#again for clarity this is Absolutely not the last chapter
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Give You Blue
Chapter 1: How It Ends
Pairing: Eren x f!reader, Reiner x f!reader (past relationship)
Rating: Explicit - MINORS DO NOT INTERACT
cw: explicit sexual content/smut (brief flashback), language, angst, a breakup
Word Count: ~3.2k
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Give You Blue Masterlist | ao3 | Give You Blue Taglist
Summary: Reiner, your best friend since childhood and your high school sweetheart, breaks up with you the night before the new semester begins. With his car packed with both your belongings, the hour long drive back to campus the next day offers some clarity. Author's Notes: Excited to be writing a new series! I hope you all enjoy it. Likes, reblogs, and/or comments are always appreciate. Thank you so much!
“I think we should break-up.”
It’s the last day of summer vacation, the night before you and Reiner head back to Stohess University for the start of a new schoolyear. You’ve been at his place all day, helping him pack his car, which is already halfway full of your own belongings. With the door to his bedroom wide open, you can hear his mom humming a familiar tune downstairs as she puts away the leftovers from tonight’s dinner. Her signature meatloaf and mashed potatoes, a favorite of yours and Reiner’s. It’s been this way since you were ten years old, when the two of you finally started eating real food instead of only candy, pizza rolls, and chicken nuggets.
The words come out of his mouth low and monotone, an automated machine void of any emotions. That’s why you’re convinced it’s in your imagination, until he speaks again. “Coco, did you hear me?”
Coco. It’s the silly nickname he’s had for you since you were five, the first time you ever met on the school playground. You were in the same kindergarten class, but Reiner could not, for the life of him, remember your name for two whole weeks. What he does remember is you eating a homemade coconut macaroon every first recess of the day. And like a typically five-year-old boy, he picked on you for it, calling you Coconut even after he learned your name. Even after you became the best of friends. Eventually, it became Coco for short, and from there, it just stuck. You’re not sure if you ever liked it; maybe you only did because it was him calling you that. One of the many special secrets shared between you two throughout the years.
You turn towards him, a pair of his socks in hand, ready to roll and toss into his half empty luggage, unfazed. “Huh?” You’re prepared to hear him say something else, anything else.
He swallows hard, a serious expression on his face, glancing at his feet. “I think we should break-up.”
It takes you a good minute to process it. Three minutes, if you’re being completely honest. And he doesn’t rush you this time for a response, seeing you stare back at him, a deer in headlights, seconds before getting hit and crushed under the weight of a semi-truck. Because that’s how it feels when your boyfriend of four years and your best friend of even longer tells you that he thinks the two of you should break-up.
You’re surprised at how long it takes for the tears to stream down your face. Everyone knows, Reiner included, how much of a sap you are. You cry easily over the most insignificant things – a car commercial, people playing with puppies, a sad scene in a movie. But this – this absolutely warrants all the tears you’ve cried over stupid shit like that.
Reiner quickly closes the door and wraps his arms around you, lips pressed to your forehead. “Baby, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” His facial hair brushes against you, a sensation you’ve always found comforting. He was a late-bloomer, incapable of growing that rugged look all throughout high school. It was really only last year when he needed to pay more attention to it; grooming became part of his regular routine. Now, it’s harsh and coarse against smooth skin, an itch you want to scratch but can’t. Somehow, you keep your volume to a minimum, aware that Mrs. Braun is downstairs, blissfully ignorant to what’s happening above her. Through quiet, choked sobs, you ask, “Why?”
He sighs, a pained expression on his face now; he’s always hated seeing you cry. How much worse does he feel knowing he’s the cause of it? Leading you to the edge of the bed, he sits, and you follow. With your hand in his, he starts explaining himself. “We’ve been inseparable for so long; I just think we need to take some time to figure ourselves out. As individuals.” He’s practiced this before, you can tell. He usually sputters when he’s put on the spot. Not this time. He’s been thinking about this for a while, you realize, and it breaks your heart more.
It’s hard for you to look at him as he speaks, so you stare at his lap, his hands holding yours delicately. When you don’t respond, he continues. “We’ve been friends forever, and I don’t want to lose that. I don’t. I just need to explore my horizons.”
In your mind, you replace the word horizons with options. He joined a frat last semester, which you can admit, worried you at first. He assured you nothing about him would change, and you believed him. Before your logic can stop you, you spit out, “So you’re trying to fuck some sorority girls, is that it?”
He clicks his tongue at you, disappointed. You’re better than this, you know this, and he does too. “C’mon. It’s not like that.”
“Then what? Don’t bullshit me, Reiner. If you’re going to break-up with me, I deserve to know the truth.” It’s fighting words. You can’t help it when you’re defenseless like this.
He hesitates before confessing, “I’m not in love with you anymore.”
It fucking hurts to hear. The one person you were so sure would never harm you, stabbing you in every vital point of your body. It’s betrayal, disappointment, and heartache all at once, and you’d give anything to turn back the clock and go back to even a few minutes ago, when you were happily folding his laundry. You’re speechless, a jumble of thoughts stuck in your throat, gagging you until it’s too hard to breathe and you’re gasping for air. There’s static noise surrounding your ear drums, and Reiner’s voice is so muffled that you can barely understand him. You reach around him for a pillow, burying your face in it to hide your cries.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.” Baby. He still calls you that through a breakup. You’re his baby that he’s not in love with you anymore. It’s all so fucked up. Between anguished sobs, you ask, “What did I do wrong?”
He rambles on and on about how it’s not you it’s me. It was nothing you did, except in the back of your mind, you keep thinking why wasn’t I good enough? He strokes the back of your hand with his palm, his skin cracked and calloused from rock-climbing, one of his new favorite hobbies. You’ve been nagging him about using that special cream you bought for him, the one that’s supposed to help soothe skin with a tiny dollop. Did that annoy him? Is that the feather that tipped the scale? You can’t help but replay every single fucking thing you’ve ever said to him, every single thing you’ve ever done for him, trying to discern when and where it went downhill.
You’ve always been best friends first, lovers second. You thought it was special this way, that it means something more. Now, as you sit at the edge of the bed with him, listening to him talk in circles about how this isn’t your fault, you realize that maybe that’s what led to this. Better off as friends, nothing more. You were both sixteen when you decided to cross the line. At the time, it felt right. Looking back, maybe it was just convenient. Were the two of you doomed from that day on?
“I’ll always love you, Coco.” He repeats it, hoping it’ll make you feel better. You hold your tongue, tempted to reply then why are you doing this? It’s a slap in the face when he says it. A consolation prize reminding you that you lost.
At the end of the day, you can’t hate him. There’s too much history there. You’ve been through too much together, seen each other at your lowest points, held each other up at the highest. That kind of relationship is rare, a treasure too precious to throw away. But damn, you want to bury it in the darkest depths of the ocean right now. Hell, you want to sink down with it.
There’s no yelling; you don’t have it in your heart to scream at him with his mother in the house with you. He probably planned it like this; he knows you too well. You don’t like making a scene, especially in front of Mrs. Braun, who’s basically another mother to you.
You think back on the other night, in this very bedroom. His mom went out to dinner with some friends, leaving you two alone. Of course, you took the opportunity to fuck each other silly. He ate you out sloppily at the edge of the bed, kneeling before you on the carpet with your legs spread wide. Was he already considering the break-up in this moment? He must have. This kind of decision doesn’t just happen. As he bounced you on his cock, his usual tired eyes peering up at you with a small grin on his face, he said, “God, you’re perfect.” And when you came with his thumb on your clit, cock still buried deep in your pussy, he whispered, “I love you,” before he released inside you. He repeated it when you relaxed against his chest, bodies spent, chanting it while he caressed your back. I love you, I love you, I love you.
You sleep in his bed tonight. Instead of being cuddled in the middle, you roll the farthest you can, turning your back to face away from him. He does the same.
“Are you still awake?” he whispers, barely audible. You don’t respond.
You hear him exhale. “I’m sorry.”
Several minutes later, he stops stirring and his soft snores fill the quiet. Eventually, you fall asleep too, wiping your tears on the pillowcase.
~~~
The next morning, you pretend that everything is normal at breakfast. Mrs. Braun prepares a feast, as usual, before you make the journey back to school. She remains ignorant to the fact that you and Reiner are no longer a couple. He mentioned it last night, how he doesn’t want his mom to worry, that it’s not the right time to break the news to her. Honestly, he’s too scared to confront it, knowing for a fact how big of a deal this will be to his family. You two are practically married in their eyes. Well, were.
You do your best to act like your cheery self, despite being close to dead inside. Reiner gives you nervous glances here and there, afraid you’ll explode any second. You keep your cool, though, making conversation with Mrs. Braun, feigning excitement for the upcoming semester. Laughing along to jokes about how Reiner should be more focused on his studies and less on the frat parties. Ha ha ha.
Around noon, with the car fully packed with yours and Reiner’s possessions, you bid farewell to his mom. She gives you a warm embrace, squeezing you extra hard. “Take care of yourself, dear. And take care of Reiner too. Love you.” It takes all the strength you have left in your feeble body to not sob on the spot, so you quickly return the sentiment and walk to the passenger side, closing the door shut, burying your face in your palms. A few moments later, Reiner joins you in the driver’s seat, one more wave to his mother before starting the car and driving away.
It's silent for the first five minutes, you wiping your tears with your sleeves, him changing the song every three seconds on his playlist to preoccupy himself. He finally picks a song, a familiar one that you know all too well. It brings back memories of the summer right after you graduated high school. The melody synonymous with weekly road trips to the beach or warm nights staying in, watching a movie marathon in bed. A bowl of popcorn on your lap, his arm wrapped around your shoulder. His face nuzzling your ear, lips nipping at your lobe. Soft touches leading to rough sex, with your mouth biting the pillow to muffle your moans as he pumps his cock into you. The cuddling afterwards, him whispering that he loves you, and that he’s so happy that you’re both going to the same college. Because he wants nothing more than to stay with you, to be with you, for the rest of your lives.
You can’t take it anymore. Before you realize, you reach over to shut off the radio, the silence louder than the music that was playing. He glances at you, mouth agape like he wants to yell, but he doesn’t. He focuses his attention on the road again, taking a deep breath before saying, “You could have asked me to change the song.”
You cross your arms over your chest, leaning your head against the window, watching the blur of buildings pass as you approach the freeway. “Every song on this playlist reminds me of you. Of us.”
He pauses, unsure how to respond. “I’m sorry.”
You’re sick of hearing it, but you don’t tell him that. Instead, you ask, “When did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That you wanted to break up.” After having a night to let it sink it, you’re ready to talk about it. At least, you think you are.
He thinks carefully, knuckles tight on the wheel, brow knit. You wait patiently for his answer, growing more afraid of whatever harsh truth he’s about to drop on you. “It’s been on my mind all summer, if I’m being completely honest.”
Never mind; maybe you’re not ready for this. Still, you let curiosity get the best of you. You swallow back the quiver in your throat, tears welling in your eyes again. “Why did you start thinking about it?”
He sighs, clearly uncomfortable. “Are you sure you want to hear this? I thought I already told you yesterday. It’s not you, it’s me.”
You can’t help but chuckle at the cliché. “I’d rather hear the truth than hear that bullshit again.”
He bites his lower lip, inhaling deeply through his nose. “I guess I started to think about how you and I have been together forever. Basically our whole lives. We don’t really know what’s it like to not be with each other.”
“And that’s bad?”
He shakes his head. “It’s not bad. It’s just…college is supposed to be about experiencing new things, right? Stepping outside our comfort zone. I don’t know if we can do that if we’re together. We rely on each other so much; we’ll never be able to explore the real world.”
You continue to stare out the window, watching as you zoom past the other cars on the street. Reiner has always been a fast driver, foot heavy on the gas pedal, raring to go past the speed limit for that tiny rush of adrenaline. You, on the other hand, are safe, never willing to push the boundaries, even for a fleeting moment. Maybe this type of mentality goes beyond the steering wheel.
After a moment, he asks, “Haven’t you ever been curious?”
“Of what?”
“What it would be like to date other people?”
It’s your turn to bite your lip, contemplating the question. In all honestly, you’ve never pictured yourself with anyone else besides Reiner. He wasn’t perfect by any means, and neither were you. But when you pour your heart and soul into one person for years, it’s difficult to imagine repeating that process with someone else.
You choose your words carefully. “I never thought about it, no. But I…I guess I can see where you’re coming from.”
He doesn’t respond to that. You can’t tell from his expression if he’s relieved or concerned. Minutes pass before he speaks again.
“You’re still my best friend, Coco. I hope you know that.”
You bite down on your lip harder, hoping the subtle pain distracts you from the influx of tears gathering in your eyes. Throat dense, tongue heavy, holding your breath because if you don’t, it’ll all come to a crumble. Before you lose it, you tap on the dial of the radio, turning it to increase the volume, not caring what song is playing anymore. Anything to get rid of the strained silence at the end of those words. For some reason, it hurts more than what he said last night.
He doesn’t continue and neither do you, him studying the road, you gazing at the evanescent glimmer of the ocean as you cross the bridge. Officially leaving Marley and entering Paradis, halfway to Stohess University. It was your top choice when you first started applying for college, and it became Reiner’s, too. And when you both received your acceptance letters, you were thrilled, and so was he. So much so that he ordered matching sweatshirts from the online store, ecstatic to let all his friends and family know that the two of you were going to Stohess, together. That part of your life, although not that long ago, seems like a dream. You’re wide awake now and the gut-wrenching reality of it all is settling in.
Finally on campus, you point him in the right direction towards your new dorm. He finds parking right in the front, reversing the car and backing into the spot. Turning off the ignition, he remains still, waiting for you. Without facing him, you announce, “I’m going to check in.”
He nods, looking down at his lap. “Okay. I’ll unload the car.”
After you check-in and receive your key, you make your way back to the Reiner, who’s already taken out most of your belongings from the trunk.
“I’m on the first floor, so I can take it from here,” you tell him, grabbing one of your suitcases.
“I’ll help you. It won’t take long.”
You don’t argue, swinging another bag over your shoulder and leading him to Room 104. You unlock the door, relieved that it’s still empty. Not ready to face Annie, your roommate, just yet. Reiner helps move your heaviest items, the mini fridge and a box of clothes and shoes. When everything has been pushed into the room, you both stand around, hands on your hips, waiting for the other to speak first.
“Thanks for your help,” you start. “I really appreciate it.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“I’ll help you with your stuff now,” you offer, grabbing your keys from the desk.
“No, it’s okay. I’m sure there will be some brothers there to help me.” He’s moving into the frat house on Greek Row, a few minutes’ walk from the sophomore’s dorms. Last year, the two of you lived in the same building, one floor apart from each other. It seems symbolic the way you’re separated this year.
“Anyways, I should get going,” he says, running his fingers through his hair.
“Sure.” You consider stalling by asking him to help you unpack, but you decide not to.
He looks at you, sadness in his eyes. For the first time all day, you finally meet his gaze, the lump in your throat returning. Stepping towards you, arms out, he embraces you, wrapping you snug in one of his signature bear hugs. “I love you, Coco. I really do. This is just something I have to do.”
You keep your arms to your side, nestling your face into his chest, memorizing the familiar scent of his t-shirt, tears soaking through the fabric. If you return his embrace, you’re certain you won’t want to let him go.
He kisses you on top of the head, giving you one last squeeze. Then, without another word, he walks out of your room, leaving you alone.
Taglist: @batafuraikisu @bloompompom @monirei @filunara @katestrophes @ichinosejager13 @hoperenae @zellskz @e-ayyy @liliorsstuff-blog
#eren jaeger#reiner braun#eren x you#eren x reader#eren x y/n#reiner x you#reiner x y/n#reiner x reader#aot fanfiction#reiner smut#aot x reader#attack on titan smut#eventual eren smut#eren smut#aot smut#give you blue#reiner braun smut#eren jaeger smut
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Philever is not dead, just different ( i hope...)
I have so many thoughts about Philever after the GuapoDuo marriage and honestly? I don’t think it’s as dead as people believe, is it changed and is the dynamic different? 100% but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Like to begin with q!Forevers obsession towards q!Philza wasn’t healthy, like before the wedding (especially in the last few interactions) q!Forever was either:
1) actively trying to gaslight Philza into believing that he is or at least was Brunim
OR
2) was so delusional that he genuinely thought they were the same person
Both are terrible foundations to build a relationship on. If Philever ever became canon with its dynamic before the wedding, I honestly couldn’t see that ever being a healthy relationship. Was it kinda cute watching Forever be so helplessly in love? Definitely, but it was also kind of just sad. Now that the ship (as it stood) has been so thoroughly destroyed I see it as an opportunity for q!Forever and q!Phil to get to know each other as people and not... whatever they were before (definitely not themselves that’s for sure).
The wedding to many may seem like the absolute end of the ship, but I think it’s just the end of the first chapter. How we saw Forever treating Phil during his confession was unlike anything we had seen before, it was like Forever was actually seeing Phil and not Brunim. It was genuinely the first bit of clarity we had seen from Forever in regards to Phil in a long time, he was actually listening to was he said (unfortunately what Phil had to say may not have been the nicest for him but anyway), he complimented something about Phil something completely independent from Brunim and even the LOVE shirt had Phils face NOT Brunims. Like come on this is new stuff guys this is Forever appreciating Phil as Phil and not just Brunim 2.0.
q!Phil from the start of their interactions found q!Forever amusing and seems to enjoy having him around as much as he jokes, he admires him as a person and takes notice of his dedication (not just in reguards to his wooing of Philza but also how dedicated he is to the eggs and the server as a whole). There is a mutual respect that has been unable to flourish into a genuine connection and friendship between the cubes because Forever never allowed Philza to get off the defensive (Like how can genuine connection bloom between them when Forever was constantly trying to manipulate and misconstrue Philzas words and actions into anything romantic?). Now that Forever has had his delusions shattered and gained a sense of self-respect (hopefully) there is potential for them to rebuild in a healthier way.
Do I think the cubes will ever actually get together? Not really no, But I am also genuinely surprised with how much PhilZa has been opening up to more roleplay opportunities, who knows maybe romance could be on the table down the track, consequently I wouldn’t be surprised if something happened between them eventually (perhaps something similar to the McYum date?). If we follow what Quackity has been saying about the QSMP its barely started, q!Forever and q!Philza will have plenty of time to grow together and grow closer once again. Plus with how loyal q!Forever is I doubt he will be able to just drop Phil altogether realistically.
Have faith my fellow delusional shippers we have a long ride to go and I honestly am really excited to see where this goes from here.
#philever#caramelduo#sugarduo#what even is their ship name these days?#they are living in my head rent free fr#Forever is honestly such an interesting character and i am so excited to see how this effects him even beyond the ship
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Fight Night Sukuna: An Infodump
I’ve put together a bit of a Fight Night info dump thanks to the cute Sukuna cat video made by @ehnonymousse (and me going through some of my character notes to write a request for MMA Sukuna) . These are in no specific order/format - just however I pulled them from my notes and some random observations!
Under a cut for length 💛
Sukuna doesn’t actually dislike junk food as much as he tends to claim, but he’s not in his 20s anymore and is already large and bulky enough that he has to be strict with his diet to make weight before fights. If he ate how he truly wanted he’d have no chance. Still, he indulges between fights and as a result gets a little soft around the middle. His lower abs are slightly obscured by a rounded stomach (though it takes a lot more than that for his Adonis belt to lose prominence) and his pecs get softer. That being said even when he’s at his leanest he doesn’t have that hard muscle. He does when flexing, yes, but it’s soft when he’s not.
He has a definite sweet tooth, but prefers bitter flavours with his sweet like dark chocolate and coffee. Had he taken reader out to the cafe we see in Chapter 5 when he wasn’t in the process of eating clean and cutting weight, we would have definitely seen him ordering their take on maritozzi, filled with coffee cream.
I’ll just pop screenshots in to make referencing it easy, but as far as Sukuna was concerned he and reader were dating while they were fucking around and partying together. He hadn’t necessarily intended that last night as a goodbye, just a break to messing around like that because he needed to train and be clean for potential random drug tests.
But those feelings, and showing them in a way other than strictly physically, were new to him and he doesn’t realize he and reader isn’t on the same page until this exchange in Chapter 5:
The “sounds like you’re asking me on a date” throws him because, well, as far as he was concerned every night out after the first was a date. That effectively confirms his suspicions that yeah, maybe doing drugs and drinking and fucking all night doesn’t exactly come across as “hey i’m boyfriend material” to most people.
On that note when Sukuna sees he isn’t in reader’s phone under his name, and instead as 👹👑, he’s actually hurt. But he doesn’t really address those types of things when he’s several hours in to filling his body with all kinds of things that obscure his judgement so he deals with that hurt the best way he knows how that isn’t violence: with his dick.
Sukuna was actually really excited to fight Toji. They’d done an entertaining amount of trash talking in press leading up to the fight, and Sukuna loves that shit. Plus it’s not often he gets to fight someone as tricky as Toji.
Also Sukuna knows reader has been looking him up online during Chapter 6 at the frozen yogurt place when they say Toji’s name. Sukuna had never mentioned his name specifically.
The first time Sukuna and reader have sex sober, at his house in Chapter 4, solidifies to Sukuna that he is absolutely down bad. In a way he’d thought his usual indifference would return after some time away, but it only makes him realize he doesn’t want to have that kind of distance again.
Sukuna sort of lazily sliding his fingers inside of reader after sex is a type of comfort thing for him. Think of it as the opposite of the implied awkward feeling that comes with post-nut clarity. He feels accepted, and likes basking in that afterglow as he remind himself he was inside of you and left something behind.
He loves having his scalp rubbed and his hair tugged, it gives him goosebumps. Like he literally pays for scalp massages, he loves it that much.
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A Moment of Clarity - Joel Miller x Reader
Summary: You and Joel wake the next morning and decide to just see how things go which is exactly the way you both want them to
Words: 2.6k
Warnings: oral (f!receiving); fluff
Notes: This is Chapter Two: Forbidden Fruit Series Masterlist
Y/N’s POV
The shrill sound of my phone ringing pierces through my comfortable slumber and I’m groaning as I blindly reach for my phone before answering it while Joel cards is fingers through my hair. It’s Daisy, of course it’s Daisy. She sounds perfectly sober despite having been absolutely back out drunk last night, a superhuman power she seems to have.
“Soooo, spill it all,” She demands, “Is he as big as everyone speculates?”
I’m choking on air, a rumble of amusement from below me as there was definitely no way Joel did not hear that. I mute it and send Joel an apologetic look, feeling my cheeks heating up but he just chuckles and pressing a kiss to my forehead before sliding out from under me. I watch as he finds a pair of grey sweatpants that cling to his lips and how good his tanned skin looks in the morning light that’s pouring through the gap in the curtains. I’m having to clear my throat and drag my eyes from his body as I unmute the call, trying to keep my voice steady, “Daisy, what are you talking about?”
“Come ooonnnn,” She groans, “Don’t play dumb with me, you spent the night at Joel’s.” I let out a frustrated sound as Joel settles on the bed, sitting in front of me and taking my hand in his, thumb rubbing soothingly over the back of it as Daisy continues her interrogation. Joel surprises me by plying the phone from my hands and putting it on speaker before setting it between us before he’s kissing my knuckles lovingly, sending my heart fluttering. Daisy’s voice crackles through the phone, impatient and expectant, “So, are you gonna answer my question or what?”
“Darlin’ are you coming down for breakfast or not?” Joel speaks and I send a confused look in his direction wondering what the fuck he’s on about but then Daisy’s squealing and Joel sends me a wink. Oooohhhhh, he’s trying to get Daisy to hang up and leave us alone for a bit. I try to hide my smile but it’s no use, Joel’s charm and quick thinking is just too much.
“Breakfast, hmmmm?” Daisy teases through the phone, “Alright I’ll leave you too your DILF but you better give me all the details later.”
“Bye Daisy.” I say with a light laugh, always amused at how energetic and supportive she is no matter the situation.
“Love you too Y/N!” With that the call ends and Joel’s pushing my shoulders, crawling over me and smothering my faces in sweet kisses. I feel a giggle bubbling up in my throat, pushing at his chest as it all tickles, but he does pull back. He’s grinning down at me, eyes shining with mischief before he’s diving down and stealing a hot kiss that has me gasping. My heart races and my body thrums with excitement as he pulls away again with a smirk. His hands trail down my body, fingers leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake and I reach up to pull him back down for another kiss but he’s standing up.
“Come one, lets have breakfast.” He says, voice just as playful as the glint in his eyes as he helps me up. I slip on my jeans before padding down the stairs after him, the smell of bacon sizzling making my mouth waters.
Tommy’s standing at the hob, three plates ready for the breakfast he’s cooking and I look for Sarah, Ellie always spending her time with Dina lately, but she’s no where to be seen. The cheeky and knowing grin Tommy flashes us as we enter the kitchen as my face heating as he knew I was here and he definitely knows I slept in Joel’s room last night. I clear my throat awkwardly, feeling the weight of Tommy’s gaze on me, “Morning Tommy.”
“Morning Mouse.” Tommy smirks, using the nickname he’s had for me since he met me all those years ago. He’s Joel’s younger brother and does have his own place but Tommy likes to spend most of his free time here and I don’t blame him. I have always loved the Millers, always finding my way to their house when my dad and I argue or if I’ve done something that my dad wouldn’t approve of. Tommy was in the first time I got drunk and he had to get me up to the spare room while I was spewing about how much I love Joel so I think Tommy’s smirk is more of a ‘finally’.
Joel laughs, full and hearty, at Tommy’s nickname for me, “Mouse, huh? You’re still calling her that?”
“Course I am,” Tommy says with a chuckle, “Here you lovebirds go.” Tommy holds out two plates of food, one with everything you could think of but the other with only the bacon, sausage and hash browns as I don’t like eggs. Joel takes both plates and heads to the table but before I can follow him, Tommy is grabbing my wrist and pulling me into a hug, whispering, “Thank god you two made moves on each other.” I feel my face heat up again at his words, knowing that Tommy has always loved to play matchmaker, especially between me and Joel. I’m wriggling out of his hug and rushing over to sit next to Joel who just sends me a quizzical look that I ignore. He’s opening his mouth to ask so I shove a piece of bacon in my mouth and he just huffs.
Joel’s hand finds its way to my thigh again as we eat, Tommy joining us with his own plate of food. Sarah must be at a friends as she’s usually up early and would have been making breakfast with Tommy, waiting for me and Joel to stumble our ways downstairs but from separate rooms. I don’t know how she’ll feel if she finds out I’m dating her dad as we’re so close in age. Wait, I’m not even dating Joel… am I? I’m sending Joel a quick glance, my heart racing at the thought of him and me dating. What if he was just looking for a quick release and will want to drop me home after breakfast as I didn’t give out? What if he feels regret for kissing me last night? What if-
Lips are on mine, soft and pliant and throwing every thought from my mind. My hand finding Joel’s cheek, his beard coarse under my palm as his thumb rubs soothing circles on my thigh, his other hand in my hair. I feel a little kiss drunk when Joel finally pulls back enough to meet my gaze, “There’s no need to worry sweet girl, I want you just as much as you want me.”
“Y-you do?”
Joel’s chuckle is soft and his eyes are warm and full of affection as he cups my cheek, “Of course I do, Y/N. Wouldn’t have kissed you last night and now if I didn’t.” My heart swells with happiness at his words and I lean in to kiss him again, feeling so safe and loved in his embrace but Tommy’s clearing his throat across from us.
“Let me eat my breakfast in my single loneliness and peace please,” There’s a teasing tone to his voice as I focus on my food, Joel doing the same. We settle into a comfortable silence, finishing the breakfast Tommy made and it’s really fucking good, Tommy being an amazing cook. He’s breaking the silence a few minutes later, taking our plates as he asks, “So what’s your plan for today?”
“I’m not sure, where are the girls?” Joel asks in return.
“She slept over at Jesse’s with Ellie and Dina. They said they wouldn’t be back until late afternoon,” Tommy tells us as he scrapes the plates clean before putting them in the dishwasher, “I’m heading out to meet up Maria, I have a lot of hope for this relationship. So you two have the house and you better behave.”
“It’s my house asshole.” Joel quips back, brothers sharing a brotherly glare before Tommy’s patting Joel on the shoulder and heading for the door. It closes behind him and I’m left sitting next to Joel, eyes on the way his large hand holds my thigh as a dirty thought or two worm their way into my mind despite the fact Joel and I haven’t even put a label on us yet. It’s like Joel can sense it, his fingers flexing against my thigh and his breath is hot against my neck when he brings his lips to my ear, “Behave sweet girl.”
I shiver at the feel of his breath on his skin and the way his voice makes me putty his in hands. But I also can’t help feel a little frustrated at his comment, wanting to explore the physical connection between us so I’m turning my head to face him, meeting his gaze with a defiant look and a small pout as I whisper, “Maybe I don’t want to behave.”
His honey eyes darken at my words, hand on my thigh tightening and he’s gripping my chin between his thumb and forefinger as he makes me look at him, “Is that so?” He asks, voice husky, “What do you want to do then sweet girl?”
Without hesitation, Joel’s lips are on mine, the kiss hot and heavy, my hands flying to his hair to pull him in closer, the table in the way. Joel’s hand moves to the back of my head, fingers tangling in my hair as he deepens the kiss, his tongue sliding against mine and drawing a soft main from me. I feel his other hand sliding further up my thigh, fingers tracing oh so close to where I need them and my back arches into the touch in response, a mewl being swallowed by his lips.
He’s pulling back, eyes searching mine as he asks, “You sure you want this Y/N? You sure you want me? I’m fourteen years older than you sweetheart-“
“Thirteen years and ten months.” I correct him and a soft look crosses his face as he lets out a soft sound so I continue talking, “I am very sure I want to be in a relationship with you Joel Miller. There is no one else who could treat me better than you, no one would could satisfy me and make me so loved than you, no one who could be both a safe haven and a fucking tease. There is no one I trust more to treat me right than y-“
Lips are crashing to mine, desperate and wanting. The kiss deepens as Joel’s hands find my hips and I’m gasping when I’m being lifted and sat on the table with him standing between my legs. He pulls me closer to the edge, pulling me flush against him and I can feel his heart beating fast against my chest, matching the rhythm of my own. His lips move down my neck, kissing and nipping at the sensitive skin there and I can’t help but moan softly, Joel’s fingers tugging at the waistband of my jeans and I’m lifting my hips for him. In one smooth movement my jeans and panties are on the floor and Joel is trailing fingers up the insides of my thighs, the skin sensitive and I’m mewling, wanting more.
“Fuck sweetheart,” He’s pulling back with a groan when two of his fingers swipe through my folds, gathering my arousal on the pads of his fingers before he’s bringing them up to his lips, his eyes fluttering shut in bliss and I think I get even wetter then I thought possible, “Fuck you taste so good.” He’s dropping back into the chair, a large and calloused hand pressing on my stomach to get me to lay back on the table as he wraps his arms around my thighs. Without any warning he’s blowing on my wet heat, making me squirm and whine out his name before he’s diving in like a starved man, tongue swirling my clit and I’m wriggling away but his grip on my thighs stops me. He’s kissing and sucking on my sensitive nub with precision and expertise that I can feel that knot in my stomach already building and my hands flying to his hair. His lips move from my core, trailing kisses and nipping up and down my thighs as I cry out in anguish, “Patience darlin’.”
I’m digging on his hair again and pushing his face back to my core, Joel’s moan vibrates through me, up my spine and straight to my head as my thighs begin to shake, all of it embarrassingly soon but the way his tongue thrusts as far as he can get it inside me, licking at my walls before moving back to abuse my clit has me teetering on the edge of pleasure. He’s chuckling softly against my folds when my legs clamp around his head before he’s prying them open and pulling away enough to coo, “That’s it sweet girl,” His voice gravelly and husky, “Let go and come for me darlin’.”
It takes one more thrust of his tongue in my core before I’m crying his name, back arching and eyes slamming shut as my hands tug at his hair almost painfully. It feels different to when I’ve fingered myself, it’s longer and wetter, wave after wave ripping through me until I’m gasping and Joel’s hands are caressing my hips as I try to regain some form of consciousness. I definitely gain it when I find his face and see he is wet, beard and chest wet as well and I realise what just happened. My hands flying up to cover my face in embarrassment because Joel just ate me out so good I squirted all over him but his gentle fingers are prying my hands from my face and he’s speaking, “That was fucking hot, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“But-“
“It’s okay darlin’,” He’s hovering over me, pupils blown out and lips kiss swollen, “Come on let’s take a shower then we can just spend the rest of the day watching movies.”
“But-“
“You don’t have to, this was about you sweetheart.” He’s helping me off the table, a proud smirk on his shiny lips as my legs shake almost too much to walk. His strong hands gripping my hips and guiding me towards the stairs, lips migrating back to my neck as he follows me upstairs. It takes all of my concentration to make it up the stairs without falling with my legs feeling like jelly and Joel currently determined to mark my neck with hickeys that I am going to have a very hard time hiding from my dad.
“Sh-shit Joel, you keep doing that and I-“
“You’ll what hmmm?” He ask, voice hot and heavy in my ear and I’m pressing my ass back against his crotch, hearing the way his breath hitches before I’m wriggling out of his grip and sending him a cheeky smile before sprinting to the bathroom with him following, a laughter erupting from him, “Come back here darlin, teasing is a dirty game!”
“Well what you gonna do about it baby?”
“Get that pretty little ass back here!”
----------------
The Last of Us Masterlist
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Smut Teaser #2 for "Performances"
18+ only | Minors DNIW | Buggy Smut
Greetings Folks!
I promise I am working on getting the first chapter out as soon as I can. For now, I wanted to grace you with something absolutely -filthy.
This little scene popped into my brain in the middle of editing last night, and would not leave me alone until it was finally down on paper. If your curious Sabrina Claudio’s : Put On Repeat was the inspiration.
Just for clarity's sake how I write about our favorite clown is always from the viewpoint that he is a switch. Able to free flow from dominating to submissive and all the little groves and crannies that are in between. So let's see what unfolds when the main female protagonist also happens to be the same.
I give you *drum roll*
The Closet Scene
Note: Please remember that all teasers may and will be edited by the time the chapters are posted.
Warnings:
Taller Fem oc x Buggy | Hand Job | Light breath play | Praise Kink | Buggy is happily submissive with a switch of dominant energy peeking out at the end.
She leaned them against the wall with one arm, Buggy's shaking breath fanning across her jaw as he pressed his head back into the solid structure, trapped between the two. His palms pressed flat to the smooth surface, not wanting to break the rules of the game. Sarisha leaned forward just enough for her cupid's bow to brush the clown’s bulbous nose as she spoke.
“Good Boy, now stay very, very still.”
She pulled her head back just enough to glance down and see the small tent starting to form against the crotch of his pants. Free hand moving slowly from his sternum, drawing small circles with the tips of painted nails before rotating her wrist for fingers to face downward, palm once again flush against him, the heat from his lower belly radiating into her digits.
Buggy gulped at the sensation that her hand made, especially when her nails had outlined their circles. Suddenly the cotton texture of his shirt against his chest hair became too obvious in the front of his mind. His eyes never left her face as he watched the subtle expressions that showed from her continuing menstruations. His own hands now gripping their nails through white gloves and into the groves of the wood behind him, the fabric piling between nailbeds. He was fighting between the loud voice of impatience internally screaming at him to move and the low vibrations coming to life from his body.
His breath caught in his throat when her fingers moved lower, smoothing over the leather of his belt, and then hovering with a barely their touch at the seam in the front of his pants. Her eyes glanced back to his when she saw the tremor in his right shoulder, a barely there smile in the corner of her lips forming.
Using her index finger to hook into the pocket of the belt, she unlopped it from the buckle. A sly smile grew at seeing the captain's chest shake from the tension that was once around his hips loosened. The loss of strength from the belt allowed his pants to slouch down by an inch, the fabric's friction against his growing erection forcing a quiet hiss to be pushed from behind clenched teeth. The sound of his nails scratching against the closet's wood was audible to them both.
“You are doing such a good job, remember to breathe.”
Buggy nodded his head fervently before licking his lips and letting out another shuttered breath he didn’t realize he was holding. Sarisha’s words sounded so soft and low; a honeyed calm compared to the electrifying sensation her touch was causing. He had to remember too that they were in a precarious place that she pushed them into. The closet was dimly lit and was also passed frequently by the occupants of the ship.
Normally the pirate couldn't care less about being caught with a woman, even sometimes pushing the border of voyeurism with his encounters, but this was…different. He was used to being the one in charge in these situations, his curiosity getting the better of him, because of her.
Sarisha’s heart was racing to the point of even feeling the artery in her neck pulsing. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt a rush from having a man in such a submissive moment. It took control to not show the tremble in her arms or her own shuddering breath that mirrored his own. Her eyes dropped down when his tongue darted out, outlining both red-smeared lips, as a quiet huff came out when her hand pressed once again into his lower belly. Fingers nimbly undoing the top button before gripping the zipper and lazily pulling it down.
Starting to look down Buggy's head gave a soft thud when he pressed it back into place, the game's rules screaming internally with the reminder not to move. All movement paused, sky-blue eyes opened to connect with redwood brown, the coil in his belly tightening at their intensity. He could sense the subtly of her shoulders as they rose and lowered from deep controlled breaths.
“I adore your obedience.”
The tension of a spring being pulled back further and further filled the air as Sarisha adjusted her weight, shifting to be closer, looking down at him from the added height of stiletto heels. The strength it took to hold back from kissing him, no, devouring him at that moment had her gulping now. She had to do her job, and giving in too soon would not guarantee its success. Sarisha needed the pirate clown to become obsessed with her for this to work. This was work she had to remind herself…again.
Buggy’s mouth opened to form a silent O as the back of her knuckles ran the length of his still-clothed erection. His knees almost buckled with that one. But what made his eyes roll back was when the pad of her thumb rubbed at the wet spot of precum that stained his boxers. Long fingers gave slow and soft strokes to the underside of his now painfully hard cock. The friction of fabric was once again at the front of his mind.
The arm that was once used to steady her balance against the wall, cupped his makeup-caked cheek, guiding his head to tilt up just enough to watch what she did next. Once she was sure he had caught his breath from her recent teasing, she smiled and brought the same hand from his still-clothed cock up to her lips, letting a thick drop of saliva roll down to the meat of her palm.
Rubbing her fingers together to spread the slick moisture, showing Buggy the webbing that stuck between her pointer finger and thumb before slowly lowering out of view. When his eyes tried to follow where her hand was going, his head became pinned in place. The other hand that once cupped his cheek so sweetly now gripped his face. Thumb pressing into the knife of his jawbone, the other four fingers gripping the base of his skull, forcing his head to the wall. Panic did not even have time to set in before a wet hand slipped past the elastic band of his boxers. Sickened fingers wrapped fully around his cock, giving a languid pump from base to tip and base again.
“Oh fuck- hmph!”
Sarisha’s hand clamped over his mouth when his surprise moan was louder than it should have been. A wicked smile graced her lips as she watched the once overly cocky clowns body twitch, his core tightening and untightening as her hand stayed wrapped around the thick mushroom head of his painfully hard cock, fingers pulsing quickly causing suction to the overly sensitive tip. Her hands' hyperfocus brought a paralyzing sensation through his body that was even too much to cum. Just when dark spots started to fill the corners of his vision, the torture paused, and the palm lifted from his mouth. Head falling forward to rest on a willowed collar bone, lungs burning in their gasping for air. Body in shock and desperately trying to process what had just occurred.
“Remember the rules.”
Buggy was slowly brought back from the gentle touches of a thumb rubbing small circles into his temple. Dark eyes watched intently as the once-red nose gained its rosy coloring back after becoming pale. Leaning forward to press their chests together for more physical contact, helping to ground the poor man from the high she pushed him into.
“Do you need a moment? I'm so sorry, we really should have talked about safe words before I started this Buggy. Why don’t we take a break.”
Sarisha’s words were filled with genuine concern. Her free hand, which was not lightly wrapped around his cock, unmoving, rubbed the back of his neck that had exposed itself when he leaned forward. A low chuckle filled the air of the small closet, growing into a quiet laugh. A finger lifted into the air, wagging before turning into a point under her chin. The seam of the glove nipped into her skin as it lifted her head high, forcing her eyes to strain to look down at him. Darkened blue eyes glared up at her through long lashes, skull tilted to the side, a hard-to-read crazed expression on his face mixed with blown wide pupils. Voice rough as he spoke.
“Oh, we are going to have a lot of fun together, aren’t we.”
#buggy x oc#buggy x reader#buggy x y/n#one piece buggy#buggy d clown#buggy the clown#buggy thoughts#buggy x you#captain buggy#buggy babbles#Spotify
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Makima does not control the Prime Minister and the Japanese government
I've noticed that it's become popular among Chainsaw Man fans to imagine Makima as the embodiment of evil who is responsible for all the bad things in this world. Due to misreading, people often spread their headcanons under the guise of reliable information, and one such belief is the theory that Makima controlled the Japanese government. Well, let's see if there is evidence of this in the manga.
I think it's worth starting with Kishibe's words from chapter 97, because in retrospect it may give a better understanding of the relationship between Makima and the Japanese government. Basically, he's saying that if the new Control Devil is raised by the government, she will become just like Makima. Regarding this dialogue, people often write it off because Kishibe doesn't literally say "they raised Makima", but the logic is that being raised by the Japanese government = becoming another Makima. I also don't think Tatsuki Fujimoto would add such a line without a reason, but for clarity we need to look at Makima's interactions with her superiors in the manga.
So, in chapter 6 we see Makima reporting to the higher-ups, and this scene alone is enough to say that the assumption that she has control over these people does not make any sense. The reason is that if they were puppets under her control, Makima would have absolutely no need to retell to herself the information that she already knows. This is not to mention how their conversation happens. Throughout the report, Makima stands and the superior threateningly hits his pen on the desk when he thinks Makima is acting out of line and then instructs her not to get attached to her subordinates.
In Chapter 22, Makima admits that the higher-ups are scary, and she is going to leave the room early and skip the luncheon just to avoid meeting them unnecessarily. Encounters with these people are stressful for Makima, and it is not how the person in control behaves.
Then there is one of the most popular Makima's quotes in chapter 33. In her conversation with the Yakuza, we learn that she considers herself a necessary evil collared and controlled by the state. So, Makima herself almost directly says she is a dog of the government, and it's hard to make that less ambiguous.
The last point I would like to draw attention to occurred in chapter 84. After learning of the unthinkable power that the Chainsaw Devil possesses, Kishibe assumed that Makima was going to use it to ruin the world. She asked if he really believe the Prime Minister would contract with such an evil Devil? Some fans I've met have unironically used this moment to argue that Makima forcibly forced the PM into a contract. However, if we try to read the page in its entirety, it is clear that she refutes Kishibe's assumption. Makima's words in the second panel imply that the Prime Minister wouldn't have signed a contract with her if she was as evil as Kishibe thinks she is (which again destroys the idea that she controlled the government). Makima then explains how her ability works in order to lead the conversation towards her real goal - to create a better world using Chainsaw Man, which she can control if she wins in battle. That is, the following lines have nothing to do with the Prime Minister, but serve as an explanation from Makima as to why she is not as evil as Kishibe thinks, and why the contract was made.
If you read the second panel as if Makima gloating over Kishibe's words, implying her control over the Prime Minister (which, as I explained above, is incorrect), then there is no point in her immediately afterwards justifying herself and telling him about her plan, which is not like that as he imagined. As I said, these words did not come out of nowhere, and like everything that will be said below, they were meant to disprove Kishibe's ideas.
Makima has no control over members of the Japanese government or the Prime Minister. Period. There's nothing in the manga to support this far-fetched fan theory. On the other hand, there are enough things that make it as accessible as possible for the reader to realize that she is just a part of this system.
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In Hindsight 🎼 bonus chapter: "never mind, never mine"
notes. character study-ish narration, not beta-read
Kunikuzushi was one who had the habit of tiptoeing around the depths of his emotions. Either he never bothered to scrutinize them at a closer angle or he was too afraid to do so. See, that was the problem with Kunikuzushi, he was one for fear. He wasn't fond of uncertainty but never liked knowing about his deepest thoughts too much that it allowed him clarity to his intentions. Unfortunately, the somewhat comfortable silence between the two of you gave him the chance for him to slip into a dreaded thought process about how exactly he ended up falling for you like this, at the worse time he thought was possible.
This revelation only took four phases to come into fruition, to the finding that he actually liked you more than just a medical practioner to a patient, more than a friend to another.
One, jealousy.
Kunikuzushi was confident. His life was sufficient, he was living, save for the few major regrets that sat at the back of his head. He never had a reason to be jealous of anyone. Now that the envy he felt for you wasn't coming from a malicious place, no, god forbid he'd ever think of hurting you.
Kuni liked living with no regrets, he always thought about his next move. Much contrast to the first impression of being the impulsive and tempermental guy he was set by people who set their eyes on him, he was considerate of the consequences that his actions bore. Maybe that was why he absolutely loathed the idea of having a puppy crush on you, someone who was supposed to be just a mere patient, someone who he was supposed to forget once you either passed or got better. But that's what you wanted to do too, right? To live with no regrets, only except you were free to do it and he wasn't.
You were aware that he didn't exactly have the best mother-son relationship. He didn't like talking about her. All you knew was that she was the director of the hospital you check into. Kuni thought that his mother should be lucky he still finds the love to call her "mother" when that was the last thing she was. The hospital director liked having control in this one, she believed that everything would be a little better if she oversees what needed to be managed the most. Control was something that Kuni wasn't granted in the major parts of his life. He envied the way you were so free to do anything that you wanted, he felt bad that you were this sick, of course but he was jealous that you had an outlet for that. But thank the archons for you, for you were able to teach him that it was okay to ask for a little.
Two, admiration.
Kuni was someone who took pride in being meticulous. He was picky. He didn't like touching certain textures, he hated certain flavors. Just like that, he also goes through a process of thinking about who he truly admired and respected. Lucky to say, you were one of them. He greatly respected how you continued to live as if your health wasn't worsening day by day, he admired how passionate you were about music. He admires how the lights in your now slightly sunken eyes looked so bright whenever you talked about writing and producing, how you break out into the biggest smiles when you find that some of your songs magically (allegedly, as Kuni says) found their way into his playlists, plural.
Three, denial
You see, Kunikuzushi didn't come to the realization that he liked you romantically on a whim. It's been roughly a month since he started shying away from the idea. Again, he's a meticulous person, someone who thinks before he does something.
He thought it was selfish of him, to ask for such a relationship with you when your life was on a timer. He denied countless times about what he truly felt for you. He blamed it on the thought that he was feeling this things for you just because you were going to be gone in roughly ten months. But with that reasoning, he found it funny on why he would actually put his time and effort into emotionally staying arm's length from you. The day on the beach, he finally just… let himself feel it. It was way easier than hiding it after all. It was easier to accept and act around you, and it was easier to find ways to keep himself in check.
Finally, acceptance.
What else can one say? Kuni has already come to terms with himself. Maybe these four phases are yet to be added to based on what he does next. Would he let you know? Would he keep his heart to himself again like he always did?
He's scared, again. Kunikuzushi feels scared that he's going to lose you inevitably, he doesn't want to go through the pain of standing before your headstone. He fears that a part of his heart will be buried along with you once you pass. He wants to move on with his life, without you being a significant figure in his memories. Kunikuzushi wants to treat you like a patient. Being his friend was enough to already blur the lines of the boundaries Baizhu set beforehand, what more a lover?
Maybe being yours wouldn't be so bad, either. He would feel the traces of the little stars you drew on the skin of his palm. He'd be able to have the pleasure of feeling his heart skip a bit because of you at least a few times everyday.
But as the both of you sit down on the grainy sand, with the waves of the shore caressing the pairs of your feet, he wants to wallow in the silence with you for just a little while. He wants to relish in the silence before the storm.
synopsis. You are a singer-songwriter. Music has always been a part of you, it's a part of your identity that no one can ever take away. However, there's always a catch: you are diagnosed with a chronic illness that puts your life on a timer. Those who have heard your countless melodies have grown to notice that the notes on the sheet played a gloomier tune. Would the snarky and capable medical student you've met be able to bring life back into these melodies? Even as life begins to seep out of your own body? (scaramouche x gn!reader)
tags. gender-neutral reader, angst, fluff, crack, heavy contexts of death and illnesses, friends to lovers, slowburn, profanities, drinking (characters are in college), suggestive themes but no nsfw.
taglist. — @beriiov @alatusorrow @br0oke96 @ohmyfinggod @itzblazekun @featuredtofu @sketcheeee @lazy-sanns @sakurapeach @sheraffim @vxmp-loml @sukunasrealgf @sleepning @yukiipc @thenightsflower @aqvvas (comment/send an ask to be added or removed, please let me know if i forgot to add you since my notification feed can be flooded sometimes!)
masterpost ★ masterlist © bamdelune 2023. do not repost, translate, plagiarize any of my works without permission, thank you so much! reblogs, notes, and comments are always appreciated!
#bamdelune#genshin impact#genshin#genshin x reader#bamdelune's bookstore#genshin smau#📹 (in hindsight) smau#genshin impact x reader#wanderer x reader#scaramouche x y/n#scaramouche x gn reader#scaramouche#scaramouche x you#scaramouche x reader#wanderer x gn reader#wanderer x y/n#wanderer x you#wanderer#kunikuzushi x reader#kunikuzushi
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Hii! It's me, Nia! I'm the one that requested a while back the Ramattra with the mixed feelings with a chief officer reader, if you're up for a continuation, I thought about a pretty pleasing conclusion to it. Reader is back in the field after months, but this time, their alone and walking towards his base with no weapons. They ask why did Ramattra spared them, and how they thought they weren't capable of caring for humans like that. They tell them that the humans are attacking again, giving their plans and strategies away, to give Ramattra and his Omnics a chance what would Ramattra do? Offer them a place to stay? Let them go? Id love to see your storytelling! -Nia.
Listen, I would've made this an entire fic if I could've, like multi chapter worthy I absolutely loved this idea so much and I am super happy you entrusted me with a second part!
Ramattra x Reader (gen)
Word count: 2035
Part 1
Months had passed since your last meeting with Ramattra. A strange meeting at that. It completely caught you off guard and even now you still couldn’t quite wrap your head around it. The only way to get answers to was to meet him again, but the thought of speaking to him during battle was preposterous. There was another way, though. Certain death, sure, but without the eyes of others, it was the only way. Your cheek burned, the contact from the ravager still present with you.
Your commanders had information that you didn’t, their next attack already being drafted as you sat there pondering the entire scenario. I spared him, he spared me. We’re enemies, we should’ve just killed each other… What is going on… The confliction only rose more with the days that passed.
“I’m requesting leave.” You spoke, entering your commanders office without a greeting.
“How long?” The tone of his voice sounded irritated.
“A week.” You stood opposite him, the desk being the only obstacle between you and him.
Silence.
He tapped away at the computer in front of him, eyes seeming vacant. You stay there, looking at him for a moment before looking around the office. It was small and a mess. Papers scattered everywhere, empty coffee cups littering the floor and cabinets. There, on his desk, you spotted an open file, blacked out text littering the page as you read it. Thanks to countless hours being in meeting rooms, the ability to read upside down was finally proving to be of use. The current known location of Null Sector.
“Fine.” His voice broke through. “Only because you have been working non stop for the last few years.”
“Soldiers need their rest.” You bite back.
“Whatever.” He shooed you out of the room, turning back to his previous task.
You left, the door closing behind you with a slight slam which made you wince, expecting some expletives from the other side. When nothing was said, you walked to your quarters, packing up what you needed and heading off site.
The air around you was eerily still and silent as you wandered through the gates that separated your work life to your personal life. Taking in a breath, you kept walking, the only destination in mind was there: Null Sector. But first, a pit stop home to drop off your belongings.
You spent the day walking, figuring out the best way to meet your saviour. Meeting your enemy felt like something they only did in the movies and books. Actually doing it only sent shivers through your body.
Despite everything telling you that you were a fool, and idiot for even wanting clarity, you had ended up in his territory, unarmed and with a lot of questions that needed answering.
In that moment, you were not a threat. No weapon, no armour, it was just you. A human, not a soldier, not a commander, human.
Every part of you screamed to go back, the trembling in your hands, shaky legs as you took another step forward, heart racing in your chest. You had come so far, it seemed pointless to go back. Instead, you searched for a way inside, walking the perimeter, away from the guards that surrounded it, and when no way in was possible, there was only one other choice.
Why am I doing this…
You approached two omnic guards who raised their weapons, pointing them directly at you.
“It would be wise to turn away now.” One spoke out, vocals low and static.
You stop before them, hands raising to show you were no threat. “I have information.”
“Regarding what?” The other spoke, gun lowering slightly.
“The humans next attack.” Narrowing your eyes, you wanted it to seem like you were on the omnic side. You needed to get inside.
The omnics look at each other before one turns back to face you, raising his weapon. The other turns away, speaking in what you were to assume was omnicode.
There was an uncomfortable silence as you waited, your heartbeat only increasing. The second omnic turned back around, a small nod of his head as he looked over at you.
“You will be escorted inside in a moment.”
Nothing else was said before the door behind them opened, the metal screeching as it moved. A third omnic appeared, approaching you.
“This… is for our safety.” He moves behind you, cuffing your hands behind your back. “Follow me and do not try anything.” His tone of voice was threatening, one you wouldn’t want to mess with.
An irritated sigh escaped you as you followed behind the larger omnic, but you knew they had to be cautious. A human in omnic territory…
The looks the omnics gave you were all expressionless, but you could tell there was judgement within them, hatred even. You were nothing but prey among beasts. Oh how they’d enjoy breaking you.
You kept your eyes focussed forward, just wanting answers to your questions. The Null Sector leader spared you, feelings were conflicted, running haywire through your veins.
“If you do not keep up, I won’t be responsible for what happens.” The omnic in front of you spoke out, snapping you out of your thoughts. You quickened your pace, almost walking next to him.
After a minute or so of walking, he stopped just short of a door, metal fist clanking against it. He waited a moment before entering, opening the door wider to allow you in, to which you entered, eyes locking with the omnic who spared you.
“You can leave.” Ramattra’s head turned slightly as he spoke, the omnic who had escorted you here left without uttering a word, the door closing behind you. “Well, I certainly did not expect this.” There was a slight amusement in his voice as he turned back to look at you, walking around the table and leaning back against it, arms crossing over his chest.
“Didn’t expect to be let in, either.” You say, keeping your eyes on him, watching for any hostility within him.
“What brings my enemy here?” His head cocks to the side. “Surely this is not a plan to eradicate me and Null Sector, is it?”
“No, far from it, in fact.”
“Oh?”
“We are enemies, yes, but you spared me.” Your hands play with each other behind your back, fingers locking and unlocking as you spoke. “Why? You could’ve easily killed me back then.”
“I could ask you the same question.” Ramattra uncrosses his arms, hands pushing him off the table as he approaches you. “You spared me, too, back then.”
“Suppose something inside of me wanted you to live.” You take a step back. You were defenceless, and just like before, he could easily kill you.
“We are enemies.” He repeats your words, taking another step forward as you take another one back. “What sort of enemy spares the other?”
“We can keep going back and forth here. We both have the same questions.”
“With no answers, it would seem.” The omnic leader encroaches into your space, backing you up against the door.
The closeness of him sends a cold chill over your body. This was far scarier than being beneath him, almost on deaths door.
“You came here for answers, but I will not say anything.” Ramattra cocks his head to the side as he looks down at you. “You came with nothing. No weapons, no armour. Do you expect to just leave here unhurt?”
“I don’t care what happens to me, I want to know why you let me live.” Tilting your head up to look at him, you notice the scratches on his faceplate, scars from previous battles.
He scoffs, stepping back. “And what if I do tell you? What then?” His arms cross over his chest again. “I cannot just let you leave here.”
“They already know of this place. How’d you think I found it?” You keep you eyes locked onto him, awaiting his response.
“Who’s side are you really on?” Ramattra’s voice was low, a gentle static humming behind it.
You let out a sigh. “Honestly, I don’t know anymore.”
The response you gave takes him aback, hands twitching against his arms as if he had expected you to say you were still on the human side.
“Seems like you aren’t the only one with conflicted feelings here.”
“What do you mean?”
He turns and walks back to the table, motioning for you to come closer, but when you stay where you are, he speaks out. “Come here.” It sounded more like an order than a request.
Hesitantly, you walk to him, hands still fiddling with each other.
Ramattra stands straight before walking behind you, unlocking the cuffs from your wrists. “What if I told you I spared you because I saw something within you. Something that I may have only just realised.”
“What would that be?” You rub your wrists, the red indents itching slightly.
“You are, as a matter of fact, the one human I cannot seem to get out of my systems. Since the day you had spared me, I have not been able to fathom why you decided to let me go. Perhaps… Perhaps that is why I spared you.” Ramattra leans back against the table again, watching your expression change to one of confusion. “You are a leader, like myself.”
“You spared me because we share the same job role?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I spared you because you have potential. Whether you work for those humans or not. In fact, I speculate that you do not want to fight against us, afterall, you spared me, and I do not recall you ever laying a hand or raising your weapon to another one of my kind.”
You look up at him from looking at your feet.
“Yes, I have watched you fight. You have quite the extensive skillset. You could potentially be useful here.”
“Sounds like you want to offer me a job.” You laugh nervously.
Ramattra chuckles and for the first time, it surprises him. “It does, doesn’t it?”
Your eyes lock with his, hesitation in your voice as you speak. “You didn’t get this from me.” You reached into your pocket, pulling out a small usb drive.
“What is it?” He takes it from you as you hand it over to him, his fingers gently brushing yours.
“Our next attack.”
“Why-”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I do not want to fight you.” You smile awkwardly, dropping your hand back to your side.
“Well, this certainly will be useful. What are you going to do now?” He seems curious. “You are helping the enemy, after all.”
“I’ve been meaning to quit for some time. It just took someone to make it clear for me.”
Ramattra felt that small wire burn inside of him again as he looked at you, noticing the relaxed shoulders. “Then, perhaps, if it is okay with you, we put our differences aside for the time being and talk? Friends, not enemies.”
Friends, not enemies…
“Sure.”
“There is a lot to learn about us.”
“I have a week.”
He chuckles again, motioning for you to sit down. “Plenty of time to get to know one another, yes?”
You sit opposite him, hands resting on your lap. He seems to trust you, more so than ever before.
Ramattra had been keeping an eye on you, he noticed your recovery had gone well, you were alive and no longer beaten or bruised. Broken bones had mended, your mind healing as time had passed. Questions were being answered, small laughs and jaunts being exchanged as the pair of you spoke, no longer seeming like enemies.
Your commander wasn’t surprised when your resignation letter arrived on his desk the following week, claiming you had a better job, somewhere that valued your insights.
Working alongside Ramattra was a definite change of pace, and he was glad you had accepted to be his right hand. With the information you had given, his next attack deemed successful, and he had you to thank. His trust only grew more, his feelings towards you growing alongside too.
You were an exceptional human, one he was glad he spared.
#overwatch#ramattra#ramattra x reader#fanfic#overwatch fanfiction#overwatch ramattra#ow#gender neutral reader#reader#ramattra x you#yazzfics#overwatch 2#ow2
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Gideon the Ninth Liveread, Chapter 12
Longest of these yet. In which we meet the sixth house, get even more of a sense of the shape of Gideon’s Harrow obsession, and analyse the incongruity of Canaan House as it relates to a certain suite of YA tropes.
We open with Teacher, the fucking comedian. The Tridentarius assessment was wrong; probing the priests produces zilch, The specifics of the trials, whatever they may be, remain unclear. Teacher, for reasons unknown but well-in-fitting with his would-be trickster archetype, fraternizes with the isolated weirdo.
Gideon’s rundown of the necros and cavs conspicuously leaves the sixth unaccounted for, bar their general absence; this feels important. Potentially they’ve gone the route Harrow did of sequestering themselves. Her commentary on the eighth provides some clarity; they’re second-to-last house before the Ninth, their aesthetic inverse, and apparently aggressively pious; there’s a religious schism at play. Very likely the eighth wants to assume the duties of the ninth, and given the ninth’s sorry state would have very good grounds to do so if it got out how badly things are going. Other points of note: The second house dyad seems to not want to be there. Earlier I speculated that at least one house was going to turn out to have sent someone primarily to keep up with the joneses; I suspected that it was Dulcinea, given how she seems like she’s about to keel over, but given that the second appears to lean more heavily into the conventional military side of things, it might be them.
Something of note is that Gideon isn’t disdaining the idea of breaking down barriers and making friends; when she alludes to the tried-and-true pillar of the John-Hughes industrial complex, it’s in the context of feeling unhappy that it hasn’t happened yet. Once again she’s offloading her failure to fit in onto Harrow’s “Ambience;” without really taking into account the whole, “never talking or expressing yourself” thing that she’s stuck to like glue thus far. You can argue that that’s also downstream of Harrow but Harrow, again, isn’t around to enforce anything she told Gideon to do, and hasn’t been for several chapters; I get the impression there’s a form of learned helplessness going on.
Interesting progression of Gideon’s relationship with Dulcinea. Hard to gauge the degree to which Gideon MINDS Dulcinea’s (expressly) master-servant interpretation of their (friend?)ship. Does Gideon mind less when the desire for service is explicit? When the requests are clear and specific? How much of the dysfunction with Harrow is that Harrow has no carrot behind the stick, never actually asked for anything and just impeded Gideon?
So Gideon wanted to do war crimes in exchange for a Big Ti- I’m not typing the rest of that out. But I think I called the flower wars thing! They kill people for thanergy.
This highlights something I’ve found extremely interesting about Gideon’s character; she’s essentially a protagonized Legate Lanius. Her goal and aspiration was to become one of the frontline hapless shitsacks that I hunt for sport whenever I boot up Fallout: New Vegas out of nostalgia. Everything we’ve seen of her childhood in the Ninth, and the myriad of ways that this fucked her up- this would be information thrown in near the bottom of an optional dialogue tree, a brief concession to the material causes that create evil people, before the player goes right back to coming up with the most over-the-top possible method of killing this faceless, unnegotiable final boss. And the fact that it’s Gideon- funny, likeable Gideon- being the one to narrate this, with no attempts to justify or rationalize it, no pause indicating that she feels a need to, is a fantastic signifier that a moral lens is absolutely the wrong frame with which to judge this story and these characters. Everyone in Canaan house is some flavor of bastard, maniac or dupe; that that’s price of admission. All that’s left is to watch them bounce off each other, to follow the horrible inexorable logic driving their characters. You are not invited here to Pass Judgement on their horrific ideals or moral behaviors; you are here to Bear Witness and hope they muddle through the Situation (capital intended) that they are about to be in. I like this.
Oh yeah. Immediate follow-up section of the fantasy. Gideon wants what she’s doing to MATTER to Harrow. Hers is not a fantasy in which Harrow is dead or deposed. Hers is a fantasy in which Harrow is comfortably in charge of things and receiving letters about Gideon’s exemplary success.
Interesting exposition on how only a select amount of Canaan House is accessible by default. A very specific section. This is a challenge.
And now Harrow is missing. Here we ought to note that Gideon only notices this because of how heavily she’s scrutinizing Harrow’s comings and goings, that she can notice no minute changes in Harrow’s bedsheets.
If “Harrow were the type (to run away) Gideon’s childhood would have been a hell of a lot smoother.” Okay. This is Interesting. Did Gideon think about cutting Harrow in on an escape plan at one point? If she tried 86 times, she must have thought to try this once. The incentives are there, for someone in Harrow’s position. I wonder if she got as far as voicing this idea to Harrow. I sense an AU point of divergence.
Big fan of the “their subsequent marriage” gag. I don’t remember if I’ve harped on this yet, but Gideon is a silent protagonist from the perspective of everyone in the story bar her own. To the extent that it is Gideon narrating, all of the commentary is for her own benefit. it’s just how she thinks. (I’m not sure if this is third person limited or not, there’s been a few spots where it felt like someone commenting on Gideon rather than Gideon’s internal monologue.)
A brief detail in the prose search montage (which is very easy to visualize as a filmed sequence); the skeletons are cleaning the pool- the pool specifically, out of the entire massive complex- and neither Magnus or Jeanmary seem to understand why. But the space has been getting progressively less shitty over the last few chapters. How long is that door Gideon found going to go unremarked upon?
Once again, this focus on Gideon’s frustration at Harrow not THANKING Gideon. The written version of an old chestnut visual gag, wherein she “gives up” and then immediately resumes the search in the next paragraph. The default behavior is to search.
So Gideon finds her way into a lobby space, accessible through an extremely unintuitive path. Even when this space was in use, this would have been a very roundabout way to get to what’s being framed as a very officious space, in comparison to the very residential space of the main living space. I’m a little unclear of the topography here, but I think Gideon is out of bounds.
Here we meet the Sixth House duo. Ignore what I said above about everyone at Canaan house being dupes, maniacs or bastards; Palamedes and Camilla are the protagonists of a very different kind of YA story than Gideon. We’re looking at Holmes and Watson. Artemis and Butler. One of the meaner Doctors and more militant companions. Encyclopedia Brown and the girl he kept on hand to beat up his enemies (Am I remembering that detail right, that he had some muscle on hand at all times? Anyway. These are the kind of protagonists who start out within the system but then reason their way out from under their conditioning due to their Commitment To Higher Principles Like Truth, thus bringing the entire system crashing down. Inside the first few lines- “there’s a wrong thing here.” “Anything can lie.”
And, to scrutinize what he’s saying a little more- Canaan house is weird. The lack of rhyme and reason in the architecture is reflected in the age of the building- not even room by room, but down to the individual materials within one room. The oldest successful psychometric reading is 9000 years old; but if I recall correctly, this is after people supposedly stopped using Canaan house for anything. Both of Palamedes’s theories ring true; it’s possible that the building was fished out the garbage heap, or that it is lying on a molecular level. I’ve got a theory about what’s going on here, which I’ll get into at the end of this.
Camilla is the first woman Gideon gets the opportunity to fight. She’s attracted to Dulcinea- oh my god, the Dulcinea effect, Don Quixote, how did I not notice this earlier. She’s attracted to Coronabeth because Coronabeth is incredibly hot. Camilla, she seems to be attracted to on the basis of their mutual kickassery. The Canaan house dating sim has revealed its fourth candidate.
This is the second time we see a Necromancer in combat, after Harrow at the drill shaft. Palamedes’s stunt with the fuck-you-and-the-meat-you-walked-in-on kill field tells us three things. It gives us context for what a top-tier necromancer from another house looks like in a fight. It gives us context for how powerful Harrow is in comparison to everyone else- Palamedes is only sweating a little blood. And it gives us a sense of why Cavaliers are necessary; Palamedes couldn’t have executed this without Camilla keeping Gideon pinned down. As he says in a few lines- if he’d tried this solo, he’d probably be dead, and he couldn’t keep doing this in a protracted fight.
“Policy Wonks on the Sixth,“ huh. I’ve been wondering what the governance looks like in the rest of the Empire.
Because necromancers lived bad lives, he added: “To clarify. Her intravenous blood. Her intravenous blood.” I love this book. I feel inspired to draw this scene specifically.
Gideon hears that Harrow may have maybe lost some blood and into mom-lifting-a-minivan overdrive she goes. In this sequence we learn that Palamedes is a man with an extremely strong understanding of Necromancy and that Harrow is panicked enough that she works right past everything he’s saying. This is an example of a situation where the narration diverges from what Gideon is actually aware of; We the audience get some juicy tidbits about the ins and outs of necromancy, and we get a description of how much of it Gideon retained, but this is implicitly being reported by a third party.
This is the first time Gideon has spoken in like 6 chapters; she speaks to a pair of individuals utterly unconcerned with addressing the discrepancy, instead focusing on the task at hand. I like the looks of these guys.
Everyone was issued a key ring and told not to open any locked doors. Well. It’s not a locked door if you unlock it first, and then open it.
It’s never a good sign when a lab is soundproofed.
So Harrow is in a Bone Cocoon. Gideon says she can take it from here; Palamedes pointedly (and rightly!) ignores her and runs a medical test on Harrow to make sure she isn’t about to die. Here we get an interesting split between “Curative Science” and Necromancy; presumably, there’s some stuff in this setting that necromancy can’t obviate the way it did robotics, and it makes sense that “making people healthy” is one of those things. (as opposed to “keeping them alive-” Hi, Dulcinea!)
Her fantasies where she.... dumps Harrow off the landing pad. Yes, Gideon. This is what you want to internalize the sensation of lifting Harrow up for.
Probably worth noting that the exact manner in which the bone cocoon collapsed was of interest to Palamedes; Gideon derides him for whipping out a ruler, but Palamedes has been pretty firmly established as a guy who Knows His Shit (tm). Anything of minute interest to him is probably worth remembering.
The last line- “I thought that would wake her up-” really cements my read on Palamedes as a little shit but also a fundamentally good person, which Camilla shores up with the “He did this for free” line; her loyalty to him seems earned. These seem like people who help people; they belong in another, happier series, where they walk the earth as private investigators, righting wrongs. It also shows that he’s self-aware enough in his little-shittery to simultaneously work over all of the egos at play, while still indulging his little-shit instincts.
So anyway. Here’s a thought I had, have, and will continue to have, which started around chapter 8 but, with the tomfoolery of chapter 12, is now basically cemented; I think that Canaan House is heavily, heavily in conversation with, and providing criticism of, the worldbuilding of Harry Potter. You’ve got the Houses, politicking and jockeying- except there’s an in-built artificiality, religiosity and militarism to it that makes it parse as rancid immediately rather than on reflection as an adult. You’ve got the kooky, wise-but-elderly mentor who clearly knows more than he’s letting on, who pays special attention to the outcast- except, as I brought up in chapter 8, he’s doing this from such a clear position of incredible institutional power that the Dumbledore routine is impossible to take seriously, because he’s a face of whimsy plastered over something bad. You have the massive, nonsensical academy, simultaneously labyrinthine and homey- except that Gideon the Ninth is holding the premise of a space like Hogwarts to the fire. It feels too big for the student body because it is, there’s only about 20 people on the whole planet, and upkeep is obviously prohibitive, and people are offput and unnerved by the space, they ask the questions akin to asking about why Hogwarts was built with so many moving staircases and hazardous flora. Out of universe, Hogwarts, and the whole wizarding world, is a thinly-conceived nonsensical playground, painted with a veneer of deep history but really meant as a vehicle for the core cast to get up to whacky, unsanctioned misadventures, all of which are, within the universe, not supposed to be happening. I think the exact same thing is happening in Canaan House, but it’s diegetic. I think that the whole space was engineered from the ground up, relatively recently, by people who’ve read YA, for the express purpose of providing a sandbox in which stuff like Gideon’s excursion with the sixies can happen as the candidates grope towards Lyctorhood. This has the energy of an unsanctioned sortie but it’s clearly along the lines of what they were eventually intended to do, given the keys. There is so much artifice, to all of this- and we have enough context about this society to know that it’s a sinister artifice. The light at the end of this carefully constructed tunnel is almost certainly an oncoming train.
#gideon the ninth liveread#gideon the ninth#gideon the 9th#gtn#the locked tomb#the locked tomb liveread#tlt#blastweave livereads#gideon nav#harrowhawk nonagesimus#palamedes sextus#camilla hect#thoughts#meta#analysis
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Body Heat - A Fawthorne Fic - Chapter 3
Title: Body Heat [AO3]
Characters: Julian & Thomas (can be seen as pre-Fawthorne)
Summary: Julian realises Thomas can feel the cold - or 3 times Thomas sneaks into Julian’s bed to get warm, 1 time Julian confronts him about it and 1 time they go to bed together.
Chapters: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
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Body Heat
Chapter 3: The Third Time
The third time, Julian thought he was ready for it.
He knew what to expect now: Thomas would sneak into his room, slip into bed behind him and, after a moment of hesitation, lightly press himself against his back. He also knew it couldn’t go on like this, no matter how nice it felt to fall asleep with someone again. He couldn’t go on like this. Not knowing why Thomas was doing this was driving him mad and starting to keep him awake on the nights Thomas did not come to him. His thoughts twisted themselves into frustrating, unrelenting what-ifs and maybes for hours until he found himself staring up at the bedroom ceiling and cursing the poet to hell and back.
Julian had to put an end to this. The next time Thomas came to him, he would get some answers.
And he did, just not in the way he thought he would.
The night started out like any other. After Music Club was finally over, Julian went to bed along with everyone else, Kitty’s high notes still ringing dully in his ears. He lay down, closed his eyes and firmly told his mind to shut up and get some rest. Either Thomas would join him or he would not. There was no point losing sleep over it. That was easier said than done, though, and an hour later, Julian found himself still wide awake. He was about to give up and go for a late night walk when the air in the room suddenly, almost imperceptibly shifted. Thomas’s footsteps were silent and the bed didn’t dip when he crawled into it but the warmth radiating from him gave him away. Willing himself to stay still, Julian waited for Thomas to settle and close the gap between them – if only to make the whole situation as awkward as possible for Thomas as payback for all the sleepless nights he’d caused.
After a moment of hesitation that seemed to grow shorter each time this happened, Thomas did. The last time, he had placed his hands on Julian’s shoulder blades. This time, he slowly slid one of them under Julian’s jacket, round his ribs and up his chest until it rested on top of his clavicle, warm and soft and gentle. A frantic heartbeat or two passed as Thomas held his breath before he more or less melted against Julian’s back and pressed the warm tip of his nose against Julian’s neck. He let out a shaky breath that stirred the fine hairs on Julian’s neck. There was something so intimate about it all that for a moment, all Julian could do was stare into the darkness, struck. Shivers were running through Thomas, faint but undeniably real, and the hand on Julian’s chest began to tremble against his shirt.
He must have had a nightmare, was the first thing Julian thought. It was no secret Thomas’s death still affected him. Julian had suspected for a while now that all those late night poetry sessions Thomas was prone to were the result of nightmares and sleepless nights rather than sudden bouts of inspiration. Maybe he had his answer right there; maybe Thomas was seeking him out because Julian had been kind to him about this sort of thing before, back when the toaster had sent his mind spiralling into past trauma.
But then Thomas sucked in a shaky breath and dipped his nose under Julian’s collar, burrowing impossibly closer, and Julian realised with sudden clarity that he’d gotten it all wrong, that his wasn’t about nightmares, comfort or even sex or physical intimacy as he’d thought – hoped? – in the beginning. This was about Thomas being cold and desperately trying to get warm.
Julian had absolutely no idea what to do with that revelation. Ghosts didn’t feel the cold. It was one of those universal rules that applied to all of them – or at least that’s what Julian had always thought. Rules were made to be broken, though, weren’t they? He was the best example of that. Ghosts couldn’t interact with the living world either and yet he could so exceptions to the rules were clearly possible.
As far as ghost powers went, Thomas had really drawn the short end of the stick with his, though, Julian couldn’t help but think. His billowy shirt and thin stockings couldn’t possibly provide much insulation against the cold. No wonder Thomas always looked like he was walking around with a stone in his fancy shoe when they were outside. Which begged the question: why had he never said anything about it? He could have just asked Alison to turn up the heating in his room – surely a simpler solution to his problem than cuddling up to Julian in the middle of the night and risking being discovered. Or he could have asked Robin to warm him up since Robin was always up for a cuddle. It was something Julian shamelessly took advantage of whenever he missed physical contact.
As far as he was aware, Thomas had done neither, though. Which was odd because even if Thomas did not want to inconvenience Alison, Robin clearly would have been the logical choice for a bedfellow. His furs were surprisingly soft and would certainly offer more warmth than Julian’s suit jacket possibly could. So why hadn’t Thomas gone to Robin?
The only explanation Julian could come up with was that he was probably the only ghost emitting body heat. It was the only thing that made sense. He’d died in the midst of passion, all hot and bothered, so why shouldn’t he run a little hotter than his fellow ghosts? That had to be it; Thomas would have never come to him if he’d had other options – of that Julian was certain. He would have chosen Robin or Pat over him, the guy who loved to rile him up, any time.
Satisfied that he finally had his answers and solved the riddle that was Thomas’s presence in his bed, Julian was ready to turn around and confront Thomas. In that moment, though, Thomas’s breathing stuttered and he shifted impossibly closer, almost as if he were trying to crawl under Julian’s skin. The fingers on Julian’s chest dug into his shirt with something akin to desperation, and when Julian felt more than heard the involuntary whimper Thomas couldn’t swallow, his cold, dead heart tightened uncomfortably.
Instead of turning around he stayed still, and that was his undoing. Once he really began to focus on the way Thomas was holding onto him, clearly aching for warmth but restraining himself out of fear of waking Julian and having to face the consequences, he realised he just couldn’t do it. There was no way he could reveal he was awake now, not with Thomas shaking apart behind him as if he’d been left to die in the death zone up on Mount Everest. Julian might be a disgraced politician but the thought of taking what little comfort Thomas was gaining from this arrangement away from him right now and leaving him to weather the cold night on his own just did not sit right with him.
He would talk to Thomas – just not now. He had his answers. The rest could wait until morning.
With that decision made, Julian closed his eyes and finally allowed himself to relax. He let his body lean back into Thomas’s tentative embrace as subtly as he could, causing Thomas to let out another quiet, wounded sound behind him that stuttered like heartbreak against Julian’s neck for a second before he managed to stifle it. It was the first time Julian had ever witnessed Thomas showing restraint like that, and it somehow made the whole thing worse. The Thomas Julian saw prancing around every day was always all over the place with his emotions; loud and bold and uncaring about whether or not anyone actually wanted to be exposed to them. But here in the darkness of his room, Thomas was quiet and holding himself together so tightly Julian was afraid he might snap. He was so different from the Thomas Julian was used to that Julian couldn’t help but wonder if all the poetry and dramatic outbursts were meant to hide this side of him – a side that was terribly fragile and insecure; a side Thomas was afraid of getting hurt and trampled all over.
Julian wasn’t sure if the fact that some part of Thomas apparently trusted him enough to let down his guard around him, even just a little, made him feel honoured or just sad. A little bit of both, perhaps.
It took him a long time to fall asleep that night – them both, really. Julian had no idea how late it was when he finally drifted off into unconsciousness; only that by the time he did, the remaining tension had finally drained from Thomas’s body and the shivering had mellowed into soft, occasional tremors that gently echoed through his back and lulled him to sleep.
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Clarity Chapter Four (Bonten Sanzu)
Minors do not interact (18+fic)
Warnings: Gang activity, mentions of drugs, guns mentions of prostitution, violence, thoughts premeditated murder, manipulation, coercion, thoughts of ownership, thoughts of possession. Possibly more that I may have missed.
Paragraphs in italics are flashbacks, the text color will be pink!
He inhaled a sharp breath through clenched teeth, his free hand pressing against his side where he’d taken the most recent damage, and although he absolutely had to get a move on to escape from the enemy, he dared not take a single step, leaning his head back against the wall of the alley while he waited. Bonten’s number two couldn’t recall just how many times he’d been hit with how many gunshots had rung out since this all began but one thing was for certain, his body was going to either go into shock or he was going to bleed out if he couldn’t patch himself up relatively soon. He already felt the effects catching up to him, his adrenaline had kept him going this long but it wouldn’t for very much longer, his body was already starting to shake, the gun trembling in his hand.
‘Damn it.’
The pink-haired male knew he was in the worst position he could be in right now; everything had gone entirely leftfield to hell in a handbasket at the drop of a hat and it wasn’t looking like things would get any better. His phone was fucked and wouldn’t be of any use to him since it’d taken a bullet, he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of his fellow executives and didn’t know if they’d managed to get away or had been cornered. He only had a single shot left if he remembered right, no clips and his extra handgun was in the glove compartment of the car that he’d never see again should he live through this day, he couldn’t get to any of their safehouses without transportation. The rest of Bonten didn’t have a clue what had transpired and the only chance they had was if either the Haitani Brothers had gotten out a phone call or text for assistance, or if Koko put two and two together when the estimated time of arrival came and went without contact from them but by then, it’d be too late; he’d never imagined the day going this way.
‘Those pricks won’t take me alive.’
If it came down to it, he’d use his last shot on himself, he wasn’t going to be tortured into giving the enemy anything that they could use against Bonten and he’d protect Mikey with his last breath no matter what it meant for him; everything he’d ever done was for the benefit of the king and if his death would do the same, it was what he’d had to do. He wasn’t going to jump the gun just yet, he’d hold out as long as he was capable until he had no other choice, but he had to make sure he didn’t waste this shot until then, his priority right now was to escape somewhere he’d be capable of hiding out then patching himself up once he was safe. The man side-glanced through the pink partially obscuring his face at the sound of multiple rushed footsteps, keeping himself hidden in the darkness the buildings provided to the alley, watching with bated breath as a small mob of enemies bolted passed his hiding spot without so much as a glance.
‘Trash.’
Sanzu could make out a slur of various statements being thrown out there, all of which supporting that the scum believed he’d head off towards the southside of the city and it gave him an opportunity, he had to find somewhere to go before he lost the small window he’d been given. His head lolled just barely in the other direction, no signs of any enemies, he eased himself away from the brick and took silent steps towards the end. He needed to move faster but at the same time, he had to be cautious since he was unsure just how much damage he’d taken, more bullets had buried themselves in his flesh than had passed through and gone out the other side; he didn’t know if any of his vitals had been hit.
‘Phone.’
If he could break into a building that had a phone, he’d be able to get in contact with the others, he knew Mikey’s number by heart and even if he didn’t answer, he knew his boss well enough to know he listened to every single voicemail as soon as he received it. Their people would swarm the area and take out the scum, find the Haitani Brothers before the worst happened and if he didn’t bleed out before then, get him to their physician to be patched the rest of the way up; all he had to do was find a fucking phone, he’d never thought he’d have to rely on a landline again. He had to get it in gear, his head felt groggy and vision was off, he was beginning to lose the battle against his crashing adrenaline, so he had to make these next few minutes count. His lips pressed into a thin line, his piercing eyes darting from one side of the street to the other, ensuring that there wasn’t another soul around before taking in the various buildings in his bleary line of sight. He was struggling to read the signs, maintaining his focus long enough to do so was growing more difficult as the milliseconds ticked by, his head turning in all directions more times than he was aware of until he abandoned it altogether, sliding around the corner with intentions of going into the first nonresidential building he came across. He couldn’t dawdle around any longer, he was losing coordination and each of his steps felt unsteady, the lightheadedness trying to overpower the little adrenaline he had left.
‘Shit.’
He could’ve slew out a number of curses in frustration when he lost his balance just enough that his shoulder collided into a door, a hiss leaving his lips instead as his head swiveled around…a clinic. His hand fumbled to find the doorknob, fully prepared to shoot the lock off and could’ve breathed a sigh of relief when it turned without resistance; some idiot had left it unlocked after the day came to an end and there was zero chance that anyone was in there at eleven pm. Sanzu pushed open the door without hesitation, stumbling inside and slammed it shut behind him without a second thought, turning the lock to bolt. Find a phone, call Mikey, patch himself up as best he could while he waited for their people and-
‘Fucking shit.’
His hand rose without skepticism, even without his vision being in the best spot, he wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t see what was very clearly a person on the other side of the room, lavender staring back at him. He stone-faced no sooner did the eyes meet his, his hand may have been shaking but he wasn’t going to show any fear, he’d shoot without remorse regardless of not being in the best shape. His finger moved to the trigger at the sound of a single step, and he managed to blink away the blurriness long enough that he could make out the face those eyes belonged to.
“I-I’m a doctor.”
A woman.
“Hi, Midori-san.”
As melancholy as Sanzu felt during the time he’d been drifting in and out of sleep from the heavenly embrace of morphine, the sound of her voice had stirred him enough that he’d completely forgotten what he’d been thinking about previously, if he’d been thinking about anything at all. It was difficult to keep track of how much time was passing from the state that he was in, no sooner would the opiate’s effects begin to lessen, she was right there at his side, pushing a dose into the IV and the effect was immediate; she was clearly doing so every four hours on the dot since he hadn’t been in ungodly pain since he’d first awoken however long ago. His eyes fluttered half open, immediately zeroing in on the petite figure across the room.
“I’m so sorry to bother you…”
Her name was Ikeda Yuki, she’d introduced herself once before, the plaques scattered around the office space were engraved with her name and had kept it from slipping from his mind, she was a doctor and apparently, she’d saved his life.
“…I know you’re probably busy with the children…”
He wasn’t sure what her deal was, why she’d gone out of her way to save him, especially after he’d tried to shoot her, but he wasn’t going to get any answers about that any time soon, if ever. As soon as he could move around without putting himself and the stiches at risk, he was out of this place, it wasn’t looking like it’d be as soon as he wanted with the rate he was healing.
“…And I hate calling on your day off…”
He hadn’t spoken a damn word to her aside from when he’d told her his blood type and she wasn’t pushing for him to speak to her, she hadn’t seemed to know who he was, nor asked him anything about himself, if she wasn’t asking if he was in pain then she was quiet most of the time. He’d watched her practically the whole time he’d been in her presence since he didn’t have anything better to do and she almost always had her laptop in front of her, her slender fingers typing away at a rapid speed, her doe eyes flittering over the words as she typed them out; she had a habit of rolling her lip between her teeth when she wasn’t typing, which told him that was when she was thinking deeply.
“…I’ve just been thinking about what you said…”
She was certainly young to be a doctor and looked as though she could be his age, most were still in university if they chose to attend but she’d already established herself. She was in her early twenties at the most and with the number of plaques situated around her office, she wasn’t just freshly out of university, she’d been in the medical field for some time and even he found that to be impressive. She’d referred to this building as her clinic, meaning that she’d opened it herself and that was even more impressive than just being a young doctor.
“…You know…”
His aquamarine orbs found her face, not bothering with subtlety while they raked over her form, she wasn’t going to notice since she was so engrossed in her phone call and even if she did, he knew what her reaction would be.
“…About how I’m pushing myself too hard…”
She was petite and delicate, just barely five foot tall, she didn’t wear heels and had been walking around the office space in just her knee-high socks, the babydoll dress falling halfway down her thighs; she’d been wearing something more business casual the night they unexpectedly met, along with a white coat that signified she was a doctor. She kept her hair loosely pulled up in a claw clip, the shorter strands framing her heart shaped face, more snow-colored strands hanging free the further into the day it got until she would finally remove the clip and when she did, that halo of white would fall almost to her hips. Her doe eyes were a shade of lavender surrounded by dark lashes, her skin a lighter ivory color and pretty pink lips; he could already imagine just how quickly the Haitani Brothers would’ve tried to jump on her.
“…So, I was thinking…”
Not only were they shit out of luck, but he’d already seen plenty enough that he could have a considerable amount of fun with the doctor depending on how long it’d take for him to fucking heal. She was a shy little thing, blushing at the drop of a hat, gentle voice and soft expressions forming on her pretty face, the total opposite to the types of women he’d seen day in and day out since Bonten had made it to the top. He couldn’t count the number of times pink had risen on her cheeks when she noticed him staring at her, holding his gaze despite the shyness reflecting in her lavender pools, only to tear her eyes away (this last time she’d made it twenty-three seconds) and go back to whatever she’d been doing before she’d caught him eye-fucking her without regret.
“…That if you and the rest of the staff were alright with it…”
Regardless of if he decided to indulge in a game of cat and mouse with the pretty little doctor, he was going to kill her before it was all said and done, he very well couldn’t risk her telling anyone about him after he left, news of one of Bonten’s executives being shot up couldn’t be public knowledge; he could only imagine the aggravation that would come from that.
“…I wanted to close the clinic until next week…”
‘…hm?’
His eyes fluttered the rest of the way open, his head tilting against the pillows with interest as he watched her, she’d been walking the same path on the other side of the room during the time that she’d been on her phone call, circling her desk and he hadn’t realized until now that there was a reason for it. She paced when she was anxious and needed to gather her thoughts, to keep herself levelheaded and even with the worried expression on her face, her voice hadn’t faltered, maintaining both composure and professionalism. He was curious what she was going to follow up with, he hadn’t been listening up until now and had only registered her voice filling the dead silence.
“…I know it’s sudden and I’m sorry for asking out of the blue like this but…” the woman spoke; she paused, listening intently to whatever the person on the other end of the call was saying. “I’m more than happy to compensate everyone for the rest of the week…Midori-san, it wouldn’t feel right of me to just expect all of you to go that long without pay.”
‘How noble. What will you do next, Doctor? Solve world hunger?’
“I understand that you all want me to take a vacation but…” she continued, sounding reluctant to agree to whatever the other woman was saying to her; she bowed her head, her free hand pinching the bridge of her nose. “Yes, yes alright…of course, we’ll reopen Monday.”
It seemed that she didn’t want anyone to know about him either and that should be enough time for him to be at a point where he could walk out of there on his own, leave no trace of himself behind after he snapped her neck or strangled her; no one would be able to tie anything to him or to Bonten.
“Thank you, Midori-san. Please let the rest of the staff know for me.” The female requested, her voice earnest; her head rose from her hand, moving it back to brush strands of white away from her face and turned, pausing mid-step when her lavender pools found his aquamarine ones.
‘How long will you make it this time?’
Exactly eight seconds of staring at each other before a light pink hue rose on her cheeks, it was almost impossible to hold back the smirk threatening to form on his lips when fifteen had passed before it was streaking over her cheeks and nose, the worried expression she’d held for the whole of her conversation swapping out to bashful by twenty-one, all for her to look away shyly by twenty-seven.
‘Shy little thing, aren’t you Doctor?’
“Thank you, goodbye.”
Sanzu wasn’t even sure that she’d waited for a response unless the woman on the other end had said goodbye before her, the phone was hardly away from her ear before her thumb tapped at the screen and she placed it on the desk, her head just barely turning back in his direction, her cheeks flushing darkly. He couldn’t not indulge at this point, he’d have so much more fun with her once he could move without putting himself at risk and from her behavior, she wouldn’t make a single attempt to stop any of his advances, she was much too timid for that.
“Are um…you in pain?” she questioned, her voice expressing concern; despite how bashful she was over his constant staring, she was always capable of pushing it off to the side when it came to her profession.
He didn’t say a word, still observing her just as intensely as he’d been since he’d come to minutes previously and she threw a glance towards her laptop before turning her attention back to him, the blush on her cheeks still going strong.
“I’ll um, get you another dose.” She spoke with traces of worry; she didn’t bother waiting for responses anymore since he’d made it obvious that he didn’t plan on speaking to her, simply checking the time before disappearing for a few short minutes to grab what she needed, sometimes she’d come back with a cup of coffee in her free hand.
Again, he didn’t speak or even acknowledge her with a nod, following her movements as she crossed the floor of the office to slip out of the room, but not before throwing another glance over her shoulder at him. No one had ever looked at him as intensely as she did unless they were on the receiving end of his blade or gun, the whores too afraid to look him in the eye even being on cloud nine. She truly didn’t seem to know who he was nor what he was capable of, otherwise there was fat chance she’d maintain composure as she did with how reserved her demeanor was, she hadn’t hesitated once around him aside from her clear embarrassment over the way he watched her. His favorite instance had to of been the night prior, he’d woken up in the early hours of the morning to find her passed out on her belly on the couch a few feet away from him, her snow-colored hair a disheveled mess and barely audible breathes leaving her pretty lips. He was unsure just how much time passed while he watched her, observing how long the pause was in between her breathes, the movement of her chest rising and falling beneath her, eyeing the subtle shifting of her dress climbing higher up her legs with every shift of her body, his eyes raking over every small dip and curve in his line of sight.
She was unlike the women he’d grown used to seeing on a day-to-day basis, as high class and beautiful as most of them were, they were whores, nonetheless, willingly offering themselves to whoever would pay their rate and pretend to enjoy the pathetic bastards that wouldn’t last longer than two minutes in their cunts. There was no lying that the doctor was breathtakingly beautiful, her eyes holding an innocence on the opposite end of the spectrum to the women in the hostess clubs, she was the definition of pure in not only her pretty face, but her profession of saving lives out of the goodness of her heart.
‘The next Mother Teresa.’
As ridiculous as he found that shit, it wasn’t a stretch that’s who she truly was as a person, he hadn’t noticed any signs or gotten any inclination that she was putting on a front. Even in her most vulnerable state when she’d awoken during the time that he’d been watching her, her persona hadn’t swapped out to something else and was consistent with the behavior he’d observed thus far from her. Her doe eyes groggy and filled with sleep as she slowly regained consciousness at the sound of the alarm she’d set previously, soft moans coming from her that told of just how sleepy she still was while she struggled to come to. It was the sole moment he hadn’t been capable of holding back, the hint of a smirk on his lips over the pretty sounds she made, dropping precisely at the moment her head lolled up to meet his stare, the befuddled expression on her face swapping to one of shyness when their eyes met. It’d thrown her off just enough that she hadn’t moved from the couch for close to five minutes, simply staring right back at him and dropping her eyes bashfully every few seconds before she pulled herself together enough to scamper out of the room to retrieve a dose of morphine.
‘Actually knows what in the fuck she’s doing.’
She may have been shy but she’d done a much better job with his care than Bonten’s current physician would’ve done, the man was a complete fool and the only reason he’d even been brought on was because Akashi had taken it upon himself to find them a doctor and given the bastard the job before talking to Mikey about it; he didn’t know how in the fuck that old man was still breathing after pulling shit like that. If she wasn’t a woman, he probably would’ve considered speaking to the king about replacing that guy when he made it back to headquarters but there was zero chance that a pretty little thing like her would’ve made it a week without being harassed, let alone been able to handle being in a criminal organization with how soft natured she was; it was a shame, she was skilled and knew what she was doing. She obviously had a variety of medications and such in stock since she was giving him morphine for pain, not to mention she’d performed surgery on him without him ever knowing so she had high class drugs in her possession, along with top-of-the-line equipment.
She would’ve been immensely valuable to them but none of the executives had time to babysit, and he couldn’t trust that Akashi wouldn’t fuck up because that’s all the fucker knew how to do. He couldn’t trust that any of the lower ranked scum wouldn’t harm the woman and they wouldn’t have been able to spare an executive to constantly watch over her, they wouldn’t have been able to trust anyone else to do so with integrity. Kakucho would’ve been the best choice since he took his orders seriously, but it wouldn’t be possible since he was constantly taking care of the face and public aspects of Bonten. Koko would’ve been next, but he was always too focused on finding ways to rake in more money every single day and forever had his face buried in his phone, looking into different investment opportunities so it was unlikely he’d even pay attention to her. Neither of the Haitani were even an option, the pair of them would most certainly compete against each other on which of them could seduce the woman first and they didn’t need that kind of shit going on right now, especially after the last instance with that female lawyer. He wouldn’t even include Mocchi in the running, he was almost as useless as Akashi. As second in command and Mikey’s shadow, he already had an abundance of duties to attend to on a regular basis so that was that; he’d just have to kill her.
‘What a shame.��
It was, a mind like hers would’ve been so valuable and because of the hole between her legs, Bonten would be missing out on a great investment, there wouldn’t be any way to deter the low-ranking scum from crossing lines, even with as many women as they owned in the hostess bars and such that they could indulge in whenever they pleased. The only woman that had walked around freely without fear was Akashi’s bitch and that was only because literally everyone knew who she belonged to; bastard had made a point to make it known.
“Vitals first.”
His face didn’t budge, a look of total boredom gracing his features as the pretty little doctor returned his stare, her own features gentle. Sanzu didn’t do anything to protest, letting her do as she pleased without argument, indulging the bullshit was the only way he’d get the morphine and he was beginning to feel the pain creeping up on him. Her lip was rolling between her teeth in concentration, her doe eyes bouncing between the clipboard she’d been using to keep track of the numbers and the new readings she’d get with each task she performed. The tinge of pink on her cheeks was still there but she maintained her focus, not hesitating while she went through the motions with practiced ease, making her notes in between each. He could’ve sighed in relief even before she pushed the needle into the IV, morphine was a gift from the gods that he’d never be able to get enough of, it’d be sad day when he wasn’t getting it any longer; she hadn’t bothered offering him anything else, it’d been morphine from the get-go.
‘Yes.’
It was a challenge to maintain composure every time it hit when he wanted nothing more than to collapse in bliss over the warm feeling in his head, it was the best drug he’d ever experienced out of all the ones he’d done thus far. The damn doctor back at headquarters didn’t even have a medical license anymore since he’d been caught red handed selling prescriptions for profit and couldn’t get ahold of shit like this easily, having to go through the networks and various channels, jumping through hoops. Bonten’s number two wholeheartedly wished he could take her and all her beautiful drugs back with him, she would’ve been so damn valuable to have around and on call for whenever he needed. If she weren’t so easy on the eyes, then it wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but the woman was stunning which would indefinitely be a problem when it came to keeping her unharmed/breathing. Between the scum and the Haitani Brothers, there wasn’t a snowball chance in hell that she would be left in peace if they saw her at headquarters…
‘At headquarters.’
That was the only thing stopping him from taking her, the location wasn’t ideal, but he didn’t necessarily have to take her anywhere, he could leave her exactly where he’d found her. Her clinic already had everything she needed, from the equipment to the medications, she was already established and had a full staff, patients and such. It was just like what the Haitani had done recently with the lavish hostess bar hiding the prostitution ring within plain sight, only hewould be hiding his own personal doctor within her own business and not a soul would know a thing about her. As valuable as she could be to the whole of Bonten, he wasn’t going to compromise as he’d done with quite literally everything else. With how often he was disappearing to complete assignments and take care of business per the king’s orders, no one would bat an eye over him slipping away every now and again, he only had to practice light discretion when he needed to swing by to visit the pretty little doctor.
‘Doctor Ikeda Yuki.’
His pretty little doctor.
‘Mine.’
The only thing he needed to do was put his foot down with her and he wouldn’t be able to do so for quite some time since he’d be recovering for the next several days, trying to do so now could only sabotage what he wanted. The regular shy expressions on her face and the constant pink running over her cheeks when she looked at him said everything he already knew, it may have been unconscious, but she’d been eye-fucking him just as much as he’d eye-fucked her. He had plenty of ways to work towards what he wanted without the need to threaten her, she was reserved, shy, so very easy to manipulate and with the way she looked at him, she wouldn’t make real attempts to stop his advances. He’d give her a little at a time, he’d take things slowly over the course of the next several weeks to build rapport with her bit by bit until she was so hooked on him that she’d never consider betraying him. He’d be able to come and go as he pleased to get his drugs or patched up as needed, no one would know about her, and she’d stay his little secret.
‘To think I was going to kill her.’
He thanked the morphine for opening up his mind to the possibilities, he would’ve just killed her and stolen what he wanted, that would only bring him short term happiness and by doing things this way, he’d have anything/everything he wanted for the long run. A doctor on call, his own personal pharmacy for whatever drugs he needed/wanted, a pretty woman that belonged to him and him alone, he’d never have to share her or wonder who’d fucked her in between his visits with her. Disregarding the way that she looked at him, she was showing no signs of having a partner, he’d only seen the phone in her hand once this whole time, she wasn’t acting antsy about needing to go home or anything of that nature, there was no ring on her finger, so he wouldn’t have to kill anyone that would be a threat to what he wanted. The only thing right now that Sanzu knew he needed to figure out was how he was going to go about this game, he had so many options on how to do things, each of them would open up different doors and although they would all lead to the same destination, he wanted to thoroughly enjoy cat and mouse for all it was worth this time around.
“You should be feeling better now.” Yuki spoke, her voice filled with compassion; his piercing eyes flicked to her form to see her placing the clipboard off to the side until their next round of vitals, taking a single step away from the bed.
‘Have to start building something with her.’
As melancholy as he felt, Sanzu was quick about it, snatching her wrist before she made it out of reaching distance to pause her steps and his unexpected touch had her swiveling around to face him, her doe eyes filled with alarm. The doctor obviously thought something was wrong and seeing as he’d never touched her aside from when he’d first woken up, he wasn’t surprised to see panic on her face as she moved back to his side, taking a seat on the edge of the bed directly beside him.
“Was it not enough? Are you still in pain?” she questioned, her tone right back to concerned; he’d made a move too soon before he had a solid plan on which route he wanted to take with her, he’d wanted to give it a considerable amount of thought before taking initiative but it was too late for that, he’d just have to roll with the punches. “I can get more if…”
‘Slow, a little at a time.’
His free hand moving to brush strands of white out of her eyes caused her words to trail off and her cheeks to flush in all of two seconds, her lavender pools filled with shyness simply over his touch. His head tilted against the pillows to stare at her from another angle, lightly trailing his fingers over her cheek to the curve of her jaw, his eyes never once pulling from hers as he did so. Her pretty face was the definition of embarrassed, pulling her eyes away for hardly three seconds only to flick back to his, looking up through dark lashes. She’d made no movement to slip away from him, her skin only growing warmer under his touch as her blush darkened, her lips had parted as though she had something she wanted to say but no words passed through.
‘Too shy to say anything, aren’t you Doctor?’
This would be all too easy for Sanzu, she behaved like a schoolgirl with a crush, how she’d managed to become a doctor with behavior like this was a mystery, but the specifics of that weren’t important. It’d take very little effort to get what he wanted, she was far too reserved to stand her ground against him and he’d be having the time of his life playing with her for the foreseeable future, the next several weeks would be a fun time. Bonten may have benefitted from having her, but he wasn’t going to share, if that prick Akashi didn’t have to then he surely wouldn’t be.
‘Oh?’
It took everything he had not to react when her free hand reached towards him and he forced his eyes not to pull from hers even though he was positive he knew what she was about to do, his scars had always been a target for curiosity; he was surprised she’d gathered enough courage to-
‘…’
He didn’t know what to think when she avoided his scars entirely, her fingers brushing locks of pink behind his ear, her butterfly touch tracing over one of the hoops in his ear, the look in her eyes entirely mesmerized as she stared back into his, almost as though she was admiring him rather than eye-fucking him.
“So pretty.”
The soft little murmur that came from her lips was almost inaudible, but he’d heard it, the expression on her face hadn’t faltered which told him she didn’t even seem to register that she’d said it aloud; she’d called him pretty.
‘Oh Doctor, are you really going to make this so easy for me?’
There was no turning back, she was his pretty little doctor now.
#tokyo revengers#toman#haruchiyo sanzu#sanzu haruchiyo#tokyo revengers sanzu#sanzu#tokrev sanzu#bonten#bonten sanzu#sanzu x oc#akashi haruchiyo#tokyo revengers haruchiyo sanzu#the pink haired degenerate sanzu haruchiyo#bonten timeline#bonten mikey#bonten ran#bonten rindou#bonten kakucho#bonten takeomi#bonten kokonoi#bonten mochizuki#haitani ran#haitani rindou#haitani brothers#haitani#kokonoi hajime#koko#kokonui#akashi takeomi#mochizuki kanji
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A Fine Line 3
Pairing: Namjoon x f!reader (ft. Hoseok)
Genre: roommates/enemies-to-lovers, non-idol!au
Word count: 5k
Summary: It’s time to rebuild your life. You’ve got a new job, a new apartment, and a future that might be bright. The only problem? Your new roommate.
Content: reader throws up
Huge thank you to M @here2bbtstrash for being an alpha beta 😂
Chapter Two | Masterlist | Chapter Four
3 – It’s Not Complicated
You woke with the certainty that if you moved, you would definitely be sick. You could handle your alcohol but you absolutely could not handle the hangovers. You slowly turned your head, looking for the glass of water you always kept on your bedside table when you suddenly remembered you weren’t at home. This was not your bed. This was not your T-shirt. You groaned, the onslaught of mixed emotions making you wish you the hangover would just kill you already. You knew you had seen it clearly last night; you knew you had somehow got things figured out but now, in the nauseating throes of the consequences of your own actions, it eluded you.
“Morning,” Hoseok said from the doorway, walking over to kneel next to you. He put a glass of water and a box of painkillers on the bedside table. “How are you feeling?”
You squinted your eyes at him.
“Why don’t you feel like this?” you asked him, your voice croaky, your mouth desert dry. He chuckled.
“I’ve already taken some of these and drunk my bodyweight in water,” he laughed. “I have to work today, so couldn’t wallow in bed even if I wanted to.”
Fuck. You knew that was his polite way of telling you to get the hell out of his apartment but you really didn’t want to spew over this poor guy’s bedsheets.
“Thanks,” you said weakly. “I’ll get up in a sec; I just need my stomach to stop lurching.”
“Oh, don’t worry, take as much time as you need. I have to go in a few minutes but you can stay as long as you like.”
“What? But what if I steal from you? Or, I don’t know, vandalise your apartment?”
“You literally can’t even lift your head up right now, so I’m not really worried about that,” he replied, laughing. “Here.” He placed a tablet against your lips and, when you took it into your mouth, lifted your head just enough so he could tip the glass and you could swallow it down.
“How do I know you’re not trying to poison me or give me an overdose?”
“Guess you don’t.” He winked at you and held the box in front of your face so you could see it was just ibuprofen. He stood. “I have to go. Help yourself to whatever; I’ve left my number for you in case you need anything.” With that, he left, and you sank back in the bed, desperately trying to go back to sleep, hopeful that if you woke up again in a few hours, your hangover would be a thing of the past.
Your mind whirled, and not just because of the alcohol. Namjoon kept coming back to you and you thought about last night, a blush creeping its way up your neck. A pang of guilt hit you; Hoseok deserved better than you climaxing thinking of another man. You thought about the sex; you remembered your embarrassment and shame with a shudder but your lasting impression was one of clarity and freedom. It had been… incredible but it wasn’t about the pleasure he’d given you, the sounds he’d worked out of you or the sheer intensity of him inside you. It was also his straight-forward insistence that you both get what you want; it was the way he looked at you so openly and made you open up to him.
You thought about what Lina had said and the way you felt as though Namjoon was constantly pushing himself into every part of your life, creeping into your mind, always unwelcome.
And then you thought again. Because it wasn’t always unwelcome. You thought about the number of times you’d touched yourself to the thought of him and shame started to creep up on you but you forced it back. Was it shameful to want someone? Was it shameful that thinking about him now, even worse for wear as you were, was making you warm? You decided not. All the effort you’d been putting into suppressing your desire for him suddenly dissipated. Just because you wanted to fuck him didn’t mean he had to know about it. He couldn’t read your thoughts and, even if he could, so what? You were allowed to want it, weren’t you? Why not? It didn’t have to mean anything but you had been letting it unravel you all this time. Your heart raced and you suddenly felt desperate for fresh air.
You made it to Hoseok’s kitchen sink, heaving the contents of your stomach into the clean, steel unit. The strong alcoholic fumes rising from your bile only made you gag further. You turned on the tap and put your mouth under it, drinking desperately. You immediately threw it back up again. You heaved and heaved until there was absolutely nothing left inside you and then you sank to the floor. Admittedly, that had made you feel better. You found your phone in your bag on the counter and checked for messages from Lina, not expecting any, but there they were.
‘Please be safe.’
‘If you need someone to come and get you, I can send Al.’
Your stomach flipped. She was so gracious and you had been so ungrateful.
You unlocked your phone to type a reply to her but you didn’t know what to say. You didn’t agree that you’d thrown your heart at Namjoon when you met and you didn’t think you’d blown the roommate things out of proportion. You had been running from your desire for him, trying to disconnect yourself from it as if it was separate from you, a thing apart, a thing he was doing to you, not something that you were experiencing within yourself. She was right that you wanted to fuck him but she was wrong about the rest. You knew she was. But that didn’t mean you had been right.
Taking a deep breath, you typed without thinking.
‘Lina, I’m so sorry. I hope you got home ok. I shouldn’t have said those things to you; it was uncalled for and untrue. I’m grateful to have you as my friend and I’m sorry. Please forgive me.’
You wanted to tell her that you wanted to talk to her, that you had so much to tell her but you knew you couldn’t ask for that. Not now. Not yet. You clutched your phone, hoping she would respond immediately, knowing that she wouldn’t. You waited a few minutes, staring hard at your blank phone screen and then gave up.
Next step was getting dressed and you crawled back to the bedroom, looking for your dress. Hoseok had folded it, and your soiled underwear, and placed it on the arm chair in the corner of the room. Beneath your clothes was a pair of jogging bottoms and a note.
‘Wear these home if you want.’
You did want. Or at least, you didn’t want to have to go home in last night’s dress. As you slipped the trousers on, you felt as if you were slipping a little bit of Hoseok on, too. You wanted to take his attitude with you when you left his apartment.
The air was surprisingly cold and the sky was bright as you stepped outside. You walked to the nearest corner shop and bought the first carbs you could find, not even waiting until you were out of the shop to shove them in your mouth. Having emptied your stomach, you were now ravenous.
You wanted to walk home, but Hoseok hadn’t given you shoes and you only had your heels from the previous night. He had given you socks, so you had made the decision to go shoeless, carrying your heels in your hand. You couldn’t walk all the way home with no shoes and you honestly didn’t really want to spend that much time in public; you might not be in a mini dress at 10am on a Saturday morning but your outfit – and the clothes and shoes in your hand – still screamed ‘morning after’. You called a taxi and were back at your apartment all too quickly.
You assumed Namjoon would be out or locked in his studio – either way, that you wouldn’t have to see him, but there he was, on the sofa as you walked in. When he looked up at you, you stopped in your tracks. He looked at your outfit and the dress in your hand.
“Good night?” he asked, expression unreadable.
What had felt so clear to you in Hoseok’s bed was suddenly muddy. You no longer felt undone by his eyes alone, but you still felt angry. It flared within you insistently as you looked back at him. What did he care? What business was it of his? You noticed the balled-up sheets of paper on the coffee table, obviously ripped from the notebook on his lap. You noticed the iced coffee sweating directly onto the coffee table with no coaster. You looked at the dress in your hand and Hoseok’s clothes on your body. Ok, so you wanted to fuck Namjoon, but that didn’t suddenly make him a good person. And it didn’t give him power over you. Sleeping with Hoseok, him taking you out of your head, had shown you that you had your own power; you didn’t have to concede anything to anyone, not if you didn’t want to.
You looked back at him, still sitting quietly on the sofa, looking at you.
“Fuck off, Namjoon”. Not waiting for his response, you walked straight into the bathroom and, stripping off Hoseok’s clothes, got under the shower.
Namjoon was nowhere to be seen when you came out and you were grateful. You felt a huge weight had been taken off your shoulders and you knew that you’d at least be able to tolerate his presence without creaming yourself to death, but you still didn’t want him around. You didn’t respect him. You couldn’t respect someone who showed so little respect for their shared living space. If anything, you thought to yourself, taking ownership of how much you wanted to fuck him had made it so much clearer that you did hate him. The two weren’t mutually exclusive after all.
You sat on your bed and held your phone. Lina still hadn’t replied.
You: Thank you for last night. And this morning. Let me know how I can get your clothes back to you
His reply was almost instant.
Hoseok: My pleasure 😉 😉 glad you had fun. What are you doing on Tuesday?
You grinned to yourself. What an excellent distraction he was going to be.
Lina replied on Sunday and was, as ever, entirely too gracious. You met in a café, halfway between each of your houses. You were nervous. You needn’t have been. She appeared to have forgiven you entirely and you relayed the later events of Friday night in hushed tones, hoping not to broadcast all the most salacious details to everyone within earshot.
She sighed when you finished and looked at you, almost expectantly.
“That’s the conclusion you’ve come to?” she asked. “That you can want to fuck him and hate him at the same time and those are your true feelings?”
You nodded. She looked uncertainly at you and chewed on her bottom lip.
“Go on, Lina, you can say it. I promise I won’t be a cunt about it this time.”
“You know that’s stupid, right? I don’t know how you think that’s any different from before.”
“Because it is!” you cried. “Before, I hated him and refused to admit I wanted to fuck hi-”
“You literally masturbated thinking about him!” Lina hissed quietly. “How could you do that and think that you didn’t want to sleep with him?!”
“… I don’t know.” She had you there. “I don’t know; I was lying to myself, what can I say? My point is that he doesn’t have power over me anymore; he can’t affect me.”
“So you don’t hate him?”
“No, I still hate him.”
“Isn’t that him having an effect on you?”
“No.” It made perfect sense to you but Lina did not look convinced.
“You were right, y/n, in that I don’t know a lot about this. I did get together with Al when we were young; he was my first boyfriend and now he’s my husband and I’ve never done all this sort of thing before-”
“No, Lina, I didn’t mea-”
“No, it’s fine,” she said, a little too sharply and you knew that your words still rankled, even if she had decided to forgive you. “You were not entirely wrong. I’ve never hate-fucked anyone; what do I know? But I’m just putting it out there that I don’t believe you and I still think this could blow up in your face. Especially if you’re going to get involved with someone else, too.”
“I don’t think it’s like that with Hoseok,” you said, but you weren’t certain. You didn’t want to date him; you didn’t want a relationship or to get entangled in all those sorts of feelings, but you didn’t know how he felt about it. You wondered how you’d bring it up with him; if you felt differently from each other, that would definitely throw a spanner in the works.
Lina raised her eyebrows at you as if giving you a warning.
“I’ll clear things up with Hoseok, but I’m sure he doesn’t think it’s like that either. This is just going to be for fun.”
“Do clear things up. Don’t run away with this and leave a trail of broken hearts in your wake, ok? I mean yours, too.”
She was worrying over nothing, you were sure. You were full to the brim with confidence and vim and vigour. You felt light and that lightness carried you through the next few days. Where, previously, you had felt rage simmering under the surface almost constantly while you were at home, constantly on edge, unable to relax, seeing stress and red rags everywhere, you now felt like you were above it. He was around much more than he had been before, no longer always coming back from work in the small hours; you heard him moving around in his studio, music playing intermittently, most days. It meant that his mess increased, the visible signs of his life piling up around you. And they still made you angry. The anger was still there, every time you trod on another ear bud or had to do the dishes because he had managed to use every single plate and bowl in one day, but you felt like it couldn’t touch you. He couldn’t touch you. You were satisfied, smug even. Rather than compulsively trying to keep your own things in perfect order, you realised you could afford to be a little messy. It was your apartment, too, after all. Two could play at that game. You decided to take up as much space as you wanted.
If Namjoon noticed the change, he didn’t say anything. At least not at first. Now that you weren’t hiding in your room so much, you realised that he wasn’t always holed up in his studio, either. He often sat on the sofa, notebook on his lap, laptop on the coffee table, writing. Or he sat stretched across the armchair, reading. Or he lounged, scrolling on his phone. Or he made a thousand coffees in the kitchen and cleaned up after none of them.
He never brought up that Saturday morning when you told him to fuck off and you got the feeling that he was avoiding the issue. You didn’t speak much at all, not properly anyway. Emboldened by your new confidence, most of what you said to him was ‘can you move your shit?’ and ‘will you fucking turn it down?’. He rarely said anything in response, simply acquiescing to your request in silence. You noticed more than once the muscle in his jaw twitch as he got up to address the mess in question and he didn’t look at you, but he never said anything. You heard him some nights, on the phone in his bedroom, his voice suddenly lowering to a faint rumble; he sounded insistent, emphatic but you couldn’t make out any of his words. You wondered if he ever talked about you. Not that you cared. Obviously.
It was early evening and you were in your bedroom, freshly showered, sitting on your bed and working up the energy to deal with your hair when he knocked at your door. You opened the door with a sigh.
“I’ve got people coming over tonight,” he said simply.
“Ok.”
“I didn’t know if you’d want to move your… stuff before they got here.” He gestured to the airer in the living room, where your underwear was currently drying. You shrugged.
“Do you want me to move it?”
“Well, I don’t know. It’s not mine.” He seemed bewildered by your response. “It’s fine, I just thought you might not want it on display.”
You shrugged again.
“Ok…” He looked at a loss as he turned around and walked away from you shaking his head. As far as you were concerned, his friends weren’t your problem.
You heard them arrive as you were plaiting your still-damp hair. You thought there were two, maybe three of them so you assumed they’d monopolise the living room. You thought about whether or not you’d let them. You decided you wanted a drink.
You tied an elastic around the end of your second plait and went into the kitchen.
“Hi,” one called from the sofa. You thought you recognised one of the others but couldn’t be sure. You looked at them all and then away, carrying on to the fridge. Silence fell as you grabbed a can from the fridge and then a glass from the cupboard. You took your time putting ice in the glass, then decanting the can, pausing to let the bubbles subside before topping up. You raised your glass at them as you walked back to your room, but didn’t turn in their direction. As soon as you were back in your room, you could hear hissed whispering. You took a triumphant sip of the drink that, truthfully, you didn’t really even want. You just wanted to prove a point.
It was Thursday. Your previously precious Thursdays had become a distant memory. Something in Namjoon’s work schedule had changed and, not only did it keep him around more, it meant he was always in on a Thursday. But he bothered you less than he used to anyway so you could cope without them.
In fact, on this particular Thursday, you didn’t even really feel like cooking. As you took off your shoes and hung up your bag, you noticed that there was a Tupperware container of your leftovers on the counter, steaming nicely, just re-heated. You took a spoon from the drawer, and not even bothering to sit down, tucked right in, standing in the kitchen. Namjoon’s studio door opened and he stopped with a start as he saw you.
“Wha-. What a-… Is that my food?” he asked, the barest hint of incredulity in his tone.
You raised your eyebrows.
“Your food? I don’t think so.”
“I just got that out. I was going to eat that. That is my foo-”
“Is it, Namjoon? Is it really? Did you cook it? Did you buy any of the ingredients? Did you participate in any way in this meal actually being made? Like fuck you did. Everything in that fridge is mine and has been since I moved in here.”
He looked at you, bewildered for a second.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
You were a little surprised by the outburst but not displeased.
“What are you talking about?”
“Have I done something to you or something? You’ve really been… Recently, you’re like…”
“Feel free to finish any one of those sentences, Namjoon.”
“That is what I’m talking about! Why are you being so… such a dick?! I haven’t done anything to you!”
You put the food back on the counter and looked at him.
“No, I suppose you’re right. You really haven’t done anything, have you? Not even things you should have done, not even things I’ve specifically asked you to do. You don’t seem to do anything that every other grown adult on the planet seems to be able to do.” You gestured broadly at the entire room and then, dipping quickly, thrust your hand into the washing machine, crossing your fingers.
Bingo, damp clothes. You grabbed whatever you first touched and lifted it up to him.
“Yours?” you asked.
He looked taken aback again and you felt like you’d got him on the back foot.
“Yeah, so?”
“And how long has it been in there, Namjoon?”
“I don-… Why do you care? They’re my clothes; what difference does it make to you?”
You ignored him and opened the fridge.
“How much of this are you responsible for?” you asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
You rolled your eyes.
“Of course, you don’t. My point is, Namjoon, did you buy anything that’s in here? Do you remember to buy milk when it runs out? Do you make meals and save the leftovers for later? Or is that me?”
“Well, I guess, you.”
“Right and who eats it all, Namjoon?” You placed heavy emphasis on his name, just in case he wanted to miss the point.
“So, this is about your food? You said I could eat it!”
That shocked you.
“When the fuck did I say that?”
“When you moved in! You left it in the fridge and said I could help myself!”
You groaned and rolled your eyes.
“And you thought that was an open invitation for the rest of time to just eat whatever you wanted? It was my first night here! I was trying to be nice; I wanted you to like me!”
He scoffed.
“Oh, I’m sorry, have you got something to say?”
“Well, you clearly don’t care about that anymore! You haven’t said one nice thing to me since-… I… I don’t even know when! The only time you ever say anything to me at all recently is to be rude.”
“It’s not as if we’re friends-”
“And whose fault is that?! I’ve tried to talk to you and you just brush me off! I’ve tried and you just fucking ignore me!”
You stared at him hard, what planet was he living on? This was by far the longest conversation you’d ever had so whatever he considered trying to be your friend must have fallen pretty wide of the mark.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you replied.
He groaned and he turned away then back again, holding his arms out in question.
“Look, fine, I figured when you moved in that you didn’t really want to be friends; you kept to yourself and that was fine, but now you’ve really turned into a-”
He faltered for a second and you raised your eyebrows at him in challenge.
“You’ve turned into a real bitch. I’ve been trying to stay out of your way-”
You scoffed at that, given that the entire apartment was full of him getting in your way. He ignored you.
“-but now it’s like you’re deliberately going out of your way to start an argument. I don’t know what you want from me.”
“I want you to fucking grow up and take some responsibility! I’m not your fucking mother, Namjoon; did she never teach you any manners? Did she not teach you clean up after yourself? I have to say, it seems like she did a pretty piss-poor job raising you to me.”
His face fell and his eyes darkened. You saw that muscle in his jaw twitch and he clenched and unclenched his fists.
“Don’t talk about my mother.”
“Or what? You’ll give me some more evidence that she raised you badly?”
You knew you’d hit a nerve and it thrilled you. You could see his jaw clenched, his teeth gritted tight together. His chest rose and fell heavily. He took a step towards you and then seemed to change his mind.
“Don’t talk about my mother,” he repeated and then he turned and walked back into his studio, his whole body stiff and tense. The door slammed.
You looked at the leftovers on the counter and didn’t really fancy them anymore. You scraped them into the bin and chucked the tub in the sink. You were exhilarated; it felt so good to finally challenge him, to test your mettle and find you could win. You pulled out your phone.
You: Busy?
Hoseok: Want to come over?
You: Want to get some food first?
Hoseok: 😋 😋 😋!
You met Hoseok outside the restaurant he suggested, just around the corner from his apartment. You had seen him semi-regularly since that first Friday, though this would be the first time outside his four walls. You hadn’t spoken to him – as you assured Lina you would – about the exact parameters of your… whatever it was. The fact that this was the first time you were seeing him for something other than sex told you what you needed to know. He clearly wasn’t interested in actually dating you, nor you him. This was just a casual arrangement that suited you both. He seemed to be the busiest man in the world but somehow always had time for you. He made you feel good and not just because of the sex… though that was pretty good, too.
You saw him leaning against the wall as you walked up and he hugged you when you approached.
“Ah, y/n! Wasn’t sure I’d recognise you with your clothes on,” he said in greeting. You shoved him.
“I could say the same to you!”
It was nice spending time with Hoseok like this. You weren’t always all business; you sometimes stayed over and you would talk and listen to music or fall asleep to films, but it was always an addendum to the sex. It was different this time. He was clearly well-known at this restaurant and well-liked; you struggled to think of reasons someone wouldn’t like him, actually. Kind, affable, deeply sexy… You wondered briefly if you should want to date him. He seemed to have it all. Then Namjoon appeared in your head.
“Fuck off,” you growled under your breath.
“What?” Hoseok asked, eyes wide.
“What? Oh, not you, sorry, I wasn’t saying anything, carry on.”
You doubled your efforts to pay attention to Hoseok and Hoseok alone. You had told him about Namjoon – or at least, about some of it. You did not tell him about how much you wanted to fuck Namjoon or that, the first time the two of you had had sex, you had come to the image of Namjoon in his underwear. You also smoothed over the recent parts where your behaviour had been less than exemplary. Of course, you knew your behaviour was bad but you couldn’t stop yourself. It was as if Namjoon brought out the worst in you and, whenever you saw him or thought of him, rather than getting desperately and embarrassingly hot, you were overcome with the desire to rile him up, to see him undone. But you didn’t tell Hoseok that. As far as Hoseok knew, he was your annoying roommate and that was it.
You walked together to Hoseok’s apartment, stuffed full of Italian food, and he wrapped an arm around your shoulders and pulled you close. Suddenly, you worried that he had thought this was a date. What if you had read the signs all wrong? What even were the signs to look out for? A streak of panic ran through you. You waited for him to remove his arm, to let you go, but he rested his cheek against your head for a moment and your certainty started to slip away. If there was one thing that your time with him was teaching you, it was that you had to start facing things head on, rather than ignoring them and hoping they went away. So, you took a deep breath.
“Um, do you want to date me?” you asked.
He pulled away slightly.
“Is that an offer or a question?”
“Question.”
“Oh, then, no.”
“Ok, so what if it was an offer?”
He looked at you carefully.
“I’m not offering,” you clarified. “But that was a very quick no…” You pouted; you might not have wanted to date him either but it still slightly stung. Hoseok laughed.
“I like you, y/n; we have fun and I’m happy having fun with you, but I don’t really want to get involved with all…” He gestured, at a loss for how to phrase it. “You have stuff going on and I don’t want to get messed up in that.”
You stopped in your tracks and he carried on. What was he talking about? What did he know?
“What do you mean?” Scurrying to catch him, you tugged on his sleeve. “What have I got going on?”
He looked meaningfully at you, but you couldn’t work out what he was driving at.
“Hoseok! What?”
He sighed and rolled his eyes playfully.
“Do you want to date me?” he asked.
“No-”
“Well then! It’s all settled. I don’t want to date you and you don’t want to date me. Do you want to come up?”
You realised you had made it to his building. You tutted dramatically.
“Obviously.”
Chapter Two | Masterlist | Chapter Four
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It’s the beginning of the comfort arc we’ve all been eagerly anticipating and it delivered more than I could have ever imagined fuck! I have so much to say BUT FIRST thank you for sharing your writing with the world it literally is amazing through and through - so carefully and beautifully crafted - and every update makes my day/night <3
Big thing for me in the last few chps is i appreciate so much how you tackle themes that mirror real life. It's in a way that’s nuanced and really makes me feel really :(( - but in a good way - in a way that makes me and i'm sure many others feel seen on so many levels. Like:
(1) Hwa in chp 10 mirroring the experience of not being accepted by family as a queer person - but also, tell me if im going too deep into this - but there’s an intersection of identities that you unpack - of class identity (i.e. Hwa’s need for career security which he was leaning on his family for) converging with his family’s expectation of heteronormativity - which meant that back then, Hwa’s relationship with San couldn’t coexist with him pursuing his passion. Like that’s a very real thing for so many people and a pretty complicated thing to explore but you expressed it in a natural way that feels very validating.
And then (2) in chp 12 Woo illuminating the experience of being a minority - when he says ‘fucking alphas’ when yunho is like ‘our girl’ - like as much as I love that possessive/intense caring vibe, woo is so fucking FAIR!!! Like that entitlement (altho obvs for yungi we know it's different) is such male behavior and I’ve KNOWN that rage woo feels, that ‘ugh alphas’ feeling is one I and I’m certain many others have felt in the context of living in an IRL patriarchy and idk… the fact that you can write that experience in a way that hits that hard, succinctly with subtlety AND clarity - damn you’re so good and I hope you know you’ve done these experiences so much justice in your writing.
But anyway on another less #deep note (lol): the ‘yeah baby?’, the ‘can I put you down sweetheart?’, the searching eyes, the cautious but caring touches, the tender kisses (p.s. I died when yunho started licking her neck omg why would you do this to us) - JESUS it’s too much for me to handle but I need it like I need air so THANK YOU. Now that yungi and mc are in the very same intimate space, that very same apartment, that very same bed that yungi/mc all began, I'm on my tippy toes patiently awaiting a new and ~soft~ dynamic.
So happy to hear you’re excited about writing again and once again, AMAZING JUICE!!
-Cloud ☁️ xxx
CLOUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! your comment literally just hit me straight in the heart as always, thank you so much.
to answer/comment on some of what you said.... yes absolutely to your comments on chapter 10. i obviously don't know too much about the member's actual upbringings or family finances.... but i certainly see a particular type of small town/working class energy from san. he projects a bit of life confidence and surety that personally informs a lot of how i write him. to me it felt natural to contrast that with seonghwa here and add an extra layer of tension to their relationship. i think for san, being rejected because of money was a hard line in the sand for him..... but that's also his own prejudices and life experience at play. i'm excited to work more with them in future chapters and expand on this.
also chap 12 like..... YESSSSS - the thing that i always love about a/b/o is that you get to play with that possessiveness to the nth degree and when you fold in elements around claims and bonds it gets even crazier. yunho and mingi have this very sure feeling that reader is theirs ....and yes, that's somewhat true just like they are hers......... but that doesn't mean that she (and omegas by extension) are just property. i really wanted to write the arc with minseok so that later on when all the happy endings happen, reader's autonomy is obvious, it's clear that it's her agency and her choice. so thank you as always for catching those moments.
on your last comment.......................there is SO much more comfort yungi coming i can't even tell you. i'm a serious sucker for hurt/comfort arcs as a reader and writer, and i just seriously believe that people who go through hard things like this deserve a person who can be there and hold them like they need to be held. it's truly my favorite thing to write as a romantic bitch 😭 so yeah get ready..... yunho and mingi are shifting into patient, loving, kind, and tender mode before things get back to hot and heavy
thank you as always, your comments bring me so much joy 💗
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Serendipity (2007!Raphael x Fem!Reader 4
CHAPTER IV: There’s Something About Raphael
Chapter Key:
——— = a flashback is happening or ending ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ or ====
= perspective change
~ = small time skip
You sighed to yourself as you looked in your empty camera bag. Another missed opportunity to take a beautiful picture of Stella perched up on the window sill staring into the sunset that loomed over New York City.
Sunset. A moment of peace and clarity, before street lights come on to illuminate illegal activity, crime, bad decisions, and deviancy. The moment before the moon comes in and takes over the sun with its bright light. It stays in the sky for hours before the sun claims its spot, and the cycle repeats.
It was almost time for the moment all of NYC waits for: Nighttime.
The time when every other city sleeps, yet the people of New York City fail to follow this stigma and are forever awake and alive.
Crime seems to not take a break either, and that was the downfall of this city’s tendency to stay awake. However, that’s exactly what The Nightwatcher is for, to stop the crimes that policemen are too tired to pick up or are too slow to get to.
About five weeks went by since the attack and when you last saw The Nightwatcher. Your wound had healed up fine with no complications, so there was no reason to tell Casey about anything that required Raph’s presence to fix.
Aside from this, you’ve been holding up fine.
You had the strength to go to Monday’s classes, and once your 1-2:15 pm class was done, you had the rest of the day to yourself and didn't have classes until Wednesday. You and Jade took this opportunity and had all of that Tuesday in between to hang out and grab a bite at a nearby Asian Fusion restaurant to finish off the day. Aside from not walking anywhere deserted or empty such as alleys or quiet towns far from the city, you felt perfectly safe walking around on your own. Raphael was right about the Purple Dragons moving on from you to someone else because, in the days that followed, you heard word on campus that they had mugged an older couple.
Other than that, you’ve been untouched. However, you know to not let your guard down, and to really watch what you say to some New Yorkers.
And now, five weeks later, here you are. In your room upset still about your camera.
You wondered when Raphael would grace his presence again. You were hung up on the fact that he said he was going to try to get it fixed, and were confident that you would see him again.
You just didn’t know how long it would take.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“‘Ey, Don!” Raph’s voice made Donny jolt from surprise and halt his clock in for his shift as tech support.
“What’s up, Raph?” Donnie absolutely hated when that happened. He especially hated when Mikey would creep up on him and scare him on purpose, he was the easiest to scare out of the four. However, he wouldn’t dare confront his older brother about it.
Raph smirked, “Nuthin’ much, sorry I scared ya.” He looked down at his younger brother sitting tensely in his worn-out office chair.
Donnie spun around in his chair, “It’s cool, do you need something?” the spinning element of his chair is part of the reason Donatello loved it in the first place. He banned Mikey from sitting in it because of this very reason. He just wouldn’t stop spinning, until one day, Mikey spun so much that he winded up flying out of Donnie’s chair and sprained his ankle.
“Nah, just wonderin’ if you eva finished fixin’ that camera.”
Donnie placed his feet on the ground and abruptly stopped his spinning. “I did, actually. Thanks, it got rid of my boredom.” Getting up from his chair, he walked toward the large table that was for his various trinkets and gadgets. Some were completed, and some were left unfinished. He picks up the polaroid camera that he spent in his free time fixing for Raphael. He didn’t ask questions about why he needed it fixed, he just saw an opportunity to put his mind to work and took it.
---
“Can you fix dis?” Raphael’s amber-colored eyes stared at Donnie’s brown ones through his magnifying goggles.
Donnie looked at the broken item in Raph’s hands and couldn’t quite comprehend what it was. “And what exactly is ‘dis,’ Raph?” He mimicked his brother’s accent, earning an eye roll from him.
“A camera, or more like what's left of it. I don’ know, just thought it’d give ya sumthin’ ta do.”
“Something to do…”
Raph places the remnants of the girl's camera on Donnie's table in his lab, as he backs away to let his younger brother take a look at it.
“...Give me three weeks max.”
---
“Thanks, lil bro.” Raph nudges Donnie’s head and picks up the camera, admiring his intelligent brother’s work. He notices a tiny slot on the left side, and that’s when Donnie clears his throat to get his attention.
“Before you take it, I wanted to ask you something.”
“Shoot.”
Donatello reaches into a nearby drawer and takes out a very, very tiny black card.
“I know whose camera you brought back.”
~
Donatello is smart. There isn’t a dumb bone in his mutant turtle body.
When it came to things that weren’t about science or math, he wasn’t as smart, but still was.
He was slightly clueless sometimes, yet other times could find small inconsistencies in what people said like he was a DA during trial.
That’s why Donatello was such a strong member of the team.
With that being said, he had a hunch about this.
---
Donatello wasn’t one to be nosy like Michaelangelo. So, when Raphael brought a random broken camera home and asked him to fix it, he brushed any skepticism aside and tended to the task at hand.
However, one night as he was still getting familiar with all the parts he had and some were missing, he noticed the tiny slot on the left that was still able to pop in and out.
And by pressing it, out popped the micro SD card inside. The more surprising part was that it was still intact.
It might’ve been a bit extreme on Donnie’s part, but he quickly turned on his computer and put it in a holder to insert into his PC.
He prayed to whatever higher up that there wasn’t anything invasive or…rated R on it.
He clicked through the many folders on his personal computer until he found the one he was looking for in his recent.
Taking a deep breath, he clicked on the newest folder and waited for it to load onto his computer. Donnie watched as an array of different tiny squares scattered across his screen, and he picked the first one to easily navigate through the others without missing any.
Donatello seemed to remember this face, it was of Casey and April's neighbor, Y/n.
‘This is the girl Casey and April know, is it not?’ He pondered. Donatello remembered a few times he and his brothers would have to go upstairs to hide so they wouldn’t reveal themselves to their friend's neighbor. Donatello was able to get a good look at her at times, and there was no doubt that she was the owner of the camera Raph found.
He clicked through and landed on a clear shot of her, as she stood next to someone Donnie could think of as being her friend. Donnie studied the photo. The background looked like someone's bedroom, and they both put peace signs up at the camera. Y/n’s e/c eyes seemed to shine from the flash, and they were staring back at him.
After going through a few other photos, Donnie stopped and took the SD card out of his computer.
He enjoyed this. Donatello found it interesting what humans did and what their life was like. To be fair, he and his brother's first taste of what the human world was like was seeing Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” on a big screen in Times Square through a sewage gate at around 8 years old. He could never forget that day, and although he’s grown now and constantly sees how humans talk and interact through TV and patrol (before Leo left for training,) he still enjoys seeing what their lives are like and how they live on the surface. It comes bittersweet, though, he can witness it, but never be able to experience it for himself. And this, dear readers, was the downside of Donatello’s continuous curiosity.
---
“How’d you get her camera?” Donny asked a visibly confused Raphael.
“Didn’t know it was ‘ers. Casey found it and gave it ‘ta me to give to you; thought you would be able ‘ta fix it.” Lie.
What else could Raph say?
‘Oh yeah found it while me and Casey were out beating up Purple Dragons, we saved her, and I stitched her up. But don’t worry, she doesn’t know who I am because I wore my Nightwatcher suit and got her to close her eyes while I did it.’ Yeah, like that would fly with Donny. He cannot let any of his brothers figure out he’s the Nightwatcher. The fact that he’s already defying Splinter’s orders to not fight while Leo’s gone is bad enough. Not only that, but he revealed a part of himself to a complete stranger.
“From what you gave me in the beginning, it seemed like it was smashed forcefully. I mean, there’s no way she may have dropped it.” Ah. Raph was understanding where Donnie was going with this. The purple-banded turtle didn’t have anything to go off of conspiracy-wise due to lack of evidence, but he still had a funny feeling that it wasn’t Y/n who broke it.
“Do you know where Casey found it?”
“On the street, near an alley somewhere.” Raph really felt like he was being interrogated.
“An alley? Why would it be there? Instead of dumping it, she probably would want it to be fixed, righ-” “Look, Don. I don’t know.” Donatello was a little too smart for his brother's liking. Either that or he’s a terrible liar. Or both.
Donatello walks back over and takes a seat in his chair. He successfully clocks in and waits for someone to call.
“Tell Casey to check up on Y/n, because who else resides in an alley?”
Raphael rolls his eyes for what seemed like the 367th time at his brother.
“Tha bad guys, Don.”
“Exactly. Now, shoo.” Donnie motions for Raph to get out of his lab so he can work in peace, much like how he always has to kick Mikey out while he’s on the clock. Getting the hint, Raph thanks his sibling again before shutting the door behind him.
“How about I check up on ‘er instead, Don?” Raph suggests to himself.
---
Now, Raphael was not one to forcefully insert himself into anyone’s life. I mean, how could he, anyway? He’s the complete opposite of Mikey. He remembered a few years back when Mikey found someone’s cat on the roof and went to return it, only to be called a “mutant freak” by the owner. He’d rather save himself the heartbreak of not being accepted by people and keep it pushing. April and Casey accepted him, that’s all that mattered.
He was though, once accepted and was involved with a girl before Leo had left: Sabrina.
Sabrina had been Raphael’s first crush. He didn’t know what to do around her. Sabrina’s friendship was a total mistake, remember earlier when it was mentioned that Mikey inserts himself in others' lives and not Raph? Yeah, this happened here.
All 4 brothers had rescued a girl from being robbed by the PDs, and Mikey had gotten excited because he noticed that her school bag had a pin from his favorite show. He stepped out of the shadows on accident but didn’t get screaming or fainting in return. Instead, they had a 10-minute conversation geeking out about the show until Leonardo put a stop to it. Unknowingly, they had befriended a short, brunette wavy-haired 18-year-old girl.
From then on, Sabrina had been a good friend of theirs, and somehow found a way to Raphael’s heart without even trying.
It was expected mostly from Donnie, because (although he begs them not to bring it up anymore,) he was the first one who had feelings for the only human girl they had met prior to Sabrina: April. Although Donnie got over it with time, it was also because he knew he had no chance once Casey came along.
Raph wasn’t sure why he fell for Sabrina. She was a mix between Donnie and Mikey- nerdy, crazy, you name it, but in a good way. Her clear, mocha skin and hourglass figure are something that especially caught him, as well as her forest-green eyes. She was the complete opposite of Raph, which is probably what attracted him to her in the first place. He wasn’t one to spill his feelings, so he dropped subtle hints here and there. He was a flirt, and that was what enticed Sabrina.
They became close, closer than he’d ever imagined.
He would come by almost every night, and they would talk for hours until she fell asleep. One night though, Sabrina had found the courage to flirt back, and this was the night of Raphael’s first kiss. He found that he loved it, and he might’ve even maybe loved her.
This lasted for about a year and a half until she packed up and went to college, never to come back since she was moving as well. It wasn’t like Sabrina broke his heart or anything, she just was moving on in her life, and he wouldn’t be a part of it. It became reality when her number wasn’t working, as she got a new one. There was no way to contact her or rekindle anything they had. It was a hard pill to swallow for him but Raphael eventually got over it. So, he doesn’t bring it up. It’s simply a memory of what once was.
---
Raphael seemed to like the idea of coming to see you.
.
He of course wasn’t comfortable with revealing himself to you, but at the same time, he wondered what you would think about him.
You already knew that he has 3 fingers, so fuck it. Raphael didn’t like change, but he also didn’t like platonic routines. He needed something to spice up his life. After all, he has so many years to live, why not live it up and do new things?
So, he decided on paying you a visit. Besides, your camera had to be returned.
Making his way to his room, Raph takes his duffle bag and slings it over his shoulder. Without being noticed by Splinter or his baby brother, he leaves the lair and opens the makeshift garage that held his bike. It was right next to Mikey’s Cowabunga Carl van, how it usually is.
Raph changes into his nighttime persona and places his helmet on as the final touch. Finally.
Revving up his bike, the red-clad turtle decides to take a spin around the city as the sun sets before stopping by at your house.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was a chilly Thursday evening, and you were cooped up in your studio apartment. After Skyping your mom to say hello and catch up, you decided to get started on some dinner. You scattered through your fridge to find something good to make, but nothing good. You were leaning toward a homecooked meal rather than something frozen.
After thinking of recipes to make, you were reminded of something that Jade’s mom made one time you came over for dinner. Although you never asked for the recipe, you could very clearly remember how it tasted with the different spices and herbs. Not only that, but you could put your slow cooker to use and have the possibility of making leftovers.
You gathered the food items and ingredients you thought you needed: Rice, an array of spices and seasonings, chicken breasts, and…
Ah.
You were out of asparagus.
Jade’s mom had pan-seared them with some minced garlic, butter, and pepper. They tasted heavenly. Even Jade- who’s known to be picky when it comes to vegetables, loved the way they tasted.
No biggie, the local grocery store was no longer than a 5-minute walk. The sun was still setting, being that it was around 7 pm. Getting on a pair of sneakers and a sweater, you left your home and toward the elevator that took you down to the lobby.
You walked the streets of New York. The air was brisk, with the occasional gust of wind tickling your skin. You passed countless people, none that you’ve ever seen before. The random drug dealers on the corner, small stand-owners that were selling trinkets or food to get by, homeless men and women asking for money, hookers that stood on the corner and tried to swoon men into buying their services, and so on.
New York City, you either love it, or you hate it. There is no in-between.
You just so happened to love it.
Despite the crime and terrible things that may happen, NYC is truly a beautiful place, a melting pot of different cultures, and people that come from all walks of life.
Making your way across the street when the light changed, you’re introduced to the small grocery store you’re very familiar with going to. The gorgeous array of fresh fruits and veggies, the deli meats that were cut to perfection, it was a nice staple in the area you were in. It also just so happened to be the closest to you.
You grabbed a plastic baggie and ripped it from the other small ones attached to the rack, and walked past the few people standing in front of the fresh veggie section. You looked toward the asparagus next to the crowns of broccoli and picked a bundle that looked the most vibrant in green.
Placing it in your baggie and tying a knot to close it, you walk toward the register to pay. A mere $2.51, is not bad at all! You hand the cashier a $5 bill after he puts it in a yellow bag for you to carry. You tell him to keep the receipt. Nodding, you’re handed your change and put it in your pocket, “Have a good evening.”
The young man smiles at you, “You do the same.”
Exiting the store, you start on your way home. The sun is getting to the point where it’ll be replaced by the moon, and the nighttime will officially be here.
~
“Stella, no.” For what seemed like the 30th time in the span of a few minutes while you prepared the chicken, Stella was clawing at your sweats because she was interested in eating whatever you were making.
You were pretty excited about a nice calm dinner tonight, you were putting the chicken in the slow cooker with the rice and decided to wait until that was done to make the asparagus. It shouldn’t take long, anyway.
While you waited, you connected your phone to the speaker in your room and allowed it to play loud enough to hear in the living area with the TV. During the wait, you caught up on some of your studies. It was mostly Physics. There was an exam coming up in less than two weeks, and you wanted to be more than prepared to take it. You seemed to breeze right through it, and before you knew it, about forty-five minutes went by.
You were sitting on the couch petting Stella with one hand and writing with the other until you heard a knock on your window that came from the bedroom. It sounded strikingly similar to the one you heard the last time you saw Raph. Despite knowing nothing about him, you felt an excitement bubble inside you, and anxiety beginning to form simultaneously. You hoped it was Raphael because it meant your camera might be fixed. Not only that, but this was your chance to convince him to stay awhile and chat.
Placing your Physics textbook on the coffee table, you walked briskly to your window to investigate the sound.
Looking at the window, you couldn’t help but smile at what you saw.
It was Raphael, in his full metal armor, Camera in hand.
You unlocked the window and opened it up, the gust of cool night wind entering your bedroom. It was finally nighttime, and the New York City lights replaced the sun in the darkness.
“Raph?” You were confused as to why he didn’t just knock on your door. It was extremely odd that he came through the fire escape, but after thinking about it for a moment, you would probably feel giddy and anxious if The Nightwatcher passed by you in your own apartment building.
“I uh…I have sumthin’ for ya.” His muffled voice through his helmet states. You noticed the slight stuttering with his words, almost as if he was nervous to be in your presence.
“You actually fixed it?” Taking it from his hands, you look all around your camera. It’s just like how you remembered it, old but still fully functional.
“Nah, not me. I got one of my bros to fix it.” You noticed a sense of pride in his tone, almost as if he was proud of his own brother's work.
“Tell them to thank you for me, seriously. This camera…means a lot to me.” Popping open the little slot on the side, you see the memory card there, and you pop it back in place, relief cascading over your entire body. A few weeks in you thought you had misplaced your SD card, but remembered that you left it inside the camera that day. Up until now, you had assumed your memories had been wiped, there was a slim chance the micro SD card would be preserved after what happened. But, it did.
A complete stranger had gone out of their way to fix your beloved device with no questions asked. No favor in return expected.
Without second-guessing it, you hugged Raph. Your arms going around his waist instead of his neck. You felt something rock hard on his back that felt abnormal.
It was possible that his suit could have a storage compartment back there. But at the same time, it didn’t make sense on why he would have one in the first place.
You immediately felt him tense up, and his arms didn’t wrap around you as yours did him. However, you didn’t expect them to. You were just happy someone took the time to help you.
You pull away after a few moments, and Raph clears his throat.
“How are ya holdin’ up?” He asks. It’s hard to tell what his facial expressions are because you can’t see his face through his helmet, but his tone seemed to match what his face might show.
You were about to answer until suddenly a particularly colder gust of wind shoots through the window, and you shiver in response.
“Would you want to come inside, Raphael?”
~
You couldn’t believe Raph was in your apartment. He still kept his suit on despite now being indoors, but you knew he wouldn’t take it off from your interaction last time you suggested it. He seemed uneasy at first, but after some persuasion with dinner, he complied. You allowed Raph to make himself comfortable, and he found your couch extremely comfortable. It looked as though Stella found him comfortable because she immediately jumped on his lap once he sat down.
The chicken and rice were finished, and while you made the asparagus in the kitchen, you couldn’t help but laugh at how Raph interacted with Stella on the couch. It was cute. Raphael seemed to like cats because he knew just the right spots to scratch that made Stella purr and meow with glee. You wondered if he had any pets of his own.
You and Raphael made small talk while you were finishing up cooking the last part of the meal, and it was pleasant. You informed him that your wound was healing up fine, and you were getting back to moving normally slowly but surely. You answered all his questions about cleaning it and dressing it with many confident “yes’s.” It felt like Raph appreciated you taking care of your own wound, and you lifted up your sweatshirt to show him the progress. Lifting it down, you thanked him again for patching you up, and for getting your camera fixed.
“What’s it mean to ya?” He asked. You continued plating the food for both of you and pondered.
“Well,” You grabbed a portion of asparagus with a pair of tongs to put on both plates. “My mom got it for me. I moved here alone for college, and it was a good luck gift.”
Finishing, made your way to the couch. Sitting down beside Raph, you handed a plate to him. “Thanks,” he muttered.
“U-Um, do you want me to like, turn around?” You realized eating required Raph to lift his helmet, and he seemed to realize that too.
“Nah, that’d be weird. You shouldn’t be able to see much anyway.” He was right. It was dark outside, and that meant the only source of light you would get is from the TV that was on in your living space in front of you both.
Raphael took a gamble and assumed you wouldn’t see.
Which you didn’t.
It surely wasn’t ideal for him, having to lift it to take a bite of his food; nonetheless, he enjoyed each time he did. You both sat beside each other on your couch (slightly awkwardly,) while the noise from the TV echoed through your apartment.
Despite the distraction of the TV, you had decided to spike up another conversation with Raphael. He winded up complementing your cooking, and you couldn’t help but smile at his words.
You firstly started by asking where he learned to fight. You couldn’t forget the type of fighting style he had, but couldn’t put your finger on the name of it. He explained that he was raised by his Japanese father that taught him ninjitsu, which he practiced in his free time (this was quite often, he mentions.) Not only that, but you also learned that he followed Bushido, which is something you didn’t expect. It seemed hard for him to open up, but at the same time, that’s all Raphael wanted to do sometimes. He winded up going on a slight tangent about his fighting skills, and he told you he had polished them to be damn near perfect. You had heard pride seer through his words and his tone.
The conversation seemed to bounce between him and you.
He wondered why you chose a college in NYC.
“Why not, you know? It’s a beautiful city with so many opportunities.” To this, he agreed.
You explained your current living situation, and how you managed to stay here and go to college at the same time. He seemed to admire the fact that you had a job and went to school. He asked you about your job, and you pointed out being a waitress at a local diner.
You asked Raph some more questions about his life, like if he went to college or anything. He explained he didn’t go to any real school but learned at home. He wasn’t planning on going to college.
How could he, anyway?
For now, his duty as a vigilante was what he was focused on.
“Someone has ‘ta keep the streets safe. These lousy cops sure ain’t,” He stated. Raphael seemed to be extremely passionate about what he did and why. Judging from his accent, he sounded like he was from Brooklyn. His accent was one you’ve heard plenty of times off the street, but he was one in particular that you enjoyed hearing. He winded up telling you why exactly he became The Nightwatcher. Not only was it to keep the city safe, but it was because of that day he heard about the Purple Dragons violating and killing a woman. Raphael’s tone was uneasy since the thought of it made him physically ill. He couldn’t believe some people existed who did such things, but this world isn’t rainbows and butterflies, he explained.
You didn’t want to pry, but you wanted to know some more about his life. Other than being a vigilante, what else was there for Raphael? There was something about Raphael that made you extremely curious.
“You mentioned brothers once, right?” You scrape your plate, gathering the scattered pieces of rice for one last delightful bite.
“Yeah, I got three.” He was able to come clean about his family and siblings. He mentioned that one of them is an I.T tech support online, the other was a host for kids' parties, and another was in a different country since last year, and some change. He seemed to like talking about his father and two brothers that were currently at home but had some sort of animosity against the one who was abroad from the way he described him.
He went (pretty vaguely) on about how they lived. Other than all learning ninjitsu and how they were all the same age (you learned he was the same age as you,) and just minutes apart, you had no clue which part of NYC he or his brothers resided in. You had assumed he was born in NYC because his accent was a dead giveaway of where he was from and where he lived. Not only that, but you didn’t know how he knew Casey.
“Ah, he’s a family friend.” Was all he said. It seemed he and Casey were pretty close, but he provided no backstory on how they met. He went into slight detail about knowing April before Casey, and she eventually brought Casey around to meet him and his brothers.
You told him about your small friend group, too. When it only consisted of your good friend Jade. Because you were still fairly new and only just close to completing your first year in college, you were still low in the friend department. You told him briefly about how you befriended Casey and April, and you went to thinking. You thought about a potential friendship between you and Raph. You already knew the same people, and Raphael saw firsthand how Casey cared about you as if he was your older brother. So, you were able to be trusted somewhat.
Raphael wasn’t about to risk it all and reveal himself to you with just over a small ounce of trust.
He couldn’t be selfish to his family and potentially put them in danger. But, he knew deep down Mikey and Donatello and even Splinter would want someone new to talk to. Someone trustworthy like April and Casey yet came from a different walk of life than they had. God knows when Leo is coming back, anyway.
So, here you were.
---
“Here I am!” The loudmouth mutant states as he skillfully flips from the stairs and onto the living room couch. The orange-banded turtle had just gotten back from another day of getting beat by kids, but his tips for the day are what put him in such a good mood in addition to the other news.
Today was the day, Leonardo was coming back.
“Hey, Mikey.” Donny put his hand out like he usually does when his younger brother gets home from work, and got a wad of cash in his hand as a response.
“Probably be the last of it, Leo’s coming back!” Mikey was extremely hyper about today. It had been a full year since Leonardo went away for training, and he was finally coming home.
Although Raphael was still upset about Leo leaving from the beginning, he was also slightly excited and relieved his older brother was coming back. Crime wasn’t taking a break just because Leo did, and the streets were getting worse.
“I am also happy Leonardo will be returning, Michelangelo.” Splinter came from the shadow of his room, gathering with his 3 sons in the living room. Leo should be home in the next hour or two, so they all sat in anticipation ready.
There had been a sound from one of the pipes outside the lair, indicating someone was entering.
Mikey couldn’t seem to contain his excitement, and he stood right in front of the wall that would soon reveal his oldest brother.
Only, it wasn’t Leo.
It was April and Casey. April held a slightly worn-out envelope that was labeled with a South American stamp.
“We got mail from Leonardo again, I thought he was coming today?” Casey asked, April handed the envelope over to their rat sensei, and he tore the top open with his nail.
“What’s it say, Masta Splintah?” Raphael asked, getting restless.
“Leonardo has decided to continue his training beyond the time I originally sent him for.” Mikey’s seemingly permanent smile faltered for the first time today, and he slouched on the couch.
Raphael looked toward Mikey, sulking now. Donnie had a disappointing look on his face, and Master Splinter sighed deeply at the news.
Leonardo had become so immersed in his training, that he forgot to take into consideration what his family thought.
“Great. Just great. Now we havta sit here without Fearless for God knows how long now!” Raph exclaimed. He hated seeing his little brother so upset. Mikey was the most excited to see Leo, and he didn’t show. Raph was especially angry because, despite Leo’s training period ending and him not showing, it still meant they had to refrain from fighting on the surface. Which also meant crime would continue to plague the city.
‘Fuck. That.’ Raph thought. He was on the brink of defying Splinter’s orders, but not yet. Raphael knew he would be the first to crack, he was never one to follow rules very well, anyway. He just didn’t know when.
---
As the night went on, you and Raph caught a glimpse into each other's lives. He seemed to like listening to you speak, and vice versa. You noticed that Raph would go on tangents and sometimes it was hard to follow, but he always went back full circle to his first point. He just had a lot to say, and this was the first time in a long time that someone was listening.
You realized you had spent 2 whole hours together in your apartment. When you and he were finished eating, you got up and motioned for him to give you his plate so you could wash it. Instead, he gets up and takes yours and insists he washes them since “It’s only right, ya fed me.” To which you complied and sat back down on the couch.
Whilst drying the dishes, the police chatter suddenly came on Raph’s radio. There was a robbery occurring at a nearby drugstore.
“How’d you get that?” You asked, Raphael, stretched his limbs slightly as if he was getting ready for something.
“I have my ways Y/n. I like ta beat ‘em to tha punch.”
“So…you’re leaving?” You asked. He nodded his head, almost reluctantly
“Thanks, fa dinna,’ I haven’t had sumthin’ that good in a while.” Raph complimented your cooking once again, and you blushed at the fact that he appreciated your amateur cooking skills.
“It’s the least I could do. After all, you help so many people every night in this city, and you went out of your way and helped me.” You watched as he walked towards the window of your bedroom from where he came in earlier, and you frowned.
“Wait, Raph.” The suited man stopped in his tracks and turned around to face you.
“I know you came back to return my camera but, when will I see you again?” You looked at his visor and hoped that you were staring directly at his eyes. Raphael wondered, too.
He wasn’t able to come around during the day, only at night. Besides, he usually caught up on sleep during the day, anyway.
You fiddled with your fingers nervously while asking your next question before he could respond to the first one. “And I was thinking…we could be friends?”
“Friends, huh?” Raphael didn’t have any friends other than Casey and April. Sure, there was Sabrina, but she was no longer in his life. He pondered about it for a minute.
“I’m determined to learn more about you. There has to be more to you than just The Nightwatcher.”
~
You didn’t realize it.
You didn't realize that what you just said made Raphael’s heart skip a beat.
It’s funny, he’s only known you for a little bit, and vice versa. Yet, you have this persistence to get to know him. The real Raph.
“I’ll swing by sometime, promise.” With that, he waved you goodbye and uttered “Have a good night.” To which you replied that he does the same, as well as to be safe out there.
Opening your window and standing on the fire escape, he let himself out.
As you closed the window and sat on your bed, you were confused as to what his response meant.
Were you friends, were you not?
He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, either.
However, he did promise he would come by again, and he emphasized the word ‘promise.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After jumping up onto the roof, Raphael took his helmet off for some fresh air, and a moment before setting out to find the crime as he sighed.
Despite not knowing his face, you trusted him enough to let him in and sit in your apartment, as well as know where you lived. He could’ve been one of those sleazy guys he and his brothers used to protect women from on patrol, but he wasn’t. You had some type of trust.
He felt a funny feeling brew inside him, where the all-too-familiar imaginary butterflies flew around his midsection.
He thought back to what you said before he left.
“There has to be more to you than just The Nightwatcher.”
Putting his helmet back on, he jumped from rooftop to rooftop.
As he made his presence known on the street beside a drugstore where the alleged crime was taking place and tripped the thief to stop him, Raphael concluded that he wanted to get to know you more than he already did.
What your likes and dislikes were, your little quirks, your opinion on certain viewpoints, and your thought process.
And he couldn't wait to do just that.
In contrast, you were excited for him to share the same.
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#tmnt 2007#bayverse tmnt#donatello#leonardo#raphael#teenage mutant ninja turtles#tmnt 2012#tmnt#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles#tmnt 2016#tmnt fanfiction#tmnt fanfics#raph x reader#raphael x reader#tmnt x reader
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Some Direction
Fem Reader x Roronoa Zoro
CW: Language, stalking, violence, sexual themes and situations, ptsd 18+ only
Chapter 1 - Table of Consent -
Chapter 8: U-Turn
Shortly after Zoro had taken you home, the police had arrived at the Dojo. Mihawk had greeted them while Zoro woke you up and helped you into the family room. Officer Smoker and Officer Tashigi sat in the family room with you, Zoro and Mihawk.
Smoker had just finished informing you all that your old apartment had been burned down by an unknown arsonist, earlier in the day. By your understanding it happened just a few hours before the attack at the library.
And you had been home barely an hour since then.
"Considering the attempted break-in alongside these other facts it's a safe, and unfortunate assumption, that Miss (L/N) is being targeted." Smoker explains. He was a broad-shouldered man with bright white hair and a scarred face. His voice was warm and full of gravel, and he had an air of justice about him. If not for your time spent around Zoro and Mihawk you probably would've found him intimidating.
Tashigi's demeanor was more approachable, as she was younger with bright eyes, but a steady feeling about her, like she was capable and practiced at her job. She'd been letting Smoker do most of the talking, but when a question was being directed at you, Tashigi asked it.
"We're aware you've been recently matched, but we can put you into protective custody during the investigation, if you want. You won't be penalized for missing the 6-month deadline, even if it doesn't take that long." Tashigi explains to you gently.
You tried to speak; you really did. You wanted to speak, but it was like your voice was broken. You look at Zoro with panic in your eyes, smacking his arm as you try to speak again. You had lost your voice during panic attacks before, but it had never persisted like this.
"It's okay. You don't have to talk. Just breathe." His voice was soft, and he was focused on you.
"Miss (Y/N) has been through a tremendous ordeal in the last week," Mihawk explains calmly to the two officers while Zoro continued to calm you down. "It is not surprising that the stress has reached this point."
Zoro caught your gaze as you focused on him, breathing more evenly as he helped you avoid spiraling into another full panic attack.
"Yes or no, do you want to leave?" He questions. His voice was still low, but firm.
You shake your head; you want to stay. You didn't know if it was asking too much, or putting Mihawk and Zoro in a dangerous position, but you absolutely wanted to stay.
"Then you'll stay." He assures you, hugging you close and running his hand through your hair.
"We will assign officers to your dojo then," Smoker explains. "Just exterior patrols for extra safety." He adds, realizing he was perhaps treading on a matter of pride. "Tashigi, get her a pen and paper, we have some follow up questions that might need more clarity than yes or no."
Zoro leans you back, searching your gaze. "Can you?"
You smile and nod. Just knowing that he has your back, that he wasn't becoming impatient with your situation or considering tossing you aside was worth a lot. You already felt that you had intruded too quickly as it was, and then spent nearly a week as a patient and house guest instead of a contributing member of the household. Neither Mihawk nor Zoro had shown the slightest bit of frustration.
"Let's start with the easy question, do you have any enemies? Someone who would want to hurt you?" Tashigi asks, handing over a pen and notepad.
You shake your head but write down a single word on the paper. You can feel Zoro tense, but he doesn't stop you as you hold it up for Tashigi and Smoker.
"Kuro... you're a survivor?" Smoker questions and you nod. "This having anything to do with that is a long shot, but we'll keep it in mind. Has there been anything out of the ordinary lately, before or after the break-in?"
You nod and tap Zoro's arm, you're ready to write down about the bus, but he explains the event on your behalf, and gives another recounting of the break-in itself for you. Your grateful that he's willing to do so and relieved you won't have to try and write it all out.
"And then nothing again until today, correct?" Tashigi questions, and you nod.
Tashigi and Smoker exchange glances, but for now that seems to be the end of their questioning. Tashigi lets you keep the notepad and pen, as the two pack up and leave.
"It should go without saying, but it's for the best if Miss (L/N) is with someone 24/7. I would recommend avoiding going to work, or any kind of outside routine." Smoker says, as a parting gift.
After the two left, you scribble on the note pad, your face scrunched up in frustration, and Zoro hugs you from behind.
"That's a lot of swearing." He states, hugging you tighter for a moment. "I get it."
You tear the page off and write "THANK YOU" in big letters holding it up for Mihawk and Zoro both.
"Such a statement is unnecessary," Mihawk assures you, "but the sentiment is appreciated."
Zoro rests his head on top of yours and you can feel his scowl before he speaks. "If you write 'rematch' at any point I will tear that entire notepad to shreds and hide every pen in the house."
You find yourself smiling despite it all and begin scribbling on the notepad, purposefully hiding it from him while you write. You wouldn't have believed someone if they told you that not even two weeks after meeting your Match you'd be teasing him.
Right now
Everything feels big.
Maybe we can
Allocate
Time to
Chat about US later.
How's that sound?
You step away from him and hold up the notepad in front of you with a cheeky grin. You see a smile on his face for a moment before the realization dawns on him what the words spell out. You mean to giggle as he scowls, but even that sound is gone from you. Your silent laugh still seems to lighten the mood in the room, relief at least that you can be a brat even with everything else that was going on.
"I'm gonna rip it." He grumbles and you snatch it away from his reach. The race is on, as you see the mischievous grin slide across his face as you're dodging his lazy swipes at your new precious notepad.
At some point Mihawk has left the two of you to your shenanigans, and after a few minutes of dancing around the couch Zoro reaches out and grabs you from the other side of it. Hauling you up and over he drops you into the couch cushions, caging you under him.
Red faces and light huffs of airy breaths mingle between the two of you. You hold your notepad in front of yourself, not to taunt him, but to hide your blushing face. You could almost see the angry vein on his forehead as he smiles and takes the notepad and pen from you, setting them aside with a muttered grumble.
His legs were on either side of yours, one foot on the floor, one knee sunk into the couch. One hand on the cushions by your head, and one on the backside of the couch steadying himself over you. His false aggravation was already fading, and he leans down toward you.
"Stop me," he swallows, keeping his gaze on you. His voice was low and husky, his desire and intent were obvious, and the fire in his eyes was reflected in your own. "If you need to or want to. I won't be mad-hurk!" Zoro makes a garbled noise as you grab the collar of his shirt and pull him down to you.
Your breath was coming out a little heavy, but not from the earlier dance. You look from his eyes to his lips and feel your skin flush all the way to your chest. There was no smile, and no scowl. Intensely focused eyes took in every part of your face, and you were sure he could see the lines of your very soul, so sharp was his gaze of steel and desire.
The first brush of his lips against yours was dry and warm, sending shivers through you and prompting you to lick your lips. The next was more of a kiss, warm lips press against your own, the pressure and sensation of it sends pleasure through your chest and heats up your body.
There was a soft gasp as he pulls back, bringing in a rush of air as your heart speeds up. Your fingers find purchase on his arm, rock solid and taut even as he sinks closer to you, while your other hand slips over his shoulder and idly combs the short hair at the nape of his neck. There was weight behind the next kiss, and weight against your body as he allowed himself to lean against you a little.
His hand comes down from the back of the couch and slides under your back. The warm touch traps you completely and you can feel your heart race and your breath shudder. His presence alone was enough to ease your anxieties, but his touch and his kisses had your body greedy for more. More than you were sure you'd get now, unable to beg and plead for things that might be too much too soon for him.
"More?" He asks, brushing his nose across yours.
You nod, threading your fingers through his hair and pulling him down, capturing his lips first for a brief moment before he pushes back into you. Your mouth parts to the fleeting feel and taste of an unsure tongue, but when your fingers tighten in his hair in response he grunts and deepens the kiss, spurred on by your consent.
The deep heavy kisses steal air and sense from you both for long minutes, and he only stops when your eyes begin to lose focus. Kissing your forehead gently, he shifts you to your side, sliding between your back and the couch as he wraps his arms around you. His chin rests atop your head, but he shifts and nuzzles into your neck, hugging you close for a moment before returning to the more relaxed position.
"I... want more." He says, the implication in his tone obvious, and you can feel your ears go red. "But more than that, I want to hear your voice." He kisses your head nuzzling into you and hugging you close again. "I can wait, so don't panic, it's just... when people talk too much it's irritating. But your voice is like wisteria, or sake." Zoro's lips and breath flow over the back of your neck and you can imagine his face is red, and not just his ears.
"It's calming."
You put your hands over his arm that's wrapped over your waist, pushing into him, and hugging his arm to you. You might be going through some of the most stressful events of your life, but you feel lucky. You couldn't imagine dealing with all of this alone, or with a match that didn't fit as well as Zoro did. The persistent concern of being cursed gnawed at you, but you did your best to ignore it.
Just because it had taken your family from you, twice, no less, didn't mean it could strike down someone as strong as Zoro.
So you hoped.
Next Chapter
#Some Direction#Roronoa Zoro x Reader#Zoro x Reader#one piece fanfiction#arranged marriage#reader insert
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The beauty of The Little Prince
Those who know me a bit are aware of the fact that I absolutely LOVE Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's "The Little Prince". I bring it up any chance I get and because today has shown me again just how much this book means to me, I thought I'd use Tumblr as a journal and share at least a few of the reasons why. It is currently 2 am as I am writing this, so I don't guarantee for any of this to make any sense.
Apart from being the book my mum used to read to me when I was very little, apart from being the book I learned to read with and being the first book I ever read in every language I speak, "The Little Prince" is also just such a wonderfully poignant book that, for me, is just as important nowadays as it was back when it was first released in 1943.
It deals with themes we all encounter on a daily. It talks about greed, love, friendship, sadness, vainness, and wisdom — just to name a few of them. And it does so very endearingly. Part of this book's charm is not just that utterly beautiful and simplistic style of its illustrations, but also that it can be read by children and adults alike. It's generally easy enough to understand for children while also being so descriptive of the themes mentioned without the so usual moralising undertone that is often apparent in comparable works. And there are so many layers to the quite simple story itself that I find something new to focus on every time I read it.
There are sequences that did not really interest me as a kid because I did not understand the full extent of what they meant. Sure, I knew there was something to take away from every sequence, but I did not always know what it was. And as I keep going back again and again, I keep finding new layers to uncover.
Take the sequence about watching the sunset 42/43/44 times, for example (depending on what edition/ language you're reading). It only gained my interest when I was about sixteen, because it suddenly spoke to me on another level that was not just about describing a pretty sky. It expressed exactly what I felt at the time but never managed to put into words, and it helped me understand what it was I was feeling. Before then, I only thought the short chapter was about the nice colours that make up a sunset, about the hues that are usually quite warm and can feel comforting. But it is really so much more.
Sadness can cause many things; for me, it makes me lose interest in most things I used to enjoy greatly. That one page that discusses the little prince feeling sad and watching the sunset so often told me to go outside and look at the sunset, and so I did that. After that, I began to appreciate the beauty in nature around me more. The sense of calmness and clarity that I get when I walk in nature and listen to the birds or sit and watch the sunset (or sunrise, occasionally) is something I never managed to replicate otherwise. People rarely talk about how they are truly feeling in everyday life, and there is still some sort of stigma around talking about mental health, depression, etc., which I think shouldn't be (but that's an entirely different discussion). We all are happy to talk about the things that fill us with joy, that excite us, so why can't we talk about the bad feelings we have in the same way? It is easy to feel that being sad or even depressed is simply not allowed in society, that one is alone with all the bad thoughts spinning around and around, because we never talk about them.
That short sequence about sunsets taught sixteen-year-old me that it was okay to be sad, that it was okay to be okay one day and a total mess the next, only to be better again. It taught me that sometimes, you just need to take a second to sit down, breathe deeply, and look around, try to find the beauty in things you usually overlook or see the beauty you have become blind to. It also taught me that extreme sadness does not last forever, which is what I keep clinging to, now that I feel myself slowly slipping back into that seemingly bottomless pit of sadness.
Another sequence that has greatly influenced the way I see things in life is the part about the fox. The taming. Because that is just such a vivid depiction of what making a friend is. It is a metaphor even kids understand. And it is so true to the core. You have to reveal who you are as a person to become friends with someone, you have to share your thoughts and beliefs. You have to get over that "being friendly strangers" phase, and for that, you need to find out more about the other person, their likes and dislikes. And only then you can determine whether you like the person enough to become friends with them. That seems pretty straightforward.
Sadly, though, we tend to skip parts. We don't get to know each other enough to get to the "being tamed"-part. We consider someone a friend too soon, when all they likely are is a friendly acquaintance and nothing more. I realised recently that I did not know some of my friends as well as I thought I did and it caused a lot of unnecessary added heartbreak. You know, when you find people you like and you get along with them splendidly whenever you see them, which might be frequent or sometimes not so much, it's easy to feel as though you're friends. But do they still message you when things get rough? Do they try to include you when they do not see you around as much as before? Likely, they do not. Or at least that is what I have experienced.
This goes hand in hand with what the fox says to the little prince about the rose. “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”
Because that's what true friendships are like, or at least they should be. They don't just end, they don't just fizzle out. You can't just up and leave when you're bored or when you disagree. Unless there is a real reason for you to stop talking or stop being friends, you should always keep an eye out for your friends. You got to know them, you tamed them, and you are at least a tiny bit responsible for them, too. Certainly not for everything they do, no, but for the part of their lives that intertwines with yours. That is what you are responsible for.
And there are some more quotes that have influenced me greatly. I won't go deeper into them now, because, frankly… if I did, I would never shut up. I will just leave them here to read and ponder for anyone who wants to.
Maybe they speak to you as much as they do to me, maybe they don't. That's the beauty of literature.
“I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.”
“Then you shall judge yourself," the king answered. "That is the most difficult thing of all. It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom.” (Chapter X)
“Where are the people?” resumed the little prince at last. “It's a little lonely in the desert…”
“It is lonely when you're among people, too,” said the snake. (Chapter XVII)
“Language is the source of misunderstandings.” (Chapter XXI)
“Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” (Chapter XXI)
“What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well.” (Chapter XXV)
“In one of those stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night. And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend… I shall not leave you.” (Chapter XXVI)
And last, but certainly not least:
“All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it.”
On that note…
#the little prince#le petit prince#antoine de saint exupéry#books that saved me#quotes I live by#late night ramblings
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