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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 months

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When private equity destroys your hospital

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW in PHOENIX (Changing Hands, Feb 29) then Tucson (Mar 9-10), San Francisco (Mar 13), and more!

As someone who writes a lot of fiction about corporate crime, I naturally end up spending a lot of time being angry about corporate crime. It's pretty goddamned enraging. But the fiction writer in me is especially upset at how cartoonishly evil the perps are – routinely doing things that I couldn't ever get away with putting in a novel.

Beyond a doubt, the most cartoonishly evil characters are the private equity looters. And the most cartoonishly evil private equity looters are the ones who get involved in health care.

(Buckle up.)

Writing for The American Prospect, Maureen Tcacik details a national scandal: the collapse of PE-backed hospital chain Steward Health, a company that bought and looted hospitals up and down the country, starving them of everything from heart valves to prescription paper, ripping off suppliers, doctors and nurses, and callously exposing patients to deadly risk:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-02-27-scenes-from-bat-cave-steward-health-florida/

Steward occupies a very special place in the private equity looting cycle. Private equity companies arrange themselves on a continuum of indiscriminate depravity. At the start of the continuum are PE funds that buy productive and useful firms (everything from hospitals to car-washes) using "leveraged buyouts." That means that they borrow money to buy the company and use the company itself as collateral: it's like you getting a bank-loan to buy your neighbor's mortgage out from under them, and using your neighbor's house as collateral for that loan.

Once the buyout is done, the PE fund pays itself a "special dividend" (stealing money the business needs to survive) and then starts charging the business a "management fee" for the PE fund's expertise. To pay for all this, the PE bosses start to hack away at the company. Quality declines. So do wages. Prices go up. The company changes suppliers, opting for cheaper alternatives, often stiffing the old company. There are mass layoffs. The remaining employees end up doing three peoples' jobs, for lower wages, with fewer materials of lower quality.

Eventually, that top-feeding PE company finds a more desperate, more ham-fisted PE company to unload the business onto. That middle-feeding company also does a leveraged buyout, pays itself another special dividend, cuts wages, staffing and quality even further. They switch to even worse suppliers and stiff the last batch. Prices go up even higher.

Then – you guessed it – the middle-feeding PE company finds an even more awful PE bottom-feeder to unload the company onto. That bottom feeder does it all again, without even pretending to leave the business in condition to do its job. The company is a shambling zombie at this point, often producing literal garbage in place of the products that made its reputation. Employees' paychecks bounce, or don't show up at all. The company stops bothering to pay the lawyers that have been fending off its creditors. Those lawyers sue the company, too.

That's the kind of PE company Steward Health was, and, as the name suggests, Steward Health is in the business of stripping away the very last residue of value from community hospitals. As you might imagine, this gets pretty fucking ugly.

Steward owns 32 hospitals up and down the country, though its holdings are dwindling as the company walks away from its debt-burdened holdings, after years of neglect that have rendered them unfit for use as health facilities – or for any other purpose. Tcacik's piece offers a snapshot of one such hospital: Florida's Rockledge Regional Medical Center, just eight miles from Cape Canaveral.

Rockledge is a disaster. The fifth floor was, at one point, home to 5,000 bats.

Five.

Thousand.

Bats.

(Rockledge stiffed the exterminators.)

The bats were just the beginning. One of the internal sewage pipes ruptured. Whole sections of the hospital were literally full of shit, oozing out of the walls and ceiling, slopping over medical equipment.

That's an urgent situation for any hospital, but for Rockledge, it's catastrophic, because Rockledge is a hospital without any hospital supplies. Steward has stiffed the companies that supply "heart valves, urology lasers, Impella catheters, cardiac catheterization balloons, slings for lifting heavier patients, blood and urine test reagents, and most recently, prescription paper." Key medical equipment has been repossessed. So have the Pepsi machines. The hospital cafeteria had its supply of cold cuts repossessed:

https://www.reddit.com/r/massachusetts/comments/1agc1j4/comment/kolicqo/

It's not just Steward's nonpayments that reek of impending doom. Its payments also bear the hallmarks of a scam artist on the brink of blowing off the con. The company recently paid off a vendor with five separate checks for $1m, each drawn on "a random hospital in Utah" (Steward recently walked away from its Utah hospitals; its partners there are suing it for stealing $18m on their way out the door).

This company – which owns 32 hospitals! – has resorted to gambits like sending photos of fake checks to doctors it hasn't paid in months as "proof" that the money was coming (the checks arrived 22 days later).

Steward owes so much money to its employees – $1.66m to just one doctors' group. But the medical staff keep doing their jobs, and are reluctant to speak on the record, thanks to Steward's reputation for vicious retaliation. Those health workers keep showing up to take care of patients, even as the hospital crumbles around them. One clinician told Tcacik: "I watched a bed collapse underneath a [patient] who had just undergone hip surgery."

Rockledge has nine elevators, but only five of them work – the other four have been broken for a year. The hospital's fourth floor has been converted to "a graveyard of broken beds." The sinks are clogged, or filled with foul gunk. There's black mold. Nurses have noted on the maintenance tags that the repair service refuses to attend the hospital until their overdue bills are paid. The fifteen-person on-site maintenance team was cut to just two workers.

Steward is just the latest looting owner of Rockledge. After the Great Financial Crisis, private equity consultants helped sell it to Health Management Associates. The hospital's CEO took home a $10m bonus for that sale and exited; Health Management Associates then quickly became embroiled in a Medicare fraud and kickback scandal. Soon after, Rockledge was passed on to Community Health Systems, who then sold it on to Rockledge.

Steward, meanwhile, was at that time owned by an even bigger private equity giant, Cerberus, which then sold Steward off. That deal was performatively complex and hid all kinds of mischief. Prior to Cerberus's sell-off of Steward, they sold off Steward's real-estate. The buyer was Medical Properties Trust, who gave Cerberus $1.25b for the real-estate: three hospitals in Florida and three more in Ohio. Steward then contracted to operate these hospitals on MPT's behalf, and pay MPT rent for the real-estate.

This complex arrangement was key to siphoning value out of the hospital and to keeping angry creditors at bay – if you can't figure out who owes you money, it's a lot harder to collect on the debt. The scheme was masterminded by Steward founder/CEO Ralph de la Torre. De la Torre is notorious for taking a massive dividend out of the company while it owed $1.4b to its creditors. He bought a $40m yacht with the money.

De la Torre was once feted as a business genius who would "disrupt" healthcare. But as Steward's private jet hops around "Corfu, Santorini, St. Maarten and Antigua" as its hospitals literally crumble, he's becoming less popular. In Massachusetts, politicians have railed against Steward and de la Torre (Governor Healey wants the company to leave the state "as soon as possible").

Florida, by contrast, is much more friendly to Steward. The state Health and Human Services Committee chair Randy Fine is an ardent admirer of hospital privatization and is currently campaigning to sell off the last community hospital in Brevard County. The state inspectors are likewise remarkably tolerant of Steward's little peccadillos. The quasi-governmental agency that inspects hospitals has awarded this shit-and-bat-filled, elevator-free, understaffed rotting hulk "A" grades for quality.

These inspectors jointly represent a mismatched assortment of private and public agencies, dominated by a nonprofit called Leapfrog, the brainchild of Harvard public-health prof Lucian Leape, who founded it in 2000. Leapfrog likes to tout its "transparent" assessment criteria, and Steward are experts at hitting those criteria, spending the exact minimum to tick every box that Leapfrog inspectors use as proxies for overall quality and safety.

This is a pretty great example of Goodhart's Law: "every measurement eventually becomes a target, whereupon it ceases to be a good measurement":

https://xkcd.com/2899/

But despite Steward's increasingly furious creditors and its decaying facilities, the company remains bullish on its ability to continue operations. Medical Properties Trust – the real estate investment trust that is nominally a separate company from Steward – recently hosted a conference call to reassure Wall Street investors that it would be a going concern. When a Bank of America analyst asked MPT's CFO how this could possibly be, given the facility's dire condition and Steward's degraded state, the CFO blithely assured him that the company would get bailouts: "We own hospitals no one wants to see closed."

That's the thing about PE and health-care. The looters who buy out every health-care facility in a region understand that this makes them too big to fail: no matter how dangerous the companies they drain become, local governments will continue to prop them up. Look at dialysis, a market that's been cornered by private equity rollups. Today, if you need this lifesaving therapy, there's a good chance that every accessible facility is owned by a private equity fund that has fired all its qualified staff and ceased sterilizing its needles. Otherwise healthy people who visit these clinics sometimes die due to operator error. But they chug along, because no dialysis clinics is worse that "dialysis clinics where unqualified sadists sometimes kill you with dirty needles":

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-dirty-business-of-clean-blood

The bad news is that private equity has thoroughly colonized the entire medical system. They took hospitals, fired the doctors, then took over the doctors' groups that provided outsource staff to the hospital:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/04/a-mind-forever-voyaging/#prop-bets

It's illegal for private equity companies to own doctors' practices (doctors have to own these), but they obfuscated the crime with a paper-thin pretext that they got away with despite its obvious bullshittery:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/21/profitable-butchers/#looted

The financier who decides whether you live or die depends on an algorithm that literally sets a tolerable level of preventable deaths for the patients trapped in the practice:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/05/any-metric-becomes-a-target/#hca

Private equity also took over emergency rooms and boobytrapped them with "surprise billing" – junk fees that ran to thousands of dollars that you had to pay even if the hospital was in network with your insurer. They made billions from this, and spent a many millions from that booty keeping the scam alive with scare ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/21/all-in-it-together/#doctor-patient-unity

The whole health stack is colonized by private equity-backed monopolies. Even your hospital bed!

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/05/hillrom/#baxter-international

Then there's residential care. Private equity cornered many regional markets on nursing homes and turned them into slaughterhouses, places where you go to die, not live:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/23/acceptable-losses/#disposable-olds

The palliative care sector is also captured by private equity. PE bosses hire vast teams of fast-talking salespeople who con vulnerable older people into entering an end-of-life system before they are ready to die. Thanks to loose regulation, the nation is filled with fake hospices that can rake in millions from Medicare while denying all care to their patients (hospice patients don't get life-extending medication or procedures, by definition):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

If you survive this long enough, Medicare eventually tells the hospice that you're clearly not dying and you get kicked off their rolls. Now you have to go through the lengthy bureaucratic nightmare of convincing the system – which was previously informed that you were at death's door – that you are actually viable and need to start getting care again (good luck with that).

If that kills you, guess what? Private equity has rolled up funeral homes up and down the country, and they will scam your survivors just as hard as the medical system that killed you did:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/09/high-cost-of-dying/#memento-mori

The PE sector spent more than a trillion dollars over the past decade buying up healthcare companies, and it has trillions more in "dry powder" allocated for further medical acquisitions. Why not? As the CFO of Medical Properties Trust told that Bank of America analyst last week, when you "own hospitals no one wants to see closed." you literally can't fail, no matter how many people you murder.

The PE sector is a reminder that the crimes people commit for money far outstrip the crimes they commit for ideology. Even the most ideological killers are horrified by the murders their profit-motivated colleagues commit.

Last year, Tkacic wrote about the history of IG Farben, the German company that built Monowitz, a private slave-labor camp up the road from Auschwitz to make the materiel it was gouging Hitler's Wehrmacht on:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

Farben bought the cheapest possible slaves from Auschwitz, preferentially sourcing women and children. These slaves were worked to death at a rate that put Auschwitz's wholesale murder in the shade. Farben's slaves died an average of just three months after starting work at Monowitz. The situation was so abominable, so unconscionable, that the SS officers who provided outsource guard-labor to Monowitz actually wrote to Berlin to complain about the cruelty.

The Nuremberg trials are famous for the Nazi officers who insisted that they were "just following order" but were nonetheless executed for their crimes. 24 Farben executives were also tried at Nuremberg, where they offered a very different defense: "We had a fiduciary duty to our shareholders to maximize our profits." 19 of the 24 were acquitted on that basis.

PE is committed to an ideology that is far worse than any form of racial animus or other bias. As a sector, it is committed to profit above all other values. As a result, its brutality knows no bounds, no decency, no compassion. Even the worst crimes we commit for hate are nothing compared to the crimes we commit for greed.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/retaliation#charnel-house

#pluralistic #Rockledge Regional Medical Center #private equity #looting #Steward Health #ponzis #maureen tcacik #Medical Properties Trust #Ralph de la Torre #Massachusetts #florida #Cerberus #too big to fail #pe #guillotine watch

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omegalomania · 1 year

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people bitching and moaning about fob "turning mainstream" as if that was never the entire point of fall out boy. that's In the goddamn dna of the band, it's baked into the ethos of why the band started in the first damn place. to be accessible to kids and especially to girls, who were often ridiculed and shunted out of the hardcore community. to be a gateway to bands that aren't as mainstream. to comment on the society they live in, as they live in it. people act like fall out boy "turning mainstream" was some kind of "betrayal" when from the start they were seizing on the trends of the time, putting their unique, unhinged fall out boy spin on them, and shooting them back out as a funhouse mirror. take this to your grave capitalized on the pop-punk zeitgeist that was big in the late 90s and early aughts and put their own spin on it: enmeshed catchy choruses with high-dexterity lyrical & linguistic skewerwork. infinity on high was basically a massive critique of the scene they were in - this ain't a scene it's a goddamn arm's race is a fucking thesis statement on what it is to be catapulted into fame in an industry that wants nothing more than a thousand cookie-cutter copycat acts of a successful formula, and fall out boy WAS the formula everyone desperately wanted to emulate. american beauty / american psycho blended sampling and modern hip-hop stylings with polished pop-rock and pointed those songs back at the snapshot of the 2010s we all lived in: commenting on racial injustice and the freeze-frame nature of relevancy. but even then they weren't doing it quite right - because fall out boy never does things quite right, they're never quite conventional, whether it's wentz's darkly confessional lyrics double-bagged in metaphor or stump's distinctive clear tenor or trohman's inescapable rock 'n roll edge or hurley's thunderous hardcore-punk-rock soul.

this band has always been too clever for its own critics, is the thing. but then, they always knew that. they knew they had a thriving fanbase of largely female fans so they were going to be mocked and belittled and ridiculed. they weren't quite right. they weren't quite so easy to market. pete wentz had to have all his hard edges filed off and cut down to size, skin lightened, literally whitewashed ("i feel like a photo that's been overexposed") to hell and back, even as he was marketed as the pretty boy of the band. and the other three members never even bothered with the spotlight: the soft-spoken vegan straightedge anarchist drummer and the wry, wisecracking, whip-clever guitarist who was more concerned with being the connective tissue than anything and the reticent vocalist who sang the words and wrote an awful lot of music but wasn't really the guy fronting the band. wentz's charisma carried the band, because the rest of them were really just some guys and never aspired to be anything else.

fall out boy is too pop. fall out boy is too mainstream. fall out boy isn't the real poster child of the emo movement. other bands are better. even within fall out boy's own narrative, they are repeatedly ignored, sidelined, and belittled, as though they weren't one of the only acts from the big 00s emo-pop movement to successfully not just survive the transition from the aughts to the '10s, and then later from the '10s to the '20s, but to thrive in it without banking on nostalgia. this band was supposed to be a flash in the pan. they weren't supposed to last and they weren't supposed to get big. they started off in joe's parents' attic because joe and pete were sick of how exclusionary and homophobic the hardcore scene was.

i think it's high time that people acknowledge how fall out boy has repeatedly succeeded where most of their other peers failed. cunning, clever, capable, and hyper-aware of the space they occupy in the culture surrounding them. that they are just as powerful, important, and artistic as any of the other bands in the scene that others might deify at their expense. that they deserve a hell of a lot more respect than they get from critics or hardcore punks who think they sold out. i hope one day they get that recognition. because they've earned it, time and time again, and the more i see people pushing back against that, the more certain i become of its inevitability.

#fall out boy #fob #*making poasts #this was supposed to be a pithy 3 sentence post but i kept going #just another Day In The Life of someone who sees a lot of garbage takes and gets tired #mostly i just shrug em off cause you know. what else is new. this has been going on since day 1.#but it saddens me. it saddens me that these guys are ridiculed for this still.#it breaks my heart that patrick isnt taken seriously as a composer in some circles because hes the guy from fall out boy.#it breaks my heart that people won't acknowledge pete as one of the most distinctive lyricists of our generation.#it breaks my heart that andy and joe are discredited and shit on within metal circles specifically because they're in fall out boy.#i hope they know that we get it. we get it and we're proud of them. no matter what.

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tkwrites · 4 days

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Elimination - Quinn Hughes x ofc

gif by @thombordeleau

Title: Elimination

Author: Tory / @tkwrites

Relationship: Pre-established: Quinn x Sarah

Warnings: Sad Quinn, fluff and comfort, smut (18+ only), unprotected sex, p in v, oral (f receiving), if I missed any others, please let me know.

Summary: When the Canucks are eliminated from the Stanley Cup Playoffs, Sarah offers Quinn a kind of comfort he didn’t know he needed.

Word count: 4,200

Comments: This snapshot has been a long time coming. The idea of Sarah comforting Quinn the way she does came to me while I was driving to work one day, and I immediately wrote it down. It took me quite a while to figure Quinn’s family into the story, including his brothers (yes! They're finally here!).

As I was editing the comfort scene, I found the story continuing in a way I didn’t really expect, but mirrored Before I meet your parents… in a way I couldn’t ignore.

If you enjoy it, please let me know by commenting or reblogging! Your comments really do inspire me to keep writing!

Elimination

A Quinn & Sarah Snapshot

The playoffs were a whole different beast than Sarah had become accustomed to. Not only was the season much longer than any of the guys were used to, practices were more intense and heated, video more in depth, the need for rest and recovery more acute. She knew first hand how tired the team was because she knew first hand how tired Quinn was.

In the first round, they'd lost the first game in the series before rallying to win the next three. The Kings won one more before the Canucks stamped them out with the last win coming on home ice in overtime. Despite the final score only being 1-0, it was the most exciting game Sarah had ever been to.

When she was sitting with Quinns family, Luke had taken to teasing her in that little brother way every time her hands ended up clutching her face with each shot directed at Demko or Talbot.

“Calm down, Sarah,” he’d said, when she jumped in her seat, hands flying up to cover her mouth as Demko barrel rolled to stop another shot from Kopitar.

She'd sent a playful glare his way, “I'm surprised Kylee hasn't told you you should never tell a woman to calm down. That's a surefire way to get yourself into trouble.”

Kylee, who was sitting on Lukes other side, snorted. “Oh, I have. He just doesn’t listen.”

Luke took it in stride and laughed. He reminded Sarah so much of her oldest nephew, Ryan. Good natured, friendly and a little bit goofy once she broke through that shy shell.

Sarah glanced at Jack, who was sitting with his some of his cousins farther down the row. His eyes darted away, as if caught staring at something he shouldn’t.

The strained way he acted around her was getting better, but he was still pretty standoffish toward her. When she asked Quinn what she could do to fix it, he said to just give it time, and Jack would come around eventually. He didn’t think it was actually anything about her, but rather Jack needing time to adjust to the situation.

“I think he finally realized how serious I am about you.”

“You’re serious about me?” she’d asked, all flirty lashes and coy smiles.

“You know I am,” he’d responded before leaning in to kiss her.

So, she turned back to the game, giving Jack time and hoping he would see how much she loved his older brother and that she only meant well.

When Garland shot the overtime goal off a picture perfect pass from Quinn, he managed to catch Talbot above the blocker, sending the puck sailing into the back of the net with a definitive whoosh.

The arena erupted into a wall of sound.

The entire team, clad in blue, spilled onto the ice, throwing helmets and gloves, crowding around Conor and Thatcher.

Quinn was ecstatic that evening. Practically bouncing off the walls of the club they went to to celebrate. Sarah had never seen him so loud - caught up in the atmosphere and moment.

Halfway through the night, he pulled her into a dim corner and kissed her so thoroughly, she actually considered pulling him into the dingy bathroom to have her way with him right then.

Jack interrupted, drunkenly loud, and demanded that Quinn come with him for a round of shots.

Quinn paused, meeting Sarah’s eye.

“Go celebrate,” she encouraged, trying her best to not come between them. She and Quinn could find a spare moment to celebrate on their own later.

With his family in his house, that moment hadn’t come, but she was glad to see Quinn celebrating so heartily with his brothers.

In the second round, after three straight losses to the Predators, Vancouver battled, forcing game five, before dominating in Nashville two nights later, selling their comeback story.

When they got back to town, the whole city was buzzing.

Despite the excitement, game six was awful to watch. Sarah had her hands over her mouth through most of it.

Now that they were fighting to tie, and the Preds were fighting, once again, to clinch the series, Nashville was playing dirty: exploiting every Canucks weakness they could find. They needled, drawing penalty after stupid, preventable penalty until they were three goals up at the end of the second period.

Quinn was exhausted. Sarah could see it in his skating and in the slumped set of his shoulders as they went into the dressing room for the intermission.

She sent him a text, I’m so proud of you.

He didn't reply, but they battled back, holding off all Preds offense and getting within a goal by the time Demko was pulled at the end of the third. Quinn battled fiercely to keep the puck in the offensive zone for more than a minute, giving a master class on body-eye coordination as he skirted the blue line, dodging Nashville players as if someone were controlling him with a top ice view.

Their passes were perfect: tic-tac-toe from Quinn to Mikheyev to Lafferty, but as Sam tried to get the puck to Höglander, the pass was intercepted.

Nashville fought to center ice and chipped the puck into the Vancouver end.

Quinn chased it, but he just didn't have enough in the tank. He caught up just as the puck bounced back out of the open net.

Full of frustration and despair, he smacked it into the boards. Caught at just the right angle, the puck ricocheted back at him, and he had to lift a hand to block it from hitting him in the face.

Sarah could practically see the frustrated embarrassment radiating off him as he skated to sit down.

Demko was pulled again and Quinn managed to get the empty netter back, but through the ugly march of time, the clock expired before they could score another.

The buzzer sounded and Nashville celebrated, throwing equipment all over the ice, all hugging and jumping as the Canucks limped into the dressing room.

Even despite the disappointment of losing, everyone was thrilled to see them get this far. Going from the middle of the pack last season to top of the league this year was no small feat. She knew Quinn wouldn’t be satisfied until they got the cup, but she was so proud of him.

He sent a text, telling them to go home and he would meet them there when he was done with the media.

It was torture for Sarah to have to leave and wait for him. She wished she could go down to the dressing room, but knew not only would she not be allowed in, Quinn would hate it. He would want to talk with her privately.

Everyone was subdued as they puttered around the apartment, waiting for him. Both Jack and Luke were on their phones, sprawled out over the living room furniture, while Ellen, Jim and Kylee were doing something in the kitchen. Sarah was too nervous to even distract herself. Quinn had lost before, of course, but she’d never seen him lose like this — not this kind of a season-ending, brutal loss.

When the elevator dinged, Sarah jumped to her feet, his family following suit, clambering into the living room.

To her surprise, Quinn came straight to her, not even bothering to shut the door behind him. His suit was rumpled, his tie attempting to slither out of his breast pocket. When she wrapped him in her arms, he practically collapsed against her.

Ellen knew Quinn loved and trusted Sarah and that he spent far more time with her these days, but it was still a bit shocking when he bypassed them all to go straight to her for comfort.

Sarah reacted in a way Ellen never had and upon seeing the scene play out, she realized Sarah’s reaction may have been something Quinn had been longing for for a long time.

She would usually hug him for a while, before talking him down. They would soon end up dissecting shifts and plays. He would lament how he could have been better, and she would try to comfort him while still being realistic.

Sarah just stood there, holding him. She didn't say a word, even when Quinn started to cry softly. She just ran a hand into his wet hair, while the other traveled slowly up and down his back.

She didn't assure or placate him, or even try to get him to stop crying. She just let him express the emotion without judgment or commentary. It hit Ellen suddenly that Sarah reacted this way because she had dealt with so much sorrow in her life, she knew how to comfort in these hard moments.

The family stood by and watched. She didn’t look up and meet their eyes with a conspiratorial, he’ll be alright, look, or invite them into the embrace. Her whole intention was focused on Quinn.

While it was sweet to see them together in this way, it was also a little awkward to watch, especially for the boys, who looked like they had no idea what to do.

It was full minutes before anyone said anything, and even then, it was just Sarah asking if he wanted to sit down. He shook his head so she did a little two-step, and kept on.

As Ellen watched them interact, it was obvious how much they meant to and understood each other. It was so sweet to witness her son finding the person he needed that she pulled out her phone to record them, wanting to document the moment.

When they finally spoke, Ellen was glad she was filming.

“I let everyone down,” Quinn said, his voice choked with emotion, just above a whisper.

“No.” Her voice was quite loud, the word definitive, leaving no room for doubt. It was a bit shocking to hear Sarah be so forceful.

Taking his jaw, she gently lifted his head up so he had to look into her eyes.

“No,” she repeated, her voice a little softer now. “This wasn't only your fault, and it didn't happen because of anything you did by yourself.”

Ellen wasn’t sure she would go that far… If he had gone for a change, someone with fresh legs may have been able to chase down that empty netter.

“You don’t win as a team, but lose by yourself. That’s not how this works.”

Now she understood where Sarah was going.

“I know this run is ending sooner than you wanted and I'd be more concerned if you weren't sad.” She paused for a long moment, looking into his eyes as if she was searching for something. When she didn’t find it, she continued, “I just - I want you to remember that I don't love you because you play hockey.”

His lower lip trembled and Ellen felt hers do the same.

“I love you because of this big, kind heart,” she said as she pressed a hand to his chest, “and because of this brilliant, thoughtful mind,” her other hand slid into the hair at his temple. “And those are the same as they were this morning. You're so much more than hockey.”

He was looking at her like she'd hung the moon.

Ellen felt tears slip down her own cheeks. All her life, she’d been trying to strike a balance with her boys - trying to find the right way to tell them hockey was just a part of who they are. And here Sarah was, walking into their life, and saying the exact thing Ellen had been trying to say all along.

Right then and there, the remaining reservations she had about Sarah were swept onto the back burner. She knew it would still take some getting used to, but how could she not love this woman standing in front of her, telling her son she loved him for who he was and not for the things he did? It was all she could ask for as a mother.

She glanced over at Jack, who looked a little dumbfounded, as if seeing Sarah for the first time. Luke was smiling in a glad, knowing way, his arm looped around Kylee.

Jim, standing on Ellen’s other side had a mixture of pride and disappointment on his face. Ellen knew he was going to battle with himself at the thought of Quinn crying over being eliminated. When they were kids, he would have told the boys to buck up, despite Ellen’s insistence it was okay for them to express their sadness for a little while.

The happiness at seeing someone accept Quinn as he was won out, and Jim put his arm around Ellen with a conspiratorial smile.

“Of course you’re going to be sad,” Sarah continued. “Like I said, I’d be more concerned if you weren’t. But you,” she poked him gently in the chest to emphasize her point, “sure as hell didn’t let me down.”

Quinn threw his arms around her in a fierce hug. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He wiped at his eyes, then turned to the family. They embraced him one by one.

After she’d hugged Quinn, Ellen went to Sarah, “I don’t know how you did that,” she said, pulling her close, “but that was exactly what he needed.”

When Quinn made his way back to Sarah, he kissed her temple. His eyes were still red, cheeks still splotched with color, but he looked settled. Not satisfied or happy, really, but settled.

Later that night, Ellen sent the video to her sister, making her promise to not share it with anyone. She just needed someone else to see the tenderness.

Oh, Elle, I'm so glad Quinn finally found a good one. I can't wait to meet her.

At the same time Ellen was texting her sister, Quinn was lying next to Sarah in bed. Her words from earlier replaying over and over again in his thoughts.

He'd practically begged her to stay over. She hadn't planned to with his family in the house, but he felt a bit needy and wanted the comfort of her next to him.

“Thank you for tonight,” he said, turning to her.

She rolled onto her side so they were face to face. “I'm always gonna be in your corner, Quinn.”

Leaning in, he kissed her - gently at first, but it soon turned more passionate.

The fact that they would be apart before too long was on both their minds as they made love that night.

“Oh, Quinn. Right there, right there,” she chanted, voice soft.

The simple fact that he could make her feel this way made his heart feel full to bursting. At least he hadn't lost that.

Keeping eye contact, his hand traced to her left knee and pulled it up over his hip. He didn’t want her to have the same old orgasm. Not tonight. A big part of him wanted to prove he could still excel here.

Head tipping back, Sarah panted.

His other hand came up to guide her chin back down.

The way she clenched around him when their eyes met made his hips stutter.

She lifted herself up to catch his mouth. It changed the angle of his thrusts, making his whole body quiver. He tried to brace against it, slowing down and concentrating on kissing the breath out of her.

It worked in that they were both breathless before too long, but didn't ease the feeling of being pulled to the very edge of his restraint. The competitive streak inside him wasn't about to allow himself to come before she did - especially not tonight, when he had so much left to prove.

“No,” she gasped when he pulled away. “I was right there.”

He laughed into her skin. “I'm not going anywhere, sweetheart,” he said, before tracing his mouth over her clavicle and trailing his tongue between her breasts, savoring the salty taste of her skin.

The blankets pulled with him as he settled between her legs, and Sarah gasped as the cool air of his room hit her.

She looked so ethereal in a pool of soft light from one of the skylights, her chest rising and falling at a hurried, steady pace.

“God, you're beautiful,” he whispered.

Times like these, Quinn still wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed to find Sarah. She seemed to be his perfect match in every way. It wasn’t always smooth sailing - nothing ever was. This summer was sure to take a toll on their relationship. He knew, somehow, they would come out on the other side, better and stronger, but all the same, he wasn’t looking forward to spending so many nights without her.

Pushing that worry out of his mind, he concentrated the task at hand and lowered his mouth to her hot center.

It was his turn to give thanks.

She was acutely aware of his family in the apartment: brothers on the floor below, while his parents were down the hall. They were never particularly loud in bed, but the thought of his family overhearing hushed her vocal cords even more.

“Quinn,” she whimpered.

He ate up every whisper, every little whine and panted breath, knowing they were just for him.

Making some unintelligible noise, her back arched, lifting off the mattress.

She whined when he eased two fingers into her and lifted his mouth.

“Help me find it?” he whispered, crooking his fingers.

“Higher.”

He moved slowly, not wanting to go too fast and pass over it.

“There, there,” she panted.

Reaching up with his free hand, he disentangled her fingers from the sheet so he could grasp her hand, linking them together.

“You can press a little harder. It’s not as sen -” her voice broke off into a groaned, “oh, fuck,” as he urged that soft, spongey spot with a heavier touch.

They’d done this more after his revelatory first time, and he loved discovering new things about her. He still had a hard time finding her g-spot on his own, but he was learning. Tonight felt like a whole new ego stroke, one he was seeking if he was being honest with himself.

His mind wandered back to the first time he’d touched her, the way she’d reminded him of Helen of Troy - beautiful beyond belief. He ached for her the same way now as he watched her fall apart. Mouth dropped open as her body pulled taught as a bow string, one hand grasping the headboard for stability while the other clutched his like a vice.

As she came down from her high, he kept his fingers pressed into her.

Even as she squirmed against the sensitivity from his strong touch, she felt a blaze of pleasure reignite in her belly, faster than it ever had before.

Still kneading with his fingertips, he lowered down, sucking her sensitive pearl into his mouth. She let out a strangled cry that left him dizzy with satisfaction.

The contrast of his warm mouth and soft tongue on her core against the harsh rasp of his playoff beard on her inner thighs wound her tighter and tighter until he was sparking so much ecstasy in her body, she couldn't quite remember why she was trying to be so quiet.

Her fingers tightened in his at the same time her legs trembled and he knew she was close. He continued on, mouth soft and steady while his fingers worked with more focused intent.

The way she whimpered his name made him groan and rock his hips into the mattress to get a bit of relief.

When the tension in her pelvis finally snapped, Sarah cried out.

It was only after she came back to herself and he eased his fingers from her that she worried about how loud she'd been.

Before she could ask, he knocked her breathless again as he slid his fingers into his mouth, cleaning them with apparent relish.

“Did I yell?” she whispered as he crawled back over her.

He shook his head, “not too loud. I don't think they heard.”

The anxiety ebbed away as he leaned in to kiss her.

“Can you turn over?” he asked, lips barely grazing hers.

She pulled back to look into his face.

“I want to make you feel good,” he said.

“You already did. Twice.”

“Please?” he asked, ghosting his lips over her cheek, “let me make you come one more time.”

In reality, Quinn was tired, but his pride was insistent, eager to feel her again and he knew if he got her on her stomach she’d come faster than in missionary.

He could see worry in her expression, but she did as he asked, the sheets clinging briefly to her back as she rolled.

One of his hands grazed down her side, following the curvature of her hip before tracing her hamstring all the way to the knee. Hooking his hand there, he eased her leg out to the side.

He really was spoiling her. Eagle with a broken wing was her favorite position other than missionary, but they didn’t do it terribly often, both generally preferring to see the other when they were together.

She felt Quinn’s heat before any of his skin, and raised her hips slightly to facilitate him.

“You’re —” she broke off into a groan as he eased into her again. She was so sensitive, she was fairly certain she would have fallen apart all over again if he had given her an intense enough look. Heat was already climbing up her spine and he hadn't even moved yet.

His hands appeared near hers as he braced on his forearms. She moved to lace her fingers through his.

When he began to thrust, he felt her fingers curl until her nails kissed his palms

Listening to her sweet sounds, he couldn’t get enough of her. He wanted to live in her forever.

“Holy shit,” she breathed, chaos sparking all over her skin. “I didn't think I could come this many times so quickly.”

Her hushed statement rushed to his head. “Sarah,” he moaned into her neck. “Fuck, Sarah.”

His mouth traced the curve of her neck before gently biting the ridge of her shoulder.

The prick of pain from his teeth combined with the way he was hitting her g spot in a steady, continuous rhythm had Sarah’s mouth falling open. “Oh. Quinn,” she moaned. “Just like that. Please don't stop.”

Feeling out of his mind with pleasure and pride, he rested his forehead on her back.

Only after he felt her tremble and pulse around him and chanting that he loved her, he let himself go, spilling into her with a loud groan he tried to muffle into her skin.

They stayed that way for a long while, his sweaty chest pressed into her back. He was a comfortable weight, pressing her into the mattress.

Quinn talked himself into moving and eased out, his wince matching the breath she hissed through her teeth. Before he could decide which side to roll onto, she was turning onto her back, and pulling him into her embrace.

Resting his head on her chest, he sighed.

Sarah smiled, tired but gratified and pushed a lock of hair off his forehead. She wanted to get up and go to the bathroom, but waited, knowing Quinn needed this extra affection.

“I don't…” he started to say, then trailed off, slowly tracing a circle around her belly button.

He had never felt supported and loved like he had today. Not only when she just let him cry, but when she reminded him that she loved the things about him that weren't his job.

Quinn hadn't known how much he needed to hear Sarah’s words until she was saying them. His whole family was so entwined in hockey that, even though he knew his parents loved him, it sometimes felt like his success and failure in the arena were wrapped up in their affection and approval. It was one of the reasons Jack always felt like the favorite child, as he had the most natural talent.

“You don't?” she urged when he didn’t say anything else.

He shook his head and took a steadying breath. “I feel like I don't deserve you.”

A little smile played on her lips, “I feel that way sometimes, too, but I'm not really sure it's about deserving. Everyone deserves love.”

She paused for a long time playing with his hair. It relaxed Quinn, causing him to practically melt into her.

“I'm glad we're both willing to put in the work and try to meet in the middle,” she said quietly.

He agreed, pressing a kiss to the top of her breast.

As they stayed that way for a long time, Quinn felt cocooned in her love and hoped she felt the same.

“Okay,” she said a little while later, starting to feel sticky and itchy, “I’m sorry, but I really need to shower, or at least rinse off.”

They took a quick shower, and Quinn changed the fitted sheet as she redid her skincare.

When they finally fell asleep tangled together, she in a pair of his shorts and a t-shirt, and he in his boxers, it was well after three.

After sleeping like the dead, Quinn woke close to ten, still feeling that strong swell of gratitude easing the disappointment in his chest.

If anyone in his family had heard them, they were all excellent actors, and didn't say a thing.

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#quinn & sarah snapshots #quinn hughes #quinn hughes fic #quinn hughes imagine #quinn hughes fanfiction #quinn hughes x oc #quinn hughes oneshot #quinn hughes smut #qh43 #jack hughes #luke hughes #nhl fanfiction #nhl imagine #hockey romance #hockey fic

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watermelonlovershigh · 6 months

Note

for a story if you want or do you want less sexy?

Sneaky Honeymoon Snapshots /concept/

AN: thanks for sending a photo in like i requested. and OMG THIS PHOTO IS AMAZING!!!!!! i hope you enjoy. it is short but i think it fits well with this AI photo.

This story contains: mentions of sex, pure fluff

{ husbandrry - soft!harry - an AU harry (aka not famous) }

word count- 389

You take a few photos of Harry sleeping on the bed after having some amazing honeymoon sex.

>>>

You've been on your honeymoon for three days now. It's been amazing so far. Your new husband Harry has showered you in so much love over these past few days, well and since from day one in your relationship, that it's almost painful to except it all. Painful in a good way.

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

In the bedroom of your honeymoon beach house that has an amazing view from every corner of the room, you and Harry have just had some amazing sex. It's just one of the many times you've had amazing sex on your honeymoon thus far. The house is sat up on the side of a rocky cliff by the ocean so as you rolled around in the bed naked, you had no worries of bystanders seeing in on such a private moment.

After having sex, you both laid on top of the white duvet, cuddling and soaking up the after moments. A few minutes later you tell Harry you need to use the bathroom and you'll only be gone a minute. To which he leans in for a quick kiss and replies, "Alright, m'love."

In the bathroom you use the toilet and freshen up. You thought you had only been gone for no more then three minutes but it must have been closer to ten when you see the state Harry's in back in the bedroom. As you enter the door of the bedroom, you see Harry laid on his tummy, a thin throw blanket covering his naked bottom, head resting in the crook of his arms, asleep.

He looks so peaceful and dreamy. And to add to the sight is the amazing view of the sea around you. Wanting to remember this scene for years to come, you scramble to your bedside table to grab your phone and then go back to your original spot at the rooms entrance before snapping a few photos of Harry.

Once you're satisfied with the pictures you took, you set your phone down and quietly slip back into bed beside your husband. You carefully ease the throw blanket up his body as well as yours now so you can share the blanket while cuddling. Harry instantly pulls you in closer to his body and for the next hour you have a much needed nap together.

Sleepy, naked, cuddles after love making.

(PLEASE REBLOG BECAUSE WRITING IS NOT EASY AND IT'S FREE SO JUST DO IT)

(no more tags are allowed because i've hit my number limit. sorry : ( )

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astrialuvs · 3 months

Text

"Captured Moments“

➻ SYNOPSIS : When the mischievous twins playfully meddle with Suna's phone, capturing plenty of candid snapshots of you, he finds himself appreciating more than just the stolen moments. The stolen glances unveil a budding connection that goes beyond the surface.

➻ PAIRING : suna rintaro x reader

➻ GENRE : fluff, mutual pining

➻ CONTENT WARNING : slight cursing

➻ WORD COUNT : 746 words

a/n: repost from old account | happy na birthday mo pa!~

another note: the twins definitely know what they're doing 😉

You've grown familiar with Suna Rintaro's daily routine for who knows how long—long enough to recognize his habits and routines such as volleyball, casual banter with the twins, and being perpetually glued to his phone.

As you were making your way towards the place where you normally have lunch, Suna was absorbed in a mobile game and unconsciously wandering about. After losing another round, he hissed for the nth time. You keep a close eye on him, apprehending that he is unaware of his surroundings.

"Excuse me!!!" someone yelled from the back. A group of students carrying boxes rushes through. You stepped aside to give them more room to pass, but Suna maintained his pace.

"Watch out, Rin," you cautioned, tugging on his sleeve and holding him close to you until the students passed.

You tried to give him a mild reprimand for not paying attention; instead, he flashed a rare smile and uttered, "I know you're always there to keep an eye on me.

You averted your gaze to the side at his response. His words lingered, tugging at the strings of your emotions, and you found yourself momentarily breathless.

No. Actually, everything he says and does for you makes your heart skip a thousand beats. You felt the tips of your fingers go cold. You silently wished for a split second to keep your emotions at bay.

"Suna!~ Y/n!~"

The appearance of the twins disrupted the moment, and Suna's reaction was palpable. Atsumu and Osamu casually walk toward you too. You didn't miss the way Suna's left eye twitched, possibly because of their appearance or maybe because of how loud they are. Or maybe both.

Amidst the chaos, you were startled when you felt a large, warm, calloused hand on your hand. Suna grasped your hand and carefully tugged it off of his sleeve, making you realize that you still clung to his sleeve.

"Your hands feel cold. Are you 'lright?" he inquired.

"Hmm-. Y-yeah. I'm fine. Must be the cold weather," you stammer awkwardly as you reach for your hands, but Suna firmly grasps your hand with both of his hands, seemingly forgetting about his previous activity.

'Oh goodness,' you thought as you noticed your heartbeat quickening.

Lunchtime unfolded, and you found yourselves sharing a table. Except for Suna, who doesn't make lunch for himself, the rest of you settled on one of the tables and took out your own lunches. The twins hatched a mischievous plan involving Suna's phone as soon as he handed over his phone to head to the counter to order his own lunch.

As soon as he leaves, the twins seize an opportunity to play a prank on Suna's phone when he heads to the counter. The twins, mainly Atsumu, flop themselves beside you, ripping out the phone from your hand, to which you quickly protested.

You hesitated, but eventually succumbed. Unlocking his phone discreetly, you wish Suna hadn't changed his phone's lock after seeing how many times he unlocked it.

As his phone got unlocked, the three of you clamored quietly, the twins comically shaking you. You took notice that his wallpaper display is a blurred silhouette of you, but before you could fully recognize it, the twins attempted to invade his phone, only to be thwarted by password-protected apps. In a spontaneous move, they redirected the camera toward you, capturing candid moments.

"Such a bummer."

"You scumbags," Suna cussed as the twins fled off the scene. You, on the other hand, lowered your head, fully aware that you were complicit in the crime. You braced yourself for what he was going to say, only to have him tell you to continue to eat.

A little later, while Suna opened and checked his phone, he flopped on his bed with one hand behind his head. checking each app to see if the three of you had changed or discovered anything.

He was lying on his bed as he scrolled through his phone. He smiles bashfully as he examines each photo, somehow thinking of how he will confess to you someday.

The first smile after finding out about the stolen shots withered away when facing the twins' stunts. He erased their photographs in haste, but he paused on the candid snaps of you with a shy smile as his future disclosure.

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bits-and-babs · 10 months

Text

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 — 𝐒𝐈𝐌𝐎𝐍 ‘𝐆𝐇𝐎𝐒𝐓’ 𝐑𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐘

synopsis : photographs from a gangland crime scene just beyond mexico's border send ghost into a spiral. as his superior, you feel it is your duty to bring him down from delirium by any means necessary.

pairing: simon ‘ghost’ riley x f!reader (colonel)

warnings : 18+ mdni. heavy use of the canon comics, gory imagery, mentions of torture, brainwashing, corpses. ptsd, delusions, simon in a submissive headspace. d/s themes, softdomme!reader, praise kink if you squint, oral (f receiving), fingering, cumming in pants, i wanted to write simon as a sub so i fucking did. please note this is a fic about using sex to navigate trauma. it will not be for everyone.

ghost masterlist ୨୧ main masterlist ୨୧ join taglist ୨୧ ask

He's like a spectre in the back of the briefing room, his shadow looming over the gory photographs spattered over the table and smothering the map beneath them. Snapshots of gruesome, twisted corpses reflect in the honey liquid of his irises, his usually expressive eyes made mute by the ghastliness of the savaged bodies.

Ghost's vast frame appears to shrink the longer he gazes at the glossy, printed pictures.

Price continues his mission briefing. His forgotten cigar smoulders in the cigarette dish placed haphazardly over the map, ashes building an eminence of embers on the glass platter. His tar-drenched lungs rasp as he talks, gritty voice booming as it ricochets from the walls in the tiny box room.

"Intel confirms a congregation of armed cartel members just beyond the Mexican borde-…."

Leaning against the wall, Ghost's shadow retreats from the tabletop and slinks back into the corner. He crosses his arms over his vast chest, charcoal grey fleece sleeves pushed to his elbows to expose the ebony ink scrawled across his chalky skin. His scarred knuckles bleach when he tightens his grip on his bicep, silently stewing in his own conviction.

He knows.

It's as though you can see them play like a film reel in his gilded irises, flickers of his trauma in Mexico. Ghost's file had been heavily redacted during your time as his equal, reams and reams of black ink ribbons distorting the writing and camouflaging his colourful history. Serving alongside him, you learnt that the SAS Lieutenant approached conversation similarly, censoring himself by remaining relatively silent.

Since your promotion to Colonel, you had gained access to transparent files and learnt precisely why Simon' Ghost' Riley kept mum about his time in Coahuila… You'd seen those gnarly scars, pink and magenta and silver welts that raised or gouged into the porcelain of his pale skin. Yet, the answer to your concerned queries was always a singular, gentle remark. "Classified."

Ghost's attempted brainwashing and the ultimate death sentence were confidential. He'd never told you that the scent of the decaying body of his Judas commanding officer, Vernon, had clung to the walls of his nasal cavities for weeks after escaping the coffin. Never revealed the way his hand sunk into the putrefying corpse when he attempted to break his way out of the casket. Wouldn't admit to ripping the jawbone from the rotting carcass to pry open the lid.

His reason for convalescent leave was also confidential. Extreme temper-management difficulties handing the vulnerable Ghost over to ex-teammates Sparks and Washington and the conclusive massacre of his entire family. Three generations, blown away with a bullet through the skull.

And the man at the centre of it all, Manuel Roba, stared back at him in the pictures of horrid, mangled, ripped flesh littering the table and pinned to the map. Puncture wounds from being elevated on meat hooks, emaciated following daily meals of mind-altering drugs––

"Riley."

Ghost's honeyed eyes dart from their fixated aim on the pictures towards Price. Concern furrows the Captain's brow as he observes Ghost's self-preserving body language. "You hearin' me?"

"Loud and clear, sir," Ghost's gruff voice rattles like gravel in his chest. His eyes appear hollow through the gaps in his ski mask, black grease paint making him look particularly gaunt.

It's a split second, momentary, but Price casts a precautionary glance your way. You know that expression, can translate the concerned crevices on John's face; he knows.

"... Good Hunting," Captain Price issues his dismissal, pointed looks urging the members of 141 out of the room quickly. The rubber soles of your boots stay rooted to the floor, gaze set on Ghost as the task force leave the conference single file. The Mancunian doesn't budge, his eyes aimed at their target on the table.

It takes a handful of moments, Gaz and Soap gawping over the brutal torture details and Price urging them both with an insistence to 'shut up' that was far too authoritative for them to ignore. Then, finally, the door swings shut, clicking in place. Ghost blinks at the sound, a minute, barely there flinch that wouldn't register with outsiders, but you notice it.

Silence creeps through the room and settles between you like a blanket of gunpowder, charged and ready to blow. Ghost's body is tense, oddly postured in an attempt to retain his intense emotions.

"Ghost." You say his codename, and immediately he moves his head in a slight shake—a silent urge for quiet. He pushes his back from the wall, slowly approaching the table he had glared at for hours.

"It's him, isn't it? Roba," Ghost's voice is tight with fury, those gravel pieces sounding a lot more like glass shards, "He's come back."

You watch, lungs seizing behind your ribcage when you hear him speak Manuel Roba's name. The vile man had lived like a ghoul amongst Simon's memories, fictitious as long as he remained unmentioned. Talking of him was almost like speaking the behemoth into existence.

"I know you read the file, Colonel," Ghost spits through gritted teeth, reaching forward to pinch a photograph from the table. You see it, the almost imperceptible tremor in his fingers as he does. "He did this to us- Strung us up like pig carcasses-"

"I understand that you're scared-" You begin your attempt to ease the spiral that Ghost appears to be silently falling into, his almost normal outward appearance betrayed only by microscopic symptoms of panic.

"I'm not," he insists, agitation edging his tone of voice as he holds up the image of a gutted corpse, "I'm not scared; you're all tip-toein' around this like I'm fuckin' stupid!"

"Riley."

The use of Ghost's surname makes the hulking mass of man stop in his tracks. He swallows the words he holds on his tongue, realising his disrespect to a commanding officer should not, and would not, be tolerated under any circumstance.

Stepping forward, you gaze right back at the shell-shocked man before you. "Manuel Roba is dead. You killed him. You know this. Shot him right between the eyes."

You demonstrate the bullet trajectory by tapping between your eyebrows with your index finger, triggering a visual for the shaken Ghost to project the image of the slaughtered drug dealer. "The bodies you're seeing are probably a result of his control over the Zaragoza Cartel. Remnants of his fighters lashing out in a last-ditch effort to obtain some power."

Ghost nods slightly, a singular tilt forward of his head as his hand lowers to his side, fingers loosening their hold on the gory picture so it falls to the ground. He clears his throat awkwardly, eyes following the path of the image as he casts his gilded irises to the floor. You note how vulnerable he looks, flayed raw by his memories and the stalking PTSD that had gripped him without detection.

"You're right. 'M sorry," he lets out a shaky sigh, chest trembling as he attempts to expel the tension in his chest, "Don't know what I was thinkin'."

You dismiss his embarrassment with a wave of your hand. "Don't mention it."

"How much do you know?" Ghost asks, the question uttered in a whisper.

You consider his query carefully. A good question. How much did you know? Had the files revealed the total of Ghost's catastrophic timeline from Mexico to Manchester? Or was there still unforeseen information hidden behind censorship walls that even you couldn't worm your way behind at this high a rank?

You're careful in your choice of words, attempting to curb any particular language that could trigger upsetting recollections. "I know Roba used to brainwash you. Drug you. Make you fight."

"And?" Simon urges you onwards, his aureate irises staring coldly at you through the blackness of the grease paint and mask–– awaiting the agonising stab of the truth.

"He used to offer sex or death as a means of control." You carefully place your palm against his shoulder, a warm and weighty presence to help ground him as you speak. "Attempted to hardwire your brain to find arousal in fear."

Ghost swallows. You see the bob of his Adam's apple beneath the thick material of the ski mask. A minuscule quiver of his eyebrow indicates his inner turmoil, the usually composed and inscrutable Lieutenant Riley slipping away as you peel away each layer of his trauma.

"Do you still? Find arousal in fear?"

Silence twists your stomach; Ghost's incessant, piercing stare causes the hairs on your forearms to stand up.

"On your knees, Riley."

"Yes, ma'am."

Simon sinks to his knees, slow and deliberate, in a latent attempt to please you. It's as though Everest has crumbled, its foundations bending beneath its enormous weight. Simon is an unshakeable force, an indomitable summit, yet when his patellas hit the floor, his giant palms meet the edges of your thighs in reverence for you.

His touch is precious and delicate with its weight–– not as though he's afraid he'll break you, but more like he's trying so hard to earn your favour as his superior. His blonde lashes dip low, heavy-lidded, unable to stand looking at your face when he's laid bare for you like this.

"Please." When Simon speaks, it's as though the cocktail of gravel and glass shards has excoriated the walls of his throat. It's broken, choked and pitchy as he begs you. "Please."

"Please what, Simon?" You query, maintaining an even, commanding tone. His eyelashes flutter slightly, trembling so prettily for you as arousal floods his spine.

"Please, ma'am. Can I be of service?" It's spoken through his gritted teeth as though he's mortified that he's voicing these torrid desires, even in the vaguest terms. You slip your naked palm beneath the woven canvas of his mask, clutching his jaw and forcing his face upwards.

It's amusing, you think, that Simon believes himself unreadable as long as he wears the skull mask. It couldn't be further from the truth. His eyes are so expressive, constantly betraying his innermost thoughts without even exposing the expressions of his visage.

The probing gaze you offer him has him twitching in his camo cargo pants. You see his thick length bob against the fabric, aroused by the ease with which you read him.

"Is that what you need, Riley?" It's rhetorical; you both know it. He's never required anything so desperately in his life. Simon had been lost in the Congo jungle without food for weeks and escaped a kidnapping attempt that had him stumble through the Iraqi desert without water, yet he looked at you with those keening eyes as though he'd die without a taste of you.

"Tell me."

"Yes," he gasps, inhaling sharply as though he'd forgotten to breathe, "Yes, ma'am. Please, I need to tast––"

Simon barely manages to finish his sentence before he pushes his trembling fingers beneath the hem of his mask on his throat, shoving it over the point of his chin and balancing the bunched-up material on the bridge of his nose. He groans out as he fumbles with your khaki belt, unwinding it with great difficulty.

While Simon busies himself with your zipper, your fingers delicately trace the silvering scars on his throat, many of Manuel Roba's love letters to evil etched into his ivory skin. The files had labelled each laceration and its cause; S2 below his chin issued by a butcher's knife, S5 against his clavicle the product of a dagger during a spar with another brainwashed hostage. You can't help but smile when your fingerprints find S7.

"S7 - a two-inch superficial scar from a tricycle accident."

A desperate groan rumbles in Simon's chest when he shucks the waistband of your cargo pants over the flesh of your hips. Your hand quickly grasps the edge of the table when he buries his nose against your clothed cunt, your heavy-handedness knocking more of the long-forgotten gory images to the floor.

"Fuck," Simon exhales, his warm breath fanning across the soaked fabric of your panties. "Thank you, Thank y- fuck."

Your gasp of pleasure catches even you off guard as Simon drags the flat of his tongue against the wetness of your underwear, a groan sneaking from his open mouth as he relishes in the taste.

"This good, ma'am?" he breathes, hot and heavy against your core. He's desperate to please, a slight flush to the lower half of his cheeks that you can see. It takes you a moment to compose yourself, overwhelmed by the exposed flesh of his face.

"Yes," you praise him as he uses his fingers to push aside the cotton in his way. "So fucking good for me, Simo-nhgn-"

The tip of Simon's tongue seems to find your clit almost instantaneously, curling around the sensitive bud and teasing it as though he knew exactly what you needed. His moan is muffled and pathetic against your soaked cunt, lapping at your arousal and drowning himself in you.

He keens when your fingernails dig into the soft flesh of his shoulder, digging reddening crescent moons into the skin. They blend amongst the charcoal of his tattoo sleeve, but they're there, little arches among the skulls, guns, and warfare.

Simon paws at the backs of your thighs, spreading the wingspan of his fingers across the curve of your asscheeks and squeezes, using his hold to drag your body impossibly closer to his mouth. He nuzzles in, the tip of his nose teasing at your clit as he sinks the hot, wet flesh of his tongue into your entrance.

"Hah-" you gasp out, Simon's moan vibrating against your needy clit forcing you to grind forward against his face in search of more friction. Your fingers find purchase in the fabric on the top of Simon's head, curling your knuckles around it but ensuring you don't lift the mask from his face.

The Lieutenant feels your grazing fingers against his scalp, burying his face further into your pussy as he tastes your arousal from the source. He sighs heavily, shakily into your cunt as he savours the ambrosia on his tongue, greed forcing him in for more–– licking and tasting and sucking and swallowing more of you.

"So good for me, Simon," you reward him, voice trembling as he assaults your cunt with his probing tongue. He retreats from the soaked flesh of your cunt to tease at your clit again. You can feel your pulse concentrating in it, thudding against his tastebuds.

"Mhmm," he huffs, vast chest heaving with heavy breaths that add another layer of pleasure to your arousal as they waft over your wet pussy lips. You could cry when you look down at him, his eyelids drooping (one lower than the other thanks to the scar that ran across his left eyelid. "S4 - a superficial scar from a fist fight during detention in Mexico").

A single, calloused palm skirts around your waist, splaying wide across your lower abdomen as Simon feels the muscles beneath his hand tremble and tense at his ministrations. He groans again, his other hand teasing at your pussy lips from behind in a silent plea for entry.

"Simon- Simon, do it," you urge him, desperate to be filled as he teased at your clit with his nimble tongue. You'd never had guessed a man so intent on disguising his countenance would have the perfect face to sit on.

"Yes, ma'am," he responds, only momentarily before reestablishing the relentless rhythm of the swipe of his tongue. Then, without much warning, he sinks his index finger into your entrance. A delicate press of his fingertip at first, testing the waters, so to speak. Only when you let out a blissful sigh does Simon continue to ease the digit into you.

His fingers are so thick. You stretch around him, your head dipping back between your shoulder blades and gasping a curse to the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. The bliss that sweeps through you is overwhelming, toes curling in your combat boots as you attempt to escape the onslaught of pleasure.

Simon won't let you.

"Please," he moans in bliss as he pulls you closer again, your feeble body unable to fight his firm control when your limbs are gelatinous and malleable to his whims.

His cock is bobbing beneath his cargos, a dark patch of precum soaking into the camo print. A flood of arousal drips through you, your eyes rolling back at the realisation that he might fucking cum in his pants, untouched, just with the taste of you.

"S-Simon-" you wail, losing all control as your voice cracks. "Right there-"

God, he ratchets up the intensity of your bliss by sinking another finger into you. It faces no resistance, sliding down to the knuckle with an ease that had you seeing stars when it pushes up against something utterly devastating within your abdomen.

"There!"

Simon groans around your cunt, lathing his tongue over your throbbing clit with an eagerness that seems so alien for the stoic, unreadable Special Airforce Soldier. His fingers ease in and out of you ever so slightly, rocking back and forth against that mind-numbing spot inside you that has your knees buckling beneath your weight.

"Oh my g-aha-" you choke on your words, both hands now fumbling to hold onto the table with a white-knuckle grip. Tension curls in the pit of your stomach, twisting and shape-shifting.

You feel it before you hear it. The vibrations of Simon's desperate groans of bliss rock through your cunt before the sounds reach your ears, his mouth sloppy on your cunt as his own arousal begins to take root. The fingers not buried inside your walls take a bruising grip on your waist, branding you with his prints.

He notches that paradisical spot inside you one more, and your failing knees quake at the vicious burst of ecstasy it unleashes. You moan loudly, the lewd sound wracking through your body as though Simon had just set off a stun grenade, light bursting through you with a crack. Your hips buck against his chin and nose mindlessly as you ride through the peak of your bliss.

Simon lets his jaw hang loose, tongue flat as you ride against it— pathetic, utterly disgusting groans of delight drip from his lips as you use him. He pants, and you only just manage to force your eyes open as a particularly pitchy wail of your name to witness his undoing.

His hips rock forward against nothing, just barely finding friction on the seam of his pants as his orgasm rocks through him. You watch his eyelids flutter and his brows twitch as he cums in his standard-issue military cargos. He slumps back slightly, jaw loose as he sucks in deep breaths. It's utterly unbecoming of someone who appeared so unshakeable, a submissive, needy man taking his place.

At first, you allow him some space. The forceful inhale and trembling exhale of his lungs tick like a clock, in and out, in and out. Simon's hand delicately smoothes over the flesh of your ankle, a feeble attempt to feel close to you in this moment without overstimulating his vulnerable mind.

When he lifts those honeyed eyes to you, searching for your comfort, you allow your palms to smooth down the fabric of his ski mask and offer him some privacy, restoring some dignity to the usually stoic Ghost.

He leans into the weight of your palm for just a second. A barely there moment, like the grip of his biceps from earlier, the twitch of his brow. It fades quickly like his S7 scar, the dripping molasses of his eyes hardening beneath the skull image.

"Not a word," you order him, tone aggressively authoritarian when you issue your directive.

Ghost is glad for it, a curt nod of his head indicating his return to lucidity as he begins to rise to his feet.

"Yes, ma'am."

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Don't forget to support content creators with a comment or a reblog! Thanks for reading munchkins! <33

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irondadfics · 4 months

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Holiday Rec List.

Hi everyone, this is long overdue, but I promised so here's to starting off the New Year right with some fics for you to check out. I didn't add any descriptions, so check them out! Some are series, some require you to be logged into your ao3. These are in no particular order. You are sure to find something you will love. We've linked the authors where possible so be sure to check out their other works, encourage (not pressure) them to finish their in progress works please or even write new works! Trust me! Happy New Year!

So many awesome stories did not make this list because I didn't want to overwhelm anyone, but many are already in mind for another special rec list!.

I love you more than anything (bio dad au) - iron_spider

But Only Hope and Sorrows End - iron_spider

Lazarus, come forth - iron_spider

Four times peter cheated death (and one time he didn't) - iron_spider

A Life of Crime - intothestorm

Up Came the Sun - WhimsicalEthnographies

Hey Ragazzo - WhimsicalEthnographies

Becoming Belonging - sahiya

A Soft Place to Land - sahiya

The Third Option - Uncertainty_Principle

Men of Iron - Spdrmain

The Little Things - soupshep

First Wednesday of March - soupshep

You'll Always Get There First - soupshep

The Time Traveler's Mentor - Diaz_evan

Three Weeks, Two Days, Seven Hours - soupshep

Never Go Home Alone - Orphan Account

Here's to all New Beginnings - Gruoch Orphan Account

Even Children Get Older - LittleMissAgrafina

A Snapshot Moment - soupshep

Hold Your Breath While You're Safe - Gruoch Orphan Account

The Hearth - Sagemb

Everyday Superhero Verse - Stoneage_woman

College Applications: The Biggest Meme - Sagemb

The Long Way Back - Gruoch Orphan Account

Allston Christmas - Gruoch Orphan Account

Hard to Love - Groo_ock Orphan Account

Aperture - Gruoch Orphan Account

Holdfasts - Gruoch Orphan Account

I Am One of You Forever - Gruoch Orphan Account

Neon Liar (Hiding in Plain Sight) - isaDanCurtisproduction

Constant Internal [Spider] Screaming: Semi-Connected Scenes from a Graduating Senior’s Life - isaDanCurtisproduction

As Luck Would Have It - blondsak, whumphoarder

Poison Apple - whumphoarder

Inevitable - imgoingtocrash

Knowing (of everything she doesn't) - imgoingtocrash

287 Miles - imgoingtocrash

Out of Darkness - StarryKnight09

I Would Lay My Armour Down - losingmymindtonight

Webcams and Webshooters - losingmymindtonight

Call You Home - Madelinedear

The Guardian - Emily_F6

Survivor's Guide to The Galaxy - fanfic1892

A Little Late On the Blood Work - Pixiemage

With Kind Regards and Completely Serious Warning - jennylarner

The Chain - RayRox360

Was that a Star Wars reference, Dr. Stark? - Jen27ny

You Are My Sunshine - M4rmalade

I told you I had issues - Bergen

PS: If you make it here then awesome sauce! Send us your fave fics to read as well, you never know they may end up on a special rec list someday! No promises though! Thank you all! Have an awesome 2024 everyone!

#fic rec list #follower outreach

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kingdomoftyto · 9 months

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I've started and deleted three drafts now trying to get my thoughts into a coherent recommendation, but there's just so much.

Let's start with the basics: You should read the graphic novel if you're a fan of the original show. You just should. It's new content of your old faves, and I'm telling you now that the art and writing are great and that you should give it a shot based on that alone.

But as for exactly why I'm losing my mind over it this much...?

It... feels like watching the show. But a version of the show unafraid to explore its own worldbuilding. A version of the show where continuity and character growth matter. A version of the show without jokes written by people far too old to understand mid-2000s teens.

And it is actually, honest-to-goodness funny. I went in fully braced for a badly shoehorned "fruit loop" one-liner, and instead I got incredible deadpan asides like this:

The art, too, manages to perfectly ride the line of looking enough like the original style to be convincing, but improving on the expressiveness of the characters' faces and actions to elevate it to something arguably better than the show:

(Like, I'm being so serious when I say the fight scenes are among the best I have ever seen in comic form. I'm the kind of person who tends to go for anime over manga because the fights are harder for me to follow in little sequential snapshots, but I can tell exactly what's happening in these battles AND they still look super cinematic and cool.)

And the story. Man, the STORY.

I won't spoil any of the plot here, but it's... really good. A little winding and goofy toward the beginning, but once things get serious, it really grabs you and refuses to let go til it's done. (Much like the best episodes of the show! Funny how that works.) It has a satisfying conclusion, but it also leaves a massive door open to continue telling more stories in the setting.

And I want more stories in this universe. The threads being dangled here might be even more enticing than those left by the original show. There is potential here for an INCREDIBLE series of comics.

We just have to prove how badly we want it.

If you can't buy the book yourself right now (it's relatively cheap for a graphic novel--I think it was about $15 even with tax from my Barnes & Noble), then please at least let other fans know it exists (I wouldn't have had any idea if not for tumblr) and keep the hype going on social media. I'm stoked to see that DP is trending on tumblr, at least, and I hope the same is true elsewhere. It's a small thing, but it's something corporate decision-makers take note of.

Fingers crossed we get to see more someday. This is one series that deserves to come back from the dead.

But, whether or not we get that continuation: welcome back, Phandom. Congrats and happy release day. 💚

#Danny Phantom #DP comic spoilers #(BARELY spoilers but I did include the images so :/ )#while I'm rambling in the tags lemme say one more thing as a slightly more niche endorsement:#since he's on the cover it's not a spoiler to say Danny's evil future self from TUE plays a big role #I am happy to report that despite the blurb on the back of the book calling him ''Dark Danny''--as all official sources do--#he is instead referred to in-universe exclusively as ''Phantom''#I think that single detail goes a LONG way toward showing just how much this author truly *understands*.#she really is one of us. on the fandom's side and not the corporation's.#this is a project made with SO MUCH admiration for what made the source material special in the first place #and for how the fandom has interacted with it since #it's... it feels awesome. I was so worried this book would be bad or mediocre but it's genuinely a labor of love and I'm so happy

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rwrbficrecs · 29 days

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WIP Wednesday

happy wednesday 💕

never the same twice by @three-drink-amy @rmd-writes @everwitch-magiks @indomitable-love @welcometololaland @athousandrooms bleedingballroomfloor, chasingashadow & ifigo (book-verse)

@na-dineee: A series of snapshots of Alex and Henry's sex life through the years. All of these fabulous authors each write a chapter about Firstprince having sex and connecting. And already the first chapters are wonderfully sweet, of course smutty but also fluffy and kind of wholesome as well. It's not hard to imagine that all the chapters will be an absolute joy to read!

@dot524: This one was an unexpected treat! Truly felt like it was my birthday, not Henry’s. The first few chapters have been fabulous and I can’t wait to read the rest from this all-star lineup.

Pride & Extreme Prejudice by @clottedcreamfudge (book-verse)

@na-dineee: Everything I've read by clottedcreamfudge so far has been at least 10/10. The author's take on 'Pride & Prejudice' promises to be what her other stories are as well: witty and funny, full of banter, attraction and tension and not forgetting the hot and smutty scenes. Although it is the “WIP-iest of WIPs” as she promises, it can only be phenomenal and worth the wait.

check out our past WIP recs here ❤️

#wip wednesday #rwrb fic recs #firstprince #firstprince recs

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dilemmaontwolegs · 9 months

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This Month: Sept/Oct 23

No fics planned: on holiday September/October. Please help yourself to my Masterlists for some entertainment in my absence 💕

Not A Verstappen: A New World {Three} {Four} {Five} A Step Too Far || CL16 Mistakes || CL16 Meet the Parents || LN4 Addicted || CS55 Chilly Chilli || CS55 Little Lion Man || MV1 & CL16 - Mafia AU We’ve Got Tonight || LN4 Declaration of Independence || LS2

Series Update Order: NAV: A New World Best Kept Secret on the Grid The Taste of Temptation

Taglist: RETIRED Head over to my dedicated library blog @dilemmaslibrary and opt to get notifications from there.

Requests: CLOSED Inbox Count: 152

Last Month: Aug 23

Not A Verstappen: Gridlocked {Four} {Five} {Six} {Seven} {Eight} {Nine} The Exception || LN4 Afterglow || CS55 The Taste of Temptation Snapshots || DR3 {One} {Two} {Three} {Four} {Five} {Six} The Best Kept Secret of the Grid {Four} Privacy || PG10 Romantic at Heart || DR3 Fallen || CL16 (Bonus Scene) Too Good {Prequel} || CL16 Transcending Time {3} || CL16 Not A Verstappen: A New World {One} {Two} The Taste of Temptation {Four} {Five} {Six} {Seven} Dead Man Walking || LN4 {Two} Your Safe Place || CL16 The Fine Line || LN Playboy || PG10 {Three} Best Friends Share Everything || LN4&CS55 Summer in the 305 || LS2 {Two} Bee Stings and Butterfly Kisses || SV5

#f1 imagine #f1 fanfic #f1 rpf #formula one imagine #formula 1 fanfic #charles leclerc fanfic #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc x reader #lando norris fanfic #formula one fanfiction #lando norris x reader #lando norris imagine #daniel ricciardo fanfic #daniel ricciardo smut #logan sargeant x reader #logan sargeant fanfiction

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wastrelwoods · 1 year

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meg’s hannibal fic recs

hurrah for accumulating enough hannibal fics to finally organize some into a sexy little numbered list (which is comprised of three subsections. tee hee i am so organized) i am leaving out some better-known and appreciated fandom classic tastemakers just because I tend to assume people have run into those on their own but of course there are some all time faves there too. this is just already so long, holy shit,

🫀 PART THE FIRST : CANONVERSE [heartwrenching character studies, missing scenes, divergences, etc]

coffee cake by bones_2_be | 82k | hannibal leaves alone after digestivo, and will stays in wolf trap. in the middle of a snowstorm, hannibal comes back to visit. a really sweet and complex slow burn that's especially satisfying to reread in inclement weather and always leaves me craving comfort food

tenderdest touch leaves the darkest of marks & the hardest of hearts by det395 | 28k | 2part divergence from season 3b | hannibal and will end up on the wrong side of the door to his BSHCI cell. THE IMAGERY is so unparalleled the twists and turns are so masterful and the integration of silence of the lambs elements in a completely unexpected way is SO fun. PERFECT

Il falò delle vanità by More_night | 17.8k | missing scenes, one per season | will and hannibal get drunk together and skirt the edges of a years-long discussion of love, destruction, and veneration. these snapshots in their increasingly tumultuous relationship and the things that change and the things that don't....ooh wee

purple hyacinth by petrodactyl352 | 3.5k | missing scene in the season 3 timeskip | scenes from will's wedding day, featuring hannibal, alana, and will. SO full of lovely pining and a fun exploration of the interplay between these characters

culinary substitution by anbarelectrum | 8.8k | mid season 3 | will's old family meets his new family. THE choice of POV for both sections lends so much to this fic and it's a great tense little vignette that explores the dynamics at play in a really clever and exciting way while being very fair and evenhanded with all characters involved. and i LOVE the conclusions drawn

trotline by colonel_bastard | 7.7k | missing scene in season 2b | will takes hannibal fishing. just a CRAZY character study. the whole of will graham writ small in a way that boils my blood to think about. (feat. extremely detailed and visceral animal death)

after the silence has returned by fahye | 2k | post-canon | domestic autocannibalism? hannibal preparing meals with will's blood for both of them to share. just very short and sweet and good

the other side of the mirror by nbcravenstag | 7.5k | mizumono | will leaves hannibal's house after their last supper torn between two impossible choices. then will turns the car around.

everyone but me by det395 | 2.7k | listen i get why more people aren't writing fic in this fandom that is wheeze-laugh-until-your-lungs-give-out funny but you know who is doing it well? @will-gayham gets a double rec for this one

the purpose of blood by basingstoke | 5k | lovely and concise post-fall getting-together fic with a very precise and adept hannibal POV. yes there are a wealth of good post-canon fics but this is my favorite! so there!

🫀PART THE SECOND : DAMN GOOD AUs [transformative and matchless in their creativity ]

airlock by murdertrout | 9k | scifi horror romance | the spaceship's AI has been killing off the crew. will is on a mission to stop it. i love the nonlinear structure & the way that exploration of the humanity of an AI works so well with hannibal's whole thing & the exploration of bodies and codependency (&sweet robot lovin)

the back foot by spqr | 8.5k | kind of a pretty woman vibe, a little romcom and a little crime thriller. ANYWAY i can be reticent about sex work AUs but there's such verisimilitude in this one specifically for how many part-time gigs will is working and i think its great that the full service SW is treated basically the same as the column writing and dog-walking. it's all skilled work that's a little bit of a slog and really he wants to be free to get back to the romance subplot

it never sings vain by chaparral_crown | 117k | midsommar inspired folk horror au | exquisitely painful to read from start to finish, feels like eating your own beating heart, heavily recommend (feat. extremely vivid and graphic depiction of suicide right out the gate)

long live the knife by tei | 29k | baroque musician au | STICK THE FUCK WITH ME HERE you'll like this so much even if you don’t know much about that. you will. the depth of research that clearly went into this fic is one of the best i've ever seen and breathes so much life into this concept and will and hannibal both fit into this space in such nuanced and interesting ways! questions of bodily autonomy and god and death and art? johann sebastian bach is there?

all of history [deleted with one stroke] & coercive notions re-evolve by serindrana | 69k | sleeper agent/mind control au that leans into psychological horror | pt 1 is a season 1 vignette: hannibal tries to take advantage of will's fevered brain and finds that it is not the terra incognita he had expected. pt 2 is a plottier fic: while trying to recover his missing memories in the BHSCI, will blacks out and wakes up at hannibal's house, where he slowly pieces together the history that has been hidden from him (feat. dubious consent and torture)

🫀PART THE THIRD : EARNING THAT XXX RATING [canonverse or not but most importantly, good n horny]

rabbit hearted by bleakmidwinter | 18.5k | post-fall getting together fic | i am a sucker for this very specific mix of romantic tension and intimacy negotiation and apparently not at all immune to the allure of 'gay sex feat. this straight guy who is about to get his mind blown'

sweet milk by lazybaker | 21.5k | post-fall good clean fun fetish fic | i am also not immune to men's tits or the notion of a LITTLE bit of tasteful lactation. sorry i meant tasty

conduit by mokuyoubi | 9k | post-fall getting together fic WITH. a fun bicurious threesome moment. like i said i'm kind of a sucker for fics that turn on the axis of will graham figuring out how to get into having gay sex

satisfied by h0neybeebear | 11.6k | WILDLY sensual and sexy t4t marathon sex that should qualify for some kind of medal or award. new nobel prize category. the incendiary capacity of el's sensory descriptions could power a rocket straight into the sun or, alternatively, keep a hitachi charged for approximately 5 aeons

let me sinful be by darlingred1 | 20k | will is an anal sex toy connoisseur and hannibal is so, so, so intrusively curious about it. i won’t say how many times this has been visited in my history. top of the ao3 wrapped type of shit

#nbc hannibal #fic rec #rec list #hannibal fanfiction #UH how do i. tag #hannibal fic recs

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gulliblelemon · 6 months

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Young Royals Fic Recommendations 2

I have been reading even more fan fiction recently so I thought I'd do another (even longer) favourites list. My first one is here if you're interested! Some are newer fics, but some are also from a while ago that I've only just got round to reading (I have a bit of a chaotic system - sorry!)

(I’ve included tumblr usernames if I know them, someone let me know if I’ve missed any and I'll add them in).

obviously by grapehyasynth @grapehyasynth 124k words. Complete. Rating: M Normal People AU. Wille and Simon meet at school and start a secret relationship. The story follows their lives as they change and grow and meet again.

The road not taken looks real good now by stretchoutandwait @stretchoutfics 90k words. Complete. Rating: E Twenty two years after season 1, King Wilhelm has a wife and three kids and doesn't expect to see Simon again - until he does. (Honourable mention to Ex by the same author).

Protected by bastuba 44k words. Complete. Rated: M Wille has moved to New York for Uni. Simon is assigned as his new bodyguard. (The story has been expanded in one shots, my favourite of which is Interview).

Fuck The Monarchy by itsme_hi_imtheproblem @iwouldnevergetintofanfic 68k words. Complete. Rating: E Simon and Wille meet when they both intern at the Riksdag. (Honourable mention to I love the way you lie by the same author).

Almost Is Never Enough by this_time_its_just_me @in-amor-veritas 138k words. WIP. Rating: E Non-royal AU. Simon meets Wille again years after school when he starts a job at Wille's place of work. (Honourable mention to We Left Footprints When We Passed By by the same author).

you can stay by origamifrogs @princewillesothermom 23k words. Complete. Rating: E. Non-royal AU. Wille and Simon shared a childhood treehouse. Snapshots of their lives together.

No Tomorrow by p_brown 31k words. Complete. Rating: M Wille loses his memory of his and Simon's break up. Simon is called to help him remember the last few years.

Can We Just Pretend? by scissorsandstone 9k words. Complete. Rating: E Simon POV for the curtains scene in S2E5 (Simon is more conflicted than in canon).

Better With You by Spidaya @simons-purplehoodie 52k words. Complete. Rating: M Non-royal AU. Simon works as Wille's assistant at a music production company.

You Are Unbreaking by unfortunate17 @unfortunate17 38k words. Complete. Rating: E Medieval AU where Simon marries Wille in the hope of assassinating him. (Honourable mention to Stairway To Heaven by the same author)

Ace Of Hearts by Whiterabbit11 14k words. Complete. Rating: G Outsider POV vignettes of Wilmon through their Hillerska years.

perhaps more by willesworld @willesworld 28k words. Complete. Rating: T Non-royal AU. Wilhelm and Simon meet at an intensive summer program for aspiring writers.

i will, tonight by witchjeons @pleuvian 27k words. Complete. Rating: E Simon and Wilhelm meet in an antique store.

like he hung the moon and the stars in the sky 1.5k words. Complete. Rating: G Young Simon is infatuated with Young Prince Wilhelm on the TV. (Also has a lovely sequel).

finding home by Elin98 @ishotforthestars 19k words. WIP. Rating: G Prince Wilhelm disappears. Simon is trying to get on with his life.

I would drive on (to the end with you) by ceramicclown (@glassdollls) 90k words. WIP 11/15 chapters. Not rated. Non-royal AU. Simon and Wille meet at Hillerska, Simon offers to drive Wilhelm when his car breaks. They strike a deal to pretend to date.

#yr fic rec #young royals fic rec #yr fanfic #young royals fanfic #yr fanfiction #young royals fanfiction #young royals #young royals fanfic rec #lemon recommends

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rachalixie · 2 years

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a/n: wishing the happiest of birthdays to my love @sweetestcherrywine. i hope you have the absolute best day. you're my pillar, my comfort, my safe space, i can't even express how much i love you!!!! you're easily one of the best people i've ever had the pleasure of meeting. i'm sending you 10000 hugs and kisses and cuddles i love you so much

you wake to a hand gently brushing through your hair, fingers long and gentle as if handling something precious. he chuckles when you stir and nuzzle into his hand a bit.

“happy birthday, my love,” he says, pressing a tender kiss to your forehead. you crack your eyes open to see him, hair a halo around him, glinting golden in the morning light. the look he’s giving you is so fond that you need to look away as if he was the sun that you revolve around.

the day moves in frames, one scene after another, clicking in transition. him pulling you out of bed to drag you to the bathroom so you can brush your teeth together. you’re making funny faces around the toothpaste in your mouths, painting an awfully domestic picture that you take a snapshot of in your mind to save for a rainy day.

click.

you sitting up on the kitchen counter as he cooks you breakfast, pancakes dotted with tart blueberries. he almost burns one because he’s too busy slotting between your thighs to give you kisses, but he saved it right in time. he feeds you small bits drizzled with syrup and whipped cream, leaning in to wipe the cream off of the corner of your lips where it smears.

click.

him massaging shampoo into your hair as you shower together, the steam billowing around you, calming your muscles as his hands move down your neck, across your back, down, down down like the water flowing down the drain.

click.

him sliding a gift box across the table after you eat a candle lit, home cooked meal. it’s flat and long and artfully wrapped, ribbons swirling on the top and edges of the wrapping paper crisp and neat. you open it carefully, not wanting to ruin anything he’s done for you, even though the wrapping was made to be ruined. once you see what’s nestled inside the box, the wrapping paper is forgotten as it floats to the floor in favor of you gaping at the gift he’s given you.

it’s a painting in a simple brown frame, crinkled brown paper with lines of black and blotches of muted colors. it’s a swirling collage of pictures, all of two figures. two figures dancing, two figures kissing, two figures laying together, all interwoven between each other. each was lined precisely in black strokes, filled in with watercolor that’s flooding out of the lines. it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

“it’s,” he starts, knocking you out of your reverie. “scenes of us. of us falling in love. i painted it.” he says, blush high on his cheeks as he avoids your eyes. you realize you had been staring at the painting for too long, he didn’t even know if you liked it or not.

“hyune,” you grab his face into your palms, moving his eyes towards yours and caressing his cheekbone with your thumb. “it’s absolutely perfect. i love it so much.”

his eyes turn into crescents as he smiles, cheeks moving under your palms before he leans in to peck you once, twice, three times.

click.

him bringing you a single cupcake, candle glowing on top, the icing lopsided but you would never comment on that. the fact that it was so obviously homemade made you warm from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. he holds it still while he tells you to make a wish, eyes closed, and he doesn't know that you don't wish for anything because all you need is standing right there in front of you.

when you open your eyes, the tip of his finger is armed with a dollop of icing, which he wastes no time smearing onto your nose. he giggles and runs, leaving the cupcake in your hands, and later you're batting him away as he tries to lick it off of you.

click.

you standing in the doorway of the kitchen, watching as he makes his way to the rickety old record player in the corner of the living room and slides a well-loved record into the slot. the sun is setting outside, bathing the room in a orangey-pink glow, and you think this must be what heaven looks like.

“dance with me?” he says, holding out his hand to you for you to take like a prince. you grab and he twirls you around and into his chest, catching you when you stumble a bit. you lay your head there by his heart once you get your balance, and he wraps his arms around you, more of a hug than a dancing position but neither of you care as you sway together. he hums the song into your ear, low and deep, the melody of your favorite tune from when you were younger, and you want to stay in this moment forever.

click.

you’re sitting on the couch at the end of the day, happily exhausted with how well this day has gone. you never raise your expectations on your birthday, but he’s moved the bar just a bit higher than where it had sat before.

“hugs?” you ask, reaching both hands out for him and wiggling your fingers. he chuckles, smile bright as the sun, and grabs your hands. he pulls you off of the couch and turns you, making your head spin for a second before he plops down in the spot you were just occupying, you falling on top of him. both of your breathes whoosh out on the impact, and your breathy giggles harmonize with his as you wiggle to get comfortable. you’re left straddling his waist, your legs on either side of his thighs and your arms thrown around his neck.

“i love you, hyune,” you say, nuzzling your head into his neck. “thank you for the perfect day.”

“oh, button,” he says, voice soft and deep in your ear. “i love you too. you mean the world to me. i would gladly do this every day if i didn’t think you would kill me.”

click.

—

soft hours

#stray kids imagines #hyunjin fic #hyunjin fluff #stray kids drabbles #stray kids headcanons #hyunjin drabble #hyunjin x you #stray kids x y/n #stray kids x you #hyunjin x y/n #soft

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twochildreninamoteldemo · 4 months

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what’s on your personal list of “must reads” for wincest? i have a feeling you’ve got good taste

- @spn2006

i wouldn't necessarily say i have a must-read list as in everyone has to read something, because everybody has different taste, especially when it comes to sam and dean's dynamics (both sexual and otherwise), but the fics that i would heartily recommend that fall into my reading of supernatural (or adjacent to it) go as such, keeping in mind that I am a samgirl, pretty much only care about early seasons, and enjoyer of the family horror of the show:

The Ballad of the Invisible Boy + Two Headed Boy by @dollyluxed

If i had to pick any fic as a must-read for a samgirl cestie, this would be the one. the yearning and desperation speak deeply to the isolation of samdean's youth, especially how sam feels it, and dollylux isn't afraid to get inside the beast of teen angst, which makes it feel really lush and visceral. the 90s nostalgia is excellent (disclaimer: i was born after the 90s, but it made me feel like i was there without being corny), and the way the story is told through several vignettes feels a lot like the show itself. these kind of snapshot short films of how samdean's codependency develops through this unspoken tension over the years. the stanford era portion has a scene i think about every time i listen to joni mitchell (check out the soundtrack for this duology too; it's excellent), and the season 1 section ties together the story in a way that fits well with the show. a slow burn, really beautiful story, and i love the illustrations. i would also recommend dollylux's shorter works for amazing smut:)

@applecrumbledore 's fanficography

The first of Roni's fics I read were "Dream fuckery" and "Drywall dust" (the latter the first of a 4-part preseries story), and the balance of angst, sexual tension, and humor blew me away. It keeps the tone of supernatural, which a lot of fics don't (which is fine), but this was super cool in that it felt extremely natural, and very fun to read. I haven't been updated in all my fanfic reading lately, but I loved the beginning of Pine Sweat, their time travel fic, and "try asking," their pov outsider fic, is fucking hilarious and exhilarating. they have lots of creative ideas from preseries to late seasons and it never gets old!

Gospel Truth by @cowboyified

A case fic with an accute sense of shame embedded within angst, a really great sense of description, and perfectly inspired by art by @thegoodthebadandtheart for the reverse bang a couple years ago. the aesthetic of both frauke's work and the fic itself feel real, both the openness of the great plains and the claustrophobia of incestuous pining. definitely a modern classic.

"Buy You a Mockingbird" by candle_beck

the dark pov outsider fic to crown all others. candle_beck is an amazing writer and i also recommend all their work, but this one in particular stands out because of the horror of the dramatic irony of the story--what the reader knows, but the pov character does not. it's incredible to see everything unfold, and a realistic if bleak interpretation of another classic trope (which i won't name for spoiler's sake).

"Other Brothers" by @homo-pink

another incredible pov outsider fic with this beautiful sense of empathy and also a hint of adrenaline thrill. sam's cheeky and sassy and smart, and dean's cute and so in love. pov outsider weecest has the potential to be disturbing or sweet, and while this teeters the line, i think it falls into the latter category in a way that doesn't feel too saccharine.

"Three Days on the Rack" by keerawa, read by Reena Jenkins

I'd highly recommend listening to this via podfic! reena is great and there's a lovely cello cover of fade to black by metallica that plays in the interlude. anyway, the fic is an orpheus and eurydice-adjacent story about sam trying to get dean out of hell--but it's a torture fic. i love the way it describes hell, i love the way we see dean in the depths of alistair's apprenticeship, i love sam's strength. another gorgeously dark gem.

"Skin Like Fear" [orphaned]

I can't speak much on this one because I don't remember it super well, but it's a take on samdean after sam's hell trauma, something not very touched on by the fandom, and the horror is super well done, it's a great fic. obviously dark, deals with rape aftermath, proceed accordingly.

"show me again, shame takes hold" by objectlesson

if you can't tell yet, i really love preseries fics. this one is a lesbian femchesters AU, butch dean i love u foreverrrrrr. as you can tell by the title, more angst, more shame, etc etc. i was catholic what can i say. there's a lot about the ambiguity of sexuality and gender in this fic too.

and that's it! some of my other favorites are "Tomcat," the Caged Desires series, "The Truth in His Bones," and Brothers, but those i wouldn't necessarily rec on a wide basis because the first one is specifically about transmasculinity, and the second 3 deal with dom!dean/sub!sam dynamics in a pretty sharp way that everyone may not sit with right. that being said they're wonderful and sexy (and the last two, rather sad). let me know what u thought of this list!

#fanfic recs #wincest #samdean #a prayer for which no words exist #letters #spn2006 #fic recs

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