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havealotonmymind · 3 months

Text

Fears

Summary: Drunk after another fresh victory, the party discusses their silliest fears with one another. When Astarion chooses to abstain, Leviathala (OC) grows ever curious as to why.

Rating: T

Category: Astarion/Original Female Character(s), Astarion/Tav, Astarion & Gale & Karlach & Lae'zel & Shadowheart & Tav & Wyll (Friendship)

Additional Tags:

Party Banter, Alcohol, Developing Friendships, Astarion Being Astarion, Developing Relationship, Blood Drinking, Sexual Tension, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Feelings Realization, Asexuality Spectrum, Named Tav, Tiefling Tav, Fighter Tav

Also available on AO3!

This was partially inspired by that moment in Act 3 when you try to send Astarion up to the circus stage and he gets upset. I just thought it was funny and it led me to wonder what other silly things the main companions might be scared of. Or at least intensely dislike.

Then it devolved (or evolved depending on how you look at it) into Astarion/Lev shenanigans lol. I think of this as a prelude to the first night they spent in the woods ;)

“Needles,” Gale said after taking a long swig of wine. “I don’t like needles. They make me feel, er…well, squeamish gives the impression of a worm. Uncomfortable, I suppose.”

Wyll couldn’t help but laugh. “You’ve faced down an entire goblin army with all manner of blades pointed at you. I’m surprised you’d shy away from the mere prick of a needle.”

Settling by the campfire after dinner had become their party’s unspoken tradition for the past tenday or so. Those first few distant nights had been tough. After all, how could anyone find pleasure in leisure with a mindflayer tadpole swimming around their brain?

When it was clear that they wouldn’t transform into monsters right away, however, that nervous energy died down, instead replaced by the kind of camaraderie brought on by good spirits and fine stories. Tonight, after many cups of wine and ale passed around, their group dared each other to reveal the silliest fears they had.

Gale frowned. “All right, well, what’s your silliest fear then? I’m sure everyone along the Sword Coast would want to know what could possibly terrify the famed Blade of Frontiers.”

“I’m sure there are some people who would like to know. Enemies, mostly, though I suppose I can make an exception for close friends.” Wyll poured himself another glass of ale. “I was raised to always be vigilant. A Duke’s son is susceptible to plenty of kidnapping and assassination attempts, after all. I became quite good at spotting would-be attackers hidden in crowds or up in rafters. Adroit as some of them thought they were, one good arrow to the chest stopped them cold.”

“I hesitate to ask, but how many such attempts have you or your father endured? It sounds awful,” Leviathala piped up. Her navy blue tail swished lazily back and forth in the dirt behind her.

“I’ve dealt with a fair handful before I became the Blade. I imagine my father faced even more so, given his travels. He used to tell me stories about roaming gangs of petty bandits he felled while on the Risen Road.”

“He may have embellished those a tad,” Shadowheart said. “Just to make sure he didn’t scare you.”

“Perhaps,” Wyll relented. “But it wasn’t the stories of bandits or monsters that scared me. As a child, I knew that there were always things I couldn’t control. Sometimes, whenever my father went off on some diplomatic trip, I worried that his caravan might overturn and tumble down a steep cliff or a bad storm would tip his ships. Bandits and monsters I believed wholeheartedly he could best, but a spot of bad luck? How could you fight against fate?”

“That’s hardly silly,” Karlach pointed out, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees. “I think every kid worries about their parents to some degree. Surely you’ve something a little sillier than that.”

He shrugged. “Sorry, that’s the best I have as far as silly fears go.”

“Man, your definition of silly needs some work,” Karlach said. “How are we supposed to laugh at that?”

“I thought the point of telling you all this was not to laugh.”

“I meant on the inside. I can stick to a promise no matter how drunk I get.”

“Well, what silly thing are you afraid of, then?” Wyll asked with an amused smile. Despite his heroic mien, he did have a bit of a mischievous streak to him.

Karlach rolled her shoulders and assumed a faux boxing stance. “Right, rough and tumble kid from the Lower City. You’d think I’d be pretty fearless, right? I thought so, too. Thought there was nothing I couldn’t beat down. Petty bullies, underbelly criminals, hell, even monsters.”

“You are much the same now,” Lae’zel pointed out.

“Yeah, but back then, I was afraid of something pretty silly in hindsight.” Her bravado dimmed just a tad. “I guess it’s kinda like Wyll’s fear, in a way. I was scared of thunderstorms. The really big ones with winds that felt like they could rip the roof right off your house. Thought they would just up and whisk me away from home.”

A far-off look passed over her face. Who knew that would come true in one way or another for her? Leviathala passed her the bottle of red wine they’d all been sharing for the past half hour without a word.

Karlach took a few long sips. “I stopped being scared of that a long time ago, though. I mean, thunder’s just all noise, right? No offense to the weather, but it’s gonna have to try a little harder to take me away from all this now. I really like all of you, you know?”

“Chk!” Lae’zel turned her nose up at the campfire. “I knew the beings on this Plane were weak, but I did not expect them to be this soft-hearted. I expect none of you would last more than a day in crèche K'liir.”

Shadowheart rolled her eyes. “Oh, and are you going to say you fear nothing?”

“A githyanki who would give in to fear is not worthy of serving Vlaakith.”

“What about when you were a child?” Gale asked before the two could break into another petty fight. “Surely even then, you must have had some irrational fear of the dark or monsters.”

At least Lae’zel seemed to ponder the question this time. “Githyanki do not tolerate any expressions of weakness. Like any young gith in-training, I wanted to prove myself above fear. But there was one creature on this Plane that I feared beyond all reason. Its body is pure muscle, strong enough to crush its prey if you were unlucky enough to find yourself in its grasp. Even a drop of its venom is said to paralyze you so you could do nothing but watch yourself be eaten. And yet, for all its prowess, it deigns to slither unassumingly along the ground.” She scowled as though the description alone was enough to make her sick. “For a creature to crawl so low and to strike so quickly…it disgusts me to this day.”

“Wait, so what were you scared of? Worms?” Karlach asked.

Leviathala snorted. “Snakes, I believe.”

“Funny, considering you look like one,” Shadowheart sniped.

Lae’zel’s eyes flashed with rage. “I suppose you are lucky I choose not to strike you down, then.”

“Do you expect me to thank you for staying your hand, gith?”

“I expect istik to be worms beneath my boot. And my time here has only proven me right.”

“Hang on, we all haven’t shared yet. You might find something worthy of fearing among us yet,” Wyll piped up from over his cup of ale. Ever the mediator. He nodded at Shadowheart. “And you, Shadowheart? Any silly fears we ought to know about?”

Her face fell. “I can’t remember.”

When everyone started to groan, she added, “It’s true! Perhaps there was something long ago I feared that’s just out of reach. Maybe if I faced it again, I would no longer be afraid of it.”

Leviathala threw her a look. Fearing wolves might not be deemed entirely silly, but it was something to tell the group at least. Especially when they were still camping out in the wilds.

Still, Shadowheart had divulged that information to her in confidence. No need to push the matter if she didn’t trust it to the others quite yet.

“Astarion, are you planning on joining us?” Gale called out over his shoulder. No manner of coaxing had successfully drawn him to their fire. Not yet, at least. It was still a courtesy they extended to him regardless.

Once everyone glanced back at his tent, Astarion’s mouth curled into a sneer. “And wantonly reveal my weaknesses just like that? No, thank you.”

“All right, killjoy.” Karlach passed the bottle back to Leviathala. “Go on then, Lev. What about you?”

Leviathala slung the bottle to her lips. “All your fears have been rather sensible so far,” she said. “But you might laugh at mine.”

“Aw, come on, we swore not to at the start of all this, didn’t we?”

“That we did, but Wyll still laughed at my discomfort with needles,” Gale said.

Wyll looked affronted. “I wasn’t prepared for it. But I do apologize. It wasn’t fair of me.”

Gale smiled and he bowed his head. “Apology accepted. I appreciate your candor, your grace.”

“All right, no need for grand titles,” Wyll grumbled, brushing him off. He gestured at Leviathala to continue. “Go on. Before anyone else starts calling me Lord or some other ridiculous thing.”

“As you wish, my Lord.” Leviathala made a show of bowing theatrically low and the others snickered.

“Walked into that one…” He knocked back the rest of his ale in a few gulps.

“Leviathala.” Her name rolled slowly over her tongue. “Named after a deadly creature known as the leviathan.”

“A rather fitting name for one as vicious as yourself.” From anyone but Lae’zel, it would have sounded like a sarcastic jab.

Lev tried not to preen at the compliment. “I must have been, oh, four or five when I asked my parents what my name meant. They handed me some monster guide or other. I don’t remember. All I do remember is trying to find the creature I was named after. When I saw it was a many-tentacled sea beast as big as the Gate itself, I think I started crying. I couldn’t help but imagine the leviathan learning of me somehow and hunting me down for stealing its name. I refused to go near any banks of water for weeks. Even now, getting on boats makes me queasy.”

A sharp burst of laughter behind her almost made her jump. Leviathala turned, stunned to find Astarion doubled over with a genuine smile on his face.

“Being afraid of your namesake is such delicious irony,” he said. “I imagine your parents must have been devastated when they found out.”

Karlach frowned at him. “Hey, we all promised not to laugh! Don’t be rude.”

“I promised no such thing. And besides, you can’t fault me for finding that funny.”

“Her parents are gonna be sad to hear that, y’know.”

“No, no, they found it as funny as Astarion did,” Lev said as she waved them off. “Which is why I rarely ever tell people unless you manage to get me drunk.”

Karlach glanced between him and Leviathala for a moment then gave an unsubtle grin. “Hey, Astarion, I have a question for you.”

“If it’s some roundabout way of asking me what ridiculous thing I fear, I’ll have to abstain.”

“Nah, nah, nothing like that.” She gestured at Lev. “You’ve been feeding on Lev’s blood for the past…I don’t know how long before I got here. If you drank her blood now, would you get drunk, too?”

Both Shadowheart and Gale, absolutely blasted off their minds on wine, failed to hide their laughter.

“That’s…a rather interesting question, actually. I suppose we’ll have to see tonight, won’t we?” Astarion flashed them all a toothy smile that showed off his fangs.

“Karlach, I’m not letting him drink my blood right now,” Lev said.

“Aw, come on! I wanna know!” She tipped violently as she made another grab for the bottle Lev still hoarded.

Leviathala kept it out of reach with a smile. “I think you’ve had a bit too much to drink.”

Karlach managed to right herself again. “No, ‘m fine! ‘s all fine. Just a bit…dizzy.”

A quick glance around revealed pretty much everyone was veering on positively drunk. It was harder to tell with Lae’zel’s stoic stance, but even from this distance, Lev could see the flush in her cheeks.

She pushed the cork back over the bottle of wine. “All right, that’s enough for one night. We still have more adventuring to do tomorrow. I’d rather we all not venture forth with hangovers.”

“Aw, come on!” Karlach whined. “I could do with a nightcap.”

“Drink some water, Karlach. I mean it.”

Karlach threw her hands in the air but headed off to her tent regardless. “Gods, okay, mum.”

“Don’t make me ground you, young lady,” Lev teased.

Their little group dispersed off to their own tents, some wobbling more than others. Leviathala’s gaze roamed over their camp, finally settling on Astarion’s tent. He still stood off to the side, eyes locked on yet another novel she picked up from the goblin camp. She recognized the cover: a faded copy of Journey of the Jungle with an equally dusty book ribbon.

Leviathala tried not to smile. Her tent was filling up with tiny stacks of books she’d taken from all the places they’d been. That particular copy of Journey of the Jungle had been at the top of her Finished pile. She had meant to put those all away in the Traveler’s Chest or sell them once she had the chance. Glad to see this book got at least one more use before then.

She drifted to him, trying not to trip over her own feet on the way there.

“I’m not apologizing, you know,” he said without even looking up.

She frowned. “For what?”

“Laughing at you.”

At this, she couldn’t help but scoff. “I’m not that fragile. Laugh away. I’ll find out what your silliest fear is yet. Mark my words.”

“Is that why you’re here?” The question was brusque, but not altogether unwelcoming of her presence.

“I’m not prying it out of you, if that’s what you’re wondering. Where’s the fun in that?”

“Then go bother someone else. You’re in my light.” His eyes flickered up to her. “Unless you want me to test out what Karlach asked.”

“I am a bit curious, I won’t lie,” she said. “But I’ll try to drink a lot more water before I sleep tonight. Hopefully flush the alcohol out a bit.”

“My dear, you act as though I’m a lightweight. I can handle myself, don’t you worry.”

Leviathala hid a laugh behind her hand. “I won’t forget when you came back to camp drunk from bear blood. I don’t think the bear was indulging in spirits that night.”

He allowed himself the barest smile in return. “I’ve never had the blood of a creature that large before. It was quite the experience. Though, not as heady a tonic as your delicious blood, darling.”

“Spare me the flattery. I’m not sober enough to appreciate it.”

Astarion’s smile grew just a little wider. “Oh? I seem to recall you telling me to curb the compliments. Who knew you were hiding how you truly felt?”

“It’s not as if you mean most of them, anyway.” This was not a jab, but rather spoken as fact. As blue as the sky and as dark as the night, Astarion was a liar through and through. “But you make me laugh and that’s enough. I think anything concerning my blood is the only honest compliment you’ve given me.”

He smirked. “Hard to lie about the very source of life sustaining me.”

“Surely the animals you feed on are more filling. My blood can’t be more than a sip in comparison to the gallons at your disposal.”

“Are you telling me to stop drinking your blood?” Astarion asked, pouting. “I have grown rather fond of the taste, you know.”

“And how does it taste to you?” Leviathala leaned in just a little closer than she normally would. “I am morbidly curious. Is it sweet? Tart? Do different blood types have different tastes, I wonder?”

He laughed again, a high, breathy sound that made her feel warm. “Gods, you are a chatty drunk.”

“Is that bad?”

That stubbornly still-sober part that navigated her inhibitions and insecurities tutted at her. Yes, of course that’s bad. Stay quiet. Stay vigilant.

The alcohol dulled that nagging voice, and for once, she saw fit to ignore it.

Astarion shut the book and tossed it inside his tent. “Not necessarily. You’re a rather fun person when you aren’t snapping at me or being sickeningly helpful.”

“I consider this nightly ritual of ours a good deed in its own way. What’s a pint of blood when it lets you down our enemies in a single strike?” she said breezily.

“Careful, darling. If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost think that was a compliment.”

Lev smiled despite herself. “Then I had better sober up fast. I wouldn’t want the alcohol to reflect on your performance tomorrow.”

“Oh please. The miniscule amount of alcohol seeped into your blood isn’t going to have any effect on me whatsoever.”

“Care to test that theory?”

After nights of sleeping through his late-night feeding, Lev hadn’t noticed any lingering pain or marks left behind. Just a general wooziness that went away as soon as she cast Lesser Restoration on herself. Surely he’d figured out some gentler bloodletting method that wouldn’t hurt as much as that first night.

“What, now?” he asked incredulously. “You wouldn’t rather wait until you were asleep first?”

She plopped onto the plush stool right by his mirror. “If I fell asleep now, I wouldn’t get to see how the alcohol affects you, if at all. Besides, I’m drunk. I don’t know if I’d feel your bite.”

“Really? Been bitten enough to tell the difference?” he teased.

“I trust you not to hurt me.”

At this, Astarion faltered. A bold claim indeed.

Leviathala tilted her head, baring her neck expectantly. “Well, go on then.”

This was neither dare nor command. It was simply one last thing to check off her list for the day, as routine as changing into sleeping clothes or putting seed oil on her spire-like horns before bed.

“Very well. Since you’re so insistent about it, how could I say no?”

His hands fell heavily on her shoulders to secure her in place. He was a lot stronger than she thought. Lev dipped her head, suddenly shy despite her earlier openness.

“You need to look up, darling,” he said with a faint smile like he could guess at her thoughts. “I can’t get a good bite in with your chin tucked like that.”

Leviathala took a deep breath and offered her neck to him once more. She fixed her gaze on the campfire, watching as the flames darted this way and that. A shoddy distraction. She could still spot Astarion closing in out of the corner of her eye.

His breath was like a chilly night breeze, welcome in the humidity of the oncoming summer nights. She squeezed her eyes shut the moment that he bit down. The alcohol did little to dull the numbing pain coursing through her. It wasn’t unpleasant, but that didn’t stop her from wincing anyway.

Her nails dug into the wood of the stool, more a reflex than any expression of pain, but she didn’t stop him. For all his playful lies and half-truths, she knew she could trust his restraint.

His slim fingers slid up the back of her neck to tangle in the soft wisps of her hair. Oddly enough, it almost felt…nice. Gentle. Gods, she must have been drunker than she thought.

Leviathala grunted in surprise when he wrapped an arm around her back, tugging her forth. The motion made her arch into him and she tried not to squirm. He hadn’t done this the very first night he bit her. There was a new hunger here.

Her breath caught when his lips trailed after a stray drop of blood. Feather-light and barely there, an unwitting kiss to her collarbone to collect it at last. As Astarion traced his way back slowly, so enticingly slow, up her neck once more, Leviathala had to bite back a gasp. Every nerve was alight, her chest tight, breath quickening to compensate.

And just like that, he broke away with a satisfied sigh. The warmth of it, made only so by her blood, was an odd contrast to his cold, firm hands still set on her trembling shoulders.

His eyes shone brighter, almost glowing even in the dim firelight. “Mm…It does taste different. Sweeter. Although I don’t suppose you’d indulge in spirits every night just to satisfy me.”

Her mind was still a riot of lingering sensations. She could think of nothing witty to say. Or indeed, anything at all after that.

Instead, she dug her nails deeper into the stool, trying to reaffirm that this was real and she was as solid as anything else around her. To say that hadn’t thrilled her would be a lie, but it also overwhelmed her more than she was prepared for.

Leviathala fixated on a dark mark on his pale skin. There, that errant drop along the edge of his lips. The traitorous stray that caused this havoc in her mind.

She swallowed hard and said, “You’ve got some on your mouth still.”

The slow flick of his tongue along his lips gave her pause. This close, it was easy to study every detail of his pretty face. The thick lashes, dark eyes half-lidded and burning into her, sharp, clean jaw…

Leviathala’s eyes fell to his soft, bloody lips. Her blood. She would only have to tilt her head up just so and…

“Gone?” Astarion asked, sounding breathless. Ravenous. He wanted more.

Was that why he hadn’t moved away yet?

Gods, he was making it so hard to think.

“N-No, it’s…Here, I’ll get it.” Leviathala reached out to absently swipe at the corner of his mouth with her sleeve. She had to scrub the reminder from existence.

Quicker than she could react, he had a firm grip on her wrist. “Don’t touch me.”

A hint of rage and something else flashed in his eyes. Fear, she realized.

So many things clicked into place in that instant. His casual cruelties, why he always opted out of any group activities at camp…

Touch was a very loaded sense. Most times, Leviathala thought she might crave it. For someone to hug her when she was lonely or to physically reach out as a show of support. Whenever anyone did, however, some deep, primordial part of her recoiled. It was so strange to crave something so commonplace and yet loathe its very presence.

She was trying her hardest to get over it. She would hug her friends, her family. Even then, that stiffness never left her. Somewhere inside her, she feared she would never overcome that.

And now she saw that same revulsion echoed in Astarion. Funny how such a kinship could finally put her unquiet mind at ease.

Her hand went limp immediately. “I’m sorry. I’m—”

“Not thinking. Yes, I know. Clearly.” He let her go with a disgusted sigh.

Lev opened her mouth to apologize again then faltered. It would only anger him more, she was sure.

“You don’t feel anything, then?” she asked instead.

His gaze turned sharp. “What?”

“My blood. The alcohol. Nothing?”

At this, he visibly relaxed. “O-Oh, right. No. Nothing.”

“Shame. It would’ve been funny to see you tipsy again.” Lev leaned back with a sigh. Parts of her felt like they were floating away. Maybe it wasn’t such a good decision to drink herself silly and let a vampire drain her on the very same night.

“And while it is very entertaining to see you tipsy, I was almost finished reading that dreadful novel,” he said as he stooped down to retrieve it. “So do take care to pass out somewhere else for the night.”

Leviathala made a big show of rolling her eyes. “Fine, I’ll get out of your hair. You’re welcome for the blood, by the way.”

“Oh, um…thank you,” he said haltingly. “I do mean that, you know.”

“I do know.” The rest of the tension in her shoulders crumbled away at last. Those rare moments he showed humility were endearing.

As she began to head off to her tent, a sudden thought occurred to her. Perhaps it was stupid to worry over a simple misunderstanding, but it was better to be clear than let any discomfort linger.

“I won’t touch you without your permission again.”

She said it aloud without turning to look back at him. His silence needled into her spine, twisting as painfully as any dagger would. She clasped her hands behind her back to give an air of casual indifference. Her tail swinging nervously to and fro still gave it all away.

“Funny, I seem to recall you being cursed to put your hands on everything.”

A cracked note of amusement forced itself through. His own strained attempt at brushing the matter over.

She smirked. “I’m being serious. Don’t tease me.”

“If only you weren’t so fun to tease.”

Leviathala chuckled as she absently rubbed the sore spot on her neck. There wasn’t a speck of blood when she drew it back. Impressive. Maybe vampires had coagulant in their saliva. Or Astarion was just very careful.

It dawned on her that perhaps he had already worked out the cleanest way to feed from her these past few nights. Another part of her wondered how gently his lips might stray over her entire body should she allow it.

She shook her head. Best not to pick at that loose thread yet.

“Clowns.”

Leviathala glanced over her shoulder at him. “I’m sorry?”

He kept his eyes fixed pointedly away. “My silliest fear. I’ve never been very fond of…clowns.”

Even as out of it as she was, she could tell this had taken a great deal of internal debate to admit. It was a surprise he’d even tell her at all.

The growing silence made him shift on his feet. “Don’t tell the others.”

“I won’t. I promise.” The answer was immediate. Instinctive. Astarion’s trust was a fragile thing. She would not tarnish it by spilling a fragment of a secret, no matter how silly it was. She spread her arms out wide. “Although it’s very possible I’ll simply forget it in the morning. Who knows?”

Astarion smiled. “Oh, I count on it. Why else would I admit my darkest secrets to a drunkard?”

“Come now, I don’t drink very often. This is a fluke.”

“What a shame. I rather like this more open side of you. You’re very cheeky without it being grating.”

A warm swell of pride filled her whole being. “I’ll try to be more open when I’m sober then.”

He snorted. “Sure. I’ll look forward to that.”

“Good night, Astarion.”

“Do try not to dream of krakens tonight.”

“Ha ha,” she said sarcastically. “I’ll trust you won’t dream of circuses, then.”

“It’s far too late for that. I’m already traveling with one.”

“Says the main clown.”

Their laughter mingled in the air between them. It helped to bridge the gap like an outstretched hand. A silent offer of true companionship laid hidden in his sharp-toothed grin.

Lev clasped her hands behind her back, her tail swishing happily behind her. “Good night.”

“Good night, darling.”

She shuffled back with a dopey smile stretched across her face before turning away again.

If she was more sober, she might have dodged the warm thoughts swirling around her mind. As it was, indulging in them now didn’t seem so bad.

There was no denying that Astarion was handsome. Beautiful, a bolder part of her insisted. He made her laugh. He paid attention to what she said, remembered small details she mentioned only in passing. And the way he stared at her…

Well, it was enough for any tipsy heart to hope. To feel safe enough to fall for him.

It was the alcohol and blood loss talking, she was sure. All this would disappear in the morning. Leviathala fell against her bedroll with a content sigh and drifted off almost immediately.

It was a horrifying thing to open her eyes and realize that every single floaty, drunken thought still rang true in the morning. The moment she met Astarion’s eyes across the campfire, he smiled knowingly, letting his gaze linger just a little longer than normal.

Did he know? Had he known all along?

Leviathala averted her gaze, face burning and absolutely mortified.

Shit.

#Baldur's Gate 3 #BG3 #Astarion #Astarion x Tav #I Feel Seen (Astarion/Leviathala)#Keep a Blade Close (Astarion)#The Wayward Tactician (Leviathala)#my fanfiction #The Hero and Me (Promotion)

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attn-all-pickpockets · 1 year

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top 5 txf episodes

I loved this prompt but also it was very hardddd, I mostly chose ones that I never shut up about lmao

"Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose"

This is my girl, this is my ride or die. I was in the Northeast when the first category 1 hurricane hit in like 50 years and I had to drive through the outer bands in a rental car with a spare tire on it and when we got home I made everyone watch this because it's my comfort episode that accompanies me through moments of triumph as well as crisis. Scully befriending the depressed old man psychic is such a great storyline for Scully and this whole ep really lets her shine. Scully has such a kindness and playfulness that she typically only shows with Mulder, but her fondness for the deadpan comedy stylings of Bruckman made her fond of him and her heartbreak when he dies is such a perfect scene. Also I just think of her smile and "there are hits and there are misses, and then there are misses :)" a lot.

2. "Leonard Betts"

If someone asked me what is the episode of The X Files that feels like the quintessential episode, I would say "Leonard Betts", which I think some would think as a weird choice. But this episode is what this show was at the height of its popularity to me. It aired after the Superbowl and the cold open is one of its best with a beheading, followed by the corpse waltzing right out of the morgue. The banter between Mulder and Scully is top notch and full of perfect Mulder quips ("blinked or winked?") and incredulous Scully deliveries ("Mulder, they're worms") and even if the scientific explanation of "evolutionary cancer" is deeply ludicrous from a scientific perspective, it is a great x-file. And the ENDING of finding out Scully has cancer is such a gut punch, just a phenomenal hour of tv.

3. "Paper Clip"

This is on here because I love the Anasazi/The Blessing Way/Paper Clip trilogy so much and I have to shout it out. I will always cape for early mythology because I think the fact that became a muddled mess makes people forget how damn good it was to begin with. So much of the early character work was done in these episodes and they're so compelling. Bringing in real history with Operation Paper Clip and connecting Mulder's father to the people Mulder is trying to investigate was a great move (that they didn't totally deliver on imo, but "sins of the father" is a great idea at the very least) and expanding the scope and complicity in the conspiracy really put what Mulder and Scully were up against in perspective. Mulder relenting and choosing to go out of hiding for Scully so she could see her sister and their conversation in the hospital room after Melissa died are some of my favorite moments of the show.

4. "Folie a Deux"

It's hard to pick a Vince episode and this could just as easily be "Pusher" (which was the episode that got me to seriously ship msr) or "Bad Blood" or almost any other episode he wrote, but "Folie a Deux" is special to me. Mulder's mental wellness and people's belief that he's crazy has been an angle that has always been present and Vince framing this as a joint delusion on Mulder and Scully's part is so fascinating and a fantastic bit or writing to me. Mulder is so discredited and dismissed in this episode and the only person who listens to him is Scully and that's a perfect distillation of their dynamic and the show itself. Also the episode is Marxist to me.

5. "Jose Chung's From Outer Space"

I thought to myself "well I can't have two Darin episodes on here" but…of course I can! This is one of the greatest episodes of TV of all time. Not just of sci-fi or network or pre-00s TV, of all TV ever made. This is one of the episodes that sets The X Files apart from its clones or other cop procedural shows and it's that it can switch genres and tones and bring this post-modern, storyline hopping masterpiece out and no one thinks twice about its place in the show or season. A lot gets said about how funny it is and the melancholic tone Darin brings to his writing, but I find myself so impressed by they way the writing and directing work to make the timeline jumping work and not end up confusing the viewer. I'll eventually talk about this more, but the shot construction to create anchor points between a re-enactment and the scene of the narrator telling this story to Mulder and Scully is so great.

#the x files #ask

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half-man-half-lime · 1 year

Text

.....I finished Twig. A lot of random thoughts:

Jesus FUCK that was a depressing ending. Like I said before, I'm not sure if it's more of a bummer than Wildbow's other endings just naturally, or because I've reread Worm over and over again for the last, what, 8 years? And I'm numb to all the biggest bummers?

So first off, I think that ending was the opposite of bittersweet. Like, sweetbitter. I guess I'm happy most of the Lambs survived their expiration dates and beat a bunch of bad guys, but Sy's mental breakdown and the way he gradually started to imitate his enemies made me stop sympathizing with his actions and goals after a while. And then, at the end, he essentially loses his battle with the Simon persona. He becomes everything he was fighting against, and he drags all of his allies down to the same level, making them complicit.

I don't know how to compare that to Worm either. Taylor becomes a monster in the end too, but she's not lucid enough to fully blame, and she gets stopped before she can actually go fully genocidal. There's a sense that despite all of the deaths, a meaningful good was wrought. In Twig, nobody really stops the Black Wood and Red Plague, and what, millions die? Were there even lives saved by stopping the Infante when they did, or was the only good caused by turning the Lambs into Nobles just creating a fighting chance for the world, somewhere down the line?

Also, I gotta say, at a certain point Wildbow just wrecked the supply and demand economy of Fates Worse Than Death. Like, good lord, there's so much awful stuff, it's hard to not feel despair for everyone in that world. Even in Worm, it's either mass death OR small, concentrated Fates Worse Than Death, nobody's fridging millions of Brians. Sort of explains why Wildbow didn't write the Chicken Tenders in Ward as having actual PTSD issues after what Cradle did, it was no longer novel enough for Wildbow to take seriously. (Treatment of stakes and consequences in Ward is a topic that's one of many of my issues with it, but that's a whole other rant)

In terms of Lambs, I liked the core team for sure. Ashton and Abby were also adorable, and Duncan's improvement as a person was a nice surprise, I wasn't expecting that much of him. Hard to imagine him as an American teenager and not, like, a bumbling thirtysomething white British office worker out of a shitty workplace sitcom.

It was neat to have Wildbow telegraph that Twig was going to be a tragedy that hard and then subvert that expectation. Early Twig has a very specific vibe of a bunch of children laughing and saying "we're the best of friends! I hope nothing bad ever happens to us!" And then a man comes in and stares at the camera and says "they're all going to die very young". Hard to put words to what I mean by that. It's... very overt and hammered in extremely hard, the heavy-handed banter interspersed with the talk of their deaths. Not forced, but not not forced.

Anyway sorry for complaining, Twig was neat in a lot of ways too, just kind of a downer ending.

#Twig Spoilers #Vague Ward Spoilers #Twig Web Serial #Wildbow #Parahumans

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sapphicwhxre · 3 years

Text

ASTERIA'S 2.5K FOLLOWER FIC REC LIST

i read fics just as much as i write them so here are some of my favourites. tysmsm for this milestone, i love you all <3 quick note: i didn't re-tag anyone if i recommended more than one of your works because of the tag limit.

───────── girls ─────────

hermione granger

tuesdays - @stupxfy

probably one of my all time favs for hermione. it's just so well written and adorable and fluffy and yes.

if i could tell her - @hellounicorn

pining, pining, PINING. the way these emotions and hermione's described is just... art. perfection. there's a happy ending and it is so worth the build up.

darling dearest - @dracolvr

fluffy goodness. read to be hopelessly in love with hermione ─ which, let's be real, we all are.

november rain - @pansydaisy

uhm i love this one sm. it's so simple but amazing ─ everyone has their days like this and having hermione to cure them? it's what everyone needs.

i need more - @15-dogs

i sobbed the first time i read this. it'll break your heart but it's so amazingly written that it's worth the sadness. actual gut wrenching / mindblowing writing.

how the potter girls react to you in lingerie - @pottersanime

the title. need i say more?

honeyed eyes - @minty-malfoy

HEAVEN. being hermione's first kiss as friend? but both of you idiots liking each other? oh my god, sign me up.

hugging her from behind - @pastanest

again, the title. read to feel 🥺💙

grey days - @pepperimps01

PANSMIONE 😌😌 it's angsty with a happy ending and i love it sm. this does such a perfect job of capturing pansy and hermione's relationship growing and having its ups and downs with just a few paragraphs. honestly so good

grenade - @hellounicorn

another one that'll make your heart shatter. but in the best way. these are the fics i live for where the you can't help but feel like it's really happening to you and hermione and god it's so fucking powerful. underrated writing right here in general. and also pansmione is the loml so it hurts in that way.

honeybees - @pansydaisy

fluffy aesthetic heaven.

lead the way - @teacup-tai

more pansmione but this is pure filthy thinking and satisfies all the sexual tension dreams pansmione shippers have.

two queens in a king sized bed - @shysneeze

domestic christmas morning with hermione and it's angelic.

would you still love me if i turned into a worm? - @minty-malfoy

one of those blurbs i never imagined i'd read or love so much. not to mention it's spot on and adorable.

pansy parkinson

right and wrong - @starrkidmalfoy

a first kiss and the overdone trope that i will never get sick of, the bitch who's soft only for you. the descriptions in this are perfection and the writing is beautiful <3

messed up - @writseo

toxic, messed up love fics will be the death of me. insane how well you captured it all and i just yes damn fucking props.

pansy parkinson imagine - @moonlight-imagines

*screams* THE BEST FRIEND BANTER + THE ENDING OH MY GOD OH MY GOD ─ I SCREAMED WHEN I FIRST READ THIS. I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE IT.

dating pansy would include - @lotsoffandomimagines

ABSOLUTE POWER COUPLE SHIT and to this day, pansy saying "jealous much?" when being scolded for pda remains iconic.

grey days - @pepperimps01

as i said before: PANSMIONE 😌😌 it's angsty with a happy ending and i love it sm. this does such a perfect job of capturing pansy and hermione's relationship growing and having its ups and downs with just a few paragraphs. honestly so good

new rules - @silversslytherin

excuse me this is immaculate ─ pansy is the best friend and the second you see that she's also the best s/o, you're done for. perfection.

study "dates" - @turning-dreams-into-chaos

the title is self explanatory and this whole thing is fluffy heaven <3

how the potter girls react to you in lingerie - @pottersanime

read the title, thank me later.

lead the way - @teacup-tai

more pansmione but this is pure filthy thinking and satisfies all the sexual tension dreams pansmione shippers have.

traitor - @hufflepuff-writings

a masterpiece where pansy chooses the wrong side in the battle of hogwarts. this ties up so well and the writing is so powerful.

back alley love potions - @a-simple-imagine

this actually hurts but in a beautiful way. watching pansy give draco a love potion is such a fucking concept and this is executed incredibly.

my little bunny - @emmamarie7708

pansy making you do this is so dirty yet she's slightly sweet and i am a sucker for it. god is a woman and her name is pansy fucking parkinson.

pansy parkinson imagine - @moonlight-imagines

i'll let pansy beat people up for me all day. they put me in madame pomfrey's, feel my girlfriend's wrath.

ginny weasley

blissful - @enyastasia

fluffy ginny goodness. the friends to lovers? the amazing kiss? 🥺🥺🥺💞💞 this fic lives in my heart <3

bubble pop electric - @hunnypot-imagines

this is hotter than a lot of actual smut and the chemistry is so... wow. ginny weasley owns me.

dear ginny - @alyssamalfoy

how does this short ass letter manage to make me feel so much. it's sorcery but i don't even care, it's beautiful.

wildflower - @pansydaisy

will i ever get tired of cheeky i love yous? not when loves like ginny weasley and ayli's so so pretty writing exist.

all i want - @hellounicorn

ouch. fuck you harry :) quite possibly the best ginny fic i have ever read. insanely talented writing, i genuinely feel every touch of emotion you put down and you need to know how amazing that is. keep breaking my heart.

linny hcs - @bluebirdlinginthenest

who doesn't need good linny content in their life?

how the potter girls react to you in lingerie - @pottersanime

sexy bitch, fuck me up.

willow - @padmeamiala

ginny is the loml. her brothers can cry about it.

bellatrix lestrange

attempting to bake with bellatrix - @carters-coffee

MY FAVOURITE BELLA FIC ─ there's not enough bellatrix fluff out there but this makes up for the lack of. heaven.

bellatrix prompt - @carters-coffee

this gives me chills. she knows she's a bad bitch and that's what we love about her.

change of plans - @dumb-sbian

why THE FUCK have i not had a rainy morning with bellatrix? she can sleep and mumble something just like this and i'm still head over heels for her.

being tortured as bellatrix's girlfriend - @writings-of-a-british-fangirl

definitely a concept BUT this makes me feel some type of way and i recommend giving it a minute of your time 😌

bellatrix finding out you're a muggleborn - @carters-coffee

the beauty, the nuance omg. this is art.

bellatrix prompt - @carters-coffee

yep jealous bella. trust me, im all yours mommy <3

sex with bellatrix would include - @onegayastronaut

so short but... sign. me. up.

luna lovegood

never leave - @/deactivated

luna smut is hard asf to come by and this is my favourite. it's so luna and the pain over her not knowing, not getting that closure about how you feel until this is an amazing rollercoaster.

she - @hunnypot-imagines

the beauty of falling in love with luna, through this majorly talented writing. ten out of fucking ten. i will not elaborate but there's also majorly good association in this imo.

silver berries and flickering fireflies - @duskgrangers

i love this fic so much. she's so herself and that is why we ✨ simp ✨ and the scene set just sounds so prettyy

how the potter girls react to you in lingerie - @pottersanime

luna + this title? yes please, ma'am i am simping.

would you still love me if i turned into a worm? - @minty-malfoy

put me in your pocket luna. im begging you.

dancing in the rain with luna - @/deactivated

only luna would get you a dress to go dancing in the rain and this is the stuff of blissful, fluffy dreams.

hugging her from behind - @pastanest

short and cute, do me a favour and read it :)

dating luna lovegood would go like - @glossymalfoy

life is NOT worth it if you don't read these cute little headcanons and imagine dating ravenclaw's baddest bitch.

linny hc - @bluebirdlinginthenest

like i said, who doesn't need good linny content?

cho chang

strawberry kisses - @pansydaisy

the only cho fic i've been able to find and it's SO WORTH IT. the cutest, it flows so well, and i absolutely love it. i need this with cho tbh.

fleur delacour

toutes les etoiles - @coffee--writes

im in love with fleur and this amazing writing. and for the first time since i started high school, my three years of taking french feel good for something.

being best friends with fleur would include - @harrypotter-imaginess

not romantic but actually so sweet pls. i want this friendship in my life so bad.

nymphadora tonks

dating nymphadora tonks would include - @imaginesforgirls

dating her + that warm little feeling of bliss that only HCs can give you

taking care of her after the war - @random-imagines-blog

this kind of hurts in that good ass way and i lovee it. they're simple hcs but i feel for tonks so much and then there's that warm lil feeling when you're the one to put her back together aand now my primary life goal is to help this woman heal.

───────── boys ─────────

harry potter

phosphenes - @minty-malfoy

ok shakespeare, the fuck?? this fic will never not get me right in the heart. the angst, holy fuck. and for once, the reader doesn't hurt harry and let draco walk all over them and it's just done so well. the transition from a toxic relationship to a sweet, loving one PLEASE. it's beautiful.

happy memories - @15-dogs

how does this manage to be so. smutty and fluffy at the same time? this is one of those short ones that has lived in my head, rent-free since i read it. and tbh any fic that includes expecto patronum is guaranteed to be good.

come back to me - @wondernimbus

right from the beginning, it's a mess of emotions both good and bad. that kind of good ass writing that hits you in the heart <3

making out with harry potter would include - @badfvith

read this title. done? now thank me later.

harry prompt - @thoseofgreatambition

harry x a sarcastic swooning bitch is an elite trope idc. short and sweet, i'm marrying this fic.

keep your eyes on the prize - @rowema-ravenclaw

first of all, showing harry up and second, pure fluff (and a little steam) right after. i also love how she writes harry in general because he's totally safe/in love with the relationship but still has that awkward lovable shyness and i just... *sighs*

always - @pansydaisy

uhm i will always love him and always reread this a thousand times so its a fit title + a good read.

late night studying - @lumosandnoxwriting

fuck studying, let his hand stay in my shirt. once again recommending fluffy bliss in the form of a short read that makes me feel things <3

would you still love me if i turned into a worm? - @minty-malfoy

he's so stupid. but he still loves you + this is from our resident perfectly talented writer so its a win.

cuddling after a rough quidditch practice - @badfvith

harry james potter is : b a b y

gryffindor's victory - @rowema-ravenclaw

make me gryffindors fucking cheerleader because HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT. AND THE WRITING IS IMMACULATE PLEASE. just read it, you won't regret it.

draco malfoy

silent treatment - @slytherinwh0re

andy's mad talented and this is just... insert a cheesy chefs kiss. unbelievably adorable but so fucking hot and an actually good smut plot (which is rare lmfao). remind me to give draco the silent treatment every time im upset.

rewards - @malfoysstilinski

so hot PLS. hype him up for the match and get your reward, bye. so good.

reading between the lines - @minty-malfoy

i've said this a thousand times but that's what happens when you've got a mad talented mutual BLESSING everyone with beauty like this. butterflies and warm feelings all around when i read this 💓

point of view - @draconisxcaput

its angst for hermione and fluff for you but overall ethereal writing. i am never going to recover from the pure talent that this is.

im not kidding im dying - @malfoysmatrioshka

i hate being sick with a passion but this... this would make it worth it.

hogwarts express - @/deactivated

draco fucking you because he knows harry's watching. the shit of legends and god is it hot.

draco laughing at you because you can't walk after sex - @glossymalfoy

*motions to the title* fluff with this loser 😌

the cheeseburger - @slytherinwh0re

really short read but this is one of those things i just. didn't know i needed. you're missing out and haven't even realised it if you haven't read about introducing him to cheeseburgers. and that ending is so funny/in character to me i fucking love it.

four am - @malfoysstilinski

domestic draco 🥺 but also sad draco 🥺 and then fluffy draco 🥺

hugging him from behind - @pastanest

real short and it'll brighten your day <3

would you still love me if i turned into a worm? - @minty-malfoy

how is it that this is so stupidly adorable. i love it 💘

ron weasley

heather - @hellounicorn

always making me cry with your fics i swearrr. this is a must-read. having someone but them not really being yours is a beautiful trope and this fic absolutely does it wonderful, poetic justice. your angst is addicting.

apple pie - @pregnant-piggy

ABSOLUTE DOMESTIC BLISS I AM IN LOVE. i don't even like kids or baking that much but this made me so soft. the whole cozy, heavenly vibes from this fic yes yes yes.

jealousy - @writeroutoftime

cliché jealousy turns friends to lovers and i am a sucker for it all over again <3

shaking and trembling - @ronsbadidea

if ron doesn't finger fuck me and then make a cheeky comment about it in class later then WHAT IS THE POINT :(

mixed signals - @iamthecabbage

i've always figured ron is this awkward idiot cutie with a crush and yea, this is it.

fred and george weasley

i love you, but you don't - @george-fabian-weasley

fred's a character i really don't read for often but goddamn. it's the saddest, most beautiful mix of rejection and pain and fred desperately caring but not in the way you want him to ─ an angsty masterpiece.

cockwarming george - @roonilwazlibimagines

because of this filthy gem, i one hundred thousand percent believe that he could make me cum without even fucking me and this is just... it's a good fucking read.

would you still love me if i turned into a worm? - @minty-malfoy

their responses are so wonderfully chaotic and adorable and GOD you're missing out if you haven't read these lil blurbs.

─

#harry potter x reader #hermione granger x reader #pansy parkinson x reader #luna lovegood x reader #ginny weasley x reader #draco malfoy x reader #fred weasley x reader #george weasley x reader #cho chang x reader #nymphadora tonks x reader #bellatrix lestrange x reader #ron weasley x reader #fleur delacour x reader #harry potter #fic recs #masterlist #smut #fluff #angst

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notnctu · 4 years

Text

switchin’ lanes - l.jn | ridin’ club

━ welcome to the ridin’ club smut series

genre ➠ slow burn, smut, pwp???, fluff (if u squint) wordcount ➠ 8.3k details ➠ fem!reader, streetracer!jeno, badboy!jeno, college!au, ━ where you and jeno are in a relationship, but not with each other. warnings ➠ explicit language, cheating, flirty banter, alcohol consumption, drugs, yall at a party, physical fighting (not with you), mentions of cuts/bruises, hickeys, drunk public dry humping, thigh riding, fingering, oral (f/receiving) synopsis ➠ If your boyfriend didn’t decide to join such a stupid unofficial club, then maybe you wouldn’t be in such a sticky situation where Lee Jeno is literally knuckles deep in your sticky situation as he drives you home. Or maybe if your boyfriend actually touched you, then you wouldn’t be seeking it from someone else, who can’t keep his hands off of you. taglist ➠ @rabbit-doyochi ; @darkneogotmyback ; @im-lame-irl ; @p-mini ; @niniluvsmarkhyuck ; @saniahmichael ; @jaehy9ngs ; @danyxthirstae01 ; @jaehyunoos ; @pikijaemin ; @suhweo ; @dearlyminhyung

a/n ➠ hi yall its author doie❀!! i hope you enjoy the series pls leave me feedback lmaoo ill literally take anything. we also hit a milestone for followers and honestly its so crazy to know how quickly this tiny sideblog has grown! we’re so thankful that yall follow us, thank u for lovin us and we will try our best to put out more content!! also through the lens hit 1k notes how is that even possible like wow im speechless thank u for everyone who left such kind comments i treasure every form of feedback :)

The heavy double doors of the classroom stare tauntingly at you. The evening setting in, painting the sky with strokes of orange and pink. You managed to remain complaint free the entire day, until your forgetful boyfriend canceled on you because of a club meeting. A meeting for an unofficial club on campus because it is illegal to street race. A club consists of delinquents that are obsessed with cars and steal your boyfriend away from you.

This is the fifth time this week that your boyfriend stood you up or coincidentally forgot your dates. You can’t remember the last time he physically stood in front of you and not through a phone screen. However, it is not completely the stupid club’s fault that your boyfriend has neglected you.

He truly is the worst boyfriend ever. He blames everything on his bad memory and does not prioritize you in his life. He loves one thing --- his car. You could be lying in a hospital bed, and he wouldn’t care to check up on you.

So why did you stay with him? Because you’re scared of being alone? Possibly, but it is a can of worms that you did not want to open just yet. Sex is definitely not the reason you stay with him. He hasn’t touched you sexually since the first and now, last time you two slept together.

You try your best, to only be waved off with a yawn. He doesn’t compliment you. He doesn’t look at you lovingly. He doesn’t even kiss you for longer than two seconds. You are a toppling tower, ready to crumble at any given moment.

The anger in your body fuels you as you pull the door open to reveal several men in leather jackets chatting away with each other. One by one, they all begin to lay their eyes on who abruptly interrupted their joyous conversations. Your eyes scan the room full of intimidating men, whose auras cause a shiver to run down your spine.

Your boyfriend is nowhere in sight, given that there are plenty enough guys who have the ability to cover him. You walk into the open space and the entire mood of the room shifts.

Heavy cologne and a deafening silence fill the air. One particular male, who has been eyeing you the entire time, gets up and walks towards you.

“Are you lost, baby?” Scoffs and chuckles sparsely cover the corners of the room. The unknown male has a jarring cut on his eyebrow, matching a small bruise on his upper cheekbone.

“I’m looking for my boyfriend…” Your weak voice trails off from the sudden attractive male intimidation. The tall man peers around the room, crossing his arms.

“If you are this beautiful woman’s boyfriend, please fucking come out now. It’s very rude to keep your girl waiting for you!” Initially, his low throaty shout startles you. A heavy heat falls on your cheeks when you register his choice of adjectives.

The whole room falls silent once more, before your pitiful boyfriend steps out from between two bulkier men. “Hey babe, what are you doing here?” His eyes nervously bounce around the room, a shaky laughter erupting from his gut.

“Sorry, Jeno. I didn’t mean to cause such a scene. I didn’t even see her come in.”

Like a trigger, you remember your intentions for storming in uninvited. Jeno gauges your flaming reaction to your boyfriend’s apologetic words. He nods, not out of acceptance of the apology, but out of disbelief.

He pulls your boyfriend by the collar of his white shirt and your eye widens at the condescending tone that causes your boyfriend to cower, “I’m not the one to apologize to.” With a careless toss, your boyfriend ends up shaking in front of you.

“Jeno is not the only one you should be scared of.” You whisper angrily to him as the rest of the room continues on with their previous chatter.

Your boyfriend rolls his eyes, “listen, Jeno’s been arrested before. You don’t want to get on that man’s bad side.”

Your eyes wander behind your boyfriend’s hunching shoulders, catching Jeno steal peeks at you too. There is no interest in the other rambling male that stands in front of him. He just wants to check you out a bit more.

He is the hottest person you’ve ever gotten the attention of. You feel flustered, and a bit flattered at his lingering gaze. His brown hair is slicked back messily, giving you more to admire. Jeno is an absolute cliche from a bad boy fanfiction. He is unreal, and the odd chance that he can’t keep his eyes off of you, is also unreal.

But with a light nudge from a blue haired fellow, Jeno’s eyes peel away from your’s. They exchange a few words, which then propels Jeno to hurriedly put on his slightly tattered leather jacket.

You lick your lips to the sight of his body lines as he stands up to follow his friend, but not without another look back at you. Noticing your stare still on him, he bids you a tiny wave goodbye with a smirk to die for. And like that, he’s gone.

“Are you listening to me?” Your boyfriend’s voice finally reaches your reality. Your focus shifts to the obviously irritated expression on his face.

“I guess, I’m not. Don’t fucking stand me up again or I will key your car.” You aren’t actually those kinds of girls, but your boyfriend didn’t take a threat seriously unless it involves his highly treasured car.

And like Jeno, you also make your exit out of the steamy room. The chilly night brush against your unknowingly hot cheeks. Then, you take yourself to the only unhealthy coping mechanism you can think of: a place of free alcohol and no boyfriend.

It takes you a few months to completely stop caring about your dying relationship. You figure how easy it is for your boyfriend to do it, so you make the same decision.

He spends his nights with his friends he made from his club, and has totally become a self proclaimed car enthusiast. You lose yourself in copious amounts of cheap alcohol at your local parties and it’s almost like you stop sulking over a man who kisses his car goodnight.

While being alone did not bother you as much as you had been dreading, the sexual frustration is a completely different issue. You are absolutely drooling whenever your eyes find Jeno in the crowds of sweaty bodies.

If there is one good thing that came out of your boyfriend’s membership in that club, it had to be Lee Jeno and a few other notable people who attended the same parties as you.

He became a very close acquaintance, and you had learned some very important names associated with the Ridin’ Club. Na Jaemin, Lee Haechan, and Huang Renjun. But the three could not compare to the kindhearted Jeno that makes butterflies stir in your lower abdomen.

Over the months, you also had learned rather quickly that your sexually clouded mind had tricked you previously into thinking that Jeno’s stares were full of lust for you. His girlfriend makes it clear that it isn’t the case.

Although you have caught the couple making out several times when trying to use the bathroom, your feverish, impure attraction toward Jeno never calmed down.

“You’re looking very tempting tonight, baby.” Jeno’s beaming eye smile greets you, even after completely undressing you with his gaze. His arms are wide open to embrace your warm body.

The parties are always too hot to wear a fully clothed outfit. You often settle for a cute tank top and a short skirt to prevent your legs from collecting extra moisture. Jeno, without a fail, shows up in black jeans that clad his lower half, tucked with a simple white shirt. His tattoos and toned arms being on full display for you to admire.

“Better make sure your actual baby doesn’t hear that.” The loud beats of the music make Jeno’s chuckle almost inaudible, but his expression remains cheerful, as per usual. “Did you get into another fight?”

The fresh wound cut through his smooth complexion, which will eventually join the rest of his collection of fading scars. He mindlessly grazes over the new bandaging and dramatically winces. Clearly concerned, you grab his hand away from the injury. “Don’t touch it, stupid.”

His smile curves into a sly smirk, as he intertwines your fingers and kisses the back of your hand. “It doesn’t hurt at all.” His chest heaves into a fit of giggles, “just wanted to see you care for me.”

Groaning, you shake his massive hand off of your’s. “Very funny. I should start charging you for my attention.”

“Name your price, I got all the money in the world for you.” He winks, while lightly pinching your cheek. You are lying to yourself if you thought you could ever stay away from him. Jeno stirs up a part of you that craves the cheesy nicknames, flirty comments and the undivided attention.

He motions you to follow him into the mess of people. Almost as if he’s a god, the crowd parts for you two to walk through without unnecessary extra bodies. The fear that settles in many individuals’ chest is understandable.

Like your first impression, Jeno is a complete walking fanfiction trope. He negotiates better with his fists, usually with good reason. The guns of the Ridin’ Club, though, his friends are very much to be feared as well. They will not hesitate to run someone over, if given the heated situation to do so. And most definitely, you can count them to be backing up their fighter, Jeno.

You had not been mindful before of the chatter that regarded the secret Ridin’ Club. They are notorious for fast paced very illegal races in the middle of nowhere destinations and tempers that aren’t meant to be provoked. Besides their intimidating aura, it melts away after getting to know them.

Lee Haechan, the most annoying brat, but has the strongest, the most loyal bond to his boys. He’s also notably funny, often making you laugh with an exchange of banter.

Huang Renjun, the whiniest and initially quiet boy, but grows to be one of the loudest and will chew you out if anyone dares try engaging in verbal combat.

Na Jaemin, the flirty playboy who always has a swarm of girls, but the gentlest man with a soft spot for cute things.

And finally, Lee Jeno, the owner of your nights. He is the friendliest of them all, despite him being the toughest one. While his stare can kill, melting away his layers reveal the warmest heart. Not that Jeno is the only one to show initial interest in you, but he is the most considerate to the people he holds close to him.

He has taken care of you for many drunk nights and watched protectively over your intoxicated figure in the crowds. He makes you feel safe and seen, which are some of the many reasons you are entirely attracted to him.

“(Y/N)!” Jaemin’s scream pierce your ears the moment the blueberry catches your eye. He excitedly nudges the other two boys, who are busy pouring drinks into red cups.

“You’re going to make me spill it, idiot!” Renjun grumbles, but looks up to see your dazzling smile and tremendous excitement. His own smile grows, “so the life of the party finally decided to say hi.”

“Hi, my fanclub. I appreciate the long awaited greeting.” Your over the top, sarcasm causes all of them to chime loudly. Haechan hands you a cup and wraps his arm around your shoulders.

Jeno joins you at your side and the five of you clink your drinks to the ceiling. A fit of yells over the music and a competition of who can finish first. As per usual, you set your cup down after draining the entirety. The others are still chugging the burning liquid down their throats.

Haechan coughs after dropping his cup onto the counter. His face is twisted with the most disgusted contour, “I don’t know how you do it, (Y/N).”

“I already drank more than you guys, so it just tastes like water now.” You scream over the loud music. Jeno, Jaemin and Renjun toss their empty cups into the sink.

At this rate, you are completely blindsided by the effects of the alcohol as your legs give out to gravity. Jeno catches you quickly, holding your elbows and your head is placed on his shoulder. Jaemin chuckles lovingly, before helping Jeno balance you against the island. Your head feels heavy on your shoulders, as the room spins in front of you.

“You good?” Haechan pats your head gently, whispering close to you.

“I---” You try catching your breath after being winded. “--It’s hitting me now.”

Jeno wraps his arm around your lower waist to draw you close to him, “want to go sit down?” He mumbles into your hair. You nod, Jeno and Renjun supporting your limp body to walk over to the couch.

The dark living room is lit up only by colorful led lights, but it is not enough to make out much of anything. Everyone is in their own world, dancing and socializing within their own selves. The two men set you down on the cushion, but your impulse catches onto Jeno’s wrist before he leaves. Renjun is already lost in the crowd.

“Can I sit on your lap?” You pout cutely, all the shame in your body has been displaced with courage. Jeno’s eyes soften at your sudden request, and kisses the top of your forehead.

“The throne is all yours.” He says as he sits at your side and pulls you on top of his thick thighs. His arm is loosely dangling around your waist, resting on top of your thighs.

The intimate position causes your mind to wander into dark thoughts. His strong, sturdy legs feel delicious against your clothed core. While you’ve been in this position once before, you could never forget how protected, yet very horny it makes you feel.

“What’s on your mind, (y/n)?” Jeno’s deep voice brushes against your bare shoulder and you feel his chest press against your back. “You’ve been pretty silent tonight.”

You turn slightly to face him, “if I told you, I’m scared it would ruin things between us.”

“There’s nothing in the world that can hold me back from you.” He is always so quick to spill such alluring words. His soft lips graze lightly on your skin as his sparkling eyes look up at your expression.

All it takes is one more tiny kiss on your arm to get you grabbing his face, drawing him into a steamy, long awaited kiss. Surprisingly, he kisses you back, open mouth and tongue lapping with your’s. His hands reposition your legs to where you straddle him. Your faces dive deeper into each other’s as the kiss continues to intensify.

Jeno’s lips still have a hint of alcohol, but he mostly tastes like mint gum. And they are comparable to a cloud, the softest lips you have ever made out with. It is like kissing pure heaven, completely different from your boyfriend’s two second pecks. Jeno devours you in a needy way, like he’s been waiting to explore the wonders of your lips.

However, you pull away when you feel the vibration of his phone against your inner thigh, almost like a wake up call. As if all the liquid courage disappeared, you blink back in shock at Jeno’s plump wet lips. The thought of his girlfriend crosses your mind, and maybe slight guilt for your own boyfriend fills your system.

You quickly start getting up from his hot body, “fuck, I’m so sorry..” But his hands pull you back onto him, your legs finding their way open above his thighs again.

“Don’t be, I’ve always wondered what your lips would taste like.” A smirk, then a hearty chuckle relaxes your contracting nerves at the potential of a ruined friendship.

“But, your girlfriend..” Your tiny voice trails off and Jeno picks up your chin. His fingers rubbing along your jawline.

His eyes do another lap around your features. He admires your averting shy eyes, your beautiful lips, and how they all come together to make a stunning you.

There is no doubt in Jeno’s mind that he is very attracted to you. He knew it the moment you barged into the club meeting. You are his type of woman, a good mixture of confident and timidness. You like to have some fun, and aren't afraid to be bold. Not to mention, that you are incredibly hot and every time you flirt back just makes him melt inside.

“She won’t care. She hooks up with people all the time.” It puzzles you, all this time you had been holding yourself back from Jeno because he has a girlfriend. All to find out that the relationship isn’t as serious as you thought it to be.

“I know, it doesn’t make sense. But we aren’t two people to be tied down, but at the same time, we like each other enough to want to stay together.”

Your confused expression causes Jeno to laugh and ask, “what’s the dilemma with your boyfriend?”

Rolling your eyes at the mention of your boyfriend, you sigh, “it’s like we’re still together, but we aren’t at the same time. We’ve abandoned the relationship unknowingly.”

Jeno runs a warm hand up and down your thigh, while he listens intently to you. He nods, grabbing your waist to pull you over his groin. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“No, he’s a shitty person and an even shittier boyfriend. We literally haven’t fucked for the past year. I’m practically a virgin again.” His hand automatically gives your thigh a light squeeze.

Jeno’s eyes light up as you quickly cover your mouth out of embarrassment. A devilish smirk raises his cheekbone, and lust clouds his mind. Gauging his reaction, your cheeks turn hot.

“We’ll have to change that, don’t we? My baby must be all kinds of frustrated. Tell me, do you like when I touch you then?” Jeno drops in tempo, usually when he wants to be more intimidating with a deeper voice.

You clear your throat intending to speak, but you can only nod your head in response. “C’mon, (Y/N). Use your words, like a big girl.” Even with the loud music and continuous chatter, you can hear Jeno‘s taunting whisper.

His words tickle your collarbone as he runs his lips against your neck. Your heart is pumping rapidly at the turn of events, as if the possibility of having something beyond a kiss from Jeno is more than possible at this rate.

Jeno enjoys your small whimpers as he marks your neck with purple love bites. Right in the center of the crowded room, Lee Jeno is just casually giving you hickeys.

“Yes, I love that you can’t keep your hands off of me.”

Almost immediately, you can feel his lips curve into a smile on your skin. Pop! Jeno marvels the darkness against your skin in the mood lighting. A small part of him hopes you do end up seeing your boyfriend sometime soon, so he can see who you really belong to.

“How about we try touching like this?” Jeno pushes you down hard against his pelvis, the veins on his hands becoming evident from the grip and the tiny drawings permanently staining his fingers.

You gasp the moment you feel Jeno’s hip begin to move underneath you to the beat of the song. He rolls your hips rhythmically to match his speed. His clothed hard on can be felt through the only barrier you have on --- your panties.

The thin fabric is soon drenched in your juices after the continuous friction up and down his length. You throw your head back to every bump against your clit, the electrifying feeling enact more of your wetness to puddle.

You can’t believe you were grinding against Jeno in the middle of a full party, as if his friends aren’t a few feet away. It is a good thing that your skirt pools around both of your waists to conceal the dirty deed underneath.

Jeno’s lip escapes under his top row of teeth as he rubs his clothed length against your barely covered pussy. He can feel his jeans dampening from your wetness and his eyes roll to the back of his head from how the feeling of wanting you consumes his body. He really becomes uncontrollable when it comes to you.

This is the most sexual activity you have had with another person for over a year. Jeno just looks absolutely heavenly intoxicated with lust, and your mouth waters at how big his cock must be. You can feel his length the harder Jeno rolls against you, and it is definitely bigger than your boyfriend’s.

You are trying so hard to stay quiet and unnoticeable, but the pleasure seeps out every crevice. Jeno is trained on you as your hand reaches up to cover your mouth, the muffled whimpers escaping your lips uncontrollably.

“I’m so close.” You admit, your body jolting every time his jean button grazes against your sensitive bud.

Jeno moves you over his thigh, forgetting his incredibly hard dick straining in his jeans. As long as you are satisfied, he can care less about his own pleasure. A low scream erupts from your throat when he flexes against you.

His thigh is much more stable, with more control for consistency. You quickly notice the dark, wet spot on his jeans and you blush even harder. Your underwear clings onto you from the excessive moisture, but Jeno continues to help you finish.

The strands of hair cover your face, but Jeno needs to see your fucked out expression. He is taken aback when you start riding his thigh faster, grinding harder without the aid of his hands.

His mouth hangs slightly open in awe at your neediness, he truly did not know the extent of your sexual frustrations. Oh, but how he is incredibly turned on by you getting off on him.

“I want you to cum for me, you deserve it.” Jeno brings you in for another passionate kiss. The mixture of his tongue sucking harshly on yours, and the friction on your clit are more than enough to reach your climax.

Your legs clenched tightly around Jeno’s thigh. The small knot in your stomach that built, drops like the beat playing in the background. The feeling of white is familiar, but it is more intense than when you would touch yourself. You are finally receiving the pleasure from someone else’s touch, someone who wants you to unravel for him.

Jeno pulls away from your lips, kissing down your neck and collarbones as your chest heaves for air. His palm soothes your shaking legs as your climax subsides. You fall into his arms, and he laughs. The reality that you two just did that publicly registers in both of your minds.

Digging your shy face further into Jeno’s shoulder, he whispers lovingly, “let me drive you home.”

“Are you still drunk?” The muffled question tickles Jeno’s neck.

“I think you beautifully cumming on my thigh sobered me up.” He jokes and you quickly cover his mouth. Your heart practically stops and you hope no one else heard him.

It is silly that you are now self conscious, as if the whole room didn’t just watch you and Jeno grind on the couch. But, the feeling of embarrassment and regret lingers in your stomach. You mentally thank the dark room for concealing both of your identities.

“I’m sorry for your jeans.” A pout begs for forgiveness as you stare at Jeno’s beaming smile. He takes your hand off of his mouth, not forgetting to give your fingertips a lingering kiss.

“I’m sorry for your boyfriend. He doesn’t know what he’s missing.” Jeno parts your hair from your neck, admiring the marks he left on you. A small sense of pride builds inside of him, accompanied by a tiny bundle of possessiveness.

“Let me say goodbye to the boys and I’ll take you home.”

Nodding, Jeno carefully lifts you off of him and onto the cushion. He leans over to kiss your cheek. As he gets up, you see the darker shades on his jeans from your doing. However, Jeno is completely unbothered and continues to find his friends.

Now that you are alone, you feel a bit nervous that someone would come up to you and talk about what they saw. Checking your phone, your screen blinds you with absolutely no notifications from your boyfriend. Going on social media is worse, as you scroll to see that your boyfriend posted a photo.

It is a photo of his hot, red polished car. He obnoxiously posed squatting next to the front wheel, his lips puckered up and kissing the rims. With a caption that makes every regret in your body disappear, “with my one and only.”

The phone is tossed somewhere else, wishing to delete the image from your memory. Your eyes wander around the room, when they spot a suspicious man sneakily dropping a small pill in an unattended drink. He, then, looks up and catches your stare. Caught red handed.

But the male smugly smirks, “you’re going to pretend you didn’t see that, like how half of this room pretended to not see you grinding on Jeno.”

“You’re complete scum, I can’t believe you just roofied someone’s drink.” You yell in utter disbelief at the unwavering man. His disgusting smirk changes into a menacing smile.

He approaches you, his height allowing him to tower above. You gulp, scared at how he can easily overpower you at any second.

“And what are you going to do about it? What? Jeno didn’t loosen you up enough?” His revolting hot breath beating down your nose, invading every corner of your personal space.

Before you can find any insult to speak back, his figure goes flying sideways and out of your face. It’d be a lie to not admit your heart skipping a beat at the sight of Jeno’s clenched fists and locked jaw. His sharp gaze watches as the stranger gets up from the ground, inflammation already growing on his left cheek.

“Dude, what the fuck!” He shouts angrily, holding his cheekbone as he winces at the pain. Immediately, the conversations are replaced with gasps, and small whispers at the sight. People gather around the living room to see the commotion. Even you are unsure how to react to the sudden fight.

The other man lunges at Jeno with full force, but Jeno stops him by grabbing the man’s collar, “this,” Jeno punches his lip, busting it open, “is for dropping a roofie in someone’s drink.”

The stranger groans at the impact, but still gets up with a fist straight for Jeno’s gut. Watching Jeno take a blow is much more difficult than you had been expecting.

He crouches over from the punch, but quickly regains his composure to put the man in a headlock. A few more gasps erupt and wonder if you should stop him before he does something unnecessarily stupid.

“This,” the man squirms to try to get out of Jeno’s iron grip, “is for disrespecting my babygirl.” And with a shift snap, the male falls limp and unconscious.

A surprised intake of air and Jeno peers up at your scared expression. He calmly walks over to you, ignoring the swarm of people that had gathered around the scene. He can only see one thing — you. Jeno’s wandering eyes try to read your expression, but all he sees is a terrified girl.

“I’m sorry you had to see that, are you okay, (Y/N)?”

Blinking blankly for a few moments, you are mortified at the laying body, “what did you do to him?”

Jeno looks back at the stranger casually, “I put him to sleep for a bit. He’ll wake up in about 20 minutes.”

A rush of reassurance washes over you knowing that he is alive and Jeno didn’t just kill someone in front of you. You exhale all the anxiousness and nerves,

“thank you for stepping in.”

“I don’t fight without a good reason. You are more than a perfect reason to fight for.” He pinches your cheek cutely, and his tough exterior fades away yet again.

His famous eye smile that warms your insides is back as if the scary, intimidating expression didn’t exist a few seconds ago. Jeno’s good sides only appear with you. Nevertheless, you are happy to know how special you are to see them.

“Violence is never the answer.” He nods, only taking it for a grain of salt. “Are you okay? It looked like stringbean knocked some wind out of your gut.”

The teddy bear thrusts himself forward into a fit of laughter, his head resting on your lap. His melody lights every dark corner inside of you. “He did get a good punch in there, didn’t he?”

His rumbling laughter stops, and he peers up at you. “I can’t believe you were still worried about a complete asshole.”

Scoffing, you break the shared gaze. “I’m a compassionate human being.” Jeno stands up, extending his hand for you to take.

“I know, you’re the best kind of person.” He genuinely means it with the way his tone remains quite stern, eye contact unwavering. He is revealing more of his intimate parts, and in return, you wish for him to see your’s.

Silence drowns out all the commotion between you two. Jeno grows shy at the way the galaxies reflect in your stare. “I--” Never once, did you think you would witness Lee Jeno stammer over his words. “I-I, let’s-- I want to take you for a drive.”

To Jeno, a drive to him is equivalent to your hand in marriage. Even his own girlfriend has never been on a drive with him. It is a big part of his personality, given that he is a crucial member of the Ridin’ Club. However, out of all of them, he is the last one to flaunt his hobby. It is special, almost sacred to his entire being.

“Me?” It is the dumbest question to ask, but you really want to clarify his intentions. Before this night, you two were barely considered friends. You two never saw each other outside of the late night parties.

But now, Lee Jeno wants to take you on a drive. It makes you wonder if the desire of companionship is mutual, that he too pines to further your relationship.

“I’m not looking at anyone else,” Jeno still waiting for your hand and holding an intense eye contact. His heart lays exposed for you, just right on his sleeve. An innocence paints his usual intimidating aura, “let me show my special girl, what is special to me.”

He must possess some magic because he knows every way to make you swoon. And like that, your palm meets his and he locks his fingers between yours.

The moment you enter Jeno’s striking, eye catching car, you automatically relax into the leather seats. His pristine car matches his personality --- simple, but captivating. Your boyfriend’s car is the exact opposite, which is why you never enjoy sitting in it.

Jeno has pieces of himself that scatter his car, like an adorable small plushie that watches out the back window. A beaded lanyard dangles from his rear view mirror. It even matches his scent of a deep ocean breeze.

Unlike your boyfriend’s obnoxious details, Jeno did not have a light up stereo that flashed annoyingly to every beat drop in a song. Instead, a sweet lilac color illuminates at your feet, along with his.

“You like what you see?” Jeno catches you astonish at the tiny aspects of the interior.

“Of course, it’s yours. It’s exactly like how I would imagine it to be.” Jeno is proud, hearing you praise his car. Even he can admit, it is a bit weird to be so connected to an inanimate object.

Nevertheless, his car, racing, driving became a huge part of his life. And unlike his friends, he feels rather shy and slightly embarrassed for being such a geek.

But hearing you actually appreciating the small details of his car when you probably hate every aspect of racing due to your boyfriend’s doing, it makes him feel very happy.

Maybe happy is an understatement, more like overjoy at how you freely can recognize the things that make him content. You respect him, and are mindful that as mundane as a car is, you know that it is something important to him.

Silence becomes the majority of the ride out of the quiet, suburban neighborhood. While Jeno’s eyes remain focused on the road ahead, you are concentrated on him.

He drives with one hand on the wheel as he rests his elbow on the middle console. His eyebrow creases here and there. It is the most normal, mundane activity anyone can do --- drive. That is all he is doing, yet the effect it suddenly has on you can not go unnoticed.

Abruptly, with the rev of the engine and a press on the gas, the car practically flies on the empty freeway. It catches you off guard, causing you to hold onto the grab handle. Jeno peeks over at your shocked figure, and smiles to himself.

“Relax, (Y/N).” He calls your name, reaching over to rub your thigh as a way to calm your anxiousness. Automatically, your hand grips onto his for support and the other one drops from the handle.

Exhaling, your eyes are trained ahead. The car is moving so fast that you can’t even make out anything around you. Everything becomes nothing, but colorful streaks against a dark background. The gravity against your chest feels crushing.

“How-- How fast are you going?”

Jeno glances at the speedometer and intertwines your fingers into his own. “I don’t think I should tell you that, you might actually have a heart attack.”

The window rolls down and you are hit with rumbling wind, “I know you’re scared right now, so stick your head out the window and take a deep breath.”

You look at him in pure fear, “what?! I can’t even move, let alone stick my head out the window!”

Jeno shakes his head, “trust me. Please, trust me.” He needs you to experience the same thrill he does. His own adrenaline is through the roof, out the entire atmosphere of the vehicle. The amount of joy he is experiencing became tenfold now that you are sitting beside him.

You trust him and very meticulously, go against the wind. Your hair crazily dances along with the rush and your eyes water from being dried out. Adjusting to the pressure, you also stick your hand out the window. It whips backward, but you feel the wind slip between your fingers.

The rise in heartbeat and excitement pump through your veins. The beauty in the white streaks that create a runway, it is nothing but you and the open space. There is no other way to explore it, except at a high pace. You understand why Jeno loved it so much.

Jeno bounces between the road and half of your figure out his window. Your eyes are closed initially, before you barely squint open. Tears fly by with strands of your hair, but you start to move your hand to physically feel the thrill pass between your fingers.

Then he sees it in the side mirror: the sweet curve in your lips he loves the most and the wideness of life in your eyes. It only makes him press the gas harder.

“That was incredible! You should take me riding with you more.” You marvel at him as he starts the route to your place. It is complete playfulness that hints in your tone because you are aware of how sacred these are to him. Nevertheless, a part of you still hopes he agrees to do so.

Jeno nods, “only because I like you,” He pauses, gauging your reaction with his side eye gaze, “a lot.”

Your heart sinks to an unsettling place in your stomach. Jeno could not possibly be serious, however, his tone no longer matches the playfulness of your own. It almost seems like he is telling the truth. But you didn’t want to believe that.

Your eyes make a full circle before settling at the disappearing sidewalks, “stay in your lane, Jeno.” It is to keep the mood still light, you and Jeno aren’t ones to be serious.

His hand has been on your thigh for the whole night, whether it be out of habit or comfort. His touch is always welcoming and warm, but suddenly, you feel the small squeeze on your flesh. Turning your attention on his face, you can see how a smirk has grown.

“But yours seems much more fun.” Immediately, your stomach leaps with somersaults. Your throat gets dry and tight, not anticipating that response.

“Beside, you can’t act like we both haven’t swerved. It was barely moments ago that you were cum---”

“---No need to further explain.”

“And I’d proudly do it again.” His voice drops several decibels and his hand slowly snakes it’s way up your thigh. All the while, his eyes still on the road ahead.

You gulp as every heartbeat constricts your throat. Lifting the ends of your skirt higher to expose more, you secretly want Jeno to cause your legs to shake again. “D-Do what again?”

Jeno perks up to the sweetness of curiosity in your tone. He pulls up to a red stoplight, being able to finally look over to your innocent face and needy hands gripping the cute, thin fabric. He stares deeply into your eyes, “make my baby cum.”

Similarly to the stoplight, you give Jeno the green light to pull your panties to the side. You spread your legs wide as his finger massages your pussy lips. He gets dangerously close to your erect clit, barely skimming over it.

A needy, yet delicate moan escapes your lips and Jeno’s jaw tightens. He’s more upset that he’s missing the view of your legs spread, open mouth in ecstasy, half lid eyes all in the passenger seat of his car. He hopes for another red light, just so he can peek over at your delicious figure.

“Jeno, please touch me.” Your voice is airy and desperate. He hummed in response, completely withdrawing his hand from your core. However, you catch his wrist and bring it to rest on your inner thigh. “Please.”

The distinct beg in your tone drives him crazy. As he dips his finger into your sudden wetness, a shiver runs up your spine. Right when he applies minimal pressure on your bundle of nerves, you jolt and close your thighs around his hand.

One touch already feels too good to be true, that finally someone, Lee fucking Jeno, is actually touching your nakedness. Peering down, Jeno’s arm is flexing in between your legs. His veins popping ever so slightly and his tattoos paint his smooth skin.

“Open your legs, babe.” His low devilish chuckle rumbles in your lower abdomen. “Let me give you the lovin’ you’ve been deprived of.”

You shudder at his cadence and slowly pry open your legs. Jeno stops at a red light and gets to see your reaction as he rubs you in a fast rhythmic pace. A soft cry yelps from your throat and you have to grip the handle to keep yourself from spazzing out any further.

Almost like a trance, he doesn’t notice that the light turns green. He’s locked into the sight of your contorting body. Your hips have a mind of its own, yet again, as Jeno feels you rolling deeper into his touch.

“Poor baby, you’re so touch starved that you can’t control yourself.”

“It feels better when you do it.” You whine, your lip being bruised from your biting. But your eyes notice the green illumination and you blink over at Jeno.

He is practically drooling at the sight of you, his eyes are trained at your needy hips and dripping wet core that soaks his fingers. You stop every urge to steal more kisses from him.

Jeno briefly recovers from the trance and steps on the gas. He takes this opportunity to ease a finger into the core, causing you to exclaim and squeeze around his digit. “Oh fuck, you’re so tight.”

“More, Jeno.” The way his name rolls off of your tongue makes his heart flutter and his dick to raise in his jeans. Without much hesitation, he slowly slips in another finger and you moan at the stretch. Pumping and curling, he ensures that you are enjoying every action.

His fingers curl against your plushy flesh and your legs spread wider for him to go deeper. You’re a moaning mess when he curls up to your sweet spot, rubbing his fingertips quickly. The familiar queasy feeling builds in your lower regions, and Jeno becomes merciless with his fingers.

He guides them in and out of you, feeling your tightness release and invite him back in. The sloppy wet noises fill the car and drown out the engine. Your half lidded eyes bounce at Jeno’s unbothered figure and the entire scene seems absolutely unbelievable to you.

One hand on the wheel. The other knuckles deep in your pussy. Eyes focus on the road ahead. A comfortable man spread. His hair is messy from the long night.

It is all too unbelievable, that Jeno’s already giving you a second climax of the night when you could barely get one in a year before. And he loves touching you as much as he loves driving.

However, the guilty raises as fast as the ball of tension in your gut. You two pull up in front of your apartment building, while Jeno’s tugging his fingers against your flesh aggressively. In a split second, you hold onto his wrist to stop him.

He shifts into park when the car settles into a spot and peers over to you. A curious expression daunts onto him, rather concern that he might have been too much. “I’m starting to feel guilty.”

Jeno nods, and retrieves his fingers out of your dripping core. The feeling of emptiness causes all the built up pressure to dissipate.

“I understand,” he begins, but pauses at the sight of your sticky juices glistening on his fingers. Your eyes widen as he licks them clean, a soft moan escaping from the back of his throat.

The small action spikes your heart rate and you rub your legs together. With a pop! Jeno hums delightfully, “baby, you taste so good. I’m a little sad I won’t be tasting more, especially directly from the source.” His lustful eyes glance down at your thighs and back to your profile.

“I’ll walk you up to your apartment.” He says way too casually, unbuckling his seat belt. A mixture of emotions are running through your head. There is guilt, but lust is too powerful to ignore, especially when it’s Lee Jeno. The damage is already done, right? It’s not like it wasn’t moments ago that you humped him in the middle of a party.

“Wait,” your hands find themselves gripping onto his leather jacket tightly. Jeno gently reaches over to release your strong grip and replaces the leather with his hand.

“Yes, babygirl?” Jeno’s round, friendly eyes meet yours. The lust clouded darkness is no longer there. His hand feels hot and somewhat rough.

“I’m going to break up with my boyfriend, so promise me, you’re not going to dip out of my life afterwards… I don’t need you to be anything more than a friend. I just can’t lose you too.”

He turns around in his seat to face you comfortably. “I don’t think you’ve noticed, but I can’t stay away from you, let alone have the ability to leave you.” He reassures you with a soothing and calm tone. His thumb draws circles around your knuckles. “I’m always going to be your friend, whether or not I know how you taste.”

“Do you still want to try it … you know, from the source?” You shyly ask, an innocence embodying your gaze and voice cadence.

Jeno raises an eyebrow, a smirk on his lips. “I’d love to, only if you let me.”

Instantly, you shift to get on your lower back. Jeno watches as you excitedly position yourself open for him and actually finds your eagerness quite adorable. Your left leg bends behind the driver’s seat and your right rests on the dashboard.

He hooks his arms underneath your thighs to pull you forward towards him and your whole body slides against the leather. With a slow lift, your skirt reveals your drenched panties. Rolling them off and tossing them to the back seat, he lays eyes on your still dripping pussy. Jeno takes a second to admire your flower, this being his first time he’s seen such a private part of you.

“You’re beautiful, you know that right?” He chuckles deeply, before his tongue licks a long strip up to your clit. You exclaim out of the tingling pleasure that seized your insides.

He flattens his tongue against your bundle of nerves, flicking and circling. His finger enters your pussy again, curling up to rub at the same pace he is licking. The pure sight of Jeno’s head in between your legs is enough for butterflies to explode.

His sole motive is to make you feel good. There is nothing else in the world that he wants at this moment beside pleasure to overtake your body. Jeno eats you out like he hasn’t had a meal in months. His mouth wraps around your clit. The mixture of his flicks and sucks cause electric bolts to run down your legs.

You get more wet as Jeno pumps his finger in and out of your hole. Your juices are practically dripping onto the interior of the car, but Jeno doesn’t care.

He fucking loves it. He loves the taste of you lingering on his tongue. Your breathless moans. Your waterfall dripping on uncontrollably. The view of you unwinding because of him. Nothing can be more perfect.

Running your hands through his messy locks, you press him closer into you. A devilish smile draws on his face as he flicks his tongue side to side. “Oh, fuck! I’m.. so c--close.”

Your back arches upward into Jeno’s mouth, feeling his muscle lick harder and faster on your throbbing clit. He adds a second finger, and the simultaneous stimulation practically throws you into another dimension. The pleasure overtakes your entire lower half, your legs trembling from pure ecstasy as you approach your orgasm.

“Don’t stop, I’m going to---” Then, Jeno pulls away and shoves his tongue into your warmth. A gasp hits the air as he also continues to rub circles on your sensitive nerves. His tongue fucked your pussy incredibly skillfully and deliciously. With this switch, your legs violently shake and try clamping together.

However, his strength holds you wide and open for display. A low grunt follows suit as his dark eyes zone in on your contoured facial expressions. Then, the white light blind you once again and the ball of tension unravels itself on Jeno’s tongue. Squirming and screaming, your hips buck forward on their own.

It is close to being too catastrophic, this being the most intense orgasm you’ve had after a whole year. Nevertheless, the satisfaction is right on the tips of your toes and you greedily indulge in the euphoric moment. Jeno feels your walls squeeze around his muscle as he laps every last bit of you up.

He is absolutely addicted to your juices, making sure he catches every drop. Finally pulling away, he wipes the extra drip on the back of his hand. Jeno blinks at your raising chest and limp legs. Chuckling, his warm hand massages feeling back into your body.

“Do you want me to carry you back up?” His hoarse, raspy voice wakes you from your post orgasm daydream. You flutter your lashes at him fondly and happily nod at his offer.

Getting out of the car, Jeno walks over to the passenger side and your arms rest nicely around his neck. His palms support your butt, but also smoothing your skirt over to cover your decency. A poke against your outer thigh makes you realize that Jeno is strained against his jeans.

“I can take care of you too.” You pout cutely at Jeno, but he shakes his head.

“It’s not about me tonight. It’s about you.” Leaving a soft kiss on your cheek, his eyes turn into moon crescents from his lovable smile. The kind, friendliness makes an appearance again.

Or so you think! In a sheer second, Jeno’s deep voice rumbles your stomach and his hooded eyes pierce your soul, “next time though, I’m fucking you real good, babe.”

You hum in response. Saliva collects in your mouth, already looking forward to more of Jeno. But a chilly draft brushes up your exposed area as Jeno carries you up the flight of stairs.

“Wait, Jeno… I don’t have my underwear on.” The ‘Level 3’ sign is in view as Jeno turns to walk.

He only laughs and shrugs nonchalantly, “it’s better that way anyways.” Without another word, he continues upward to your floor and you playfully punch his solid chest. In all honesty, that’s not going to be the only time you leave behind your panties in his beloved car.

Your hatred for the notorious Ridin’ Club subside after such a wild night. If anything, you owe it all to your shitty ex-boyfriend for joining such a ridiculous club. Without him and the club’s existence, who knows if Lee Jeno would’ve still swerve into your lane.

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fredshufflepuff · 3 years

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hi! i saw a post of friends to lovers > enemies to lovers and i completely agree! can i request fred or george (or whoever you think fits most idm!) fic of mutual pining where they are too proud to admit feelings or completely unaware of each others flirting? <3

princess || g.w ✧˖*°࿐

summary: same house, same friend group—means nothing when you hate each other. at least, that’s what you thought.

warnings: enemies to lovers (not really enemies buttt), one cuss word, pet name :), fluff, that should be it! ps. hopefully this holds up to your expectations! it took me awhile to write so i may have gotten carried away <3

word count: 1,277

“gryffindor!” the sorting hat shouted, excitement shooting through your veins as you grinned widely, standing yourself up and making your way to your houses table.

“congratulations!” a red headed boy greeted, his hair curly and skin pale. he was one of the older students, a certain badge on his front reading ‘head boy.’

“thanks!”

another boy on his right looked similar to him, a little younger but older than you. that boy had a twin, and if he wasn’t his twin, your eyes were playing tricks on you.

the boy looked at you, scratch that stared at you. you couldn’t help but stare back, glaring at him before asking him his deal was.

“if i’m going to be honest, i was expecting hufflepuff or even ravenclaw, not gryffindor” he says bluntly, a stupid smirk on his face at seeing your eyebrows furrow together.

“what’s that supposed to mean?”

before the boy could explain, his twin nudged him harshly in the side, “leave the poor first year alone, george.”

george was his name.

“just telling her what i think” he shrugs, giving you one last look before turning to the plates of food.

“don’t mind him, he’s a jerk” a voice butts in, your head turning to the side to see another red head, but unlike the others he was in your year.

‘merlin’s beard how many red heads are there?’ you thought to yourself, the boy introducing himself before introducing his friends.

hermione granger and harry potter.

“nice to meet you” the curly hair girl smiled, sticking out her hand for you to shake, “and you are?”

you took her hand and gave her a warm smile.

“y/n y/l/n.”

fast forward six years, you were sixteen about to turn seventeen. but no matter how old you were, it never stopped your immature banter between you and a certain red head.

“mooorning” george announced to the common room, shoving your feet off the couch and plopping himself next to you.

“don’t touch me” you spat, the boy rolling his eyes as you went back to your conversation with hermione.

“do you have the potions notes?” you asked, the girl nodding while digging through her book bag.

“here you go.”

“thanks, ‘mione” you smiled, standing up and heading to your dorm to study.

you were sick the day snape decided to start a new topic on potions, but hermione was kind enough to let you borrow her notes.

you heard shuffling behind you, a heavy arm falling on your shoulder making you snap your head to the side.

“we’re we going, princess?” george asked, smirking at your annoyed state as you shoved him off.

“i’m going to my dorm, you can stay in the common room” you said, george still following you until you both stood outside the door.

“but i’m great at potions, i can tutor you” he suggested, clearly not going to take no for an answer.

“if i say yes will you stop pestering me?”

his lips thinned together as he cocked his eyebrow, “since when do i pester you?”

“george.”

“fine.”

an hour went by of george trying to teach you potions and you getting annoyed, nothing seemed to be sticking.

“worm tail or worm wood?”

his question rang in your head, clouding your mind as you tried to think of the right answer.

“worm...worm tail?”

“worm wood” he corrected, a frown taking over your face as you let out a frustrated sigh. you were never going to pass snape’s exam.

“although you look cute when you pout, you shouldn’t worry- you’re smart. we just need to practice a little more.”

“i’m cute when i pout?” you ask, the red head smirking as you pushed him softly, “stop flirting weasley and help me pass snape’s class.”

a week went by and you finally took the exam, getting your mark back as soon as you finished.

“i got an O?!” you couldn’t help but gasp, snape narrowing his eyes at your sudden outburst as you quickly apologized.

you grabbed your bag and made an exit for the door, a smile on your face as you made a b line for the quidditch pitch.

“george!” you called out, cupping around your mouth so your voice would carry to where he was. the twins were doing their daily practice on the field, doing laps and passing the bludgers back and forth.

“your girl is calling for you” fred smirked, nudging his twin as he rolled his eyes—although he couldn’t stop the grin that made its way across his face.

george made his way down to you, hoping off of his broom as his feet hit the ground with a ‘thud.’

“yes, princess-” he was cut off by your arms being thrown across his neck, pulling him into an unexpected hug as you squeezed him tightly.

george had to bend down slightly for you to hold him, the height difference causing you to stand on your tip toes- but neither of you cared.

he let go of his broom to hold you back, blushing deeply as his chin rested on your shoulder.

“what’s all this for?” he asked, laughing lightly as you pulled away. your arms were still wrapped around his neck, a wide smile on your face as you told him the good news.

“an O?! that’s amazing!” he exclaimed, the boy proud of you for getting such a high mark on an exam you were once struggling to study for.

“all thanks to you.”

it was quiet for a few seconds, the two of you inches away as smiles were formed on both of your faces.

you would be lying if you said you didn’t fancy george, he was undeniably attractive. but ever since your first interaction with him during your first year at hogwarts, you learned to despise him.

there was no need for him to be so mean to you- if that’s what you could call it. over the following years he would tease and bicker with you, try to get any reaction out of you- good or bad.

but him too fell for you, your smile, your personality, your laughter...your looks. he watched you mature over the years, which also made him realize if he wanted you to actually like him, he would have to stop pestering you.

“george” you suddenly said, breaking him from your thoughts as he hummed in response, looking down at you with a glint in his eyes.

“kiss me.”

he didn’t question it, didn’t even hesitate. one hand stayed on your hip while the other came up to cup the side of your face, pulling you into him as your lips met with his.

his mouth molded with yours like a missing piece to a puzzle.

your puzzle.

it felt like fireworks were going off and you were the star of the show- the main attraction.

it all felt right.

“finally!” fred cheered, the two of you pulling away immediately and looking up at the older twin, “thata boy, georgie!”

“fuck off, fred” he joked, grinning at his brother before turning back to you, the pad of his thumb running over the side of your face before stopping at your bottom lip.

“can i take you out to hogsmeade? maybe get a butterbeer or two?” he asked, trying to act cool but inside he was freaking out.

sure you had made the first move, if that’s what you could even call it, but he didn’t want to mess things up.

“of course, george” you smiled, “i’d love to go to hosgmeade with you.”

“brilliant” he breathed out, pulling you into another kiss almost immediately.

he was finally yours.

🏷 @90smalfoy @astoria-malfcy @whipped-for-the-weasley-twins @ang9lic @malfoysbiitch @Harrypotter_Whore @aetheralist

#george weasley fluff #george weasley x y/n #george weasley x you #george weasley #george weasley x reader #george weasley imagine #george weasley fic #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter fic #harry potter fluff

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into-the-daniverse · 2 years

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This is mostly just for me and for fun, but I wanted to put together a list of my favorite fics that I wrote last year—one from each month—and kind of talk about them a little!

Of all the fics I posted over 2021, my word count was approximately 194k, which isn’t counting the dozens of WIPs I have that I haven’t finished, but uh, that’s a lot. 😭

Anyway, if you read any of my fics this past year I love and appreciate you so much! There are so many more stories in my brain that I’m sure I’ll be sharing this coming year.

January

The Devil is a Gentleman — While the band travels with the newly appointed Pirate Queen Meredith, Alec meets another pirate captain during a stop at a tavern, one who takes an interest in her, and is far more dangerous than he seems at first glance.

Okay, so, while this was a very hard fic to write, and it isn’t one I reread often, it achieved my end-goal, which was to give everyone who read it the heebie-jeebies. As an official introduction to Syd, from the eyes of a kid who has never met him before, I don’t think I could have done it any better—you get the charm and the creep factor all at once! Plus this kickstarted a ton of pirate worms so, yay!

February

January — After Alec’s death, the rest of the band deals with their grief each in their own way, forcing Leon to be the responsible one for once and take care of his family while mourning Alec himself.

While this fic absolutely broke my heart to write, it (and the whole series tbh) is one of my favorites because I got to explore Leon’s voice and trauma in a new way.

March

Glitter and Gold — Rodrigo and the crew of El Corazon Sangrante come across a kid stuck in the Strait of Sirens, and after saving him, he becomes a permanent part of the crew.

This was so much fun to write, because as much as I hate writing action I feel like it turned out well in this one, and also writing banter is like my favorite thing to do, and especially the banter between Rodrigo and Keean is great! It also gave Rodrigo a chance to be more than just an asshole, which is both good and bad because now I’m obsessed with him.

April

Feral Roots — Part 1 of Meredith’s backstory, her time growing up among the Laochra tribe from her birth to the day she ran away after her father’s death.

I’ve rewritten this part a few times, but this is such a good stepping stone for the novel I’m going to eventually write about her, I just love it so much! Plus I got to explore the dynamics of a group of people who were born and grew up in the wilderness and how that would effect them.

May

And So It Went — Part 3 of Meredith’s backstory, after meeting the Pirate Queen Aria, she travels back to her tribe’s home in the south, only to find that there is no one left anymore. Leaving her home for the last time, she agrees to become Aria’s protege, the next Pirate Queen, and trains with her for four years.

This is probably my favorite of the 3 parts because there’s so much lore and information, and a lot of strings tie together in this one over other fics I’ve read. It’s heartbreaking but also inspiring (at least to me) and watching Meredith start this chapter of her life is amazing.

June

How To Rest — After she gets injured during a fight, Theodore pleads for Meredith to take the time to rest and heal, and after some convincing, she listens.

God. GOD. This month was so hard because I did a lot of cute fics but I definitely come back to this one the most and it has a special place in my heart because it completely set the ship of the two of them in high gear in my brain. I’m just so weak for mean and battled-hardened pirate queen falling for her kind and gentle doctor.

July

Break The Chain — After running away from his family in Prakra, Jamil makes one final change to signify his own hold over his life.

This was a very cathartic fic for me to write, because I have had my own journey with my hair growing up, and cutting it/shaving it always felt like being able to take control over myself again in the face of my mother trying to control my looks and decisions.

August

Nostalgia — Part 4 of Alec’s Prologue, in which, Alec reunites with someone from her past in a dream, begins her investigation of the Count’s murder, and starts to connect more with the Countess, finding that they have more in common than she would have thought.

My favorite part of this was writing Alec’s reunion with Leon, where even though she still doesn’t know who they are, she gets that confirmation that she does have family somewhere outside of Vesuvia, and they care about her so much.

September

Smoke Signals — Ignatius bonds with his younger sister, Camía-Marie, neither of them prepared for what happens when her magic awakens.

Okay, this one is sad, but it was another one that I enjoyed writing because I felt like I got to expand out of my comfort zone and write uncomfortable scenes and talk about trauma. Plus, writing outside of the POV that the story centers around is something that I’ve grown to enjoy.

October

November

And Then She Kissed Me — Andreya and Elizabeth spend some time alone in the middle of a busy day aboard The Jagged Ruby, between their own duties.

Y’all I’ve had these OCs in my mind for so long and this is the first thing I’ve written for them, it just makes me so emotional to finally have something that features them, even if it’s not in their canon universe. Plus they’re such cute girlfriends!

December

Why Why Why — Rodrigo grows up in his village of Girasol with his mothers, Elena and Carina, but unknown to him, there are forces outside of the village who will stop at nothing to get their hands on his magic.

I spent so long with this in my drafts, but being able to finish it was such a rewarding feeling. This fic (and the part 2 that will come later) really allowed me to explore my own feelings about being taken from a culture that was supposed to be mine at a young age, though Rodrigo’s experience is considerably more traumatic, it is a dramatized view of my own trauma.

Some Honorable Mentions under the cut! (caution for 🍋 content)

Honorable Mentions

Talk Dirty 🍋 — listen I am very gay for my own OCs and Alec is no exception 😩

Jamil’s Romance Tale — yes I reread this often, I just love him 🥺

Desire 🍋 — spicy valjam is the best valjam and this is my favorite thing I've written for them

Midsummer Masquerade Masterlist 🍋 — I literally can’t pick one so have them all

Show Me What I’m Looking For 🍋 — I don’t write many “first time” fics but this one of Jamil x Leon is very dear to me

Follow You — I am a sucker for character A gets injured and character B watches over them, but with the added spice of emotional constipation

#daniverse fic #my fic #into the daniverse #not tagging them all but anyway #I had fun with this

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phoebehalliwell · 3 years

Note

on the subject of crackships.

in a prue lives, phoebeleo piperkyle pruecole paigeandy au (in which paige meets them in s1) how do u see it playing out and ALSO. do u see them all having kids still. this is so random i am so sorry (also i don't mean they have to be set from the get go and never get w anyone else but these would hypothetically be endgame)

i mean with phoebeleo like hard yes like in s2 when they're watching the baby at the end everyone's like phoebe ik you're gonna be a great mom you're gonna have like a million and one kids like mark my words and phoebe's real smitten about it like wow u really think you : ) i'd like to. guess i should probably find a guy first tho huh. but if that guy's already there bc it's leo and he's been here since season one i think they are easily first to have kids and first to get a full power of three the other three is definitely like another can of worms bc like.

okay so for paigeandy obvi we're starting andy's an old childhood friend of the halliwell's for the sake of cleanliness did not date any of them (if we're going messy tho dated prue hooked up once or twice with phoebe (not while dating prue, but neither of them ever mentioned it around prue bc well. yikes.) And piper had a major crush on andy for like. a decade. from ages 13 to 23) and he's a cop and does. stuff idk helps people and this lands him frequently in bed with social services which is. consistently. a pain in the ass. and he doesn't try to hold it against them bc they're clearly understaffed underpaid there's a lot to do but um jesus. and everyone in the precinct Hates having to go over there to do stuff bc you're just standing in the lobby drinking bad coffee for fifty minutes before you can even get a word in with the work and unlucky andy he drew the short straw ends up at social services and who should he meet there if not this gorgeous but really scatterbrained berkeley grad with a mouth like a sailor and a heart of gold and now um there's no need to draw straws at the station because andy straight up volunteers to go to social services just to see paige which she notices of course because like. were you jinxed or something? cursed? i've never known someone to draw the short straw so many times. and andy's like no i just um. like being hands on with my work i don't like leaving up to some dumb rookie with bad luck and paige is like oh don't worry i promise it is still being left to some dumb rookie with bad luck i mean i am right here blah blah blah banter conversation hint at a tragic backstory give it half a season and then it's official bf/gf shit and as far as charmed goes it's a prophecy about four sisters and the halliwells are like phew. dodged a bullet there lmao. until they do something only charmed ones could do and they're like Wait. Fuck. Is There A Fourth Sister Out There? so they find paige within the first hmm ten episodes or so.

so since we have both s1 phoebeleo and paigeandy i'd say they'd be on the fastest track but i feel like paige does have a lot more issues when it comes to getting married and having kids than phoebe does regardless i think by s4 they're married on track to have kids with pruecole we're doing the s3 introduction and the enemies to lovers arc we seal that with either a wedding at the very end of s4 or at the very beginning of s5 however kids is like. like they both want kids but prue has daddy issues and cole has mommy issues not to mention the charmed one/demon hybrid so they need to do some soul searching on that one. prue's probably pregnant by the end of s5 and has her baby halfway thru s6. paige may or may not have had kids at this point if they did they were kind of a whoopsies baby but she and andy r embracing it with open arms.

piperkyle imo is peak in a divorce/widower era it's been pitched like piperkyle au where he's not fucking insane piperkyle au where she's not brokenhearted piperkyle au where they're both normal happy people who then meet but like. nah. the appeal of them to me really is being the broken fucked up human being and feeling like you're kinda just gonna stay broken and fucked up bc you had your shot and you blew it so now you're here get used to it and then to have someone to meet someone who sees you so genuinely as you are that at first it's disgusting leave me alone i hate you but out of that just honest sight grows familiarity and comfort and before you even realized it happened love and jfc i'm in love with them???? but you realize that you're always happier when they're around you want to stay by their side and you don't even have to wonder if they feel the same because you just know they do because you Know each other and you don't have to wait for them to turn and run once they see who you really are because they know who you are they've known from the start saw the ugly the broken and vile and looked past that and saw the beauty and genuine love underneath like 🗣‼🗣‼🗣‼🗣‼. piperkyle consistently makes me insane. So. in order to hit this. we're bringing in dan. that's right, from season two to six (maybe just five but i'd like to have the pruecole arc wrapped up in a nice bow by the time we open up the next enemies to lovers) piper and dan give a relationship the old college try going from the honeymoon phase to the cringe failmarriage stage until it's eventually just time to call it quits like you literally can't move forward. so because of the delayed start piperkyle would def be the last to have kids but because this is a long slowburn full of character development and just like. vulnerable bonding moments i think that once they go official as a couple wedding and kids are not far off on the horizon i think if we close out a season (a hypothetical 9 or 10) with them getting together for the first time then we gotta burn some miles on the freak out denial stage because i always think that's funny that'll last half a season? maybe a third. and then by the end of the season we're looking at a wedding. by the end of the following season they def have a kid

superlatives!

most fashionable couple: pruecole

most likely to name their kids after dead relatives: piperkyle

most likely to break p tradition: paigeandy

most chill about dating a charmed one: phoebeleo (andy kyle & cole would all be way too willing to throw themselves into danger, leo trusts phoebe's foresight and knows when he needs to sit on the sidelines. it is a lesson all the other men still struggle with)

bonus round!

best bromance: 1st place: leoandy 2nd place: leocole 3rd place: colekyle

#charmed #prue x cole #piper x kyle #phoebe x leo #paige x andy #also never apologize for sending me dumb crackship things i fuckin love them!!#💌

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thepapergirlandthespiegelman · 3 years

Text

Castlevania Season 4: I’m not mad, just disappointed

Season 4 is poorly written fanfiction, which is...better than a lot of things could be, I guess.

Spoilers below the cut.

Content warning: trauma, sexual assault, psychological manipulation

The Gods Have Had a Change of Heart

Or, “Season 3 Blocked and Ignored”

Season 3 felt like the fabric of the universe had been twisted just to inflict additional pain. Season 4 overcompensates in the other direction; trauma evaporates, and good things happen for no other reason than to make our favorite characters happy.

The Season 3 finale left two characters in particular totally devastated: Alucard and Hector. Alucard is violently betrayed in a horrifying sexual assault by the first two people he’s spoken to since Trevor and Sypha left. He ends up killing them in self-defense and puts their bodies on stakes outside the castle, alluding to his father’s habit of doing so and potentially hinting at a turn toward evil. Hector is seduced by Lenore and then enslaved using a magic ring.

Yet at the start of Season 4, it’s as if these things never happened. Alucard is troubled, but not totally devastated, certainly not evil. Taka and Sumi are referenced in exactly one conversation with new character, Greta, in which she says the rather tactless throwaway line, “I had a boyfriend and girlfriend at the same time once. But they never tried to kill me.” Hector is nominally imprisoned, but immediately seems highly agentic, perhaps even more so than before. He studies, lays traps, and makes secret plans with other people. Furthermore, his relationship with Lenore is completely transformed. From falling to his knees in abject horror and despair at being enslaved, he suddenly switches to light banter, in what is apparently a basically okay, mutually enjoyed romantic/sexual relationship. Manipulative, selfish Lenore is now a sympathetic character struggling to reconcile her own role and feelings with Carmilla’s plans.

The events of season 3 happened, remaining canon in the most basic, literal sense. But the emotional weight attached to them has disappeared into thin air.

Not gonna lie, I did breathe a sigh of relief when I saw that Alucard and Hector were okay. I’m soft-hearted! I don’t like seeing characters I like suffer! I mean, conflict is important, and I can deal with (or even enjoy in a certain sense) seeing characters suffer if it makes sense and serves a narrative purpose. But as far as I can tell, the season 3 finale was nothing more than lurid, meaningless violence. I probably wouldn’t have continued watching the show if it devolved into nothing more than finding novel ways to torture the characters.

Still, it doesn’t feel quite right to pretend like nothing happened either. Or, really, not that nothing happened, but that those things didn’t matter, didn’t hurt, didn’t leave lasting scars. That’s...almost kind of worse.

But, I thought, I can sort of forgive this sudden shift in the stars, given that there may have been some sort of change in creative direction relating to Ellis’ decreased involvement with the show.* Plus, season 3 was insanity. It’s not like it was full of great writing choices, so if we quietly ignore some of them, maybe that’s for the best.

*I only later learned that Netflix actually chose to continue with Ellis’ season 4 scripts. It is not lost on me that maybe Ellis doesn’t know how to write about the lasting effects of traumatic sexual experiences or how power dynamics can make a sexual relationship problematic because he doesn’t understand that those things exist.

Characters Being Nobody and Nothing Happening

Pretty Pictures, Not Much Else

Unfortunately, the disconnect between seasons 3 and 4 isn’t the only problem with this season. Although I felt that season 4 was a bit less boring than season 3 (I particularly enjoyed some of the earlier episodes of season 4), it suffers from the same basic problems of Characters Being Nobody and Nothing Happening.

None of the characters experience any significant development, let alone any sort of coherent arc. Sypha has changed slightly, becoming more rough and jaded. I did really like the scene where she talks about becoming the kind of person who says “shit.” I think it really speaks to how entering into a relationship with someone means taking on aspects of their lifestyle, and how that can change you in ways that you can’t predict and therefore can’t exactly “agree” to. Sometimes those changes are good, sometimes they’re bad, sometimes they’re neutral, and sometimes it’s difficult to know. But you have to accept that you’re sacrificing some aspects of the person that you could have been if you chose to live completely independently, or with someone else.

Trevor really hasn’t changed since season 1 when he first decided to take up the mantle of hero again. Likewise with Alucard. Hector and Lenore change, as previously noted, but that change is sudden, jarring, and occurs completely off screen in between seasons 3 and 4. Carmilla dies as exactly as she lived: bitter, angry, and violent. Saint Germain just kind of...gets fucked over in a nonsensical subplot, which is its own whole can of worms.

We also get several new characters in season 4, none of whom have developed personalities or motives, nor do they develop any of those things over the course of the season: Greta, Zamfir, Varney, Ratko.

And nobody. Does. Anything.

Trevor and Sypha spend the entire season trying to explore and aid Targoviste, which comes to absolutely nothing. They’re unable to help anyone, Zamfir dies, and they end up just jumping through a magic portal to the actually relevant subplot in the finale. Carmilla literally does little more than draw maps until she’s ultimately killed. Hector plays a minor role in Saint Germain’s extraction of Dracula from Hell; otherwise, he and Lenore basically just exchange banter. Saint Germain does sort of do some stuff? But it’s often unclear how he’s made his connections, who the people who are helping him are, or what exactly he’s doing in terms of his magic beyond “whatever it takes to get back to his lover.”

Sure, there are fight scenes, but they feel meaningless. There’s no context, no stakes. There’s also a LOT of dialogue, and it is. Not well written. Exposition is embarrassingly clumsy at times, and the philosophical musings are cliche at best, muddled and confusing at worst. There’s just not all that much going on.

That is, except for Isaac. But more on him in a second.

What Kind of Show Is This?

When the plot line adapted from Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse ended with season 2, the show struggled to establish a new identity.

Despite nominally dealing with themes like whether humanity is inherently good or evil and how to cope with wrongdoing and loss, seasons 1 and 2 ultimately boiled down to a pretty generic action-adventure/fantasy plot with found family/power of friendship elements. Main characters Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard don’t really wrestle with big philosophical questions or suffer any major defeats. They know that they have to take down Dracula for the good of the world, and they work together as a team to do it, with a little character development relating to their various backstories sprinkled in.

Then season 3 happened, and things got weird. The trio is broken up for what feels like a pretty trivial reason—Alucard has to protect the castle and Belmont hold, I guess? And the result of that decision is that the dynamics for the three main characters are completely unbalanced.

Ellis openly admits that he basically went feral with the writing of season 3, and it shows. The messaging in seasons 1 and 2 was cliche, but consistent. The message of season 3? Anyone’s guess.

Season 4 reversed the darkening of tone from season 3, but shares its inability to pick a story and tell it.

Isaac is the Main Character

Always has been.

While I can’t say that his character or arc are perfect, I can say that he actually has a character and an arc. He starts off motivated by his fierce loyalty to Dracula, then has to struggle to find his purpose once Dracula is gone. He goes from subservient to agentic. He goes from fully endorsing the genocide of humanity and not caring about his own life to seeing some worth in humans and genuinely wanting to live. He has an interesting moment that deepens our understanding of what night creatures are, while also serving as an exploration of the meaning of one’s fundamental nature. Most importantly, these changes happen naturally over the course of the show. They never feel forced or out of the blue, and while I feel like even more could have been done with Isaac’s character, there’s a lot to appreciate about what is there.

If there’s any thread holding Castlevania as a single, coherent work together, it’s Isaac. Not only is his character the best executed and the most coherent over the course of the show, his character explores themes that are larger than himself and relevant to the show as a whole, like those mentioned earlier: misanthropy versus a belief in the value of humanity; the ability to go beyond one’s “nature” or initial circumstances; and how to respond to being wronged or losing something important to you. Exploring the individual lives of characters is great, but really good writing usually requires going beyond that to reflect on broader questions and ideas. Isaac is the only character here that serves that larger purpose.

Sorry...I Just Don’t Buy It

The season 4 finale is crazy, although in a different way from season 3′s.

Varney being Death makes no sense on several different levels. I’m not going to spend a lot of time picking that particular plot twist apart, but I will talk about why I think it doesn’t work at the largest scale, and how I think season 4 might have been done better.

Last minute twists with zero foreshadowing are rarely a good idea, and this is no exception. Why introduce this “Death” entity at the last minute to be the most important battle of the season? The finale of the entire show, even? Besides the lack of logic or emotional buildup, this robs the show of the opportunity to make use of the antagonists that it already has. Since Dracula died, Carmilla has been the obvious choice for a new big bad. Why hasn’t she done more?

Season 4 feels crowded with characters and plot lines that amount to nothing. Why not bring some of these characters together? If Carmilla is the main antagonist, how come she never meets any of the protagonists (except Hector, who is a pretty minor player in this ecosystem) or even affects them in any way?

Season 4 feels like maybe it was trying to make something out of season 3 and the model that it presented, but it ultimately fails to do so. The writers throw the trio back together at the end anyway, so why not have them rejoin sooner and work together? Maybe Sypha and Trevor’s past experience with Saint Germain could have helped Alucard and Greta piece together what he was plotting sooner, rather than all four of them being completely blindsided by it in the penultimate episode. (Sypha and Trevor know that someone is trying to resurrect Dracula, but they fail to find out any actual detail about the plans, despite their supposed attempts.) Have characters actually do stuff, figure stuff out, advance the plot!

Likewise, maybe Carmilla becomes aware of Saint Germain’s scheming, sees it as a threat, and tries to take him down. Maybe she tries to get involved and somehow use alchemy or the Infinite Corridor to her own benefit. What does it look like when power-hungry Carmilla, who wants to rule the world, finds out there’s an entire multiverse out there? That could easily set her up to be a foil to Saint Germain, causing him to realize that what he’s doing is wrong.

What actually ended up happening in the show feels disjointed and often empty. In particular, most of the events that happen in the last two episodes just don’t really work for me. I didn’t like Trevor suddenly sacrificing himself to this random, new, super powerful enemy, or how the gems and dagger that he found just happened to be the perfect weapon to kill this new enemy, or how he inexplicably returns from the dead.

This kind of thing is what I mean when I say that this season feels like fanfiction. Trevor comes back from the dead for no discernible reason other than that it would really suck if he died. Greta as a character seems to literally only exist to be Alucard’s girlfriend and support him so that he doesn’t have to continue to be alone and potentially turn evil. Alucard’s trauma from Taka and Sumi and Hector’s trauma from Lenore are both conveniently erased. Even Dracula and Lisa are resurrected somehow and get their happy ending. And it’s like, I guess I prefer deus ex machina to the opposite (Does that have a name? When everything is going well but then something terrible happens for no reason other than to make things worse for the characters?), but they’re both bad writing.

God. This isn’t even getting into what happened with the Council of Sisters. And I don’t even really like those characters, but that doesn’t mean I want to see their characters handled poorly.

I’m not sorry that I watched until the end, but I can’t in good faith recommend the show as a whole. If you’ve yet to watch Castlevania, just stop at the end of season 2. While there are some shining moments in seasons 3 and 4 (4 more than 3), it’s just really not worth it.

#review #thoughts #television #animation #adult animation #video game adaptation #fantasy #Netflix #Netflix Original #Castlevania #storytelling #writing #characters #plot #character development #vampires #Isaac (Castlevania)

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zet-sway · 3 years

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@the-wip-project day 35:

I don't know what today's question is but I gotta write a wall of text about what happened last night because holy shit

I was on the verge of falling asleep and, like I usually do, I decided to hunt for some spicy fanfics to read on my phone. I found one.

All my posts are long but this one is real fucking long. CW for touching on dub-con and injury mentioned in the type of context it probably shouldn't be.

It's time for me to admit that not only am I a oneshot writer, I'm also a oneshot reader. I am drawn to short fanfics. If I click on a chaptered fic, it's (usually) because it's rated E for smut and I'll go in with every intention of skimming it for the spicy bits. I'm not proud of this. I've avoided saying this for years because I don't want to disappoint people who work hard on their very long and well thought out chaptered stories. I have a short attention span, and I know what I want.

But anyway, last night I clicked on a fic with 5 chapters and some amount of words, around 30k? Long, by my standards, but I was tired and I just wanted something to read while I dozed off.

This particular fic hooked me in, though. I still skimmed it, but the writing was so unique in a way that made me writhe with writer's envy and admiration. Whoever wrote this had their own language - nothing borrowed - their own vision.

I guess I should tell the good people who read my posts (ya'll, seriously, thank you) that the fic in topic is called Fault Lines by Recidiva on AO3. I would link to it but uhhhh I may be using my work PC for "extracurricular purposes" right this moment ^^; so maybe when I get home I'll remember to add it.

I skimmed it - like I said above - for the spicy parts. It generally follows the plot of Bioware's canon. Thane begins as possessive and manipulative, likely uncomfortably close to dub-con for a lot of people. He kisses her and knows full well that his kiss will make her willing but intoxicated, and how he will use that to fulfil himself. But as the story progresses, he falls in love. Their relationship is what I'll call "edgy." Both of them are renegades. There's a scene where they get down in the shuttle after a fight and they're both still injured and it borders on downright unrealistic but fuck it, it's fanfic and I bought it. However their relationship develops a certain heart-wrenching tenderness. She asks him what Siha means over and over again, and eventually tells him she thinks "bitch" when he says it. But in that moment they have a playful banter, he knows full well she's probably already looked it up on the extranet, and they fall into bed together. The smut is mind-boggling.

By the time it gets to Shepard's arrest, he's taken up a place on Earth and visits her, breaks into her house arrest. There's a scene where they see each other for the first time in a while, she tells him how much she's missed his mouth and how it's not right how bad she wants him, and wants him bad enough to smother him with affection. She says something to the effect of "if you're looking to die, I'd volunteer to be the cause," implying that her lust is powerful enough to endanger his life. And it was at this moment I realized I fucked up.

It's established that I live in my own headcanon and I'm not burdened with considering the end of Thane's life as part of my fics. And the suspension of disbelief was such that I forgot he doesn't make it. So at this moment in the fic, chapter 4 out of 5, I realized "Oh shit this isn't going to have a happy ending." I skipped to the end right away, I wanted to confirm my fears.

In their final exchange, she asks him to lie to her - something that's repeated in other chapters of the story. I forget what he says, I was reading desperately, but he asks her in return to tell him something true. She kisses him and tells him she loves him, and he breathes his last breath with the lingering tingle of their kiss to carry him to the other side.

I was so entrenched in the depth of their relationship up to that point. The level of fathomless love the author conveyed, unlike anything I've ever managed to write before, but more realistic to my own understanding of love as I've experienced it. Not because they're renegades, but just the selflessness with which they feel, communicate, banter, and make love.

When I read that last paragraph, something inside me broke. That sounds dramatic but that's honestly how I would describe it. It felt like waking up from a night terror, when you bolt up in bed from a dream so bad you immediately get up even if it's 4am because nothing feels real and you're so terrified you have to get up and do something - literally anything to take your mind off it, to ease you back into reality. I put my phone down and stared into the darkness of my bedroom and told myself "it's just a fanfic, no need to get upset." And then I started to cry and I didn't stop for 30 minutes.

My husband was downstairs watching Bohemian Rhapsody and I went down there and wrapped myself around him so tight and cried. Bless this man, from the bottom of my heart - bless him - for his unfathomable kindness. I felt like a fucking fool because I was crying over fanfiction but he paused his movie and just listened while I tried to articulate how it wasn't exactly about the character death, or the characters at all, it was just the writing and how it wormed into my brain so convincingly. I felt the loss like it was my own loss. I am terrified of losing my husband. So many feelings coalesced and I realized one day I may be in that situation, kissing the man I love goodbye for the last time, never to hold him again. I'm at work right now and I'm tearing up because it's so hard.

I tip my hat to the author, but I genuinely wished I hadn't read that fanfic. And isn't it kind of funny after that grandstand I took yesterday about not wanting to write the pain of loss and grief, that I ended up reading it instead and probably fucking myself up just as badly, if not worse, than if I had tried to write it myself?

It gets worse, too. Because it got me thinking about my own writing, and how I could never hope to achieve what that author did. So I sat there crying out my painfeelings while simultaneously feeling like a shit writer and like nothing I put out matters. I got up from the couch, sat down at my PC and picked up where I left off in the Omega DLC in ME3 because video games are great for taking the mind off things. It didn't exactly help with the intensity I'd hoped for, but I managed to fall asleep, by 3am.

Fast forward to this morning. I dragged my sorry ass out of bed 4 hours later and drove to work. By some fucking miracle, no one is here right now except our field director. And I'm stewing in how this one fic really fucked me up bad, reconsidering everything. I feel like I've been put in my place.

So what changed?

Yesterday I posted about how I'm struggling to write a plotline. I know what happens, but I'm not interested in the little bits that tie it together. I want to write the romance. I think there's a way to write the plot and the romance at the same time, but it's damn hard.

I started doing this because I wanted to grow my skills as a writer, and I knew it might be more than I could chew. I'm at that moment now where I'm about ready to give up.

Even if I felt like a shit writer last night (and still kinda do this morning), I know that the stuff I've put out has value. We can't all write these epically tragic smut-romance-renegades-to-lovers tales, we'd all be sad all the damn time. There's a time and a place and - I would argue - even a need for lighterhearted fic out there. There are really no rules. I'm confident in what I know how to do.

But the plot. Fuck it, man. I think maybe I'm trying too hard to be something I'm not. I'm trying really hard to write like other people. I may have mentioned before that I saw a post about how many artists spend their time pining for the skills of others, thinking "wow, when I can draw like that, I'll have made it as an artist." That same post cautioned against this, basically saying you already have your own unique style, it's just harder to see through the lens of your own eyeballs. It's fine to challenge yourself but try to acknowledge what you do that sets you apart already. I feel like I have that something - maybe not to the extent that I wish, but I have something.

So what's the point of the plot? Why do I need to tell my readers how I cured Keprals? I'm asking myself important questions here. I like to think I've come up with ideas that no one else has, but as I said above, I don't read a lot of chaptered fics. I very well may have come to the same ideas as other writers and I'm not even aware of it. I don't know if my ideas are unique but I still arrived at them all by myself.

The challenge here - the thing I'm struggling so much with - is how to put them together with the same elegance of my fellow writers. I'm looking at you, shrios fam (yeah I'm calling you that, yall know who you are). I know I can write words, but it's like I have a bunch of pieces from completely different jigsaw puzzles and I'm struggling to make a new picture out of them. I struggle with the transitions between them.

The point here is I have to find my own way. And I have to stop taking myself so seriously. In fact this level of "seriousness" is one of the things that got me into so much angst over World of Warcraft over the last two years. At least I know how to recognize it.

I have to find my own way. I have my own things that are worth sharing. The author I read last night had a language all their own, and I have a language all my own too. Their wordplay was actually more choppy than I would ever write. I've talked before about how I'm scared of starting too many sentences with pronouns, how I maybe write too many run-on sentences, whatever. This author did that with reckless abandon. It worked for them. So if they can make that shit work, I can make my own shit work.

I have to find my own way.

My most current WIP is Thane and Shepard's first time. I've been working on it pretty nonchalantly because I hadn't intended to publish it until I built up to it. It takes place further into my timeline, and it would probably ruin the point of a slow burn if I put it out there now. There are some really memorably moments in this WIP, and there are other moments that need to be smoothed over as well. I never knew what I'd really imagined for their first time but I think I've mostly developed something that's unique in its own right, and I think will be fun for people to read.

I'm just so fucking torn over what to do with it. I feel guilty for working on it. I should be writing "other shit" leading up to it but I don't fucking want to. I actually wrote probably 2-3k words this weekend, which is a pretty staggering amount by my standards. Some of it was for this smutty WIP and some was for something I just threw together, Thane observing Shepard on Horizon and the emotional toll it takes on her. He's seeing her humanity. I don't know if it's worth it to continue but I wrote a lot of it and the words are more precise than usual for a draft, I don't know. I have so much fucking insecurity. Fuck dude. I want to write this longfic, but I don't want to write it. I want to skim to the spicy bits like I always do.

I am wracked with insecurity, of my own making. I know what I can do but I feel compelled to see this idea through. Somehow I have to find my own way.

TLDR I feel like if I don't publish something soon I'm going to burst and I don't even know what the fuck to work on first and fjslfjsojoiejrj

I would be really down for, like, a bunch of hugs and a bowl of ice cream shared over memes and fanservice.

#this post is EXTREMELY fucking long send help #ITT: i read something that probably changed my brain chemistry for a few hours and it's painful #zet vs 100days #i'm just glad to get this off my chest good lord #anyway if people want to send me links to their favorite shrios fluff i would welcome it

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phoebenavarro · 3 years

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rest assured, the night will come

realized I haven’t posted this here! a continuation of my “Jon trusts Tim” s2 AU, but this is first chronologically so reading the other parts isn’t necessary

After the Prentiss attack, Jon finds himself exhausted, in pain, and dreading having to be alone, so that’s how he finds himself outside of Tim’s flat propping himself up on the cane the doctors gave him with two containers of curry takeaway in his free hand. Together, Jon and Tim grapple with the events of the day, and Jon makes a decision on who he can trust.

the magnus archives, jontim, 2500 words

on ao3 here

When Jon finally leaves the Institute, statements taken and pain meds all but worn off, exhausted and bone-weary, the last thing he wants to do is to be alone in his flat. He wants nothing more than to sleep, but even as tired as he is, the nightmares that are sure to come turn him off the concept. His stomach clenches, and he realizes that it’s from hunger, not fear or anxiety or disgust like he’d been assuming since he woke up. He’s not sure if he’ll be able to keep any food down, but he figures he’s got to at least try. And he really doesn’t want to be alone, so that’s how he finds himself outside of Tim’s flat propping himself up on the cane the doctors gave him with two containers of curry takeaway in his free hand.

I should have texted, he thinks, rather belatedly, after he’s knocked on the door.

Tim answers the door after a few moments, and he looks slightly better than he did the last time Jon saw him. Maybe he took a nap. He looks surprised to see Jon.

“Sorry, I should’ve let you know I was coming,” Jon says before Tim gets a chance to say anything, “But I really didn’t want to be alone, so.” He holds up the food. “Curry?”

Tim smiles the first genuine smile Jon’s seen from him since they both woke up in the ECDC tent.

“God, yeah, you read my mind,” Tim says, “Come in.”

Jon’s been to Tim’s flat a few times, so he makes a bee line for the coffee table and sets the food down. A nature documentary of some sort is playing on the TV, volume low. He smiles a bit; Tim always needs his background noise. Jon carefully sits down on the sofa, wincing as the movement pulls on his wounds, and leans the cane against the armrest.

Tim looks at him with concern. “Boss, did you just now leave the Institute?”

“Yes,” Jon sighs. The pain medication has now worn off entirely, he thinks, and his entire body aches. The worst is in his hip, where the worms dug particularly deep. The doctors gave him a prescription for more, but he didn’t think to go pick it up before the pharmacies closed, something he is now seriously regretting.

“Jon,” Tim says, exasperated.

“I know, I know…”

Tim turns on his heel and rummages around in the kitchen, returning with some napkins and a pill bottle, which he holds out to Jon.

“I’m assuming you didn’t get a chance to get these then,” he says, giving the bottle a shake, “Good thing I did, huh?” Jon wordlessly takes the bottle. “Food first, though.”

“Oh! Right,” Jon says, “Thank you, Tim. You’re a life saver.” Tim hums. “Quite literally.”

“Yeah. Guess there are some perks of getting eaten by worms together, huh? Sharing food and drugs.” He stands up. “Want something to drink? Alcohol is a big no no on the medication, otherwise I would be getting wasted.”

“Water’s fine,” Jon says. Tim goes back to the kitchen, and Jon starts unpacking the containers of food. Tim returns with two glasses of water, and they eat mostly in silence, too exhausted for the animated banter they usually share. Jon doesn’t mind, the quiet companionship is comforting, so they just sit and watch the documentary. Jon doesn’t really absorb any of it, but the soothing voice of the narrator is also comforting.

After they finish eating, Tim starts cleaning up, taking the empty containers to the kitchen. Jon takes a moment to read the directions on the pill bottle before taking one, very much looking forward to the pain easing up. Tim returns, settling next to Jon on the couch, sitting close enough that Jon can lean against him. They finish up the documentary, and Jon finally lets himself relax as the pain medication kicks in.

“What now?” Tim asks. Jon shrugs.

“I don’t care. Put on whatever you want.” “Alright,” Tim says, “A comfort movie then.” Jon nods, letting himself zone out while Tim scrolls through menus on the TV. Tim selects something, and Jon rouses himself from his thoughts.

“What are we watching?” Jon asks.

“Stand By Me.”

“Oh, I’ve never seen it.”

“Boss,” Tim sighs, shaking his head in disappointment, but he’s still grinning, “You’ve got to watch more movies. It’s a classic!”

Tim talks throughout the movie, but Jon doesn’t mind, because he has the subtitles on and everything he mentions is related to the movie, little tidbits and trivia. (“It’s based on a short story by Stephen King called The Body, and Stephen King actually saw a friend of his get killed by a train, but he doesn’t remember it because he repressed it so thoroughly,” Tim says. Jon admits he hasn’t read much Stephen King, and he is treated to a mini lecture about how “Stephen King is one of the most prolific authors of our time and you can’t discount him just because he is known for horror.”)

Tim is… remarkably normal, considering the day they had. Jon knows he copes with humor, so it’s not all that surprising, but Jon can’t muster up the energy to pretend to be annoyed by Tim’s quips. His mind keeps wandering back to Gertrude, murdered and then left in the tunnels for months, no one caring enough to truly look for her, not even the police.

That could happen to you, a horrible part of his mind whispers, and he shivers.

“Jon, what’s wrong?” Tim asks, gently, very sincerely, and he pauses the movie, turning to face Jon, “I mean, other than the obvious. I can practically hear you thinking.” Jon hesitates. It’s never been his nature to share his feelings with anyone, not even the people he’s closest with, but as he looks at Tim, at the bandages covering his skin that Jon can’t help but feel responsible for, he finds himself wanting to tell Tim. Tim suffered the worst right along him, he can trust Tim, especially when he’s looking at Jon like he is.

“You heard about Gertrude?” Jon asks quietly.

“Yeah, Martin told me, after I finally got him to stop apologizing for losing us in the tunnels.”

“Did he…” Jon swallows, “Did he tell you how she died?”

“No, but I’m guessing it wasn’t natural causes.”

“She ah, she was shot.”

“Fuck’s sake,” Tim breathes, “Seriously?” Jon nods. “Christ, who would want to kill Gertrude?”

“I don’t know, but it scares me,” Jon admits, “Even more than if she was killed by some… Monster. Because…”

“Because this was a person,” Tim finishes, “And they could do it again.” Jon nods again. “Yeah, I get it.” Tim cocks his head, makes the face he always makes when he’s about to make a joke to try to lighten the mood, “Although, it could have been a monster with a gun. We don’t know that they can’t use guns.” And Jon can’t help it, he does grin a little.

“Yes, well, somehow I don’t think that’s likely,” he says.

“No,” Tim sighs mournfully, “But that would be pretty cool. I mean, bad for us, Jane Prentiss managed to fuck us up pretty badly with just the worms, I’m glad we didn’t have to worry about being shot—“

“Tim,” Jon says, stopping him, because this topic of conversation is not good for his anxiety.

“Sorry,” Tim says, picking up on Jon’s discomfort, “Uh, do the police have any leads?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Jon says, “I’d imagine the trail is pretty cold by now. I mean, it was probably someone at the Institute, to be able to get into the tunnels, but we have no idea if there are other entrances outside the Institute… So it really could’ve been anyone.”

“But why would someone kill Gertrude?” Tim wonders, “I mean, other than for gross incompetence at actual archiving. Unless she was a secret badass or something.”

“At this point, I wouldn’t even be all that surprised,” Jon mutters, “I don’t want to believe that there’s a murderer at the Institute, but that’s what makes the most sense.”

“Yeah,” Tim agrees, “Probably.”

“I— It feels like I’m being watched, when I’m in the Archives. And with the tunnels— there’s more to the Institute than I thought. There’s something off. And I think Gertrude’s death has something to do with that. And…” Jon bites his lip.

“And?” Tim prompts.

“And what if whoever killed her comes after me as well?”

“Jon…”

“I know, I know, it’s stupid, but I can’t shake the feeling.”

“After the day we’ve had, I don’t think that’s stupid. A bit paranoid, maybe, but not stupid.”

“Oh,” Jon says. He hadn’t expected Tim to take him seriously.

“Considering the way Prentiss seemed to single you out, I mean, it kind of makes sense that people— or monsters might have it out for the archivist.” And that’s something Jon’s been trying not to think about, but he definitely agrees.

“And that is a whole other terrifying question,” Jon sighs, “What exactly I’ve gotten us into. But my more immediate concern is whether or not there is a murderer in our midst.”

“Bit more pressing,” Tim agrees, “You think the cops can handle it?”

Jon shrugs, “They weren’t particularly interested in finding her the first time, I don’t think finding her killer is going to be a priority.”

Tim snorts. “No, of course not.”

“It could have been anyone, even Martin, even Sasha. I really hope it wasn’t them, but I’m starting to think that we can’t afford to trust anyone. I know how paranoid that sounds, but—“

“But it makes sense,” Tim says. They lapse into silence for a moment. “What about me?

“What?”

“How can you be sure I didn’t kill Gertrude?”

Jon considers it. He probably shouldn’t trust Tim, if he’s being purely logical. But he does. He knows Tim; he saw Tim, when he first came to the Institute, deeply traumatized and clearly in a bad place (and he’d been curious about what happened, of course he was, but he’s known for a very long time that there are things you don’t ask about.) Jon helped coax him into a better place, watched as Tim found himself again. All that, and what they’d been through today was a hell of a bonding experience, and well, they were alone a lot during the attack. If Tim wanted him dead, he’d had plenty of opportunities.

But really, it all comes down to: Jon is scared, and he doesn’t want to do this alone, and Tim is the safest option. No, not just that, he wants to trust Tim.

“Because you’re my friend and I’m choosing to trust you,” Jon says.

Tim has a bit of a deer-in-the-headlights look to him, like he wasn’t expecting Jon to be sincere.

“Yeah,” Tim says, and he looks away from Jon, and he sounds a bit strained, “Yeah boss, I trust you too.” Jon grins.

“I appreciate it,” Jon says, “Considering you’re allergic to sincerity.” He nudges Tim with his elbow, and Tim laughs, pulling Jon into a loose embrace, careful not to put too much pressure on their wounds. Tim sighs, and he starts gently brushing his fingers through Jon’s hair. Jon melts into the touch, and they settle back against the couch cushions in each other’s arms. It feels right.

“If you want to do your own investigation into Gertrude’s killer, I will help you,” Tim says, “One hundred percent. But right now we can’t really do anything. The Institute’s closed, we’re out on sick leave. The trail’s not gonna get any colder. First we need to focus on healing, okay?” Jon nods. “We can figure out all the suspects and make a murder board later, but I don’t think either of us are up to it right now.” As much as Jon’s skin is buzzing with the need to do something, or else he’s leaving himself open to attack, his more rational side knows that Tim is right. They’re safer together, anyway.

“Yeah,” Jon says, “Right. Let’s finish the movie.” They resume the movie, and Tim is a bit more subdued, content to watch the screen and idly run his fingers through Jon’s hair. As the film draws to a close, Tim starts to doze, breathing softly. Jon looks down at Tim’s peaceful face, covered in bandages, and his heart twists. This is his fault. If Tim hadn’t been helping Jon walk, he probably would’ve kept up with Martin, or if he’d left Jon to his fate, maybe he would have been able to outrun Prentiss and the worms.

This isn’t helpful, Jon chastises himself, but he can’t stop. If he can’t protect his employees, his friends, then what is the point? He tries not to spiral, and he directs his attention to the end of the movie. It’s not the kind of movie he would normally pick for himself, but he can see why Tim likes it. There are few things Tim values more than family, whether that be blood family or found family. Tim doesn’t talk much about his parents, but there are pictures of them and a brother around the place. Tim will talk more about his brother, but it’s always tinged with sadness, like he isn’t around anymore. Jon doesn’t ask; he feels like he hasn’t earned the right.

“I guess I should head back to my flat.” Jon says while the credits are rolling, because he can feel himself starting to nod off next to Tim. That wakes Tim up, though.

“Jon,” he groans, “It’s midnight. You’re staying here.” He says it with finality, like it’s obvious. “I’m not letting you take the tube in the middle of the night when you can barely walk.” He gestures at Jon’s cane. Jon feels like he needs to object out of politeness, to make sure that it’s really alright, but he is, quite frankly, too tired, and he knows Tim wouldn’t offer if he didn’t mean it. But still, that part within him that won’t allow him to be a burden on anybody squirms. He pushes the feeling down.

Jon nods. “Thank you, Tim.”

“Come on,” Tim says, slowly getting to his feet, “The guest bed is made up, and we’re really gonna regret it in the morning if we sleep on the couch.” He offers a hand to help Jon up, but Jon waves him off, not wanting to hurt him. He uses his cane to help him get to his feet, and Tim leads him to the guest bedroom.

“Bathroom’s across the hall,” Tim says, “Let me know if you need anything.” And then Tim pulls him into a hug, resting his chin on Jon’s shoulder. “I’m really glad we’re alive,” he says into Jon’s hair, “We’ll figure it out, I promise.”

“Okay,” Jon replies, “Thanks Tim.”

That night, at least, they both sleep soundly, too exhausted for nightmares.

#tma #the magnus archives #jontim #tim stoker #jonathan sims #mine #my writing #tma fic

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peace-coast-island · 3 years

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Diary of a Junebug

Bake away the weekend with confetti cakes

There's soooo much cake in the kitchen, it's unreal. On one hand, I enjoyed making the cakes, but on the other hand, what were we thinking? I don't mean that in a bad way, I mean that as in it's so much work kind of way. Overall, all that hard work and effort was worth it as we got to enjoy a masterpiece at the end.

I think it helps that it was a group collab instead of a solo venture. If it's just me I probably would've used a cake mix and add one layer of frosting and call it a day. In this case, we had some friends visiting the camp and we all felt like doing something creative, so that's how this baking marathon came to be.

Although it was a lot of work - and a bit frustrating at times - making all these cakes from scratch and decorating them was fun and rewarding. To be honest though, I won't be doing that again anytime soon just because it takes up a lot of stuff and time, plus it's something you really have to be in the mood for. Still, I'd be up for doing something like that again, just not anytime in the near future.

Again, we made so much cake - I'm actually kinda worried that it might go to waste. Hopefully that won't be a problem, but still, seeing that much cake is a bit intimidating.

Visiting us at the camp is Sandi, Lea, and Chase, Lea's partner at the agency. Lea and the others have talked about Chase so it kinda feels like I sorta know him even though we didn't actually meet until now. Lea has been trying to get him to join her on her adventures with us but their schedules never aligned. I remember a couple years back he was planning to meet up with us but couldn't make it at the last minute. So it's good to finally meet him after all this time!

It's a bit unusual to see Sandi and Lea without DJ, Dell, and Em. I think this is the first time I haven't seen them all together. It's funny how you're so used to seeing one thing that when the pattern changes, it takes a bit of readjustment. Although Sandi, Lea, and the others are known as a team, they don't actually see each other too much outside of that.

They're practically family so they do keep in touch often but since Sandi accomplished her main purpose, everyone sort of went their separate ways. Not exactly disbanded as they still get together for missions once in a while, more like the whole crime fighting/retrieving lost treasures team is secondary compared to everything else going on in their lives. They pretty much admitted on separate occasions that the main reason why they continue taking on missions here and there is so they can have an excuse to hang out. Nothing like a good ol' heist to bring the team back together again!

When Sandi isn't out on missions, she's helping her mom out at the orphanage they run together. She says that she's really considering the idea of going to school to become a teacher, which I can totally see her doing. Problem is, how to get in, especially with an unusual background like hers. While reuniting with her mom has helped Sandi fill in some of the gaps of her past, there's still a lot missing and there's probably no way of knowing since her father's been dead for years. In short, what's stopping her is basically a potential legal nightmare - and given her history with some certain agencies, that just complicates things further.

Speaking of Sandi's complicated and cluttered past, an interesting development popped up. Something about an old acquaintance who turns out to be a half sibling through her father. What makes it complicated is that they both had agreed to leave that part of their lives behind so finding that out has left her with mixed feelings. It seems that the more she tries to dig up information on her father, she just gets left with more questions.

Lea and Chase are currently looking more into it, but it's a long shot. Apparently, Sandi's father was pretty much living a double life as his colleagues were unaware about Sandi and her mom for a long time. As for Sandi's friend, she, Lea, and Chase believe that it's likely that her dad never knew about him, or else they would've found something by now. In fact, how this information came out was pretty much an incidental finding, a random occurrence that wound up opening a can of worms.

Aside from that, things at the agency have been the same. Lea, as usual, solved cases with her vast knowledge on art and history while Chase did his part by wreaking havoc and catching the culprits. Sandi pops in once in a while as an informant, helping out in her own way. Given how they all are now, it's hard to believe that Lea and Chase used to work against Sandi and the others.

Them coming here was a bit of an impromptu trip. Lea and Chase had a bunch of vacation days they need to use up so they decided to plan something together. Then Lea extended the invitation to the others but they were unable to make it aside from Sandi, making it one of the rare occasions where it's just the three of them.

Chase has been described as a loose cannon, mainly by Lea. Compared to Lea and Sandi, he does stick out for being a bit extra, not in a bad way though. More like he tries, but ends up being clumsy and a bit of a mess, the kind who wants to help but ends up getting in the way. He and Lea are pretty much the brawn and brains kind of partnership where it doesn't seem like they'd get along but they surprisingly work together well. Sandi likes to roast him, as does Em and DJ, but they do admit that once they got him on their side instead of him working against them, he's actually a pretty cool guy.

Hanging out with them, especially outside of a mission or event has been fun. It's interesting and entertaining seeing Lea and Chase's dynamic - I can see how they get along at work. As for Sandi, she and Chase have a fun sibling-like kind of relationship where they mess around and banter with each other.

For some reason we all felt like we're in a baking mood so we watched a bunch of cake videos for inspiration. Between the four of us, we consider ourselves decent bakers so we decided to make a cake from scratch. It's not as intimidating as one would think, but it takes some prep work. But other than that, it's mostly just mixing different ingredients together.

Since we were feeling ambitious, we went for a bit of a complex recipe. By that, I mean we used a recipe from a pastry chef that takes a bit more work but isn't too hard to make. We went for confetti cake since we had all the ingredients. Plus it's been forever since I've had confetti cake and Sandi's never had it before.

And if baking a cake from scratch wasn't enough, we decided to make a bunch and decorate them! The first cake, our trial run, was a huge success so we made more. The recipe is really good - the cake is light and fluffy with a sweet vanilla flavor. Definitely something I'll be making again.

Now I want to try other recipes by Saffy like her chai coffee cake and Boston cream pie. But like I said, as much as I enjoyed making and decorating all these confetti cakes, I don't plan on doing that again anytime soon. You just gotta be in the mood for it, ya know?

We also used Saffy's recipe for merengue buttercream, which can be a bit finicky as timing's important - another reason why it's better to work in a group instead of solo. The result is a sweet, cloudlike frosting that goes well with the cake - or any kind of cake really. It's also fun to mix the frosting with food coloring, especially with the texture of the buttercream.

Along with decorating a bunch of small cakes, we put together a three tiered cake and went all out on that. I don't know how cake decorators do it, especially with big cakes. Shoutout to Chase and Sandi for doing most of the heavy lifting - literally and figuratively!

Decorating the cakes were a lot of fun. It kinda turned into a mini campsite event with various campers decorating their own cakes. Working on the big cake was fun and challenging but I think I prefer the simplicity of working on a smaller cake. Not too shabby for a bunch of first timers when it comes to the centerpiece!

As for the cake scraps, we made cake pops and decorated those too. It's so interesting seeing everyone's personality show through cake decorating. Lea goes for patterns, the methodical, organized type. I don't know how she has the patience to do all those details! Sandi likes to go for color with rainbows and star sprinkles. She also has a thing for galaxy and marble patterns. Chase goes for simplicity, usually with a layer of frosting and a bunch of sprinkles scattered about. And I, of course, went with florals and stars, though I still haven't quite gotten the hang of piping frosting yet so the flowers are a hit or miss. At least I can never go wrong with starry sprinkles!

Overall, I think the baking process was my favorite part of the whole thing. There's just something so satisfying about mixing together ingredients and watching them come together. Baking, as frustrating as it can be sometimes, is also fun as well as rewarding. It's a good thing we have Lea here to double check the measurements as that made things go by a lot more smoothly.

After the unveiling of the masterpiece, we threw a little party - with a feat like that, how could we not celebrate? At least we made a dent in our cake supply!

#animal crossing #animal crossing pocket camp #Diary of a Junebug #headcanon ramble

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ollieofthebeholder · 3 years

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leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall): a TMA fanfic

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] Also on AO3

Chapter 11: Sasha

They all jump at the sound of the recorder clicking off. Tim sits up straighter and rubs his hands together.

“Well!” he says in what Sasha can tell is a falsely cheerful voice. “I think that’s enough earth-shattering revelations for one night. Who wants that whiskey now?”

“I refuse to get drunk around you again,” Sasha says. It’s a pathetic attempt at their usual banter, but it does get a genuine smirk out of Tim, complete with that unfairly attractive dimple.

Jon exhales heavily. He pulls off his glasses with one hand and rubs at his eyes with the other. “I should…probably get going.”

“The hell you will,” Tim says immediately. “Look at you. If I let you out the door, you’ll fall asleep at the wheel and die before you get to the end of the block. You’re staying the night.”

“Tim, while I appreciate the offer—”

“Nope, not interested in the rest of that sentence. The only thing keeping you upright is the arm of the sofa and the starch in your underpants.”

“And the stick jammed up my ass, no doubt?” Jon raises an eyebrow.

Tim grins. “See? You’re so tired you’re actually joking around with me. Stay the night, and tomorrow we can get answers out of them first thing.” He stands up without waiting for an answer. “One of you can take the sofa, the other one can have the love seat. Unless you want to build a blanket fort on the floor, but it wouldn’t be fair to leave Martin out. We’ll let the old folks fight over the bed.”

“Old folks?” Jon Prime repeats indignantly. He shoots an obviously exaggerated glare at Martin Prime, who isn’t even bothering to hide his snickers. “We don’t look that bad.”

Tim laughs. He’s the only one that doesn’t seem that tired, really. “Come on, you two. I’ll show you where the bedroom is.”

Jon Prime gets to his feet, then hesitates and glances at Martin Prime. Sasha wonders how blind Martin Prime actually is, because he seems to respond to that look; he hesitantly reaches out in Jon Prime’s direction. Jon Prime takes his arm without further comment, and Sasha watches Martin Prime’s shoulders slump in evident relief before the two of them quietly wish the rest of them goodnight and follow Tim down the hall.

Sasha watches them for a moment, then glances at Jon and Martin, who are both avoiding looking at one another. She decides to give them a little space and go gather up the spare blankets and pillows. They probably both need a minute or two to process what they just heard.

Truthfully, Sasha’s not sure what she thinks of it either. She’s impressed that Martin Prime isn’t passively rolling over and taking whatever Jon Prime dishes out, and she’s a little bit in awe of his strength. Could she have survived two weeks alone and blind, let alone in the Archives? That feeling of being watched is creepy enough when she can look over her shoulder and confirm nobody’s actually there; she can’t imagine what it would be like if she didn’t have that option. It must be terrifying, but Martin Prime hasn’t shown it.

She’s also—there’s no denying it—curious as all get-out. She kind of wants to interrogate Martin Prime, find out how he lost his eyesight, if it’s total vision loss or partial, if he thinks it’s temporary or permanent. What it’s like being blind in general, what it’s like trying to maneuver around the Archives blind. How he plans to deal with it if it is permanent.

As she passes the door of Tim’s bedroom, which is ajar, she hears Martin Prime say, evidently mid-sentence, “—put you to any trouble.”

Sasha slows her steps and hovers outside the door, eavesdropping shamelessly. It’s always been one of her fatal flaws, that urge to snoop and spy and pluck secrets out of thin air. It’s part of what drew her to the Magnus Institute over any of the other research or archival jobs she could have taken, the other part being that most of the others would have required her to go too far from London. She hasn’t said anything about that to any of the others, about why she’s so keen to stay in the city. For all she loves ferreting out things about those around her, she’s always been close-mouthed about her own secrets.

“It’s no trouble at all,” Tim says. “Like I said, we were planning to spend the night in the Archives anyway, and I don’t think we’d all have fit on that cot in the back room. My floor’s a lot more comfortable.”

“Yes, but we don’t want to turn you out of your room.” Jon Prime sounds uncertain and exhausted.

“I offered. Look. Martin’s probably going to be asleep before I get back out to the living room, he looks exhausted. And I don’t think the rest of us want to leave him alone right now.” Tim sighs. “Where did we all sleep when we did this before?”

“Hmm?” Sasha isn’t sure which one of the Primes makes that noise.

“You said this happened a lot earlier than it did for you guys, right? If we want to keep an eye on each other like this now, I bet it was even worse two months down the line. Did somebody else put us all up or what?”

There’s a short pause before Martin Prime says, “No, we—we all sort of went our separate ways.”

“Wait, seriously?” Tim sounds genuinely shocked. “No, that’s—if you were hurt—”

“I wasn’t, though. I was the only one who came out of it unhurt.”

“Physically, anyway,” Jon Prime says. “We were all a bit…it was rough for a while there.”

“All the more reason we should have stayed together, then,” Tim says. “Whose idea was it not to?”

“I think we were all just…tired,” Martin Prime says slowly. “You—our Tim, I mean—he was in quarantine for a while, so he just wanted to go home, and Sasha…she wasn’t herself.”

Somebody makes a noise that might be a laugh, but Sasha isn’t getting the joke. Tim has an audible frown in his voice when he speaks again. “And you? What did you do? Go back to the place you’d last seen when you were being toyed with by six thousand worms wrapped in a trench coat and pretend that the idea of sleeping there alone didn’t bother you, then spend the night lying in bed staring up at the ceiling and jumping at every single sound?”

Martin Prime doesn’t answer for a moment. Finally, he says, so quietly Sasha has to move closer to hear properly, “You know, nobody ever actually asked me about that?”

“You know, that doesn’t really answer the question.”

“Martin?” Jon Prime’s voice is soft and laden with concern.

Martin Prime sighs heavily. “No. I went back to the place I’d last seen when I was being toyed with by six thousand worms wrapped in a trench coat and found out that I’d missed the deadline to renew my lease, then spent the night in a waiting room at St. Pancras pretending I had an early-morning train and reading through rental notices.”

Sasha presses a hand to her mouth to keep from swearing out loud. Tim does enough of that for both of them. “When was the lease up?”

“Mid-April sometime? Mrs. Mattson is…I’d been living there for years, but she’s not a sentimentalist. Once that deadline passed, she found a new tenant and arranged to have the place cleared out.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Jon Prime’s voice sounds ragged.

“It never really came up,” Martin Prime says, sounding a bit tired himself. “By the time I saw you again, I’d found a new place anyway, and I just…nobody ever asked me why I moved and it seemed easier not to say anything. There was kind of a lot going on.”

“All right, I—I suppose that’s fair, but…” Jon Prime trails off.

Sasha hears Tim take a deep breath. “Right, well, we’ll do better than that for our Martin, don’t worry. Maybe you can help us convince him he deserves it. Anyway, you two look like you’re about ready to drop, so I’ll let you get some sleep and finish grilling you tomorrow. Bathroom’s right across the hall if you need it.”

“Thank you, Tim,” Jon Prime says softly. “I mean it.”

“Hey, what are friends for?”

Sasha hurriedly steps away from the door and moves to the linen closet at the end of the hallway. A moment or two later, Tim joins her. “Need a hand?”

“I just thought I’d get the spare blankets and pillows,” Sasha says. “You know, so it feels a little more like we’re really sleeping. How were you planning to handle that in the Archives, by the way?”

Tim has the grace to look sheepish. “Okay, so it was an impulse. Sue me. We’d have probably ended up in a pile on the floor or something.”

“I suppose there are worse ways to sleep than in a cuddle pile with my two best friends.” Sasha nudges Tim, who laughs. “Like…alone, on a cot in the Archives.”

“I still can’t believe we let him do that for so long. We are horrible friends.” Tim glances over his shoulder, his expression suddenly pinched. Sasha wonders if she should admit that she heard his whole conversation with the Primes, but decides, on the balance, nah. “I mean, Jon I understand, he was still pretending he hated us.”

Sasha snorts and pulls out an armful of soft things. “Not very well.”

It at least brings a smile back to Tim’s face. “Well, I mean, you and I already knew it was an act. It’s just Martin who probably didn’t know.”

“Martin would have quit if he really thought Jon didn’t like him,” Sasha says, although she’s not altogether sure that’s true. Between the fact that he falsified most of his credentials to get the job at the Institute to begin with and the fact that he’s the sole support for a chronically ill mother, he probably would have put up with a lot worse than a boss that hated him. “Or at least asked to be transferred back to the library.”

“What, and leave us to the mercies of the Archives?” Tim grins. “C’mon, grab the spare pillows and let’s go make everybody comfortable.”

True to Tim’s prediction, Martin has fallen asleep by the time they get back into the living room, although in a way that doesn’t make it seem like he’s under very deep, or at least that he’s not comfortable enough to stay asleep easily. Jon is kneeling on the floor in front of him, carefully working his shoes off his feet. He looks up when they come in, obviously flustered and embarrassed. “I didn’t notice he’d dropped off until a minute ago,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper.

Sasha isn’t surprised, considering he was avoiding making eye contact, but she doesn’t say that out loud. “I mean, it’s been a long day, and he’s probably in a lot of pain.”

Tim dumps his load on the coffee table. “Here, you get the lever and I’ll ease the back down so he doesn’t fall too hard. Don’t want to wake him, but sitting upright all night isn’t going to help him.”

Sasha wonders, as she sets down her own burden, how much of this is Tim trying to atone for what their counterparts did to Martin Prime and how much of it is him genuinely worrying about their Martin, but she’s not going to ask because that would mean revealing she was eavesdropping. Instead, she selects a pillow and blanket and starts setting them up on the love seat while she watches Tim and Jon try to ease the footrest out and the back to a reclining position without jostling Martin awake. He must be really tired, though, because although his face screws up briefly and he makes a soft sound, he doesn’t otherwise react. Once he’s lying down, Jon leans over and carefully slides Martin’s glasses off of his face, then folds them and sets them on the end table between the recliner and the sofa.

He turns around, presumably to get a blanket, and starts when he sees Sasha making up a bed. “Here, you don’t have to—you’re taller than I am, you should—”

“Only by a bit,” Sasha interrupts. “Two or three inches isn’t going to make that much of a difference, and I sleep curled up anyway.” She also sleeps like the dead, and judging by the way Tim and Jon are fussing over Martin without making it obvious, she guesses they’re more concerned about Martin than she is. Which isn’t to say that she isn’t worried about him, only that she’s a bit more detached from the situation, for whatever reason. If anything happens to Martin in the middle of the night, she won’t wake up and hear it, and they’re more likely to jump up to do something about it anyway, so there’s no reason for her to stay near him. She doesn’t say that out loud, though.

“I…” Jon hesitates, then glances back at Martin, and his face softens in a way Sasha pretends not to notice so she won’t be tempted to pick at it. “All right. T-Tim, are you sure—”

“Yep. The floor and I are good friends. I’ve done a lot of camping and backpacking and the like, so I’m used to it.” Tim grins. “Pick a pillow and a blanket.”

Jon looks over the offerings on the table, then selects a faded patchwork quilt and unfolds it carefully. Somehow, Sasha isn’t surprised when he drapes it over Martin and tucks him in gently, almost tenderly, before turning back and taking another blanket along with a pillow. The blanket, to Sasha’s eye, looks as if it’s made of fiberglass and horsehair, but Jon runs his fingers over the pattern almost reverently. “Where did you find this?”

“California, I think,” Tim answers. “Maybe Mexico. My grandparents left me a bit of a legacy when they died, with the stipulation that I use it for a gap year in ‘the mountains’. It was that vague. I think my folks expected me to pick the Alps or the Pyrenees, maybe the Sierra Morena if I felt like being different. Something close to home, anyway. But I thought, hey, when am I ever going to get a chance like this again? Spent my whole last year of school planning and budgeting, and two days after graduation I was off to America. The start of the Pacific Crest Trail is right on the border with Mexico, and there was a market there, people selling handcrafts and the like. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have an extra blanket. I was right, too.”

“Does it mean something to you, Jon?” Sasha asks, curious. “The pattern, I mean?” She’s seen people trace the lines of relics and books like that when touching something that looks familiar but isn’t, and there’s an oddly thoughtful look on Jon’s face.

“Sort of?” Jon looks up. He truly does look tired, which is odd, considering he wasn’t the one running from worms. “I—my mother’s sister married an American. Well, he was Mexican-American. My cousin had a blanket like this on his guest bed, he said his grandmother made it for him.”

Tim begins making up a bed on the floor with the remaining blankets. He does so with a practiced ease that tells Sasha he truly has done this plenty of times before. “You’ve been to America, then? Or does your cousin live over here?”

“No, he’s in New Mexico. Or he was the last time we spoke. It’s been a few years.” Jon bends over and begins untying his shoes. “I didn’t—exactly take a gap year, but I did take some time off and go to visit him. He and his parents, or at least my aunt, used to come over and visit for a week or two every summer, so I thought I’d repay him by returning the visit. Ended up staying through to the end of the year.”

“Didn’t make it to New Mexico when I was there.” Tim turns to Sasha. “How ‘bout you, Sash? Ever been to America?”

Sasha shakes her head. “Closest I’ve come was getting to go onto one of their military bases in Ansbach. My family was on holiday in Germany and a boy asked me if I’d be his date to a holiday party. Evidently I was the only girl his age who spoke English he ran into who wasn’t already going with someone else.”

“We’ll all have to go sometime,” Tim says. “Close the Archives down for a couple weeks, the four of us can fly over and do the tourist thing.”

“I doubt Elias would go for that,” Jon says dryly, straightening up. “I barely was able to convince him to let us have a day or two off while the cleaning crews come in and get rid of the worm carcasses. Unless we manage to somehow convince him we’re doing research and that I need all of you with me, he’d likely insist at least one of us stay back.”

“Then we’ll sneak off,” Tim declares. “Leave the Institute on a Friday night, promise to see him Monday. Slip away under the cover of darkness, take a taxi to the airport, buy tickets under assumed names and catch a midnight flight. By the time he realizes we’re not coming in on Monday, we’ll be well dug in somewhere in America. He’ll never think to look for us there.”

“And then we’ll get fired the minute we set foot back in the Institute,” Sasha says.

“Nah, not us. Who’d take our place? Especially now? He’d have to hire from the outside and lie about the conditions. Worst we’ll have to endure is a lecture. ‘I am sorely disappointed in all of you, leaving the Archives in such a state and going on holiday. We won’t discuss this further, but I will have to refuse any further time off requests you make for the remainder of the year.’”

Sasha presses a hand to her mouth to stifle her giggles. “Shh, you’ll wake Martin.”

“What do you say, Boss?” Tim asks, undeterred. “Team Archives in America? Debunking ghosts and solving mysteries? Rent a technicolor cargo van and adopt a Great Dane?”

The corners of Jon’s mouth twitch upwards in a smile. “Actually, the idea of going on a trip with the three of you is, strangely enough, not an altogether unwelcome one. God knows I haven’t taken a holiday in ages.”

“Your enthusiasm is boundless,” Tim says dryly. He kicks off his shoes and sits down on the blanket nest he’s built. “Hey, maybe the Primes will cover for us. They can pretend to be you and Martin and just Sasha and I can take the time off.”

“I think it’s a bit obvious they’re not us. Especially now.” Jon looks over at Martin. “I—I am sorry. I should have been there. I should have…it should have been me. Not any of you.”

Tim sighs, the smirk melting off his face. “Well, according to your counterparts, Martin was the only one who didn’t get…wormed the first time, so maybe you not being there means fewer people got hurt.”

“While I’m not ungrateful that you and Sasha weren’t hurt, Tim, it doesn’t make me feel any better for not…being there to help. Not even knowing.”

“Yeah, well…it was spur of the moment, sort of. And I deliberately didn’t tell you. Figured you wouldn’t…I don’t know, want to stay? Encourage us to stay? I mean, like you told Martin, it is still technically where we work, even if he was living there for a while.”

Jon looks pained. “I…in truth, I probably wouldn’t have wanted you all to stay, but not…Elias thought I was overreacting anyway, having Martin living there. I’d have probably come up with some ridiculous reason why you shouldn’t stay, but really it would have boiled down to the fear that if Elias found out we were all staying, he might order Martin out, and I—I thought that would put him in danger.”

“Well, if you believe what Martin Prime apparently told him, he wasn’t really what she was after,” Sasha points out. The last couple of words are swallowed by a yawn.

“I don’t know what I believe, Sasha.” Jon sighs heavily and takes off his glasses. “Let’s…table this discussion for the morning, shall we?”

“Sounds good. Tomorrow, then.” Tim yawns and burrows into his blankets.

Sasha curls up on the love seat. She figures she’ll lie there until she’s sure the others are asleep, then get up and do some investigating on her laptop, but to her mild surprise, she drifts off almost as soon as her eyes close.

#ollie writes fanfic #the magnus archives #tma #leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall)#in which a whole lot of nothing appears to happen #enjoy the mental image of Team Archives as the Scooby Gang #Jon is Shaggy #Tim is Fred #Sasha is Daphne #Martin is Velma #I will fight you on this

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herohotline · 4 years

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Spit Out the Sun (Toshi x You) Part 2

A/N: part 2!!! I might make another part where its the opposite ending, but that probably wont be for awhile.

“What did he say?”

“He told me he had to think about it.” You look over to Midoriya with a sad smile. “He said we’ll meet up and he’ll tell me tomorrow. And y’know,” you sluggishly shrug, “I get it. You don’t want to just say something in the heat of the moment, only to find out later that it wasn’t true. He’s being careful. It’s just not exactly the answer you want when you confess your literal dying love for someone.”

Midoriya wordlessly nods, placing a comforting hand on your shoulder that makes you smile just a little more. The two of you are seated at a park near Toshi’s house- color you surprised when the green haired boy had knocked on the door and interrupted your confession. The two of you left together and found literally anywhere that you could sit down after that, since you couldn’t bear being around Toshi after he told you that he couldn’t give you an answer.

Of course, you felt bad for leaning on Midoriya like this. He shouldn’t have to worry about these petty things with you, but at this point, he was the only one who knew. He was the only one you had.

“I know it’s not my place,” Midoriya anxiously starts, taking his hand away and putting it back on his lap. “But I really think he does love you.”

You take a slow, deep breath through your nose as you close your eyes. “Thank you, Midoriya,” you release the air just as slow, opening your eyes again to look at the sky. The sun had begun to set, making everything a pleasant and warm orange hue. Breaking out of your daze, you stand up and gesture for the young boy to do the same. “I didn’t realize it was getting late… I’ll walk you home and drop you off.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Midoriya’s emerald green eyes shine in concern for you and it breaks your heart.

This kid was way too much like Toshinori.

“I will be fine, Midoriya.” The two of you begin to walk to his home, a respectable distance between you. You try and ignore his gaze when your body shakes, wanting desperately to cough out petals. You suppress the urge with a strong smile- you won’t let him see you break down.

“I’ll make sure of it.”

——

You don’t sleep at all that night, but you reason that it’s completely understandable given your situation. You can’t stop worrying about Toshi’s answer. Of course, of course you want him to love you back, but you know that the possibility that he doesn’t still exists. You know that the odds don’t look like they’re in your favor and you might have to get the surgery.

And what would happen to you? The results from removing Hanahaki had wildly different results based on the person. Some grew indifferent, some could love exactly as they could before, and some couldn’t love at all.

What if that was you? What if everyone important to you just… faded away?

Your heart aches at the thought of how Toshi would react. The worst part, besides the dying and awful side effects for you, was knowing that Toshi would never forgive himself. You cannot help your feelings- you know that more than most, and you know that he can’t help his feelings either. He would pretend he could, though- just so he could continue to feel awful about it.

Oh, Toshi… You’re more of a mess than I am.

You’d love to continue wallowing in bed until the next morning- but a few light knocks on your door breaks you out of your thoughts. You sit upright immediately, looking at your clock with a confused look on your face. It’s almost midnight- who could that be?

“Hold on,” you yell from your room, quickly putting on some warmer clothes and slippers before walking over to the door. You hesitate to open it. What if it was some creep?

Even though you’ve never used it before this point, you look through your peephole. The porchlight glows, being your only source of light in the late hour to see who it is before you rip your door open. “Toshi?!”

“Um, hello,” his eyes grow wide from you opening the door so suddenly. “Did I wake you?”

“Do you really think I was sleeping?” You give him an exhausted look, sighing deeply and running a hand through your hair. “What are you doing here?” And then as a second thought, you open the door wider. “Come in, the cold air is getting in.”

Toshi quickly shuffles in, the both of you shivering slightly as you close the door and lock it.

“Well, I wanted to... talk to you. I think I know how I feel- but I didn’t think I would really be sure until I saw you again.”

Toshi’s eyes are on the floor as he speaks, his hands coming out of his trench coat pockets so he could anxiously play with them. You sigh and reach out, grabbing one of his hands gently and lead him to the couch. You sit side by side as you continue to hold his large hand in yours, looking into his eyes as earnestly as you could.

“Toshi,” you whisper gently. “I want you to know that I’m sorry for exploding on you earlier. I know you understand why, but I’m still sorry. And I want you to know that it’s okay if you don’t feel the same.” You hold his hand a bit tighter. Your voice is wobbly just from thinking about it, but you push onward.

“Either way, I’m going to be fine. I’m going to be fine.” You repeat it once for good measure- you don’t know if you’re trying to convince Toshi or yourself at this point.

There’s a small silence once you’ve finished speaking. When you look up at Toshi, you see him looking back at you with an expression you can’t really name, but it still makes your heart rate speed up.

He speaks your name, soft and gentle. He smiles, a nervous kind of smile as he wets his lips and creases his eyebrows. And then, finally- “I love you.”

You can’t really describe how it feels. It’s like the moment before fireworks start- everything is quiet and cold, but then the explosions start and everything is loud and colorful. That’s what it feels like in your heart- and also in your lungs.

“Oh, God,” you choke, and then you’re quickly letting go of Toshi’s hands as you dash to your kitchen sink. A sudden burst of flowers flows out of your throat, sunflower petals covered in your saliva spilling in the sink as you hurl. You had read about a lot of things, but you never read about this. It’s like all the flowers that had been budding and sitting in your lungs were coming out of you all at once now that they had no reason to stay.

Toshi had quickly followed you into the kitchen, worriedly looking over your shoulder as he rubbed your back as comfortingly as he could. You had to admit that it did help a bit- his hand was naturally warm and felt nice.

You just felt bad for ruining his confession by throwing up everywhere.

But eventually, it ends, and you can finally breathe again. Suddenly the air felt fresh again. It hadn’t been this easy to simply be since you had thrown up your first flower. Your body relaxes over the sink, and you find yourself giggling quietly as Toshi still stays by your side.

“Sorry about that,” you croak, your throat sore from doing all of that at once. “I didn’t know that was going to happen.”

“It’s good, though,” Toshi looks at all the sunflower petals and buds in the sink. There’s no blood. “Are they all out?”

“I think so.”

“...Did it hurt?”

“Oh, yeah,” you chuckle. “Could you get me a glass?”

“Right!” Toshi flusters and leaves your side quickly, opening a cabinet and handing you the first cup he can reach. You thank him quietly and fill it with water. When you drink, it feels so refreshing that you fill the cup up again once you’re finished and drink all of that too.

You happily sigh once you’re done, standing up straight and looking at Toshi as you smile. “Come here,” you beckon him with your hand and he smiles back as he takes two large steps and then engulfs you with his long arms. And oh, does it feel nice.

“I love you,” you whisper into his ear.

“I love you too,” he whispers back, holding you even closer as you positively melt against him. Yes, your eyes are wet, but you swear you’ve never been this happy.

And this tired.

“Can you carry me back to bed?” You laugh, and Toshi can feel the vibrations run through him as you do. “I’m... really tired.”

“Of course,” he smiles. It’s a little difficult carrying you since you didn’t want to stop holding him, so he scoops you up from under your legs.

“Am I heavy?”

“I may be retired, but I’m still All Might,” he laughs through his nose and you suppose that’s true. “You weigh as much as a feather to me.”

“Someone’s bragging.”

“Hmm, maybe.”

At the end of your banter, Toshi has already made it into your bedroom. He sets you on the bed gently, tucking you under the covers with careful hands before you stop him halfway through. “You’re being silly, Toshi,” you glare playfully at him and he flushes.

“I didn’t want to assume-”

“Do it. Assume. More than half the time, you’re going to be right. I love you, you know,” you smile and scoot over, allowing him room to lay beside you. The hero just laughs under his breath as he worms his way under the covers. “Good job,” you smile as he wraps his arms around your waist without asking. “That was a good assumption.”

“Thank you,” Toshi hums. His hands run up and down your back soothingly as you wiggle into a comfortable position beside him. Once you’re finally relaxed, your body sinking into the mattress, you feel one of his hands slide up your body and gently grab your face.

Lord help you because oh my God, Toshinori is kissing you.

It’s innocent and sweet, a goodnight kiss at its finest. But it’s your first kiss with him and it still makes you blush as you look up at him with shocked eyes. “Was that alright?” He shrinks a little in your gaze.

“Yeah, it was great,” you smile and reach up, cupping his jaw in your hands as you lean forward to kiss him again. “Goodnight, Toshi,” you whisper against his lips, feeling his body lightly shiver.

“Goodnight, darling.”

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