#Yes I did do it as a reblog and personal post
Text
Is it over?
Pairings: Emily Prentiss x reader.
Summary: Set on 6x18: Lauren. If the team noticed Emily acting weird, they didn’t say anything about it. For the last two weeks, Emily had been acting strange, kind of off which was weird about Emily. Reader was the lucky person who could say that she knew Emily more than anyone else in the team, but this time...she was not sure about it anymore.
A/n: So...just like when I asked when I posted my first Calex fic; is my blog gonna turn into Marvel, SVU and Criminal Minds? Maybe so🫢 I'm obsessed with criminal minds right now (yes, a bit late, I've seen some of it before but I've always been an svu girly) and I am deeply in love with Emily (not new that I found Paget Brewster gorgeous😮💨). Anywayyyy, first Emily fic✨ Yes…I’ll be taking requests🫢 I dunno if some things are accurate or not so bear with me but hope you enjoy this, leave comments, hearts, whatever you like and reblog so this gets some love🫶🏻
*not my gif*
If the team noticed Emily acting weird, they didn’t say anything about it. For the last two weeks, Emily had been acting strange, kind of off which was weird about Emily. Every once in a while, she’d crack a joke or even make fun of Morgan or Reid or anyone on the team, but nothing had been done. The cases they’ve had had been a bit of a pain, which could possibly be the reason why Emily had been acting so weird. Garcia was the first one to really say something to Emily, she had been teasing and trying to get information in case she had a secret boyfriend for the times she had been late to work, but Emily had stopped her from keep going and they just forgot about it for that moment. Reid then had asked her if she was okay and Emily had said that she was, even if she had started picking on her nails again and it was something that Reid had noticed she did when she was stressed, but again, Emily brushed it off.
The only person who could truly see Emily off work was Agent Y/n Carter, the one person that was the closest to Emily, who had always been there with Emily and for Emily, the one person that could really say that she knew more about Emily than anyone in the BAU. What they didn’t know is that y/n was not only the closest person to Emily in a friendly way, but they had been dating for the last year. No, it’s not that they didn’t trust the team, they loved them, they would do anything for them, but if they said anything about their relationship, which meant that there was a chance that they could be used against each other in case they got threatened or were hostages -which of course they hoped it never happened-. But they still wanted to keep the secret to themselves for as long as possible, and either way, they were able to enjoy it and have a relationship for them and only them.
“Hey, P! Leaving now, you need a ride?” Y/n walked to Penelope’s room and offered a smile.
“Ah, no sweet cheeks. Car is fixed, I’m driving myself now.” Penelope smiled as she grabbed her things.
Y/n nodded. “See you tomorrow then.” She was about to leave before she was stopped by Penelope’s voice.
“Hey honey?” Penelope asked softly.
Y/n turned to look at her and smiled. “Yeah?”
“Have you uh…have you talked to Emily?”
Y/n furrowed her brows as she stared at Penelope. “Uh…I mean…she was mostly with Morgan in the case so…not really. Why? Something wrong?” She tilted her head as she walked back to Penelope.
“I just…I’ve noticed that she’s been acting a bit odd.” Penelope shrugged. “I even asked her if she was preggo.” She chuckled.
Y/n chuckled softly as she shook her head. “Do we even know if she’s got a boyfriend?”
“Well, she brushed it off when I mentioned it, but…you know…she’s been late these past few days and that’s not common of her.”
Y/n nodded softly and offered a smile. “I’ll try to talk to her tomorrow when I see her. But I’m sure she’s okay, P. Just…maybe stressed.”
Penelope nodded and smiled. “She trusts you more than she trusts anyone here, honey. I’m sure she’ll let you know if somethings going on.”
“I know.” Y/n smiled. “Night love.”
“Goodnight pretty girl!”
Y/n walked to the elevator and sighed softly as the doors closed. They had been busy with the last few cases that she hadn’t really paid any attention to Emily’s attitude or behaviour, which now that she thought about it, was really wrong of her, and she felt bad about it. As she got in her car, she decided to make a few stops before she stopped by Emily’s apartment. The whole ride, she thought of what exactly she was going to tell Emily, because she knew better than to get to her and be all like ‘oh you’ve been acting weird so I thought I could come and figure out what’s wrong with you’. As much as Emily loved y/n, Emily was not exactly an open book. She finally got to Emily’s apartment and decided it was better to use her key instead of knocking on the door. She walked inside the apartment and was greeted by Sergio, she closed the door softly and as she turned, she found Emily walking out of her room with her gun in hand.
“Woah, Em! It’s me!” Y/n raised her hands as she looked at Emily.
Emily sighed heavily as she put her fun on the back of her jeans and walked to y/n. “What are you doing here?”
Y/n cleared her throat. “Uh…” she looked down at her hands and had a bag of desserts and in the other hand, she had flowers. “I uh…well…I’ve noticed that you haven’t been yourself, I thought you were tired and exhausted, so I decided to…bring something.” She offered a shy smile as she looked at Emily.
Emily’s heart warmed as she stared at y/n, smiling softly as she walked to her, grabbing the flowers, and smelling them. “They smell wonderful.” She looked up at y/n and smiled. “Thank you.”
“Anything for you.” Y/n leaned in and pecked her lips softly. “I also brought your favorite.” She smiled.
Emily chuckled softly as she nodded. “Thank you.” She walked to the kitchen and took a deep breath. She grabbed a vase to put the flowers in and filled it with water. She hated that she had to tell y/n that she couldn’t stay, all she wanted was to be held and to have y/n with her, but she couldn’t put her at risk.
The thing was her nemesis was in the city. Just a few hours ago, she had met with the person she never thought she’d ever see again, the person that she had left in her past and that had been nothing but another case for her. Ian Doyle was looking for her, and she had now put everyone at risk, and the last thing she needed, was for Ian to find out that y/n was more than just a friend and a colleague, he had no idea about her, he thought that the most important thing for Emily was her life, and the team was her family, so in a way, y/n was still very much at risk, but at least he had no idea that she was more than just a friend.
Emily walked back to the dining room and smiled at y/n. “I’m sorry…I hate to do this but I just…” she sighed. “I think I’m getting that flu that Garcia’s been talking about.” She huffed a chuckle as she stared at y/n.
Y/n tilted her head as she pouted. “So you want me to go?”
Emily smiled sadly. “I’m afraid you’ll catch it, and it’ll be a fun thing to explain to the rest of the team why we both have it.” She grinned.
Y/n rolled her eyes playfully and nodded. “I guess you’re right.” She sighed as she stared at Emily, walking to her. “Em…are you okay?”
“I am.” Emily smiled.
Y/n squinted her eyes and raised her brow. “You’re not getting tired of me, are you?”
Emily felt her heart sinking as she stared at her girlfriend. She smiled softly and walked to her, wrapping her arms around her shoulders, and resting her forehead against hers. “I love you too much to do that.” She whispered softly as she smiled.
Y/n smiled widely as she wrapped her arms around her waist. “I love you too.” She furrowed her brows. “You’re really getting sick, Prentiss. You’d have joked about it.”
Emily shrugged. “I also like to tell you that I love you, because I really do.” She smiled softly, leaning in, and kissing her lips softly.
Y/n smiled against her lips and held her as close as possible. “Thought you didn’t want to give me the flu.” She whispered against her lips once they pulled away.
“A kiss won’t hurt.” Emily chuckled softly as she looked at y/n. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
Y/n nodded. “Sure will.” She smiled. “Save me my dessert, I’ll come eat it when you feel better.” She grinned as she walked to the door, she petted Sergio before she finally left.
Emily sighed again and felt her eyes getting watery. She hated that she had to do this, she hated that she was pushing the one person she trusted with her whole heart…but again…that sounded pretty hypocrite since y/n had no idea about her past with Ian Doyle. No one could know. She preferred to lie about it than put them more at risk.
********************
Y/n stretched as she got up from bed and yawned. After the exhausting days that they’ve had at the BAU, she had returned home and gotten herself in bed, trying to get herself to get some rest before whatever event was going to happen the next day. But right at two am, there had been a knock on her door, which woke her from her beauty sleep. She walked to the door and looked into the small hole, furrowing her brows as she noticed Emily standing right in front of the door. She opened the door and smiled sleepily.
“You lost your key again?” Y/n raised her brows as she stared at Emily.
Emily smiled softly. “I forgot it at home.”
Y/n nodded. “And you forgot your keys too?”
“I just wanted to see you.” Emily said softly.
Y/n furrowed her brows but said nothing, grabbing Emily’s hand and pulling her inside the apartment, closing the door behind her. “What’s going on, Em?” She said softly.
Emily took a deep breath as she shook her head. “I’ve just been having a hard time sleeping.”
“Then stay here with me.”
“I can’t.” Emily sighed softly. “Sergio…he’s been a pain in the ass. He hates that I leave him alone.”
Y/n grinned softly. “I’m gonna start to be jealous of him, getting all your attention.”
Emily rolled her eyes playfully. She then cupped y/n’s face in her hands, bringing their lips into a sweet and tender kiss. Emily could feel her eyes getting teary, but she stayed close to y/n and kept kissing her softly. Y/n wrapped her arms around Emily, her hands going up and down her back, her fingertips delicately touching her as she kissed Emily back. Even if Emily had this tough, bad girl persona, everyone knew that Emily had a soft spot because she was also a complete nerd, and y/n was lucky enough to say that she was able to experience it. They both pulled away slowly, resting their foreheads against each other’s, smiling softly.
“You know I love you, right?” Emily said softly, smiling at y/n.
“I know.” Y/n pulled away to look into her beautiful brown eyes as she nodded. “And I love you. A lot.” She whispered softly as she kissed her nose softly.
Emily smiled as she ran her fingers through her hair. “This whole stress will end soon.”
Y/n furrowed her brows slightly but nodded. “It will. Maybe you should consider what Rossi said about taking a vacation.” She grinned softly.
Emily chuckled softly as she nodded. “Go somewhere far away from here, no cellphones or technology…just us.”
“Well, he meant only for you.” Y/n teased.
“But I’d take you with me.” Emily smiled lovingly as her other hand stroked her cheek. “I want you with me.”
“And I’ll always be here, Em.” Y/n smiled as she leaned in to kiss her lips again. “Always.”
Emily nodded softly as she kissed her lips again, smiling sadly. “Hey uh…” she reached on her pocket and smiled softly down at her hands. “I got you something.” She looked back at y/n.
Y/n furrowed her brows and tried to look at what Emily had in her hands. “What is it?” She grinned softly.
Emily smiled softly and then opened her hand to show y/n what she had in hands, raising her brow softly. “You always mention you like it.”
Y/n’s lips parted and soon after turned into a smile, looking back up at Emily. “Em…you…you wear this necklace more than anything.”
Emily chuckled softly as she grabbed the heraldic rose pendant and moved behind y/n. She moved y/n’s hair to the side and placed the necklace delicately. “You always mentioned how you liked it…loved it, actually. And I thought maybe you should have it.” She smiled softly as she leaned down to kiss her shoulder. “It’ll look better on you anyway.” She then moved back to face y/n.
Y/n looked down at it and smiled softly. “I do love it.” She looked back at Emily as she held it. “Em-“
“Consider it an early birthday gift.” Emily grinned.
“Still two months to go, though.” Y/n raised her brow as she grinned.
“I like spoiling you, and you know it.” Emily smiled as she wrapped her arms around her and kissed her lips softly. “I gotta go, it’s late.” She whispered softly as she stared at her.
“And Sergio is gonna kill you.” Y/n grinned playfully.
Emily chuckled as she nodded. “Yes.” She looked into y/n’s eyes and smiled, leaning in to kiss her forehead softly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow.” Y/n smiled.
Y/n stared at her until Emily closed the door and then she was gone, her hands still in the necklace. She sighed softly as she locked the door, her mind spinning as thoughts started to cloud her whole mind. There was something going on, but y/n couldn’t figure out what it was. Emily was definitely not herself, but if she pushed, Emily would only brush it off and she’d say nothing was going on, but the more she focused on Emily, the more worried she was about her. But she was right, this would soon end, and they would be able to go back to their lives.
********************
The whole time they were at the BAU, y/n kept an eye on Emily, trying to focus on what Hotch and the rest of the team was saying about this whole case, but she couldn’t help but see every move that Emily made. She was quieter than usual, which was not normal of her, she always had so much to say about the cases, y/n always found Emily being the best profiler in the team, of course they had their own thing, and she didn’t just think about it because she was her girlfriend, but she truly admired Emily so much, it surprised her when Emily gave her attention and actually wanted to be with her, even with the slight age difference, Emily still had her eyes on y/n. So yes, y/n knew Emily better than anyone in that room, but lately, it seemed like what she knew meant nothing.
Once Emily and Derek were back, y/n couldn’t help but keep her eyes on Emily, but this time, her full attention was on her. Every reaction, every movement, every facial expression, she was trying to get anything she could. As they continued to talk about the case, y/n noticed the way Emily became more tense about it and the way she kept fidgeting with her hands. Before anything else could happen, once the team was a bit more distracted, y/n pulled Emily with her and pulled them inside the bathroom, locking the door behind her.
“What are you doing?” Emily asked, brows furrowed as she stared at y/n.
Y/n crossed her arms as she looked at Emily. “What is going on, Emily?”
Emily shook her head. “I don’t-“
“You do know.” Y/n said, trying not to sound upset or worried. “Emily, I can see the way you’re acting. You never get to work late, even when we have spent the night together. You have barely eaten anything, you’ve barely been sleeping, I can notice. You haven’t been yourself, Em.”
“Baby…I don’t really wanna talk about it.” Emily rubbed her hand on her face as she looked down at the floor.
Y/n shook her head. “I know you don’t. But Emily…you’re not okay. I can tell. I’m here, why won’t you talk to me?” She walked close to Emily and placed her hands on her shoulders, sliding them down to grab her hands. “Please. I’m worried about you, Em.” She whispered softly.
Emily shook her head. “I just…” she sighed as she looked back at y/n. “…I’ve been having these nightmares, I’m exhausted. I want this to end. I need it to end.” She felt her eyes getting teary as her hands landed on y/n’s cheeks, stroking them softly. “I’ll be okay.”
Y/n shook her head as she sighed, wrapping her arms around Emily’s waist. “I’ll stop pushing…but Em, seriously…I’m here.” She looked into her eyes as she smiled. “Come to me. Talk to me.” She whispered softly.
Emily nodded as she leaned down to kiss her lips. “I love you.” She whispered softly against her lips.
Y/n smiled softly. “I love you too.” She kissed her nose softly and then her lips again.
Emily sighed as she pulled away and smiled softly. “We should get back.”
Y/n only nodded and then walked out of the bathroom with Emily, making sure that no one had seen them. As they went back with the rest, y/n still had her attention on Emily but said nothing more. As for Emily, she knew that sooner or later, y/n would figure out what was going on, the whole team would figure it out and there was nothing that would stop them, so she had to act fast. Things were only getting worse, more people were dying, and it was on Emily, and the thought of it was eating her alive. If she didn’t do anything now, he’d soon get to all of them. He’d get to y/n.
********************
Y/n furrowed her brows as she walked around the halls, looking around. After they had mentioned the profile of Ian Doyle, they had gathered around to make a plan and see where they could go next and that’s when she noticed that Emily was nowhere to be found. She saw her once she arrived back with Morgan, she had a worried look, her face had entirely changed and y/n was sure this had something to do with this whole thing, but if she pushed, she knew that she wouldn’t get anything anyway. Once Hotch dismissed everyone, that’s when she noticed she was gone. What was she doing?
“Guys, I cannot find Emily anywhere.” Y/n walked to them and stared at all of them. “What?”
Rossi sighed. “We believe Emily is involved with this case.”
Y/n furrowed her brows. “What?” She shook her head. “No…she would’ve said something. What do you mean involved?”
“Years ago, she was undercover. Weeks ago, she mentioned a name, Lauren Reynolds. Saying she was gone. I believe that was her undercover name.”
Y/n felt dizzy for a moment as she stared at them, not sure what was going on. Emily would’ve told her the truth, as much as she had wanted to protect them, she wouldn’t have lied to her. But she did…that’s why she had been acting weird, she had been pushing her away, she didn’t even let her stay at her apartment. That visit at two a.m., the necklace, Emily repeatedly telling her that she loved her…Emily was hiding it so y/n wouldn’t find out. Emily was a hopeless romantic, that was not a secret, but the way she had been acting, the way she had spoken to y/n…it all made sense now. She was trying to protect her, Ian was after them, and Emily was going to deal with this alone.
It was like her body was acting on its own once they moved to review the information JJ had. She didn’t even know when JJ had arrived, but she was there, she was there to help with the case. Y/n only sat there and tried to focus on everything about which they were talking. Emily had been undercover…she had been one of Ian’s lovers…his lover. She had been involved with him and she was one of the reasons he had ended up behind bars. She had never actually asked much about Emily’s past jobs, Emily always told her about her life, she knew the nerd she was, the silly movies she loved to watch, the books she read, she knew her routine in the morning and at night, what annoyed her and what she liked. She knew Emily. Right? She knew her, she just…didn’t know this part. Emily trusted her. Or maybe not.
“Carter…did you know about this?” Derek snapped as he looked back at y/n, making her snap out of her trance.
Y/n furrowed her brows as she stared at him. “W-What?”
“You’re the closest to Emily. You spend more time with her than with any of us. Did she tell you any of this?” Derek stood up and kept his eyes fixated on y/n.
“Derek…no. I had no idea…I-“
“Please.” Derek scoffed. “You always say it, you know more about Emily than any of us. Why should I believe that you didn’t know any of this?”
“Morgan.” Hotch warned as he stared at him.
“No!” Derek looked at everyone and then went back to y/n. “You and Emily have been hiding this from us for days. She’s now on the run and we have no idea where she could be. So enlighten us, Carter. Tell us where she is so this ends now.”
Y/n stood up from her seat, feeling anger growing in the pit of her stomach. “I have no idea…where she is, Morgan.” She felt her eyes getting teary as she stared at him. “I didn’t know anything about this. She never told me. Trust me, I’m not stupid. If I knew where she was, I wouldn’t be sitting here listening to your crap. I wouldn’t have let her leave. You were the last one with her, what did she tell you?”
“She said nothing. Because she doesn’t trust us. Apparently, you included.” Derek snapped.
“That’s enough.” Rossi said as he stared at both of them.
“Why should I believe you? Why should I believe that you’re not covering for Emily? You’re best friends. You two are literally glued to each other, and you want me to believe that you’re not hiding anything from us? Emily put you up to this, but this has to end now, Carter!” Derek yelled as he walked to Carter. “You’re the person she trusted the most, huh? If she’s your best friend, then you’ll tell us whe-“
“She was more than my best friend! I love her!” Y/n snapped as tears rolled down her cheeks as she stared at Derek. She sobbed softly as she took a step back, feeling everyone’s eyes on her. She looked down at the floor as she shook her head. “We’ve…we’ve been dating for a whole year…we didn’t say anything because…we didn’t want anyone to use us against each other in case something went south on a case.” She said between sobs. “She didn’t tell me anything, Morgan.” She looked back up at him. “You’re right. Maybe she didn’t trust me. Maybe she just wanted to protect me. I don’t even know what to think. I don’t know what’s going on. So please…back off, and let’s focus on finding Emily.”
Everyone in the room said nothing more about the subject, Rossi and Morgan decided to go to Emily’s apartment and y/n went over her bag and handed them the key, staring at Morgan as she did and then leaving the room. She could’ve offered to go with them, she could’ve said that she would be the one going, but she knew that if she did, she wouldn’t want to leave, and she was now a bit afraid of what she might find there. She wasn’t upset…she wasn’t mad…at least not at the moment, she was just…confused.
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Y/n felt like she was numb at that point, only focusing on what they had to say about the case and following them around, barely saying anything. She was hoping that she’d wake up from this nightmare, that maybe, just maybe, everything was in her head, that she was actually asleep, and this would end soon. For a moment, she tried to go and clear her mind for a bit, deciding that Penelope could help at least a little bit, but as she walked to her office, she heard her talking and then she figured out what she was doing. She tried to swallow back her tears as she walked to her, offering a small as she turned on her chair.
“Hey, sweet girl.” Penelope said softly as she offered a small smile.
“Hi.” Y/n smiled softly and crossed her arms. “So…we figured out if Emily had a boyfriend, huh?” She chuckled softly.
Penelope nodded as she smiled. “I always thought you guys looked cute. I’m happy you’re actually a couple.”
Y/n smiled softly as she nodded. “Thanks.” She cleared her throat. “Any luck with the phone numbers?”
Penelope shook her head. “No…I’ve left a message in all of them.”
Y/n nodded as she sighed. “Do you think I could uh…could you…give me at least one to try it out?”
Penelope smiled as she turned her chair and wrote down one of the phone numbers, and then turned to look at y/n, handing her the post it. “I just tried this one, is the last one I found.”
Y/n grabbed it and stared at it for a moment, smiling softly as she looked back at Penelope. “Thanks, P.” She nodded before she left.
Y/n looked around the hallway and noticed no one was there, so she for her phone out and dialed the number. She bit her lip softly as she waited, part of her hoping that she’d answer and the other part just waiting to be sent to voicemail. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she heard the voicemail tone. “Hey Em…it’s me, y/n. Uh…Penelope gave me this number, we’re not even sure if you have it anymore or not…” she huffed a chuckle. “…I don’t even know what to say. I just want you to know that…I love you. I won’t ever stop doing that.” She sniffled, biting her lip softly as she tried to swallow back her sobs. “Just come back, Emily…please. We can fix this together. I just need you back with me.” She let out sobs as she looked shook her head. “Come back to me.” She sighed as she ended the voicemail and closed her phone, putting it back in her pocket.
Emily sighed as she closed her eyes for a moment. She was exhausted, she was tired, she wanted this whole thing to end, and the worst thing about this, was that she had no idea how this would end. She wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, she felt helpless but she knew she had a reason and purpose, she needed to put an end to this; he wasn’t going to win, not as long as Emily could stop him. She looked down at her phone and furrowed her brows as she noticed two voicemails. Her heart stopped for a second as she heard Penelope’s voice, her eyes getting teary. She hated so much that she was doing this to them, she knew maybe they’d hate her, but she was doing this for them.
She opened the last voicemail and she felt her heart sank, for a moment, her whole world had stopped. It was y/n. She was sure Penelope had given her the phone number. She closed her eyes as she felt l tears rolling down her cheeks. She never meant to hurt y/n like this, she never wanted to lie to her, she never meant to hide this from them, but she thought she’d be able to live with it and that nothing would ever happen, he’d stay in jail forever and no one in her life would know about it. But she was wrong. And she hated it. She wanted to drive back to her lover, hold her and kiss her, but she had to protect her, she had to protect her family.
“I love you…I’m sorry.” Emily whispered softly before she turned off her phone and took a deep breath.
********************
The whole ride to the Warehouse, y/n tried to keep her head clear, thinking that they would be able to find Emily and that this whole thing would finally end, that she’d be able to bring her home and both of them would work on this together. For a moment, as she heard more and more about Emily’s undercover and Ian, she felt herself getting angry at the whole situation. It was clear everyone was upset at the thought of Emily getting involved with someone like him, and she was not gonna lie, it upset her too, but then all she could think about was Emily; was she okay? Was she safe? Y/n knew Emily was a fighter, she could protect herself, but what if Ian had hurt her badly? She couldn’t help the negative thoughts that filled her mind. She grabbed onto her necklace and kissed it, trying to swallow back her tears. She flinched a bit as she felt a hand on her shoulder, and she turned to look at Derek, who offered a small smile.
Y/n decided she’d go in with Derek, she followed them around and her heart started racing as she walked through the warehouse. For a moment, she tried to think that this was just another victim, she wanted to try to concentrate the best she could and not lose her posture. She could almost hear Strauss yelling at her for getting involved even though she knew she should’ve stayed behind. When the lights went out, she felt like she was in a nightmare, following Derek as she kept looking around us, making sure to not miss any door or room. At some point, Derek told y/n to go first to have her back, and just as she walked into the very end of the warehouse, her heart dropped at the sight of Emily on the floor…bleeding.
“Emily!” Y/n dropped to her knees and placed her gun on the floor. “Derek, call an ambulance!” She placed her hand on Emily’s and looked at her, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Emily? Em…please answer me. I’m here.” She said almost in a whisper.
Emily opened her eyes weakly and stared back at y/n. “Y/n?” She whispered weakly.
Y/n nodded and smiled through her tears. “Yes. It’s me. I’m here.” She placed her hand on Emily’s cheek, stroking it softly. “C’mon, baby. I need you to stay with me, help is coming.”
Emily’s breathing was weak, she tried to keep her eyes opened to look at her lover, but it was becoming harder. “Love…I’m…msorry.”
“Help! Please!” Y/n turned to look at Derek with tears in her eyes and then went back to Emily. “No, Em. I know why you did this. I love you, okay? I’m not mad, I’m not upset. I’m here. Just please, please stay with me. I need you, my love. Please.” She cried out as she leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Please, Em…”
“I…love you.” Emily breathed out and closed her eyes.
“Emily! Please! Hurry up!” Y/n looked down at her and sobbed. “Emily!”
The time stopped as y/n kept yelling Emily’s name, and as she felt Derek’s hands on her trying to pull her back, y/n kept yelling and trying to get away from Derek. The paramedics arrived and were all over Emily, y/n could only feel Derek’s arms wrapped around her trying to stop her from moving, and y/n could not do anything else than let herself cry and scream in Derek’s arms. This was not happening. This was not supposed to happen. At some point she felt Derek picking her up and helping her walk so they could follow the ambulance, y/n was sobbing uncontrollably so they didn’t let her go in the ambulance with her.
The whole way to the hospital seemed like a movie, y/n felt like she was not there, she was just numb, and she had gone completely quiet. She could feel JJ and Derek holding her, but she only sat there, her eyes glued to the ambulance in front of them. And then, as if she had transported, she was in the visitors lounge with the whole team. She didn’t know when or how they had all arrived there, even Penelope. She had sat down alone, only staring down at her hands as she fidgeted with her fingers. She thought that she had ran out of tears because none were coming out of her eyes, she could feel her head throbbing, her eyes were swollen and her whole body was trembling. If this is a nightmare, just wake up. Wake up now. She kept repeating in her head over and over again. In the corner of her eye, she saw a figure moving, making her turn her face to find JJ and she stood up rapidly to walk to JJ.
“JJ?” Y/n asked in a whisper as she walked to her. She furrowed her brows when she didn’t say anything. “JJ…say something.” She made a pause and shook her head as there was still silence coming from JJ.
“No…” Penelope whispered softly, her voice breaking.
“Say something!” Y/n’s bottom lip trembled as she sobbed quietly. “Please…”
“She never made it off the table.” JJ said softly, but rapidly, as if she had pushed herself from saying those words.
Y/n felt her like time stopped once again as JJ’s words kept replying in her mind. She could hear Penelope and Spencer crying, she could hear them in the background, but all she could do was sit back down, just staring into nothing as her mind processed JJ’s words. She felt someone touching her shoulder, but she couldn’t make up the words that were coming out of their mouth, her mind had shut down entirely and her body couldn’t react. At some point she felt something wet on her face and she processed in her mind that she was crying and then her mind registered where she was. She looked up and found Penelope by her side, wrapping her arms around her and that’s when she felt her whole body giving up and she started sobbing again, screaming loudly as Penelope tightened her grip on her. She was living in the nightmare.
********************
“I really wish you would’ve told me, Em…I could’ve probably helped you.” Y/n whispered softly, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I miss you terribly.” She sobbed quietly.
“Y/n?” Derek asked softly as she stood beside her.
Y/n cleared her throat as she smiled sadly. “She gave me her necklace. The day before, she came to my apartment at two a.m. I guess she thought that…maybe if she went that late, maybe they wouldn’t be watching her or something.” She shrugged softly as she looked down at the grave. “She seemed so…worried but she was reassuring me that she was okay.” She huffed a chuckle. “I knew she was not, but I didn’t push. I let her have control. She kissed me and left.” She shook her head as more tears rolled down her cheeks. “I should’ve pushed.”
“We know she wouldn’t have told you anything anyway.” Derek sighed. “She wanted to protect us. Protect you.”
Y/n nodded. “I hate her for that.” She shook her head. “I should be upset that she didn’t tell me anything, that she got involved with him.” She sighed. “But I’m upset that she let this happen and I couldn’t be there to save her.”
Derek nodded. “We did what we could.”
Y/n looked up at Derek as she cried. “Did we?” She cried out.
Derek stared at her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him and kissing her forehead softly. “I’m sorry for how I spoke to you.”
“I forgive you.” Y/n whispered softly as she rested her head against his shoulder. “I’m sorry too.”
Derek shook his head. “We’re good, princess. And I’m here.”
Y/n nodded. “I know. I’m here too.” She sighed as she let more tears roll down her cheeks.
“So…wanna tell me how it all began?” Derek grinned as he looked down at y/n.
Y/n huffed a chuckle as she wiped her tears. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“I do too.”
Y/n turned to look at Penelope and smiled softly. “You’re still here.”
Penelope smiled through her tears. “I didn’t want to leave you, sweet cheeks.”
Y/n smiled as she extended her hand for Penelope to take it. She then looked back at the grave and smiled. “I think Emily would love for me to tell you guys about how it all started.” She nodded softly as she knelt down and sat on the grass, followed by Penelope and Derek.
#emily prentiss#emily prentiss x reader#emily prentiss x you#emily prentiss x female reader#emily prentiss fanfiction#criminal minds fanfiction#criminal minds
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He's just a LITTLE dramatic 🤏
Inspired by this post by @fuckyeahgoodomens
#good omens#katiefrog217#ineffable husbands#my art#fanart#good omens fanart#good omens crowley#snake crowley#Silly post#snakes#Yes I did do it as a reblog and personal post#good omens 2#good omens shitpost#go art
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august 2020 // august 2022
#kip sabian#aew#all elite wrestling#aewedit#wrestlingedit#wrestling#night gifs#yes i did take a break and watch zero hour why do you ask#i saw the first one and i was like hang on he still does this and zero hour was the easiest example post return i could find#little things like this just makes me so happy. like on one hand i feel like he completely reinvented himself when he came back#but its so nice to see that his moveset is still mostly the same with minimal tweaks. all that work in his favor btw#just yeah. wanted to make a small comparison <3#also sorry im not tagging anyone else boo me yeah i know sorry pac girlies#my beloved#kip in a box#(rp blogs dont reblog; saving and other personal use with tag credits is fine)
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why do character haters not know how to just...block tags?
#cryptid’s thoughts#like I am consistently baffled by how many posts I see JC haters jump on just to shit on JC like go do anything else#*JC anti sees any post about JC not being the worst person ever* oh boy time to clock in#yes I am still salty about that ridiculous fic comment I got#but I've also been going through my FYP and I keep seeing them reblog posts about JC just to actively shit on him like why? stop that#I don't even really go here in the sense that he's not my fave guy but I also don't and never have hated his character lol#much like most of the other characters - I find him intriguing and his journey is very nice to chew on#I certainly never got the vibe that he's some evil monster hellbent on destroying everything wwx has ever loved but idk maybe that's just m#anyway that's beside the point! even if I DID - I wouldn't comment on posts that JC fans made to complain
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So I rewatched Arrietty with my friend on discord yesterday and
WELL....I'm adding so many other muses for the new year. Why not her too?
#potential muses#// LISTEN#// THE MOVIE WAS MUCH BETTER THIS SECOND TIME THAN THE FIRST TIME THROUGH#// I REALLY WANNA ADD THIS LITTLE BEAN AT SOME POINT#// MAYBE even Sho but like I really need to rewatch it a couple more times for him#// but YES I will be calling him Sho and not SHAWN#// I still have no idea why Disney did that tbh#// like HUH#// but yah I'm gonna keep Bridget as my Arrietty's VC tbh#DO NOT REBLOG THIS POST#PERSONALS DO NOT INTERACT
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I was tagged a while back by @somekindof-disaster to do this. c:
Thank you most kindly ~ ! ♡
♡ Are you named after someone?
Hm! Partially!
♡ When was the last time you cried?
When my puppy passed away. </3
♡ Do you have kids?
No!?! I haven’t even finished school yet??!??
♡ Do you use sarcasm a lot?
Nope!
I always speak very sincerely, and I’m really proud of that. c:
♡ What’s the first thing you notice about people?
Their character! Honestly, it’s like the saying: when someone shows you who they are the first time — believe them!
How someone is when they first meet you is who they are, and a good indicator of how they’ll treat you!
I like to surround myself with kind, compassionate, honest, and uplifting people so I really pay attention to that kind of thing. c:
♡ What’s your eye color?
Brown!
♡ Scary movies or happy endings?
Happy endings! <3
I can see how scary movies can be fun at times, but honestly there are already far more terrifying things happening in the world!
So I’d rather be uplifted!
♡ Any special talents?
Well, I don’t like to speak praises of myself, but I am very good at baking! (And I really like baking for people I love!!) <3
I’m also quite proud of my gardening skills! I had a very pretty garden at my old home, and I was really proud of that!
♡ Where were you born?
I’m a Southern girl since birth hehe. c:
♡ What are your hobbies?
Clothes, makeup, reading, writing, painting, singing, dancing, acting! I also like hiking, and just being outside with my puppies. c:
♡ Have you any pets?
My puppies Wall-e and Eve!
♡ What sports do you play/have you played?
I only dance! <3
♡ How tall are you?
5’3”
♡ Favorite subjects in school?
Art & History. c:
♡ Dream job?
Acting or dancing — I love performing ~ ! <3 It’s so much fun !! :D
Okay! I’ll tag @rainberrydrops @coffeeperson99 @bratty-vampyre @prettysavagelikethat ! ♡ ⊹ * ·̩͙ ✿
#<3#tagged#tag game#rosie things#i disabled reblogs but they’re still on so please no reblogs guys ;-;#i’m not really comfortable with them on personal posts !#thank you ! <3#i tried !#not sure i did this right ? XD#yes my dogs are named after the little pixar robots from the movie :’)#anyway thank you kindly friend !#i’m sorry for just now doing this and being a little late#but i wasn’t here much after my puppy passed away#i’m doing better though no worry !#hugs & happiness ! <3#i appreciate the tag and hope you’re doing well too !#c:#xo ! <3#♡ ⊹ * ·̩͙ ✿
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In case this needs to be said: don't trauma dump in a stranger's tags. It's disrespectful and not something people really want to see.
#yes i'm speaking from experience#i blocked this person immediately and considered reporting for harassment#but as someone who didn't have any triggers about this topic#those tags made me really uncomfortable#so if i was someone who did experience trauma/got triggered about this topic#that could've been harmful#if you need to publicly vent do it somewhere else#this is also why i'll occasionally make a long rant-y post about something i reblogged a few minutes ago#sometimes i just need to rant/vent#and putting a rant in a stranger's tag isn't something i want to do
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did you think you could simply bury me under superior numbers and brute strength?
HOW NAIVE.
personals do not reblog.
requested by @godkilller
#video tag;#cas asked me to grab gin's little speech for him and so i have#behold the glory and wonder that is sho hayami & koji yusa#sorry to everyone who enjoys dub but they're superior in japanese#( YES I KNOW WHAT AIZEN AND GIN SOUND LIKE IN THE DUB AND SHINJI TOO AND GRIMMJOW AND I JUST KIND OF#DISLIKE IT ALL )#but seriously#personals do not reblog.#i mean it#don't make me turn reblogs off on this post#BUT ALSO HEY CASUAL FUCKING REMINDER THAT AIZEN IS ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL CHARACTERS ON BLEACH#HE SHATTERED KOMAMURA'S BANKAI#HE TOOK DOWN *NUMEROUS* CAPTAIN-CLASS SHINIGAMI ON HIS OWN#WITH ONLY ONE OR TWO SWINGS OF HIS BLADE#HE PUT DOWN *EVERYONE* WHO FACED HIM#and yes i include yama-jii in this because even though aizen used wonderweiss?#it was still a take down of yama through his own designs#aizen is fucking *TERRIFYING*#no one laid a single scratch onto him#and no i don't count what ichigo did because that healed itself#the only person to truly wound aizen on this day? was gin.#yeah.#anyways enjoy aizen cutting everyone down i know i sure do. :) look at him go.
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getting pretty tired seeing ppl talk about how tumblr is so much "better" just because you can show a little bit of booba now 😐
#personal#yes it did make some improvements and i like them#but we still getting more problems with this site most of the time#you can't report reposters anymore bc staff is fcking lazy and took out the option to report them and probably wont bring it back#your creations do not show up in the tags and it happens very often now#and not to talk about reblog ratio#yea tumblr staff really hates anyone who creates shit on here#also lots of glitches that sometimes staff doesn't even know about until u try to tell them yourself#like right now the queue is so glitchy it doesn't post on time and posts disappear#and lots and lots of other problems tbh#so its not ''better''
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i love (/s) accounts that just have,, the worst opinions on just abt everything. today i saw someone saying that people who think u shouldn't smoke anywhere u want r sensitive little snowflakes or whatever. like girl what
#a bunch of other nic addicts were like#yeah this is why i love post yugo they just let u smoke anywhereee 🥰😍#like as a person living in post yugo just......... what............#i hope u know all of post yugo is going to shit bc of stuff like this#they prolly encourage 14 y/os drinking like half of my country lmao#initially i made a really fucking angry reblog but then i got shy#n e way their excuse was like#oh well I have asthma and second hand smoke didnt do anything to ME#like girl yes it did?? ur literally a smoker now????????#also does it ever occur to them that maybe some ppl. have sensory issues#or just dont want ur gross smoke all up in their face???#ok im done sorry#juno complains#i hate ppl who smoke w me in closed spaces
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Been thinking about The Shawshank Redemption and how good of a decision it was not to give the specifics of the murder Red committed. It means you have to judge him based on who he is now, not what he's done in the past. If they'd specified that it was something particularly bad, like in the book, some people would be less sympathetic towards him, but if he'd been justified there might be a temptation to make him the exception. By not specifying it really communicates that ultimately what he did is irrelevant, because he's still a person worthy of compassion regardless of the mistakes he's made in the past and no one deserves to experience the American prison system.
#maybe the justice system should be about actually improving society rather than revenge and prejudice#you personally have to be compassionate to people who have hurt you#i mean that in a way#not in a way i know tumblr likes to misinterpret things a lot#the shawshank redemption#and yes i have read the book i do know what red did#but he has 3 life sentences in the book and 1 in the film and there's not actually that much overlap so its probably a different crime#i would post this straight to my fandom sideblog but shawshank deserves better than to be associated with spn so I'll reblog it instead
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I understand post saying that blocking people is ok, you should feel more comfortable doing it, but I just can't really agree with them
#anyway is this me being angry that i can't reblog some art cause person blocked me and i think i know why they blocked me and i i think that#was because of some tags that i have decided i shouldn't write anyway?#(not even on their post on someone elses)#yes it is#also tumblr was reccomending me posts from someone who had me blocked like from april to september 2022#(that person unblocked me at some point)#(i went then with basically liking and reblogging all of their art)#so it's not even like you don't see it#and it's frustrating#also you can just generally see it on other people's blog with tumblr reccomending it#also that person who blocked me once appeared on my activity page.#while they still had me blocked.#they liked post on my blog. that wasn't my post#though it was my ask.#but i had mention on activity which mean they probably liked my reblog (unless it was something weird with tumblr functioning)#i guess they might have liked my tags.#but my point is.#you can interact with people you blocked#without realizing that#so i dunno blocking function really sucks here#like if it worked like on twitter when you just don't see it when you look at account it says 'that account blocked you'#'you have blocked that account' 'that tweet comes from account that blocked you'#'that tweet comes from account you blocked'#i would agree with that takes but tumblr mostly makes being blocked frustrating#and if you like blocked people because of something else than pettty reasons and they already know you#then it's kind of useless cause they can still see your post#and if you did because you do not want to reblog from someone specific/like their posts when if you don't remember their username#or don't pay attention or they changed it#chance is you still might do that#...i think my point is blocking function here sucks
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A heartfelt and grievously expanded-upon update to this—please, please read the whole thing if you can. reblogs much appreciated.
(DISCLAIMER, for all who are saying reasons like abusive parents/legal stuff/toxic ex/triggering memories/page got deleted/job/stalkers/bullying/[[insert any other shitty life thing]], This is not concerning that—personal safety & health ALWAYS comes first, and is worth more than any media ever could be. This is my biggest reason for defending that autonomy. I would be a hypocrite to say I hadn’t deleted triggering posts of mine or ones that got me in trouble with my family.)
it genuinely makes me sad and kinda upset when someone purges all their old art off the internet like. barring harmful content what if someone liked that. What if someone would have. And now nobody will ever know and it's just gone. even people's old invader zim askblogs or whatever getting deleted feels like a micro alexandria to me and that's just something I made up. I wasn't even thinking of a specific one it just stresses me out. Is this the autism I don't get why nobody else seems to freak internally abt it like I do. I see artists whose blogs I've never even looked at go like "man so glad I deleted all my old stuff it's so clean" or saying they throw out art from when they were kids I'm like. how are you not hurling. How is that not distressing that is literally your tree rings why would you do that. I want to see what's out there. people want to see it I promise someone out there likes it
...don't they??? Does everyone get quietly irrationally upset by this as me, or is this just hyperfixation/autism/some amalgam of the two. I'm not a hoarder or obsessive compulsive or anything like that so i wonder..
Anyways. reblog if you had a favorite amateur youtube animator in your childhood whose channel got nuked without a trace one day that you still think about.
I wanted to attach this video because it condenses my point very well. A TLDR of sorts. Please watch the whole thing, it genuinely changed the entire way I think about art as a concept.
(2nd vid is "Subjectivity in Art")
“The moment your art touches an audience, the ownership shifts in an irreversible way. [They're] not having an art experience with you and your intentions. They're having an art experience with the art object.
“You can't just burn your past; it's not even your past to burn anymore. It's other people's history as well. Whether or not you like it, that art is already bonded to somebody's soul, and if you rip the art away, you're ripping a bit of the soul that has adhesive contact to it.”
The digital age makes it very easy to distance or detach yourself from the impact your work has—be it art, fanfic, videos, even memes. Online content is as important to people now as any other media, if not more. But it's also by far the easiest, fastest, and most effective form of it to erase from public access. Media so unbelievably important to people and in general. Yes, you—with the 2010s purple sparkle dog speedpaint. I still think about that speedpaint all the time, because it was the first time i learned that you could draw on a computer, and I thought it was cool as hell. I still do.
I do wish there was a stronger culture of preservation and consideration for this, because every time I see people talk about snuffing their stuff because it doesn't personally resonate with them anymore, I just think ...what about all the people it did?
I've seen lots of people saying "get over it, it doesn't even matter," but it fucking does. It does matter. Even if I didn’t make it, even if I don’t have to deal with being the one who made it, even if I'm naturally inclined to be distressed by it—It still matters. And there’s nothing you could ever say to suddenly make it not matter, because there’s nothing you could ever say to make it not matter to me.
Don't devalue the act of creation. Don't dismiss something you made. It's out there, in people's thoughts and hearts and souls, and that is real. Even if you don't know it. Especially if you don't know it. Especially in a world where physical media is being snuffed out, the internet is constantly dying without any physical remains to recover, social isolation is rampant, and simply because independently produced content online is still media.
Fanfiction can hold equal or greater significance to someone as a book, but you can’t unpublish a book. Authors don’t have a button that can vaporize every copy of their work across all time, but fanfiction authors do. I’m not counting people who download fics either—when you buy a book, that transaction is over. But online, you have the power of unending transaction that can be terminated instantly at your will. The process of publishing fanfic vs. publishing a book may be different, but people’s connection to the art is the same intensity.
So yeah. I do get depressed about the Internet being a constant Alexandria, but the times I get the most depressed is when I click someone's page and see that all their work is gone because they're ‘curating a new aesthetic’ for their page or some shit. Or weeding out all the "ugly" art. Or just went on whatever the hell 'thrill deleting' is, because they just get a kick out of it.
Fuck it—yeah! It upsets me! I’m not wrong to say that. I’m saying it!
Under the cut, because it got long as shit! Also don’t worry the ending is way sappier and more ‘beauty of human nature’ vibe so it’s not all doom and gloom lol
What if that was someone's favorite art of that character. What if someone read that 'cringe oneshot' on the worst day of their life. What if that Warriors meme vid is still burned into a college student’s mind despite being gone for 10 years. What if it's actually not just you and the ones and zeros you rent out to the world—secure in knowing the original will always be on your computer for you to do whatever you want with it.
I really, deeply wish there was more of a general awareness of this, because even though social media can be used like a diary, that’s functionally the opposite of what it is. It’s social media. When you post, it’s no longer in a vacuum, even though you can’t see the real humans that content touches—often deeply.
Media is history. You shouldn’t burn that history just because you personally believe it isn’t worth saving.
Because it’s no longer just your personal opinion. It’s no longer just your personal work. it’s. history. Memory of media is not a suitable replacement for the media itself. If it was, we wouldn’t save anything at all. Nostalgia is an agent of that. The definition of nostalgia is grief for moments of the past that are inaccessible, and the biggest balm for that pain is accessing a physical reminder of those moments. That opinion of yours is no longer personal. It’s weighed against uncountable people across all time that your thing is ALSO personal to. People who would, and will mourn its absence.
How many times have you joined an older fandom only to discover that some of its most popular works are gone? How many times have you routed through random blogs looking for scraps people hopefully reblogged? how many times have you used Wayback machine desperately praying that a fan fiction or a YouTube video will be there? How many times do you look up crunchy old vines or YouTube videos or anime AMV‘s? How many times do you remember old fanfic.net sex that impacted you in middle school, only to shake your head and go ‘probably no point even looking.’
i mourn the absence. No, people can’t and shouldn’t have their agency over what they post revoked, but they should be conscious of that weight. If you’re reading this and getting extremely annoyed, and you’re not in the pink text above,,,, good.
I honestly do hope it gets under your skin. I hope it sits with you. I hope you feel it every time you hit that button, and whether or not you do hit that button—if you hesitate, if you remember this, even spitefully, I’ve done my job. I am howling into the void. And I may not want an answer, but I do want my anguish to be heard and remembered. Because it isn’t me just being melodramatic.
I know I sound that way writing so much, but if my favorite writing YouTuber can drop trow this week and go, "yeah, sorry, all my video essays from less than a year ago that you listen to in the car all the time? I'm "rebranding" my content so i deleted them. besides, my personal views don't really agree align with the analyses i did, or the techniques i taught in them anyway. Sorry if some of the literal tens of thousands of you used them, but I don't want to feel shackled to having youtuber "classics" tied to me”
….then i guess I'm just going to have to sound dramatic! That fucking sucks! Hours of work and knowledge gone! This was a new channel too. It’s very likely there’s no archive of any kind, because who would think someone who worked hard enough to write, record, and edit hour-long videos, would just turn around and nuke it all? I definitely didn’t see it coming, but I did just start a new screenwriting class a few weeks ago, so I’ll tell you at least one person is REALLY missing those fucking videos right now. Because a lot of them were about specifically screenwriting, which I know jack shit about. and that specific person’s pace, editing, and style of breaking down information was the best suited style I found that I could focus on and absorb. There’s no replacement for that. No alternative for his individual perspective. his jokes. his opinions.
No, they may not resonate with him now, but in this decision, he’s put up a big middle finger to everyone who might have. And he has like 100k subscribers! Those are confirmed supporters! Imagine how many silent and untethered observers are feeling this loss right now. Imagine how many will not have it in the future.
If he never posted them at all, we wouldn’t know we had it. It wouldn’t be a loss. But we did. We did have it. Until he decided that no, we didn’t, because he just happens to be the one out of millions of individuals holding the button to burn it in a hundredth of a second.
His personal work, the attachment I had to it, and the ways that it helped me are now just ripped away. I am one person out of millions, literal MILLIONS of people who saw and liked this content before it vanished. The soul has been ripped, the access severed, and by CJ’s (and my) definition, the art is functionally dead. Not for the YouTuber or anyone else lucky enough to save a link or download, but everyone else. From this point until the end of time, even if people even two weeks from now don’t know it. Even if someone who stumbles upon his channel today, doesn’t know it.
We only mourn the concept of Alexandria because we had some kind of scope for what was inside. Yes, maybe you got self-conscious and deleted your 12 year old deviant art account. Do you know who else is doing that?? THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of other twenty somethings who ALSO feel self-conscious about their old socials. Art. Fanfic. One direction fan videos. anything.
Suddenly, an unquantifiable amount of information from your age group—an entire age group in 2012, is. gone. And we will NEVER know what’s been erased from that history. We will NEVER know what could have been significant to us ten years from now. Twenty years from now. A hundred years. A thousand.
You could have deleted a fanfic that would have been someone else’s new go-to panic attack distraction tomorrow. You could have deleted a video someone used to laugh at with their friend who died yesterday. When you delete something, you risk tearing a hole in unknowable personal histories.
The Internet isn’t just a big library of Alexandria. It’s a library containing libraries. And those libraries have their own libraries in those libraries have their own as well. libraries inside libraries, inside libraries, ad infinitum. To conceive the amount of destroyed history on the Internet is crushing.
And I just can’t help but I ask myself how in gods name people can choose to contribute to that, instead of reposting everything to trash heap alts titled “hall of shame” or some shit.
You can offload to alts. Put up disclaimers. Make password locked blogs, or dropboxes, or anonymous imgur dumps. Anonymous reuploads. Orphan fics. Make a playlist or linktree of unlisted videos. Cut off the watermarks. Delete all references to it on your main. Make a dedicated unlisted playlist. make a google drive. Make new portfolio sites. Delete any questions you get about it. Change pen names. Pretend it never existed.
Give a heads up.
Something.
But don’t. kill. the media.
The knowledge that our stuff is going to forever be tied to us is a cross we have to bear, but the responsibility that comes with putting it out there in the first place, can’t be ignored.
Anyway. I'm not trying to start conflict. This is not a bash on anyone, nor a call for witch hunts. Or anon hate, or blocks and unfollows or anything of that nature. I'm not wishing ramifications or hate of any kind on anyone who does wants to do any of this.
I'm also not guilt tripping— I am not saying that you should feel bad. I AM saying why it makes me feel bad. That’s not guilting, it’s a dialogue. One I personally feel is long overdue.
It's me yelling into the void: please consider the real people on the other side of the screen before you hit that button. Realize and know that whatever you're about to erase from history could be the most important thing in the world to someone.
Art is an experience. It's why we revisit it. If art and history simply lived in the matter and code of media, we would only need to look at it once. We wouldn’t put things in museums. We wouldn’t build libraries. We wouldn’t look up vine compilations.
If you're able, consider (and I do mean consider, this is not a call to action) not destroying that. And don’t shrug it off as some pretentious asshole venting on Tumblr. You only need to look in the notes and tags to see that it isn’t just me. it’s never just me, or you, or the pixels.
And even if you do shrug it off, then at least recognize that what you make matters. Whatever you think about it, if it’s out there, that's not your discretion anymore. If a tree falls in the woods and even one person is around to see it, it fucking mattered. Because it happened. Don’t mulch your tree rings if you don’t have to. Because if enough people do it, a whole forest is gone. Media is history, no matter whether you think it’s worth putting in a museum, or only has 30 notes.
Thousands of years ago, a child named onfim doodled on his homework. They’re crude, and everyone has the wrong amount of fingers, and they’re also priceless archaeological artifacts recognizable throughout the world.
the only thing separating Onfim’s doodles and your MS paint Pokémon doodles is time. The only thing separating your old MS paint Pokémon doodles from being a priceless artifacts, thousands of years in the future is time. Your creations are already priceless artifacts. No matter what you do, don't ever, ever deny that. It isn’t blowing up your own ass, it’s artistic and anthropological fact.
The mundane and the supposedly unworthy are often the first things lost to time, and that’s why they’re so precious. That’s why artists who were before their time are scorned first only to be celebrated later. Do you think they knew that was going to happen?? What if they nuked it? Many probably did! But now that’s happening exponentially and instantaneously everywhere, WITHOUT the artist having to destroy their only copy—which makes it way easier and more dismissable.
Sometimes, If you’re revolutionary enough, people will make an effort to preserve your work, but recognized and thoroughly recorded work is rare compared to unrecognized and thoroughly recorded work.
Sometimes something is beloved enough that it would be impossible for it not to go down in history, but even then it isnt a guarantee, and it’s rare. But if van Gogh burned all of his paintings in a fit of despair before his death, we would have no van Gogh. Because he wasn’t respected as an artist in his time, but that wasn’t what defined the worth of his art. The people after him did, because his art was still there for them.
If you rip the art away, you're ripping a bit of the soul that has adhesive contact to it. If you belittle your art, you belittle the very real relationships and emotions and revisitations people have with the media. You defy the inherent worth and weight of a creation. you created. That's effort. It's passion. No matter how flippant or unskilled or worthless you think it is, it matters. Because at the end of the day, you could have chosen to make nothing at all, and you didn't.
•
Muting notifs
#artists on tumblr#Artistic#digital art#art history#anthropology#humanity#art discussion#art theory#skit yells
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ੈ✩‧₊˚ EVERYBODY TALKS (LN4)
pairing: lando norris x f!reader
summary: lando eventually lands the girl of his dreams. he also finds out just how fast news travels
a/n: this was one of my wips i posted foREVER ago so enjoy the full one shot whilst i finish off some written stuff. based on everybody talks by neon trees🙇♀️🤍
*faceclaim (but imagine as you see her fit) is millie hannah
landonorris just posted a photo ੈ✩‧₊˚
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landonorris boo’s birthday
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alex_albon here’s a thought stop calling her your boo and actually make her your boo
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user did anyone else see that comment or am i making things up
user bro just ask her out i swear to god
user last photo is feeling very intimate mr. norris
alex_albon happy birthday y/n/n, please don’t get me super drunk tomorrow
user i saw that last comment mr ur not slick
yourusername no promises albono i intend to do a lot of shots
texts between lando and friends ੈ✩‧₊˚
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yourusername y/n’s big birthday bash🪩
👤 tagged landonorris, friend1 and 6 others
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landonorris did u run to the bathrooms just to post on instagram
yourusername stfu and order me shots
user is anyone else now thinking about how often y/n probably sees lando shirtless👁️👄👁️
user i’ve been thinking about it since she first posted that photo of him in the gym showing his abs
user @/user TAG ME IN THAT WTF
texts between lando and friends ੈ✩‧₊˚
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yourusername 💋
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user MA’AM YOU ARE UNBELIEVABLY ATTRACTIVE
lilymhe is that the lip combo i suggested because GIRL IT SUITS YOU
user lando MOVE i want her too
landonorris pretty
landonorris where are you off to?
yourusername meeting that friend i told you about on my bday!
y/n’s texts with lando ੈ✩‧₊˚
landonorris just posted stories ੈ✩‧₊˚
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yourusername race days
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maxverstappen1 you’re a jinx. never come again
maxverstappen1 (it was lovely to see you)
yourusername hope you enjoyed your time in the garage🥰🥰
user come to every race you’re good luck
user personally if my best friend was super hot and came to cheer me on looking that good i’d cuff her but maybe lando’s different
yourusername nah he’s just oblivious
landonorris @/yourusername HUH
yourusername @/landonorris i said what i said
tmz just posted a photo ੈ✩‧₊˚
texts between lando and friends ੈ✩‧₊˚
landonorris just tweeted ੈ✩‧₊˚
yourusername responded: yes, literally everyone.
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landonorris lando: 1, friendzone: 0
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user FUCKIN FINALLY.
user @/yourusername i could treat you better
alex_albon you’re not really winning if you’ve been pining over her for two years mate
landonorris shut the fuck up before she sees this
yourusername @/landonorris TWO YEARS??? TWO YEARS AND YOU SAID NOTHING????
user uh oh. lando’s in trouble
————
a/n: this was… weak i apologise im still settling in😭 just wanted to put something out whilst i finish my charles/seb/lando written one shots eek!
as always any reblogs and whatnot appreciated. big love xx
- giselle
taglist (found here): @idkiwantchocolatee @vellicora @alessioayla @bborra @crimeshowjunkie @minkyungseokie @paolexsstuff @celestialpato @champagnelovers101 @loxbbg @hobiismyhopeu @tsukishitm-a @moonypixel @champagneproblems17 @ironmaiden1313 @lqvesoph @sunflower-golden-vol6 @six-call @skatingiswalkingincursive @peqch-pie @m0cha-bunny @woozarts @he6rtshaker @iluvvmeeee @goldenalbon @izzy-marvel @lucyysthings @lichterfee @tallrock35 @treehouse-house @iloveyou3000morgan @scopeiguess @amaranthineghost @gwginnyweasley @hetfieldd @sweetbabygirlsworld @wittywhispers @dark-night-sky-99 @namgification @casperlikej @marshmummy @geniusalpaca
#… [giselle speaking]#f1 x reader#f1#lando norris#lando norris x reader#lando norris imagine#mclaren#lando norris au#lando norris blurb#lando norris smau#lando norris scenario#lando norris one shot
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PERSIMMON & INK ; PT ONE OF TWO
yakuza!getō suguru x tattoo artist!reader| 1/2 | wc; 12.9k
story summary; you're a tattoo artist hidden amidst the bustle of shinjuku city and renown with tourists. due to a misstep of your shady employee, you're visited one night at closing by an eerily beautiful man in a disheveled suit and no tie requesting an intricate back piece done traditionally. the undertaking slowly begins to unthread your life piece-by-piece the closer you get to him until there is no way out.
story warnings; dark content, yakuza au!, details about tattooing, traditional tattooing (tebori), money laundering, injuries to mc, implied death of oc, manipulation, power imbalance, a bunch of cultish shit, mc doesn't fuck around and is a hardass + sort of a bully to their employee, sex w/ injury, getō smokes, mc dogging on foreigners, implied stalking, prose + detail heavy, explicit sexual content, heavily implied homicide, graphic details of violence + wounds.
read the warnings! + mdni! events within this story are not indicative of my personal viewpoints.
thank you @ceruleansol for your earlier proofreading efforts! appreciative, as always!
a/n: this is part one of two. i strongly implore that you reblog & interact with this post! it helps out authors tremendously when you do!
A silvery peal called out to the little shop stifled in past-midnight silence. During regular business hours, it was a good sound to hear; it meant that your next client had parked their feet through the threshold behind a closed door and jittered a bell hanging by a red string. In this case, you hadn't been fast enough to flick off the neon signage anchored into the building outside, nor set the deadbolt to signal the shop had retired for the night.
You were still hard at work wiping down your workspace, the last appointment of the night having taken several hours longer than intended with a squeamish foreigner who couldn't bite his knuckles long enough for you to finish linework on his ankle.
"It's past midnight. Come back some other time," you said, inflectionless, unwilling to be deterred in your task. It didn't occur to you to even give this newcomer the time of day by looking at them. "I have all my information online. Email for appointment bookings."
"Oh, really? That's too bad," replied the stranger, voice traceless of the frustration you were accustomed to when turning people away at odd hours. "I was told this would be a better time to come by for a consultation."
That made you jolt upright, swiveling toward the man standing inside your shop. Strangely, you hadn't anticipated the way he sounded when he spoke—affable, syrupy, and an elegant, fluid stroke on glazed canvas—to be so different from how he looked—tall, lean, refined with a sort of edge to him that'd intrigue anyone in a room he walked into.
Apart from his appearance, something you couldn't be sure was real with him bathed in the faint neon-red glow from flickering bulbs filtering in through the windows, you were drawn to the somewhat disheveled suit he wore. It looked like something a salaryman uniformed himself in while sitting on his ass for twelve hours in one of Tokyo's skyscrapers.
He doesn't have a tie. That stood out to you at this late hour.
"I didn't tell you that." You suspected who did and let your voice rise above the pitch of the checkered wall clock and drone of an oscillating ceiling fan directly above you. "Kōji! Get out here!"
From the depths of your little shop, tucked away in the furthest corner behind a door painted the same morose gray as the walls flanking it, there was a great ruckus—a chair tipping over, a body smashing to the floor, and feet fumbling over and over again until a weaselly fellow skittered out into the parlor.
"Ye-yeah? What's up? Time to—"
"Get this guy scheduled for a consultation for next month." Nothing prepared you for the way Kōji's color sank out of his cheeks and neck when you turned toward him. You pushed onward boldly, "I'm booked out for the next few weeks. Since you told him he could come by whenever, take responsibility and get him out."
Kōji's eyes were so much bigger, the whites of them showing, knuckles turning stark when his hand grasped your forearm, and he hinged forward at his waist, bowing so low you thought he'd fall forward.
"Thank you so much for your patience." Kōji sprung back up, feet popping into the air as he whisked you away into the back office, still repeatedly dipping his head to this man. "Please, give us a couple of minutes, and we'll be right with you."
"No worries." The suit guy smiled at you, catching your gaze before the gray door was pulled shut in your face. "Take your time."
Inside the dinky space, surrounded by unsteady towers of boxes brimming with all the things your second-floor apartment couldn't handle without making the walls burst at the seams, Kōji still had a hold on you. This time, however, both his hands gripped your arms, hot and clammy on your bare skin.
"You can't tell him to leave." Kōji hesitated to take any stance against you, any tone that could be implicated as threatening or domineering. Even through his quivering breaths, he tried to sound firm.
You looked at him incredulously, neck craning back in hopes it got the message across. It was easy enough to sweep away his hands. "The fuck, I can. It's my shop. Tell him to get out."
Kōji let his posture sag, whittling deep into himself as his fingers came together to pick at minuscule slithers of skin that left raw spots around his nails. He shook his head. "Not someone like him."
"Kōji—"
He was trying hard not to stick the underside of a fingernail between his teeth. A couple months ago, he had told you he wanted to kick the habit because he couldn't stand looking at his hands. This job and his natural disposition worked against him—long hours pouring over finances and bookkeeping, tucked away in a tiny room with a humming desk fan and no windows, would be enough to drive anyone's anxiety through the roof.
It wasn't ideal for him, you knew that, and suggested that he move his workstation around the shop or to the front-end counter as long as he didn't disturb the flow you kept going with clients. Worse than the isolation was his aversion to handling any potential customer interaction.
That's what made this so odd to you, so strange that he simply reiterated time and time again, "We can't kick him out," anytime you'd try to get anything else in word wise.
You had to back up, put some pressure against the new pulse in your temples. Kōji let his gaze flutter around the room, never steadying on your face for long enough for you to get a better read on him. His hair and neck were soaked with sweat. Beads of it dripped from his brow onto his shoes, leaving glistening, branching paths behind that never quite dried before more took their place.
It came to you then, just as a guess but one with enough certainty that dread wound itself against your spine and made you fidget.
"Is that—is he part of a gang?"
Kōji did a lot of work to keep his eyes off of you, still, lips thin and wet with sweat that he lapped away.
No confirmation was a confirmation—you launched yourself at him, wringing fistfuls of his stiff button-up until it was tight against him. You felt the heat of his body through the fabric wrapped around your hands.
He was shorter than the man in the parlor, but still taller than you. His feet stayed planted on the floor as you brought his face down to your height. "Did you fucking tell the yakuza about my shop, Kōji?! Is he here because of you?!"
"No, no! Not me! Not me!" Kōji wailed, crumbling beneath your bulbous stare. "Not on purpose! I swear! I swear! It was an accident. I was at lunch with… some friends, and I mentioned that I was working here. I guess word got around!"
"So, you're having lunch with criminals now?!" You wanted to wring his neck. It was physically impossible to bring yourself any closer to him without tasting the salty drops on his skin. "Are you insane?!"
Since the start of Kōji's employment years ago, you knew that he was a leery character, and having him on board to handle the more mundane, unsavory parts of running a business wasn't your best call to judgment. Still, he was efficiently organized in a way that made sense. He was fast and dedicated enough in doing things right that you stopped asking yourself questions about what antics he did on the side.
Up until now, he had never brought anything from the outside in to disrupt your status quo, the fine-tuned, well-oiled gears that kept your business running and clientele coming around like revolving doors. This was an entirely different ordeal, though, and you didn't know how to handle it.
You let Kōji whimper around your fists for a while longer, releasing him only once you were ready for a deep breath.
"I don't care." you said, taking a wide step away from him as your fingers scouted through all of the pockets on your person. There was one stick of gum left in your hoodie that went straight into your mouth. "I don't care. Stop being a fucking wuss and fix your mistake. Get him out of my shop."
Kōji gasped, scuttling closer to you just as his skinny, knobby knees bent inward and trembled. The weight of his body nearly toppled you when he went down to the floor, hands on your clothes. "No, no. Please. If you—if you turn him away, he'll tell the others, and who knows what'll happen to… us."
The selfish little imp actually meant himself.
It killed you to acknowledge that he wasn't wrong. You knew as much about the movements and customs of crime syndicates in Japan as anyone else, probably even less than the regular citizen, but they were still criminals with tight fists on the economy and underground.
All it would take is one bad remark and everything you had worked for would be razed to the ground.
"Who is he?" You pushed him off by the shoulders. "Who is that guy?"
You didn't like his silence, how his face warped, and his eyes fell to the white tips of your shoes. "Kōji."
Slowly, he answered, "He's the kingpin of the Uzumaki-kai."
"Goddamnit."
He stayed sniveling on the floor while you scrambled around the back office, turning over boxes and water-stained folders for particular papers you needed to go forward. Once you had them, you blotted the tip of an ink pen on your tongue, ripping a piece of white printer paper out from the tray and beginning a frantic scrawl that you weren't even sure was discernible.
You weren't in that room with Kōji for more than twenty minutes, reemerging into the parlor to find him—Getō Suguru, boss of the Uzumaki-kai—still waiting for you exactly where you'd left him. Only now, the smile he greeted you with was smug, shoulders lax against the door with one foot hiked up on it.
He had heard the entire thing, all of your shouts and Kōji's perilous pleas. The walls weren't as thick as you wished they were.
"You should find a different artist who specializes in the kind of work you want." you said, spreading your array of papers out on the front counter. The pen dotted your tongue once more before touching them, a messy signature left behind on black condemning lines.
"I've looked at your portfolio online." He had come closer, eyes set on the motions of your pen flying across paper. "It's the best I've seen in Tokyo."
There was something in his words that rang sweet and untrue. With Tokyo being one of the foremost tourist magnets in the world, attracting domestic business and foreign intrigue, competition amongst tattoo shops during peak seasons was staggering. You were part of the cluster of shops preferring to bring in international clientele because they were lured with anything quick and easy and cheap.
Simply put, they were your revolving door. Kōji monitored your shop's social media presence well, eyeballing analytics, trends, and patterns in the algorithm, so you stayed a persistent pest on the front page most days. Whatever moves he pulled worked, filled the books until you were writing in last second, twenty-minute appointments against the seams in your spiral bound to keep tabs.
You'd see anywhere from eight to twelve clients on the worst of days, most of them coming from overseas to tour the city or countryside. Every one of them chose premade designs from a catalog you kept nearby, all work you had committed to muscle memory and knew so well you could do the line work without a stencil and let your mind float somewhere else.
These foreigners wanted memorability, everlasting art imbued with stories from their exotic balmy summertime getaway where they stayed in air-conditioned hotels and shops and harassed the locals because it gave them a swell of adrenaline, a sense of adventure from the belief that they were in possession of more culture now than they had been before.
They tried to talk to you about those things because when they'd first see you, stepping under the chiming little bell, there was a brightness in their eyes of knowing you weren't someone who belonged—just like them. After so many years in the business, you were conversationally fluent in several languages but pretended not to be for all of two or three.
"I'll do it, but—" You pulled yourself from that reverie, pen flipping through your fingers for him to take. "You have to sign a bunch of waivers and there are conditions."
Getō had waited for you in well-tempered silence for several minutes and maintained that even now with a neutral expression. "Can you explain them to me?"
"The waivers are pretty standard," you said, shifting your weight against the counter. "The first three are making sure you understand the risk of scarring, infection, colors bleeding together. Fourth one is a liability waiver."
When you reached the final piece of paper buried beneath all the rest, the one you had handwritten and hastily signed, his eyes were gleaming with intrigue.
"What's this?"
There wasn't much to it, really, just a single paragraph on a bleach-white background, one blank line below your signature with enough room for a timestamp after it.
You made sure it was in his hand before you spoke again. "This is a rigid waiver agreeing that if I do your tattoo, you can't tell anyone you're associated with about this shop.
Getō wore an aloof smile. "What are you implying? I never said—"
"Stop trying to make me sound fucking stupid." You winced after the fact, not intending for it to have come out so aggressive. "Either sign it or leave, please. If anyone finds out you came here, it could ruin my business."
All but the ticking wall clock, a jarring neon against a backdrop of dark walls, and the ceiling fan with its monotonous beat from spinning blades had kept your shop from catapulting into silence.
You hadn't realized it until now, not until Getō had taken many long moments to examine the papers you'd given him and wordlessly signed them, that your chest was starting to ache from how hard your heart rammed your ribs.
You couldn't believe this was happening.
A snare formed in your throat once he finished printing the date and time on your special waiver, pen aside, papers stacked together as he tapped them on the countertop so they were neat.
He held them out to you, still with a beguiling smile that betrayed everything he represented. "Could I get copies? I'd like them for myself too."
You smeared sweaty palms down the back of your sweatpants, flexing out your fingers over and over until you felt sure enough that you could handle those papers without trembling. This must've been how Kōji felt when he had walked in earlier.
"I'll be back." Your bow was stiff and slight, probably an affront, but he let you go, turning to find a home on one of your low couches in the corner and started perusing the pages of your catalog displayed crookedly on an acrylic table in front of him.
It was all you could do to not slam the office door behind you, to intentionally scare the soul straight out of Koji's ass for putting you in this hard spot. If he weren't such an integral part of keeping this place afloat, you'd have fired him ages—years ago.
"I need copies," was everything you needed to say to make Kōji rifle through his arsenal of ridiculous expressions. He shrank under your stare, sliding deeper into his seat behind his desk. "You still need to be back here at eleven."
"Yes, I know." he mumbled, handing you fresh copies after stapling them together. You let the warmth sit on your hands for a while. "Do you want me to leave?"
Truthfully, you didn't want to be alone with Getō. You wanted to yell at Kōji a little more.
"Yeah. Get out of here."
And he ran.
A part of you hoped that Getō would've gotten bored with how long this entire process had been just to sign some flimsy agreements and listen to you pitch a fit at your employee. You prayed that the fleeting glance Kōji had made to the corner of the room was to check, not to confirm.
You stepped out into your workspace, boldly expecting to see it bathed in nothingness and shadows—but he was still there.
Getō let the tip of his shoe, a pointy closed-toe, jerk with the sounds of your wall clock. His leg was crossed, your catalog still splayed across his thigh as he looked at your preset designs, work made to appease the masses and feed into their fiction of Japan. You had half the hope that he'd be turned off by them and change his mind.
"What you're offering here and what's on your website are completely different."
This guy was observant.
You didn't like that.
"I get a lot of travelers." It crossed your mind to rip the book out of his hands. "They're the ones who make up the bulk of my business. My website hosts my professional work. It's what I prefer to do."
He didn't look up, continuing to leaf through the pages with long, lithe fingers. "So, you cater to foreigners, then?"
"My shop is small. It's just me and Kōji here. This place has to stay running somehow." You weren't sure why you were explaining yourself to him. "If that's something that bothers you, I can shred these papers, and you can find another artist."
Getō let his smile return, closing the catalog to drop it back onto the table. As though to challenge your stubbornness, he took the copies from you and skimmed them one more time.
"Thank you." He moved those aside too, now wholly focused on you. "Do you have time tonight to hear out my ideas?"
You were facing the wall clock now; it was almost two in the morning. If he wanted something more complex, it would take hours to work up a sketch for him. And that was being so bold to believe he'd like it on the first try.
"Got a deposit?" you asked. "Nonrefundable, of course."
He paid you what you wanted right then and there, to your complete astonishment. The price you had given him was astronomical, an act of spontaneity that you decided you'd pose to him as a joke if he got mad or guarded with severity.
No questions.
No doubt.
Just the warm clip of folded yen from his pocket that he didn't even look over. The yakuza were historically a stingy bunch, but he didn't even do a second sweep, didn't try to double back on you, and didn't seem to care.
"Let me get my stuff." You left the cash off to the side on the acrylic table. It was your equivalent of a cat showing its belly good-naturedly.
The money was still there when you returned with a tablet stuck under the sweat of your armpit and two mugs of tea, an act of hospitality you didn't often invoke mostly because you didn't care. These were dire circumstances, though, and you couldn't put it out of your mind (or nerves) that you were walking on thin ice laden with eggshells.
"It isn't anything fancy." You put your things down before handing him his mug. "It's from some random box I grabbed at the store."
Getō gave his thanks and took it from you, first sips coming as soon as he could bring his lips to it. He made no mention about the flavor or quality, didn't look at it with any amount of suspicion. It simply rested there against his palms while he waited patiently.
He was defeating every stereotype of yakuza that you had adopted from the movies and media. If it weren't for Kōji being a scummy little rat who liked hanging around trash in his off time and believing all of his reactions from a while ago, you'd be convinced that Getō wasn't affiliated at all.
A businessman with questionable practices, maybe, but not a greater part of the underbelly of society.
"It's a sort of complicated idea." He rearranged his legs so they were spread wide, back sinking into the worn green leather. Another sip. "Tell me if I should slow down."
True to his word, the tattoo he wanted was ambitious, terrifyingly ambitious, and something better left to a specialized skill set, not someone who bounced around between commercialized brand characters and bastardized interpretations of The Great Wave by Hokusai.
"I'd like the dragon to be white." Getō was partway through his explanation, now sitting forward on the edge of the couch, an elbow pointed down on a thigh to cradle his cheek. He was invested. "The eyes, hm, yellow or gold. You can choose what'd go best for the inside of its mouth. I want the head of it in the top left—"
"Hold on." You sighed, managing a lukewarm drink from your tea. "So, to go about the white, there are a couple of options: we leave that space empty, so it'll be your skin tone. Most people get dragons that are red or green or black. It'd be better to try that if you—"
"It has to be white." He looked at you the same, but his words were razored in a way so slight yet unmistakable. "What else can be done?"
"Well"—the leather creaked against your back the deeper you dug into it—"I could do white ink. I could get it opaque, but the problem with it is that it fades drastically; you'd need it retouched every couple of years."
"I see." His smile was wider. "I like that idea. Let's go with that."
You frowned. "You do know that white ink is expensive, right? So the price is going to jack up, and there's more pain involved since I'll have to apply more pressure."
"That's fine with me."
More specifics for the work he wanted flooded in: He wanted to start with his back, covering every bit of surface from his neck down to his tailbone. Afterward, he would branch out to both arms and finish the design over his breasts. It certainly aligned with artistry you've seen done by yakuza tattooists; the entire point of them was to be seen by those who mattered, easily concealed to those who didn't.
Most of the real estate was going to the white dragon with gold eyes first, the rest of it going to freestyle characters from fiction such as kuchisake-onna and religious iconography that he pursued with quite a bit of insistence.
You sketched until four in the morning, arranging characters and wispy, dreamy clouds. Long whiskers floated away from the dragon's snout, while the teeth you gave it were more comically blunt and human-like rather than jagged and threatening, a detail he seemed particularly delighted to see.
"What's with the Buddhist symbols?" You had to bring out your laptop to research those, settling on a few he gave a nod to. "Are you some kind of priest? This is a pretty specific scene you're giving me."
"It came to me in a dream." he said.
What a weirdo. Your fingers ached and cramped by the time you finished the draft, stylus leaving deep impressions in your skin that you were sure had knocked bone a few times.
From up close, you weren't too partial to how it looked like an amalgam of things surrounding all of the labor you put into specifics of the dragon, but when you moved it away, it came together like some hazy dreamscape.
"I should tell you why I chose you in the first place," was what he said when you spun the tablet around for him.
You had the device facing you again, pen notched through your fingers to apply some simple colors to the design. "I thought it was because you were enamored with me and my online portfolio."
Getō stared at you, humoring your joke with a smile even though you didn't see it. He stayed slouched over his thighs, fist moving to the side of his head to keep him upright.
"I'm looking for this to be done traditionally."
The tablet flattened on your lap, stylus rolling off of it onto the floor. You couldn't believe you didn't think of this. If he really was part of a crime syndicate, of course he would want all of the work done traditionally.
"That's going to bring in a whole host of problems." You let your thumb hover dangerously close to the trash bin button in the top right of the screen. "First of all, the overall cost of this is going up by twice what I've already quoted you."
"No worries." Getō shrugged his shoulders. "I've done my research."
But you weren't done. "Healing time will be reduced, but some of my clients have told me it's more painful than a machine."
"I'm not 'some' of those clients." he rejoined.
You were suddenly wishing your tea wasn't cold so you could disappear into it for a while. The tablet ran hot on your thighs, dragging your eyes back down to the drawing, thoughts flitting through what it'd mean for business, expenses in versus expenses out, and how committing to this would solidify you as a yakuza artist.
It would be inescapable and follow your reputation into the ground if Getō ever spread word about it.
"This back piece is going to take me a really long time to do for you. A machine cuts that time in half." Maybe you could beg him to change his mind.
He wouldn't budge. "Yes, I'm well aware."
"So"—fine then, you'd give him something to reconsider—"you know for the sake of longevity that traditional isn't going to be the best? Machines are able to apply more force into the skin and move faster. Because you'll be relying on me instead of a machine, your line work will start to bleed within a few years and your color is going to fade pretty significantly, too."
If he was dissuaded, Getō never let on because he grinned. "You were the right choice, after all."
That ended the discussion and your night. Your eyes felt dry in their sockets, rolling them towards the wall where you read a big black number “5” on its clear plastic face. Getō didn't share that same urgency. He hadn't even checked a watch or a phone the entire time he was with you.
"Remember," you said, your tone daring, "you signed an agreement to not tell anyone about this place. I expect you to keep your word."
"Of course. I wouldn't consider breaking it in my wildest dreams." Effortless and gentle, he said this to you with fondness that felt oddly misplaced. "After all, we prefer choosing our artists. And, now, you're mine. I'll see you soon."
You locked the door after him without saying anything, losing track of his body through the window as he went somewhere under the shadows cast by taller buildings close by.
This time, you made sure to flip off the neon signage that had been glowing outside all night long.
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The Uzumaki-kai had started out under a different name in the forties, one seemingly redacted from all publications shortly after the change. It had a tumultuous history with frequent power shifts and internal disputes that had left it nearly eradicated by the seventies until Yorimitsu Asahi climbed to the peak of the hierarchy. Within ten years, membership tripled, revenue increased into the billions, and nearly all records of their exploits had dropped off the edge.
Kōji had hit a dead end in his research for you, an attempt to give you some peace of mind in what you were dealing with. The idea was to hit the ground running, so when Getō came back around, you'd have some vague notion of what to expect. But all you were able to do was skim the surface of an, allegedly, power-hungry and morally depraved bunch of men and women.
The most recent details of their movements dated back two years ago, whereas the more credible sources haven't reported anything for nearly seven. In the earlier articles by a journalist gone undercover, they had a significant hand in the economy, mainly through casinos, prostitution, and ties to religious institutions.
You had to let out a groan because Kōji hit a wall—again. All of the latest news you could find were just sensationalist reprints about how they were actively scouting people, or giving charity to orphans, and where the yakuza ranked in the world amongst other crime syndicates.
"Hey." Getō was standing in front of you, just on the other side of your counter. "Ready to get this started?"
Snapping shut your laptop had been an instinctual response. A flush of adrenaline in your veins was chased away by the cold creep of fear reaching up your spine. This wasn't the same as mom catching you watching porn or a teacher hovering close enough to see you cheat.
This was the chill of knowing you were digging into things you shouldn't be.
"Wel—welcome back." You didn't mean it but bowed your head low anyway. "I never got a chance to schedule you in. It'll take me a while to set up, if you'd want to come back another day."
Getō had his hands in his pockets, posture relaxed just like the last time, and looked around the small square footage of your shop. It was big enough to arrange a few compact pieces of furniture in the corner, give breathing space for a couple of bodies in the middle while you worked on them, and the front-end counter where you sat.
You made use of decorative shelving to display all the things that customers wanted to see: bottles of ink, strange art, little trinkets to give the place some interest so you wouldn't have to be. Everything else was shoved into the back office to clog up Kōji's space or upstairs in your apartment where you could fit it.
"No." Getō took a walk over to one of the shelves, a collection of inks you had arranged by color family. "I'd like to start today. I can wait for you to set up."
"Okay." You licked your lips. "Yup. That's fine. Kōji!"
With Kōji's help, what would've taken you close to an hour to prepare for Getō was whittled down to about thirty minutes. Just one look and the smarmy guy took on a more diminutive attitude, convincing you that if you were to walk away and come back, he'd probably be spit-shining the tops of Getō's shoes.
At least he wasn't sweating all over the floor again. You could watch the fragile flattery without completely twisting in disgust.
"One thing you didn't do last time was confirm that you were happy with the sketch." You had Kōji fetch your tablet and bring it up to show him. "Also, I refuse to start unless you have payment upfront. That was something else we didn't discuss."
"Th–that's a joke." Kōji sputtered.
You looked straight at Getō. "You're yakuza asking me for an extremely elaborate piece done traditionally with a lot of white ink. I have a right to want to protect my time and resources."
"I agree. The sketch is perfect." Getō said, fluid strides bringing him less than a couple of feet away. "Do you prefer cash or card?"
You were seeing him in the daylight, not awash in flickering neon or shrinking away into shadows, and he was absolutely breathtaking. It made you think how easy it'd be to lure someone into the Uzumaki-kai by his looks alone.
Payment had been seamless enough, a quick transaction that Kōji verified before scuttling out of the shop for the evening. You were left with this man, this dangerous, handsome man, to undress in front of you, casually peeling layers of his suit away until the first slithers of pale skin sent your gaze to the instrument in your fingers.
Getō only removed his jacket and button-up since his back piece alone would take months to complete, a damning thing to realize once you thought about it.
This just felt too real.
This was really happening, and all you wanted to do was blame Kōji for putting you in this position.
"So, what you're going to do is lie down." You slipped on a pair of disposable gloves and gestured to the massage table behind him. A white sheet had been placed over the black leather underneath. "If you need extra padding, let me know. Since we're building this entire piece around the white dragon, that's what I'm focusing on for now."
He leaned his weight against the table, hands back in his pockets. You tried keeping your eyes off his chest, off of his defined pectorals and abdomen, away from the thickness of his arms. The knowing smile inching onto his lips proved that you had failed.
"I'm going to be using a projector to position the image on your back, draw it out with a marker, and start with the needles." You could finally show him the thing in your hand. It was a long glazed stick with a metal ferrule attaching a row of sterile needles at the tip. "You'll feel me stretch your skin and start poking. It makes a weird sound because of how it needs to be angled, how it goes into the skin."
You took a breath, and he actually laughed.
"That was a mouthful." He hinged forward, bringing his face closer to the rod. "Not quite as 'traditional' as I thought it would be."
"There are modern adaptations to everything. It used to be bamboo, this is made from persimmon." you said, lowering the instrument onto a silver tray next to all the others of varying sizes. "What makes it traditional is the technique applied. I guarantee your buddies aren't going to back-alley places in Japan and having someone stab their backs with unsterilized needles tied to a piece of wood."
His dark eyes followed your path to the projector, watching you flip the switch and cast an image of the dragon on the table. "You never know. Some of them just don't know any better. They don't always have the best show of judgment. They need guidance."
You had something to say to that but thought better of all your organs and didn't. "Cool. Get on the table so we can start."
The landscape of his back was as defined and lovely as the front of him. You waited until the white dragon was scaled down to the appropriate size and positioned over him to touch his skin, letting your fingertips soak up all his warmth.
"We'll see how far I get today," you were saying, dragging a narrow marker tip across the broad sprawl of him. "It's going to take me longer than it usually does, and I don't really go longer than eight-hour appointments."
"There's plenty of time." This guy had infinite patience, it seemed.
And when the time came for the first prods with your needles, you paused to ask, "Need a break? Want some background noise?"
"I'm talking to you," he said, pulling a few straggling pieces of ebony hair over his shoulder. "That’s enough for me." It sounded ridiculous when he said it and worse when it replayed in your head. "What made you want to practice traditionally?"
You were already in several jabs, wiping down between them to keep a visual of what you were doing. "My mentor is one of the best traditional artists in Japan. I learned everything from him. He used to work in Osaka, I'm not sure about now. I lost contact with him years ago."
"That's too bad." he said. "Have you thought about looking for him?"
The last thing you were interested in was talking about finding people with yakuza, so after a few more pokes along the middle of his back, dipping into that pretty region that made his waist look so waspy, you decided to flip the script.
"What about you? Did you just dream about joining a gang, or…?"
He shifted his cheek to his arms, looking along his nose at your hunched shoulders. "Would you believe me if I gave you an answer?"
You dabbed his skin. "Probably not."
There wasn't much of a lull in conversation before he was onto the next topic, steering away from the niceties onto the real things he wanted to ask. You had been around the block a time or two; you knew the look people got when they had certain questions stewing inside their heads.
The only thing that ever stopped them was the devastatingly desperate aversion to kicking up dust and drama in public, and probably because they weren't yakuza.
Getō was the opposite in this scenario, so you lost.
"Where are you from?" There it was.
You sucked in a breath. "Gifu prefecture."
"That's not what I meant." He was still observing you with all the self-possession of a saint, but also unflinching obstinance that you couldn't get out of by hijacking the conversation again. "You weren't born in Japan, were you? Isn't it pretty bold of you to play off foreigners' lack of awareness for profit?"
As you swiped at the traces of ink and blood that coalesced into a single ugly bead, you noticed he hadn't winced once the entire time you pushed ink.
Would he if you stabbed him a little harder?
"That's a long story." Stab. Stab. Stab. His expression remained beautiful and pristine. "I don't feel like answering it."
He smiled. "Hm."
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The game of twenty questions spilled over from one session into the next, weeks apart, yet Getō always remembered where you both left off like he was troubling himself to commit all the contents of a crumpled-up list to memory. Sometimes, between a peaceful interlude that rendered conversation bare, the flawless terrain of his back stretched between your fingers as your needles sunk deep, you'd think to yourself that had he been any other man—you'd be impressed by the effort.
Unlike other scenarios that leaned in your favor, boorish foreign men left unanswered when they'd talk about your body—where were you hiding tattoos? Under your clothes? Can we see? They'd laugh with one another because they almost always traveled in groups. Questions morphed into ugliness when they translated silence to incompetence; quips turned lewd and derogatory, but you no longer existed to them because you couldn't talk back.
That luxury of feigning ignorance wasn't packaged with Getō, having had lured that nugget of trivia out of you by the end of his first session. He never said those things about you, never let his inquisitiveness or eyes roam like you already had him. It was disgusting how being beneath his stare made you feel so vulnerable, stripped down to nothing but your underwear without that ever happening, without him ever having touched you.
You told yourself you'd be relieved the second this piece was finally finished, and he'd be gone from your shop for good.
"How long have you been a tattoo artist?"
But, still, for now, this little game with him continued, and he led the way.
"About ten years." No one had asked you that before, so it took you a few seconds for you to respond. Even then, you weren't entirely certain that was right. "Yeah, probably about ten years."
"Hm." Getō was in the habit of making that sound to quite a few of your answers. "You don't look it."
You jolted upright in your chair, fingers lifting away from his back just as you gave your tongue a reproachful click. All it would take would be one hard open-palm slap right against the sorest spot on his back to put him in a world of hurt and permanently fuck up the ink under his skin. You'd absolutely have your throat slit or neck snapped at the gallows, but it would be well worth the risk at this moment.
"What the hell is that—"
Getō's mellifluous laughter made your anger whittle to heat behind the ears before any words even made it out of his mouth. He tried keeping his back still. "Haha, sorry, that came out wrong. I meant: you look too young to have been doing this for ten years."
Good recovery. Smooth man.
You weren't nearly as amicable. "Aren't you too old to be playing pretend with a bunch of other guys?"
He let air out hard through his nostrils, lips pulling his smile wide enough for you to see the wet glisten on his white teeth.
"Fair enough."
Time crept along like that for the pair of you, multiple sessions coming and going with inconsequential banter that was always more upsetting to you than it ever was to him. Somewhere along the way, you had been convinced that Getō was unflappable—impossible to rouse to anger, regardless of the times your clap-backs had taken a personal edge, aiming to bury deeper than any of your needles could reach.
It was enough when he'd frown, his pretty mouth pressed firm and drawn down. Oddly, when he'd look at you like that, it was reminiscent of something wholly unsettling, pulled from some deep recess in your memory that you couldn't quite put a finger on until it happened again one evening.
You had taken things a bit too far, reminding yourself that it was better to keep your distance from him. All it would take was one wrong comment on one bad day for this rapport to come crashing down on you with every bit of the same force as a tsunami, ruining everything you had built.
Getō had decided he needed a break, something uncharacteristic in the months you had spent with him as your client, and got up from the table. He couldn't go far without covering his back, so he stayed wedged between the inside and outside, trapped in the door and setting off the delicate, jangling bell overhead more times than you were comfortable with.
He had looked at you before walking away, though, that frown marring his visage, weighing down his beauty with cavernous shadows around his mouth. You acted like Kōji in that moment, feeble and pathetic, withering into a smaller version of yourself so maybe he'd show mercy.
Between those tense minutes, until he returned to the massage table, you figured out what made his disapproval so familiar.
It was like burdening the weight of a disappointed parent, like knowing you had failed another test in school, and your teacher was delivering results with that same sort of dissatisfaction while peeking over their glasses at you.
You felt like you were being reprimanded in the way only someone with influence on your life could have.
It really rubbed you the wrong way.
"Sorry." It was a hard word for you to say. Getō was on his stomach again, cheek pressed atop his arms so he could look at you. "Sometimes, I get carried away. Guess that's what I get for spending all my time with Kōji."
Cue a loud sneeze from the back office.
His placid smile was a relief to see. "You should get out more often and see other guys."
There was no disputing that fact. Besides your mainly male clientele, Kōji was the only man you were in any regular contact with. Life had a way of keeping people apart, widening the gaps of time from months into years, wearing away at those delicate threads of friendship until they were all but frayed and irreplaceable.
It was simply the natural progression of adulthood, and it was boring and terribly lonely. Tattooing made your life easier, numbed you to becoming just another downtrodden drunk hunched over a glass full of glowing gold, lusting after the bare minimum of affection from anyone.
This job kept your head above water, just enough so you could forget all of that and spend your time exactly how you wanted to—
"Do you have a boyfriend?"
His question hit you full throttle, stealing the breath from your lungs as though he had landed a fist into your gut. It was just a few nonchalant words, an easy way to keep the conversation flowing, yet it had set your heart aflutter. You heard the rhythm of it ricocheting in your skull. It was suddenly so much harder to hold his skin taut, fingertips slipping inside the nitrile gloves you wore.
"A boyfriend?" A word that sat heavy on your tongue, unfamiliar, flustering you. "I don't have the time for that."
Getō shifted on the bed, something he usually didn't do without warning you beforehand. You let him get situated, taking that moment to also change your gloves beneath the table after patting them dry on your thighs. The skin around your fingertips had swelled and indented from moisture, further augmenting agitation.
He was gazing ahead now, narrow chin cradled in a slot made by his fingers. You couldn't tell what he was looking at since you kept so much stuff mounted on the walls to detract attention from you. It could've been anything.
You did think his vision aligned with your catalog of preset designs, though, leaving you just a little more self-conscious than his question had already made you.
When he did say something, his smile didn't quite reach how despondent he sounded, "It seems like no one has the time anymore. We've all lost our way."
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Getō came by astonishingly early one day with the earthiness of a good brew wafting all around him. The shop had been open less than an hour, giving you just enough time to unlock the entrance and flip on all the signage before he walked in.
The little bell signaled him, both your eyes and nose lured by the cheery sound of it as well as the scent. You had expected to see Kōji at first; it wasn't unlike him to show up before his scheduled shift. Years of cubicle servitude had a way of battering people into automated drones. Workers like him might as well have been walking on conveyor belts their entire lives—going somewhere without actually getting anywhere.
Kōji also only survived off of his thirty-two-ounce thermos sloshing with coffee. Sometimes he'd share with you so you wouldn't need to deplete the shop's supply or climb two flights of stairs to your apartment to make some, but more often than not, he was halfway through that gigantic flask by midafternoon.
So to see that it was Getō taking languid strides up to your counter with two coffee cups, palms wrapped around slithers of cardboard to keep his skin from blistering, you had to correct a grimace.
"Getō." You used his name tentatively, always sparingly. It tasted unwelcome on your tongue, like the smoky bitterness of charred meat or the tang of vomit that burned through your nostrils and made your mouth salivate. "I didn't have you down for today. I have other clients coming in later."
"I'm sure they don't mind rescheduling." He smiled as usual, but the finality behind his words sent quakes down your spine. "I don't know how you take your coffee, so I just asked for cream and sugar. I'm more partial to tea, but sometimes it just doesn't give the kick I'm looking for."
You meticulously avoided his fingers as he handed over one of the cups. The lid was marked with your initials, an act of thoughtfulness you would've been moved by had he—once again—been anyone else.
For Getō, he simply watched you with a tired, satiated smile as though the very notion of buying you coffee was worthy of some ovation. For you, seeing those black lines smear and spear outward across the white lid as dainty wisps of steam escaped wherever they could felt damning.
"How is it?" he asked, lips caressing the lifted rim of his own beverage. "You can be honest."
He sipped at the same time as you, pacing himself so your cups tilted simultaneously, eyes locked on tight, evaluating your slightest flinch. A hot trickle reached your tongue and crawled down your throat, feeling as though it were blooming out into your lungs and veins. It was known by him as well, like sharing the same experience, tipping the same cup and tasting those faint traces of one another, emulating warmth against your lips and in your mouth, lessening whatever uneasy longing he had started to spur inside of you.
You didn't know if the shudder that rattled down along your back came from the penetrating depths of his dark eyes or the bitter drink sinking into your cheeks, making you pucker.
Time forwarded for you again after that. The wall clock continued its eternal rotation, bustling bodies passed your shop, and you had lost those few seconds as though trapped in a dream.
"Did I add too much sugar?" Getō acted the same, perfectly pleasant smile seeming more like a fastened feature to you these days. "You sort of winced."
You set the cup down, ducking away from the front counter to collect your things out of the back office.
"It was actually too bitter for me."
Kōji came through the threshold about an hour later with some semblance of urgency, nearly knocking the door wide enough for it to slam into the wall. All of the color bled out of his cheeks, leaving his face a ghostly hue once he realized he was on the receiving end of Getō's stare. You were hunkered over his back, hands at work with the long stick and needles.
"If you break something, it's coming out of your paycheck." you drawled, so thoroughly enveloped by the black tracks left behind from your ink that you didn't notice Kōji's uneasiness turn into dewy skin and a beading forehead.
"I—can I talk to you in the back for a second?" Kōji hung onto every word, testing the sound of them while gauging Getō's quiet expressions. "There's—you need to see something."
"Kōji, seriously?" You didn't think you needed to point out Getō, or the fact that you were pulling ink from a glob on your glove. "Just tell me later, dude."
His face stretched as though wounded. "It's important. I swear. I wouldn't be asking if—"
"Is there a reason why you can't say it in front of me?" Getō had his nose pointed at Kōji, arm turned red beneath his cheek as he simpered. "Nothing's stopping you from telling us both right here, right now."
The scrawny man melted into himself, fingers fiddling together in a brave attempt to keep his teeth off of his nails and open sores on his cuticles. Whatever thing he had wanted to say was abandoned in that moment, stifled in his throat by a few words from the man on your massage table.
Your fingers halted, hovering over Getō's back as you took in the tone of his remarks to your employee, contemplating with a frown to threaten to throw him out.
"Don't talk to him like that." The leather underneath you groaned as you sat up straight on your stool. "This is my shop. You're not going to disrespect my employ—Kōji!"
He had already rushed away behind the somber gray door into the back office.
"Kōji!" You swiveled away from Getō, instrument an afterthought on the silver tray at your side. Seconds later, you swung back around. "You need to leave."
Getō, who had watched the entire thing from his arms, suddenly lifted his head and shoulders up, face weighed by surprise.
"What?" His eyes were wide. "Come again?"
You didn't falter. "Get the hell out of my shop. We're done for today."
His confusion mellowed into something undefinable, an expression you couldn't read with eyes that tracked across your face as though trying to catch a bluff. Nothing familiar remained in his gaze, the cold snare he held you in for several seconds, the depths of him black as coal and empty. For those few beats, until he looked away, you had held your breath without realizing it and heard blood gushing in your ears.
"You live in the apartment above here, right? On the second floor?" Getō still had his back to you, fingers fussing with the buttons on the front of his white shirt. "You should be careful."
Every ounce of courage you had gathered just moments before was suddenly sucked dry, stolen from your bones and spine, making your posture crumble on the stool. Dread wrapped around you like freezing, creeping tendrils that made the fine hairs on your neck stick out, put a knot in your throat that might as well have been his fist.
"How—how do you know that, Getō?" You were halfway out of your seat, fingers resting against cool metal and close to your arsenal of needles mounted to persimmon dowels. "Are you watching me?"
"Mm, not quite." He turned around while finishing the last buttons, expression void of that easygoing smile and mirthful glint in his eye that you had come to rely on from him. Without it, it was like you were freefalling into the unknown without a net to catch your back. "You should fire that assistant of yours soon."
"Kōji?" You had thought that same thing many times, but hearing it from someone else was an insult. "He's been here for years. He does his job. Who do you think you are to come in here, harass my employee, and tell me to fire him? This is my shop. Before you're anyone, you're a client who I have every right to refund and turn the fuck away."
"I suppose that's true." Getō said, rounding the table, coming into such close proximity to you that you could smell faint remnants of coffee on his clothes and breath, saw the late morning glow filtering in through the windows give his eyes a golden glint. "It's only a suggestion, but you should take it. I don't want to see you take the fall for things he meddles in."
You frowned. "What does that mean?"
He showed you one of his good-tempered smiles instead of answering, an easy way to stop the conversation before it could snowball into something else, dragging you deeper into his world more than what you already are.
There was a part of you convinced that he wanted to submerge you into that gross underbelly with him all the way, steal you below the surface, take you away from everything you'd ever known. But when the light would return to his eyes, just like now, and he looked upon you with such fondness, trying to smother your inquiries with lips pressed thin and tight so as to seal all his secrets behind them, you weren't so sure what his intentions were.
Some of his weight was suddenly on your shoulder, collected in the palm of his hand cradling the roundness of it. His fingertips pushed into the fabric, pressed divots into your skin and burned where he squeezed.
"Take care of yourself." Getō said, surprising you one last time by using that same hand, the very peaks of his knuckles to skim your cheek on his way past. "I'll see you soon."
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Firing Kōji was never an option, no matter what he involved himself with after work. There would be no business for you to spin signage for in the mornings, a studio to keep tidy, leather chairs to polish and preserve, and no stuttering neon light to bask under in the late hours of silence before returning upstairs to your bed.
Long ago, you had decided it made more sense to simply not see what didn't involve you directly, what didn't benefit you, because it was easier than acknowledging that the person you'd chosen to run everything in the background probably wasn't ideal. You'd known for years that his dealings outside your shop erred on the wrong side of the law, most likely, but it didn't matter as long as you didn't have to know exactly what it was.
As long as no one found him out, traced his employment to your tattoo shop, and turned your revolving door of clientele into thin, dwindling trickles, you'd force yourself to forgive him for whatever misdeeds he committed. He came into work on time every single day with his coffee flask and messenger bag, made no complaints about his workload and worn-in swivel chair that sometimes squealed when it turned, and didn't try to usurp the business from you.
He was the perfect employee and still was, even weeks following the incident with Getō. Every attempt you had made since then to get information out of him about that day was thwarted, distracted by numbers, stock invoices, client bookings, and asking if you wanted yakisoba from the little old lady down the road for lunch.
Kōji had decided you were untrustworthy now, a fact you were well aware of and unsure of how to handle. Less because he was your only employee—and, regrettably, the closest confidant you had in your life at all—but more that the entire ordeal left you uneasy and bothered.
He was doing something he shouldn't be, and Getō already knew about it and where you lived. Things weren't adding up, and you were the only one left in the dark.
One Sunday afternoon off left you with plenty of time to mull it over while packing around armfuls of groceries. A mid-autumn breeze was fabricated by cars passing through the city, throwing your hair in disarray, catching crisp bursts of air under your collar to leave you colder than you had been seconds ago. Your body was lulled into a relaxed state from the wind rocking your body left and right, pulled by the invisible force of it.
Your eyes stuck to the crosswalk sign, waiting for it to turn green, for the cluster of scuttering bodies to trot their way across and clear the area so they weren't stranded there until the next rotation. Their idle chatter hardly registered to you while you stood there next to them—colors of clothing, small domes of umbrellas, the drone of passing car engines felt so far away and surreal to you.
Everything seemed to vanish except your heartbeat when the light finally changed, eyes drifting down toward something that had an inexplicable pull on you, first as a slither of all black that grew tall and eventually into the shape of a body. You felt like you were searching through a sea of pines for that one glimpse at something that had caught your attention.
It was then that you realized what had you so engrossed was the unfaltering stare of another. You nearly collided with a man in a beige coat two feet ahead of you when you saw that it was Getō standing at the other end of the crosswalk.
Why is he here? Is he following me? You didn't give yourself the time to ruminate before ducking low behind a group of teenagers eagerly discussing their new idol obsession. A couple of the girls were in gyaru fashion, something you'd expect on a day trip to Harajuku, not on the west side of Tokyo near Shinjuku.
They paid little mind to you lingering entirely too close to them, using the shelf of a boy's shoulder to hazard a peek out at the scene until you had reached the end of the crosswalk with them. They dispersed in all different directions, sharing casual partings before you could think of where to go next, legs suddenly snared to the concrete when Getō called out from nearby.
"Hey, what a coincidence to see you here."
"Is it, really?" You tried remembering where you were in Shinjuku.
The red-light district, Kabukichō, the typical yakuza stomping grounds, wasn't far from here. It was one of those things that was easy to forget once the novelty of living in the area wore away, but it always meant something to someone else. That group of kids flashed in your mind briefly. It might've been their first time exploring a place like Shinjuku by themselves.
Getō came closer with his hands buried deep in his pants, the other half of a black sweatsuit that was too large for his frame. You tried to keep your eyes moving around a thinning crowd, steeped in uncertainty of how different interacting with him on the streets would be to piercing his back with needles.
"Are you heading home?" He saw your discomfort before the bags on your arms, his tone softening in the same way you expected it would for a frightened animal. "Do you need help carrying—"
"Hey, Suguru!" Another man showed himself through the intermix of bountiful bodies, his shape hidden beneath similarly slouchy, loose folds of clothing. His voice carried a similar pitch as the other, albeit inelegant and insouciant, with a head that was fully white and eyes so terrifyingly blue you guessed he had to be mixed with something.
For those few seconds you spared him a glance, you were set awash in a sensation of familiarity—a distant type of it. The same sort you'd expect to have while watching a movie with the appearance of an actor that startled you because you knew you had seen him from somewhere, but you couldn't place just exactly where.
If it hadn't been for his petulant seeming disposition on arrival and slothful bearings that ruined his posture and any semblance of class based on his bizarre, exotic beauty—you would have thought he was a model or someone of status, at the very least. His voice was annoying, however, and somewhat nasally as he complained about being left behind when Getō had noticed you skulking from afar.
Getō handled him benignly, almost disinterestedly, despite all of the speaking that coalesced into something even you stopped caring about. You made up your mind to use the distraction as a way to get out of this brush in public, spun on rubber soles, and almost began away until Getō broke apart from him and took the straps on one of your bags.
"Hold on"—he didn't let go despite how your features purposefully deformed from his nearness, a brazen attempt to look ugly to him—"you're a long way from home. Let me carry a few bags to help you out. Gojō, I'll see you around."
"Whaaaaat?! Seriously?" complained the other, making a whale of a noise that didn't match his relaxed stance. His bones seemed to collapse into the heaps of fabric he had stuck his arms through that day.
You tried putting opposite pressure on your bag to reclaim it from Getō, though he got what he wanted in the end. "I don't want to trouble you. I can carry these myself."
"It's no trouble." Getō insisted, still with obscene patience that overwhelmed your dogged determination to avoid causing an awkward shift between the two men.
As it was natural in Japan, jumpers and coats and pretty umbrellas wove through your motley bunch without being too distracted by the scene. They all had somewhere to go, somewhere to be, however truly inconsequential their destination was. It would've demanded too much of their concentration and willpower to look at everyone who made a ruckus in the streets of Shinjuku, but maybe they paid a little more attention because Getō and Gojō were beautiful, and you were like the hapless protagonist in a drama.
In that moment, however, you felt equal parts unfortunate that Getō bunched his long fluid strides to shorter ones to mime the pace of yours as he walked away from Gojō alongside you, all but two of your bags on his arms, and equal parts secretly enthralled by the experience and that you had been chosen over whatever former objective the two men shared.
"What was the point of us coming to Shinjuku if you're just leaving me here?! You suck!" Gojō's voice was carried by the false autumnal breeze whirled up by cars and gas exhausts, loud and strange because the urgency behind it had dropped off long ago. Now, it just sounded like he was calling after you both in casual parting like someone would from their doorstep down the road.
On that same fake wind, somewhere farther away but still close enough to see the uneven tips of Gojō’s white hair fluttering out away from his scalp, you could've sworn you heard the shape of your name—the pronunciation of it unmistakable—with all the same inflection Getō uttered when using it with you, weaponizing it so your ears would perk and be forced to hear him.
"I'm not doing any more of your tattoo until next week. I hope you know that." You had walked most of the way with him back to the studio. Seas of somber, dark concrete crosswalks with white lines and faceless beings in sometimes nice clothes had shrunk from a hearty basin of converging intersections to a gentle downstream trickle of interweaving streets that housed residences and hidden businesses. "Sunday is my only day off. I don't make exceptions for anyone."
Getō stayed with you the entire time, his movements a little more sluggish than you were used to seeing since you didn't have the same leg reach as him. He could probably open up his arms and touch buildings on either side of the street with the blunt nails on his long fingers.
You wondered, briefly, to your shame, if he could wrap himself around you twice if you were to do it first.
"I know," he said, an affable smile in his eyes and curved onto his lips. The look of him grew even brighter when he noticed you were staring, your face blemished by creases and lines and uneasy, fluttering eyeballs that conveyed your distrust and intrigue all at once. "What? You don't believe me? My back is still healing from the last session. I think you went deeper with the needles than previous times. It's taking longer."
You probably did bury ink deeper into the pretty flesh on his back because he upset your employee—your only employee, your safeguard to a successful business.
"Remember, you signed a waiver about infection. If there's too much redness and swelling, you should get it looked at." It wasn't often any interest to you to give unsolicited advice outside the shop, but Getō was your special exception. "I'm not going to touch your back again until that's completely ruled out. Besides, the dragon is done, so now we're just adding all your weird folklore and buddhist iconography."
"Hard to believe we've made it all these months." he said, now standing with you outside the building you rented for your studio and second-floor apartment. Despite the nylon straps on his arms digging cavernous divots into his black sleeves, he didn't act as though he were carrying around bags of lead like you felt you with yours. "I couldn't have chosen a better artist. I wasn't lying when I said your online portfolio was one of the best I'd seen in Tokyo, by the way."
What he said still sounded so sweetly untrue, but you unlocked the old door with a grimy brass key and let him inside to take his shoes off in the entryway and climb the stairs behind you to the second floor.
"I never have guests, so I don't really have anything for you. Coffee? Tea? Water? I may have some orange juice left." Every inch of tiny countertop and kitchen floor was swallowed by plastic totes and your bodies. It didn't occur to you at that moment to try putting some things away first to make more room, so you stumbled through the mess for your one-cup coffee machine that doubled as your tea kettle. "Sorry for the mess, I guess. I spend most of my time working, so I don't get the chance to clean up very often."
Getō betrayed no emotion, didn't seem afflicted in the slightest by the state of your apartment, and kept the curl of his smile fastened all the time. "Tea is fine. I'll just take whatever is easiest for you."
Minutes later, he politely sipped from the rim of your favorite mug, one hip implanted into the edge of the counter, staved off from helping you unload your groceries because you told him it'd be weird for a yakuza boss to do that. He still tried to take some boxes of stuff and stick them in your cabinets when you weren't looking, though.
“Did you tell that guy about me?” The sound of your voice, sudden and suspicious, was enough to startle Getō into a wide-eyed stare. He asked you what you meant, so you told him, “That guy back at the intersection you were with. Who was he? He knew my name. I saw him. Is he one of your gang friends?”
The alarm sank out of his expression, tension in his shoulders along with it. Despite the severity of your questions, he barely seemed to register them seriously and resumed stacking things on shelves to clear the countertops.
“Getō.” you pressed.
“No.” He closed the cabinet once he finished and came to you, undaunted by the obstacles spaced out on the floor. “I didn't tell him about you. I've kept my word. He's an annoying shit who likes snooping around my business.”
“Then, how did he…”
You receded into your thoughts, now trying harder than before to recall who that man was. His identity was tilted there on the edge of your memory, one word or phrase or image away from awestruck revelation. When it finally happened, seconds later, Getō was in front of you, heavy hands on your upper arms as though keeping you upright, and face bright with intrigue.
“Wait. Wait. Wait!” You cried out. “Gojō as in financial Gojō? As in one of the richest families in Japan, Gojō? Gold spoon baby Gojō?”
Getō gave a jubilant laugh as though delighted by you figuring it out on your own. His hands rose higher on your arms, capping your shoulders in warm weight that felt as refreshing as it did unusual. You couldn't remember the last time someone had touched you like that.
“He's my best friend—my only one. I'm not surprised he was able to figure out I was getting work done at your shop.” He said lightly, but doing nothing to assuage your doubt. “I know you don't believe it, but he's good to know if you need help. I'll give you his number so you—”
“I don't want it.” you said with feeble resolve. “It’s already a pain in the ass enough to have yakuza hanging around all the time. I don't need some trust fund baby to know where I live, too.”
Your heart wasn't in those words, finding that all you could concentrate on was the space of his palms encapsulating your shoulders, deft fingers leaving marks in your clothes as though trying to feel your skin through fabric. He didn't allow himself to roam you, but the taut muscles in his hands revealed a sort of composed restraint that was close to snapping.
He said your name once; a low, raspy sound in his throat that seemed so much like him yet unlike anything you had heard leave his mouth before. His eyes were darkened by his lashes, mesmerizing you in some dreamlike haze that only intensified when he stooped his head to kiss you.
His lips found rhythm with yours; slow, at first, to test the feeling and how much either of you actually wanted this. You responded with quiet sounds, a sigh and a moan, followed by the spread of your arms reaching around his neck to bring him closer, feel him more.
Getō backed your body against the countertop and leaned forward on his hands behind you to press down harder into the kiss. The blunt edges of your fingernails dove through black downy hairs on the back of his neck, trailing further down the ridges of his spine, molding to the ridges of his vertebrae that pushed up below the surface of his skin.
Goose flesh marked him all over, breath stuttering in your mouth like he was stifling pleasurable sounds of his own. You expected more self-control from a man of his status, yet there he was melting into you and sucking the air from your lungs while tasting your tongue with the roughness of his.
There was an ache between your legs, unabated heat which you had forgotten could be stimulated by another person. You weren't ashamed to take care of yourself when the need arose, although even those instances were far and few between and lacked this same urgency—this need to have another person wrapped up in you, touching you, devouring you.
You thought about how bad of an idea this was, how Kōji would react if he knew how weak your willpower truly was. It made sense to expect someone like Getō to exert his influence over you like this, for him to give into his every impulse without fear of consequence because there simply was none for him. He was above needing to restrain his inhibitions if that's what he wanted in the end.
“I can make you feel good.” He said apart from your lips, now pressed into the underside of your jaw after stretching out the neckline of your shirt. “Tell me what you want. I'll do it. I've wanted you since the beginning.”
What would happen if you told him to strip off your pants and get on his knees? Would the kingpin of the Uzumaki-kai obey someone lesser and bow and swallow the nectar from your body? Would he laugh at your brazen attempt, call you a wretch and drag you away for trying to make a mockery of him?
“Just… touch me.” Those words were not your own.
“Where?” Getō’s hands left the countertop to pile underneath your shirt, hands a light caress against the skin on your lower back. The heat of them made you flinch. “Here? Tell me where you want me.”
Something about this was too surreal, stirred unease in your chest and hundreds of quivering butterflies in your gut. It had come on as suddenly and dimmed the lust in your groin, lifted the fog from your eyes and cotton in your brain. It left you pliant in his arms, yet far away in mind as you searched those deeper recesses of yourself for an answer.
Getō noticed the disconnect and passionless kiss, your lips barely taking shape against his, and lifted his hands off of you.
“What's wrong?” He asked.
“I—” Something about you. “I don't know. This is just unprofessional. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done it.”
There was still darkness in his eyes, emotions shimmering through them despite an effortless smile he secured on his face. It was an eerie mask this time around, but your vulnerability and reddened, bruised neck kept you from saying anything on it.
“I should be the one apologizing.” Getō said with that unshakable calmness of his. “I didn't have the intention to push myself on you. I just thought…” He tilted his head a little left, tempting you to lean with him. “I thought we wanted the same thing.”
You couldn't answer that truthfully because then this would never end and he'd wind up in your bed. Had he been any other man, you'd have stripped him down to nothing and let him ravage you as he said he would.
But, you couldn't because he was your client.
You couldn't because of who he was.
You couldn't because he liked to keep his secrets close to his chest, and while you had your neck exposed—warm, sucking lips at your jaw and on the small swells in your throat when you'd swallow—you realized you couldn't trust him not to sink his teeth in and rip out gore and stringy sinew and let you bleed out on the floor.
He knew that distrust, had probably seen in everyone he’d ever known, yet he kept that smile which had grown stiff.
“It's not a good idea, Getō.” Because there's something off about you. You're a wolf masquerading as a shepherd. “Of all people, you should know that.”
Getō said nothing else as he was led downstairs and let out into the brisk evening air. Briefly, you worried he would feel the chill through this baggy sweatshirt and had to think better of fetching him a scarf for the trip back to wherever he belonged.
You stayed behind the door near the stairs, leaning through it far enough for him to reach out and stroke your face with the peaks of his knuckles. It was a fleeting touch, perhaps an attempt to not overstep as he had before.
And then, just before he pulled away, he said something familiar, “I'll see you soon.”
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a/n: so i started this project late last year, i think. i put it aside after i started working on my original android x reader oneshot (which is posted and y'all should read it *hint**hint*) but i'm picking this back up to finish it.
originally, i was going to post this in its entirety once it was finished (est. 20k-22k), but decided just to get this out of my face and do the other half separately. if y'all wanna see the second half and conclusion to this please reblog and interact with this!! if i don't really gauge any interest in it, i don't really see the point in putting my time into finishing it.
the second half has the sex scene and all the drama and stuff.
anyway, deuces!
#getou x reader#getou suguru#geto x reader#jjk geto#geto suguru#jujutsu geto#getō suguru#jjk suguru#getou suguru x reader#suguru x reader#suguru geto#suguru x you#suguru x y/n#suguru geto x reader#suguru geto x you#suguru geto x y/n#jjk x you#jjk imagines#jjk x reader#jujutsu kaisen#2k writes#writing#reader insert#reader interactive
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ugh I love quietly fact checking posts
#‘I didn’t know this happened!!’ bc it Did Not. lol#we might be on the way! frankly I would not be surprised! but like… please#yes it will be fucked up if the josefina and kaya ag books are banned in school bc of ‘crt’#and yes it is unfortunately possible! but it is not actually the case#pro tip from someone who quoted a LOT of sourceless tumblr posts without hesitation as a teen:#if it concerns you but there aren’t any legitimate sources backing it up - put a pin in it.#monitor it. keep an eye out for news.#bc sometimes things do break in unexpected ways!#but it’s our responsibility not to spread misinformation yknow#I’m still guilty of it sometimes. like I’ll reblog a post thinking ‘holy shit’ and later realize oh wait. that was just… not true#but it’s about working to be better so the things that do happen ARE spread!#this is genuinely not an angry/mean/petty post directed towards anyone. I just like doing it & it’s a sign of personal growth for me#anyways throwback to when I almost did my ninth grade science fair project on ALEXANDRIAS FUCKING GENESIS#my life
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