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everythingharrypotterblog · 3 years

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charmed [7]: ‘night changes’ (remus lupin x reader)

a/n: i got rejected from my top choice university program today so if im gonna be unhappy, might as well make u guys happy and release parts 5 and 7

brief summary: y/n and remus are both teachers at hogwarts and this is his first transformation where he is under wolfsbane. y/n remains in human form as he transforms. werewolf or not, all y/n ever feels is him.

series summary: set in the prisoner of azkaban, including its major plot points. remus and y/n get hired by dumbledore last minute to teach at hogwarts, defense against the dark arts and charms respectively. not wanting the students to know they are married, they navigate the challenging year through hidden glances, hand holds underneath the table and loving moments in their offices. even with all their efforts to conceal their relationship, their chemistry does not go unnoticed by the student population of hogwarts, who grow fond of the pair as they offer them some of the best classes they’ve had in a while. their relationship as newlyweds is strengthened as teaching the next generation of wizards unlocks a sea of memories of their love story. for the second time in his life, remus holds hogwarts responsible for some of his happiest memories. he’s given the chance to create them with the love of his life, y/n, who has taught and continues to teach him that every part of him is lovable, remaining forever under her charm.

series masterlist here

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previously, in part 1:

“No, you don’t understand, it’s incredibly, extremely dangerous for a human to be around a were-“ Remus had tried to say, before Y/N had stood up and with a crack, disappeared. A single white dove hovered where she had stood, its wings flapping slowly to stay afloat.

“Y/N?”

With a crack, Y/N had appeared again.

“I didn’t know you were an Animagus.”

Y/N grinned.

“What, you thought James, Sirius and Peter were the only ones to ever succeed at it?”

Remus still grimaced, shaking his head and looking down.

“It’s still too dangerous, I won’t risk it. I couldn’t possibly think of hurting you, I’m too dangerous-“

“Remus, stop it. You didn’t hurt Peter as a rat back in the day, you wouldn’t hurt a flinging bird either. Plus, I got a serious height advantage on you anyway.” Y/N raised her eyebrows at him teasingly, transforming back again into the dove and flying up to the ceiling. Lupin wasn’t convinced.

“Y/N, you shouldn’t-“

The dove reappeared as Y/N and kneeled between Lupin’s legs, taking his face into her hands carefully.

“Please? Let me be there for you. Let me try-“

“I-“ Remus winced in his crippling self-doubt.

“I promise, if I ever feel unsafe, I’ll fly away. I promise.”

Remus nodded. “I love you.”

Y/N was taken aback, but surged forward to press her lips against his.

“I love you too.”

It was the first time they had said that to each other.

The first full moon of the Hogwarts term was now but a day away. As it drew nearer, Remus got paler and grew more irritable, as it always was.

The students never noticed, as he remained their kind Professor Lupin to them. Remus valued the staff and Dumbledore in extremely high regard, so he mainly kept to himself to avoid conflict.

However, his short temper was not 100% appeasable.

He was presently in his office, leg anxiously bouncing. He couldn’t help but jitter as restless energy coursed through him. The door opened, and he jerked his head in its direction, to see Y/N walk in, slightly anxious as well.

“Hi, love.” She said, making her way to him.

“He’s late.” Remus muttered.

“It’s Albus Dumbledore, what do you expect- maybe he had a Wizarding War in Luxembourg to stop before this or something.” Y/N joked, dragging a chair beside her and taking Remus’ hand.

His leg stopped bouncing.

1980.

Remus sat in an armchair in the House of Black’s library, attempting to distract himself before the night would come, a transformation night.

Loud voices reverberated across the walls, and he usually wouldn’t have minded, but the full moon made him more irritable.

“Will you guys stop yelling!” He called out across the hallway to the room where James, Sirius and a couple other Order members were talking over each other.

Sirius shared a look with James and they shrugged, making a motion with their hand asking the others to lower their voices.

“Hi, guys!” In came Y/N’s voice, as she walked through the door after a day of work, setting down her jacket. She joined the table for a few snacks, before inquiring, “Where’s Remus?”

“Ah, in the library.” James said mindlessly, shuffling the pack of cards they were playing with. He spotted Y/N head for that direction, and attempted to add, “But I wouldn’t disturb him if I were-“

But Y/N already walked in the library, wanting to see her boyfriend. She found him buried in a book, sitting slightly uncomfortably in his clothes, as if his body was having pre-transformation aches.

“Hi, love.” She said gently.

Remus peered up from his book and instantly smiled, uncrossing his legs and patting at his lap. Y/N took a seat on him, and he wrapped his arms around her comfortably.

“How was work?” He grumbled, mouth kissing up her arm and shoulder.

“Oh, just the usual.”

He listened to her talk about her day, hugging her as she sat in his lap.

James heard faint sounds of their light voices from the other room, and laughed. Sirius shook his head, both of them amused by their friend’s drastic change in demeanor.

“Little fucker.”

Dumbledore appeared in Remus’ office not long after Y/N joined, with a goblet of familiar-looking blue smoke.

“Remus, Y/N. I took the liberty of bringing you your last dose myself, Severus has already done so much. So, you wanted to talk about the logistics of your upcoming transformation.”

Remus nodded, leaning forward and taking the potion.

“This is your first time with Wolfsbane, so we cannot be sure on how it will affect you. However, I trust that it has been brewed properly, so it should do its function, which is to maintain your mental state when you transform.”

“So technically, he could just stay and hide here in his office and wait for the night to be over?” Y/N asked Dumbledore, thumb rubbing over Remus’ hand.

“Yes. If the potion has been brewed correctly, which I am sure it has, Remus should transform into nothing but a harmless wolf. Of course, because this is your first time, if you still wish to go outside and-“

“Yes.” Remus interjected, once he finished the last of the potion. “I wish to still use the Whomping Willow, just to avoid all potential risk.”

“Very well.” Dumbledore smiled, bowing his head. “I have complete trust in you, so you do as you please.”

“And I should… I won’t forget who I am, I won’t lose my mind?” Remus asked.

“No.” Dumbledore confirmed. “Your mental state will stay intact.”

“Then, I can technically be in human form with him.” Y/N gasped as the idea jumped into her head. She was immediately met with startled looks from both Dumbledore and Remus, Dumbledore merely intrigued and Remus looking downright terrified. “I mean, I could be with him. Me, a human.” She added hastily.

Glancing at Remus’ fervently opposed look, Dumbledore merely stood up.

“I will leave that between you two to discuss. Goodnight, and good luck.” He said. “Oh! And one more thing.”

His eyes twinkled. “I hear talk amongst the students since the start of term. About you two.”

Remus and Y/N looked at each other nervously.

“Something about spotting their Charms and Defence teachers always being present in each other’s offices…”

Y/N mouth dropped in shock, trying to figure out how students could even know where they spent their nights, before Dumbledore laughed heartily, shaking his head.

“I kid, I kid, I have heard nothing of the sort. All that has reached my ears are the raving comments about your classes and subjects. Keep up the good work, Professors.” Dumbledore chuckled, and vanished into the fireplace.

Y/N stared dumbfounded at the spot he disappeared, before letting out a laugh.

“I-“ She blinked. “He is so weird, and can you believe, I almost let slip that I’m an Animagus-“

She stopped once she looked at her husband, whose expression was grave.

“Wha-“

“You cannot stay in human form with me.” He shook his head.

Y/N stayed silent for a second. “Why not? If this potion works, and we know it will, your-“

“We can’t be too sure!” Remus sighed. “Werewolves, we hunt for humans. We look for victims to bite, to… to-“

“If the potion doesn’t work, then I’ll just transform into a dove, like always.”

Remus met her eyes in a worried gaze.

“I’ve been a bird countless of times on your transformations, you’re still gonna let me do that, are you?” Y/N raised her eyebrows. “You even said, werewolves look for humans, animal companions are harmless-“

“Which is exactly why you can’t be in human form, darling! The extreme danger that would put you in, you have no idea.”

“I have no idea?” Y/N pursed her lips, instinctively reaching out to her bicep, on which lay a tiny white scar.

Remus glanced at it too, with almost hatred and remorse in his eyes, as he sighed, hand tracing over it and kissing it.

“Maybe you should transform right now, my love.” Remus said anxiously as he, Y/N, James, Sirius and Peter walked through an abandoned part of the woods.

The sky was dark, and the clouds radiated a faint shimmer indicating the full moon would appear soon.

“I won’t transform until I absolutely need to.” Y/N said firmly, hand holding onto Remus’ tightly.

“She’ll follow our lead, Moony, don’t worry.” Sirius said.

Unintentionally, they stopped at a small hill, deeming the timing to be right.

“Y/N, it’s not too late, you could just Disapparate away, I-“ Remus said to Y/N.

“Remus. Stop. I’m not scared.” Y/N smiled at him, cupping his cheek. “You’re still you. And I love you, all parts of you. Nothing will change that, or you and me.”

Remus nodded, breathing quickly and pulled her in for a kiss, before the other Marauders beckoned Y/N to back away slightly as the moon started to peak.

The night changed in an instant.

The opal orb shone in the sky and in the moonlight, Y/N watched as Remus’ tall silhouette trembled, his body morphing into a werewolf.

Y/N was in awe. His body lengthened. His shoulders were hunching. Hair sprouted visibly from his head and neck and his hands curled into clawed paws. Straightening up, he howled to the sky, the sound echoing into the rest of the night.

Y/N’s mind went blank. The Marauders had transformed as she kept her eye on Remus. For a second, the werewolf’s eyes met hers, but before she could do anything, he lunged for her.

Adrenaline shot through her body as the werewolf made a swipe towards her, a big black dog jumping in between them just in time for Remus’ sharp claw to slightly graze her shoulder before she transformed with a crack, into a dove and flew up, batting her wings.

“I’ll never be able to forgive myself for that.” Remus whispered painfully, finger tracing over the small permanent scratch near Y/N’s shoulder.

“But I’m fine.” Y/N pursed her lips, eyes looking into Remus’ face imploringly. “Because I knew that it wasn’t you. And after the night ended, you cared for me so tenderly and lovingly. Gently. Because that is the real you.”

Remus soaked a warm towel for the millionth time as he sat Y/N on the toilet next to the sink to tend the small scratch she had acquired from him.

“Rem, it’s okay, do you realize that I’ve broken literal bones before! This is nothing.” Y/N said, letting him clean the patch of skin before taking both of his hands in hers. He kneeled in between her legs.

“I could never forgive myself for this, I’m so sorry-“

“Please. In the best way possible, shut up.” Y/N smiled, eyes welling up at the unnecessary look of remorse plaguing Remus’ face. “That wasn’t you. And nothing that I saw or felt last night changes who you are to me now.”

“You don’t…see me as a monster? You don’t even feel a tiny bit scared being with me right now?” Remus teared up.

Y/N smiled, eyes crinkling and letting tears fall down her cheeks. “I just feel you.”

Y/N woke up from her nap the night of the full moon to find Remus’ side of the bed empty. Eventually, she had gotten Remus to agree to let her accompany him as she always did, but in human form this time.

Getting up, she spotted Remus already at the door. She crossed her arms.

“Are you running away?” Y/N frowned, her husband jumping at getting caught.

“No, I-I figured I’d head out earlier.”

Y/N walked towards him, squeezing his shoulders.

“We talked about this. It’ll be okay.” Y/N reassured him. She saw the fear still in his eyes but he nodded, blinking some away and reaching to get Y/N’s coat for her.

They walked in the chilly night air, making their way to the Forest. Although this felt completely new, they had never done this at Hogwarts and they were expecting new results tonight, there was also a sense of déjà-vu present in the air.

Y/N had been helping Remus with every one of his transformations during their entire marriage and before, ever since she was 18. It’s been almost 13 years that they were in this together.

We're only gettin' older, baby

And I've been thinkin' about it lately

“Thank you for being here.” Remus said, squeezing her hand. “And I don’t just mean tonight.”

Y/N squeezed it back tightly, beaming at him. The moon was close to being fully out, and they stopped on a small hill overlooking Hagrid’s Hut where it would appear in full view.

Does it ever drive you crazy

Just how fast the night changes?

“Remember, if I make any sudden moves, you transform on the spot, okay?” Remus looked down at her, eyes full of conviction. Y/N nodded.

They both stood there, waiting, anticipation through the roof. They felt nauseous, from nervousness. The clouds began to fade, and more moonlight shined onto them. Slowly, they let go of each other’s hands and took a couple steps back from each other.

Everything that you've ever dreamed of

Disappearing when you wake up

The first beam of light hit Remus as the full moon emerged.

But there's nothing to be afraid of

Even when the night changes

His neck began elongating, thick hair growing from his head and covering his back. His shoulders hunched as he grew taller, breaking through the material of his clothes.

It will never change, baby

Y/N watched from a short distance as Remus morphed into a towering creature. Her incantation was ready in her head, just in case she had to transform into the dove.

It will never change, baby

Slowly, the full-fledge werewolf straightened up from its hunched over position. His eyes met Y/N’s and her body tensed, remembering. Instead of lunging at her, he sat down, his human-like eyes expressing gentleness. Y/N took a tiny step towards him.

“Remus?” She said, voice trembling.

The werewolf nodded.

Taking steps closer, she shakily got down onto her knees to join him on the ground. She lifted a hand, tentatively, and inch by inch, approached it to cup his cheek. At the contact, they both breathed out in relief.

“I just feel you.” Y/N smiled, tears flowing from her eyes.

It will never change me and you.

to be continued

a/n: as always i’d love to hear what u thought or what ud like to see of the series:)

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#remus lupin fanfiction #remus lupin fanfic #remus lupin x reader #remus lupin imagine #remus lupin fluff #remus lupin x y/n #remus lupin x you #Professor Remus Lupin #professor lupin x reader #professor! reader #charmed

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takahero · 3 years

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some descriptions of Basta in Inkheart if you’re interested!! spoiler warning just to be on the safe side, in case u haven’t read it. and my unsolicited commentary here and there

“‘Naturally I recognised them at once. Capricorn had sent his best men. Even Basta was with them.’” — pg.99

“Rasping cat’s-tongue voice” pg.125

“(Basta’s face) was thin, sharply angular, with close-set eyes…Basta was not a tall man, and his shoulders were almost as narrow as a boy’s, but Meggie held her breath when he took a step towards her…He had an aura of fury about him, or something keen and biting—” pg.126

“Only Basta wore a snow-white shirt, just as Dustfinger had said, with a red flower in the buttonhole of his jacket, a red flower like a warning.” pg.131

“He caught her eye, and with a twisted smile kissed the blade of his knife.” — pg.173 (I JUST HAD TO ADD THIS)

“‘Oh, Basta can’t write,’ replied Capricorn calmly. ‘None of my men can either read or write. I’ve forbidden them to learn.’” — pg.176 (literacy rights for Basta 2k21)

“She could see the trepidation even on Basta’s face, although he was doing his best to hide it by assuming a particularly bored expression.” — pg.185

“‘Abduction!’ Basta savoured the word. ‘Sounds good to me. Really good.’” — pg.192 (ok but if u read it a certain way. unofficial evidence that basta would enjoy reading if he could LMAO)

“‘Where’s our luggage?’ she asked.

“Dustfinger looked at her with amusement. ‘I expect Basta’s divided it out among Capricorn’s maids. He likes to ingratiate himself with them.’” — pg.213 LMAOOOOOOO OH MY GOD

“Basta was still standing in the road. His face was sharply outlined when he lit a cigarette with a lighter.” — pg.215

“And he bent down to cut through the leather thong that Basta wore around his neck. It had a little bag tied with a red drawstring hanging from it.” — pg. 231

“‘Ah, Basta!’ Fenoglio smiled. Each of his separate wrinkles expressed self-satisfaction. ‘One of the best villains I ever thought up. A rabid dog, but not half as bad as my other dark hero, Capricorn. Basta would let his heart be torn out for Capricorn, but his master is a stranger to such loyalty.’” — pg.264

“‘You know, if you were to ask me which of those two I was prouder of, Basta or Capricorn, I couldn’t tell you! Even though some critics said they were just too nasty!’” — pg.265

“Basta emphasised the word, putting his foxy face so close to Meggie’s she could see herself reflected in his eyes.” — pg.301

“‘You’ll do no such thing!’ he spat at Flatnose, as the grey cat disappeared under the wardrobe. ‘Killing cats is unlucky. How often do I have to tell you?’” — pg.303 (friendly reminder that the last time he appeared, he kicked a dog in the ribs 😐)

“Basta was walking just behind her, and she heard him quietly cursing the rain.” — pg.304 (irrelevant but i kind of hc basta to like the rain, since it would dampen dustfinger’s showbiz LMAO)

“Basta’s eyes always narrowed when he smiled.” — pg.305

“‘You wear long sleeves,’ Fenoglio continued very slowly, as if giving Basta time to take in every single word, ‘because your master likes playing with fire. You burned both arms right up to the shoulders when you obeyed his orders and set fire to the house of a man who had dared to refuse his daughter to Capricorn. Ever since then, someone else has laid the fire, and you confine yourself to playing games with knives.’” — pg.308

“‘Oh, I know all about you, Basta,’ he said. ‘I know you’d give your life for Capricorn any day, and you’re always hungry for his praise. I know you were younger than Meggie when his men picked you up, and ever since you’ve loved him like a father. But shall I tell you something? Capricorn thinks you’re stupid, and despises you for it. He despises you all, his devoted black-clad sons, although it’s his own doing that you’re still so ignorant. And he wouldn’t hesitate to set the police on to any one of you if it was to his advantage. Are you quite clear about that?’” — pg.308 (FENOGLIO…..RUTHLESS)

“Basta winked at Meggie.” — pg.310 (wink 1)

“Every cruel deed with which he had ever credited Basta was probably going through his head. Basta relished the fear on his face for a few delicious minutes.” — pg.312

“Basta’s car had not been in the car park at all since they’d come here. It was unusual for it to be gone so long, because Basta didn’t like to be away from the village for any length of time.” — pg.318 basta is a homebody guys

“‘Save your tongue for later, scribbler!” Basta interrupted. ‘I don’t like whispering.’” — pg.324

“Almost all the women in the village kept away from Basta, but he didn’t keep away from them.” — pg.337

“‘Take him, for instance,’ he said, pointing to Basta. ‘I always knew he was a very unhappy boy before you picked him up. As it says in another very fine book, it’s terribly easy to persuade children that they are worthless. Basta was convinced of it. Not that you taught him any better, oh no! Why would you? But suddenly here was someone to whom he could devote himself, someone who told him what to do — he’d found a god, Capricorn, and if you treated him badly, well, who says that all gods are kindly? Most of them are stern and cruel, wouldn’t you agree? I didn’t write all this in the book. I knew it, that was enough.’” — pg.345 (this is really the part that made my stance toward basta change. like PHEW. that’s a lot to unpack)

“Basta was notorious for his silent tread.” — pg.363

“Basta’s breath smelled of mint, fresh and sharp. Apparently a girl he’d once wanted to kiss had told him he had bad breath. The girl had regretted it, but ever since then Basta chewed peppermint leaves from morning to night.” — pg.364

“He whistled softly through his teeth, then held the book close to Meggie’s face.”— pg.374 (i was rendered speechless)

“Basta’s lips quivered with annoyance, but he bit back his reply and, without a word, put his hand under the black cloth.” — pg.377 (ugh I loved this. like we know he worships capricorn like a dog, but earlier fenoglio flat out told him capricorn couldn’t care less about what happened to him. more than that, capricorn asked basta to bring meggie and fenoglio — prisoners — into his home. later dustfinger says that basta would’ve slept on the threshold of capricorn’s room if he could but none of the men sleep there. so with all of this fresh in his mind, you can imagine him feeling quite hurt and betrayed. UGH I wish he had a greater arc surrounding capricorn…like even if we saw a few hints that his loyalty was starting to show cracks…idk what his arc is in inkspell so maybe I’ll sit tight for that)

“He was in a hurry to get back to the light of day, away from the dead and their ghosts. His hand shook as he hung his lantern on a book and opened the grating over the first cell.” — pg.409

“Dustfinger was always surprised to find how easily you could scare the man with a few words.” — pg.409 LMAOOOOO

“‘That notion of burning us isn’t a very new idea, Basta, but then you were never fond of new ideas.’” — pg.422

“His teeth were almost as white as his shirt.” — pg.442

“Meggie saw from his face that everything in him felt revulsion, but he came closer and took the creature. He held the scaly body well away from him as it wound and twisted in the air.

“‘As you see, Basta doesn’t care for my snakes!’ said the Magpie, with a smile. ‘He never did, not that that means much. As far as I know Basta doesn’t like anything but his knife. He also believed that snakes bring bad luck, which of course is pure nonsense.’ Mortola handed Basta the second snake. Meggie saw the viper’s tiny poison fangs when it opened its mouth. For a moment, she almost felt sorry for Basta.” — pg.446

“‘Basta likes to use snakes to scare women who reject his advances. It didn’t work with Resa. How did it go exactly — didn’t she finally put the snake outside your door, Basta?’” — pg.446 (10/10 resa & snake well-deserved)

“Basta did not want neighbours. Indeed, he wanted no other company but Capricorn’s. Dustfinger knew Basta would have slept on the threshold of Capricorn’s room if he had been allowed to, but none of the men lived in the main house.” — pg.478

“Basta was probably the only man in Capricorn’s village who locked his front door.” — pg.480

“They said in the village that whenever Capricorn had a house set on fire Basta took away a brick or stone, even though he feared fire at other times, and clearly that story was true.” — pg.480

“(Everything in Basta’s house was scrubbed clean, as spotless as his snow-white shirt.)” — pg.481

“Once or twice, footsteps approached, but each time they passed by the house. What a good thing Basta had no friends.” — pg.482

“Basta was not in a good way. Whenever they looked at him they saw his hands clinging to the bars, knuckles white under his sun-tanned skin.” — pg.503 (BASTA’S SUNTANNED?!?!)

“Basta in particular was the object of enough scorn and derision for ten men, and from his failure to react at all one could only guess at the depths of his despair.” — pg.503

“For the fraction of a second life came back into Basta as his former lord and master stopped by the bars; he raised his head, his eyes pleading silently, like a dog begging for forgiveness…Basta only bowed his head and stared at the floor. Elinor thought he looked like an oyster with the flesh and life sucked out of it.” — pg.504 (i honestly still can’t wrap my head around his behaviour in this chap. i mean yes, the gladiator-style death sentence looming over his head can’t be understated. but i think for me it was how rapidly his spirits deteriorated from screaming for help in the cell to becoming a husk of a man before he even saw capricorn again? how?? was it all because of dustfinger spooking him so bad in the crypt?? 🤔🤔)

#the list nobody asked for #im gonna keep adding and editing for personal reasons #it’ll be interesting to see if any of my thoughts change after inkspell tho I’m kinda scared #basta #i could’ve sworn there was another wink!!!!!!!!! I SWEAR #basta: don’t swear oaths u can’t keep #inkheart

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jaceyneedsabetterusername · 3 years

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Broken Down (Pt.1)

Pairing: Arvin Russell x F!Reader

Summary: When your car breaks down on the side of the highway, you’re picked up by a kind couple who apparently have a thing for picking up hitchhikers, judging by the boy in the back seat. What started as a ride turns into a horror story.

Warnings: NONCON ELEMENTS (it’s Carl and Sandy and if you are reading this, you’re damn well aware of what they do - no full on rape though! Just noncon touching), murder/ serial killers, being held at gun point, description of blood and violence, typical Carl and Sandy stuff

Word Count: 7.2k

A/N: There are parts of this that are from the movie directly and I do not claim to own those parts. All other original parts are mine though!

Part 2 out now!

____________________________________

It was no secret that Sandy was unhappy with her life with Carl anymore. She wasn't quiet about it- not even to him. Any logical person would think that she'd be scared to tell her serial killer partner that she was tired of killing people but she wasn't sure if she cared about the outcome anymore. She already felt dead inside.

"Carl, I'm done."

"C'mon, Sandy. It's not that bad." Carl tried to convince his partner, looking over at her from behind the wheel.

Sandy scoffed sadly, "I don't like when they cry."

"But they take the best pictures," Carl responded insensitively. They drove on in silence for a while down the highway, ever consciously looking for their next victim. "You know what? How about we try something new, huh? We can try to make this next one a little more interesting."

Sandy rolled her eyes and stared out at the landscape as it blurred past on their trek along the highway. That wasn’t what she meant and Carl knew it. She didn’t want to make things more interesting. She wanted out. She knew it was no use arguing, though. Carl always got his way.

You stood at the edge of the road, thumb extended as the occasional car passed by, to no avail. Your car sat dead in the turn out behind you. Your duffel bag was laid down on the ground by your feet, your dark blue floral skirt blowing against the material when the breeze blew. Of all the roads to break down on, it just had to be the one in the middle of nowhere Ohio - West Virginia border where almost no cars drove past. It was beginning to get dark and your nerves were starting to fray at the thought of being stuck in the woods alone at night.

Finally, a car drove up to you and you waved your hands to get their attention, put on your nicest smile, and stuck your thumb out. The vehicle slowed to a halt beside you and you saw three people in there, a woman driving, a man rolling his window down to talk to you, and a young man in the backseat. "What's a sweet girl like you doing out here stuck on the side of the road?" The man questioned with a smile.

"My car broke down and I just need to get into town to call a mechanic." You gestured back to your old yellow Ford that had started acting up a little ways back. When you pulled over to take a look at it, it just wouldn't start up again.

He looked over at the pretty blonde lady driving, giving her a look you couldn't see but she returned one that you couldn't quite read. The man turned back to you with a smile, “Well we’re dropping this fella off in Meade but I’m sure we could drop you in the next closest town. Shouldn’t be too far if you’d like a ride.”

A smile spread across your face, “Thank you so much.” You picked up your duffel bag and hustled over to the side of the car that was bordering the road, sliding into the seat when you threw the door open.

“What a good day for makin’ new friends, huh, honey?” The man said chipperly before turning around to look at the two of you in the back seat. “What were your names?”

“Y/N.” You answered warmly, glancing over at the boy beside you who sat stiffly, his jaw clenched tightly. You’d assumed he was with the couple but it seemed you may have been wrong.

He swallowed after a brief pause, his eyes widening in fear for a moment, “Arvin, sir.”

“Well, Arvin and Y/N, it’s a pleasure to meet you two. I’m Carl and this is my wife Sandy.” He patted Sandy on the shoulder and she gave him a small forced smile. Trouble in paradise, you thought. “Where you from Y/N?”

Your hands laid prim and proper in your lap, holding your skirt down from the breeze from Carl’s rolled down window, “Just a small town not too far from here actually. Barren Springs? Not many people have heard of it.”

“Can’t say I have,” Carl shook his head.

Arvin chimed in for the first time since you’d gotten in the car, “I've been through there for work before.”

“Yeah? You live nearby?” You asked, looking over at him. A blush heated your cheeks at the site of the handsome young man. His curly brown locks were messily pressed down against his head from the baseball cap that he had curled up in his lap.

Arvin just nodded a little when he made eye contact, “Coal Creek.” He swallowed hard, before his eyes darted away from yours and bounced off every moving object he could see.

“Oh, nice! I’ve only ever driven through it on the way to my grandparent’s house but it’s a cute little town.” You chipped, waiting for a response from Arvin but he only gave you a curt nod and fidgeted his hands along his legs. A thick silence settled over the car for a moment and you cast your gaze away from the attractive boy down to the mechanism that allowed the driver’s seat to adjust on the ground of the car, suddenly feeling like you overstepped with Arvin with your seemingly innocent comment.

“Looks like you’re set for a trip. You leaving or coming home?” Sandy asked, looking at you through the rear view mirror.

“Comin’ home,” You responded, replacing that polite smile and slightly higher voice you did when speaking to strangers, “A friend of mine from high school moved to Blacksburg with her sweetheart. I just went out there for their wedding.” You smiled at the memory of their ceremony. It was one of those marriages that you just knew was meant to be.

“Awe, I just love weddings.” She said dreamily, gazing nostalgically out across the road.

You smiled and made a small noise of agreement. At the thought of weddings, you couldn’t help but let your mind wander to the idea of marrying the man sitting beside you. It was silly, you knew, fantasizing about marrying a complete and total stranger. Barren Springs didn’t have many good suitors to pick from and you had yet to make it out on your own into the world. It had been a long time since you’d been physically attracted to anyone as strongly as you were attracted to Arvin. Besides, you weren’t fantasizing about marrying him, per se, but more so just having a wedding with him. The thought of seeing him so handsome and dressed up and the way his eyes would sparkle with adoration when he saw you walk down the aisle in your dress. It was ridiculous! You could have laughed at yourself. You just wanted to think that maybe there was some possibility that he thought you were half as beautiful as you thought he was.

After some time driving in silence, with you sneaking many glances at the man sitting beside you, Carl spoke up, “Oh shit, my old billy don’t work like it used to. I’m gonna have to pull over and take a leak.” He trailed off, looking over at Sandy with a smile. She gave him a sharp look but slowed down. You wondered just how often of an inconvenience this must have been if she seemed so annoyed by the request. “Is that alright by you two?” He asked a little louder, directing the question at you and Arvin.

You and Arvin both got strange looks on your face, finding it strange that he felt the need to ask if he could use the restroom. “Sure,” Arvin muttered.

“Yeah, of course.” You added, eyes flicking between the man and woman up front.

“There should be a road up here on the right,” Carl directed Sandy, “Little further. Little further. Slow down. Right here.” The car slowed and rolled to a stop, rocks crunching beneath the tires. “This is good.”

You craned your head to watch the main road disappear a few dozen feet behind you and your nerves perked up. Arvin must have noticed the way you sucked a deep breath in, louder than usual, because he glanced over at you with a look in his eyes that told you that your sudden uneasiness was not unfounded. You watched as his eyes shot back and forth between the couple and then around at your surroundings.

You began to pick at the hem of your dress. Hitchhiking was something you tried to avoid at all costs and managed to do so successfully until this very day because the idea of getting in a car with a stranger made you nervous. You knew that in all likeliness, Carl probably was just going to use the restroom and then return and you’d be on your merry way. The little indecipherable looks he and Sandy kept shooting each other didn’t escape your notice though.

“I won’t be long.” Carl reassured, opening the door and stepping out. As he did, his jacket lifted and you saw the pistol tucked in the waistband of his pants clear as day and your eyes widened in silent panic.

A lot of people own guns out here, you tried to rationalize but it still didn’t sit right with you. None of this did. A rock the size of Texas sat heavy in your gut and you had an extreme urge to get as far from here as possible without raising suspicions. For one, it would be extremely awkward if you were wrong and you were freaking out over nothing. On the other hand, if they were planning to kill you, it could speed up the process before you could think up a way out of it.

You glanced over at Arvin and it was clear that he had noticed the gun as well because his jaw clenched tightly and his eyes followed Carl like a hawk watching a rabbit. Your hand slid across the seat and you nudged his leg, nodding ever so slightly towards Carl with wide implying eyes. Arvin breathed deeply and nodded, having seen exactly what you had seen. It was validating to know that Arvin didn’t feel right either but it was also even more unnerving because it meant the likelihood of danger was more likely.

Arvin rolled the window down to watch Carl more clearly and Sandy shifting up front drew your attention. You looked up to see her absentmindedly trying to light a match for the cigarette that hung between her lips. Finally, she got it lit and brought the flame to the tip of her cigarette. You watched her do this with intent, so much so that you jumped when Carl leaned through Arvin’s window and loudly announced, “Damn. That’s gonna be one fine sunset. You have to be patient with me while I get a few shots off. Hon, give me the key.”

He must have noticed the uncomfortable looks on yours and Arvin’s faces because he reassured, “Don’t you worry none. We’ve got some hooch in the back and… well, you got two pretty ladies with ya.” Carl raised his eyebrows at you and his partner before looking back at Arvin with a wink, “And Sandy’s good company.”

You fidgeted uncomfortably at the way Carl added that last part, not liking the way his tone implied certain things. Sandy turned around to shoot the pair of you a smile, one that both of you returned with a hard swallow in an attempt to not show that you were highly suspicious of whatever the hell this was. Your gaze went back to Carl, where the keys made a bulge in this back pocket and your heart fell at the sight. Those keys were your only chance of getting out of here.

The back of the car opened and you turned around to watch Carl retrieve a camera and a blanket, the gun still firmly in his waistband, before walking up to the side of the car and opening the door. Arvin flinched and looked over at Carl who motioned outside, “How ‘bout we all share a drink over this beautiful sunset. What y’all think?”

Your voice came out shaky, “Thank you but I don’t drink. It might be best if we get headin’ out sooner than later though. My ma’s expecting me home soon and I don’t wanna worry her.” Whether or not your words were lies was a moot point. Getting out of the car just felt like a bad move.

Carl shrugged, “Well, then, you can just watch the rest of us share a drink then. And don’t you worry. We’ll be on the road soon enough- just as soon as the sun sets. Your mama shouldn’t be too worried. Now why don’t you two come join us.” This time, it didn’t sound like much of a question.

Sandy had thrown her door open and stepped out onto the earth outside, slamming the door shut. You were surprised when she opened up your door and leaned against it, “C’mon, hon. You don’t have to drink any. Wouldn’t wanna miss such a pretty sunset, though, would you?”

With a partner on either side of you, you and Arvin looked at each other, knowing neither of you had a choice but to get out of the car. Reluctantly, you stepped out and walked around the back of the car towards the clearing that Carl was now leading Arvin too as well. He laid out the blanket on the ground and gestured for you and Arvin to sit down. Sandy followed shortly after with a mason jar full of a light peach liquid. She unscrewed the cap and took a swig straight from the jar, “I made it myself out o’ some strawberries I grew back home.”

“The best stuff in Ohio. My girl’s got a real gift.” Carl winked at his wife, who handed him the jar. He too took a sip before passing it to Arvin. Arvin just shook his head before murmuring a polite decline. Carl tsked, “C’mon boy. Don’t wanna hurt my wife’s feelings.” Arvin’s jaw tensed before he slowly took the strawberry hooch from your host and tilted it till the liquid touched his lips, though you couldn’t quite tell if he actually let any of the liquid enter his mouth or not.

He handed the jar back to Carl, not offering you any and you wondered if he was trying to respect your comment about not indulging in alcohol or if he was trying to keep you safe. Regardless, you were grateful. Carl raised the jar towards you, offering it silently, but you put your hand up, “Thank you but I’ll have to pass. I’m sure it’s delicious though.”

“Alright, suit yourself.” He said with a shrug, taking a sip himself before screwing the lid back on and setting it on the blanket.

Sandy came to sit just beside you and Arvin on the blanket, looking up at her husband who was still standing. “Wouldn’t they make a cute couple, Carl?” She pondered out loud and you couldn’t help the blush in your cheeks at the thought. Arvin shifted beside you, most likely feeling just as weird about the comment as you did.

“Now, Sandy, no need to make the poor kids uncomfortable,” He chided lightly, turning around, “But, y’know, this is a real nice picture. Do y’all mind if I take a few shots for posterity’s sake? I mean, seein’ as we probably won’t see each other again after today.”

Before you could answer, Sandy was already scooting in close to Arvin and forcefully initiating a pose, “Alright, now you,” Carl pointed at you, “Scootch in just a little closer.” Your arms shook as they lifted your body enough to move a few inches closer to Arvin. “Perfect. Now everyone smile.” You tried your hardest to force a smile but you couldn’t get one out that was worth any photo.

Carl stood up, as if he was in thought, “I’m a photographer and I would love to get some posed shots if y’all wouldn’t mind. Now, Sandy, why don’t you step back for just a moment while we get these two together. Good. Now, Arvin, you put your arm around her- good! Just like that.”

Arvin awkwardly placed his arm on the ground behind your back, just close enough to look like the two of you were leaning into each other. Carl pulled away from the camera with a smile, “Sandy is right. You two would make a cute couple. Now, Sandy, why you don’t hop back in there. Perfect.”

Carl paused for a moment to ponder his next pose, “Now, Arvin, why don’t you lean back and touch my wife. Y/N, I want you to kiss him while he does it.”

The instructions slipped from his lips with such little reservation that you were convinced you misheard him for a moment. The man had been fairly polite thus far, if not a bit odd with his quips and pryingly friendly remarks, so the bluntness with which he just told you and Arvin to perform semi-sexual acts on each other and his wife took you off guard. “Excuse me?” You shrank back, ripping your body away from Arvin and Sandy with a velocity that almost jolted you.

When you did, your hand grazed a large patch of skin that had previously been covered with her fuzzy cheetah print coat. You whipped around to see her sitting behind you in nothing but her underwear and you quickly realized that you had grazed just beneath her bare breast. “What the fuck!” You jumped, moving away from the nearly nude woman.

Arvin jumped when her hand rested on his shoulder and moved away as well, looking between the man and woman who clearly saw nothing wrong with what they were doing. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on here but we’re leaving.” Arvin pressed with a firm voice, standing up and offering his hand to you, pulling you up to almost be tucked into his side, his hand staying on your arm protectively.

Carl looked at him like he was some naive boy. “Boy, I’m giving you the opportunity to fuck my wife and that beautiful girl over there while I take pictures. You’re a damned fool if you turn this down.”

“You guys are sick. I will not be having sex with anyone here today!” You exclaimed indignantly at Carl’s implication that you were going to be just fine with this.

The older man looked over to you and waved his hand with a cocky knowing smirk. “I’ve seen you lookin’ at ‘im the whole drive. You’re tellin’ me you don’t want to make love to this boy right here? And what about my wife? You ever been with a woman?” Carl asked, eyes flicking back to Sandy, who wiggled her breasts and gave you a comforting look that told you she would help you through whatever experience you may have lacked.

You found yourself stepping backwards, away from Arvin even. Your head shook, a boiling mixture of terror, rage, and embarrassment burning inside you, “I-I-I already told you. I ain’t doing no-”

Words failed when Carl reached behind him and pulled out the gun you’d noticed earlier, pointing it right at your chest, “Now look, I hate pointin’ a gun at a pretty young thing like yourself but I’m gonna shoot you if you don’t start doin’ what I say. You and my wife are gonna give this boy the best time of his life and I’m gonna take pictures while you do it. That’s it. You understand?”

The world around you seemed to freeze while you stared down the barrel of his pistol. You couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t talk. Sandy moved closer to you, her lips coming to your neck in a gentle kiss that made your skin crawl. A single tear rolled down your cheek while you stared at the gun that was still pointed at you, Sandy’s hand moving to brush your hair off your neck so she had more access. There was nothing you could do. If you made any move to shove her off, he’d shoot you. If you made a move to run, he’d shoot you. If you tried to knock the gun out of his hand, he’d shoot you. All you could do for the time being was let Sandy do what she would until you could find the right moment to disarm Carl and get the hell out of here.

She looked up at Arvin with sultry eyes over your shoulder, “C’mon, Arvin. You ever thought about being with two women at once before?”

Arvin swallowed hard as he watched how you sat with tears welling in your eyes, trying your hardest not to break in this impossible situation. He stood in seething anger and fear, his heart breaking a little when your hands snapped up to grab her wrists as her hands crept around your front and unpopped the top two buttons of your blouse.

There was a click from Carl cocking the pistol and he took a step closer to you, “I told you I would shoot you if you don’t start playin’ along. This is your last warning. You’re testing my patience, girl.” Your legs were nearly giving out on you when Sandy popped open another two buttons, your bra clearly exposed for everyone to see. Your shirt was unbuttoned as far as it could go before disappearing into the waistband of your skirt where it was tucked in.

Arvin looked away from your exposed upper body, not wanting to make you any more uncomfortable and violated than you already were. Suddenly, there was a small flash and the click of a camera and Arvin snapped his focus over to Carl to see him snapping pictures of you, half nude and trying not to fall apart. A coil of pure hatred had been building in Arvin since the first direction of sexual acts but now he was on the verge of tackling and killing Carl right now with his bare hands.

When he looked at you, eyes clenched shut now and silent tears pouring out the corners, he could see Lenora. Both of you were just fearful girls being taken advantage of by someone with too much power. He couldn’t save his sister but maybe he could save you. Arvin could feel his father’s Luger in his pocket but he wasn’t sure if he could draw it and shoot Carl before he could pull the trigger on you. His father’s words came back to him. Wait for the right moment.

Carl whipped his head over to look at Arvin and snapped at him, “I ain’t askin’ again, son. Get in there and start touchin’ those girls!” Carl took the gun off you for just a moment to point it at Arvin and encourage him to approach you and Sandy.

Now, it wasn’t that Arvin had no regard for his own life. The last thing he wanted to do was die, especially after how hard he’d had to fight his whole life, but he was more willing to risk getting himself shot than you. His hand had been gripped around his pistol in the pocket of his denim jacket, just waiting for the right moment to get the two of you away safely. In a second, he cocked the gun and drew it quickly, firing sloppily in Carl’s direction.

Two gunshots rang out.

You screamed, thinking that Carl had just murdered Arvin before your eyes and that you were next. Your eyes were clenched shut until you noticed Carl seethe in anger and pain, “Fuck! Fuck you boy!” And then multiple more gunshots.

This time, there were no more groans of pain, only the heavy thud of Carl’s body on the ground. His gun fell to the ground when his hand loosened and you dove for it, snapping out of Sandy’s grip. You landed hard, your bare chest and abdomen scraping painfully against the sticks and rocks when your body slid against the rough ground. You grabbed the gun and turned to point it at Sandy, who had also procured a gun from God knows where and had it aimed right at you. You didn’t hesitate.

Again, there were two bangs.

You fell back after you fired off your shot and in your panicked state, you couldn’t tell if you’d been hit, your arms had given up supporting your weight on the ground, or if the recoil from the gun was that intense.

There was the sound of another body hitting the ground.

Arving rushed to your side, falling to his knees and inspecting you for immediate signs of physical distress. “Are you okay? Were you shot?”

Your hands ran all over your body, trying to feel for any signs of being shot. You couldn’t feel any part of your body right now, the adrenaline distorting your perception of pain. Even the large bloody scratches on your chest, breasts, stomach, arms, and knees weren’t causing any discomfort at the moment. You shook your head, “I- I don’t think so. Were you?”

He shook his head, helping lift you to sitting, “No-no, I’m alright. We need to get out of here though.”

Your knees were shaky as you tried to stand up but they almost gave out on you when you saw the dead bodies on the forest floor. Carl had been shot three times, twice in the chest and once in the arm. Sandy was already pale with a bloody entrance wound in her throat.

“Oh my God… we killed them.” You were nearly hyperventilating, stumbling backwards. Arvin walked with you, holding you up until you stopped moving.

“They were gonna kill us. We had no choice.” He held you tightly by the shoulders, looking straight into your teary and panicked eyes.

“The police ain't gonna believe that.” Your entire life just crumbled to pieces before your eyes, all because you hitched a ride with some strangers.

Arvin shook his head, “That’s why we gotta get outta here. Leave ‘em. Don’t tell anybody about what happened.”

His words sunk in and you nodded in agreement. The honest part of you wanted to tell the police. Maybe they could help you but you knew that there was an equal chance they’d lock you up for murder as well. You couldn’t risk it. Running was the only option.

Carl’s gun was still in your hand and once you realized it, you wiped it down on your skirt before placing it back in Carl’s hand. “What’re you doin’?” Arvin asked, watching you meticulously place it as if it had just fallen in place.

“Makin’ it look like a murder-suicide. They can’t pin it to us if it don’t look like they were just murdered.” You explained, leaving the gun in his hand and taking a few shaky steps back as you stared at the corpse. You couldn’t believe you were doing this. You had never imagined yourself shooting anyone let alone fixing a crime scene to get away with murder. This was an extreme situation though. You had to shoot Sandy and Arvin had to shoot Carl. They were going to kill you two if you didn’t kill them first.

Arvin noticed the way your face had noticeably paled and how your eyes were glued to Carl’s body and the splatters of crimson liquid that pooled on his shirt and dripped onto the earth beneath his body. He stepped between you and Carl’s body and put his hand on your shoulder, the other gently on your face. His beautiful face blocked your view but you still struggled to fight the tunnel vision. “Hey, look at me. Look at me!” He urged, his grip on your face getting ever so slightly more firm when he noticed your eyes try to dart around his frame to see the body again. Arvin wasn’t hurting you by any means, just trying to keep you focused on him. “You did what you had to do, ya hear me? They was gonna kill both of us. You ain’t done nothin’ wrong. Now we just gotta get outta here, okay?”

You swallowed hard and nodded, your eyes squeezing shut tightly for just a moment to ground yourself. In your brief moment of meditation, you tried to focus on anything to ground you but the only calming thing you could process was Arvin’s comforting hands on your shoulder and face and the way you could feel his gaze still on you with so much concern and determination, even with your eyes closed.

When you opened them again, you breathed out, “Okay.”

Arvin glanced down and noticed the thin trails of blood that were starting to dribble down your torso from the deeper scrapes and at first reached out to button your shirt for you but hesitated, his hands shrinking back when he realized he wasn’t sure whether that was the appropriate response. You flinched back a little when he reached for your top out of pure instinct but quickly relaxed. You glanced down, just now noticing that your shirt was still unbuttoned. “‘M sorry, I just…” You trailed off, unsure of how to explain your new reaction in light of the trauma you’d just gone through. Your fingers nimbly began to button up your shirt but you hissed when the fabric tightened around the copious lesions.

“No, it’s alright. Here, take my jacket.” He was already shrugging off the denim jacket before he finished speaking.

You put your hand up, clutching the opened fabric of your shirt together in your hand in front of your chest instead of buttoning it properly, finding this way you could keep the fabric from sticking to your wounds. “I can’t take your jacket. I don’t wanna get blood on it.” Arvin’s eyes followed yours until they landed on the small spots of blood already seeping through your thin blouse.

Without allowing you to protest, he slung in over your shoulders, engulfing you arms and all. “It’s fine, really. I insist. You can’t go walkin’ ‘round all exposed like that. I can try to help you clean up if we find any rags.”

You sighed when the fabric covered your arms and his scent engulfed your senses. Yet again, you found yourself numb to the world, if only for a second, but this time because all you could experience was Arvin Russel. Tunnel vision made him your only view and all you inhaled was the scent of clean musk, wet earth, and the faint scent of car grease. “Thank you.” You whispered, gripping onto the open sides just enough to keep the garment from slipping off your shoulders.

Arvin just nodded reassuringly before wordlessly taking off towards Carl and Sandy’s car. You followed curiously. He searched around frantically and, while you were unsure of what he was looking for, you were curious to see what he’d find. For the most part, there was nothing out of the usual, until he came across a roll of film in the glove compartment. With trembling hands, he unrolled the small canister and looked at the negatives. “Oh my God-” He trailed off in horror.

“What is it?” You asked, reaching for the film. The images nearly made you throw up. Even though they were difficult to see because they were only negatives, it was still fairly clear what they were. Pictures of men and Sandy filled the roll but they got progressively more violent and graphic, sexually and gorily. At first, they were just sitting together but then Sandy was topless in the next one and then they were kissing in the one after that and then the man would be naked in the following. Eventually, there’d only be a pool of what you assumed to be blood where his genitals should have been before finally just shots of a motionless bloody corpse that used to be whoever that poor man was.

“Shit… we were next, weren’t we?” You asked, images of you and Arvin facing this same kind of torture flooding your mind and making your stomach churn. The guilt you had felt for shooting Sandy was melting away and you actually felt almost glad you and Arvin had ended this pair of monsters. They couldn’t hurt anyone else the way they had brutally slaughtered these other men.

“I think so. Fuck, there’s a bunch of ‘em.” Arvin pulled out at least four other canisters, too scared to open them. It was safe to assume what they were photos of and you really didn’t want to see anymore.

Your hands shook so much you could barely keep your grip on the negatives, “We need to give these to the police. If we prove they were serial killers, maybe they won’t send us to jail. It was self-defense.”

Arvin really did appreciate the fact that you so badly wanted to be good and honest. Killing people wasn’t easy and he was pretty damn sure you’d never done it before. Hell, before today, neither had he. Maybe it would be easy for you to get off without any charges if you came clean but he was sure the police would be looking for him for killing Preston Teagarden any moment now. The note he’d left for his uncle and grandma back home was pretty much sure evidence that he was the murderer. If the two of you went to the police, he’d be practically turning himself in. He couldn’t do it.

“I-I can’t go to the police. I can’t tell you why but I can’t. If you want to go to the police, you can’t tell ‘em I was here. Tell ‘em you was by yourself.” Arvin looked up at you from where he sat in the passenger seat.

You looked down at him, realization dawning on your face. “You did somethin’, didn’t you? That’s why you were hitchhiking. You were runnin’ away.”

Arvin got quiet and looked down at the ground where your white shoes, now scuffed up from the encounter, made contact with the soil and leaves that covered the ground. He shouldn’t tell you the truth but for some reason he really wanted to. There was an energy radiating off of you that felt safe and understanding and maybe he shouldn’t trust you but gosh did he want to. Finally, with a heavy sigh, he answered, still avoiding your gaze, “I- I didn’t want to but… he hurt my sister real bad.”

Your silence scared Arvin. He shouldn’t have opened up, especially to a girl that was practically a stranger. Being nearly killed by a pair of serial killers creates a strange bond between two people though. Arvin’s heart stopped beating until you finally spoke again. “I believe you. It’s okay.”

The surprise was clear in Arvin’s scared eyes when he finally looked back up to you. You didn’t look scared of him like he had feared. You actually looked almost sad for him.

Inside, you were. Arvin Russell was a good man - you could just feel it. From your brief but intense experience with him today, you could tell that he was a kind, polite soul but there was clearly a fire that burned inside him, an urge to protect those he cared about. You had seen first hand that he was more than capable of protecting himself and others, even at high stakes… and now so were you. You were no different than him now so you were in no position to judge for what he may have done.

“If you don’t want to go to the police, we won’t. We can get as far from here as possible and keep this our secret.” You assured, uncomfortable by how comfortable you were with the idea of running from the law.

Arvin took a moment to try and figure out the next step. Whatever it was, it needed to happen fast so you two had enough time to put space between you and the crime scene. He thought to the next closest town and groaned, “What’s wrong with your car?”

“I don’t know. It just started actin’ up while I was drivin’ and when I pulled over, it wouldn’t start up again.” You thought back to the vehicle, which still sat on the side of the road no more than three miles back.

Arvin stood up from the passenger seat and you stepped aside so he could have some room. “I know a little ‘bout cars. It might not be too bad a fix. Walkin’ back and fixing up the car wouldn’t take as long as walking the next ten or fifteen miles to Falksville.” Arvin was right. You were right between Coal Creek, where apparently Arvin was on the run from, and Falksville, the next town over. It would take hours to walk there.

“Alright,” you agreed. You walked to the backdoor and opened it to grab your duffel bag, handing Arvin his bag as well. Before the two of you started your trek back to your car, you couldn’t help but look back at the crime scene - the two dead bodies lying motionless, knowing you did that, the way that you had manipulated the scene, the way that you were running away with Arvin to literally flee the police. The weight of the situation weighed on you with a heavy sigh.

A hand rested on your shoulder, “We did what we had to.” You tore your gaze from the scene, the image burned into your memory for the rest of your life. It was difficult to argue with those beautiful brown eyes that looked at you like you were someone he genuinely cared for, not like you were the stranger to him that you actually were.

You stood up a little straighter, cast one more look over at the scene before turning around to face the road. “I know.”

The walk took almost an hour and neither of you tried to hitchhike your way there. Once you arrived, you attempted to clean your wounds with a pile of napkins you had hidden in your glove compartment and a water bottle while Arvin tinkered under the hood of your car. it didn’t take long for him to figure out the problem and with the help of the tool set your father insisted on you keeping in your trunk in case of an emergency (like this), he was able to get the car up and running.

“Alright, try it now.” He instructed from under the hood. You sat in the driver’s seat, turning the key in the ignition whenever Arvin instructed to see if the car would turn over. You twisted the key again and the car struggled at first, the pulsing mechanical sound of the car trying to turn over tearing through the quiet woods. Just as you were about to admit defeat this round, the roar of the engine came to life and just like that, your car ran again.

A big smile spread across your face and you jumped out of the driver’s seat to stand beside Arvin, both of you looking down at the engine beneath the hood. “I can’t believe that worked! Thank you so much!”

Arvin reached up and shut the hood. “It’s no problem. We should get goin’ though.”

You nodded in agreement, “Where do you need a ride to?”

He thought for a moment. Arvin wasn’t quite sure. He had been hitching rides to Meade so he could see his old home but you weren’t going anywhere near that way. He didn’t want to ask you to go so far out of your way but then it occurred to him…. “Where are you goin’?”

“Back home. My parents are expectin’ me home tonight but I can give you a ride where you need.” You answered as if it were obvious. The best way to act normal was to do exactly that: act normal.

Arvin chewed his tongue, “You don’t live too far from here. It might be easy to link you to the crime if they catch you.” He didn’t want to scare you but he also didn’t want to see you get locked up.

You rolled your eyes, “If that were true, they’d have to suspect every person in a thirty mile radius. It’s illogical for the police to single us out. You can stay at my house for a few days, if you need.”

Arvin just shook his head, “I got some things I gotta do. Look, I really think you should get away for a little while so they can’t connect you to the crime but I understand if not. If it’s not too much to ask, though, would you mind possibly given’ me a lift to Falksville so I can hitch a ride there? I ain’t got much money for gas but-”

“I ain’t lettin’ you hitchhike your way to Meade. Not after what just happened. I can give you a ride there.” You leaned against the hood of your car and looked up at him sincerely.

“You sure? What ‘bout your parents? Ain’t they expectin’ you?”

You just shrugged, “I’ll call ‘em in Fawksville and tell ‘em I decided to head up to Meade for a few days. Shouldn’t be a problem at all. That way I can give you a ride up to Meade and then you can take the bus there to wherever you wanna go.”

“That’s real kind of you. Thank you.” His hands twitched in his pocket, wanting to reach out and hug you but physical affection had made Arvin nervous ever since his mother got sick.

You nodded your head back to the car, “Hop in. We can head out and get as far as we can tonight. Either find a hotel or we can switch off when we get too tired.” Arvin listened and wordlessly slid into the passenger seat.

The two of you drove off into the night, the stars beginning to shine brightly in the lightless woods. You weren’t quite sure what your life would be like now and neither was Arvin. There was blood on your hands and there would be a constant paranoia that one day the cops would catch up with you and throw you in prison, even if you ran away like Arvin had suggested.

And then there was Arvin. Handsome, altruistic, and brave, you were bonded to this stranger by the horrors you had endured and the blood you had shed. Though the two of you were strangers, there was a closeness that you felt to him that seemed impossible to feel with anyone else- a bond between survivors that would always be there, even if you never saw each other again. Something told you that this man would be a salient figure in your life, though.

As you drove off down the highway, the only sound being the faint crackling radio, you tried to leave the horrors of the road behind you but there was a feeling in your gut that this was far from the end.

#Arvin Russell #arvin russel imagine #arvin russel #arvin russell x reader #arvin russel imagines #arvin x reader #arvin russel x y/n #arvin russel x you #arvin russel x reader #tom holland #tom holland imagine #tom holland one shot #tom holland x you #The Devil All The Time #tdatt #tdatt imagine #tdatt fics

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bl1ndbraavosi · 3 years

Note

White violet or huckleberry for kakasaku 🥺

eeeeep this was soooo much fun THANK YOU

ok tbh i wanted to do smth for each of these prompts but my brain is EMPTY so i offer u this piece for huckleberry - simple pleasures

send me a prompt!!

“We’re celebrating,” she said as she walked into his office, uninvited, unexpected, and unwarranted.

“I don’t have anything to celebrate,” he said shortly, sending her one of his patented Very Tired looks before returning to his mind-numbing paperwork.

“Well, I do,” she insisted, circling his desk and planting herself very inconveniently on top of his paperwork, the sound of paper and scrolls crunching beneath her weight. “Do you know how much work it takes to keep you alive and well? I’m celebrating another year I’ve kept you around,” she teased, swinging her legs out and kicking him in the shin far more viciously than he thought the situation called for.

“Maybe you should quit,” he muttered under his breath. She let out a deeply unhappy tut-tut.

“We’re going to unpack that some other time. Today, it’s your birthday, and I am determined to make sure you have fun,” she said with a triumphant grin. “Even if it makes you miserable.” He thought that sounded a little counterintuitive, but he knew from years of experience that there was no deterring Sakura once she was on a mission. She was the embodiment of do or die.

He had begrudgingly let her tear him away from his desk, which he could admit was a gift in and of itself, and now they were wandering aimlessly around the village. She had made it a point to teasingly parade him by the Hokage monument, where his big head was staring down at him, immortalized in stone.

“How incredible that it’s life-sized,” she teased. He nearly cracked a smile before he remembered that he was meant to be there with her against his will. He had a feeling she knew he’d nearly cracked, because then she’d taken her torture one step further and announced—loudly—that she was so pleased to be celebrating his birthday with him.

The villagers flocked unrepentantly. He was shocked her face didn’t split in half under the force of her shit-eating grin.

“I thought birthdays were supposed to be fun,” he complained once they’d made a daring escape from all the bowing well-wishers.

“I was under the impression that torture and melancholy was your idea of a good time,” she said, pouting in thought and looking up at him with mockingly wide, innocent eyes.

“Cute,” he said, not hiding how unimpressed he was with her. She giggled and held herself to his arm.

“Okay, fine. So what do you want to do?” she asked, smiling up at him with so much warmth he nearly burnt up from the inside out. He just shrugged. He had never really thought about it. “Well, what do you usually do?”

“Nothing,” he said plainly. She frowned.

“What about when you were a kid?” she asked, her lip jutting out in a genuine pout as her frown deepened. He shifted uncomfortably beside her as they ambled down a quiet road. Truthfully, there was really only one person in the village that ever acknowledged his birthday since the death of Minato-sensei. Gai was always available for a “celebratory competition”, and that was all he ever really needed.

“I don’t know, Sakura,” he said tiredly. “I was probably on missions most of the time,” he admitted with a shrug. He remembered Rin always bringing him dog-shaped onigiri on his birthdays. Minato-sensei had always been disgruntled when Kakashi’s one birthday request was a lesson in fuinjutsu, but he always complied. Obito…

Kakashi sighed and when he looked down at Sakura, who was uncharacteristically quiet, he was horrified to see her big green eyes filled to the brim with unshed tears. He flinched away from her at the sight, which thankfully dispelled the tears, but her tears had made way for annoyance, which she relieved by roughly punching his arm.

Physical violence was far less terrifying than being confronted with such an outward display of emotion, though, so he would accept this as a victory.

“I have an idea,” she said once she’d finished terrorizing him with her brute strength. He wasn’t sure what he found more daunting; her fists or her mind. He went along with her to spare himself the trouble for the time being.

Not long after, he found himself laid on a blanket at a park, staring up at the stars while Sakura snickered into the basket of goods she’d procured. He hadn’t argued when she’d pulled him around town, ducking into a couple of storefronts until she had gathered all her necessities. Now, they were sharing an itchy blanket in the middle of a park while she concocted some beverage in a couple of embarrassingly festive cups.

From where he lay, he couldn’t see much beyond her hunched back, shaking with her quiet snickers. Whenever he asked her what exactly she was doing, she told him to kindly shut up and let her surprise him. And so, he was staring at the stars. Not a bad end to the day, he supposed. Even if there was a madwoman at his feet, brewing up a surefire shit-storm.

When she finally decided to re-enter the realm of normal, human behaviour, she was brandishing two plastic cups, filled to the brim with some heinously green liquid that she said was guaranteed to get him “Kaka-shitfaced”. If that wasn’t bad enough, she’d also presented him with a massive sparkler sat atop the saddest baked good he’d ever laid eyes on.

“What is this?” he asked in distaste.

“A bran muffin; you need to watch out for your digestive tract at your age,” she teased. “Also, it was late and that was all the bakery had left in stock.” It was the thought that counted, he supposed. Still, he made her share half of it “for good luck”.

She was right about one thing, though. That drink was going straight to his head. He knew he was in trouble when the stars starting dancing above him. Sakura was lying beside him, her head resting against his shoulder and her arms tightly hugging one of his. She gasped, untangling one of her arms to point overhead to a star shooting clear across the sky.

“Make a birthday wish,” she said through her giggles. He peered down at her, pink-cheeked and gazing up at the sky, the silliest grin plastered across her face. He felt so lighthearted he thought he might just float away. His mind was shockingly blank as the star and its tail disappeared from the night sky. “Did you do it?” she whispered.

He hummed vaguely, and that seemed to be enough to appease her. He was grateful for that tight hold she had on his arm, because right now, he felt like that was all that was keeping him tethered to this world. He could have blamed the drinks, but honestly, it was a combination of things.

“You know, I had planned on making you play a drinking game with me, but I think we are both better off without it,” she said, giggling to herself. “But, just so you know, that is quintessential birthday behaviour.”

“For sixteen year olds, maybe,” he mocked.

“What do you know? You went straight from five to fifty,” she chided lightly. Then, her head was tilted back and she was gazing at him with the same intrigue with which she had been watching the stars.

“And is stargazing quintessential birthday behaviour?” he asked. She pouted in thought.

“Could be. It’s all very individual, you know,” she said with the confidence of a bonafide birthday expert.

“Except the drinking games. Those are non-negotiable,” he said.

“Exactly. You’re a quick learner,” she playfully praised him. “They really are essential.”

“How about one round, then? For the sake of tradition, of course.”

“Of course,” she repeated, a mischievous smile playing at her lips. “Truth or drink,” she proposed, and he agreed because he had absolutely no basis for refusal. He was entirely unsure of why he’d proposed this to begin with. She turned so she was curled up to his side instead of on her back, and it felt only natural for him to move his arm from her grasp to drape it around her. He didn’t dwell much on just how natural it felt to have her tucked under his arm that way.

“What was your best birthday?” he asked. She snorted, delicate as ever. He couldn’t help but smile at that.

“That’s a terrible question, Kakashi. You’re supposed to pick something that would be hard to answer so that I’d be tempted to drink,” she said, rolling her eyes as she laid her chin on his chest to peer up at him judgmentally and drunkenly. He thought that was a strange combination, but it worked for her. When he shrugged and made no effort to rectify his drinking game blunder, she sighed. “Fine, I’ll tell you, and then you have to recreate it with me. If you refuse, you have to down another birthday beverage,” she proposed with a wicked smile.

“I feel like you are taking advantage of my trusting nature,” he complained.

“You are the least trusting being in existence,” she said, waving him off. He didn’t argue; instead he agreed to her terms, curious to see where it would take them. So far, leaning into her ideas had landed him in a decent position. He couldn’t deny that this was the best night he’d had in a long time, birthday or not. “My favourite birthday memory is from when I was seven. Ino and I ate our weight in dango and birthday cake, and then we played on a swing set until we both threw up,” she said, giggling through the story as she recalled it.

“I’m not eating my weight in dango,” he warned. Her giggles intensified.

“I’ll concede on that,” she agreed.

“And I’ve never been on a swing set,” he admitted softly, sorry to see her giggles give way to a wide-eyed disbelief, tinged the faintest bit with sadness. So quick it made him dizzy, she was up on her feet and tugging on his arms until he was standing with her.

“That is unacceptable, Hokage-sama,” she said seriously, slipping her hand into his and towing him toward a children’s playground, her blanket and basket forgotten behind them. She presented the swing set to him with a flourish, pushing him until the swing was behind his legs, and then she was shoving him until he was uncomfortably sat on its band, his feet dragging sadly through the woodchips beneath him.

“I feel that I may have missed my window of opportunity,” he said as he stared down at his legs, seemingly too long for this endeavour to truly work out in his favour. She ignored him, sitting herself on the swing beside him and wasting no time in launching herself into a languid swing. Cautiously, he did the same. She laughed at him every time he miscalculated and kicked up a burst of woodchips mid-swing.

“You’re a natural,” she teased, leaning back and enjoying the breeze as she flew back to front, her hair billowing behind her, shining in the moonlight. “Isn’t this nice?” she called out as they swung in opposing directions. He had to admit, silly as it felt, it was nice. It felt good to finally have this small, seemingly inconsequential experience; even if it was coming a few decades late.

He wasn’t sure how long they did that, just swinging back and forth, higher and higher, mostly in silence, but for Sakura’s delighted giggles every now and then. A few times, he even laughed with her. Eventually, though, their swinging slowed until they were simply hanging side-by-side.

“I don’t see how that made you puke,” he said after awhile. He should have known nothing good would come of this when her mischievous snicker hit his ears. She hopped off her swing and grabbed each of the chains that hung on either side of him.

“Do you trust me?”

“In general, or right this moment?”

She didn’t bother elaborating, nor waiting for his final answer. Instead, she gripped those chains and twisted, link over link, until the chains were tangled and taut and he was deeply nervous of where this would lead him.

“Ready?” she asked, her voice lilting with palpable amusement.

“No,” he answered, but just as he did, she gripped his shoulders and pushed—he suspected with a hint of chakra strength—and sent him spinning furiously. The world around him was a total blur. He felt the chains untangle and re-tangle in the opposite direction, the force of his spinning too strong to stop. He felt her arms on his shoulders again, and he stared up at her to meet her green eyes, even though she had six of them.

He couldn’t get a word out before he was spinning again. Her uncontrollable laugher taunted him as he turned without end. Finally, just when he thought his head might fly off like a spinning top, he stopped.

“You feeling okay?” she asked softly, her laughter subdued but not departed.

“Never better,” he responded, as strongly as he could. He was pleased that his voice managed to sound deceptively even, but the effect of that was entirely ruined by his sliding off the seat and flat on his back into the woodchips, his legs dangling on the swing above him. “Ow.”

“Oh, gods,” she giggled out, falling to her hands and knees above him, peering down at him in concern, but her shoulders still quaking with silent laughter. His head was still spinning, and he was seeing stars, but this time, they appeared to be dancing in Sakura’s eyes instead of the night sky. He thought they seemed to belong there.

“I think it’s your turn,” he rasped out.

“I think our game of truth or drink has ended,” she said with a light laugh, pressing cool fingertips to his forehead. He shook his head and demanded she take her turn. “Well, we’ve already thrown the rules out the door,” she considered with a soft smile, her soft hands still sitting at the side of his face. “Would you show me your face?” she asked, her cheeks going pink.

He would blame the alcohol and the light-headedness, but he didn’t even hesitate before curling a finger into his mask and pulling it down. She stared down at him in surprise, her cheeks transitioning from pink to red.

“Does that mean you have to drink?” he asked stupidly.

“You have woodchips in your hair,” she responded, equally stupidly.

And then his hand was at the back of her head and he was leaning up to meet her halfway in a kiss that made him dizzier than all the swing-spinning in the world. She tasted like that vile green drink and bran muffin. With a contented sigh, he fell back down to the woodchips, leaving his hand lingering in her hair. She smiled down at him.

“Birthday kisses are also essential,” she offered. He hummed, agreeing wholeheartedly.

And then he was curled on his side, throwing up into the woodchips, Sakura’s laughter ringing loudly in his ears.

#alholland #prompt

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dreaming-about-fanfictions · 4 years

Text

How to hold a sword - Geralt of Rivia x Reader - Part 1 of 2

Summary: You are bored with your life and want more. Luckily, Geralt of Rivia visits the town one day.

Requested by: @just-antiyou “could i request a geralt x reader where the reader is slightly wealthy but hates it and wants to be tougher than she looks so she hites geralt to teacher her and he slowly falls for her but she doesnt comprehend why HER? maybe this made no sense im so sorry i love ur writing pls an thank u stay safe” --> Hope you like it! I decided to make two parts out of the story! <3

Words: 2030 Pairing: Geralt of Rivia x fem!Reader Warnings: none

„Stop wasting my time. “

„Come on! I can pay you!”

“Sure you can.”

“Yes! Don’t you believe me?”

“Stop bothering me and go home.”

“I have coin! Here!”

Finally, the Witcher turned around when he heard the rattling of the coins in your small bag as you held it up. He quickly grabbed your hand, forcing it down. “Are you mad or do you enjoy the idea of being robbed,” he scolded you.

He was right. You were standing in the middle of a busy street, merchants and farmers passing you by as they made their way home from the market. The sun was already beginning to set and the first drunks stumbled out of the tavern to your right. Two working girls shrieked when a man fell against them, landing face down on one of the their bosoms, and angrily pushed him away.

You let the small bag slip back into the pocket of your coat. “I have coin!”, you repeated yourself.

“Where’d you get that?”, he demanded to know. “Did you steal it?”

You snorted. Asshole. “My family owns half the town. Did you not recognize this?!” You pointed at your necklace with the family emblem brightly visible.

His eyes only grazed shortly over it. “I’m not from here.”

“Right, because you’re Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher, a famous one – so give me one reason why you would decline my offer?”

“Teaching spoilt girls how to hold a sword is not in my job description.”

“First of all,” this time you pointed your finger at him. “I’m not a girl, I’m a woman, so start treating me like one! And secondly, as far as I’m concerned, there is no monster to kill for you at the moment.”

“There’s always monsters to kill.”

“Witcher!” A frustrated sigh escaped your mouth. What was his problem?

Geralt looked at you intensely, his eyes wandering from your face to your pocket, where the coins were stowed, back to your face. He pondered about what the offer would truly mean – letting another person come too close to him rarely resulted in anything good. People around him tend to end up hurt or heartbroken or dead. The last person to experience this had been Jaskier. Years of traveling together and it ended in Geralt chasing him away, blaming him for things that weren’t his fault. This happened a few years back and since then, the two of them had rekindled their friendship, but still. His point remained unchanged.

However, this could be different. You didn’t seek him out to become friends. It was nothing more than a job. Not to mention that your comment about him not having anything better to do at the moment was true. He could really use the coin. Before Geralt was able to rethink this, he wiped his eyes in a tiring and annoyed matter. “Fine.”

Your face lit up instantly and a big smile appeared on it. “Yes? Oh thank you!”

“Ten days.”

“That’s a good start!”, you exclaimed happily.

“It’s not a start, it’s all I’m offering,” he corrected you. Were you always this cheerful or just when you got your way? “What do I get out of it?”

“Three coins for each day.”

The Witcher raised an eyebrow. There was far more in that bag of yours and you both knew it. “Eight.”

“Four.”

“Seven.”

“Witcher!”

“Six then.”

“Five.”

“Deal,” he nodded.

Your smile grew even wider. “Thank you! This is fantastic!”

The only acknowledgment you got for that statement was a low grunt. He wasn’t so sure about it being a fantastic idea. “Meet me here tomorrow when the sun rises. Do you own a sword?”

He let out a sigh when you shook your head. “Of course you don’t. Doesn’t matter. Tomorrow, when the sun rises! Understood?”

“Understood!”

***

You arrived early the next morning. The excitement for the days to come was too overwhelming so after hours of tossing and turning and occasionally falling into a half slumber, you decided to cut the night short.

You nervously looked around you. Despite the late (or rather early) hour, the street was buzzing with people. Mostly drunks but no less intimidating. It was the second time you visit this part of the town as your mother would forbid you to come here. “It’s a dangerous place,” she always said, “nothing to find there except for criminals and whores.” Observing the people around you, she might had a point.

Growing up in one of the richest families of the town was a blessing and a curse at the same time. Nothing seemed to be missing from your life – dresses and jewelry, parties and royal receptions – everything was there in arm’s reach. You never had to work a day in your life and never went to bed on an empty stomach. Still, you were unhappy. You were born into this world with no purpose. All you had to do was look pretty, agree to a beneficial marriage and produce heirs. Your father didn’t allow you to be something else, something more. You never asked for much, knowing he’d deny your requests, except for learning how to fight and defend yourself. It was a simple desire but you hoped it would give you something. What, you weren’t sure. A purpose maybe? Indubitably, he refused you.

A sense of guilt and shame rushed through you. It happened every time as you were aware that the problems were nothing more than luxurary at best. After all, what gave you, a privileged girl with no troubles, the right to complain when there were people starving and dying?

“Well, ‘ello there, aren’t you a pretty one.”

You shrieked at the slurring words coming from your left. A man, smelling of beer and piss, reeled towards you. A disgusted look on your face, you took a step back.

“What’s that face, pretty one? Don’t cha think I’m pretty too?”

“Fuck off!”

A second voice made you turn around in surprise. Geralt of Rivia was standing in the doorway of the tavern, glaring at the drunk. Even in his current state of mind, the man sensed that Geralt wasn’t someone he wanted to bother, so he spit out undefinable curses and stumbled away.

“Thank you,” you said to the Witcher. He looked different this morning. Rested and bathed, you figured and realized his attractiveness for the first time since you met him. Last night you were more focused on convincing him to train you. Tall, broad, with his glooming golden eyes and white hair that fell loosely on his shoulders – only a blind person could deny his good looks.

Geralt eyed you up and down. “Now why would you wear that?”

You furrowed your brows in confusion and looked down at your blue dress and fine cloak that hugged your figure. “What?”

“You want to learn how to fight, am I wrong?”

“No, you’re not.”

“And you’re gonna do that in a dress?”

“I’ve seen women fight in dresses.”

“But not in fucking ball gowns.”

“This is not a ball gown!” You protested.

He rolled his eyes and started walking. “Whatever, come on. We have a long day ahead.”

You followed, struggling to keep up with him. He didn’t seem to care all that much. “Why do you sleep here?” You pointed back to the run-down pension.

“What do you mean?”

“With the money I’m paying, you can afford better … places.”

“I like it here.”

“You like sleeping around these creatures?”

Geralt didn’t answer instead he shot you a glance that made your cheeks flush in embarrassment. You knew exactly what he thought in this moment – he probably regretted taking the job and dreaded the fact that he was stuck with a spoilt girl like you for the next days. You didn’t blame him.

You couldn’t have known on this day but you were wrong. Geralt didn’t have any regrets – not yet however. He saw you as spoilt, yes. He also recognized your will to change – or else you wouldn’t have come to him in the first place.

***

One hour later and Geralt finally stopped in his tracks. You were more than thankful as your feet already started to hurt. The two of you had left the town far behind and had now reached a small clearing in the woods.

With a sigh you sat down and leaned against a tree. Geralt kept his gaze on the ground and walked around the clearing, looking for something.

You watched him. There was certainly something about that Witcher with his tall figure, white-hair and brooding looks. Only a blind woman would deny that. For a brief moment, you wondered if he had a companion or a consort, so to speak. What kind of woman did he desire? You had heard rumors about a mage he had taken as his lover. So probably powerful woman, fighters, he didn’t need to worry about protecting.

“Here,” a stick landing in front of you catapulted you back into reality.

You looked at the stick and back at Geralt. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Fight,” only then you noticed a second branch, resting in his hand.

“With a stick?”

“Yes.”

You grabbed it and got up in the same movement. “I’m not a child, I won’t play with sticks,” putting some force behind your words, you looked at him intensely.

His face didn’t falter. “What do you suggest instead?”

“A sword. I want to learn how to fight with a sword.”

“You’re not ready.”

“We only have two weeks though, we need to speed up this whole process,” you argued.

“You’re not ready.” He repeated sternly.

You kept staring at him, realizing that you wouldn’t win this argument. A sigh left your lips. “Fine.”

A small smile appeared on his face. “Great. Let’s get started.”

*** The first training was an absolute disaster. You were convinced that you spent the most time on the ground, face-down in the mud – the rest of the time you got your ass kicked. The exhaustion you felt when you were back in the tavern with torn clothes and leaves in your hair came close to nothing you ever experienced in your life.

Geralt sat next to you, happily eating his piece of chicken, looking like he had just returned home from a lazy and relaxed day out of town.

“You should eat something,” he said in between bites.

You looked down at your plate where the food remained untouched. “I’m not hungry.”

“Yes, you are.”

As if your stomach wanted to agree, a low growl was heard.

Geralt smirked but didn’t comment.

“Fine,” you admitted. “I’m starving.”

“But?”

“Everything hurts.” It was true, you felt too exhausted to take one bite out of the meat.

He shrugged. “Of course it does. You’ll get better though.”

“I don’t think so,” you sighed. “Did you see me today?!”

“I’ll tell you what,” Geralt said with a chuckle. “I promise that you’ll be able to fight and win against Jaskier by the end of this.”

“Is he a good fighter?” You asked with narrowed eyes.

“He’s not too bad.”

“What if I lose against him?”

“You’ll get your coin back.”

“Deal.” You nodded in contently. Then you added after a brief moment: “Wait, who’s Jaskier?”

“He’s traveling with me,” Geralt simply answered and took a sip from his beer mug. “You’ll meet him tomorrow. He knows people from this town.”

Jaskier. You were curious about the kind of person a Witcher spent his time with when he wasn’t away, hunting beasts. Was he as calm and collected as Geralt? Always so serious?

Another growl came from your stomach and you looked back at the plate. Well, maybe not eating at all would be a worse decision. After all, there were nine more days filled with exhaustion ahead of you. Slowly, you reached down to grab one of the chicken legs and bit into it.

Geralt watched you carefully and a very small part of him began to like the idea of having to spend more dinners with you in the next days. Of course, he’d never admit it. Not even to himself.

***

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Message me if you want to be added to my tag list <3

#geralt of rivia imagine #geralt of rivia x reader #geralt of rivia x female reader #geralt of rivia x you #geralt x y/n #geralt x reader #geralt x female reader #the witcher imagine #the witcher imagines #witcher imagine #witcher imagines #geralt of rivia fanfiction #witcher fanfiction #the witcher fanfiction #geralt of rivia #the witcher #witcher #astrids fics

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dasibom · 3 years

Note

haven't read it but heard mostly very positive things about a little life, would be interested in why u think it's bad? (if u want ofc)

ofc i love talking abt how much i hate this book. i answered a similar ask on my old blog so i'm just gonna copy paste (with a little editing):

content and trigger warnings for rape, csa, suicide, self harm and abuse. both for the book and this post.

i have so, so many problems with this book. lets start with... the gay stuff. here’s an bit from a goodreads review (link) by Michael Flick, which says it better than i could. the whole review is worth a read, too.

“Some believe that this is “The Great Gay Novel.” That couldn’t be more wrong. There are only two recognizable gay men in this work, JB and Caleb. A creative queen and a violent, probably psychopathic, sadist. All the other “possibilities” are pedophiles (categorically not gay—that’s a sickness, an evil, that has nothing to do with being gay) or so hopelessly confused (and impotent) that you can’t know what they are (JB and Willem). The take on gay men here is antediluvian—a dangerous and discredited brand of heteronormative delusion in which all gay men, no matter the glittering surface of their lives, are fated only to die a lonely, miserable death. Caleb dies an excruciating death (so we’re told) from pancreatic cancer. JB, the witty, flamboyant, unstable, creative queen is merely a plot point. His happiness, told but not shown, at the bitter end doesn’t mean anything more than that. He’s a device to wring one more regret from you, one more sorrow. You can be assured that he, too, will die an ignoble death just beyond this novel’s last page. And you won’t be troubled or offended or titillated by the gay sex (or really any sex) here because there isn’t any: it’s the sex that dare not speak its name. All this is because the author knows absolutely nothing about gay men other than the most superficial stereotypes and doesn’t have the imagination to venture deeper than that. She can’t even imagine that a man (Willem) doesn’t need a woman to quench his sexual needs—he has a solution readily at hand.

other than this, i remember this book having lesbophopic language but i don’t own a copy and i'm not gonna search the internet for that.

basically the whole book is just pure torture porn. so many bad and traumatising things happen to the main character it feels unrealistic and i think the only reason it happens is because the characters life has to be miserable. that's the whole point of the book to me. there is no reason to so graphically include a ton of this stuff in a book other than shock value. some of this graphic stuff includes very extreme descriptions of self harm (mostly cutting but also other stuff), suicide (including possible methods), physical and sexual abuse (part of it when the main character is a child), violence and medical trauma. i’m afraid that there is a real danger to this book teaching people how to hurt themselves (or even stuff like where to hide the tools they do it with) and i can’t imagine what an actively suicidal person might get out of this book. it really, really concerns me. i’m afraid this book teaches people to not get help, to not go to therapy and get help if they’ve been traumatised and/or are struggling with living. i've been traumatised in childhood and i can imagine what someone younger than i am, someone more impressionable, could get out of this book. like seriously some very fucked up ideas, i felt like the whole thing about being traumatised, and the constant self harming and suicide attempts were presented in almost a romanticised way. obviously my opinion here isn't like objective, or something, cause i'm a person trying to recover and deal w childhood trauma, which still affects me every day, in several ways, and realistically, it will never stop affecting me, but the point is that although it was terrible and it fucking sucks, it doesn't mean i will have a life with no quality and will forever be unhappy and unable to cope. and this book so clearly disagrees with it. the fact that the main character is traumatised and that horrible things happened to him as a child feels like a death sentence when it doesn't have to be.

^ lmao a point i also wanted to bring up in this section is that not all of the shit that happens to the main character needed to happen because it's fiction and it's a made up story, like after some point when i was reading it and seriously messed up shit just kept happening and it kept on going i thought like... why? it servers absolutely no purpose after some point. reading a rape scene after rape scene stopped having an affect on me eventually and... that's not very good, is it? like, i'm trying to say, this is fiction, it doesn't need to go that far? at some point, a very early point at that, it was enough to get the message across that hey, what happens to this character is bad and fucked up, it didn't need to go on.

the whole book is also full of people enabling the main character to hurt himself over and over again and do nothing. every character is there to some way hurt the main character and people praise this book for being such a great tale about friendship. it is so pretentious and again, just pure torture porn. the book so clearly seem to think therapy and reaching out to people for help it bullshit!

i’m not saying you can’t write or discuss the themes that are present in this book but i just don’t think this is the way to do it. probably a therapist specialising in trauma should consult with the writer and someone should make sure the description of self harm and suicide will not harm anyone. i think there are guidelines made for that by people working in the field and i just feel like something like that would be of benefit here. like, i don't know, i don't have a solution, i'm just saying this is not it.

also, here is a link to the author literally saying she does not believe in trigger warnings. and i think those would have been extremely beneficial to have at the start of this book and i certainly would not have read it if it was for them. that would have saved me from so much triggering content that i did not want to read and i wish badly that i did not read. it seems clear to me the author does not have any idea how traumatic things can work, or at least that is what i think based on what she says. here is a link to an interview in which she says she does not believe in talk therapy. there, a point about a persons autonomy to end their own life is brought up which is a topic but if that’s what she wants to talk about then it should be done in clear terms and not with the only message “therapy doesn’t work if you’ve suffered enough trauma.” at least that’s how the whole thing seemed to me. like of course a persons own choice to end their life is a discussion i do think is worth having, but... that did not come across in the book.

lastly, here are some links i have saved about this book which i think point out excellent things if anyone wants to read more:

https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/a0e1yi/convince_me_a_little_life_is_a_good_book_please/

http://post45.org/2016/06/im-so-sorry-a-little-life-and-the-socialism-of-the-rich/

https://cannonballread.com/2016/07/narfna-a-little-life/

& you're welcome to ask me to clarify something or just discuss, this is a little bit of a mess cause i copy pasted that old answer and edited it a bit to hopefully word things better but like. idk if much of it makes sense

#i rly hope this is like readable and understable lol #asks

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silver-wield · 4 years

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Fanfiction dork has returned!

Red XIII lay in a cramped corner of the cargo bay on the ship travelling from Junon Harbor. The group sneaked on board during Rufus Shinra's inauguration celebration and disguised themselves as public security to hide in plain sight. “How much longer until we arrive at Costa del Sol?”

Tracking Sephiroth was almost too easy and Cloud had his suspicions why, but kept them to himself. He didn't want to worry anyone when it could be nothing.

“Cloud?” Red pawed at Cloud's leg.

“Hmm? Oh, sorry.” His frown cleared and he shrugged. “By morning, most likely. If we don't run into trouble.” The ship had weapons and onboard defenses for dealing with large monsters. Who knew what floated beneath them just waiting for the chance to attack unsuspecting travellers?

Red sighed. “It's stuffy down here.”

Cloud took his helmet off and swiped a forearm across his sweaty brow as though just noticing the heat. “It's too risky you coming up on deck right now. Someone could spot you.” He looked around and put his helmet back on. “I'll send one of the others later when it's dark, okay?”

Red lowered his head. “I suppose I've endured worse.”

Guilt pinged Cloud's conscience, but also a lingering sense of relatability fogged his mind. He grimaced and gripped the side of his head as a momentary flash of something hit, bringing with it a headache. A familiar voice echoed in his ears and he swung round, drawing in a sharp breath.

“The subject's lack of tolerance to mako make it unfit for further study. I have therefore marked it for disposal and dissection.”

No. No. Don’t. Please.

“Cloud!”

Icy cold and breathing hard, Cloud didn't hear Red calling him at first. A sharp heat swiped his calf. The gun-metal grey walls of the ship snapped back into focus, wiping out the hazy, green-tinged visage. Who was that? He felt like he should know.

“Cloud, are you sick?”

Looking down, Cloud noticed a faint scorch mark on his trouser leg. “Nah, I'm fine,” he replied in a dismissive tone. “It's the heat.” Realising complaining sounded unfair when he could leave the stuffy berth and get some fresh air, he grimaced again. “I'll send someone for you soon as it's dark.”

“All right.” Red settled down in the corner. “Although I don't see why Barret gets to stay up top. He's more conspicuous than I am.”

Cloud bit off a short chuckle. “You haven't seen what he's wearing?” The girls couldn't find a uniform that fit, so they raided the sailors' lockers instead. Luckily, they found one they could cut and stitch together on the fly before they left. Barret had to lose the gun, which was left with Red to guard.

“Take a picture for me,” Red replied, tipping his head to the side and grinning.

“I don't have a death wish,” Cloud joked, shaking his head. “Remember, stay out of sight.”

“You can count on me.”

~*~*~

Got dark quick. What month is it, anyhow? Cloud wandered the deck, copying the patrol pattern he'd noted, though it felt like he didn't have to memorise it to know how public security officers would move about. Why is that? Eh, forget it. He'd already sent Aerith to fetch Red, moving the biggest liability out of sight for a while. Barret positioned himself at the front of the boat where the spray was heaviest. It meant less people would head that way; a smart move from someone known for impulsive choices. That leaves Tifa. Cloud frowned and looked around for her. He hadn't seen her since they'd separated at an alley in Junon City to board separately. Cloud's unique appearance made him an easy target, so he'd put himself on distraction duty. Before that, he and Tifa sneaked into the city to get the elevator moving for the others stuck down in the undercity. It was the only way up.

Gaze panning skyward, Cloud spotted movement on one of the high catwalks. Of course she's up there. Always goes where she can fall the furthest. Not even a public security uniform could hide her identity to him. He knew it was her from the way she carried herself. The way she stood. He'd know it was her anywhere.

Cloud climbed the ladders to reach Tifa's position.

“U-uh, everything quiet over here.” She offered a clumsy salute to go with the artificially deep voice.

Cloud stifled a laugh by pretending to cough. “Girls work for Shinra too, you know,” he said, to relieve her concern.

“Cloud?” Tifa's shoulders dropped. “You startled me.” She put a hand to her chest and took a deep breath. “I don't know what I would've done if you'd been a real soldier.”

Cloud's brows pinched beneath his helmet. A real soldier? Aren't I? No. I'm an Ex-SOLDIER. “You can handle it,” he said as a throwaway compliment.

Tifa laughed. “And don't you forget it.” She turned to grip the railing with both hands and leant forward.

“Careful.” He took a step in her direction.

“Sure thing,” she replied in a cheerful voice.

Watching her for a moment, Cloud became away of the lengthening silence. It was pleasant, but he found himself wanting to fill it. To hear her voice. Focus her attention on him. “So...what do you think of the uniform?”

Tifa turned his way and tipped her head to the side. After a slight hesitation, she said, “It looks good on you.”

“Huh? You think it looks good on me?” Cloud ducked his head. “Uh, thanks.” He could feel his cheeks turning red.

“Oh! You meant—I thought you were asking—!” Tifa's laugh was adorably self-conscious. She linked her hands behind her back and shifted from side to side. “It's okay. Apart from the helmet.” She stopped moving. “...Do you think it'll be okay if I take it off for a bit? It's kind of stuffy.”

Cloud looked around. No one about. He nodded. “Should be okay for a bit.”

“Phew.” Tifa lifted the helmet off and her hair unravelled down her back like a length of ribbon. She shook her head from side to side. “That's better.” She put it on the floor.

Why not? Cloud took his helmet off and held it one-handed. Hearing Tifa laugh, his eyes widened, asking a silent question.

“Your hair.” Tifa pointed. “I didn't think anything could flatten it.”

Embarrassed, Cloud tried to smooth a hand through the spikes. From the growing look of amusement on Tifa's face, he guessed he was making it worse.

“Here, let me?” Tifa nodded and smiled as she waited for permission.

“Uh, sure. Thanks.” Cloud nodded and dipped his head a little as Tifa came close. She reached up and he could feel her gloved fingers teasing his hair. Her gaze was focused on her task, and he found himself smiling at the concentration on her face. A small smile teased the corners of her lips and a faint frown fluttered between her brows. Her breaths were steady and even, but each one brought her closer to him. Or was he moving closer to her? His free hand touched her hip and he heard a slightly sharper in-drawn breath, but she didn't stop what she was doing. In fact, had her movements become more caressing? Was he imagining it? She bit her lower lip and Cloud stifled a moan. He tried to keep his gaze centred on her cheek, but his eyes kept flitting to hers, watching slight movements she made as she fussed with his hair. The atmosphere felt good. It was soft and warm and he didn't want it to end. This is nice. But, she was taking a while. What if she thought he was taking advantage? He didn’t want to think badly of him. “No good?” he whispered in a low voice.

Tifa's eyes went to his and widened. “Oh.” She took a step back. Her hand caught and knocked Cloud's helmet from his grip. It clattered to the floor. “Sorry. I was—I mean, I didn't realise—”

Damn it. Shouldn't have startled her. He didn't realise how much he'd enjoyed her being that close until she wasn't any longer. “It's fine. Is it okay now?” He lifted a hand to his hair.

“Yeah,” she replied in a soft voice. Nodding more firmly, she added, “It looks good.”

“Everything okay up there?!”

The shout from below had Tifa scooping up Cloud's helmet from where it fell and jamming it on his head, as he grabbed her around the waist and positioned her out of sight in front of him with her back against the railing. If the grunt caught sight of her he'd call for back up. Girls worked for Shinra, but he doubted any looked like Tifa. “Just taking a breather!” he called over his shoulder. “Dropped my keys!”

“Copy that!” The Shinra grunt continued on his patrol pattern.

Cloud watched him from the corner of his eye until he couldn't see him any longer, then let out a relieved sigh. “Quick thinking,” he said to Tifa. He hadn't thought about his own distinctive hairstyle. He'd been preoccupied with keeping her safe.

“T-thanks,” she whispered, keeping her head tucked against him.

Cloud swallowed. She was closer now than when she'd been playing with his hair. He gripped the railing with one hand and had the other around her waist, held flat against her lower back. He could feel one of her hands on his bicep and the other against his chest and he cursed the thickness of Shinra's uniforms. “You okay?” He said the words against her cheek, almost like he kissed her.

“I guess, I just...forgot where we were for a moment,” she murmured after a pause. When she stepped back, she gave him a sheepish smile, her cheeks a deep pink in the dim lighting. “This isn't a pleasure cruise.”

Something in his gut shifted as she said the word “pleasure”. Part of him wished it was just that, but there were bigger motives driving their actions. Once I settle things, then everything will be okay. “Yeah,” he said, voice flat and unhappy. “You should probably put your helmet back on.”

“Right.” She didn't sound any happier about it than he did. As Tifa bent over to scoop it up, something knocked into the ship and made it tilt to the side. “Oh!”

“Tifa!” Cloud darted a hand out and grabbed her arm. Pulling her close once more, he turned and scowled towards the ship's bow. “Felt like something hit us.”

“Yeah. Monster, maybe?” Tifa gathered her hair up and stuffed it under the helmet as she put it back on. “Should we check it out?”

Cloud had a quick internal debate with that annoying voice who made him dance at the Honeybee Inn.

If it's a monster, Shinra'll deal with it.

And if they can't?

Not my problem.

You're on the boat, Buddy. You going down with the ship?

Shit.

Tutting under his breath, Cloud nodded. “Probably should.” He moved away from Tifa and towards the ladder.

“Barret's over there, too, right?”

Cloud huffed. “God damn it. Yeah.”

Tifa nodded. “Then, let's hurry. Who knows what kind of trouble he's gotten himself into?”

Sliding down the ladder, Cloud and Tifa rushed to the front of the ship where they found Barret fending off some kind of squid monster trying to climb its way on board.

“'Bout time you two showed up!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Cloud reached for his sword and grabbed air. “Shit.” His gear was below deck, along with Barret's gun.

“What now?!”

Tifa couldn't fend it off with just her fists, no matter how capable she was.

“Is it my turn now?” Aerith and Red appeared from the rear and put themselves in front of Cloud and Barret.

“You two have no weapons. Let us deal with this.”

Cloud glanced at Tifa, who nodded in agreement. “Fine. Be careful. Barret, pull back.”

Barret slapped a tentacle away. “Eh, who are you to be giving me orders?”

“Just do it!” Cloud spun on his heel and moved out of range, glancing over his shoulder to check Barret followed.

“We got this, guys!”

Cloud's gaze panned to the upper deck. “Could shoot it,” he suggested to Barret.

Barret laughed. “Now you're talking my language! Let's go!” Slapping Cloud on the back so hard he staggered forward, they ran to the upper deck and the harpoon gun...

#final fantasy 7 remake #cloud strife #ff7r #ffviir #cloti #tifa lockheart #final fantasy 7r #final fantasy viir #final fantasy 7 remake fanfiction #Silver wields a pen

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ajokeformur-ray · 5 years

Text

Let’s Stop This Pain Tonight // Arthur Fleck x Reader // so soft you’ll get toothache.

rebs-doom: hmmm something like being hopelessly in love with artie and making him dinner because u went to his house to check his mother health out and watching TV with him but you fall asleep and he watches you a lot thinking of how much he would like to kiss you and you two happen to share the bed for that night and it’s weird because you two are only friends but being half asleep and everything you accidentally kiss him goodnight on his lips.

Female reader for this one, loves! It’s only the use of pronouns though, I think I used them once, so you can switch them out as you wish x

Arthur Fleck/Joker: @writings-of-a-gen-z @x-avantgarde-x @mapreza1 @insomniabird @mavalenovaninagavi @itwasrealenough @morrisonmercurymalek @rand0ms-fand0ms @rafaelina-casillas @aclownthing @rebs-doom @vivft @help-i-am-obssessed @autumnaffection @taintednihilist @vladtoly @mg-woolf99 @misstgrey92 @that-s-life @dopey-girl-blogs @seeking-dreamland @sweetheart-syndrome @heartxfdesire @xmusichealsthesoulx @0callmejude0 @the-one-that-likes-riddles @hannibalsslut @folliaght

TW; swearing, err... i think that’s it. this one is mostly very fluffy. i had to bite into a pillow at one point to stop myself fangirling so loud i woke people up lmao.

word count: 2, 970.

It was with two quick and quiet raps that you knocked on Arthur’s apartment door, the paint flaking and the brass letters displaying his apartment information rusted so badly that the corners had been chipped down to a black that would leave some kind of residue on your hands. Oh… you wanted desperately to hold Arthur and to lift him out of everything that was holding him down, holding him back.

The hand that you had used to knock hastily moved to support the hot, almost breaking brown shopping bag which had previously been balanced on one arm; the way one would hold a small child. You had cooked the Flecks enough food for about a week; you had seen that Arthur had a freezer so you had a lot of your own supplies at home to cook for them. You had seen Arthur topless numerous times - it was his preferred way to relax - and though you found him striking and truly, so beautiful that he seemed ethereal to you at times, the way his ribs seemed like they would rip through his skin if he stretched too fast worried you. It was all well and good, and admirable, for him to selflessly look after others, but what about himself? Didn’t he see that he was worth all that effort and more?

A soft giggle snapped you out of your thoughts. You started, brain suddenly thrust back into reality. There you were, stood on Arthur’s doorsteps, thinking so heavily of him that you had completely missed his answering the door. He was leaned against the door frame, a smile still on his lips, as he stood there watching you.

“You have such a lovely look on your face, Y/N. What are you thinking about?” Arthur stepped back to allow you into the apartment and you made a beeline for the kitchen. Arthur and Penny were going to have a hot meal every night from now on, you would make sure of it.

Too lost now in what you were doing - unloading the food and leaving it on the side to cool - you simply told the truth before you could apply your ill-used brain to mouth filter. “You.”

Arthur blinked a few times before an unhappy giggle left his lips. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”

I just did, you thought unhappily. You turned back to the food and it was then that Arthur noticed what you had been focusing on. “Y/N, w-what’s all this?” His words came out in a rush and you looked up at him to see a huge frown on his face. Did he think that you thought it was an act of charity? Did he think you were an imposition upon his own home? Had you acted without thought, like you so often did? You were impulsive sometimes, you couldn’t help it; the thought, ah, fuck it was so often the motivation behind your actions that sometimes you couldn’t tell if you were responsible or not. Sometimes you didn’t want to know. It was just better to take every day as it came and let your future self worry about the problem. They had it all figured out, anyway.

“Food for you and Penny. I’ve made enough for about a week. I’ll drop more off soon when I have the time.” You refrained from mentioning that you took up a few more shifts to fund this kindness, and that your own kitchen would be low for a few days until you got paid again. Somehow you figured that Arthur would take that as some kind of insult. He didn’t speak. You turned to look at him over his shoulder and you saw that he had clamped a hand over his mouth, his eyes glittering with painful tears to keep himself from laughing.

You sighed quietly and pulled him into a hug, your fingers burying themselves in the hairs at the nape of his neck. You held him through the laughter, his body quaking hard in your hold. You didn’t say anything, you just held him, and when he choked on his laughter, you shushed him. What more could you do? You held him until the fit stopped, and then when he was done, Arthur slumped into your embrace and melted into the touch. He was so touch starved and always so grateful for every touch you gave him that it broke your heart. You had made it a point in the very early days of your friendship to give him casual touches, to let him know that he did exist, that he was real, and that you saw him and now it was as natural as breathing to touch each other.

The line between friendship and relationship didn’t exist with the two of you; it had been eradicated long ago. There was only the question of when. Tonight? You hoped so. You hoped that tonight would be the night that Arthur would finally get to taste happiness in its purest form. Not at the bottom of a pill bottle, not at the filter of a cigarette, but in a real, tangible form.

“Happy, is everything okay in there?”

You both sighed. A look of understanding was shared between you as with practised ease, Arthur swiped a hand over his face. To an outsider, to anyone who didn’t know Arthur, it’d simply look like he was scratching his nose. To you, though? Oh, you saw the way his thumb and forefinger brushed away tears, the way he sniffed, the way he swallowed against the lump in his throat and winced slightly. You saw Arthur Fleck and as he sighed again, straightened his back and went to see his mother, the final piece of you, right in the back of your head, clicked into place and settled into your new truth:

You loved Arthur Fleck.

Dinner was easily prepared; all you had to do was dish it out onto plates and then hand around cutlery. The three of you ate quietly, the only sounds coming from the television and the sounds of cutlery gently scraping against the ceramic plates. You were finished before Arthur and Penny and back into the kitchen to start washing up. Arthur couldn’t argue, couldn’t tell you off or swan you away from the kitchen by dancing with you, only for him to dart back into the kitchen with a quick, sharp laugh and a mischievous gleam in his eye that looked so right on him that it took your breath away - he had done that to you before, the sneaky bastard, and that was why you had eaten quicker than he and Penny. You wouldn’t let him do that today.

Today was all about him. The distinction didn’t make much difference, truth be told; for you, every day was all about Arthur. He was your reason to smile, your ray of sunshine, your best friend. You hadn’t noticed the day when you stopped living solely for yourself, but you couldn’t deny that you liked the change in you that loving him had caused.

“That was truly delicious, Y/N, thank you.”

You smiled. “You’re welcome.”

“Let me help you with that,” Arthur picked a tea towel up and you took it from him.

“Nu-uh. Go on, go sit down. You’ve been at work all day.”

“So have you,” Arthur frowned, opening his mouth to argue. If he really wanted to help you, you wouldn’t force him to sit down, but you could see the exhausted look on his face, the dark circles under his eyes which were growing their own bags, and the way he looked about ready to fall asleep where he stood.

“I’m not about to fall asleep at any second, Arthur,” You smiled gently at him to take any edge off your words - it never took much for Arthur to misinterpret or misunderstand things you said to him - and went back to washing up, pretending to ignore him. In reality, your entire body was trained on him. You tensed when he stepped closer to you, close enough that his chest was just touching your arm.

A soft, gentle pressure to your temple as he kissed you in gratitude. “Thank you.” He whispered, and then he was gone.

You sighed softly, raised your eyes to the water damaged, mouldy ceiling, bit your bottom lip hard to stop yourself from squealing, and carried on with the chores.

There was nothing you could do to stop yourself from smiling, though, and it made the time until you could join him on the sofa to watch television flash by.

What had he done to you?

The thought, nothing I didn’t want him to do, kept you company while you walked the short distance from the kitchen to the sofa, flopping down ungracefully next to Arthur with a relieved sigh. He smiled, amused by your obvious display of tiredness, and Penny watched the silent interaction with a wistful look on her face. She had had that once too with her dear Thomas...

The evening was spent in this way, you and Arthur sat so closely together that you were touching shoulders, thighs and knees, old re-reruns of the Murray show playing quietly. At some point, Arthur stood up to dance with his mother, but you had already fallen asleep, emotionally and physically knackered. It was only Monday. Arthur wished you would take better care of yourself. The world was harsh; both of you were always so tired, but you both worked so hard and deserved some respite. Still, when did people ever get what they deserved?, Arthur thought bitterly.

The anger in him calmed almost as quickly as he felt it, not only because he didn’t want to feel it, but also because you snored once in his sleep. He chuckled quietly and reached out a slender, pale finger to poke your cheek. You wrinkled your nose, batted his hand away gently, and carried on sleeping.

“Look at her,” Penny whispered, not unkindly, “She’s away with the faeries.”

“I know,” Arthur’s voice was thick with an amused smile, “Isn’t she beautiful?”

Penny smiled at how happy her son was. He was practically glowing. Arthur, for his part, was only thinking of how badly he wanted to kiss you. Penny could see the love you had for each other, and thinking quickly, she said, “Why don’t you take her to bed? I’ll sleep on the sofa tonight. It’d be good for you.”

“But, mum, your back - “

“My back will be fine,” Penny laid a gentle hand on Arthur’s arm and nodded decisively at him. “Goodnight, Arthur.”

Arthur smiled without showing his teeth. His true emotions were in his eyes. “Okay. Goodnight, mum.”

Penny nodded, already getting comfortable on the sofa, as Arthur went into the kitchen and put away the now cold food into the freezer. His heart was so full of love towards you. He hadn’t eaten for days and there you were, thinking he didn’t know you were pulling extra shifts, just to feed him. He wished you didn’t have to work so hard and that you would take better care of your health, but the world stopped for nobody and he knew well what happened to those that slipped through society’s many cracks and were forgotten.

He didn’t want the same to happen to you. He wouldn’t let the same happen to you. He’d die before any kind of harm befell you. With those thoughts giving him the strength, though he supposed the nutritious food you had made for him also helped, Arthur slid an arm under your shoulders, and another under your knees, and he lifted you. With more struggle than he anticipated did he move you into the bedroom, setting you down gently on top of the duvet.

The movement had woken you, and when Arthur came back from getting ready for bed, he saw you sitting up, bleary eyed and staring at the open doorway.

He’d laughed more today than he had in weeks. “Hello, sleeping beauty.”

You blushed. He wondered how far down your blush travelled. Did it spread across your chest like wildfire, just like it did on your face? He stopped those thoughts before they could start. He didn’t need you to see his arousal.

“Sorry I fell asleep.”

Arthur shook his head. “No. You needed it. You work too hard.”

“And you don’t?” You grinned. Everything was so right with Arthur.

Another easy look of understanding was shared between you as you both moved to get comfortable under the covers. As you switched off the bedside light, feeling a thrill run through you with the knowledge that you were sharing a bed with Arthur, you turned over to face him.

“Night.” You leaned over, kissed his mouth, and went to lay down but reality hit you like a bolt of lightning just as Arthur’s own body stiffened beside you.

“Oh my god, Arthur, I - “

Silence. It was uncomfortable, both of you holding your breath as the seconds ticked passed. Both of you were waiting for the other to make the first move.

“D-do you... do you m-mean... mm.” Arthur cut himself off, hiccuped, and you sat up straight and took his hands in yours, squeezing his hands to ground him so that he didn’t burst out with laughter. You took one hand away from him and turned the lamp back on, contorting your arm in a really awkward manner. You needed to be able to see each other in this moment. Arthur didn’t trust words, he didn’t trust people, but he trusted you and he needed to know that what you were about to say was real and true.

“Look at me.” You murmured, keeping your voice quiet, both because you didn’t want to ruin the tranquillity of the moment but also because you just didn’t want to wake up Penny. You could hear her soft snores already.

Arthur’s intense green eyes met yours and he looked like he was ready to be sick. He was scared of what you were going to say, what you were going to do, and whether or not you had meant to kiss him goodnight the way he had seen married couples do on the old films that his mother liked to watch sometimes.

You squeezed his hands and Arthur smiled, unable to help himself. “I see you, I love you, and I never want to be without you.”

His jaw dropped just a little, his grip on your hands slackened slightly, but you gave him space. You gave him the space and the time he needed for his brain to replay the entire evening - answering the door to see you standing there with a look of total love on your face, inviting you in and then the smell of all that food had greeted him, you comforting him in a way no one else ever did, including his mother, sitting with you on the sofa, and now this... He replayed your words again and again, and through it all you were patient and silent. Though you had no real way of knowing because there was no clock in the room, it must have been a good ten minutes before Arthur opened his mouth to finally speak,

“A-are you real?”

Your heart broke and you felt tears threaten to blur your vision. You blinked them back, wrinkled your nose against the impulse to cry, and nodded. “Yes. I’m as real as you are.”

Arthur couldn’t take it anymore. Here was everything he had ever wanted, and all he could do was cry. Tears, hot and heavy, poured down his face and you made a sympathetic noise as you gently wiped every tear away as they fell, lifting yourself up onto your knees so that you could press a tender kiss to his forehead. Arthur laughed quietly at the loving gesture and you smiled against his skin. He was so soft and you completely adored him.

“Oh~, I love you so fucking much.”

Arthur shook his head in disbelief. There was no way he was hallucinating. His mother had seen you, he had eaten the food and he had it in his freezer, and the way you were leaving goosebumps in the wake of your touches told him how real you were.

“I love you too,” He grinned, the gesture free and easy, and this time you did cry. You cried for him, for all the hurt he’d been through, for all the times he’d been stomped on and beaten, torn down and left for dead, abused and manipulated, rejected and shunned. You cried because of him but, most beautifully, you cried with him. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” He repeated this phrase like a mantra, and you breathed in those three words spoken in his soft voice, and felt yourself coming home.

In the morning, you would talk about your next steps as a couple. Things would be awkward until you both settled into a rhythm, until Arthur got used to the fact that he wasn’t alone anymore and that he had someone to share all of his burdens with. But for now you would sleep. You switched the lamp off, got settled back into bed and fidgeted around to get comfortable until Arthur ended up being the little spoon; his legs curled up into the foetal position with your arms locked around him and your nose nuzzled into the crook of his neck. You could rest.

You could rest in the knowledge that you were in love, that you were together and that, with this addictive and altogether surreal emotion to fuel your personal fires, you could take on the fucking world.

#arthur fleck #arthur fleck imagine #arthur fleck x reader #joker #joker imagine #joker 2019 imagine #todd phillips #joaquin phoenix #Joaquin phoenix joker #joaquin phoenix x reader #joaquin phoenix imagine #phoenix!joker #phoenix!joker x reader #phoenix!joker imagine

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dyaz-stories · 4 years

Text

Not How It’s Done — Four

One — Two — Three — ff.net

Tagging: @cammysansstuff @tsukinohimeusagi @umacaking @inuyashaeienni @coquinespike @freshlypickledpancakes @simply-zerah @shinidamachu @digital-art-monster @sailorbabydoll92 @sweetchcolate @clearwillow @zelink-inukag @cstorm86 @digital-art-monster @danycontreras90 @redflamesofpassion @lost-amidst-the-stars @eternalnight8806-3 @desiree239 @keichanz @ashleys-canvas @mustardyellowsunshine @meggz0rz @contacting-u @ramen---boi @superpixie42

Inuyasha could hear Hoshiki’s screams from outside as he neared Kagome’s apartment, and that immediately had him frowning. The kid was pretty calm usually, so it was unexpected to hear that, but he also realized that the cries had a strange mixture of fear, anger and helplessness that translated into a strong urge to stop them, to remove anything that could make the child unhappy.

He walked to her door quickly, knocked, and, when Kagome didn’t reply quite enough, he opened it. Fortunately, it wasn’t locked, otherwise he would probably have broken it. He frowned at the thought. She should lock her door, it really wasn’t careful not to and… and he couldn’t be so overprotective of her. He didn’t have any right to.

“Oh, hey, Inuyasha, I’m sorry, did you knock?”

Kagome walked towards him, holding the child against her. She was rocking him gently, clearly trying to soothe him, and that sight at least was reassuring. It sent a wave of tenderness through him. She was doing her best. That was short lived, however, as his sensitive nose picked up on the scent of blood. What was going on here?

“I’m so sorry,” Kagome started, trying to speak over Hoshiki’s cries. ”I know you were supposed to take him out, but he barely slept tonight and I don’t think it’s going to be much fun if he keeps—”

A particularly loud shriek had her wincing.

“—I don’t know how to help him,” she finished miserably. “It’s his teeth, I think.”

“His fangs,” Inuyasha realized out loud, and suddenly everything made sense.

That was always bad for demons — and half-demons, obviously. Their organism kept trying to heal them, and of course, the teeth still had to pierce the skin. They did grow them faster than humans, but it was known to be an absolute nightmare. He didn’t remember anything of that time, but his mother had mentioned it to him once or twice, and his brother’s wife had complained to him about it. He’d even helped with the kids back then.

“D’you want me to take him?”

Kagome let out a relieved sigh.

“You don’t mind? I’ve been up all night too and—”

“’s fine, c’mon buddy.”

He weirdly liked Kagome’s rambling, most of the time, but with Hoshiki’s screams in the background, he couldn’t say he enjoyed them. She did look exhausted, with bags under her eyes and messy hair. He took Hoshiki from him, and the kid calmed down, just a little, at his contact, but it mostly meant that his screams weren’t as loud.

“I’m so sorry,” she apologized a second time. “I know this was supposed to be a day out for you and I’m sure you both looked forward to it, but I just couldn’t get him to sleep, I tried, really, but—”

She seemed to be on the verge of crying, and it was so unlike her that Inuyasha had no idea how to react. Why was she apologizing, exactly? There was nothing she could have done. The kid was in pain. Sure, it was unpleasant and painful, to know that he was suffering and there was nothing they could do about it, she probably hated it as much as he did, but they just had to wait it out.

“D’you have anything he could chew on, perhaps?” he asked, interrupting her somewhat awkwardly, not knowing how to handle it. “I know it helps for some kids, gives them something to focus on, though it ain’t gonna last long for a demon. I think my ‘ma had something like that for me.”

“Oh,” she said, and he saw her bit her lower lip and close her eyes briefly. “I didn’t think about that,” she mumbled with a quiet voice. “I’ll see if I have something.”

He watched her with worried eyes as she rummaged through cupboards. She looked close to her breaking point. As she stepped out of the kitchen, probably to go in Hoshiki’s room, he focused on the kid. Hoshiki was screaming and moving around in his arms.

“You look just as tired as your ‘ma,” Inuyasha commented. He knew Hoshiki liked it when he was resting against him and his voice rumbled through his chest, and indeed, he seemed to calm down a little when he talked. “Don’t you wanna go to sleep? ‘cause it seems to me like you need some. Give a break to your ‘ma. Don’t worry, we can reschedule our walk.”

Kagome walked back in, holding a rubber ring, and allowed herself to rest for just a second against the door, watching as Inuyasha rocked Hoshiki, talking to him gently. His voice didn’t change that much, when he spoke with the kid, which she found interesting. Most people talked to babies differently, and Inuyasha did have a deep, somewhat scary voice, but he didn’t change anything with Hoshiki, which she thought was great. He did, however, watch his language a little more, and she appreciated him all the more for it.

“I have something,” she said, approaching the pair, “but you’re right, it’s never going to last, and I’m afraid he’ll swallow some parts.”

Inuyasha took the ring from her hands. It was large enough that it wouldn’t fit entirely in his mouth, and it wasn’t like there much out yet.

“It’ll do. Why don’t ya take a second to— I dunno, eat or drink or something, and I’ll try to get him in bed?”

She nodded, looking grateful.

“Thanks, Inuyasha. I don’t know if you’ll be able to do it, but I— I really appreciate it.”

“Any time.”

After what felt like hours, Inuyasha finally managed to get Hoshiki to rest. With the help of the rubber and a lot of singing that rumbled through his chest, the kid’s eyes finally closed, though to be fair, he was probably way past his point of exhaustion. He laid him down very, very carefully, and as he did, he realized he was wearing the gloves he’d given to Kagome. That had him frowning briefly, until he understood.

Well, that explains the smell of blood. The kid was small, and he doubted his claws would have gone very deep, but still, he couldn’t control himself yet, and he’d probably hurt Kagome. The thought was unpleasant. Had he done that, too? Hurt his ‘ma? He hoped not.

He found Kagome dozing off at the table when he came back in, but she looked up and smiled at him quickly when he sat down, facing her.

“You did it!” she yawned. “He really, really needed some sleep. At this point, I think he was crying from exhaustion as much as from pain.” Then, her face crumpled a little. “God, this is going to last for days, isn’t it? My poor baby…”

“Hey,” he said, instinctively reaching out over the table to take her hand in his, the gesture so natural that it almost scared him, “it’s gonna be fine, ‘kay? I mean, it does hurt like a bitch, but it’ll also be over in just a few days. I mean, ’til he grows the next one, but let’s take it once at a time, alright? Just make sure he doesn’t rip the rubber to shreds.”

She nodded, laughing a little.

“Thank God you don’t talk like that around him.”

He scoffed, but still chuckled. Yeah, it wouldn’t be too great if the first words Hoshiki learned were parts of his vocabulary.

Kagome squeezed his hand in hers.

“Thanks, Inuyasha,” she said softly. “And again, really, I’m super sorry that—”

“Stop apologizing already woman,” he practically growled, and her eyes widened at the sound.“It’s not like there’s much you could have done.”

“I mean, I could have given him—”

“Kagome. Stop beating yourself up about that. You’re doing everything you can, right? And it ain’t like you’re taught ‘bout how to rise a demon, are ya?”

She shook her head wordlessly.

“So this isn’t your fault and— ah, don’t cry!”

Shit. Shit shit shit. Him and his big mouth. He hadn’t meant to cause that, he didn’t think there was anything wrong with her.

“I’m sorry,” she said yet again, only sobbing this time, “I don’t mean to cry, I’m just really tired and I— I feel like I’m being such a terrible mom, and I couldn’t do anything to help him, and you made it work really easily so clearly, I could have done better and—”

Ah, fuck. In just one step, he was in front of her. He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her against him as she cried. She held onto him, fingers digging in his shirt. He simply let her, hands moving on her back, trying to get her to calm down. He just wanted to comfort her, wanted her to be okay, and yet he couldn’t help but think about how nicely she fit in his arms, and about how he liked that. Holding her.

It wasn’t the fucking time for those thoughts.

When she moved back, she quickly wiped her tears away. She felt a bit ridiculous for the whole thing. She hadn’t meant to push all of her emotions onto Inuyasha. Poor guy really hadn’t signed for that. They were Hoshiki’s parents, of course, but they didn’t exactly do their thing together. Not that she hated the idea of them being… partners, or something, but she still hadn’t meant to lose it like that. Sometimes, things just got hard.

“Feeling better?” Inuyasha asked, patting her head somewhat awkwardly.

She laughed, a bit embarrassed.

“Yeah. Sorry I—”

“You really need to stop apologizing. You’re doing a fucking fantastic job here. I know demon mothers who knew that shit was coming, and you handled it a thousand better than them.”

Well, better than Kagura, at least, and he supposed that wasn’t too hard, but she didn’t need to know that. She smiled again, and he nodded, satisfied. She should be fine with a good night of sleep. But first…

“Did he scratch ya?”

She blinked, and then he watched as her hand went to rub her arm.

“Oh, yes, he did, but it’s nothing too bad, really, and I gave him his gloves, so…”

“Yeah. Y’should let him keep it. ’s good if he didn’t do much, but he can still hurt ya.” His face was surprisingly somber as he said that, and it almost made Kagome want to ask questions, but she held them back. She was way too tired to have an actual conversation, but one of these days… They would really need to have one. “And you can always, y’know, call me, if things get too hard.”

She gave him a bright, sincere smile at that. She had to admit, she was impressed by how he stuck around, even when things were complicated. He wasn’t just there for the bright, happy, easy moments of Hoshiki’s life. He was genuine about wanting to be involved in every aspects. Even the ones that were far from brilliant.

“Now ya should get some sleep, too,” he said when she yawned again. “I can stay here, if ya don’t mind?”

“I don’t. You can— watch TV or— I have some books— or—”

“I’ll handle myself,” he shrugged. If she didn’t get herself to bed now, she was just going to fall down from exhaustion. “And I’ll take care of Hoshiki if he wakes up, so don’t ya worry ‘bout it, okay?”

Her smile softened as she watched him. Who’d have thought, huh? The tall, broad-shouldered half-demon with the tough exterior and the crude language. Taking care of his kid, and of her, though she wasn’t his anything.

She didn’t think much when she leaned in to kiss him on the cheek.

“Thank you, Inuyasha. For everything you did for us today.”

It took him a couple of seconds to find his voice again.

“Yeah. Whatever. Now go.”

She laughed, missing the fact that she was the reason he was reacting, that he was blushing, and that he was avoiding her eyes.

“G’night,” she mumbled on her way out, though it was the middle of the day.

“Good night,” he mumbled back.

The second her door was closed, he let himself fall on the couch, hand covering his face. This was— He was ridiculous. This shouldn’t affect him this much. This shouldn’t affect him at all. They had a fucking baby together, and he was losing it at a kiss? It made no fucking sense. He made no fucking sense. Nothing fucking made sense here.

He growled loudly, grabbed the remote control, and turned the TV on, trying to think about something else. Trying to think about anything but how he liked to hold her, how he was glad she’d kissed him, and how he was starting to think that he wouldn’t mind, if she did it again.

Damn. He was fucked.

Okay, hope you liked this new (and kinda short) installment in this little series! This was written extremely quickly so I hope it’s good, it had been on my mind all day and I’m glad I managed to finish it ^-^ They were actually supposed to have the conversation Kagome hints at in this chapter but then it just... didn’t happen. Anyway, really hope you enjoyed this, it was really pleasant to write, and I will see you soon for more Inukag!

#inuyasha #kagome #inukag #kagome higurashi #inuyasha fanfiction #my writing #pregnant from a one night stand au

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chanswavyhair · 4 years

Text

i learned to love (pt.2) | seo changbin

a/n: i ended up writing this bc i felt too upsetti doing a sad ending JSHSJS sorry:’) anyways, i hope u enjoy uwu. stream streetlight folks!!

word count: 1.8k

genres: angst, fluff

part 1 | [m.list]

it’s been a long night. you sighed, lying in your bed. you were listening to red velvet’s i just on loop, while surfing the internet. suddenly, the idea of checking changbin’s sns crossed your mind, as it’s been days since you last checked. you tried to control yourself, but your fingers were already typing his usser.

to your surprise, you saw that he had produced another –probably amazing– song. you immediately clicked on the link, and closed your eyes as you listened carefully the lyrics.

“even a fool knows this, you’re the best thing I've got” wow, first verse and it already hit really hard. you tried to make a promise to yourself, and not to cry if it seemed like he already fell for someone else. even if it’s been three months now since you left.

“i should've hurried, it's too late to regret it now” to be honest, those three months were really significant. you finally got to understand yourself, what did you want to do, and even learned to love yourself more. but somehow, you still missed his love, no matter how hard you tried, you didn’t seem to get interested in anyone else.

“i should've let go of my foolish pride then, i’m only regretting now for missing out the chance” tears started to fall by then. as much as it hurt, you wanted to believe that maybe, just maybe, he would think about you as much as you did about him. well, he didn’t have a reason since it was you whobroke up with him and suddenly disappeared, but you couldn’t help but hope the lyrics were about you.

“how could I ever let you go?” that was exactly what you’ve been thinking for the last three months. yes, you did break up with him, but you still loved him as you’ve ever loved anyone. your relationship came to a dead point, and you had to put it out, even though you hated yourself because of it.

one more night, you cried silently until you’d fall asleep; regretting to ever let all of this happen.

for changbin, things were really, really weird. just like you, at first he thought that even if it was a shame, you two couldn’t have done anything about it. but eventually, he realized that he missed you so bad. he came to think that he got used to having you by his side, which made him start to take less care about your relationship. but he loved you, and he didn’t get why didn’t you let him have a chance to talk to you. well, to be honest, he didn’t try that much and tried to accept it at the beginning, but he was slowly going crazy. so he wrote a song, hoping you would listen it, and at least know, that he still loved you so, so much.

a month after on track came out, you still listened to it on daily basis, and most of the nights, you played it before you went to bed. it was kind of masochistic, reminding yourself everyday of changbin not wanting to let someone go. but you had a life, in which you would study to get your preschooler teacher title – as the high school teacher title wasn’t valid. and in the afternoon you worked at a small café. you were still young, so you didn’t worry about studying again a lot.

it was a quiet afternoon, not many people at the café, which meant you could study while it was empty. just half an hour before closing, the door was opened, probably the fourth or fith client in the last hour.

“welcome to streetlight café, how can i- oh” your eyes went wide open as you realized it was the seo changbin who stood in front of you. he seemed quite surprised as well.

“uh, if you’re not comfortable i can leave-” he said awkwardly. you immediately shook your head.

“please don’t-, i mean, i can keep it professional” what a liar, you thought. he nodded at your words.

“then, can i have a espresso without milk, please?” you nodded trying to ide your smile, because you still remembered his favorite coffee. while preparing it, you realized you haven’t felt your heart race like this in such a long time. as you finished, you took it to where he was sitting. he didn’t say anything but right when you were about to return to your place, he spoke.

“are you busy?” changbin asked. you were internally in chaos, but so he was.

“well... you’re the only here right now.” you said nervously. he made a motion, telling you to sit in front of him. you didn’t rush, not wanting to seem desperate.

“how have you been doing?” he asked, looking at his coffee as if moving the spoon again and again was the most interesting thing ever.

“to be honest... could’ve been better. i am studying to get the preschooler teacher title, and i’m living with a friend from my hometown who is studying here in seoul, too. i guess she was more fun before.” you joked a bit, before mumbling, “what about you?” you tried to avoid his eyes once you finished talking.

“i’m still living at the apartment. i’ve produced many songs, and even took up rapping, turns out i am pretty good. but things are weird, because everything’s right, but i’ve been feeling complicated for some time now.” he said. he made himself look at you, before causually saying, “i haven’t dated anyone since you left, by the way.” changbin hoped you either did.

“me neither, i’m really busy studying and working to meet new people. also, i didn’t feel like doing it.” you said. he didn’t say anything for the next minutes, he just drank his coffee, and you stared at him.

“i’m sorry i made you feel unloved.” he stated, once he finished the hot drink. he surprised himself, looking for your eyes.

“changbin... i think we both did. and it’s understandable because we were both so busy and stressed. i mean, it did hurt, but i could never blame it just on you for being unhappy.” you said, with your heart on your hands. he was clearly collecting his thoughts, until he left out a soft laugh.

“if you think about it, maybe fate wanted us to meet here, don’t you think? what i mean is... if it’s okay for you, we could try to be friends again... i miss you.” your heart fluttered at his words, but you didn’t let it show.

“i guess we can try to be friends again, but i don’t want to rush.” you said. nonetheless, your heart wanted to be home with him again, while your rational part just didn’t want to go through letting go of him again. you smiled softly, ignoring your thoughts. “i missed you too, changbin.”

since that evening at the café, you two officially came to terms with each other, and ineither of you spelt that night out of excitement. he kept his words, and didn’t make any moves on you, just let things flow. it was kinda painful for him, to see you eventually more often, but not being able to kiss you, or to hug you – unless you did it first or he really needed to.

months went by, and you two became really close again, and although it felt different – a good type of different – from when you two started dating, you couldn’t help but fall even harder for him, wondering why did you ever let go of him. when you two started talking, you thought it would help you get over him, but it obviously had the opposite effect.

for changbin, even if he said he was happy to be friends with you again, he eventually let his feelings become obvious. he knew you knew, but he didn’t really mind it, because you were too good to leave him hanging from a string, so you would tell him if you weren’t feeling something too. he just didn’t want to pressure you, even if he half jokingly reminded you from time to time that you could sleep at his (and formerly yours) place; but it just didn’t felt right for you – after all, you used to live there with him and you were already confused enough.

half a year had passed, when you found yourself in his couch, almost cuddling him, watching a boring program you weren’t even watching. it was getting late, you usually left his place by the time, but that night, it felt so wrong to do it. you’ve contained yourself way too many times, but that night you just didn’t want to. you wanted to let things flow, and whatever it should happen, it would.

“it’s getting late, do you want me to walk you home?” he offered, looking at you. you stared at him, wondering if you should tell him your thoughts.

“changbin.” you said, doubting a last time.

“hmm?” he looked at you lovingly, while his deep voice let you know that he would be there for you, whatever you had to say. you then became confident on your decision.

“can i sleep over? is that okay for you.” you said, and his eyes suddenly widened.

“wait, are you for real?” he asked.

“i wouldn’t joke about it.” you answered.

“but... you are aware of my feelings for you, aren’t you? i’m not sure if i... will be able to restrain myself if we spend the night together, y/n.” he said. he felt ashamed to speak up about his feelings, even if you already knew.

“changbin, i’m not a little girl anymore. i am very conscious of your feelings, so just... don’t. you don’t have to restrain yourself.” he looked at you, getting closer. was this finally happening?

“y/n, before i do... i need to let you know. i love a lot, i don’t think i’ve ever stopped. i hated myself when i lost you, and i stopped when i found you again. if i focus on any part of you, your hands, your lips, your legs... i remember what i was to feel them against my skin and want to feel them again. but more than that, i ask myself how can love them all. so, if you are sure about this, ask me to kiss you and i will, but if you’re not, don’t do this. because i don’t know if i’ll ever love again.” he said, centimeters from your face, holding it with his hands, while you were now holding his heart.

“i’m afraid to hurt you so bad again you don’t love again, but you know i’ve always been selfish, and i’m even more afraid of you not loving me anymore. it’s crazy, how i can keep falling for you again and again. we are too young to love like this, but i would never regret it, just don’t ever let me down. so if you are willing not to do it, please... kiss me, changbin.”

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haich-slash-cee · 4 years

Text

Is the print publishing world picking up online/fandom terms? How they are using them? How do we feel about this?

So this is... attention-getting, for folks who like to follow publishing and meta stuff.

https://twitter.com/sapphicxrey/status/1215065948677443584

https://twitter.com/TorDotComPub/status/1233391556750647299

(2nd tweet -- TW, mentions of non-con)

Are we seeing the beginnings of book publishers directly borrowing from online/fandom culture in promoting their books? How do we feel about these examples?

More below cut.

Exhibit #1: screenshots of Bonds of Brass promo from Jan 8 2020. (Which is probably going to have reactions of “haha, cute” at most.)

Transcript of blurb:

“If you like...

forbidden romances, “there’s only one bed”, cityships, weaponized umbrellas, powersuits, secret princes, best friends, best friends PINING, fake dating between PINING best friends, tactical streaking, the minivan of starships, cigar-chomping cyborg ladies, scary empress moms, galactic-level bisexual disasters, LEGACY (WHAT IS A LEGACY?), rooftop hopping, golden trios, rumblin’ drums, bootleg fireworks, BIG SPACE BATTLES PEW PEW, a surprisingly functional public transit system, mob trouble, one hell of a pilot, the inherent DRAMA of empire, a nice interlude in a river, smoking a joint that’s been on the floor, sick stunts, slick grifts, hiding in a dumpster, or any combination of the above,

Then you might like

BONDS OF BRASS”

The Twitter responses seem to be generally enthusiastic. (And also, “FinnPoe! FinnPoe!”)

Personally, I’m intrigued from a meta-view of “oh so that’s definitely pulling from online world and fanfiction world, interesting. I wonder how much fanfiction culture is starting to influence print book culture and promotion.” Maybe I’ve got some questions like, “Ok so moneymaking companies such as Penguin are now using culture developed by the not-moneymaking-world of fanfiction? How do we feel about this?” Anyway, the book looks cute, I’m interested enough and I might get it from the library.

I suspect many people’s reactions are along the lines of “hm, interesting”, “sounds like a lark”, or “haha they’re using AO3 tags as promo”, etc.

Exhibit #2, screenshots of DOCILE promo, from Feb 28 2020 (today is March 1 2020), and screenshots of Twitter responses so far:

(*CW, non-con discussion)

Tweet transcript:

“DOCILE by @KMSzpara:

-Dubcon/Noncon

-Dramatic Trillionaire Content

-BDSM and then some more BDSM and then a lot more BDSM

-Hurt/comfort and hurt/no comfort

-Cinnamon roll of steel

-The most scandalous kink: love

-Courtroom, bedroom, & Preakness drama

[Tor book website link]”

So this is getting mixed reactions on Twitter. All dozen or so reactions, so far. Here’s text transcripts and bio info from repliers, below. I’m being a little obsessive, mostly to show that there’s a mix of queer, book-ish people in the replies (including the author).)

Noncon is nonconsentual sex, rape. Even in fandom it's a content tag, not a promotional term. I can't imagine being a rape survivor and seeing this come across my TL. -- @WriteSomeGood [queer rainbow] [Cis queer homemaker, aspiring author, maker of incredible cinnamon buns. She/her] [has a Tumblr page]

I’m not a survivor but it was an instant “no thank you” from me. And I was sincerely looking forward to this prior to. This is the most immediately off-putting marketing push I’ve seen for a book in a long damn time. -- @AGAWilmot [Author, editor, artist. Co-EIC of @anathemaspec. @SFU alum. The Death Scene Artist/W&W 2018. Ace/enby. They/them. Horror is my comfort food.]

Whichever intern wrote this tweet, deserves a full time job. With benefits. -- @simeontsanev [Aspiring writer, post-aspiring musician, and overall geek He/Him /[queer rainbow]/ To the world we dream about, and the one we live in now! http://simeontsanev.com]

Idk why everyone thinks it’s always an intern writing copy and not a team comprised of extremely skilled social media experts, editors, publicists and marketers, and their assistants I worked on those tags with my editor and a good friend!! -- @KMSzpara [Kellan. [queer rainbow] Speculative fiction writer. Queer agenda. Hugo & Nebula finalist. DOCILE 3/3/20 from Tor Dot Com Publishing. He/him. Rep @suddenlyjen] *The author, bio page and twitter page.

this is CUTE! -- @MSSciarappa [queer rainbow] I do books. he/him.

I am Extremely Ready for this content thank u -- @JessicaBCooper [Journo ☽ Writer of faerie, villain fuckery & cruel desires ☽ Lestat & Loki's love child ☽ Aleksander Morozova's side-hoe ☽ Rep'd by Kate Testerman @ktliterary]

I’m listening -- @MerynLobb [Government worker. Weightlifter. Nihilist. Aspiring cult leader. Avid user of words, often bad ones. #AMM R6 Mentee. she/her]

Soon! Soon!! -- @castrophony [Geek. Gamer. Cosplayer. Bibliophile. Scientist. She/Her.]

[happy reaction gif] -- @TorDotComPub [Providing a home for writers to tell SFF stories in exactly the number of words they choose. All our titles are available globally in print and DRM-free ebook.]

[throwing stuff in dumpster, unhappy reaction gif] -- @cursedgravy [name's xavi, im a transman and i like to daydream about making content]

For more context, here’s the blurb from the author website. Below is the blurb from the publisher’s site:

“Docile

K.M. Szpara

K. M. Szpara's Docile is a science fiction parable about love and sex, wealth and debt, abuse and power, a challenging tour de force that at turns seduces and startles.

There is no consent under capitalism.

To be a Docile is to be kept, body and soul, for the uses of the owner of your contract. To be a Docile is to forget, to disappear, to hide inside your body from the horrors of your service. To be a Docile is to sell yourself to pay your parents' debts and buy your children's future.

Elisha Wilder’s family has been ruined by debt, handed down to them from previous generations. His mother never recovered from the Dociline she took during her term as a Docile, so when Elisha decides to try and erase the family’s debt himself, he swears he will never take the drug that took his mother from him.

Too bad his contract has been purchased by Alexander Bishop III, whose ultra-rich family is the brains (and money) behind Dociline and the entire Office of Debt Resolution. When Elisha refuses Dociline, Alex refuses to believe that his family’s crowning achievement could have any negative side effects—and is determined to turn Elisha into the perfect Docile without it.

Content warning: Docile contains forthright depictions and discussions of rape and sexual abuse.”

So that’s a lot of info and reactions.

Personally: at first glance, I absently skimmed the tweet and “hurt/comfort” popped out, and I was like “What? Mainstream publishing is cool with this now? I was wondering if ‘hurt/comfort’ would one day become commonly used in publishing [related post]. But this is way sooner than I thought.” And then I read the rest of of the tweet and thought, “Wait, what?”

And then I started reading through the tweet replies and thought, “OK, at the risk of getting a bunch of Tumblr drama, I want to bring this to the whump community and see how people feel."

As for myself, one of my squicks is non-con, and I’m not really interested in hurt/no comfort. So just from the tweet, I know the book is not for me. The official blurbs confirmed that. In this sense, this is like skimming Ao3 tags on a fic and saying “pass” on a story.

However, I have questions about the specific promotion of the book. So the official blurbs are pretty standard. What about that tweet, which Tor (and the author, who helped put it together) put out? Because I think an official publisher’s Tweet comes with different context than Ao3 tags.

First, the different internet spaces. You can filter tags on Ao3 and Tumblr. I know you can mute words on Twitter, but is that the same thing? Also, would people be expecting these tags on Twitter? Compared to Ao3 or Tumblr or Tumblr Whump spaces?

Within the Tumblr Whump community, from what I’ve browsed, the community attitude (guidelines?) seem to be “Write and discuss what you want. Be sure to tag it, use content warnings, or otherwise clearly communicate if you have things that may be triggering. Respect people’s squicks/triggers. Walk away from what you don’t like.” Like, tumblr whump has a very specific culture of trying to balance discourse/stories about potentially very dark stuff, but also wanting to make sure the IRL people and Tumblr users are okay. There’s always posts going around about how to do this, are we doing this in the right way, ethics, so on. Also -- and people can correct me -- the whump tumblr space might be where tags are content warnings for people to stay away, and also what people might actively look for. So if any space is going to discuss if this promotional tweet checks out, I feel like it’s this space.

Also, to note again, Tor Tweets are in the money-official-publisher-world, not unpaid-tumblr-people or unpaid-fanfiction-fandom-world.

Maybe I just want to ask, “Hey those first two tweet responses, does they have a point? Tor using ‘noncon’ as official promotion? On Twitter?” I mean, I’ve previously written, “The CW and TW tags that Ao3 writers use, I really wish those were used with published books as well.” But somehow, the Tor tweet was not quite what I was expecting. Maybe for reasons similar to that first tweet response. (I guess one could debate if a tweet is really promotion or just information... you know what someone can correct me, but I’m gonna say that a Tor.com tweet is promotion, compared to information like Ao3, and that tweet was there for promotion.)

Those tags operate within specific Ao3 and Tumblr cultures and infrastructure. I don’t hang around Twitter for whump stuff, IDK what the culture is. Anyway, does dropping these tags into a promotional tweet from Tor.... translate?

The tweet is evidently gathering the people who are there for it, and the people who aren’t there for it are quickly realizing that they are not there for it. But personally, the Tor website blurb does a better job at that, using writing that I’d expect from a publisher for communicating fictional non-con situations. (Maybe the blurb content warnings are what I wanted more of, when I said I wished for CW and TW in books.)

Anyway, there’s no huge drama about that Docile book promo on Twitter, as far as I can tell. So this is a niche thing, right now. But. The promo for Bonds of Brass and for Docile might be the beginnings of a trend of well-known book publishers borrowing from online writing / fandom culture and terminology in order to promote or categorize their books. These two promos might set a precedent or have other significance.

So if anyone has discourse on the tweets or potential future trends...

#meta #discourse #publishing #bonds of brass #Docile #publishers #future trends #maybe #non-con #trigger warnings #content warnings #fanfiction #ao3 #tumblr #whump #hurt/comfort #hurt/no comfort #books

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many-gay-magpies · 4 years

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Smh i should really stop talking to my mom about anxiety/mental stuff because every time it only makes me feel worse

I love my mom a lot but like . sometimes there are just things that get on my nerves even though i love her. I kinda feel bad because like she tries so hard to understand and says she understands and I know she DOES to a degree so I feel bad for lowkey thinking like the whiny teenager all like "yOu DoN't UnDeRsTaNd Me" sometimes, y'know? Like the bottom line is our brains just work really really differently a lot of the time and she either wants to believe or genuinely believes that they dont

Every time I talk to her about my (non-clinical, probably) anxiety and what caused it (this girl bullying me for six years) she goes on to mention all the ways she was bullied as a kid and all the terrible shit she's gone through to say in the end "so I understand" when like all of that shit is way different from my experience so every time she says it inside I'm just like "yes but actually no"

Like, today i was talking about my bully to her and how I've started realizing that all my responses now are responses i was forced to give as a kid because of the situation i was in with my bully, and she went in depth and told me (all stuff she had already told me about before and also when i had been talking about my anxiety stuffs before) about how her mom forced her to sleep in curlers so she would have banana curls and made her wear dresses and how she got mugged really bad when she was older and all this stuff that is very valid trauma and sucks ass and i thank her for trying to understand me but at the same time all the shit that happened to her was surface level. Neither of us could control what was happening to us, because her mom made her dress like that and I couldn't just make this girl suddenly not have issues, but like a dress is still something you can change??? Take off??? Like it isnt attatched to you as a person. I cant change the fact that i exist, which this girl bullying me apparently hated me for. To her my existence was just like "oh i must hurt this person" not because of what i wore, what i looked like, etc etc.

She also kept subtly bringing up the fact that i had never been PHYSICALLY hurt by my bully and implying that because she HAD her pain was worse and i could have had it worse if my bully physically hurt me and ACTED on the threats to hurt me (which my mom's bullies did) and while yes that was true . My bully didn't threaten to physically hurt me at all so there were no threats TO act on she just talked to me like i was shit all the time and beat my self esteem about my personality into a meaningless pulp . I kind of wanted to scream in my moms face "YOUR PAIN WAS MOSTLY PHYSICAL WHILE MINE WAS EMOTIONAL, BOTH ARE VALID AND DIFFERENT" but i know she does know that-- but maybe it would have gotten the point across idk

I wish so badly that i could just tell my mom "I dont want/need you to understand, i just need you to be here" and like i could but . I'm not there yet

(Warning ahead, I'm sorry if this gets really long but like I wanna get it off my chest before i go to sleep bcs i feel like ill sleep better if i do)

Another thing that annoys me is that??? Every time??? I say something??? Or tell her how I'm feeling at the moment??? She just asks me??? "Why?"??? And yes its good to talk about stuff but I'm trying to explain to you in a polite way why i want to leave the conversation and that its making me uncomfortable and i just want to go to bed and you just go "but why are you uncomfortable?" Or like if i tell her I'm upset and i want to stop talking about it she goes "why are you upset? I dont want you to be upset" and I'm just. I literally just said i dont want to talk about this anymore can i please leave you cant control that I'm upset about this because continuing talking to you is just going to make me more upset because no matter what way i try to explain it i cant get my points across right to you and i dont want to say you dont understand bcs thats immature but you kind of dont understand

I want to tell her "This conversation isnt having the outcome i wanted it to have and i want to leave it before it makes me more upset so that i can go think on it for later" but I'm sure if i do. that shed just go "but WHY arent you happy with the conversation tell me so i can fix it" and if i tell her blatantly what is making me unhappy (the fact that she keeps saying she understands and pouring stories of her traumas onto me to "prove" that she understands) then she's going to guilt trip me when were talking in the future by emphasizing the fact that i dont like when she talks a certain way and be all like "oh i wont tell you about my OWN experiences though because you said you don't LIKE when I DO that" and i just hhhhhh

Like every time i tell her she doesnt understand and try to explain it in a way that she WILL and it'll finally click it just. Doesn't and it makes me feel so defeated because every time i do that she just circles back around to "well i experienced all these types of trauma so i totally understand" and i appreciate the effort but that just isnt the kind of support i needed to make me feel content

And also when i was talking to her tonight i told her about a specific instance that happened in like 1rst or 4th grade where I was crying because the girl bullying me was just in one of those. Bad Moods™ where like she hated me for existing and talked to me like i was a piece of trash she had stepped in or smth and then she and a couple other kids asked me WHY I WAS CRYING and I didn't want to tell her "hey I'm crying because you keep hurting me and i dont want you to" because if i said that she would just hurt me MORE so i made up a lie on the spot and said that my parents had a small argument (I'm a sensitive kid and will cry at the barest hint of conflict between my parents so it checked out) and i was crying because of it and . Out of that ENTIRE STORY the one thing my mom zeroed in on was the fact that i told a lie that "painted my parents in a bad light"

Just. Like. Yeah. It did. But I wasn't even thinking about that at the moment?? Like it didn't even cross my mind??? The only thing i was thinking about was that i was scared and in danger and i probably would have said anything to get OUT of that danger (as fake or ill-perceived it might have been). But no, even later on after i had explained that in basically those exact words she still went back around to say "oh if it was bad enough that you told a lie about your parents to get out of it then she REALLY fucked you up"

Which??? By the way??? Is a whole other reason why i try not to talk to my mom about this shit??? Because every time i open up about it and want to have a conversation in a more logical/organized/"well here's the situation and here's what we can do about it" kind of way she always turns it around and says stuff like "damn [REDACTED] really fucked you up didn't she" and "I didn't know it was that bad"/"I didn't know it effected you that bad, you should have said something!" which. Makes me Feel Bad™, for some reason way more than my dad excitedly talking about reptile and monkey brains and how stuff that happened to us in the past is engrained into our brain and still effects us now, like instinct

She also always turns all of my stuff talking about emotions into "oh you're just a teenager" "you're pms'ing" "you'll grow out of it later"

Like one time i told her that her mind was always in the past or the future, always worrying about the past or the future, never in the present, in response to her worrying a bunch about something and how i had my mind in the present more often and her response was something along the lines of "well you're like that because you're young and a teenager, you CAN stay thinking in the present because you dont have all that stuff to worry about like an adult does, I'm an adult and i work a bunch so i constantly have stuff to worry about" and like. Yeah theres some solidity to that. But also i literally talked about that exact thing with my dad and HE said her brain was always in the past/future and never the present so I'm pretty sure its not just a teen vs adult thing

And then towards the end of this whole thing when i had finally managed to tell her "hey I'm uncomfortable in this conversation can i please leave and go to bed" and even further explained that it was because i went into this wanting to have a more casual/logic-based talk rather than an emotional discussion and . she's kind of of the mind that "why did you bring it up if you didn't want to have a deep emotional discussion about it" and I'm just HHHNNNNGGGG but also i actually DIDNT mention it, first i was mentioning how id been having sensory overload lately and how certain sounds of words hurt and then she said i should have a doctor check that out and then i said "I've been reading up on anxiety and sensory overload is a part of that so i figured that's just what it was" (bcs my dad gets sensory overload a lot too) which then ensued a ten-minute conversation about how i probably dont have clinical anxiety because mine isnt as bad as/like all the many, many people my mom has known who DO have it (throughout which i kept trying to tell her "just social anxiety exists too tho" to which she would respond "yea but u dont have these symptoms of general anxiety so i dont think u have it" and while i hope and think i dont i was just like HHHHHHH because i mean social anxiety and by social anxiety I DO NOT MEAN GENERAL ANXIETY YOU CAN HAVE SOCIAL ANXIETY WITHOUT HAVING GENERAL at least i think idk i might be wrong) which i ended by saying "i probably dont have clinical anxiety but i do believe my brain has been wired to react to certain situations based on how i had to react to those situations for six years" which then lead to me talking more about my bully and my mom pretty much siphoning as much emotional vulnerability and opening up out of me as she could

And then at the end i told her "can i please leave i kind of feel like crying and i dont want to do it in front of a person at the moment" (because I haven't cried in a few months and i feel like I'm in need of a good cry tbh which in itself is something she doesnt really understand) which lead her to go "why do you feel like crying now I'm worried for you" and HHHHHHEBDJBEHNDEJHBDNEHDBEH yeah--

There's probably more i could say but I'm not going to, because its almost 1 am and while i had actually been about to sleep early at like ten she ended up roping me into an hour or two long talk about emotions, which is. Fun. And i have to get up in six hours so I'm going to go to bed. Sorry if this was a mess which I'm sure it is, i really just needed to get this out there lol

Also when i went to my dad after this to say goodnight (i actually like talking to my dad abt this stuff a lot since his brain and mine are just really similar) he gave me this lil smile and just said "deep breaths" and that made me feel better

#magpie thoughts #and at the end she started doing that thing where she acts silly to try and make me happy and not feel like crying which is a good sentiment #but like i WANTED to cry tonight and now im not in the mood anymore #magpie rants

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damienthepious · 4 years

Note

also. also because. i am a gremlin. and i shall die of Emotions and take you with me apparently. ["From yourself?" Amaryllis says, her brow furrowed with worry. "Look, I- I know this is uncomfortable, Arum, but- but I know that you've tried to get Damien to- to-"] to ["If you had managed to convince Damien to do it, it'd be cruel, first of all. He doesn't deserve that kind of guilt weighing on him. And second, again, you would be dead, Arum.] please thank i am lov u

[Pick a short passage from any fanfic I’ve written and send it to me, and I’ll give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet]

you’re not a gremlin you are valid and i love you. that is a LONG PASSAGE THO, so BUCKLE UP. Also cw for discussion of depression, suicide, and suicidal thoughts below the cut. fun times with soft fic! or somethingggg

fun fact before we begin! Originally, this conversation was supposed to happen... before the i-love-you confessions. This was supposed to be broken down before they admitted that they cared for each other romantically, but i was having a shitton of trouble working out the trajectory and the ending of the scene, like, what the actual resolution was, and I couldn’t figure out how to make it work in time when all the other stuff in the chapter was good to go. And THEN it was supposed to happen right after the i-love-yous, but that felt SO busy and SO sloppy, so it kept getting shifted backward-

which wound up being kind of a blessing, i think? because here’s the thing- this scene is TENSE, here, and Rilla pushes pretty hard- but the older version was... kind of a FIGHT. Arum was much more aggressive about it, and there was a line in there for a long time- something like You will be gone this time tomorrow ANYWAY, Amaryllis. What does it matter? And then Rilla had this fucking heartbreaking- Missing you and MOURNING you are not the SAME THING, are you even LISTENING to yourself? and there was just... a lot more harshness to the whole thing. I’m glad it got to settle out, and I’m glad they were in a place to be softer with each other for this. It was too important to me that they addressed this, and i didn’t want it to get waysided.

obviously depression and suicidality aren’t things that have easy fixes, and love is not a Cure for mental illness, but i wanted it to be clear that a) rilla and damien are aware of arum’s non-physical hurts and care about them, too, and b) they are an expansion of Arum’s support network, which is SUPER important when coping with mental illness!

The Keep did the best it could, I think, but when it was just the two of them it was harder for the Keep to know what to do when Arum was deep in a depressive episode, and... well, they have a mental link, right? so I kind of assumed... they might share at least shades of this as well. Arum’s depression gets bad, the Keep is probably not having a good time just then either. Harder to take care of each other while you don’t even know how to take care of yourself. But! the initial point! expanding their collective support system is SO important to learning how to better cope with Arum’s mental illness, which has been running him pretty ragged while his physical injuries had him in traction.

Anyway. ANYWAY. the actual section you requested.

["From yourself?" Amaryllis says, her brow furrowed with worry. "Look, I- I know this is uncomfortable, Arum, but- but I know that you've tried to get Damien to- to-"] The reason why Rilla is leading this conversation is partially because Damien hasn’t fully discussed this with her, mostly out of a concern for... like... not betraying Arum’s trust? What happened between Damien and Arum was between them, and Damien wasn’t comfortable outright blurting that to Rilla. This was one of the ones that doesn’t get told. Not directly at least. Another reason why Damien takes a verbal backseat here is that... well.. he’s already said his piece to Arum on this front. The waters brought you here to live is a pretty definitive statement, yeah?

["What? Wh-what did you tell her?" Arum says, turning towards Damien, and he means to snap but his tone sounds more hurt than furious. Damien only sits, his hands clasped in his lap, his lips pressed tight together. "What did you say, knight?"] And, clearly, Damien’s instincts on that front were right. Arum is mortified by the idea that Damien would have aired his (as Arum thinks of it) weakness, and hopelessness. He’s hurt, that Damien might tell on him when it doesn’t matter because it didn’t happen, and he doesn’t feel that way now so clearly it doesn’t matter-

["He didn't tell me anything, Arum." She shakes her head, angling her body a bit more between them, leaning closer.] Rilla knows him too well by now. Tries to head off that hurt/anger and get them on track.

["Nothing specific, at least, but I'm not stupid. I heard you goading him plenty of times, and he said you told him about your- your work before we left, and he said that if he killed you then, it wouldn't have been a slaying and really there's only one way to interpret that evidence-" she pauses, cringes, bites her lip. "You tried to get Damien to kill you."] “it wouldn’t have been a slaying” was always a particular... phrasing that hurt me, i guess you could say.

[Arum freezes, his mouth going dry.] Arum does not like being confronted with his own weaknesses, as he sees them. He especially doesn’t want Amaryllis of all people to know about this- bad enough that Damien had to know.

["I don't know if it was because of guilt or- or depression or panic about the trip or what, but- but I already told you, Arum. I didn't put in all this hard work just for you to die. Just for you to throw all of it away-"] It was, in all honestly, a combination of these factors. Which is part of why Arum continues to panic. he’s still not really used to being seen, especially not in such a vulnerable way.

["I am home, Amaryllis," he manages in a whisper. "You brought me home. There will certainly be no reason for me to- to endanger myself now."] When you’re suicidal, it’s kind of hard to imagine what it’s like to not be suicidal. When you’re out of one of those valleys, it’s kind of hard to remember how deep they can feel. he doesn’t want to think about it. he’s happy right now. he has more than he could have ever dreamed possible, so it’s really hard for him to conceptualize that moment, right now. It’s hard, and it hurts.

["No?" she says weakly. "There wasn't any reason for you to try to goad Damien into killing you back in the hut, either, Arum, but you did it anyway."] no reasons that make sense outside of Depression Brain, at least.

["I-" Arum glances away again, his hand flexing, but she reaches out and takes one of his hands, squeezing tight. His eyes flick to Sir Damien, sitting quiet though his worried eyes are fixed on the pair of them. "I- that was- different-"] He has SUCH a hard time articulating this. Combine that with the fact that he really HATES talking about it. Lizard is having a panic.

["Different how, Arum?"] Rilla is pushing really hard, here, for good reason. She’s terrified that he might pull something after they leave. she hasn’t been away from him barely at ALL in MONTHS, and now she knows he’s suicidal, which is compounding the terror she already has about leaving him. She wants to protect him, from other monsters, from knights, from himself if she needs to. She loves him and she wants him to be safe and happy and if she needs to gently bully him through an uncomfortable conversation then by the fucking saints-

["I did not want you to endanger yourself for me, Amaryllis," he hisses, turning towards her with his tail thrashing. "You- you make the world less cruel, by your actions, your choices, your existence. The both of you. You try, if nothing else, and for you to leap to action and danger for my sake is- was-"] And he breaks. That was the real kicker of it, y’know? She found out that he needed to go home for his Keep and she buckled down, for him, after he had just been confronted with evidence of his former work and the ways it had directly harmed a human he loves. How could he possibly feel like he deserved that sort of care, that sort of consideration? How could he allow her to risk her own safety to get him home? He failed the Keep, he failed her, he failed himself-

in that moment, he was utterly certain that it was better for him to simply set them ALL back in their places. Amaryllis might be unhappy that he was gone, but it would be precisely the same hurt that she would have when she left him at home anyway, wouldn’t it? (pro-tip: No It Wouldn’t) Damien would simply return to being the knight he was always meant to be, and the Keep could grow a new familiar, unburdened by his distant, useless weight (pro-tip: No They Wouldn’t). And there would be no more risk to any of them for his sake.

[She stares up into his eyes, her hand clasped tight around his wrist, and he clenches his teeth and pretends that his throat is not aching.] It is so hard to explain this to her. Especially while he is... currently fairly distant from the feeling. He’s keyed up, emotionally, because of his renewed proximity to the keep, and because of the giddiness of newly-admitted love. Literally everything feels like A Lot, right now. but this? next level distress.

["If helping me destroyed you, it would be the worst of cruelties I have inflicted upon this world. And I, Amaryllis, have inflicted more than my share of cruelties already."] ouch. I feel like i’ve already unpacked this so just. ouch.

["So you try to take yourself out of the picture instead? Arum-"] She’s horrified. She understands the particularities of Damien’s anxiety by now, how bad that can get, but Arum’s been pretty internal with his own mental health stuff and whatever hints she’s been catching have been somewhat obscured as possibly just... responses to the physical trauma? Him being actively suicidal when he was basically out of the woods physically is... hard for her to cope with.

["The little knight did not bite when provoked regardless, so I hardly see how it matters," Arum growls, and in his periphery he sees Damien flinch, his head ducking.] oh poor Damien. Thinking about how close he actually did come, to ‘biting’

[Amaryllis' grip on his wrist tightens. "You do know that's not comforting, right?] It’s really not. Putting the onus on Damien like that- god, fuck. [It matters because I- because we love you, and because if you die, Arum, you'll be dead. Even if you were trying to protect us in some roundabout way-"] back when this scene was placed before the i-love-yous, that line was “It matters because I- because I care about you,” for... obvious reasons. Rilla, unsurprisingly, is about as bad as Damien is, at hiding her feelings once she admits to them the first time.

[Arum flinches, and she pauses, pressing her lips together for a moment as she visibly chooses a different phrasing.] She knows him well enough by now to understand that he’s flinching because saying that it was altruistic to want to protect him... she knows she shouldn’t push against that.

["If you had managed to convince Damien to do it, it'd be cruel, first of all. He doesn't deserve that kind of guilt weighing on him. And second, again, you would be dead, Arum.] It would be cruel. I think about Rilla’s assessment of Damien from Treacherous Heart sometimes, about the potential deadliness of real guilt for Damien... if he really broke in that moment and loosed that arrow- it would have destroyed him. Especially at that point, when he cared about Arum, even if he didn’t have any proper context to fit that care into, and when he knows how much this creature means to Rilla- RILLA’S heartbreak if she had to come back to that- to that? when she thinks she’s coming back to pack him up for home? when she knows that she loves Arum but is forcing herself to ignore it and push it down and away? Arum killing himself by Damien’s hand in that moment would have destroyed all of them, in a way. but! hey, that’s not the kind of fic i write, yeah? oof. I just think about what-if’s a lot and make myself sad.

Rilla’s emphasis on the kind of hyper-obvious here is... deliberate, also. if you died you’d be dead is something of a redundant statement, duh, but also like... the permanent consequences of a temporary state of mind are fucking important, and Rilla needs to make sure that he understands what he nearly did, and why it matters, and why she’s SCARED for him.

anyway this was a whole fuck of a lot. i hope any of this is interesting or enjoyable and not just. heavy. whoops.

#elle's fanfic meta #scattered meta #suicidal ideation cw #suicide discussion #depression cw #i dont' know if i need more tags argh #shorter-than-her-tbr-pile #asks

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beabaseball · 4 years

Text

this is a delirious 11pm post for Adults Only guys

Leave this space, child!

...

...y’all teenagers are going to be tweaked out of their goddamn minds.

Like, not necessarily in the drugged way, though some maybe yes in the drugged way, but like. Specifically in the non-drug way, they’re going to be snippy, and inattentive, and self centered. And that’s probably fine.

Like. Of course teens are self-centered, their bodies are doing weird shit for the first time and people keep making jokes they don’t understand yet, and some of these fuckers haven’t been given sex ed so they don’t even know what’s coming.

The younger teens have just emerged from the child form that has only just started being able to comprehend a larger world. In elementary school, sure I was reading time magazine for kids and we prayed for people who were being reported (religious school; recent tsunami, it happens) and when I was in 1st or 2nd grade we heard rumors that once upon a time women weren’t allowed to do the same stuff as men, but like— you can feel those things, but it’s not really something that you comprehend unless it’s right then a part of your life. I remember the first time I really ‘got’ sexism was in ninth grade in a gym class of 24 boys to 3 + me girls, and I wrote bad poetry about it in my phone for like three months trying to process it.

When I was like 16 our car broke down midway to school and we had to call my dorm parent to come drive me the next 5 mins, and so he’s in a bad mood bc he has to pick me up, and mom is in a bad mood bc car she gets a feeling dorm parent didn’t believe her when she said the car broke down, and it’s like 80 out but more importantly the humidity is a swamp, and I just remember being in his car driving the rest of the way to school and he’s complaining about sunburns bc he’s super pale and Irish, but he’s trying to talk so I kind of say “huh well i’ve never gotten a sunburn. I tan real fast and then go inside and I’m white again.”

and even in the moment I remember being like “that’s not really what he wanted to hear” and I think he even made a face, but I was too out of it and hot and tired to really do anything passed that. And I do feel kind of bad about it? Like, I did not mean to demean his pain of sunburns and I know also that at the time he was having A Rough Time with his marriage, to the point where he had us doing religious plays about parenthood for three seasons straight.

But also, I was a teenager. And looking back I can’t exactly blame my past self for just kinda... saying some words and feeling bad the rest of the car ride but also too tired to care. Theater teacher man wasn’t a bad guy; we were definitely not good at reading each other and he thought musicals sucked, but he also was the one who comforted me out of a panic attack when we had a tornado warning and I ended up convinced my daystudent friend was going to die.

Because that’s what I cared about at the time. Me-related things. Yes, tornado, but I am worried about one (1) person, and that mattered to me. I stayed behind when we got an actual sex-ed person in 7th grade because I was scared that reading yaoi would send me to hell. I had a breakdown in front of my history professor because one of my friends was discovering her gender identity and I was scared I was ‘losing her’ (you know the words!)

Now, someone comes out to me or someone doesn’t understand a term and I’m over here like “yea which definition u wanna use” but back then I was a kid and I had never experienced anything like this before, my hormones were wild—which didn’t mean I was horny and wanted boyfriend, it meant I was in constant fear of bleeding through things and every now and then I would wake up and my body would be in surprise unknowable pain (aka I was finally big enough to cut off my own circulation in my sleep and also growing pains)

Now, I’ve got a lot of that under control. When I wake up with a body in pain I usually know why and probably it is my fault actually. I know a bit better how to get through days when I’m too hot, or too groggy, or just dissociation or mad. (The trick is: say aloud, “sorry if I’m not responding much, I’m just really hot/groggy/out of it/still upset about that.” )

That’s not something a lot of teens have down yet. I saw a kid with a naruto shirt on at work once and I said “hey naruto” and he looked at me like he’d seen the face of god, he was so surprised someone knew what naruto was. To someone even MILDLY in my age range, the idea of not knowing who Naruto is is preposterous. But this was like, 12-15 year old at the most. Not hit his growth spurt yet. Just absolutely blindsided that there was an outside world which recognized something he liked, which I’m gonna wildly guess his parents probably aren’t into or don’t talk about it with him, because the thought of talking Naruto with your kid is horrifying.

Obviously, thinking other people don’t know about naruto is a similar kind of self-centered thought along the lines of “I bet thigh chick isn’t a REAL fan of x” or “EVERYONE has an opinion on me and there is no in between” where like the world... sort of revolves around you.

And like, once that person grows up if they keep that sort of self-focus, that’s usually the time you start trying to ditch them, but even older teens are still just coming out of that larval childhood state. They know a lot more about the world than we probably did at their age—I know a lot of them aren’t having the same existential crisis over their friends’ gender like I did, which is a big ol step— but there are still days that it’s going to be too much new shit to deal with, plus whatever else is happening inside them personally. And it’ll take a while to learn how to handle that.

In the meantime, they might be snappish, or out of it, or just kind of give up and have a ‘fuck it’ attitude sometimes, and it drives a lot of adults just goddamn insane it seems, according to all the mildly aggressive parents at work, trying to get kids who don’t want to be there to give the right reactions. It’s probably not even anything personal to the event that’s making them unhappy. One time I talked to a kid who was crying, and when I got her to tell me what was bothering her, it turned out that some people on her family reunion were mean to her. Nothing about the immediate ‘now’, just a lot of emotion that needed to go somewhere, and that somewhere ended up being crying, and it was not at all about respect or disrespect or anything related to us. Probably most of what was needed was to talk about it (success) and take a long nap.

The first time I remember having a meltdown with a ‘trigger’ like that, I was in 5th grade and my first assignment was something like “what did you do over summer” so I lost my entire shit and cried on the couch for an hour. Passed out, slept til 7, woke up and was fed soup, and have no idea if I finished that paper but presumably I did because I remember a nap and food working.

I would keep having these homework meltdowns periodically, and I don’t know when they stopped, but I had at least one, maybe two, in my first year of college.

And eventually I’ve just kinda.... stopped having them. Stress about a big project wasn’t something that bothered me anymore. You just did it one step at a time, and when you started thinking “maybe I’ll do it in the morning”, you immediately go to bed because you’ve already lost the fight and even if you don’t do it in the morning at least you won’t face it sleep deprived.

It takes time and living to get these experiences, and while one kid might not have the same issues with school work I had, maybe something else just knocks them on their ass every time (same) and it is just. Literally something you need to live through a couple times before you know how to deal with it. You can provide Blank Slate Alien Person with all the mental health tips and anecdotal advice and chamomile tea as you want, but the first couple times they face stress, none of those tips help if they don’t know how to implement them.

If you’ve ever assembled something by instructions and ended up building it upside down—it’s easier to build it again once you’ve gotten mad and undone it and started again. Because you’ve practiced. You already had the instructions, but now you have the experience of building it already, even if the result wasn’t the one you wanted.

Teens are learning a) how to read instructions, and b) that their assembly is probably upside down. and in the meantime, the world is also bonkers wild right now.

When they have that moment of rage, or giving up, or aloofness upon finding shit got built upside down— just. Let them.

You don’t have to ‘fix’ it or ‘fix’ them for having these emotions, or lack of them.

These are normal reactions. They make sense. All I’m asking is that we understand it’s going to happen. These emotions are going to happen.

Don’t let yourself justify being mean to kids and teens by telling yourself they’re being disrespectful. The world and their lives and emotions also don’t revolve around you. It’s not always a rebellion or reason to fight when things get too high strung to hold total control of.

That doesn’t mean ignore them. I was maybe 12 or 13, and it was 90 on a metal ship, and i was wearing an under shirt because i didn’t have a bra, so two layers of clothes on a hot metal ship, on my period— and all I remember is asking my dad to let us sit down and eat some lunch, because i was dizzy and dehydrated, and all he just kept saying we would do it once he saw the tour. I have no idea how long it was but I probably could’ve cried and been called moody or uncooperative.

Life is difficult. Especially for people who aren’t yet in control of their situations. Who are still bursting out with emotions they can’t otherwise articulate.

Be kind to that.

#long post #ramble #teenagers #kids #teens #puberty #puberty Sucks #especially when the world continues to exist around you #beatext #memories

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malereader-inserts · 5 years

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Bloodsport

Fandom: Gotham Pairing: Oswald Cobblepot x Male!Reader Summary: If I fall short, if I break rank It's a bloodsport, but I understand, I am all yours, I am unmanned. I'm on all fours, willingly damned. Word Count: 2,079 Request: “for a Gotham request: finally confessing to Oswald for the first time after working close to him for a while, maybe victor encouraging the reader on to do so because he's watched him swoon over the crimelord for a while.” A?n: I wrote this the night before because I’m not currently drunk af as I post this so enjoyyyyyyy

You sat on the bar stool, your elbows leaning against the bar with the right hand holding a glass of whiskey and the other hand resting against your upper right arm. You stare at the rack of alcoholic beverages against the wall, sitting in the empty Iceberg Club. You sighed as you gently placed your glass down and ran that hand through your hair.

Your hands rested against the bar, you’ve been quiet for the past few days.

Oswald had noticed your sudden standoffish behaviour, truth be told he was getting exhausted with your longing sighs and tired looks. He just couldn’t put a finger what has caused you to feel so moody.

So, somehow, he was not surprised to see you moping around at the bar.

He chuckles to himself, limping his way towards you, carefully trying not to bang his cane against the floor as he silently sits next to you. You give him a side eye before turning to look down at your drink, PIcking up the glass and taking a sip.

“Hello, friend.”

Friend, how much that word had disgraced you. The reason why you’ve been mopy is the fact that you were trying to get rid of your growing crush on your friend. The man you’ve been working with for so long, the man who had promoted you to be is second in command.

Victor teases you, the way you silently admire Oswald in his little outburst and rants. Victor points out your loving eyes and longing stares at Oswald. Your compliments that seem way to invasive but flies over Oswald’s head (truth be told he wasn’t that tall so most of the things you say go over his head.)

You grunted in response, tipping your glass at his direction before gulping down the last of your drink.

“You’re not going to leave now, are you?” Oswald asked, his lips thinning, annoyed that you weren’t responding in the way he wanted.

You cast a glance, you hold it for a moment before flickering back to the neon lights. Sighing, you lean over the bar, grabbing another glass for Oswald and a fresh unopen bottle of whiskey.

He watches you twist the cap and pouring in each glass before placing the bottle between you and Oswald, not one moment you had spoken to him.

The more you try to distance yourself from Oswald, he just kept coming. You were a pathetic idiot pining over him, whilst he sends heart eyes to Ed Nygma you did the same with him.

Truth be told, you loved him. Although he isn’t perfect, as nothing can be, his imperfections don’t detract from how much you love him. In fact, you love him so much that you are willing to wait through anything negative to be able to love him.

Only Victor could see how progressively bad your pining became.

Oswald watches you down another glass and as you were about to tip the bottle for another glass. Oswald grabs your wrist, you looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

“(Y/n),” Oswald’s tone was deep as you stared at him silently.

He had not noticed how your eyes wandered to admire his face, how your face became very hot that Oswald was gripping your wrist. He hadn’t noticed how you got distracted almost immediately.

“You’re going to drink yourself dead.”

“It’s only my fourth glass,” You mumbled as you put down the bottle, “What do you want?”

“Not hostility,” Oswald snaps at you, “What’s got you like this, I can’t even remember when’s the last time you smiled.”

Three weeks ago, Oswald counted the days. He, too, was pining for you. Victor had been scoffing himself into a sore throat as he was witnessing you two pine for each other. Oswald had always valued your opinion, always asked for your input even it was minuscule.

Oswald had been giving you the same longing stares, even tried to confess to his feels for you but you had to dash out in cleaning up a mess in one of the districts before the GCPD caught on. You hadn’t even noticed how Oswald loved walking by your side, he felt safer by you and he loved seeing how much taller you were compared to him.

He was only 5″8 and you were taller, he wondered how he could perfectly fit into your arms, your chin on top of his head as you bring him close to you.

Your love for each other was a bloodsport.

Unknownst to each other how you would endlessly do things for them, how you both would shed blood on Gotham’s ground. You were willing to stain your hands red for him if he asked. He was willing to put a bullet in someone’s head if you just said the word.

Oswald was selfish, he could never love someone - Ed said it himself.

“None of your business,” You grumbled as you refuse to look at him, before getting violently turned around as Oswald grips your shoulder to spin your bar stool to face him.

“You’re being an ass,” Oswald seethes, “Get over whatever, you’re being childish and I don’t need your moodiness effecting me.”

“I’ll try, Oswald,” You sarcastically commented as Oswald tensed his jaw, you had to stop yourself from looking embarrassed.

Suddenly your phone started to buzz, you retrieve it out of your inside pocket and find Victor sending multiple texts.

“Looks like I have a problem to fix,” You hummed sliding off the bar stool, Oswald grips your wrist, “Yes?”

“No, you’re staying here until you tell me what’s got you so moody!”

“I have things to do, Os, don’t you have someone else to entertain you?”

You snatched your wrist away from him, you watched his green eyes harden at your snappy attitude, you could tell you were pushing his buttons if you weren’t you - he would have most likely have murdered you here.

“Don’t make me do something I’d regret.”

“Regret isn’t in your nature.” You retaliate back, your face too close for comfort but Oswald hadn’t had the pleasure to see your face up close and when you leaned back, he wanted to pull you closer.

“Emotions are my weakness, so I’ve been told,” Oswald commented, you shrug as you check your gun and started to make your way out of the club.

“My loyalty is mine.”

Oswald didn’t know what to think when you left him alone, not once in the years you have known each other and worked together had you argued or spat words in a distasteful manner. He knows what you’re capable of and what he was capable of.

Though, he does wonder what is going on in the funny little brain of yours.

“You’ve got it bad, man,” Victor commented as the two of your walk through Gotham with a milkshake in hand, walking back to the club.

Both of your covered in blood after you and Victor angrily took out some of Falcone’s capos that were hiding underground. Victor was busy slurping on his drink as you rolled your eyes.

“I know, that’s why I’m ignoring him until I don’t have to feel anymore.”

“How’s that going for you?”

“Terribly,” You commented, your shoulders deflate, “Once I think I’m over it, he comes back into the room with his stupid little cane and his charming fucking smile. God, have you seen how his eyes light u- You don’t care do you?”

“That is the fifth rant of the week about you gushing over our boss,” Victor informed you, “It’s only Tuesday.”

“Thanks for making me ten times great about myself,” You grumbled, “Might go to a strip joint or a gay bar.”

“Hey, you promised you’d take me to a gay bar, maybe us two good pals go out tonight?” Victor asked, excitedly, bumping shoulders with you as you chuckle whilst you sipped your milkshake.

“I’m not getting drunk with you, V, last time that happened we trashed a GCPD car,” You opened the door to the Iceberg Lounge, it was empty other than the frozen Ed statue.

“Still, it was a great time, didn’t you bed someone that night too?”

You two continued to walk into the back of the Lounge, entering where Oswald had his office and a “staff room” if you could consider that. Most often not, you, Ivy and the two Victors hung around mostly. You send Victor an unhappy look as you meet Ivy sitting with a magazine in her hand and Oswald pacing back and forth in the room. Victor Fries chilling.

“Still, you owe me a night out,” Victor says as you two enter the room, the three occupants looking at you two.

“I’m not taking you to a gay bar tonight,” You rolled your eyes, hoping you don’t meet Oswald’s stare, “Another night.”

Victor looked triumph before patting you on the shoulder, leaning close to your ear to whisper, “Just confess your feelings, you idiot, before I do it for you.”

You scoffed as you stare at Oswald, he stares at you for a moment before promptly ranting. You had missed how his lips trembled with jealousy at how close Victor was to you. You missed how his foot was tapping, impatient with you.

Though amidst in his rant and plotting, he missed how you look vaguely amused, he missed how your eyes sparkled and for once you hadn’t looked so bummed down.

“Aren’t you so clever with your schemes and your plots.”

Oswald’s voice echoed through the empty lounge, you looked up from your laptop at the bar and sighed, you had been avoiding him like clockwork, you knew it would soon catch up with you.

“Schemes and plots are the same thing,” You responded coolly before returning your attention on your laptop.

He slinks himself in the bar stool next to you, “You’ve been avoiding me.”

“Perhaps I am,” You responded, “What will you accuse me this time?”

“Spying on me and my endeavours,” Oswald started to list, “Betraying me, telling others about my plans, you’re avoiding me because of guilt, so if you confess now - I might let you live.”

You looked up from your keyboard, your fingers hovering above them before turning to look at him spinning your stool to turn your whole body to him. Due to this, he was taken aback.

“Loyalty is my weakness, Oswald,” You hummed, “I told you that.”

“I’m starting to wonder if it really is.”

“I’m not avoiding you out of guilt, it’s something else.”

“Well, what is it? It’s affecting our relationship, I can’t lose the man who’s been by my side since I started with Fish.”

You stare at him, conflicted what to say, in your head, it was telling you to make up a story like your family died or you were recently broken up over. But, your heart was telling you to confess, he was right here and he was worried about your state of mind.

Just confess your feelings, you idiot, before I do it for you

Victor’s voice echos in your head, you bit your lip and stare at him. You knew what to do, heart over head.

You sighed, your shoulders deflate, “I...I love you, and not in a brotherly way since we’ve been working together for years but as in I have fallen in love with-”

You were suddenly cut off when you felt his lips pressed against yours. Your eyes widen before promptly shutting your eyes too. Melting at his warmth, melting into the passion in this feverish kiss. How he had gripped your tie to pull you closer. When parting, you slowly open to see his bright eyes shining at you, a small smile creeping up on his lips.

“I-” You breathed out, his hand still gripping against your tie.

“I love you too, silly man,” Oswald breaths out, engulfing the look of shock and storing it for later.

You two sat there in silence before your phone started to buzz. You lean back, and took out your phone, scoffing and throwing it on the table.

“Who is it?” Oswald asked, watching you turn to face him.

“Victor.”

“Oh, what does he want?”

“He wanted to know if I fessed up,” You admitted, leaning closer to him as Oswald chuckles, “I guess I owe dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“Yeah, tonight at seven, we have a lot to catch up with me being moping for the past month.”

#oswald copplepot #oswald cobblepot imagine #oswald cobblepot x male reader #x male reader #gotham #gotham imagine #gotham x male reader

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