#~he hasn’t been outside in a while~ SO HAVE A BUNCH OF PEOPLE THIS LAST YEAR BUT THEY STILL MAINTAIN SOME MELANIN

[ronearoundblindly]

Eight-Thirty PM

CEO!Steve Rogers x CEO!Reader (from It Had To Be You series)

Summary: Steve returns after a long business trip.

Warnings for smut. Yeah, it's not rocket science. They bang in the office. Yes, of course, on the desk. Yeah, up against the window, too. And a chair. And the floor. Look, it's just smut (with very light bondage, consensually unprotected sex, hint of marking kink, dirty talk, and the ever-expected fact that I'm going to hell). WC 3k

MINORS DNI, 18+ ONLY. There's plenty for you to read on my Light Masterlist, but this work is not for you!

“Why are you still here?”

Your head shoots up from your tablet. You didn’t think he’d come back to the office. Steve’s plane landed only an hour ago, and after a grueling two weeks of flying around the world to five different countries, you thought you’d see him tomorrow after he’s slept off the jet lag.

Overnight bag in hand, your co-CEO and boyfriend is still wearing an overcoat and work suit from meetings on the other side of the Atlantic just twelve hours ago.

You’ve been in this office just as long, finishing up the odds and ends from new contracts.

Giving a quick shrug, you answer, “You know damn well I don’t leave until the day is done.”

He sighs dramatically in your doorway, giving a pointed glare to the clear night that has fallen outside. If he’s brought his bag all the way up though, Steve planned to work, too, the hypocrite.

“What’s left?” He drops his bag in the corner, the door automatically swinging shut, and walks to your side, planting one hand by your elbow and one on the back of your chair to peer at your screen.

For the last fifteen minutes, you’ve been scrolling mindlessly through news articles, dreading going to your empty apartment for one more night. You’d hoped Steve would call when he landed, ask you out to dinner, or immediately back to his place, so you waited and zoned out.

“Ah yes, pressing stuff,” he grumbles at your social media feed. “How dare I interrupt this?”

You drop your hands to your lap and spin toward him.

“How else am I supposed to keep you supplied with soothing yet hilarious animal memes?”

Steve hasn’t changed his lean over you, so his face is just there, within reach, but you hold firm.

He lifts the hand from the desk to stroke your cheek, voice like warm honey tea. “Of course. That makes sense.”

Like a magnetic dance of alignment, he shifts and so do you, forcing you to rise from your chair. Words don’t come to mind while Steve crowds your space, hands deftly finding your hips and petting—pushing, rather—you back towards your office window.

“Is this new? I like it.”

 The blouse you bought in Japan, the perfectly tailored pencil skirt is from Italy, and your ability to resist his presence was on loan. Time just expired.

His long fingers bunch the thick fabric of your bottoms higher and higher until your thinly veiled ass presses against the window for the whole world to see. Not that anyway cares; not that anyone can look in when you have an unobstructed view out to the water. You couldn’t care less when Steve is back.

He’s back, back here, back by your side, back against your body, a thin, reinforced pane of glass separating you both from a thirty-story, sheer drop. If you could shift your feet six inches farther, you’d be flying like a superhero above New York City.

That’s ridiculous. There aren’t people who can fly. Superheros don’t exist…but if they did…

Steve Rogers would be a prime specimen. He and his broad, stabilizing hands—the ones anchoring your hips to that precariously invisible wall, the ones suspending you between ecstasy and terror—would definitely classify as hero-level marvelous.

Your skin buzzes, alive and anticipating. Your mind drowns in the wave of rich, comforted by the scent flooding the air around you.

That damn soap.

Those broad hands move up your sides, gripping so firm and hot your blouse wrinkles in their wake until his fingers finally reach the column of your neck. He replaces the grounding effect of pinning you with a deliberate thrust of his hips. His breath rolls between his fingers at your throat. The sensation brings you back from truly floating.

“Precious…”

Your leaden eyelids struggle to open. You hadn’t realized they were even closed. When he fills every sense, what’s lack of sight? He’s just so wonderful to feel, and he’s almost too glorious to behold: dark, blown pupils; tongue striping across his bottom lip; pristinely coifed hair slightly out of place in his rush to corner you.

You missed him. You missed this because this is Steve in your space, and he doesn’t invade. No. Steve enlightens the world around you. He lifts your work-weary soul up another thirty stories high and makes you believe that thing he’s always saying to you.

You’re amazing.

You sure as shit feel amazing when the first prickles of his beard scuttle across your jaw, the distance between you so minuscule now that you’re left with a void of all else but him and his oh-so-smooth, plush lips grazing yours.

With a shaky, deep breath and a sensual rasp to his voice, Steve starts, “So about the Cloutman contract…”

You almost laugh, but you almost slap him, too.

He just won’t quit. It really is so marvelously irritating.

“Shut up,” you huff into his mouth before taking hold of his lapels and making him.

You offer your best reciprocation of hot hands all over him, sliding beneath his coat and blazer to wrap his heaving chest and cling while he shrugs the layers off. Your tongues dance and slow. Your mouths suck and nibble. Your lips touch and tease.

You could not go on like this all night. You need each other after this long apart.

“Got any condoms in your office,” you ask during one break for air.

Steve freezes.

You didn’t actually anticipate the answer would be ‘no.’ Somehow, though he’s never dated much, though he’s rarely even touched you in the office these last two months of dating, you expected him to have…some sort of manly stash everywhere.

“Not in your bag?” you try.

Steve looks horrified, huffing, “You weren’t on the trip with me.” Why would he need condoms without you? his look continues silently.

You bite your lip and try not to laugh.

Door to door, the office to his place is over half an hour, the office to your place takes forty-five minutes on the best day, and to a drug store and back here would cost both twenty minutes and your dignity. You would never send a driver on that kind of errand, so you keep mulling over your options

Steve’s so disappointed, in mourning for his last moments before even more travel, running his fingers along the silky fabric of your blouse, the supple leather of your skirt, and the soft cotton of your panties.

“Maybe we should sit,” you suggest, thinking he’ll walk you over to one of the three chairs in the room, but Steve plunks his ass down right on his coat pooled atop the carpet. 

He pulls you into his lap, hands still roaming your clothing. He seems resigned to staring at the sliver of your décolleté beyond your collar, and it’s natural to tease him by starting to unbutton it. Two weeks is too long to go without seeing that slack-jawed look of envy for the fabrics that are allowed to kiss your skin all day. He’s as ravenous as an addict before they fall right back off the wagon.

“Okay,” you say finally.

Steve absently repeats you, but you’re solid in your decision.

Last week was your period, there are no fluctuations in your cycle to concern you, and you even thought that was a lucky break while your new-ish boyfriend was away. Then the word’s meaning seems to dawn on Steve.

“Okay-okay?” He swallows thickly.

Your top is undone, so you start on his, pulling the Windsor knot loose from his neck and moving slowly.

“Oh-kay,” you repeat, button by button.

Steve inhales sharply through his nose. “Like okay we don’t have one?” His face exposes his thoughts tentatively, a spark of something akin to hope here, a flicker of darker desire there. “You want me to…” he puffs out his chest “…and then I’ll just—“

“—come inside me.”

“—pull out,” he finishes. “What?!” It’s the world’s smallest exclamation. All the air rushes out of him. His blue eyes shadow as if dusk hit the harbor in a sudden eclipse.

You push the crisp white shirt over his broad shoulders.

“Precious,” Steve breathes, “are you sure?” Once the sleeves are off his arms, he pets down his beard. “You…”

“Uh-huh.” You nod, sliding off the navy tie.

“You’re sure,” he says again, unconvinced, short-circuiting. “I never…”

You understand his hesitation, you really do, but Steve doesn’t have to become a broken record questioning your choices. It’s a reasonable call in your monogamous relationship, and if he fucking ruins this for you after waiting half a month for his return, you’re gonna…you’re gonna…get ideas.

Ideas like this one.

You take Steve’s hands in yours and start wrapping the tie around his wrists.

He says nothing. He doesn’t even look down. He just stares at your face as you concentrate on tying a couple of knots on the makeshift binding and glance back up at him. He keeps his hands together, suspended between your bodies, unwilling to move yet.

So you keep working.

You undo his belt and unzip his pants, watching his lips fall open and the thoughts racing behind his eyes slow down. It’s a hard reset—one making Steve harder and harder beneath your touch.

“Hey, Captain,” you husk, leaning into his paralyzed hands only to have him recoil in alarm, “whatcha thinking?”

His long fingers grip gently at your face, face close to yours. Steve licks across his lips excruciatingly slow. “Say it again.” 

“Fuck me.”

He growls, sweeping his arms over your head and pinning you to his chest. With ease, Steve rolls onto his knees and rises, carrying you until your ass hits the chilly wood of your desk. He drags his body between your wide legs.

“Say it again.”

He bends forward, forcing you to lay back with his bound hands cradling your head, heat surging down your body when his warm skin sits flush down your torso. 

With his lips latched just below your ear, you whisper in his, “I want you to come inside me.”

You feel his teeth graze your throat as Steve grunts involuntarily, ripping his hands out from under you and shoving down his pants and boxer briefs. He orders you to remove your panties, demands you unhook the front clasp of your bra, and presses his erection to your core. He praises your exposed beauty while shushing your incoherent whimpers. His arms push past your shoulders and settle beneath the small of your back, angling you perfectly for his cock to slide back and forth through your folds, his hips nudging that too-long neglected bundle of nerves.

No more long, solo business trips, you think before your mind blurs in the low lamp light, you won’t survive another absence.

He spreads your arousal between you for an agonizing eternity, swipe after swipe, making you cry out every time the head of him notches in just the right spot. He could be in you right now. He could be fucking your brains out. At least that would give you reason to be this stupidly cock-crazed already.

“Didn’t use to need it like this,” Steve mutters into the valley of your breasts. “Went so long without. Can’t now.” He nips at the swell of you. “Not a day—not a night without…wanting this.”

He’s slow to push the head in, having foregone stretching you on his fingers, but he lavishes your nipples with attention enough to have you mewling for more.

“…wanting you…”

You gasp as his edging progression throbs across your whole body. His thick length and dextrous tongue coax every thrill back to the side of pleasure that curls your toes and shakes your thighs around him. He thrusts shallowly before pressing deeper, bullying a nipple with strong suction as he struggles to control himself.

“Missed you. Missed you so much.”

It makes you soar to hear him so broken, unable to separate his need for your company from his need to bury himself in you, unable to rein in his raw, animalistic desire to fill you in any way.

Steve fights this nature.

He fights to be respectful. He fights to be appreciative. He fights to ensure you always feel seen as more than just a woman, but right at this moment, it is the greatest accomplishment of your career to override the genius mind of Steve Rogers and make him crumble in worship of your pussy.

When he’s fully seated within your walls, you shiver straight into his embrace.

“I love you,” you breathe, pulling your arms out from beneath his to card through his hair.

Steve whines at the intimacy, muttering how good you feel into your neck before finding you for a kiss.

“I love you, too.”

Your spit-slicked nipples graze his rough chest hair with every bounce of Steve’s frantic and increasingly wild thrusts. His excitement fuels yours, his moans turning to groans while your core heats up like a kettle on the cusp of whistling.

“Are you sure?” he asks, but he sounds so wrecked, so incapable of any rational thought that isn’t pure praise of you.

His huge hands cling to your shoulder blades. The bite of short fingernails barely registers on your sweating skin. All you can do is scream in warning.

Your body clamps down, fluttering a strong and desperate rhythm of its own against him.

“Oh fuck, precious,” Steve pants, hustling to move his arms back around to your front, pressing into your tight stomach, imagining the glide of his cock beneath his palms as he holds you still.

He’s lost and lust-drunk, focused on pumping you full of his cum and relishing the new sensation. His eyes shut, lashes kissing his cheeks, and his head lolls back in one last choked shout.

It’s so much wetter combined with you, so much nastier and possessive.

He kneads gently at your belly, still pushed in as deep as he can be, and lets out a breathy chuckle in utter, debauched bliss.

A second later, Steve easily twists out of the looped tie, tossing it in a heap beside you on the desk and petting every inch of you he can reach as he comes down.

His descending calm only sends you reeling.

You watch the corruption of man in 4K high definition as Steve succumbs to this new, greedy delight. You see the very moment it dawns on him that he’s a righteously common man—replete with vice he’s unlikely to recover from. His downfall keeps you floating on shockwaves like you’re in a mosh pit, his every expression pushing you back into the fog of orgasm.

You did this. You did this to him as much as he did this to you.

Eyes glazed and dark, Steve’s fingertips finally trace the joint of your hip.

The tickle makes you buck against him, knocking him back a little, and slowly, Steve does pull out entirely. He never lets go of you though.

His thumb finds your clit and starts up another leisurely pace. He sits his bare ass on your office chair and looks directly at your exposed sex, staring as the stimulation makes you clench.

 You hear the powerful man between your legs roll forward for a better view. 

You feel him leaking out of you and know he’s holding that gaze for a moment longer before yanking out a few tissues from the box in your drawer and wiping up what he can. He’s gentle, but he doesn’t have to be so slow to clean you. 

You expect that to be it.

He’s brought you back down—albeit teasingly,—returned from his trip to some feral, nomad land, and that’s likely the end of your romp at work with straight-laced, kind Steve Rogers. 

But his hot hand finds your calf, lifting your leg to drape over his shoulder. He doesn’t even wait until the other leg is moved into place before his lips lock around that sensitive nub still aching from attention.

He goes to town, particularly ravenous for more noise, pausing for long periods to caress and nuzzle the plush skin of your thighs. He whispers how he likes the smell of you two together, how it’s stronger, maybe because he’s been away, how you smell potent and ready for him, and he didn’t hurt you, did he? He just wanted you so bad. Needed you.

You lean into his new-found obsession, steadily rising high again, body and soul.

Did he like marking you? you ask. Will he keep thinking about it?

Will he want to keep you full and watch it overflow from you? 

Is he ready to fuck you again already?

Your words don’t even shame the golden boy begging to suffocate between your legs; they only encourage him. He has you gushing again in minutes. It takes longer for the sparking electricity of your high to dissipate than it did to build the charge.

He simply watches with a smile on his face and his lips sliding across the tender back of your knee.

Eventually, you sit up, gasping for air, blouse and bra still trapped on your elbows, skirt still hiked up to your waist. No more words pass between you. You hold each other in an adoring gaze, giggling when he has to help you put your feet back on the ground.

You fluff your destroyed hair and step onto wobbly legs. Steve races to help, but you only move to straddle him in the chair, your hand finding his still-slick cock that’s well on its way to hard. His eyes meet yours and never falter, his hands steady beside your arms in case you need his strength but untouching while you jerk and toy with him. He unabashedly shows you the full mess of him you’ve made, like you let him see of you.

You look over to the clock near the door.

8:30.

The night is still young, and you missed your boyfriend. He’s full of surprises and you want to explore at least one more before breaking to head home.

@bucky-fricking-barnes-reads @whiskeytangofoxtrot555 @fallinallinmendes @deandreamernp @rach2602 @patzammit @royalwritersoftheuniverses @supraveng @1950schick @yiiiikesmish

A/N: Hey gang, so I'm in a phase of this emotional cluster-fuck that I honestly cannot tell if my work reads well? Normally, I have a decent radar for the quality I'm looking for/proud of, but lately, absolutely nothing makes par. I'm kinda relying on you guys to tell me if and when we get to a point that it's bad and maybe I need to take a real break. I PROMISED SINFUL SUNDAY THOUGH, so I do hope it was at least passable as entertainment! 💚💜

[Main Masterlist; Ko-Fi]

#it had to be you #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers smut #steve rogers x you #ceo!steve #ceo!steve rogers #ceo!reader #series #steve rogers fanfic #steve rogers fic #steve rogers fluff #steve rogers one shot #steve rogers x reader smut #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers x f!reader #steve rogers x female reader #steve x reader #steve x you #steve rogers au #marvel au #18+ #18+ fanfic

[ryujnn]

⊳ akuma ﾟ｡ ⋆ three clicks and i’m home. (05)

⊳ chapter summary ﾟ｡ ⋆ it took your anxious mind and sixty one days to realize that you were falling in love with the most secretive man in the world.

⊳ chapter warnings ﾟ｡ ⋆ sexual tension between gojo and the reader. finally some comfort followed after the angst. mentions of sukuna. not many warnings, good buildup to the next chapter.

⊳ note akuma return? i wanted to change the format as well, i hope you all enjoy this chapter! i tried to make it nice and long as an apology for being gone 4 so long!! ^^ don’t be shy to ask questions, etc. in my inbox!

tag list. visual + character board. prev. next.

Two months.

Nine weeks.

Sixty—one days,

And one thousand, four hundred and sixty hours.

That’s how long it’s been since your mother had been laid to rest.

It’s also the last time you’ve seen your husband.

What a drastic change from seeing him every day, bumping into him on the way to the lake outside his home — and even running into him the kitchen.

Truthfully, when Gojo never returned home, you didn’t expect to be so… frantic.

“Kazuha,” You brush your hair from your face, controlling your breathing from the running you’d been doing. After rushing around the house in attempt to find your missing husband, you’ve resorted to asking the cleaning ladies. “Hi. Have you seen Gojo, ma’am?”

She shakes her head, pulling her grey eyebrows together. “I have not. Is he missing? I can call the people—”

“No, no, that’s alright,” You forced a reinsuring smile, wiping the sweat from your palms onto your jeans. “Thank you, anyway.”

Once you noticed the lack of absence from your husband, everyone started to catch on. People at work whispering and gossiping about the apparent disappearance of Gojo and what he could be possibly doing.

And when everyone began to question you where Gojo Satoru had disappeared to, you always responded the same way.

“He’s out doing what he does best.”

You couldn’t tell them that your marriage was all planned, for reasons you aren’t aware of, and that he hasn’t communicated where he’d be going this entire time.

For a while, you convinced yourself that if anything did happen to the world’s most powerful jujutsu sorcerer, you’d find out about it. It would be reported and you’d be alerted about it.

But that only fueled your heart to start cracking and dropping every time your phone rang.

You opened the door to Gojo’s room, revealing the poorly made up bed that hasn’t been touched in weeks. Eyeing the bowl of candy set on his nightstand, and soaking up the rest of the sweet scent that seems to follow him out of this room.

Resting against the threshold, you had your arms crossed over your chest, secretly praying that he’d walk out of his bathroom and reveal his tall, worthy frame and tease you about barging in and not knocking.

You’d do anything to have another argument, another bicker. To hold his hand as you both walked into the school, fueling the narrative you both had. Hell, you’d even opt for another bar rescue. Where was he?

Where is your husband?

“Maki, gun. Inumaki, spear. Panda, dagger. Megumi, nunchucks.” You set your clipboard down, resting against the table behind you afterwards. “There’s water in the gun, the blades are significantly dull and the nunchucks are padded.”

“Fight.”

As the students begin to duke it out for another assessment test with a newer student added to the bunch, you rested against the surface and checked your phone once more.

Nothing.

Pathetically, you pulled up your messages with Gojo and still found absolutely nothing. Just a few messages you’d sent over the past two months.

‘There’s a package for you.’

‘My father wants to know if you have our marriage certificate hung up in the house.’

‘Another package.’

‘Mail is on the counter.’

Each one of these texts were all lies, but all you hoped for was a response. Even it was an emoji or a message you thought was passive aggressive because you cannot decipher tone through text.

Shutting your phone back off, you slipped it back into your back pocket and returned your attention to the students in front of you.

“Ms. Shio!” A man paces towards you, envelope in hand.

Each step he took towards you, your heart dropped farther and farther out of your chest and onto the ground.

How are you going to react? What if this man is relying the message that your husband had been killed? What do you say? Do you cry? Do you—

“Ms Shio, here you are.” Ruffled black hair, panting out of breath, this man looked more distressed than you were.

He bows, offering the envelope above his head.

After accepting the envelope, you tore through it until you had the paper in hand.

Who mailed death papers anymore?

Scanning each letter caused your hands to warm and sweat.. and sweat.. until there was any need to. This letter wasn’t about your husband’s death — not even about your husband, but simply a task for one of your students.

You felt utterly silly assuming this was the worst. Not the best letter, especially for your student, but it wasn’t what you were expecting.

“Alright, thank you.”

“Megumi!” You yelled, halting the fight. All of the students paused, gladly taking the time to catch their breath and fan themselves of Japan’s heat. “Come here, please. The rest of you can continue.”

Megumi dropped his tools and jogged over to you, keeping a neutral and stoic expression on his face, one he’d normally have. He was new, different. Apparently he had a good word and a great family name behind his back.

“Yes, Shio—Sensei?”

You turned the letter towards your student, swapping it with him before pushing up from the table. “You have a task. Stevenson’s hut has one of Ryomen Sukuna’s fingers located there, and your job is to find it and bring it back here. Can you do that?”

The boy seems to light up slightly, excited to be given his first task. There’s no smile, not even a hint of one, but the way his eyes widen and he nods before you could even finish your questions shows his spirit.

You found it adorable.

“Great. Call me if anything happens, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

That didn’t take long.

“Run it past me one more time, Megumi,” Your hands are gripping the steering wheel with all your might, breaking all kinds of laws while trying to make it to your student. “Couldn’t find the finger, encountered a curse and now someone… ate it?”

“Yeah! And he’s not dead! His body took it.. he’s got all these marks on him and now— Stop looking in your pants, please!”

You were utterly confused, but luckily, you were near the area they were at. Even pulling over near the building, the cursed energy was forcing itself into your car, nearly suffocating you.

The past two months have changed you. You’ve learned more, to be more skilled, how to identify a cursed object by smell, taste and touch — you’ve even learned yourself a few new tricks you have up your sleeve.

“I’m coming up, Megumi.”

Your phone keeps its position in your car, and as you walk up the steps to the roof of the building, you reach your hand out in front of you to emit an oval — shaped black hole, revealing the orange handled katana. Your katana.

Snagging it and shutting the hole off, you tucked the weapon onto your belt, in it’s designated spot. Your boots kick the gravel on the ground as you approached the two kids idling in the middle of the roof.

“What the hell is going on?”

“I got this!” Megumi yells, crouching down and slapping his hands together. “Under Jujutsu regulations, Itadori Yuji, I will exorcise you as a curse!”

“No!” You run forward, next to your students within seconds and grabbing his shoulder. “Not yet.”

The boy with the pink hair in front of you both raised his hands to his head, surrendering. “Yeah! Seriously, It’s me! Let’s just go to a hospital.”

Both you and Megumi both contemplated on your lives. Maybe this was the ‘Itadori’ and he wasn’t affected by the curse right now. Or maybe it was… and this thousand year old curse is playing one of his old tricks to kill two sorcerers.

It was a gamble.

“What’s the situation?”

Chills. Immediate chills ran down your spine. Even if that voice didn’t appear, that whiny yet authoritative voice didn’t sing like a song into your ears, the presence alone would’ve done it.

The familiar feeling that everything would be okay.

“Gojo—sensei, what are you doing here?” Megumi asked.

“Hey.” Gojo raised his hand, smile peering down to his student. “I wasn’t planning on coming, but man, you’re roughed up. I should show the second—years.”

And there he is. The playful, funny, energetic man that only acts like this around his students. Snapping photos with an obnoxious flash on to annoy Megumi, but only in good spirits.

Until he raised his eyes onto you.

“Hi, wifey.”

The blank stare told him all he needed to know. Of course you were upset, you had all right to be, but it was difficult reading you. That stare could mean anything — that you didn’t care, that you were sad or angry, maybe even thrilled to see him.

But all he saw was a blank stare.

To you, the rest was a blur. Discussing how Itadori swallowed the finger and now he was combined with the most hated curse. Gojo attempting to beat the curse out of him, though it simply does not work and he opts for passing the kid out.

He’s ordered Megumi to take his unconscious body downstairs to Ichiji as he runs after you, who’s rushing down the steps and praying to get to your car before he musters up the energy to speak.

Even after you’ve returned your katana to it’s infinite home and tugged your keys from your back pocket, he stalks behind you. You’re not aware of the motive, but once you’ve unlocked your car door, he slips in, giving you no choice to go home alone.

And you suppose you’re should suck this in. You were just praying for him to come home, to fight with to, to tease you and move your stuff around the home to piss you off.

But he’s okay. He’s got his cellphone. Not a scratch on that pretty, porcelain skin — and he’s in a chipper mood.

Two months.

Nine weeks.

Sixty two fucking days.

And one thousand, four hundred and sixty hours.

That’s how long it’s been since your mother was laid to rest,

and that’s the last time you saw your husband.

“Y/N.”

The thick heel of your boots connected with the birch wood flooring, keeping your hands to your side, fists balled, counting the seconds until you’re in your room so you could punch something in peace.

“Stop walking, please.”

But you couldn’t get there fast enough. It was like you were walking in slow motion, or like a song’s on repeat that you absolutely hated. You were irritated and furious, all to the point where even breathing too hard was pissing you off.

“Y/N—” Gojo’s long arm extended in front of himself, grabbing at your wrist and spinning you around to face him. He uses his other hand to capture your other wrist, keeping you steady in front of him. “Can you stop walking away from me?”

“Where were you?”

That small crack in your voice, the octave dropping a pitch lower, and the fact you had your head down, refusing to look up at him told him everything he needed to know.

“Don’t cry,” He drops your hands and switches to cup your face, tucking those pesky strands of hair from your eyes. “I never wanted to make you cry.”

You raise your head to your husband, puffy red eyes looking up into his. He could point of some definite differences within the past two months, but the bags under your eyes made him tense up in his spot.

Was this because of him?

“Why won’t you talk to me?” You ask, keeping a crucial eye on your husband. Your soft cries and little hiccups between your words would normally make Satoru ‘aww’ and tease you, but he realizes that he hates it. And for some reason, the pain you’re feeling is now his, too.

“Y/N…”

“I’ve been… trying to do everything right. I try to look nice, try not to c…complain and do everything like you wanted,” Your chest is stuttering up, trying to catch your breath as you spoke and fought back tears. “All I want is… answers. Tell me why you married me, where you went, how you knew my mother… and… and who’s Suguru Geto? Why won’t you tell me any of that?!”

“I know.”

“You’re an asshole. I’ve been searching for those answers while you were off doing god knows what because you won’t tell me!”

“I know.”

“And you scared me. I looked like an awful wife not knowing where her husband was. Is that what you want? To humiliate me?”

“Of course not.”

“Okay then talk to me!”

“I’m sorry,” He lowers to his knees, resting on his legs as your followed suit. He wraps his long arms around you and tugs you into his chest. Your head rests against his chest, thumbs caressing your skin. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Stop cryin’.”

You were too emotional to realize the sudden changes between you both. He’s touching you, dropping all infinity and calling you the sweetest of names. Cuddling you between his legs, pressing gentle kisses to your head.

“Let’s talk about it tomorrow, okay?”

Gojo felt the smallest nod on his chest, and it’s all he needed to end the night. He’s thankful he’s home, he knows you are two — and he knows it’s time for him to give you the answers you wanted.

Or at least some of them.

Holding you close to his chest, shushing you and rocking you side to side like a baby. After you’ve cried yourself to sleep, still sniffling and curled into a fetal position; he lifts you into his arms like a princess and carries your into his bedroom.

Two months.

Nine weeks.

Sixty two days,

And one thousand, four hundred and sixty hours.

That’s how long it’s been since your mother has been laid to rest,

and how long it’s been since you realized that you were falling in love with Satoru Gojo.

Gojo stretches his long legs and long arms, hearing a few pops here and there from his bones and wakes him up nice and steady this morning. He’s missed his bed, most importantly, he missed having days off.

He looks over to the side of his bed, seeing his duvet pulled back and your body missing. For a second, he panics — but he smells the vanilla scent coming from the kitchen, and the familiar ding to your coffee pot. You’re safe.

The strongest sorcerer slips out of bed, bare feet sliding against the glossy wood of his floor and makes his way into the living room, ruffling his white hair between his fingers.

“Good morning.”

You don’t turn around once you’re greeted by your husbands voice, not until you’ve stirred your hot beverage with a straw, tasted it from the metal and tossed it into your sink when you were done.

Now facing the man you were convinced you hated, you keep your hands warm with your cup and the fluffy cardigan hugging your arms. Under that was some silky shorts and a matching bra you bought a month ago — happily wearing around the house you lived alone in.

If that wasn’t distracting enough, Satoru opted to leave his shirt thrown on the side of his bed, only approaching the kitchen with a pair on black sweats that hung by his hips. You’ve always assumed Gojo was build pretty fair. Wasn’t too alarming big like a gym head, but he was definitely carrying a good amount of muscle. It complimented his waist, his shoulders, just him.

“Mornin’.”

The air was thick. You totally ignored your husband sucking your image in because you were too busy looking at his. To Gojo, you’ve definitely changed over the last few weeks. Your hair looks healthier, you’re now allowing it down whenever you’re not working. The training payed its due with your body, your thighs growing thicker and your body’s more toned.

He’s wanting to pull those skimpy shorts down and keep his head between your legs for however long he can. Maybe leave a few marks on your skin to remind you just how sorry he was.

But he knows he’s been a bad boy, and now it’s time for him to tell you what you wanna hear.

“Ready to talk?” Gojo asks, raising an eyebrow at you. He knows you are — he just can’t help being a piece of shit sometimes.

You nod, “Yeah.” Following behind your husband, taking a gamble on which seat you’ll take for this interesting conversation.

Once you both were seated across from one another, Satoru leans back and props his foot up on his knee. “You first,” He’s crossing his arms now. “What is your clan?”

©️ RYUJNN: 03/27/2023. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. do not translate, plagiarize or remake any of my work! reposting my work is allowed — likes, reblogs & comments are appreciated.

💭: @torufilms @luckimoon @itxtoyll @96jnie @goldfishesarecute @clreamon @creolequeen11210 @michikoyuu @patchi-chi @chieeeeeee @parkchanyeol-kr @shadowarchon n @willowsversion @whoreforfictionalmen18 @weebotaku21 @regalillegal @rahhhhhrs @luckimoon @chuurroo @xiaosie @nonoiix @gh0stwish @ayatoru @zohraaa @dazailover1900 0 @tookiostqr @catoru-gojo @justwinterlights @kash2 @lightblueexorcist t @tuzuis4thwife @nakachuchu @96jnie @clreamon @emissaire @vernasce-blogs @tsukifv @michikoyuu @oi-loverboy @holeyahsama @sanzuandmikey @vynlover27 @mnoaeiu @ginger0322 @prettyroxy @softiebadbitch @planetmarz @sugurugetosbitch @immikasasgf @reiners-milkbiddies @bebetiny @tojisprincess @coquettemaiden @lovemarvel16 @purpleguk @shima707 @shuxjodie

#gojo satoru #gojou satoru x reader #gojo satoru smut #gojo saturo #gojo x you #gojo satoru x reader #jjk gojo #gojo satoru oneshot #gojo satoru fluff #gojo satoru imagine #gojo satoru x you #gojo satoru series #gojo satoru x y/n #gojo x y/n #gojo x reader #gojo series #jjk fanfic #jjk x you #jjk smut #jjk headcanons #jjk x reader #jjk series #jjk fluff #jujustu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x you #jujutsu kaisen smut #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen series #jujutsu kaisen imagines

[zahri-melitor]

I don't know if it's just me but it feels like alot of the points people use to criticise Tim are things that can actually be seen with early Damian writing. The too smart, dangerous, over-competent and slightly murderous character doesn't really fit Tim as a character even though he's ascribed to that and criticised for it but it can easily be seen with Damian.

I don't hate Damian as a character, but I get what you mean about it being tiring that DC keeps pushing him to the top of the totem pole especially since the way the do that is by making other characters seem incompetent and by ignoring other characters. Also correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Cass, Barbara or Tim have been on the Justice League but Damian as a teen younger than them technically is/was?

Oh boy. Late response on this, but I've been playing with it for a while.

Starting with the last point first: Tim’s actually the only one of those three who hasn’t been on a main universe Justice League at any point.

Barbara was a member of the JLA after the Morrison reboot for quite a while between 1998-2000. She’s also got the tendency to pop up in JL stories and events as one of the computer folk helping maintain their systems. She’s certainly more focused on her OWN team and I don’t think she’s ever been a member as Batgirl, but as Oracle? As Lian Harper says in Titans #1 (1999), she’s secretly running the League.

Cass was a member of Justice League Elite, a morally ambiguous Justice League spinoff coming out of one of the more confusing JLA arcs. She was placed on the team undercover as ‘Kasumi’ by Bruce essentially as a spy. In tone it feels like DC trying their hand at a The Authority ripoff before they gobbled Wildstorm up. Is it a good series? No, but it does mean Cass has been on a Justice League team with Wally, Ollie, and a bunch of Z-listers you’ve never heard of. (Someone is now going to defend oh Manitou Dawn to me and while I DO like her, she's a Z-lister, sorry)

Digression aside!

I think a lot of the time when people are arguing against a character, they are frequently complaining about the flanderised, fanonised version of that character that they trip over in fic all the time more than the character on page in comics. Not always! But those do tend to irritate people more.

In terms of "what people want to argue fanon Tim to be, Damian already is" sort of? I mean there are multiple fanon versions of Tim, but yes, "too smart, dangerous, over-competent and slightly murderous" is a common one among people who want to really insist Tim killed lots and lots and lots of people in Red Robin #8 (a reading I do not subscribe to). It is equally an okay but not great description of Damian, in that I would mostly place even early Damian as 'dangerously violent' not 'murderous' by BFTC.

I don't think it's great in terms of complete accuracy for either of them, but yeah, if you boil things down, it's closer to Damian's actual character than Tim's.

In terms of DC pushing them: yeah, Damian by being THE Robin between 2009 and 2019 or so got a solid editorial pitch as a central character, because 'Robin' as a title has that extra cachet outside of intense comics nerd circles. There were events and storylines that centred his position as The Robin, but equally it comes out in basic things like...which characters are prioritised to appear in anthologies! If we are writing a Batman Christmas story, let's have it feature Bruce and Damian, or Bruce, Dick, Damian and Barbara. And so on.

Now whether Damian's getting prioritised over every other 'kid' of the family is a murky discussion - there's a place for the conversation that certain writers in particular had a tendency to focus on Damian being Bruce's biological kid, over and above the adopted children - but generally it comes and goes in waves and with what stories are pitched. It's very clear when you read comics that some writers just like using particular characters more than others. There's often stories written where to make the story work, someone has to be left holding the idiot ball or being needlessly aggressive, to provide conflict, and writers who do this obviously have to choose someone to do it for them. If a story is centring Damian, generally he isn't going to be the one who finds out he's wrong after providing the conflict. If it's centring say Tim, then Damian might be used to push the narrative forward. And when a writer does like one character more than another, they might choose the one they don't intend to write often as the one who gets stuck being idiot ball.

TL;DR: on some occasions Damian might be being prioritised. On others he isn't. He got a lot of spotlight to himself during the 2010s; that's been more balanced since then (honestly Dick has been the one hogging spotlight for the last few years, if anyone).

[tortoisebore]

okay hear me out remus and sirius at IKEA pretending every room is their house and pretend making food it’d be so chaotic

SO TRUEEEEE SO TRUE

omfg imagine

they go in the first time to grab a kitchen table after they move apartments bc the one sirius found on the side of the road two years ago finally broke during the move across the city. so their apartment is still full of boxes and they venture out early one morning and before they go in remus puts his hands on sirius’ shoulders and makes him look at him and he goes “we are here for ONE THING. we are here for a TABLE. nothing else.” and he makes sirius audibly confirm that yes, they are there for only a table and they’re going to get in and get out and that’s it, no dilly dallying. because he’s been to an ikea before but sirius hasn’t and he knows what’s about to happen so he assigns himself as their supervisor for the trip

but then six hours later they’re calling an uber XL to the front of the ikea and they’re standing there with a box that supposedly contains their new table and another one that contains a bookshelf and four of those big blue tarp ikea bags and two lamps and they’re both just standing there on the curb like ‘🧍……..,what the hell just happened’

so they set up their new place over the next few months and they make it all cozy and warm and sirius’ records are all over the living room and remus’ books have migrated from his new bookshelf in their bedroom and they’re taking over every corner of the place, like they’re practically sentient.

so one random weeknight they’re having takeout on the couch and sirius is looking around like 🧐 and he goes ‘u know…..,you could use another bookshelf.’ and remus is all ‘lmfao yeah, i know’ and sirius is like ‘………we could…..we could go to ikea………’ and remus goes ‘😐………………yes’

so then the next saturday they’re back and they’re having another pep talk outside and they’re both going ‘we’re here for a bookshelf we’re here for a bookshelf we’re here for a bookshelf’ and people are passing them and staring at them bc they’re chanting it louder and louder like they’re casting a fucking spell on the place

and they get inside and they do really really good for a while and they’ve almost made it to the storage section where they found remus’ first bookshelf last time when they stumble upon all these showrooms??? and they both stop in their tracks and they’re going 😧😦😲🤯😮😯 and then all hell breaks loose

they leave that time with four more tarp ikea bags of random shit, like a planter shaped like a marble statue even though they don’t have any plants, and a set of stainless steel mixing bowls even though they have absolutely no need for fucking mixing bowls, and a toothbrush holder (because the other week remus opened the drawer in their bathroom to see their toothbrushes touching and he had a meltdown about germs while sirius loudly explained that they very regularly have their mouths on every part of each other’s body) and two more bookshelves for remus and a vinyl organizer for sirius and a new little stand for his record player that’ll go nice next to the window in the living room

so they’re good on furniture for a while but now they go to ikea for entertainment purposes because the showroomssssssss

they’ll brainstorm a new backstory every time they go—sometimes they’re newlyweds looking to furnish their first home just outside the city, other times they’re roommates with extreme levels of sexual tension that haven’t admitted they’re in love with each other yet, and a couple of times they’ve roleplayed as a very picky and argumentative elderly couple that can’t agree on curtains

one saturday afternoon they’re in this living room setup with all these floor-to-ceiling dark gray glass cabinets and a sleek steel electric fireplace and a bunch of orange-tinted lamps. and sirius is lounging in the gray tweed chair in the corner and remus is opening the cabinets and testing the soft-shut hinges, and sirius goes ‘i don’t think your brother will like the couch.’ and remus doesn’t have a brother but he sighs all big and goes ‘it doesn’t matter if my brother likes the couch, sirius, it’s our couch.’ and sirius is all ‘yeah but i don’t want to hear all his yapping about structure and lumbar support and shit when they come for christmas—‘ and remus drags a hand down his face and he’s all ‘baby, can you at least pretend that you don’t hate him for two seconds while we get a fucking couch—“ and sirius stands up and huffs and stomps his foot and goes ‘it was never about the couch!!!! this is about you taking my side for once!!!!!’ and everyone in the vicinity is eavesdropping because this is some juicy relationship drama to be happening in the home section of this ikea right now

and another time they’re in this bedroom setup with a big light birch wood wardrobe covering the entire wall. and it lights up when you open the doors and there’s shelves for shoes and drawers and a fucking jewelry drawer?? in it and sirius is like ‘you need this in your room, remus.’ and remus goes ‘i do not. this would not even come close to fitting in my room,’ and sirius is all ‘it absolutely would, i know exactly how big your room is and this would fit great on the wall across from the window, you need more shit in there anyway, it’s sad and empty.’ and remus leans against the wardrobe door next to the one sirius has open and he’s all ‘how do you know what fits in my room, huh?’ and sirius blushes a bit and he backtracks and he’s all ‘no i mean i just think it would fit. like i think it would look good. our rooms are close to the same size and and and—‘ and remus is crossing his arms and getting up in his space going all ‘it is kind of empty, huh? maybe you should do something about that?’ and sirius is all ‘😳 like what….?’ and remus shrugs and goes ‘maybe i should just let you do it. put shit on the walls and all that. you know, make it nice.’ and sirius is shutting the doors and crossing his own arms and leaning against the wood to size him up and he goes ‘you want me to make your room nice for you?’ and remus goes ‘mhm yes yeah i do,’ and sirius is all ‘why don’t i just put a giant picture of me on your wall, that’d spruce the place up, right?’ and remus is biting his lip and going ‘mmmm that might not work actually, what if i bring someone home? what would they think?’ and sirius laughs really loud and rolls his eyes and goes ‘yeah rightttt you haven’t pulled anyone in months, remus—’ and then remus is crowding him up against the door and going ‘keeping tabs on me, huh?’ and then they’re getting chastised by security for making out in the fake ikea shower attached to the bedroom with the giant wardrobe

and one friday night when they don’t feel like going out they wander around the home section and fight about curtains. like sirius is all ‘i can’t watch my shows in the evening with the sun coming through that damn window remus, we need curtains.’ and remus is all ‘well fucking excuse me for enjoying some natural light every once in a while’ and they bicker about what color to choose for the rod because the beige matches the walls and will blend in nicely but the black matches the legs on their dining table chairs and eventually remus goes ‘holy fuck sirius just get the beige jesus christ it never ends—‘ and sirius scoffs and goes ‘all you do is complain, it’s like listening to a toddler—‘ and then they’re going home with and getting wine drunk on this pinot noir remus bought the other week and trying to hang up the pretty new sheers in the living room and sirius nearly cracks his skull open and has to be caught out of mid-air by a very tipsy and clumsy remus while trying to hang them up standing on a chair and they’re both laughing so hard they’re crying

sometimes they spend the whole trip in the fake kitchens pretending they’re at their vacation home in the south of france where sirius spent summers as a kid and sirius will bumble about the kitchen and send remus to the attached living room to finally fix that squeaky hinge on the tv stand. and they actually do quite a lot of shopping in the kitchens so they have to be careful about spending too much time in there, because sirius loves all the little gadgets and spice racks and electric can openers and display jars because ever since they got those mixing bowls he’s been dabbling in baking and their kitchen has gotten more action in the last six months than it probably ever has but remus always makes sure to stop by the grocery store and grab another bag of flour when sirius texts and asks for one, even when he’s had an annoying day and just wants to go home, because sirius likes to keep his hands busy and remus loves coming home and finding him making a giant sticky mess on the counters

they’re in this green kitchen one day and it has a big huge rack above the island for pots and pans to hang off of. and sirius breaks character and goes all starry eyed and remus immediately knows where this is going when he turns to him with big eyes and goes ‘look at it!!! 😲😲’ and remus is like ‘it is very cool but it’s like six hundred fucking—‘ and sirius is moving around the room looking at it from all angles like ‘oh but imagine how great it would look, we could put your stainless steel pans up there, they’d look so nice!!!’ and then remus is going to talk him down and immediately almost cracking his head on the corner of the giant rack. and he goes ‘look, see, i’m too tall for it, i’d break my head open the first week we had it in there—‘ and then sirius is pouting, shuffling up close and wrapping his arms around remus’ middle and looking up at him with his chin on his sternum and he’s the living embodiment of 🥺🥺🥺

so remus spends the next weekend supervising while sirius installs anchors in their ceiling and hangs the rack above the tiny island in their kitchen because he’s a saint and he’s too in love for his own good

#u ask tortoise answers #anon #IKEA RANT #tortoise writes a novel ab an ask for no reason #last month i was staying in hammersmith for a week and we stopped at the ikea every night in the way home #just browsed around #i devoured every inch of that ikea #‘tortoise we want to go home we’re tired please’ #‘hang on u guys have got to see this fuckin cabinet i found’ #almost bought a couch & then remembered i don’t live in london #the closest ikea to me is fuckin d*llas god help me #day trip to d*llas just to wander around ikea

[wsdanon]

Hhm.. for the wip game, celltw snippet?

sorry anon for the late response i was trying to space my answers out a bit and then spontaneously wrote a fic in between oops

celltw snippets is basically just like… supposed to a bunch of different scenes ranging from post-fuga to qsmp era of their developing relationship and all that mess. i started and stopped writing it somewhere just after tazercraft got thrown in prison?

anyway take a snippet of one of the scenes:

It’s a little weird to be curled up in Cellbit’s bed at his castle. They haven’t really done this sort of thing in a while—especially not since Cellbit got married. The last time probably would’ve been… those couple of nights after they got Felps back. 

But him and Mike escaped from prison… a couple of days ago. Maybe. After the loss of Walter Bob, Mike refused to go outside, and Pac wasn’t going to just leave him, so he's not exactly sure how much time has passed. 

But earlier today was when they had revealed they had escaped to Cellbit. He seemed anxious to keep them in his sight, and now here they are. 

Cellbit’s arms are wrapped tightly around him, pulling him close. Close enough that he can feel the back of Roier’s arm pressing into his stomach from where he has it thrown over Cellbit’s waist. Mike is practically plastered to his back. He refused to sleep in any other position—an intensity in his insistence that hid a deep-rooted fear. 

Pac thinks the weirdest part about this whole situation is Roier. He had barely even blinked when Cellbit had explained what he wanted—his hand still tightly clasping Pac’s from when he’d dragged him up the stairs. Pac can’t say he knows Roier well enough to know whether he’s prone to serious jealousy, but he had been more than understanding about the situation. 

Maybe it’s because they got married right after Felps was rescued, so Roier’s used to this from Cellbit. Maybe it’s because he’s a therapist. 

Whatever the reason, Pac’s grateful for it. It’s nice to be held.

Cellbit’s arms flex around him, as he stretches a little and shifts. His eyes flick open a little to catch Pac’s briefly, before closing again.

“You’re still awake.” Cellbit murmurs.

“Yeah.”

He’s not sure how. Mike’s been sleeping too much, and Pac hasn’t been sleeping at all. He thought maybe tonight would be the night that changed—his mind content with the fact that if he falls asleep, there’s other people here to look after Mike—but he remains awake.

"It's okay." Cellbit's hands rub soothing circles into him. "I can stay up if you want."

--

i have a few others all roughly this length but this is the only one i want to post right now pfft i don't have the time at the moment to fix them up

#wsd/w.ips #wsd/a.non #wsd/a.sks

[im-a-king-baby]

Hey, I love ELYN 😭❤️

So my two fave scenes/ moments were the 'keep of the lake house for now' and 'I've been in love with him since' so any commentary will be amazing. Any extra stuff will be amazing so 🪻please 😊

Hiii <3

Gonna put these 3 under a cut because length

“So hold onto that lake house for a while longer,” he says. “Okay?”

Context: i wrote the majority of the first draft of ELYN for Nanowrimo in 2022 (basically a challenge where you write a 50k novel in the month of November) and then I rewrote and edited it over a bunch of months.

So this chapter was actually very similar to the original draft, except that in Draft 1 all of the vote fallout was in one chapter which had the Simon scene first then the Nils scene. In the editing/developing process all the non-Wilhelm characters grew a lot so I knew I wanted to expand Nil's role, and add some more Felice which meant I could bump Simon into his own chapter.

(there was absolutely not meant to be a giant posting gap between the Nils scene and the Simon scene. To be completely honest if I'd known I was going to need that long to finish the fic off I'd probably have chosen to put the gap immediately after the debate because... tension 😈)

The main places where the Simon scene got extended was in the details - Simon's life and career was not well thought through in draft 1 and a lot of the extra length across the whole fic came from building that up - but the lakehouse beat was always there because it was important that Simon's rehab process had to be something he did independent of Wilhelm, so this idea of Wilhelm offering up this house and Simon rejecting it, then clarifying that it's a 'not yet' but hopefully one day when he's in a better place.

Wilhelm's 'I keep thinking about the last time you went to L.A.' was not in the original and was one of those character beats that didn't come to me until months later, but that really pulled together Wilhelm's feelings at that moment and his reluctance to let Simon leave, and that then led really nicely back into Simon saying hang on to the house, because hopefully its not goodbye this time.

“Keira asked what was different about you,” Simon says. “I said: I fell in love with Wilhelm when I was sixteen, and I have been in love with him every day since.”

Okay so this part was possibly the slowest part of the fic to write mostly because I was still figuring out how to articulate this ending which was meant to be optimistic but not magic-wand-everything's-fixed-now. This line in particular came about because I was trying to find where Simon was sitting emotionally and ended up writing a very short therapy in L.A. scene in which Simon dropped this line and I was immediately like 'well, that has to get into the main story.'

It's a nice parallel to Wilhelm's 'I'm never going to stop being in love with him.' in chapter 8, and it highlights that the issues between them have never been a lack of love or not wanting to be together, it's always been these outside forces that they need to break away from.

Also its one of those lines that you write down and then you read it and you're like 'people are gonna quote this one back at me' and its nice when you get that right 😅

And on that theme, your 🪻 is:

“Do you want to tell me what you’re thinking about?” This is the worst part of therapy. “Wilhelm.” Keira’s eyebrows twitch slightly, which is the only reaction he ever gets and means he’s surprised her. “We haven’t spoken much about Wilhelm, not since you asked if you could text him. Are you ready to tell me more about what happened between you?” “You could check the tabloids.” Her ‘you know that’s not what I meant’ look reminds him of Candace, except that she hasn’t figured out how to also convey ‘and I’m disappointed and you’re exhausting and you’d be nothing without me.’ “I’d like to hear it in your own words.” Simon absolutely can’t look at her. “I fell in love with Wilhelm when I was sixteen,” he says. “And I’ve been in love with him every day since. He’s the one I think about every time I sing a love song. Still. I have slept with - I don’t know, hundreds? - of people since I left Sweden and none of it meant anything, compared to him.” “What was it like, seeing him again?” He’d been drinking steadily in the car on the way to the benefit concert so that he’d be able to smile and read a teleprompter and not just stand there staring but it was a close thing. After his performance they’d swept him into a room where he drank champagne and smiled for the cameras. Wilhelm had touched a fingertip to his bare shoulder and Simon had wanted him so badly it hurt in places he’d thought could no longer feel anything. He doesn’t have words for that, except that it was like being in love. “He showed me I could do this,” Simon says instead. “That I could get out. That these systems we were caught up in weren’t infallible.” She frowns very slightly. “Do you think he spoke out against the monarchy for you?” Maybe? He offered once. On a cold night in his ridiculous scarf in so many words that it was Ayub who figured out what he was getting at after he’d walked away. But, no. “He did it for him. Because he needed it. And I did this for me. But there couldn’t be an ‘us’ before. Because of all those things getting in the way. And now… and maybe we both did it a bit for that. For love. Or whatever.”

#Elyn fic #elyn spoilers #I guess #I mean I assume you've all read it at this point

[f1-giuki]

A Sunday Kind of Love 6 is at +13k words and I don't know how longer it will get, probably a lot, I love it.

Should I add a scene where Max, on the phone with Charles’s mom, dyes Charles’ hair?

And, here's a snippet of the fic! Enjoy!

~

The next morning Max is awake and not too dumbed by a long 12-hour nap. All the tiredness he accumulated caught up with him. He wakes up rather early and manages to eat half of the sweets in the pantry for breakfast. He drinks a red red bull can, the only one he's allowed in the house, and he walks upstairs to turn on the simulator. He might do some endurance racing until lunch.

As the computer turns on he checks his messages. There are a few texts from Charles, a bunch of I lost my dildo, do you know where my pink dildo is texts, a picture of a cake his mother made with a finger half covering the camera lens, another one without the finger, a video Arthur took of Charles asleep on the sofa snoring loudly, you stole my highway pass!!, BASTARD!, then Charles texts him the time he will leave for Italy, two days later, Max blinks twice when he sees that Charles will drive from Monaco to their place.

Babe, are you insane?

Wait, don't answer… What will you do today?

He texts and grins when he sees Charles's answer, a sticker of his face holding a red triangle sign saying 'don't'. Max laughs.

I'll sleep again, go to your place since mine is flooded with people outside, I'll help mom make a menu for the dinner with the cousins and then I'll probably be forced to make lasagne for lunch by Arthur, he doesn't let me live after the ones I made for Easter

Tell him that the next time you fall asleep he should draw a dick on your forehead

Like he did last week

absolutely no, don't give him strange ideas

You're lucky I don't have his number

I know you think I lack self-preservation instincts, but I don't go that far

I miss you

I love you

I love you too

don't let Arthur wait for his food

Blah blah blah, ttyl <3

God you're so sexy when you use millennial slang

Max smiles and puts his phone on the Red Bull mini-fridge he has in the sim room, next to his first world championship trophy. A curious piece of tat. He sits down and fixes the camera in front of him. He still has an hour before he needs to turn it on and join a live stream with his sim racing team. He grins and opens goat simulator and takes his phone to text Lando.

Wanna do one hour of goat simulator before I go live?

Fuck yeah, mate

-

Max's stomach rumbles at half past noon, while he's still streaming and, after five minutes of good teasing, he turns off the live stream, and goes to the kitchen, trying to understand what to make. He looks at the package of tagliatelle Charles bought but didn't like. It's been sitting on the counter for two weeks. He takes it and grins as he opens the pantry filled with stacked jars of fancy tomato sauce. Charles really has a problem…

"Okay, that will do," he mumbles as he takes a new jar.

He puts on another Paul Simon vinyl and jams to the music while cutting onions and garlic, humming the words of 50 Ways to leave your lover. Max grins and puts the chopped stuff in a little bowl. Charles has taught him to be organised in the kitchen and he's trying. His phone starts ringing and Max stops the music to pick it up. It’s a number he hasn’t saved in his contacts, an Italian number.

"Hello?"

"Ciao zio Max! Sono Lorenzo!" Hi uncle Max! I'm Lorenzo!

"Ciao Lorenzo, come stai?” Hi Lorenzo, how are you? He asks with a big smile on his face.

“Tutto bene, scusa se ti chiamo, ma mia mamma non riesce a venirmi a prendere a scuola… Potresti passare tu?”

“Aspetta, I don’t understand, one second, un secondo…” Max says as he hurries to the living room to take his tablet with him and opens Google Translate.

“Parla, per favore,” Speak, please. He says and Lorenzo repeats the phrase. All’s good, sorry if I’m calling you, but my mom can’t pick me up from school… Could you come and pick me up?

#lestappen #lestappen fic #charles leclerc fanfic #max verstappen fanfic #ao3 #lestappen wip #lestappen fanfic #a sunday kind of love

[powpowpunchout]

It’s Great to see you!

Bald Bull lost.

Sandman watched the fight on his TV the night it happened.

He remembered catching glimpses of it on the screen while he was making himself a quick dinner, he remembered turning the volume all the way up so he wouldn’t miss a single moment of the action, and he remembered the pit that dropped in his stomach when he watched Bull collapse.

He lost his appetite that night.

He could only watch several seconds of the aftermath before he turned his TV off and stared at his reflection.

When he couldn’t force himself to eat a bite of his dinner, he shoved it into a container and tossed it into the fridge, promising himself he’d have it later.

He dragged himself to bed feeling anything but exhausted, and spent the next few hours staring at his ceiling while dread twisted his stomach.

That was all a few days ago.

That feeling of dread never went away.

Even now, as he laid in bed at the start of a new day, the only thing that filled his mind were countless scenarios of what could happen to him.

He could go outside and run into a couple of journalists who wanted to hear his feeling on his eventual fight with that Nobody, they could ask him if he felt intimidated, or if he was worried about ruining his record like Bull. What if they asked him about his thoughts on Bull’s fight? What if he responded with something that sounded horrible and made Bull miserable? Sandman remembered the last time Bull lost and how he completely shut down, so the thought of accidentally saying something awful and making Bull feel even worse? It made Sandman nauseous.

And what about the higher ups? They probably raised their expectations for him after that fight–no. No, there was no ‘probably’ about it. They absolutely raised their expectations. He’s the champion, and if he messes up? If another World Circuit boxer loses? People will start to think the WVBA is falling apart.

And the paparazzis… Just thinking about them made him groan and grip at his hair.

He knew he was bound to run into them sooner or later. He knew they were gonna take a bunch of pictures of him and ask him about this Nobody champion, or if he was being avoidant of their questions because he was afraid, or why he was out and about instead of training. They’d probably ask if he was even training at all.

Sandman shifted around and laid on his stomach.

You know what sucked? The fact that Sandman hasn’t been training recently. After he watched Bull’s fight, the most he had the energy to do was lay in bed and snack on whatever he could find.

You know what sucks even more? The fact that Sandman wanted to train. He wanted to spend those last couple of days going to the stadium to work out, or go to his basement and use his treadmill and lift some weights, but he just couldn’t. No matter how much his mind screamed at him to get up, no matter how much his body urged him to move, he just stayed put.

Sandman let out a heavy sigh and wrapped his arms around his pillow.

He laid there, ceiling fan whirring above his head as he let all those potential scenarios flood his mind, and the longer he stayed like this, the more he felt like such a jerk.

Bald Bull lost a fight and was probably stressed out of his mind, and all Sandman can do is feel sorry for himself. What sort of friend does that?

He buried his face into the pillow.

He reached a hand out towards his nightstand. He felt around until his fingers touched the top of his flip phone. He grabbed it and brought it to his face, finally lifting his head up as he opened the phone.

He stared at his unsent text message to Bull.

‘hey bull. sorry bout what happened tonight. you still killed it out there keep your head high.’

Guilt started to fill his stomach. He should’ve sent that message days ago, but he worried that if he had sent it right after Bull’s loss, it would’ve salt on the wound. He kept putting it off, waiting for the right time to finally send it, only for it to completely slip his mind.

Man, Bull probably thinks he’s a garbage friend for not bothering to check in on him.

Sandman replaced the ‘tonight’ in his text with ‘at the fight’, and then hit send.

He snapped the phone shut and tossed it to the side before he shoved his head back into the pillow and imagined what Bull was probably gonna say–

His phone suddenly pinged.

He shot his head up.

No way.

Did Bull really respond that fast?

Oh no, what did he say?

‘Why are you just saying this now?’

‘Where was this on the night of my fight?’

’Please don’t talk to me.’

Sandman grabbed his phone and opened it again.

Relief washed over him when he saw it was a text from Joe instead.

‘Good morning! Are we still meeting by the park today?’

Sandman immediately pushed himself off the bed.

Shoot.

Shoot, that’s right. He nearly forgot.

He has to pick up his water bottle from Joe. They’re supposed to meet at a little park not far from his place at 9AM.

Sandman tore off his old, white shirt and checked his alarm clock.

8:35AM.

Okay.

Okay, that’s not too bad.

He’s just gotta get cleaned up and run over to the park, easy.

As Sandman searched through his closet for a clean shirt with one hand, he texted Joe back with the other.

He wasn’t really paying attention to what his fingers were doing–and only when he hit ‘send’ did he notice he spelled ‘yeah’ as ‘yrgh’. Hopefully Joe understood what he meant.

He kept a hold of his phone while he grabbed a gray shirt and a pair of black shorts. He hurried into the bathroom, turned the lights on, and heard another ping.

‘Perfect! I’ll see you soon.’

~ ~ ~ ~

Octave shoved a pile of dirty clothes into a beaten-up, white, plastic laundry basket that he’s been using for who knows how long.

Some of his crumbled socks and shorts tumbled from the pile and onto the beige carpet of his living room. He grumbled and shoved them back into the basket before pushing down into the pile as hard as he could, trying to make everything fit. He did not want to take two trips to the laundromat. The stupid place was already such a long walk–

He heard a loud snap come from the basket.

He quickly scanned it, trying to look for new cracks that might’ve formed, but he didn’t see anything. This cruddy thing better last him another few months.

Octave lifted the basket up and threw it onto his couch. He stretched his arms, the bottom of his light gray tank top riding up his stomach, then he patted one of the pockets of his long, black, worn down pants–

Octave stopped.

He patted his pockets again.

Where was his money?

His eyes darted around the living room. He brought some quarters with him–he knows he did–where the heck did he put them?

Octave picked up the basket again to make sure they weren’t hiding under there. His eyes darted over to his broken end table, then to the coffee table–

He let out a quick sigh when he saw the quarters sitting atop the coffee table, they were nearly hidden behind his lunchbox. He nabbed them from their spot and quickly counted them, making sure he had enough for the laundromat before he shoved them into his pocket. He brought his head back up and looked at his lunchbox.

His eyes lingered on it for a moment more before they flickered over to the small, folded up piece of paper that poked out from underneath it, Tiger’s number.

Octave reached for it and plucked it away from his lunchbox. He stared at it as he thought back to the phone call he had with Tiger last night.

“So…” Octave remembered saying while he laid across his couch, “...How do ya feel bout meetin’ up again sometime soon?”

“Oh,” Tiger started, his tone not sounding promising, “I’d love to, really, but I have to help Bull recover.”

The corners of Octave’s mouth twitched, “What, from that fight a few nights back? Can’t th’big guy handle himself?”

“No, it’s–it’s complicated. There’s a lot going on and I’m–I’m sorry, I want to be there for him.”

Octave sunk further into the cushions, “Right.”

It was silent for a moment.

Octave gripped onto the receiver of his phone and sighed, “Welp, ain’t gonna keep ya then.” He pushed himself up, “Do whatcha need to do.”

Tiger mumbled to himself for a second.

“Perhaps later this week?” Tiger said, “I might be free then, and I could use a break from–well–everything.” He chuckled.

“I mean if ya busy–”

“No, no, it’d be nice to see you again.”

Octave couldn’t help but feel a bit warm when he heard that.

“Why don’t you choose our next little meet-up spot, hm?” Tiger suggested.

“What?”

“I mean, I’ve chosen the last two places, it only seems fair that you get to choose this time.”

“Right, yeah.” Octave started to wrap the phone cord around his finger as one place immediately popped into his head:

The diner.

He’d love to go to the diner with Tiger–

“I’ll think bout it.” Octave said instead.

“Wonderful!” Tiger said, Octave could hear his smile through the phone. “Just call me whenever you think of a time and place, I’m looking forward to it.”

“Ya got it.”

Octave blinked.

It’s been hours, and he hasn’t thought of any other place but the diner.

He didn’t hate the diner–he loved it–but he couldn’t deny it was a bit of a dump, and the thought of how Tiger could react when he saw the place made Octave cringe.

Octave could see it now: He and Tiger will be walking to the diner, Tiger will be happily talking about what a great idea it was to meet up, and then he’ll instantly shut up the second he sees that run down restaurant. He’ll probably be speechless. He’ll probably look at Octave and wait for him to confess this was all some big joke or something, and tell him where their actual meet up spot is. What would Octave even say?

‘Hey Tiger, thanks again for lettin’ me choose th’next place. Here’s some dingy hunk’a junk from the 20’s!’

Octave rested his head against his hand. As much as he didn’t want to embarrass himself by taking Tiger to that diner, he really couldn’t think of any other restaurant.

Sure, he’s eaten at a ton of other places in the city before, but most of them were hastily-made bars that Aran’s taken him to, some were too far from his house, and the rest were too noisy.

Octave loved that diner. He loved the food they had, he loved their decoration, he loved the atmosphere, and he’d kinda like it if Tiger could come along with him.

Octave glanced over at his laundry basket before he stood up, set the paper back down, and slipped on some dirtied, black converse shoes.

His phone suddenly rang.

Octave couldn’t help but perk up.

He grabbed his phone by its neck and brought the receiver to his ear, a speck of him hoping to hear Tiger–

“Oy, O’erload.” Aran’s voice came through. Octave’s face dropped.

“Whaddaya want, Aran?”

“Aye, contain yer excitement.” Aran chuckled, a hint of bitterness weaved within each laugh, “I t’ink Bear finally got his hand broken.”

A strange, sharp feeling shot through Octave’s chest, “Yeah?”

“Yeah, gotta call from th’higher ups th’other day, supposed t’meet up wit’ ‘em soon.” As Aran talked, Octave could make out the sound of cars rushing by. Was he by the highway or something?  

“Surprised ya don’t want me to come over ‘n defend ya again.” Octave said as he leaned against his end table, the chipped wood cracking under his weight. Aran scoffed.

“Better off without’cha on t’at. Got m’self outta th’first meetin’ just fine. All I gotta do is act all confused ‘n those higher ups won’t even bother.”

“Right.” Octave rolled his eyes.

“Should only take a few minutes.” Aran said, “Y’down to get drinks t’night?”

Octave inhaled through his teeth, “Jeez, Aran, I’unno. Gotta do th’laundry today.”

“Th’laundry don’t take all day.”

“It’s a lotta laundry.”

Aran growled.

“Would ye say t’is to Tiger?” He asked.

“What?”

“Ye t’ink I’m stupid? Izzat it?”

“Aran, th’heck ya talkin’ bout–”

“Ye’ve been choosin’ Tiger ov’r me, I ain’t stupid. Ye went on t’at li’l dinner date wit him, y’never stop blabbin’ bout ‘Ooh, Tiger told me t’is’, or ‘Oh, Tiger showed me t’at!’ Are y’tryna replace me or somethin’?!”

Octave’s grip on his phone tightened, “Aran that’s not what’s happenin’--”

“It better not.” Aran hissed, “Tiger wasn’t t’guy who bothered t’speak t’ye when y’were in th’Minor Circuit, aye? He was jus’ floatin’ round wit th’other chumps while I trained wit ye. He never stood up for ye.”

“Aran, for pete's sake, he's just another friend! Ya can have Disco but when I hang round somebody else, it’s suddenly–”

“I ain’t friends wit Disco.” Aran spat, “I jus’ need ‘em for rides ‘n patchin’ me up after matches. Yer th’only guy I like in th’stadium. Y’ain’t no ninny or sore player. Y’know how t’bite back.”

Octave’s mouth hung slightly. A small and uncomfortable burning sensation filled his throat.

“Yeah Aran, I mean–c’mon. Ya think I’d really do that to ya? Leave ya just like that?” His knuckles started to turn white “Ya th’best guy I’ve met at th’stadium. Ain’t no way I could ditch ya.”

“Yeah? Then we’re goin’ drinkin’ tonight, right?”

Octave hesitated. He stared at his basket of clothes for far too long.

“I’ll see if I got th’time.” He finally said. Not the answer Aran wanted, but the answer he got.

Aran hissed again, “When Tiger ditches ye, don’t come cryin’ back t’me.”

And then he hung up.

~ ~ ~ ~

Sandman leaned against one of the many dark oak benches that aligned the sidewalks of the neighborhood’s block.

This wasn’t his neighborhood, but one that was a good several blocks away from his house. It was a bit of a walk, but he didn’t really mind, it was a good way to get some steps in. It was also a nice halfway point between his and Joe’s place.

Usually a walk to this neighborhood took about fifteen minutes. Usually. Today, though? Sandman took a longer route. Anytime he saw a group of people, he instinctively took a turn into one of the alleys or hidden paths squeezed between apartment complexes and other buildings. He knew with every twist and turn he took, it’d make his trip longer by the minute, but he didn’t want too many people to see him. He didn’t want anyone running up to him. He didn’t want any photos taken. Even now, while waiting in one of the quietest neighborhoods he knew, a part of him was still nervous about getting caught.

Sandman started to pick at the skin of his fingers, his eyes constantly scanning the block.

He’s been through this neighborhood before, plenty of times, actually. He’d usually pass by during his early morning jogs, always coming close to tripping over the dirty, uneven sidewalk thanks to the holes and cracks littered about.

He heard dead leaves scutter across the pavement, he glanced to the side and watched those leaves move in whatever direction the gentle breeze took them. This place always seemed to have leaves and sticks laying around or piled up in the corners of buildings. He can’t remember the last time he’d seen this place without dead leaves and sticks, honestly.

Grass and weeds grew out of the pavement cracks–some nearly reached his knees–and the trees that were planted along the edge of the sidewalks haven’t been trimmed in ages, resulting in some of their branches getting tangled with the power lines.

Sandman looked at the row buildings behind him; a mix of apartments, little restaurants, and stores that hadn’t been fixed up in years.

The apartments were–and he felt bad saying this–kind of sloppy. Their bricks were uneven, cracked, some poked out from their place while others had fallen out entirely, leaving the residents to fill the gaps with wood or cement. Their colors were washed out reds and browns with light-gray streaks running down them, making the buildings look even more muddied. The windows weren’t in the best shape either, they were cracked, slanted, and some had to be boarded up.

Taking up the first floor of most buildings were the small shops and restaurants. One place had a small boutique with tinted windows and a black awning where paper flowers hung from. Another place had a little ice cream parlor with sky-blue walls and colorful pinwheels that filled the flowerpots by its door, and…

Sandman looked at the place he stood in front of. A deli used to be there.

It was one of the few businesses at the block that was its own separate building. Dark red bricks, a deep-green awning with faded white text on it, windows that were covered in posters advertising new stores, future events, and houses for sale, and a piece of paper slapped in the center of the locked door that read: ‘We’ve moved!’

Sandman sighed.

This was one of the few places that used to be open anytime he jogged through here. He loved picking up one of their wraps or reuben sandwiches and enjoying them after a workout. He loved their odd interior decorations–a bunch of animal crossing signs that hung from the walls–and the lively people who worked there. He loved the pastries they displayed from the local bakers.

And now it’s gone.

Boarded up, wasted away, and to remain untouched, just like so many other stores that had shut down here.

Sure, Sandman visits their new location every now and then, but the interior isn’t the same, it’s a bit too far, and he didn’t like how busy the new street was.

Sandman pressed his lips together and took his phone out of his pant’s pocket. He stopped when he realized he had accidentally taken an orange leaf out along with it. He had picked it up during his walk here–along with a couple other cool looking leaves–and didn’t want to lose it, so he carefully placed it back into his pocket with the rest.

He flipped his phone open and checked his messages. He had sent Joe the address to the old deli 20 minutes ago.

He quickly checked the streets again. No sign of Joe.

He looked back to his phone and checked his message to Bull. No response from him either.

He closed it and placed it into his other, leaf-free pocket.

He went back to picking his skin as he stared at the small playground across the street.

It was a bit worn down. The slides were scraped and dented, the monkey bars were missing pieces, and the swings’ chains were rusted. The grass was overridden with dandelions, the black picket fence was slanted, this playground has been here for as long as he could remember. It was worn down, but it was nice.

Sandman raised his head and peeked over the fence. He could see someone had left a box of chalk on the sidewalk, along with a couple of jump ropes and soccer balls that the residents had left for each other.

That’s what Sandman liked so much about this neighborhood–despite how beaten up everything was, despite how everything was falling apart, and despite how much the city tried to forget about this place–the people kept it alive.

From the ruined walls covered with colorful paints, to the posters promoting up-coming community events, to the vibrant plants and handcrafted decor that hung from people’s windows and balconies, to the little wooden boxes you could find that offered free fruits, books, and canned goods, it was a great place.

It sucked that the rest of the city neglected it–

“Sandman!” He heard Joe holler. Sandman jolted.

He whipped his head around to see Joe hurrying over to him. He carried Sandman’s gray, sticker-ridden water bottle in one hand while holding his sunglasses in the other.

“Hey Joe,” Sandman grinned, “good to see ya.”

“Yes, wonderful to see you as well and–I’m so sorry for being late. I got the numbers of the address mixed up and I waited around in front of some record store for several minutes,” Joe started gesturing about, swinging the water bottle around with him, “and then I started thinking: ‘Alright, something clearly isn’t right.’ So I checked your message again, nearly had a heart attack when I found out I got the location wrong, ran over here, and I feel terrible.”

“Hey, it’s all good. Appreciate you goin’ through the hassle ‘n gettin’ my bottle, seriously. Thank ya.” Sandman's smile grew a little warmer.

Joe smiled back and handed him his bottle. It was light and a little dirty at the bottom, Sandman will have to wash that later.

He then looked back at Joe.

“Aren’t ya hot in that?” He asked as he pointed at Joe’s attire.

“What? This?” Joe spun around and opened up his thin, dark blue–almost black looking–trench coat. Underneath was a white turtleneck, and below that was a pair of sleek, dark gray pants and black, polished shoes. “Yes, absolutely.”

“You want me to hold your jacket or somethin’?”

“No!” Joe quickly hugged himself, “I chose to wear this outfit, now I have to live with the consequences.”

“A’ight.” Sandman shrugged, “I don’t mind, though.”

It wasn’t that hot outside–just a bit warm–and they were in a pretty shaded area as well, but Sandman knew the second they stepped out into the sun, Joe was gonna break into a sweat and beg him to carry his jacket. Again, not that Sandman minded.

“So!” Joe clasped his hands together, “Do you have time for breakfast? I haven’t eaten much this morning.”

Sandman’s face shifted. His brows lowered and his nose scrunched.

“I mean… I would,” He started, eyes drifting away from Joe’s, “but I kinda don’t wanna run into any fans ‘n stuff, ya know?”

Joe tilted his head, “Has that been an issue lately?”

Sandman inhaled.

He wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to that.

Yes?

No?

Sort of?

He ran into a couple of weirdos the other day when he was trying to do some errands. They followed him around, shouted questions at him, and he’s pretty sure they took some pictures of him too. Hopefully those weren’t gonna be in the paper or anything. He’s been avoiding the newspapers lately.  

He wasn’t sure if those were fans, paparazzis, or journalists, but he hated it, and he’d hate it even more if he forced Joe to go through that as well.

“Kinda.” He finally replied. A look of sympathy spread across Joe’s face.

Sandman picked at his fingers again. He couldn’t say goodbye and just go home now. Not when Joe went through all that effort of finding his bottle and dropping it off, and he loved spending time with Joe, he just didn’t want–

“There’s this one place I visited a couple times before.” Sandman said before he could finish that thought, “It’s close by. Kinda small, but I don’t think a whole lotta people go there. We could eat there if ya wanna.”

Joe’s eyes lit up, “How’s the food?”

Sandman shrugged, “Been bout a year since I’ve been there, but I think their stuff was pretty good. They might’ve added some new things to th’menu.”

“Well,” Joe threw on his shades, “lead the way.”

“You got it.” Sandman grinned. He slipped one hand into his pocket and started walking, Joe followed along.

As the sound of crushed leaves and broken twigs filled their ears, Sandman glanced back over to Joe.

“Didn’t ya wanna tell me somethin’ bout what happened to Bear Hug–”

Before he could even finish that sentence, Joe gasped.

“Oh, you won’t believe what happened to that poor man–! I don’t even know where to start! I went to the stadium to grab your bottle, right? Everything seemed perfectly normal…” Joe started to ramble. Sandman’s little grin stayed on his face as he listened.

While a part of him was still worried about paparazzis hunting him down, the other part of him was just glad to be spending time with a friend. He needed a nice change of pace.

~ ~ ~ ~

Octave inserted a couple of quarters into the slot at the top of the white washing machine. He tried to push them in, but when the slot didn’t budge, he grabbed it by its edge and slammed it against the machine; a loud ‘CLANG’ echoed through the laundromat.

He huffed and glared at the coin slot for a second before he pressed a couple of buttons on the machine.

The machine let out a low hum that steadily grew louder. Octave’s eyes drifted down to the washing machine’s round window, he watched his clothes slowly shift around, the pace and tumbling getting faster and faster until all he could make out were colored blurs.

He leaned against the washing machine and folded his arms. The machine trembled and thrashed around as if there were a rabid animal trapped inside it. Octave’s body occasionally bounced off its surface with each jolt and thrust.

He stared at the rest of the laundromat. It was one, long rectangular room, the only thing breaking up its flatness was the front counter on the left side–the same side where all the washing machines were–which jutted out from the wall. The walls themselves were white, the only interesting thing on them was a pair of thin horizontal lines. They were an ugly shade of green though, and Octave thought the place would be better off without them.

Speaking of the walls, Octave swore one of them had to be slanted. Anytime he studied the room for a little too long, something started to feel off.

He looked over to where the counter stuck out. On its left side was a door–which was also that ugly shade of green–with the words ‘STAFF ONLY’ on it. Octave was pretty sure there was an employee in there. Maybe. He didn’t really glance through the counter’s window, he just walked by and started shoving his stuff into a washer.

It’s not like it mattered if he had spoken to an employee or not, he doubted they really did anything else besides sit around and give change to customers.

As the sound of the washing machine filled his ears, he looked down to the floor. It was made of simple, white tile. In the middle of the floor were two rows of white, plastic chairs with their backs pressed against each other. At each end of the row were two small tables with outdated magazines and a roll of paper towels on top of them.

His eyes narrowed at the chairs. They were made out of some sort of thick plastic, their tops were smooth, and in the center of each of them were two, round-headed nails that’d drive into your back if you even thought about sitting down. What was the point of having seats if they weren’t comfortable?

Octave didn’t even bother glancing up at the ceiling. He did not want to stare at those blinding, white, fluorescent lights. They gave everything such an obnoxious shine. Would it kill the owners to turn them down during the day? They already had a couple giant windows up front where sun constantly poured through, did they really need the lights on top of it?

Maybe they needed the lights to show how ‘sleek’ their interior was. Maybe they wanted to make their laundromat look more ‘modern’ and eye-catching to draw in new customers.

Octave remembered when the laundromat didn’t look like this. He remembered when the floor and walls had odd, brown stains on them, he remembered the exposed, rusty pipes and the buckets placed underneath them to catch drops of water, he remembered the stacks of boxes filled with bottled detergents and dryer sheets that were left all over the area. It was a sorry slob of a place.

The owner ended up blowing all their money on redesigning the interior, and sure, it looked all fancy, but they didn’t bother getting any new washers or dryers. Heck, Octave was pretty sure the owner changed everything but the washers and dryers.

Most of their buttons were worn away, there were stains and chipped paint scattered all around them, and some of them needed to have their doors practically pried from their hinges just to open them, and the dryers on the right side of the room? Octave swore he’s seen smoke come from them before.

As Octave stood there, body still occasionally bumped by the washing machine, he had one thought on his mind…

‘Wish I had brought paper to this cruddy place.’

It’d give him something to mess with while he waited around. He’s not sure why he didn’t bring any along with him. If worst comes to worst, he could tear off a couple of pages from the magazine and use that–not like anyone reads those things anyways–or use a few strips of paper towels.

He could always–

Octave’s body tensed when he heard horrible, muffled music come from outside. His head jolted up and he looked through the windows. He watched as some bozo without a shirt walked past the laundromat and bobbed his head along with a boombox he carried on his shoulder.

Octave watched the man, hands slowly curling into tight fists.

He raised one of his fists and was about to strike the washing machine–

He stopped.

If he dents this thing, he’ll have to pay for it.

The muffled bass clawed at his ears.

Freak.

He brought his fist down to his leg instead, hitting himself as hard as he could.

Annoying freak.

He hit himself a few more times before he forced himself to look away.

He placed an elbow atop the washer and propped his head against it, trying to focus on the hums and thrashes of the machine rather than that horrible noise.

His breaths got faster. His heart pounded.

He grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled at it.

He wanted to run outside and tear that boombox out of that guy’s hands.

He wanted to bash it against the man’s face until his head was nothing but sludge.

He wanted to–

He wanted to–

Octave shook his head.

As the music grew quieter, Octave’s eyes scanned the laundromat for a distraction. For anything else he could think about. He shoved his hands into his pockets–only to pull them back out and see he still had some extra quarters left.

He stared at the coins for a moment before looking over to the front door. Right beside it sat two, red, slightly worn down candy dispensers.

He took a deep breath and walked over to them, quarters in hand as he stared at his options.

One of the small dispensers was filled with gumballs, the other filled with some sort of round, chewy, fruit-flavored candy he never knew the name of. He’s seen them in hundreds of dispensers before, yet he never learned what they were called.

It didn’t matter though. What did matter is that they were addictive.

He used to eat a million of these when he was younger, even though it’d get him sick, and honestly? He would gladly get sick again if it meant he could eat a million more.

He crouched down, inserted a quarter into the slot, and placed his hand under the metal chute. He turned the knob, the loud cranks as grating as they were nostalgic, and when he heard the candy hit against the metal, he opened the little slot and slid them into the palm of his hand.

A small smile made its way onto his face. He helped himself to a few pieces as he stood back up and stared outside.

He watched cars drive by and groups of friends chat away. He thought to himself.

As much as he’d love to kill some time by walking around the block and checking out the store, he knew better than to leave his clothes unattended.

There’d been instances of people having their clothes taken just minutes after they left the building, and if the scumbags didn’t screw you over? The laundromat itself would gladly do so.

The amount of times people had stepped outside to make a quick phone call or fetch something from their car, only to come back and see that their washing machine had suddenly turned off was far too many. It wasn’t the machine stopping that was annoying, it was the fact you had to pay again just so it could finish what it started.

Octave started to head back to his washing machine–but then a slow, high pitched creak pierced his ears.

He cringed and gritted his teeth.

He whipped his head around to see what sorta run-down car was making a sound that bad, but he was surprised when he saw a limo instead.

It looked kinda fancy. Its color sorta reminded Octave of lavender–except it was a bit bluer. Its windows were tinted and outlined with a thin line of gold paint, and at the very front of it was a golden hood ornament of a flexing bicep.

Octave let out a chuckle as he watched it pass by. It kinda reminded him of one of Macho Man’s limos.

He watched as the limo slowed down.

It then stopped in front of the laundromat.

One of its back doors opened–Oh no.

Octave scrambled back to his washing machine and frantically looked around.

Where the heck could he hide? Where the heck could he hide?

There weren’t any bathrooms, the front counter needed a key to get in to, the machines were far too small to hide behind–

The door swung open. The bell above it chimed.

“Overload, is that you?!” Super Macho Man asked as he walked inside, tearing off his purple-tinted shades. There was a big, dumb smile on his face.

Octave froze, “No.”

“Good one.” Macho laughed. He tossed his shades into the pocket of his robe. Octave’s never seen Macho wear that robe before. It was a luxurious shade of purple with faux fur trims that looked incredibly soft. Octave was almost about to think highly of the golden swirls sewn along the bottom of the robe, but he pushed that thought out of his mind the second he realized those ‘swirls’ were just Macho’s name in cursive.

Octave also noticed that Macho was wearing a pair of purple boxing boots. Was he wearing a speedo underneath that robe as well? Was he just… Walking around wearing nothing but his boxing attire and a robe?

Macho noticed him staring, “Ya like this bad boy?” He asked as he leaned against a neighboring washer, “Had it custom made at this li’l boutique. I wasn’t supposed to get it till, like, a few days from now, but you’d be surprised how far some good ol’ Macho charm can–jeez it smells like dishwater in here.” He shook his head.

Octave couldn’t make out any traces of the laundromat’s stench, his nose had been completely taken over by Macho’s cologne, which was a strong combination of ginger, cocoa, and oddly enough, a touch of tobacco.

“Man, my bathroom’s better than this joint. Don’t tell me ya have to do your laundry here. Don’t it get noisy?” Macho motioned around, “If ya need a personal laundry aide or somethin’, I can hook ya up. ”

He scanned the interior of the laundromat before he let out a pleasant sigh, “I remember havin’ to do this sorta stuff when I was your age. Only had several hundred dollars to my name and nobody but myself to–”

Octave cut him off, “Aren’t ya only like… Four years older than me?”

Macho stared at him.

He raised a finger in the air and opened his mouth.

He closed it.

He opened it again.

He let it hang for a second before he pointed to Overload, “That’s not the point.”

Octave grumbled and rubbed his temples, “Why are ya here?”

Macho chuckled, “Well, I was headin’ back from th’boutique, right? And as we were passin’ by, my driver was like ‘Hey, ain’t that that kid ya talk bout?’ So we slowed down, ‘n hey! Whaddaya know, I saw you through th’window and had to say hi!”

Octave rolled his eyes, “Ya didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to.” Macho smiled.

“Alright. Ya said hi. You can go now.”

“C’mon li’l dude, ya think I would’ve hauled myself across the street just to say hi? We got th’whole place to ourselves, why don’t we chat ‘n–” Macho extended his hand out to ruffle Octave’s hair, but when Octave backed away, Macho stopped.

His hand lingered for a moment before he brought it back and combed it through his own hair instead. His smile faltered before he opened his mouth again.

“So, I was talkin’ to some of the other guys last week…” He started, “Well, wasn’t really talkin’, more like everyone yellin’ at each other.” He chuckled again, it was drier, “Anyways, your name got tossed round here ‘n there, and then someone mentions somethin’ bout you actin’ up durin’ a dinner? What was that about?”

Octave groaned, “Is that whatcha wanna talk bout?”

Another stupid lecture. Just what he needed.

“Ey, don’t gimme that attitude.” Macho lowered his brows, “I’m tryna look out for ya–”

“I don’t want’cha lookin’ out for me.” Octave growled. He turned away and faced the wall instead, “Ya give me a headache anytime ya come around ‘n blab bout this sorta stuff. Dunno why ya bother with these conversations when all they do is waste my time, ‘n I know it’s a waste of ya time well.” He stashed the rest of the candy into his pocket.

“It ain’t a waste of my–we wouldn’t be havin’ these sorta conversations all the dang time if you actually listened to me.” Macho leaned closer to Overload.

“Listened to ya bout what?!” Octave shot back.

“How bout–I dunno–bein’ a li’l less aggressive towards the other guys?! Bein’ a li’l nicer?” Macho threw a hand up.

“Nice–?!” Octave sputtered, “Hardly any of ‘em can’t be decent round me, but I’m the one that’s gotta try ‘n be pals with ‘em? Why th’heck are ya even tellin’ me this?! You don’t even get along with half th’guys in the World Circuit, they can’t stand ya! No one can–!”

“I ain’t sayin’ you gotta be best friends with every chump at th’stadium. And I know I ain’t buds with everyone–some of ‘em I wouldn’t dream of talkin’ to!” Macho put a hand on his chest, “Ya think I’d ever wanna sit down ‘n have a chat with Aran? I know he’s your bud ‘n all, but I’d be crazy to talk to a guy like him. He’d tarnish my, well,” He gestured at his body, “my everythin’!”

Octave just grumbled in response.

“Do Bull ‘n I get along? Hardly! Ya know what happened a while back?” Macho asked, he got an eye roll in return. “I messed up. I wasn’t my prime self ‘n I messed stuff up with Bull, ‘n ya know what I did? I apologized! Tried to make it up to th’guy.”

“Yeah? ‘N how’d that work out for ya?” Octave scoffed.

When Macho hesitated, Octave sneered.

“Yeah. Figured.”

Macho furrowed his brows.

“I’m tryna say–” He started, but he stumbled over his words. He paused for a second as he thought about what he wanted to say next, “Look, yeah, givin’ a single lousy apology ain’t that much to write home bout, ‘n Bull wasn’t floored by my offers to make it up to him, but it’s better than nothin’. At least he knows I care, right? Could you imagine if I didn’t say anythin’?” He waited for a reaction from Overload, but when he got nothing, he shifted the conversation, “Do ya know the sorta stuff I’ve heard bout you durin’ that dinner?”

“Oh yeah, a few li’l jokes th’other guys got offended over.” Octave waved him off, “If they’re still gettin’ worked up over what I said, they can shove it. They’ve heard worse in th’ring, ya know. I dunno why me makin’ jokes is somehow worse, and ya just–ya want me to apologize for that? A guy can’t have fun anymore?”

“Overload, th’guys invite ya out ‘n ya treat ‘em like dirt.”

“Yeah?” Octave scowled. He looked away again, “Well, if ya had been there, ya’d know that they started it.”

“Okay!” Macho shot his arms out, “Then dang, they can apologize too!”

“Are ya also gonna give ‘em this stupid talk? Ya stoppin’ by Pisty and Donny’s place later today to yap at ‘em as well?”

“Those guys ain’t the ones who keep botherin’ people–”

“Is that what all th’other guys keep tellin’ ya?” Octave hissed as he stepped closer to Macho, “And ya just eat it up? Ya don’t think maybe they’re just overreactin’?”

Macho didn’t budge, “If a bunch’a people keep comin’ over ‘n tell me you’re actin’ like a jerk, then yeah, I’m gonna start believin’ ‘em.”

“So you ain’t lookin’ out for me! Ya just listenin’ to all those other guys ‘n gettin’ mad at me too!” Octave snapped.

“Overload–”

“Why do ya even care if a buncha’s professional boxers are cryin’ for ya help over some words?!”

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with askin’ for help, especially if it’s help from a guy like me.” Macho shot back, “And even if those chumps never said a word bout ya, I got eyes, Overload.” He glared, “I’ve seen how ya act, I can hear your yellin’ through the dang halls…”

Octave folded his arms.

“...And I know some of the other guys can be garbage, ‘n th’noise they make can get real annoying–like that rose guy? The way he sniffs? Drives me crazy too, but ya can’t keep yellin’ at everybody over every li’l thing, cause sooner or later you’re gonna end up– “ When he saw Overload turn his body away from him, his voice dwindled.

It was quiet for a few moments.

Macho opened his mouth to call Overload’s name, but Octave broke the silence.

“Don’tcha got some party ya need to go to? I’m sure ya’d like to be anywhere else but with a jerk like me, huh?”

Macho stared at the back of Overload’s head.

He then let out a heavy sigh and brushed his hair with his hands. He leaned further against the washing machine before he spoke again.

“Ya know, when I–” He stopped himself, “When I was y–” He rested his chin atop his hand and exhaled.

“Ya know, when I was startin’ out at th’stadium…” He started again, his voice low, “I–I knew a guy kinda like you. I didn’t really talk to him that much, just saw him from time to time, but man, did I hear everybody complain bout ‘em.” He folded his arms, “At first I thought they were bein’ dramatic, ya know? He’d say mean stuff in th’ring, big deal, but then more ‘n more people kept yappin’ bout how he’d keep, like, I dunno… He’d threaten ‘em and all that. He was climbin’ th’ranks pretty good, so I guess he just didn’t care bout th’other guys that much…”

Octave peered over in Macho’s direction ever so slightly.

“...But yeah, he’d threaten ‘em, kept braggin’, I remember th’higher ups hated him, and–well–everyone else did too.” He continued, “Anytime I saw th’guy he’d be all up in someone’s face or totally alone. Again, I didn’t talk to him that much, I didn’t wanna be around him that much either. No one did. Guy was great in th’ring but was pretty garbage at gettin’ along with anyone.” Macho laughed with no smile to accompany it.

He started to tug at the end of his ponytail as his voice grew just a bit hoarse, “Anyways, eventually th’guy just–I guess he hit a rough spot or somethin’. He showed up less, stopped talkin’ to people, and when he did show up he’d get super aggressive, ‘n then one day he just... He just left.”

He pressed his lips together and stared at the ground, “No one really missed him, ya know? Pretty sure th’higher ups couldn’t have cared less bout whatever issues he was goin’ through either, and yeah, I saw th’guy struggle but I didn’t do anythin’. I didn’t want to, and–I dunno. I guess I kinda wished I did? Or at least kept in touch with ‘em.” Macho kept staring at the floor for another moment before he sighed, “It’s been ages, but lookin’ back at it now, whole thing was sort of a mess.”

It was silent for what felt like an eternity.

Macho looked over to Octave, who kept his eyes locked on the wall in front of him.

Octave slowly curled his fingers around the edge of the washer, “And why should I care bout some random guy?”

Macho felt his throat tighten, “Overload, c’mon.” He took a step forward, “I don’t want that sorta stuff happenin’ to ya. That–th’guy had no one, people thought he was a massive jerk, he’s–I don’t want you goin’ through that, I just–” His hands fell to his sides, “I want’cha to be alright, ya know?”

Macho felt like he wanted to say more–that he had to say more–he could feel all those potential words fill his throat, but nothing ever came.

Octave finally spoke again.

“Are ya finished?”

Macho stared at him. He stepped closer, “Overload–”

Octave brought a hand up, making Macho stop.

“I dunno why th’heck ya do this.” Octave scowled, “I ain’t some kid ya gotta babysit, I don’t want’cha crappy advice–ya want me to be alright?” He snapped his head to Macho, “Ya wanna know what would make me feel ‘alright’? What would make me so much happier? If ya stopped botherin’ me every dang second ya see me–or how bout ya stop grabbin’ me with ya nasty hands whenever I’m dealin’ with someone?”

Octave got into Macho’s face, “I got friends. I actually know how to get respect in that stupid stadium unlike that crummy li’l chump ya blabbed bout for th’last five minutes. In fact–” Octave threw his arms up, “I bet if ya ever spoke to that guy, he would’ve gotten worse! Ya probably would’ve went ‘n treated him just how you’re treatin’ me!”

“What? Treat him a li’l bit nicer? Give ‘em someone to talk to?” Macho raised his voice.

“Oh, you–” Octave covered his face and cussed into his hand, “Ya not that stupid. I know ya not.” He raised his voice to Macho’s level, “You’d just get up in the schmuck’s face ‘n talk to him like he’s an idiot, all while ya act like ya advice is th’greatest thing on earth! I bet ya only wished ya could’ve helped that guy cause it would’ve made ya look good.”

Macho tensed when that last sentence filled the room.

“Overload, I’d never–”

“Oh, ‘n I bet ya’d follow him around all day, or constantly call him till his head explodes, or waste his time with stupid meetin’s all cause he forgot one of ya crummy gifts!”

“Overload–”

“And then I bet ya’d keep buggin’ him to ‘spend some time’ with ya, because ya just ‘wanna have some bondin’ time with him’, ‘n then you’d keep botherin’ him over it every time ya see him cause ya can’t take th’hint that people just don’t. Want. To be. Around ya.” Octave finished.

He stood before Macho, breathing heavily through his teeth with his hands curled into tight fists.

Macho looked down at Octave, an unreadable expression on his face.

His lips curled down.

He slowly fixed the lapels of his robe and straightened his posture.

“If ya don’t want me around as much, I can do that for you, Overload.” Macho said, his voice low, “But I can’t promise I’ll leave you alone forever. I just can’t do that. I wanna be there for ya.”

Octave narrowed his eyes, “I don’t need ya.”

Macho backed away before he turned and made his way to the door.

He opened it, the bell let out a chime, and then he lingered in the door frame for a moment.

His grip on the knob tightened. He looked back to Overload.

“If ya ever need to reach out to me, you have my number.”

Octave only repeated himself, “I don’t need ya.”

“I’m just lettin’ ya know–”

“Go. Away.”  

~ ~ ~ ~

“...And when I brought up my concerns with Overload–I didn’t mention him helping with those traps because Bear would’ve been upset–but I was hoping at the very least, they’d step in and do something about his behavior, and you know what those higher ups told me? They told me: ‘They’ll look into it.’ As if.” Joe rolled his eyes.

“So they’re basically never gonna talk to him about it, huh?” Sandman commented as the two of them walked through the neighborhood streets.

“Basically.” Joe huffed, “I know he doesn’t have as much of a–”

“Turn here.” Sandman pointed towards a path to the right of them with his water bottle. It was placed between two worn down apartments.

Joe did so before he continued, “I know Overload doesn’t tamper with people’s things nearly as much as Aran does, but honestly.” He huffed as he followed behind Sandman, “He’s taken Disco’s stuff before–his walkman, his phone, and he nearly destroyed his boombox!”

Disco had texted Joe before about the time Overload and Aran chucked his walkman around, Disco had also told him of the time Overload apparently grabbed his flip phone right out of his hand and threatened to snap it in half all because the phone’s speaker was just a little too loud, and Disco’s boombox? Why, Joe was there to witness the scene himself.

It was quite some time ago, but Joe remembered that day when Disco came dancing into the training room with a giant smile on his face and a boombox in his arms. He greeted everyone he saw and set the boombox on a bench. He rambled about a new cassette tape he had bought–music from the 70s, of course–and started playing it for everyone. Despite Disco claiming he wanted to share the music to ‘Get them into the zone’, Joe recalled Disco doing much more dancing than he did training.

The music wasn’t too loud, at least, not too loud to Joe, but to Overload? Apparently he could hear it from the other side of the stadium. He stormed inside, took one glance at the boombox, and already knew who it belonged to. Joe watched him yell and curse at Disco. He demanded Disco turn that ‘garbage’ down, and when Disco did? It still wasn’t enough.

The two kept going back and forth. Disco refused to make his music any quieter–he actually wanted to hear it–while Octave got angrier by the second. His demand went from ‘Lower the music’ to ‘No music’. Joe remembered how he and Kaiser tried to tell Overload off, how they suggested he leave the building entirely if it bothered him so much, but he didn’t listen to them.

Octave started to mash whatever buttons Disco’s boombox had in an attempt to turn it off–which made Disco freak out and holler at Octave that he was gonna break it if he kept hitting it so hard. Octave didn’t care though, he never cares, does he? No, he just kept hitting every button he could while Disco kept trying to frantically readjust the settings, and when Disco finally raised his voice back? When he finally snapped and told Overload how he just ruins anything that makes people happy? Octave cussed at him and threw a fist down onto the boombox, breaking several of its buttons and putting an end to the music.

Disco didn’t even have time to react to Overload’s actions, neither did Joe or Kaiser, Overload just stared at the boombox for a split second before he fled the scene.

‘Whatever. It still works.’ Joe remembered Disco saying as he pressed on one of the battered buttons. The device let out a sputter in response, ‘Sorta.’

Joe remembered how horrible he felt for Disco. He tried to give some sort of reassurance, and despite Disco’s ‘Thanks’, it was clear his spirits had been crushed.

Kaiser must’ve felt awful as well, because he ended up giving Disco an offer.

‘One of my students…’ He started, tugging on one of his suspenders, ‘I meet with their father for coffee from time to time. He is good with these–these–’ He motioned towards the boombox, ‘Devices. Part of his job is fixing them. I could bring this to him and ask for his help, it should not be too hard.’

Joe remembered the bit of relief he felt when he saw the way Disco’s face lit up. He handed the boombox to Kaiser thanking him a million times, and not even two weeks later, Kaiser brought it back, good as new.

Joe was still furious over Overload’s actions, though. Who wouldn’t be? Breaking another person’s belongings just because he got annoyed? How immature can someone get?

“Even if those higher ups wanted to ignore all that,” Joe muttered, “you’d think they’d at least acknowledge the fact he constantly yells and–and threatens us! The most they’ve done is talk to him a couple of times, and I hate to say this, but I think Macho Man does a better job keeping him in check than they do.” He folded his arms, “He can’t stop Overload for long, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Yeah?” Sandman peered over at Joe, “I’m sorry ya gotta put up with that. If you ever want me to try ‘n–” His phone started to ring.

He stopped and pulled his phone out. His brows lowered before he hung up.

“Who was that?” Joe asked, lightly kicking at the cracked, weed-ridden, beige sidewalk.

“No idea. Must’ve been th’wrong number.” Sandman said. He stared at his phone for a moment longer before he put it back into his pocket. He tilted his head, motioning for Joe to keep following.  

“Right, well–it’s not that I don’t appreciate your help, but the higher ups shouldn’t have to wait until they hear a complaint from you to finally do something.” Joe said as he looked at the buildings that walled the sides of the path.  

Their walls–or, the walls that Joe could see–were made of old bricks, their color a deep yet surprisingly vibrant shade of crimson. Portions of the walls were covered by a thick layer of vines, and Joe couldn’t help but wonder if the colors of the hidden walls were any lighter or darker. The vines themselves were a rather lovely color as well, a hue of green that reminded him of emeralds; there were small white flowers speckled throughout them.

“I’m sure I’m not the only person to complain about Overload.” Joe mumbled as he kept his eyes locked onto a vine-covered wall they were nearing. He looked to the top of the building where the vines began and followed them all the way to the ground. He studied the thin, stray, yellow stems that stretched across the pavement. They reminded him of veins–no, worms–no, stray hair–he needs to stop with these comparisons, he’s going to make himself sick.

“Guess since he isn’t settin’ stuff up in lockers or whatever, they don’t care that much.” Sandman said.

Joe leaned closer to Sandman as they grew closer to the vines. He didn’t care how lovely their colors were, he did not want a single one of those stems to touch him–

He suddenly felt something slither across his ankle.

He jumped back and frantically started to brush off that horrible sensation. He shot an arm out to Sandman for support–but when he didn’t feel Sandman next him, he spun around.

“You’re just sticking your hands in there?!” Joe blurted out as he watched Sandman rummage through the thick layer of vines that covered a portion of the building on the right.

“Yeah.”

Joe sputtered for a second, “Why?! There could be spiders in there! Or–or some unknown disease!”

“Saw a cool leaf.” Sandman said as he plucked a dark green leaf with yellow speckles scattered across it. He twirled it around in his fingers for a moment before he carefully slipped it into his pocket, “Found a few others too while I was waitin’ for ya. Gonna add ‘em to–wait.” He looked back at Joe, “Diseases?”

Joe’s cheeks turned red for a second, “Well, you know!” He gestured for a few moments before he shrugged, unable to think of why in the world his mind went to ‘diseases’ of all things.

Sandman turned back to the vines. He grabbed a handful of them and carefully lifted them up. Joe shuddered as he watched a couple bugs, dirt, and flakes who-knows-what fall from the leaves and flutter onto the ground. A strong smell that reminded Joe of wet soil quickly filled the air.

“There’s windows under here.” Sandman pointed to one of the windows that was nearly hidden by the vines’ shadows.

“Really?” Joe wasn’t sure why he was so surprised by that. The sides of the buildings were covered in black-rimmed windows, so it’d make sense that there’d be more hidden under the vines. Still, it was strange to peer through the dirtied glass and see a pleasantly decorated room inside, while the walls on the outside looked so dreary, dark, and–admittedly–kind of disgusting.

Joe took a step closer, his face dropping when he realized that the reason the walls looked so dark wasn’t because of the shadows–but because the bricks had been completely taken over by some sort of dark moss.

Joe opened his mouth–but the men suddenly heard a thud. They looked through the window and watched as a person came into view–

In a panic, Sandman quickly let go of the vines and rushed away from the spot. Joe hurried behind.

“Forgot people lived there for a second.” Sandman mumbled, a tight grip on his water bottle.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, so did I.” Joe said, just as embarrassed

Sandman’s phone rang again.

He took it out, looked at the caller, and hung up.

“It’s the same number.” He said before Joe could ask the question. He didn’t bother putting his phone back into his pocket, he just held onto it. “Anyways, kinda gotcha off topic from that Overload guy, didn’t I?”

“Oh, I mean–I was just complaining.” Joe said with a shrug.

“Hey, I’d complain too if one of my friends got hurt like that.”

“Right! If those higher ups don’t do anything, it’s not going to take long for Overload to–I don’t know–finally lose it and hurt someone!? Did I mention the fact that he grabbed Don during the Major Circuit’s dinner night? Because oh, he did…!”

Joe started to go off again.

Sandman’s phone rang again.

He checked his screen, and sure enough, it was that same dang number.

This had to have been a fan, or some determined journalist, or something. Who else would be calling him so many times?

While a part of him was tempted to answer the call just to tell the person to stop, the other part of him didn’t want to take any chances.

What if this was a fan, and they get so excited over getting a response that they give out his number to a million other fans? Then he’ll have to deal with a hoard of crazy people and go through the hassle of changing his number like Bull did.

Sandman’s clutched onto his phone harder.

He hopes Bull is doing okay–

“Oh my gosh, Sandman–!” Joe cried out. Sandman jolted and looked over.

“I lied to you! I’m a horrible liar!” He started to tear off his trenchcoat, “I can’t handle the consequences, I’m going to drown in my own sweat! Could you hold this, please?” He handed it to Sandman.

Sandman raised his head slightly and grinned, “Dang. Hate to say it Joe, but ya should’ve listened to me from the start.”

Sandman went to grab the coat–but Joe suddenly yanked it away.

“Actually, I changed my mind.”

“What?”

“If you’re going to be like that, I’d rather drown in my own sweat.” Joe tossed the jacket over his head and folded his arms.

“Awh, c’mon Joe, I was jokin’.”

Sandman stared at his pouty friend for a second more. He watched as beads of sweat started to form on his forehead. Sandman plucked the jacket off of him and threw it over his shoulder.

“Thanks.” Joe grumbled.

Joe’s grouchy attitude didn’t last a moment longer, as Sandman’s phone rang again for the fourth time.

Sandman huffed, “I swear–”

He checked his phone.

The same. Stupid. Number.

“Are you going to answer that?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know ‘em.”

“They must know you if they keep calling.”

“Well, they’re gonna have to wait.” Sandman said, “I came here to hang out with ya, not answer phone calls. Besides, that breakfast place is right around th’corner.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Joe smirked. He marched out of the alley and turned a right corner–

Sure enough, there was a little restaurant waiting there.

Its wooden exterior was painted a dark magenta, tons of windchimes hung from its windows, and the white tables outside had been neatly set up.

Sandman peered past the corner, “Hm. Looks like I was right again–”

“Stop.”

Sandman chuckled. He playfully tossed his phone into the air and caught it as he started making his way to the restaurant’s door.

“I just realized,” Joe began, “I haven’t even asked how your week has been–or your weekend! How’ve you been?”

“Hey, no worries.” Sandman tossed his phone back into the air, but when he caught it again, a little ‘Ping!’ came from it. He flipped it open, a part of him hoping Bull had finally responded to him, but instead, it was that number again.

He quickly skimmed it.

“Good morning Mr. Sandman, I would appreciate it if you could call me as soon as you’re available. I’ve been speaking to the community manager, some promoters, and other figures about you, and we would like to discuss…”

Sandman immediately shut the phone.

His heart started to pound.

Oh no.

No, no, no.

Had he been ignoring a higher up all this time?

His eyes flickered over to Joe, who had a hint of concern across his face.

“Yeah, I’ve been doin’ fine.” Sandman quickly responded before he shoved his phone away. He went over to the restaurant’s door and propped it open, “Why don’t we finally get somethin’ to eat?”

~ ~ ~ ~

When Octave swung open the door to his house, he was immediately greeted with the sound of his phone ringing.

He placed his basket of clean clothes to the side, closed the door, and took his shoes off. He wasn’t in any rush–he frankly didn’t care how long that phone had been ringing for. He knew Aran had probably been calling him on and off for the last hour or so to ask about those stupid drinks again.

Octave stretched his arms as he made his way over to the end table. He grabbed his phone and brought the receiver to his ear.

“Yeah?”

“Ah, Overload!” Tiger’s voice chimed through.

Octave perked up, “Tiger, hey, how’s it goin’?” He asked as he leaned against the armrest of his couch.

“Fine, fine. I had a bit of time on my hands, so I wanted to check in on you.” Tiger hummed.

“Appreciate it.”

“Have you thought about where you’d like to meet up later this week?”

Octave twirled the cord of his phone with his finger while his mouth hung open.

He thought to himself for a second more.

“I got one place in mind…”

#punch out #punch out!! #punch out wii #punch out mr sandman #punch out glass joe #punch out oc #punch out super macho man #art #fic

[goldenraeofsun]

Day 3: Digital

Dean should have never taken advice from Zachariah Adler, AKA the worst boss in existence. While Dean eats wheatgrass and manifests his best self (whatever the hell that actually means), Adler’s probably poaching his biggest accounts with his oily charm and smarmy grin.

It was Dean’s fault for getting too personal in smalltalk before the Marketing & Sales all-hands meeting, saying how he’d been on an improvement kick – Kubrick oversold the damn Master Cleanse by several hundred orders of magnitude – but he didn’t know what to do next.

Zachariah, of course, had the perfect solution: a digital detox retreat. Worked wonders for him a few months ago.

After everyone arrives at the campsite – if you can call it that, with its electricity, running water, and actual toilets – they go on an hour-long hike, do yoga by the lake, and in the afternoon have some weird group therapy session to discuss their “technology addiction”.

Dean spends most of his turn complaining about Sandover’s batshit promotion policy, but a couple people nod in agreement around the circle. The uncomfortable-looking guy in pristine jeans and boots that Dean would bet dollars to donuts never touched actual dirt until that morning, mumbles he works at Sandover too.

He – Castiel – goes next, saying his roommate pressed him to go on this retreat. He drops corporate buzzwords like “toxic environments” and “poor work-life balance” with a pinched, bewildered expression on his face, and Dean has a sneaking suspicion that Cas has no idea what they actually mean. The weirdo actually uses finger quotes around “hustle culture”. 

Cas evidently made time for yoga, though. (Dean wasn’t entirely focused on the instructor when it came time for downward dog.) He has an ass Dean hasn’t seen outside of porn – the fancy kind, the kind you pay for.

By day four, Dean can practically feel Zachariah and the other sales sharks circling his biggest accounts.

In the evening, Dean lines up for the lone phone on the premises – a communal landline – and calls Charlie, their western sales rep and Dean’s best work-friend at Sandover. He not-so-subtly probes her, and Charlie admits she saw Zachariah having lunch with Lily Sunder of Sunder Inc. 

Dean almost loses it right then and there. 

But because he is a goddamn professional, he politely listens to Charlie’s dramatic retelling of last Tuesday night’s bar trivia (they lost without Dean’s pop culture powerhouse) before hanging up and stalking out of the room.

Incensed, he paces around his cabin, trying to come up with a plan. Sammy isn’t due to pick him up in the Impala until the end of the retreat in three days. But by then, it could be all over.

So, after some serious Mission Impossible shit and Ocean’s 11 levels of safe cracking, Dean is once again in possession of his phone. 

Just out of sight of the campsite, probably standing in a bunch of poison ivy, knowing his luck, he turns it on. “Fuck,” he mutters, entirely unsurprised to see he has no bars out here in the ass end of nowhere.

Time to rough it.

He ducks back into his cabin to grab a flashlight, his swiss army knife, and a granola bar – all stuff he packed without knowing he was going glamping. Armed with his gear and his phone, he goes on the hunt for a signal. The hiking trail from their first day reached a decently high elevation.

About a third of the way up, a rustling in the underbrush makes him freeze.

Heart pounding, his gaze darts up from his phone screen and his hand tightens around his swiss army knife in his pocket. Are there bears in this area? Why the hell didn’t he pack bear spray?

“Dean?”

Dean exhales a quick sigh of relief. Not a bear.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean says as he quickly stashes his phone in his jacket. “What the hell are you doin’ all the way out here?”

Cas blinks owlishly at him. He has a few leaves and a twig or two stuck in his hair. The fresh dirt covers the knees of his jeans, like he took a fall (or five) in the past ten minutes. After a long beat, he deadpans, “Communing with nature.”

Dean unclenches his hands from around his knife and instead crosses his arms over his chest, regarding Cas impassively. Internally, he’s beyond amused, so he can’t help but ask, “And how’s that goin’ for ya?”

Cas narrows his eyes. “Poorly,” he says sourly.

A rapid series of tinny chimes cut off Dean’s snort of laughter. He eagerly grabs his phone, scanning the barrage texts coming in. He only has one bar, but better that than nothing.

“You have service?” Cas demands, stepping closer.

“Fucking finally,” Dean breathes as he holds his phone up above his head. The signal stubbornly does not improve. Damn.

Sighing, Cas slips his own phone out of his pocket and squints despondently at the screen.

Maybe that was why Mr. Wilderness was bumbling around in the dark, halfway up a mountain. Well, Dean’s not a heartless corporate suit, no matter what Charlie calls him when he has to cancel Moondoor plans at the last-minute. “D’you wanna use mine?” Dean asks. “I’ve got almost a full charge.”

Cas looks like he could kiss Dean right then and there – and, huh, isn’t that an idea? Cas’s gaze shifts to Dean’s phone, an eager glint in his eyes like Dean might as well be holding the holy grail itself. “Thank you,” Cas breathes.

“No problem,” Dean says casually. “Mind if we go a bit higher? I think we can get a better signal.”

Cas nods, and they set off up the trails.

“So…” Dean starts, “Sandover too?”

“Unfortunately,” Cas says with an adorable grimace. “You as well?”

Dean nods. “Marketing.”

“Finance.”

Dean’s dealings with Finance are limited, mostly to the junior accountants who have nothing better to do than pull him reports that should all be entered into the dullest Excel sheet of the year awards. “Do you work with Marv?” he asks, naming the one Finance Director he worked with on the Talbot account.

A sliver of moonlight falls on Cas’s face from a break in the tree cover, or else Dean never would have caught his look of apprehension. After a beat, Cas says evenly, “I do.”

“What a dick,” Dean says, and Cas’s expression relaxes. “Has he told you about the book he’s writing?” During their last meeting, Marv spent twenty minutes droning on and on.

“Yes,” Cas says with the look of a man who was indeed up to date on the intricate politics of angel factions and the motivations of a stupidly overpowered hero. “I’m surprised he told you about it, though. He tends only to inflict his writing process on the Finance Department.”

Dean lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I guess I’m just that adorable.”

“I’d say so,” Cas says before promptly tripping over a root. He straightens, his blush all but glowing in the dark.

“You alright?” Dean says, trying and mostly failing to keep in his laughter.

“Fine,” Cas mutters. “We’d better keep going. I think there’s a plateau up ahead.”

“So why did you come out to this thing if tree hugging isn’t your deal?” Dean asks conversationally.

“My roommate said I needed to get out of the city for my own good,” Cas says glumly. “She said it was either this or Coachella.”

Dean doesn’t bother muffling his laughter this time around. Cas at Coachella? Dean can just as easily see him flying around outer space. 

Once Dean’s chuckles subside, Cas asks, “So why are you here, Dean?”

Dean rubs the back of his neck. “Similar to you, I guess. I’ve been looking for a change, you know?” Way back when, he thought Sandover would be a pitstop. A way to make a decent paycheck with good dental before he figured out what he really wanted to do with his life (other than hunt ghosts and/or run around Gotham in an awesome batsuit). 

But it only seemed like the blink of an eye when he looked up and realized his fifth anniversary at Sandover came and went. And he had nothing to show for it except a stellar portfolio and a dozen dead plants in an apartment he rarely saw during daylight hours.

“I guess I was hoping for a reset,” Dean says seriously. “It’s like, one day I woke up and I saw that my whole life was my work.” He shakes his head. “That’s no way to live.”

“I suppose not.” Cas smiles crookedly. “Not that I would know any differently.”

They reach the plateau, and Dean checks his phone.

Three whole bars shine brightly back at him from his phone screen. 

And because he’s a gentleman when it counts, he hands it over to Cas to make the first call. He lays back against a tree, staring out as the stars as Cas talks over returns and turnovers for next quarter. Every so often, Dean picks out a recognizable name like MacLeod Pharma, Sandover’s biggest client. 

Fifteen minutes later (ten more than they are allowed on the communal landline back at camp), Cas hands over the phone with a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Dean says as he dials Lily’s number. He leaves her a voicemail since she’s old school, and moves on down his mental list, sending emails to Benny, Lenore, and Garth. He sends a meme to Andy, the only form of communication that has a chance of getting through to him.

That done, he finds Cas leaning against a tree, staring out at the night sky above them. “I’d forgotten how beautiful it can be under a full moon with all the stars.”

Dean nods in agreement. He’s not normally a touchy-feely guy, but he feels strangely not-himself, halfway up some random mountain in the Catskills with an almost-stranger in the dark. Not in a bad way, though. Not at all. 

“Hey,” he says with far more confidence than he actually feels, “d’you wanna do something like this back home?”

Cas stares at him, his eyes impossibly wide. “Like what?”

“I dunno,” Dean hedges, the remaining bravado draining away at Cas’s lack of immediate enthusiasm, “Something just the two of us, no phones, no work.”

“I believe the whole point of this little trip was to enable phone usage and catch up on work,” Cas says dryly.

Dean nudges him with his elbow. “You know what I mean.”

Cas steals a sidelong glance his way. “Would this be like… a date?”

“If you want it to be,” Dean says, deliberately keeping his eyes trained on the moon overhead. “Or just a few hours to keep ourselves honest about what we want out of life.”

“I’d like that.”

#suptober22 #destiel fanfic #destiel #office au #businessman dean #accountant castiel #rae writes fic #fanfic #First Meetings

[bohemian-nights]

It's always interesting how as soon as black women become a love interest in a straight ship 1 of 2 things will happen.

A third thing, the double standards, an example:

Laena x Rhaenyra ship- in the books we know they were close and some fans use the phrase"more than fond of"to reinforce they were a couple(nothing against this couple it's still fiction eh)

Everything normal here.

But when we learnt more about Rhaegar and Elia and their relationship, the sentence "fond" is still used to describe their relationship and now you have people saying "oh they were just friends" "oh he didn't love her" "oh Elia will be okay with Rhaegar and Lyanna being a couple"

First at all, the racism, Dorne is not okay with adultery in marraige, they don't care if if man or woman, UNMARRIED, take a paramour,UNMARRIED; it's different for them, a different mindset

•Convenient how now when their white fave needs to be paired up with a white character(nothing against Lyanna, the girl was 14 year old)when there are POC characters that show interest in them(Elia loved Rhaegar and I can dream he loved her, why? BECAUSE I LOVE ANGST)

CONVENIENCE MY DEAR FRIEND

Read about the Sophie's actress' scandal(if you called that) -just wtf.

Also Bethany's harassment.WTF.

If they are not happy with Sophie being black, then they are free to read the books or ignore it! It's not that difficult.

Bethany is gonna slay this season, so stay mad colonizers😏

Sorry for the rant, tired of this nonsense🤣

Ps: Some people are starting shipping Dettles out of spite, for the racism's nonesense so yeah, IT'S GONNA BE A LONG YEAR HERE!!All of you are doing great sweeties🥰

Don’t apologize for ranting cause everything you said is the truth👏🏽

I hate Laenyra. People mainly hype it up to move attention away from Daemon and Laena’s marriage and center their self insert into their relationship .

Yeah it’s ironic that the same people hyping up Laryngitis and saying all those who oppose it are racistare the same people who love dunk on Elia non-stop and say that she was fine with her husband sleeping with Snow Becky because she’s dornish. The same people hyping up Jon’s parents are the same people who dunk on Dettles.

I’ll be the first one to say that I don’t give a damn about Ravioli and Snow Becky, but I’ll admit that it was GRRM’s intention to make them romantic(it’s definitely not supposed to be grooming even if I find the whole situation weird). I’ll even admit that there are plenty of similarities between Dettles and that ship, but you’d have an easier time finding a leprechauns gold than getting those people to admit the same.

Don’t get me started on the Bridgerton fandom. A bunch of ungrateful bigots who keep making demands of Shonda while at the same time degrading her and saying there are “too many Black people” on the show (and then crying when people call them out for being the anti-Black morons they are).

And I get that Masali hasn’t been officially announced as Sophie, and of course she’s not the only possibility, but she’s the only one whose name that has been circulating around that fits the casting call. Her schedule was cleared last year and she’s got no upcoming projects. She’s following multiple members of the cast and multiple members are following her back.

(Nicola, Hannah Dodd, Hannah New, Victor Ali who is suspected to be playing John, as well as one of the hairdressers who does the main casts hair to name a few. Hell, there was even one of the directors following her, but he mysteriously unfollowed her for some reason).

More importantly, no one else has produced another casting call to contradict said casting call or to show that the role she was cast for is a member of the Stirling family.

(I’m not going to get into it, but if you’re “evidence” hinges on Masali and Victor Ali looking alike please go down to Lens Crafters cause they don’t look nothing alike outside of being dark and Black. It’s fucking offensive as fuck to say they do).

And as I said in a previous ask, the Bridgerton team has cast a role with a specific race in mind cause they were looking for an Indian woman to play Kate(which is how some people figured Simone Ashley was playing Kate when most of Kates fancasts were white women👏🏽).

So the fact that you have so many people running around like a chicken with its head cut off claiming it’s impossible for Sophie to be Black, that Sophie should be x race, or just being racist jackasses is disturbing asf. You shouldn’t have to see this bullshit:

You bet your ass I took screenshots cause everybody likes to lie and hide their hands after typing out the most vile shit.

And yeah I get everyone wants representation, but people keep trying to silence and speak over Black people specifically Black women and that's where we have a problem.

Because for any other group, this behavior would be absolutely unacceptable. Especially if you are making demands that an EP not cast any more people of her race on her show, but with Black women that doesn't matter. They don’t care.

We haven’t even had a fucking fully Black female love interest get her happily ever after with a man(the people saying Masali should be a gender-bent Michael need to have several seats cause you’re creating a OC just because you don’t want to see her as Sophie) like everybody else and yet they want us to step aside and cheer them on. Fuck that.

This is why I don’t believe any of you hateful bitches when you say you care about misogynoir because the moment a Black woman is cast in a role you want, even in a role that’s meant for a Black woman like with Nettles, y’all either start demanding she be cut or made into something else.

This literally happens every single time Black female characters are involved and yet you can’t even talk about it because people want to ignore and perpetuate our oppression.

I’ll leave it there cause I’m too exhausted by all of this drama(it’s making my blood boil), but these fandoms piss me off so much. They make it hell for non-white and especially Black fans to exist within them. Even in shows created by Black people.

#bnask #bnasks #fandom drama #bncommentary #hey look we are both ranting now 🤣 #fandom misogynoir

[dyrewrites]

Before Deluca -- Hunted

Peaceful as our moment, as our day honestly—barring the innocent life we took that seemed less and less important to me after our confessions—it wouldn’t last.

We weren’t aware then, as such things weren’t available in the papers or shared outside of obscure circles, but we were being hunted. The people of my town did not take well to finding the two most influential among them slaughtered in their home with their only son—and apparent linchpin for their entire business—nowhere to be found. But they knew who to blame, of course, as so many were in the inn the night I met the beautiful stranger.

I would learn far too late why the inn was emptied when we left it. They figured him out before I did. How? I couldn’t know, experience perhaps. Regardless, they formed their little mob and marched to the nearest church. We were gone before the Hunter answered the church summons...but she picked our trail up quick enough.

It was through the party—which had been a slaughter, pure and simple—that she found us. And slaughters, I learned, were uncommon for vampires. They were a quiet bunch, all told, keeping to themselves and feeding when they needed—most often on the willing, or at least compliant. What we did was unheard of and Lucient’s plan to blame it on the others failed the second one of them worked out who all the victims had been.

Wolf, with her wee little pig, made certain everyone had a clear image of who was responsible. But, being that she never saw my face, it was Lucient the Hunter came for.

Now, I knew none of this at the time, it was gleaned through the thoughts of the Hunter and Lucient’s ever-studious mind as he worked out how she could have possibly been on our ship.

As she was just then, boarding us from her own while we enjoyed our quiet moment in the Captain’s quarters. Lucient twitched, a motion that would have gone unnoticed by anyone not holding him so closely, before he was at the door—still only in his nightshirt.

“We have a guest,” he said before letting the chill evening air in.

What billowed in with it had me up and by his side an instant after.

Wailing, howling, the horrid groans of the crew were twisted to impossible agonies as the whole of the forecastle burned. I had no love for the crew, unsettling as they were, but none deserved to smoke and crinkle as they did in those flames. Yet I could not see the source, or the ‘guest’ Lucient spoke of.

Amid the flames, treasure, look for the darkest shadow—the largest shadow, he told my fretting mind, it hasn’t noticed us yet but it’s searching.

I tried desperately to find what he spoke of but there were only flames and blackness and eerily still crew members wailing as they charred. And while I focused on the flames, Lucient disappeared into the closet, stepping into it in a manner I hadn’t thought possible when I dug through it. I shut the door to those sounds and leaned against it, uncertain and...afraid. Something I hadn’t been for days, weeks perhaps, but it shivered through me stabbing as so many prickles in my veins.

He emerged from the closet fully clothed—waistcoat and jacket all—and had something I certainly recognized but never in his hands. Swords, their thin blades gleaming silver while their hilts glared like black stains in his palms.

“Do you know how to use one?” His voice rang hollow, numb. I nodded—no bravado left in the gnawing dread to brag of competitions I won with similar weapons—and he smiled small, tight and presented one to me, with gloved hand, “Don’t touch the blade, it’ll burn.”

I nodded again, accepting it, testing its weight and balance—ever-wary of the silver, near blinding to my eyes—and worried of my own attire.

Lucient snuck a kiss on my cheek and patted my chest, covered only by my thin shirt, and whispered, “You’re perfect as is, treasure, don’t want you overheating.”

“What are we...fighting?” I asked as he gripped the door handle.

Glancing over his shoulder at me, that small smile yet bothered, “A Hunter, typically they are humans trained to capture our kind. But it appears we warrant a gifted one,” turning back to the door he looked up at the sky and sighed, “and the moon is so bright and beautiful tonight.” I reached for his shoulder and he smiled back at me, still too small, “Be wary of its claws and teeth.”

“Claws and tee—” My confusion was cut by a howl, not the agonies of crew—unheard through the closed door—but a piercing, bestial howl. I knew that sound, or something like it, as a herald of nightmares while still young enough to fear such fanciful things as the dark. Wolves stalked the mountains outside my hometown, far outside, and yet I heard them every night as if they were by my window. Echoed and deep their howls, phantoms I would imagine, wailing of lives lost.

The one somehow penetrating the quiet of the cabin pitched deeper, it didn’t stutter either, didn’t sing a song to its blessed moon. It sang a dirge that dripped with certainty, violent, lethal certainty.

And it chilled more than Lucient’s grip on my arm, “Closer to it and you’ll feel the teeth, the claws, as real as if they were in you. But it is a trick, treasure, do you hear me? Do not listen. Listen only to me,” In your thoughts, mon amour, ever in your thoughts. Hold me here, no matter what you hear, hold me here.

My love, he’d called me—hopeless for him as I was it distracted, soothed.

I readied my weapon, ignoring that I never used one quite so thick, or for true combat, and nodded at the door, I’m ready, amore mio, let us fight this...Hunter.

Another quick kiss for the return of his words and he opened the door.

And I was not ready.

#writeblr #snippet #writing #novel #before deluca #>.>

[secretsandwriting]

Murder Made Us Do It

Part Twelve: A History On Cults

When a killer targeting couples manages to avoid both the Justice League and the Devil Fugitives, the two “enemies” decide to work together to bring him down. How do you catch a killer targeting couples? You bait him with couples. It couldn’t go wrong, right?

TW WARNINGS: Mentions of child abuse, death, human experimentation, kidnapping, electroshock therapy, phycological abuse, phycological horror, gunshot wounds, autopsies, bullet removal, shrapnel removal, animal abuse, organs outside of the body, starvation, forced iv, blood.

Probably over tagged but I figured better safe than sorry. Anyways idk how much I like this but its good enough! I hope those of you ok with reading it like it!

SUMMARIZED VERSION WITHOUT ALL THE TRIGGERS

ALSO, if you like it pls comment or reblog with your thoughts bc i would love to hear them :D

“I really hate to have to be the one to say it… But ever since we cut contact, Matchmaker hasn’t shown up, we’ve all been feeling like we’re being watched, and we keep hearing about these people with smiley face masks. Something is going on and the only people who knew all the details are Bruce, Dick, Jason, Tim, Jacob and ourselves. The onl-” Alistair looked ready to cry.

“And the only one who wouldn’t face direct problems from it would be Jacob.” Ry finished for him.

“But he took us in, helped us learn how to function in society, got us therapy and countless other things. Why would he do something like this?” It didn’t make sense, why would he put so much effort into helping the three of you while helping the other side.

“The biggest question is who’s he helpi-” A hand clamped over your mouth and held you down, within seconds Ali and Ry were pinned as well. A familiar weight was clamped over your neck and the pain that came with it was just as bad as you remembered.

“No! Please! I promise I’ll be good!” You begged the man in the white coat. “I promise! I’ll sit still and I won’t hurt anyone I’m not supposed to! Just please don’t put the collar on! It hurts so much!” He hadn’t listened and the power restraining collar had been forced on despite your begging.

You were pulled from your memories when you were lifted up after being securely cuffed. Jacob stood up front, talking with one of the old scientists you thought had been killed. He glanced over and smirked. His eyes didn’t hold the warmth you were used to. It was like he was someone else entirely.

“Get them in the van. Make sure no one notices.” 

Why couldn’t nice things last.

Tim looked down at his phone when it pinged. Alistair. A soft smile grew on his face and the rest of the family grinned to themselves. It was cute and good blackmail material. 

“What’d your boyfriend say?”

“It’s just a location. Their hou-” He was cut off by the sound of Jason’s phone. Ry judging by the look on his face. He stepped away to answer before coming back and putting it on speaker. It sounded like Trash. The chatter was clearly a racoon and he sounded upset.

“The SOS.” Dick looked sick.

“What.” Bruce stood up.

“Y/n told me that they have a three part SOS and that the order they would come in would be Alistair, Ry, and then her. But her part was just a bunch of numbers and a book-” He typed through his phone before  showing them a screenshot with a series of numbers. 

“That's a safe code.”

“We need to go now!”

The entire group moved fast, getting into costume before getting into vehicles and speeding away. Within record time they were entering the house. Everything looked normal until two disturbed animals came running in. Trash waved them in while Appa started moving further into the house. 

They were led to a bookshelf that Trash scaled until he reached one book and tugged, looking back at the group. Damian stepped forward.

“A history of Cults?” He reached out and grabbed the book to pull it out but it only went so far before it stopped and they heard a click. Appa yowled from her spot on the ground, front paws up on the bookshelf and almost mimicking pushing it. Steph moved to help the cat and the bookshelf moved easily revealing a safe. The safe’s door was ripped off and it was empty.

“They go-” Appa yowled, interrupting Bruce and turning their eyes down to where Trash was acting something out.

“Behind it!” Jason moved and started inspecting the safe, Tim joining him. “Here. Pull!” The safe was moved and under it was another safe. “The code!” Dick put in the code and the door opened. He pulled out three files and a notebook. On the front of the books, in all caps, READ IN A SECURE LOCATION! Back to the Batcave, this time, they called the rest of the league to join them. 

“Why are we here?”

“The three from Devil’s Fugitives. Ghost, Cryptic, and Hacker have been kidnapped. We don’t know why or by who but they left us everything to get into their safe where we pulled these.” Bruce set the files and the notebook on the table. “We’re going to go over them and see if we can get any information off of them.”

“Ok, why is Dick holding a cat and a raccoon clinging to Jason?”

“They’re the girl’s pets.” 

The first file was scanned in and within seconds the first page was pulled up. 

Subject 404

It was Alistair’s judging by his ability listed. The reality of how bad it was, slowly started sinking in. They all saw the signs of past trauma, wasted as the three refused to explain things they had asked about, how how they all had weird habits that seemed off. But they never would have realized the full extent.

They hadn’t even gotten past the first page with the training plan. Just the training plan. But it was horrific. The detailed daily schedule consisted of electroshock therapy, whatever the hell fear training was, 6 hours of training daily, then an additional 4 hours of mental training as well as a whole slew of other things they didn’t want to figure out.

The second page was worse. It was the scientist's notes. While it was all important and all extremely twisted, a few things stood out to them.

—---

Today pain training went well, the subject barely flinched when he was shot. Tomorrow we’ll try multiple shots.

—---

The subject is starting to settle down. He’s not trying to make friends anymore and he’s going quietly when the guards go get him.

—---

The subject is showing signs of fear towards rats. Tomorrow he’ll go through fear training and will be locked in a cage with them until he’s no longer afraid.

—---

Today we introduced the subject to another to compare compatibility.

—---

The subject seems to be working well with Subject 532. 

—---

The Subject and Subject 532 will be introduced to the third. 

—---

Subjects 404, 532, and 673 have been introduced and started training together. Its only a matter of time before our goals are completed.

—---

The subjects seem to be getting too friendly. He was put down.

—---

During Subject 404’s autopsy, 31 bullets, 45 shrapnel, and 392 foreign items were removed. They’re currently in the process of fixing the broken bones, once that’s complete we’ll move onto the enhanced Lazurus pit injections we created.

—---

The injection was just inserted into the subject's heart. Now it’s a waiting game

—---

The subject’s heart has started beating on its own.

—---

One of the side effects seems to be a change in blood color, It's now a dark turquoise. 

—---

The first training session since the revival has revealed an increase of physical abilities.

—---

The subjects are still too close. When a guard tried to separate them, he was killed without hesitation. They’re getting stronger, we’re getting closer.

The only sound in the cave was Tim’s sobs. It was horrific. No one wanted to move onto the other files but they had too. They needed a clue as to where they would be.

The Next file was labeled Subject 532. It was Ry’s. The first page was basically the same, all the normal information a doctors office would have and then another horrible schedule plan. The Rest of the file was notes, and they braced themselves for the worst. 

—---

Subject 532 is doing well with the fear training. It only takes an hour for her to get over most fears. 

—---

The subject is still overly friendly with others but that could work as a cover so we’re letting it slide for now.

—---

We’ve found a good punishment for the subject since meals weren’t enough leverage. Give her punishments to the animals she trains with and she’ll break.

—---

The subject was introduced to a potential teammate. Subject 404. We’re not sure how it will go yet.

—---

The two subjects seem to be working well together. We’ll adjust their training to match

—---

A Third subject will be introduced. It’s earlier than planned but we’re progressing well. 

—---

The first training with the third is going well. They’ve seemed to click well. Training will be adjusted again

—---

The subject has gotten too close with the others. We were afraid of this. Subject 532 has been terminated.

—---

Subject 532’s autopsy went well. All foreign objects were removed and bones and organs were patched up. Her organs will be placed in the body and the Enhanced Lazarus Pit serum will be injected tomorrow

—---

The Subject's heart has started beating. It’s estimated she’ll be back up in less than a week

—---

There's been a change in blood color as well as a few other vitals.

—---

The first training session went well. The subject is showing signs of advanced physical abilities and increased aggression. More testing will be needed to find the limit

—---

The subjects are still too close. When separation is mentioned around them they go ballistic. Its only a matter of time before they’re too strong for any chains mankind can create

Jason looked sick, between crying and screaming. No one could blame him. The things they read in the last hour were horrible. No one should have to go through anything like that. They continued on.

Subject #673

—---

Starvation training is going good. It’s been 6 days since her last meal and she hasn’t broken yet.

—---

The subject seems to be avoiding others, that's good for now

—---

The subject refused to drink anything again today. We’ll have to use an IV

—---

The subject is doing well with most of her training. She’s being prepared for her introduction with the other two subjects.

—---

The subject wasn’t working well with the other two until a little into the session. They’ll be good together

—---

Training has been adjusted to better match the three of them. However the subjects appear to be getting too close.

—---

As feared, the subjects became too close to each other. Subject 673 was killed.

—---

The subject was autopsied and put back together with the Enhanced Lazarus Pit liquid injected into her heart at the end. 

—---

Her vitals are returning to normal and she should be ready to go soon. Her blood has started to change color.

—---

The first training session has revealed an increase in physical ability. This will do wonders for our goal.

—---

The subject has started showing signs of increased hostility, right now sh-

It abruptly cut off and blood could be seen at the bottom of the paper. There was nothing to help there. Just a list and descriptions of the horrors the three went through. That left their only hope in the notebook.

The three boys had seen enough, they had spent the last 7 months getting closer to them only to have them ripped from them and then shown the horrors the three had grown up with. But they needed to find them. They needed to save them. And they needed information for that

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[justicerikai]

Charisma House - AGF2021 question and quiz corner (small summary)

While I said I wouldn’t cover any type of live events… this was pretty funny, so I just had to lol.

A small summary covering the question & quiz corner of the Charisma House AGF2021 broadcast. It doesn’t go too in detail, but I tried my best to include what I thought was interesting from the banter atleast.

I will be referring to each seiyuu by their last name. Overview of the seiyuu:

Fumiya: Ono Yuuki

Iori: Fukuhara Katsumi

Terra: Okawa Genki

Rikai: Yamanaka Masahiro

Sarukawa: Hosoda Kenta

Ohse: Hyuga Saku

Amahiko: Hashizume Tomohisa

Questions asked by the seiyuu corner

From Ono Yuki to the Charisma staff:

“Just what in the world is charisma charge?”

Here’s what staff had to say:

“Charisma charge is when each of these charismatic guys are manifesting their charisma thus charging their charisma. By these charismastics accumulating charisma they will grow to become more charismatic, charge it in turn, and then everyone will become thoroughly charismatic before you know it. Adults, children, and ladies, let’s charisma! Yay!

The seiyuu point out how this doesn’t make any sense and how it’s not even an answer. But perhaps charisma is a word left up to your own interpretation.

From Hosoda Kenta to the Charisma staff:

“Do these 7 guys have friends outside of their sharehouse?

Here’s what staff had to say:

“They at least have a few acquaintances. But if they have friends is somewhat of a delicate situation. Ahaha.”

They think it’s funny but it’s most likely they don’t have any friends, perhaps.

From Yamanaka Masahiro and Okawa Genki to the Charisma staff:

“What was the deciding factor for casting during auditions?”

Here’s what staff had to say:

“For us, these 7 characters are cool and charming, have a very strong appeal and overall are handsomely charismatic, however, depending on who else looks at them they might think that they’re “just a bunch of dangerous people”. That’s basically it.”

The seiyuu go like “eh”? and Hashizume wonders if this is really about the audition. They’re pretty taken aback by this. Ono brings up how during rehearsals there is this feeling of “oh my!” in which Fukuhara mentions how he didn’t notice it.

Charisma quiz

The first question, about Rikai: “What was the name of the dog Rikai owned a long time ago ?”

Yamanaka points out how this hasn’t been brought up before in an episode, yet somehow there’s still a correct answer to it, which he thinks is terrifying.

He answers with “Hou-chan” and “Ritsu-kun” (Houritsu together means law). He thinks it fits Rikai a lot.

Correct answer: “Justice”, which Yamanaka throws his answer board on the floor in disbelief over.

The second question, about Fumiya: “He found a wallet. What does he do?”

Ono answers with a quote coming directly from Fumiya: “Stealing is… not good.” The other seiyuu go like “huuuh”? Yamanaka points out how Fumiya isn’t the one to say that.

Correct answer: “Don’t mind if I do…”

All of them laugh and Hosoda says that he’s definitely nabbing it, compared to Ono’s answer. Okawa thinks this quiz is amazing because it gives you an understanding of the charisma.

The third question, about Iori: “It’s the end of the world. What will he do?”

Fukuhara answers with: “Please… give me directions…”. Fukuhara says he’ll just be waiting for someone to tell him what to do.

Correct answer: “What do you want to do?”

All the seiyuu go like “OOOH THIS IS THE CORRECT ANSWER?”. Fukuhara says that didn’t cross his mind but thinks that’s much like Iori himself of how he will please others till the very end.

The fourth question, about Ohse: “It’s the end of the world. What will he do?”

The seiyuu point out how it’s the same question, but the answer will be different.

Hyuga answer with how Ohse will probably do radio calisthenics which Rikai-oniisan dragged him to do. It makes Yamanaka laugh. Hosoda thinks Hyuga’s answers leans more towards Rikai though.

Correct answer: “He’ll celebrate it.”

The seiyuu go like ‘woah!’ and think it’s just like Ohse, a shitty sore loser like Ohse. Hyuga’s somewhat frustrated over how his answer was a miss.

The fifth question, about Terra: “What is his favourite animal?”

The seiyuu think it’s a question fitting for a quiz which you could easily answer.

Okawa’s answer is simply “Terra-kun”.

Correct answer: “Terra-kun”

The seiyuu clap and Okawa points out how compared to someone like Rikai, Terra is easy to understand. He’s happy he got it right.

The sixth question, about Sarukawa: “He’s at a red light. What will he do?”

Hosoda thinks this is the same as Terra’s question in the sense that you could easily answer this.

Hosoda answers with: “I’m absolutely crossing this shit!”. He adds that for Sarukawa, red is basically green.

Correct answer: “A red light?”

Hosoda stands up baffled, going like, “he doesn’t know that???”

The other seiyuu are equally perplexed. Hosoda thinks Sarukawa is a difficult character, but Ono points out that maybe he’s just an idiot.

The seventh question, about Amahiko: “What does he first do in the morning when waking up?”

Yamanaka wonders if they can even broadcast this.

Hashizume answers with how he rinses his underwear, and as for what he’ll be washing… well…

Correct answer: “He puts on underwear”

All of the seiyuu jump out of their chairs, yelling, all shocked by the answer. Hashizume thinks it’s amazing that he got the underwear part down.

That concludes my little summary! The AGF2021 broadcast archive is only avaible for a limited time, but if you do wish to see it it can be found back here.

#charisma house #tendou amahiko #terra #kusanagi rikai #motohashi iori #sarukawa kei #minato ohse #ito fumiya #charismahouse

[klaineownsmysoul]

Ok but really W was in England a couple of months ago and now it seems in Ireland.. why is now one questioning what job he has coz really?!? And M? Beloved long time dream bar?! She moved to by to be with her husband for the birth is their child they say, well understandable mom's take maternity leave.. but in this case said husband was busy like 24/7 so again bar? What bar?! What a coincidence isn't it that these two so's seem to have absolutely nothing to do

Its truly just the most incredible coincidence that two of the hardest working highly talented young men you'll see are both tied to SO who couldn't be lazier or less their professional equals if you tried. I have absolutely no idea what it is that W does for a living since he seems to do even less work than M, if that's humanly possible (it shouldn't be). I've heard he's supposed to be some kind of writer or something along those lines, but other than trailing C around, I don't know what it is he does and I don’t think I’m alone with that thought. And where have I heard that before? The only difference between them is that prior to the last couple of months, we didn't see W all that much - at least in comparison to M. C seemed content to keep their "relationship" on the DL, which sounds like him and seemed to fit. We'd get the occasional pic, but there was almost always a 3rd or 4th party present and it always felt more like a bunch of friends hanging out than anything romantic; I've never once gotten that boyfriends vibe from them at all.  And if you really think its just a coincidence that we suddenly started getting tons of pics - comparatively speaking - of them right after the baby news dropped (ugh hopefully that metaphor has died), well then, bless your heart.  You don’t just wake up one morning, do a personality 180, and decide to publicly share the details of your life that you’d previously kept to yourself, especially considering his SM accounts have a much more authentically C feel to them.  He seems to have more control over what’s posted and for the most part, they are used to promote his work and his career and not his SO.  Plus they are generally in English and make sense and aren't the drunken gibberish we’ve unfortunately come to expect from D’s accounts.  And we aren’t bombarded with articles about how cool W is and you don’t have  C’s entire team trying to sell an ever changing timeline while pushing a couple narrative that seems to always contradict said timeline.  I still roll my eyes at it but it doesn’t fill me with the “FFS here we go again” annoyance that I get with D.

That god awful bar has been an albatross around D’s neck since before it opened and we’ve watched him waste far too much of his time over the years promoting it.  If its her life long dream, tell her to get off her ass and do the work herself.  He can't make the point that this is her bar any clearer.  If she wanted this so much, why didn’t she just open the bar herself?  Its not like she was busy with anything and her family is wealthy and connected, so what was stopping her from getting this off the ground?  Could it be that no one outside of her little stans would care that MS opened a bar?  No one outside of D’s fandom has any idea who she is - why would they - so that limits the pool of people you can immediately attract as customers.  But with D’s name and his fame behind it and with it being billed as “theirs,” all of a sudden, you have a huge base to continuously sell to. So the badass businesswoman gets free press for her strip bar while someone else does all the work to keep it afloat. She’s been in NYC since March and probably hasn’t even given that place a second thought, much like she does when she shadows D to events for weeks at a time all around the world. Such dedication.  And most new parents who take maternity leave use that time to bond with their baby and figure out how to keep it alive.  She was out and about in the city the same week the baby was born and has been spotted numerous times since at bars and late night parties and spent the entire Tonys weekend living it up.  July 4th concert at the capitol?  Babysitter in the hotel room it is!  She’s at the AB closing party making sure that she’s seen because the party wouldn’t count otherwise.  And like always, D’s SO is the only one who feels the need to make a spectacle of herself.  Its the same eye rolling bullshit we’ve been watching for the past 5 years, only now its even more obvious that her priorities are her and her siphoned “fame” because what kind of person so readily abandons their newborn for things they don't really need to be at?  The baby is a prop to her and an attention getter and I sincerely hope they are at least keeping her inside in the air conditioned hotel right now since the UK is melting and her safety is more important than posing for cutesy little family pics that are sent to and then shared by M’s promotional team.

#lather rinse repeat #nothing changes #anonymous