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mrsjellymunson · 6 months

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Hello, Stranger

Pairing: Eddie Munson x gn!reader, Eddie Munson x you, Eddie Munson x reader

For @lesservillain’s excellent Strange and Spooky Stories Halloween writing event for the prompt: ‘Stranger’

Summary: A stranger comes in to buy weird stuff at odd times, and as the cashier at the local hardware store you’re not quite sure what to make of it…

CW: 18+ (MDNI), fluff, maybe SFW though caution for mature and dark themes and allusions to crime and violence. Flirting, li’l bit of awkwardness, some swearing. Both Eddie and reader are in their 20s. Reader’s gender and appearance are not described, they can be whatever you want. No use of y/n. Time period is not mentioned, and any inaccuracies/inconsistencies about history, equipment, American schooling (I’m not from around these parts) or science are deliberate and artistic oh yes they are. No smut, I thought I’d better assess whether I could string a semi-coherent story together before attempting to add that 😆

WC: ~6.2k

A/N: I love gore, revenge movies, murder shows, true crime, science/biology/forensics and DIY (sort of), so this prompt seemed like a perfect fit. There are tiny Easter eggs from The Equalizer, Breaking Bad, 80s crime TV, The Blacklist and John Wick in here - let me know if you spot any! This is the first ‘proper’ fic I’ve posted so I’d love to know what you think. Comments, reblogs and feedback are hugely appreciated and very welcome!

(Also this is my first attempt at dividers too, I hope they worked, I literally have no idea what I’m doing!)

Yep, you were ‘that’ weird kid. Your friends in Middle School had called you a freak because you brought squirrel tails and chicken feet to show’n’tell.

“But look! If you pull this tendon it makes the claw close! Isn’t that cool?!”

No, apparently that was not cool. Especially when demonstrated against your teacher’s finger...

You’d visit a friend whose father was a doctor, begging to read his medical and pathology text books, and preferring to look at pictures of dissected and diseased organs and spontaneous human combustion over braiding your friend’s hair or talking about boys.

And, apparently, scoring a class-topping 9.5/10 for your rat dissection also wasn’t the social merit badge you thought it might be, even amongst your science-abreast academic peers.

So what if you had a strong constitution. And a love of anatomy and pathology. And then compounded it with a love of true crime, particularly serial killers and forensic methods. Surely there were worse things to be interested in?

By the time you’d finished High School you’d learned to mask your enthusiasm, covering your (apparently, socially unacceptable) fascination for all things ‘gross’ and ‘murderous’ (your friends’ words) by choosing science majors like human anatomy and pathology, criminal behaviour and forensics.

People just thought you were clever, nerdy, a scientist. You never let on that you were itching to actually experience some of these things for yourself, in real time, with your own hands…

You work the evening shift at the sprawling out-of-town homewares store on the road running out of Indianapolis towards a tiny town you’ve never been to (Hawksville? Hawking?). You work a few evenings a week plus alternate Sundays, currently in the gardening, kitchen and hardware department. It wouldn’t be your chosen section of the store (in the short time you’ve been there you’ve had to amass a lot of knowledge about tools. Also, how to politely deflect the regulars’ offers to share details of their new projects, lest you get drawn in to a half-hour discussion about u-bends or rawl plugs), but the hours suit you and fit around your college classes, and the employee discount comes in handy when things in your shitty apartment break down or your roommate carelessly breaks something, again.

The final few hours of your shifts were usually pretty quiet, barring the occasional domestic plumbing emergency, or a bored Hawkins housewife coming in looking for batteries.

You don’t mind spending your evenings amongst the tools and machinery, it gives you a chance to flick through the latest copy of forensic magazine or True Crime, or work on your college assignments.

One thing that does make the slow evenings more entertaining is the unusual clientele. A nerdy-looking guy with a moustache needing releasable cable ties, cooking oil and a large plastic sheet at 9.30pm must have an interesting backstory, right?

You find yourself concocting fantastical vignettes about the oddballs that pass through, giving them the most amusing or disturbing story you can think of as they glide by in the night.

The guy with the cable ties? Too easy. Clearly he’s got a ‘special friend’ and an interesting evening planned. TBH, that’s probably not even fictional. You call him Salacious Scott.

The friendly, rotund lady who regularly comes in for for buckets and sawdust? You know it’s Mrs Henderson, who is trying to go self-sufficient and has recently installed a composting toilet, but you prefer to imagine she’s actually a madam with a ‘specialist interest’ playroom, who you brand Madame Urolagnia.

The paranoid guy with a beard and thick glasses who won’t tell you his name, buys a lot of vodka from the liquor store nearby and comes in for plastic pipe, cladding and those slot-together foam mats for kids? He tells you he’s into martial arts and these make safe weapon facsimiles for training, but you reckon he’s actually some kind of government agent. Your imaginary name for him is Mysterious Murray.

One oddball in particular has caught your attention, and not just because he’s easily the handsomest customer you’ve had in a while.

Wait, no, you didn’t just admit that; you just find him interesting, that’s all.

It was his speed and demeanour that had struck you first, rushing in, hand atop the bandana on his head, gangly legs in ripped jeans looking like they were trying to run in two different directions at once, large, dark eyes wide as he’d frantically looked around the store.

“Uh, rope, I need rope, where’d you keep the rope?”

You’d blurted some instructions and he’d headed off, not looking in your direction.

His leather jacket and swinging chains certainly commanded attention amongst the flannel and blue denim that was usually in your line of sight, and you’d found your eyes following him, catching sight of him moving between the aisles from your position behind the counter.

He’d moved towards you with a sturdy knife, a shovel and 3 rolls of duct tape that he’d collected on his way to the checkout, arms full (he didn’t pick up a basket), when you’d ventured,

“I’d recommend the next brand up, if you want something stronger with better sticking power? It costs a little more, but it’s better quality, so overall you’ll use less”, (silently thanking Mr Wheeler’s recent diatribe on the merits and pitfalls of various brands of adhesive tape, remembering the detail because he’d gone so far as to demonstrate by sticking small pieces of it to your skin. It was a weird interaction for sure, but also oddly informative).

He’d lifted his head to look at you and your eyes had connected for the first time. Your eyes widened, and you think you spotted a slight twitch of a smile at one side of his mouth.

Oh, he’s actually really cute.

“Uh, okay, if you think that’s best”.

He dropped his eyes from yours and, after unceremoniously dumping everything else onto your counter, he’d exchanged the rolls and returned.

You’d both paused, you don’t know for how long, and you’d wondered how someone buying rope could be so captivating. But the spell was broken as you’d both spoke simultaneously:

“Did you find everything you need?”

“I’m kinda in a rush, so…”

You’d both chuckled nervously, and you’d set about ringing up his purchases, noticing that a small smile definitely now graced those previously harried features.

He’d paid with a handful of old, crumpled bills pulled from his jacket, politely declining your offer of a bag, and then he was gone as quick as he came, hurrying out into the night with the swish of the automatic doors and a breeze of parking lot-scented night air.

You didn’t know why anyone would need rope and a shovel at that time on a weeknight, but with this particular guy, who you dubbed The Stranger, you found yourself thinking that you wouldn’t mind finding out.

You’d unintentionally spent the rest of that evening coming up with fantasies about that particular customer, although, unusually for you, quite a few of them hadn’t actually involved what was on his receipt…

When The Stranger next comes in he’s after heavyweight garbage bags, more tape and a saw, but seems in slightly less of a rush.

He pauses at your counter for a few moments, making polite conversation, asking how long you’d been working here, whether you were working late tonight.

Is he trying to… flirt? Surely not…

“Thanks for the tape recommendation by the way, it was a real lifesaver. That stuff’s really good, I definitely have a new favourite!”, gracing you with a broad grin (oh fuck, that was a sight) before he was on his way again.

Another time he bought shears, tarp and a large quantity of painting coveralls.

The next trip involved wire cutters, buckets and a wet’n’dry vacuum.

You begin to enjoy The Stranger coming in buying random shit at odd hours. You can’t quite make him out. He buys a lot of gardening and decorating-type equipment (plus he’s almost single-handedly keeping the cleaning product aisle in business), but he dresses like neither - always in tight, ripped jeans, shredded band tees and his signature leather jacket. You’ve never seen him covered in leaves or dirt, and his clothes have zero paint on them. Those coveralls must do a really good job…

You build up a rapport of sorts with him. There’s always a polite, verging on friendly greeting between you, and you let him know when there’s special offers on tarp and garbage bags, and what days there are deliveries of latex gloves and those painting coveralls he seems to like so much. (Sometimes you’ll even stash a few of the latter for him under the counter if there’s a holiday weekend coming up, knowing Hawkins’ husbands will be out in force and not wanting him to miss out.)

But the ‘fantasy vignette’ and forensically-inclined parts of your brain begin to overlap, and start to tickle your imagination. It’s almost as if each selection of items he buys could be used to either dispatch someone, or dispose of a body. But that’s crazy, right? He seems way too nice to be a serial killer. And mob activity in this part of Indiana? Nah. That wouldn’t happen around here.

Would it?

It’s a quiet Friday night when you next see The Stranger. He’s picked up bolt cutters, pliers, some metal trays, a sledgehammer, a mop, and, most bizarrely of all because you’ve noticed he’s not usually one for personal safety equipment, ear defenders.

Again, he’s basket-less, barely able to contain the items piled up in his arms. They topple as he arrives at your counter, and some end up partially covering your open magazine.

“Shit, I’m really sorry about that.”

“Oh, no problem, honestly. I probably shouldn’t be reading on the clock anyway”, you say, slightly bashful, as you move the crumpled magazine out from underneath his items, smoothing it down. The Stranger’s eyes are locked on your hands, and as they move across the page they reveal a headline about a recently apprehended serial murderer and some photographs of a variety of grisly-looking, bloody weapons.

“That looks… interesting, watcha reading there?”, he remarks, leaning in.

“Oh, this? It’s about a new guy they’ve just caught over in Europe. He’s fascinating, he used such a variety of tools and methods that at first the police didn’t even think to link the crimes. Ingenious, really, when you think about it. So creative!”

You look up, and The Stranger is regarding you with an unreadable expression. Does he think you’re weird, babbling on about this murderer like you admire him? Or is he actually impressed with your enthusiasm?

“Sorry, I’m a true crime buff, it’s a bit of a pet topic of mine. And I’m studying forensics at college, so it’s kind of like schoolwork too.” You chuckle nervously, arms moving in front of your body and shoulders subtly curling in on yourself in embarrassment.

The Stranger seems to sense your discomfort, and shakes his head, making his curls bounce, smiling and chuckling along with you.

“No, yeah, uh, me too with the crime thing, actually. Well, not so much the reading, I’m more of a hear-it-through-the grapevine, hands on kinda guy.”

‘Hands on’? WTF does that mean?

“Oh, cool, coolcoolcool”. Smooth…

As you scan his items your fantasy vignette tickles your brain again.

No, don’t be silly…

You bag everything up this time, insisting it’ll be easier to carry, handing them to him and taking his crumpled bills.

Your curiosity is more than piqued and you can’t hold it in any longer. Feeling bold, you ask, “So, what’s all this for?”

“Huh?”

“The- the stuff. What’re you doin’ with it?”

The Stranger looks at you through his lashes, not speaking.

Shit, you’ve overstepped, he’s gonna leave, find a different store and you’ll never see him again.

“Uh, well, some people I know out near the big city are, er, planning a, uh, party, with a few of their, um, associates, and I think it’s gonna get pretty loud, hence the earphones. I, uh, don’t usually get involved in stuff until later in the evening, y’know, after all the main fun’s over.”

You look a little quizzical.

He thinks for a moment.

“I tidy up, but I sorta make it a bit more fun for everyone. Bring a bit of pizazz to a usually mundane part of the evening. Kinda thing.”

You process for a few moments. The ‘Mob Cleaner’ vignette you’d fantasised about screams loud and long into your cerebrum.

Nerves give way to curiosity, and you brashly ask, “So, what exactly is it that you do?”

“I’m kind of a cleaner, I guess? If someone has a problem that they’ve had dealt with and they wanna make the cleanup more, um, interesting, I’m the guy they call.”

Probing further, you clarify, “So you don’t make the, uh, mess, you just clean it up. Creatively?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

He explains he’s still quite new to the job, and kinda fell into it. His boss and his mentor are both encouraging, saying his USP is truly original (Unique Selling Point, he explains when you look confused), and that he definitely ‘has potential’. He’s learning a lot as he goes, but his enthusiasm seems to be appreciated and he wants to do well.

“All you really need is a strong stomach, imagination and a flair for the dramatic!”

He illustrates his last point by making jazz hands by the sides of his head, offering you a generous smile. Yeah, you can see how that particular part of the job comes easy to him.

“Oh, well, it sounds like fun. I hope you have a very successful evening!”

“Okay, well, thanks again! I’ll see you.”

You watch him leave, noticing in particular how well his jeans fit tonight.

What’s that saying again - I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave…?

You shake your head to rid yourself of the lewd - and crazy, yeah, totally crazy - thoughts you’re having about The Stranger and encourage yourself back into work mode.

As you busy yourself and tidy your counter you notice something small and white on the floor in front, about the size of a credit card. It must’ve fallen out of his jacket as he fumbled for cash.

Cash. Always cash. Never credit card, never cheque, never — anything traceable…

You round the counter and pick it up, thinking you’d save it and return it to him the next time he comes in. It’s a business card. The text is unfussy and clear, but glossy, bold and slightly gothic. It’s a company name above some text and a pager number, but it may well be the most intriguing piece of writing that you’ve ever come across:

E.M. Creative Disposal Services, Apprentice to Mr Kaplan & Associates, For dinner reservations call: (555)-666-6969

It’s another quiet night, but there’s already a couple of people at the counter when The Stranger arrives. Mr Sinclair needs a pipe wrench and a plunger (you don’t envy him his evening), and Mrs Wheeler has come in to buy double-As for the second time this month (although this time she also added gardening gloves and secateurs to pad out her basket. Not that you’d judge either way).

You spot The Stranger’s curls before anything else, bobbing in the fluorescent lights as he comes through the entrance doors. He spots the queue and immediately joins it, glancing towards the counter and visibly brightening when he sees you behind it. He’s carrying the sledgehammer he bought last time. As you start to ring up Mrs Wheeler’s batteries you see him examining the head of the hammer. Frowning slightly, he moistens his thumb with his tongue and rubs at one corner, then polishes the same spot on the front of his jeans.

He reaches the counter, receipt retrieved from a bundle pulled from inside his jacket.

You greet each other with a quiet ‘hey’. He continues, “I, uh, wanted to return this. Can I do that?”

“Yeah, sure, lemme ring it through the till. Can I ask why? Company policy,” you shrug, almost apologetically.

“Sure, uh, well you know that phase ‘using a sledgehammer to crack a nut‘? Turns out a sledgehammer does indeed obliterate the, uh, nuts… Let’s just say it wasn’t really suitable for the project I had in mind. I think I need something…”

Lighter? Easier to aim?

“With a little more finesse?” You venture, eyebrows raised, hoping you haven’t completely misread things.

“Yeah, finesse! I like that”. He beams widely at you tilting his head slightly, revealing the most gorgeous dimples you’ve ever seen, and it’s all you can do to hold on to the edge of the counter while your knees gently fail beneath you.

“Umm, you want some help choosing?”

He readily agrees and you direct him to the hammer section, both of you discussing the merits and disadvantages of various models as you choose ones from the display and encourage him to feel their weight and balance. He seems impressed, clearly not expecting you to be so well-versed in the finer aspects of hardware.

“Y’know, you really know your tools!”

You squeak out a bashful, “Thanks.”

You slip into self-deprecating mode and brush off his compliment, saying, “It comes with the territory I guess. I’ve picked up a lot working here. Plus I just sometimes browse the shelves, thinking of nefarious uses for random household objects.” Hurriedly adding, “For school, of course!”

You cringe a bit, thinking this must make you look like some kind of weirdo, but The Stranger takes it easily in his stride, commenting, “You know, you’d be surprised to learn just how much of a marketable skill that can be.”

You chat some more and he eventually chooses a smaller, less unwieldy hammer, and after he pays you part ways again.

You still desperately want to ask him exactly what he used that other hammer for, what ‘Creative Disposal Services’ actually means, and what the hell have dinner reservations got to do with any of this?

The next night you see The Stranger he saunters in at about 8:30. He has a different energy about him this evening, seeming both more relaxed but also somewhat on edge. He’s not in his usual ratty band tee tonight, you notice, and no leather jacket either. Instead he’s wearing a what looks to be a clean, maybe even pressed, electric blue raglan shirt with black half length sleeves. You spot a crimson guitar pick necklace that you’ve not seen before dangling from a twinkling silver ball chain, resting against his sternum and resplendent against the blue.

Observing his forearms for the first time you notice how attractive - and (oh!) tattooed - they are. Toned and veined, their shape and his mix of tattoos are shown off to perfection by that sleeve length, and a leather and chain bracelet that adorns one powerful-looking wrist. The glint of his chunky silver rings accentuates his large hands that peek out of his jeans pockets as he wanders over to you. He’s still in tight black jeans, but they seem a little… neater than usual. And he’s not in a rush. It’s almost like he’s not working, maybe even making an effort.

You feel a frisson of excitement - could it be that he’s come in just to see you?

Exhibit A, m’lud: Scrubbing up well.

He heads straight for your counter, and you greet each other with your characteristic friendliness.

He spies the hefty text books you’ve spread before you, and leans onto the counter to get a closer look.

“Watcha workin’ on tonight, Doctor Quincy?”

You swallow at the cute nickname, voice cracking slightly as you start to tell him about the assignment you’ve got. It’s about evidential tool marks, and how pathologists can identify what’s been used as a weapon or tool of dismemberment.

The Stranger tries to play down his interest, but his demeanour betrays him as he presses for more details, even asking if he could maybe read the finished piece.

That’s weird, right? People don’t read other people’s science essays for fun. Do they?

But you agree, promising to bring him a copy when it’s done.

The conversation lulls, and The Stranger twists the pad of one of his thumbs against the counter, seemingly a little nervous, though you can’t imagine what about.

To break the silence you slip into work mode, but for some reason drop your voice a couple of octaves and murmur,

“So anyway, what is it that can I help you with, sir?”

Wait, is he blushing?

“Um, oh, uh, I actually don’t have a shopping list today, I was, uh, just gonna browse, I guess.”

He backs away from your counter, giving it a few rhythmic slaps with his fingertips before turning away from you and ambling off into the store. He returns a few moments later with a small hatchet and mid-range fold-out knife, plus two rolls of his now-favourite tape.

“You can never have too many of these, amirite?”

He gives you that dimpled smile again, and you feel your stomach do a full (though anatomically impossible) 360° flip.

Observing his lack of focus and comparatively small selection of items, you wonder if he really needs those things, or whether he’s just picking them up as an excuse to come in to the store. Your chest heats up a little at the thought.

Exhibit B: Small, possibly unnecessary purchase. The evidence is mounting up.

Seeing the hatchet, your eyes light up with enthusiasm as you remember something.

“Hey, we just got some new stock in that I think you might like, y’know, if I’m not overstepping or anything.” You finish with a nervous chuckle.

You smile at him nervously through your lashes, skin heating even more in case this is suddenly all a bit too familiar.

He grins, responding, “Sure, go ahead!”

Your smile broadens and relaxes as you turn away from him and walk to the back shelves, crouching down and retrieving something in your arms.

Standing quickly and turning, you notice his eyes widen and immediately flick up to yours, a slightly alarmed expression on his face.

Exhibit C: Was he checking you out when he thought you wouldn’t notice? (Also, is it getting hot in here?)

With a loud thunk you lay two (frankly, terrifying-looking) multi-tools out on the counter in front of him. One looks like an oversized, overspec-ed Swiss Army knife, and the other could easily pass as a prop from an exorcism-themed horror movie. You over-excitedly explain the features of each, saying, “This one has a hammer and an axe, plus screwdrivers, pliers, a saw, wire cutters, a magnesium rod”, you look up at him quickly and ask, “do you ever need to start fires? Plus, it has…”, you wave your hand dramatically over your favourite part of the item, like you were showing it off on a shopping channel, and stretch out the syllables of the final two words for emphasis, “…a bottle opener…”. You raise your eyebrows and grin widely, like this must surely be the deal breaker.

The Stranger laughs, throwing his head back with deep-throated barks from the centre of his chest, and then he chuckles a little, bringing a strand of hair over his cheek and a curled finger to his lips. You’re slightly distracted by that glimpse of his extended neck (god, you want to gnaw at it), and that laugh? You wish you could’ve recorded it somehow.

You quickly compose yourself and continue, switching to the ’horror prop’ product, “And this one has fewer features, but I like it for its simplicity, robustness and practical charm. It’s an axe, hammer, nail puller and pry bar. And it even has a rubber coated handle, so you can still use it safely even if your hands are wet. For, y’know, whatever reason…” you finish, slightly abashed.

“Aw, Pumpkin, this is the kindest thing anyone’s done for me in a while, thank you.”

Pumpkin. PumpkinPumpkinPumpkin. Exhibit D: A term of endearment!

He takes some time to examine both articles, testing out their various features, hefting them in his (large, strong) hands (stop it!).

“I love them. Y’know what, I can’t decide. I’ll take both. What’s the damage?”

You visibly brighten, a squeak of delight that you hope he didn’t hear inadvertently leaving you as you puff up with both his term of endearment and your ever-growing customer service confidence.

You check whether he’d still like the other items he’d brought to the counter, and apart from the duct tape (“You really can’t have too much of this stuff!”), he allows you to reshelve the rest.

He watches, enthralled, as you wrap his new tools in the store-issue brown paper reverently and carefully, as though you were wrapping an expensive gift in a fancy department store, the pair of you sharing bashful looks and half smiles as you work.

As he hands over the now-unsurprising crumpled bills and takes his change his hand drifts closer to yours, glancing his fingers over your palm and lingering for just a moment. There’s a little hitch in your inhale, and you think you see his ears redden a little.

He gathers up his purchases in his arms carefully and gently, and he backs away from your counter slowly.

“I guess I’ll head out then. Uh, I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, I guess you will, uhh-”

“Eddie. My name’s Eddie.”

“Okay, I guess so, Eddie.” You say his name slowly, like you’re testing out the syllables in your mouth.

You continue speaking, offering your name in reciprocation.

“Yeah, yeah I know your name, it’s kinda on your little badge there.” A tiny nod indicates the plastic rectangle pinned on your apron strap near your left shoulder.

Your cheeks heat again. “Right, of course. Ha!” You inwardly cringe. Well, that could’ve gone better.

He’s still backing away, getting dangerously close to an intricately balanced display of colourful children’s watering cans. You’re about to say something, but he turns just in time, ambling towards the illuminated exit with a mumbled, “Okay, bye then. Thanks again for these…” lifting the packages in his arms, and turning to look over his shoulder a couple more times before he finally reaches the door and disappears into the parking lot.

“Hey, d’you know anything about wood chippers?”

It’s been a week since you’ve seen The Stranger Eddie, and you turn abruptly to find him walking towards your counter.

His question throws you out of your stocktaking zone (you’d been focussing on ordering enough plastic pumpkin-shaped buckets for all of Hawkins’ kids this Halloween), but you quickly slip into customer service mode and ask for more details.

Eddie explains, using mostly his arms, that he needs one that, “throws everything everywhere”. You finally work out that he means the type where you feed stuff into a hopper on one side and the shredded debris is forced out of a raised chute on the other (as opposed to the more gravity-based ones where stuff is fed into the top and simply falls out the bottom).

He’s passing it off as being involved in some avant garde student art project, a performance piece involving feeding a load of wood and, uh, paint, yeah, paint into a wood chipper and having it spray out the other side. He blusters that the students are trying to make a point about climate change, or maybe it’s deforestation, he can’t seem to decide.

He explains that the piece is to be performed indoors, that there’ll be quite a few people present, and that he also needs a large quantity of tarp and coveralls because it was likely to make a huge mess.

This is the clincher. You’re absolutely convinced there is no art project, and what’s go through that chipper is more likely to be a human body. Or, given the amount of effort being gone to, and Eddie’s flair for theatrics, probably more than one.

“What size branches?”

He looks at you, confused. “Huh?”

“The, uh, limbs. What size will you be shredding? Some of the smaller models won’t cope with thick trunks.”

He swallows. His eyes meet yours, and he licks his lips. You can’t help but stare at those full, pink… Look away! Just look away!!

He subtly smirks, slowly moves his hands across the counter, and, gently taking hold of one of your hands in his, loops his other finger and thumb around your wrist.

“Um, definitely thicker than this…” - he extends your arm towards him, and moves his other hand slowly up your skin until he gets to your upper arm - “…and maybe a little thicker than this, too.”

You hope he can’t feel the burning sensation that’s erupted up your arm. You know he can’t possibly hear your racing heartbeat or detect the adrenaline that’s coursing through your veins, but you’re acutely aware of both just the same. You briefly ponder whether you’ll need to get a fire extinguisher from aisle 7.

“Umm, how about I show you what we’ve got?”

Composing yourself, barely, you take him to the large garden implements section, explaining that for larger trunks and limbs he may need something towable.

Under the guise of working out whether various models would be suitable, you take the opportunity to dig a little and find out what kind of vehicle he drives. It’s a van, so roomy, practical for carrying a lot of equipment that needs to be kept out of sight. Well, this all tracks.

Also, your brain helpfully suggests, it could potentially be romantic, a private little hideaway where you and he could… No! Stay on topic, you’re at work for god’s sake!

As you debate the various choices you find you’re occasionally leaning into each other, shoulders and elbows lightly bumping, you stealing glances at his chiselled jawline when you think he isn’t looking.

Eddie eventually decides on a mid-size towable model, and as you arrange for it to be delivered to the collection bay he bids you goodnight and disappears out to his van.

‘Art project’, huh? I don’t think so…

You don’t see Eddie for a couple of weeks after that, and you begin to wonder whether he doesn’t like you. Maybe you went too far, did you bore him? Did you frighten him off? Did he feel pressured into buying those gadgets or the expensive wood chipper?

Maybe he’s finally realised you’re a weirdo, like everyone at school eventually did?

Trying to get out of your funk you steel yourself and ask your department manager, Keith, whether he’d seen an odd, metal-looking guy in the store at all.

“Nah, not recently, but someone like that did come in a few weeks back, asking about when you’d be working. Something about your product knowledge helping him with a job, or whatever. I told him your schedule, I hope that’s ok.”

So you haven’t missed him, and maybe he’s not avoiding you. Good, that’s good. Exhibit E: He’s been asking about you?? Oh fu-

You’re startled out of your reverie by the sound of someone slapping two plastic packets down onto the counter.

“Oh, hi Mrs Wheeler, let me ring those up for you…”

On his next visit it’s clear Eddie is restocking his cleaning supplies, and he’s even deigned to use a small trolley this time to transport the heavy and bulky items.

As well as multi-surface cleaner, mops, cloths and some heavy duty gloves, you notice his trolley also contains numerous bottles of chlorine bleach.

“Big clean-up job tonight, huh?”

“What? Oh, yeah, I guess so. I need to leave the place without any trace of the, uh, performance this time.”

“Depends what you need to clean up, I guess. Y’know, chlorine bleach doesn’t necessarily get rid of everything.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, it’s fascinating, common misconception by the way. Chlorine bleach gets rid of visible stains, so that’s great if your main concern is aesthetics. But you can still detect haemoglobin, if you have access to the right tools and solutions.”

Eddie looks bath engaged and confused.

“A-heema-whatnow?”

You snicker.

“Haemo-, y’know what, never mind. Blood, basically. So actually, oxygen bleach is your best bet if your biggest concern removing all traces of, let’s say, blood and DNA. Whilst it doesn’t necessarily remove all the marks, it does degrade everything biological to the point where it’s undetectable. At least, with the tests we currently have.”

Eddie leans his elbows on the counter, giving you his full attention, resting his cheeks on his knuckles and pushing his dimpled grin up even further. Emboldened, you talk at length about haemoglobin, DNA degradation, specialist chemical solutions and alternative light sources.

He stays there, rapt, until you come to a natural stop. Just before he straightens up he quietly mumbles, still smiling, “Fucking incredible”.

With a deep breath he returns to the aisles to procure both types of bleach, pays and heads out into the night with a cheery, “Wish me luck!”

The cleanup must’ve gone well, because Eddie’s back a few days later and is making conversation.

“Hey, um, I remember reading once about some guy in England, years ago, who, like, melted people. You ever heard of that?”

You contemplate for a moment.

“Oh, d’you mean the Acid Bath Murderer, John Haigh?”

“Acid bath? Yeah, that sounds familiar.”

“Y’know, that’s actually one of my favourite case studies! It was one of the stories that first got me interested in true crime. 1940s England, dude thought he could get away with it if there was no body. Nope, sorry! When I first heard about it I thought it was really inventive, though he actually took the idea from a French guy who’d already done similar. Makes you wonder how many undiscovered dissolved bodies there might’ve been before and since, huh?”

You wax lyrical for a little while on the relative merits and disadvantages of the dissolving of human bodies in acid, even relating an anecdote about how your lab partner once chose the wrong combination of acid and beaker type, finishing with, “Hoo-boy, that was a mess!”

You become a little awkward, aware of how long you’ve been talking and the possibly-disturbingly-creepy level of detail you’ve gone into, though Eddie doesn’t seem to mind and presents somewhat like he’s paying attention in a chem class. Regardless, you decide to change the subject.

“I meant to ask last time, how did that wood chipping project go?”

“Oh, uh, yeah, really good, thanks. Y’know that advice you gave me about the chipper came in real handy. It was quite the show!” He looks gleefully at you, flashing that brilliant smile. A few small fireworks quietly explode in your innards.

“I’m so glad! Did the client like it?”

“Oh yeah, baby, they were thrilled!”

Baby. That’s new. You like it, and you add it to your growing mental filing system labelled ‘Evidence that Eddie might like me’. You can’t even remember what letter you’re up to now, you’re just enjoying stuffing it fuller every time he graces you with another morsel.

“They even gave me a nice bonus, for my ‘theatricality’.” He begins to lift his arms, but stops himself, resisting doing the jazz hands things again, reasoning there’s only so many times he can do an impersonation of a court jester before it puts someone off. “Said they’re gonna recommend me to their buddies too.”

More softly, and a little bashful, looking through his lashes he adds, “Kinda wish you could’ve been there, actually.”

Oh my, is he blushing again?

“Yeah, me too. I’d love to see you work sometime…”

“You would?”

Okay, he’s definitely blushing.

He leans in over your counter, close, so he can say in a low voice,

“Uh, just so we’re on the same page, you know what I do has nothing to do with art projects, right?”

Holding his gaze, and with your voice surprisingly steady, you swallow before confirming, “Yes, Eddie. I know.”

He huffs out a stuttering breath, and the air between you seems to heat.

He lifts one hand and rubs the back of his neck nervously.

“Hey listen, uh, I dunno if this is a little too forward, or weird, or y’know, whatever,” He’s rambling now. It’s adorable.

“I was kinda gonna ask you if you wanted to get milkshakes sometime, but, uh, maybe you’d actually wanna come out on a job with me? I’ve got one coming up on Sunday that I could really use an extra pair of hands on. I could pay you of course, y’know, for your time.”

You want to blurt out that, for him, you’d willingly burn the world and everyone in it for free. Instead, you smile wide, and settle for,

“Well, my tutors are always encouraging us to get real world experience…”

“Great, so I’ll pick you up at the end of your shift?”

“Sure, Eddie. I’ll look forward to it.”

You’re both grinning, stuttering messes.

“Great! Great. Uh, okay then, I guess I’ll see you Sunday?”

As he turns to leave, you stop him with one final question.

“Just one more thing Eddie. Should I bring my own coveralls..?”

If you got this far, thanks so much for reading!!

Comments and reblogs make my world spin, do let me know what you think.

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proxima-writes · 1 year

Text

title: a million moments

pairing: pre-outbreak!joel miller/female reader

rating: explicit (18+ MDNI)

chapters: 1/1

summary: a slice of a happy life with joel miller.

read on ao3 | masterlist

author’s note: this fluffy fic is based off of this gif set by @serenaxpedro , this ask, and this one! requests are open if you’ve got something you’re itching to read, and please consider leaving a lil comment if you enjoyed this fic! 💕

contents warnings/additional tags: explicit sexual content (18+ MDNI), no use of y/n, fluff!!!!, happy and soft pre-outbreak joel as the lord intended, established relationship, domestic as hell!!!!, discussions of marriage, pet names, dirty talk, oral sex (f receiving), unprotected p in v, minor breeding kink. let me know if any are missing!

You’re finishing up breakfast, talking with Sarah as she tells you about a test she has coming up, when Joel shuffles into the kitchen, yawning widely as he scrubs a hand through his hair.

“My favorite girls,” he says, pressing a kiss first to Sarah’s cheek before wrapping his arms around your middle and leaning his head against your shoulder blade, eyes falling closed again. “Smells good.”

“I made eggs. Yours are cold because you kept hitting the snooze button,” you tease. You can feel his lips spread into a smile against your back. “Sit. Eat. I need to make lunches.”

He brings a palm up to turn your face to his, pressing a chaste kiss to your lips over your shoulder. The kiss is followed by three squeezes to your hip before he reaches past you to grab the plate you made for him, popping it in the microwave.

With the two Millers chatting behind you, you assemble their lunches. Sarah always requests a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, while Joel prefers to bring two ham and cheese sandwiches to work. They each get apple slices and a bag of chips, and you slip a Twinkie into Joel’s box as well, knowing he has a sweet tooth.

Which reminds you…

“Joel, don’t forget you have a dentist appointment at two,” you tell him.

“Shit. I mean, shoot,” he replies.

“Swear jar,” you and Sarah say in unison. The teen giggles as Joel grumbles under his breath, digging his wallet from his pants. He checks his watch. “Finish up, baby girl, we gotta get goin’.”

You watch as Sarah shoves the last of her toast into her mouth. Joel stands, sticking his plate in the sink and pressing a kiss to your cheek before he leaves the kitchen in search of his work boots.

“Babe! Have you seen—“

“On the porch!” You call, cutting him off.

You zip up Sarah’s lunch box, handing it to her as she flies through the kitchen.

“Thank you!” She calls, blowing you a kiss as she heads for the front door. You wave to her, watching through the bay window as Joel gets into the truck, waving through the windshield as he backs out.

You’re smiling to yourself as you clean up the sink, humming a vague tune as you stick the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher. Your mind drifts back to the night you met Joel Miller, about a year ago.

“Please tell me you’re not about to rent that,” a masculine voice asks from beside you, making you jump, nearly losing your hold on the DVD case you were reading, a copy of The Lord of the Rings that was sitting in the new release section.

The man eyeing the DVD case is tall and broad shouldered, with biceps straining the material of his t-shirt. He has curly dark hair and kind brown eyes that are looking at you expectantly.

“Oh, uh, I was thinking about it. Is it bad?” You ask. He runs a hand through his hair.

“No, no, it’s a great choice it’s just…my daughter just finished the book this week and I told her I’d rent her the movie when she did,” he admits.

“Oh! You go ahead and rent it, then,” you tell him, holding the case out to him.

“Are you sure?” He asks, reaching for it. His fingertips brush against yours, the slight touch enough to leave you craving more as you return his bright smile. “I’m Joel, by the way.”

After returning his introduction with your own, he lingers for a moment. You’re just staring at each other with goofy smiles on your faces.

“Could I…make it up to you? With dinner?” He finally asks.

“I’d like that, Joel.”

You finish the dishes and grab a rag to wipe down the counters when you notice the lunch box still sitting there. You can’t help the little laugh that escapes you.

Checking the time, you head back to the bedroom to get ready for your shift at the hair salon, resolving to bring Joel his lunch during your break.

________

Joel sees your car pull up at the work site and his face splits in a grin. He tugs his work gloves off and goes to meet you.

“Well, hello there, gorgeous,” he calls. God, he loves the way your cheeks turn the prettiest shade of pink just for him. “What’s the occasion?”

“The occasion, Joel Miller, is that you forgot your lunch at home,” you say, shaking the lunch box in your hand. He laughs.

“What would I do without you?” He asks, wrapping his arms around your shoulders. Your head tips back to look at him and presses a kiss to your lips. “Stay to eat with me?”

“Sure. Let me grab my lunch. I’ll meet you at your truck,” you say, squeezing his hip three times as you pull away. He tugs you back for another kiss, swallowing your giggles. “Joel, let me go.”

“Never, darlin’.”

________

You’re sitting between Joel’s legs, your back pressed to his chest, in the bed of the truck. He’s parked beneath a large tree, the shade a relief from the Texas heat as you both enjoy your sandwiches.

“What are your thoughts on marriage?” Joel asks, apropos of nothing. You blink.

“In general? They’re positive ones. Why?”

You feel him shrug beneath you. “Just been thinkin’ about it lately.”

Your smile makes your cheeks ache.

________

Joel stops at the store on the way home, a spring in his step from a good day. He scrutinizes the flower selection, hands on his hips as he tries to pick out a bouquet. His eyes land on a bouquet of bursting pink peonies.

Perfect.

On the drive home, he hums along to the classic rock radio, fingers drumming in the steering wheel, flowers settled on the passenger seat with care. His mind drifts back to the conversation at lunch, and how you’d grinned at him when he mentioned he’d been thinking about marriage lately.

And it’s the truth, he’d been thinking about it a lot. Every time he turned over in bed and slipped an arm around your waist, tugging you closer. Or when he’d come into the kitchen and find you bent over Sarah’s math homework with a furrow in your brow as you tried to help her, despite math being your weakest subject. Or finding the little notes left in his lunch box, scribbled I love yous on colorful paper that he keeps in his glove box for safekeeping.

He thinks about it every time he opens his wallet and sees the folded photo strip of you, him, and Sarah, squeezed into a photo booth at a carnival as you make silly faces at the camera. Or when you’re getting ready in the morning, slicking lip gloss onto your pretty lips and he wants to kiss it all away.

There are a million moments that he thinks about marrying you.

Joel walks in on one such moment this evening. You’re alone in the kitchen, humming as you stir something in the pot on the stove. He steps up behind you, wrapping an arm around your waist and pressing a kiss to your neck.

“Hey, baby,” he murmurs between kisses.

“Hey, handsome,” you reply, turning to face him. Your eyes light up when you see the flowers in his hand. “Those for me?”

“For my one and only,” he confirms, letting you take them from him. You press your nose to the blooms, inhaling deeply.

“They’re amazing,” you gush, moving around the kitchen to find a vase to fill with water. You hand them back to Joel and he removes the wrapping paper, using the kitchen shears to cut the ends off the stems.

You set a glass vase of water on the kitchen table and Joel tips the flowers into them, watching with a small smile as you arrange them to look their best.

“I love them,” you tell him, wrapping your arms around his shoulders.

“I love you,” he says.

________

Joel kisses you breathless, right there in the kitchen. His tongue slides against yours, his hands smoothing down your waist until they grip your hips and tug you closer.

“Gross,” Sarah comments from the doorway. Joel pulls back abruptly. He squeezes your hips three times before letting go, crossing to the doorway to pull Sarah into a hug.

“Set the table,” he tells her, ruffling a hand through her curly hair. She groans, batting at his hand and ducking away from him to grab the silverware.

The three of you enjoy dinner, followed by Joel starting up a movie that Sarah’s been begging to watch.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Joel tells her.

“I won’t!” Sarah insists.

She’s out cold twenty minutes later. Joel laughs silently.

“I’ll get her in bed,” he says, shifting out from beneath her and picking her up from the couch. “Meet you in the bedroom?”

You nod, turning the TV off and putting away the blanket the three of you had been sharing. You head upstairs to your shared bedroom, changing into one of Joel’s well loved t-shirts before climbing into bed, turning the bedside lamp on.

“Never gets old,” Joel says when he comes in a moment later. He reaches behind his head, tugging his shirt up and off.

“What’s that?” You ask.

“You, in my bed. In my clothes,” he says, shoving his jeans down his thighs and kicking them away. You raise an eyebrow at him. “I’ll put them in the hamper later, I swear, let me just hold you.”

He crawls into bed, flopping beside you with a groan and shimmying around until he’s pulled you into his body, tugging your leg over his hip and pressing his head to your chest with a sigh. You run your fingers through his soft curly hair.

“Love you,” he says into your chest.

“You sayin’ that to me or my boobs?” You ask, teasing lilt to your voice.

“Both, definitely both,” he confirms, lifting his head. He brings a hand to the back of your neck to drag your lips to his. The kiss is slow and syrupy, no rush and all the time in the world to enjoy each other.

Joel’s mouth opens against yours, tongue exploring at his leisure. His hand slides down your back until he grips a handful of your ass, tugging you closer until your pussy drags against his hardening cock.

You whine against his lips, and he repeats the action. “You feelin’ a little needy, baby?”

You nod, and he shifts forward, pressing your back to the mattress and hovering over you. His mouth trails across your jaw and down your neck, wet hot kisses marking you like a tattoo, his love seeping beneath your skin.

His calloused fingers drag your shirt up, bunching it up beneath your armpits to expose your breasts to the cool bedroom air. You squirm beneath him as he kisses your sternum before taking one pert nipple between his lips with little preamble.

His tongue swirls around your hard nipple before he draws back with a nip of teeth that makes you gasp. You can feel his grin against your skin as he moves to give your other breast the same treatment.

Joel slips a hand into your panties, finger sliding through your wet folds and he groans. “God, this pussy, baby. Always so fuckin’ wet for me.”

A finger dips into your entrance and you keen, pressing your head back against the pillow. He shushes you as he kisses your tummy. He withdraws his hand to your whine of displeasure.

Joel tugs your underwear over your hips, dragging them down your legs before he tosses them to the side. His hands press your legs apart so that he can position himself on his belly between them, face close to where you crave him most. He kisses your inner thighs, teasing you mercilessly.

“Joel,” you whine. Your fingers tangle in his hair.

He chuckles. “You want my mouth, sweetheart?”

“Yes,” you groan.

“Ask nicely.”

“Please, put your mouth on me, baby.”

He licks through your folds, swirling his tongue deftly over your sensitive clit. The sudden stimulation makes your hips buck against his face and he throws an arm over you to keep you still.

Joel is a man on a mission, pulling out all the moves he knows drive you wild. Circling your clit before sucking it between his lips, dipping down to your entrance to drive his tongue against you to drink up your essence. His teeth graze the bundle of nerves and you bite back a shout, hips fighting against his hold.

His free hand presses a finger to your hole, slipping inside you wet heat. He groans against you, the vibration of it making you whine. One finger becomes two that he curls against your front wall, grazing a spot inside of you that makes you see stars.

He looks up at you from between your legs, brown eyes shaded with lust as he works you until you shatter, your release dripping down his wrist as he slows his hand and draws out the swipes of his tongue in broad strokes.

You sink into the mattress, a boneless heap in the aftermath. Joel sits up with a smug smile, crawling over your body until his face hovers above yours.

“You wanna taste?” He murmurs, voice a low rumble you feel through all your nerve endings. You nod and he presses his fingertips to your lips, urging them to part. You lick the taste of yourself from his skin, tongue sliding over the digits reverently.

He presses against your tongue slightly before withdrawing, replacing his fingers with his lips and tongue in a deep and dirty kiss. You reach a hand into his boxers, gripping his length and pumping it leisurely. He hisses, hips flexing into your hold.

“Want your cock, baby,” you whisper, your thumb circling the head and smearing the drop of precum gathered at the slit around the crown. “Please?”

Joel shoves his boxers down in a hurry and you giggle at the display of desperation. He takes himself in hand, sliding himself through your wetness, bumping your still sensitive clit. He notches himself to your entrance, pressing forward in a slow slide until he’s pressed so deep and close you don’t know where you start and he ends.

His body is a welcome weight against yours as he flexes his hips, drawing back before snapping them forward in a harsh thrust. You gasp.

“That’s right, baby,” he says, teeth gritted. “This pretty cunt is all mine, huh?”

“Yours,” you agree, nails scraping against his shoulders. “Wan’ you to fill me up, Joel.”

His hips stutter. “Yeah? You want me drippin’ out of this pretty little pussy?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” you chant back. He bites at your neck before sitting up on his heels, your legs held up against one shoulder as he uses a rough grip on your thighs to slam into you over and over and over.

You have to slap a palm over your mouth to keep the noises you’re making at manageable volume. His grin is near feral.

“Can’t help yourself, huh, darlin’? Wanna scream so bad over how my cock’s making you feel,” he growls. Your eyes flutter shut as you let him command your body how he desires.

You can feel your second orgasm creeping up on you as your belly starts to tighten, like all your nerves are gearing up to shatter in unison.

“Come on, baby, wanna feel you cum on my cock,” he tells you, his thrusts sloppy as he chases his own release. “Make that pussy milk me.”

It’s his dirty words that send you over the edge, forcing you to bite your lip to the point of pain. He lets your legs fall to his hips as he presses deeply into you, his cock pulsing his warm release as he slams his lips to yours, swallowing your noises and mixing them with his own.

His hips slow until he’s just pressed inside of you, his kisses turning into soft pecks to your lips. He lifts his head to look at you, smoothing your hair back from your sweaty forehead with a tender hand.

You smile, turning your head to press a kiss to his open palm.

“I love you, Joel.”

________

As Joel looks down at you, his heart squeezes in his chest. There was a time, around when Sarah’s mom left them both without warning, that he thought love was a hoax. That no one actually found it for themselves.

But looking into your eyes, he finds he was wrong. All that pain was just meant to lead him to you. He wants a million of these moments with you.

“I love you, too, sweetheart,” he murmurs.

Joel Miller tag list: @huffle-punk @johnwatsn @hopelessromantic727 @whereasport @pedr0swh0r3 @yellingloudly @dragon-of-winterfell @thedeadsingwithdirtintheirmouths @mydailyhyperfixations @liati2000 @ghostofjoharvelle @cutesyscreenname @morgaussy @letsgroovetonighttt @endlessthxxghts @fake-bleach @brilliantopposite187 @mattmurdock1021 @str84pedro

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#joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller fic #no use of y/n #joel miller smut #joel miller x female reader #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x you #joel tlou #joel miller fluff #joel x female reader #joel x reader

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threewaysdivided · 9 months

Note

I just wanted to say: I love your art and especially your banner rn by talos! also your fic as well thank you for creating everything that you do for people, it’s awesome!

Second: what’s something that you’ve been chewing on lately, story wise? What character conflict, or plot point can you tell me about (that doesn’t spoil too much of course)? I wanna hear your thoughts about the characters you write and your head-cannons on them too! Just spit some word vomit at me!

Thank you!

My current banner art is actually a crop of the first paired piece I ever did to go with my Deathly Weapons fic. (Specifically Chapter 11, which I still have a soft spot for since it’s one of earliest chapters that really let me lean into scratching the thing-I-haven’t-seen-too-often-in-fanfic itch.)

I recently got my hands on a discounted Wacom (my digital art process got tanked a few years ago when my poor art-compatible hybrid tablet-laptop was tragically taken from us by a cracked motherboard) so I’m looking forward to getting into a faster art workflow again and maybe putting some new pieces out more easily. I’d like to do more comic art pieces for the Chapter 18 mission, and there’s a silly little concept drawing for the planned Mission 5 that might be new-blog-banner material if it turns out nicely. We’ll have to see how that goes.

As for what I’ve been chewing on story-wise lately… I’ve sort of been all over the place. I’m still on burnout recovery so I’ve been letting myself move non-sequentially, working on the bits my brain feels like focussing on rather than trying to force creativity where the juice isn’t flowing. (One of the things about being my type of writing-nerd is that “self-indulgent” for me means a story with plenty of material to analyse, which is very fun as a reader but has created a lot of work for myself as the writer. As mentioned in another post, I have a full-blown TV-show-style story-bible for this one.)

Recently, my authorial ping-pong-ing has been going into a fair bit of spoiler territory. There are some chunks of the Act III endgame plan which are underdeveloped in the specifics of what the big-boss bad-guys’ plan is, whether I want to involve the Anti-Ecto Acts more, and the logistics of both the counter-strategy our heroes are planning to use and how to make its more action-heavy parts look cool in writing. When I’m not doing that I’ve been focussing a lot on the upcoming Wally-centric chapters, which are a set I’ve been wanting to keep schtum about since there’s a small potential spoiler mixed in and I don’t want to risk giving the game up or pre-setting people’s expectations before they have a chance to blind read (even if a few people have already made some close guesses in the comments). It puts me in a bit of an odd-spot right now because the chapters I’m drafting are an immediate spoiler, the later sections I’m working on are a major spoiler and there’s a good chance that a lot of the character stuff going on in the middle won’t make a whole lot of coherent sense without prior context because of how I like to layer foreshadowing/development.

That said, Wally-centric chapters mean Wally thoughts, and of those I have plenty to share:

First of all, I want to establish that I really do like Wally as a character. The DW chapter set comprising Flashpoints through to Equilibrium is going to explore and develop some of his flaws and insecurities, which means he isn’t going to be looking his best, but it’s not meant to be a Ron The Death Eater situation. He’s just a complex person, and taking him warts and all means sometimes you have to get up close and personal on the warts.

Something that I’m maybe a bit over-conscious of when reviewing my DW story notes is worrying about letting Wally slide into just being punching-bag joke-fodder. Wally is quippy, irreverent, a little tactless and prone to being a bit of an impulsive goober who sometimes gets possessed by teenage boner-brain, which makes him easy to fall back on as a default source of incidental levity (whether cracking the joke or being the punchline). Because I’m now writing an 8-character ensemble where most non-focal characters only get a few lines per conversation, it’s easy for characters to slide into being defined by their strongest surface level trait(s)… and something I worry about with Wally is that his availability as a source of jokes runs the risk of Flanderisation into a disposable Scrappy/ Flirty Comic Relief, which isn’t his character. Wally is actually really important – not just for his scientific book-smarts but for his perceptiveness, earnestness and ability to function as one of the emotional barometers for the squad – so I always have it in the back of my mind to make sure I include enough moments that actually demonstrate those qualities and the other characters’ appreciation of them/ their friendship, so that it counterbalances the more light-hearted goofery.

I think he’s walking the same tightrope as Sokka from Avatar: the Last Airbender – yes, he tends to take the L more often than the others for comedy purposes and sometimes he gets stuck with supremely dumb side-plots for the sake of tonal balance, but to claim that it’s the entirety of his characterisation really misses the point by a wide mile.

On that note, I actually really like the decision YJ!Animated decided to go with in its first and only season (ahem) in giving Wally a normal and functional family background. I know that’s not the typical background for his comics counterparts (and no shade on other fan-writers who want to write AUs exploring the abuse dynamic, those are really interesting stories) but I think it was a smart deviation for the purposes of a large ensemble, and offered a fair bit of potential for cast-balance. It lets him serve an important role as the normal one – not only as an easy window into what the current lives of ordinary middle-class civilians look like (which is good because ordinary people are who our heroes are donning the masks to protect) but also as a touch-stone for the others, most of whom either come from different cultures or from very atypical backgrounds. Even if we discount the Impure Atlantean with military training, the ostracised White Martian and the Half-Alien clone-weapon, the other members of this line-up are an orphaned circus acrobat adopted by a billionaire, a girl from a dangerously dysfunctional criminal household where she was forced to fight her sibling, and a fledgling sorceress raised by an overprotective single Dad. The others might intellectually understand what a “normal” childhood and family look like but they don’t necessarily know it as intuitively and intimately as Wally does. That normality gives Wally the potential to be a more stable foundation for the others, a source of emotional contrast and of a necessary wholesome mundanity. That is a good thing for the Team to have. I think it also speaks volumes to the heart of his character. For this Wally, the Flash and heroism weren’t an escape from a bad personal situation. His life was actually pretty comfy and privileged - he didn’t experience a brutal wakeup to the injustices of the world or some other personal call to action. This is a Wally who opted into the game because he loves the players and sincerely believes in their values and mission. And while that might mean he has a more romanticised idea of what heroism entails – and will probably face some rough shocks down the line as that rosy vision runs into those more brutal realities – it also means he brings a sincere hopefulness to the job that is less hardened than a lot of his roughed-up, pre-jaded peers. Underneath the teen sarcasm and surface-level lancer/smart-guy traits, this Wally has as much power to be a stealth-Heart as any of his Flash!counterparts.

Something else I find interesting when using Wally is how a lot of his strengths and flaws feed into each other – and I think this alternate backstory is part of it. For all of his good heart Wally can come off as insensitive, and I think some of that could be read as a product of living a more charmed life. I think he’s susceptible to a thing that a lot of real people do – universalising their own personal experience as the default – and that while he is canonically a geek and somewhat genre-savvy about hero cliches, he’s a geek about in-universe media so he probably doesn’t think to apply those tropes to “real people” like himself or his colleagues. While this Wally is a skeptic, he’s not a cynic, and I think he might forget how much of an outlier he is in a world where things like living parents and loving parents are often mutually exclusive. He’s smart enough to connect dots but there’s a little blind-spot where he simply might not think to until one of the others jabs an elbow into his ribs, because his default view on humanity is in some ways a little kinder than typical due to that small but still significant amount of privilege.

At the same time, Wally is also someone who has probably run into (or watched his mentor run into) a lamp-post at high-speed at least once in his career. He contains multitudes and among those multitudes is an endless capacity for some absolute Looney-Tunes nonsense, which the world is 100% better off for having.

I love him, your honour.

#striking the balance between silly and genuine with Wally is a challenge but you gotta have both #young justice: deathly weapons #YJ:DW Meta #young justice #young justice (animated)#Young Justice Season 1 #Wally West #Kid Flash #DC Comics #potatoeofwisdom #3WD Answers

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thecheesywritingcabin · 4 months

Text

A Pre-2024 Update

Hi. Long time no post. How’s everyone doing? Surviving what’s left of 2023? I hope so.

Anyway, before 2024 starts, I thought I’d break down 1) where I’ve been and 2) what I’ve been up to. This update is now 3 months overdue after all.

What’s Been Going On

So, the last time I posted an update was April. I was firmly in “Act 2/3 territory” back then, so where does that leave me? Don’t worry, I won’t drag out the reveal.

As of September 27th, draft 3 of The Case of the Crawling Shadows is done. We all have read over the book, and are at a point where we're ready to share it with people.

I can't overstate how happy I am about it - we've been working at this thing since April 2022, and we're finally here. We can start talking about publishing this thing. I CAN SHOW PEOPLE THE BOOK.

Back in September, I intended to do a post about it. There's a draft announcement saved on my computer somewhere for that purpose.

I remember reaching the end of the book, and then scrolling back to the top as I usually do. I didn't find any outstanding comments, or weird spelling/grammar, or even a sentence I thought looked funky. As I read through, searching for weak points, none materialised. I was happy with the book.

It was the weirdest feeling, almost melancholy. For those of you who don't know, I've never finished a novel before. Starting them isn't a problem, but I tend to keep going and just...abandon them. This was a first. I enjoy writing, and it was a bit sad to not be writing this story that consumed a large portion of my life any more.

So, I told the others I was done with my side of the edit, stepped away for a bit, and then threw myself into some writing exercises to feed the itch. The others finished their edits and read-throughs not long after.

From here, the plan is simple. The three of us are sending it to some beta readers (ie: close friends to double check things) on Tuesday. After that I’d like to send it out for a sensitivity read, do tweaks according to both sets of feedback, then…yeah. We’re good.

The plan at this point is self-publishing so @fioriisketches and @lazyninjartist have the freedom to design the inside and outside of the book. I'm hype to see what we can do with the layout.

What Else Has Been Going On

So, it's been 3 months, and there's been a bit going on between now and September. First and foremost, I started drafting pieces of book 2 (yes, we want to do another book) and doing character studies in November. I'm probably going to pick up a 4thewords subscription next year after how much fun I had during NaNo 2023.

December I took a break from writing a bit to compensate for how much I was doing in November. The plan is to ease back into it Janurary/February - then again, my plans have failed before.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to what 2024 brings - I'll hopefully see you all there. For now, I'm going to leave you with one of my favourite parts of The Case of the Crawling Shadow. @lazyninjartist handled the opening section during draft 1, then @fioriisketches and I came in to embelish and adjust dialogue. It's one of the chapters that's changed the least since we started, I think.

#office of cryptology #cryptologists #writing #editing #novel writing #we did it #finally #this is the thing I've been looking forward to since 2022 #covert investigation #makoto marshall #alex farren #the case of the crawling shadow #end of book sads

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flydotnet · 7 months

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Would You Stop Fucking Lying Already You Piece of Shit (affectionate)

WHUMPTOBER 2023, DAY 9: “Learning everything ain't what it seems, that's the thing about these days.” Polaroid | Mistaken Identity | “You're a liar.”

I guess it's a new yearly ritual of mine: I have somehow getting back into Inazuma Eleven for three days, wanting to make an UTAU voicebank; and now, I guess I have the yearly, challenge-fueled (platonic) AkeJun fanfic. Last year had the Fanfiction Library's New Ship Challenge entry, "Honestly, I've Seen Better Days", and this year, we have a Whumptober prompt fill. Who knows what 2024 will bring! Maybe next time I'll actually go off the rails.

Yeah, it's yet another humourous take on a prompt. I'm a dumbass like that.

If you wish to place this oneshot in the actual HSAU timeline, it's meant to happen on HSAU+1, the year following the AU's main school year. It's around February+1, if so to speak.

----------------------------------------------------

Would You Stop Fucking Lying Already You Piece of Shit (affectionate)

Summary: Goro is stuck having to care for an unwell Jun for reasons beyond either of their comprehension. It gets weird.

Fandom: Persona 5/Captain Tsubasa (it's the funny high school teacher AU again!)

Word Count: 1.3K words

AO3 version available here.

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“You’re a liar. A dirty fuckin’ liar.”

In response to his sharply accurate statement, all Goro gets is a loud sniffle.

“Do you even fuckin’ hear me?” He continues. “You’re a fuckin’ liar, Misugi.”

“You’re not the first to tell me.”

Absolutely infuriating.

“Remind me why in the hell do I have to babysit your lyin’ ass?”

“You actually don’t need to. I’m a grown adult.”

For fuck’s sake, he’s right. Goro doesn’t actually have to be here, he could just be exploding shit in his classroom, or in the lab, or in his kitchen. He could be having a nice day, now that his lessons for the day are over. Even attending Ann’s stupid-ass tea club sounds like a better idea, but there he is, having to keep guard over the smuggest bastard in the school.

“Unless you don’t want to disappoint Yayoi?”

As always, when one just points out his defaults, he attacks back. Why is he so good at it too? That’s nowhere near fair. Fuck this shit.

“You’re a coward and a liar.”

“You’re not proving me wrong.”

“Fuck you! There’s just nobody to do this except for me, so shut the fuck up!”

“Oh really?”

He tilts his head as he sits on his desk, a smug smirk on his lips. For once, they’d dried and ugly. (It’s not satisfying to notice. It itches under his skin).

“Your girlfriend’s busy and entrusted me with you. That’s all you need.”

“What about Hikaru?”

“You’re fucking with me? Is that how stupid you think I am?”

That takes Misugi off guard. Huh.

“What do you mean?”

“That guy’s on a class trip.” Goro deadpans hard enough to feel his own features set like concrete. “Y’know? He’s accompanying Fujisawa on the stupid yearly Euro Section trip to who knows where. I dunno, I didn’t listen to that part, I didn’t give a fuck. But I expected you to remember shit like that. Isn’t Bushy Eyebrows your best friend, dumbass?”

“It’s… uh…” His eyes fret around the place. “I forgot. I honestly forgot.”

He coughs into his elbow, the fabric unable to hide the sheer awfulness and wetness of it. It’s the sound equivalent of having to wash someone else’s cat, and the stupid thing is fighting back with its shitty claws and leaving hair in your hands and all over the bathroom – what was he thinking about already?

Right. Misugi being weird – well, weirder than usual.

“That doesn’t sound like you,” Goro comments with an oddly serious tone that feels… outside of himself. “You’re always bragging back against me. You’re the one idiot here who can’t shut it. The hell’s this shit?”

“It’s a simple moment of forgetfulness. Life can be tough on the memory, especially short-term.”

Despite the smile on his face, there is a sense of vertigo to the rest of his body. Goro prefers brushing it off and focus on what matters: showing this guy he shouldn’t be too prideful. He’s just too smug about it all, and a handsome-looking asshole, and Goro will use the babysitting session to his advantage.

“Y’know, you need to stop lying through your damn teeth, douchebag.”

Jun doesn’t smirk back.

“You sound half-hearted. What’s wrong, Goro?” Only then does he smile, brighter than before, eyes looking through him (literally). “Are you tired of playing?”

“Playing what? This ain’t a game of chess, fuckhead. We’re not on VirtuaChess, in case you didn’t realize.”

He’s starting to fully comprehend why Yayoi was so insistent on having someone keep an eye on her stupid boyfriend.

“I’ve always thought this was all a little dance routine for us.” He coughs again. “You don’t seem to see this way.”

“Get real.”

“I’m being honest.” He clears his throat. “We had that big conversation last year, didn’t we? About how we weren’t so different, that we actually didn’t dislike each other.”

“You’re oddly mellow.”

“I’m tired.”

“Oh, so you can do something else than lie! Good to know.”

The asshole chuckles, but even that sounds lame and lazy. It’s almost insulting.

“What would I even be lying about?”

“Your health, you fuckin’ moron.” He bites on his lip, disgusted about what he’s about to say. “I can’t have you dying on my hands when Yayoi entrusted you with me. I don’t know what’s going in her head, that sounds like a shitty idea.”

Jun’s gaze hardens, sharp like a knife’s blade. Or, it’d be, if his eyes weren’t so glassy today, and he’s all weak. Everything about him is weak today and Goro hates it to a point that he can’t even put into fucking words.

“It would be none of your business, to be fair.” He clears his throat again. “It’s only mine to worry about. You can leave, I won’t mind. Yayoi won’t mind.”

“You’re really expecting me to leave now?”

“What’d be the point of you staying here? You don’t want to be here.”

“Come on, asshole, you’re sick. I’m an asshole, but not to that point.”

“Oh. Well, with how stubborn you are, I suppose I’m not convincing you of the opposite for a while, if ever.” He gets up, lets the room tilt around him for a moment (or at least it seems so, otherwise he just unplugged his own brain for a second). “My head hurts and my joints feel like creaky wooden planks. That cough is running me up the wall. All I want is my girlfriend.”

Oh. Well then.

“Well fuck, didn’t expect you to cough it up.”

“You sound like you don’t quite know what you want in life, to be fair.”

“Fuck off.” Goro brushes his hands against his lab coat. “Now that you’ve said it out loud, it’s not like I can let you to die in a fire of your own making. I refuse to take accountability for your fucking death.”

Jun laughs – to a point where he coughs out a lung.

“You’re a fucking moron,” Goro lets out as he walks to the desk, accidentally keeping his workmate from nosediving right to the floor.

“Heh, thanks,” Jun croaks out. “You can be quite funny when you want to.”

“I’m not being funny, I’m pissed because you’re a fucking idiot that lies through his teeth.”

“That makes the two of us, then.”

Fed up, Goro slides the guy’s arm around his shoulders and brings him to his own examination table.

“I don’t think you have the necessary qualifications to diagnose me,” Jun continues to joke, voice going downhill because he has no damned preservation instinct.

“I think you should just shut the fuck up.”

He scans the room around for the one thing that may get him to shut up.

“The thermometer is inside the top drawer of that small table,” the local doctor points said table, a metallic pathetic little thing, with his finger.

“Tsk, you know that whole place by heart?”

“Of course I do. It’s where I work. It’s me who installed everything and placed all of my tools.”

Goro takes the thing out. It looks… ordinary.

“Oh, that’s the wrong thing. That’s a rectal thermometer.”

“Why do you have such a thing, you fuckin’ idiot?!”

“It was there when I arrived. I’ve never used it.”

“Why is there, then? Why the fuck would you keep shit you don’t use? Are you fucking dumb?”

“I don’t know, I guess it just wouldn’t be the same without it. It’s like an artefact of this school. Who am I to displace it?”

“The hell you’re going on about?” Goro takes out another thermometer. “That one?”

“Yes, that’s the – mmh?!”

The thing beeps soon enough.

“Can’t you have warned me ahead?!”

“Knowing you, you’d have tried getting out of this, asshole.” Goro looks at it. “39 degrees. You really are a moron.”

“You’ve been saying that for over a year.”

“Then stop being one! Can’t be that hard.”

He sighs yet smiles.

“Doctors being terrible patients is a well-known thing for a reason.”

“So shut up and let me handle this.”

Jun shrugs.

“I admit defeat. But let me try to tell you how you’re supposed to.”

#whumptober 2023 #no.9 #“you're a liar”#persona 5 #captain tsubasa #crossover #fic #hsau

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satancopilotsmytardis · 10 months

Note

12, 31, 18 (you choose) Please :D

12. If a genie offered you three writing wishes, what would they be? Btw if you wish for more wishes the genie turns all your current WIPs into Lorem Ipsum, I don’t make the rules

I would wish to never get stuck writing a story, to always be able to readily find inspiration for my next piece, and to be able to successfully market my work where appropriate (be this just being able to write compelling summaries for fanfics or actually market an original piece)

31. Write a short love letter to your readers.

I don't know about writing love letters, but I can happily say that I am incredibly grateful for all of the enthusiastic support that has been given to me over these past few months. The past year has been the hardest one of my life and things have not gotten any easier, but thanks to the kind comments and enthusiasm for my work (something I started doing again just to give myself something to feel better about) I've at least had things to look forward to. That has been a saving grace throughout this time and I really genuinely am grateful for all of the kindness that I've been shown. Thank you.

18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage.

His fingers itch. There's a curiosity sitting under his skin. Abandoned again. Younger brother he wants to kill. Needing to kill Endeavor himself. Tokoyami is in the same class as Endeavor's youngest, isn't he? His hair is white and red, half for his mother and half for his father, he thinks. Dabi's tail and ears were white. Leaves streaks of black dye on their towels. How many kids does Endeavor have? How many of them have white hair? Hawks doesn't look it up. He doesn't try to find out more. The curiosity sits on the edge of his mind, screaming for attention, but he does not give in to it. Not when Dabi had nearly killed himself to keep who he was first hidden. He, Tomura, and Compress are the only three that the HPSC hadn't been able to learn anything about when they'd first started their investigation. He hasn't been looking into them. Hasn't used what he's seen of them to try and put more pieces together, but they haven't given him much in way of that either. But. Last night was an exception. Last night would be enough. He could find out who Dabi is. He could.

So this passage is from the next installment of the Mishap series and is a fun little peek into Hawks' thought process as he grapples with the amount of things Dabi was forced to tell them under a truth quirk. I liked working on this scene because I always like to highlight that no matter if the three of them are in love, they are still the same clever, ruthless characters they've always been in spite of that. I actually didn't have the section about Shoto's hair color specifically in the first pass but added it in later because I wanted to solidify that further and Hawks definitely saw Shoto during the sports festival.

Thanks for the asks!

#tanco speaks #ask #asks #writer ask game

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spoiledleaff · 1 year

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@x-aki-tsuki-x hello again! :D it's just me, haha! the comment character limit drives me crazy as well, so i hope it's alright that i chose to just respond to you in an extra post! :) i just know that i'd be sending you way too many little responses in your comment section, haha! so, i hope you don't mind, but i ended up making a separate post! :D

oh! yeah, i can certainly see where the concern would be, especially considering that i see much the same thing, haha! i'm a little biased, though, as i am a smut writer, hehe. although, i think i mentioned this before when touching on your fetishization concerns in the tags? but, porn/smut is actually super popular on ao3, as well! i mean, in just the ghost fandom tag alone, the explicit fics alone are over double the amounts of mature fics! let alone any of the other ratings! of course, not all of these works are porn! some are merely heavy topics safely tagged, but a good portion is still... well, uh, spicy stuff! haha! again, i definitely can't speak for all trans smut writers, but for me at least, i write trans smut as a means to project and cope. :) i mentioned this earlier, but some of the reasons why i love writing and reading porn that focuses on trans characters is mostly for the interactions and relationships between trans characters and their respective partners! it's just kind of comforting to know that there are people, even if they are fictional, that can love and accept trans bodies for how they are :) it's comforting! and, i mean, hey, it's kinda fun too, haha!

absolutely! i mean, to me, that's the whole fun about fanfiction! :D especially with such a vague universe like ghost! i personally love writing the ghouls as a genderfluid species in general! so, honestly, it just depends on how they're feeling! or, in this case of content creation, what kind of body type or identity or dynamics i may be itching to write about or draw! personally, it's not just dew or copia! i love writing and drawing nonbinary zephyr, trans mountain, intersex mist, and even trans sunshine and genderqueer cirrus! :D i mean, that's the whole fun behind this sort of thing! and, hey, if you prefer to think of dewdrop as a cis man with a cock? that's totally fine! :D i certainly don't mind if an author or artists depicts him as either or, or even as intersex! there's always some fun for some gender-fuckery, haha! mhm, respectfully, i don't quite agree with you on the trans community in the ghost fandom demanding that he's only ever trans. but, perhaps i'm a little biased and i just don't see it :0 although, unrelated perhaps, but i do believe it's important, especially in terms of published fanfiction, for respective pronouns and anatomical terminology to be acknowledged and addressed before reading :) i know that trans porn isn't necessarily everyone's cup of tea, so i always try to acknowledge these sorts of things in summaries or author's notes :0 i don't think this sort of preference is transphobia? i think this is really just... well, having a preference! i think a lot of people tend to gravitate towards content that can relate to and vibe with! i know that i'm certainly not writing content for cishet people, so, to be honest, i don't expect a lot of cishet people to be included in my audience :) nothing against them! that's just not who my content is for, and i understand that :)

i agree :) maybe this is the people-pleaser side of me? haha! but i don't think there should be any arguing about a character's gender identity, haha! i mean, to me that's just such a silly thing to argue over! i mean, if you vibe and relate better to cisgendered ghouls? that's totally fine! i'll just be over here transgendering all the ghouls eight ways 'till sunday, haha! our preferences don't quite match? but that's okay! :) doesn't mean we can't be civil about our preferences, you know? :) oh! i also saw one of your comments bringing up the subject of why it's always copia or dew being represented as trans characters? i don't have, like, a definite answer for you! but, i think that one of the main-ish reasons is that both characters already seem to have pretty prominent identity crises? whether it be canon or fanon, i think those sort of conflicts really resonate with a lot of people! trans people especially, hehe :) but! trust me my friend, when i say i'm working on trans-ing the genders of everyone? ohoho, i'm working on it! >:)

oh, that's amazing, haha! my regards to your friend! :D he sounds like a riot, haha! i actually just wanted to take some time to address a couple of your previous comments on dew's mannerisms towards the crowd? as well as the connection of genitalia towards identity! :) i know a good amount of women, both cis and trans women, haha! who use that sort of wanking off gesture! whether it's a joke or an insult, it seems to be a favorite among some people i know, haha! additionally, there are plenty of ways for modern society to help people feel more comfortable with their bodies! there's ways to pack to help achieve a desired look and feeling! golly, there's so many options for packing or even for tucking, wow! so, again respectfully, i do have to disagree on that point! :) oh! another kinda personal thing, haha! i personally don't experience bottom dysphoria! :D or, at least, not enough to look into getting bottom surgery :) for now, at least, i'm totally content with living the rest of my life with only having completed top surgery, and still living my life with a vagina/traditionally female reproductive system :) however! i know that there are plenty of people who are very much interested in bottom surgery as part of their transition goals! but, damn, my friend!! that shit's expensive, haha!! :'D so, again, i do have to respectfully disagree with you on those fronts :) gender identity is so expansive and inclusive nowadays! :D it's amazing, haha! people can feel more comfortable with who they are, and there's so many different options for people to feel more comfortable in their bodies! :D when i was younger, i know that reading generalized trans fanfiction where men were still dealing with periods, or maybe just take a moment to have a bit of confidence in how their tits looks in that one shirt? haha! those sorts of fics really helped me out in some darker times, as silly as that might sound! but, again, i understand that that sort of subject matter isn't exactly relatable for everyone. ahh, i'm rambling again, haha! my point is that, personally, i plan to live my life as a man with a vagina! but, i don't think that makes me any less of a man :) just as trans women who can't afford to or simply don't wish to have bottom surgery are still beautiful and amazing women in their own right! :D everyone's ideal transition is different :) again, i'm kinda bringing back the reality vs fiction idea! we have a lot to thank the actors for who help bring the inspiration for the ghost fandom to light! but, as with all headcanons, who's to say really, haha! everyone can be cis until proven otherwise, or, in my case! everyone is trans until proven otherwise, haha! i think this case would be very much different if there was fanfiction about per or tobias or any other members of the cast being portrayed as trans or something similar along those lines? now, to me, that kind of 'inclusivity' or 'representation' or whatever you wish to call it is a bit icky... but, you are very right in that there isn't very much representation in a lot of forms of media :') but, that's why fanfiction exists, haha! we make our own representation where we find comfort and a sense of inclusivity in it :D

oh, no worries! :D i know the character count on those tumblr replies are ridiculous, haha! and, well, i had a bit of a feeling i'd be sending another essay, ahhhh... :'D haha! again, i hope this doesn't read like i'm attacking you or anything like that? i mean, you have your preferences and i have mine! they just happen to not quite match up :) and that's okay! as i've started before, everyone's different :D whether it's our gender identities, the kind of fanfiction we want to read or the kinds of characters we want to see portrayed! everyone has their different tastes :) again, i apologize for the massive essays i keep sending your way, haha! but, also again, i do hope this may provide a bit of insight on this subject :) although, this is also just the opinion of one little trans smut writer, haha! i highly recommend giving a listen to other genderqueer authors or content creators who may have their own sides to the story, so to speak, haha! i'm definitely a bit more... lenient? i think? with my own gender identity? as well as things like anatomical terminology! so, for instance, i use terminology like 'breasts', 'clitoris', 'vagina' (albeit, in much more... uhh, smuttier terms, haha!) when describing smut scenes? but, i also use terms like 'cock' or 'dick' when transmasc characters are referring to themselves. again! everyone's super different, and this is just how i write and communicate the gender identities of my personal trans characters :) but, again, and i can't stress this enough! everyone's journeys with their gender identity is so different! and i'm just one little lad in a garden of trans/genderqueer fanfic writers! :D

#ooc leaf

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2manyfandoms2count · 2 years

Text

The Black Cat Watering Can Affair

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas (in July)!

Have I been sitting on this last part specifically to do this? Maybe 👀 (In my defense, it's been less than a month since I've had it ready... maybe it was a way to will the heat away)

I hope you'll like this chapter, and that you've enjoyed reading this silly little fic as much as I did writing it!

First | Previous | AO3

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Chapter 5: Three's the charm

Adrien wasn’t there for the secret Santa gift exchange the next day.

It was the first Saturday of the holidays, and the other participants gathered and waited in the art room, M. Monlataing having graciously accepted to let them into the school while he sorted some documents.

Alya and Nino tried to postpone the actual exchange as long as they could, going as far as sending Marinette back to the bakery to get pastries while they all waited. The fact that Marinette wasn’t the one initiating the stalling had her friends exchanging worried glances, but they decided not to comment on it; some of their classmates were leaving for their holidays, so they couldn’t hold off the gift trade any longer.

Marinette proudly handed her present (customised Kitty Section mask-themed hair grips) to Juleka, then chatted with her classmates as she waited for her own Santa to reveal themself.

When nobody did, it became increasingly clear who he was.

Her thoughts were still too focused on her accidental identity reveal for her to be properly disappointed that Adrien wasn’t going to make it, though.

She'd lost sleep the previous night, replaying Chat Noir's "I have to fix something" over and over again in her mind, trying to figure out what exactly he could have meant by it, and tying her brain and stomach into knots as she considered disaster scenarios involving Bunnyx.

Meeting up with her class had kept her mind off of it somewhat, but she’d still been itching to go back home to check her bugphone.

Inevitably, the time when M. Monlataing had to return to his own home to start his holidays came, and the students who hadn’t already left gathered on the school steps to say goodbye to each other, and until the next year, for those who wouldn’t see each other before January.

When everyone had parted ways, Marinette strode towards her building, the bakery door glistening in sunlight as a customer exited the shop.

She was intent on transforming the minute she got to her room, and wait for a sign from Chat Noir. He promised that we’d talk today, she thought, and Chat is nothing if not a man of his word. She hoped that she hadn’t already missed a message from him. And if not, that her partner wouldn’t let her suffer for too long.

"Marinette, wait!"

A car door slammed behind her as she was about to cross the street, making her turn around.

A very dishevelled Adrien sprinted towards her, his hair so uncharacteristically messed up and the bags under his eyes so deep, she almost didn't recognise him at first.

"I'm sorry I'm late," he panted when he finally reached her, bending forwards to catch his breath. "I finished my gift rather late and slept through my alarm."

"Oh Adrien, you really shouldn't have given yourself so much trouble! I would have loved any gift from you." Marinette blushed.

"Believe me, I absolutely did." He grinned, handing her a gift bag. "Merry Christmas, Marinette."

"Thanks Adrien." She smiled, taking it from him and eyeing the small, carefully wrapped gift inside. "But you don't have your gift to open! Had I known, I would have asked Rose to give it to me so-"

"It's fine, Marinette, I'll see her when school starts again." He dismissed her concern, almost hopping on site. “I really wanted you to have your gift, though.”

He handed her a small packet, which she took cautiously. She looked at him before starting to open it, unecessarily asking for his permission.

“Go on,” he encouraged her.

She attacked the wrapping paper and took out a small item made mostly of white yarn, with a splash of orange and black.

“Oh, erm, it’s a-” Marinette started.

“It’s a snowman! You know, because we wanted to build one together? And then the snow melted, but I still wanted you to have one…” Adrien scratched the back of his neck nervously as her silence lingered. “Sorry, I know it’s not great, it was my first attempt at crochet-”

“It’s beautiful, Adrien. I love it, I really do,” she interrupted him with a smile, a light blush dusting her cheeks. “Thank you so much.”

“And wait until you see the second part!”

Marinette watched him dig through his bag for another item, and thought that she couldn’t remember ever seeing him be so excited about anything. It was nice to see him like this, his emotions bubbling out, instead of trying to keep them in check.

“You really didn’t have to, you know, you already went through so much trouble with the snowman…” She gasped as he finally took it out.

“Anything for you, Marinette.” He handed it to her insistantly, before withdrawing it at the last second. "I really hope you’ll like this."

He looked straight into her eyes, making her heart skip a beat.

"I, er, I'm sure I will." Marinette's voice caught in her throat.

She gently unwrapped the second package, revealing a crocheted black cat.

"A cat." She stated. "It's very cute, thank you."

"It's not any cat. It's a black cat. And it's supposed to be a watering can, too, even though I wasn't sure how to make that obvious besides sewing the tail to the back of the head, see?"

"How original." Marinette was getting more puzzled by the minute. Her thoughts instantly went to Chat Noir’s gift, but she shook it off.

"I, er, well," Adrien cleared his throat uneasily, frustrated by his own rambling. Marinette saw his face suddenly light up as a thought struck him. "You know, I would've gotten you the real thing, but I think your balcony is already crowded enough with two. And besides, you told me you'd gotten the last one."

Marinette stared at him blankly, her brain clearly not making the right connections.

“The last black cat watering can, I mean.” He insisted as she stared at the small crocheted item in her hands. "But I couldn’t not get something similar, because three's the charm, isn't it, my Lady?"

Her eyes snapped up at the nickname. “My?...”

“I thought it would be better to talk in person, and had I not overslept, it would’ve been the earliest we could’ve talked.” He looked down shyly. “But maybe it’s better this way, we have more privacy than inside.”

Surprise, joy, relief, and many other feelings swirled inside Marinette’s chest, none volunteering a useful contribution, so she just threw her arms around Adrien’s neck and hugged him tightly. He froze for a second at the sudden embrace, before wrapping his own arms around her back.

“Thank you so much, Chaton,” she managed to whisper in his ear, a giddy smile stretched on her lips.

“Thank you, my Lady.”

A sudden, loud honk startled them out of each other’s arms. They turned towards its source; the Gorilla got out of the car, opened one of the back doors, and nodded inside, ever the chatty one. Adrien threw him a pleading look, which was met with an unequivocal headshake.

“It’s okay, we’ll see each other tonight, alright?” Marinette tried to cheer up her partner (the use of the word setting off butterflies in her stomach).

“And Adrien?” She called out to him before he entered the car. He looked up, bumping his head in the process. “Best Miaouël ever.” She winked at him.

The gleeful smile that spread on his lips warmed her heart, and she knew then that she didn’t need to worry about the consequences of their surprise reveal.

#miraculous ladybug #the miraculous tales of ladybug and chat noir #mlb #ml #miraculous fanfiction #miraculous fanfic #adrienette #adrinette #adrien agreste #marinette dupain-cheng #reveal #elle writes #bcwca

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lilacte · 4 years

Text

#PegHawks2020

Pairings: Hawks x Reader

Summary: You peg Hawks. That's it. That's the plot.

Word Count: 2.1k+

Warnings: smut (18+), dom!reader, sub!hawks, pegging, sex toys, anal fingering, dirty talk, light bondage(?), edging, overstimulation, plot i guess (if you squint)

A/N: My first submission for @bnhabookclub's Bingo Event! Thank you to @honeytama and @dragonhrte for beta-reading my fic! Also huge thanks to my wife @royal-after-dark for helping me so much with my fic.

Taglist: @royal-after-dark @mrs-takami-keigo @keigod @shoutogepi @gr0vndz3ro @honeytama

The first time Hawks met you, his heart hammered so loudly that it felt like it was going to burst in his chest. Your eyes gazed at him with such cold sharpness that he can't help but swallow the lump forming in his throat. You were (Y/N)(L/N), a Pro-Hero just like him. You regarded him with cold disposition and barely spared him a glance, not even a word spoken to him.

Maybe that's what sparked his interest in you.

The next time he saw you was at a high-end bar. You were in the V.I.P section, surrounded by what he assumed were your friends, sitting on the plush sofa while sipping on your drink as your eyes dragged around the dancefloor in boredom. And then your eyes met his, and Hawks felt his blood rushing to his groin when you eyed him up and down erotically. A few hours later, Hawks was pinned harshly against the wall as both of you reached your hotel room. Your lips against his neck, causing frenzy to seize his veins, your bright red lipstick staining his skin. The next day Hawks woke up in your hotel room without you beside him anymore.

You left your phone number on the nightstand, though.

Three months later, you started dating. It's been six months into the relationship when you brought up the idea of pegging. Hawks humored the idea, confident that he could do it.

He really, really wants to impress you.

That was why he was in his apartment right now, on all fours and naked, facing the mirror as you prod two lubed fingers in his hole. At first, it stung a bit, still unsure about the odd sensation he was feeling. Your fingers slide in, your movements slow at first to help him relax.

"Do you feel alright, Hawks?" You ask, tone soft yet reserved.

"I can barely feel anything, babe. This is nothing I can't handle. Ah-"

Hawks jolts when he feels you push your fingers deep inside of him, hitting the right spot. A traitorous moan escapes his lips as your fingers teased his prostate.

"Oh? Are you sure? It sounded like you enjoyed that one, Hawks." Glancing at the mirror in front of him, Hawks meets your heated gaze, cheeks coloring with embarrassment as your lips twist in a smug grin.

"I-Is that the best you can do, babe?" Hawks exhales, voice starting to tremble as your fingers move faster inside of him.

"You're taking my fingers so well, baby bird. Such a dirty little slut for me, hmm?" you taunt as you add in a third lubed finger in his hole, and Hawks involuntarily clenches around your fingers as you continue to pump inside of him, teasing his insides.

"So tight just for me. I can't wait to fuck you, Hawks." You murmur. Your free hand travels to the underside of his dick, knuckles ghosting his skin, and he melts at the feeling. His cock becomes uncomfortably hard between his thighs, and he whines, aching for you to give it attention.

"Ngh. Fuck-" Hawks shudders, arms gripping the carpet as your fingers spread inside of him, scissoring up and down, stretching him so much and sending jolts of tension throughout his body.

"Do you think you're ready for my cock, pretty bird?"

Hawks nods eagerly, and you gently withdraw your fingers from his hole, satisfied, and Hawks whines at the loss of your fingers.

Hawks sits down properly on his knees, and you undress in front of him, unbuttoning your white blouse. Hawks admires your naked body, and you give him a small smirk as you go behind him.

"I'll tie you up now. Tell me if it hurts." You whisper in his ear, so softly that it sends tremors of pleasure tickling down his spine.

"That's easy stuff. I can handle it."

Grabbing both his wrists, you place them behind him, tying them firmly with your white blouse. You stand up, putting the harness around your hips, and Hawks stares at your bright red, huge cock that hangs in front of it.

Smiling sweetly at him, you say, "Come on, now. This cock isn't going to suck itself."

He snickers, golden eyes staring back at you arrogantly.

"Don't make me laugh, chickadee. This will be a piece of cake."

Hawks tongue glides over your cock, from base to tip. He stares up into your eyes as he finally wraps his lips around your dick, cheeks hollowing as he sinks to take in your length, saliva pooling against his tongue and coating it. His head bobs up and down your cock, taking his time with it.

"Look at you, such a whore for mommy's cock, getting it nice and ready for that tight little hole of yours." You grab onto his blond strands harshly, and with a small smirk, you force him down deeper until he's gagging on your cock.

"Keep your eyes on me, my pretty bird." His golden eyes stare up to you, and you can't help but purr in delight as unshed tears start to form in his eyes. His moans are muffled as you continue to guide him by the hair, soft choking sounds like music to your ears.

"You look so good on your knees like that." You murmur, bucking your hips faster. Hawks can barely breathe, throat constricted around your dick, cheeks reddening as he chokes on your strap-on. With his hands tied behind him, he can't do anything but let you have your way with him. Strings of saliva spill from the corners of his mouth, dribbling down to his chest.

After a few more minutes, you stop your thrusts, pulling him away from your cock, and Hawks can finally breathe, jaw burning as he sucks in as much air as possible. Your fingers cup his cheeks, tracing his wet lips with your thumb, admiring his reddened state.

"What an undignified look you have." You mock.

"Stand up and lay on the bed on your stomach." Hawks does what you tell him to eagerly, his face buried into the pillow. You kneel behind him, hands finding their way to his hips, and position him with his ass up in the air, adding a pillow to support his body. You position the tip of your large red dildo onto his already drenched hole and add more lube before you slowly slide your silicone cock into him.

"F-Fuck, that feels good." Hawks hisses, tugging at his restraints as you stretch his walls.

You set a slow, steady pace as you fill him up.

"Look at you, pretty bird. Taking it so well already." You hum appreciatively, fingers digging deep into his skin as your hips rock against him, and his vermillion wings flutter excitedly at the comment.

Hawks bites into the pillow as your dick slides in and out of him, stirring his gummy walls and friction building up inside of him. You hover above Hawks, hand settling on either side of his head. His back arches as your cock prods at his prostate.

"You like me fucking you like this, Hawks? Tell mommy how much you like it." You inch close to him, your hot breath fanning his ear.

"Ngh! V-Very much. Give me more, mommy~" Hawks desperately pushes back against your cock, face flushed so red in arousal. You adjust your position, hitting that sweet spot over and over again, driving Hawks insanely.

"Fuck! P-Please, m-mommy. I'm going to come!" Anticipation builds in his lower belly, euphoria surging red hot in his veins—a few more thrusts into him, and his orgasm tears through him. Hawks pants harshly, face twisting with absolute bliss.

You smack his ass harshly and Hawks yelps in response, lifting his head up to eye you through the mirror.

"W-what?" Hawks asks, eyes still hazy as his orgasm settles in his body. You let out a displeased sigh, running a hand through your hair as you eye Hawks' reflection.

"I never said you could come, Hawks," Your lips curl up in a wicked grin, eyes glinting maliciously before your hands grab onto his wings.

"Now, you need to be punished." Using his wings as support, you rock your hips into him, this time, at a much rougher pace.

You don't let Hawks cum.

Every time Hawks was close, you always pulled out, not giving him the sweet release he desperately wanted. By now, he was just a jumbled mess. The words spilling out of his mouth are a disarray of incoherencies. His choked sobs were like aphrodisiac to your ears and that you can't help but want to torture him more.

"Hnn… ah! Too… hng! Ah!! Deep, hnn. Ah!" Hawks gasps at the overwhelming sensation, ragged breaths leaving his lips as you slam into him mercilessly. His body feels achingly sore, yet the pleasure is so overwhelmingly powerful that he can't help but beg for more.

"You were all talk, baby. Now you can't even say a word. Who knew you liked to be fucked like this? What would others think about you when they found out, hmm?" You snicker condescendingly.

It was all too much. It was so good it hurt.

"Too much! I want to cum, mommy! Please let me cum! I'll be your good little fuck hole from now on!" Hawks cries out, tears streaming down his cheeks and saliva dribbling down his chin. His hands pull at the makeshift restraints, itching to grab onto something as his body jerks from your relentless thrusts.

"Beg for it like the whore you are then." You purr, burying yourself into him as deep as you can, your pace unrelenting. Hawks jaw slacks open, breathless moans escaping his mouth, tongue lolling out of his face, mind going haywire as you hit the right spots inside him. His neglected cock aches between his legs, loads of his pre-cum leaking out. With all of his might, Hawks breaks free from the makeshift handcuffs, the fabric ripping away, his hands immediately flying in front of him to grasp the sheets.

Your arms leave their hold on his wings, one hand snaking around his waist and the other wrapping around the base of his cock. His cock twitches in your grasp, and he gasps, eyes rolling the back of his head as you pump him up and down, circling his tip, and fucking him from behind.

Everything was so overwhelmingly good and Hawks can barely breathe.

"Let me hear your scream, my pretty bird."

"Ah, ngh! So… good! I'm a whore for your cock! Mommy's cock is so good! Mommy!" Hawks cries out breathlessly, his mind is blank from the numbing pleasure, all rational thoughts leaving his head.

You let out a chuckle, deciding that you've tortured Hawks long enough. Your hips rut into him at a faster pace, your hand wrapped around his shaft, doing the same.

"Come for me then, pretty bird."

A pleased guttural moan escapes Hawks' lips as he finally comes, body trembling as rivulets of his seed drips down his cock and in your hands and on the bedsheets. Hawks lifts his head, meeting your heated stare through the mirror, and he gives you a dazed grin. Face so flushed with the trails of tears running down his face and viscous strings of saliva running down his chin.

His body trembles from his orgasm, wings twitching with delight, and before long, his body goes limp in your arms.

"Hawks?" you question, shaking him slightly in your arms. When he doesn't move, you release your hold on Hawks, setting him down onto the mattress face first. You grip onto his hips softly as you pull your cock out from his used hole. You remove the harness, placing it down on the floor. You leave the room and come back moments later with a damp cloth and new clothes. You let out a sigh as you survey Hawks' worn-out features.

"I think I was too rough on you. Sorry." You whisper as you clean him up.

Before you leave Hawks' apartment, you give him a chaste kiss on the cheeks and cover his body with a blanket.

The next day Hawks arrived at a Hero meeting, limping so badly and so very achingly sore. When he entered the room, everyone saw how the winged-hero staggered, intrigued at what happened to him.

"What… happened to you, Hawks?" Endeavor asks, tone cold with a hint of curiosity.

"Had a... nasty fight… with a villain." Hawks lamely replies to which Endeavour simply nods, believing it before changing the subject to the meeting. Hawks looks around the room and spots you talking to Miruko.

Feeling his eyes linger on you, you turn to look at him, a sly smirk graces your lips as you eyed him up and down before flashing him a wink.

Hawks legs gave in at that moment.

#bnhabookclub #hawks x reader smut #hawks x reader #keigo takami x reader #takami keigo smut #boku no hero smut #mha smut #hawks bnha smut #hawks smut #sub hawks

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goldencuffs · 3 years

Text

untraditional

@lamenweek day five: traditions

Damen doesn’t think he’s supposed to feel so bone-weary at thirty-one.

Everything in his body aches, and he’s already greying at his temples. Last night, he had gone to bed at eight.

Theomedes doesn’t look up from the Ios Financial Times when Damen enters the Drawing Room. The table already has been set: Damen’s seat is, as usual, is to the left of his father, exactly fourty-seven centimetres apart. Damen’s food has been already served, because his father got here before him, and everyone gets served the same time as Theomedes.

Damen’s entire life has been dictated by these traditions, guidelines and precedents.

Some of them are good, but most of them are like this: nonsensical and elitist.

Even Theomedes’ and Damianos’ tea is prepared via strict protocol: one teaspoon of loose tea leaves per cup, heated to a hundred degrees celcius (seventy for green tea), with a tablespoon of organic, raw honey added straight to the teapot.

(It’s amazing tea, though).

Theomedes says, “Your food is cold.”

Damen stares at the pile of mash potatoes and salmon. “I’m not hungry.”

He also hates salmon, but Theomedes is the only one who sets the menu for the week with the head chef. Last week, they had roast beef and vegetables four times.

“You’re not still sulking are you?” Theomedes finally says, three minutes later.

Damen grips his table fork. He forces himself to do the breathing exercises Makedon had taught him.

In an ideal world, he wouldn’t reply, but in this one, everyone answered to the King.

“No, sir,” Damen says, and shoves a polite bite of food in his mouth.

“You haven’t had a meal with me in three weeks,” Theomedes says, and he sounds hurt and disappointed.

“Hmm,” Damen says. “I’ve been busy. You know I’ve been working on the preservation of Marlas with Nikandros.”

Theomedes crosses his fork and knife over his plate. Instantly, three different staff members rush forward to clear the table.

Damen’s plate is cleared too; no one eats after the King has left. Another useless, bane tradition.

“You know I did what’s best for you,” Theomedes says, looming over Damen.

When Damen nods, Theomedes kisses his temple. “You’ll realise it sooner, rather than later.”

“Yes, sir,” Damen says quietly, and rises only after Theomedes has left, as is protocol.

An hour later, the itch under Damen’s skin becomes unbearable, and he finds himself burrowing under the left corner of his mattress for certain… supplies.

He pulls on the red, shoulder-length curly wig with little care, and then the faux-leather beret. It’s peeling and terrible, but Damen doesn’t care.

The rest of his outfit is just layers: sunglasses, two coats, scarves, and a muted shirt, to hide as much of his body as possible.

He normally doesn’t leave so early in the day, when he’s being patrolled by guards and the Kyros.

Luckily, it’s only Nikandros who catches him, right outside his door.

His expression is flat. “You’re not serious. You’re leaving now? We’re in the middle of drafting the Delpha treaty!”

Damen shrugs. “I have to go.”

“You don’t have to—” Nikandros cuts himself off with a sigh. “Whatever. Can you please bring me back those caramel slices?”

Damen grins. “You got it, boss.”

Once he’s past the Main Foyer, the rest of the journey is easy: Damen takes an hour and a half train ride from Central Ios to Andris, and then a fifteen minute bus ride on the eighty-six. And then finally, an eight minute walk to the Andris Office District.

There’s a small bookstore there called Pocket Bookmark, painted emerald green, the lettering done in gold.

Inside, it’s not too busy: it’s not quite the end of a business day, and the customers in here are high school students, skimming the Shakespeare section, and a man hovering near the new releases.

Damen keeps his head down, weaving through the aisles.

Nicaise, the mouthy teenage cashier rolls his eyes when he sees Damen approaching, lifting up the wooden flap on on the bench, allowing Damen to duck through.

“Thanks, kid,” Damen says, mussing his hair.

“Ah, fuck off,” Nicaise grunts, but fondly. He’s warmed up to Damen ever since Damen bought him his first car. (Nothing too flashy, obviously).

Damen hurries all the way to the back, opening the door marked, No entry, and then goes up the narrow steps, which always make the worst creaking noises.

There’s another door a the small porch upstairs, and Damen fishes out the key in his pocket to open it.

Instantly, he’s hit with the smell of butter chicken simmering on the stove, and his mouth salivates. He dumps his entire attire by the small settee in the hallway, inhaling gratefully.

The second thing he’s greeted with is Wendy, who meows and claws at his leg.

“Come here, baby,” Damen murmurs, picking her up and holding her to his chest. She purrs and curls up, like a big ball of fluff and he kisses her head. “I love you so much.”

She meows in response, and snuggles closer.

Laurent turns off the stove in the tiny kitchen. He looks over his shoulder for just a second and scrunches his nose. “Ugh, she’s such a slut. I’ve been petting her for the last hour, but apparently I’m just not good enough.”

Laurent is in his after work attire: which means he’s as half dressed as possible. The shirt he’s wearing is one of Damen’s, and his shorts are the pair that shrunk in the wash; they ride too high up his thigh.

Laurent’s just come out of the shower: the hair at his nape is still wet, and his skin is pinked and glowing. Even with the curry, Damen can smell jasmine and coconut.

Laurent has got this sweet, soft smile that lights up his eyes.

It takes Damen’s breath away: not just Laurent, but this entire picture of domesticity. It’s all Damen’s wanted his entire life.

He means to make a snarky comment about Wendy, but what comes out is: “Marry me.”

Laurent drops the wooden spoon, eyes wide.

Damen grips Wendy too tightly and she lets out a shriek and jumps out of his arms.

They stare at each other for a moment. Damen’s heart is racing.

Laurent blinks. “Oh, sorry. I think I hallucinated for a minute.”

Damen steps forward, smiling. “It wasn’t a hallucination. Marry me.”

Laurent makes a small noise in the back of his throat. “Are you asking me or telling me?” He swallows, eyes darting all over Damen’s face, his body. “I don’t see a ring,” he says quietly.

Damen groans, rubbing a hand over his face. “Shit, I know. I had this whole plan, I was going to propose with the Queen’s ring, but obviously I’d have to talk to my father first and—” He sits down at the kitchen table, pulling out his phone. “There’s a courthouse ten minutes from here. It’s Thursday night, so they’re still open. We just need to show up with a signed ‘Intended Marriage Certificate’. It’s like three pages, we’ll be fine.”

“…Oh.” Laurent has gone very still. “You’re looking up courthouses. You’re serious.”

“Shit,” Damen says, watching him. “I’m so sorry. You—Do you want to marry me, Laurent? Because I’ve been dying to marry you since I first saw you. Er. No pressure, though.”

Laurent glares at him, affronted. “Of course I want to marry you, you fucking idiot!”

Damen leaps to his feet, grinning and flushed. “Fuck yeah! Let’s go print this form and—”

“Damen!” Laurent laughs, looking a little crazed. “We can’t just—Just wait a minute.”

“Alright. Shoot, baby.”

Predictably, Laurent flushes pink. “Is it even legal? Aren’t there special ceremonies for royals? And—and the King still thinks we broke up!”

Damen winces a little at that.

After an entire year of sneaking around, of meeting up in discreet hotels, and making plans to move in together one day, Damen had fucked up three weeks ago.

Drunk and enamoured, he had kissed Laurent outside his bookstore after a date. There had been photos—and the only saving grace had been the fact that Laurent’s face had been inscrutable.

But the fact that he was a commoner had been enough for Theomedes to unleash his rage. He had ordered Damen to break things off with Laurent, and Damen had pretended to, but… Well, Laurent had been hurt. It had been the first time he had realised how shaky their entire relationship was, how quickly it could come crumbling down.

Damen had spent days convincing him otherwise, and Laurent had finally agreed, but there had still been shadows in his eyes.

Now—now, though, Damen realises exactly what he can do, what he should have done months ago, to make Laurent realise he’s it.

“Fuck the King,” Damen says. He finally closes the distance between them, gripping Laurent’s hands. “Laurent, listen. I can still get married legally in a civil ceremony.”

“But—” Laurent bites his lip. “I don’t want you to get into trouble. And,” His voice grows small. “I know there’s so many rules and traditions you have to follow. I’ve read about the whole tradition where your father is supposed to gift you a diptych piece.”

Damen’s heart is warm. He smiles down at Laurent, smitten. “You’ve read up on royal wedding traditions?”

Laurent colours even more. “Of course.”

Damen kisses him hard, unable to bare the love swelling up inside him. Laurent flings his arms around Damen’s neck, his mouth emitting small, sweet gasps.

When they pull apart, Damen presses his forehead to Laurent’s. “Fuck the King,” he repeats. “Fuck the customs and rules and traditions. You are the only thing that matters to me. Just forget everything for a moment and answer: do you want to go downtown and marry me?”

Laurent’s smile overtakes his face, his eyes shining. “Yes,” he says softly. “I want to—so much.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t ask you in a better way or give you a ring or—”

“Stop. This was absolutely perfect.” He sighs. “You’re perfect.”

Damen kisses him again, pressing him to the counter. “I want you to have my mother’s ring.”

Laurent buries his head into Damen’s chest, overwhelmed. He nods.

Damen drops a kiss to his hair. “Get changed, baby. We’re getting married.”

Laurent looks up at him in wonder. “We’re getting married.”

#yes this is rushed what about it!!!!! 🤧😤#just kidding i still hope u enjoy #lamen week 2021 #captive prince #my writing #my fic

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potter-imagines · 4 years

Text

Flowers in Braids (Fred Weasley)

Pairing: Fred Weasley x Reader

Request: Could I request something please? 🧡 I just had a thought, a concept if you will, okay, so, Goblet of Fire Fred, and his gf y/n braiding his hair? 👉🏻👈🏻

Warning: None, just fluff

Word Count: 3k (short n sweet, hope you guys enjoy!)

Cloudy rays poured into the windows of Hogwarta giving a small glimpse to the declining temperatures outside. Crowds of students jogged out beyond the castle grounds all meeting up in the small village outside Hogwarts. Hogsmeade was buzzing with life as where the castle was empty besides the students who had yet to reach the age of permission to even enter Hogsmeade. Despite the younger kids cooped up inside their dorm rooms and wandering around the grounds, your boyfriend, Fred Weasley, and yourself had chosen to skip out.

The two of you were locked away in his dorm room, chatting amongst yourself as you kneeled over him, eyes trained on his hair. After working him in for quite some time, you managed to convince Fred to let you give him two French braids. His hair had finally reached the perfectly length and you had been itching for months to try different braids in it.

“Does that feel good, Freddie?”

Your fingertips raked against the skin of his scalp as you reached for another strand. The long orange strands slipped like buttermilk through your grasp. Braiding the outside piece of hair in, you tied it under the middle section of his hair, pulling tightly. Fred jerked back at your force causing his spine to smack against your knee. You mumbled a quick apology, having lost yourself in the rhythm of the weaving pattern. When you braid your own hair, you had conditioned yourself to the scalp piercing pulls. Fred was new to this, so you had to take it easy so he’d let you braid his beautiful locks again. Your boyfriend just smiled smugly with his eyes drawn shut and hummed.

“Mmmhhh.”

Taking a small section of his hair, you braid it into the pile of fiery hair and gave a softer pull to tighten it lightly. The further down you got, the faster your finger moved. Sitting on your knees, you continued weaving while taking a peek at his face. Fred looked half asleep, a small smile displayed across his face. You paused your work to leave a chaste kiss to the side of his rosy cheek. Fred’s eyes pried open by the touch and gazed up at you.

“Is that a yes?” You asked, giggling like a child. Your boyfriend just melted into your touch as you ran your free hand through the left side of his head that wasn’t braided yet. Tracing your fingers through his free strands, Fred leaned further in your touch. He was always a sucker for having you play with his hair.

“Hmmm.”

His hands were folded in his lap, thumbs fiddling quietly. This was by far the most relaxed you had seen him- besides when he was snoring in slumber. Fred was your crazy, energetic, childlike, prankster boyfriend. Although now, he was the exact opposite to his normal demeanor. He hardly uttered a word, basking in the sensation of your touch and pull. His breathing deepened, heavy puffs falling from his chest. You stared for a moment longer then wrapped your hand around the side of his face, other hand holding the end of the braid. Leaning him back a tip, you leaned down to plant a kiss to his lips. Fred grinned against your lips, but soon enough kissed you back sweetly. Whispering you used your hand to guide his head away, closer to the blanket resting on the bed.

“Tilt your head down, love.” You directed him. His ginger hair was as soft as silk, draping over your knuckles with every twist. As your fingers brushed against his neck, you could feel the vibrations of his soothing hums. Reaching around his tall frame, you grabbed a small rubber band and scrunched it around your hand. Hitting the end of the braid, you wrapped the band around the bottom of his hair with ease. Giving one last pull, you took a look at the first finished braid.

“Lemme see, darling.” Fred made grabby hands behind his back motioning for the mirror. You handed him the oval shaped pastel pink mirror and watched on in anticipation. Fred’s eyes roamed your work, examining every detail of your nearly perfectly french braid. He reached up in surprise and lightly tapped the tight weaves.

“Wicked. Are you planning on finishing the otherside or am I meant to walk around like this?” He asked laughing. Handing the mirror back to you, Fred settled into his previous spot, his back pressed to your knees. You giggled at the sight of him. One braid was secured stiffly on one side of his head while his strawberry locks laid past his shoulder on the other side. You rose up so you were kneeling. Fred was quite tall, his towering height made it difficult to see over the top of his head. Grabbing your comb from the mattress, you curled your fingers around the top section, dividing it into three equal strands. You brushed through the pillow soft mane, another hum sounding from Fred.

“What do you think the next task is gonna be? The dragons were terrifying! Still can’t believe you were cheering for the killer dragons over our own friend.” The recollection earned a mental scoff. Remembering the events of last week, you wondered about the upcoming second task. The first task was not exactly your cup of tea. Despite your boyfriend’s astonishment and eagerness over the deathly dragons, you were petrified. Fred kept his hand laced in yours for the entirety of the task. As he cheered crazily with George, he’d squeeze your hand in reassurance to let you know he was still paying attention to you. George would give you hugs every few minutes- half to calm you and the other half to piss his twin off.

Fred chuckled again, leaning his head back so he was looking at you from an upside down view. He puckered his lips causing you to roll his eyes but reluctantly gave in and left a kiss to his ready lips.

“I think you mean amazing, love. Harry’s dragon was by far the best!” His thunderous roar filled the room. George and Lee were out at Hogsmeade, joining the rest of your friends for the day. Any other night Fred and yourself would be taking the long stroll to the village with the group. Hogsmeade trips were highly anticipated but for some reason, neither one of you really felt up for the trip. When Fred woke up, his only plan for the day was to remain attached to his bed. Not having any desires for a busy day, you decided to join him.

“Doesn’t mean you have to cheer for it, Fred.” You commented, snickering to yourself. During the first match, you sat in the stands of the Quidditch Pitch- now dragon arena- in between Fred and George. The twins hollered in excitement when the task was announced. Each competitor that came out, the twins looked through and waited anxiously for the reveal of the dragon. In all honesty, they couldn’t care less about who won or who was competing, they only wanted to see the dragons and their mass destruction. Even when your dear friend was almost killed by the fire breathing monster, Fred and George jumped up and down in delight, clapping their hands and screaming happily, “Go, dragon!”. It was a bit embarrassing to be sitting with them as other students sent dirty looks, especially the Hufflepuffs cheering on Cedric. Fred merely shrugged as you threaded the end of his hair,

“But I wanted to. Anyhow, Harry said it’s got something to do with water and George and I saw Dumbledore and Snape out on the Black Lake so I’d say it’ll be some task out there. Now let me see!” Fred whipped around as lightning speed, looking for the handheld mirror. You could see the excitement on his face. Dragging the mirror towards himself, Fred lifted the glass but just as he did, you snatched the mirror away from him.

“Wait, Freddie, I’m not finished. The flowers, remember? I picked out the purple and white ones just for you.” You squeaked. Fred had promised he’d let you stick some flowers in his braid once you finished. With everything inside of him, Fred desperately wanted to scream no. It already took you months to convince

“But… I wanna go show George my braids and if I have flowers in my hair…” He stopped mid thought when he saw your pouty expression. Puppy dog eyes and a puff out bottom lip, you gazed up at Fred with a begging stare. A smile hit his lips immediately as rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine. But I only want the little white ones.”

Grinning in victory you started separating the stems from the petals. Getting the flowers laid out on the large bed, your eyes darted up to Fred in question.

“The daisies?” Holding up the delicate flowers, you raised your brow to Fred. His doe gleam hit yours then down to the miniature flowers. A cheeky smirk flashed across Fred’s face as he flirted,

“The only flower I know is you, darling.”

Your face went deadpan as you shot your giggling boyfriend a playful glare, feigning unamusement. Fred could be extremely sweet when he wants to do and today, that seems to be his main motive. Rolling your e/c eyes you resumed your concentration on his braided hair and the generous pile of daisies laying next to your thigh. Carefully, one by one, you twist the flowers to snap the excess stem off. Then you individually tucked each petallful bud into his locks, cautious not to go overboard like you would in your own binding braids.

The pale petals poked out, It was the kind of brilliant white that would even make new snow look grey, the kind of white that sears into your retinas and makes you temporarily blind. The bright contrast made the pumpkin orange shade of his hair pop in the light. Smoothing your hand over the bumps, you gazed upon your work. Handing the mirror back to Fred, you informed him that you had finished.

“Do you like it, Freddie?” You placed your hands together, hiding your face behind them. This was the first time Fred ever let you even attempt to style his hair, and to Fred Weasley, his hair meant everything. Now in your sixth year, it has reached its peak. Fred and George were very proud of their shoulder length orange locks, and you could understand why. Dating for already three years, you could confidently declare this style was your favorite. This being the reason you yelled in horror after the stunt Fred and George pulled during their entry, or attempt of an entry, for the Tri-Wizard tournament. After he finished tousling and rolling around on the floor with his twin, Fred ran up to you for help. Much to his surprise, you took off like a rocket in the opposite direction. Your friends all laughed at the sight of the twins until tears were streaming down their cheeks. His aged state, and frizzed crazy white hair was too much for you to process all at once. You nearly cried in joy when the prankster came knocking on your door hours later back to his normal state. Back again were his beloved ginger locks. The traumatic event still haunted you. Since then, you never missed a moment to admire his beautiful long hair.

One thing Fred loved was your need to constantly touch his locks. Sitting in class, Fred will lean his head on your shoulder as the professor drones one. Muscle memory kicks in and your free hand will sneak up his back and start running your runnings through his hair. When names were being drawn out of the flaming goblet, Fred sat in front of you with George. He squeezed himself between your legs, his arms resting on your knees. While the headmasters snatched their slips of papers falling from the fire, you’d be fiddling with strands of his hair, petting over the velvet like hair. To Fred, it was always comforting to sense your hands on him, no matter where.

You waited patiently, nervous for his reaction. Fred’s large hands moved the mirror in various spots, trying to get a peek from every possible angle. Eyes raking over the braids, a twinkle beamed on Fred’s lips as he exclaimed,

“It looks wonderful, sweetheart. I’m so proud of you, I love it!” Your heart jumped with happiness at his approval. Throwing your arms around him, Fred maneuvered so he was fully facing you. He returned the hug, gripping your body tightly in his arms. His lips sneaked a quick kiss to your blushing cheek.

“Serious? Or are you just being nice?” You asked softly.

Pulling away, Fred slid you forward so you were sitting practically in his lap. Once more he sealed a peck to your lips, then left a lingering kiss on the tip of your nose.

“No, really, I honestly love it. We gotta go find George and Lee! They should be back soon. But if they ask for you to braid their hair, please say no, darling. I only want you braiding my hair, not George’s. He won’t shut up about it if you do.” His tone was a facade of chaff, a hint of seriousness shining through. It was clear he was pretending to be all jokes but the sincerity lingered. You rolled your eyes overtly and smacked his chest like a child.

“You’re so dramatic, Freddie. I won’t touch your brother’s hair, Merlin’s sake.”

Just as you went to stand up, a pair of strong arms wrapped around your frame and yanked you to your previous position.

“Where are you going?”

“I thought we were gonna show George and Lee-”

The warmth of his breath smacked against the chilling skin of your neck. His arms were stiff around your waist, not even giving you a chance to escape. Giggles stormed through you at the feeling. Fred’s fingers poked and probed at your sides, starting an attack of tickles. You tried to pin his hands down although he overpowered you in seconds. He paused his tickle war not long after, allowing you to catch a gasp of air. Smiling brightly at you, Fred extended his legs out so you were placed between them.

“But I haven’t gotten to braid your hair yet! Now, turn around for me, darling. Hand me the brush please. Your braid is gonna be all flowers, no hair.” The contagious laughter of Fred encapsulated the atmosphere. Your hands shot up to cover your face in embarrassment. Fred had tried- at least ten times- to get a braid to stick in your hair and he had yet to succeed. His idea of a braid was starting with holding all three strands of hair at once and just twisting them in a repetitive cycle. The thought of grabbing pieces of hair to braid in was just another level of hair styling to Fred. Glancing up at Fred you gave him an unsure gaze.

“I’m gonna look like a clown, Freddie.”

Not missing a beat, your gentleman of a boyfriend just smirked, replying,

“A cute clown, love. A cute flower clown. You’ll have people thinking Halloween came early!” Already expecting what was to come, Fred cowered behind his arms, using them as shield from your hits. You didn’t strike to hurt, just to sting. Part of dating Fred was falling victim to his teasing. As close as you were, his jokes never truly offended you. There was a line drawn years ago and his toes never even grazed it. Crossing your arms over your chest you scrunch your nose in pretend annoyance.

“Freddie! Not nice.”

Your boyfriend laughed gently then reached over to pick up your basket of flowers on the ground. Sifting his hands through the pile, Fred was deep in concentration as he plucked out about five flowers of various shapes. The thing that stood out to you was the color. Although different in type, all the flowers were a pretty lilac tone. You assumed he had chosen flowers for your hair until he spoke.

“I’ll let you put some purple flowers in my hair, if you’d like? Would that make it up to you?” He asked you sweetly. Fred knew you weren’t actually mad, a small part of him wanted pastel purple flowers to begin with. He just didn’t want you telling everyone he chose them himself- this way he could say he had to, in order to make you happy. The words lit a spark behind your eyes and you eagerly pivoted on the bed so your back was against his front. Nodding to yourself you agreed to his offer, trying not to show your excitement too much.

“Now face the wall, love. I’m gonna give you a Italian braid so sit still.” Your eyes widen in confusion as you whip around to face him. Fred grinned enthusiastically, holding a small portion of your hair in his hands. Squinting your eyes, you laugh a bit at him.

“An Italian- Freddie, no, darling. It’s called a French braid!”

His saucer like eyes just stared at you, the terminology flying straight over his head. He flickered between your gape, then down to your hair, then back up. Bobbing his head he seemed to agree with you. He grabbed your shoulders gingerly and positioned you so you were looking at the wall again. Mumbling to himself, Fred whispered words of encouragement earning a chuckle from you.

“Oh, yeah… a French braid.” His hands roamed through your hair, fingers brushing against your scalp. Nimbly he separated your strands into small portions. You felt the strong tug on your hair when he suddenly stopped abruptly and asked faintly, “Sweetheart… how do you braid hair?”

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