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arachnoia · 10 months

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formula 1 | [2] | across the spiderverse

In which you turn suspicious of your cousin Miles and follow him, only to find out he’s part of a racing gang. love triangle between hobie, miguel, and you

Part 1 here !!

Unlike every other day in summer vacation, you didn’t wake up with the usual carelessness you wore as you stretched your sore body. Instead, you felt a bit cautious and scared, not going with your usual lazy stretch but just staring at the TLC poster that was plastered on your wall.

You just challenged a gang leader yesterday. The adrenaline wore off and you felt your stomach drop once you realized.

What if he hurts Rio and Jeff? What if he hurts Miles?

Everything felt weird in general and you felt on edge. Like you were-

“WAKE UP Y/N!!” Miles barged into your room and went over to grab a random pillow to hit you but got distracted by his Tamagotchi and went to feed his pet.

“Miles…” Your usually cheery morning voice was replaced with something more of a croak, making Miles look at you with concern.

“Sis…Are you okay?” Miles placed his pet on your desk and went over to hug you. “Your dumbass really got yourself into this huh?”

You pushed him off and let out a dry laugh, “I don’t know Miles, I’m just…scared. I just wanted to look out for you.”

He gave you a sad look and sat on your bed, “You’ll be fine and I can help you, I’m grown up now, man. Let me deal with whatever shit I get myself into-”

You narrowed your eyes at Miles, “Even though I’m in shit with your boss doesn’t mean I’m gonna let you deal with messes by yourself.”

Miles laughed and sighed, “So now that you know…Do you think you could help me and my car right now?”

“Hmmm, not a chance,”

“Oh, whatever!”

………

You called Aaron and told him that you were going to be late and walked to the bodega you went into yesterday with Hobie and Miles. You opened the door and were greeted with the familiar jingle and the shop owner greeting you.

“Que tal, Señora! Buenos dias.” you smiled, waving at her, and grabbed some granola bars and a can of an energy drink to keep you awake.

As you walked to Aaron’s, your eyebrows furrowed at what you saw; a shiny red Lamborghini Diablo parked outside the auto shop. The owner must be an idiot to leave that gorgeous car alone.

You lazily walked through the garage and yawned as you took a bite of your granola bar. “What’s up, man?”

Aaron’s head poked out from the door connecting the garage to the shop. “We have an important client today. I’m sure you saw that gorgeous car so be extra polite today, Y/N! We could get in a good word from this guy.”

Your eyes widened and you smiled. “I gotcha! What does the guy want?”

“Meh, just a tune-up but it’s a nice car so be careful! He wants it done by 6 so make it quick but nice. Imma go get some drinks from the corner shop so I’ll see ya in a bit.”

You laughed, “Don’t kiss his ass when you see him though!”

“Mhm,” He grumbled and took his wallet as he dashed through the door. Aaron then came back and threw the keys at you, “Drive it in here and-”

“Be careful! I know,” you said, rolling your eyes and laughing.

You were then alone with the keys in the empty auto shop and felt giddy. That car was fucking beautiful. You felt more excited when you were behind the wheel, driving it in, and felt nervous with the leather wheel brushing at your fingertips.

“Damn.”

You got working and lifted the hood, inspecting the engine and working on it. Aaron came a few minutes later with some Coke to drink and you finished right before 6.

5:30 to be exact.

“Yo, Unc! I’m finished,” you said, throwing the keys at him and wiping the oil from your face.

“Thanks, man! ‘Preciate it,”

You smiled smugly and crossed your arms with pride, “It’s great and I’m gonna add a sugar cookie air freshener!”

Aaron laughed, “The guy’s outside so once you get it, greet the guy, alright?

“Yeah yeah fine!”

You walked into the front of the shop where there was a wall of air fresheners and you started skimming for one.

Once you picked one, you felt your shoulder feel heavier as someone tapped you and placed their hand on your shoulder.

“So this is where you work huh?”

Oh fuck.

Miguel stood there behind you in all his glory.

“Why are you here?” you said, placing your hands on your hips.

He smirked and wiped his top lip with his Bulls jersey.

“Why would I not be here, mami? That’s my car you’re fixing.”

His smirk changed into a smug expression as he noticed how your face shifted to one of horror.

“Whatcha got there?” he leaned forward and pointed at your hand.

“N-Nothing,” you put the freshener in your pocket and pointed to the door leading to the garage. “Your car’s ready.” You sure as hell weren’t going to waste a sugar cookie air freshener on his stupid ass.

Miguel started walking towards the entrance of the garage and leaned on the wall.

Aaron shined the roof of the car and he jumped up in Miguel’s presence.

“Hi, Mr. O’Hara. Your car is ready!” Aaron smiled. Miguel smiled and smirked evilly back at you and your upset face. “Gracias, mami. I expect to see you tonight.”

WHAT THE FUCKKKK

You could help but feel your face turn red which made him smile even more.

Miguel went over to his car and patted Aaron on the shoulder, giving him a fat stack of 50-dollar bills, “Thank you. Here’s a tip along with the cost. I’m sure I’ll be coming here again for the great service.”

He gazed at you as he said “Great service”. At this point, you felt your face was as hot as the fucking sun.

He looked fine as hell, you couldn’t lie on that. His tan muscles were glistening with the sunset as the tattoo etched on his skin was more evident, making it more beautiful than before when you first met him. His gold chain was sparking all over, the diamonds looking like stars, just like his red ey-

“Y/N, you good?” Aaron tried waving his hand in your face. Your dozed-off expression earned a chuckle from Miguel and you could dig a hole and die.

“I’m gonna go but thanks, Davis. I appreciate it,” Miguel said before going into his car, winking at you, and driving off.

Aaron turned to you and jumped up in glee, “This calls for a celebration! Y/N, I could pay off my debt with this and still get myself something nice.”

Aaron’s giddiness filled up the room until you noticed Miles on the side of the garage door, motioning for you to come out.

“Hey Unc, Imma have to give you a rain check on that celebration. I have to go, man”

His face turned sympathetic and nodded, “I get it. You’re tired? Go get some rest, I’ll see you on Monday.”

You smiled and gave him a hug before grabbing your canvas bag and leaving from the front doors where Miles was already there with Hobie.

“What’s up, Y/N,” Hobie said, dabbing you up before Miles did too.

“Let’s bounce”

You, Miles, and Hobie started walking toward the warehouse before reaching the gate and being met by a girl.

“Hey Morales, what’s up?”

She had blue eyes, blonde hair with pink tips, a side of it shaved, and freckles. She wore a green bomber jacket and black pants with Vans? You couldn’t tell but you could tell she was close with Miles by the way she looked at him.

Hobie nudged at you and whispered, “Look at those two lovebirds.”

She took her focus off of Miles and looked at you two blankly, “Oh hey Hobie. Hi I-Don’t-Know-You”

You raised your eyebrow at her and looked at Miles who felt your sharp glare and spoke, “Y/N Y/L/N this is Gwen, my uh- friend! Gwen, this is Y/N Y/L/N, my cousin!” he said nervously.

She just waved and you felt your expression drop. Oh?

“We have a race today and Miguel wants you to race, Hobie”

“Miguel coulda told me? But alright…And speak of the bloody devil.” He looked beside Gwen to see Miguel walking towards you guys.

He changed out of his jersey into a simple white t-shirt. He smirked once you two locked eyes for a second.

“So you came, Y/L/N? Nice to see you,” he smiled. It was scary due to his intimidating nature.

You took a deep breath and shrugged, “Well of course I have to come on my first day of the job so I’m here.”

He raised his eyebrow in surprise and nodded, “Good to know, and Hobie? You’re racing today.”

Gwen sneered at Hobie and laughed, “Ha! Told you so.”

Hobie rolled his eyes and cracked his knuckles, “Oh whatever.”

He and Gwen started walking and followed Miguel in the warehouse. Miles looked up to you with his eyes wide, “So you’re our new mechanic now?!”

You smiled and shrugged, “I guess? But this is just an opportunity, y’know?” Miles nodded and smiled, “Yeah, let’s go.”

You walked into the colorful warehouse and saw all the beautiful cars, getting ready to go race.

The group stopped where Hobie’s car was; a Jaguar XJR-15 in an electric navy blue.

“You don’t need to do anything, Y/N. It’s still pretty fast and I drove it yesterday so we’re good.”

Before you could say anything, a guy popped out of the car and stretched.

“When are you gonna stop lying, Hobie? I used my amazing mechanic skills and fixed it yesterday.”

He turned around, sighed dramatically, and froze once he saw you.

“Oh you’re new.”

You laughed awkwardly and waved, “Hi, I’m Y/N.”

He yawned loudly and leaned against the car, “I’m Pavitr, probably the BEST mechanic in this place but-“

Gwen rolled her eyes and interrupted him, “Right.”

Miguel frowned and glared at the two, “Shut the shock up right now. Hobie, get in the car”

Hobie saluted to Miguel and shoved Pavitr away, “Yes sir.”

Hobie went inside the car and started driving slowly outside, having Miles and the group follow.

“Y’know it’s nice but not as nice as mine,” Gwen said to you, smirking.

“What car is it?”

“Ahah, 1989 Ferrari Testarossa. It’s so fucking beautiful.”

She motioned to a car parked in a corner of the warehouse. Some people were polishing it and Gwen wasn’t wrong. It was very very nice.

It was pink with black streaks all over it. It was very beautiful and shiny due to the polish.

Once you guys got out of the warehouse gates, Hobie positioned the car next to some other cars getting ready to race.

Gwen went over to one of the girls who was next to Miguel yesterday. She was pretty and had red sunglasses on in contrast to the other girl who had pink ones on, shaped like hearts. “Hey, Jess!”

Jess smiled and hugged Gwen, “Hey Gwen. You ready for the race?”

Gwen nodded and went next to Miles where they started to talk in themselves.

“You’re back!” The girl with pink heart sunglasses went toward you and hugged you.

Miguel rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, “Lyla?”

“Hi, I’m Lyla! Nice to meetcha-?”

“Y/N, I’m-”

Lyla laughed and sighed, “Of course I know your name, silly! You’re the girl who yelled at Miguel yesterday!”

Your stomach dropped in second-hand embarrassment. Does she still remember that?

“Oh well! Time to get in my place! Have fun!” Lyla ran to her place next to the cars where Jess was to the opposite of her, holding the same checkered flag as Lyla. They both matched each other with the same white dress and hair in ponytails.

“Start your engines!”

You went over to where Hobie was and knocked on his window where he opened it, “What’s up pretty?”

You rolled your eyes and gave him a handshake. You wanted to wish him luck but realized you probably look awkward. “Good luck, S-Punk.”

He smiled and nodded, pulling up the window.

The racers revved their engines getting ready to start until Lyla and Jess motioned their flags.

“Ready…”

You saw Hobie staring at a particular car with a bit of nervousness etched on his face.

“Set…”

With a swift motion, the cars went. And god were they fast.

“Hobie is totally gonna win…” Gwen whispered.

Miguel peered down at you and had a faint smile play at his lips as he saw your amazed expression, “Enjoying the race?”

You nodded energetically and focused on Hobie’s car making sharp turns around the streets.

—

Pavitr looked at you and Miguel, smiling while nudging at Miles, “So new girl and Boss have a thing for each other?”

Miles groaned annoyed, “No? Why do you think that?”

Gwen motioned to you two, as Miguel just looked at you blankly.

All three of them never saw Miguel just look at someone so the sight was a shocker. They huddled up and looked at each other stunned.

“He’s so smiley it’s scary…” Miles whispered.

Gwen nodded, “Damn Miles, so your cousin really is allat and a bag of chips huh?”

Pavitr’s jaw dropped as he whipped his head to your direction where you were laughing at something. “THAT’S YOUR COUSIN MORALES? She’s so fly, man!”

Miles cringed at Pavitr’s words and crossed his arms, “I don’t know but Y/N is just nice like that so whatever.”

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

You looked around you and nudged Miguel on the shoulder, getting him to peer down to you, “Well where’s the cool suits and jackets and stuff? The uniforms?”

He snickered and covered his mouth, “What?”

“Well yeah? You guys are supposed to be like a gang team whatever you guys are. I would think you guys have uniforms or jackets?”

Your answer made him laugh even harder before he leaned by your ear and whispered.

“This isn’t Formula 1 racing, sweetheart."

"It’s much more than that.”

a/n- tis a bit short but yeah! thank you guys so much for 100! it means alot ily guys<3333

i’m like still debating if I should discontinue this or go on w it…🧍🏻‍♀️

tags -

@catr4dora @deputy-videogamer @viriexo

@soilmayo @toaffes @itzsab

#miguel ohara x reader #spiderman 2099 #miguel o'hara #across the spiderverse #into the spider verse #miguel o’hara x reader #hobie brown #miles morales #sol (not de janeiro)#spiderman #gwen stacy #hobie x y/n

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eirxair · 4 months

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DO NOT AND I MEAN DO NOT !!!

pick two languages for gcses please, i am regretting it, you WILL regret it!!!

my english is going out the window (always was tbh) i speak spanish when im supposed to speak irish, i speak irish when im supposed to speak spanish.

I THOUGHT PORTAN (they carry 🇪🇸) WAS PORTÁN (crab🇮🇪) I WISH I WAS JOKING.

I HAVE SÉIMHIÚ-ED WORDS THAT DO NOT NEED TO BE SÉIMHIÚ’ED LIKE ‘MI CHASA’ (supposed to be ‘mi casa’ which means ‘my house’ 🇪🇸)

A Live Re-enactment from my spanish class except i gave my teacher a nickname:

Señor Joven: ¡Hola! ¿Qué tál? ¿Tuviste una buena Navidad?

Yo: ¡Hola! Tá mé go maith, bhí buena Navidad agam. ¿y tú?

Señor Joven:

OR OR.

the awkward:

Señor Joven: ¿Qué tal?

Me: Maith…. ….bien.

you thought that was just spanish??

A Live Re-Enachment of My Irish Classes (giving my teachers more nicknames):

Bean Uí Beanna Boirche: Cad é mar atá tú?

Mé: Muy…go leor…

Or I’ll pronounce the ch in ch sounds spanishly instead of irishly Boirche? nah its Bore-che (ch like choo choo)😰. or even the word Leche(milk🇪🇸)in spanish? nah its ‘Le-hé’ but like throatily apparently

sometimes i spell báinne (milk🇮🇪, i was revising my foods and drinks in both languages) with a tilda ‘báña’ which sounds suspiciously like baño except my dumbass looks at the b and a goes “broad!🥰” and pronounces it ‘bwaño’ bc apparently i cant just leave spanish words alone

(ive spelt ‘catholic’ like ‘caflich’ before, ive spelt the word ‘you’ with a j, ‘seven’ like ‘sebhen’, senior like señur and milk like milch)

in conclusion: dont pick two languages for gcses.

but do if you want to. just one language id a lot of work and i mean A LOT buts its great craic and if u enjoy languages then go u ig. 👍

#THEY SRENT EVEN SIMILAR LANGUAGES #ONES CELTIC ONES ROMANCE #ive called it ‘Spáilge’#for any moots not from the uk: gcses are like exams you do when youre 14/15-16/17 as a form of qualification #irish #languages #gcses #i love languages #spanish #life lessons #advice ig #this is a rant but oh well

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taeswolfie · 6 months

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𝑱𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒂 𝑭𝒆𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 : 𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝑵𝒊𝒏𝒆

☽︎𝑾𝒐𝒍𝒇'𝒔 𝑩𝒂𝒏𝒆☾︎

Ch.08 - Ch.10

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Stiles Stilinski x fem!Reader

Word count: 4.4k

Kate Argent chases Derek's car down the roads thinking she's chasing Derek, but when she gets word that he's on foot at the iron works she wonders who's actually driving his car. The answer: Y/n is the one behind the wheel, Stiles beside her and Scott in the back. Stiles glances out the back window while she focuses in front of them. "Faster?" She asks.

"Much faster." He answers. She grits her teeth and shifts gears, accelerating even more. After a bit Stiles looks back again to see the car still on their tail. "Y/n, I don't think you're grasping the concept of the car chase here."

"Sure I do. We're in a car, we're being chased."

"If she goes faster, she'll kill us." Scott says.

"Well, if she doesn't go faster, they're gonna kill us."

"I need to keep her on our tail. If I go too fast we could actually lose her." Y/n speeds up just a bit to make him feel better.

Tires screech and Stiles looks back yet again. "They're gone." Y/n looks in the rearview while Scott turns around. Stiles presses a button on the handheld radio and it beeps before coming to life.

"All units, suspect is on foot heading into the iron works." The Sheriff's voice informs.

Y/n huffs as she speeds up yet again to pick up Derek. She skids to a stop as they near him and Stiles opens the door. "Get in." He urges as he climbs in the back with Scott while Derek hops in the front, bullets from Mr. Argent following. The tires squeal as Y/n peels out of there.

"What part of laying low don't you understand?" Scott chastises.

"Damn it, I had him!" Derek complains.

"Who, the Alpha?" Stiles wonders.

"Yes! He was right in front of me, and the friggin' police showed up."

"Whoa, hey, they're just doing their jobs." Derek glares at Stiles. "Uh, yeah..."

"Yeah, thanks to someone who decided to make me the most wanted fugitive in the entire state." He looks pointedly at Scott.

"Can we seriously get past that? I made a dumbass mistake. I get it."

"All right, enough!" Y/n yells to get them to stop.

"How did you find him?" Stiles asks. Derek looks at them, refusing to answer.

"Can you try to trust us for at least a millisecond?" Y/n gives Derek a meaningful glance that the boys in the back miss.

"Yeah, all of us." Stiles leans forward, but backs up again at Derek's look. "Or just them. I'll be back here." He settles back and Y/n manages a twitch of a smile at him.

"And stop with the glares, please. I swear your face is gonna stick like that forever if it already hasn't."

Derek ignores her comment. "Look, the last time I talked to my sister, she was close to figuring something out. She found two things. The first was a guy named Harris."

"Our Chemistry teacher?" Stiles pipes up again.

"Of course." Y/n grumbles.

"Why him?" Scott wonders.

"I don't know yet." Derek answers.

"What's the second?"

"Some kind of symbol." He pulls a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolds it to show a drawn picture. Y/n sighs when she sees it and Scott doesn't react any better. "What? You know what this is?"

"Seen it on a necklace." She answered.

"Allison's necklace." Scott clarifies.

...

"This is gonna be impossible, you know." Scott says as the teens walk into school.

"Y/n, can't you ask her if you can borrow it?" Stiles suggests.

"It's a family heirloom, you can't just borrow something like that." She shakes her head lightly. "Why don't you just "borrow" it?" She made finger quotes around borrow. At Scott's questioning look she elaborates. "Steal it."

"I can't do that!" He quietly exclaims.

"Why don't you just ask her to borrow it?" Stiles asks Scott.

"How?" The boy questions.

"It's easy. You just say, 'hey, Allison, can I borrow your necklace to see if there's anything on it or in it that can lead me to an Alpha werewolf that I need to kill in order to get back together with you?"

"You're not helping."

"Why don't you just talk to her."

"She won't talk to me. What if she, like, only takes it off in the shower or something?"

"That's why you ease-" He stops them walking. "That's why you ease back into it, okay? Get back on the good side, remind her of the good times. And then you ask for the necklace." Stiles notices Scott has a slight smirk as he looks at nothing. "You're thinking about her in the shower, aren't you?"

"Yeah." Scott admits.

"Boys." Y/n mutters with an eye roll.

"All right, stay focused, okay? Get the necklace, get the Alpha, get cured, get Allison. In that order. Got it?"

Scott nods. "Get the necklace." They go their separate ways.

When they meet again later Scott tells them that Jackson figured out what he is. Oh, bother. Y/n sighs internally. "How the hell did he find out?" Y/n asks.

"I have no idea."

"Did he say it out loud?" Stiles asks. "The word?"

"What word?"

"Werewolf. Did he say, 'I know you're a werewolf'?"

"No, but he implied it pretty freaking clearly."

"Okay, maybe it's not as bad as it seems. I mean, he doesn't have any proof, right? And if he wanted to tell someone, who's gonna believe him anyway?"

"How about Allison's father?"

"It's kinda bad." Y/n grimaced a bit.

"I need a cure. Right now."

"I don't think it's that easy." Y/n hated to say it but she wasn't even sure there was a cure. There's rumors but as far as she knew, once you're bitten, that's it. You either change or die.

"Does he know about Allison's father?" Stiles asks.

"I don't know."

"Okay, where's Derek?"

"Hiding, like we told him to. Why?"

"I have another idea. It's gonna take a little time and finesse, though."

"We have that game tonight. It's quarterfinals. And it's your first game."

"I know, I know. Look, do you have a plan for Allison yet?"

"She's in our next class." He tilts his head towards Y/n.

"Get the necklace." Stiles walks away leaving the two to go to their class. Scott pauses when he sees Allison and Y/n takes the seat to her left, the seat on her right is open. Scott goes to sit there, but Lydia puts her stuff on the desk.

"Try another row, sweetheart." She smiles at him and he's forced to take the seat behind Lydia.

"Okay, class, let's settle down." The teacher says. "Let's get our books out."

Scott leans forward a bit towards Allison. "Allison." He whispers.

She glances at him. "Hey. Class is beginning." She whispers back.

"I know. I'll shut up. I just, um- I have some stuff on my phone that I wanted to send you. I thought you might like it."

She nods a little. "Okay." And he does so, watching her reaction as she looks at the photos he sent. Y/n glanced over at her and saw the pictures of them together. Wrong move, Y/n winced. That is not something you want to send the girl who broke up with you when she's still trying to figure stuff out.

The teacher turned back to the class then. "All right, I'd like to return to our discussion from yesterday with a more in-depth analysis of Iago and the way in which he preyed upon Othello's jealousies." Allison gathered her things and left the class with a hurt look towards Scott who jumped up to follow her out. "We seem to have some here today." Y/n sighs with a small shake of her head.

She sits across from Scott at lunch when Stiles sits next to him, his tray clattering on the table. "Did you get her to give you the necklace?" He asked Scott.

"Not exactly."

"Ah. What happened?"

"She told me not to talk to her. At all."

"So she's not giving you-"

"She's not giving me the necklace!"

"Well, did you find anything else out?"

"Just that I know nothing about girls, and that they're totally psychotic."

"Hey." Y/n piped up. "I take offense to that, mister. Not all girls are psychotic. Some are just a bit nuts. Me? I'm psychotic." She takes a bite of food and smirks with a wink.

"Okay, I came up with a plan 'B' just in case anything like this happened." Stiles says.

"What's plan 'B'?" Scott wonders.

"Just steal the stupid thing."

"You mean your plan 'B' was to use my idea as yours." Y/n raised a brow at Stiles.

"More like kept safe in back pocket."

"Uh-huh, sure." She said unbelieving, but still smiled.

"Couldn't we try at least getting to Harris?" Scott asks.

Stiles shook his head. "My dad put him on a 24-hour protective detail, okay? The necklace is all we got. Steal it. Thank you."

Scott suddenly perks up at something over her shoulder and looks at his friends. "Guys, he's watching us." The two look over and see that 'he' is Jackson and he is indeed watching them, mainly watching Scott though.

"Ignore him." Y/n says dismissively. She vaguely hears the crunch of an apple and Scott flinches.

"Scott..." Jackson's low tone comes over the chatter of other students. Y/n would normally ignore it but it's hard to when Scott starts to be bothered and she can't help but listen to it. "You can hear me? You can, can't you?"

"What's wrong?" Stiles asks.

"Jackson's talking to me. He knows I can hear him." Stiles glances over at him, but Scott stops him. "Look at me. Just talk to me. Act normal. Pretend nothing's happening."

"Are you trying to pretend not to hear me?"

"Say something. Talk to me!" Scott urges. Stiles flails his hands while Y/n frowns.

"I can't think of anything. My mind's a complete blank." Stiles says.

"Your mind's blank? You can't think of something to say?"

"Not under this kind of pressure."

"Y/n?" Scott gives her a pleading look and all she can do is give him a helpless shrug. It's like when someone asks you what your favorite book is and all of a sudden you've never read a single thing in your entire life.

Stiles looks back at the table. "FYI, he's not even sitting with them anymore."

Scott looks around but can't find the blonde. "Where the hell is he?"

"Looking for me, McCall? I'm right here." He chuckles. "So what else can you do? Huh? Can you see better? Are you stronger, more powerful? No, I knew there was no way you suddenly got that good at lacrosse. Which means you're actually a cheater, aren't you? I mean, can you even play lacrosse?"

"Yes." Scott unintentionally answers.

"I'll bet my new Co-Captain's gonna score a bunch of shots tonight, aren't you? And while you're pretending you're not a lying cheat, I'm gonna ruin your life if you don't give me what I want. And you know what I'm gonna start with? Her. I'm gonna destroy any chance you'll ever have with her." Scott grips his water bottle and his hand lightly trembles from the effort of not crushing it as he takes a sip. "And when I'm done with that, I'm gonna get her all alone, and I'm gonna get my hands all over that tight little body."

Y/n had to slightly grit her teeth to keep from physically gagging at that remark. She has to keep her expression in unaware concern for her friend, but pretending like you can't hear more than others comes easy when you've done it your entire life. "Scott, you can't let him get to you." She tries to help.

"You can't let him do this. You can't let him have this kind of power over you, okay?" Stiles tries too, but it doesn't seem to be working.

"I'm gonna do everything you never got the chance to do," Scott grips the edges of his tray and that starts to shake, "and, Scott, she's gonna beg for more. I'll bet she likes to get loud. Maybe she's even a screamer. How are you gonna feel, Scott... When she's screaming my name?" The tray snaps in half in Scott's hands, the loud sound making everyone become quiet and look at him. Scott glares when he finally finds Jackson as he takes another obnoxious bite of his apple.

...

Stiles swings his bag off of his shoulders and sets it down, going straight to his desk. Y/n follows, only pausing when she sees Derek behind the door. She raises a brow at him in question. "How did you-" She starts to ask, but Noah's voice cuts her off.

"Hey, Stiles!"

"Yo, D- Derek." Stiles turns around and finally spots him, calling his name in shock. Derek puts a finger to his lips and gestures for Stiles to get rid of his dad. Stiles scrambles for the door and tries to act natural as he shuts the door and stands in front of it.

"What'd you say?"

"What? I said 'yo... D-Dad'."

"Uh, listen, I've got something I've got to take care of, but I'm gonna be there tonight. I mean, your first game."

"My first game. Gosh, great. Awesome. Uh... Good."

"I'm very happy for you. And I'm really proud of you."

"Oh, thanks. Me too. I'm happy and proud... Of myself."

Derek looks at Y/n, his expression saying, "You really like this idiot?" She just shrugs with an amused smile.

"So they're really gonna let you play, right?"

"Yeah, dad. I'm first line. Believe that?"

"I'm very proud."

"Oh, me too. Again, I'm- oh." Noah goes to give Stiles a hug. "Huggie... Huggie, huggie..." Stiles awkwardly tries to keep his dad from suspecting anyone is in his room.

"See you there."

"Take it easy."

"Oh, and, uh, say hi to Y/n for me." Noah gives him a knowing smirk as Stiles sputters at his retreating form.

"Uh, y-yeah. Sure." He sighs once his dad is out of sight and goes back into his room, closing the door and instantly being pinned to it by Derek.

Y/n pushes Derek away and glares at him. "What did I say about touching him? Don't."

"If you say one word-" He points at Stiles over her shoulder.

"Oh, what, you mean, like, 'hey dad, Derek Hale's in my room with Y/n... Bring your gun'?" Derek doesn't say anything. "Yeah, that's right. If I'm harboring your fugitive ass, it's my house, my rules, buddy." Derek nods after a second and Stiles gives a faint laugh. He walks around Y/n, but jumps when Derek feigns a lunge. "Oh, my God!" Y/n glares at Derek as Stiles plops down in his desk chair.

"Scott didn't get the necklace?"

"No. He's still working on it. But there's something else we can try." Derek makes a gesture for him to continue. "The night we were trapped at the school, Scott sent a text to Allison asking her to meet him there."

"So?"

"So it wasn't Scott." Y/n informed.

"Well, can you find out who sent it?"

Stiles shook his head. "No, not us. But I think I know somebody who can."

"You want me to do what?" Turns out the 'somebody' Stiles knew was Danny who now stands next to Stiles as he sits at his desk.

"Trace a text."

"I came here to do lab work. That's what lab partners do."

"And we will, once you trace the text."

"And what makes you think I know how?"

"I-I looked up your arrest report, so..."

"I-I was 13. They dropped the charges."

"Whatever."

"No, we're doing lab work." Danny grabs a spare chair and sits next to Stiles at the desk intent on doing lab work. He glances behind them to look at Y/n, who's perched on the edge of Stiles' bed, and Derek, who's sat in a chair against the wall across from them. "Why is Y/n here?"

"I just came to admire Stiles." She got up from the bed and instead leaned her hip against Stiles' desk to look down at him, smiling when Stiles blinked at her.

"Okay." Danny nodded before he glanced at Derek again. "Who's he again?"

"Uh..." It took Stiles a moment for his brain to catch up from Y/n's comment and presence, but when it did he said the first thing he could think of. "My cousin... Miguel." Y/n raised a brow at him in amusement as Derek just glared up from the book he was looking at.

"Is that blood on his shirt?"

Stiles looked at the spot. "Yeah. Yes. Well, he gets these horrible nosebleeds. Hey, Miguel. I thought I told you you could borrow one of my shirts." He urges Derek with his eyes and the man shuts the book with a 'snap', tossing it onto the bed. He got up and took off his shirt, revealing his triskele tattoo between his shoulder blades, and started to rummage through the dresser. Y/n tilted her head and narrowed her eyes a bit at the tattoo, the image familiar yet she's unable to place it at the moment.

"So anyway, I mean, we both know you have the skills to trace that text, so we should probably-"

"Uh, Stiles?" Derek calls.

"Yes?"

"This..." He tugs the shirt between his hands. "No fit."

"Then try something else on. Sorry." He said to Danny only to see him staring at 'Miguel'. Danny averts his eyes when he notices he's been caught. Stiles and Y/n share a look. "Hey, that one looks pretty good, huh?" Derek had put on a blue and orange striped shirt. "What do you think, Danny?"

"Huh?" He tries to keep his eyes away from the man.

"The shirt."

"It's... It's not really his color."

Derek takes the shirt off and looks for another. Y/n lowered her voice. "You swing for a different team, but you still play ball, don't you, Danny boy?" Y/n smiled at him.

"You're horrible people."

Stiles sighs. "I know. It keeps me awake at night."

"I sleep like a baby." She smirks.

"Anyway, about that text."

"Stiles!" Derek calls again. "None of these fit."

Stiles looks from the shirtless Derek to Danny. "I'll need the ISP, the phone number, and the exact time of the text." Danny relents and works on Stiles computer. Y/n and Stiles share a discreet high five while the other two aren't looking at them.

After a while the four gather around the desk, Derek now with a shirt, as Danny types. He sighs once he finishes. "There. The text was sent from a computer. This one."

"Registered to that account name?" Derek asks. Danny nods.

"No, no, no, no. That can't be right." Stiles denies.

"There's no way." Y/n agrees. They're so in denial because the name that comes up is Melissa McCall.

...

Y/n, Stiles and Derek sit in the Jeep in front of the hospital, trying to figure out how they're going to find out who actually sent the message. Y/n shivers a bit. She hadn't gotten the chance to get a warmer jacket for the night so she was very cold. "My hands are freezing." She idly complained.

"Sorry." Stiles apologized. "Uh, I can turn the heat on." He reached to turn the car back on.

"No, it's okay." She stopped him by grabbing his hand, but when she felt how warm it was she held on with both of hers. He gave her a questioning look and she lightly shrugged. "Your hands are warm." She smiled at his flustered state from the contact and they just looked at each other for a moment.

"Can you guys save your cutesy heart eyed moments for later?" Derek grumbled from the backseat and Y/n shot him an annoyed look.

"We didn't- we weren't-" Stiles sputtered. "That- that wasn't a moment."

"It wasn't?" Y/n asked him seemingly hurt, but honestly she just wanted to tease him.

"I mean, was it? Did you want it to be?"

"I wouldn't be opposed to it." Her lips quirked up in a half smile and he couldn't help the slightly hopeful one come to him.

"Oh, my God. Your chemo signals are crazy." Derek groaned in annoyance.

"Stop sniffing our chemo signals then, Derek." She snapped.

"I can't. They're giving me a headache."

"Oh, you must be picking up on the migraine I get every time you talk. So sorry." She gave him a sad smile yet her tone was dripping with sarcasm. No more can be said between the two as Stiles' phone goes off, a picture from Scott and a call a minute later.

"Did you get the picture?"

"Yeah, we did, and it looks just like the drawing." Stiles answered.

Derek grabs Stiles' wrist to use the phone, making the boy have to bend at an awkward angle to stop it from hurting. "Hey, is there something on the back of it? There's gotta be something. An inscription, an opening, something."

"No, no, the thing's flat. And, no, it doesn't open. There's nothing in it, on it, around it, nothing. And where are you? You're supposed to be here. You're first line."

"Where the hell is Bilinski? Huh?" They hear Coach ask Scott.

"'Bilinski'?" Y/n mutters in question.

"Don't ask." Stiles slightly shakes his head.

"Man, you're not gonna play if you're not here to start."

"I know. Look, if you see my dad, can you tell him- tell him I'll be there, I'll just be a little late, okay? All right, thanks." Stiles hangs up.

"You're not gonna be able to make it." Y/n said with a small frown.

"I know."

"And you didn't tell him about his mom, either." Derek noted.

"Not till we find out the truth."

"By the way, one more thing."

"Yeah." Stiles turned his head to look at Derek just as the man pushed his head down to hit the steering wheel.

"Derek! I swear if you don't stop-" Y/n's threat is cut off by Stiles' exclamation of pain.

"Oh, God! What the hell was-"

"You know what that was for." He pointed at Stiles. "Go. Gooo!" Stiles gets out and heads towards the hospital doors. Then Derek faced Y/n as she watched Stiles walk away.

"Touch me and I break your face." She warned.

After a while of searching Stiles can't find Melissa or anyone else for that matter so he calls Y/n and she puts him on speaker. "Yeah, I said I can't find her."

"Look, ask for Jennifer. She's been looking after my uncle." Derek instructed.

Stiles does as told, but doesn't find anyone in the room either. "Yeah, well, he's not here either."

"What?"

"He's not here. He's gone, Derek."

Derek is confused for a moment before his eyes widen in realization. "Stiles, get out of there right now- it's him! He's the Alpha! Get out!"

"Stiles!" Y/n calls in alarm and bolts for the hospital, Derek hot on her heels.

Stiles backs away from the room and looks to his side to see Peter Hale up and about, old burn scars on the right side of his face. "You must be Stiles." He says.

Stiles backs up and turns to run, but stops when he sees Jennifer standing in his way. "What are you doing here? Visiting hours are over."

"You..." He points at her before looking at Peter. "And him." He points at Peter now. "You're- you're the one who-" He looks at her as he pieces things together. "Oh, my- and he's the-" He looks at Peter again. "Oh, my God, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die." He keeps looking between the two, helpless.

Suddenly Y/n comes up behind Jennifer, grabbing the back of her head and ramming her face into the wall, knocking the woman out cold. "That's not nice, little witch." Peter tuts.

"Like I give a shit right now." She sasses.

"She's my nurse."

"She's a psychotic bitch helping you kill people." Derek stands next to Y/n. "Get out of the way." He ordered Stiles.

"Oh, damn." He dropped down to the ground and Y/n tried to help coax him to her.

"You think I killed Laura on purpose? One of my own family?" Peter advances and Derek growls, eyes flashing and canines extending. Derek jumps and pushes off the desk to vault himself at Peter, but the older Hale simply grabs him and shoves him against the wall. He then throws Derek into another before he falls to the ground. Stiles flails as he tries to avoid them. Y/n grabs him by the scruff of his jacket to pull him in a safer direction. Peter picks Derek up by the throat, the Beta holding onto his wrist to get him to let go. "My mind, my personality were literally burned out of me." He starts to drag Derek down the hall. "I was driven by pure instinct." He lets Derek drop and he grunts when he hits the ground. Peter crouches and fishes in Jennifer's pocket for her keys.

"You want forgiveness?" Derek gets up and punches Peter. He goes to hit him again yet Peter blocks, grabs his jacket, and headbutts him.

"I want understanding." He kicks Derek in the chest and he flies back. "Do you have any idea... What it was like for me during those years?" Derek spits blood on the ground as he starts to get back up. "Slowly healing, cell by cell. Even more slowly coming back to consciousness." Stiles scrambles around a desk and stops when he sees Derek on the ground. Y/n pulls him back by the collar to keep out of sight. "Yes, becoming an Alpha, taking that from Laura pushed me over a plateau in the healing process. I can't help that." Derek gets up and swipes at him, Peter dodging his fists before catching one in his own, squeezing until Derek's down on a knee. "I tried to tell you what was happening. I tried to warn you." He hauls Derek up and throws him into the protective glass over the nurse's station and over the desk. Derek crawls away and Peter follows.

"Come on." Y/n urged quietly. "This way. Go, go, go." Y/n grabbed Stiles' hand and they ran from the hospital. The feel of the Alpha's anger still lingers on her, raising the hairs on the back of her neck and fueling her legs to go faster.

Ch.10

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archivist-the-knight · 2 months

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love how the entire slimecicle bg3 gang is like really smart they're also all just. actually im exploring this

xiv is very smart. not only are they an arcane battery, their father likely gave them plenty of books to read about spell-casting. so they're a big thinker. but what stops them from reaching their true potential is the fact that they likely don't allow themselves to properly process their more negative emotions, like rai's death and whatnot. and they're... literally going through this entire adventure after escaping an incredibly toxic and neglectful environment. they're probably trying to push back how their father was a piece of shit as well and its not working because their dream visitor IS their father!! so they know their way around a book but don't know how to deal with their father screaming from the other room :-3

tal i think is very aware of others feelings, and partially emotionally intelligent for himself. he tries to talk rai down before he's forced to kill him, being kind to him in rai's final moments of lucidity. he understand's something wrong with xiv, that there's something they aren't telling the rest of the group, but he doesn't wanna pry. in terms of more "intellectual intelligence" i think he is smart but just... doesn't know how to articulate it. he can do it, but unlike xiv he literally cannot explain it to you. it's like how he mispronounced monotonous; he knows of it, he just forgot the pronunciation. basically him and xiv are kind of inverses of each other; xiv is smart and can explain it, but can't deal with their emotions. tal can recongize his and others emotions, and while being a bit smart he can't explain it like xiv can and forgets the information sometime. another thing i think they have in common is accidentally lashing out in anger. tal doesn't know why (not a violent dog; doesn't know why he bites) and xiv knows but wishes they didnt (violent dog; wishes they didn't know why they bite.)

klip. i'm gonna be honest i think he's the most normal in the group and that is genuinely saying something. he's about average in terms of emotional and intelectual intelligence, but. the way he reacts to rai being weird is touching the book thats glowing ominously, but at the same time checking to see if he's okay. it's like he's barely passed the skillcheck, and thus while it's good, there are aspects of it he's missing. its not the fact that he can't read the room, its the fact that he can read parts of it. the rest of it he realizes depending on the person's reaction. im 50/50 on whether or not he harbors a bit of guilt from not actually defeating that goblin camp but this again. is klip we're talking about. surprisingly the most well adjusted of the group despite the squidfucking.

now rai... i think rai. thinks he's well adjusted but oh. isn't. i think its the book that makes him realize he craves a family more than anything. but its really too late to change anything is it. and just god... rai's death was so fucked man. he didn't even get to learn anything about his parents, we didnt get to learn anything about his parents, before he died. its so... goddd its fucked. anyway yeah. rai thinks he is. the book reminds him so coldly and cruelly that he isnt <333

all of that to say. just because they're dumbasses does not mean they're stupid. also @flammablefaerie the bread is here

#eden mrraps.#also i know discussing intelligence can be finnicky so if i accidentally sound ableist let me know please <3 #slimecicle bg3

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winged-self-indulgence · 4 months

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I replayed BSH and was immediately infected by the dark urge to write a fic for it. Or at least, the first 2.6K words.

The crash of ceramic colliding with the beige tiles jolted Diya from her work, and it was only the reflexive tightening of strong fingers around the heavy box in her arms that prevented a veritable flood of brand-new oat milk from joining the rapidly spreading brown puddle on the ground.

The woman inhaled and exhaled a deliberate breath of coffee-flavoured air as her co-worker’s grating voice cut through the hum of the café’s background chatter.

“Ayo, Newbie, pass me some napkins!” Miles shouted despite being barely 10ft away, “some old fart dropped his coffee!”

Carefully, Diya set down the delivery – both because it was heavy, and to remove the temptation to brain the man with its vegan-friendly contents – and charitably yanked a wad of thick, perforated napkins from the box beneath the counter.

“Stop calling me Newbie,” she snapped, shoving them at his chest hard enough that Miles let out a little oof at the sudden impact before scrambling to catch the napkins before they could hit the ground. “Either use my name, or don’t call me at all.”

“Haha, someone’s grouchy this morning!” He shot finger guns her way, making little pew-pew noises to go with them. “Guess you’re in a brew-tal mood, huh? Get it? Brew-tal? Brutal?”

As always, Miles just laughed as though he hadn’t noticed her bad temper or genuinely didn’t care that he was about 30 seconds away from being violently strangled with his own apron strings. Most days Diya wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed by his perpetual good humour or amused by his easygoing nature, so usually she simply settled on being begrudgingly fond of his particular brand of nonsense. Like a particularly stupid orange cat that constantly knocked over anything not nailed to the countertop.

A sigh escaped Diya’s lips. Her sister would have loved Miles. They could both make godawful puns together.

“Speaking of…uh…what is your name again? If I ask Hals they’ll explode at me again,” Miles scratched the back of his head sheepishly, nearly knocking off the beat-up beanie barely holding his messy brown hair in check.

Diya shot him a pointed glare, before intentionally directing her gaze down to the front of her forest green apron where a very obvious employee name card proclaimed the word Dayana in neat looping letters. As Miles lips parted in a silent oh of realization,she rolled her eyes and turned back to continue restocking the fridge.

“We have been working together for over a month, Miles,” she snapped, running a frustrated hand through the wavy strands of her chin-length black hair. “I know you have the brain capacity of a severely concussed goldfish, but you could at least try to make some effort. It’s two syllables.”

“I’m sorry! I promise I’ll remember next time!” It was a blatant lie but only one of them knew it. Diya wouldn’t be surprised if Miles had already forgotten her name in the five seconds it had taken him to look away and check the coffee spill. “By the way, can I get more napkins? It was a ton of coffee. Like, a whole bean coffee, hehe…”

For fuck’s sake, is he already high? Diya stared at the man in dull disbelief as Miles continued to chuckle under his breath. It was only 9 a.m. Haley would have his ass if he was.

“If the spill’s that big, just get one of the mops. We have a cleaning closet for a reason, dumbass,” she informed him, jerking a sarcastic thumb over to the door that led to the employee-only area at the back of the café. “Besides, if you just wipe it down with paper towels the whole area is going to get super sticky and attract ants–. You know what? Never mind. I’ll take care of it.”

Miles’s bright blue eyes went even brighter, and he even clapped his hands underneath his chin, dropping the tissue dispenser to the ground where it split open with a metallic thunk. “You sure Newbie? ‘Cause my legs are super sore from stocking up this morning, so this would be a real lifesaver!”

The headache building behind Diya’s eyes grew exponentially as she stared down at the carpet of napkins littering the ground with dead-eyed acceptance. Genuinely how did someone as careless as Miles survive on their own for so long without accidentally getting themselves killed? Without an ability or extremely good luck, people like him couldn’t last long without some sort of safety net.

“Sure, let me just–”

“Let you just what?” Haley’s tall, unimpressed form appeared behind Miles, causing both employees to jump a good foot off the ground in surprise. A pair of dark brown eyes levelled Miles with a glare sharp enough to cut through steel. “Just let Miles do his job and clean up the huge mess on that table? What an excellent idea, Diya.”

Without giving the man a chance to respond, Haley handed Miles a bucket and mop. He took the cleaning instruments meekly, shooting them a nervous grin before trailing off in the direction of the spill with all the melodramatic malaise of a Victorian orphan being sent off to the workhouse. Haley watched him go stoically, waiting for him to be mostly out of earshot before turning to Diya with a complicated expression on their face.

“You don’t have to baby him so much,” they said, grabbing a slightly burned croissant from the discard pile. Painted black fingernails picked at the charcoal-covered tips where the heat of the oven had burned them to a crisp. One of the heating implements was out of order, meaning it either didn’t work or it worked far too well and roasted everything in that corner. “I know Miles seems ridiculously incompetent, but you shouldn’t do everything for him. It just enables him.”

“It’s easier than watching him fuck up,” Diya snorted, smirking across the room where Miles was trying to mop up the pool of milky brown and mostly succeeding in smearing it around in a sickly mess of coffee and pink, floral scented cleaning fluid. Still, the tense jut of his shoulders indicated that he could feel their hawkish stares and was trying to maintain the veneer of a hardworking employee while still appearing pathetic enough that hopefully Diya would swoop in to do the work for him.

It might have worked. The tips of her fingers itched to snatch the mop away from him and just do it herself, but Hal’s stern gaze kept Diya’s feet rooted firmly by the counter.

“I know it’s tempting,” they acknowledged, wincing as some of the gross fluid splashed onto Miles’s fancy-looking shoes. Diya vaguely recalled seeing them in some brand fashion magazine going for a few hundred, if not more.

Ah, so money was his safety net.

“Shit…think I could nab those while he’s napping in the breakroom?” Haley waggled their brows invitingly, a lock of dark green hair falling into their hopelessly pretty face. “Wannabe my partner in crime? We’ll even split the winnings, 50/50.”

“50/50?” A snort of laughter erupted from Diya’s lips. “What does that even mean? They’re shoes! What, do I get the left leg and you get the right? Do we switch on a weekly basis?”

“I was thinking more like shared custody,” Haley smirked, biting off a mouthful of somehow still-warm pastry. “You can get them…hmmm…on the weekends.”

“Wow, so generous. What am I, a deadbeat dad?” Diya rolled her eyes as she retook her place behind the register and began wiping down the countertops with a harsh, self-deprecating snicker. “Besides, I don’t think I’m cut out for a life of crime. Making minimum wage as a barista is all the excitement I ever want to handle. I don’t need any more trouble.”

Haley’s smile softened, soft lips taking on a gentler curve. “Sounds like you’re speaking from experience,” they replied. To Diya’s surprise, they leaned closer, the deep emerald hues of their long hair forming a forest-like curtain that seemed to banish all outside noise. “I wonder what secrets you’re hiding, Diya~”

Temporarily frozen in place, it took Diya a few seconds to huff and shove them away. “My secrets? I should be more concerned about you, Mx. Owns My Own Café in The Middle of The City. How am I going to fulfil my dreams of lifelong mediocrity if you get arrested for insurance fraud?”

Haley spluttered with laughter, nearly choking on her croissant. “Ew, insurance fraud? At least let me be arrested for something flashier, like a bank heist! Then my grand, daredevil deeds can serve as an inspiration to you to go on and find your dream job!”

That was the thing about Haley, Diya thought with a grin. They always knew how to cheer her up, even in the absolute dregs. A month ago, Diya had been on her last legs. Her apartment lease was about to end, and the landlord had been banging on the doors almost every week demanding she either fork over rent or get lost.

Chilled wind carried the stirrings of autumn and the warning of winter, and she had been desperate, starving, and almost homeless until Haley had offered her a job as a barista. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that they had saved Diya’s life. Haley was her hero, though that was something Diya would never say aloud considering their vitriolic opinions on heroes and the NAHA.

Opinions that Diya herself shared, though she had the public sense to be considerably less outspoken about them than her boss. Heroes were not only huge celebrities, but also pillars of morality embedded deep into the fabric of contemporary society. They were modern myths, their images featured in preschool cartoons, on children’s books, and stamped on charities. To speak ill of a hero was, at best, social suicide and at worst legally suspicious. The last thing Diya needed was some ‘concerned citizen’ calling a raid on her apartment because she’d accidentally insulted their favourite hero.

“Uh…can I order?”

Shit! Diya’s head sprang up at the low, drawling voice emanating from a customer standing at the other side of the counter. How engrossed in the conversation with Haley had she been that she hadn��t noticed an entire grown man less than two feet away? For the sake of her pride, Diya hoped he’d only just arrived and hadn’t been waiting there listening to the two of them chatter.

The man rubbed his arm awkwardly, pupils scanning the overhead menu in an effort to avoid eye contact. Paradoxically, his obvious discomfort with the situation helped Diya calm down, banishing the heat from her cheeks as she craned her neck up to take the stranger in. He was tall, with a pronounced and off-kilter slouch that tilted his weight forward and made it appear like he was drowning in his maroon sweater. The fabric hung off his frame, revealing a lean throat and collarbones. Strands of thick, golden-brown hair tumbled down his neck and swept across his forehead, framing a wan face speckled with a striking constellation of freckles.

“Sorry about that. I didn’t see you there,” Diya put on a tight-lipped, customer-service smile.

The man finally tore his gaze away from the menu, briefly fixing her with a pair of eyes the colour of a clear summer sky. The kind of sky you get when the sun is so impossibly hot that it chases all the clouds away and all that exists is blue, blue, blue stretching out as far as the horizon. A hungry sort of hue, a void erasing gravity and swallowing up everything around.

When he looked away again, Diya felt like she had been allowed to come up for air after an unknown amount of time. “No worries. I prefer it that way.”

“Hm. I think I get it,” she replied, shrugging when he shot her a disbelieving stare. “It’d be nice to not be noticed sometimes, is all. What would you like to order?”

Those impossible eyes flickered back to the menu, pausing on the seasonal options, and Diya mentally went over the syrups they had and whether there was enough whipped cream to last until the weekend or if she should tell Miles to run out and buy some more. “Can I get…a black coffee to go?”

“What?” The word was out of her mouth before she could stop it, causing her to be on the receiving end of the man’s startled stare. Diya’s cheeks heated up and she shook her head. “Sorry, sorry. Just one black coffee, and nothing else?”

The man paused and narrowed his eyes as though trying to parse whether this was some sort of elaborate trick question. It was…kind of cute if she had to be honest. “Uh…no?” He replied, cheeks going a little pink. “No, thank you.”

Well then, it seemed the whipped cream would last a little longer. “Okay, that’ll be $3.”

The man dug his hands into his pocket and pulled out a battered wallet from which he retrieved a $5 bill. Diya quickly rang him up and counted out his change on the receipt, but he just shoved his hands back into the pockets of his jeans and muttered a curt, “Keep it.”

Not very talkative, huh. That was fine. At least he wasn’t being outright rude. Diya had frequently found that the worst, most entitled customers were the ones who never shut the fuck up. One man had even insisted on making conversation with her while she’d been preparing his drink, resulting in a near brush with the hospital from the milk-frother when his yelling got too distracting.

Then he’d even had the audacity to leave a one-star review on Yelp for ‘unfriendly service’.

“Here you go,” Diya handed over a to go cup of plain black coffee, wrapped in a protective sleeve. “Please be careful. It’s very hot, and I don’t want you to burn your hands.”

Internally, Diya wanted to slam her face into the countertop. ‘It’s very hot’? Wow, no kidding! Luckily the man didn’t seem to take the redundant statement with any bad intentions, and just flashed her a wry smirk.

“Thanks…uh…” His eyes dropped down, and for a single enraging moment Diya was certain that he was staring at her tits. Sharply, she followed his gaze to the name tag pinned to the left of her chest. “…Dayana? Have a good day.”

He took the coffee from her hands, their fingertips brushing as the cup was exchanged. It was barely a flicker of contact, yet something in Diya’s stomach stirred; a swarm of butterflies bursting to life inside her belly and fluttering to be free.

Embarrassment welled up in the back of her throat, sickly and nauseating, but she managed to smile back and return his words with a polite, “Same to you.”

Against her will, Diya watched him exit the café – the bell above the door chiming gently as he stepped out into the semi-busy streets – and quickly looked away when he glanced back at her with a knowing smile. The blue of his eyes would not leave her mind, no matter how hard she tried to throw herself into her work. A glance at the clock on the wall revealed that it was only 10am. Damn. Still hours to go.

Not even watching TV helped, because every news channel was running the same special on Binary Star Hero – sponsored by the NAHA of course – and Diya refused to watch the their propaganda poster-boy for a single second of her own free will. However, several customers began to complain when she tried to change the station so she was forced to work the rest of her shift trying not to think about blue eyes while a gratingly cheerful voice parroted the same corporate platitudes and catchphrases in a dozen different ways.

#binary star hero #bsh ray #bshvn #my fic

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finnitesimal · 3 days

Note

if you're suffering from the heat(especially dry heat) soak a bandanna or two- ring it out- put it on your head or neck(or both if you have two)- if you have long (to bottom of your shoulder blades or longer) hair take a shower before going anywhere (or in morning) make sure your hair is like SOAKING wet, braid it and/or put it in a bun(mine is long enough like to/past my butt that a simple ponytail -> knot like bun is less time consuming and more possible for me) and then undo the second you need the cooling!(typically by the 6th/8th hour afterwards it starts drying to a point it's not helpful for me) be careful about paper you're around but for the most part this works well!

recommend getting big "tal" bottles too- several are nearly the massive gallon milk jug sized that should last you NEARLY the entire day, we have two that are like?? 2/3 the large milk jugs' sizes- carrying two of those usually lasts me an 8 hour shift at work (especially with some of those flavor/hydration packets at sprouts for at least one of the bottles, helps actually RETAIN the water but doing more than one a day is BAD and can make you consume FAR TOO MUCH LEAD depending on what flavor/hydration packets you get and where they're from- G-fuel has enough that in Cali it warrants a note on the box of it being enough to cause cancer in that state on every box in order to be sold there.)

- @honeycombed-beloved (the dumbass who lives in dry heat that last summer worked in a weld shop in like 119f degree heat- again note DRY heat, not super humid here)

Thank u m8

#more about the deletion of motivation for me but v sick v cool advice #augustanswers

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goodbye-randoms · 1 year

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𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐀 𝐉𝐈𝐋𝐁𝐄𝐑𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐓..!

#@𝐩𝐮𝐫𝐞-𝐝𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐭𝐦 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐚𝐜𝐜

Hi I'm Natalia you also may or may not know me from @pure-dumbass-tm. You can also call me, Talia, Tal, Jit, JJJ, JJ, MMJ, JMM, Den'ya, Denny, & Nataria. I'm 22, fem, gemini, & ESFP-T.

𝐒𝐈𝐃𝐄 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐆'𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐇𝐎𝐄'𝐒:

@jit-jai-jilburhant

@theeeminemshow

@nemistitties

@xxcupidsdaughterxx

@voluptas-and-oizy

@quotes-from-jit

@venting-with-jitty

@koyukis-basketball

𝐇𝐎𝐓 𝐖𝐈𝐅𝐄𝐘'𝐒:

@x0laani

@tttanon

@kurooandkenmasslut

@nymphoheretic

& more to come..

𝐌𝐘 𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐌𝐎𝐎𝐓𝐒:

@graveyardsnightguard

@ghostg1rleveryday

@tomiokas-lunchbox

@animepansexualosaurus

@dabislittlemouse

@all-his-clones/@paintoreos

@i-karaku-swear-i-dont-smoke-weed

@strawberry-lemonade-kisses

@dabislittlesluttyprincess

@taisho-era-secrets

@thee-og-onika101

@koyuki-the-flower

& hopefully more..

Maybe I'll warm up & write fics?????

shout out to: @kurooandkenmasslut, @x0laani, @tttanon, @nymphoheretic, & @thee-og-onika101

Sincerely,

𝒯𝒶𝓁𝒾𝒶 𝒥𝒾𝓁𝒷𝑒𝓇𝒽𝒶𝓃𝓉

(old pinned post)

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jovialkittycreation1 · 10 months

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Jealous, Jealous, Jealous boyyy~

First Fanfic probably bad vocabulary Miguel x fem!reader

quick intro Miguel has a crush on reader, reader hates him {I <3 drama.}

This is going to be so bad- part 1 part 2 part 3

It was exactly 9:00am and you were rethinking your life choices before getting ready to clock in at work. You grabbed your suit from the dryer slipping it on before checking your phone for any new notifications then grabbing your watch clicking a few buttons revealing a portal. Sighing you walk through trying to keep yourself composed. You walk through being greeted with the busy space of everyone together you guessing there being a meeting walked over there. "You're late" Miguel says as your cheeks go pink from being embarrassed like that only for Miguel to continue talking. You noticed Hobie coming towards you "Don't worry 'bout him he got a stick up his arse don't 'e" he said causing you to let out a quiet laugh then began to pay attention to the actual meeting the tense air still present. Gathering every ounce of courage you ever had you talked to the guy next to you "I like your piercings, by the way my name is (y/n)." You rushed out all the words at once "thanks bruv it's Hobie nice to meet ya." the rest of the meeting was a blur to you just Miguel talking about new rules and the importance of the multiverse while Hobie talked shit about him.

People walking out of the room bring you out of your daydream you turn around to leave but feel a hand placed on your shoulder "I want you to work in my office today (y/n)" Miguel spoke from behind you "Oh okay" you said continuing on your way to the break room eternally crying in your head. You shuffled your feet through the break room your face lighting up seeing Hobie waiting at a table for you "Hey Hobie, you waiting for someone" you say knowing damn well he was waiting for you "I am looking for someone she has the ugliest spider suit i seen" "Aye, I find that offensive" you say looking away from him. "At least you don't wear all the same red and blue suit it gives me an eyesore." You sit next to Hobie pulling your sketchbook with your headphones out of your duffle bag putting them in their ordered places before getting to work. A few minutes go by of silence before people start leaving to their places "I gotta go see ya (y/n)" Hobie spoke before taking his leave you gathered your things before going back to Miguel's office. You recited what you were going to say under your breath a few times you exhale before walking into the room "You said you wanted me to work in here today what exactly did you plan on me doing?" you asked genuinely curious "saving the multiverse what we always do" he answered this dry talker you huffed before walking up to the painfully slow descending platform.

The rest of the day was rushed things were pretty quiet "I think i'm going to head out for the day" you said "you think or you're going to" Miguel replied causing you to roll your eyes in response grabbing your bag and organizing the papers you left around the room before heading out... "Got any plans today?" Gwen said startling you "huh me?" you said "who else" she replied "Uhh no I think" "Well do you wanna hang out?" Gwen asked you "Sure i'm guessing my Earth?" "yeah!" she said before following you through the portal.

You woke up faced with Gwen sleeping on the left side of the bed turning over you checked your phone "shit" it was exactly 9:10 and you were so late Miguel would probably have a heart attack since his dumbass pays attention to everyone coming into work but that's besides the point. "Gwen wake up, wake up" you called out to her "oh i'm up" she said rubbing her eyes "we're late" you pointed out "shit" she said, you both changed into your suits before you grabbed your watch and opened up the portal.

"Yo whats going on" Gwen said as you two were faced with a way too busy society "There is an Anomaly on earth 1029 hurry up and teleport there we need all the help we can get and talk to me later (y/n)" Miguel answered. This bitch you rolled your eyes and set up your watch as you and Gwen rushed into the newly opened portal. "What'd we miss" Gwen says before almost getting caught off guard with rubble from a nearby building before you made a web catching it "You good" you say a bit surprised at the attack "Totally" she said sarcastically. You both got eyes on the anomaly before looking at each other with a nod then swing your webs towards it. More rubble being thrown at you causes Gwen to split up as you corner the Anomaly. You both being able to swiftly create a web cage to distract the Anomaly "Looks like this is another version of Green Goblin" you told Gwen before reaching through a sack placed on your hip searching for a sedative "this should do" you spoke grabbing it out before stabbing it into the trapped Goblin. "We did it!!!" Gwen said holding her hand out for you to give her a high five "I think you mean I did it" you said smirking before clapping her hand "To bad you gotta deal with Miguel" You just silently death stared her "way to ruin the vibe" you sighed out as if predicted Miguel appeared through a portal, shoving Green Goblin through before giving you a motion to follow him, what does his king kong looking ass want now you thought. "We need to talk" Miguel spoke breaking the silence "about what?" you said giving him a side eye, "How you're spending your time" "with all due respect that doesn't concern you" you added with a snobby smile "It really does though you're in a society that I made." "I hope you know i'm an adult with my own life outside of here" "I do but you could be putting this society in danger" your brows furrowed Tf does that mean "I assume this discussion is over i'm leaving" "no you're not" "too late" you said with a huff walking out.

"what was that" Gwen asked concern radiating from her "He's concerned about how i'm spending my time so i'm taking a break and work on saving my universe instead of the multiverse" "So you're quitting" Hobie said joining in the conversation "no it's temporary" "for how long?" Gwen said with a worried expression "... a month?" you said a bit unsure "okay i'm really gonna miss you" Gwen added "ay don't worry 'bout 'er she's got it handled, ain't that right" Hobie reassured Gwen. "Okay it's time for me to leave" you said noticing Miguel's platform descending, "Bye guys" you said before taking off in a sprint to the portal room.

Authors note: I forgot my passcode to jovialkittycreation so this is my new acc

#miguel x reader #miguel o'hara #atsv miguel #miguel spiderverse #miguel spiderman #2099 #miguel o hara #spider man 2099

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exalted-dawn-drabbles · 1 year

Note

HAP FRI HAP FRI “Let’s push all of these stuff away. I wanna dance here right now with you.” “Are we really doing this? Are we really slow-dancing?” for tal x calder?

Hehehehe I actually already started a lil drabble along the lines of this so I was able to sorta bend it to this prompt XD WORK SMARTER NOT HARDER! But anyway, enjoy! (It's a lil naughty cause dumbasses do be horny always)

for @dadrunkwriting

Rated M: Slightly suggestive themes, 510 words

Slow Dancing | by Exalted_Dawn

Talenna hid her burgeoning smile beneath a sigh. But still, she did not pull away.

“You’re drunk, ma lath.”

“And you’re ravishing. Doesn’t mean we should stop.”

His laughter, scented of berry wines and the late summer breeze, stirred against the crown of her head, hearty and warm and criminally endearing. It made chasing his hands from her waist, something she was hardly keen on to begin with, far more difficult a feat than it already was. His touch was insistent, and he held her close against his chest as they both swayed gently down alleyways, dancing beneath the light of the two moons.

The music had long since faded; swept away between hallways and shut doors as they had drifted farther and farther from the celebrations. Somewhere across the maze of stone and shingles, the bands still played and drinks were still poured, but they were a long ways from there now, and Calder was beginning to step on her feet.

"I beg to differ," she snorted, tilting her head to catch his gaze. "I won't be so ravishing when you fall over top of me, tipsy as you are. We may have survived the war, but that hardly means I can't be crushed to death under your fat arse."

“Nonsense,” he murmured, speaking kisses against her forehead. “You are ravishing, always. Especially whenever you wind up under me,” he added after a moment’s thought, gleeful.

She shouldn’t have, but Talenna couldn’t help but chuckle. Even drunk, the man was much too keen for his own good. Reckless and witty were a bad combination, and that was without any encouragement, liquid or otherwise. She shook her head, biting down on her lips to hide her grin. “I’m not doing this here with you.”

“Doing ‘what’ exactly?” His smile widened against her brow. His hand glided over her hip. “Slow dancing?”

Talenna scoffed, but she did not push him away. Instead, her eyes flicked to his, their bronze gold bright with knowing. “Is that really what we’re doing right now? We’re slow dancing?”

“Yeup.” The ‘p’ smacked on Calder’s lips. And he spoke it oh so confidently, too.

“Unfortunate,” she hummed, plucking at some invisible speck of dust on his shirt. “I was hoping for a different answer. After all,” she grinned up at him, her smile more wolfish now than his– fitting for her namesake. “You are a much better lover than you are a dancer, ma lath, and that's without the wine in your veins. I may have been tempted otherwise.”

And with that, she slipped out of his grasp and began to run, jogging across the cobblestones. Somewhere behind her, she could hear the man’s befuddled squawk, but she did not stop for it. He would be fine, she knew.

“Ir abelas,” she called, laughter like the unbound strands of her hair streaking out behind her. “But I won’t dance for all of Orlais to see! If you want a show, you’ll have to catch me in private first!”

And, well, Calder found his feet fast enough after that.

#dumbasses #dadwc #dragon age fanfiction #calenna

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shootybangbang · 2 years

Text

In which the merits of manhandling are discussed [Part 4]

[Ao3 link]

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3][Part 4]

continuation of an ask from @tecker

(unedited, feel free to point out errors or give criticism)

———

A shock of cold water splashes against your face with all the rousing urgency of a punch in the head. You sputter and flinch, and find yourself suddenly horizontal. Damp grass cushions your back. Staring you in the face with its ridged metal eye is the mouthpiece of a canteen.

“What just—”

“You fainted,” Arthur says flatly. He is knelt beside you, dress shirt and pants completely soaked with river water, and he has the expression of a man trying very hard to mask his very obvious concern with anger. “Gave yourself heatstroke from sittin’ in there for so long.”

“I did?”

“Sure did, dumbass. Can you sit up?”

A faint breeze skims through the clearing. Its chill sends goosebumps prickling over your skin and reminds you that you are, in fact, lying largely naked on the ground beside the man you’ve been in love with for months. He’s thrown his jacket over your torso in an attempt to preserve your dignity, but it does little to mitigate your mortification. The sheer force of ignominy strikes you nearly catatonic, and you lay there stunned like a fish out of water.

He sighs impatiently and lowers himself onto the grass, then loops his arm around your shoulders to haul you against him, positioning you so that your head rests against the crook of his neck. Your damp hair clings like a wet curtain over your left eye, and he tucks it behind your ear as he peers anxiously into your face. Your lack of response is worrying him, you realize. Normally, you’d have said something sarcastic by now.

“How’re you feeling?” he asks. “Still dizzy? Nauseous?”

“Deeply suicidal,” you reply, clutching his jacket to your chest with both hands to hold it in place.

“Well, that’s too bad, then,” he lifts his canteen to your lips. “Need you alive at least long enough to help me offload all that cutlery you stole. C’mon, drink.”

The water is cool and sweet. He coaches you to drink with slow, careful sips, and scolds you vehemently as he tilts the container. Calls you a fool. Says something about only sitting in springs for short intervals. Something something blood temperature. Truthfully, it all goes over your head, because the only thing you’re able to concentrate on right now is the solidity of his frame, the warmth and firmness of his chest against your back.

He’s holding you as close as a lover, and were he not currently lecturing you on the depth of your own idiocy, this whole situation might almost be romantic. Because it is rather romantic, isn’t it, the mental image of him rushing into the river with little regard for his expensive clothes, then carrying you out in his arms, and laying you on the grass, and… and forcing you to drink water while he tells you how stupid you are.

On second thought, maybe being fished out of a hot spring and dumped on the ground isn’t very romantic at all. Nor the bleak realization that, after being confronted with your naked body, he doesn’t seem at all tempted. Which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, given the man’s continued lack of interest, but stings nonetheless. He is blushing a little, but it seems to stem more from secondhand embarrassment than anything else. Prude.

After you’ve drained the canteen, he asks again if you’re alright. You nod. “Well then.” He drops his arm from around your shoulders and braces his hand against the ground to push himself off the grass. “I’ll go get your clothes.”

Maybe you do still have heatstroke, because the internal font of self doubt that seems to run everconstant has, for the moment, dried up completely. With uncharacteristic boldness, you clutch at his wet sleeve and hold it fast. “Wait.”

“Hm?”

“This is my last night being Mrs Callahan,” you say plainly. “So let me savor it a little longer.”

He sits back down. Arthur stares at you with the abject confusion of a man who’s just been sentenced to death by wild geese. “What’re you talking about?”

“You’re tired of it, right? Being the nouveau riche husband? From now on you can be… I dunno, the valet. Or the guard. I’ll think of something.”

“You think I…” Arthur’s voice is thick with disbelief. He shakes his head slowly, as though dazed. “You think I’m tired of pretending to be your husband?”

You stare back at him, just as lost. “Yes?”

Sighing, he pushes his dark blond hair out of his eyes with the heel of his hand. Though he’d slicked it back with pomade for the soiree, the commotion of dragging you out of the river has left him disheveled in a raffish, carelessly handsome way. “Woman,” he says— and he sounds tired, exasperated even. “If I didn’t like bein’ Mr Callahan, then I wouldn’t have been so shit at poker tonight.”

“But you’re always shit at poker,” you point out, frowning.

“That ain’t the point.” The shade of red that colors Arthur’s cheeks could probably best be described as “beetroot”. He takes a deep breath, trains his eyes on a nearby patch of grass, then continues, “What I’m tryin’ to say is that there wasn’t a lot of blood goin’ to my head the whole time I was sat there, watchin’ you talk those ladies up.”

The ordeal of having been boiled like an egg for twenty minutes has dampened the inner workings of your brain enough that it takes almost a full ten seconds for you to register the innuendo. When you do, the only thing that comes out is a quietly bewildered, “Me?”

Arthur is seemingly still unduly fascinated by grass. “Yeah. You.”

“But I… I…” Bewilderment gives way to simmering, helpless rage. What the fuck. What the FUCK. “Why didn’t you say anything? I’ve been flirting with you for months!”

“You have?” Arthur asks. He pauses his scholarly contemplation of the ground to look you in the face. And his expression is so innocently dumbfounded that your hands itch to throttle him. Fucking CHRIST.

“Why else do you think I was constantly catching you all those crickets to use as bait, and bringing you carrots for Athena, and–”

“Hold on,” he interrupts. The corner of his mouth is twitching. “That’s your idea of flirting? Crickets and carrots?”

Presented this way, it does seem rather stupid. In a tiny, uncertain voice, you say, “Yes.”

Arthur is struggling not to laugh. And though it is an admirable effort, it is a futile one. Already, the seams are starting to snap. “I thought,” he says, grinning widely, foolishly. “I honestly thought you just really enjoyed catching crickets.”

“I hate catching crickets,” you reply unhappily. “I feel sorry for them.”

And at this, the dam breaks. Arthur snorts, then tries to school his face into something neutral, fails abysmally, and starts chortling. He transitions quickly to a roar of laughter so loud and shamelessly intense that he near doubles over. There are tears in his eyes. Between guffaws, he attempts to communicate, but the words come out disjointed as scattershot. “Sweetheart,” he wheezes. “I use worms to fish. Crickets’re… they’re harder to hook, so… so every time…” Desperate gasps for breath, then a moment of wavering calm. “Every time you gave me a jar of crickets… I just…I let ‘em go while you weren’t looking.”

You stare at your knees, “I think I’m going to cry.”

“Aw, honey, no.” Arthur puts his arm back around you and squeezes your shoulders. His voice is shaky with mirth. “Don’t do that.”

His feeble pity pushes you over the edge, and you really do start crying. “Do you know how long it took me to catch all those crickets?” Furious tears prick at the corners of your eyes. “Do you know how many times I found spiders instead?” Under the blanket of his jacket, you pull your knees up to your chest, then bury your head in its leather collar and let out a pained, anguished sob.

He strokes the slope of your shoulder with his thumb. “At least…” Arthur chokes down a laugh. “At least the crickets are okay.”

A brief moment of silence passes as you contemplate this. “I guess,” you say begrudgingly. The words come out muffled against his jacket.

His hand shifts from your shoulder to the back of your neck, and he gently runs his palm down the furrow of your spine, lingering over each hill of bone tucked beneath your skin. Were this under any other occasion, you’d find this highly erotic. Instead, you bristle under his touch like a feral animal and peek from behind his jacket to glare at him.

He pays you no mind. “You know,” he says– and god, he’s still hiccuping with laughter. “I’ve been flirting with you too. Probably not very well. Tried telling you that you looked nice last week, and you uh… you put your hand against my forehead and asked if I had a fever.”

You’re going to fucking kill him. Straightening up to properly address him, you narrow your eyes and scowl. “Arthur,” you say, your voice deceptively soft. “The few times you’ve commented on my appearance, it’s always been things like ‘you have dirt on your face’ or ‘your shirt’s untucked’. Why wouldn’t I think there was something wrong with you?”

“Yeah, well.” He has the decency to look a little embarrassed. “I didn’t want to come on too strong.”

“You can’t be that dumb. It’s not humanly possible to be that dumb.”

“That, and…” Again, Arthur looks away. He rubs nervously at the back of his neck and says, “Dunno if you’ve noticed, but you do happen to be the only person I take along whenever I go wanderin’.”

“Oh,” you say lamely. “I guess… I guess that’s true.”

Looking back through the scattered lens of memory, you suppose you can glimpse it, obliquely. It’s in the thin white scratches on the backs of his hands as he’d helped you disentangle your shirt from a gorse bush. It’s in the thumb-sized ammonite fossil he’d tossed into your lap one afternoon, with the knees of his pants still worn with dry riverbed dust. It’s in his steadfast grip when leading you down the steep, mossy embankments of a mountain river, snickering each time you’d slip, but not once letting you fall. Intimacy like a glancing blow, imbued in the minutiae of everyday life.

Crickets and carrots. Brambles and moss. Quiet courtship spoken through the language of practicality, all of it completely and mutually overlooked.

“Well,” you venture, uncertainly. “What now?”

Arthur lingers a moment in quiet rumination. He seems lost in thought, his eyes distant as he considers you. “Y’know, I never got ‘round to mentionin’ this, but those women in Strawberry did tell me somethin’ interestin’ while you were in that courtyard.”

Your heart plummets like a stone, and you feel as though you’ve been caught in the split second reprieve before getting hit in the head by something heavy. The trajectory of an oncoming projectile whistles cheerily overhead. “What?” you ask.

The set of his mouth is still serious, but his voice is suffused with the brightness of a barely suppressed smirk. “She told me you said somethin’ about me bein’ rough where it matters. Somethin’ about me takin’ whatever I want.”

“Can you put me back in the hot spring. I’d like to be unconscious again.”

Arthur chuckles. “And I was thinkin’,” he continues, a slow smile spreading across his face. “That if I’m gonna keep bein’ Mr Callahan, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to practice gettin’ in character.” He touches two fingers to your chin and nudges you to tilt your face upwards. “Think I’ll start by takin’ what I want,” he murmurs, then dips his head down and presses his lips to yours in an inelegant kiss.

He tastes faintly of champagne— and mint, the mint you’d nagged him into chewing before the soirée. He tastes refined, like everything he is not, because the kiss itself is awkward but earnest, with the mien of someone who, after fumbling for a long time in the dark, has finally found what he’s sought, and is mapping out its form through touch alone.

Only a quick brush of warmth, but the intensity of it steeps rich and full, spills into the brief span of seconds like hours. And when he draws back, his eyes soft but uncertain, you don’t immediately respond, caught as you are in the eddying dip of suspended time.

Arthur murmurs your name, lilts it like a question.

You answer him with your own clumsy efforts. And it is more a crashing of parts than anything else. Contact for the sake of contact, without any of the expectant grace you’d imagined such a union would entail. All those bouts of hopeless yearning and impossible daydreams have piled inside like a mountain of loose stones, and all of it comes cascading down now, with the press of his mouth the impetus for the ensuing landslide. It crashes through in a kinetic burst of explosive force— and perhaps that’s the only way it can be for people like you and him. Individuals so far removed from tenderness that neither knows quite what to do with the other. All subtlety discarded in favor of that which cannot be reasoned away.

Seizing the drenched collar of his shirt with both hands, you kiss him back with such violence that it knocks his coat askew. It slips down your shoulders and onto your lap as a crumpled heap. Arthur’s mouth follows its downward path, shifting off-course from your own to the slope of your neck, to the dip of your sternum, to the swell of your breast. He drags his tongue over your nipple as a wet, broad stripe of warmth, and the scruff of his cheek— faintly stubbled now despite having just coerced him into shaving this morning— scrapes against the soft skin like sandpaper.

You put your hand to the back of his head to keep him there, raking your fingers through his dark blond hair until the stiffness of pomade wears away and it feathers soft over the top of his ears in his usual unruly fashion. The nip of his teeth at your breast, sharp and brief as a pinprick, startles a squeak out of you, then melts into a moan as he licks over the hurt as if in apology, smoothing it over with a kiss and a murmur.

He bears you into the grass and wild clover and descends unto you, skimming his palm down your stomach until he finds your center. With two fingers, he traces the wet seam of your core, then brushes his lips over your throat to taste the vibration of your whimper.

“What’re you–”

“Said I was good with my hands, didn’t you?” With a delicate touch of pressure, he slips a finger in knuckle deep and begins drawing a slow back-and-forth against the softness that yields before him there. “Figured after all that talk, you’d appreciate a demonstration.”

Embarrassment peaks hot through the bloom of pleasure, and you cover your eyes with one hand. “God,” you groan. “I forgot you heard that.”

“Oh, I heard it, alright,” he chuckles. “Been in my head ever since. Whole time we were goin’ through that woman’s things, all I could think about was doin’ this–”

Abruptly, Arthur slips a second finger inside, then curls them both. And at that sudden spike of sensation, you grab at his shoulders through his wet shirt and gasp. “Wanted to sit you on that bed and push those skirts aside, then open you up just like this,” he growls. “And then that dumb little stunt in the woods.” His voice is low and rough, his words marked with the frank crudeness of long-denied admission. “God, I been hard ever since.”

Again and again, his seeking fingers press and withdraw, press and withdraw, and the resulting friction sparks a crackling tension like newborn flame. He’s good at this. He’s unreasonably good at this.

Roughly, he presses his chapped lips to your own. In comparison to the adroitness of his fingers, his kiss is an incongruous thing. Overeager, clumsy in its ardor, as if he’s still a little unsure of himself, of you.

But he’s a man of incongruencies, isn’t he? Flickering between alternate extremes, the man he is in private diametrically opposed to that which he is for the world at large. Gradations of decency and cruelty alike, and the switch is not easy for him by any means, remnants of either trait lingering in the other. Even now, with all of him straining to be gentle, there is a current of that inherent brutality present, a wild urgency that runs sure as blood.

Arthur— obstinate, infuriating Arthur— the wistful figure held constantly on the periphery, distanced just out of arm’s reach, but never more than three paces away— close enough now that you can nearly feel the hammering of his heart where it rests suspended over your own—

He draws out the first warm waves of your orgasm, and your line of consciousness flutters in crests and troughs nearly seismic in nature. It singes bright through your body, burning and burning, and as wood crumbles to the fine grain of ash in the charred wake of fire, so too do you come apart in his hands. Scattered and loose-boned and helplessly diffuse.

After the ringing fade of it finally ebbs and you’ve caught your breath, you gather yourself up again, bit by bit, coalescing again until the present settles back into place. You look him in the eyes and, with a breathless, exhilarated smile stretching across your lips, you tell him, “You are entirely too dressed for this.”

“Yeah,” he says. He sits up and works open the top three buttons of his wet shirt, then grabs the hem of the garment and pulls it over his head in one fluid motion. “I reckon you’re right about that.”

Arthur, unlike most men, is not at all diminished when undressed. If anything, the opposite is true. He is broad and finely-muscled, hewn from a mixture of physical labor and violence, simple field work and the difficult task of breaking apart other men. Yet still a leanness, a taper in his waist that reminds you of a dangerous animal that has been fed too seldom. And overlaying it all, a veritable map of scars. The trailing echo of what his line of work reaps: an accumulative record of gunshots and knives and broken bones acquired over a span of decades. All storied in his skin.

Some you know well. A silvery streak of a grazed bullet from a heist in Colorado. The peppering of scuffs emblematic of a spray of shrapnel. And, tapering from his right hip, the mark of your acquaintance. A jagged line that thins like the trailing tail of a comet where it bites up to his lower rib.

The others, you’ll learn in time.

He pulls the leather strip of his belt through its metal buckle so fast that the leather hisses as it slithers across its own ouroboros’d loop. And when he unbuttons his fly and takes himself in hand, an offhand comment you’d made during the soiree floats through your head.

“As you can see, he’s certainly more… substantial than other men.”

Well. You’ve always enjoyed a good challenge.

He swipes the head of his cock back and forth along your slit to coat it with your slick, and the blunt sweep of arousal that it spurs sends an anticipatory shiver up your spine. “You gotta let me know if it’s too much,” he says. Sternly, with the same tone of admonishment he’d used while holding his canteen to your mouth. “You hear me? ‘Cause you’re always—”

“Will you please just hurry up,” you whine.

“See, this is why you never win at dominos,” he scolds. “Not a lick of forethought in you.”

Before you can point out that the reason you never win at dominos is because he obviously cheats, he guides himself inside, and the rebuke fades away in the raw, sweet scrape of warmth that follows. And he seems nearly dazed by his own pleasure, pausing at the halfway mark to draw in a deep, shuddering gasp as he stares down at the join of your bodies, meeting your eyes with such a guileless look of wonder that it nearly hurts to behold. With one arm braced against the ground to keep the full brunt of his weight away, he brushes your hair out of your face and presses an absurdly chaste kiss to your forehead.

He’s almost too gentle at first, stroking in and out with measured thrusts, his shoulders rigid with the force of restraint. Self control, at least in this arena, is something he’s practiced for so long that it’s harder to let it go than not. But he eases into a slow continuum of force, picking up confidence as he enters a smooth, easy progression from lovemaking to outright carnality. Fucking, with all the simultaneous tenderness and vulgarity that the act entails.

Each hard thrust is a confirmation of his want. A firm reassurance in the blurred ache of it with all the weight of unspoken confession. His hips clash against yours over and over, and it is jarring each time in the best way possible. And you hope to god that it bruises, that his hands on your skin leave behind a fading record of violet so that you have only to press against that faint burst of color to have the throb of it prove incontrivertibly that he was here.

He grits out your name in a tight, strained voice and looks like he wants to say something more, loose some desperate sentiment that’s been bubbling inside him for far too long, but he either can’t find the words or the volition to do so. Instead he frustratedly shakes his head and tightens his grip on your pelvis, He presses his thumb hard against the inner curve of your hipbone until the pleasure-dulled pang of it makes you cry out, and fucks you almost as if angry. Hard and slow, with that same simmer of intensity, but sans its requisite ire.

When he lowers his mouth to your shoulder and bites down, the branching jolt of pain resounds like a chord all the way down to your heart, to your core with an inward sweep of arousal. Clutching at him, you arch your back off the ground and keen.

“Fuck,” he hisses. He sounds nearly pained with the intensity of it all. His hand seeks out your clit again, and he rubs his thumb over it in tight arcs as he bites down again— your neck this time, the ring of his teeth like a brand, a circlet writ with bruises like ink to mark his possession. And you come hard, with a violent twinge that flares blunt and sharp all at once. Arthur fucks you through to the conclusion of your orgasm with his jaw clenched tight, staring at you as though everything outside of the immediate has been shoved aside for just this, and in that look is an underlying loneliness signifying that this is satisfying for him on a level far beyond mere physicality.

A full body tremor ripples through him. Abruptly, he pulls out and frantically strokes himself, groaning, grimacing as he spills his seed over your torso. It spatters hot against your skin in wet streaks spanning from your navel to your throat. And when he finishes, he heaves out a shuddering sigh and collapses next to you in the grass, panting hard and drained in the fullest sense of the word.

For a little while, you both lie still and supine, staring up at the sky. The quiet lap of riverwater over the rocks and along the shore plays through the silence, and when you turn your head towards him, you find that he’s already watching you, his eyes half-lidded and his mouth drawn up in a crooked smile. “You alright?” he asks.

You return his smile with a weak laugh. “I don’t think I can get up.”

“Gimme a second and I’ll fix that.” Arthur wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, then braces his arm against the ground and laboriously hauls himself into a sitting position. He starts working himself out of the wet trousers he’d neglected to remove in his mad rush to intercourse.

“Why’re you getting undressed now?” you ask.

“We’re gonna take a quick dip in the river.” He tosses his discarded pants on top of his crumpled shirt.

“… We?”

“Yeah. You’re comin’ too.” He kneels beside you and, hooking one arm behind your shoulders and another behind your knees, sweeps you into his arms in much the same manner he had that dark hotel room back in Strawberry. You yelp and throw your arms around his neck to keep your balance, then make a face as the cooling drip of his come drips down your skin.

As he walks to the river, Arthur asks, “You gonna scream like that every time I pick you up?”

Every time. The words makes your heart race. “Probably,” you reply, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. “Though not if you—”

You realize suddenly that he isn’t heading towards the walled-off pool. No. He’s heading towards the unsectioned part of the river. The cold part of the river. “Wait, no,” you say, trying to wriggle out of his arms. “No, no, no, what the hell’re you doing.”

He holds you firm, and he huffs like he’s trying not to laugh, the bastard. The water is nearly up to his waist. You cringe away from it as though it were acid. “If you drop me here, I’ll—”

“You want me to drop you here?” he asks innocently.

“No, I don’t! Don’t do it, don’t— oh my god, fuck you—”

With a loud splash, he lets you fall. And you immediately scramble to your feet when you hit that cold water, sputtering from the chill of it and clutching at yourself, shivering.

“See?” he says. He’s snickering, and you’ve seen anything more reprehensible in your life. “You can get up just fine.”

You furiously shove at his chest with both hands, but it’s like running at a brick wall, not only useless but counterproductive, because he responds by wrapping his arms around you like a vise. You writhe against him, struggling to free yourself so that you might escape to the refuge of the pool. “What’s wrong?” he asks. “You seemed alright with this a minute ago.”

“I thought you were going to the hot spring, you dumb bastard.”

“Oh, so you wanted us both to pass out in there. That your idea of romance? Drowning in the same pool?”

You snarl, “Is this your idea of romance? Having us both freeze to death in meltwater?”

“Hey, shhh… calm down. It’s okay.” He soothes, kissing the top of your head. The lure of affection dampens your ire to nothing but a vague smolder, and you lift your chin to allow him to press his mouth to yours. Your wriggling attenuates until it shifts instead to a reluctant embrace.

Then he ruins the whole thing by murmuring, “Huh, if I’d have known kissing’d make you this obedient…”

“Divorce,” you say flatly. “We are getting a divorce.”

“Let go, then.”

You stand there silently for a few seconds, not moving, balancing pride against comfort. The latter wins out, eventually. Burying your face against his chest, you say in a muffled voice, “I hate you so goddamn much.”

“Sounds like the basis for any good marriage,” he says. When you flick your eyes upwards to glare at him, you find that he’s wearing a smile so soft that it makes your throat tighten. You duck back down, heart pounding hard.

Very sweetly, he asks whether you’re still considering divorce.

“I haven’t ruled it out completely,” you reply sullenly.

[Part 4]

“What just—”

“I did?”

“Sure did, dumbass. Can you sit up?”

“How’re you feeling?” he asks. “Still dizzy? Nauseous?”

“Deeply suicidal,” you reply, clutching his jacket to your chest with both hands to hold it in place.

“Well, that’s too bad, then,” he lifts his canteen to your lips. “Need you alive at least long enough to help me offload all that cutlery you stole. C’mon, drink.”

“Hm?”

“This is my last night being Mrs Callahan,” you say plainly. “So let me savor it a little longer.”

He sits back down. Arthur stares at you with the abject confusion of a man who’s just been sentenced to death by wild geese. “What’re you talking about?”

“You’re tired of it, right? Being the nouveau riche husband? From now on you can be… I dunno, the valet. Or the guard. I’ll think of something.”

“You think I…” Arthur’s voice is thick with disbelief. He shakes his head slowly, as though dazed. “You think I’m tired of pretending to be your husband?”

You stare back at him, just as lost. “Yes?”

“But you’re always shit at poker,” you point out, frowning.

Arthur is seemingly still unduly fascinated by grass. “Yeah. You.”

“But I… I…” Bewilderment gives way to simmering, helpless rage. What the fuck. What the FUCK. “Why didn’t you say anything? I’ve been flirting with you for months!”

“Why else do you think I was constantly catching you all those crickets to use as bait, and bringing you carrots for Athena, and–”

“Hold on,” he interrupts. The corner of his mouth is twitching. “That’s your idea of flirting? Crickets and carrots?”

Presented this way, it does seem rather stupid. In a tiny, uncertain voice, you say, “Yes.”

“I hate catching crickets,” you reply unhappily. “I feel sorry for them.”

You stare at your knees, “I think I’m going to cry.”

“Aw, honey, no.” Arthur puts his arm back around you and squeezes your shoulders. His voice is shaky with mirth. “Don’t do that.”

He strokes the slope of your shoulder with his thumb. “At least…” Arthur chokes down a laugh. “At least the crickets are okay.”

A brief moment of silence passes as you contemplate this. “I guess,” you say begrudgingly. The words come out muffled against his jacket.

“Yeah, well.” He has the decency to look a little embarrassed. “I didn’t want to come on too strong.”

“You can’t be that dumb. It’s not humanly possible to be that dumb.”

“Oh,” you say lamely. “I guess… I guess that’s true.”

Crickets and carrots. Brambles and moss. Quiet courtship spoken through the language of practicality, all of it completely and mutually overlooked.

“Well,” you venture, uncertainly. “What now?”

“Can you put me back in the hot spring. I’d like to be unconscious again.”

Arthur murmurs your name, lilts it like a question.

“What’re you–”

Embarrassment peaks hot through the bloom of pleasure, and you cover your eyes with one hand. “God,” you groan. “I forgot you heard that.”

“Oh, I heard it, alright,” he chuckles. “Been in my head ever since. Whole time we were goin’ through that woman’s things, all I could think about was doin’ this–”

The others, you’ll learn in time.

“As you can see, he’s certainly more… substantial than other men.”

Well. You’ve always enjoyed a good challenge.

“Will you please just hurry up,” you whine.

“See, this is why you never win at dominos,” he scolds. “Not a lick of forethought in you.”

You return his smile with a weak laugh. “I don’t think I can get up.”

“Why’re you getting undressed now?” you ask.

“We’re gonna take a quick dip in the river.” He tosses his discarded pants on top of his crumpled shirt.

“… We?”

As he walks to the river, Arthur asks, “You gonna scream like that every time I pick you up?”

Every time. The words makes your heart race. “Probably,” you reply, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. “Though not if you—”

He holds you firm, and he huffs like he’s trying not to laugh, the bastard. The water is nearly up to his waist. You cringe away from it as though it were acid. “If you drop me here, I’ll—”

“You want me to drop you here?” he asks innocently.

“No, I don’t! Don’t do it, don’t— oh my god, fuck you—”

With a loud splash, he lets you fall. And you immediately scramble to your feet when you hit that cold water, sputtering from the chill of it and clutching at yourself, shivering.

“See?” he says. He’s snickering, and you’ve seen anything more reprehensible in your life. “You can get up just fine.”

“I thought you were going to the hot spring, you dumb bastard.”

“Oh, so you wanted us both to pass out in there. That your idea of romance? Drowning in the same pool?”

You snarl, “Is this your idea of romance? Having us both freeze to death in meltwater?”

Then he ruins the whole thing by murmuring, “Huh, if I’d have known kissing’d make you this obedient…”

“Divorce,” you say flatly. “We are getting a divorce.”

“Let go, then.”

Very sweetly, he asks whether you’re still considering divorce.

“I haven’t ruled it out completely,” you reply sullenly.

Later, after you’ve both changed into the dry set of spare clothes worn while riding to Strawberry, he claps you on the shoulder as he leads you towards the horses. “Well, Mrs Callahan,” he says, and that phrase has a different ring to it now when he utters it, weighed by an element of legitimacy. The lie spinning to truth like straw to gold. “Let’s go home.”

“I haven’t ruled it out completely,” you reply sullenly.

#arthur morgan #arthur morgan/reader #arthur morgan/oc #fic #my work #merits of manhandling #posting this now bc i have agonizing over it in drafts for far too long

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