleep if Taehyung was holding you but it was far too hot for that.

"I told you I didn't mind cuddling." He said as he sat up in the bed and laid his head back on the headboard,

"I did, Tae. It's too hot."

"Damn, I can't control the weather." You were starting to regret making him watch 'that 70's show' you rolled your eyes at him and turned over, hoping you could at least get some sleep but nothing was working.

"Just one hug, maybe it'll help you." He whined, he was desperate to hold you. He'd always loved being able to hug you whenever he could and being shut out from it was turning him into a whiney baby desperate for attention from you.

"I can't...I hate everything to do with the heat. It's disgusting, can we move somewhere cold? Like Finland?" He shook his head at you and chuckled, kissing the top of your head as he got up for work, he knew he wasn't going to get anywhere with this argument so he left you alone to try and let you get some rest.

Jungkook:

He'd been trying to do everything to get close to you for the last ten minutes, he'd pretended to yawn and reach around you. Pulled you close to him, ''accidentally'' rolled onto you and now he was slowly inching himself closer and closer thinking you were asleep and hadn't even noticed. He was just an inch away from you with his arm stretched out when your voice rang out,

"If you try and cuddle me again I will move out of this apartment." He sighed and moved away from you all over again looking at the ceiling in defeat from his plan not working.

"What if I got another fan-"

"We have four, they're just blowing hot air around, one night of no hugs won't kill you." He pouted out his bottom lip and turned away from you, expecting you to go and hug him right away but when it never happened he got more offended

"You're so mean to me, you never hug me." You hummed at him and rolled your eyes,

"So I never fly out on tour when you need me? I don't cook for you?" You giggled turning over to look at him, he turned over and faced you,

"Nope. Never." You nodded slowly and laughed sarcastically at him,

"Well you're cooking tomorrow and I'm not coming on the next tour then," Instantly he was telling you how much he loved you and how he was going to make sure that you could get some decent sleep even if it meant going without being next to you all night anything as long as you could still go on the next tour and cook…he really couldn’t cook for you both it was always the worst.

tagline: 

@writingdreamsnottragedies @yoongisdumplingcheeks @snowy-meowl @lynnthevirgo @jooniesdarlingdimples @fan-ati--c @lyoongx​ @mitzwinchester​ @callingmyangel​ @rjsmochii​ @btsiguess-kpop​ @kneel-begyourpardon​ @taestannie​ @supresoo​

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

[lost-in-zembla]

On Metamodernism

It’s tough to grasp metamodernism as an artistic movement but most of us live lives strongly affected by the concepts of metamodernism every day. You’re having a serious conversation with your friend about her mental health; simultaneously, you and your friend are part of a groupchat where you are currently making fun of the very friend you are supporting. This isn’t necessarily disingenuous; you are witnessing two different instances of a person and those two instantiations of you happen to be different depending on context and medium. In part, metamodernism is a kind of acceptance of our multiple selves, our tendency to oscillate between states or even inhabit both in a sort of human superposition.

I taught my friends about metamodernism in our groupchat as my friend Jarett consoled me via one-on-one text after the sudden implosion of my five-year long relationship and the fact that my life is generally unbearable—a fact that is more embarrassing when one considers how easy I have it. It’s sort of a shame feedback loop. 

As I was explaining metamodernism for my own satisfaction, I thought that I might actually make an okay professor. I could teach American literature. Maybe. 

So I get a job teaching at the local community college and my life slowly comes back together like a cut that heals. I am relatively respected by my students and I have some abstract sense purpose, the cracks in the surface of which are only visible if one spends a long, existential period of time contemplating the practical or, god-forbid, spiritual uses of an education in American literature what with the reality of a global climate catastrophe and the approaching drumbeats of right-wing strongmen leaders reaching positions of power all around the world.

But things are pretty good.

I get a parking space. I get an apartment that looks bad, then looks better. I start to open the curtains. I don’t want to hide so much. A year or two down the line I lease a practical car and people treat me with a bit more respect when they see me step out of it. I smile at people in the grocery store. At this point I can see peoples’ mouths when I go outside. When I see their mouths, they’re smiling. They can see my mouth. I’m smiling.

I get to know people and people think I’m lovely. The faculty all look up to me. How young and handsome and intelligent he is! He’ll sure go places, they say. And I do. I quickly earn a raise and then I’m head of the department. And so young! When I’m not inspiring awe I inspire smoldering jealousy. Women? Naturally. And I treat each of them with utmost respect. I value these women for more than the thousands of hours of hot naked ecstasy they provide me. I buy more fresh produce. I throw none of it out.

I single-handedly save the English department at the community college. Funding comes pouring in. Eventually, it becomes one of the premier colleges for literary studies in the Midwest. They rename a building after me. I just turned thirty. Before long, I’m offered a job at the prestigious private university in town, with nods toward a proverbial shoe in the door when it comes to tenure. Unheard of! But he’s just that good. My wrists and forearms become perceptibly thicker. People cross the street in front of traffic to shake my hand. I learn what the fuck “ketosis” is.

Then there I am one day in my cushy office. Rows of leather-bound books fill the shelves around the ample perimeter of the room. I’ve read them all, naturally. My hair has started to grey in places but damn if it’s not as thick and lush as the heart of the Amazon. A knock on the door. My office hours ended at one. I answer and it’s, oh, Claire from this semester’s modern American literature course. Of course I’ve noticed her in class. How could I not? But I’d always maintained a professional and appropriately avuncular demeanor in front of her. She’s twenty-eight, French, gorgeous. Naturally.

We discuss her essay on Light in August and I say to her, you know, Claire, it was the French who were among the first to notice Faulkner’s genius. She puts her hand on my thigh. In her accent that itself somehow resembles a beautiful naked body she says, The French notice lots of things. I slide my attractively thick forearm over the crowded desk space and knock the books and pens and everything onto the floor and—well, let’s just say that my life of success and talent has enhanced me in other ways. And it’s hot and insane and weird and papers fly everywhere. And it sort of just goes on like that for weeks and then months—the relationship, not that particular sexual event. At my age, after all the sex and drugs and joy and tragedy, sometimes I think that it’s the clandestine nature of the thing that really gets me off. Like I need more and more secret or shameful shit to fire off those tired old neurons. I start to become cavalier in front of the students. I begin to, perhaps, show my hand. 

I get another knock on my office, sometime in the Spring. Bill, I say. Come in. He sits down and we engage in a tense discussion where every syllable is laced with a double entendre because he can’t just say it out loud, for Christ’s sake. That’s just not how these things are done. He’s old school, but firm, Bill. She’s graduating anyway, and something tells me when we can finally be together publicly then the thrill will already be gone. 

The students already know. I’ve seen the screenshots. I’ve been memed. Things are tense in class and they can tell that I’ve given up. The fire in my eye that led to my meteoric rise has dimmed to a pathetic ember. Sometimes I take my Audi out on a dark highway outside of town and I press on the accelerator until I can’t go any faster. I have to stop myself from shutting my eyes.

One day in class, I look up from my papers and all the students are out of their desks, standing over me. They’re holding pencils and yardsticks that have been modified into edged weapons. What’s the meaning of this? They use my Tom Ford tie to tie my arms behind me and to my chair. They put me in the center of the room. I knew they would betray me. I’d always known. For years this notion has haunted the deepest recesses of my mind: these people, these kids, are going to be the ones to put this old dog down. Is this because of Claire, I ask. They laugh. They laugh because they think I’m an old fool. I am an old fool.

No, professor, Shellie says. She seems to be the leader. It’s much more serious than that, she says. O life! Everything I’ve ever done. I’ve stomped on people all the way to the top and now it’s all coming back to me, some sort of holdup in the karmic clerical system that led to forty years of consequences all delivered at once. Things were so easy for so long, so fun, that I forgot what it was like to live a life with consequences.

Shut up, she says. You’re here for a reason. What could she know? How did she mobilize all of these students? When did they make the weapons? How many questions could I possibly pose in sequence?

Professor, she says, we have one question for you. Anything, I say. And answer truthfully, she says. And I say of course, of course I’ll be completely honest. Okay, professor, she says, do you consider yourself… a historicist? At this very moment I know it’s over for me. Well, I say, it’s not so simple, Shellie. The mob is in an uproar. A fair bit of verbal sparring ensues. Shellie and the other students in favor of the transcendent nature of literature—whatever that means—and me in favor of a more context-based approach. Sure, if I thought that novels were a good way to learn about history then I’d deserve this. I’d deserve all of this.

How can you read these works outside of their historical context? What about Light in August for God’s sake?  The mob lashes out again—not Faulkner fans, go figure—but Shellie shushes them until the classroom is as silent as the dusty hills of Jerusalem. Literature, she says, is timeless. And this essentially breaks me. I begin weeping openly. You might as well kill me, then, I say. They set upon me like a pack of hyenas. 

A moment or an eternity after my head is pulled off my body like the Bacchae in that Euripides tragedy, I hear waves lap against the rocks. I feel in my face the salty breeze of the ocean. I open my eyes to find a beautiful Mediterranean island. It feels neither hot nor cold. The breeze from the ocean feels perfect, as though there were no storms to be found in any corner of the Earth.

Behind me, inland, I hear the sound of approaching footsteps. I turn around to find Vladimir goddamn Nabokov of all people. It’s perfect. So I tell him the story, how I was murdered by my students over two reductive and non-mutually exclusive schools of thought in literature—two schools of thought that are both perfect lenses through which to view Nabokov’s work. When I tell him he laughs his big Russian laugh and slaps me on the shoulder, and I laugh. Then he hands me a butterfly net and we skip through pleasant hills in that vast and timeless place forever and ever.

No. What’s happening? It’s all slipping away from me now. All the memories, the moments, the time, leaking out of my mind to become something ghostly, an image half-developed, a thought unspoken. I lift my head and look at my hands and there I am, lying on a couch in a high school faculty lounge. My hands are unwrinkled. My body is young. There is no Humanities Wing in my name, no tenure, no Audi. No Claire. Was it all just a dream? Could it all have been just a dream? Is it within the realm of possibility that such an absurdly bad trope could have manifested into my life naturally? Or am I the subject of a cruel and untalented god who simply bats me about and writes hack narratives for me to tumble through like some Sisyphean Rube Goldberg machine? Coffee. Need Coffee.

It’s all silly, anyway. Nabokov and myself cavorting through some weird Elysium? Ridiculous. If that was what the afterlife had in store for me, then Nabokov would probably be hanging out with Pushkin and Tolstoy while maybe Dostoevsky and I build a sandcastle. Maybe. But then, in all likelihood, Nabokov, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and the other cool kids would kick sand in my face and walk off with whatever beautiful ladies happen to inhabit this weird Russian-literary Elysium that I’ve somehow ended up in. I haven’t thought this out very well.

What was this all about, again? Metamodernism. Easy. Let’s think.

Okay.

As I write this now, behind my computer, watching Youtube videos about sushi, wondering how the sushi will make its way into my writing through mental osmosis (not subtly, it turns out), I look at these instances of me, with the meteoric success or the banal day-to-day life, and I wonder who exactly I am. I am a thousand selves. I am nothing. I am trying to remember into the future who I am. I am a metamodernist—no, I’m not.

#metamodernism #literary criticism #my writing #vladimir nabokov #william faulkner #teacher #professor #teaching #teach #writing #writers on tumblr #writer #creative nonfiction #nonfiction #fiction #i don't know what i'm doing

[unholyhelbig]

Bechloe Prompt: Chloe is a street racer where she lost her car in a pink slip race (where the winner keeps the loser car), no big deal except the car belongs to her best friend, Aubrey is out of town, and is now in the possession of her nemesis. In need to get it back before Aubrey gets back, she's forced to ask for help from Beca, a mechanic and former street racer that gave it up for unknown reasons, who also happens to be her crush.

Read my stuff on AO3 | SEND ME PROMPTS

A/N: Listen, I know this isn’t the greatest, but I’m trying to get back in the game. I’ve been kind of scarce on here lately when it comes to fanfiction. My life is kind of getting together. But yeah… I miss it! But I’m rusty.

The scorching heat didn’t’ help. It never did. It clung to Chloe like a wet cloth, baking off the asphalt in nearly visible rays. She was drumming her thumbs against the steering wheel, letting the sweat collect in an even brine against her brow. She had turned the engine off an hour ago and still couldn’t bring herself to get out of her car.  

Chloe’s life had been ruined in one single race.

When she was in high school and had first gotten her license, she would shut the headlights for her car off. It plunged her into a cooling darkness. She would sit, listening to her engine purr and staring at the line of trees to make sure she was completely alone. The North Carolina nights damning and isolating.

Chloe revved her engine before pushing down hard on the gas. The wind would flood the cab and the scent of gas clouded her lungs. She would drive as fast as she could: The meter suddenly climbing from 60. Her fingers would tighten around the wheel. 75. The road would bend like a warped spine. 80.

For a while, it was the only high that mattered. The only way she could feel alive in her desolate town, with her overbearing parents and suffocating life responsibilities.  Just hit the gas. Keep riding until she would suddenly have to smash the brakes for an oncoming car that had no chance of seeing her in the first place.

That’s why she started racing when she moved out to the West Coast. They had full societies dedicated to lining up on empty tracks. Three lights and then hit the gas. It wasn’t the same as the woods, but it still pushed blood through her veins.

It’s how she lost her car- well, Aubrey’s car. Aubrey who had told her to take care of her place while she was on an important business trip in the city. Aubrey who had a nice Lexus and kept it pristine enough to be a makeshift Uber. Aubrey who would very much gut her like a fish the second she found out about the pink-slip race.

Someone knocked on the window of her beat up truck. Chloe jumped, anxiety pushing close to her throat as she let out a yelp of surprise and shifted her focus. A stranger, a young girl with a baseball cap on and a toothpick hanging out of her lips, gestured for her to roll down her window. Chloe did.  

“You’ve been sittin’ out here for a long while.” The girl said, pulling her baseball cap off. She had a lot of hair, the brown locks falling around a perfectly innocent face. Her forehead was coated in sweat, her shirt branded with an embroidered name. Emily. “Must be hot.”

“It is-I” Chloe quickly pulled her keys from the ignition and pushed out of the car. The girl took a wide step back and shifted the toothpick from one side of her mouth to the other. “This is… Beca Mitchell works here, doesn’t she?”

She slammed her door and stare the woman down. She wore something that was a mix between a smile and a grimace. Emily plucked the toothpick from her mouth and flicked it on the ground next to a few cigarette butts.

“She does, but it’s by appointment only. Your truck acting up on you? One of our other guys can take a look at it.”

“No, no it’s not that. It’s a personal matter.”

Emily looked like she wished she had kept the toothpick in her mouth. Like she was just as bothered by the heat as Chloe was. There was the sound of drilling coming from the open garages a few feet away. A few distant voices and the scent of motor oil. Chloe had half the mind to get back in her truck. To drive away and to figure out some other option for her predicament.

“Right, well. She’s in her office. Better than boiling like a lobster out here in your truck.”

Emily had a bit of charm to her that Chloe couldn’t’ quite figure out. She mocked a salute and walked back into the much cooler garage, she imagined, to find something else to chew on. Chloe still stood evenly by the side of her car for a few moments before she pulled her shoulders back and walked towards the front office of the little tire place.

She was instantly cooled off the moment the door opened, and a little bell sounded in response. There was a fan oscillating in the corner with a light buzz- a receptionist looking up from the little spot that she was perched at. Her dull green eyes flashing in annoyance for a split second before clearing up.

“Hi, do you have an appointment?”  

“No, I don’t.” She walked up to the counter, feeling the sweat on her forehead harden against the fans blast. She saw the girl grimace.

“We can set one up for you. Oil change? Tire replacement? How is Monday at eight?”

“I don’t need my car worked on,” Chloe cleared her throat and shifted on the balls of her feet. “I just need to talk to Beca- If that’s possible. It’s important. Really important.”

Chloe hadn’t realized how hard she was pressing against the counter, but her fingertips burned. She kept her eyes trained on the receptionist, the woman typing away a few things on her computer with a puzzled look on her face.

“I’m sorry, but you have to make an-“

“I don’t have time for an appointment!” Chloe said.

The girl with dull eyes leaned back evenly in her chair. It creaked up her weight as she rose a drawn-on eyebrow at Chloe. The answer would still be the same regardless of if she raised her voice or not. Chloe needed to make an appointment, and Beca would quickly dismiss it the second she saw the name on her schedule.

“There a problem, here, Tammy?”

Beca was leaning against the doorframe to what had to be her office. Triggered by the loud voices, or one voice, in particular, Chloe would never know. Her attention was sharp, her hair pulled into a loose ponytail, jumpsuit hanging tied and low around her waist. Her white shirt was stained and hugging her body close. Her stare didn’t soften at the sight of Chloe. In fact, it solidified. She dragged that midnight stare across her frame and Chloe swallowed back chills. The fan was directly on her. Tied string waving in the current.

“Not at all, Miss Mitchell. She was just leaving. Weren’t you?”

Chloe swallowed roughly and stared between the two women. Tammy, she could take. Her eyeliner was drawn on too thick and her lips were outlined in a shade that didn’t compliment her skin tone. Beca, on the other hand, was stretching the sleeves of her shirt, her arms crossed over her chest and a dark look shading her features.

“No. No, I wasn’t. Beca, I need to talk to you.”

“And I have no interest in speaking to you.”

“Please, it’s important.”

“That’s what everyone says, Red. Begging isn’t flattering.”

Beca turned to walk into her office, and Chloe followed close behind. The receptionist drew in a sharp and angry breath, close to reaching for the phone but she didn’t do anything. Instead, she watched as Beca slumped into her office chair and Chloe straddled the line of trespassing.

The mechanic struggled to ignore her. Picking up her ink pen and scribbling against the paperwork she was struggling to file. Chloe saw this as her chance, she figured Beca could multi-task just as well as she could.

“Last night Max got ahold of my car- well, not my car, but a car.” She started “I was so close, so fucking close, but my wheels stalled. They always stall. You know how he works, Beca. He won’t let me race for it again.”

There was a round of thick silence, but Beca’s pen stopped moving. She didn’t’ look up. “I didn’t’ think I would see the day when Chloe Mother Fucking Beale would turn up in my shop asking for help.”

“Is that a no?”

Beca stood and trained her full attention on Chloe, her fingers pressing into the top of the desk as she frowned at the girl. “You’re fucking stupid for racing against Max in a Pink Slip. You know that?”

“I know.”

“I’m out of the game, have been for years now. I don’t even think I could win against something like that anymore.”

“I know that too.” Chloe said daringly “But you’re my only hope.”

#Beca Mitchell #Chloe Beale #Bechloe #bechloe au #bechloe fic rec #request

[unpack-my-heart]

Unpack My Heart With Words – Updated

Chapter 5 of my Hamlet/Theatre Reddie AU. The chapter is called When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

You can read it on AO3 HERE or I’ve pasted it under the cut.

Preview:

“Heh. I suppose,” Eddie responds. “I remember reading King Lear when I was at RADA, when I was convinced that I’d be the one reciting the lines, rather than instructing people how to read the lines. My Lear is based on someone from my past.”

Richie feels sick.

“Oh?” the interviewer probes, “I imagine you don’t think favourably of them, then? They’ve got to be a pretty painful relic, surely?”

Richie watches the on-screen-Eddie pause. Eddie’s eyes close before he responds.

“Quite the opposite, actually. Thank you so much for having me”

Tag List:

@constantreaderfool @xandertheundead @violetreddie

The road Richie lives on is small and unassuming, a forgettable cul-de-sac. He’d moved there with Sandy, as soon as he got the email confirming that he’d ‘read Hamlet’. It hadn’t lasted. They’d broken up less than a year after they’d bought the house. She’d accused him of cheating on her, and he hadn’t denied it. He hadn’t cheated on her, of course, but it had given him a very convenient way of avoiding having a conversation he’d been putting off for several months prior. I’m still in love with the boy (man?) that broke my heart over a decade ago doesn’t roll off the tongue particularly well, nor is it all that believable. So they’d split. Richie had taken on sole tenancy of the small townhouse they rented, and Sandy had left him and moved back in with her parents in Bath, leaving him in Stratford-Upon-Avon on his own.

The road Richie lives on is small and unassuming, a perfectly pleasant and quiet area of a perfectly pleasant and quiet town. That’s why, when Richie was stumbling down the street pissed out of his mind at 3am after trying (and failing) to drink Ben under the table, and singing (or howling) along to Prowlin’ from Grease 2, a large number of people peered around their curtains and glared at him. He paid them no mind. He fumbled with his keys, dropping them six times, before his uncooperative fingers finally managed to shove the key into the lock and turn it. The stuffy, gaping black maw of his hallway stared back at him. Scoffing, and swearing at everything and anything, Richie managed to turn on all the lights in his living room and kitchen, and flop onto the sofa, without breaking anything – limbs and extremities included.

Richie smacked his lips. His mouth tasted like someone had been using his tongue as an ash tray for the last four hours, before telling him to gargle with white spirit. In short, it tasted like ass. Not that Richie remembered what ass tasted like. It had been far too long. His laptop sat, screen open and inviting, sat on the coffee table. Richie tugged it towards him, before lifting it over to his lap by the screen. He almost missed Sandy shrieking ‘if you lift it like that, the screen will come off in your hands and you’ll be fucked’. Almost.

The machine booted up, whirs and purrs breaking the silence. Richie’s fingers worked on autopilot, his alcohol-hazed brain taking several seconds to catch up.

Google: Edsss kaspbrK

Did you mean: Eds Kaspbrak?

Did you mean: Edward Kaspbrak?

Yes. Yes he did mean Edward Kaspbrak. Richie supposed he wasn’t allowed to call Eddie Eds anymore.

Edward Kaspbrak, 486,972 results in 0.0003 seconds

Richie’s eyes lazily scanned the first few lines of results. The first page was Eddie’s staff page on the RSC website. The second was Eddie’s twitter. The third was an article from the Edinburgh College of Dramatic Arts student newspaper. Richie clicked on it.

“The ECDA is super stoked to announce that the opening night of the student production of the Phantom of the Opera, directed by our very own Eddie K, …. Blah blah blah blah Eddie blah blah blah successful blah blah blah” Richie mumbled out loud to himself, heart tightening in his chest.

Backspacing out of the page, Richie clicked on the next article. This one was from four years ago, and was a review of a production of King Lear that Eddie had directed. Richie skimmed the article, before clicking on the embedded video interview at the bottom of the page. Eddie’s face fills the screen. He looks younger than the Eddie Richie had seen earlier that day. His face is smoother, and his mouth isn’t set in a harsh line. His eyes are soft. He looks happy. Richie feels sick.

“So,” the interviewer begins, “Tell me about this production. Your Lear is particularly arrogant and unlikable, and unlike other productions that I’ve seen, I actually don’t feel like your Lear had any redeeming features at all. He’s just … consistently unlikable. That’s a pretty bold move for someone’s debut RSC directorial job, right?”

“Heh. I suppose,” Eddie responds. “I remember reading King Lear when I was at RADA, when I was convinced that I’d be the one reciting the lines, rather than instructing people how to read the lines. My Lear is based on someone from my past.”

Richie feels sick.

“Oh?” the interviewer probes, “I imagine you don’t think favourably of them, then? They’ve got to be a pretty painful relic, surely?”

Richie watches the on-screen-Eddie pause. Eddie’s eyes close before he responds.

“Quite the opposite, actually. Thank you so much for having me”

Eddie leaves the frame, and Richie doesn’t listen to the interviewers cursory wrap up. His ears are ringing too loudly.

Richie backspaces, before blindly clicking on one last link. It takes him to the announcement of Eddie’s appointment as Artistic Director in the newsletter of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Richie can feel bile swelling in his throat.

The Royal Shakespeare Company is privileged and pleased to announce that  Edward Frank Kaspbrak has accepted the position of Artistic Director. Edward replaces Claire Van de Camp, who wishes her successor success. Edward joins us at a particularly exciting time, and his first production will the semi-centenary celebration of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a milestone marked with a production of Hamlet. We wish Edward a long and happy tenure with us, and we all look forward to working with him for years to come

A few words from Edward himself: “I’m delighted to join the RSC as Artistic Director to celebrate the momentous semi-centenary anniversary of the company. I am a man of few words, so I’ll leave you with the words of a wordsmith more skilled than I. And so, all yours. I am all yours, RSC, and I will serve you as long as you’ll have me.”

The last words force the bile that had been bubbling in Richie’s throat to surge up his oesophagus. He scrambles to his feet, laptop falling gracelessly to the floor, and scrambles to his bedroom. He pulls an inconspicuous wooden box from under the bed, upending it so white envelopes come tumbling out. He spreads them all out on the carpet, before he grabs the one marked 15th April 2019. He opens the envelope. Two pieces of paper fall out, and he stuffs one back in without looking at it. He unfolds the other piece of paper.

15th April 2019

And so, all yours

E

The paper is fragile – It had been recklessly torn in half, before it has been painstakingly sellotaped back together. Richie couldn’t count how many times he’d stared at those four words.

– X –

When Richie had first started receiving the letters from Eddie, he had become almost incensed with anger. He’d vented to Stan, ugly, venomous ranting.

“I fucking hate him, Stan”

“No you don’t”

“Yes I fucking do. He abandons me to chase some stupid fucking selfish dream in Scotland, and then has the audacity – the fucking NERVE – to write to me, to plead with me to forgive him?”

“That’s not what the letter says, Richie”

“Wow. Fucking Wow. I thought you were supposed to be on my side? You know, your best friends side?”

“You haven’t spoken to me for three months, Rich. I thought you forgot who I was”

“You’re being fucking ridiculous”

“Richard? Can I have a word, s’il vous plaît?"

“Uh, sure, Jacques”

Stan disappeared down the corridor, without so much as glancing over his shoulder. Jacques was stood behind Richie, holding the door to his office open with a gracious arm. Richie walked inside.

“What’s all this ruckus, Richard?”

“Nothing, Jacques. Just – just personal stuff, s’all.”

“Are you arguing with master Stanley about Edward?”

Richie felt himself stiffen.

“How did you know?”

Jacques sits back on his chair, and folds his arms across his chest. His scarf flutters slightly in the breeze coming from the oscillating fan on his desk.

“Did you know that I told Edward to apply for the Edinburgh school?”

“No.”

“Did you know that I convinced him to go when he was reticent to leave you?”

“No.”

“Well, I did. Send some of that rage my way, if you must, but please do leave master Stanley out of it, he really isn’t at fault here”

“He’s been writing to me. I want to burn them.” Richie blurts out, without really meaning to.

“Spoken like a true dramatist”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, you’re being melodramatic”

“With all due respect, Jacques, you have no idea what you’re talking about” Richie snaps, in a tone that he’d probably regret later when he’s being disciplined for being mouthy to a member of staff.

“Perhaps. But perhaps you also have no idea what you’re talking about”

“Now you’re just not making sense”

“You’re nineteen, Richard. Things have a way of working out. Don’t burn the letters. Don’t send your memories of him up in flames. You’ll regret it.”

“Can I go now?”

“But of course”

As soon as he wakes up, Richie decides that he’s not going to rehearsal. This is partly because he’s hungover, but the hangover was nothing worse than he’d ever experienced after getting pissed after the opening night of every other production he’s ever done. It was mostly because he couldn’t bear to look at Eddie’s face. Or, perhaps more accurately, he couldn’t take nearly twelve hours of Eddie refusing to look at him with anything other than scorn. Not today.

He contemplates ringing to tell Eddie that he’s ill, but he doesn’t have Eddie’s number. He thumbs over the ‘Eds <3’ contact in his phone. Eddie’s old number, of course. Richie had a new number, too, in fact, he’d had several new numbers in the fifteen years since he’d last text Eddie. He had, however, copied the ‘Eds <3’ contact into every new phone he’d has since 2019. He assumed that Eddie had probably also had several new numbers since they’d last talked, but that didn’t deter him.

Now, though, the sight of ‘Eds <3’ in his phone turns his stomach more than the whiskey in the tumbler on his nightstand does.

He decides not to ring anyone.

Instead, he clicks on the YouTube app, and types in ‘Edward II’.

He watches other people say the lines that he’d whispered to Eddie until he falls asleep, tear tracks marking his cheeks.

Richie wakes up several hours later. His phone is buzzing furiously on his bedside table like an angry hornet. When he picks it up, the screen reads ‘Unknown Number’. He throws the phone on the floor.

The buzzing stops, but almost immediately starts up again.

He doesn’t answer.

The unknown number calls back again.

He doesn’t pick up.

His phone buzzes again, but this time its three short buzzes.

A Text.

He grabs his phone off the stained carpet.

From: Unknown Number:

Where the fuck are you?

From: Unknown Number:

Today was a fucking disaster. Where are you?

From: Unknown Number:

How dare you make me worry about you.

Richie stares at the last text, shrouded in the dark comfort of his room, for what feels like hours.

#reddie #unpack my heart #unpack my heart with words #eddie kaspbrak #richie tozier #richie tozier x eddie kaspbrak #hamlet AU #theatre AU #ao3 #thefutureisbright

[ravenedroyalty]

i see kevin day and my “i can fix him” and my “i can make him worse” urges are immediately at odds

#ooc #smth ab that boy.......... #do i want to see him get better or do i want to send him to rock bottom #oscillates like a fucking desk fan #kinda wanna write him but i really don't need to be picking up any more characters

[ashapon]

Sanctuary

The second part of my KazuHi Caretaker series! I’ve read through it a few times, but it’s still possible I missed an error, so apologies.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget he’s not alone.

Part 1

---

Hiei’s destination seems like a lifetime away, within eyesight and somehow perpetually out of his reach. On a horizon blurred out by the rain.

He shakes his head, because it’s nonsense. Irrationality born from the fever that has tormented him for days, the one that’s granted him a few fleeting moments of rest.

He knows he’s too caught up in his thoughts when his foot slips on a branch; of course, he catches himself and blames it on the weather. If he were so clumsy as to fall, it truly would be the end.

The pain in his temple is tremendous, it prevents him from attempting to discern where he’s going. He knows, but it hurts to think. Everything is instinct.

Hiei lands on another branch - and it’s sloppy, but he doesn’t have time to think on it. Every breath he takes is a trial, the air around him is simultaneously frigid and blistering. A desert caught between night and day.

He crouches, raising to tap his knuckles against a window close by.

There’s no answer right away and he snorts. It would be just his luck to come all this way and find the place empty.

He’s leaning on the window when it opens and he doesn’t quite have the time to recover.

Someone catches him and he holds onto consciousness just long enough to hear them say his name.

---

Kazuma paces the length of his room, phone in hand, eyes darting to the mound of blankets on his bed.

More specifically, he supposes, the ill demon curled up beneath them.

To say that Hiei showing up minutes ago and tumbling through his bedroom window was the most eventful thing to happen that Sunday afternoon would be an understatement. After all, Kazuma’s main goal for the day was to fit in enough studying that he didn’t feel like a complete mess going into next week.

So yes, Hiei was a surprise. The sickness not so much, but the degree to which it had progressed? Definitely.

They’d all noticed he was unwell, as much as he tried to hide it, it was clear when Hiei was off his game. This was, however, the same Hiei that would sooner hole himself up and burn the illness away with sheer rage than admit to a bad case of the sniffles.

The instant they commented on the fact that he should look after himself, he disappeared.

And okay, maybe Kazuma entertained the insane notion that somehow Hiei had just stabbed the sickness out. Like there was a singular mass, a physical manifestation of his affliction that he’d carved out and buried away, deep beneath the earth for no one to find.

Then, perhaps, he’d spent the rest of the week training. Because how dare his body succumbed to any sort of weakness. It must be punished, something, something.

“Come on, pick up,” Kazuma groans, cradling the phone against his ear. “Sorta outta my element here.”

The call rang through, Kurama must be busy.

He hangs up, defeated.

The lump that is his friend, Hiei the Headstrong-- no, no one calls him that -- Hiei the Stubborn -- oh, they definitely call him that -- shifts in his sleep. He makes a sound that can only be described as anguished and Kazuma is dialing another number.

The thing is, he can do the whole caretaker thing. The common cold, a flu. But he’s never interacted with a demon flu or cold or whatever this is and he really doesn’t want to mess this up.

Hiei trusted him enough to come here, after all.

None of this matters, though, if none of friends pick up their phone.

Kazuma snaps his phone shut and slides it onto his desk, fed up. Okay, so it was time for plan B, which loosely amounts to do your best.

He rolls up his sleeves and gets to work.

---

Hiei is aware of a few things in the transitory moments between sleep and more sleep.

He knows he isn’t alone. His body can’t decide whether that’s a positive or negative thing, if the tension in his muscles can be relied on.

He’s out of the rain, at least, because he’s not soaked, his clothing isn’t drenched. It’s warm. Too warm.

The clothing isn’t his, it’s not familiar. The brush of the fabric on his feverish skin. Foreign.

Soft, he decides. Which means it can stay.

But all of it -- the clothing, the piles of blankets -- it contributes to the unpleasant heat layering his skin. Stirring up sweat on his brow.

It’s too hot, somehow it burns hotter than the flames of the demon realm. Unbearable.

Impossible.

So, he’s dying, and that’s it, then?

Someone chuckles nearby and Hiei forces his eyes open. Narrows them.

This isn’t funny, let him die in peace.

“You’re not dying,” the voice says and sounds like a smile, gentle and pitying. “At least, I’m pretty sure you’re not.”

“Stupid,” Hiei manages and closes his eyes once more.

---

Kazuma can’t help but grin at the single word he assumes is directed at him. If Hiei can still toss around an insult or two, he can’t be too far gone.

He can’t blame the demon for his drama, it doesn’t feel great to be sick. If it doesn’t happen to you often, it might as well feel like death.

Kazuma sighs, dipping a cloth in cold water, ringing the excess away. When he starts to dab the sweat away on Hiei’s brow, the demon flinches.

“Sorry,” Kazuma blurts, hesitating. “It’s just water, that okay?”

He doesn’t receive an answer, but Hiei is more receptive to his touches from that point on. Less tense.

Hiei was never a chatty character, but his words are certainly few and far between. They’re distant, like his awareness.

Kazuma isn’t even sure he knows where he is half the time.

Still, Hiei sleeps and its fairly sound.

Kazuma takes to settling on the floor beside his bed, textbook in his lap, cell at his side. He’s close, just in case Hiei’s voice fails him.

For the past hour, Hiei has been making remarks about being too warm. It’s happening consistently enough, that Kazuma isn’t sure anything he does will be effective.

At first, he tries a cool cloth. A compress, something chilled and resting over Hiei’s closed third eye.

“No good?” Kazuma furrows his eyebrows when the demon head drops to the side and he groans.

That’s a no.

So he gets a fan from the storage closet, sets it on high oscillation. Thinks better of it and simply has it face Hiei directly.

Kazuma calls Kurama again. No answer.

In his desperation, he dials a second time. A third.

“Kurama, man,” Kazuma whines into the voice mailbox, rubbing his arms when a sudden shiver strikes him. “So, we were right about the shrimp being sick, okay? He’s here and, uh, is there like a book I can read or somethi-”

He shivers again, his breath leaving him in a frosted puff.

“So,” his teeth chatter and he curses under his breath. “Damn, nevermind.”

Kazuma snaps his phone closed and takes a few short steps to his closet, wondering all the while why each step feels like his feet on bare ice.

It’s not a spirit, he doesn’t actually sense anything. What, then?

He pauses just as he’s about to slide on a sweater. He does sense it now, realizes. Demonic energy that he’d dismissed before because there was an air of familiarity to it.

He’d just associated it with--

“Shit,” he spins, eyes searching, landing on the form still resting in his bed.

--with Hiei, who’d been quiet this entire time.

Kazuma’s watches the demon’s soft exhales leave his lips, clouding up in the frigid air. But that makes sense with whatever’s happening.

What doesn’t is the blue glow that surrounds his slumbering form, the thin layer of frost accumulating on Kazuma’s sheets, spreading to the floor. The icy air curling, spilling very visibly from Hiei’s fingers.

Wide-eyed, Kazuma shoots forward, winces when he finds it is, in fact, even colder the closer he gets to the demon.

“Okay,” Kazuma grits his teeth, recoiling when his hand brushes Hiei’s. “Oh fuck, that’s...”

Cold. It’s like ice.

“Is this normal?” He squeaks at the same time that he thinks, and he knows, that it isn’t. “Hiei?”

---

He hates it, he hates this.

If he could burn it away, he would. He doesn’t think he possesses any flames powerful enough, shame as it is to say.

“Shrimp?”

It makes sense, if this is it. His life began in flames, it should end the same way.

Usually, the fire, it listens. It’s the only thing he’s had all this time.

Fine, then.

“Hiei?”

Now it betrays him.

Fitting. Wild, temperamental, this borrowed power.

Tendrils of heat coiling beneath his skin, seeking freedom. He’s not enough for them, he never has been.

So, then, if his life is not meant to be lived in fire.

...no, he would rather die than rely on it.

Their power.

He can’t -- won’t -- count on ice.

So the fire can have him.

“Hiei!”

Unless there’s something else.

---

Kazuma heaves a sigh of relief when Hiei’s eyes shoot open.

And just like that, the frigid temperature disappears. His room is no longer an impromptu ice rink.

Kazuma’s shoulders fall and he turns to meet Hiei’s wide-eyed gaze.

For an instant, he thinks that Hiei might disappear. Might run, just like that. The fear in his eyes is that real, an uncertainty that Kazuma has never bore witness to in an otherwise cool calculating stare.

So he feels like he has to say something, because it’s fine. It really is.

Hiei looks like he needs to know that.

“Hey,” Kazuma’s startled by how off his voice sounds. “Do demons like ice cream?”

Hiei blinks at him, brow furrowed. He rises, slowly.

“What,” he starts, weary, “is ice cream?”

Kazuma grins.

Thirty minutes later, he learns Hiei has tried ice cream. He calls it ‘sweet snow’, which is simultaneously accurate and entertaining and, though he is dismissive of the delectability of strawberry and chocolate swirl, he polishes off an entire carton with ease.

“You liked it,” Kazuma accuses, propped against the wall his bed rests next to. “You can say you like something, you know?”

“I like sleeping,” Hiei returns, tugging the blankets up to his shoulders and turning away.

Kazuma laughs until Hiei kicks his leg.

---

Hiei recognizes the forest surrounding him on all sides: the towering trees that blot out any source of light, the lullaby that the wind whistles through its branches, haunting and beautiful. The unconventional beauty of the woods he grew up in was often a comfortable sight, but tonight was different.

Tonight, the danger that always lurked behind every rustled bush, that skulked just on the edge of your vision, it was very real.

The night is cold, in spite of the crackling fire in front of him. When the wind picks up, he clutches feebly at the edges of his tattered cloak. There’s enough of it there to wrap around himself entirely, twice, but still it does little to keep him warm.

In the distance, where they think he can’t hear, the bandits debate.

He tells himself he doesn’t care what they say, what they believe, but knows not deep down enough that this matters.

Pieces of the conversation filter through his waning consciousness.

“--just a young’in--”

“We don’t have ti--”

“A weapon, at least.”

“We need everyth’n we can take.”

At the last bit, Hiei’s gaze shoots over to the large blade at his side. His hands are too small to clutch the hilt in its entirety, but he holds it close, watches with a newfound attentiveness the way that the fire scatters its light across its steel.

Heavy footsteps stop to his left. He doesn’t look up, he doesn’t let go of his blade.

“Hiei--”

“I don’t care,” Hiei answers, frowning. “If you’re going to leave, do it.”

There’s a silence where Gen, the enormous earthen demon who boasts second-in-command of their little group, their family, shifts his weight. He’s hesitating, so Hiei makes it easy for him.

“Shut up,” he raises his voice, but it still comes out a rasp. “You talk too much.”

“Boss and I know you’ll catch up,” Gen continues, unphased. “Rules we live by, they’re tough.”

Hiei feels the other move closer and leaps to his feet, drawing his sword and using it to create distance between them.

“I don’t need your pity,” he snarls. “If you don’t want to lose that hand, leave.”

There’s a fury that stirs in his chest when Gen sighs and it does, in fact, still sound like pity.

Hiei lets the anger fester there, lets it consume the despair. It’s easier to be resentful when Gen turns his back and sets off with the rest.

So much easier than the two tears that escape and clatter to the ground as he holds himself, alone, and stops just short of reaching out, of pleading for someone, anyone, to come back.

---

Kazuma tears his eyes from his book just in time to see Hiei awake with a start, to watch him wildly search the room and heave breath after frenzied breath.

He’s looking for something, someone, but he doesn’t really see. Not until Kazuma speaks up.

“Hiei,” Kazuma sits up, slides as close as he can. “Hey, it’s alright, I’m here.”

Hiei sees him, meets his gaze, but he doesn’t relax. Not yet.

In the silence, Kazuma offers a smile, carefully rests his hand over one of Hiei’s and leaves it there when he’s allowed. He waits, listens for the demon’s breathing to even out before he tuck his book to his chest and moves to fill the distance between Hiei and the wall.

There, he rests his textbook on his folded legs and resumes studying. Nothing more to say, no need to comment on the glassy sheen to Hiei’s eyes.

With their shoulders touching, Kazuma feels Hiei relax beside him.

Kazuma finishes another chapter of his reading before he realizes the weight on his shoulder is heavier. When he glances over, Hiei is sound asleep.

It takes some time and isn’t particularly graceful, but Kazuma manages to shift their position without waking the demon.

And like that, with Hiei nestled against his chest and sufficiently covered with every blanket in the Kuwabara household, Kazuma gets a head-start on his reading for the week.

The two round gems, their own unique shade and luster, that slid beneath the pillow... those Kazuma slips into his pocket to get rid of later.

#kazuma kuwabara #yu yu hakusho #kuwabara kazuma #kuwahi #hiei #hiei jaganshi #yyh #kazuhi #kazuhiei #hieibara #my writing #ash writes #ashapon

[johnnygstaffordshire]

obligatory appreciation post? well, I've never really been obligated to do anything in my life but I am appreciative of the little and basic things I come across and the essentials I'm in possession of. I don't really do this photography thing at a high level so the a6000 everything to the boy. I love it so much that I don't give a damn about posting these photos I probably would have taken and posted as a kid I've taken as a grown man...or at least at 27. I'm still quite appreciative of the setup/station I put together in 2019 I used to write, produce, and record the project that is now 'Edith's Prunes'. I still have functioning legs I use to walk to the goddamn WalMart I can't seem to stay away from with. there's this automated controller I used to mix both 'Edith's Prunes' and the last project I worked on with that is so perfect it's probably a Behringer, too bad it's only a controller. I bought a used TLM 103 in 2018 that rocks. there's an Oxygen 8 25 key MIDI controller I've been using for almost 3 years now and it's not all that I need but I don't need anything else if that makes sense. my grandma who sleeps in the room beneath me who deals with my odd behavior, please don't kill her. my mom who brings me to get ice cream quite often, she also doesn't wanna be killed. there are two Martin Logan bookshelf speakers I bought because of its ribbon tweeters that are outstanding for referencing but don't take my word for it. two Klipsch bookshelf speakers, two Pioneer standing speakers, a subwoofer, a STR-DV10, a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M50x headphones and I didn't buy them because Taylor Swift has some. this iPhone 7 that I used to write 'Edith's Prunes' with. a Blackberry Classic I used to write the third track on my last project with. that fairly new roof I've been sleeping under for 3 years now. the now creaking floorboards I've been walking over and jumping on for 20 years now. this lamp I think either I or my mother bought for under $10 at that goddamn WalMart I tried to sleep in once. this motherfucking U-PHORIA UM2 that is the centerpiece of my career as a recording artist. the ICD-PX333 handheld voice recorder I might kill you for if you steal it so if you actually wanna be killed steal that thing. the $20 oscillating fan I bought at the goddamn WalMart. clothes. a bed. this memory foam pillow I sleep on I swear SWAT's gonna raid 'cause of, the thing is amazing. the motherfucking iMac used to watch as much porn as possible. air conditioning. food. shoes. a fucking PS3 with HDMI AND CONTROLLER. a 32" Samsung LCD. this Champion Auburn University sweatshirt my mom got me that doesn't make me feel smarter by any stretch. tea bags and the electric tea kettle. sugar. I'm appreciative of hardly ever being constipated. both Youtube and Spotify. that subwoofer I've been using. laundry detergent. water from piping hot to freezing cold, need 'em both. onions. beef. cilantro. corn tortillas. salsa. avocados. curry powder. peppercorns. SALT. vanilla ice cream. the bathroom mirror. a toilet. the front door. bedroom doors that I can masturbate with dignity behind. power outlets. wifi. cable television. the black Kenmore Elite. this used Samsung fridge the community brought over for us to use, when will they be back for it? mirrors. my black Rayban wayfarers. boonies. electricity. windows. a desk. this cheap and incredibly unsupportive office chair. books. tea cups. video games. memory cards, hard drives, and the part of my brain that helps me remember how anything works. sinks without dripping faucets (big shoutout to the community). why do we have plungers? come get these fucking plungers. ouuu this military grade LED flashlight. cheese for fried cheese sticks. a shower-head. bathtub. unclogged drains. flooring. underwear. lighting. this Logitech keyboard. this Logitech mouse. a second floor in this house I live in. bath towels. you can come and get that goddamn dinning table no one asked for. sofas and chairs. this fucking navy blue sectional that's so cheap sometimes it's literally irritating. an iPhone charger. a Black

and Decker blender. the goddamn WalMart's Great Value brand. cups. forks and knives. door locks. lighting fixtures. the backyard. change and cash. maybe come get these textbooks? an extra large bathrobe. hand tools for when I get interested. trash bins and the weekly trash routine. a Toshiba television. socks. Chacos. a functioning body. XLR cables. bluetooth connectivity. usb cables and hubs. power cords and working ports. wood...I like wood. curtains. trees for oxygen. emission regulations. muscle car engines. teeth and all the parts of my functioning body. rooms. needles and thread. limes. my leather belt. my leather boots. my fatigue jacket. my F497 fleece. clothes again and then more clothes after that with words like Gucci and Prada on them. hygiene. grooming utensils and every thing else I'm forgetting. my writing abilities. my sense of humor. my rapping abilities. my abilities and skills. my ear for sound. my ear for flow. my sense for cover arts. EVERYTHING THAT I'M FORGETTING TO ADD IN THIS POST bodyruiner on the way you scary dipshits.

[sorenmarie87]

FNAF in Real Life

Fic Summary- Dean and Y/N wake up in an office and it looks just like a certain game she’s played before.   Word Count -  1,086 A/N - This fic is for Beca’s Birthday Challenge.  Go check out @becaamm if you haven’t already.  Her fics are awesome~   Gifs below cut :)  My prompts were # 11  “Where the fuck are we, and what the hell are you wearing?” - and #27  “You look so cute when you pout.” Tagging - @lovetusk @dragongirl420 @mirajanefairytailmage @becaamm

“Come on sweetheart, please wake up.”  Dean said with a grunt.  He was trying to shake your unconscious form awake but apparently you were not budging.  “Son of a bitch.”  A groan came from you, as Dean sighed in relief.  You opened your eyes and slowly sat up.  This place was very unfamiliar to you considering the last time you checked you were still in the Bunker.  You looked around the darkened room before glancing at Dean.  It wasn’t until the lights flickered on that you recognized where you were.

“Where the fuck are we and what in the hell are you wearing?”   It wasn’t until you looked down that you understood why Dean was asking about your outfits.  You were dressed as security guards.  

“Son of a bitch, I know where we are.”  Dean raised an eyebrow expecting you to go on with your explanation.  “You remember the other day when I was playing that game on my laptop?”

Dean chuckled as he took in the room you both appeared to be trapped in  “You’re going to have to be more specific on what game you’re talking about sweetheart.”  

You sighed to yourself and knew exactly what he was talking about.  Note to self - stop playing dating sims whenever Dean is near.  He gets just as invested as you do when you play them.  “You remember me playing the one where you’re hired as a night guard at that pizzeria overnight to watch the animatronics?”  

You were right, the office you woke up in was the an exact replica from Five Nights At Freddy's.  There was a desk in front of you with an oscillating fan on it, the computer you would be using during the night and a basic desk phone.  Corkboards were hung on the wall with various posters littering it, showing you what Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria was famous for.   Dean also spotted two doors on each side of you, with buttons labeled ‘Door’ and ‘Lights’ respectively.  

“Oh please don’t tell me it’s the one where the animatronics come to life.”  

“Okay fine I won’t.”  You smirked as he looked over at you.  “Fine it is.”  

“You’re acting fine for someone who jumps every time they got you.”

“This coming from the same man who screamed like a girl when a cat jumped out of locker.”  Dean’s cheeks were light pink and he was muttering something along the lines of “shut up.”  You kissed his cheek and then the phone started ringing.  

“You should answer it.”  You sighed shaking your head.  

“Hello hello.”  The familiar voice rang in your ears giving you the same speech about checking the animatronics, and to make sure you check Pirate’s Cove.  You started to hang up but that’s when the voice morphed.

“Oh hey dollface.”  

“Gabe?  Honestly what the hell are we doing here?”  You thought that the Archangel was your friend and wouldn’t mess with you like this but apparently you were wrong.  You turned back and looked at Dean when he heard you mention Gabriel’s name.  Ripping the phone out your hands,  Dean started yelling.

“Why are we here you son of a bitch?”  You walked over to the computers, checking them to make sure none of the animatronics were coming down the hallways.  Bonnie had moved a little, Chica was still in place and so was Freddie.  Taking a glance at Pirate’s Cove you noticed the “Sorry. Out of Order” sign and the curtains were still closed.  So everything was still in place.

“Why else would you be there?  I just felt like screwing with you guys.   You want out of there though, you have to survive the night.  It’s about what 12 am?   Survive until 6 am, work together with Y/N and you’ll get out there.”   Dean slammed the phone down onto the base and looked back at you.  

“We have to go through this whole night.”  

“12 am to 6 am, so instead of five nights, we just have to survive one?”  

He trudged his way back to where you were and noticed something out of the corner of his eye.   “Y/N we have a problem.”

“What’s wrong?”  You noticed a certain fox hauling ass down the hallway towards the office.  “DEAN GET THE DOOR.”  

“WHICH SIDE?”  

“LEFT!!!”  He noticed the fox animatronic at the door and let out a scream,  one that rivaled your own when you first encountered Foxy in the games.  

“So who’s the big bubble blowing baby right now?”  You asked laughing as the door came down.  

“Shut up.”  

For the rest of the night, you and Dean were a well oiled machine.  You watched the cameras closely, listening in case one of them was near the two doors.  You reminded him every so often to check what percentage of power was remaining and once the clock rolled over to 6 am, you actually celebrated.  Dean pulled you in for a quick hug as you both waited for Gabriel to show.  

“I knew it!”  A voice called out and you turned to the source.  He was standing there with a smile on his face, wiggling his eyebrows.  “So you are bumping uglies with Dean-o here.”

“I am not!”  You cried out as your face turned beet red and you started to pout.  Gabe was shocked, it was the initial reason he stuck you two together.   Dean realized in that moment you looked so cute when you pouted.  

“Not that it’s any of this winged dicks business but we could be.”  You turned your head and looked at the older Winchester.  You were in shock, was he admitting feelings now?   “Let’s talk about this later though.”

“We made it through the night, now can you send us home please?”  You just wanted to go home and crawl under your covers.  

With a snap of his fingers, you were back in the Bunker.  Dean was still standing in front of you and you were very aware of his presence now.  He smiled as he opened his arms, drawing you into another hug.  You cuddled into his chest as he kissed the top of your head.  “We’re home now Y/N.  But seriously we can lay off the horror games for a while now right?”

You chuckled slightly.  “I’m glad it was Five Nights at Freddy’s and not Outlast.”

“Y/N!  Dean!”  You heard Sam’s worried voice coming from down the hallway.  

“If he rushes any faster can we start calling him Foxy?”

“I think he might enjoy that.”

#SPN fics #Beca's Birthday Challenge #Dean x Reader #Deanxreader #Dean Winchester x Reader #Dean Winchester #Five Nights at Freddy's

[redditnosleep]

You’ve Got Long, Long Legs

by peachsquid

My job is boring. I work in an office and do data entry for eight hours a day. Then I go home to my dull, taupe colored apartment. I feel like I'm the kind of person who would have a cat. But I don't have a cat. I have some plants, so I go home and water my plants. I eat tasteless microwaveable food then I go to sleep and have dull dreams. Sometimes I spice things up and order Chinese food for delivery. My life is mind-numbingly boring.

Then one day, one of my coworkers came to work with a smile on his face and a straw hat tilted at a jaunty angle on his head. He was humming a song when he sat at his desk. He stared at his key board for a moment with that smile still plastered on his usually grumpy face. He turned to me and said “well I can't for the life of me remember how to use this darned thing.” Then he turned his head back to his computer, his neck made an eerie popping sound and I swear, I saw a strange bulge for just a second at the base of his neck.

Finally, something interesting. I'm not going to take my eyes off him. I'm going to watch this all play out, I thought. I'm hesitant to say that I'm ‘glad' I did, but I was right, my life finally got interesting.

It has been unseasonably warm for weeks. The air was out in the office. Everyone was in a terrible mood, worse than usual. The man who sat next to me, Sam, was always miserable. He was downright intolerable since the air quit. He banged around the office, threw files on his desk and cursed under his breath. I ignored him. I ignored everyone. I had no office friends. I typed and took my hour lunch break and two cigarette breaks and made no eye contact.

Then, like I said, things got interesting. I got to work one morning. The office was sweltering. My boss was in his office. He had a framed picture of his three cats on his desk. I thought about getting a pet. My boss grunted at me in greeting. Pets certainly haven't improved his life, so why bother?

I sat at my desk. People started to trail in. Sam walked in. I noticed because he was humming. He sat at his desk and we had our weird, one sided exchange. He went back to humming while he slowly poked at his keyboard with his index finger. I recognized the tune. It was a new song, always on the radio. I liked it, but it always struck me as strange that it was such a hit, it sounded old timey, like it was being sung into one of those old fashioned microphones in a club by man wearing a hat and smoking a cigarette.

“You've got long, long legs/and big green eyes/when you look at me baby/oh I get hypnotized”

I didn't get any work done that day. I watched Sam. I watched him type away with one finger. I watched the back of his neck. I watched the smile on his face. He never stopped smiling. He never stopped humming.

At the end of the day, I took a look at his computer screen before I left. I had visions of “all work and no play make Sam a dull boy.” But on the screen were just the letters “efgh” over and over and over. I was…disappointed.

I went home. I watered my plants. I dreamed about things moving around at the base of my neck.

..

The next day, and the ones after that, Sam came to work with a smile. The office was still a sauna. My boss shut his door and set up an oscillating fan. I watched Sam type. He had started to sing quietly as he worked.

“You've got long, long legs/and big green eyes/ oh baby if this ain't love/ it's my demise”

This was my routine for almost two weeks. The AC got fixed, I ordered Chinese twice. Sam smiled and typed and sang. Life was a little more interesting.

One day, as I watched Sam, something moved underneath the skin at the corner of his upturned mouth. I leaned forward. There it was again, a ripple, definitely not a tremor or a tick. Something was under his skin. He saw me looking. He turned his whole body to look at me. His smile got bigger.

“Lovely weather we're having,” he said.

I nodded. He turned back to his computer. At the end of the day I looked at his screen. He had typed “ijkl” repeatedly. I followed him out the door.

He walked down the sidewalk, hands swinging at his sides. I had followed him for almost a block when he suddenly walked sideways into an alley. I peered around the edge of the brick wall. He was standing halfway down the alley, near a dumpster and his shoes drenched in whatever gooey trash and slime that coating the cement. He leaned slightly to the left. Then his body shuddered like he was freezing. He straightened up and moved his head and neck around like he was stretching the muscles. His neck made that strange popping sound again. Something bulged at the base of his neck. I turned and walked away.

The next day, in the afternoon, Sam turned to me and said “I sure am hungry,” and he smiled so wide that the corners of his mouth cracked.

That day my boss came out of his office and yelled at Sam about not getting some reports in on time and to “wipe that fucking smile” off his face and to “take off that ridiculous hat.” Sam didn't do either.

I decided to buy some fish. Maybe some snails. I spent time that night researching aquariums. I listened to the radio. That song played twice before I went to bed.

“You've got long, long legs/ and big green eyes/ oh baby don't ya know/ ya keep me satisfied/come on!”

The next morning my boss yelled at all of us for our lack of initiative. Sam hunched over his computer at an awkward angle. The bulge at the back of his neck was prominent.

I hadn't taken a cigarette break since I started watching Sam. The day before yesterday, I threw the rest of my pack away and I didn't buy a new one.

..

When I got into work yesterday, my boss was at Sam's desk. He was looking through Sam's files. Sam walked in.

“The hell is all this?” my boss yelled. Sam smiled.

“This is your last warning, get your shit together or you're fired,” he stomped into his office.

Sam sat down at his desk. His eyes looked like they were sinking into his face. His skin was pale and looked loose, like he had lost a lot of weight. He was still smiling. Still wearing that straw hat. He looked at me, his head cocked slightly to the side.

“The weather sure is fine,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I sure am hungry,” he said.

“Eat something?” I said.

“Maybe later. Time to work.”

At the end of the day Sam's face was nearly touching the keyboard because he was so hunched over. Everyone else had left for the day except me, my boss and Sam.

Sam got up from his desk and walked in a halting, almost drunken stagger, to the restroom. He was singing quietly as he went. I followed him.

I opened the door just enough so I could peek in. Sam was standing in front of the mirror. He was singing. He reached up and took off his hat. The top of his head was split open and something pink was wriggling around inside.

“You've got long, long legs” he sang. He put the hat down on the counter.

“And big, green eyes,” he put both hands on the counter and leaned forward.

“Oh baby,” his body began to stretch. His arms started to get longer, his shirt split down the seams as his chest and back expanded. His legs started to stretch, too.

“That's right,” he said quietly, I could hardly hear him.

“That's right, I have long, long legs, and I got big green eyes, and oh baby, I'm hungry.”

I shut the bathroom door quietly and hurried out of the office. Last night, I ordered pizza.

..

This morning, when I got in to work, my boss was in his office. He was smiling.

“Hey,” he said as I walked to my desk, “come here.”

I walked into his office. He smiled, a big, toothy grin. I noticed a comically large watch on his wrist. The time was wrong. Music was playing quietly from his computer speakers. I knew the song well.

“You like cats?” he said, still smiling. I shrugged.

He bent down under his desk and came up with a pet carrier. He put it down on the desk. Three uncomfortable looking cats were crammed inside. He smiled at me and something under the skin of his forehead rippled.

“Don't think I'm much of a cat person,” my boss said. He pushed the pet carrier closer to me. One of the cats meowed.

“Take ‘em home. Heck, take the day off. Lovely weather we're having.”

So now I have three cats. And a couple of plants. And I'm going to take the day off and look for another job.

#creepy #horror story

[whatthefoucault]

WIP meme

I’m so bad with doing these memes when somebody tags me because I am a garbage person with a terrible memory, but the illustrious @frostbitebakery and I’m gonna do this before I forget!  I have so many WIPs (blush blush) but here’s a handful of contextless fic chunks, I guess

Buildings on the beachfront tip toward each other like a gang of buddies, sauced as fuck on whiskey and beer and staggering into the morning, singing songs about making love to beautiful girls.  I can't count how many times I laughed along; I didn't want any trouble and it was so much easier.

Three ladies in summer dresses sway their hips in time with the soft jazz that's coming from the little bar.  In spite of myself I imagine you dancing to me across our dusty old rug, but you never could dance for shit.  I imagine you stumbling, feet too fast for the rest of you to keep up.  I imagine catching you as you trip over a bump in the floorboards, and then,

My body betrays my mind again.  I finish my sandwich and move on.

Outside, life went on: people were still shopping for groceries and writing exams, couples were fighting and making up, trains were leaving their stations on time, pizzas were being delivered, babies were being born.  He could still take shallow breaths, the weight keeping his leg in place now a dull, relentless pressure.  He wondered how long it had been, how long it would be before his body surrendered.  He was so tired.

"Hey, are you texting Clint?" asked Natasha.

"Yeah, just letting him know the neighbour's dogsitting for a few days," said Kate.

"You should tell him we're going to blow up the Death Star," Natasha grinned.  "He'll be so jealous."

"That is super mean," replied Kate.  "I love it."

Just FYI, Tony and I and some people are going to Stockholm for a few days.

What the hell Kate

Don't worry!  Just a little light sabotage while you're away.  Christopher from downstairs is keeping an eye on Lucky.

Christopher who makes cabbage rolls every Monday night

The only Christopher who lives downstairs, yeah.

You realise we're going to come home to a dog who's got not only dog farts but cABBAGE dog farts

Oh my god

KATIE KATE WHY

Ok ok I'm texting him NO CABBAGE.

I TRUSTED YOU KATIE

Fine, Clint, I'll fix it.  Good luck out there.

Thanks babe

Love ya, bitch

Love you more, girly girl

gross

It was all Steve Stupid Rogers' stupid fault, all of it.

There was Sam, just minding his own beeswax, trying to get in a nice morning run, when along barrelled Steve Dumbass Rogers and his damn super self, and the next thing Sam knew, people were shooting at him and there was Hydra and there were bad robots and running around endlessly on a wild goose chase for a dude with a metal arm that, in fairness, had also tried to kill them a couple of times.

But however it happened, Steve Fartface Rogers had become one of Sam's very best friends, and it was pretty cool.

Sometimes it felt as though Sam was the only person he knew who had his shit remotely together, but that was unfair.  If there was one thing Sam had learned in his years of this work and that, it was that absolutely no-one had their shit together, and as soon as you thought you did, your shit would find itself hovering dangerously close to a six-inch, three-speed, oscillating desk fan, and next thing you know, your shit would be distributed in a haphazard splatter all over your recently redecorated office.

"Oh my god," moaned Wade, picking at the upholstery on his headrest, "how the hell is America so boring?"

"It's a big country," reasoned Steve. "Can't all be hustle and bustle."

"I guess," said Wade, with a petulant sigh. "Want to play chubby bunny?"

Steve stiffened in his seat.

"Wade, listen," he said carefully, feeling a blush creeping over his face. This was not a conversation he wanted to have with anyone, let alone with Deadpool, with a good day's worth of travelling to go. "I think you're a really good person, but... I'm kind of spoken for."

Wade shot him an incredulous look.  "And that means you're not allowed to have a contest to see who can stuff the most marshmallows in their mouth how?" he asked.

"What?" asked Steve.

"What?"

"What?"

"Steve," said Wade, "what did you think I meant by chubby bunny?"

Steve felt the blush crawl further over his face, down his neck, and right out to the tips of his ears.

"It...  kind of meant something different back in the 40s," he mumbled, self-consciously running a hand through his hair, praying that Wade would not press for details.

As if he was going to be that lucky.  "Well, what?" pressed Wade.  "You can't leave a juicy nugget like that hanging in front of me without following through."

"Or you can google it when we get back to New York," reasoned Steve.

"Fine," conceded Wade, seemingly content with the compromise.  "But have you done it?"

Steve's blush returned in full force, like an entire patch of perfectly ripe strawberries.

"No, geez!" he flustered.  "Besides, even if I had, it's... that's personal."

"Have it your way," shrugged Wade, shaking the marshmallow bag at Steve.  "Chubby bunny?"

Tagging all y’all who have some WIPs to post.  I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT ALL OF THEM

#writings #ugh

[bloodywaluigi]

5 Things About Me

I was (indirectly) tagged by @koopakrazy85

5 things you’ll find in my bag:

wallet

pen

small notepad

disability pay stub (only sometimes)

oh boy i would love to put smartphone here but i don’t have one

5 things you’ll find in my bedroom:

desktop computer and drawing tablet

oscillating desk fan in summer or space heater in the winter

a book case full of books on art and spiritual nonsense

piles of unwashed laundry

shelves of dusty, traditional painting supplies that i all but ignore

5 things I’ve always wanted to do in life:

be able to make art or designs that inspire others

make money from said art

be able to travel without anxiety

have enough money to be able to travel

not be fucking poor as shit

5 things that make me happy:

cats

food

art

sleeping

Waluigi

5 things I’m currently into:

Neverwinter MMORPG

Dungeons & Dragons

historical drama shows/movies 

ancient and medieval history

obscure mythologies and legends

5 things on my to do list:

laundry

get to shopper’s drug mart to fill a very short but important shopping list

i don’t usually make plans so idk???

uhhh... uhhhhhhh......

make a vegetable stew for dinner tonight I guess???

5 things people may not know about me:

I’m mostly self taught as an artist. My highest “professional” training was high school art class.

I’m Canadian and do occasionally say “eh” at the end of my sentences.

I’m afraid of losing my independence because of my mental illness.

I used to feel lonely all the time but now I just ...don’t care? Idk what happened, maybe because I’m getting old, but I just don’t need to be around people all the time. It’s exhausting.I get all my socialization online these days anyway.

I feel like I should be better at my art by now and I’m very frustrated with my current skill level. 

#i was tagged #about me #boring personal information #sorry #i'm just not interesting

[colorofyourhair]

Hung Jury

Prompt:

Prompt Rating: M/E

Note: Requests are open again so please see [this] post for rules if you’d like to make one! As tumblr is the only site that will let me list an individual rating per chapter I’ll rate them as content demands. However the larger compilation on both FFN and AO3 are rated M.

Also posted here:

FFN

AO3

“I know what you're thinking,” the boy said with an arrogant grin. Jellal cocked an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair. The heat of the room was starting to bother him. Ridiculous that the department hadn't fixed the air conditioning yet.

“And what's that?”

“If you keep me in this dank ass room long enough I'll give you a name.”

“First of all, punk –” Laxus pushed off the wall and poked his finger toward Erik irritably. Jellal bit back a sigh and stood. He grasped his partner's sleeve and tugged him toward the door. Erik's grin didn't fade even as Jellal shut the door closed behind them. “Can you believe that kid?” Laxus muttered, smoothing his shirt before rolling up his sleeves.

“Yeah, I can. It's you I can't believe. Are you really going to snap on a seventeen year old? His ego doesn't need the boost, Dreyar, get your shit together.”

“It's a fucking sauna in there and if I have to look at his dumbass grin –”

“Go get a snickers. I'll handle the rest.” Laxus's scowl deepened but he didn't argue. He yanked his sleeve up and over a final fold and stalked away. Jellal followed suit with his own sleeves and stepped back into the interrogation room.

“Your partner can't handle the heat?” Erik asked, grin still in place. Jellal's mouth curled into his own grin and the boy's smile flinched for the first time. He pulled a file from the stack and flipped it open. Erik shifted in his seat when Jellal slid a pair of security footage photos toward him.

“Do any of these look familiar?”

“No,” Erik mumbled.

“No?” Jellal leaned forward. “Are you sure? Not even a little?”

“Look, man –”

“What about this one?” Jellal slid a third photo across the table. The image was not of the best quality but the facial scar and hair were unmistakable. Erik slumped in his chair. “Ringing a bell now?”

“You can't prove that's me,” Erik said, grasping at previous bravado.

“You know I can. I'd rather not, though. We know who did the breaking and taking, that much is on camera.”

“Then what do you want from me?”

“This.” Jellal collected the three photos and provided a fourth. “Who is he?” He watched Erik glance at the picture and then divert his eyes to pick at a scab on his arm.

“I don't know.”

“You're sure about that?”

“I never seen him before.”

Jellal sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face. “What's going to happen to your sister if you get sent away again, Erik? You're old enough to be her guardian now and that's a big job you can't do from jail.”

“I can handle it.”

“Yeah? Then why are you running around with drug dealers? That's a far cry from what went down last night. That's serious jail time.”

“I – I haven't done any of that.”

“Not yet, no. These people, Erik, they don't care about you and they're not the type to let you just dip a toe in.” Erik said nothing and Jellal pursed his lips. He pulled out the last photo in the file and slid it across the table. “What about her?”

Erik stopped fidgeting and glanced at the photos again. He flicked the photo of the unknown man away from him as if it would burn him, and tapped his finger on the edge of the woman's. “I can help you with her.”

He found Laxus standing in front of an oscillating desk fan sipping a can of soda. Jellal snorted and tossed the files on his desk.

“Comfortable?”

“Damn right I am,” Laxus muttered. “Did you get a name off the kid?”

“Not the one I was hoping for.”

“You weren't gonna get anything important out of him. He's a grunt. Did you book him?”

“No, it's not worth it. His sister's only eight and I can't fucking stand the idea of calling social services.”

“He'll just do it again.”

“He's our only lead on the Six Prayers right now and I know I can get him to give me a bigger name. I'm not locking him up just to prove a point. It's stupid and the little girl will be the one who suffers.”

Laxus barked out a laugh and flopped into his desk chair. “You're a softie.”

“Maybe.”

Ultear Milkovich's presence was announced by the click of her heels on linoleum and the cloud of perfume that always followed her around. She rapped her knuckles on the edge of Jellal's desk and smirked.

“Detectives,” her smile dripped with something that made Jellal's skin crawl. “Do you know where I just came from?”

“Man Eaters Not So Anonymous?” Laxus asked nonchalantly, sipping from his soda can. She didn't flinch in the slightest – which only served to make Jellal feel even more uneasy.

“The courthouse,” she said, not skipping a beat.

“How shocking.” Laxus muttered. Despite his partner's flippancy with the District Attorney, her eyes zeroed in on Jellal.

“I have a new ADA,” she said coyly. “I personally find her to be over qualified for this position and too much of a bleeding heart – kind of like someone else I know – but she'll do. We need some fresh blood around here.”

“What's that got to do with us?” Laxus asked, crushing his soda can. Ultear's eyes never left Jellal's.

“Just thought you should know,” she said in an overly sweet voice. She sashayed away on her typical pair of ridiculously high heels.

“I can't stand that woman,” Laxus said under his breath. “I know, I know, we're all on the same side but still. There's something about her that rubs me the wrong way.”

Jellal stared after Ultear and jumped when Laxus threw his empty soda can at him.

“Hey, Fernandes!”

“Hm?”

“You got a thing for her or something? I'd watch out, she's the type to suck your soul out right through your dick.”

Jellal curled his lip. “No.”

“Let's bail on this heat trap and get some lunch. I'm starving.”

“Yeah, okay.” Jellal grabbed his jacket and followed Laxus from the building. The sun wasn't much better than the broken AC in the station but the diner Laxus made a bee-line for would be cool enough on the inside. There was much better food nearby but Jellal knew they weren't going to Mira's for the burgers.

The courthouse wasn't his favorite place to be. High ceilings and the pomp of Lady Justice made him feel claustrophobic. Jellal hooked a finger into the collar of his shirt and tugged. Even now, as an adult and on the proper end of the law, Jellal couldn't shake the first impressions this building had left on him when he'd been nothing but a scrappy kid like Erik.

“Detective Fernandes?” The title was formal but the voice was so familiar it sliced him right in two. Jellal whirled around. He saw her hair first – always the hair – it was like a sickness with him. She had it twisted up and off her shoulders but he felt trapped by it all the same.

“Erza?” he breathed. Her name, her hair, her voice. All the broken pieces of himself came tumbling from the closet he'd stuffed them into all those years ago when she'd been a clerk and he'd still been in a uniform riding around the city writing traffic tickets. The closet door had never been hung right in the first place and the hinges were bound to fail at the first sign of pressure.

“Ms. Scarlet is probably better,” she muttered, and shifted the bag on her shoulder. Erza's heels weren't nearly as high as Ultear's but even if they had been she'd still be several inches shorter than him. He stepped back so as not to tower over her.

“Right. My apologies, Ms. Scarlet.” Jellal's heart pounded violently against his chest and it hurt – it hurt so good.

“Uh, I just needed to –”

“There you are Ms. Scarlet.” Ultear's voice rattled the marbles in Jellal's head and he frowned. Erza's eyes hadn't left his but he had to tear his own away. He had to. “I see you've found him. Detective, Ms. Scarlet will be handling the Six Prayers case. I assume your witness is ready?”

“My witness still hasn't been properly protected,” Jellal snapped, focusing entirely on Ultear.

“The state agreed to –”

“He's seventeen with an eight year old sibling he has sole custody of. The state can do better.” Jellal enjoyed the frustrated way Ultear's eyebrows drew together.

“He's a minor component to a street gang. This isn't a federal case, Detective”

“Then I guess you don't have a witness.” Jellal spun on his heel and counted his steps away from her. He made it to five before Ultear stopped him. It took every ounce of maturity not to smirk.

“Fine! We'll work something out. I'll send Ms. Scarlet over tomorrow with an offer.”

Jellal turned back around and slid his hands into his pockets with an arrogance he knew Ultear hated. “How generous of you. We'll look it over.”

“Since when are cops on the side of criminals?”

“Somebody has to look out for who falls underfoot when cases get moving. My witness isn't the one on trial.” Jellal couldn't bring himself to look at Erza again. He moved quickly down the hallway and out of the building. Once through the doors, he sucked in a deep, shaking breath.

“So the new ADA is your ex?” Laxus asked around a mouthful of pancakes.

“Yep.”

“And Milkovich knew that the other day when she came through the station?”

“Yep.”

“Sounds messy,” Laxus grunted.

“Divorce usually is,” Jellal mumbled, finishing off his coffee. He didn't have to look up to know Laxus was pulling his signature eyebrow twitch.

“Divorce?” he hissed. “I didn't know you were married! Why didn't I know that about you? We're fucking partners, man.”

“Sorry, I guess it didn't come up what with all the small talk we have time to do.” Jellal finally glanced at his partner. Laxus was clearly offended. “It doesn't matter. Everybody does stupid shit in college. We were too young to know what we were doing and it ended in a great big mess. I don't know why she's back here, but it doesn't matter.”

“You aren't going to ask?”

“It's none of my business.” Jellal eyed Laxus's incredulous expression. “You've been hanging out with Mirajane too long. You're turning into a gossip.”

“Any other skeletons you've got in your closet, Fernandes?” Laxus asked, returning to his familiar gruff tone. “Is this gonna change the case?”

“Nope.” Jellal crumpled his napkin and left it on his plate.

“Full immunity and a safehouse?” Jellal muttered as he looked over the official papers Ultear had sent.

“You aren't even an attorney, much less his,” Erza said with annoyance. “It's not really up to you.”

“My witness is seventeen. He may be considered an adult in the eyes of the law but he's still vulnerable.” He glanced up at her and couldn't stop himself from grinning. “This all came from Ultear? She signed off on it so quickly after huffing and puffing in the courthouse yesterday?” Erza looked away and Jellal openly enjoyed the fact that she still blushed easily.

“It's my case, Detective. She trusts me to handle it appropriately.”

“I see. Well I appreciate your consideration, Ms. Scarlet. I'll be in touch.”

“We're going to court in a week.”

“Yes, it says that right here,” he said, still grinning. Jellal didn't know where his obnoxious confidence was coming from but he didn't hate it. Making Erza huff in indignation still pleased him.

“I was just making sure you understood that. When you say you'll be in touch, I need to know when that'll be.”

“Still a stickler for schedules, huh?” Jellal's internal voice of reason was screaming at him to stop messing with her.

“This is serious, Jellal.” She didn't realize she'd called him by his first name until it fell from her lips. Her face turned red and his grin widened. “I didn't – I mean –” Jellal enjoyed her floundering but decided – in his first reasonable act since she'd approached his desk – to have mercy.

“It's fine, Ms. Scarlet. It happens. I'll be in touch before the weekend. How's that?”

“Thank you,” she said in an embarrassed breath. Erza's hair swished around her shoulders when she spun around to vacate the station, leaving a puff of lavender scented air behind her.

“What the fuck was that?” Laxus asked – he'd almost forgotten his partner was even there. Jellal fell into his own chair and sighed. Now that the high had worn off, he wished he'd kept things shorter. More professional.

“What was what?”

“You were ruthless with her.”

“You haven't seen ruthless,” Jellal murmured.

“She's giving the kid a really good deal to roll on his buddies. Why'd you bat her around like that? Overkill, man.”

“Leave it alone.” He stood and grabbed his jacket. “I'm getting out of here. It's late and I'm starving. You staying or do you want to grab dinner?”

“Nah, I need to finish up these reports.”

Jellal left Laxus squinting at his laptop screen and stalked through the station. In truth, he didn't know why he'd behaved that way with Erza. Their relationship had been a lesson in pendulum swings. The highs were amazing and being with her had made him happier than he'd ever been in his life but the lows – Jellal didn't care to revisit the lows. Too many hours working and not enough hours talking. They'd walked away mad with words still in the queue – which he now realized was not the way to end anything.

“Stop itching your wrists,” Jellal hissed. “It makes you look like a junkie.”

“I can't help it!” Erik shot back, tugging on the cuffs of his sleeves. “This thing itches and I don't even want to be wearing it.”

“It makes you look less like an urchin.”

“Well, I am an urchin. So the fuck what?”

“Don't fucking swear in the courthouse!”

Erik smirked. “You just did, Detective. Such a good role model.” Jellal rolled his eyes and sighed. As much as he hated the courthouse, he needed to make sure Erik didn't bail at the last minute. “Where's my sister?”

“Don't worry about it,” Jellal muttered. “She's with one of the clerks.”

“All you tell me to do is worry about her and when I do you tell me not to?”

“You need to focus on your testimony. Your sister will be fine.” Erik slumped over on the bench and Jellal joined him. “I hate it here too. It'll be over soon enough.”

“You're a cop,” Erik muttered. “Isn't this like your second home?”

“Not anymore. Hopefully you won't be back here too often after today.”

“Trust me, all this bullshit is enough for me not to mess with the Prayers ever again. I'm taking my sister to my grandma's and we're gonna do things right.”

“Good.” Jellal leaned back against the wall. “If you manage that you'll be doing better than me at your age.”

Jellal wasn't allowed in the courtroom during Erik's testimony. He waited anxiously on the bench outside and counted every fleck in the berber carpet between his feet. When he reached eight-hundred and fifty-seven, the door swung open and Erza escorted Erik back into the hallway. Jellal stood and his eyes flit between them.

“Well?”

“I think we have a solid case. The jury is out and all we can do is wait.”

“Can I see my sister now?” Erik asked under his breath. He wouldn't look at Jellal or Erza.

“Of course,” Erza said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. The motion caught Jellal's eye and he looked away quickly. “I'll get her and the two of you are free to go.” She disappeared around the corner and Erik exhaled heavily. He fell back onto the bench and gazed up at the ceiling.

“What's the matter?” Jellal asked.

“That lawyer lady.”

“What about her?”

“She's hot. I can't even look at her.” Erik shook his head. “Every time she asked me a question I felt like I was gonna die.” Jellal snorted and then caught himself.

“She's an Assistant District Attorney. It doesn't matter what she looks like.”

“You weren't the one under fire, man. It was like being murdered in the best way possible.”

“Yeah well –” Jellal bit his tongue and glanced back down the hallway. Erza rounded the corner and knelt in front of the little girl. He couldn't hear the conversation but the girl smiled and took a packet of cookies from Erza.

Erik stood at their approach and took his sister's hand. “Hey, squirt. Ready to get out of her?” She nodded and waved to Erza one last time. “Hope I don't see you again, Fernandes,” Erik said before leading his sister away.

When Jellal turned around, Erza had gone.

“Vodka cranberry, please. Two limes.” The voice beside him was soft and Jellal knocked back the rest of his bourbon.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the empty glass.

“Well, I thought I deserved a drink for winning my first case as an ADA.” Jellal's eyes slid over to where the bartender placed Erza's drink on a fresh napkin. “I didn't expect to see you, though.”

“No?” He finally turned to her. “Your boss didn't mention this is a popular spot for courthouse stragglers?”

“She didn't.” Erza sipped her drink and smiled. God he still loved her smile. It was a beautiful disaster waiting to happen. “But since you put it that way, I should be asking what you're doing here. The courthouse hasn't ever been your haunt. Unless things have changed now that you're a detective.”

“They haven't,” he muttered pushing his glass toward the opposite side of the bar and signaling the bartender. In not so many words she'd stripped him down. He'd come here on purpose like a fucking addict.

“I see.”

“Why are you in Crocus, Erza?” He watched her stir the ice and lime wedges. She'd always left the rinds in her glass instead of leaving them on the napkin.

“Because I needed a change. Magnolia is boring.”

“So your big change was to come back here?”

“Should I lie, Jellal? Should I say I meant to never run into you? I think you'd know that's bullshit.”

“You took a job you knew would be incredibly stressful just because we might run into each other?” Jellal snorted and watched her finish off her cocktail. The ice left her lips sparkling in the low light of the bar.

“Not exactly.”

“I always forget talking in circles is part of your job.” Jellal dug out his wallet and left enough cash on the bar for his tab and tip. Trying to get Erza to say what he needed would be harder than prying confessions from smartass kids like Erik. He turned to leave but her hand shot out to grasp his wrist and he froze.

“Wait,” she whispered. “Don't leave.”

“We've played this game already, Erza,” he said turning his head only halfway back toward her. “We know how it ends.”

“If you're so sure, why did you come here tonight?” Her question stung like the worst – best – kind of salve.

“So what if I'm not sure? What does that mean? Isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results?” Her grip on his wrist tightened and he turned the rest of the way around. Her eyes were wide. The vodka cranberry hadn't been her first drink of the evening just like the bourbon hadn't been his.

“Maybe we're insane, then,” she whispered. She slid off her stool and stepped close to him. Her fingers brushed over the buttons of his shirt and Jellal couldn't even stop her. Instead, he pulled out his wallet again and added to the pile of cash. If he hurt her again he wanted to at least know he'd bought the drinks.

Her lips didn't taste like cranberry or vodka. The flavor was the kind of red wine so dry and bitter it would bring anyone who wasn't Erza to tears. She'd always liked the bite.

He wasn't familiar with her apartment but the wall nearest her front door was perfect. Jellal pressed her against it and kissed her with a wild force. Her breath caught in her throat and her nails dug into his shoulder through his shirt. Erza had always been skilled with buttons and his didn't last long – the shirt wound up on the floor quickly. He tugged the zipper of her dress down and didn't remove any of it before his palms were greedily taking in the expanse of her back. She was still as smooth as he remembered.

“Erza –”

“We can talk later, Jellal,” she breathed tugging at the button keeping his pants clothed. “Just fuck me.” There was a certain lilt to her demand that made him smile wickedly. His pants hit the floor at the same time as her dress. Determined to learn everything he'd missed in the last several years, Jellal's eyes took all of her in. Her bra was black lace and his hand still knew the exact swell of her breasts – even if she no longer wore cheap cotton.

Jellal hooked his finger into the waist of her panties – more black lace – and pulled them down. He didn't bother to find out if she was wet because he didn't need to. The way she closed her eyes and bit at his bottom lip reminded him of so many times before. His hand grasped her thigh and hitched it over his hip. Her back slid against the wall and he thrust inside of her with years worth of frustrated want.

He would always want Erza.

Her thighs gripped him tightly and her tongue entered his mouth with an equal force. Erza's breaths reached a peak and her mouth tore away from his and rolled back to hit the wall. In a show of forethought he didn't leave a mark on her neck but he could've. She wouldn't have stopped him.

“There, right there,” she bit out, kissing him again with the intent to bruise. Jellal lifted her leg higher and relished every clench, every spasm, every pulse of her climax.

“Fuck,” he gasped and emptied himself inside of her without a thought to pulling out. He hoped she was still on the pill. Erza's feet hit the floor but she didn't let him go.

“Bed,” she whispered, digging her fingernails into his forearm. Her bedroom was dark but the light from the window was good enough. Before she fell into the mattress, he pulled her against his chest. Careful not to damage the expensive bra he unhooked each clasp and tossed it aside.

Jellal filled his hands with her breasts and held her back against his chest. The scent of her lavender shampoo filled his nostrils and her hair brushed over his lips. Strands of scarlet twisted over his fingers when he finally bent her over the bed.

It crossed his mind to get the fuck out before she woke but he couldn't. For all his greedy roughness the night before, he didn't want to go. The softness of morning soothed every sting she'd left – both on his shoulders and on his heart.

“You didn't leave,” she whispered drawing his attention. His instinct was to smile but Jellal pushed it down. He wasn't sure if it would be real and lying to Erza wasn't something he wanted to do even now.

“No, I didn't leave.” His eyes never left hers as he reached for a curl of hair stuck to her shoulder. It was one thing to have it tangle in his hands as he fucked her, but this... this was something else.

#Fairy Tail #Jerza #Jellal Fernandes #Erza Scarlet #prompt requests