#Unless some of you start to get some art in there
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Art Nouveau Chapter 1
@scarletsaphire
Set in my 'Painting in Different Colors' series!
Danny and Frostbite had just finished their spar and were walking back to the main hall to have some frozen chocolate (much better than hot chocolate) when a group of yetis waved them over. They looked like they'd been arguing with each other, but they didn't seem angry, just frustrated with each other.
“What is it, Driftice?” asked Frostbite.
Danny trailed after him, feeling a little awkward. Was this something he should be overhearing? Or was it some intra-tribe thing he should bow out of?
“Flashfreeze thought there might be a color shift spinward of us, near the false horizon.” He gestured towards that edge of the island.
“I am not the only one who thinks there has been a change.”
Frostbite looked in the direction Driftice had indicated. “What kind of color shift?”
“Purple, I think,” said Flashfreeze. “Or blue, perhaps.”
“I see,” said Frostbite. “Great One, do you detect any such change in color in that direction? Your eyes are different from ours, and may see it more sharply.”
Danny, who had already been looking in that direction, shrugged. “Maybe? I think it might just be that there are a lot of doors over there, though.”
“We could get out the telescope,” said Frostbite.
Some of the other yetis made faces of distaste at that, but Danny perked up, levitating slightly. “You have a telescope? What kind of telescope? Can I see it?”
“Yes,” said Frostbite. He shot a look over Danny’s head, which Danny chose to ignore. “It’s a rather large one. Quite impressive, if I do say so myself. I think you would like it.”
Danny nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a telescope I didn’t like. Unless it was, like, broken. Or bad. But you wouldn’t have a bad telescope, I’m sure.”
“Then we’re decided,” said Frostbite. “We’ll see the telescope.”
“Yes!” shouted Danny, pumping his fist. “Telescope!”
“It is this way,” said Frostbite, waving Danny towards the buildings and caves that made up the village proper. “We keep it put away so it isn’t damaged.”
“Cool,” said Danny. “So, is it a reflector or a refractor?”
“A refractor. It is made of ice.”
“Of course,” said Danny, nodding. “The lens and the tube and everything?”
“Yes,” said Frostbite.
“It must have really thick lenses, then, since ice has a lower refractive index than glass.”
Frostbite gave a great shrug. “It is what it is. We tend not to work with glass outside of medical settings, so the lenses seem to be the correct thickness to us.”
That made sense, overall, and for a short time, he just followed after Frostbite, glancing at the yetis behind him. “What’s the big deal about the color being different, anyway?” he asked.
“No one has spoken to you about the turning of the ages?” asked Frostbite, sounding surprised. “Princess Dorathea? Lord Clockwork?”
“Nope,” said Danny. “Haven’t heard of that before at all.”
“One moment, Great One,” said Frostbite. He called to the other nearby yetis, and started giving them instructions, directing them to one of the larger caves. Together, they started the work of extracting the telescope.
“Can I help?” asked Danny.
“In this case, it is best to leave the work to those who know how to handle the telescope. Now, where was I?”
“You mentioned the ‘turning of the ages?’”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Frostbite. “Where to begin… The Infinite Realms are made up of ectoplasm. Ectoplasm is substantially different from normal matter. So, the laws upon which it works are also different.”
“Sure,” said Danny. The physics of ectoplasm was one of the things his parents studied. He had a passing understanding of how it all worked.
“Instead of, say, quantum spin, or quantum flavor, particles of ectoplasm might be better described in terms of color and character, qualities that go hand in hand. On occasion, the character and color of the Realms shift. The shift begins in one location, then spreads, until it has reached every corner of the Realms.”
“So… Ectoplasmic particles don’t have spin?”
“They do, to some degree, but that subject would require a great deal of additional explanation. The important part is the change.”
“Right. The change in color?”
“In color, but also in character. In mood, or aesthetic, some might say. Others might call it theme.”
“... I don’t get it,” admitted Danny. None of those things sounded very scientific to him.
“Let me attempt to explain from a different angle,” said Frostbite. “Every so often, the ambient ectoplasm of the Realms undergoes a change in color and character, which is called the turning of the age. As the two are related, the color of the ectoplasm indicates to us the character of the coming age. The character being how the Realms as a whole both look and behave. The aesthetic, if you would.”
They followed the telescope up a nearby hill.
“You are aware that different cultures had different views of the afterlife? Some very similar, some very different?”
Danny nodded.
“Some of that is caused by natural portals during the relevant time periods leading to different Realms, but the larger differences can be ascribed to the portals leading to different ages. For example, the popular conception of Hell was likely inspired by a red age. During red ages, temperatures grow more extreme, islands crash together to form larger landmasses, ghosts take on a more monstrous, demonic mien and become more aggressive.”
“Wait, so this shift affects ghosts, too?”
“How could it not? Like anything else, we change with our environment. When the laws of nature change, we must adapt to them. That being said, the internal ectoplasm of individual ghosts rarely changes color. Yours will, in all likelihood, remain green.”
“Well, I guess I'm glad Flashfreeze thinks it's purple, then. Red sounds kind of awful.”
“It might still become red,” said Frostbite. “It is not at all uncommon for the color to change before the age has completely turned, or for an age to last only a very brief time.”
“So, turning into a demon is still on the table.” As if he didn't already have enough trouble with his reputation back home.
Frostbite laughed, and patted his shoulder. “Yes, but red ages have their good points, too. They are exciting ages of alliances and camaraderie, and many a quiet injustice has been revealed and overturned in a red age. But we ought to see if there even is a change in color before we speculate any more on the age to come, hm?”
“Okay,” said Danny, watching as the yetis heaved the immense telescope into position. The white ice sides, taller than he was, twinkled in the light of the Zone.
Flashfreeze looked through the eyepiece first. They seemed to look for a long time, but then they stepped back and nodded, decisively. “I was right,” they said. “It isn't doors. The ectoplasm over there is turning purple.”
.
“Okay, will you tell me what a purple age means now?” asked Danny, aggressively stirring his frozen chocolate with a spoon made of ice. The telescope had been swarmed by yeti scientists immediately after Flashfreeze had made their pronouncement, and Danny hadn’t gotten a chance to look through it at all.
“Yes, yes,” said Frostbite. “Yes, but purple ages, or violet ages, are not nearly as easy to define or predict as some others. They can be highly variable.”
“But they’ve got to have some common points.”
“That they do. The principle commonality is rules.”
“I thought all of them shared rules. All of the ages where the colors were the same, I mean.”
“Well, yes, but purple ages tend to apply more rules, and to a greater degree. Rules similar to Frailties.”
Frailties were curses imparted by the five great rivers of the Ghost Zone. The Styx, which bound one to promises, the Acheron, which defined uncrossable boundaries, physical and social, the Cocytus, which engendered weaknesses, the Lethe which granted forgetfulness, and the Phlegethon, which caused something like addiction, a dependence on a stimulus, most often blood or fire.
“So, instead of demons, it’s more like vampires?”
Frostbite chuckled. “I do not believe that has been the first guess of anyone I have ever explained this to. Then again, I haven't explained it all that frequently.”
“Not vampires, then?”
“Vampires would not be out of the question, actually, what with their rules regarding thresholds, their diets, sunlight, and all the rest. There was an age of vampires that was purple. But most people think of fairies and the fae, not vampires.”
“We’re going to turn into… fairies.”
“Do not sound so skeptical. There are a great variety of fairies, hence why purple ages are so unpredictable.”
“But fairies.”
“Or elves, or fae, or a variety of other subsets of such creatures. Take unicorns, as an example. While usually universally violent, when a purple age comes over the Realms, they become tamable by virgins.”
“That’s still weird,” said Danny.
“The tendency towards rules extends to social structures as well. That’s how it always is in these cases… Last time we made all sorts of roles and positions and held all sorts of elections, competitions, what have you, in order to fulfill them. Hierarchies. Royalty and nobility are very popular in purple ages. There is a great tendency to titles and epithets, as a depressingly common frailty is that of being bound by one’s true name.”
“Which river does that?”
“In most ages, it is a rare interaction between the Styx and the Acheron. But in purple ages…” Frostbite shrugged. “Every age has something common to it that is rare elsewhere. For example, cyan ages - that is the color between blue and green - tend to have a greater number of half humans.”
“Really?” asked Danny.
“Truly,” said Frostbite.
“Do you think we’ll have one of those, soon?”
“Impossible to say.”
“What about red ages, what do they have?”
“Wars, I’m afraid.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right for demons.” He shook his head. “What else should I look out for, in a purple age? Or is it too unpredictable?” he added, remembering some of Frostbite's earlier comments.
“Ah, well, beyond the emphasis on rules… Any turning of the age comes with physical changes. It may be quite some time before you see any, the change has only just begun, but it would be wise to keep your eye out.”
“Do you think that it'll affect my human form?” asked Danny, frowning over the brim of his cup.
Frostbite frowned as well. “It may. There are unfortunately few studies on the matter.”
“You'll probably be seeing a lot of me, then.”
“A silver lining, no matter how the coming age unfolds.”
Danny looked away and drank his frozen chocolate to hide how hard he was blushing.
.
“So, you’re going to shrink and grow wings?” asked Tucker, raising an eyebrow.
“I mean, maybe,” said Danny. “I could also become a vampire. Or maybe a werewolf. Those have a lot of rules, too.”
“And Tinkerbell-lookalikes aren’t the only kind of fairy,” said Sam. “Elves, hobgoblins, and banshees are all kinds of fairy, too.”
Due to various construction noises at Fentonworks - apparently something about the change of age had tripped some detector or other, and Danny’s parents were very excited about it - Team Phantom had retreated to Jazz’s usual haunt. The library. Specifically, one particular reading room in the library. It was very cozy, with the three of them, and verged on tight when Jazz was in there.
Of course, as soon as Danny had thought that, Jazz returned with a teetering stack of books. She dropped them on the table as soon as she shut the door.
Tucker sneezed. “Blegh. Dust. This is why hard drives are the superior form of data storage.”
“Books can’t be defeated by magnets or overheating,” pointed out Jazz.
“Sure they can. It’s called fire.”
“Is… is this an RPG book?” asked Danny, tugging one of the books out of the pile.
Jazz blushed. “It’s– Well, yeah, but it’s something people did research for. It’s all based on actual folklore and modern takes on that folklore. I thought it would be easier to digest.”
“Gimme,” said Tucker, reaching for it.
Danny moved it out of his reach.
“I’ve also got the Encyclopaedia of Fairies, Collected Celtic Folklore, and a bunch of fairytale collections, of course,” said Jazz, ignoring Tucker and Danny as they wrestled over the book. “Do you want The Dark Side of Fairytales?”
“Yes, please,” said Sam. “I think I’d lose it trying to work through the others.”
“I was thinking we could list common weaknesses,” said Jazz. “Physical characteristics are probably too varied, but the list of what works against fairies should be a little bit easier.”
Tucker managed to get the book away from Danny - via treacherous use of Danny’s ticklish spot - and Danny decided not to push Jazz by using his ghost powers in the library. Sulking, he took the encyclopedia. That, at least, would be organized.
.
“I regret all my decisions,” said Danny.
“Is there any weakness here that isn’t contradicted by something else?” asked Sam.
“Iron, I think,” said Tucker. “I haven’t found anything that contradicts iron. Unless, you know, fairy knights wear steel armor. That’d do it.”
“Well,” said Jazz, with forced cheer, “we can still take the most common ones and test them regularly, to make sure they don’t trip you up later, right, Danny?”
“I guess,” said Danny, eying an illustration of a troll. “I hope I don’t wind up looking like that.”
“Don’t say that,” said Tucker. “You’ll jinx yourself.”
Danny let both the book and his head fall to the table with a thump.
.
“Have you noticed anything?” asked Jazz, a couple weeks later.
“No,” said Danny, as he had every time. “I haven’t even gotten into the bathroom yet. Give me a break.”
“I just think that you should probably get checked up. There could be internal changes.”
Danny, who had just endured an interminable week of sex ed in health class, groaned. “Don’t say that, that’s gross.”
“It’s not gross, it’s just the way things are,” protested Jazz. “I know you haven’t had a chance to go since Mom and Dad started in on… whatever… but I think you really should. Your health is important.”
“Fine,” said Danny. “But later, and only if I can get past Mom and Dad.”
“That’s all I’m asking,” said Jazz.
Danny felt like she was asking a lot more than that, especially so early in the morning. He liked the Far Frozen, but it was, as the name suggested, far away. The commute would eat up his weekend.
“You guys’ll have to patrol without me, you know that, right?”
“It’s fine,” said Jazz. “I’ve been practicing, and it’s been quiet.”
It had been, too. Danny mumbled something like agreement in response and slipped into the bathroom.
The first thing he did was poke the various iron bits that he and his friends had scraped together, on the premise that no one knew what ‘cold iron’ really meant. There was a horseshoe nail, a broken piece of wrought iron, some regular iron filings, steel screws of various types, a lump of iron ore, and, Danny’s favorite, a tiny iron meteorite in its own case.
(Danny had taken to carrying that last one around in his pocket during the day and putting it away at night.)
None of them had given Danny so much as a rash. That done, he checked his ears. They weren’t pointy. Teeth. They weren’t sharp. Fingers. Had the right number of joints. Skin. Still a pale pink. Eyes. Blue, with round pupils. He ran through the same check as Phantom, although that one naturally had different results.
Either way, he couldn’t find any changes. He hadn’t even grown taller, as far as he could tell, which was too bad. He was among the shortest in his grade, although luckily not the shortest. That honor fell on Mikey.
He sighed. He almost would prefer the changes to just happen already. But he knew better than to say anything like that out loud.
He grabbed his toothbrush. If he really was going to the Far Frozen today, he’d need to get ready.
.
The Ghost Zone looked different.
Not a lot different. The sky was still mostly green, islands and doors still floated lazily about, and small ghosts flitted to and fro. There was, however, a haze of sweet-smelling purple mist in the air, and the grass growing on the ground had taken on a more natural hue.
There was also a change in the quality of light and temperature of the Zone. Most of the time, the Zone felt timeless, as if it was stuck in an eternal, neon night at the bottom of a very deep cave. But today, it felt a lot like stepping outside on an autumn morning. Which, incidentally, was what it was back in Amity Park.
It was weird. Not bad, but… weird. Definitely weird.
He took off towards the Far Frozen, making note of other small changes as he went. Doors and islands, at first glance largely unaffected, seemed to be clustered closer together. Several of the trees he passed looked alive, rather than dead. The wind, when it blew audibly, sounded musical.
Yes, Danny was definitely leaning towards fairies rather than vampires.
However, Danny was only about halfway to the Far Frozen when he came upon a lair that simply should not have been anywhere near there: Clockwork’s tower, Long Now.
Once he recognized it, he hovered for a few minutes, trying to figure out why Clockwork would be here. None of the reasons Danny could think of were very good. He rarely put himself so directly on someone’s path unless it was important. And, in Danny’s experience, important often meant calamitous.
It was a lot less disturbing when he went looking for Clockwork.
Nevertheless, Danny shook himself and flew to the tower. If Clockwork needed him… Well, it was important. Reaching the Far Frozen could wait.
He touched down outside the large double doors, which opened immediately, and went in. The atrium of the tower was empty, however…
Danny crouched down to look at the floor. The last time he was here - about a month ago - this floor had been plain stone. Now, it was inlaid with graceful swooping patterns that reminded Danny of vines, or maybe visualizations of how planets moved. They were still somewhat indistinct, half-formed, but they described a path. After another moment of hesitation, Danny followed.
The path traced a spiral through Long Now, leading Danny through rooms he didn’t know existed. As Danny went, the purple haze got thicker and thicker, to the point where Danny could swear he tasted lilacs on his tongue. Finally, though, it deposited him in a circular courtyard.
There was a garden in the courtyard, and at the very center of it was a tree. Both the garden and the tree were divided into quarters. One, had plants and trees just starting to put up new growth, and young, early spring flowers. Another was rich and bright with full foliage and the buzz of summer insects. The third looked much like Amity Park did now, wreathed in the golds and oranges of fall, with fruit growing on branches. The final one was wintery, cold, but still vital with winter-blooming flowers.
The tree at the center was partially in all four quarters, and looked it, with one quarter of the tree in bloom, a quarter in full leaf, a quarter bearing fruit, and a quarter bare.
It was a very Clockwork garden.
What wasn’t like Clockwork, however, was the number of other guests.
Frostbite was there, and given the other two, Danny flew over to him as quickly as he could without damaging any of Clockwork’s plants. The others were Fright Knight and Undergrowth.
Clockwork, meanwhile, had his back to them, looking up at the tree.
“Doubtless, you are all wondering why I have summoned you here,” said Clockwork, turning away from the tree to face them. To Danny’s surprise, he was sporting a pair of legs. He eyed them with interest. He’d never seen Clockwork with legs before.
“The thought had crossed my mind, meddler,” said Undergrowth.
“Before it is fully set, an age can be manipulated,” said Clockwork, gliding across the ground with small, even steps. “Influenced. Changed. Not at all easily, but I have put the first building blocks into place.” He waved his hand through the air, purple swirling after it. “I intend to do so in your favor.”
“For what purpose?” asked Frostbite, just a touch of a growl in his voice.
“I am not sure you would believe me if I told you.”
“I would,” said Danny.
Clockwork smiled. “Mischief, mainly. I have few enough chances to divest myself of some of the Observants’ control. This, establishing a hierarchy that they are not party to, is one of them.”
“And what hierarchy would that be, Lord Clockwork?” asked Fright Knight, his voice almost as deep as Frostbite’s.
“The seasonal courts,” said Clockwork, gesturing to the corners of his garden. “Summer and Winter, Fall and Spring. The wheel of the year, all things moving in order. With this changing of the age, seasons will come to the Realms, as will night and day, and the phases of the moon.”
“And you’ll make yourself stronger by marking the passage of time,” said Undergrowth. “I see how that helps you, but I have no interest in that. How will it help us?”
“Seasonal courts must have their rulers,” said Clockwork. “I think you would serve well as the King of Summer. And, you, as Champion of Autumn.” He turned slightly to Fright Knight, and as he did so, his hood fell back, revealing silvery white braided hair and pointed ears.
Actually… Clockwork had stayed in one, young and relatively handsome, form this whole time. If Danny looked closely, the other three ghosts around him also looked more… polished, maybe. It’d take a lot of work to make Undergrowth look like anything but a plant monstrosity, but he had more flowers growing from his vines. Frostbite’s fur looked shinier and sleeker. Even Fright Knight seemed less tarnished and bloody.
Danny raised his hand to his own ears. They weren’t nearly as pointed as Clockwork’s, but the taper was detectable. Had the concentration of purple ectoplasm here accelerated the change? Or had it happened when Danny first came through the portal?
“As for Chief of the Winter Court, I do not think I would ever find anyone more suitable than you, Chief Frostbite, who have managed the Far Frozen well for these past centuries. And, finally, for our Prince of Spring, one who embodies youth, change, and life.”
Clockwork had, without Danny realizing it, gotten close enough to touch Danny’s face. He flinched back, surprised.
“I have ice powers, though,” said Danny.
“As there is snow in spring,” said Clockwork, unconcerned.
“And… I’m not sure about the responsibility.”
“You could be a figurehead. But the symbolism is necessary, to wrest control from the Observants. Even now, they are attempting to force things onto a path more suitable for themselves.”
“I don’t know…”
Undergrowth scoffed. “It hardly matters. I accept your proposal. It has been some time since I ruled, and it’s high time I do so again.”
Clockwork nodded. “Then stand in summer, King Undergrowth.”
“I will take on this task as well,” said Fright Knight. He walked to the autumn section of the garden and drew his sword, setting the tip in the soil.
“You’re doing this much, just to annoy the Observants?” asked Frostbite.
Clockwork tilted his head to one side, regarding both Danny and Frostbite. “There are some other forces at play as well, admittedly. Rest assured, this path leads to the greatest good. I cannot reveal more than that.”
“Then I accept,” said Frostbite. “But be warned: if I should discover treachery at the end of this path, it will not go well for you.”
Well, Danny could hardly say no after all of that. He still had to check. “So, the greatest good?”
“That is correct.”
“And saying no, that wouldn’t lead to something on the level of, you know. Dan.”
“Not on his level, no. Not for you.”
Danny squinted at Clockwork. He had to wonder if that careful phrasing was a way to get around a restriction on lying.
But Clockwork had helped Danny, more than once. Even if Clockwork wasn’t being entirely honest, Danny should at least return the favor.
He scuffed his feet against the garden path, then looked up. “What do I need to do?”
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So, I keep thinking about the Kyouya-nii AU (which is starting to take up residence in my mind), and I keep thinking about two specific things in particular
One - I am unable to think about it without imagining the sunniest, most joyful littol child walking behind his "Awesome Kyouya-nii!" during patrol and thinking (or talking) about how he's the "Coolest brother ever!" while Kyouya has that scowl. Just, the contrast. Scary, and the adorable that's secretly scary
Two - I keep wondering how Kyouya met Izuku, because unless he has some internal feral potential detector (which, I would not put it past him) he probably would have needed to see something that showed off that potential. Like, you know how in the first episode of MHA we see kiddie Izuku getting between those bully brats and the kid they were bullying? I'm wondering if it was something like that.
Also, you have gotten me obsessed with KHR even though I'm very likely never gonna watch or read it
See no this is exactly what I'm going for with this AU.
Hibari sees Izuku stand up to some bullies and is like "nice' and then he sees Izuku spear tackle someone and he's like "Nice" and then the kid gets up all bloody and bruised after getting his ass kicked and just pats himself on the cheeks all "next time I'll go for the knees cause his quirk makes his joints weak" and he's like "Wao" and decides that this small animal is adorable and obviously needs a stronger predator to help it grow into its fangs.
And, well, what better carnivore is there out there than him?
Which of course means that Hibari basically grabs Izuku by the back of his shirt, drags him to ta clearing, and starts educating him in the fine art of ass-kicking. Which then ends up with Izuku crying all over him when Hibari gives him his very own training tonfa and decides that Izuku's obviously far enough along to come with him to hunt down rule breakers on his patrols.
So everyone gets treated to the terrifying sight of Hibari strolling through town with the most adorable little green child trailing after him, spouting praise and just chattering on and on. And there are a few people who are Big Worried about this kid because it's Hibari, ya know?
But then someone sees Hibari beat a thug only halfway down and then step back and nudge the Izuku forward. And before anyone can stop him, because holy shit dude what the fuck that's an entire BABY, Izuku whips out his training tonfa and finishes fucking this thug all the way up.
And Hibari just kind of smiles with his body but not his face, pats the kid on the head 1 time, and then they move on.
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trading paper dolls - chapter three
Fandom: Masters of the Air
Rating: T
Chapter: 3 / 3
Word Count: 3982
Summary:
Tired of the pin-up girls, Alex draws Buck Cleven in a similar style, never intending for the sketch to fall into the hands of Bucky Egan.
read on tumblr: one | two
Gale drowned himself. He took the drawing to the sink that was crowded in the mornings but not at that time of day and watched the door as he held the paper underwater, shredding it until he could push the pulp into the drain with his fingertips. The task wasn’t difficult or strenuous; the paper was already so soft that it tore with ease. When it was done, he wiped his hands dry on his overcoat and went out. It had only taken a few minutes.
He had never tried to attract more attention than what was necessary for the boys to respect his rank. He didn’t boast, didn’t dance, didn’t get drunk. He stepped into leadership as a major because it was what he had to do, and he thought he did a fair job of it, keeping a level head and watching out for his boys. But it seemed he had attracted more attention than he’d been aware of. He had been not only observed but commissioned, commissioned into a drawing his fingers had since turned to a mush that hadn’t appeared dissimilar to many of their meals.
John had claimed responsibility, but it wasn’t as though Gale didn’t know where the sketch had come from. In their very bunkhouse lived the man who provided such things for the camp at large. Unless there were another man who did the same sort of drawings—but of male subjects—in secret, Gale knew the artist was Alex. Alex had been quiet, then, quickly, after Gale made the effort to speak with him, Alex had been forthcoming and warm. He was sharp, he was keen to be useful with his mapping abilities, but now Gale saw that he hadn’t yet learned everything about the lieutenant, because he hadn’t expected this from him. It left Gale feeling exposed.
Aside from destroying the drawing, he attempted to stick to his regular routine. He soon decided that no one else knew. The other option—that his boys were not only liars but incredibly good liars—was impossible. Gale couldn’t start doubting everyone around him, everyone he had flown with and trusted. He would be dishonouring them and himself to assume the worst of them after all they’d been through together. He wouldn’t bring the disease of paranoia into this camp, not amongst their forces. The problem of the drawing was a strange but isolated one, which should’ve been some relief to him.
He knew. Alex knew. John knew. John had barely told him, and Alex hadn’t told at all. Of course, Gale had been tempted to confront him. He felt he was owed an explanation, because surely being drawn like that was a sign of disrespect. That was where it got tricky though; Gale didn’t believe, in general, that pin-ups were disrespectful. Maybe they weren’t exactly appropriate either—not the kind of art you’d want shipped home to your mother with your effects if you bought it over Germany—but they were meant for admiring. They were tokens of the softness men missed in places like this, in circumstances like these. Was he that type of token? Was he an ideal?
The thought made Gale feel imaginary. It was hard enough to keep tabs on yourself here, to wake each day still knowing who you were. Where did you preserve your identity when nothing really belonged to you? On a piece of paper?
But the paper hadn’t been his, so that couldn’t be right. What need did John have to preserve Gale in a drawing when he had the real person? This puzzled Gale. It kept him subdued around the boys, and around John in particular, which was strange. He’d been feeling, lately, these urges to reach out for John. They all moved in such close contact, lived in such cramped quarters, that Gale would sometimes lie awake in the night and imagine digging a tunnel only he knew about. Not for escape—just for a place to go be alone for a while. John was the person who drove him closest to the edge, but he was also the only one Gale couldn’t leave, even in these fantasies where he burrowed into the earth and panted hot breaths in the dark. He had touched John at last—their two hands in John’s pocket, Gale’s light contact with John’s rough cheek—and then John had tucked the folded drawing into his palm. He had put the page between them.
Gale wondered what would’ve happened if he hadn’t given in to his instinct to slip his hand in alongside John’s. Would John have ever told him about the drawing? Would he have wept when he did? Gale wasn’t sure he understood the crying anymore than he understood the sketch—not the reasons behind them—but he was beginning to understand how they made him feel.
The revelation happened over the course of several days succeeding his discovery of the drawing. The food was shit. The wind whistled through the cracks in their bunkhouse walls. The thin patch in the heel of Gale’s sock had worn into a hole. The realization couldn’t fill his stomach or block the wind or darn his sock, but it changed something he couldn’t physically feed or shield or warm. He saw that he was treasured. He was. He, who had never felt less worthy, here in what seemed like a cold hell. There was a stalwart sense of brotherhood between the prisoners of this camp, but he hadn’t believed tenderness could survive in these conditions.
Reflecting on the drawing’s wear, Gale felt himself an accidental witness to not only gentleness but passion. Flapping in the cold wind hadn’t done that to the paper; it had been transformed by heat and sweat. Those things had touched a paper body that wasn’t his… but was meant to be.
—
The day Buck asked the question, Alex didn’t see it coming.
Though it wasn’t providing much warmth, the sun was shining, and that was a comfort they hadn’t enjoyed in what seemed like weeks. The wind had gotten itself tangled up between the trees, or lain down in some field; wherever it was, it was elsewhere. Sitting on the step outside the hut was almost pleasant, if you forgot about who was watching the step and where the step was and how they had gotten there and why they had to remain. But you did have to forget sometimes in order to breathe. Alex planted his hands behind him and leaned back while Buck stretched his legs out ahead of him.
He'd been describing the P-51 Mustangs again. Buck always wanted to hear about them. It’d gotten so Alex could tell Buck was imagining himself inside one, eyes closed as he asked where was this gauge and that, how were his sightlines if he turned his head just so.
“You could fly that baby blind,” Alex said, grinning.
Buck grinned back.
“Wouldn’t that be something.”
Alex agreed that it would, then he explained how, when you flew something so sleek and fast, it felt like an extension of your body. Instead of rushing to give Buck an account of missions he’d flown, Alex lingered over sensory memories of getting a feel for those planes. He recalled early days in training as he talked. His eyes were closed too when he spoke of easing a Mustang into a smooth bank, tilting her until it seemed he was sailing along on sunbeams. At the time, he’d sweat—damn near cooked—in the cabin, but now, he tried to feel just a little of that warmth, draw it through time to nestle up against. He was hunkered right down in the memory until he heard Buck say, “How’d he ask for it?”
Alex opened his eyes and frowned. “Say again?” He was lost. Buck wasn’t looking his way.
“When Bucky came to you about the drawing, how’d he… what did he say?”
“Oh. Well…”
Alex’s heart was racing, but Buck looked as calm as anything, staring out at the yard while Alex watched the side of his face.
There was so much information in the question. First, it informed Alex that Buck had found out about the drawing, someway, somehow. Second, it told him Buck had connected the drawing to Alex and Egan both. Third, it said Egan hadn’t ratted on him, since Buck didn’t know about the drawing’s exact origins. Finally, the question meant Buck wasn’t angry with him. He definitely didn’t sound angry, just like he was placidly working on a problem. Alex had seen him that way before during the meetings he and Macon were now included in, meetings for plotting escape routes and learning the fastest and quietest ways to incapacitate the enemy if they had to fight their way out.
But how to answer such a question? Now that Buck knew Alex had sketched him without his knowledge, he probably owed him the full truth, and telling him that meant admitting Egan hadn’t come to him at all. And what about the silent deal he’d made with Egan whereby they kept each other’s secrets? If Alex’s had been exposed, did that void Egan’s as well? Or did Alex ignore it all? Maybe the way forward here was to find his own escape route from a matter that no longer involved him. He could see what his role had been and he felt, for better or worse, that he’d played it. The rest was between Buck and Egan.
“It wasn’t much of a conversation,” Alex said. The explanation, though evasive, wasn’t a lie—Egan had snatched the paper during a raid of the bunkhouse.
Buck looked disappointed that Alex had failed to satisfy his curiosity.
“You know,” he said, eyes still forward, “Bucky ran and got recaptured more than once after parachuting from his plane. He fought like hell trying to escape. He could’ve died. They meant to kill him.” Buck turned his head to look back at Alex. “He gave me that drawing like a surrender.”
Alex’s lips parted, but he didn’t know how to respond. He understood how the most difficult thing was sometimes to go willingly. For a man with grit, a man with strength and ideas and convictions, it was easy to value control over everything else. You got so used to protecting your right to make your own choices, Alex thought, that it was hard when somebody came along who made surrender seem not only possible but appealing. Alex had learned this lesson with his sweetheart back home, but not everybody had a sweetheart back home. Not everybody got to learn to let go on a porch swing in Detroit while the condensation on a glass of lemonade hid their nervous, sweaty palms. Some people had POW camps and paper dolls and that was the best they got.
“That doesn’t mean he’s weak,” Alex proposed cautiously.
“No,” Buck agreed. “It sure doesn’t.”
“If you find you’ve got to know just what it does mean, I’d suggest asking him.”
“No two ways about it, huh?”
“There never seems to be for anything worth doin’.”
Buck rose. Alex hadn’t meant for him to act right then, but it wasn’t as though they had a list of pressing duties that needed attending to.
“Thanks for your thoughts, Alex,” Buck said, leaning down to where Alex still sat and extending his hand.
Alex nodded, shaking it. “Buck.”
When he expected Buck to withdraw his hand, Buck tightened his grip instead.
“One more thing,” he said. He leaned a little closer. “There aren’t any others of me out there, correct?”
“That’s correct,” Alex promised, meeting Buck’s assessing gaze with his steady one. “And there won’t be.”
Buck released his hand and, sitting forward once he was alone, Alex released a heavy sigh. Not too bad, he thought. It was behind them now. He’d even managed to resist joking that, if there had been other pin-up drawings of Buck, Egan surely would’ve collected them all up by now. No, he’d handled things the best he could’ve. The rest was for the two majors to sort out.
With the day as fine as it was, Alex eventually pushed himself up off the step and took a walk across the yard. He could see Macon and DeMarco busy with something. They were looking at the ground. As he neared, he panicked, but tried not to show it. They’d drawn a ring in the dirt and, staring at it, DeMarco kneaded the back of his neck in frustration. What the hell had they done? Put a goddamn map in the yard, right where the goons could see? Alex fought the urge to walk faster.
There were stones scattered across the dirt.
“What’s this?” he asked Macon lightly.
“I’m plottin’ my move,” Macon said. “What would you do?”
Alex’s eyes widened at his friend’s casual tone. He didn’t realize his expression had been observed until he heard DeMarco’s laugh, rough like the scruff on his cheeks, and looked up.
“It’s marbles,” he said. “We’re playing marbles with rocks.”
“Oh.” This was an amused huff from Macon. He had glanced up to see why DeMarco was explaining and also caught the look on Alex’s face. “Shit! Speakin’ of marbles, Alex here’s thinkin’ we fuckin’ lost ours, Benny. Thought we was out here holdin’ cartography club.”
He doubled over laughing while Alex rolled his eyes. Well, at least Macon appeared to be feeling better.
DeMarco crouched to consider his next shot. Alex angled his head close to Macon’s ear.
“I’ll just leave you and ‘Benny’ to it. I just got an idea for another drawing. Maybe two guys from our bunkhouse this time?”
Macon glared at him, but Alex was grinning now.
“It ain’t like that,” Macon protested. He took a playful swipe at Alex, but Alex stepped clear. Macon winced as he twisted, hand hitting nothing.
“Watch your neck, now,” Alex cautioned. “Then again…” He glanced to where DeMarco had circled away from them, lowering his hand to the dirt in preparation to flick a stone towards their makeshift target. “I saw him rubbin’ his neck. Maybe he could do yours.”
Macon pointed a warning finger.
“Don’t interfere in other people’s business.”
Alex only smiled and backed away. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. If this Buck and Egan thing worked out, it might be nice going two for two. It’d be a way to pass the time.
—
“Right where I thought you’d be.”
Bucky smiled at the sound of Buck’s voice and allowed the chair he’d rocked back on two legs to fall forward again onto four. He listened as Buck’s even steps entered the room, their room—everybody’s room, but their room at the moment, because it was empty but for the two of them.
“Creature of habit,” Buck continued as he strode into Bucky’s line of sight.
Bucky glanced up and his smile broadened.
“Imprisonment’ll do that to a guy.”
“S’pose so.”
Buck grabbed a chair and dragged it around, then straddled it backwards, facing Bucky. He crossed his arms along the back. Bucky couldn’t help his light laugh, waiting for Buck to speak. They hadn’t done much of that (talking) in days. Bucky was scared, not that he’d say it. The laugh was more of an anxious giggle, which was meant as a question: Where are we starting from? Because he didn’t know how to begin anymore. He didn’t know how to step back into the last normal conversation they’d had without his feet going out from under him, slipping on the bloody wheel of his heart. He kept trying to get his balance, but that heart-wheel kept spinning, faster each time Buck caught his eye or called his name. He felt choked; he wanted to run. He fixed his gaze on Buck’s face and, grinning with a nervous brand of hilarity, said, “Hi.”
Buck smiled back, amusement in his eyes. Bucky thought he looked like maybe he didn’t know how to begin either.
“Hey there, stranger,” Buck replied, soft and low.
Now, as long as Bucky didn’t cry—he started to, and thumbed the tear from the inner corner of his eye.
“We got some business, Major?” he asked, smiling at Buck, at himself, at his control leaving him like a kite string jerking through his hands.
“We do,” Buck said. “You wanna lead?”
“Buck, if I knew the steps, I’d already be on the floor.”
Bucky pressed his finger into a crack in the table, tracing back and forth until Buck’s hand hovered over his. After a breath or two, it landed. Bucky stared at it covering his own.
“You don’t have anything to say?” Buck urged.
Swallowing, Bucky shook his head.
“I’d ruin it.” His voice came out hoarse.
“Maybe”—from his tone, Bucky could tell he was teasing—“but isn’t it worth trying?”
“I don’t really know… how to apologize for somethin’ like that…” Bucky fumbled out.
“You wanna apologize for it?”
Surprised, Bucky glanced up.
“Don’t you want me to? Isn’t that what this is about?”
Because the hand—it was comfort. The words were a return to their old friendliness. The privacy was necessary for the topic at hand, until they buried it deep and left no marker.
“No,” Buck said simply. “I was hoping we understood each other now.”
Bucky laughed loudly then, head thrown back, hand on his chest. When he looked at Buck again, his friend was blushing.
“Well, radio man,” Bucky started with a grin, “I think we got our wires crossed somewhere ’cause—”
“You’re in love with me,” Buck blurted. The abruptness, so unlike Buck, would’ve been enough to stop Bucky in his tracks, but then there were the words—petal-strewn overkill if the point was just to shut Bucky up.
“Tell me quick if I’m wrong,” Buck went on, “’cause I’ve looked at this every which way and it’s all I’ve got, John.”
“Buck. Gale.” It was possible the world was ending and Bucky couldn’t seem to clear his throat.
“I didn’t think it’d be like this,” Buck said, so faint Bucky wasn’t sure he was supposed to hear. All he could do in response was shake his head to show he didn’t follow. “I thought I’d see it comin’. You snuck up on me, John.”
If Buck kept using his name like that, Bucky believed he might do something impulsive, like bite his friend’s lip between his teeth.
“Me?” he checked.
As though to demonstrate just how impossible the idea of him sneaking up on anyone was, Bucky scraped the chair back as he staggered to his feet. He needed to pace. He couldn’t deal with this unless he was moving.
But Buck’s leg shot out and kicked Bucky’s chair.
“Sit your ass back down and listen to me,” he snapped. Bucky stared at him. “I’m tryin’… I’m trying…”
Slowly, Bucky reached for his chair. He lifted it off the ground so its legs wouldn’t scrape. He set it down close to Buck’s. He put his hand on Buck’s knee.
“You love me too, huh?” he guessed, as crazy as it seemed. “That the size of it?”
“Just about.”
They chuckled over how badly this was going, how well. Bucky booted the leg of Buck’s chair.
“What’d you do with my pin-up?” he demanded jokingly.
“Got rid of it.”
“Yeah? You got some nerve, Buck. That was my property.”
“You don’t need it anymore,” Buck told him.
Bucky leaned in, taunting. “Says who?”
“Little closer and I’ll show ya.”
Bucky went smiling. He got as close to Buck as he could before the tiny bit of him that was still unsure he hadn’t made a mistake somewhere and misunderstood hit the brakes. He could feel Buck’s breath on his face; he’d have bet Buck could feel the same on his. He could see, up so close, where the cold had chapped Buck’s skin, and he could see when Buck made up his mind to kiss him. Bucky closed his eyes between that moment and the next, and then there was the pressure of Buck’s mouth, making him almost leap out of his skin.
He'd spent weeks sharing a bed with that sheet of paper, like a lover. Before that, he’d spent months lugging his heart around, heavy with the enormity of his infatuation. Years he’d known Buck, liked Buck, cared about Buck more than he cared about anyone else he knew or had known. It wasn’t sudden. And yet, as Buck’s mouth opened just slightly and Bucky felt the difference between his dry lips and his wet tongue, it was. He moaned because he’d never been shy, and that put his lips in contact with Buck’s teeth—another new feeling—because Buck smiled at the sound.
Determinedly, Bucky cupped the back of Buck’s neck and kissed him harder, deeper, tilting his head. They couldn’t stop now. He couldn’t stand it. He didn’t want a pause to let Buck speak or to stare into his eyes. He knew what he sounded like, knew how he looked. Really, Bucky would’ve kept going even if he hadn’t been able to breathe. He held Buck greedily against him, wishing there weren’t a chairback between them so it could be more than their mouths, more than his hand now on the back of Buck’s head. I did, he thought. I thought it’d be exactly like this.
Buck was like a food he’d been deprived of, though Bucky couldn’t think what that might’ve been just then, because there was nothing he wanted to taste more than Buck’s mouth. Again and again, he opened it wider with his lips, dove forward with his tongue. He found Buck a little coyer until Buck snatched him by the front of his shirt and yanked him to the edge of his seat. Bucky had to feel blindly for the table and grip it hard to prevent himself from knocking the chairs aside like he wanted to. He wanted so much.
He surprised himself by being the reasonable one, the thoughtful one. He eased Buck’s grip from his shirt and slowed their kisses to a last lick from Buck’s tongue over his bottom lip.
“Welcome to the goddamn bunkhouse,” he whispered. “We got roommates, and they’ll come back sooner or later.”
Gaze lowered and mouth pink from Bucky’s efforts, Buck smirked as he straightened Bucky’s shirt.
“Ain’t that a shame.”
“I know some good hiding places though,” Bucky bragged.
“Do you now?”
“Kept that drawing secret, didn’t I?”
Buck shook his head in amusement. “That’s a little different. You can’t hide me between the pages of a book.”
“I didn’t hide it between pages,” Bucky informed him, smiling devilishly. “I hid it between sheets.”
“You can’t hide me in your bunk.”
Bucky slouched back in his chair and smirked at Buck.
“You can’t,” Buck repeated, fighting not to laugh at the way Bucky was so clearly uninterested in listening to him.
“That’s one opinion,” was all he would allow.
“An opinion,” Buck echoed in disbelief. “I call the other option insanity.”
“You call you in my bed insanity? I call it somethin’ to live for.”
And Bucky meant it in that big way, in that grand way. He meant it in a small way too: that he would live little by little for it, that the sun rose and set on his wanting of Buck, but it would’ve risen and set anyway. He would live for the possibility of Buck in each moment, from his first stirrings of wakefulness in the morning to the final shift on the sheets that let him sleep with some modicum of comfort in this forlorn place. Someday, mark my words, his sly smile and raised eyebrows said to Buck, you’ll be on those sheets with me. And, boy, won’t we live then, Buck. Won’t we live then.
#my writing#MotA#Masters of the Air#MotA fic#Bucky x Buck#Clegan#Gale 'Buck' Cleven#Alexander Jefferson#John 'Bucky' Egan#Richard Macon#Bernard DeMarco
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hey! absolutely love your art and your rainer interpretation- can you talk about your headcanons lore-wise involving rainer and mike? honestly you can talk about more than just those two as well i'm very curious about your interpretations honestly.
YOOO I LOVE UR RAINER ALSO thank u.....
this will hopefully not be complete word salad. bc my brains fried already, but my views on petscop characters are esoteric and best and downright incomprehensible at worst. so idk how legible this will be JDKSHSKSBSK
uhh ill start with like. jill is significantly older than anna and lina. rainers actually fairly close in age to anna.
rainers biological dad isnt in the picture and actually went missing a few years after him and jill divorced. it runs in the family i guess. but since tom was there longer hes only ever called him dad, and both jill and him took the last name hammond when they got married. and mike was actually an accident! a welcome one tho. jill and tom were in their 40s and rainer was like 16 or so.
they were very close tho! he was very close with his immediate family. for the brief time he was in college he still lived at home despite the commute.
mike would sit and watch him work on the game all the time. he wanted him to teach him how to code (thats why he created the "petscop kids" after school program! at first anyway...) but 5-6 year olds dont exactly have the attention span for explaining how the dev kit console works. unless theyre belle i guess. but he did get into art! and considering rainers also an artist he encouraged it. mike would sometimes draw his own pets to be put in the game, but since it never went past evencare they never showed up. he did sorta base toneth on mike, and that was before he based any of the other pets on other family members.
mike went missing shortly after rainers mental health was declining. he ran away after some argument with his mom, and nobody remembers what the argument was even about. since this was after marvin hit the dog with the car, and he was beginning to experience psychosis, he immediately made the connection and believed marvin had something to do with it. the cops found it a little suspicious that rainer somehow just knew he had been struck by a car, and he was the only suspect for quite a while. tom had to vouch for him pretty hard and get him a lawyer.
as for vaguer things. the newmaker plane was started in an attempt to find out where mike wouldve run to. he was already recording movements in game, so he put all of mikes in game behaviors into a to scale version of their town, trying to train it to show him where he couldve gone. this obviously didnt work. didnt help that it was completely flat terrain and like had only their house, the marks house, the school and like a couple roads. it actually lead him to the opposite side of the town than where his body was located.
marvin is ALSO severely mentally ill and was convinced that care was lina reborn before any of this happened. obviously anna didnt believe that since shes still. yknow. alive. but rainer introduced the A/B/NLM concept to him, and they both began to believe care was just lina A reborn. pre traumatic event lina. they were both trying to see if they could somehow force something like that to occur, in an attempt to bring mike A back. when belle didnt work, they figured she was too old, so they moved to care. part of this whole "changing your past" thing involved plucking out her eyebrows (lina A had trich) and essentially trying to reenact aforementioned traumatic event. thats why marvin kidnapped her to keep her in the school. and it didnt work! just traumatized the fuck outta the kid. they never had the chance to do anything to "bring mike back" by the end of it, which lead to Bathroom Tomb Event. however, last belle heard, he was pretty certain paul was actually mike A. she tried her best to keep that from paul before they became distant.
i feel like the core of a lot of this is that i really dont believe that the rebirthing process does anything at all. with enough manipulation you may start developing false memories, sure, but its not actually working. in retrospect it makes rainers character a lot sadder. just a terrified kid trying in vain to bring his baby brother back. its not easy losing someone so young in such a horrible way without knowing who took his life.
BUT UUHHH YEAH ^}^ can you tell ive been thinking abt petscop pretty much nonstop since the end of 2022 i bet you cant
#THIS IS SO MUCH MORE THSN JUST MIKE AND RAINER SJSJSJSIEUIEGE#i dont even like. know where all of this shit came from ill be honest#ive got so many abt paul and all the leskowitzes its not even funny. ive just been thinking abt rainer way more lately#petscop#petscop rainer#rainer hammond#headcanons
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All the artist:
Left wall: Roberto Corona
Right wall from top to bottom (left to right):
Lew Stringer, Carl Flint , Jonathan Gray, @Kapellosaur , @MORG , Carl Flint (once more) and Nigel Kitching
The rest was me.
#fleetway#fleetwaycomics#sonicthecomic#shortfusethecybernik#verminthecybernik#verfuse#redrawmeme#Soon I'll own the Vermin the cybernik tag#and it will all be stupid memes#Unless some of you start to get some art in there
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statement of osgood delos santos regarding a radio tower and the corner of his eye
#art zone#tma#pandorica radio tag#osgood delos santos (oc)#jonathan sims#YOU GOTTA DO SOME THINGS FOR YOURSELF SOMETIMES!!!!!#YOU WILL NEVER HAVE FREEDOM UNLESS YOU TAKE IT!!!!#ill write her statement later gimme a sec#fanart#? at least 50% of it is#this is what i get for starting my 2nd relisten while working on pandorica#art zone plus
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uh oh. I can't imagine mixing a virus with a wayward executable can lead to anything good..... what do you mean it just gave him the flu,
FINALLY, at LONG LONG LAST; Thierry's OFFICIAL Lovebug AU rendition! in which the man quite literally gets bugged.
with love! & with sick nasty
truly a lesson to all to watch what you download from your emails!
( the lovebug AU concept belongs to @things1do ~ )
#uwu art#The Stanley Parable#The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe#TSP Narrator#Lovebug AU#THERE WE GO HE'S OUT THE DOOR#i'll elaborate on him later. perhaps after a nap#which i will now go & have i just had to get him out#AS PROMISED#men who smell like candy & Fucking Illness#FUN FACT; the left & right thierrys started out as lovePLAGUE references first before i altered them some#i mean same premise in essence he's still sopping wet & uselessly pathetic & lovey dovey#but i can't stress enough he's not as terrifying as the right would lead you to believe#unless you're a germaphobe. maybe#I'LL ALSO ADD a more detailed reference of his eyes later & may enlarge these later bc they're pretty small#BUT anyway
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I've dealt with some real weirdos and especially in the NSFW spaces I've been, people lose a lot of common sense with strangers, but especially when they're horny, or think being in sexual spaces (or other places that are less formal and more open about some things) makes your boundaries nonexistent. People can hardly act normal asking for @ s of accounts for that kind of thing, but y'know it also applies to SFW spaces as well sometimes because the average attitude in some spaces are super goddamn weird and either culty or reinforcing parasocial shit... or just really entitled, need it be access to the creators of something, or towards just other people in the circle making stuff
Remember, if some rando is thinks they're entitled to your art/writing/edits/mods/whatever you post because they like it and act like you're a cold selfish bitch who is suddenly bad at being in [whatever hobby/creative job industry you do if you do that] for having boundaries, rejecting a commission/work from them, sometimes even just telling them requests aren't open, or they violate rules you have established are needed to follow you wherever (such as age), you're allowed to give them the boot because they're annoying, wrong, and are more often then not holding a one way ticket to parasocial town and you do not want that near you.
You owe them nothing, if negative behavior like that towards you is brought on/worsened by their mental health issues/disabilities/so on, it's still not your damn job or obligation to keep them around or help them manage even if you're understanding of it because they aren't your friend or kid. That's an explanation, not excuse or get out of jail free, block em.
#vena vents#things I wish I knew when I was like. 18#PSA I am mentally ill btw so before anyone starts on that last part. I just don't make it anyone else's problem#they are not obligated to give you a get out of jail free card for experiencing RSD or not noticing their boundaries or something#I just block if someone is giving off vibes that they would be the most annoying person ever if they ever interacted with you#which is to say not the average person in my notifs but there have been some#if you're still here you're not one of them#not art#I delight in blocking people like this unless they're clearly mentally ill bc I Get It Man but I'm not letting you violate my boundaries#Most of them have been just plain entitled teenagers and young adults tho
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#kirby#cursed image#daily kirby#my art#digital#hal laboratory#nintendo#so.#did not have to hobble to the leasing office - they called me first thing in the morning to send the contractor over#contractor looks for like 30 seconds and is like 'yep that thing is completely clogged with dust and a little rusted.'#'also it's 40 years old and to clean it we'd have to remove the whole thing anyway so at that point you might as well replace it.'#so they ran off to leave a proposal for the work with the leasing office#tomorrow is saturday - the leasing office will be open but I'm assuming the contractors will be off unless it's urgent#I'll go irritate them when I get up to see what route we're going with.#(I would like to replace the whole unit - even a cheap one will probably be more energy efficient)#(which helps make up for some of the energy cost)#(since the broken pos has to run all day to get even in the zip code of an acceptable temperature)#(and we're now starting day 5)#but at least my wife picked me up a bunch of snacks and some random little household stuff we'd been meaning to get since we moved#like we ran out of coat hangers#and we know what the problem is now#instead of having the poor on-site general maintenance guys just standing around looking confused#(not their fault they're not highly trained on one specialty machine!)#so like. it is technically an improvement.
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🧸 havent done talking in tags in a bit so here i go!!
#having toast with apricot jam rn!!!!!#im still working on art requests#some are ocs even!!!!! from a prompt i reblogged long agoo#also it is SO cold outside#i got myself a mitsuki funkopop.....#officially my first one and probably my last one#unless theyre gonna make mitsuki funkpop 2 (which isnt his sage mode)#i started watching heartstopper#AND IM SO CLOSE TO COMPLETING SPONGEBOB BATTLE FOR BIKINI BOTTOM YOU GUYS#i need like 6 more golden spatulas#its mostly finding patricks socks and paying mr krabs now#im still binging spongebob btw im on season 3#my cat says hi btw#i have three cats did you know actually#ive been thinking about swiss rolls havent had one in soo long#i started posting on instagram more frequently#dyed my hair too!! still getting used to new color#oh and im totally looking for some more game recs#im almost done with bioshock 2 but cheesus the crashing of this game..#it had me put it on hold for like a month#done with apricot jam toast#if u even care /j#if u read this far mwah#suntalking
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meow :3
color refs for me 🔥🔥🔥🔥
nevaeh thompson, she/he - secretary but not in a sexy way more of a bit of a loser way. They’re all losers
Jacob “”””””jake””””” Mulligan, he/they - always put a particular amount of spiteful emphasis on his nickname being jake if you do mention it, unless you just want to be normal about it
going to let you in on a little secret everyone here really uses any pronouns because like. That’s not my job. Make ur own pronouns dude. But also they CANT so I’m sitting here assigning arbitrary pronouns to them
#notwordswordstag#caustic corp#this pose was originally for a bigger piece I doubt you’ll see but if you do then this drawing doesn’t exist ok?#you may notice they all have slightly different tints of white it doesn’t really mean anything unless you make it which you can#but it’s mainly what goes with their design#iris' white is literally off magenta and I'm not really sure how that happened#they all end up either red or blue and it's super noticeable when they're standing next to eachother and I'm going to try to remedy this in#the future#but also it's not too big of a big deal because 90% of the time I go a bit off ref anyways#their EARINGS' colors however are chosen with a tiny bit more care#idk why this is captioned meow but it's staying <3#I need to start drawing at a reasonable brightness because I swear to you nevaehs face was near unreadable as I was drawing this and I fel#felt bad because I couldnt see what was going on but couldn't fix that#looking at it again it's not nearly that bad#I also neglected to color some of the outlines because they looked about the same color and I figured coloring them wouldn't make much of#a difference but I was WRONG like a fool but it doesn't effect the drawing as a while much#I didn't make the upper half of jacobs arm defined but that's just a him problem I think. I'm not responsible for his arm (I am)#eventually I'll do a wip dump and you'll get to look at all the art that's never getting finished but would be pretty cool if it did#she's holding her clipboard close to her chest which is something I changed from the original because she was#going to hold it behind her back but you couldn't see it then. rude.#specifically with the papers facing away from her
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I don't understand how there are people still supporting your content after it's clear you are an emotionally unstable narcissist. I swear some people care about their dumb fandoms more than common human decency.
First - I refuse to let my lore posts, drawings and theories be called 'content'. I protest. It is a very soulless term that reduces creativity (the very expression of the soul, mind you!) to some sort of shallow and more importantly, replaceable good. "Why you consume the content from this PROBLEMATIC :( person" in the same vein as "Why you buy your car fuel from an unethical corporation" is absolutely absurd in any way, because creations are not physical goods but something unique.
Second, you seem to be confused on what the fandom entails.
Being a fan of something, in fact, doesn't... really entail all that much? Being a fan of something doesn't, and will NEVER mean that you subscribe to certain cultural, religious, political or humanity values or opinions, it will NEVER be only for the ones the loudest people in the crowd deemed "right" and "pure" enough, and certainly it will NEVER be only for people with clear history *cough cough* or people of "proper" mental state *COUGH cough*.
The only, and only, and only, and ONLY "requirement" for being a Bloodborne fan is - to care about Bloodborne. Ironically, this is something people I tend to become antagonists with often fail at, as there is a difference between 'Bloodborne fan' and 'Mariadeline fan that knows nothing about BB lore and holds only interests in how to shame men more and what kind of fans to declare "problematic"' *COUGH COUGH* god sorry guys, got a bad cough attack during this ask fhdhgfds
But, again, I think we the people that obsess with this or that media came to the conclusion that gatekeeping leads to another extreme - the whole thing with shaming artists that draw something not accurate, and think something not 100% correct to the canon is 'dirtying' the canon. You know, the whole 'oh you are fan of X band? name 40 songs' thing. So I think gatekeeping should be avoided unless someone appears who is both completely uneducated about lore AND tries to set their own rules.
*COOOOOUGH COOOOOUGH*
But, yeah. Your confusion is likely caused by the fact that people who like Bloodborne... love to read about Bloodborne, and not about what user should be blacklisted and what character is this or that identity and what this or that character is "problematic" etc. I object the idea that certain game/movie/book/etc is only for "right" kind of people and I think we as society at this rate are capable of separating interaction with the fictional universe and personality/personal lives.
#ask replies#personal#disco horse#/negative#i think my line of thought started with cringe statements YEARS ago such as the stuff like uhhhhh...#like people being like 'hey CIS MEN stephen universe is for women and trans men and nb folks we take it back!!!'#i then thought 'wow bitches really think enjoying a fictional thing is only for certain type of people????'#but by now it seems to have came the full circle#that said i welcome everyone in this fandom who likes bloodborne#because art is supposed to unite people not divide them#and certainly no game or movie or book is ONLY for 'certain' type of people#art is supposed to have default capacity of reaching everyone despite everything.#yooo you remember how j k rowling claimed ppl who still love hp support her ideals? NEVER do that shit folks#granted there is grey area of people not wanting to get money from people that are on polar different side of politic/humanity compass#which is valid? but i'd appreciate it if that wasn't forced onto people who do NOT benefit anything and just want to enjoy stuff#also emotional stuff is somewhat absurd tbh#i am making conscious effort ever since sp*de blocked me without explaining why to hold people at far emotional distance#so they do not have to be exposed to possibly questionable emotional stuff they don't know how to address#like... i do not in fact cling to people nor i make friends anymore unless they are PROVEN to be as chaotic as me#but again for some people bad once = bad forever and I don't play that game anymore lol
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Throttling my brain right now because I keep having ideas for things I can write/draw for Keith vs The World and story arcs I want to add and I'm already crafting a timeline for a sequel and I'M GOING INSANE HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!
On one hand if I actually wrote everything I want to write for the series it would probably take years, and that's intimidating as hell. But on the other hand...
*Stares lovingly at Keith*
#I hope you guys are liking KvTW so far cus we're in for a WILD FUCKING RIDE#GET READY FOR A FEW YEARS OF JOY AND PAIN#It's a very daunting project but one that I'm willing to see through to completion#I may take breaks every now and then but I'm never ever abandoning KvTW#Unless I'm in some sort of tragic accident that forces me to amputate both my arms#But honestly? I'd probably start typing with my tongue#This dumb fanfic for a tiny fandom is my pride and joy#Also yes I waited to make this post until I had enough Keith art to fill this meme template#Keith vs The World#L4D2#keith l4d2#l4d2 keith#kebby rambles
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honestly i also think that groups arent going to award's shows anymore is also because its not only rigged but you also already know whos gonna win. like if they have 10 awards you already know b'ts is gonna get at least 3 whether they deserve it or not because otherwise fans will eat them alive, thats 7 awards left then you have male and female rookie which, well it excludes anyone who isnt a rookie, 1 award for best male (excludes women) 1 award for best female (excludes men), an award for solo artists, and then like performance of the year or something. so you basically have 50 groups sitting there ineligible for half the awards and not being able to get the other half because the same 5 groups always get them so like..... why even go at that point
yea i agree, awards shows across genre have been losing their sway for a couple of years. i think kpop ones are a particularly acute microcosm bc there are not very many types of awards, and there are really stark differences between the 'top tier' of groups and the rest of the ones that make up the majority of the industry, despite the industry being relatively small. even though there's numerically less groups debuting in the last twoish years (i did a quick survey of the wikipedia list of debuts by year to check numbers and it was about 30ish per year in the 2010s but so far it's been about 20ish for the 2020s. however this does include subunits and project groups so it's not a totally accurate figure), all those numbers compound on each other since there aren't the same amount leaving the industry as entering. so overall, these awards shows continue to be stacked towards the groups with the biggest companies and fanbases, even though there's better art that deserves that recognition being made by increasingly more and more groups that go completely unnoticed and have no chances of being noticed.
#the thing is that you cant really like.......diversify kpop awards in the same way you can for film/tv/music#you cant divide idol music by genre bc it IS the genre. unless you started giving out awards for 'best (x) concept'#which......doesn't really work#like this is the same problem as hollywood has with the oscars etc but there's still some kind of pretense that they care about 'art'#for those at least. like superhero movies dont usually get noms for best picture#whereas with kpop its like. if the lastest marvel movie won every award bc the most people watched it and it made the most money#its all very transparently capitalistic#and not at all a recognition of artistry#its also at a place where these awards are losing value to fans bc a handful of groups who dont deserve them are constantly winning them#but to groups from small companies who get nommed its still a HUGE deal. its become this weird dichotomy#i'm sure its very frustrating for idols#text#answers#kpop questions#awards shows 2022
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❝ 𝐈 𝐍𝐄𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐄𝐑 ❞
❝ PROF. GETO'S CLASS IS SO HARD, BUT HE'S SO HOT!! ❞
✧ pairing: professor!geto x f!reader (part one of the prof geto series)
✧ summary: you were a 4.0, straight A student, until professor geto's class, the same far too hot ethics professor fawned over by faculty and students alike. you didn't understand what was so special about him...until you start having dreams about him.
✧ warnings: 18+, nsfw, a lot of smut (mostly fantasy), depictions of student/teacher relationship (only ok in fiction not irl!!!), reader is a grad student in my mind, but age is vague, masturbation (f + m), fingering (f! receiving), sex (p in v), getting off to his voice in recorded lectures, arousal from reading his writing, amateur's take on moral philsophy and ethics, art by @/jatinsohanvi, google scholar graphic by platonic loml @laneysmusings
✧ wc: 10,149 (i have a problem) | part two
“You’re late,”
Your first impression of Professor Suguru Geto’s class was that you could never be late again, unless you would like to be chided in front of all your peers for your tardiness.
Your first impression of Professor Suguru Geto himself was that he was truly the most breathtaking man you’d ever laid your eyes on. His inky black locks tied into a neat bun, his deep royal purple vest buttoned over a crisp white button up with pressed gray slacks, his pretty lips pressed in a small frown, as his dark gaze pierced through you. And you don’t know what stirs in your chest — a fleeting moment that is tucked away under a bite of your bottom lip and burning cheeks.
And now you knew why when you had walked into class, the amount of unfamiliar faces in this course had far outnumbered the ones in your usual course load — the same reason why this man undoubtedly had three chili peppers next to his professor rating on some website out there.
And now you were faced with him staring you down as you stumbled down the stairs of the all too full lecture hall.
As you muttered apologies, and took your seat far too close to the front of the class, smack dab in the very front of the very same professor whose eyes still were concentrated on you, before sliding back to the class at large.
“Now, where were we?” he says, continuing the lecture.
Ethics was not your major — you were a philosophy grad student, and although the two went hand in hand — no, they were not the same thing. Ethics are the moral principles — like rules to follow to live a moral life — people can follow, while philosophy is the study of knowledge, reality, and existence. And this class encompassed both — an ethics and moral philosophy class. Your eyes slid around the room — and compared to all the random majors stuffed into this classroom, you had no doubt you’d do well. Your eyes met Professor Geto’s — maybe one slight doubt.
And when you get your first essay back, you eagerly flip to the last page of the paper, wondering what accolades and compliments you’d receive this time. Your eyes find the grade, and your stomach drops, a gaping maw that consumes you from the inside out.
You got a B.
A B+ — an 88 on your paper in this course, and you stared at the grade on the very last page of the paper you had collected from his desk — Professor Geto had insisted everyone submit their papers both physically and electronically — his scrawl in red pen littered each page of what you thought was a thoughtful and even clever paper on the existence free will and the ethical and moral dilemmas that surround it. And he had given it an 88.
You had a 4.0 point average — you had gotten the highest scores in some of the most difficult courses required by your major, and now you were going to be derailed by a class you took on a whim? That’s not happening. No, you were going to get him to change your grade. You were seeing as red as the ink that tore your paper to shreds.
“Come in,” your knuckles had rapped against Professor Geto’s door, your heart in your throat, as you heard his reply, entering his office. His office was as pretentious as he was. A much larger office than you had seen before (poor Professor Ijichi had a shoebox of an office), while Professor Geto’s was three times the size, outfitted with large, beautiful windows, distinct bookshelves, and even a lovely deep mahogany colored couch with decorative cushions. And you knew why that was the case — Professor Geto was an expert in his field, revered, even at his relatively young age. And the university had coveted him, and managed to lure him to work behind these ivy covered walls. While other professors who have been here longer are stuck with offices that don’t begin to compare.
Academia was truly hell.
And yet, Professor Geto seemed to rule over it with an iron fist. Even now, you found your professor looking as annoyingly perfect as ever — his elbow resting against his desk, pen in his other hand, as he flipped through more papers on his desk, his hair in a messy bun, a few black strands falling across his furrowed brow, his pretty lips pursed in concentration, and his dark gaze flicks up from his work to you, and his lips curl, your name leaving his lips, “good to see you, please sit,”
You had planned to attend these office hours in victory, to apologize for your misstep in the first class, and let your professor praise your paper to no end — but instead you were going to see why your paper was graded so harshly.
Your speech was ready, you were going to lay it out, you had the perfect explanation and the excellent reasoning “Professor Geto—”
“I know why you’re here,” he cuts you off, lips forming in an utterly condescending smile, “you want to discuss your paper, correct?”
“I am, I wanted to—”
He sits forward in his chair, setting down his pen, “I’m going to save us some time by explaining my comments on your paper, do you have it?” and you close your mouth, pulling the paper out of your folder and handing it to him, “Your paper was one of the best in the class — it was thought provoking, grounded in research, persuasive, even made me consider some points I hadn’t before—”
You blink, his praise catching you off guard, your thoughts twisting in on themselves, “Then why did you give me B?”
“You didn’t allow me to finish,” he sighs, as he flips through your paper, looking up to meet your gaze, “your paper was excellent when it came to philosophical concepts, but your ethical conclusions on the other hand, could use some work,”
You gaped at him, “What did I possibly—”
“To put it simply, you were trying to use your knowledge of philosophy to cover up your lack of knowledge in the field of ethics,”
“I wasn’t—”
“And that’s okay, because that means I have something to teach you don’t I? That’s why you’re in this course, to learn,” he gives a tight lipped smile, tilting his head. Oh you’d like to learn a lot more from him — like the ethical dilemma of wanting to murder your professor, “and I’m here to teach — and this paper is a teaching moment — and from your expression, I assume you didn’t read the comments I left in detail,”
And your cheeks burn, as your eyes fall away from him, “Not fully in detail,” you still swallow your shame, and meet his gaze, “I don’t mean to be a bother, Professor, but how can my paper still receive a B — I’ve never received that low of a score on any single paper—”
“There’s a first time for everything,” and you have to bite back your retort, “yeah first time having an annoying prick for a professor,” and he rises from his desk to hand you back your paper, “the bottom line is, I know you’re capable of better, this class isn’t going to be easy — I’m not going to hand you accolades for no reason. You have to earn them — if you aren’t up for the challenge, you can drop the class.”
The option was there — you could simply drop the course, rid yourself of Professor Geto and his ridiculous criticism forever. You could take a class with one of the many professors who delighted in your papers (even the ones you’d written at 3 AM and submitted not proofread), and go on with your life and preserve your 4.0 GPA with ease.
But then you looked at him again. He was unfairly hot, even when he was fucking putting you down, he stood in front of you, offering your paper, his fingers long and thick brushing yours by mistake as you took back your paper, a watch on his wrist gleamed in the low light of his office. You glanced around his office, saw the awards on his walls, pictures of him giving lectures or receiving honors, and the books that lined his shelves weren’t dissimilar to your own academic shelf at home. And your eyes fell back to his, as he stared at you curiously, lips pursed, as your paper slightly crumples in your fist.
“Next paper is due in two weeks?” and he pauses, before his lips curl in that same grin.
“Yes it is,” and a smile graces your lips, lightning quick.
Like hell you were going to let him win. You were going to get him to praise your papers (and maybe that wouldn’t be the only thing he praised) — if it was the last thing you do. You’d get an A in his class, hell, you’d get him to beg you to be his teaching assistant (he’d look very nice on his knees for you, wouldn’t he?).
You rise from your seat, and grab your bag, “I’ll see you at your next office hours then, to discuss my paper topic,” and he watches you leave, his eyes piercing into your back as you do.
“See you soon.”
Oh, he would.
“Right on time,” Professor Geto barely looks up now when you knock on his door, his door now always ajar for office hours.
Now you had made a habit of showing up for his office hours, you’d bring your paper topic all picked out, along with your handpicked sources you had chosen for your paper, all typed up in a neat bibliography. And he’d kindly rip it apart with that same damn smile on his lips. It had been a few weeks, a few papers later — and you finally had worked your grade up to an A-, not quite an A+, but you’d get there. You had to.
Because it wasn’t just about your GPA now — you were going to get Professor Geto to praise you — through any means necessary. The man was stubborn, even when you’d come back with an improved draft, he’d only hand it back to you with a smile barely tugging at the corner of his lips, with no compliment to be had — only small check marks scribbled in the margins in your papers, with the occasional “good” written next to it.
“Well, we all know what happens when I’m late,” he laughs, a noise that makes the ice dagger clutched behind your back ever so slightly melt, “I made you laugh, extra credit?”
And he rolls his eyes, and you notice that his dark eyes are hidden behind glasses today — and god, why does it only make him even more gorgeous? He’s already brilliant, it’s unfair for him to look as if he was sculpted by the gods as well, “It takes a lot more than a chuckle to earn extra credit,” and you can’t help but bite your lip.
No, no, he’s the worst. It didn’t matter he was the epitome of every academic’s wet dream, you were above that. You had a goal.
“So, can we discuss my next paper?” you hand him your bibliography, and he takes it, delicate fingers flipping through, your mind notes the absence of a ring on either hand, before brushing the thought aside.
“You’re writing on the morality of good or bad actions,” he hums, as he looks over the sources you had chosen, “Scanlon, good — have you read—”
“‘What We Owe to Each Other?’ Only about a million times — well more like six,” and he nods appreciatively, “of course you’ve read it,”
“I didn’t just read it, I wrote a paper on it, similar to yours, actually,” and your eyes flick up to meet his, he’s leaning forward in his chair, red pen in hand, as he scribbles notes in the margins, as well as on the back of your bibliography, “of course I don’t have your penchant for rambling,”
You pout, “I don’t ramble — I like to make my point—”
“Many times, and the same one,” and your mouth opens, only to find a wry smirk on his lips, “I’m teasing, another one of my very tedious qualities, and how you stand it during class astonishes me,”
You cross your arms, unable to meet his eyes, as you choose to stare at your bibliography instead, “You’re not completely tedious, more like irritating,” and he huffs a chuckle.
You had to admit, begrudgingly, Professor Geto was a…good teacher. And you had your fair share of awful teachers — many of them were brilliant, accomplished people in their fields, but didn’t know how to translate and convey that in their lectures to students who simply knew less than them. But Geto…he knew how to break down complex concepts and theories of moral philosophy and ethics to a science, he knows how to make students understand these complicated topics that you had seen other professors fail to, and he does it while being an intellectual dreamboat to most of his students — the ones that swarm his desk after class, still there even as you slowly make your way out of the lecture hall.
“A rare compliment from you,” he raises an eyebrow, “I’m touched,”
“You’re one to talk,” you furrow your brow, and a smile pulls at his lips.
“Didn’t know you wanted my approval,” he tilts his head, leaning forward to lean on his elbow on the desk, “well, you have improved remarkably in the class so far, and if you keep going like this, I may have no choice but to praise you,”
“You will,”
“Someone is very sure of themselves,” a pause and then he adds with a quirk of his lips, “as you should be,” and he’s sliding your bibliography across the table again, and passes it back, “read the sources I recommended, and see about adding them to your paper — you may have some overlap in the other papers you chose so use your discretion on which ones you use,”
“So don’t repeat myself?” You raise an eyebrow, and he leans back in his chair, crossing his legs.
“You learn fast.”
And you do — returning to your apartment to work on your paper, as you flip through his notes — as much as you hate to admit it, his notes and criticism did help — annoyingly so. He was far more detailed and perceptive than any other professor you had. Most had let you skate by without a second thought, and you wrote papers like you deleted your internet history after a scandalous romp through elicit websites — tools, clear history — and then onto the next paper or exam. But Professor Geto forced you to face your shortcomings, face the things that you didn’t like to give a second glance to, lest your rejection sensitive self feel the agony of having to deal with criticism.
Each time you did it, you got a little better, and he had a little less to say — time and time again.
You leaned back on your bed, scrolling through the papers he recommended, but so what? So what if he was a good teacher? Doesn’t mean he has to be as infuriating as he is — he knew exactly what to do to get under your skin, and he didn’t prod at it, he scratched it.
And you found yourself typing his name (“suguru geto”) and T.M. Scanlon’s name into the search bar of your university’s library collection, and his paper pops up right on top.
You stare at the paper for a good minute, before you click on it — and you start reading. And reading. And reading — and fuck—
It was good. It was more than that — it gave you so much insight on this topic, it made you rediscover T.M. Scanlon’s work in a new light — and you bite your lip. And it wasn’t just the research — the way it organized, the way it was presented, the way it was written — it was eloquent, but it wasn’t unreadable or incomprehensible. It was…really good.
You imagined him, pouring over Scanlon’s work as he wrote notes in the margins of his copy, pages dogeared and passages highlighted, as he sat in his office typing away at this paper. His sleeves rolled up, his hair let out of his usual bun, his glasses perched on his nose as he read, only his desk lamp and computer illuminating his office. The keys of his computer clacking under his touch, lengthy fingers pitter pattering as he wrote his thoughts and analysis of Scanlon’s work — his brow furrowed in thought.
And you felt yourself flush, swallowing the lump in your throat, as you kicked off your blanket — it was so warm all of a sudden, pressing your thighs together. You shook the thoughts from your mind — what the hell were you doing? You glanced at the time, 2:39 AM it read back at you mockingly. You sigh, shutting your laptop down, and putting it aside — you need to do your skincare and brush your teeth. You glance back at your laptop—the familiar of your flush clung to your skin like a forbidden kiss—
And you clearly needed sleep.
“Can you read this passage to me?” Professor Geto’s voice said, as he stood in front of you in the lecture hall — as you stood behind the podium that faced the entire class — hands in his pockets, in an olive henley, his hair tied in the usual neat bun, his black bangs falling in his eyes as always, glasses on, instead of the usual contacts. The class sat all around you — his exercise in getting the class to participate and get comfortable speaking in front of others, just as philosophers had done in the past (his very own “literary salon” he called it).
You swallow, keeping your eyes fixed on the book in front of you, “‘When I ask myself what reason the fact that an action would be wrong provides me with not to do it, my answer is that such an action would be one that I could not justify to others on ground I could expect them to accept—’”
“What do you think Scanlon meant by this?” he asks you, but his gaze was different this time, it held the amusement it always did when it came to you, but it was warm — no — it was burning. His lips were pursed, as he crossed his arms, the henley’s fabric seemingly straining under the action.
“He meant that an action that is wrong in his eyes when he couldn’t expect others to accept the ground on which he could justify it,” and his lips curve into that damned smile, as he takes a few steps closer, rounding the podium, as he brushes past you, the brief touch of temptation incarnate — the dangling apple of Tantalus personified before you.
“And can you give me some examples of what kinds of actions would be wrong?” and he’s standing behind you now, and you can’t bring yourself to look at him — but you can feel his gaze on you.
“Senseless murder,” and he hums in approval, his breath felt like it was warming your skin, “wanton violence, reckless assault—”
“What other everyday wrongdoings could fall under this category?” and suddenly the class before you is gone, and it’s just the two of you in an empty lecture hall, “theft, lying, student-teacher relationships?”
And your breath catches in your throat, his cologne strangling any sense left in your mind, as his body heat nearly radiates off him, “Professor Geto—”
“Suguru,” he corrects you, and he’s reaching for you, but he pauses, “can I—” and you only can nod, and his fingers brush your hair aside, ever so gently, “would this be considered a moral wrongness, sweetheart?” his lips press a chaste kiss to your shoulder, and you shiver at the softness of his touch.
“Well, I am a student in your class, and even though I’m of age, it presents a power dynamic and a favoritism that might be—” and your sentence cuts off as his arms wind their way around your waist, pressing himself to your back, “I—”
“Go on,” he’s murmuring his words against the nape of your neck now, as he pulls his glasses off to place them on the podium, “might be what?”
“Might be viewed as morally wrong—” and he’s chuckling, the vibration sending a delicious shiver down your spine, as he presses more butterfly kisses to your neck.
“How can something be wrong when it feels so right?” he asks, and his hand is sliding down your side, “feels so good, does it even matter what society views as right or wrong? Do their rules pertain to what we’re doing here?” and his fingers toy with the hem of your pants, teasing and pulling, as he pauses, waiting for your answer, “what do you think—”
“Please,” you swallow, as you turn to look at him, seeing his lips in that same smile that haunted you, “touch me,”
And his smile only grows wider, “Good girl.”
BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ.
Your eyes flutter open, your breath caught in your throat, as you stare at your ceiling, your hand reaching for your phone to silence the alarm. And you squeeze your thighs together, a distinct ache between your legs, your skin all too warm.
What the fuck was that?
You skip office hours the next week. You couldn’t bear it — you could barely tolerate going to class now, as the dream invades your nights, with filthy variations that leave you perturbed and horny (mostly horny). The common theme only being that each time you get close to anything remotely that’s anything (a kiss, a touch that’s more than a caress, anything at all), you wake up.
It’s as if your dreams are edging you — you groan into your pillow — and it was working.
You’re so wound up, you’ve even resorted to using your vibrator before bed, wondering if that would make a difference — it did, but only with you having a dream of Professor Geto using a vibrator on you during class — the vibrations growing even faster when you were speaking as he watched you—
You needed to stop thinking about this. But how can you?
God, it’s even worse when you’re in class. You sit in your usual seat, front and center — and why does it feel like his eyes are on you far too often? Even as he lectures Professor Geto attempts to catch your eye during his lecture, trying to make a point, you all but glue your gaze down to the textbook and your laptop, typing away his words, trying to drown out the whispered words and groans from your dream that ring in your ears. You can’t stop seeing him — unless you want to skip class, which you really couldn’t when attendance and participation counted for a good chunk of your grade.
Class ended and you were packing up your things. You had to weather the storm — avoid being alone with him until the dreams were just a distant memory—
And then you heard him say your name—
Your eyes flick up to meet Professor Geto — who had his usual swarm of students waiting by his desk, but he parted the crowd, he approached your own seat, hands in your pockets, “Do you have a class after this?”
“No, I don’t—” the words slip out before your sleep deprived mind can put the pieces together.
“Then can you please stay after class? I’d like to talk to you,” he says, and before you can say anything, he turns to speak to the students waiting for him.
And now you wait — your anxious energy singing at the frayed ends of your nerves, as you tried to hold yourself together — wondering what he could possibly want to speak to you about. His students dissipated one by one, until it was just you and him left in the lecture hall.
Just. Like. Your. Fucking. Dream.
You round the row you sat in, before walking down to speak to him, “Is there something wrong? The next paper isn’t due until the end of next week—”
“It isn’t about the paper,” and your heart squeezes, as you try to keep your breathing even, as he steps closer — and why, why did he have to opt to only wear a button up today — and a deep royal purple one no less, “I wanted to check in with you,” and he begins to undo the cuffs of his shirt, rolling them up — exposing his forearms and the pretty veins that ran along them — the same arms that he had used in one of your dreams to bend you over that desk, the whispers of heated kisses along your neck—
You needed to get out of here.
You blink, “I’m fine,” and he tilts his head.
“I only ask because you’ve looked tired the last two classes, and you didn’t show up for office hours this week,” he crosses his arms, unhelpfully, as he purses his lips, the lines of his brow furrowed.
“I’m fine, Professor, I appreciate your concern — I just haven’t been sleeping well,” you admit — it was the truth, “and that’s why I didn’t come to office hours. I was trying to catch up on sleep,”
He nods, sighing, fingers raking through his hair — those same fingers that would feel so pretty around your neck— “I know I’m hard on you,” oh he would be, “but it’s because I know you’re capable of more — most of these students are taking the class for an elective, but I know it’s more than that for you,” yes, it’s so you can finally earn his praise, “but I’m also here for your benefit, so if you need an extension or anything else, please let me know,”
God, all you wanted was for him to maybe wrap you in his arms and kiss you, or bend you over, pull your clothes off and fuck you, or just to leave you alone all together.
You weren’t sure which one you wanted the most at this moment.
“I will, Professor Geto, I appreciate it,” you murmur, biting your lip, as you try to focus on the task at hand — getting out of here, “I don’t think I need an extension, I’ve made good progress so far. I just need to finish it, so I can revise,”
“Well, let me know if anything changes,” his lips curl, “ok?” And you nod, and if you weren’t so hyperaware, you swore you would have imagined it — but you didn’t, “good girl,”
And you pause a moment — his lips did move, you pinch yourself discreetly — and you know it isn’t a fucking dream. You only smile in return, giving a curt nod and goodbye, before beelining out of the classroom.
But you didn’t stick around long enough to see the slight flush on Professor Geto’s cheeks — nor did you know that you two were thinking the same thing about yourselves—
What the fuck were you doing?
But to your relief, the dreams do subside, and you’re finally able to rest — but the thing that doesn’t subside is your awareness of your professor.
You sit in class, watching him teach — and you knew he was attractive, hell, it was one of the things that made you all the more embarrassed to have him ream you out — having your super hot professor rail at you for your mistakes wasn’t on your list of shining achievements (lest it was him actually railing you—).
You needed to stop doing that.
But it felt as if you weren’t the only one who was hyper aware. You felt as if his eyes skimmed over you during class this week, his replies to your weekly discussion board were less biting than usual, and his office hours were surprisingly canceled this week. First time all semester, but you weren’t so full of yourself that you thought it had anything to do with you — right?
Either way, you had submitted your paper and now you were done with this week—and as class finishes, you slowly pack up, looking forward to the week being over with and for a personal rendezvous with your bed. But as the usual gaggle of students make their way to chat with Professor Geto, your eyes flicker up to meet his, as he stares back a moment.
And you can’t make yourself look away, and for a moment, neither can he.
But then a student calls for his attention, so his eyes flicker away, a smile on his lips as he spoke — and you turn to leave, grabbing your bag, as you look back—
But why did his smile look so strained?
There must be something wrong with him.
Professor Suguru Geto drummed his fingers against his desk, but he felt more like shoving his things off his desk — if only to distract him for a moment. He pulls his glasses off, and runs a hand down his face—god, he hadn’t been sleeping well. No, his nights were plagued, plagued by you — you had slipped into his dreams ever since that day he stopped you.
Why had he stopped you?
It wasn’t the first time he had personally stopped a student who seemed to be struggling, he could count the times he had on both his hands.
But this, this felt different.
You were different.
But why were you different to him? He rubs his temples, from the moment you had stepped into his office he thought he had read you — an overachieving student used to getting their way, As handed out to them, and an inability to take criticism.
He knew, because he used to be one of them. But he knew you needed to be challenged to grow — but it was a matter if you would accept it. And from the moment you asked him when the next paper was due, he couldn’t help but smile.
And his time spent in office hours with you grew more enjoyable each time you came. And when you hadn’t last week, he couldn’t sit still, checking the time, checking his email, and even checking if his office hours had been accidentally listed wrong in his weekly email to the class (they weren’t). And the hour and half passed with many students hungry for his time and his charm — but not the one he was looking for.
Then those words had slipped from his tongue when he had stopped you, left his mouth like he was possessed, and now he had found himself here. Found himself thinking about how your lips parted when he said it, thinking about how you were feeling, thinking about you, you, you—
There’s a knock at the door, “Professor Geto?”
And it was you.
“I apologize, I know you canceled office hours, but I just had a few questions I didn’t get to ask you in class,” your fingers toy with the ring you wore, a folder in hand, a soft smile on your lips.
“Of course, come in,” and you did, your dress was painfully short, the fabric riding up as you sat, the folder in your lap, “is this about your paper?”
“It is, I was reading a few papers, and after our conversation, I couldn’t help but find your paper,” and he tilts his head, “and I want to include it as a source in my paper, but I had a few points you made that I wanted clarified,”
He raises an eyebrow, and he can’t help but tease, “Clarified or criticized? Are you planning on turning the tables on me?”
“Well I do have a red pen,” you click your pen, lips curved in a smile, and there’s a hint of heat that he wishes to unearth, pluck from the earth and possess himself, “but I promise I’ll be civil,”
“I have no doubt,” he had a million when it came to you — but that wasn’t one of them. He runs his fingers through his hair, a few strands coming loose, “of course, let’s discuss it,”
“You discuss Scanlon’s idea of a social contract, everyone within this moral society agrees on what’s right and what’s wrong — the basic principle is that if there is a rule no one can reasonably reject as a basis, but is there such a rule that can exist?”
He tilts his head, “Scanlon’s theory relies on this premise — are you questioning me or the premise?”
“Both, actually,” you shrug, crossing your legs, “is there a magic switch that changes every person to be rational? Because I think only rational people can agree on what rules cannot be reasonably rejected — what about people who are cruel, inconsiderate, self-absorbed? Do those traits go away when operating under Scanlon’s social contract? You propose in your paper that moral reasons are not subjective — nothing is uncolored by human opinion,”
“No, but—”
“How can we agree on what is truly right or wrong? How can one hundred people agree on that when everyone views these actions in different ways? Right and wrong? Black, white, or gray?” you rise from your chair to hand him his paper printed out, the paper more red than white with the amount of writing you’ve done, “like for example,” you lean forward, your hand braced against the edge of his desk, “can one hundred people agree that student-teacher relationships are wrong? Because one veto,” your hand trails ever closer to his, toeing that dangerous line either of you had even yet to approach to cross. But here you were, seemingly barreling toward it.
And he didn’t want to pull away.
He swallows, whispering your name, “This can’t—” and you were so close — too close, your perfume hypnotized him, your fingers brush against his and he can’t help but hold them, his thumb rubbing across your knuckles, “they can agree that it’s wrong — the power imbalance from the authority of the professor and the age difference—”
“I disagree, so the rule isn’t legitimate, right? Even if one disagrees, the rule cannot be make valid,” and his breath catches as your fingers slide up his arm now, resting on his shoulder, as you lean over his chair now, as your other hand toys with the loose strands of his hair, “if the two of us can’t even agree, then how could a hundred, or a thousand, or a million?”
“But—”
“But what?” you pout, your fingers dragging down his chest, toying with the top button of his button down, “I don’t see you pulling away, do you want me to stop, Professor? Because I will,”
And he swallows thickly, but he can’t stop you — he doesn’t want to, “But, we shouldn’t — it isn’t a reasonable objection—” he tries his hardest to stand firm, but he only crumbles when your fingers brush his cheek, tracing the cut of his jaw. And it feels like flames tickling at his skin, begging him to thrust his hand into the fire.
“Like I said, people are not reasonable,” your lips draw closer, and he can feel your breath warm his own, and god, why are you so tempting? And your lips stop short, barely an inch between your faces, “and besides, would you rather be reasonable or satisfied?”
And there’s only one answer — you.
He leans forward, lips nearly brushing yours—
RING. RING. RING.
He jerks awake from his desk, papers sliding as he does, his breath caught in his throat, and his eyes wander — and finds no one else there.
A dream. He runs his fingers through his hair again, crumpling the paper he had oh so lovingly drooled during his nap. He needed to get his shit together.
But his current predicament wasn’t making that easy — his cock strained against the fabric of his pants — was he a grown adult or a horny teenager?
Fuck. It wasn’t going away — no matter what he thought, his mind kept circling back to you.
And his eyes slide to the time: 1:40 AM.
Far past the time any soul would be here, even cleaning staff would have been long gone. It was just him—
And you.
“So good for me, baby,” he’s panting, palming his erection, an embarrassing amount of precum drips from his cock for a barely wet dream. He ignores the gnawing guilt in the back of his mind — but he can’t help but imagine the image of you, spread out on his desk, hiking that oh so teasing sundress up, only to find your underwear drenched — just for him.
His fingers would slide up your plush thighs, squeezing to draw a gasp from your pretty lips, “Professor—“ you’d say, unable to form a sentence, all those brilliant falling away under his touch, until it was just him occupying every crevice of your mind.
“Where’s that mouth now? So needy f’me,” he’d murmur, “but such a good girl,” and you were, his thumb tracing his slit, smearing his pre-cum, as he imagined you spread on his desk, your puffy folds nearly showing through your far too translucent panties, “my best student’s so pliant for me now,”
And his hand moves faster, and he can imagine your fingers reaching for him too, your smaller fingers wouldn’t be able to even touch as much as he can — but god it would feel so much better.
But he’d want you to feel even better than he did.
He’d tug your underwear down, stuffing it in his pocket (his fee for all of additional office hours), and he would prep you right — fuck you open with his fingers, two or three, before he tasted you. Your fingers would dig into his scalp as you moaned his name again and again, before you came all over his face.
He’d lick his lips clean of your release, before dragging his cock down your sweet cunt, watching his precum mix with your cum, as your walls flutter around nothing, craving to have him sink into you.
“Professor, please,” you’d beg with pretty, kiss bitten lips between pants, “please,”
“Where’s all those quips now, sweetheart?” he’d tease, as he would let his tip tease your clit, pulling a moan from your lips, “all those words fall away when you want this cock, don’t they? Been thinking about you like this, wondering what you’d look like spread out under me,” and he would lean down to kiss you, “it’s even better than I expected,”
He’s jerking himself off in earnest now, the lewd noises of his hand around his cock filling most of the silence, his low groans filling the rest. And he’d finally sink into you, inch by inch, until he’d kiss your cervix with his weeping tip.
And, god, he wishes his fingers fisted around his cock would be as good as your cunt would feel around him. He would fuck you slow at first, “I know those boys can’t fuck you as good as I can, as well as I can,” he’d tell you, as he would pick up the pace when you’d tell him to, making you cum again and again with his cock, thumb rubbing at your clit, until he was finally close. He’d either cum all over your stomach, marking you with his release, or if you’d let him, he’d cum inside you, filling you with his seed—and then he’d watch it drip out when he would pull out. He groans your name lowly, shuddering as he comes all over his hand, hard.
Fuck.
That’s the hardest he’d cum in a long time. He’s a mess — panting and flushed, as he leans back, head against the back of his chair, too spent to even clean up. And then he finally does, cleaning himself up well, and collecting his things to leave the office.
But he only treated the symptoms, not the problem itself. His hard-on is gone, but his mind is still filled with thoughts of you. How he’d kiss you sweetly after, how he’d clean you up, care for you gently, make you rest because you never seem to do enough of that, and he’d let you relax — finally relax, as you slept the night in his arms.
As he heads to his car, he knows that he’s utterly fucked (without even being fucked) because he has feelings for you. And he didn’t know if they were going to go away as easily as he hoped.
But he hoped they would. He owed it to you, your education, and your future career not to act on these feelings.
And he sighs as he sits in his car, starting it, but why did it hurt not to?
It was that time again.
Your next paper had come around again, and you needed to prepare a topic before you went to speak to Professor Geto. You had put it off, something you had never done with his class, but you wanted to limit the amount of time you spent with him, if only for the sake of your heart.
Watching him in lectures was bad enough, your thighs pressing together as you watched him speak, his impeccable looks and intelligence a deadly combination for your heart (and your body). You could barely focus, your eyes too fixed on the way he wrote on the board — his fingers too lithe and too thick, his voice all too alluring when discussing Kant and Aristotle and you can’t help but think what he’d sound moaning your name.
God. Fuck.
Either way, you needed to listen to the lectures again since you weren’t able to pay attention. Maybe without watching the video would be better, you settle on your bed, notebook and pen in hand, as you place your headphones on. His voice filled your ears, and you’re scrawling notes.
But your mind begins to wander. He’s lecturing on the deontological ethics, and all you can think about is how he could make you cum with just that voice of his.
Shit, you shifted your thighs again, feeling that familiar ache again. What would he sound like when he moaned? How would it sound to have him touch you, run those long fingers down your thighs, and whisper filthy things in your ear?
As you listened to the lecture, his voice became white noise as your fingers slipped past the waistband of your shorts, and you shut your eyes.
“That’s it, sweetheart, spread your legs for me,” he’d murmur in your ear, his chest pressed to your back and he’s urge your thighs wider, and his fingers would press against the wet patch on your panties, and he’d hum, “so wet f’me and I haven’t touched you yet, Princess,” his lips would kiss your pulse, “you like my voice that much?”
“Professor,” you gasp, as his fingers would tease you through your underwear, the fabric growing more soaked by the second, “please—“ and his thumb would ghost around your clit, teasing you, as his long fingers would piston in and out — they would reach so much fucking deeper “I need to—“
“Already begging? I knew you learned fast, but not this fast,” and his fingers would tug the crotch of your panties aside, his fingertips tracing around your outer lips, before a finger pushes past your sweet cunt, “fuck, my favorite student’s pussy is so fucking tight. These boys are not fucking you right,” and you whimper, his finger would be so much thicker than yours, as you glide another finger inside you, the two dragging against your walls, “listen to your pretty cunt,” he’d grin against your skin, “and the wet squelch of your pussy, “so pliant for me, takes my fingers so well,” he’d murmur with a chuckle, “practically swallowing me up,”
And you’re bucking your hips against him, wanting, needing him deeper, because your fingers don’t reach as far as his does, moans leaving your lips.
“I’m so—” you’re moving faster and faster, his lecture still filling your ears, your pre-cum soaking your shorts and onto the bed sheets, “I can’t—”
“Come on, Princess, use those big words of yours, you have no problem usually,” his hot words would whisper in your ear, and you’d hear him rub his erection against your ass, trying to get himself off, and you’d grind against him, wanting any friction, “tell me,”
“Let me cum, please,” and he would smile, running his fingers through your hair, before he bore his thumb down on your clit and sunk a third finger into your needy cunt, just as you did now. And it’s too much for you, your toes curl, your messy walls fluttering around your fingers, as you cum all over your shorts and sheets with a groan of his name. Your fingers were soaked, as you pant, trying to gather yourself, as you came down from your high.
“Fuck,” you murmur, tugging off your headphones, so your cunt doesn’t have to twitch listening to his dulcet words again. And you’re pulling your fingers out, your cum dripped down your fingers, as you shifted, far too wet underneath you, as you tried to slip off your bed to take a shower and clean yourself up.
And then you realized, you didn’t even hear any of the lecture.
Double fuck.
Why was this so difficult?
You stood near his office, trying to work up the urge to approach his door for office hours? Since it’s almost the end of the semester, there had been an influx of students attending office hours, and with everything, you had found excuses in your head to avoid office hours. But you couldn’t avoid him anymore.
For your final paper in the class, you had to have a meeting with him during office hours to discuss your topic, complete with bibliography and outline. And it was almost time for your meeting.
But you didn’t know how to go in.
The last few weeks in class have made things worse. You couldn’t help but watch the other students fawn over Professor Geto, his lips curled as he spoke to them. And you’d leave class without a word. You had to stick through the semester and your feelings would disappear with time. You wouldn’t have to see him, you wouldn’t have class anymore, and you couldn’t talk to him.
Or wouldn’t.
But now you had to. And you didn’t know how— otherwise than just to do it.
You knock at his door, “Come in,” and you open the door to see an empty desk, blinking, “I’m over here,”
And your head snaps to your right, and Professor Geto is sitting on his couch, his legs crossed with a stack of papers in hand. His jacket is slung over the side of the couch, his deep maroon button up sleeves rolled up, glasses perched on the tip of his nose.
“I thought you lived at your desk,” you raise an eyebrow, “decided to change it up for the end of the semester?”
“Everyone needs a change of scenery,” he leans forward, placing the stack of papers on the table in front of him, “do you want to sit here or move to the desk?”
You shift in place, before moving to the couch beside him, “This is fine,” he stares, “what?”
“Just surprised, you always have something to say,” he leans on his elbow, “no smart remarks today?”
“Fresh out, can I offer you my proposal for the final paper instead?” You say dryly, and he cracks a smile, holding out your proposal. He clicks his red pen, readying his sword.
He takes it, his dark eyes darting back and forth as he reads, his brow furrowed in concentration — and you can’t help but want to reach out and smooth his brow for him, tease him that he’ll get wrinkles. But you can’t. Can’t because that would cross a line that neither of you should cross.
“You’ve come a long way,” he says, as he flips it back the front, writing only a few notes here and there.
“But?” You wait for it.
His gaze flickers up, a tilt of his head, “That was the end of my sentence,”
You pause a moment, “Really?”
“Really,” he scribbles a few more notes, “I look forward to reading the paper, it will be excellent I’m sure, maybe you’ll even get higher than a B+,”
“Oh, ha, ha,” sarcasm dripping from your tongue, but you can’t help but smile, “you’ll miss me and my endless need for academic validation,” but was it really academic validation you were after now — your eyes gazed at him sitting with the tip of his pen pressed to his lips — or was it his?
And it’s his turn to pause, and his lips curl into a soft smile, “I will,”
Your breath catches, “Really?”
He chuckles, “Really,” he licks his lips, his eyes glancing downward at your proposal than at your face, “I’ve enjoyed our chats this semester,”
“Have you? Even when I argued with you,” a half nervous half serious laugh dies on your lips when his gaze meets yours, far too serious for your heart to take.
“Especially then,” his fingers run through his hair a moment, before he speaks again, “I can’t say you could say the same,”
“And why couldn’t you?” his eyes flicker with an emotion you can’t grasp fast enough, before it slips away into the depths of his dark irises.
“Because you stopped coming,” his voice is soft, his tone barely even, and this gives you a real pause, heat flushing your body, as if his words had set every nerve ending alight, your mouth growing dry along with it, and it gives him a reprieve he needs to brush it aside, “you don’t have to, of course, these office hours are not relevant to your—”
“I didn’t stop coming because I didn’t enjoy it,” you cut him off, swallowing the lump in your throat, “I stopped coming because I did,”
He stares, “What do you—”
“I don’t want academic validation anymore, I don’t care about my GPA,” you consider it a moment, “ok I do,” and he snorts, “but I care more about validation from you,”
“From me?” he says, and his gaze tries to meet yours and it can’t — but his fingers brush against your skin, making your breath catch, your eyes finding his, “and what kind of validation do you want?”
And you can’t find the words, and you hesitation makes him shake his head, “I apologize, I shouldn’t have—”
“Will you have a drink with me?” and he’s speechless for once, “after the semester is over, of course — I know it wouldn’t be ethical before,”
And his eyes find yours again, “Some would say it would be unethical after too,”
“I would say it depends,”
“On what basis?” and you can’t help but smirk.
“Am I being graded, Professor?” and you delight in a small crack in his smiling veneer as a light flush dusts the tops of his ears, “and if I’m good, will you call me a good girl again?”
He swallows, “I don’t want to cost you your education or your—”
“I understand the risks, but we aren’t contemplating shifting a trolley to hit one person or five, or murdering one healthy person to save five sick ones,” and he raises an eyebrow, “it’s a drink to celebrate the end of the semester,”
“And if it's something more?” he nearly whispers, the softness of his voice reflected in his features, as his fingers that rested on the couch twitched beside yours.
“Then we’ll cross that bridge then,” and then you add with a small smile, “Or hit the metaphorical person with the trolley,” and it pulls at the corners of his lips.
“You make a fair point,” and you gasp in mock surprise.
“The first time all semester you agree with me,” and he chuckles, a noise you wished you could hear him make innumerable times more.
“Not the first,” he replies, before leaning forward, pressing your outline back into your hands, his fingers brushing yours, “we both agree you’re a good girl, don’t we?”
And your breath catches, his words warm your skin, turning your blood to lava, “Professor,” and he smiles again.
“When we go for drinks, call me Suguru.”
~~~~
The semester wears on and finally draws to an end, but finals induced hibernation begins for you. A mix of papers and exams, you finish everything — including your paper for Professor Geto’s class. As always, he has you submit a paper and electronic copy, the paper copy to be dropped off at his office mailbox. And you do just that, the mailboxes being only around the corner from his office, and your heart squeezes at the thought of him. After this, the class was over, it was done. You weren’t his student anymore.
And you place the paper into the mailbox and sigh, chewing your lip as you pass by his office, but find the door closed (and locked, as you quickly turned the doorknob to test it). Where was he? This was the time he was usually in his office, but maybe he had left campus for the semester — had he forgotten about your drinks?
Fuck. You hadn’t even discussed a time or place, you had left it vague — “after finals.” Your cheeks burned at the memory, you were far too flustered to elaborate. And you had spent far too many nights imagining him calling you a ‘good girl’ in many other situations.
And then you heard a call of your name, your gaze snapping up, your heart leaping, but only to see the department head.
“Hi Professor, how are you?” and the two of you make polite chit-chat, until he asks you.
“Have you applied to be a T.A. for the department?” and you blink, “applications just opened and I think from what I’ve heard about you around the department, I think you would be an excellent candidate.”
“I’d love to be — how does the application process work?” and he explains that it’s a double blind process where applications are viewed without personal information of the candidates, and then matched with a professor based only on resume and writing samples.
You can barely listen to the department head, still far too distracted with thoughts of Professor Geto — so you agree to apply, if only to placate the department head, and make an excuse to leave.
It had been a week or so, as you lay in bed in your apartment, staring at your ceiling — you hadn’t even bothered to get Professor Geto’s personal number. You couldn’t even reach out to him if you tried, as the only way you could was through his university email, which was out of the question — the university had rules against a professor and student dating, and if anyone found that email — you sighed — it wouldn’t be good.
Maybe it was for the best.
The only communication you had gotten from him was an email from Professor Geto’s mailing list to the class from a few days ago, stating that he was out of state in a conference, and he would return soon, but your grades would be emailed to you. But the paper copies would be available to pick up in his office from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM on Tuesday. It was almost time to pick up your paper, and your nerves bit at you as you thought about the possibility of seeing him. Who knows if he would even be there to begin with.
Would it be anything? Would it be nothing? Was there not any point to this at all?
Oh, great, you were becoming existential.
You sat up, the only thing you could do was go. So you do, taking your time to get dressed. If you were going to see him, you might as well look your best.
Fuck. You couldn’t go in. It had taken you longer to get back to campus than you thought, and now there were only a few minutes of his office hours left.
And you’re about to knock when the door opens, and you find yourself face to face with the man who has consumed every thought of yours for the last few months — good and bad alike.
“Late again?” and you can’t help but smile.
“I prefer fashionably late,” and his eyes rake over your outfit, making your cheeks burn.
“You certainly are,” and he steps aside to allow you into his office, and you glance between the couch and the desk, but he makes the choice and sits at his desk, “I have your paper right here,” and he’s rifling through his file of papers, “how did your finals go?”
“If I have an A on this paper, perfectly,” and a smile tugs at his lips, and you raise an eyebrow, “what? Something funny?”
“Not at all,” and he pulls your paper out, ha “I just recall you saying you wanted something more than, what was it? ‘My academic validation?’”
And your cheeks flush, “I did, but I also didn’t hear from you,” and your fingers reach for the paper, and he holds onto it, “Professor,”
“I couldn’t reach out to you because I was still your professor, but once you get this grade, I’m not anymore,” and his gaze is sharper without his glasses today, his dark blue Henley doing nothing to help the flush on your cheeks — memories of your dreams flooding your mind, “and once you get this grade back, I’m not anymore,”
“And what does that mean?” you can’t pull your eyes away from his, but his fingers let go of your graded paper, “how about you look at the last page of your paper and see?”
You pull the paper into your hands, flipping to the last page:
99 — I was impressed by this paper not only by the content but by its comprehension and use of both ethics and philosophy. But I was also impressed by the person who wrote the paper. You’ve shown determination and growth throughout the semester — and you have reminded me what we owe to each other. And I think we owe each other a drink, and a chance for this.
You feel his eyes watch you as you read, your eyes finally meeting his — his brow knit together, his lips pursed, concentrated gaze trying to decipher your reaction.
“Why a 99?” And his eyebrows raise, as if to ask, “that’s your question?”
“You had some spelling and grammar errors,”
“Really? You couldn’t let it slide?” And he tilts his head, before he sees your lips curling into a grin.
“So you think it’s funny to mess with your professor?” And his voice drops, a playful tone that makes you nearly shiver, as he leans forward, resting his chin against his elbow.
“You’re not my professor anymore, are you, Suguru?” he likes that by the way his teeth bite his bottom lip briefly, his eyes flitting to your lips for a moment and back to your eyes, “so I guess we’re using that trolley after all,”
“If you want to,” he says softly, “I wouldn’t blame you if you change your mind, it’s a risk,”
It was. It was a risk to your reputations, your careers, your futures — especially to yours. But, your eyes met his again.
“Contractualism is about avoiding risk,” and he nods, as his gaze falls away, “but some risk is necessary in life, and I think this is one that’s worth taking,”
“We will have to be careful,” he murmurs, but already his fingers are twitching, far too eager to touch you, ���we can’t make any mistakes. I don’t want to hurt you,” he adds softly.
“I know, I don’t want to hurt you either,” and you rise before slowly rounding his desk, “but I want to know what it’s like,”
And he can’t stop himself — he gets to his feet, his fingers finding your cheeks and he kisses you. You can taste the black coffee on his lips, his kiss is gentle at first, so chaste and fleeting that you’d swear he didn’t kiss you at all — and so it’s not a second before your lips find his again, in a deeper kiss that steals every ounce of breath from your lungs, and leaves only heat behind. This was dangerous. The very risk you were both trying to avoid, but as he’s pressing you into the edge of his desk, you can’t find the logic you misplaced when those goddamn fingers you’ve been dreaming about squeeze your hips.
“Fuck,” he’s panting — god that word sounded more sinful on his lips than it should — as he presses sweet kisses to your neck, “we shouldn’t be doing this here,”
“Not very ethical,” you chuckle breathlessly, as your fingers rake through his now disheveled bun, “but I can’t find the sense to care,” your noses brush, as you can’t help but smile, “what would Scanlon or Kant say about this?”
And his arms lift you onto his desk, several papers crumpling underneath, “Who the fuck cares?” he’s hissing, his lips find yours in a searing kiss, as his thighs press yours apart, as he settles himself between your legs, his knee grazing your core, drawing a delightful gasp from your lips, “I know what I want,” and his eyes soften, his fingers tracing the length of your cheek, “do you?”
Before you can answer, two pings catch your attention — your phone and his computer lighting up with a notification, and you both pause a moment, as your eyes glance at the banner notification on your phone, skimming over the words. The T.A. positions have been assigned.
“Fuck,” you hear him mutter, and you gaze snaps up to his on his computer, the email now opened on his screen, “this can’t be right—”
“What is it—” and the question dies on your lips as your eyes find where his rested —
You — you were his T.A. for next semester — for the very class that you met in.
Fuck, indeed.
✧ read part 2 now
✧ a/n: lets all remember that student and teacher relationships are bad in real life. it's ok to live vicariously through reader but unfortunately no professor will be as hot as professor geto or gojo T_T. s/o to @/laneymusings and @bucky-of-the-opera for beta reading this for me and being just absolutely wonderful!!
✧ tag list: @sokkasmoon, @unoriginalideas, @waytootiredforthisss, @sinnerstardoll, @secret-pages-of-my-heart, @drthymby, @hanlay, @catsgomurp, @hatsunemitskislobotomy, @esuz, @difficultdomains, @poopyface222, @iwassentfromhell, @diogodxlot, @totallynotcc, @llovekami, @deadmarygolds, @teatreeoilll, @carcarcraziiv2, @forest-hashira, @aliyalala, @esuz, @that-goth-bisexual, @hehehehesthings, @imjustmememe, @j1jay, @iwassentfromhell,
#sab [mlist]#sab series [prof suguru]#suguru geto x reader#suguru geto smut#geto suguru x reader#geto suguru smut#geto suguru imagines#geto x reader#geto smut#geto x you#geto suguru fanfiction#jjk smut#jjk x reader#jjk x you#jujutsu kaisen smut#jujutsu kaisen fanfic#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jujutsu kaisen fanfiction#dividers by @/saradika
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hi if you're noticing a theme in what i'm reblogging lately. it's because i'm fucking annoyed sorry lmao
#ghost whispers#i'm so tired man i'm tempted to start putting 'don't like unless you reblog' on my art posts#ik some people really hate that but! i'm fucking tired of spending all this effort and sharing it here for no one to fucking interact!#like yes. no i don't 'have' to get interaction and shit and 'likes should be perfectly fine' but have you considered:#people don't even like my art posts very often. i get very fucking lucky when just one person likes the post nowadays.#so idk i think i'm allowed to be annoyed about it especially when doing art takes so much of my time#if anyone has any alternatives to tumblr for art. please tell me i'm considering just deleting all my art on here at this point
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