#wish i could come up with some thing better

[deadsetobsessions]

Danny always knew tax evasion ran in his veins. His parents hadn’t been the most… morally sound of people, and less so as ecto-scientists.

He just didn’t think their lessons would ever result in a criminal empire that spanned the entire city and then some. Danny hadn’t seen it coming. His parents definitely wouldn’t have.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Wayne. Mr. Fox.”

Danny ‘the Phantom’ Fenton sat down across from a rather tense looking (to Danny’s enhanced senses, anyways) Brucie Wayne and his right hand, Lucius Fox. He smiled pleasantly, matching Brucie’s vacant smile with that touch of Midwest suburban mother smile.

With his acquisition of multiple Gotham companies, his rather newly established Fentom Co. became one of the largest holding companies in Gotham, the first being Wayne Enterprises and the second being Drake Industries. After months of constantly working his butt off while fending off assassins, reforming Gotham’s slums and cleaning up some of the streets, and taking care of his nest of street kids, Danny garnered enough power to even stand close to Wayne Enterprises in terms of financial powers.

The topic of this meeting was, of course, the proposed merger of Wayne Enterprises’ Medical R&D division with Fentom Co.’s pharmaceutical department. Usually, Wayne Enterprises wouldn’t even consider such an offer, as their Medical R&D division was the most well funded and least likely to be part of a Rogue’s scheme- and therefore most beloved- department of the same nature in Gotham. However, Danny had something the other offers didn’t.

Blackmail.

His overly polite smile widened as Bruce’s mask twitched. His eyes slid over to Lucius Fox.

“It’s an honor to meet you, sir. I’ve heard much about your genius in… research and development.”

By that, Danny meant that he knew Lucius Fox helped develop Batman’s tech.

He did a lot of stalking that week. It felt rather… invasive, even if he did get a bunch of juicy secrets.

You know what they say: dead men tell no tales… but halfas are generally blabbermouths.

“Is that so? It is a pleasure to meet you as well, Mr. Fenton.” The man quickly glanced between the youngsters, accurately predicting that this might have something to do with Bruce’s active nightlife.

“Yes, it is such a pleasure to meet you.”

Wow, Danny didn’t think he’d ever heard anyone sound both so perky and dead inside at the same time, except for Susan at Gotham High’s bake sale.

Bruce wishes he could be a Susan. He’s at best a Becky.

“Will you be staying, Mr. Fox? You’re the head of the R&D department, correct?”

“Ah, yes-”

“Oh, Lucius! I think you had an appointment with the finance department right now! I heard Sally talk about it, you know!”

Lucius Fox sent an unreadable look at Bruce before rallying.

“Oh, it must have slipped my mind. My apologies, Mr. Fenton, it seems as though I can not skip this appointment.”

“That’s alright. I suppose it gives you… plausible deniability… should things go wrong, haha!” Danny allowed his smile to widen a little further than natural. Bruce tensed but Lucius Fox simply politely smiled and left the room.

Ignorance is bliss and all that, Danny amusedly thought.

As the door shut with a click, Bruce dropped the vacant Brucie smile and sighed.

“What do you want,” he gritted out. Danny wasn’t about to let that slide, not after he spent the better part of this month wrangling Bruce’s problem children.

“Ah, it must be because I’m from the Midwest, Brucie, but where I come from, we value these things called manners.”

You uneducated jerk, he doesn’t say.

Danny leaned back in his chair, loosening his smile into something relaxed and sharp.

“…” Oh, boy, Danny could just hear the other man’s blood pressure rising. “What is the purpose of your visit, Mr. Fenton?”

“Relax, Brucie,” Danny sing-songed in a non-relaxing way. “I’m just here to discuss a possible merger that I’m sure you’ll agree to, and give you a couple of updates on your… wayward bird.”

He heard Bruce take a slow, controlled breath. “Very well. Where. Would. You. Like. To. Start.”

Danny ignored the gritted out sentence. He passed a contract to Bruce, who took it like he was handling a live bomb.

“Here’s the proposal, Mr. Wayne. Please, look it over.”

He watched as Bruce looked over the contract with an eagle eye before lowering it, scrutinizing Danny.

“This is… very fair.”

Danny raised an eyebrow. Of course it was fair. Danny wasn’t interested in exploiting the Waynes, despite them being very able to afford it.

He’d brought fifty manufacturing sites for pharmaceuticals, and offered up a building where both companies could send their workers. He provided top notch security- that definitely didn’t have any talons on staff, what were they talking about?- that came from his own security division. Granted, most of them were reformed and trained goons, but hey, creating jobs can only help Gotham’s economy and help break the cycle of poverty, right? Guaranteed by the Wayne name and, most importantly, uncompromised medicine that was accessible to everyone would be a damn good start. He’d also have Penguin’s empire to distribute it to those who couldn’t make it to a clinic or a store, and there were plans in there to work with and establish contracts with Gotham’s welfare department. Well… once Danny finished replacing them with people who wouldn’t try to take a cut of the funds and actually cared about the people. He was thinking… the multitudes of poor grad students and parents that need income. He’s in the process of building childcare centers and…

It’s a good thing he managed to save money from the taxes (thank you, Gotham’s morally ambiguous tax experts that were in desperate need for clients! He could do it himself but having a team of accountants at the ready was seriously so helpful.) because ancients knows the government weren’t about to step into Gotham and help the people here. He needs so much money to pull all of this shit off and a lot of it has to be clean.

Danny inwardly sighed and marked another thing onto his to do list.

Make money laundering fronts.



“Of course, Mr. Wayne. You didn’t think I’d come in here demanding money, did you?”

“I considered it.”

“I am, in fact, trying to help Gotham. You might not agree with my methods, but I’d rather not damage Wayne Enterprises when it’s doing so much to help the people.”

Ugh, he was doing too much work. Danny just wanted to- hah- chill at home and read bed time stories to his kids.

Bruce Wayne, the specific blend between Brucie and Batman, regarded him silently. Danny felt like he went up a few notches in the respect ladder.

Nice.

“You’re a criminal.”

“Says the man in the bat-suit breaking into places and assaulting people.”

Bruce’s hands spasmed around the contract. Danny smiled at him, taking a sip of the coffee they’d prepared. Oo, nice!

“Ah, I heard you’re adopting- pardon, fostering- Tim Drake. Getting empty nest syndrome, Brucie?” He slipped back into using Bruce’s first name. The proposal was formal. This… was very much not.

“What about it?”

“That’s very kind of you. Speaking of which, well, of your birds, I was wondering if you remembered what I asked you to do.” Danny continued, not giving Bruce a chance to reply. “Didn’t I ask for you to keep your birds in line, Brucie?”

The CEO straightened even further, form filling out to be Batman’s imposing figure. “I did.”

“No, you didn’t. Do you know where your charge is, right now? No, not the formerly dead one,” Danny tilted his head, smile shrinking.

“Don’t you dare do anything to Tim. I swear, if you even lay a hand on a strand of his hair, I’ll-”

“Sit your Armani clad ass down, Bruce.” Danny snapped. “Your son’s in your office. I don’t harm children, and your assumptions are deeply insulting. Threaten me again, Bruce, and I’ll make sure you know exactly how much I know about your birds, your cousin, and the commissioner’s daughter.”

Bruce snarled but leashed his anger just enough to sit back down. He itched to go check on Tim, but leaving a threat like Phantom unwatched felt inherently wrong.

“Your other son,” Danny continued. “Is doing quite well. He’s learning that he has hobbies again. He’s actually working under me, you know.”

“He’s what.”

Oh, yeah, that tracks. It figured that Jason wouldn’t tell Bruce about anything. He’s still conflicted about his death. Danny got it.

“Ah, that’s precious information. You’ll have to offer something of equal value if you want to know. There is, on the other hand, a piece of information I’ll give you for free.”

Danny paused for the dramatic effect. It was lost on Bruce, the ultimate drama queen of this world.

“The League of Assassins are hanging around Hotham lately. It’s getting tedious, getting rid of them. I suggest talking to your old flame, you know, with words and what little communication skill you’ve got rattling around in your noggin to get them to pull back. Her interest is… unnaturally focused on Jason.”

Danny read the dark agreement swimming about Bruce’s face and inclined his head. “Should negotiations fail, rest assured that Jason will be protected.”

“…Thank you.”

“You are most welcome. Go ahead and discuss the contract with Mr. Fox, I am sure you’ll find little problems with it. Ah,” Danny stood up, fixing his suit jacket. “And you should probably check up on Timothy. He’s probably having a great time in your office, Mr. Wayne.”

“I’ll see you out.”

“Of course.”

Having Batman escorting him out should probably be more intimidating.

Danny stood in the elevator, waiting for Bruce’s contemplative silence to put itself into words.

Sure enough, “What… what kind of hobbies does Jason have now?”

“I’d tell you to ask him, but you two aren’t on speaking terms, are you? He likes books, of course, but recently, he’s found an interest in glass blowing. He made quite a bit of progress on his attempts at sun catchers.”

“I see.”

Well, Danny’s not about to step on that landmine any more than he has to.

——

“Danny.”

“Oh, hey, Jason. Sit down, we were about to have dinner.”

Jason clambered into the window. Danny sighed. He had a door, but by the way Jason never used it, it was like the door didn’t exist.

“Mind telling me why the old bastard showed up on my rooftops with a bunch of glass and glassblowing tools?”

Danny smiled. “No idea.”

“Uh huh.”

Danny placed a hand on his chest and put on his best woe-is-me expression. The teen’s face twitched in annoyance. “Doubt? At me? Why, I never!”

A bread roll thwacked him in the face.

#dpxdc #danny phantom #batman #bruce wayne #jason todd #tim drake #dc x dp #red hood #bamf danny phantom #crime lord Danny #accidental crime lord Danny

[bitchy-craft]

PICK A CARD: What blessings will come your way

Hello and welcome to this new post of mine! I will give you a reading on what blessings will be coming to you. I hope you guys enjoy and find this interesting.

Masterpost > Paid Readings

art by: lilypawstudios

~pick a card~

Pile 1:

Financial blessings will come your way without having had any hints that it would. The money and wealth that will shower you will come as a surprise to you, but will come from a certain place in your life you always wish would start booming, or would step into your life.

These blessings won’t be enormous riches to many of you, but it sure will be something noticeable when living your day-to-day life. Troubles you’ve been having will come a far way with being solved, if not getting completely solved. Some of you have things that you wish you could afford but can’t; no worries, those blessings will come to you, and it will remove tons of stress off of your shoulders.

Pile 2:

Opportunities. Opportunities will be the blessing that comes your way. Many of you have certain dreams you wish to accomplish, but dreams that might be pretty difficult to achieve. No worries, the next step in these journeys will come to you; you will be getting closer to that goal of yours, that dream of yours. The moment that opportunity comes to you, make sure to grab it with full confidence.

That path you wish to follow? That path is already yours, and it won’t take long for you to see and experience it all. It might be difficult to believe, and it’s definitely okay to stay sceptical until those blessings come to you. But once you have it, once you come close to those dreams and goals, try to realise it, try to live it and enjoy every moment.

Pile 3:

You will be getting closer connections to people you will not believe is even possible to get closer connections to. These connections will come to you as blessings since they will bring tons of perks and beautiful memories to you. The person you will get close to will have been the opposite of kind to you, and it will for many of you still feel pretty fresh. But conversations and getting to know each other better will definitely push those feelings away with better ones, some of you will even feel a sense of forgiveness.

These connections will give you more insight on the life of others, that not everything is what it seems, and not everything is often meant the way things have come over. You will be a bit wary when these connections will come to you, so try to stay open-minded and allow yourself to close off the chapters you wish to close off, and open new ones if that is what you wish (you, of course, don’t need to open up anything if you don’t wish to open anything up).

#pick a card #pick a pile #pick a photo #pick an image #pick a picture #pac #spirituality #spiritual #divination #tarot #tarot reading #tarot readings #tarot deck #tarot cards #tarotoftheday #tarotblr #tarotcommunity #channeling #channeled message #channeled reading #channeled messages #blessings #future spouse #love reading #wealth #loa #law of assumption #law of manifestation #law of attraction #law of success

[lovelyjj]

hey! Can you write insecure reader who stops eating and her boyfriend JJ finds out?

I love all your works btw! 😽🫶

Insecure

jj maybank x reader

a/n: thank you and thank you so much for requesting!

It was hard not to compare yourself to other girls. When you were at the beach all you could think about is the bodies of the other girls. They had tiny waists and long legs. Their hair was perfect and you just wished you looked like them.

The fact that you had to wear a bikini to the beach made you not want to go. Showing off your body is quite possibly the last thing you would ever want to be doing. So you would ether not go or wear a sweatshirt and say you weren’t tanning or swimming.

It was also hard to see the same girls at the beach flirt with your boyfriend. JJ would blow them off and reassure you that that you were the only one for him. JJ didn’t even glance in their direction. He was completely devoted to you. Yet you still felt like he deserved better.

All you could think about is how horrible you looked. You were far from how the girls at the beach looked, and you couldn’t help but think you were ugly. You were deeply insecure and you didn’t know how to fix it.

You felt uncomfortable in your own skin and not good enough for anyone or anything. You were tired of feeling this way, it was draining. You were also feeling hopeless. Your mind was your worst enemy. Every time you looked in the mirror you cringed. So, you tried to avoid doing that at all times.

When food was placed in front of you you would almost gag. You didn’t want to eat. It was too much. You thought maybe if you stopped eating you would become thinner and look like all the other girls with tiny waists.

You didn’t mean to it just sort of happened. You thought you were just not hungry, but then you were skipping meals. a lot of meals. You have stopped eating all together and you were hoping that you would get good results out of it.

JJ wasn’t stupid, he knew something was wrong he just didn’t know what. He noticed that he hasn’t seen you eat in a long time. He also noticed that you’ve lost some weight. Of course your weight didn’t matter to him but he was concerned for your health.

The chateau was busy with all the pogues in it. They were all getting ready to go in the hot tub. You were having a dilemma because you didn’t want to get into a swimsuit. So you decided you wouldn’t go in.

“What’s up buttercup?” JJ asked.

“Nothing just chillin,” you spoke.

“How are you, seriously?” JJ asked. He was concerned about you. He was watching you decline and he hated it.

“Um m’fine,” you replied.

“I think we need to talk,” JJ put forth.

“what about?”

“I haven’t seen you eat in a long time and I’m worried about you,” JJ confessed.

You let out a deep sigh. You did not want to have this conversation right now.

“Don’t worry about it JJ,” you instructed.

“No I will worry about it because i worry about you. You’re my girl and I care about you. I’m concerned. Please baby, talk to me.” JJ begged.

“I just want to feel pretty,” tears filled your eyes but you didn’t let them fall.

“I thought maybe if I stop eating, I would loose some weight.” You looked down on the floor avoiding JJ’s eyes.

“You know I think you’re the most beautiful girl in the world right?!”

“Baby please look at me.”

You did as you were told, reluctantly.

“I want you to listen to me when I say this. You’re perfect just the way you are. I love you and I love your body. I think you’re gorgeous. It breaks my heart that you don’t see it. I wish you could see yourself through my eyes.”

You gave JJ a sad smile.

“Come here,” JJ opened his arms for you to get into.

Once you were in JJ’s arms he kissed your cheek. Then he kissed your forehead. He then kissed your temple. “My beautiful girl, love you so much!” Then he kissed your lips.

“How about I order a pizza?” JJ suggested.

“I don’t know jayj,” you shrugged.

“Come on please baby I need you to eat something for me. I don’t want you to wither away. I care about you and your health.”

“I’ll eat with you, I will even help you. If you want me too,” JJ shrugged.

“Jayj…”

“No come on, I’m ordering the pizza, end of story.”

You gave JJ a small smile silently thanking him but you were more so just done protesting. You knew JJ meant well you were just stubborn. It meant a lot to you that he cared so much about you. You thought it was sweet. You just really didn’t want to eat.

The pizza was delivered and you were dreading eating it. JJ took the pizza to his room so you could have some privacy.

“I know you don’t want to eat but i’m right here I’m not going anywhere and I want you to nourish your body.”

“okay jayj.”

JJ sat with you and helped you eat. He was understanding and considerate. He wanted to be there for you during this hard time. With JJ’s help you were able to eat something.

“There you go baby, good job! I’m proud of you,” JJ praised.

“Thank you J.”

#jj maybank #outer banks #obx #jj maybank x reader #jj maybank imagine #jj maybank fanfiction #jj maybank angst #jj maybank fluff #jj maybank x female!reader #jj maybank x fem!reader #jj maybank x you #jj maybank x y/n #jj outer banks #jj outer banks x reader #jj obx #jj maybank outer banks #jj x y/n #jj x you #jj x reader #outer banks fanfiction #jj obx imagine #outer banks x reader #obx imagine #outer banks fluff #jj maybank blurb #jj maybank concept #jj maybank drabble #jj obx fic #jj maybank fanfic #jj maybank x reader blurb

[illdowhatiwantthanks]

Emily x Reader after Reader has a sh relapse, Emily patches and her up and assures her she's still beautiful by slow, gentle, loving sex and lots of cuddling please?

You got it, anon! Thanks for the request! :) Hope you like it!

Burning

Emily Prentiss x fem!reader Warnings: 18+ Minors DNI, NSFW, self-harm, depression, mental illness, sex, fingering, etc., injuries due to self-harm, brief mentions of an eating disorder, some explicit language (please let me know if I've missed anything!) Word Count: 2.3k

Summary: With Emily away on a case and a depressive episode hitting you hard, you fall back into a pattern you thought you'd kicked a long time ago. When she comes home and discovers what you've done, you're afraid it'll be too much for her. Emily does her best to show you that it's not.

You’d been standing in front of the bathroom mirror for what felt like hours, but was probably mere minutes. Time warped itself when the urges took hold, every second a lifetime of effort, until it became all the potential lives you might live stacked one on top of the other, and they were too heavy for you to carry.

The hand that held the unlit match was shaking, and you seesawed between the unbearable desire to scratch a painful itch and the knowledge that self-hatred that would flood you afterward. But at least the self-hatred and the pain would be something to feel, other than the abject hopelessness that had seemed to swallow you up over the last week.

You’d known a depressive episode was coming before Emily left. You could always feel them coming. But what were you supposed to say? Don’t go save people from a terrorist cell? Stay here with me because I’m scared I’m getting depressed and I need you? It’d be pathetic. You were pathetic. And it wasn’t Emily’s job to keep your mental illness at bay.

But she’d been gone longer than you expected–over a week now. And your depressive episode had hit you harder than you thought it would. You’d called out of work, you’d binged on food delivery, then hated yourself afterward, staring into the mirror feeling lower and lower and lower. Until the only way you could think to stop sinking was to shock yourself out of it.

You knew it wasn’t wise or healthy. You knew you’d feel even worse once the pain subsided. You knew that a relapse would make it that much harder to stop next time. You knew that if Emily was here, she would stop you, she would hide the matches and the lighters, she would be so, so sad that you’d even thought about hurting yourself.

But despite knowing all these things, the hunger for fire, for pain, was too much to resist. You scratched the head of the match against the matchbox and the flame leapt into existence. Your go-to spot in young adulthood had been your arms, but the burns wouldn't fade before Emily got back, and she’d notice them on your arms. This time, you held the match to the upper side of your abdomen, where your arms would hopefully hide the marks.

You scrunched your eyebrows and winced as the flame licked at your skin, the pain white and bright and hot. You wished you could explain to people that odd, addictive mixture of self-loathing and dopamine that hit you and made you feel simultaneously worse and better. You wished people understood the desire for it, that sometimes you wanted to feel worse because feeling worse made you feel better. But it was hard to explain. Even harder to understand. So you didn’t bother most of the time. You lit match after match until the box was empty, until your side was scattered with raised, red-white blotches, like a constellation of all the shitty things you’d ever been through or felt.

You looked at yourself in the mirror and hated what you saw. And it felt good to hate yourself, like a guilty pleasure.

You jumped at the sound of the apartment door opening and closing, and cold panic flooded your system.

“Hey, baby, I’m home!” Emily called from the entryway.

You quickly pulled a loose t-shirt over your head, wincing as the fabric brushed over the burns. She wasn’t supposed to be home yet. She hadn’t texted or called. She’ll hate me, you thought. She’ll hate me if she finds out.

Of course, Emily knew you struggled with self-harm. But you’d been in a really good spot when you’d started dating and had, for the most part, stayed in that really good spot for your entire relationship. You were in therapy. You had healthy coping mechanisms. You hadn’t relapsed in years. You didn’t know what had made today different from every other bad day in the last few years, but you knew you didn’t want Emily to know.

You silently cursed yourself for using all the matches; there were none left to light a candle in the bathroom to mask the scent of burning. You ran to meet her in the living room, hoping that by heading her off, the smell would have time to dissipate.

“Hi, honey,” you greeted her, forcing a smile. You took both her hands in yours to try and prevent her touching your side, which still felt as if it was on fire. You stood on tiptoes to kiss her, and she smiled, leaning in.

“I missed you,” she breathed, wrapping her arms around you. You flinched and inhaled sharply as her fingers grazed the burns.

She furrowed her eyebrows. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” you nodded, avoiding her eyes. “I just, um… fell earlier.”

Her hands fluttered over you, a worried expression on her face. “You fell!? Where!? Like, how hard?”

“Not that hard,” you said, trying to squirm away. “It doesn’t hurt too bad. Ow!” Emily had placed a gentle hand at your side and you couldn’t help your outburst.

“Well, honey, if it hurts that bad, you need to let me see it. We might need to go to the ER or something.”

You knew you were done for when she grabbed your wrist, hard. Emily was much stronger than you, so instead of fighting, you went numb.

You felt your whole world stop as she lifted up your shirt to see the scattered burns. You felt tears prick at your eyes. There were too many marks, and they were too symmetrical to have been an accident. You knew it, and Emily knew it, too.

You couldn’t bring yourself to look at her, but if you did, you would have seen that her eyes were wet with tears she wasn’t going to let herself cry because you needed someone strong right now. If you’d looked at her, you would have seen a mixture of sadness and pity and heartbreak and undying love. You’d have seen the face of someone who wanted nothing more than for you to be okay.

“Y/N,” Emily managed after a moment. “Did you do this to yourself?”

You nodded, a tear rolling down your cheek.

“Today?”

You nodded again.

“How long ago?”

You looked at the ceiling, willing yourself not to cry. “Right before you walked in.”

You hated yourself. You hated yourself even more because you knew that Emily would feel awful. She’d think that if she’d just been a few minutes earlier, she could have prevented this. And you never wanted Emily to feel like your mental illness was her fault or her responsibility.

“Come here,” she said, gently taking your hand and guiding you to the bathroom. She turned on the shower, making sure the water was cool but not cold, then slowly pulled your clothes off. She nodded toward the shower and you got in, shivering under the chilly stream.

Emily sighed and sat down on the toilet lid, watching you. She looked tired, so tired. You hated to be another thing that exhausted her, another thing she had to take care of and fix.

“You should sit down,” she added quietly. “You’re gonna have to be in there for a while. Until they stop burning.”

You sat on the tiled floor, the water leaching the pain away from the burn marks, leaving only disgust and self-loathing in their place. You pulled your knees up to your chest and buried your face, trying and failing not to cry.

Your shoulders shook with the force of your sobs. You heard Emily stand and were sure she was going to leave. Why wouldn’t she? She deserved to. She deserved not to have to deal with you.

You jumped a little as Emily lowered herself into the shower next to you, clothes abandoned on the bathroom floor, and wrapped her arm around your shoulder. She pressed her face into yours as the shower drenched you both.

“Shh,” she soothed, careful to avoid your burns. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

“I’m sorry, Em,” you wept, rocking. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she repeated. “You don’t need to be sorry. I love you. You’re gonna be okay.”

“I hate myself,” you whispered.

Emily gently grabbed your face and tilted it toward her. There were tears in her eyes, too. “Baby, please don’t say that.”

“I can’t help it.” Your voice was so quiet, so small, the sound of the shower almost drowned it out.

“That’s okay,” Emily said, brushing strands of wet hair out of your face. “We’re gonna get you some help, okay?”

You looked in her eyes then for the first time since she’d discovered the burn marks. You didn’t know what you’d expected to see: annoyance, disgust, hatred, or worst of all, ambivalence. But there was none of that in Emily’s eyes. Only love and concern.

Even so, you were scared to ask what you needed to ask. “Do you still love me?”

“Oh, honey, of course I do. I could never stop loving you.”

And then you kissed her. You kissed her with the cool water pouring down around your bodies. With your skin hot from the burns and from your aching love for Emily. You kissed her desperately, hungrily, like someone clinging to a lifeboat, and Emily was. She was your lifeboat. And for Emily’s part, she was gentle, almost too gentle, as if you might break at any moment.

You wrapped your legs and arms around her and she held you so carefully, so mindful of your burns. You shuddered in the cool water as your hips pushed against her.

Emily moaned into your mouth, her hands faltering for a moment.

“Y/N,” she said breathlessly, pulling away to hold your face in her hands. “We don’t have to do this." She looked at you a moment longer, then added, "I love you.”

You kissed her again. Her mouth. Her forehead. Her collarbone. Emily’s chest heaved into you and your heart beat rapidly.

“Please,” you begged. “Show me.”

Emily pulled you into her, letting her tongue and her lips roam over your neck, letting her hips meet yours as the water surrounded you, soothing your burns the way Emily soothed the roiling, burning despair inside of you.

“I love you,” she whispered as she kissed your eyelids. “I love you,” she whispered as she pressed her hands into the soft flesh of your ass. “I love you,” she whispered as she slipped her fingers inside of you. You bit back a moan and trembled against her, your body pulsing around her.

She fucked you slowly, tenderly, as if it was both your first time and your last, though this was neither. And she kept saying it–“I love you”–again and again, never stopping, so that all the darkness in your mind, all the self-doubt, didn’t have any room to make itself heard.

You let out a strangled groan as your body tensed around her, and when your pleasure flooded you, it was like you were on fire. And this fire was so much better, louder, brighter, than any flame you’d ever held to your body. It was a burning that consumed you, one that would leave you new and glistening afterward instead of scarred and in ashes.

You fell limp against her as she removed her fingers, kissing your forehead, your collarbone, your mouth, swirling her tongue with yours until you felt drunk on her. “I love you,” she said, and you didn’t think you’d ever get tired of hearing it. “I love you.”

You were quiet as she turned off the shower head. Quiet as you both dried off, as Emily gently pressed a towel to your side, making sure your burns were clean and dry. She sat you on the toilet lid as she pulled gauze squares and antibacterial ointment out of the bathroom cabinet, spreading the ointment on the gauze, then pressing it gently to your skin.

“Lift your arms up,” she said quietly, as she circled your body with bandages, wrapping it just tight enough that it wouldn’t shift in the night.

She knelt down in front of you and caressed your face. “Bed?” she asked. You nodded.

“You go ahead,” she said, patting your leg. “I’ll be right there.”

You felt self-doubt start creeping back in as you laid in bed on top of the covers, your burns still too hot to sleep underneath. When Emily came into the room, she carried a glass of water and a bottle of pills.

“Take these,” she told you, handing you a few. You drank and swallowed obediently.

She lay down in the bed and motioned you over. “Come here and let me hold you.”

You rested your face in the crook of her neck, and she played with your hair, careful to avoid your burns.

“I love you,” she whispered after a few minutes, kissing the top of your head.

“You said.” You meant it to be funny, but your heart wasn’t in it. Not yet.

“And I’ll keep saying it until you believe it.”

You were quiet for a minute, then spoke. “I love you, too, Em.” You nuzzled your way closer to her, hoping against hope that her arms around you were enough to keep the darkness and the numbness away for the night.,

And as you drifted off, she kept saying it–“I love you.” And then a kiss on your head.

As your eyelids fluttered closed–“I love you.” And she pressed her face to your forehead.

As your breath slowed and evened, and your body went limp–“I love you. I love you. I love you.”

#emily prentiss #emily prentiss x reader #emily prentiss smut #emily prentiss fanfic #emily prentiss x fem!reader #emily prentiss fluff #emily prentiss drabble #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfic #hurt/comfort #self h@rm

[coffe-and-tea-time]

KEEP PRETENDING TO SLEEP! KEEP PRETENDING TO SLEEP!!!

HEHEHEHEHEHE I WAS WAITING TO COOK THIS

Coffee insanely speaking! Thanks Dear, you gimme the perfect excuse to write a second part just in time although I expected the option of talking to him to come first. Not that I'm complaining lol

Post where this suggestion came from

↪︎ ☾ I love to see you ....................................... .......................................☆ I love to hear you↩︎

TW: yandere behavior, delusions, murder of self-preservation, stalking, obssesion, somewhat willing reader, kinda denying of bad decisions

Of course, the best option is to stay still, not because you are enjoying this no no, of course not...

Despite his soft voice that sounds rather familiar, you can't really recall who or where. So the safest option is just giving in at the moment, you didn't know how he could react so the safer the better, isn't it?

A smile starts creeping on your face against your will, seems like you are a rather bad actor when it's required, huh? 

“Oh, I'm really glad, you seem like you're finally having a good dream… will it be too greedy if I want to be inside that little dream of yours? Well, if you find that greedy, you won't be able to handle me later”

Hearing a close mouthed giggle following the whisper makes your heart flutter softly, like this is some kind of really romantic scene in his mind. You were able to hear the faint sound of footsteps, he seems like he's doing a little room tour, making it a little hard to hear him.

“Oh Dear, you were researching that thing again?”

It seems like he found his way into your phone, what was he referring to?

“Why do you keep reading so much about romance? Are these words good enough to keep your focus?... Maybe I have to start practicing oral expression? It's been a while since I felt like that, last time was when you downloaded that stupid dating sim… This is truly irritating, the names they use, the way they ‘communicate’ to you; do no justice, I can express myself way better, my love, and how my eyes change when I see you walking by… just... please, I need only one chance, and I promise you won't have a room left for doubts”

Even though he made the effort to lower his voice in order to 'not wake you up', it's clear how his tone is changing with every word depending on the topic; First, a low hint of infatuation, then, what sounds closer to a plead and, finally,...was that...hopelessness?

Honestly, in a normal situation, you would be annoyed by someone searching through your phone but only an idiot would think this man would judge you even if you had pictures of dead people there, more like he's genuinely looking for more of you, despite the fact that it's really not the ‘proper’ way, you can't say it didn't work.

“My beloved Cherry, what can i do for you to talk to me? Those characters seem to steal your attention quickly… I would be lying if I sad I'm not a little hopeful because of them though, you seem to have quite the specific taste, Cherry, and I believe I fit perfectly on them... if only I could find the right moment to get into your routine, to be part of your life…”

Weird that he worries about getting to talk to you with an ideal scene but not worrying about stalking you, but maybe it's kind of understable? Since well, everyone likes to check on their crush on social media even if they take a while to actually talk, even if this guy took it a little too far, he sounds... harmless like his wish is just to win your affection…

wait a second…

Are you truly relaxed in this kind of situation? What is going on with you? Why? Why… well, can't say you didn't ask for this, even as a joke, you know this time is different because it's real, but… why does reality feel like a fantasy right now? Is it because of him?

“Huh, I come here as a routine by now, I still get the same queries, I’m dying to find the answers soon..”

Sensing that lightly sweet fragrance once more makes you know he’s approaching your ‘sleeping’ form once again, making it easy to hear him despite his constant whispering.

“Would you let me cuddle you? Would you let me kiss you? Would you mind if I were clingy? Would you mind if I get jealous? Would you mind if it seems like I already know more about you than I should? I want to hold you my dear, I can’t wait for the day I can just snuggle with you every time we want… I really can’t wait anymore, I need to be closer to you… I guess I have no option other than to talk to you out of the blue, I dislike to be so imprudent, but I promise I will make up for it once you accept me in your life, Love”

You feel a gentle hand slightly caress your cheek as a little peck is placed on your forehead, making you almost smile like a fool if it weren’t for the fact that pretending to sleep is your priority in this sweet moment, unexpected but called for moment.

“Sweet dreams Cherry, I have to prepare what I should say tomorrow, I will put all of my efforts to be my best self to make a good first impression, I hope I snatch enough of your interest to be on your mind even for a moment”

Oh, he is definitely gonna be stuck in your mind for a while, as you try your best to focus on the sounds, you catch his steps as he seems to walk away… but you keep up with your act just in case.

So, tomorrow, huh? Seems like once again you have important decisions in your hand, should you indulge in your fantasy and let him get near you? It also sounds fun to go to him first… But, maybe you should try to avoid him? It’s the safer choice, but do you really want that? He seems safe enough not to raise any of your flags, he seemed so caring for you…

sorry for any misspellings or weird sentence structure ❣

images from pinterest

#pineapple our oc #Coffee speaking #yandere #random #yandere male #yandere imagines #yandere drabble #yandere oc #oc #male yandere #yandere scenarios #yandere x reader #yandere x darling #yandere x you #obsessive love #yandere classmate #otome #yandere x willing reader #stalker #tw stalking #soft yandere #yandere writing #drabble #silly #silly writing #delulu #delusional #anon ask #oc x reader #yandere oc x reader

[sergeantsporks]

writing request: hunter carving waffles :)

Sorry that I'm writing this over a year after you sent it. The passage of time eludes me always

xxx

“What’s that?”

Hunter quickly closed his notebook before Luz could take a peek. “Homework.”

“Uh-huh. You know, you could just say it was your diary, and I wouldn’t try to read it.”

“It’s not a diary.”

She flopped dramatically against him, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead. “Your tortured poetry, perhaps? Or Cosmic Frontier fanfiction?”

Hunter moved to the side, letting her fall. “It’s homework. Palisman homework.”

Luz picked herself up. “Palisman homework? On paper? Are you making designs or something? I thought you just… carved.”

She wasn’t going to let up, was she? Hunter sighed, flipping the cover of his journal back and forth. “If you must know, I’m brainstorming. Dell’s dead-set on me carving my own palisman, and I’m trying to figure out what the best fit would be.”

Luz’s face softened into something that was close to pity, but felt more like understanding. “Oh,” she said simply.

It wasn’t that he necessarily OPPOSED the idea of having a palisman again. Spending time with the Bat Queen and all her abandoned palisman had opened up an ache in his chest, an ache he could only describe as ‘pining.’ He wanted a palisman so badly it hurt.

But whenever he tried to think about what that palisman would be, what he would carve, who he wanted to spend his life with, all he could think about was Flapjack. Or, when he wasn’t thinking about Flapjack, the form of his future palisman slipped outside of his grasp. All he could think about was the feeling, the connection. Like his palisman was already curled up inside of his chest, like he was already bonded to them, even though they didn’t exist.

“I’m just having trouble picturing it. Can’t think of what I want, you know?”

“A wolf?” Luz suggested.

“Maybe.”

He’d actually carved a wolf out of practice wood and gifted it to Eber—besides a songbird, it was probably the shape he was most familiar with. But holding that little wolf statue in his hands hadn’t felt right. It hadn’t clicked the way he’d always imagined finding your palisman’s shape would. He’d carved a few for others, and when the wood shaped underneath his hands, he could feel the palisman’s soul bursting through, could feel already the hum of connection with its partner. He’d seen it on his clients’ faces, too, a sort of light in their eyes. The way their faces sparked with recognition when they saw the animal carved into the wood.

“You could always carve an egg, like I did. Let them decide.”

That didn’t sound quite right either. Not that he minded his palisman choosing their own form, or that he thought Luz had picked a worse route, but he wanted to give them form. He wanted to give them something special, to handpick something just for them, something that said ‘I know what I want and I know who you are, and I’ve thought about you for so long.’

“So…” Luz tapped the journal cover. “Ideas for what it’ll be, then?”

“Some of them.” A flush crept across Hunter’s face and ears. “I’m also… brainstorming a list of things that might be my greatest wish?”

To Luz’s credit, she didn’t laugh, although her face screwed up like she was trying very hard not to. “You’re… making a list.”

Hunter nodded. “I figured I could make a list of all the things I want from life, then arrange them in tiers to narrow down which wish is most likely to wake up my palisman.”

“Uh-huh. Well—” she was trying so hard to not say something about spontaneity and living in the moment, he could see it. “—whatcha got so far? Maybe I can help.”

“It’s my greatest wish, not yours.”

“Aw, come on, two heads are better than one! I didn’t realize my greatest wish until I talked to my mom.”

“Fine. Nosy.” Hunter opened his journal. “I think—I mean, so far, I’ve mostly got what I said to Belos that night, you know? Studying wild magic, going to Hexside, playing flyer derby with my friends, learning to carve palisman… those are the things I want. But, well, I’m already accomplishing those things, you know? I’m enrolled at Hexside, Eda’s already told me I’ve got a place at the university if I want it, I play with the Entrails every other day after school, and I’m carving palisman with Dell the days I don’t practice with the Entrails. They’re still things I want, but they’re also things I’m doing.”

Frustration built up in the back of Hunter’s throat, and he ran a hand through his hair. Surely there had to be something else, something he was missing. “Belos is gone, the throne room is destroyed, so everything I used to want… it’s done! I accomplished it. I can’t use those wishes to wake up a palisman—they didn’t even work to save the palisman I had!”

The moment the words left his mouth, he froze. Luz gave him another one of those looks, those looks of terrible, sad understanding.

“Oh, Hunter—”

“I’m fine.” Hunter closed the journal again, tucking it into his schoolbag. “I’ll figure it out. I’ve got to go meet Dell.”

In reality, his carving tutoring didn’t start for another hour, but anything was better than sitting here for another second. He swung his bag over his shoulder and warped away before Luz could say anything else. He could practically hear her voice in his head, though—Hunter, what happened to Flapjack wasn’t your fault. Hunter, there was nothing you could do. Hunter, Flapjack would want you to be happy. Hunter, your wishes back then have nothing to do with healing palisman so why don’t you just use one of those perfectly-fine statements and get it over with; stop overthinking it.

Okay, the last part wasn’t Luz’s voice, but it was still true. Flapjack had chosen him based on an off-hand statement about wanting to choose his own future. He hadn’t even been talking to the palisman. Why put so much effort and time into considering the perfect wish? Because he’d watched Luz agonize over it? From what he’d heard, Willow and Gus’s palisman had chosen them quickly, with a simple statement. Why was he searching so hard for the perfect wish? The palisman wouldn’t wake up without the right words anyway—he could say whatever he wanted to them, and he’d know he’d made the true wish when they came to life.

Dell had already set aside the wood for him. A beautiful, perfect stump of palistrom, taken from one of the tree’s thick branches. The rings sat in exact circles, not a single knot or lump in the wood as far as Hunter could see. Hunter almost wished there was an imperfection in the wood. “Oops, sorry! Can’t get to work on this! Oops, it’ll take a while to sand out this knot, so why don’t we leave the whole project off for later?”

Instead, he picked up the perfect piece of wood, imagining each stroke of the chisel. Peeling back layers of wood in perfect blue curls, until the wood became…

He thought again of Flapjack, and put the wood down. He wouldn’t carve a cardinal—he knew better than anyone that it wouldn’t be the same, that a recreation of Flapjack wouldn’t be Flapjack. It would probably hurt worse to have a palisman that looked exactly like Flapjack but wasn’t, and for a brief, spiraling moment, he thought he understood how Belos had felt about him.

“Thinking about your future palisman?”

Hunter jumped at Dell’s voice, nearly knocking the wood off the table. “You’re early.”

Dell chuckled. “So are you.” He sat slowly down at the workbench, holding his cane between his hands and looking at Hunter expectantly.

“I still haven’t figured out what I want to carve.”

“I see.” Dell’s eyes twinkled. “Can I tell you a secret?”

Hunter swallowed. What secret? A carving technique? A shortcut to finding one’s deepest wish? “Of course.”

“I didn’t carve my palisman.”

It took a moment for the words to register in Hunter’s mind. Five simple words, and for a moment, they made Hunter feel like the ground had fallen away. “What?” he said finally.

“I didn’t carve my palisman,” Dell repeated easily, “She was passed onto me—she’s been in the family business for a while. The day my mother died and I inherited the carving business, she flew to my shoulder and has been there ever since. She did the same for my mother, and for her parent, and for their father before them.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Was he planning on giving his palisman to Hunter when he died? Not that Hunter minded taking care of her, but it was a heavy topic.

Dell sighed, stretching. “My palisman was passed on to me. Despite guiding many others to their heart’s desire, I’ve never had to confront my own. I’ve never been in the place you are now, trying to pick the perfect creature to carve. I can only offer the same advice I’ve offered to countless young witches trying to find their way in life.”

“Which is?”

Dell smiled, pointing his cane at Hunter’s chest. “Stop thinking with your head. Let go of the stress, the anxiety of picking something so permanent as a palisman. Still your thoughts, quiet your heart. Then, and only then, will you know what you want. Then, your palisman will find you.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Take the wood home.”

“What?”

“Take it home. And your tools. No carving lesson for today.”

“I—”

“When your teacher gives you a project in school, they give you time to work on it, yes?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Today is a work day. I want you to focus on your palisman. Go.”

Focus on my palisman.

I can do this.

An hour and a half of staring at a lump of blue wood later, Hunter almost wanted to throw the palistrom through the window. He wouldn’t, of course, not after everything the species had been through, but he was very, very tempted.

Finally, he picked up the wood and his tools. “Still thoughts, quiet heart,” he breathed, “Fine. Carve. Just carve! It’s not like I’m going to wake it up right now, I’m just carving. It’s just like anyone else’s palisman, except it might maybe be mine.”

Hunter took a deep breath, and started to carve. Petals of blue shavings fell to the floor, and Hunter thought briefly of how Darius would gasp if he saw the mess. But his attention turned quickly back to the statue forming underneath his hands with every rhythmic scrape. At some point, Darius turned on the bedroom light, scolding him for how he’d strain his eyes, but Hunter barely registered the complaint. He noticed even less when Darius came back to warn him not to stay up too much later, or he’d be exhausted at school. There was only him and the palisman. Blisters rubbed onto his hands, and a dozen tiny splinters stuck in his fingers, but it wasn’t until one of the blisters popped, oozing blood and pus, that he stopped, shaken from the trance he’d fallen into.

“Ow.”

Hunter shook his hands. It wasn’t just the blisters and splinters—his hands had stiffened up from gripping the chisels and knives, sore and achy. He cautiously rubbed his eyes. When was the last time he’d blinked? The clock beeped an accusatory “5 AM” at him, and he wandered to the bathroom to take care of his injuries. First, he used tweezers to pluck out the splinters, then dressed his blisters and applied about five thousand band-aids to them. He chuckled at the sight. Back in the coven, his hands had constantly been bandaged because of blisters from training with his staff, or bruised and busted knuckles. But even in this peaceful life, it seemed he couldn’t escape the blisters and bruises.

Well, maybe you could if you stopped carving and went to bed at a reasonable time, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Darius’ said in his mind.

Hunter returned to his room, picking up the palisman.

A bird.

His heart sank, even as he kicked himself for it. Of course when he’d zoned out and emptied his mind he’d carved a bird—why had he expected anything else? Of course Flapjack was still in the front of his mind, of course he’d carve a…

Hunter realized dully that this bird wasn’t a cardinal. He hadn’t painted it yet, of course, although the blue of the wood seemed to suit it. But even so, the head swooped back instead of up, the beak was thinner, and the wings tilted down rather than back. This wasn’t the same bird.

“It’s just that I couldn’t carve the shape right,” Hunter said out loud, “I messed up. It’s not because… because…”

Had he just failed at carving a cardinal? Something about this palisman seemed different. Hunter sat it back down on his desk, resting his arms on the table’s surface and his head on his arms. Maybe it was just delirium from lack of sleep.

“You’re beautiful,” he told the bird, “I’m sure I can find you a good home—you deserve someone better than me. I mean, I didn’t even try. I just carved what I’m most familiar with. I’m sorry.” He gently brushed her—how he knew the palisman was a she, he didn’t know—beak with bandaged fingers. “I just wish…” he trailed off, fighting to stay awake. “I just wish every witch and their palisman could have what Luz and Stringbean have. What Eda and Owlbert, Amity and Ghost, Willow and Clover, and Gus and Emmiline have.” His eyes finally drifted shut, his hand still gently patting the palisman’s head. “I just wish everyone could have what Flapjack and I had,” he murmured.

Somewhere outside of the haze of sleep, Hunter heard a chirp.

#toh #the owl house #writing requests #toh hunter #hunter clawthorne #hunter deamonne #hunter wittebane #toh waffles #toh fanfiction #my writing

[theadorableapprentice]

Nightmare

MC x Solomon Warnings: Hurt/Comfort Word Count: 1709

A/N: The song is Nightmare by Set It Off. It's one of my favorite songs and made me think of Solomon awhile back. I'm glad I finally got to write this story. It took a different direction than I thought it would, but I still like how it turned out. I hope you enjoy!

They're coming, creeping from the corner

And all I know is that I don't feel safe

Solomon doesn't talk about his past much. You knew this. Of course you knew this. You’ve tried so many times to get Solomon to tell you stories from his life. He would brush off your requests with some cheeky one-liner and that was that. So, you didn’t get to know the real reason why he’s always on edge. “We’re humans in the Devildom, MC. Why wouldn’t I be?” That’s his response whenever you asked him about it. Nevermind that Solomon managed to beat Diavolo when he was mad and actively going for Solomon’s throat. Nevermind that he walked from the Human World all the way to the underworld and then back. Nevermind that he’s fought a war against the Devildom. 

The only thing that you really know is that Solomon doesn’t feel safe. You’re actually not sure if you’ve ever seen him truly relaxed. Sure he puts up this laid back facade, but you know him better than that. Which is why you’re not entirely shocked by the sight before you upon coming home.

I feel the tapping on my shoulder

I turn around in an alarming state

But am I losing my mind? I really think so

Not a creature in sight

Solomon whips around when he hears the door click, eyes wide with fear. He’s scared of something. You’re not sure what, but he is. 

“Sol… Is everything alright?”

“MC, I-” He cuts himself off and looks over your shoulder and then peers out the window.

But, what you don't know

Is that my breathing gets faster and so does my heartbeat

I wish this was over, I wish that this was a dream

He can feel his heartbeat speeding up. It’s getting hard for him to breathe. This hasn’t happened in awhile. He’s usually good at hiding these things from everyone. But not now, not from you. 

“MC, I don’t-” He closes his eyes and tries to take a deep breath. Anything to get this to stop. For things to go back to normal, where he could pretend everything was okay.

“Sol, look at me. Can you look at me?”

I created a monster, a hell within my head

With nowhere to go, I'm out on my own

Oh, I'm so scared

Solomon opens his eyes and there are tears forming. You’ve never seen him cry before. In fact, any vulnerability is a rare sight. It’s becoming more frequent, but the moments are few and far between.

“Here, now put your hand here,” You say, guiding his hand to your chest. “Take a deep breath with me. In.” You take a deep breath in and watch as Solomon tries to do the same. He shakes his head, unable to get a deep breath in. “That’s okay. Just keep your hand here. Can I try something?”

I created a monster, a beast inside my brain

With nowhere to go, I'm out on my own

My mind impaired

Awake me from my nightmare

Solomon nods, tears falling from his eyes. His voice cracks. “Please.”

You move your hands to his face and gently pull him until your foreheads are touching. Your thumbs lightly stroke his cheeks, wiping away the tears that have fallen. “Okay, I want you to close your eyes and focus on my voice. Can you do that for me?”

Solomon nods and closes his eyes. 

“Okay. I want you to think of the place you feel the safest. Think really hard about it. Do you have a place in mind?”

Solomon nods again, breathing slowing ever so slightly.

“Okay, can you describe it to me?” You ask.

“It’s your bedroom when we sleep together in there,” He responds. This makes your heart swell. The place he feels safest is with you.

“Can you tell me specific details? I want you to make this as real as possible in your mind.”

“The blankets are soft. It’s warm because you’re next to me, but it’s not too hot. The room is dark, except for the moonlight that comes through the window.” Solomon’s breathing is slowly returning to normal as he describes your room to you. 

When he finishes and his breathing returns to normal, you take him into a hug.

“Thank you, MC,” Solomon says, hugging you back. He buries his face in the crook of your neck and you feel tears starting to fall from his eyes.

“I’ll always be here for you Sol. Can you talk to me about what’s going on?”

Wait, something doesn't feel right

No, something seems wrong

And I've been feeling this way

For far too long

“I don’t even know where to start. There’s just so much.”

You slowly rub his back, hoping to comfort him even more. “How about you just tell me one thing. One thing that’s upsetting you.”

“Okay. I don’t feel safe, MC. Something feels wrong but I don’t know what it is. It’s like this feeling that something terrible is going to happen or that something is off.” 

“Solomon, you’ve lived a very long life. And I’m sure you have been through a lot of things that would traumatize most people. That’s going to have some lasting effects on you. Let me try something that works for me. Can you tell me what terrible thing you think is going to happen that has you so upset right now?”

“I’m scared I’m going to lose you again, MC. I’m scared that one day you’re going to go out and you won’t come back.”

Your heart breaks for him when you hear that. “Okay, let’s break this down. Why is that a realistic fear?”

“You’re a human in the Devildom. Most demons want to eat you.”

“Okay, and now, why is that fear unlikely to come true?”

“You’re a very capable magic user. And you have a lot of powerful beings watching over you.”

“I don’t think Diavolo would take very kindly to a demon trying to harm me, do you?”

Solomon lets out a tearful laugh. “No, probably not. Seeing him genuinely angry is a rare sight, but I know that whatever demon tried to hurt you would be in for a real bad time.”

“Okay, see? While there is always a chance I’ll get hurt, it’s very unlikely. I don’t think many demons are stupid enough to face the wrath of some of the most powerful beings in the three realms. Now, is there anything else that’s upsetting you?”

As my vision gets blurred, my skin's getting colder

Appearing young, while I'm growing older

I collapse to the floor and scream

"Can anybody save me from myself?"

“I feel trapped, MC. I stay at this physical age, but I grow older every year. Every so often I have to move around, pretending to be a new person. It’s hard to keep any human friends because they all grow older and I don’t. One day you’re going to grow old too. But I will always stay just like I am. Most people would kill to be immortal, but it just feels like a curse anymore.” More tears fall onto your shoulder.

“I can’t imagine how lonely that would be. But, I want you to remember that you do have friends. The brothers, for one. I mean, remember Asmo and Mammon fighting over what Asmo should get you for your birthday? They care about you. And, while I might not always be around, you still have me for quite awhile. And who knows, maybe I’ll stumble upon some ancient artifact that turns me immortal. With how things seem to work for me, that is a possibility.”

Walking to the ledge, I find myself looking down

Frozen still with fear, now I'm plunging to the ground

If only I knew how to fly

Then I could convince myself this isn't my time to die

Solomon laughs again. “Yeah, it is… But I wouldn’t wish immortality upon you MC. It’s truly not as great as it seems. It’s… It’s hell. You watch everything change around you as everyone you know and love grows old and dies. And then you have to start over somewhere else.”

“I have plenty of loved ones who aren’t going to grow old and die. You, for one.” You give him a comforting squeeze and continue to rub his back.

“Yeah, but what about your human family? What about your human friends? Watching the people you love die isn’t an easy thing.”

“No, but that’s a part of life. And I’m sure staying the same age while they get older is hard, but I have you guys. It wouldn’t all be bad. Getting to stay with you forever wouldn’t be bad.”

“Staying with you forever sounds nice… But I still wouldn’t wish this upon you. I don’t want you to turn into what I have.”

“What, a wonderful person who protects humanity? Someone who would do anything to help the ones he loves? That sounds like a pretty good person to me.”

“You have too high an opinion of me, MC.”

Instead, I'm rocketing faster and faster

I dive-bomb to the floor

And when my body crashes to the pavement

I'm right back where I was before

“No, I think my opinion of you is just right.”

Solomon lets out a shaky breath as a few more tears fall. “Everyone calls me shady, some even call me evil. Your opinion-”

You cut him off. “My opinion matters more than a bunch of demons who don’t actually know you. Have you done shady things? Sure. But don’t forget the ones calling you shady are literal demons. They don’t get an opinion when they’re worse than shady themselves. You’re doing great Sol. Despite what you and everyone else thinks, you’re doing great just how you are.”

I created a monster, a hell within my head

With nowhere to go, I'm out on my own

Oh, I'm so scared

Awake me from my nightmare

Solomon sniffles, pulling his face back up and wiping the rest of his tears. “Thank you, MC. I love you and I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

You smile at him. “I love you too Solomon.”

#obey me #obey me x reader #obey me solomon #obey me solomon x reader #Nightmare

[ddoxhan]

stay by my side

if there is no one next to you I’ll just be behind you, just stay by my side

word count : 0.9k words

genre : classic angst; giselle x gn! reader; days were never the same anymore but your feelings for aeri will always be unchanging for as long time exists

t/w : nothing :) this is just some good ol' angst

a/n : not much plot to it but ! it's the feels of not being able to forget someone and maybe, you're better off longing for them than try pressing down your feelings. anyone out there longing for their special someone, I just wanna say it's okay to feel that way :3 it may not be the healthiest choice, but allow yourself to long for that person until you feel it's time to actually let them go <3 enjoy !

things were just never the same anymore, it couldn't. I'd keep having dreams about you, about us. those sweet, spring memories we shared now embedded in my head like a broken record. those days when we spent our mornings showering each other with kisses, when we would take night walks in the park, when we talked about spending the rest of our lives together. those days, when we loved each other like there was no tomorrow. we did, but it just didn't last forever just like what we had wished under that shooting star.

I admit, that I still love you, the same or maybe even more than I did back then. I truly believed that we were meant to be, and no one can tell me otherwise as I've seen those eyes of yours bear the same endearment for me as I do for you. it sounds cheesy, but I am willing to be if it's you. however, as much as I want to let go of you, I don't think I'd ever come to terms with the fact that you did. we were so beautiful, don't you think so? it was as if the world revolved around us. I know we will never be able to go back to those days, to love each other again.

every night that came and went in the same repertoire. staring straight at the ceiling, reminiscing the times I still had you in my arms, crying myself to sleep, jolting awake from the same nightmare, hugging myself back to sleep. the pain was almost unbearable when it gets to the nightmare. it was my regrets for not doing my best for you, and the mistakes that I wished I hadn't made. I could never stand to see tears in your eyes, especially if it was because of me. on the day you left, you looked me in the eye, with tears threatening to roll down your crimson cheeks. that moment broke my heart to pieces, noticing the burning sensation of the wind against my skin.

it seems I have already lost you, with no chance to turn back time.

when I'm sober, everything I did numbed me to the core. when I wake up to your side of the bed empty, seeing that the once lively space all dull with silence, the fridge slowly emptying, leaving nothing but water and some alcohol. it's like I stopped functioning properly when you're not with me. the flowers that you loved so much don't look as lively, the warm breeze that greeted us daily slowly getting chilly, the stars that we spent hours looking at don't sparkle as much. you brought so much color to my world, and it returned back to being monochromatic, like those times before I met you.

you brought so much joy to my life, and I have never felt so grateful for being alive. it was the first time I felt so euphoric, fortunate to see that very smile of yours when you look at me with such affection. that smile was for me, because of me, only me. you made me feel like the luckiest person on earth to love someone as wonderful as you are. I can only hope you felt the same way as I did.

all the things in my life took a turn, not a good one at that, after you left. you took a part of me with you when you told me that things weren't working out. what did that mean? was I not doing good enough? did your feelings for me change? there were so many questions I want to ask, but sometimes, they were better left unanswered. these daggers piercing through my heart are more than enough to leave me bleeding profusely till I can't feel love anymore.

as I spent each day, yearning for your warmth and affection, there's something that I've come to realize as I take a step back to look at things. there will be no one else who would be able to fill your spot, not even with time. it's been months, almost a year that I've been standing here, not knowing what is wrong with me. that's because, nothing is wrong. everything made so much sense.

I love you and nothing can ever change that fact. even if you don't love me anymore, that's okay. all I will do is just stand here right behind you, protecting you from the shadows. although there might not be someone who would be by your side all the time, I will be right here behind you. until the day I get the chance to stand next to you, be the one you can rely on, I will be here for you.

there will be a day where we meet again, whether it be by chance or fate. and when that day comes, I want to be stronger than I am now, to give you that smile you loved so much when we were us. until then, I will take this role as your dark knight. looking over you from somewhere you wouldn't notice, offering you a hand when you struggle, finding solace right here. I know you would be able to tell that I am here, but please, leave me be. for the day I am able to let you go, will hopefully come.

so let me stay by your side for now, aeri.

#giselle #uchinaga aeri #aespa #aespa angst #aespa imagines #aespa scenarios #aespa x reader #giselle x reader #Spotify

[agathaandbrienneslesbian]

Heart of Gold - Part 2

Miranda Hilmarson x Mounted!Police!Fem!Reader

HELLO EVERYONE <3 I finally managed to finish Part 2 of my Miranda Hilmarson Fic. I'm sorry it took so long but it's finally here. I hope you enjoy this little addition to the first part. I'm not yet sure if I should make a 3rd part but if you guys want one, I'll look into it <3

Huge thanks to @weemssapphic for proofreading this part <3

Disclaimer: English is not my first language!

Warnings: Talk of bullying, talk of death and dying, descriptions of blood, death and being shot (I'm sorry... this is an angsty one)

Authors Note: Hurt/Comfort with a shit ton of Angst. I hope you guys enjoy <3

Words: 2'400+

AO3 Link

Taglist

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“Why do you care so much about me?”

You look at her, unable to answer the question. Should you tell her? Should you take the risk and risk the friendship you’ve built? Miranda looked at you intensely, chest heaving from being dragged around. You tried to collect your thoughts but just as you were about to answer, Miranda dropped her head, looking down at her feet. A sigh of defeat left her lips.

“It’s a joke to you as well isn’t it?” she asked through clenched teeth, tears threatened to spill from her eyes any second. You looked at her in shock.

“No! No Mir that's not the case!!! That's not the case at all-”

“Save it!” Miranda looked up at you, eyes red, tears wetting her face as she furiously wiped the back of her hand over her cheeks. 

“I should have known… you’re like everyone else… I- I should have never trusted you…” and with that, Miranda stormed out before you could say anything else. 

The defeat on her face, the betrayal, the way she looked so full of hope only for it to be replaced by pain, a pain you felt right in this moment with her. How could you have fucked up this bad… you should have just told her… you should have just SHOWN her. You had to catch up to her. Without further hesitation your feet carried you through the stables towards the parking lot only to see her drive off in a hurry.

“Shit… SHIT'' Defeated, you return to the stables to gather your things and leave. You’d see her tomorrow! You’d get your chance to talk to her again… hopefully.

—

However, luck wasn’t on your side. Miranda had started avoiding you, leaving the room when you entered, walking the other direction when you walked towards her. And this had been going on for a few weeks now.

It hurt. 

You knew better than to follow her but… it hurt. After a particularly busy day, you went to get some drinks with your colleagues, wishing you were with Miranda. A heavy sigh left your lips as you absentmindedly picked at the label of your beer. You felt sick…

“Hey guys… I’m gonna go home… I don’t feel too well…”

You stood, handing your beer to your friend, and gathered your things. Of course you were met with protest but you just ignored it, and soon enough they figured that it might be best to just let you leave. So that is what you did. 

Exiting the pub you felt the cold breeze on your skin. The air was a bit chilly and it smelled like rain. Cool darkness enveloped you and you stood there for a minute, just feeling the breeze on your skin and the smell of rain. When you opened your eyes again, that’s when you saw her. 

Miranda anxiously stepped on a cigarette she’d just finished. It looked as if she were considering coming into the pub or not. She hadn’t seen you yet. Should you approach her? Go back inside? Before a choice could be made, she looked up, making eye contact. You were expecting her to run away, to flee from your loving and pained gaze once again but…. She didn’t. She held your gaze, waiting. 

“Miranda-“

“Can we walk?”

She interrupted. You looked at her, surprise painted all over your face as she just waited for you to reply. Quickly, you nodded, walking over to her and following.

“Miranda… I am so sorry. If I have done something that hurt you please just let me know I-“

“Don’t apologise… I should-“

The blonde took a deep breath, shoving her hands in her vest pockets and looking down at her feet, kicking some stones around as she walked with you. She had missed you… but she needed time to think.

“I should have let you answer that night… I am sorry…”

Suddenly, Miranda stopped, looking out over the beach and the dark ocean. You stood beside her, your eyes trained on her face. You had to tell her how you feel. You had to let her know that she is worthy of love and affection. That she is beautiful, wonderful, perfect. In your eyes, Miranda was perfect. 

“I care because you’re worth it.”

Miranda was avoiding your gaze, but you saw her eyebrows furrow. This just spurred you on more.

“I care because you are worth the time and energy. I care because you are the sweetest and most adorable and kind person on this planet. I care because you lit up my world when I met you the very first time. You make my days better and I cannot fall asleep or wake up without thinking of you.”

Miranda looked down at you, her eyes, usually so blue and bright now seemed grey, and were welling up with tears. Carefully, you took her hand into yours, giving her a reassuring squeeze with your hands.

“I care because I fell in love with you…. Miranda… I love you”

You said it, admitted your feelings, and it sent a rush of anxiety down your spine, leaving its sticky tingling feeling behind. You were expecting her to leave again, to get upset at you… what you didn’t expect were her lips suddenly pressed against yours, a big hand with long, slim fingers, gently cupping your cheek and pulling you closer.

Miranda had hoped you would say that. It took her a while to realise… several weeks. She simply wasn’t used to it. No one had ever shown her the care and affection you had. And she found herself falling for you. Afraid you would hate her if she admitted it, she kept quiet.

But that night…. She had to know. 

However, as soon as the question left her lips, she felt herself getting anxious. She was terrified. What if you said you pitied her and that’s why you ‘acted’ like you cared so much? So, before you could answer, she pulled away. She ran away. To protect herself, not noticing how much her actions had hurt you. Until she saw how your smile faded, how your eyes stopped shining, how you seemed to have lost your joy. And she hated herself for hurting you so much. 

“I am sorry Y/N… I… love you too. I was just anxious and-“

Now it was your turn to interrupt her with a kiss. Your arms wrapping around her shoulders, holding her close. You didn’t need to hear more. It was no secret that Miranda was oftentimes anxious. Who could blame her… she’s been through a lot. 

“I’ve heard everything I needed to hear Mir… you don’t have to apologise. You’re okay. I am not mad at you. I’m glad you told me…”

Your whispers and words of affirmation and understanding caused Miranda to completely dissolve. Her tears flowing freely as she held onto you, finding comfort in your embrace. She did not know how she deserved you, but she would be an idiot if she’d ever let go of you. You loved her… and she loved you. 

—

And so it happened that the two of you became the cutest couple at the police station (at least according to you two. Who cares what the others think).

More often than not, you brought Miranda a coffee, some treats or even flowers. You started spending almost every waking moment together, only separating to go home and sleep. 

Both of you wanted to take it slow. There was no hurry. You weren’t going anywhere and neither was Miranda. The love you experienced in each other's embrace and kisses was enough to keep you two glued together. No force could ever part you… not even a routine patrol that ended more dangerous for you than expected. 

—

It was like every Wednesday afternoon.

You were patrolling the promenades before going back to the stables and calling it a day. Already excited to spend time with Miranda after work, you did not realise that the altercation you rode towards, would end up being almost fatal for you. 

Of course it had to happen.

You knew you shouldn’t have split up with your colleague. But there was no harm in thinking that if he took the lower road, you could take the higher one and still be close enough to hear each other. 

The second you realised that there was a gun pointed at you, you started calling for your colleague. Reaching for your own gun, you suddenly felt a piercing pain in your shoulder. A BANG was heard and then your ears were ringing. The pain in your shoulder increased, dragging its disgusting talons over your neck to the back of your head, digging deep into your skin. You started feeling faint, head pounding and everything started looking fuzzy and far away. At first you hadn’t even noticed that your horse was galloping towards the stables. Your hand just instinctively grabbed onto the horn of the saddle and your grip tightened. 

Artemis was huffing, whining and neighing the closer she got to the stables. A place she knew was safe. She felt your shift in energy, understanding the severity of the situation more than you. The smart horse she was, she stopped in front of the station, making a ruckus to get the other officers’ attention.

Miranda looked out the window, expecting to see you waving at her but what she saw, sent her into a panic. She rushed out to you and Artemis, gently pulling you from your mare and asking you questions. What exactly she asked, you didn’t know… you didn’t hear. All you knew was that you were in Miranda’s arms and it soothed the pain you were experiencing. 

Meanwhile Miranda tried to stay calm. She had called the ambulance, staying with you and holding you close, trying to stop the bleeding. Her hands, your shirt and her sleeves were covered in thick, dark red, warm blood. Your blood. 

Miranda tried really hard to keep it together, to stay strong for you, but she couldn’t keep the sobs in. Tears coated her soft pale skin, huffs and sobs escaped her lips, frantic breathing accompanied by the fear that she could lose you. She couldn't lose you… Miranda wouldn’t survive without you, she knew that. She needed you. She loved you. 

The next few hours were a blur for Miranda. You were unconscious, the medics doing everything they could to keep you alive as she accompanied you, holding your hand throughout the entire drive to the hospital. There, you were separated. 

But Miranda didn’t let up. 

She waited, and waited, and waited. Minutes turned to hours, hours filled with anxiety, fear and pain. She did not even wash up, her hands, shirt and trousers still soaked in your blood. Now cold, sticking to her skin, as if death itself latched onto her. 

It wasn’t until 4 hours later that the nurse finally went to fetch Miranda. She did ask her to at least wash her arms before bringing her to your room. There you laid, unconscious, but breathing. You were breathing. Miranda immediately went to your side, gently brushing some hair from your face, caressing your cheek, and holding your warm, soft hand. 

“I need you… please don’t leave me just yet…” She whispered.

“I love you. Come back to me…” She begged.

“I can’t lose you..”

She breathed. 

Miranda hoped you would hear her. She would tell you about all the things she wanted to experience with you, places she wanted to show you and future plans she had dreamed about. For more than 48 hours, Miranda sat by your side. The nurses had to force her to at least eat and drink something if she wasn’t going to sleep or go home to get changed. She sat by your side and wouldn’t leave. It was as if Miranda was in a frozen state. Holding your hand and pressing kisses to your cheek and forehead. She was only ripped from her trance as the heart monitor flatlined. She shot up, calling out for help, screaming, begging, sobbing, but no one heard. She was alone… and you were gone… —

“Miranda?”

Suddenly, Miranda felt a soft hand on her arm, another on her cheek, wiping away tears that escaped her eyelids once more. She opened her eyes, finding herself in her bedroom. Her breathing ragged, panic evident on her face, she started looking around. Where were you? “Miranda… darling… It’s okay. It was just a bad dream…” Her eyes shot to the direction of the voice, and she started sobbing. You wrapped your arms around her, pulling her close and kissing her head. Miranda’s arms immediately wrapping around your middle, so as not to hurt your healing shoulder. She pulled you close and that's when she realised where she was. Miranda was at home, in her bed, with you holding her, consoling her.

“I am here Mir. I won’t go anywhere… I promised you I won’t.” Your soft voice brought her peace. This wasn’t the first time she awoke in this manner. Once the nurses and doctors were happy with your recovery, they allowed you to go back home. Miranda insisted you live with her, so she could take care of you and protect you. Of course you said yes. But ever since then, Miranda was plagued by nightmares. One worse than the other, the outcome was the same every time. She couldn’t save you. She couldn’t protect you. You were gone, leaving her alone in her pain and loneliness. 

But it was just a dream. Every night she would feel your arms around her, your soft voice rousing her from the hell she fell into. Every night, you would reassure her that you were still there, that you survived, and that it was thanks to her quick thinking. Every night, you would dry her tears and have her fall asleep with her head on your chest, hearing your heartbeat. You were alive, and you were with her. It would take some time for the two of you to overcome the trauma, the horrors both of you faced each night. But you would overcome it. Together. Miranda could overcome it with your love, and you with hers. And her heart of Gold.

So, just like every night, you reminded her of that. A kiss pressed to her head as you noticed her relaxing in your arms, sleep ready to take her again. You whispered, so as not to wake her again: “Miranda?”

“Hm?”

“I love you”

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End Note: As always, reblogs, comments and likes are well appreciated <3 Taglist: @vivendraws @erinyaya @phexyce @aemilia19 @weemssapphic @gela123 @winterfireblond @Xxmecverxx @unicorniusfallapatorious @gwenistheloml @yourgaeyisshowing @readingtheentrails

#queer #gwendoline christie #sapphic #fanfic #wlw #reader insert #ao3 #gwendoline christie fanfics #Miranda Hilmarson x Reader #Miranda Hilmarson fanfic #Miranda hilmarson #Fanfic #x reader #angst #hurt comfort #heart of gold part 2

[fqntasies]

The First Kiss - Feyd Rautha x Reader

summary: You are visiting Giedi Prime once again. As you've grown older, the pull you feel around the na-baron is stronger, deeper, even if you've never spoken on it. Does he dream of you too? Will you be able to speak of them to him, or will such dreams remain as such forever? We he be able to resist you?

disclaimer: this is a kind of follow up fic to my last feyd x reader. However, this takes place before that time frame. Read the first one here to get a better understanding of how i'm approaching my feyd stories.

words: 1,111

This was the fifth time your family's entourage had visited Giedi Prime; your betrothed's home planet. Each stay got a little more familiar. Perhaps it was the smell of the air. The caress of the blinding black sun above; brilliant and strange; a blot in the heavens. You felt enraptured in it somehow. Like a feeling you could not shake, though in part you blamed the dreams.

You had yet to speak of them with him.

Had he dreamt too? Surely, the na-baron had. You thought often that he must, if not only for the way his eyes seemed to linger on you when you shared a space, no matter how many resided in it. You felt wholly consumed by it. There was a heaviness in his actions, weighted by their directness; when his gaze would meet yours, your pulse would quicken, breaths catch in your chest.

Sometimes, even in silence, in those spaces you shared among the others of your families, you found him lingering close. Felt the heat of him at your back. The hand at his side ever so close to caressing the edge of your hip. He was possessive. Protective.

You two had shared such few words, yet you knew this about him already. Nor could you deny the way it made you feel. A magnetism. Something at the edge that was just out of reach. For now.

"My lady." You startle at the closeness of his words, earrings brushing the curve of your neck as you whip swiftly to look up at Feyd.

You had been thinking of him; lost in your own thoughts. He seemed to read it in your gaze, dark eyes flitting between yours, shadows blanketing the angles of his face. There is a palpable silence as his gaze lowers to your lips. That heat you'd come to know with him. Your mouth waters at the ghost of his kisses in your mind. A seemingly distant future in visions of your marriage.

You vaguely catch the Baron's smug rasp to your father something about spice production, but they have trailed out of the room before you catch the full statement; leading a train of servants in their wake, and the hissing of levitation technology.

When you speak it is but a breathy sound.

"My lord na-baron."

"-Feyd." He quips. low and sudden.

You swallow thickly, a flush beneath your cheeks as you meet his eyes. His given name. You hadn't used it yet, save your own thoughts, and whispers to yourself at night in the safety of your room. It seemed a sacred thing. Something intimate. Something of your yet-to-be-husband's.

The na-baron watches you intently; his body imperceptibly closer, as though seeking to envelope you in his shadow. Predator and prey. You decide to broach the subject. The feeling between you...you must know if it is something of your own mind.

"Feyd Rautha". For some reason the use of his full name from your lips makes him smile. A bizarre sight, being so rare - and this grin looked almost amused. Like he had not been expecting the addendum, humorous. You are quick to try and follow up with your request, cheeks hot.

"I must ask something rather delicate, pertaining to our betrothal."

At that he seems to sober a bit, obviously unsure about whatever it was you were to follow with.

"Do you..." You wish you could know a thing beyond just your own feelings. The twisting of your stomach at the thought he could reject you tearing your insides.

"...Do you dream?"

For a moment, there is that heavy silence again, but then you see the slow curl of his lips, just at the edges. Oh, he seems to say. Followed by a soft and knowing hum.

"Is that what this is about?"

He is coming closer now, stalking you in a few calculated steps with that same smile. Your chest heaves with your breaths as you make way backwards, but then he has an arm about your waist, and mentally you are aware of the heat of him, and the strength. You feel like you've lost some game, or been suddenly caught cheating.

That's when you taste him. His mouth has tilted upon yours, slotted against you like you were meant to be there and you moan softly. Surprised that this moment has come at all - yet wanton for it too. How many nights had you dreamed of him holding you like this? Wondering what it might be like for him to lean in and kiss you?

Feyd swallows your sigh greedily. Readily. The arm he has around you pulls you into him further, and you are pleasantly surprised by how soft his lips are, and how good he tastes. His tongue swipes across your bottom lip.

You angle your head opening for him further, learning as you go. He was so quietly calculated, and yet he kissed you like a man starved, uncaring of who saw or who tried to stop him. Not that any being could. You would bet everything that the na-baron would slice any fool willing to try, to shreds. You'd seen his bloodlust, and his prowess in the arena. Such a feat might even excite him, with you as his prize.

He seemed eager to hold back his need for air - kissing as deeply as he could. Slow. Then fast. As though his control would slip and he has to taste more of you. More. More. His tongue sought yours in a dance, followed by teeth tugging at your lips. You mewled softly at that, eyes so heavy. You felt almost drugged, and after a moment too long, you both parted, breaths breaking the silence.

His hands are at your hips now, holding you steady, but your faces were still just a fraction apart. You felt proud of the way Feyd's eyes looked heavy lidded, or how his lips were tinged pink. It drew your eyes in a way that had him groaning.

"Careful, princess..." The nickname has your cheeks heating again, even after being kissed senseless, and he chuckles low in his chest. The smells of spice and some kind of foreign cologne fill your senses as he nears again, this time bringing his mouth towards your ear. You close your eyes, barely able to keep them open as you angle your head slightly to the side.

"-Or I might have to make more of my dreams a reality."

The admittance, and the low tone of his voice so close has you turning your face and opening for him once more, your breaths colliding as he is quick to seek your tongue with his own.

#feyd x reader #feyd rautha x reader #feyd rautha #x reader #fanfic #reader insert #reader #fanfiction #dune fanfic #dune fanfiction #feyd x you #i love the bald man alright #like dang why they make him so kissable though #okay dawg yeah i wanna make out gosh

[nihilnovisubsole]

Because of your latest post: not sure if you’ve answered this before, but how does someone even entertain the idea of writing for the game dev industry? Did you start out on indie games or just write before and show them your work? Since it’s such a subjective field etc

if i have, it bears repeating! here's a rough timeline of what i did. never discount the value of luck and the kindness of friends

2016: i was doing a random freelance transcription job when i saw @theivorytowercrumbles post about writing for voltage. they reblogged the studio's open casting call for new writers. since it was so lenient - no experience, fanfic samples allowed - i applied. they hired me for their new project, but let me go after a trial period, citing that the tone of my writing was a bad fit for that game. i foundered for a while after that. i don't take rejection well. i started dangerous crowns to try to make money from writing some other way.

2017: one of voltage's producers reached out to me and said they'd started another project that i was a good fit for. she felt letting me go was a mistake and wanted to snap me back up. i said yes, i mean, are you kidding? so i started on reiner's route.

2018-2019: i kept at it. i took on diego's route. it occurred to me that i wasn't making very much money, but i liked my coworkers, and i was building my portfolio, so who cared? i also finished dangerous crowns, and a handful of people bought it, but certainly not enough to support myself or anything.

early 2020: between the pay and creative differences with voltage's team, it started to sink in that i needed to find other work. i applied to the few open game writer jobs i could find, but with only mobile romance in my portfolio, i got nowhere. i threw in dangerous crowns samples. i tried to network on twitter. i still never made it to the interview phase. i foundered for a while again.

late 2020: the voltage writers went on strike. i gave a statement to a journalist that one of obsidian's narrative designers noticed. we became acquaintances over it. another old friend of mine threw me a life raft in the form of a different contract, better paying, on a non-romance indie game. i took it gladly. i added a twine game to my portfolio, too. i kept applying. i got a few interviews, but something still didn't click.

2021: i finally accepted that i needed formal help. i did a portfolio workshop. i got resume coaching. the coach passed my name to a writer on the company of heroes team. they liked me! they also paid me more money than i'd ever seen in my life. at the same time, obsidian advertised a narrative job opening. i applied on a lark and let my ND pal know i was doing so. why not, right? college-new-vegas-fan me would want me to. they rejected me, but not before i passed their writing test and two interviews. i had nothing to lose at that point, so i told my ND pal that i was bummed. she gave me a golden piece of advice: "you came really close. try again."

2022: obsidian had another narrative opening. i threw myself at it. i was now going to annoy them into hiring me. since i was a known quantity from applying six months before, they had no qualms about interviewing me again. this time, it worked out, and i've been there ever since.

what's the common denominator here? i met people who thought i was all right and gave me a hand up when i needed it. the standard advice is to work with a community of your peers instead of trying to get your heroes to senpai-notice you. it's not that they don't care - they just have their own thing going on, and your peers could be the heroes of tomorrow if the right project comes along. i also found the portfolio was the end-all-be-all when it came to job hunting. i went through a grieving process with that! i'm not afraid to admit it. i wish studios had held my degree or dangerous crowns in higher regard, but i just had to make games in a wider variety of genres, and that was that.

one caveat: narrative is a really saturated field right now. a lot of people want to write, and there aren't many openings. it's not uncommon for big studios to get hundreds of applicants. larian probably got over a thousand for the job they posted recently. i feel awful saying that, because i don't want to discourage you, but i'd feel worse if i didn't let you know what you were getting into. if it's something you want, you should try! keep an open mind about the random projects you may find. you never know where they'll take you.

#asks #anon #workjob

[homesickturner]

Homesick - Ch. 1

plot : childhood best friends Gracie and John are separated when join joins the war. Both are dealing with their own problems…will they cope with such distance between them. Most importantly, will the friendship (or more than..) stand the test of the war?

Dara speaks : hi hi! I’m overjoyed to finally be releasing this first chapter 🥹 I just could not keep these two to myself anymore 🫶 pls comment if you enjoy…any constructive criticism is welcome also. My asks box is wide open for any and all thoughts you have after reading this chapter so please send them my way !! The idea for this series came to me while listening to my favorite song ever homesick by dua lipa…give it a listen if you have not it’s too good!

warning : will be historically inaccurate at times for the sake of storytelling. Mentions of anxiety.

Gracie and John grew up together. Their parents often say that it was not often throughout their lives that one was seen without the other. Once they reached hugh school, things certainly changed although they still remained very close.

Gracie has been an exceptional student for all her young life and had future hopes of become a nurse. John and Gracie spoke often of their future plans and although there was a chance they may end up hours and hours from each other they knew they would be alright.

“So John,” Gracie spoke up, John sitting opposite her at the dinner table at her home. “I was thinking of doing some traveling before I head to Washington in the fall…where is it that you confirmed again?.”

“Gracie-.”

“Don’t worry though it’ll be way before college so we’ll have time to work and-.”

“I’m joining the air corps,” he blurted out, setting his knife and fork down.”

“You’re…what. John you’re going off to the war and you didn’t mention it.”

“No Gracie because I knew how worried you’d be-.”

“Damn right John.” She shot back, a hurt expression clouding her face. The girl was lost for words. “I’m coming with you-.”

“Like hell you are,” he scoffed. “Quit talking crap Gracie.”

“John! I was going to be a nurse anyway at least this way I’d be helping.” She pleaded.

“Gracie..you don’t want to see what some of the nurses do in the war,” John said softly. “You have so much going for you, go to college and have fun-.”

“While you’re getting shot down out of your fucking plane John!.” She shouted back at him, tears brimming in her eyes.

“Grace I’ll be ‘aright. I’m not letting you throw your future away for me…for this stupid war.” He insisted.

“John you’re my best friend. I can’t let you go out there.” She stood from the table and began pacing the small dining room. “If I do, I’d bet money that there’ll be a letter landing on my lap in Washington in a few months because you’ll-.”

“Gracie,” he yelled, strolling to where she was in front of him and laying both hands firmly on her shoulders. “Please…you’re breaking my heart. You gotta let me go.” He choked out, getting the slightest bit emotional seeing her eyes filled with tears.

Gracie felt like the life she’d planned had been ripped from beneath her. Some may say, she indeed had the world at her feet, everything was in her favor. Her family were wealthy, she had friends and she was headed to one of the top nursing programs in the country. Gracie never in a million years expected to hear that news from John. She was so crushed, so angry that this war was going to take away her favorite person from her and maybe never give him back. Gracie knew that boy better than she knew herself, so she knew that there was no changing his mind.

Although she was deeply upset, she knew John and had every belief he was doing this for the right reasons. Gracie knew that John had a big heart and truly just wanted to do what he could in such a horrific situation.

She wished she could be mature and think clearly about the situation. At the end of the day, Gracie was 18 years old and about to potentially loose her best friend to this war. So, she certainly was not thinking clearly.

As much as Gracie tried to persuade him, John’s decision was made. One week later he and Gracie stood at the Wisconsin harbor to say their goodbyes.

“Please don’t do this,” she whispered quietly into this ear, both her arms wrapped around his neck. “I can’t loose you Johnny…you’re my other half.”

Gracie couldn’t believe John was finally leaving her. She wasn’t sure she could live without him. Unfortunately for her, she was about to find out.

“It’ll be alright Gracie, I promise you. Just trust me alright?,” he muttered to her softly, he hands rubbed her back slowly.

John knew no matter what he told her, she’d worry. He knew that they were two halves of the same coin, and they balanced each other out perfectly. John brought out her wild side and Gracie kept John’s feet on the ground when he got overexcited. They certainly brought out the best in each other.

He might have been going off to war, but the only thing he was worried about was how Gracie would cope when he was gone. She’d always been an anxious girl, and it has only worsened in her late teens. In recent years, her friends and family realized that it was only John who seemed to truly help her. They would watch the nerves and worry melt off her face and her body relax when John and Gracie were in company togther. When she was with him, it was as if all the voices in her head were quieted and she felt herself again. John could only hope a constant stream of encouraging letters would keep his Grace happy.

As they broke apart John kept his hands on her shoulders. The two kept their eyes locked for a few moments, the words that were not said danced in the air between them. The moment neither of them ever thought would come had finally arrived.

Gracie watched as John turned and slowly began to walk away from her, and into the unknown. Right before boarding the boat, he turned to her once more as she called out to him.

“John?,” she asked. “Yeah Gracie?,” he called back, a small smile forming on this lips. “

“Please take care of yourself Johnny….and I’ll be waiting for my letters.” John could see her eyes lighting up as she shouted out to him.

“I will Grace, I promise I will. You’ll have plenty of letters don’t you worry.”

Gracie watched as her best friend boarded the boat. Moments later he appeared on the top deck, finding himself a spot next to the railing and stood waving to Gracie. A smile graced her lips as she watched him waving to her, and she would laugh when every so often he would do a salute. John noticed these laughs, and did them twice as much when he noticed she enjoyed them.

Gracie’s heart broke as she watched the boat sail away slowly. She stood and waved the John until she couldn’t see him anymore. Once the boat had sailed far enough, she let some tears finally fall down her cheeks.

#buck and bucky #bucky egan #john egan #mota #rosie rosenthal #mota x reader #mota spoilers #john egan x reader #john egan x oc #Gracie and John #austin butler #callum turner #nate mann #john brady

[miller-n-morgan]

And I Feel Fine (.ii)

Joel Miller x Jackson!Reader

18+, mdni

Summary: A new journey lies ahead, and on the very first night you become sure of something that will completely change the trajectory of your entire future.

Warnings: leaving most of the warnings the same because they apply. mentions of death, violence, gore, blood, mentions of sex abuse and trafficking. Mentions of teenage pregnancy. Mention of drugs and substances. Again, literally has ✨️the works.✨️

Word Count: 7k (i'm going absolutely wild)

Now we're cookin'.... enjoy this slice of my brain that I spent entirely too long on. And also know that the first part of the Arthur Morgan series will probably drop this week.

“I ain’t shittin’ you.” You were fine to leave it at that, but he sure as hell wasn’t. For a guy that hated long conversations, he seemed to like poking around in your business.  “And what makes you think that?”  You honestly didn’t want to tell him. He’s not Tommy, he might make fun of you, might store away the information later on and use it against you. You have no idea, actually. You don’t know him. 

Your contact had gotten you to an apartment. It was worn down, just as every other place in the QZ seemed to be, but it was better taken care of. The people living here must have been attentive about the appearance of their home. A good enough family to leave your baby with. 

She stopped you in the hallway, knocking three times on the old wood door, hearing a lively voice from the otherside before it opened. The woman standing there was lovely, about thirty or so, a half smile on her face when she saw you both had arrived. This plan had been in the works for some time now. 

“Hello, I’m Maxine Williams,” she greeted, reaching for your hand to shake. You did your best to match her kind and infectious energy, giving her a smile in return. She is after all going to be doing you the favor of a lifetime. 

“It’s nice to meet you,” you replied, keeping your head low between your shoulders, though you felt comfortable in her presence. 

She leaned into your contact, turning her head, but you heard the whisper “She’s so young…” 

“S’why she needs help.” 

You understood that this didn’t look right. You should not be pregnant at your tender age, should not have been put in this position. You’ve seen more horrific things than any person ever should, and it all started when you were eight… outbreak day. 

“Of course… come in, both of you.”

The pleasantries went on for a while, exchanging information of where you came from, why you were in this area, what you did before being in Boston. She mentioned her husband, her two sons and their love for older things, wishing for the world the way it was. It was all just small talk, leading up to the actual conversation topic: the baby she was about to take off your hands. 

“You’ll stay with us until the birth, if that’s okay,” she offered, but it sounded more like a demand. It wasn’t a harsh or cruel one. Even if you slept on the rickety couch you were lounging upon now, it would be better than camping in the woods, sleeping on the hard ground like you’d been doing only a month ago. 

“I’ll do whatever you want me to.”

Your contact was happy to see both ends so receptive. She’d never seen a deal containing human life go down this smoothly. Probably because this was a bit more sensitive of an exchange. 

“Good… that’s good. I’ve heard you’re interested in a closed adoption?” 

You glanced down at your stomach, feeling the weight of it, crushing inwards on the rest of your body. Having this baby and giving it away will relieve the weight both physically and metaphorically. They’ll be in good hands, better than your own could ever be. 

“I think it’s probably best. I used to have siblings, but I never really took care of them… I’m not sure I could do this,” You shook your head. You saw her younger son peeking his head out of the bedroom door in the corner, backing away as soon as you caught him. Even in an apocalypse, a child can be happy… just not with you. “I want to give them their best chance.”

“I understand…  and we’re going to do our best to make sure they have a normal childhood,” she responded, leaning forward and placing a comforting hand on your knee. 

“Thank you…”

You had sat down on one of the containment units, feeling as though the adrenaline rush from the ambush was beginning to wear off. Tommy found Maria not far away from where you were sitting, and began to ask his special favor. It was crazy, he knew it, you knew it… but it had to be done. This girl was somehow important, to the fireflies and to all of mankind, and you were starting to wonder why. Joel hadn’t said a word, sitting across from you and awaiting the news that would surely come from his brother’s discussion with his wife. 

“So, you’ve been traveling with Ellie?” 

He looked up at you from his boot laces, his eyes were heavy, and he didn’t seem in the mood to talk. He was grumpy in nature, but you could tell there was more underneath the tough exterior.

“I have.” And no further explanation was given. 

You didn’t think it was best to keep trying your luck, keep on asking him questions. He wasn’t the talking type and you figured you’d be wasting your time… but speak of the devil, Ellie came up to him just as the conversation between Tommy and Maria was getting heated. 

“What’s that all about?” She nodded in their direction. She looked scared, like a deer caught in headlights, just not as frozen. Wide eyed and unable to look away from the scene. “Does that have anything to do with me?” 

She was smart, she’d pick up on the words they were saying - more like yelling - to each other. The context clues were there, Joel would have to be an idiot to think she’d just let him off the hook. 

“We’ll talk about it later…” he grumbled, his annoyance already at a high from your unimportant questions and the fighting in the background. 

“Did he tell you where the lab is?” She asked, her eyebrows furrowing as she got even closer to hear them. 

The lab? Is that where the fireflies would be? You vaguely remember the days you spent with the resistance group, but you don’t remember anything about a lab…

“We’ll talk about it later,” he repeated himself, almost as a warning. 

She turned to Tommy and Maria, then back to Joel, her face one of distrust and sadness. She knew, she could tell. Joel was trying to get rid of her. 

You wanted to say something, to jump in and tell her that she didn’t need to be scared, didn’t need to be worried about where she was going. That you would go with her and it would be okay… but that wouldn’t help a damn thing. Even if you turn out to be her biological mother, you are most definitely not her mom, and cannot console her as one.

“Later… right,” she trailed, backing away from Joel and off to another sectional of the checkpoint. 

Joel looked back to you, your eyes already on him. 

He sighed, at first not saying a word… but when he made a full rotation of his eyeline and you were still staring holes into him, he had to speak up. 

“If you’re lookin’ to judge me, then just-.” 

“I’m not.” 

Your interruption cut him off, and he didn’t really know what else to say. He nodded, not looking away from you, but rather trying to figure out what it is you needed from him. Your stare was not discomforting but it felt demanding. It wanted something.

“How long have you known her?” You finally spit out, tucking a leg under your elbow as you sat back. You knew you’d gotten his attention, now. 

“Few months, now. I’m supposed to take her to the fireflies as a favor to someone.” 

“What do the fireflies want with a fourteen year old kid?” 

He sighed, raising his shoulders in a shrug like he didn’t know. He must’ve been lying, right? You’d gotten pretty good at reading people, but for some reason you couldn’t tell with him. Maybe you just didn’t know him well enough… 

“M’not really sure. All I knew in the beginning was that I could get paid pretty well, so I took her.”

You nodded. He didn’t seem like the person that did things for the sake of them, Tommy had told you stories about him, the things he used to do. If it was for his survival, he’d do it… but just for the sake of getting paid? When barely anything left had real monetary value? It sounded like bullshit. 

“She seems to trust you an awful lot,” you gestured between him and the empty space she’d left. 

There was another beat of silence, to which he didn’t use for reply. Instead he sat, his back curled over and his shoulders sunken inwards. He was tired, he was worn. He needed to rest, but this life wouldn’t let him.

“She knows you’re handing her off…”

“I reckon she does, yeah.” 

And right over your shoulder you heard the climax of Tommy and Maria’s argument. She held a pointed finger in his face, before he finally insisted on Joel’s plan. She couldn’t move him. He was going to do this whether she liked it or not… which is something you haven’t seen out of Tommy for years. Joel must mean a hell of a lot to him, to up and leave Maria on a dangerous errand like this. 

You stay seated when Maria walks over to Joel, and then when Joel stands up to talk to Tommy. You stay seated and think… I can keep Tommy safe. I’ve got nothing to lose, and everything to gain from learning about this girl. I can bring him home to Maria, even if it means my life. 

But you immediately stand when you hear Tommy’s rapid speech. “That girl of yours. she took one of our horses and rode off,” and then he glanced at you with an eyeroll. “She took provoker…”

You huffed a sigh, following the men over to the front of the sectional, the open trail up ahead. Maria was mad at Tommy, so obviously she wouldn’t be accompanying them… and that left you. Casper didn’t like men. 

“Damnit, which way?” Joel asked, his steps were heavy on the muddy ground. 

“I just saw her riding out of here!” Terry yelled, loosening the reins on two more horses he’d brought over for assistance. 

“Alright, get back inside, help the others clean the place up,” Tommy told the man, nodding for you to mount the back of his horse after he’d climbed up himself. You chanced a look at Joel, riding across from you both. His face was mixed with anger and determination, and it reminded you of what Tommy looked like after hours of hunting. They were the epitome of brothers, though you’d never met the other half before. 

You all followed the tracks, leading every which way it seemed. Some of the tracks were fresh, and some were older, but it was hard to tell when the grounds here were moist all the time, never really drying up and creating lasting prints on the dirt. 

After a while of riding, and running into some raiders - who were easily fended off - you saw your horse standing in front of an old farmhouse, the reins tied to a pole holding up the roof of the porch. You jumped from Tommy’s mare and ran up to Casper, petting his mane and making sure he was alright. There didn’t seem to be a scratch on him. 

You watched Joel enter the house, waiting back with Tommy. Even though Joel was the one she ran away from, you couldn’t imagine she’d be thrilled to see you or Tommy instead. Joel had a good reason to do what he did. He didn’t feel strong enough or fast enough for this job anymore. He didn’t feel like he could keep her safe. You unfortunately understood that feeling a little too well, and if you were correct on your suspicions, it would have been with the exact same kid. 

Tommy unstrapped his gun from his back, holding it steady and watching the surroundings whilst he leaned against the porch beam you were standing by. He was trying to gage whether or not your horse was calm enough for him to approach you closer, knowing what would happen if he wasn’t. 

“I think you’re right, you know…” He trailed, his voice quiet on the off chance of an open window. 

“You do?” 

You turned to him, you didn’t exactly have to think twice about what he meant. 

“Yeah,” he nodded, a chuckle falling from his lips. “It makes sense… the timing n’ everything. She looks a hell of a lot like you… and she’s caused about as much trouble today as the first time I met you.”

“Causing trouble is genetic?” You laughed, your eyes watering a bit at the implications he made. She might be yours. Your daughter, who you didn’t think you’d see again. 

“Hell, it might be. Your kinda trouble, anyway… stealin’ horses and shit.”

The nod of your head was slow, the thought of this all sinking in. It made perfect sense and yet coming to terms with the facts of ‘it is’ instead of ‘it could be’ makes you feel light headed.

You didn’t know if he was being serious or if he was just trying to make you feel better, but the look on his face told you the former. He wouldn’t just lie to you, he knew you could read him. 

“I keep turning it over in my head, tryin’ to think of ways I could prove it to myself… I think just seein’ her was enough for me. I’m remembering things I thought I forgot about a long time ago.”

Now it was his turn to nod, but your moment was caught short when you heard a branch snap around the corner. You instinctively pulled your gun from your pants, holding it out in the direction the snap came from. Tommy raised his rifle, doing the same and gesturing for you to go inside. You both made it in the doorway before the threat made itself known. Two guys, coming around the corner. They hadn’t realized you were watching them yet, but they did a quick scan, making sure there wasn’t any immediate danger. 

“Get upstairs,” he said in a whisper, but you snapped your head to face him. 

“No way, the odds are even if I stay,” you argued, but he wasn’t exactly in the mood for a fight right now. It was too risky to have you both down here. 

“Go tell Joel to get his ass down here, you stay up with the kid.” 

“Like hell I’m going up there. Your brother scares me,” you say in a half joking mumble, keeping watch on the two strangers that were now surrounding your horse. They were about to get kicked in the ass if they didn’t step away. 

Tommy realizes that them being distracted gives a good amount of time to leave without cover. 

“Alright, but you first,” he shrugged a shoulder towards the staircase, and with one last glance to your horse, you left your corner by the window. 

You quickly ran up the stairs, ducking a head in a few rooms before finding the one Joel and Ellie were in. 

“Get it together, we’re not alone,” Tommy said as soon as you got inside the door.

“I got two walking in,” Joel leaned towards the sliding window to get some eyes on the situation. 

“There’s more inside already…”

 You backed against the door, Tommy against the dresser on the opposite side. Joel stepped over in front of you, and Ellie behind Tommy. You didn’t realize until now, but taking a glance at Ellie, she looked even worse than when she left. Her face was sullen and her head was dropped. She didn’t seem to be snapping into reality, even with the weight of the situation. 

You stayed by her throughout the house, when Tommy and Joel started shooting, you stood in front of her, covering them from back behind. It was weird, these maternal feelings that had never sparked within you before, only now arising for this specific human that had no clue who you were. 

Once outside, it seemed strange. The dynamic between the four of you was so incredibly awkward. Everyone was thinking on a different topic, and the silence could echo on for miles. You nodded for Ellie to mount the back of your horse, since she didn’t seem comfortable to ride with Joel for the time being. She climbed up behind you and for a second you smiled, because this is your daughter, you know it… but soon after, your mind quickly succumbed to the general silence.

The nature and scenery surrounding you seemed to be duller than before, the pretty autumnal colors becoming ugly in the sense that you didn’t appreciate them right now. You loved the beginning of fall, but the feelings spread among you are tense and terrible, worse than raking up the fallen leaves before winter. 

The feeling never leaves, it stays until you all reach the edge of the town. 

-

“I’m not hungry,” you swore, shoving the extra plate of food away from your placemat.

Manxine’s husband was hungry, and you’d noticed him and his wife being decent enough to give you some of their food the past few days. It wasn’t necessary, because you weren’t working, and you weren’t barely helping them. They were helping you, and you couldn’t be more grateful. Taking extra food that wasn’t just lying around felt like stealing. You’d never been a stranger to it before, but these people were far too kind, too gentle. They made you feel like maybe the world wasn’t completely at its end. It still turned, and people were still good, despite everything. 

“Yes you are, and you should be,” Maxine pushed the plate back in front of you. Her goal had been to ‘put a little meat on your bones’ as long as you were under her roof. 

“I’m fine, I promise.”

“Promise or no promise, you need to eat more. You’re still too thin to try and survive childbirth, ya hear?” She put the old fork back into your open hand, and you sighed. It was sometimes hard to eat more than you normally did, on the account of your body not being used to it. If you ate more than usual would it make you sick? If you threw up the extra rations they were spotting you, you’d feel terrible, but she kept insisting. 

You opened your mouth to take a bite, swallowing it down and feeling the slight discomfort start to settle. Already you’d been eating a lot more than before the QZ, and you didn’t realize how slowly your appetite would have to grow. 

After a few more bites you had to drop the fork to your plate, feeling too full already to keep on. You felt terrible, refusing extra portions that were meant to keep you healthy. Whether or not it was caused by the pregnancy hormones, or just your own emotional breakdown, you weren’t sure… but you started tearing up while sitting at the table. 

“I’m sorry,” you shook your head, covering your mouth and sitting back while the tears rolled down. 

“Don’t you apologize, sweetheart,” Maxine uttered softly, her presence at your side immediately. 

To her, none of this effort was wasted, or overdone. She and her husband, though some of the better off people in the QZ by job merritt, couldn’t seem to have another baby. It wasn’t for the lack of trying, or stress that they couldn’t afford it. It was simply the fact that after six years from their last child, they couldn’t conceive another. This baby, your baby, was going to be a gift to them. They were happy to take any necessary steps into getting you to childbirth. 

“I just can’t eat anymore,” you tried to justify your emotions, but now it only looked like an overreaction. People are dying without food, and here you are, crying about there being too much. 

“It’s alright. Leftovers don’t go to waste in this house,” she spoke, a bit of a chuckle in her tone, which alleviated some of the pressure you felt. 

“Okay,” you nodded, letting her take your plate to the other room, likely where her husband had retired to. 

The campfire was crackling, the smoke filling the hazy navy color of the dark sky. Trees had covered it mostly, but there were a few stars peaking here and there. You’d just finished a can of chicken soup, tossing it on the pile that had been started by the others. It was crazy, how you suddenly remembered so much, just by eating food out of a can again. Days on the run, with the fireflies, being a raider even… it all came back. 

It had only been a few hours or so since leaving Jackson, but after the fiasco of today, the three of you had gotten extremely tired a lot earlier than you should have. 

The three of you meaning: Yourself, Joel and Ellie. 

After the silence of the horse ride back to the commune, something had changed. Joel realized not only what Ellie meant to him, but what he means to Ellie. He’d decided Tommy was no longer required, and that he could fare the journey on his own. Of course, you immediately volunteered an extra pair of hands and a quick gun as assistance. To your surprise, it was Ellie who was your greatest advocate. Her, and the fact that you remembered the lab’s location, could probably get her there on your own if you had to. 

The mirror building… you don’t remember it being a lab, but as soon as Tommy said the words it jogged your memory.

Now you were here, sitting with your back against a log, and staring holes into the shoulder of a fourteen year old girl. 

“Whatch’u lookin’ at?” Joel asked, his arms crossed over his chest as he lazily reclined against a tree. 

You only looked away for a second, too fixated on what was just barely peeking over the collar of Ellie’s shirt and jacket. It had fallen down a bit when she laid down to sleep.

“Nothin’,” you shrugged it off. He was a man of few words, surely he’d drop it on account of having to speak more if he didn’t… but God help him, he’s like a damn cat, his curiosity could kill him. 

“You’re very focused on nothin’,” he teased. There was something off about you with Ellie, he’d taken notice of it. He didn’t know what it was about but it didn’t seem like a danger.

You rolled your eyes over to him, but could tell by his glance back that he wouldn’t quit. He’d already volunteered to take the first watch, and he had nothing else better to do. 

“It’s a long story, you’d get bored.”

But again, he had nothing better to do. 

“Try me,” he raised his shoulders in a shrug of his own. He seemed much more docile of a creature in this setting. The early hours of night, so quiet, and dimly lit. His voice was gentle and his features were soft. He was relaxed.

You took a deep inhale, trying to brace yourself for whatever came of this. He was a fresh face, someone new to explain an old wound to. The scar had finally healed and you were about to dig a blade back through and rip it open… but you suppose you’d sharpened the knife by coming along in the first place. 

“I think Ellie’s my daughter,” you breathed out, not checking for a reaction until he’d been silent too long. His eyes were narrow, and he tilted his head, looking between you two. She was fast asleep by now, but he had a picture of her in his head, comparing it to you. 

“You’re shittin’ me, right?” 

You blew out another long breath, shaking your head and rolling your eyes. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t know this feeling you have or the fact that you’ve never felt it before. He doesn’t understand that you’d come to peace with the fact that you’d never see her again, and then she appeared like a ghost from your past. You thought she was your past self at first, taunting you, making fun of who you were now. 

“I ain’t shittin’ you.”

You were fine to leave it at that, but he sure as hell wasn’t. For a guy that hated long conversations, he seemed to like poking around in your business. 

“And what makes you think that?” 

You honestly didn’t want to tell him. He’s not Tommy, he might make fun of you, might store away the information later on and use it against you. You have no idea, actually. You don’t know him. 

You let your eyes flick up to the stars, hoping by some miracle they will fall from the heavens in the form of angels to give you a message, that message being: shut the fuck up and don’t spill your guts to a man you met this morning. 

“When I was thirteen, I was by myself. I fell into a weird group of people that could probably be considered a cult. There was this one guy that treated me better than the others…” you trailed off, not sure if you’re ready to rehash all of this. But it’s been a long time since you talked about it. You need to get it off your chest if you’re to somehow make a relationship with the product of your past. “He was in his twenties, so a lot younger than most people in the group. Pretty sure I was the youngest. I didn’t realize he was using me.”

Joel was tense, but not because he was uncomfortable… he was genuinely invested. Wanted to know this story and how it connected with Ellie. His Ellie.

“We left the group, and I found out I was pregnant a few months later. I’d barely had my cycle a fucking year… wasn’t even sure what it meant when I didn’t get it. Anyways,” you had to stifle a laugh, because just looking back… what the actual hell? You kept blinking to make sure no tears escaped in front of this man. You weren’t there yet with him. “I think he just lost all interest in me after that. He didn’t really speak to me unless it was necessary, and wouldn't look at me. Stuff like that.”

But that wasn’t the worst part, and Joel knew you were working your way up to it. 

“Before I was pregnant I used to sneak into places most people couldn’t. I was real skinny like that. Was able to smuggle stuff in and out of different QZs across the country. We peddled rare narcotics for the most part… but I had to stop when I, you know…” you made a round hand motion around your stomach, hoping he got the jist. “I didn’t fit in the smaller spaces.”

“What kind of narcotics?” Joel finally asked a question, and it wasn’t really the one you were hoping for… but you understood he’d probably fallen into the same scheme over the years. 

“Vicodin, mostly. Up in Princeton there was this one apartment… we’d searched it top to bottom because of how many secret hiding places there were. Vicodin everywhere. Whoever lived there was either severely addicted or preparing for the worst.”

“Maybe both.”

Yeah, probably. Damn shame he never got to use them.

“We used it as a trading token most of the time. It was actually what got us into Boston,” you waved off your tangent eventually, getting back to the story and where Ellie came in. “Pretty much gave the rest of our stash to a contact we had there… she got us a family we could hand the baby off to.” 

And now he got it. You’d been knocked up by a predator, and said predator wanted you to give up the baby so he could go about using you some more. He’d seen and done some cruel things in a post apocalyptic world, but he would never stoop that low, and grimaced at anyone who possibly could.

“I had her when I was fourteen. Lookin’ at her today was like looking in a mirror,” you rambled on, still not quite to your point. “She’s the right age, from the right location… and that birthmark on her shoulder…”

He hadn’t even noticed it all this time. Months with the kid, and he thought nothing of it. But to you, it was clarification. It was the confirming piece of evidence that pulled it all together. You’d barely taken your eyes off of it since you saw it. You wanted to make sure you weren’t seeing things. Wanted to make sure it was the right shape and placement, just so you could be sure. 

He nodded, seemingly coming to this conclusion now, too. It didn’t take him any more convincing. It was clear by now that your hunch was not just a hunch. 

“Her dad, he still… around?” 

You shook your head with a light hearted laugh. 

“No,” and you could have left it with that simple answer… but that was never much your style. “I shot him in the head.”

His low whistle cut the air, and you almost felt proud. You’d killed the one thing in life that ever hurt you directly. 

“He deserved worse.” 

“Yeah, he did.”

And then it was quiet for a minute, all the words the two of you had spoken up until now were rotating over and around in your heads to make sense of them, until he spoke up again. 

“I’m sorry,” he nearly whispered. 

“S’okay. Not your fault…” you shook it off. It’s in the past, it’s done. 

“Not yours either,” he replied, raising a brow to you. “M’just, sorry you went through that.”

He was soft, he was gentle. You supposed he was like Tommy. He didn’t judge you or make you feel inferior because of your tragic mishappenings. He just listened, and felt sympathy.

“I don’t mind it so much now… I got her back.”

And both your gazes shifted to the sleeping teenager, her breaths steady with the humming of the night around you. She has no clue, and for now you’ll have to keep it that way. 

Yeah, you think… I got her back.

-

It only took two weeks. Riding, eating, sleeping, and talking, rinse and repeat. There was the odd occasion of dealing with infected, but they were never in large groups, and cleared out easily. 

You remembered exactly where to go when you entered the city limits, guiding them towards the college campus you once lived in as a firefly. It was almost ten years ago, but you remember it pretty well. It’s where you met Tommy. Not in the lab, obviously. You’d both been put on security detail one morning, having never met beforehand. He proceeded to ‘teach you’ how to shoot a rifle properly, only to find you could hit a perfect bullseye on your first shot. Probably because your dad was a man who loved his guns, and you’d been shooting one since you were a kid before the outbreak. He laughed about it, and you two were friends ever since. 

“Are you getting any of this?” Ellie asked you, pulling you from your thoughts as you rode alongside them. 

For the last hour, Joel was attempting - and failing - to explain the rules of football to the young Miss Ellie. And she didn’t understand one lick of it, not that you blame her. You’d been to actual football games in your youth, but you couldn’t get it even then. 

“Nope, I was always more of a baseball fan…” you trailed, and smiled at the thought. Baseball was fun, you remember it well. It was your biggest obsession right before ballet, and right after fingerpainting. 

“Oh really, now?” Joel cut in, his surprise evident in his raised eyebrow and tilted gaze in your direction. 

“Yep. You’re looking at the MVP of the Acorn’s jr. little league team.” 

Ellie laughed. She didn’t know a thing about baseball either. She’d seen some old collectors cards though here and there. Apparently they used to be valuable. They were only knick knacks to anyone who saw them now. 

“What position did you play?” 

“Shortstop… or second base, technically. No shortstop in jr. little league,” you admitted. Your dad always called you shortstop, so that’s what you tell people now. Anyone who asks, at least. You can count on one hand the number of people who have. 

“Seein’ you around infected… I bet you swung like hell,” he chuckled. Ellie was still confused about the rules of the last sport, much less how to play this one… but she listened intently because Joel was interested, so she was interested too.

“I always got on base, didn’t always stay there, but always got on. Plus, I was the only kid who never picked their nose at the plate, so… Obviously I earned my title.”

“That must’ve been an amazing accomplishment. How old were you?” 

From what he understood, you’d been eight on outbreak day. You couldn’t have been too much younger to have started a sport, right?

“Probably six or seven at the time. I did ballet after, had kind of a short attention span when it came to after school activities,” you explained, a smile on your cheeks when you spoke about the things you used to love doing. You probably would still like doing some of them, had they been an option in Jackson.

“I know about ballet!” Ellie jumped in, nearly scaring Joel off the horse. “That’s the dancers that used to wear those weird shoes and shit.”

“Pointe shoes?” You chuckled, more at Joel trying to compose himself than Ellie’s funny recollection of footwear. 

“Yeah, those. They looked like torture devices in some of the paintings I saw… did you ever wear any?” 

“No, I would have had to train for about five more years to have gotten to that point. That was the dream at the time, to be a pointe ballerina. Of course, the end of the world happened…”

Joel turned to you from his forwards facing stare, a sadness in his eyes before he looked back onto the road ahead of him. Was that… pity? You were slowly learning to read him, his little mannerisms and tells that made him like everyone else, yet just a tad different, in a way that only he could be. 

“Maybe after all this is over you can teach me some steps,” she suggested, but you scoffed. 

“Maybe,” you shook your head at how funny the thought sounded in your head. You’d only danced for what? Ten months at most? And as an eight year old? “I think you’ll probably be too busy with Joel’s guitar lessons.”

She laughed it off, shaking her head and leaning it back onto Joel’s shoulder in front of her. The three of you kept along until reaching the building you remembered, but instantly it was a disappointment. The fireflies weren’t here, and likely hadn’t been for over a year. 

“This isn’t right. There should be a checkpoint set up and a security blockade surrounding the place,” you mentioned, getting off your horse and running up to the door in the front. You peeked inside, and there was no sign of life anywhere. 

“You’re kidding,” Ellie grumbled. 

Joel dismounted the horse and followed after you, looking around and trying to find any signs that they might have been here at all. 

“You sure this is the right place?” 

“Positive. I remember this building, I met Tommy right over there,” you pointed down the sidewalk, where a half torn down barricade of cement was still sitting, but just barely. You walked to the corner of the crumbling stairs and grabbed a piece of old broken up brick, chucking it through the front door in order to unlock it.

Joel chuckled for a moment at your frustration, watching the scene play out. 

“Baseball… right,” he teased, leading the way inside with you and Ellie in tow. 

-

Maxine’s boys were at Fedra school. Her husband was at work in a different sector. Maxine herself was trading ration cards for supplies. It was the first time she’d left the apartment since you’d been there, and of all days, of all mornings for it to happen… your water broke.

You were alone, and scared. You weren’t allowed to leave the apartment for fear of the neighbor’s suspicion. Maxine’s family would be torn apart by Fedra if anyone found out what was going on, so no matter how terrified you were, you couldn’t risk going outside for help.

“Not now,” you cried, the tension in the pit of your stomach slowly turning to pain when your first contraction started. “Please, kid, I’m begging.”

You suck down against the wall of the living room, trying to find a sitting position that doesn't kill you from the pain. You wished more than anything you had some of those pain pills left over from the exchange, but they would probably only hurt you right now. 

“Please, don’t,” you tried to even your breathing, the tears crawling down your cheeks at a fastening rate. “I can’t do this…” 

The walls were closing in, you weren’t prepared for this. It didn’t seem to be the right time, either… but it was happening, and there was absolutely nothing you could do to stop it. The baby was coming, and if you wanted to live to see another day, you were going to have to get your head straight, and push it out of you. 

You didn’t know how long you’d have, but from the time your water broke to the last contraction, things were moving relatively quickly. You were still on the ground against the wall, biting down on the sleeve of your shirt to try and not make noise. 

You hoped and prayed that you would not deliver this baby on your own, but it looked like that was your only option right now. They had all left around an hour ago, they would be gone all day. 

“I don’t know what to do, kid… help me out here,” you cried out again, but the baby didn’t exactly listen. You felt more weight bearing down on your lower half by the minute, and all you could do was panic.

It had happened so fast, the attack. Too fast, nothing you guys could have prepared for. It was all within minutes, and the ringing in your ears following your last gunshot seemed to put everything in slow motion. The way Ellie was yelling but you couldn’t hear it, the man that was coming up from behind you, and the one that was wrestling with Joel near the edge of the rail. 

Too fast, the man on your rear grabbed at you and pulled backwards, keeping you from being able to stop Joel’s attacker… You got trapped in a headlock, a gun to your temple, and another man was about to get Ellie. Joel and his attacker broke through the railing, tumbling over the edge and falling into God knows what. You sunk deadweight in the man’s arms, letting Ellie shoot him with her raised gun before you shot the man coming for her. 

She ran to the edge first, freezing as she looked down. You followed and peered over, unsure what you would see. 

“Shit,” you lowered yourself to a sitting position before scooting off the edge and dropping down to where he was. Your voice was in a panic “Joel?” 

He was alive, but fatally injured if you didn’t get him out of here right now. 

“I’m gonna need you to pull,” he managed to get out through gritted teeth. His face was scrunched in pain, and you knew better than anyone how hard it was to stay quiet when you’re hurting that bad. 

“You could bleed out,” you shook your head, kneeling down and flinging off your backpack. Digging through, you only have the most basic of supplies… nothing substantial enough to stop mass amounts of blood, or, worst case scenario, a deadly infection. 

“Just pull, damnit,” he grunted, offering his hand. 

By now Ellie had come down, watching in fear as the only figure of importance in her life was nearly on his deathbed. It couldn’t be exaggerated because it really was that bad. He could drop down at any moment and never get back up, but he kept pushing on. 

You did as he asked, hoisting him to a stand, letting him lean on you for support. Ellie went on ahead, leading the way as she cleared the place with her own gun. You had to assist here and there, unwilling to let Ellie get shot on account of holding Joel up on his feet. 

It was practically a miracle that any of you made it outside. Your horse had already taken care of a raider, it seemed, the man lying unconscious on the ground behind him. He likely got to close, touched him, even. Ellie shot the last obstacle standing between you and an escape, and once he was cleared, you mounted your horses, helping Joel onto his, first. 

You rode in front of them, looking for a place to take shelter. Looking for an empty house, or gas station even. Anything would work, as long as it was safer than here. You rode for miles down the road, unsure if there were people in the area. You’d finally reached a neighborhood of substantial size, with no signs of life or proof of human activity. 

But before you could even find a safe shelter…

“Joel? Joel!” 

And you quickly turned around. Joel fell off the horse, out like a light.

-

Tags: @orcasoul

#joel miller #reader insert #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x reader #joel tlou #the last of us #joel

[guessimwritingficsagain]

Kintsugi (the golden roses will bloom prettily in the space between your ribs)

Summary : You'd met Joel a year ago. Then you learn he and Tess are gone from the Boston QZ.

Warnings : Mature content, MDNI, rape attempt (not from Joel, though), pining, ANGST.

Tags : Just ask.

———

You hear it first in the whispers around the QZ. You see it, then, in the way your associates Matthew avoids looking you in the eye. You walk to the apartment and it’s like there’s a ticking sound, the countdown of a bomb. You knock, once, twice. Wait. Repeat the motion. Once, twice. Wait. 

There’s the sound of footsteps, then. Not familiar ones. And a voice that drawls :

‘You waistin’ your time, sweetheart. Didn’t you hear ? They gone.’

You don’t turn to look at the man. You get down the stairs and into the street. 

———

The way you see it, there are two kinds of memories living in your mind : the ones you hold on to, and the ones that won’t go away. 

What went down the day of the outbreak wakes you up at night. Ten years old, at school. The way little Timmy launched at Travis and bit him right in the throat. 

You mother always said that as a woman it was better to be a rose disguised as a sunflower. Be pretty, hide your spikes, but always be ready to strike. Draw blood. She was dead when you got home that day. 

Sometimes you think about that other memory. You have a lot of memories with Joel Miller, but there is one you hold on to. One that keeps you up at night, cunt and heart aching. The memory of fingers in your hair, as you’re not quite awake, on an old couch. It’s just that : fingers in your hair, scratching your scalp, and the heat of his thigh right next to your head. Fingers halting and warmth leaving right before the door opened and the voice of Tess announced ‘come on, we need to go’. Sometimes you think it was all a dream. 

You met Tess before you met Joel. She’d trusted you to smuggle some pills for her when things almost went south. Almost, because you were, ever since you had to kill your pal Katie by repeatedly beating her skull with a chair, your arms heavy and aching with effort, a rose disguised as a sunflower. Things almost went south but you played the dumb little girl act - almost thirty years old, you were, but you’d learned that men would believe anything as long as that belief made them think they could advantage of you. You smuggled the pills, put a knife through the throat of a FEDRA soldier, and ended up at Tess’ place with a bloody nose and a top half ripped-off. Except it wasn’t Tess’ place only, and that’s when you met Joel Miller, almost a year before today, before you hear ‘You waistin’ your time, sweetheart. Didn’t you hear ? They gone.’. 

Poetry lies in the cracks of things broken, except, at the end of the world, there is no sweet, gorgeous, shiny gold to mend what’s damaged. You’d read it in a book, once, became obsessed with it, too - Kintsugi. You’d wished you could do that - as a hobby. Wished you could take broken pottery and fix it with liquid gold. Wished you could take your heart, your ribs, your everything, and fix that too. 

When you entered Tess’ place that day and met Joel Miller, he took one look at you as Tess muttered Christ, kid, you okay ?

You were not a kid. You were almost thirty and when you were ten you had killed your friend Katie with a chair, and then Travis, and then you had gone home to find the corpse of your mother and when the world hit you, you’d hit back but also you wanted to fix pottery with shiny gold and-

And Joel Miller grabbed your jaw, gentle but firm, and his other hand grabbed your arm, sat you down, and cleaned up your bloody nose. 

That’s how you met Joel Miller. Tall, broad, manly. Precise, careful, in his movements, as Tess asked about what happened. And then Tess, to him

‘We can trust her, she’s basically a wallflower. Very useful if you want things to go quietly.’

Not a wallflower, a sunflower, you wanted to answer. I love beautiful things and I love the sun and I love when life shines. But a wallflower you were considered, and a wallflower you became. And neither Tess nor Joel took the time to see the sunflower behind the wallflower. Nor the rose with spikes hidden behind. 

And Tess put a gentle hand on Joel Miller’s shoulder, squeezed as they looked at each other and you knew. You knew that grip on your jaw, that focused gaze on your face were all you were going to get. You were not one to fool yourself.

A wallflower you’d remain. 

And Joel Miller’s name would be yours to say in the quiet of the night, fingers in your cunt, when the darkness makes the world outside disappear. 

Not quite liquid gold fixing the breaks between your ribs, but enough. 

———

They made sense, Joel and Tess. Tess was stern, face hardened by years of struggling - that made her beautiful in a way you would never be because you’d learned to hide that part of you. She was glorious. Determined, strong, assertive. 

One day you stopped before knocking at her door because you heard-

You heard. 

Even the way she moaned was beautiful. 

So you turned back, found a guy, and brought him back home. 

You woke up to a furious pounding on your door and watched Joel throw the guy out, pants barely covering his dick, shoes in his hands. 

‘Where were you last night ? Why didn’t you show up ?’

You couldn’t exactly said that you’d shown up to hear Tess being fucked into the mattress so you settled with 

‘I got distracted.’

His hand grabbed your jaw, his eyes intense. 

‘Don’t. Don’t ever do that again. Ever.’

You could have said it, then. Could have said that he didn’t seem so worried when his cock was buried in Tess’ cunt. Couldn’t have been bothered to show up before the morning after. You said nothing. 

A wallflower indeed. 

And now-

Now. 

Now it’s been two days since you felt Joel’s fingers in your hair, as you were sleeping in their apartment. Two days since he stopped and got up before Tess walked in and said ‘come on, we need to go’. Two days of whispers and glances and maybe after learning they were gone, knowing they left, maybe you got drunk, and maybe a FEDRA soldier put his hand where it didn’t belong and whispered in your ear : 

‘They’re gone now, you’re all alone, little girl.’

And maybe you slit his throat. Maybe you slit his throat and then cut his dick off, for good mesure. Nobody would know for sure, because when they found the corpse in the morning, you were long gone. 

And with you, you took nothing, except the bone-crushing knowledge that even at the end of the world, heartbreak is still what hurts the most - not killing Katie, not your dead mother, not the twenty years fighting for your life - and no amount of burning liquid gold will ever fix the empty space where your heart should be. 

But maybe, 

Maybe, you think, as you walk through green pastures on a way to a mythical place called Jackson, maybe, one can be a sunflower and a rose at the same time.

Maybe you’ll kill if you have to, and maybe, if Jackson is real, you’ll spend your time fixing pottery with- maybe not gold, but with yourself. 

But as you approach the gates of Jackson, arms raised, slowly, saying 

‘I don’t mean any harm.’

You make a promise to yourself. 

And that promise is shaken to its core when the man in front of you - warm, familiar eyes - introduces himself as Tommy, Tommy Miller. 

But you make a promise. 

A sunflower. 

A rose. 

You’re gonna fix all the goddamn vases in this place. 

The golden roses will bloom prettily in the space between your ribs, and you’ll let them be beautiful, and you’ll let them draw blood, too.

———

Taglist

@pedritobalmando @amidjarin @ajeff855 @justpedropascal @sara-alonso @sarahjkl82-blog @amidjarin @sara-alonso@justpedropasc@mrsbentallmadge @farfromjustordinary @hnt-escape @kirsteng42

#joel miller/reader #joel miller x reader

[writing-till-i-am-dead]

Stargoth oneshot - Ice Skating

“Seriously, Deacon?” Chase grumbled. “You just had to get close to the pony at the fair.”

Deacon glared at Chase before lifting up his bandaged arm, healing from being broken by an angry miniature pony. “Hey, remember! You can’t talk! I jinxed you earlier!”

“Ya, I think that cancelled out when you yelled my name out in pain a little over three times when that pony kicked you.”

Chase sighed and shook his head. “Guess I’ll be doing the work on my own for a bit until you heal up..”

Deacon sank into his bed, grumbling under his bed. 

Chase looked over at Bronze. “Keep an eye on him?”

Bronze shrugged. “Got nothing better to do.”

Chase picked up Silver and smiled at her. “Ready for this?”

She smiled and did a curtsy. “Always!”

Chase reached for a random book, merely glancing at the title before inserting the key. 

When he opened his eyes, he felt like he was in Christmas Town from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

He looked at his outfit. A skin tight blue suit with a fur collar, puffballs, and a mid length cape with a snowflake theme. 

“Another great outfit, Silver!” he said happily. He took a step and nearly fell. That’s when he realized he’s also wearing ice skates and he’s on a frozen pond. 

“Oh shoot. I haven’t ice skated in years..” He slapped his face and shook his head. “No matter! For I am Chase Hollow, and I can do anything!”

He attempted to glide over the ice, but instead face planted. That was when he heard skrrrrch coming his way. He looked up and really wish he hadn’t. 

“Buddy,” he said bluntly.

“Did you seriously choose a story like this when you don’t even know how to ice skate?” Buddy asked, raising a smug eyebrow.

“I know how to skate! Just.. rusty!” he grumbled as he struggled to get to his feet. 

“Mhm..”

Chase finally managed to get to his feet and looked at Buddy. 

Ugh. One of the most frustrating things about hating this absolute tool is that Chase finds him extremely hot. 

He can’t help it! Goth guys have always been his type!

And with Buddy’s low cut black shirt with navy trim and a black and white cloak barely covering his shoulders to show off the fishnet undershirt he was wearing underneath.. ya, Chase felt like his heart would burst out of his chest. 

Whatever! The black snowflake tiara that he was wearing was lame and that’s all he decided to focus on. 

“So,” Buddy started. “Where’s your little sidekick?”

“Huh?”

“You never seem to go into a story without him anymore.”

“He’s.. busy for a bit.”

“Busy? If you have the responsibility of being a key holder, you can’t afford to be busy.”

Chase rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Go outside and touch grass. Maybe that’ll make you less of a prick,” he said before turning and skating away. 

The entire kingdom seemed to be on ice, all the villagers also wearing ice skates as they made their way around town. 

Doesn’t that get exhausting, though? Chase wondered. 

He looked around, wondering what he had to do to trigger the story. 

That’s when he spotted it. A sign for The Royal Ice Skating Challenge. 

“That seems plot important,” he murmured to himself as he skated closer to the sign to get a better look at it.

“In the Icicle Forest. Where’s that?” he thought. He looked around, hoping to find a road of some sort. But no. No land in sight. Not even a forest. Just. Ice. He felt like he was playing in a superflat Minecraft world right now. 

“The prince!” Shouted one villager. “He’s here!”

Here we go… Chase thought as he mentally prepared himself to deal with another boring prince. 

“Hello!” he said to the overly sparkly man (and Chase loves sparkles, but this guy was seriously overdoing it). 

“Ah! Hello. You are a baker?” he asked, gesturing at what the heroine character must’ve been wearing. 

“Yepppp. That’s me. Listen, I was wondering if I could join your ice skating challenge thing!”

“Oh! Why of c-!”

But he was cut off by Gothy McGothFace, who skated to the prince’s side. 

“Really, sir? Are you really going to let a peasant join the challenge?”

“I.. well, why wouldn’t I, Iclyn?”

Iclyn? Chase thought. What an on the nose name. What, is my name something like Frosta?

“Frosta!” shouted a voice from behind him. “Come inside and help serve the customers!”

Chase groaned slightly and glared at ‘IcLyN’ before skating off to whoever was calling him. 

“I gotta find out where that Ice Skating Competition will be..” he said quietly to himself. He saw the lady who called to him, who was shaking her head. 

“Your father is getting tired of you always running off, Frosta.”

“Oh, um, sorry.. mom?” he guessed. 

She sighed and ruffled his hair. “It’s all right. Just get to your station.”

He touched the spot she had ruffled, processing the motherly affection before forcing himself to snap out of it. 

She’s not your real mom, Chase. He forced himself to think. 

“Hey, mom. Where’s the Icicle Forest from here?”

“Now, Frosta, why would you need to know that?”

“Uh. Some competition.”

“The Royal Ice Skating Competition? Frosta, honey, why would you want to do that? You know there’s no possible way you can win.”

“What?! But mom-!” Chase had heard those words too many times. ‘Chase, you are never going to be a singer. Give up.’ The only person who believed in him 100% was.. his mom. 

“No, mom. I will win! And I’ll prove it to you when I bring home the trophy.”

“Trophy? The prize is a tiara.”

“Um.. I’ll bring home the tiara!”

She sucked in her lips for a moment, furrowing her eyebrows before sighing. “But Frosta. Your skating is.. mediocre at best.”

Even though he wasn’t really Frosta and this wasn’t really his mom, he had to admit, that stung. 

“Yknow what? I don’t need you! I’ll find the forest on my own!”

He turned and bolted out the door. He tried to slow down when he panicked at his speed, but had too much momentum and slammed into another house. 

“Ow..”

“Ohhh,” said that annoyingly familiar voice. “That’s gotta sting.”

“You’re not as cool as you think you are.”

Buddy arched an eyebrow. “Pun not intended, I should hope?”

“No, pun absolutely intended. I’m no coward.”

“I..” he shook his head and pinched his brow. “Nevermind.”

Chase got back to his feet and brushed off his clothes, even if there was no dust to brush off. 

“I just need to find where the Icicle Forest is and I’m all set.”

“Mhm. Well, good luck with that.”

“Hey, hey, hey!! Do you know where it is?”

He tilted his head and arched his eyebrow. “Why, I don’t know. Do I? I don’t have the Helper Key.”

“Ughhhh…”

He watched as Buddy skated off into the distance. He looked around the town for some sort of map. 

“Do you know where I can find a map to the Icicle Forest?” he asked one villager. 

“Oh Frosta, why would you need to get there?”

“Because I’m joining the competition.”

“Silly girl. You know you won’t win.”

That was basically every conversation he had when he asked for help. 

People seriously treat me, er, her, pretty shitty.

He groaned and leaned against a building wall, sitting on the freezing ground. Just when he was about to give up hope, he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Sweetie.”

He turned to the voice and saw a little old lady standing over him. 

“Oh, uh-“

She sighed. “Your mother told me about your plan.”

He gave her a suspicious look. “You going to try and talk me out of it?”

She chuckled and shook her head. “No, no. I think it’s a great idea. But you should practice on your figure skating a bit more.”

He felt like letting out a long groan. “But the competition-!”

“Is tomorrow. You can spend all day and night practicing. Listen to grandma.”

“I… right. Sorry.. grandma.”

She helped him up and he looked around anxiously. “Where do I practice?”

“Anywhere, sweetie. The world is your rink.”

He thought about that for a moment. He was starting to realize how badly his ankles were hurting from skating this entire time. Geez, that hurts.. But he forced himself to ignore it. 

He went to find a clear area, which wasn’t too hard. (Seriously, this place is so empty, it’s almost eerie)

He closed his eyes and tried to remember any figure skating he may have seen. But the only form of figure skating he’s ever seen was from Yuri On Ice. 

He tried to lift his leg up as high as he could, but he felt like his back was going to snap. 

He heard a laugh behind him and he whipped his head around, expecting to see that annoying fucker, but instead he saw the prince from earlier. 

“You are.. quite bad,” he said, laughing. 

Chase crossed his arms and glared at him. “Thanks,” he said sarcastically. 

“No, I mean it in a playful way. Say, would you like some help?”

He gave him a confused look. “Why would you help me?”

“In all honesty.. I would rather have anyone win but Iclyn.”

“Really? Why?”

“She said is she wins she will make me her husband. I.. would rather not have that.”

“Oh. Oh! So, like, team up to make sure she loses?”

“That is what I was hoping for,” he said, nodding. 

“Well, that benefits me too. So I’m in!”

Him and the prince shook hands. 

The rest of that day, the prince helped Chase on forms and jumps and all that other stuff. He had to admit, this was probably the best prince he’s met, even if he was overly sparkly. 

But Chase couldn’t help the feeling that someone was watching them. But everytime he looked around, he didn’t see anyone. 

They practiced until it was pitch black outside, the moonlight reflecting on the ice, casting a faint silver glow. 

“You’re amazing, Frosta,” the prince said. “I know you’ll do great tomorrow.”

Chase smiled at the praise. After a whole day of people beating him down, the compliments really helped lift his spirits. 

“Thanks. I should be heading home now. To rest.”

“Yes. Have a good rest of your night.”

Chase waved goodbye as he skated off, smiling. That was actually really fun. 

As he approached his house, he felt a figure loom over him. 

He turned and just as he did, Buddy pinned him to the wall. 

“What were you doing?”

“Hey! Let me go! I was just practicing my skating!”

“With the prince?”

“Ya! What, is that not part of the story?!”

“It.. is. But you were really enjoying yourself out there.”

“Ya, I wa- Wait. Were you spying on us?!”

“Of course I was. Nothing goes unseen,” he hissed.

“Ugh, you’re such a creep!” he exclaimed before shoving him away. 

“Ugh. Whatever. I don’t care, anyways!”

He watched as Buddy skated away. Chase clenched his fists and huffed. 

But you do care.. he thought. 

Inside the house was a hard wood floor. Where they got the wood to even build these places was beyond Chase’s knowledge, but he didn’t thinking about it as he collapsed onto the floor, his feet and ankles swollen and sore. 

So tired…

Before he even knew it, he found himself passed out on the floor, snoring away. 

By the morning, he was woken up to a gentle shaking. He slowly opened his eyes and found the old lady from earlier waking him up. 

“Frosta. Wake up. You need to prepare for the challenge.”

“Ughhh…” he sat up and rubbed his eyes, feeling like absolute shit. His feet were still sore and his knees were shaky. 

He sat up and rubbed his ankles and calves in an attempt to soothe the absolute pain, and to apologize to them for the fact that he’s about to put them through more torture. 

He stood up reluctantly and the old lady handed him a slate of ice. 

“It’s a map to the Icicle Forest. Stay safe, Frosta. I believe in you!”

He smiled at the encouragement. “Thanks. I’ll, uh.. I’ll see you when I win!”

He put on the ice skates and followed the map. There was nothing out in this field. The most interesting thing he’s managed to spot it is that there is an ocean. But no landmarks, which was weird. 

Until he saw it in the distance. 

A forest made of ice spikes jutting upwards, and instead of grass, there was huge, random patches of snow. 

He entered the strange biome and looked around but seeing nothing specifically. But this place did cast some weird shadows. 

“Now where in the forest is this competition..?”

He felt like he was wandering for hours. And then he looked up at the sky and realized he hadbeen wandering for hours. 

“NOOO! Where AM I?!”

“Lost?” a voice purred behind him. 

He turned and internally groaned. “Buddy.”

“Heh. Of course you would manage to get lost so easily.”

“Oh ya? And what are you doing here?”

“You were taking so long to arrive. I got curious. The competition starts in an hour, yknow?”

“Ya, I know,” he hissed. “Just lead me to there! Don’t you want to get this story over with too?”

Buddy thought for a moment. “I dunno. The ending to this story is rather unappealing to me.”

“What? You lose? That happens to you in every story.”

“It’s not just that I lose. There’s some more to it.”

“Huh?”

“Nevermind,” he said, shaking his head. “Forget about it.”

Chase watches as Buddy seemed to glide over the ice like it was nothing. Like he was almost weightless. 

“Cmon. Just lead the way, please.”

He narrows his eyes before shaking his head and sighing. “Fine. Follow me..”

Chase jumped a little, which nearly cost him his balance as he followed him. 

“Man, this place is a lot colder than the village.”

“Yes, well, with an outfit like your’s, it’s no surprise you’re getting so cold so easily.”

“Hey! Your’s isn’t any better!”

“Well, I’m naturally cold, so I have nothing to worry about.”

“Tsk. Prick..” Chase grumbled. 

He attempted to just ignore the cold, but the deeper and deeper they went in, the colder it got. Even Buddy seemed affected by it, as he was inching bit by bit closer to Chase, shivering slightly. 

“Thought you were naturally cold, Mr. Emo Snowman,” Chase said sarcastically. 

“Shut up. We’re almost there.”

“Geez, why did they pick the coldest area for this stupid contest? This is some bull!”

“Whining will get you no where.”

“Oh, it’ll get me somewhere, all right. It’ll get me right on your nerves.. I-I’m getting on your nerves, is what I’m trying to say.”

“Ughhh! You are so stupid..”

Chase glared at him and shoved him into the snow. “I don’t need your sour attitude! Or your insults!”

“Why you little-!”

But before Buddy had a chance to get up and shove him back, there was a loud sound of skates cutting along ice. 

“You two!” said a man in knightly clothes. “Are you here for the skating contest?”

“Ummm… yes,” Chase said, quickly fixing his hair. “Yes we are!”

“Well, hurry along! It starts soon!”

Chase scrambled to follow after him, Buddy doing the same thing, shooting cold glares in Chase’s direction. 

They reached an opening in the ‘forest’. Fairylights hug from icicle to icicle, illuminating the area with a glow bouncing off the ice. 

Chase spotted the prince off in the distance and he smiled widely and waved over to him, Buddy glaring daggers into him and smacking Chase’s hand down. 

“Ah-? Hey!” 

But Buddy just rolled his eyes and skated away, as if he wasn’t being infuriating on purpose. 

Chase went up to the prince. 

“Are you ready, Frosta?”

“Born ready!”

“Thank you for working so hard on this. Truly. I am so scared I’d have to marry Iclyn.”

“Yaaa.. say, what is so bad about her, anyways?”

“She’s so possessive and clingy, despite the fact that we’re not even together. She’s aggressive to anyone who shows any interest in me. It’s all so annoying.”

“I see..” Weird. Buddy is also kinda like that..

He looked out at the opening, fresh ice, skaters preparing for their own routines. 

“Are you ready, Frosta?”

“Ya!”

“Are you pumped?!”

“Ya!!”

He looked out at the opening again and saw Buddy going out. He’s about to do his routine. 

I’m actually kind of curious..

He decided to watch intensely. And.. perhaps he felt himself getting a little too immersed in the dance as he watch Buddy dip low to the ice, spinning around as his dark hair flowed in the wind, sweat flying from his face and his sharp blue eyes hard with focusing. 

And.. ya, he never got so excited by a figure skating leaping, but somehow Buddy managed to absolutely grab his full attention. 

After the performance, Chase looked around, seeing if there was anyone who was absolutely hypnotized by the performance. But, instead, everyone looked bored. 

“It was kind of a boring performance.”

“I’ve seen those same things but done much more interestingly.”

Chase was surprised by everyone’s remarks. Was he the oddball for being so into it? Or is the people being unimpressed just part of the story?

He looked at Buddy’s face and realized..

No. 

Those reactions weren’t meant to be part of the story. Buddy’s face said it all. It was a mediocre performance by professional standards. 

And Chase could see that Buddy was doing everything he could to suppress the anger. Chase.. knew what that was like. He was often met with the same reactions for his singing. He hated it too.. he hated it a lot..

As the two skated past each other, Chase paused. “Your performance was very impressive, Buddy.”

Buddy paused and clenched his fists before letting out a scoff-laugh. “Yes, thank you, Frosta,” he said back, almost bitterly. 

Geez.. just trying to be nice..

Chase skated toward the center and waved out to the crowd. He prepared and struck a pose. He didn’t have a lot of time to create a whole routine. Do, instead he may or may not have.. stolen his. 

Yes, that’s right. He, Chase Hollow, had to steal a routine from Yuri On Ice, performing Yuri’s Eros routine. He’s not proud to admit that he’s plagiarizing. 

But still. He was having so much fun performing it. He looked over at Buddy while he was performing and he noticed him staring.. really intensely, which did make Chase nervous, causing the performance to get sloppy. 

But once he was done, there was an eruption of applause and cheering. 

“Yes! Yes! Thank you! I know, I’m amazing!”

He skated over to Buddy, smiling proudly and smugly. 

“Was that performance.. from Yuri On Ice?”

“EH-!” He froze, standing there as he processed being called out. 

“Weeb…” Buddy murmured before skating off. 

…. WHAT A JERK! Wait a minute…

“HOW DID YOU RECOGNIZE WHAT IT WAS FROM UNLESS YOU KNOW THE ROUTINE FROM HEART AS WELL!?” he called out. 

He could’ve sworn he saw Buddy’s ears turn red, but he just ignored him. 

“Frosta!” he heard a voice yell out from behind him. “The judges announced you as the winner!”

“Really? Wait, but only me and Iclyn performed, was there no one else in the competition-?” he decided to just put it at ‘nevermind’, so stories can be weirdly short and very unspecific or muddy with the details. 

The prince held up a gorgeous silver tiara and placed it onto his head. 

“Frosta. You are.. fantastic. I’m so proud of you!” The prince blushed slightly. 

There’s the rushed romantic feelings. Chase thought. 

“I hope you continue to skate!”

“Hm? Well. Thanks. I’ll… do that. But for now, I gotta go show my mom this tiara that I won. She underestimated me and I’m going to rub it in her face.”

“Ah.. well. Have fun with that, Frosta..” he said awkwardly with a crooked smile. 

He waved off to the prince. The trek through the forest wasn’t nearly as awful as it was last time, actually knowing where he was supposed to go now. Though, the cold had just hit him, causing him to shiver so hard he nearly lost balance on his skates. 

He saw the village in the distance and he nearly burst into tears. His legs were in so much pain and he just wanted to sit down. 

As he entered the town, the villagers looked out at him and smiled at him. 

“Frosta! We heard about the competition!”

“We’re so proud of you!”

“We knew you could do it!”

Eh?!? You literally had 0 faith in me winning! Don’t you lie to me!

He spotted the bakery Frosta’s mom owned. 

Time to go show off my prize! Haha!

But just before he opened the door, a hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him aside. 

“You..” Buddy said darkly. 

“Ah! Hey, what the hell-?!”

“I can’t let this final half of the story play out.”

“What are you talking about! Ugh, let me go!”

But then he noticed the look on Buddy’s face. Almost terrified. 

“Buddy? Geez, why are you acting like this? Isn’t this just like every other fairytale ending? What, do I die or something?”

“No, it’s just..”

He was cut off by a blaring trumpet. They turn to see the prince and 2 knights skating into the village. 

Frosta’s mom pokes her head out of the shop upon hearing the noise. 

She spots Chase and gasps upon seeing the crown. 

“Frosta?!”

“Oh, uh.. hey mom! TOLD YOU I’D WIN!!”

“Frosta!” called out the prince, gesturing for him to come forward. 

Chase shot one final glare at Buddy before breaking away from him and heading to the prince, ready for this story to finally be over with. 

“Hellllo prince,” Chase said, waving. 

What happened next, he didn’t expect. The prince grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into a hug. 

“Woah, uh, personal space there, dude-“

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Huh?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were my long lost fiancé?”

“….HUH?!”

Wait, I’m his what now!?

“Oh, uh, yknow, haha, just, I, um..”

“I can’t believe you had run away.”

“Oh, uhhhhhhhh…”

This is what I get for never reading the stories!!

“But I remember you told me we would reunite.” The prince grasped Chase’s face and pulled him into.. A KISS?!

“PLEGHHH! UGHH, DUDE! WHY?!”

“It was meant to be a.. a kiss to, yknow.. say hello again.”

“STILL! YOU DON’T JUST KISS SOMEONE WITHOUT PERMISSION! UGH! THAT WAS MY FIRST KISS!”

Behind Chase was a thudding noise. 

He turns to see Buddy on his knees, sulking dramatically. 

“Aw, and what’s up with you, mall goth?!?”

“The kiss was unavoidable,” he said, his voice strained. 

“Hah?”

Buddy didn’t answer, instead pulling out his key. 

“Hey, where are you going?!”

Buddy didn’t answer before disappearing. 

I’ve never seen him react like that to.. anything!

He tightly closed his eyes to think about the matter at hand. He turned to the prince. “You!! At first I thought you were pretty bearable for a prince, but you had to ruin it with your overall lack of care for consent!”

“But, Frosta-“

“Oh, don’t FrOsTa me, you big creep!!”

Chase pulled out his key. “I think I’m done with this story, I’m going home!”

“Wait, but-!”

He didn’t hear what he had to say as he woke up in his bedroom. 

“Ughhh… and here I thought that prince wasn’t too bad.”

“Oh, you’re back!” Deacon said, poking his head in. “How was it?”

“It was fine at first! But then the Prince got all grabby. And, honestly, so did Buddy.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Well, Buddy grabbed me and pinned me to a wall, like, twice. And he said he didn’t want the story to be complete. Like, huh?! Since when has he never wanted to properly finish a story?!”

“Ok.. and what did the prince do?”

“Well, after that whole thing with Buddy, the prince showed up and made me kiss him!”

“Oh ya. That’s how the story ends, to seal the deal of their marriage or whatever. Wait. Buddy didn’t want the story to end.. how did he react after the prince kissed you.”

“I dunno. He was sulking I think? He disappeared before I had a chance to talk to him.”

“….Uhuh…”

“What? What is it?”

Deacon sighed and shook his head. “You are so dense…”

Divider by @animatedglittergraphics-n-more

#cinderella boy #cinderella boy webtoon #Chase hollow #buddy cinderella boy #Stargoth #Fanfic

[jimraisedmeup]

TICK // 8.1 - i guess that's why they call it the blues

Rating: mature (angst, language, sexual content, masturbation)

Word Count: 3000

A/N: still trying to work out some bugs on the taglist. thank you to everyone.

☾

Don't wish it away Don't look at it like it's forever

Between me and you I could honestly say Things can only get better

☾

New Year's Eve 1983 - junior year

You sat on your bed, wrapped in a white fluffy towel. Your hair was wet and dangling as you ran a brush through it.

Just let me know the time and place to pick you up.

The phone call was meticulously planned to occur when you were home alone, as Robin and your parents went to the store. There was nothing you disliked more than someone listening in on your private conversations. And having parents like Richard and Melissa made things such as privacy a rare luxury.

After hanging up the phone with Eddie, you had swiftly made your way into the shower. Without wanting to fully admit it to yourself, you purposely used your mother's expensive shampoo so that your hair would smell different, fancy. It was New Year's, after all. A special occasion.

Now the only obstacle was escaping your parents' watchful eyes after dinner. It was a tradition for the Buckley family to eat dinner late in the evening on New Year's. But this year, you and Robin had absolutely no intention of being home at midnight.

You wondered vaguely if Eddie's dad cared about him being out all night.

Mr. Munson didn't seem very nice on the phone when you called for Eddie. The older man was mouth breathing and irritable, like you had interrupted an important event. Which turned out to be true once you heard him yelling about Jeopardy being on.

Having unkind parents was something you understood, but still shocked you to overhear the abusive tone Eddie's father held as his only son simply got a phone call.

And then, as you were lost in thought with the brush still in your hair, a peculiar thing happened.

The phone in your room began to ring.

Knowing you were the only one home, you reached for the receiver with haste, a tiny voice in the back of your mind begging for it to be Eddie again.

But after one ring, just as the tip of your finger touched the phone, the ringing stopped. 

You were momentarily frightened as you heard a deep voice mumbling downstairs, then quickly realized that it was your father. You must not have been the only one to ditch the grocery shopping trip.

Then the fear came back, washing over you like a wave. What if it was Eddie calling you back? Your father would have a fucking conniption fit if Eddie Munson was calling his home.

In a panic, you quietly lifted the receiver to see if you could hear the voice of the caller. Normally, you wouldn't dream of listening to someone else's call - but anxiety took over. 

"...Richard, honey, come to the office for just an hour… you know I won't tell anyone…"

The sultry voice of a woman was the last thing you expected to hear. You also didn't expect to recognize the voice as your father's coworker, Kate.

Pressing your palm to your mouth and nose to stay quiet, you were unable to stop yourself from listening further, a sick feeling rising in your stomach.

Your father's voice, usually impatient and gruff, seemed almost unrecognizable as he responded to the woman.

"You know that's a risky idea, Kate. I have dinner with my family tonight."

"So come before dinner. The office is empty for the holiday. I promise I'll make it worth your while."

You almost gagged to yourself. Was this really happening, or did you never wake up from your dream-filled sleep from earlier that morning?

It didn't take much for Richard Buckley to give in. "You drive a hard bargain. I'll be there in about twenty minutes. Just don't call the house again, okay? Unless I call you first."

Not waiting to hear the rest of the unpleasant infidelity, you gently hung up the phone and rushed to put clothes on. 

Your father was off the phone and gathering the keys to his work truck when you appeared at the foot of the stairs, arms crossed. You were satisfied to see the color drain from his face.

"I- okay, now," he sighed angrily. "I thought you went with your mother to the store."

Relishing in having the upper hand in the situation, you kept a poker face and stared at him.

"Ditto."

Your father sighed again, running a hand over his thin combed-over hair. "I have to run to the office for a while before dinner. There was an… unexpected delivery."

"Okay. I'll let mom know."

You waited for him to turn for the front door, letting him think he could make it out unscathed, before adding another comment.

"Tell Kate I said hello."

Freezing with one hand gripped on the doorknob, white-knuckled, Richard Buckley didn't look at his daughter as he chose his words carefully.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

You scoffed, pinching the bridge of your nose. "Please don't make me spell it out, Dad. I could hear her on the phone."

"You must be mistaken, then. That was a phone call about a deliv-"

Tossing your hands in the air, you weren't about to be gaslighted. "Oh, come on. I'm not a child. Listen, I'll make you a deal, okay?"

Your father finally looked at you then, face red with anger at your defiance, but not an ounce of shame for being caught. This only fueled your frustration. If your father was going to play dirty, so were you.

"I won't tell Mom about this… if you let me and Robin go out tonight for New Year's. No curfew."

"Fine."

That was easy, you thought, satisfied. But what else could you get out of this?

"One more thing."

He hesitated, but still humored you, gesturing with his hand impatiently for you to continue.

"I don't want to face any consequences for spending time with Eddie Munson. No more threats of private school."

You almost laughed at your father's expression then, the reddest you had ever seen it. He looked as if he could spontaneously combust at any moment. 

But as foolish as your father was, he wasn't a complete imbecile. Having an affair with his also married coworker was something that would ruin his reputation not only with the town, but with his beloved church as well. You were almost tempted to ask him how God felt about adultery.

You didn't get an easy response like your first part of the deal.

"Listen," he spoke slowly. "You need to keep your nose out of this. Forget this ever happened. Your mother and I have private lives that don't involve you."

"I have a private life too! And I'm sick of you dictating who Robin and I can be friends with!" 

Desperate to end the conversation, Richard pointed his finger in your face.

"You are a troubled young woman. Be friends with whoever you want. But dear daughter of mine," spit was flying from his lips, face basically a tomato. "If I so much as see that Munson boy, this deal is over."

You stared him down. It took everything in you to not smack his finger out of your face. You calmed yourself, realizing that this was as good as the situation could possibly get. 

Holding a hand out to shake, you sneered at him. "You drive a hard bargain, Richard."

But he didn't shake your hand. Your father abruptly left the house as he mumbled an almost incoherent "absolute failure" under his breath.

Slumping down on the bottom stair, you trembled with adrenaline, wondering if you were the failure or if your father was actually admitting it about himself.

☾

While I'm away Dust out the demons inside And it won't be long Before you and me run To the place in our hearts Where we hide

☾

Eddie found himself in a quandary.

Later that evening, as he got ready to head out for the night, the brown-eyed boy stood in front of the bathroom mirror, a foil wrapper crinkling in his hand.

A condom.

The cliche better safe than sorry was running through his mind. But on the same note, he felt bad for assuming that you would even kiss him again. 

He rubbed his eyes, then looked at his reflection in the mirror. Dark eyes, dark hair, dark clothing. It was kind of a front, though, as his thoughts usually weren't very dark. 

Usually. 

Eddie still had plans with Jeff and Gareth before he was due to pick you up, and he considered asking them for advice about the situation. That would be fruitless, however, as Eddie was quite familiar with the extent of their experiences with women. 

Plus, you would literally have his head if you knew he was talking about you like that to anyone. One of his favorite things about you was the respect you had for yourself, the sureness with which you carried yourself. You were quiet and a little awkward, but still completely confident.

He pondered for a moment, still fiddling with the foil wrapper in his palm. Like a horrible totem representing his own crippled self confidence.

Figuring that you wouldn't even know that he had it unless you actually asked him for one, Eddie tucked it away inside of his wallet for safe keeping.

He could hear his dad stomping around upstairs as he walked back and forth between his armchair and the case of beer in the fridge. As much as Eddie liked his bedroom and bathroom in the basement, he wouldn't miss hearing that annoying stomping as a daily reminder of his dad's alcoholism.

For now, the solitude of the basement was worth it. And it held good memories regardless of the drunk monster that lived above him.

Brushing his teeth, Eddie's thoughts wandered back to the condom in his wallet. He thought about you, about your request to spend New Year's Eve with him. Him, of all people.

At eighteen years old, Eddie was still technically a virgin. Would he ever admit that to anyone? Probably not. Heavy petting make-out sessions and half of a handjob didn't exactly count as occurrences that required such contraception.

And he never really considered himself to be the kind of guy who needed to carry around a condom with him everyday. The town freak. 

He noticed attractive people, like any other teenager in Hawkins. But as of the entire last year, you were the only human being to cross his path that made him want an excuse to use a condom.

Sure, he wasn't exactly a blushing, completely inexperienced teenager. Though it had been less than a month, Eddie was still fucking shocked that you hadn't even kissed anyone before. He almost wondered if you were fucking with him, some kind of sick joke.

Deep down he knew you were telling the truth, though. Maybe he was naive, but Eddie refused to believe that you'd lie to him about something like that. Not to mention that after several years of school with you, he had never seen you dating anyone.

Eddie was curious as to why. You were semi-popular, attractive, funny. But maybe your attitude and general feisty demeanor made it clear that you preferred to be alone.

Pacing in his bathroom, the only sound was his boots dragging across the linoleum tile, the clinking of the chains on his belt. 

It didn't take long for his attention to crawl towards something more deviant. He didn't think he could ever forget the feeling of your skin as he tattooed you. The cold press of your lips on his as snow fell around them.

Jesus Christ, he needed to get rid of the tension in his body before he was physically near you.

Grabbing the lotion off the bathroom counter, he hastily unbuckled his jeans.

Already hard, he imagined groping you in the shadows, wishing it was your soft hands along his length. He wondered how sensitive you were - would you whimper if he dragged his nails gently over the most private area of your blue jeans? Would you take his hand and place it inside your panties?

He dropped himself back onto his bed, spare guitar picks falling to the floor. Flashing images of you kissing his neck, fingers pulling his hair.

It didn’t take long for him to make a mess all over his belly, letting out a sigh at the ceiling tiles where he swore he could see your name hidden in the cobweb patterns.

☾

I guess that's why they call it the blues Time on my hands Could be time spent with you

Oh, laughing like children Living like lovers Rolling like thunder Under the covers

☾

"You're late, Munson."

He smiled at you. "You know, I think that might be something you'll have to get used to. I'm incapable of being on time."

It was just after eleven at night, only an hour before the New Year, as you scrambled into the passenger seat of his warm van. Rubbing your hands together in front of the vents, you turned your excited eyes to him as he drove away from your house. 

He was dressed in his usual dark attire. From the glow of the streetlights, you could see his devilish grin as he lifted a cigarette to his mouth.

You were just about to tell him how gross the cigarette was when you heard the song playing on the radio.

"Oh! Turn it up, will you?"

Lifting an eyebrow at you, Eddie twisted the volume dial. "Journey? Are you serious?"

"'Separate Ways' is my all-time favorite song," you stated matter-of-factly, tapping your fingers on the window sill. "So, where are we going?"

"I'd tell you it's a surprise, but it's not really all that surprising. We're going to Lovers' Lake."

Now it was your turn to raise an eyebrow at him. 

"That's very original of you, Eddie. Isn't it all frozen over this time of year?"

He flicked the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. "Yes, sunshine. A huge, frigid heart-shaped body of water. Just like my own heart."

You smirked to yourself. "Yet another perfect place for you to finally murder me."

"Not quite yet! I have a warm van, a six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and some blankets in the back."

"You literally just described the exact van that murderers drive around in."

Eddie laughed at your morbid sense of humor. "Does it help at all that we'll have the best view on the lake? My friend isn't at his cabin tonight, but he said it's cool to pull my van up to the shore by his boathouse."

Pretending to think hard for a moment, you shrugged and smiled. Then, you shocked Eddie by nonchalantly placing your palm on his leg, like it was something you did everyday. 

"I guess that makes up for all these homicidal red flags."

☾

Stare into space Picture my face in your hands

Live for each second Without hesitation And never forget I'm your man

☾

"So, how do your parents feel about you being out so late?"

Eddie helped you wrap yourself into a blanket cocoon and then handed you a beer. He watched as you took a drink of it, shivering slightly, before responding to him.

You were curled up close to each other in the back of his van, legs dangling out of the open rear doors. Eddie made sure to blast the heat in the front so you wouldn't get too cold, but he could still see your breath in the brisk winter air around them.

"Oh, the usual. I'm a sinner. A disappointment. An absolute heathen, disgracing the Buckley name."

He stared at you, his can of beer paused halfway to his mouth. "Did they really say that?"

You snorted. "No, but my father might as well have. My mom's just an idiot who goes along with him."

"Do they know you're with me?"

"Yes," you replied simply.

When Eddie stayed quiet on the matter, you asked some of the lingering questions in your mind.

"How does your dad feel? He didn't sound very happy when I called earlier."

Taking a long sip of the cold beverage in his gloved hand, Eddie seemed to wince at your query. He glanced out at the frozen, dark abyss of Lovers' Lake and then peered over at you.

"I doubt he even noticed that I left the house."

You fidgeted in the blanket and awkwardly adjusted the fluffy hat on your head. "I'm sorry, Munson."

"Don't sweat it. He's just an asshole. I think I'm going to move in with my uncle this summer, though. After graduation."

You were surprised to hear this. "Really? Does your uncle live far away?"

Eddie didn't miss the slight panic in your words, his heart instantly swelling as he realized that you worried he was moving away from Hawkins. Still, he wasn't going to pass up the chance to tease you about it.

"Well, well, well. Are you going to miss me? Is Miss Buckley breaking away from her infamous emotionless exterior? Do I see the hint of an actual soul in there?" 

He burst out in laughter as you punched him playfully on the shoulder. 

"C'mon, Eddie. If you weren't around, who else would tolerate me?"

"Don't worry about it. I'll tolerate you all the way from Forest Hills Trailer Park, sunshine."

Your shoulders dropped a little in relief. "Oh. That's not far at all."

"Nope."

The conversation went quiet for a while, a comfortable silence forming between the two teenagers. You rested your head on Eddie's shoulder, feeling his hair tickle the side of your cheek.

It didn't go unnoticed by either of you that, without directly saying it, you both wanted to spend the upcoming summer together.

Eddie continued to sneak glances of his watch. Midnight was slowly approaching.

☾

Wait on me girl Cry in the night if it helps But more than ever I simply love you More than I love life itself

☾

(song lyrics credit: "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues" by Elton John)

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