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#also if anyone has suggestions for bases let me know!!!!
boyybites · 5 months
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New deal for the new year, get all my bases for only $20!
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piningprecussionist · 4 months
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Im going to be completely frank with you all... and admit that I read these options and wasn't sure how to take this chart,,, so uh. Under the cut is Another Version. I'd apologize but I've given you the option to keep scrolling ¯\_(・・)_/¯
(If you notice characters missing on Kim's side, I probably figured she doesn't know who they are lol)
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For the record,,, if they *wanted* me to pull their hair-- *is shot several times before I can continue*
Uhh Matthew is here because I have been converted fully on he/him or enby lesbian Matthew I think. He lives in my brain rent free now, very gender. I'd pull his hair but also I think he mostly just deserves to have it played with nicely.
And Scott's here because 1) I enjoy trans Scott, 2) Kim Pine Brain Rot possibly, 3) idk he's like,, the exception. God damnit, I've fallen for the inexplicable Scott Pilgrim Effect. What the fuck--
I did think about doing this chart like everyone was actually applicable to my tastes, but even if they were I think the ones I didn't put up would have to fall on the caress side bc I just don't feel that way abt them lol.
Again, not to say that's the case for the gals over on that side,,, I just think I would want to be gentle w them shxkdjsdhbd with the exception for Lynette who probably deserves to have her hair pulled, but again I fear she would Hurt Me,,, but maybe in a fun way,,,
Anyway No One Look At Me....
(,, also,,, Ramona is so far over bc I think she would enjoy it,, otherwise she'd be closer to Kim in that section. Same thing w Roxie)
If anyone actually looks at this version, I'm not opposed to doing a version like this for Kim btw! Just ask for it so I feel like I'm not just Dropping This and scurrying away
#sp comic#meme#kim pine#id tag more people but i Do Not Have The Strength....#also i like Living and I think the idea of more people seeing the suggestively taken one makes me want to Die a little#(not to say you cant reblog this or whatever im just being dramatic shdjejsdhdhgdd I am generally a fairly Reserved person)#for the kim chart- i based my other scott placement on the interaction theyve had here! i think if they interacted for real or more often +#+ he'd end up definitively in the Pull Roughly suggestion with most people#ooc#he maybe if i finish edits for everyone i could try this w the au stuff. kit's thoughts might be different here...#hey*#also let me know if i forgot anyone??? i thought abt including the robots but. no hair. and gideon the cat has Fur so. on technicality-#but like barring parents and peter i think i got most people#i guess if lainey was here she'd go somewhere in the middle or right? w/out knowing what she'd be like#FUCK I DIDNT MEAN TO POST THIS. I MEAN IT'S HERE NOW SO IM NOT REMOVING IT BUT I AM S C R E A M I N G I WASNT READY#ah i forgot crash and the boys actually. thats why i wasnt supposed to post this yet#uhhhh Pull Roughly for like all of them. except trasha. trasha gets head pats and a juice box#except for on Kim's chart. on Kim's chart she's in the pull roughly section I can't lie to myself. she hates that kid 😭 also on that note +#+ knives should probably be in the middle section. like she wants to pull it for her having copped her style and being stupid abt scott.#but I didn't put her there bc I feel like even if she wants to she wouldn't ya know? knives is a Precious Angel after all
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asphodeldreams · 2 years
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annoyed that i had to take a break from collecting my silly little fandom data, but it’s only because i’m putting together an rvb trivia game for my friends to play this weekend jsjsjs
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ichorai · 6 months
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wool ; coriolanus snow.
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pairing ; young!coriolanus snow x capitol!reader (gender-neutral)
synopsis ; when you laughed, airy and light and reminiscent to that of wind chimes, coryo wished he could bottle up the sound and keep it as his, only his.
words ; 1.5k
themes ; mild fluff/angst, slightly suggestive
warnings / includes ; set before events of tbosas so no actual spoilers, making out, clemensia appearance, mentions of other characters, coryo's paranoia, he's not exactly toxic yet but the seeds are very much planted, i tried to keep him in character as best i could, let's pretend the academy also serves dinner
a/n ; this man has consumed me body and soul. this fic was inspired by the song wool by flatland cavalry on the movie soundtrack! let me know if you guys would like a second part :)
series masterlist. main masterlist.
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Coriolanus Snow was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He bore an aristocratic last name—yet you noticed that his dress shirt’s buttons seemed to be various different shades of black and slightly misshapen. His voice, so sweetly saccharine, charming, seductive—would whisper falsities like it was second nature. He would often claim that he wasn’t hungry, but you’d catch the longing glint in his pale irises as he eyed the steaming bread rolls Sejanus slathered with generous helpings of butter. 
Control. That was all he needed. 
It crumbled, ever so slightly, when you nudged your slice of apple pie in his direction. His eye twitched, and you pursed your lips, pulling your plate back to you. You ate quietly, and Coryo stared at you all the while, as if he were mentally dissecting your mind—studying you. 
You knew. It was all too clear, even if he wouldn’t tell you. And if he wouldn’t tell his closest friend—or, the closest thing he had to a friend, the two of you certainly did things that friends wouldn’t do—he most definitely wouldn’t let it slip that he was financially strapped to anyone else.
That same day, he met you in the back of the library. The two of you were supposed to be studying history—Professor Demigloss was one of the nicer teachers at the academy, but that didn’t mean he was any less strict with grades. And neither you nor Coryo could afford slipping now. Not if you both wanted to get into university. Being on top meant that there was only greater distance to fall.
But there were… distractions.
Mainly, his foot knocking against yours under the table. Your hand over his jostling knee. His teeth digging into his bottom lip. When you shifted so that your thighs brushed against his, the books spread out over the table were entirely forgotten.
He pushed you against the bookshelves a mere second later, the wood digging into your back uncomfortably, and kissed you until you grew dizzy. You were a welcome distraction—he could taste the apples on your tongue. The way you snaked your arms around his neck, toying with his pale blonde curls, pulling him closer until his body slotted against yours just perfectly—clicking into place like a pair of magnets facing opposite directions. It was desperate and heavy and he could only barely pull away to inhale sharply before cradling the base of your head to tilt your jaw back and kiss you even harder. Coryo swallowed any muffled whimpers that slipped from you when his free hand traveled lower.
Lower, lower, dangerously low—
When Clemensia’s voice echoed through the library in search of her lab partner, the two of you sprang apart, gasping for air.
She rounded the bend, and her dark eyes landed on the two of you. Keen, observant, narrowed. Coriolanus was flushed, hair mussed, lips swollen, chest rising and falling erratically. You were looking anywhere but the two of them, smoothing out your clothes and wiping your mouth with the back of your hand.
“Oh! I guess I’ll just have to find another time to bother you, Coriolanus,” she tittered, sickly sweet. She tilted her head with a tempered smile. “What’re you guys studying?”
Snow rolled his eyes in exasperation. “History,” he said. Curt, simple.
“Right.” She eyed you curiously. When she spoke again, it was directed more to you than him, sounding uncharacteristically void of frigid scorn. “I’d be careful if I were you. You sure he’s not just sleeping with you because you’re the top of the class?”
You stiffened, and Coryo bristled. 
“I’ll be fine, Clem. See you tomorrow.” 
There was another beat of terse silence. Her eyes darted warily between the two of you, and she whisked away in a flutter of red and black.
You blew out a breath. Your mouth tingled with the phantom memory of his lips planted over yours, and your cheeks flushed with heat. The two of you sat back down, both quiet. You worked in fluid tandem with each other, as you always did. His hands kept to himself this time. 
“I’m not using you,” he whispered, eventually. “It’s not like that.”
“I know,” you replied hesitantly, testing the waters. “It’s not like you’d need to. Your grades are just fine as is.”
The two of you kept working until your fingers cramped with overuse and his head pulsed with the beginnings of a migraine. 
“Dinner?” you asked once the clock struck six, nudging him. “I think they’ll be serving mashed potatoes today.”
His stomach clenched at the thought of warm food. Control.
“Sure,” he replied coolly, flicking his books closed and gathering up all the papers to stuff into his bag. “I’m sick of mashed potatoes, though.”
You shot him an incredulous smile, brows quirking up. He was lying, but you didn’t know. “Not even when it’s seasoned with roasted garlic? A dash of the freshest of herbs?”
The blue of his eyes gleamed when they bore into yours. “Not even then.”
“You’re a strange man, Coriolanus Snow.” Your lips twisted downward, but it was more of a smile than a frown. When your eyes darted below to glance at his school uniform, you couldn’t help but notice the unironed creases in the carmine fabric. One of the buttons—the very top one—was oddly shaped and a different color from all the rest. It reminded you of his dress shirt. You quite liked that dress shirt. He looked handsome in it, but you chalked it up to his uncanny ability to look handsome in just about anything.
Your head tilted to the side, molten eyes fixed on the button. You knew. He knew that you knew. Panic seized in his chest, an irrational clawing sensation searing within his lungs. Would you tell the rest of the class? What would you say to them? That he was living as filthily as a District boy? That he skipped meals because he couldn’t afford them? That his cousin mended his clothes for him?
But your frown-smile deepened. Fondness stained your expression, clear as day. Coriolanus found himself surprised, as he often did around you. 
“I love your buttons, by the way,” you mumbled, reaching out to trace it with a finger. He held his breath on instinct. “Is it a stylistic choice? Having them all irregular like this?”
Stylistic. Coriolanus almost laughed.
“Mhm. It’ll be in fashion one day. I’m just ahead of the trends,” he murmured charmingly. A bluff.
When you laughed, airy and light and reminiscent to that of wind chimes, Coryo wished he could bottle up the sound and keep it as his, only his. 
“Maybe I’ll start wearing mismatched buttons now, too. Rebel against uniformity.” You stood up from your chair as you spoke, not catching the way Coriolanus’ expression faltered momentarily with your last three words. It was a joke, he had to remind himself. Just a joke. “Come on. Let’s go have dinner. I’m starving.”
He jerkily stood up. Grabbed your hand just because he could, fingers folding over your wrist. He could feel your pulse, thumping quicker and quicker. You regarded him curiously. Snow’s remaining spindly hand cradled your face and he stepped closer, intuitive eyes roaming over your face, wondering just how much of you was real. How much of you was lying, just as he was?
His lips fell over yours again. This time, the kiss was sweeter. Slower, more languid. His nose brushed over your cheekbone, warm to the touch. You hummed pleasantly against him, before placing a hand flat over his chest—over the crooked button—and pulled away with a dazed smile. It felt dangerously good that you hadn’t tugged your hand out of his grasp yet. His grip tightened in a near possessive manner.
As the two of you began walking out of the library, Coriolanus couldn’t help but think back to your hyperbole—about how far from starving you truly were. You wouldn’t ever know, not when your family was the very epitome of Capitol wealth. But he was glad he wasn’t the only one lying, for once, even if your lie was merely an inflation of the truth. 
After dinner, Coryo worked off the top button of his uniform with repeated tugs to the threads, pulling apart Tigris’ handiwork. He slid it over the table to you, watching the way your countenance softened in endearment. He kissed you again in the dark hallways outside the cafeteria, finding it difficult to get your lips to melt away from your tightly-stretched grin.
He walked home with a mirroring smile and a missing button that night. One less piece of the wolf’s sheeply clothes.
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fox-guardian · 9 months
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hey guys did you know that um. did you know. first of all did you know i'm losing my mind, secondly, do y'all remember in tma how when someone reads a written statement, they don't really Stop unless they're interrupted? and they read the whole thing easy cheesy, no issues with reading whatever words are there? like. jon literally could read french for a whole statement and was Fine. granted, that's Jon, but like nobody else struggled with pronunciations and whatnot (that i can recall)
presumably, this is an eye thing. either as employees of the institute, or because everyone there is just also eye-aligned in some degree (melanie had the ghost hunting show, the eye is fond of martin, etc)
and then there's tim in season 3 ep 86
[Sigh] Statement of… uh, Benjamin Hatendi… Hateendi? Regarding a… [papers rustling] a blanket. Dead friend. Monster. Regarding his unavoidable and gruesome end. How he tried to hide. He couldn’t. Statement is from… 1983, March 2nd. And I guess… [long sigh] I guess I’m doing this one. Tim Stoker. Archival assistant… Archival prisoner at the Magnus Institute.
correct me if im wrong but i don't recall anyone struggling with pronunciations before this bit. but that's not even the biggest thing here, that's just a lil Taste, a lil Flavor.
note the phrasing there. "Regarding his unavoidable and gruesome end." why would he say this when the written text on the statement says this:
Uh, right. Benjamin Hatendi’s account of… [rustling pages] oh for… a, a strange encounter. Er, statement date, March 2nd, 1983. Melanie King recording. Apparently.
"a strange encounter". that's it. nothing about an unavoidable death, just a "strange encounter". Tim Why Did You Say That.
why would our dear timothy bimothy, who is being pushed to the brink, who is becoming rapidly more depressed and losing hope, say this?
this isn't the only time he's said some weirdly grim shit tho (ep 104)
There was never really any hope for me, though, was there? This was how it was always going to go.
and then there's this bit from elias apparently having Looked into tim (also 104)
TIM All right, hit me with your X-ray eyes then, boss. What do you see? ELIAS Disruption. An unpredictable, angry man with nothing left but the desire to feel in some way revenged. TIM [Sarcastic] Ooh, terrifying! Surely only magic could have let you see so deep inside my very soul.
"nothing left" but the desire to feel revenged. and tim doesn't dispute this, because it's true.
when he first joined the institute he did so in order to look for answers about danny, but then he stopped seriously looking. and now that the circus is back, this is all the drive he has left. not looking for answers, just wanting revenge. closure. an end, if you will.
this is Literally It For Him. a couple lines later he suggests elias kill him, he's At The Breaking Point.
he is so tired, he's lost all hope, and he's saying all this grim shit about "unavoidable death" and "this is how it was always going to go" like hmmmm sounds familiar doesn't it. DOESN'T IT (<- is going insane)
(ep 11) [....] despite the rapid response of the paramedics and how much of his medical history I had immediately to hand, there was nothing I could do to save him. (ep 11) I have no responsibility to try and prevent whatever fate is coming for you. Based on my previous experience, such a thing is likely impossible anyway,[....] (ep 121) There. That was it. That was our fate; where we would always be.
hmmmm sounds a bit like oliver huh? everyone's favorite ex-accountant avatar of the end?? right??
but then there's this last bit i have from ep 86.
why did he stop reading the statement
Statement. “My parents never let me have a nightlight. I was always afraid, but they were ju–” Ugh, this is stupid.
why did he do that. again, correct me if im wrong but when else has someone just Stopped Reading like that without someone or something else interrupting them? why could tim just stop himself?
my theory is this: at this point, tim is completely gone from being aligned with the eye. he no longer seeks to know what happened to danny, he just wants closure. he doesn't wanna do any statement work, and he keeps mentioning these tidbits about hopelessness and the inevitability of terrible events, specifically death.
the eye isn't compelling him to read the statements like it does the others, because it doesn't have as strong a hold anymore. the grip is slipping from him. and by the time the unknowing rolls around, maybe it's lost him for good. maybe he finally fell into a different power he never meant to serve, and yet, he does.
and maybe. just maybe. because i'm so not in denial. but MAYBE. he did die in the unknowing. but maybe he got better.
basically end!tim truthers rise up, this is how end!tim kayaking with his bf oliver banks can still win, etc etc I'm Going Feral <3
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robertreich · 7 months
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No Labels Isn't What It Claims to Be
The “No Labels” Party is not what it pretends to be. It’s a front group for Donald Trump.
Now I understand, if you’re sick of the two major parties, you might be intrigued by a party that claims to be a “common sense” alternative that finds the middle ground.
But if you or anyone in your life is planning to vote for No Labels — or any third party — in 2024, please watch and share this video first.
Here are three things you need to know.
First, No Labels is a dark money group with secret far-right donors. Investigative reporting has revealed that they include many of the same Republican donors who have pumped huge sums of money into electing candidates like Trump and Ron DeSantis. They also include the rightwing billionaire Harlan Crow, who spent years secretly treating Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to a lifestyle of the rich and famous.
If the No Labels Party is backed by Trump donors, in an election where Trump is on the ballot, there’s actually a label we should give to “No Labels.” Clearly, they’re a pro-Trump group.
Second, the premise No Labels is based on — that Donald Trump and President Biden are at equally extreme ends of the political spectrum — is preposterous.
Trump has been impeached twice, found by a jury to have committed sexual assault, is facing 91 criminal charges in four separate cases — two of them in connection with an attempt to effectively end American democracy.
There is no “equally extreme” candidate as Trump!
Finally, the structure of the Electoral College means that as a practical matter, a third party only draws votes away from whichever major party candidate is closest to it. No third party candidate has ever won a presidential election.
And in this particular election, when one of the major parties is putting up a candidate who threatens democracy itself, we cannot take the risk.
Donald Trump has already tried to overturn one election and suggested suspending the Constitution to maintain power. It is no exaggeration to say that if he takes the White House again, there may not ever be another free and fair election.
Democracy won by a whisker in the last presidential election. Just 44,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — less than one tenth of 1 percent of the total votes cast nationwide — were the difference between the Biden presidency and a tie in the Electoral College that would have thrown the election to the House of Representatives, and hence to Trump.
If candidates from No Labels— or any other third party, like the Green Party or the Libertarian Party —  peel off just a fraction of the anti-Trump vote from Biden, while Trump voters stay loyal to him, Trump could win the top five swing states comfortably and return to the Oval Office. And No Labels’ own polling shows they would do just that!
Let me be absolutely clear. Third-party groups like No Labels are in effect front groups for Trump in 2024, and should be treated as such.
The supposed “centrism” No Labels touts is nonsense. There is no middle ground between democracy and fascism.
Please share this video and spread the word.
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angelfoxx · 9 months
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how about a petit reader like 1.53 or 5'0 (size difference) with keegan, ghost or konig?
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┊ ➶ 。˚ ° ❝ HI, SHORT STUFF. ❞
… in which you’re (much) shorter than they are.
FEATURING: simon “ghost” riley, könig (does he have a last name or anything???) & keegan p russ.
WARNINGS: suggestive per usual. daily dose of shameless keegan hornyposting
NOTE/S: as a relatively small girlie myself (5’5, so not as short but still not tall) this one makes me giggle. tee hee tall babies tall babies
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★ SIMON “GHOST” RILEY.
✦ — He’s six foot four. Add on whatever height those boots give him, and he’s got a good foot and a half on you. It makes him even more intimidating in the beginning, because he’s just…a big guy. He’s loud and kind of scary and he’s just a fucking tank of a guy, all flat muscle and ridiculous height.
✦ — Once you two are…acquainted, physically…he sort of uses his size to his advantage. Not necessarily sexually. He’s quick to act as a human shield if anything is thrown your way. His first instinct when you two are in a crowded room is to shadow you, which is totally fine, but he’s enormous and so you can just sort of always see the edge of his silhouette in the tops of your peripherals.
✦ — You’re so much smaller than him, and beyond his usual hurt-my-troops-you-hurt-me demeanor, now you two are involved — and you’re so much smaller than him, and you’re so…little. You’re so little and it’s not that he thinks you’re weak but you’re so much smaller than him and most of the other people on the base. So when he sort of fights your battles for you, frets over you doing certain tasks on the field, et cetera, it’s not because he thinks you’re weak or incapable. He’s just…you’re so fucking short compared to everyone else. And he likes you. And you like him. And so he’s going to watch out for you even when it’s sort of pointless.
✦ — His public demeanor towards your size might be mildly annoying at times, but behind closed doors it’s a bit…different. Bringing up how overly protective he is of you results in a minor argument — when he finally lets slip that it’s partly because you’re so much fucking shorter than he is, you’re quick to argue that you’re just as capable as he is. You’re just as capable as anyone else on the base is.
✦ — He wants you to understand that he’s not coming from a place of total insanity. Most of the people on the base are guys, and they’re also usually over six foot. You’re a foot and then some shorter than almost everyone on the base. Physically, you’re at a disadvantage — and he proves that by picking you up under both arms and just…holding you there. He wants to show you that maybe he has a good reason to be “overly careful” with you. He cares about you, and you’re at such an obvious imbalance in a high-stress, rough working field.
✦ — Oopsie. Difference in size…mm. Mm. Suddenly, it seems less annoying and more arousing.
✦ — You stop complaining after you’re thrown back-first onto Ghost’s bed and the guy fucking blots out the ceiling because his shoulders are so broad and he’s tall enough to literally swallow you under his shape.
✦ — At some point, you stop complaining about Ghost being so physically overprotective of you. Actually, when there’s a crowd attending a debriefing, one of the soldiers swears that when Price mentions heavy artillery and Ghost sort of stances up behind you, a close shadow clearly unhappy with the idea of you manning the big guns, you reach back and pull his arm around your waist. Oh, and you seem to zone out looking at the way his hand is so much bigger under yours. That too.
★ KÖNIG WHATEVER THE FUCK HIS SURNAME IS.
✦ — Six foot ten. Six foot fucking ten. What the fuck? Why is he so tall? That’s almost seven feet. What the fuck? What the fuck?
✦ — He knows he’s tall. Obviously. He’s the kind of person to bully people with his height; if he’s involved in a heated argument, he’s no stranger to standing upright (he usually slouches) and sorry, but a seven-foot-tall man wearing an executioner’s mask, staring down at you from his colossal fucking height? You’re toast. Whoever he’s arguing with generally excuses themselves because dude, what the fuck? What the fuck. Hell no.
✦ — Keeping in mind that a lot of his men (and women) are on the taller side, you waltzing in at five feet tall almost makes him laugh. Because like, you’re short to everyone else, but everyone else is short to him. So you’re fucking tiny. He keeps calling you ameise, which you later learns means “ant”. He’s calling you an ant.
✦ — You’re a good soldier. In good fun, he’ll compare other soldiers to you; he’ll tell them that they’re being outshone by “eine kleine ameise”, which sort of pisses you off but you do remember that it’s a joke. Sort of. You are very short and you are outdoing other soldiers.
✦ — If/when you two get in a relationship, he’s keen to use his height against you. You go to find him in his office? He’ll stand up just so he can talk to you from two feet over your head. He’s leading a debriefing? He’ll make a point out of having you stand near him so that every time he straightens up, you have to deal with how fucking huge he is.
✦ — With his jests at your height, you often try to return the jokes. Every time he comes through a doorway, you rush over and ask if he needs ice for his forehead. Because, you know, he’s hitting his head constantly. Every time he’s on the field with you and you have to get in any sort of vehicle, you tell him that he’ll have to skip out on the ride because he’s too fucking tall to comfortably fit in the thing and putting him on the roof would make you guys an enormous target.
✦ — Your jokes sort of die down though when you’re pushed up against the wall, toes brushing the floor and breath shuddering. He’s got both forearms pinning your shoulders down and he’s pistoning his hips unfairly hard up into you and he’s sort of breathlessly laughing a wheezy cackle in your ear. “Why so quiet, meine kleine ameise? No words?”
★ KEEGAN P RUSS. THATS MY LAST NAME TOO BTW
✦ — He’s six foot one. So his height difference to you isn’t as excessive as the other two seen above, but…
✦ — He’s the most irritating about it. Probably. Because you’ll think everything is fine — he won’t think of you as any less, and he’s fully confident in your capabilities, et cetera — but the minute he gets you alone, the short jokes start. Is it chilly down there? Do you find the stairs too steep? A new truck came in this afternoon, but…well, it’s a little lifted, so you won’t be driving it. You’d only be able to get in with a step-stool — no way you’d be able to reach the pedals!
✦ — He’s insufferable. He’s fucking insufferable. It’s like you’ve opened up a Pandora’s Box of stupid fucking jokes that Keegan finds ridiculous. This shit gets genuine laughs from him. Maybe it’s the jokes or maybe it’s your reactions to them.
✦ — If/when you two are in a relationship, the jokes take a dirty turn. You’re trying to get in his pants? He’s biting his cheek and saying that he’s not sure he’ll fit, and you’re two seconds from slapping him. He makes random comments about how your knees will never turn red because you don’t even need to kneel in order to suck him off. Et cetera. Half the time the jokes go over your head and it takes you a good ten or fifteen seconds of being confused in order for you to realize that he’s making sex jokes at you. By that time, he’s usually turning away and biting back amusement.
✦ — He seems to take a great joy in bringing you stupid gifts. Ever the romantic; if you’re both scouting on a looser mission, he’ll pick you flowers. Specifically, though, he’ll pick you tiny flowers. Or, like, petals. He asks you to carry his rifle and walks behind you because apparently it’s the same height (or taller) than you are and it’s funny to watch. At one point, he gets his hands on a tiny model gun and he’s practically bursting at the seams to gift it to you as a “proper size gun”.
✦ — He knows he can make those jokes and get under your skin. He doesn’t care, though. When he’s laying in his barracks with you sitting on his stomach and jabbing him in the chest with that stupid toy gun, he’s just smirking like an idiot. He finds how easy you are to irritate so incredibly fun to mess with. He’s just sort of egging you on the whole time. “Yeah? I’m bothering you? I’m frustrating you?”
✦ — You’re still complaining and whining, so eventually he just starts flipping the script. He’s saying it’s so good you’re short because it makes it so much easier for him to flip you over and pin your shoulders down, and it makes it so much easier for him to wrap his arms around your mouth to keep you quiet when you two are tangled in his sheets at night with his teeth buried in your shoulder and his hips flush to yours, and you fit so nice and snug around him…
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keisobe · 11 months
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౨ৎ ‧˚ 𝐂𝐀𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐈𝐍 𝐀 𝐖𝐄𝐁 (𝐩𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐛. 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐫 + 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐨’𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚) ⋮ heavily suggestive. age difference. 18+ reader. cheating. ooc. ⎯ spiderdads love having you as their little intern.
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recently receiving a spider watch after a year of your debut as spider-woman in your dimension, you made it your ultimate duty to live up to the expectations of your variant superiors. your forthcoming nature and free time was open to anyone, but you found yourself always being in the radar of peter and miguel.
it would start off with innocent requests.
“hey kid, is it fine if you could grab me some coffee?” peter would smile at your enthusiastic nod and hand you his ‘number one dad’ mug. by now you know peter’s order— steaming hot coffee with powdered creamer.
“kid, transfer these files to sector 3.” miguel wouldn’t even look at you, but you still flashed a grin and began to sprint through the bustling hallway. you also learned he liked the empanadas at the cafeteria.
and in exchange of completed requests, you’ve found yourself looped into their peculiar ways to regard your work.
“good girl.” peter’s voice was hushed and deep as he sweetly patted your head, taking a careful sip of his aromatic coffee with an attractive grin. he left you a little stunned after that, or more so a blushing mess. then you watched him go back into his usual ‘i’m a proud dad’ routine and attend to mayday back in his dimension.
“gracias cari– u-umm i mean thanks… kid.” miguel uncharacteristically fumbles his words as he finally darts his ruby eyes away from the glowing, holographic screens, looking into your eyes with actual acknowledgement of your presence. his gaze was intense, a sense of longing in them. then he abruptly dismisses you, leaving you with a sense of wonder as to what just happened as you exited his lab.
it was always a special occasion when the two of them would be together.
“kiddo, you free?” peter shouted as he waved you down in the midst of you finishing a small errand for jess.
you responded with a firm nod as you sent jess a brief message on your watch. the smile you wore slightly faltered at the sight of a weirdly unreadable miguel beside peter— eyes glittering with a shade of red that you’ve never seen before. it made you feel on edge. nonetheless, you approach the two with a determined glow on your face as you let them lead you with peter filling in the awkward silence with his little quips and sarcastic comments towards miguel.
at this point, you've been working for the spider society for three months now. the teasing remarks from the other spider-people toned down and you’re finally classified as a real agent, exclusively working alongside miguel, jessica, and peter. and even through the fantastic upbringings in your life, something has been eating at you— more correctly, two people have been making your life miserably complicated.
miguel was by far the most interesting person you’ve met. his past takes a toll on him every counting day and the integral goal he based his life around is to never repeat his one mistake. although he’s very calloused and irritable, you admired his ambition and the rare moments his cold demeanor would falter to reveal a huge dork (in no other dimension have you ever seen a grown man get bullied by his own ai). as much as miguel shared a huge part of himself to you, he seemed far more content with being completely alone and devoting his life to a vow he made that day his daughter and an entire universe was wiped from existence.
peter, sarcastic and careless in nature, recently became an attentive father. it was endearing to see, considering the various stories of his depressing upbringing would make your warm lunch turn ice cold and soggy within a minute into his sulky narration (you might’ve avoided spending your lunch breaks with him afterwards). and his rekindling love with mary-jane finally gave him a sense of comfort and relief of a normal, happy family life. peter gave you a sting of hope that things will somehow turn out okay in the end. it made you feel closer to him, until you remembered that he was just sharing some old, adult wisdom to you.
and that was fine with you. you can totally push aside your small crushes for peter and miguel. one was emotionally unavailable and one was in a stable relationship with a beautiful daughter. plus they were your bosses and twice your age. so why? why is that miguel would linger a little longer whenever you announced that you’ll be going back to your dimension? why is that peter’s brown eyes would brighten up whenever you held mayday lovingly in your arms?
it didn’t help when miguel would start to call you endearing pet names with a genuine smile on his face, or when peter would situate you on his lap as he nuzzle his nose into your neck just because ‘it felt comfortable’. this conundrum made you think that you were completely losing your damn mind, that somehow you were looking too deep into the lines. but you concluded it was just all a huge misunderstanding on your part.
yeah, that’s what it was.
“you have to be quiet, okay?”
peter mumbles in the shell of ear as he clumsily discards your tight spider suit in the corner of the room while miguel makes sure that all the doors are sealed shut and locked from prying eyes.
it was normal just a few minutes ago. peter ribbing miguel with his usual dry humor, and miguel ignoring his antics to tick him off while leading you both to what you presumed to be a private conference room to discuss the important matters of anomalies.
but when the three of you nearly approach the door, peter suddenly stops talking. cautiously looking around his surroundings, peter presses himself closer and subtly grinds his hips onto the softness of your ass while miguel’s lingering hand gropes the curve of your tits— his neutral expression completely taunting your shattering composure. this is where your actual conundrum begins.
the room continued to hiss as the electric engines faintly knocked on the metal walls. the dimmed lights that made your very inappropriate circumstances much more intimate than it should be.
the chiseled arch of miguel’s cheekbones brushed the plush skin of your spread thighs, his sharp canines eagerly leaving tender marks that were reserved for only the three of you to look at. each bite and suck left you weakly whimpering his name with growing anticipation.
it was lonely back in your dimension, your bed was cold without another body to warm it up. returning back to an empty apartment would elicit forbidden thoughts— ones that held you in a heated daze until you realize you’re dumbly standing in the middle of the room and shamelessly yearning to open another portal to be in the arms of peter and miguel.
god, this was so wrong.
“aw, do you want more kid?” peter teasingly asks as his stumble scrapes along your jawline, leaving marks of his own along the junction of your neck.
miguel gazed up at your troubled expression, an amused smirk dancing along the swell of your inner thighs.
morals, pay attention to your morals.
you nodded eagerly, a force of habit after attending to the various needs of your superiors, but miguel wouldn’t take that as an answer.
“you have to tell us cariño.” miguel grumbles in between his love bites— crimson eyes glowing under the dull light.
oh well.
“yes! please, i need more.”
peter and miguel muse at your neediness, swiftly changing their positions as they propped you comfortably on a table placed in the middle of the room. you flinched from the chilling contact, but you were immediately warmed up when both men knelt down— each hooking an arm around your quivering legs and indecently displaying you as they spread your limbs. they move like they were on the same wavelength, finally agreeing on one thing.
guilt pinged in your stomach once again when peter’s wedding band brushes against your skin and miguel’s spider watch brightly flashes with pilled voice memos urgently calling for his assistance.
obviously annoyed, miguel hastily pries off the pinging watch and puts it aside while peter eagerly tucks his wedding ring in the pocket of his discarded pink robe. weirdly, their visible desperation to have their attention focused on you filled you with pride.
finally, two pairs of eyes were trained on you, sparkling with a hypnotizing red and a drunken brown. their previous notions left no ounce of guilt, instead it made them hyper focused with lust.
“don’t worry querida,” miguel gruffly murmurs as he snags your underwear with a sharp finger. “peter and i will take good care of you.”
“but don’t tell anyone kiddo.” peter cuts in, a subtle grin on his face but through his playful tone, he was dead serious.
you compliantly nodded.
of course, you won’t tell a single soul.
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KEISOBE © 2023. please do not copy, translate, or modify any of my work. all of my works are not permitted to be posted on any other sites.
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justadeadreaper · 3 months
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okay so I'm curious- puptrapping you say? That you'd need another post to go into? I'd like to encourage this please
Puptrapping?
You want to hear about puptrapping, you say?
Anon, your wish is my command.
Just so you know, this is like you encouraging a crack addict by finding them a new dealer. I am not joking because this is my obsession at this point, but I do encourage you to send in more asks about Omega!Makarov or ideas you want me to write about because I will. I never originally thought of puptrapping; instead, it was my dear friend @frogchiro who said that she thought he would based on a comment I made about him tying you down to make sure you cum in him. Also, do thank @frogchiro because she helped me form these ideas in our late-night rants, and she is my biggest encourager.
Now that I have written this, I am tempted to write about Omega!Makarov with pups or a fic based on this idea if anyone wants it.
Obvious warnings for puptrapping (omegaverse version of babytrapping) and all the shit that goes with it, Omega!Makarov spiking your drink with an omegaverse version of Viagra (that sounds so fucking weird), but also a big misunderstanding between Omega!Makarov and reader.
This whole idea is based on it being a misunderstanding. Omega!Makarov is a feared man; no one even knows he is an omega; you were only allowed that grace of knowledge due to being his alpha -specifically chosen for being the most desired for your size and strength-. Knowing how secretive he was about his second gender, you presumed that he would never want pups as it would reveal his identity to the world, and he could not have that, could he? Hell, you did not even think he loved you; he only used you to satisfy his natural instincts that come with being an omega so that he would not be on a constant edge from having his subconscious desires not be fulfilled. You enforced the rule around using some form of protection as you did not want to force or pressure him into having pups that he would never want in a million years.
But oh, you poor, dumb alpha. How wrong could you be?
Omega!Makarov is infatuated with you. As soon as he saw you, he knew that you had to be his; no one else would be able to satisfy him after he saw you. Yes, he may be a cruel, heartless man but he loves you in his own special way and let me tell you he loves you with all his heart! He genuinely does! Now, being that he loves you so much, it is only natural that he wants your pups; it is only made worse by him being an omega and having the natural instincts to breed and have pups that poor omegas like him have. He knew he wanted pups from a young age, even if he knew that he did not love like a normal person does. Another part of him wanting to have pups is his own relationship with his father. A narcissistic, bullheaded alpha that abused Makarov and his poor brother for being omegas, Makarov had to watch as his poor mother was abused for not giving that asshole the alpha sons he desperately wanted. His father was never nice to him; he was a horrid father who chickened out at the last minute instead of suffering the consequences of his actions. Makarov does not want to be like that; he instead wants to be the best father he can be and have as many pups as he can to shove it to the old man who damaged him so much, to embrace the one thing his father abused him for and always forced him to hide.
So, for you to say that you need to use birth control? That is the biggest insult to him! Do you not love him? Do you not think he is a good enough omega to have your pups? Are you just using him to get yourself off? Are you planning on just dropping him off one day? Why do you not feel like him? He wants your pups so badly, why do you not want to give them to him?
He damn near hissed at you for suggesting such a thing, but he decided to hold his tongue as he knows he will get his way, he always has.
Now it just. depends on what type of birth control you force him to use for what he does to still be able to have your pups.
Condoms? Expect every single one to have multiple puncture holes from the set of pins that used to belong to his mother. Small enough for you not to notice but just big enough to allow enough cum to come through to give him a nice litter of pups. But that is only if you are stupid enough to allow him to be the only one to supply the condoms or allow him to be around the box by himself for longer than two minutes. If you buy them and never let him near them, you can be sure that those things will rip because, for some reason, your knot was a lot bigger than it normally is causing the condom to rip.
Birth control? He is lying about being on it. The prescription he showed you was a fake he forced a poor pharmacist to make as the pills inside that he showed you were nothing more than sugar pills mixed with the omegaverse version of Viagra known as an Amplifa that helps people knot while also increasing their fertility that he forced the drug dealers he hires to make. Each day, he will take them in front of you, knowing that they do not work. But if you are the one to supply the pills, then he is finding any pill or herb known to man to counteract it so that the birth control fails.
The Amplifa he uses to spike your drink and his own have a few side effects. I imagine omegas to have a reverse knot to match an alpha’s knot, which means they are doubly bonded. How it works is by inflating the sides of the passage like how, for an alpha, the base inflates to lock inside; it is to make sure that the alpha is being milked of all their cum and that the omega is too tight for the alpha to pull out. Since both he and you have been spiked with it, it causes your knot to inflate beyond the point of it being pulled out while he is too tight that it hurts to try and pull out. It also makes the knots last for hours upon hours instead of the normal half an hour to an hour, as it makes you cum so much. Not to mention it makes you incredibly more horny so you could fuck for longer.
With everything prepared, he has sex with you.
Once you are close to cumming he leg locks you making sure you can not push him off as you cum. Your knot inflating inside him as he milks you dry, all while he is still moving his hips in a specific motion to cause more friction that stimulates you and makes you hard yet again. Wiggling his hips and whining as you have yet another orgasm while the two of you are stuck together as his reverse knot will just not let go. Watching as his tummy begins to form a bump already as it grows from how much cum you have stuffed inside of it with every orgasm. He puts on the “I’m innocent, I swear!” act; he uses all the manipulation tactics he knows, the fake tears, the lies, the everything. He is just a simple omega who was trying to enjoy sex with his alpha; he has no idea what is going on. Whining over how worried he is since with this much cum he is most definitely already pregnant, even if you were being safe. All of this while he continues to move his hips as you cum once more.
And as soon as you are asleep from exhaustion and overstimulation he is gently caressing his stomach as he purrs. He can already imagine the litter of pups he will be having in a few months and how much of a happy family you all will be...
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reiderwriter · 5 months
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Hi I’m new to this so I’ve no clue if this is how you request, but I was thinking Spencer fluff, in earlier seasons where he’s a little bit more awkward but has a little bit of confidence, based on that one episode where hotch says Reid was propositioned by all the prostitutes & you’re dating him but you’re not the jealous type, they know what they have with Spencer is good and knows he worships the ground they walk on, so isn’t worried or threatened by anyone so while he’s getting hit on being a blabbering mess they just giggle to themselves making little suggestive comments. Hope this makes sense🥰
A/N: That's one of my favourite scenes because it's so hilarious to see Hotch cracking jokes for some reason. That and "did you join a boy band?" Iconic, truly. ❤️ Thank you for requesting, I'll shut up now.
Warnings: none
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You were aware that Spencer Reid was a catch. Perfectly aware. More than aware. Desperately aware.
He was, quite possibly, the most attractive bean pole of a man that had ever walked the earth. He was beautiful and he was loving and his smile lit up the room and you were quite honoured to be able to call him your boyfriend.
It was not lost on you that many other people - not just women - also desired him. Which led to some downright hilarious instances.
“It's not funny, Y/N.” He pouted, that adorable furrow in his brow coming back and finding it's perfect place on his face as you stared up at him. You knew the expression you were showing him was a little bit dreamy, head in both hands as you gazed admiringly up at him, but you simply didn't care what kind of company you were in.
“Spencer, you were propositioned by 11 prostitutes.”
“I'm sure they were just teasing, Y/N. I'm awkward, I stand out like a sore thumb, I'm not buff or hot, I'm-”
“A complete and total liar!” You stood, gasping and grasping non existent pearls, playing up your disbelief. He cracked a smile and you paused briefly to send up a prayer to God, thanking them for putting a real angel on Earth.
“Spencer, you may be a little bit nerdy, and you absolutely do not know when to shut up. Your hair may always looks like your mom did it for school picture day, and your fashion sense is questionable to out it kindly-”
“Is there a but? I need there to be a but or I'll cry myself to sleep.”
“But those things are incredibly endearing. And did I mention you're really hot? It's like you're all members of the Scooby Doo cast rolled into one body and somehow that really works for me.” To punctuate your words, you took a step closer, letting your hand play with his tie as you slowly encouraged him to take a small step towards you as well, until you weren't sure where the heat that warmed you was coming from.
It could've been rolling off of him, or you, or it could've been a fire burning between you, as you fixed his tie and ran a hand through his hair.
“I'm not joking with you, Spencer. I love watching everyone appreciate your beauty and your intellect. Frankly, it turns me on.”
“Okay. I'll remember that, thank you.”
“Turns on the prostitutes, too.”
“Y/N! They're just trying to make a living, if you'd have been out there canvassing they'd have tried it with you too.” You had to giggle a bit at his loom of exasperation, flas to see that it was tainted with an uncontrollable smile, a small lifting at the corners of his mouth that he couldn't combat.
“Spencer Reid, Hotch told me that one of the girls offered you $100 for a ride.”
“That's not exactly cheap or a discount, Y/N, the going rate for a working girl in the area is-”
“Spencer. She was offering you money.” His brows knitted again and then his eyes widened in realisation.
“Oh. Oh, she did look very disappointed now that I think about it.” You pressed your hand to your mouth to suppress the small pleasurable giggles from slipping out and composed yourself, before slipping your arms around his waist.
“So, Spence. How is it that you know the going rate of a working girl?” You lifted your eyebrow and watched him panic, ready to memorise every expression that ever passed across his angelic features.
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vamphrrr · 4 months
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Hi!! i loved your tough love fanfic of clarisse! so i decided to ask if you can make a clarisse la rue , (aphrodite child) reader, but she’s not some normal teenager… she’s a princess if you get what im saying??? lets say that aphrodite dated a princess and had a child with him before she left, and so that’s where reader grew up, no one knew that the reader was a princess u til she told clarisse, she was really worried clarisse was gonna hate her but clarisse is like “Woah me mad at you? no way” and clarisse supports her! (Including some kissing, flirting, it would be super nice if the reader was shorter the clarisse probably up to her chest like in the tough love fanfic!)
notes ; omgggg this is so cute!! i’m so glad u liked my last fic i was nervous about posting 😭. also i’ll be making clarisse call reader princess too now knowing SHE IS ONE! they’re already dating in this. i used the same banner bc i’m too lazy to create new ones based on plot LMAO. i wrote this so soon but sometimes if anyone requests it might take me a couple of days bc of school and stuff! think i went a little overboard with this one. i should probably start counting how much i write lol.
%% are you mad?
in which your super attractive girlfriend finds out the secret you’ve been hiding from her for so long. also, she accidentally meets your dad.
— clarisse la rue x f!aphrodite!reader
warnings ; reader has doubts, tall & buff clarisse / short reader (again), flirty!clarisse flirty!clarisse, a little angst?, kissing, two swear words, flustered reader (oh how the turned tables), ooc clarisse? (i’m never sure if i write her right), one suggestive thought in the first paragraph (nothing happened tho!). a little too much background i think… too much father, did my daddy issues come out? made reader’s dad a king bc plot reasons, maybe more emotional than requested srry😭
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You couldn’t believe you were doing this. Sneaking off from your girlfriend’s warm bed in the middle of the night. For a minute, you wondered how’d that look to anyone watching. A girl hastily running from a cabin that she very obviously did not belong in, a long shirt —it was Clarisse’s— accompanied by small shorts, (which were not visible might you add). Oh and how could you forget, you were barefoot. Who’s bright idea was that? Oh, yeah, yours. Why?
Gods were you cold. Should’ve brought a jacket, you thought.
The bottom of your feet hurt, stepping on rocks and sticks and who knows what else would do that to you. Next time, you would definitely bring hiking boots or something. And a jacket. In the forest, you were far away from anybody that might disturb you. Pulling Clarisse’s shirt up until your shorts were visible, you dug your hand inside the pocket, meeting with a drachma. You approached the round well, splashing water mist being met with sunlight from below, creating a rainbow.
How? It was the middle of the night. Why was the sun inside? You decided not to think about it.
This well was old, dirty from not being used much. See, not many people knew about it. Apparently, it was for those that needed to talk to somebody reallyyyy privately, that’s why it was hidden in the forest, only appearing at night. You weren’t sure how that worked, but you stumbled upon it a couple of years back when you were being chased by wood nymphs for being out at night. They found you, obviously. Punishment was not escapable and you ended up having to clean the stables the day after you got your nails done. Yuck.
Now here you were again, this being the only place where you could speak to your father without anyone finding you. It’s not that you were embarrassed of him per say, it was that you really didn’t want anyone to know that you were a royal. I mean, how ironic was that? A daughter of Aphrodite, a Princess? Forget it. You’d get made fun of for the rest of your life. You especially didn’t want Clarisse to know. She was your girlfriend yes, and this was something very important that you needed to tell her about, but you weren’t sure how’d she react. You knew she wouldn’t make fun of you like others would, but you didn’t know if dating a literal Princess was too much of a deal breaker for her.
Being with a royal was too stressful, there was so much that they’d get criticized for and so little people that they’d be accepted by. Your dad was a King with many past lovers, Aphrodite included. The people loved her, I mean, who wouldn’t? But then she was gone, disappearing the same night she gave birth to you. Your dad knew of her, of this. He knew she’d be gone by the time the sun rose. Yet, he did nothing. Who was he, than just a mortal man? He could not stop a goddess from leaving.
He got with others after that, your dad had a lot of love to give. Maybe that was something that attracted your mother to him. Public lovers were not taken well, the people respected the King, sure, they just didn’t respect his partners. Constant judging, constant eyes following their every move, constant hatred being thrown, constant stress on their shoulders. In the end, they could never take it. Running away or completely disappearing seemed to be something they all had in common. Your father had to give up on love, small secret romances blossomed for a while, but never enough for it to go public.
That is why you were so scared to tell Clarisse of your status. She was smart, she’d realize being with you would not be worth the hassle. She’d leave you just like everyone else left your father. Clarisse was the love of your life, you don’t think you’d be able to handle it if she left.
You threw the drachma in, calling for the rainbow goddess to let you see your father.
“Dad,” you said, once the back of his head was visible.
He jumped, turning around. “Oh! My dearest daughter, you scared me.” He laughed a bit, looking at you with such soft eyes it almost made you cry. “Why are you Iris messaging me at this hour? Isn’t it time for you to be resting?”
You swallowed, a sudden knot appearing in your throat. “I just needed someone to talk to.” Playing with the ring around your finger that Clarisse gave you for your one year anniversary, you choked out. “I have this amazing girlfriend, she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me here at camp and—” You stopped talking, taking a small breath, not noticing the familiar figure of Clarisse standing a couple of feet behind you. “—and I’m scared to tell her that I’m not who she thinks I am. That I’m not this girl that just so happens to be a daughter of Aphrodite. I love her so much and I want to tell her about you. I want to bring her to you in person because I want the two people I love the most to meet. But how do I do that when I haven’t even told her I’m a Princess and that the only way you two could meet is if I took her to our royal palace?”
Your father widened his eyes, not expecting his little girl to burst out her feelings just like that. He sighed, glancing behind your shoulder. “If this girl you love so much really loves you like you do her, she wouldn’t care about your status.” Staring at who he assumed was your girlfriend behind you, he continued. “She wouldn’t care that you hid this from her. Instead, she’d try to see it from your point of view.” Moving his eyes away from Clarisse, he looked at you, eyes squinting in light mischief. “You should tell her, she’ll understand. I love you.” Is all he said, before he was gone.
You’re left staring at a rainbow, your dad nowhere in sight. Suddenly, a branch broke from behind you. Turning around quickly, heart beating rapidly, you’re met with the eyes of your girlfriend. You immediately let out a gasp, not knowing she was there.
Clarisse speaks up. “You’re a Princess?”
You felt your mouth dry up. With wide eyes, you respond. “Please don’t hate me! I didn’t know how to tell you!” Walking closer to her, you reached your hands out, grabbing one of her own with both of yours. “Please, you have to understand. I didn’t want this to ruin us.”
She stayed silent.
Silence was haunting, especially coming from Clarisse, someone who was always provoking people and boasting loudly everywhere. You gulped, with lips shaking you asked, “A-are you mad?”
She lets out a huff. Was something funny? Was she annoyed? Angry? Did she not care at all? Those were the questions running through your mind. You’d find out the answers soon enough.
“Woah,” she shook her head, letting you see the slight amused smile on her face. “Me? Mad at you? No fucking way.” She reached her free hand towards your face, moving away the strand of hair that fell slightly over your eye. “It just… surprised me s’ all.”
You let out a breath, relaxing and putting your head against her chest. “Thank the gods, I thought you were going to break up with me or something.”
Reaching out again, she placed her forefinger below your chin, raising your head to meet her eyes. “How could I ever break up with someone so beautiful?” She leaned down, your lips grazing against each other’s. “Why would I leave when I can now be your knight in shining armor?” Closing the distance, your eyes fluttered shut. Butterflies were in your stomach just like the first time you two ever kissed. Without your lips separating, she put one arm around your waist, the other grabbing below your thighs, hoisting you up.
“Ah!” you screamed, separating your lips, not expecting it.
Clarisse smirked, seeing you get flustered. “You don’t have any shoes on.” You pouted, putting your arms around her neck so you wouldn’t fall while she walked back (not that she would let you fall off in the first place). “Didn’t think I’d notice, did you, princess?” Teasingly, she used the pet name, now knowing how much truth was behind it.
You whined, pressing your face against her neck. “You’re so unfair. I’m supposed to be the one flustering you.”
“Awe, the princess is mad,” she cooed, letting her lips touch the tip of your ear. “You want me to get on one knee and apologize?”
Clarisse laughed when you let out a loud groan, hitting her lightly on the chest. Smiling, she knew the only way she’d ever leave you was if she was six feet under. And even then, she’d find a way to get back to the land of the living just to be by your side.
The only things heard in the dead of night were the grasshoppers, chirping their little melodies into the darkness. That was until you muttered sleepily, letting out a yawn. “I love you.”
Clarisse repeated after you. “I love you.” Feeling your eyes fluttered close, she followed it with an almost silent “goodnight.”
Now that you were asleep, she felt panic slowly rise, steps quickening to reach the Ares cabin faster. She could only think about two things now.
Holy shit, she’s a Princess. Oh my gods, I met her dad.
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caligvlasaqvarivm · 2 months
Text
Love is Stored in the Cat: A Nepeta Leijon Character Study
I guess these are a series now! I also have a request for Feferi in my inbox that I'll get around to eventually.
SO! Dear, sweet Nepeta.
Nepeta is the troll that is most against the existence of the hemocaste.
I believe the Ultimate Self speech was originally going to be from her, not Davepetasprite^2.
She's bad at shipping.
These all make her extremely impurrtant!!!
So furst of all, I'm going to start with the same disclaimer as my Eridan essay (go read that first!!! It sets up a lot of ideas that I'm expanding on here), which is that the things Hussie says are going to be lowered in value, because he likes to play coy about plot stuff. I'm also not counting anything but the actual text as canon, and even with in that text, I'm counting everything after GAME OVER as soft canon - a suggestion of what would have been, often truncated for time, often a deliberate middle finger to the shitty fandom.
Okay, so with that squared away!
Nepeta Says Fuck The Hemocaste
I'm not going to bother doing a deep dive on Nepeta's characterization, because fur the most part, I think the fandom more or less gets her right - she wears her heart (h33h33) on her sl33ve, after all! She's a very sweet little catgirl who loves roleplay and shipping, who is also a vicious hunter of wild beasts and lives in a cave. She's very nice and friendly, but has a tough streak and a spine.
She also says fuck the hemocaste, why does that even exist:
CT: D --> Your fraternization with the base classes have 100sened your morals, can't you see this AC: :33 < no! i dont care, they are fun AC: :33 < and i dont know anything about classes or bases or blood color, it doesn't matter! AC: :33 < what does gr33n blood even mean! it doesnt mean anything to me and it shouldnt mean anything to anyone else!
This is a radical stance not outright shared by any of the other trolls. Aradia calls highbloods "hateful sn0bs" that she and Tavros shouldn't have "ever had anything t0 d0 with", the highbloods are, of course, all casteist to varying degrees, and even Karkat seems fairly accepting of the class divide, at one point taunting Vriska that her rejection from the blue team is "ANOTHER INFURIATING VICTORY FOR GUTTER BLOOD OVER ARISTOCRACY". Not to mention his long-held dream of becoming a threshecutioner.
Even Feferi, despite saying to Eridan that "W-E AR-E NOT B-ETT-ER T)(AN ANYBODY!!!!!", is actually perfectly comfortable with the caste system's existence, comparing having to stop using her royal typing quirk to "peasant-IFICATING" herself - and let's not forget that a Beforus under her rule had its caste system 100% intact.
This means that Nepeta is the ONLY troll who has said, in no uncertain terms, that the caste system should not exist. It's stupid, it's bad, and it doesn't meowtter!
AND SHE'S RIGHT.
But she's never able to fully express this opinion, which brings us to:
A COMPLICKATED RELATIONSHIP WITH EQUIUS
Now, before I say anything, I must insist that I do believe these two work as good moirails. That does not, however, stop them from being 13, and therefore, being poor to each other the way 13-year-olds sometimes are. I don't think they should break up; I think they should re-examine certain dynamics, and I think they need some space to breathe apart from each other.
Equius has a lot of problems, which I won't get into overmuch here, because... that's a whole essay on its own (are you people seeing a trend yet). But with regards to Nepeta specifically, he's extremely controlling and protective, to the point where she's a little scared of him before the game begins:
AC: :33 < well it does sound like it will be a lot of fun but i think i should get purrmission first GC: BL4R!!!!! GC: TH4TS SO STUP1D GC: H3S NOT TH3 BOSS OF YOU AC: :33 < i know! AC: :33 < but still im kind of scared of him and i think purrhaps its best to just run it by him first so there isnt a kerfuffle about it or anything
She's also afraid to tell him about her crush on Karkat, since she knows he doesn't like Karkat:
AC: :33 < well AC: :33 < i have never told anybody this not even my moirail AC: :33 < heh, actually hes the LAST guy i might tell, he so wouldnt appurrve X33 AC: :33 < but yes i have liked somebody for quite some time, but alas he doesnt know it
By the time they end their game, she's gotten over this fear, seeing as she spends many hours curled up with Equius in a pile of robotics parts, but it still must be noted that they have some issues in their relationship that were never resolved, primarily on Equius's end. What this means for Nepeta, however, is that in addition to setting her up as the most outright anti-classism troll, the comic sets her up to be socially isolated due to her moirail's paranoia about letting her associate with both lowbloods (seeing them as bad influences) OR other highbloods, seeing them as dangerous.
He's not entirely wrong - his refusal to allow her to participate in FLARP kept her from winding up entangled in the horrible chain of revenge, as Tavros alludes:
AT: iT'S PROBABLY FOR THE BEST, AT: tHAT YOU LISTEN TO HIM, AC: :33 < i dont know AC: :33 < you think so? AT: wELL, AT: iF YOU DIDN'T LISTEN TO HIM BEFORE, AT: yOU MIGHT HAVE PLAYED GAMES WITH US BEFORE, AT: aND SOMETHING BAD MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED TO YOU, AC: :33 < hmm purrhaps
But he's still wrong. And it's probably an uncontrolled manifestation of his Heir of Void abilities - he's both consciously and unconsciously hiding her from other people.
This isn't to say she doesn't stand up for herself! Many of her discussions with Equius are pseudo-arguments, and she does get her way often enough, managing to get him to roleplay with her, and managing to get him back in the roboti% pile to talk about his feelings about Aradia. She also talks to the humans explicitly against Equius's orders, although she's keeping it a sneakret from him:
NEPETA: :33 < but equius already furbid me from doing that :(( NEPETA: :33 < not that i am listening to him, but shhhhh! :33 KARKAT: WAIT, HE DID? KARKAT: OK, THEN AS YOUR LEADER I ORDER YOU TO RP WITH THEM AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. BE AS OBNOXIOUS ABOUT IT AS YOU CAN. NEPETA: :33 < yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
But the fact that she has to tiptoe around him like this speaks to them having issues in their relationship that go unexamined and unresolved, especially since it's clear that Nepeta really would like to be friends with more people, were Equius not getting in her way. So, even though I do think they are good moirails for each other - they clearly genuinely, deeply care about one another. But they could use some relationship counselling.
In fact, Jasprosesprite^2 outright calls her lonely:
JASPROSESPRITE^2: Or the girl who likes ships! Cause they made her less lonely. ;3
So, she's anti-hemocaste and lonely, two character traits that were set up and never resolved. And beclaws this is Nepeta, in her honor, I'm going to talk about a third:
Her Unrequited Crush On Karcat
She has the BIGGEST flushed crush on Karkat. It's seen on her shipping wall twice, once with the word OTP on it.
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And, despite never discussing it with her moirail, Nepeta mentions it once to Jaspersprite, and once to Jasprosesprite^2.
Now, I'm not really here to debate on the validity of KatNep - I think it's fine, even if I don't personally ship it, and don't personally think it would work out (there are lots of indications that they wouldn't work out, including Jasprosesprite^2 outright saying so). However, her crush on Karkat is both complicated and creates some interesting setups for her character. I am going to discuss it fairly critically either way, so KatNep shippers have been warned.
A lot of her feelings about Karkat - and about shipping in general - wind up being heavily interlinked with her status as a Hero of Heart, so I'm going to expand on it more there. But what I will note in this section is the fact that, despite Nepeta insisting twice that she doesn't think Karkat knows about her crush on her:
NEPETASPRITE: :33 < it was karkat NEPETASPRITE: :33 < but i never told him and im pretty sure he never found out how i felt!
He tooootally did:
KARKAT: OK, BUT TO BE FAIR, I'M PRETTY SURE SHE'S STILL OBSESSED WITH ME. KARKAT: IT'S A VERY UNFORTUNATE, VERY RED AND VERY UNREQUITED SITUATION I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TIPTOE AROUND FOR A LONG TIME, OK?
Interpret that how you will for shipping purposes, but I want to propose that this is a reflection of their statuses as Heart and Blood players. Heart, despite its players' obsessions with romance, is not the romance aspect, Blood is. Karkat displays this very same romantic acumen when he tells Dave that he's known Terezi and Gamzee were a thing for a long time, despite everyone else on the meteor trying to keep it a secret from him. Heart is, instead, about identity, feelings, motivations, souls, and self. In other words:
Nepeta Is Kind Of Bad At Shipping
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Let's take a look at those shipping walls.
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Let's break this down a little. Nepeta's ships are not entirely wrong, but even the successful ones are kind of wrong. Here's what I mean. We've already discussed how Equius and Nepeta's moirallegiance has some... issues in it. If we go down her list of ships that actually do happen, most of them have some issues in them!
Aradia expresses her regret for getting together with Equius in the Ministrife. Kanaya and Rose suffer some major relationship problems when Rose starts drinking, to the point Karkat feels a need to step in as an auspice. Karkat and Gamzee fail, as Karkat is not calmed by Gamzee, and Gamzee stops listening to Karkat. And while Sollux and Feferi seem to be fairly healthy, after they both wind up in the Furthest Ring, he's pretty much always next to Aradia - he and Feferi don't even get to exchange words with each other once they're in the Furthest Ring. Purrsonally, I think he and Feferi are meant to end up as moirails, but shhhh.
So what's happening here? Well, this goes back to her identity as a Heart player. Heart is concerned with feelings and motivations.
They simply want to understand the one thing we all are stuck with for our entire lives, i.e. our own minds. Forging an identity is extremely important to the Heart-bound, and every decision and action goes toward building a coherent narrative of their own story. That isn't to say Heart-bound don't care deeply for their friends and allies; they just have a tendency to assume that everyone is as concerned with identity as they are.
Nepeta's shipping has also been associated with her isolation and loneliness. When you put this together, it implies that Nepeta's shipping is about her desire to understand others, and much of her ships are based on one of the parties having feelings, regardless of compatibility, feasibility, or broader implications. After all, despite the fact that she has pretty terrible romantic acumen, she IS able to instinctively identify that Eridan's advances toward her were insincere:
NEPETASPRITE: :33 < well ok i guess eridan hit on me a few times NEPETASPRITE: :33 < but his advances always struck me as cr33py and insincere
And that Karkat secretly LOVES and RESPECTS his friends:
JASPROSESPRITE^2: On the contrary Nepeta. You deserve someone who will RESPECT and ADORE you. NEPETASPRITE: :33 < well... yes NEPETASPRITE: :33 < i always hoped to find someone like that some day NEPETASPRITE: :33 < i dunno maybe youre right but in spite of whatever problems he might have i always felt like i saw something in him that made me think he could be that purrson!
Or knowing that Equius loves to play games, and still feels sad about Aradia exploding:
AC: :33 < i s33 right through your stupid act, who are you trying to kid! AC: :33 < look how you go out of your way to use words that have x's in them so that you can use your silly purrcent signs AC: :33 < or use these absurd words that you can shoehorn a '100' into, even if its not strictly replacing 'loo'!!! AC: :33 < you are so transpurrent AC: :33 < i can tell you like to play games, d33p down you are a guy who likes to play games! AC: :33 < i can smell a guy who likes to play games from so fur away with this nose, you have no idea X33
NEPETA: :33 < she was so happy, just like she used to be, and she said she would s33 you soon! EQUIUS: D --> That's a nice thought, and thank you for sharing it EQUIUS: D --> But it was only a dream, and will surely have no consequence in reality NEPETA: :33 < equius? NEPETA: :33 < are those f33lings i an detecting with my wiggly whiskery nose? EQUIUS: D --> Maybe
Because feelings, and not relationships, are her actual domain.
And speaking of Heart powers...
Nepeta and the Ultimate Self
So from this point forward, I'm going to assume you're more or less agreeing with my take that at some point after Game Over, Hussie - for whatever reason - gave up on his original ending, and wound up truncating his ideas so he could finish the comic faster. I go more into detail about that here.
So, in this hypothetical original ending, I firmly believe that the speech about the Ultimate Self would have come from Nepeta. First, let's take a look at what the "Ultimate Self" entails, as it appears within the comic:
DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < everything that ever happens to every version of you is an important part of your ultimate self... like a superceding bodyless and timeless persona that crosses the boundaries of paradox space and unlike god tiers or bubble ghosts or whatever, it really IS immortal DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < but in your physical form there are all these partitions in your mind that prevent you from remembering any of that which makes your existence f33l totally linear DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < which is probably for the best! DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < in a regular body s33ing all that would be too overwhelming ... DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < and after it sinks in for a while you start coming to this understanding of a greater self DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < maybe i "got it" quicker though because of the two people i was and their aspects DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < understanding heart is all about the nuances of a distributed self DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < nepeta never got to make much headway with her aspect but shes finally gettin the chance DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < the time aspect is all about running into different versions of yourself so you kinda get confronted with it in a really literal way that can be disturbing DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < obviously davesprite stuggled with that too, but now its fine DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < hes fr33 from worrying about it all and what it means for his place in reality DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < because he can s33 now all his selves have relevance in painting the full picture of who he truly is DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < im not COMPLETELY sure because im not like some sort of ASPECT MASTER but DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < my avian slash feline intuition tells me that all roads will lead you here eventually DAVEPETASPRITE^2: B33 < gaining the d33pest possible understanding of any aspect will bring you to the same final conclusion about your ultimate self
Now, I believe - and I hope you'll agree - that it's kind of lame, narratively, for Davesprite to have been set up with so much angst about not being the "real Dave," and for Nepeta to have all her issues with loneliness and shyness, and for these two specific iterations of each other to have never interacted, but suddenly getting double-prototyped fixes all of their problems, and they achieve Ultimate Selfhood despite being two total strangers to each other. So let's instead break down the more salient points about what Ultimate Selfhood entails, divorced from the fact that it's Davepetasprite^2 doing the narrating:
Every player in the game possesses an "Ultimate Self," an ultimate culmination of all their experiences and memories, specifically referred to as a "persona"
Normally, people are not aware of this, because it would be too overwhelming to deal with so many memories and iterations of each other.
Everyone will achieve Ultimate Selfhood eventually as the final culmination of their understanding of their aspect.
Heart is all about the nuances of a distributed self.
Let's talk about that last one some more, and by that I mean, let's see what Calliope has to say about it:
TT: I don't know why it had to be this way for me. Juggling these two waking selves at once. TT: I guess I'm used to it, but it still makes for a pretty intense existence. TT: Do you even know what the deal with that is? Like is there any precedent in your readings? UU: i don't know aboUt precedent, bUt it makes plenty of sense to me as the type of path one might expect for a hero of heart. UU: a path rUled by the heart aspect can be a joUrney of splintered self. UU: that is, the player's being may exhibit the same kind of fragmentation which certain classes coUld caUse in others. UU: i think this is what has triggered yoUr dUal-awareness between waking and dream selves, thoUgh it woUld not sUrprise me if the symptoms manifested in even more ways than this.
Now, Dirk has a clawmplicated relationship with his alternate selves, given that he's a Prince, but Nepeta wouldn't have the same struggles, or at least, not to the same degree. The problem is, hampered by Equius and her own shyness about discussing her thoughts and feelings with others:
NEPETASPRITE: :33 < i get so shy and worried what people might think of me if i say how i f33l NEPETASPRITE: :33 < im always so scared that they wont f33l the same way or just think im stupid or pathetic or something
She never actually gets to explore this part of herself.
But What If... She Did?
The way I imagine the original ending going is that each troll that gets saved by John's interference in the timeline then asks John to help them fix their own mistakes, thereby saving somebody else. Each successive trip through the meteor brings new character development, and also riddles the comic with progressively more password pages, which I think would be really funny. And throughout all this the Game Over team is searching for Vriska, Meenah, and the treasure, and resolving their arcs that way, so it's not like they would be replaced - they're the ones who get to kill LE. The process, in my mind, goes like this:
Terezi asks John to save Vriska, and prevent her from getting too spades with Gamzee, as these are her two greatest regrets.
Vriska obviously had great regrets about killing Tavros, both pre- and post-retcon, so she asks for his death to be prevented.
Tavros staying alive means that he and Gamzee wind up hashing out some stuff - Gamzee mentions that he feels "So aT ChIlL WiTh yOu" while talking to Tavros, and Tavros reciprocates the friendship and also - interestingly - acknowledges Gamzee's religion, calling it beautiful even if he doesn't necessarily believe in it. This is interesting because Karkat's inability to do so is explicitly one of the reasons their moirallegiance broke down. So having Tavros back, alive, means that he and Gamzee would likely end up in some sort of relationship, probably pale despite flushed leanings, and would bring Gamzee back into the fold.
Gamzee would then be like, yeah, wow, that time I killed Nepeta and Equius was pretty bad, huh? Especially since his decision to hang onto his friends' bodies and prototype them is often interpreted as him genuinely feeling bad about his dead friends (he tells Kurloz to shut up when Kurloz mentions all the dead friends, and his religion seems to be about a paradise he wants to share with his friends anyway). So he'd ask John to prevent him from killing them, resulting in the two of them getting to live.
Things get much more hypothetical from here, since so much of the character dynamics would have changed, but I think by this point, Equius might command ask John to let him say goodbye to Aradiabot before she explodes, which he expresses feeling very sad about. However, in doing so, John and Aradiabot end up in the same room, and when she realizes that he has the ability to change the timeline without repercussions, she'd seize him by the arm and demand that he take her back in time, to before she died. After all, she expresses regrets about her reckless actions, and how she always felt like it was all one big setup.
She would take Aradia's place in the Vriska revenge chain, being once more freed of her robot chassis, and from there, would trick Doc Scratch and the Handmaiden into thinking everything was still going according to their designs. Meanwhile, Alive!Aradia would be hanging out at Equius's place, borrowing his void powers to avoid notice, coordinating a new timeline that keeps the beats of the original (too much deviation causes unpredictability, and an paradox'd timeline offshoot without John's direct interference would still become doomed), but allows them greater freedom and the ability to overcome the machinations of Doc Scratch and associates.
This would also prevent Sollux from becoming so self-loathing, since it's no longer "his fault" that Aradia dies, although he winds up in that hole again after Feferi gets killed. Now that his Aradia is alive, he wouldn't feel like he might as well stay in the bubbles because his closest companions are there, so he'd make it to the end, and would ask John to prevent Feferi's death.
Eridan still dies; he's so disconnected and isolated from all his friends that his course of actions is largely unaffected even by everybody else's timeline tweaks. But before Feferi can suggest bringing him back, Karkat would butt in.
The Friendship Troll should be the one to demand that ALL of their friends be revived, especially if they had everyone except only one guy, and Karkat and Eridan are heavily implied to be moirails anyway. The course of Karkat's fixes are so comprehensive, and primarily romance-based, that the end result of this final loop is everybody not only being alive, but god-tiered, with appropriate character development.
Now, where Nepeta's Heart powers would play into all of this is that she would start to notice something going on. After all, Heart players are sensitive to their splintered selves, and (Nepeta) is probably much closer to Nepeta than regular doomed timeline offshoots. As the loops continue, and Nepeta has more and more time to talk to people, and meets her dead alternate selves, and even meets (Nepeta), she starts to awaken to her Ultimate Self - to come into possession of alternate memories.
And if the Ultimate Self is a very soul-y kind of concept, such that Heart players have a natural advantage in coming to understand it, then isn't it a natural fit that a Rogue of Heart - one who steals from Heart or steals Heart for others - would be naturally inclined to share the wisdom of her alternate selves, and even the very concept of the Ultimate Self, with her friends?
Because the Ultimate Self is actually, in my opinion, a pretty good narrative device. It turns the sadness of the dead and doomed timelines into something littersweet instead, and makes it so any weirdness regarding time travel and not really knowing your friends anymore will eventually be resolved, even if off-screen.
It's not really narratively satisfying when Davepetasprite^2 suddenly comes into being and reaches enlightenment, but imagine if instead it's a post-character development Nepeta comforting Davesprite on his relevance, or Jade on her loneliness, or John on not really knowing these new post-retcon versions of his friends? It would feel a lot better, since in this hypothetical, she would have reached that point after on-screen character development. Being able to share her true self with her friends on the meteor - by necessity, since what else are they going to be doing for three years - leads to her finally being able to fulfill her role as a Rogue of Heart.
Also, at some point during these repeated meteor trips, she dates Karkat (whether that's successful or not, I'll leave to reader interpretation - you already know where I stand), fulfilling Jaspersprite's musing that she might only be able to date Karkat after she dies.
So that's two out of thr33 of her outstanding plot hooks resolved... okay. So, I try not to make these essays into ship propaganda, but hear me out:
Hate Is Stored In The FefNep
Okay, so, remember that thing about how Feferi is actually a huge casteist hypocrite? Well, let's also note that the comic, post-Murderstuck, seems to put Nepeta and Feferi together a lot - they're a Commodore and Rear Admiral in the ghost pirate army, respectively, and they also wind up as Fefetasprite. So I think it's not entirely out of left field to say that these two were implied to have SOMETHING going on.
And that something... is a difference in political views.
I mean, let's be real, there's a reason Fefetasprite is the most explode-prone after Tavrisprite. Miss "The Hemocaste is Stupid and Shouldn't Matter" vs. Miss "I Love Being A Princess And Call Jade Hornless and Finless (Derogatory)"? Come on, tell me you don't see it.
Without getting too much into Feferi, this hypocrisy, and unwillingness to check her privilege (so glad I found an excuse to use that term unironically), are probably her greatest character flaws - ie, the things you would expect the story to address about her. Meanwhile, one of Nepeta's flaws, which she laments to Jasproseprite^2, is that she feels too shy to talk about her feelings to other people, leading to her having never expressed her views on the hemocaste to anyone but Equius.
I think that they initially think they'd be friends. Each one of them would go "oh man, this other girl is soooo cute, I wish I could talk to her more often!"
And then, once they do, they realize they fucking hate each other. Nepeta would go "X00 < you are such a hypocrite who f33ls like youre better than all of us!!!" and Feferi would go "You're suc)( an uneducated glubbing P-EASANT! 3X0" and then they'd claw each others' eyes out. It would be so funny, and if a homestuck ship isn't extremely fucking funny, then why are we even here.
But more importantly, this would further them along into resolving each others' arcs - Feferi would be forced to grapple with the greater implications of classism, and Nepeta - who is shown having a spine the most in defiance of somebody else - would grow more aggressive about being open about her feelings in defiance of Feferi. Even Equius would get roped into it in a positive way - you can just imagine him going "D --> Can I really believe my auricular sponge clots D --> Nepeta, you are finally taking interest in politi%" and be 100% on board with teaching her so Feferi won't be able to call her uneducated.
And then for flushed, I dunno! Karkat's an option, and Jade and Jake also both love the fuck out of furries, and Tavros seems nice. But yeah I'll die on the fefnep hate ship. Guys it would be so funny.
Thank you as always for reading! Let me know if there's a troll you want to hear me ramble about next.
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shadowtriovibes · 1 year
Text
pt. i: break a sweat
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pt. ii: blood, sweat and tears || pt. iii: sweat it out || pt. iv: never let 'em see you sweat
Pairing: Sebastian Sallow x f!MC
Word Count: 5.2k
Rating: E
Warnings: 18+, aged-up characters, explicit sexual content, unprotected PIV sex, dubious safe sex methods, even more dubious interpretations of how the room of requirement works
Summary: sebastian makes the house quidditch team after training all summer. before his first match, you let him talk you into a bet over its outcome that will in all likelihood ruin your friendship. (merlin, you sure hope it does.)
"Speaking of which," you say, leaning out of the hug just enough to see Sebastian’s face. "What prize will you not be winning?" Sebastian lets his hands drop down to your hips as he murmurs, "I have something in mind." You force yourself not to get distracted. "Do tell." "If I win, I’d like to take you to the Room of Requirement after the game," he says, and the way he grips your sides through your skirt ensures you have no way of misunderstanding what he’s suggesting.
Seeing Sebastian for the first time since the end of your sixth year at Hogwarts is quite the shock.
You knew from his detailed letters that your dearest friend had spent the better part of his summer break training for Quidditch tryouts in the fall, frequently flying down to the Poidsear Coast to log hours and hours at their pitch.
Sometimes he would even bring Anne along with him when she was feeling well enough to ride on the back of his broom. He’d convince her to release a secondhand Snitch for him to track down, and while he hunted it down, she worked on the assignments your professors had set to help her prepare for her return to Hogwarts in the fall.
He’d even written to tell you that he’d never felt more confident on a broom, and that if he only got to have one last season on your house team before leaving school, he was determined to make the absolute most of it.
You knew all of this, and yet when you first see him in the Great Hall for the start-of-term feast, you nearly swoon like a Muggle schoolgirl at the sight of him.
The first thing you notice is that he’s taller. Even seated next to Anne at the Slytherin table, you can see his entire head whereas you can barely make out the top of his sister’s. Sebastian had never seemed that much bigger than his twin before, but things have clearly changed.
Then, you notice that his complexion has changed as well. He’s tan from spending all summer training in the sun, his button-down shirt suddenly looking so crisply white against his sun-kissed face.
His freckles, too – there are so many more.
But that could also just be because there’s simply more Sebastian now. His shoulders are broader, his chest wider, and even his hair has grown long enough to brush upwards into a less haphazard style (though certainly not as severe as Ominis’).
It’s as if your boyish Sebastian from the previous school year had quite suddenly become a grown man in just three short months, and you can’t tear your eyes away from the sight of him.
It takes you a few minutes to adjust as you slide into a seat across from him next to Ominis, and based on the look on Anne’s face, she at least knows what’s got you so flustered.
During a lull in conversation about Anne’s return, you tell Sebastian, “You’re looking fit.”
You hope you can casually get it out of the way, and that no one will dwell on it.
“Am I?” he asks with an easy smile.
“I mean physically,” you insist, remaining one step ahead of him. “I nearly mistook you for one of the Beaters for the Magpies.”
“Sebastian could never be a Beater,” Anne interjects. “He’s too much of a show-off to be anything but the Seeker.”
“I’ll be whatever the team needs me to be,” he insists. “I practiced for all four positions this summer, so wherever they want to slot me in is fine.”
“Silly Sebastian,” Violet McDowell calls out from a few seats down, a wicked grin on her face. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that there are many more positions than just four?”
Your entire end of the table bursts into laughter while Sebastian simply flashes a wicked grin, and you think about using your ancient magic to hurl one of the stacked platters of food in front of you at Violet’s head. (Or maybe you should simply toss her out into the courtyard.)
“Is this how it’s going to be this year?” Anne sighs. “When I left, Sebastian was just an awkward boy with his nose always buried in a book, and now the girls are lusting after him.”
“I’m not thrilled about it either,” Ominis agrees. “He had a big enough head before he was attractive.”
“I think it’s excellent,” Sebastian laughs. “It’s about time everyone realized that I’m the perfect man, and all it took was a little bit of Quidditch practice and one last growth spurt.”
“‘All it took,’” Anne mumbles at the same time Ominis exclaims, “‘Perfect man?!’”
While both his sister and best friend take turns putting dents in Sebastian’s inflated ego, he takes it in stride and sneakily winks at you from across the table when he catches you silently observing, your gaze firmly settled on the sharp line of his jaw.
Sebastian makes a mental note of the fact that you immediately go red. Even if no one else notices, he certainly does.
Two weeks later, you and Anne link arms with Ominis to walk down with him to the Quidditch pitch to watch the Slytherin team tryouts.
“Now that I’ve got a brilliant witch on each arm, I suppose I won’t be needing my wand as often to get around,” he teases.
“Please, I know a thing or two about that wand of yours,” Anne replies. “Last year I spent a full month reading books on wandcraft that Sebastian brought me from the library. If I had to guess, I think you can probably ‘see’ more clearly than either of us can. It’s powerful.”
“No idea what you’re talking about,” Ominis demurs. “I’m just naturally perceptive.”
Once you arrive at the pitch, the three of you take seats along the practice bleachers with a few of your housemates, who chat excitedly when the Slytherin hopefuls begin to take the field.
You spot Sebastian quickly, even among nearly two dozen others in green practice uniforms circling for warmups on their brooms. Compared to how big he’d looked at the start of term in just his school robes, he’s huge now – equipped with pads across his shoulders, forearms and shins that accentuate his muscular form.
He’d declined a helmet, of course, because despite his newfound bulk he’s still the same exasperatingly headstrong boy you’ve nurtured a crush on for nearly your entire school career.
“Between us, what do you think his chances are of making the team?” you ask Anne.
“Truthfully?” she smirks. “I think he’ll have his pick of positions, unless Imelda wants to humble him on purpose.”
“Which one would be humbling?” you ask, amused.
“Probably Chaser,” she muses. “He’d be an excellent Chaser, of course, but it’s his least favorite.”
“I’ll bet he becomes a Beater,” Ominis offers. “Without the Dark Arts, I’d like him to have some sort of outlet for his intensity.”
“Fine, then I’ll say… Keeper,” you say, smiling to yourself at your private joke that only Sebastian would appreciate. “Because that way he’ll get to stay in one place the whole game and know that everyone’s eyes are on him.”
Shortly after tryouts wrap up, Imelda sequesters herself in the girls’ dorm to put together her official roster and the majority of Slytherin’s upperclassmen start passing around Butterbeers while they settle in to await her decision.
Sebastian is inarguably the center of attention, casually leaning against a table in the corner with Anne at his side. A flock of fifth-year girls crowds around him to listen intently as he talks about the impressive diving save he’d made, capturing the Snitch just feet from the ground.
“He’s going to be insufferable now,” Ominis groans while the two of you watch from across the room. “There’s barely enough room for his ego in this friendship as it is.”
“Come now, we can keep him in check,” you laugh. “Especially with Anne here.”
“It’s really good to have her back,” Ominis agrees softly, smiling to himself when he hears Anne’s voice through the noise, telling Sebastian’s fan club how he’d attempted a similar save over the summer and ended up crashing into a derelict poacher camp.
Huh.
However, before you can spend too much more time thinking about Ominis and Anne, you hear the noise in the room spike as Imelda saunters down the stairs, a rolled-up piece of parchment in her hand.
“Who’s ready to meet this year’s Slytherin Quidditch team?” she calls out, and the entire room bursts into excited cheers.
She starts to read off from her list, allowing brief pauses for applause after each name. You and Ominis snake through the common room to stand by Sebastian. He seems to be perfectly calm, but by now you can recognize some telltale tension lingering in his jaw.
Anne holds one of his hands to reassure him, swaying a bit nervously herself.
While Imelda works her way down the list, the four of you learn that hasn’t been named Slytherin’s Keeper. He’s not a Beater either, nor is he ultimately a Chaser.
“Lastly, your newest Seeker,” Imelda teases as she reaches the end of the list. “...It’s obviously Sallow!”
Sebastian beams brilliantly while Anne pulls him into a tight hug, and Ominis smiles and murmurs his congratulations to his friend, assuring him he always knew he’d make the team.
There are several other girls quick to offer their congratulations as well, but you wait for the crowd around him to thin out and for Anne to escort Ominis to get more Butterbeers before you sidle up next to Sebastian and nudge your shoulder against his.
“Excellent work, Bash,” you murmur. “You put on quite a show at tryouts.”
“Only because you were watching,” he flirts back, and you roll your eyes fondly.
Since the start of term, he’s been relentless with his play-flirting. You resist it as much as you can, but it always makes your heart race when he calls you “love,” or offers to carry your books for you, or even charms little notes poking fun at your classmates into tiny birds that gracefully land on your desk during classes.
(You don’t have the heart to ask him to knock it off, because even though you know he doesn’t mean it, it still feels nice to be the center of his attention.)
“Then I’ll have to come to see you start in next week’s match,” you offer. “Especially if you only play that well when I’m watching.”
“You can be my good luck charm,” he jokes. “Felix Felicis is prohibited, but you’re not.”
“That was awful,” you laugh, but Sebastian just grins.
“Tell you what,” he says after a moment. “We should make a bet on it.”
“A bet?” you ask. “On what, that you’ll win?”
He shakes his head. “Too easy, we’re playing Ravenclaw, we’ll obviously win. I mean something more challenging.”
“You’re clearly confident,” you tell him. “What are your terms?”
He considers his offer for a moment and then says, “I’ll bet that I can catch the Snitch in under thirty minutes. I’ll even let you be the official timekeeper, since I’ll be a bit preoccupied.”
“Under thirty?” you ask skeptically. “That’s nearly professional, Sebastian. Ominis told me most games last at least an hour.”
“I’ve been practicing all summer,” he insists. “Anne would release a Snitch and I’d even give it a five-minute head start, but I never let one get further away from me than the far side of Marunweem Lake.”
“Careful, Sebastian, you sound quite cocky,” you murmur, and you think you see Sebastian’s gaze dip down to your mouth for a split second.
“I am,” he agrees. “In fact, I’ll even let you pick your prize first, for if you win.”
“Alright,” you laugh. “When I win, I want… for you to write my History of Magic assignments for the next month.
“That’s it?” he scoffs. “You could have anything and you want me to write your essays?”
“I didn’t start studying magic with the rest of you lot, and I don’t know a lot of the foundational things that Binns wants us to reference,” you remind him. “You know your history much better than I do, and I need to bump my ‘Acceptable’ up to ‘Exceeds Expectations’ by the time N.E.W.T.s roll around.”
“Love, I would’ve done them for you anyway,” Sebastian says dismissively, and you bite the inside of your cheek to keep from grinning at the nickname. “Pick something fun.”
“Fine,” you reply. “I want…”
You consider your options for a moment, trying to think of something that isn’t either obscene or pathetic. Finally, you have an idea.
“There is one thing I’ve been thinking about,” you tell him, a secret smile on your lips.
Sebastian perks up, leaning in closer. “Go on then.”
“I want you to help me set up Anne and Ominis,” you say carefully, watching him for any signs that he’s about to blow up.
He just blinks at you, bewildered. “What.”
“I think they would be a lovely couple,” you croon. “And I know she’s your sister and you’re, y’know...”
“I’m what?” he demands.
“You’re very protective of her,” you say tactfully. “But we’re all adults now, and I think they really understand each other. I want you to help me convince them that they should give it a chance.”
Sebastian is quiet for several long moments.
“Well,” he finally murmurs. “I would prefer it if Anne never dated anyone so I wouldn’t have any more reasons to worry about her, but I suppose if she must, Ominis is a good man.”
You shout excitedly and wrap your arms around his impossibly broad shoulders, pulling him in for a hug. He easily allows it, fondly pressing his nose to your hair.
“I suppose it doesn’t really matter though, since you won’t win and I’ll never have to aid you in your scheming,” he murmurs against your temple.
“Speaking of which,” you say, leaning out of the hug just enough to see Sebastian’s face. “What prize will you not be winning?”
Sebastian lets his hands drop down to your hips as he murmurs, “I have something in mind.”
You force yourself not to get distracted. “Do tell.”
“If I win, I’d like to take you to the Room of Requirement after the game,” he says, and the way he grips your sides through your skirt ensures you have no way of misunderstanding what he’s suggesting.
“O-oh?” you ask softly, squirming a little in his grasp. “Just me?”
“Just you,” he confirms.
His eyes are dark, and despite the cacophony of the room around you both, he’s focused solely on you.
“And what would we be doing in the Room of Requirement?” you ask softly.
He doesn’t even dignify your question with a response. Instead, he deliberately drags his thumbs across your hips, raking his gaze down your body and back up with a pointed look.
“You mean it?” you ask him quietly. “You aren’t just teasing like earlier?”
“When was I teasing?” Sebastian asks, amused.
“This whole time,” you insist, fidgeting nervously with the laces at the front of his Quidditch shirt. “All the flirting, all this back-and-forth… You’re just winding me up.”
“I’m not,” he says quietly. “I thought about you all summer, love. I missed you like mad, and I sincerely want you.”
Merlin.
Some bold part of you steps a little closer so you can lean in close to his ear and ask, “Are you sure we shouldn’t just go to the Room of Requirement right now?”
You hear Sebastian swallow and exhale sharply.
“N-not now,” he answers. “After the match. I just…”
He doesn’t really have the words to articulate it, but he wants to earn your affection. He has to prove he’s good enough first, that you aren’t making a mistake by letting him finally force your close friendship into something more.
“Alright,” you acquiesce, gently brushing your lips against his cheekbone. “Just don’t get too distracted and fall off your broom, because I actually want you to win.”
“The match or the bet?” he asks in a low voice.
You just take a step back with a teasing grin, and before you disappear into the crowd to find your friends, you murmur, “Wouldn’t you like to know, Sallow.”
It’s so many flights of stairs up to the Room of Requirement. You almost feel bad for Sebastian, but not enough to stop relentlessly tugging him up countless flights in the quiet Astronomy Tower.
He must be exhausted already, you assume. While the match itself had only lasted twenty-seven minutes and forty seconds, he spent nearly all of them racing around the pitch alongside Ravenclaw’s Seeker, eyes trained on any flash of light that shimmered like gold.
He’d even taken a Bludger to his right thigh. You’d felt like you were going to be sick just watching it collide with him, but he’d merely dropped a few feet with a wince and sped off again.
Not even a damn Bludger could knock him off his broom.
(As soon as your nausea had dissipated, you’d felt another dizzying wave of sensation take over slightly south of your stomach.)
Just as he’d promised, he quickly caught up with the Snitch near the base of the Hufflepuff student section, landing not-so-neatly in the muddy grass with one arm thrown up in the air. He was evidently clutching the struggling Snitch and beaming so hugely you could see it from your spot in the stands fifty feet in the air.
As soon as Madam Kogawa blew her whistle, the Slytherins had begun to move en masse toward the stairs, preparing to turn their common room into the official site of the year’s first not-so-clandestine party.
You, however, snuck away from the group and lingered outside the team’s changing area. Inside, you could hear raised voices.
“Imelda, you don’t understand,” Sebastian was whining. “I need to go now.”
“There’s a way we do things here, Sallow,” she had argued “I’m the captain, and if I say we’re going to discuss the game before anyone leaves, you stay.”
Sebastian had a few choice words to say to that but ultimately relented, and you couldn’t help but laugh softly while you leaned against one of the canvas walls that lined the interior channels of the pitch. Ultimately, it only took about ten minutes to discuss how everyone could improve – and Imelda’s only suggestion for Sebastian had been to try to find a dryer patch of grass on which to land next time.
Seconds later, he’d burst through the door and started to take off toward the castle.
“Bash!” you called out. “Not so fast.”
When he turned and spotted you, his face lit up.
“You waited for me,” he breathed.
“Of course I did,” you said. “I believe you’ve won a prize, and the nature of it is time-sensitive.”
He looked like an utter rake with that crooked smile on his lips. He was still in his uniform head to toe, his hair even messier than usual thanks to his helmet. He’d even kept his pads on, so when he reached out to take your hand, you felt impossibly small next to him.
“Shall we?” he asks, and then the two of you were off.
By the time you reach the Room and ensure no house elves are present, you’re both out of breath and panting.
“Come here,” you whine, throwing your arms around his shoulders and messily kissing along his jawline.
“W-wait,” he stammers. “Let me get these pads off, and–”
He cuts himself off, making a face.
“I need to clean up,” he tells you, suddenly self-conscious. “I must look like hell.”
“You look obscene,” you reply, dragging your hands down his chest pads. “Which is obviously a compliment.”
He wraps his hands around your wrists to stop you from attempting to undo the laces at the front of his trousers. “Just – just let me clean off first, the prefects’ bathroom isn’t far and I got the password off of Weasley.”
“No, don’t leave,” you whine, and Sebastian is merely a man, he can’t resist the girl he’s been in love with for years when she’s begging him to take his pants off.
“I must smell foul,” he laughs. “You’re – you’re seriously okay with this?”
“Look where we are, Sebastian,” you croon, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the side of his neck. “Just imagine what you need.”
For your part, you imagine a plush armchair where you can wrangle Sebastian into finally taking a seat, and one quickly spins to life just behind him. You take advantage of his distraction to shove him backwards toward it and climb astride lap.
“It’s the Room of Requirement,” you tease him, straddling his thighs and dragging your nose along his cheek so he’ll tip his head back for you. “If you require something, the Room provides.”
“I require a bath,” he drawls, cursing quietly when you gently bite just over his pulse point. “Quickly, please, Room.”
Sebastian waits patiently while you eagerly strip him of his pads, but the Room doesn’t change.
“I thought you said you’ve taken baths here,” he points out skeptically. “In a huge basin, like the prefects have.”
“I have,” you insist, frowning. “I don’t know why it’s not…”
Then you trail off, your realization making you go red.
“Go on, love,” Sebastian murmurs, sliding a hand up the back of your thigh to lazily palm at your ass underneath your skirt. “I know that face, you’ve figured it out. What’s the problem?”
“W-well, it’s my Room,” you tell him sheepishly. “So it, um… I suppose it defaults to what I require.”
“And what you require,” Sebastian says slowly, “is for me to not take a bath?”
You squeeze your eyes shut, embarrassed.
“I… I suppose the Room must have deduced that I – I like you like this,” you whisper, dragging your hands across his rumpled Quidditch shirt. “And I don’t need to wait for you to clean off.”
“You don’t?” Sebastian asks, his eyes now impossibly dark. “You’d let me touch you just like this? I’m a mess, I’m covered in sweat and mud and probably some blood, even.”
“Don’t care,” you breathe, sliding your hands underneath the hem of his shirt. “I want you now, Sebastian, exactly like this.”
He says some absolutely filthy words under his breath, sitting back so he can strip off his filthy uniform shirt. You can’t get your hands on his body fast enough, hurriedly familiarizing yourself with his sculpted core, broad chest, and strong shoulders.
He’s less of a mess underneath where his shirt had lain, but his skin is still warm and damp with sweat from the match. You want to put your mouth all over him, everywhere – and there’s so much of him to explore.
“I couldn’t believe it when I first saw you like this,” you confess to him. “You’ve gotten bigger since last spring, and so handsome… how did you become a man in just one summer?”
“You think I’m the only one who changed this summer?” he asks with a low voice. “Look at you.”
“What about me?” you ask dumbly.
His hands go straight for your chest, roughly tugging open your uniform shirt with no regard for the longevity of its buttons.
“Here,” he murmurs, his hands cupping your breasts through your thin brassiere. “I can assure you that I noticed where you’ve grown bigger.”
You gasp softly as he tugs down on the cups of your bra until he can lean in and press his mouth to your skin, sucking on one of your nipples and then the other.
“And here,” he murmurs into your chest, his hands returning to the backs of your thighs and sliding up your ass. “You have all these curves now, love, and they’re driving me mad.”
“Sebastian,” you whimper. “Take off my clothes.”
He helps you wrestle your skirt up over your head and tosses it recklessly as far as he can. When you’re left in nothing but your undergarments, Sebastian wraps one strong arm around your lower back and hooks the other below your hips, easily standing up from the armchair to walk you over to the bed you’d hastily imagined into existence.
Once he has you on your back, he tugs down your last remaining garment and leaves you bare and exposed to him, breathless and flushed all over.
“Your turn,” you remind him, even though part of you wishes he could leave the uniform pants on (despite the impracticality).
Once he manages to peel off the last of his clothes, he settles on his knees between your legs and skims a hand up your body, from the curve of your hip all the way up to your cheek.
“Is this too fast?” he asks you softly. “Did I ask too much?”
Your heart aches. Sebastian always stuns you with his sincerity when you least expect it.
You turn your head to kiss his palm and murmur, “No, love.”
His shoulders drop a little, the last of the tension he’d been carrying all week draining from his body. He wants, he always wants so damn badly and he would never forgive himself if he marred your first time with each other by rushing you.
“Can I touch you?” he asks in a hushed voice.
“Please,” you whine, letting your knees fall wide.
(Whether or not the other has ever done this before is still a mystery to you both, and it’s not something you’ll discuss until afterward. But right now, it’s of no importance to you.)
For a while, Sebastian’s hands roam your body without an agenda, acquainting himself with your breasts, your hips, the insides of your thighs. You moan softly when he drags his thumb along your slit, spreading your wetness around until he can easily rub slow circles over your clit.
“How do you feel?” he asks you.
“Good,” you gasp. “So good, Sebastian, like that.”
“Do you want more?” he offers, and you frantically nod, one of your hands fisting the pillow behind your head.
He carefully presses one long finger inside you, glancing between your face and your entrance to make sure you’re comfortable the entire time. One finger quickly becomes two, and when two nearly becomes three, you have to pause and take a breath.
“Enough,” you pant. “That’s enough.”
“Are you sure?” he asks you.
You reach down and wrap your hand around his cock, giving him a few slow strokes while he leaks precum onto your hand and groans helplessly.
“I want you,” you insist. “I’ve wanted you.”
“R-right, yeah,” he agrees, trying to clear his head and focus on the task at hand. “Enough.”
He gently nudges your hand away so he can guide himself inside you, one hand wrapped around himself and the other gently pressing on your inner thigh to keep you still for him.
Underneath Sebastian like this, pinned to the mattress by his hips and hands, he completely overtakes your senses. He’s all you can see, all you can touch — you even taste and smell him.
Masculine sweat. Dark brown eyes. Crisp autumn air. The curve of his collarbone where it meets his shoulder. Woodsmoke. A million tiny freckles. Metallic blood from a split lip. Flashes of copper in his messy curls. Singed pine needles.
Sebastian groans low in his throat as he presses in, his hair falling into his eyes before he frantically brushes it away so he can see you take him for the first time.
Once he’s fully seated inside you, he bends down and presses his forehead against yours.
“Tell me,” he begs, his hand curling gently around the back of your neck to hold you close.
“Tell you what?” you whisper, your lips brushing against his with every syllable.
“Tell me that it feels like this for you,” he practically breathes into you. “It feels like you’re — you’re everywhere, like you’re all there is.”
“Sebastian,” you whimper, and his hips snap against yours.
“Say it,” he growls. “Please.”
“You’re all there is,” you gasp. “You’re all mine, Bash.”
He makes a sound like you’ve sucker-punched him, messily kissing wherever he can get his mouth on you – your cheek, your jaw, your lips. All the while he’s fucking you open with relentless, eager thrusts.
He’s not going to last long, but you don’t expect him to. You just want him to feel good – the two of you have already wasted enough time not doing this, so why delay satisfaction?
You wrap your legs around his hips to hold him against you, rocking your own hips upward to meet him and coax him closer to the edge.
“I’m going to come,” he grits out, grinding into you desperately the closer he gets to his climax. “Can I finish inside?”
“N-no,” you whimper. There’s a potion you can drink to make it safe that takes an entire week to brew, and the batch that’s currently bubbling away at your potions station across the Room isn’t quite ready yet.
“Where?” he begs.
“Anywhere else, wherever you want,” you promise him, your mind quickly tossing out mental images of him spilling himself across your breasts, into your mouth, on the curve of your back.
He pulls out of you with a reluctant moan and kneels between your open thighs, wrapping a hand around his cock to finish himself off. You watch his eyes while he takes you in, seemingly torn between meeting your gaze and staring transfixed at your fingers between your thighs as you get closer to finishing yourself.
“Next time, love,” you murmur softly. “The next time you fuck me you can finish in me, I’ll take it all.”
“Promise?” he asks breathlessly, still an incorrigible flirt even when he’s seconds away from his orgasm.
“Promise,” you whine, spreading your legs a little wider when you catch his gaze lingering again.
You’re so close, desperately rolling your hips against your own hand until you tip over the edge, the rush of your release arching your back before you collapse lazily against the bed.
He shuffles forward and groans your name just before he spills, leaving a warm, wet mess all over your stomach and between your hips. You feel properly claimed – especially when he flops down next to you and immediately tugs you against his chest, unbothered by his release smearing between your bodies.
“You’re amazing,” he breathes into your hair. “Merlin, I love you.”
“You love me?” you whisper against his collarbone.
“Enduringly,” he says.
You rest your cheek against his chest and listen to his racing heartbeat for a few moments before you tell him, “I love you too, you know.”
Just then, the Room starts to rumble.
“What’s going on?” Sebastian asks, urgently peering around for his wand.
He quickly settles and even laughs under his breath when he sees the Room shifting around the two of you to provide a spacious, sunken bathtub in the middle of the room, complete with a luxurious amount of taps that undoubtedly offer an array of bubbles, salts and soaps.
“Oh, now you want to let me clean myself up?” Sebastian drawls. “After you’ve completely worn me out, hmm?”
“It’s more for me,” you giggle. “I can’t possibly sleep like this, but you’re welcome to join me if you’d like.”
As if Sebastian would ever pass up the chance to feel you up in the water.
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moni-logues · 1 month
Text
What the cat dragged in
Pairing: Lee Know x reader (afab, she/her)
Genre: smut, angst, strangers-to-lovers (kinda); 5+1
Summary: You followed Minho home because you had nowhere else to go. Then you kept following... all the way into his heart, but not his bed.
aka five times you and Minho don't fuck and one time you do.
Content: reader is 16yo in the first section (nothing sexual or romantic happens but there are suggestions of it), couple of references to human/sex trafficking; the gang are useless crime idiots but this is only barely relevant; interrupted foreplay; attempted car sex; unprotected piv sex; fingering; a lot of kissing tbh
Word count: 13.5k
A/N: SO this whole thing actually started HERE in JUNE (jfc, I thought I'd been thinking about this since like, October or something but, no no, a full ten months!!!!). It has drifted from that somewhat but that was its beginning and, honestly, I'm kind of stoked about this fic. I really like how it came out and it's my FIRST MINHO. It's taken me SO long to get around to my bestest evil catdad.
Huge thanks to @violetsiren90 for beta-ing! and also for reading it half-finished when I really needed some encouragment. AND for the title
*~*~*
FIRST 
“Why don’t you fuck off?” 
The voice came from behind you. It was low and cold and threatening. It was directed at Shindong, the man in front of you, whom you were sure was this close to offering to take you home. You whipped around to see who had uttered it. 
Your immediate thought was that he was too short and too slight to be walking up with that level of aggression. Your second thought was interrupted by the spark that shot up your arm when he grabbed your hand. You’d have pulled it back, but his grip was solid and your arm didn’t budge.  
“What the fuck do you want, Minho?” your companion replied, all the charm sliding off his face, replaced with a loathing, arrogant sneer.  
“I want you to fuck off.” 
“She yours? Might want to keep a closer eye on her; she was just about to come home with me.” 
The stranger’s hand squeezed yours, so hard it started to hurt. He offered nothing in response.  
Both men continued to stare at each other. Shindong had inches on Minho – both height and breadth – and you couldn’t believe your eyes when you saw him hesitating. He flicked his eyes between you and Minho.  
“What if I want to fight you for her?” 
“What if I told you she’s not legal?” 
Shindong hesitated, moved just a fraction backwards, no longer leaning in, looming over the two of you. He rolled his eyes and gave a heartless chuckle. 
“Not worth the fucking bother,” he muttered as he walked away.  
Minho, still a stranger to you, still holding your hand, who hadn’t even looked your way, pulled you sharply by said hand, storming off and taking you with him. You followed him into one of the warehouse’s many dark corners. He kicked out the couple who were two clothing items shy of a citation for public indecency, and only then did he let you go. Only then did he turn his dark, flaming eyes on you. 
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” you asked.  
Shindong had been your lifeline. What did this guy think he was playing at? 
Your vehemence took him off-guard, surprise flashing across his face, until his scowl returned, worse than before. You understood now why he made Shindong hesitate. His gaze was fierce, penetrating, his jaw set, his mouth a taut, grim line. You would never show your hand to anyone, but a cold droplet of fear slithered down your spine. You straightened it, rolled your shoulders back, lifted your head. You wouldn’t let him intimidate you. 
“Do you know him?” he asked, voice still low, still threatening. 
Not personally. Not until that evening. But people like him came with a reputation that preceded them. A reputation that you were relying upon being based in fact. A reputation that had spread all around your school and beyond, but that you had heard from a source close to the truth. It was close enough that you were able to find him here, in a part of town you’d never been to. It was close enough that you were able to pick Shindong out from this crowd. Close enough that when you approached him and he laughed at you – young, naïve, foolish, all of those things you were sure he thought – you were able to drop his cousin’s name and he suddenly took you seriously. That was what you had been hoping for. A connection was all you needed to keep you covered for a night, at least. Just one would be something. 
And then this guy showed up. 
“I was about to.” 
Minho’s top lip curled, just a fraction, his nose barely wrinkling with the movement, but you got his meaning. Disgust. He could be as disgusted as he liked; that wasn’t your problem. Your problem was that his disgust had led him to chase away your only lead.  
Or was he? Was Shindong your only option? 
You changed tack. Realised that maybe you had another now. Minho, whoever the fuck he was, had approached you as if he knew you and scared off the competition. That must have been it. Despite the way he glowered at you, absolutely no interest or desire lurking behind his dark eyes, you figured you had nothing left to lose.  
You relaxed a little, pouted your lips, played up to the damsel in distress he might have thought you were. 
“But if he’s so awful, I guess I can only thank you,” you said, making your voice soft, your eyes a little wider. You lifted your lips in a tiny, shy smile and then put a hand to them, your thumb and index finger tugging a little on your bottom lip, hoping it made you look small, nervous, sweet.  
He gave you no reaction. He continued to glare, his stance unchanged, unmoving. So you moved. You stepped towards him: shy, little bird steps, until you were so close that he moved backwards. 
“Thanks for looking out for me. Your name’s Minho, right?” 
His eyes tightened minutely. He didn’t reply.  
“I’d like to thank you properly,” you said, sliding your body into his, pressing just one finger against his chest. You fluttered your lashes up at him. 
His face changed immediately. Eyes wide, mouth dropping, and he was stumbling backwards, pressing himself against the wall. 
“What the fuck are you doing? What are you, fifteen?” 
Embarrassment licked your cheeks like flames and your scowl returned. 
“I’m sixteen!” 
“Wow, big age. My mistake. By all means, let’s fuck, Sixteen.” 
His sarcasm was biting but you hadn’t given yourself up yet. 
“Don’t you want to?” you asked, innocently. “You must have sent Shindong away for a reason. If not this, then what?” 
He let out a sigh so aggrieved it was almost a shout. He rolled his eyes.  
“Jesus Christ, where are your parents?” he asked, but it was muttered, almost under his breath and you didn’t know if you were supposed to answer. You did anyway. 
“Dead.” 
His lack of reaction grated. He didn’t flinch. There was no surprise, no guilt on his face. He had robbed you of Shindong and now he had robbed you of your fun: getting a reaction out of people as a poor, orphaned, little Annie was as close as you got these days. Then again, he wasn’t a well-meaning aunt or nosy teacher. He knew what this place was; he knew, or at least knew of, Shindong. Maybe your hand-grenade was, here, little more than a snap. 
“And this is your great life plan? Offering sexual favours to predators?”  
He gestured widely to the room behind you, and you could only assume he did not mean to include himself in that group.  
Actually, it was your plan. Kind of… Insofar as you had any sort of plan at all. You would not be telling him that. You kept your mouth shut tight and jaw clenched, refusing to look down, to be the one to break the eye contact.  
“You know he’s a fucking bad guy,” he said, more softly than he had said anything so far but the hard edge remained.  
“And what are you, my hero?” 
“Absolutely fucking not. I do not want to have anything to do with whatever mess you are making of your life, but I’m not about to let that cunt take off with a child.” 
“I am not a child!” you shouted, right in his face.  
He took it, impassive, unimpressed even.  
“That’s exactly what a child would say.” 
You wanted to hit him. You wanted to smash him in his beautifully sharp jaw, or break that perfect, delicate nose of his. You were just about not stupid enough to try. How did he even know you were young? You knew you didn’t look it; you were always getting told you looked older than you were. How did he know? Why did he care? 
“Go on then,” you said, darkly. “Leave. If I’m not your fucking problem, why don’t you fuck off?” 
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t move.  
“Worried I’ll get murdered?”  
You lifted your hands to your open mouth, eyes widened, a mockery of fear.  
His face and tone were flat when he responded.  
“There are things worse than death.” 
Then he pushed past you and out of the door.  
You took one shaky breath and walked after him before you could talk yourself out of it. You decided that, one way or another, this guy owed you and it was time to collect. 
You followed him, not too closely, but not exactly hiding it, for over a mile. You wondered, at one point, if he was trying to lose you, if he was actually heading to his destination or just trying to outlast you. You’d show him. You were a long-distance runner at school; you were extremely confident you could keep up. 
So confident, in fact, so determined were you not to lose him, that you were too slow to notice him slowing, to notice him stopping, to very nearly not stop yourself walking into him.  
“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked, not turning to look at you. 
“I’m walking here.” 
“Stop following me.” 
“I’m not following you.” 
He raised his eyes skyward. He stood for a moment and you stood, too, waiting for him to continue – walking or talking, you didn’t know which. He finally turned around and looked at you, everything about him a little softer than before. Not soft, but softer.  
“You can’t follow me,” he told you slowly, emphatically. “I am not looking after you. I am not your fath-“ 
“I don’t have a fucking father.” 
He scoffed. 
“Yeah, that much is very clear, Sixteen.” 
“I’m not sixteen!” 
He frowned. 
“That’s what you told me.” 
“That’s not my fucking name! Stop saying it like I’m a child. How old are you anyway?” 
“Old enough to know better.”  
“What does that mean?” 
“Go home, Sixteen.” 
“I don’t have a home.” 
“Well you can’t have mine.” 
He turned on his heel and continued walking, a little faster this time, increasing his pace to a jog as he crossed the road. You knew he hoped you wouldn’t be able to follow, that the flashing green man would disappear before you could make it, but you’d been underestimated before.  
After another mile or so, you saw him take his phone from his pocket and put it to his ear. You couldn’t quite hear what he was saying but you thought it sounded like Japanese. Was he Japanese?  
It hadn’t missed you, the knowledge that you had no knowledge of this man. You understood that you were, as far as you knew, in as much danger following him home as you had been going with Shindong. But you literally had no other options. It was follow this guy somewhere or wander around on the street all night; it was too cold to stay out. You hadn’t thought beyond that when you’d left your house earlier that day. Hadn’t thought much at all, except about getting out.  
Now you were out. Mission accomplished. And you had no idea what to do next.  
You almost missed him ducking into a narrow side street, but you caught the door he rushed through just before it shut. He disappeared from view through another door, off to the left of the dingy, dimly lit corridor you found yourself in. You stalked up to it – it wasn’t even fully closed – but something made you hesitate.  
Suddenly the fear that you had been suppressing all night raised its head. Was this a lion’s den? A serpents’ nest? Was Minho playing some kind of long game, saving you from Shindong so you would trust him, so you would follow him here, so he could…? 
“Are you going to fucking stand out there all night?” you heard a voice call from inside. It had to be Minho’s but you wouldn’t have bet on it.  
You fixed your face, your scowl reappearing, and kicked the door open with excessive force. 
It was just a bar. Just him, sitting on a stool with a beer in his hand, and one other guy, standing opposite, looking at you with his eyebrows raised in the way a parent does when they catch their child doing something naughty. 
“You break that door, I’m going to make you pay for it,” he said, in an accent that you knew wasn’t local.  
And, just like a defiant child, you slammed it shut without breaking eye contact. He turned to Minho. 
“Thanks, man. You had to bring home a fucking streetrat.” 
“I am not a streetrat,” you spat. 
“No?” Minho chimed in. “Then where’s your home?” 
“Fuck off.” 
“I really wish you would.” 
You sat down in a booth just off to your left and stared him down.  
“She can’t stay here,” the stranger said to Minho, as if you were no longer there.  
“I didn’t bring her; she just came.” 
He, the newest stranger, looked between you and Minho for several seconds. He was looking at Minho when he spoke again. 
“One night. That’s it. And she’s your responsibility.”  
He heaved a box full of empty glass bottles into his arms and wandered away, through a different door, mumbling something about ‘strays’.  
“Who was that?” you demanded as Minho continued to sip at his beer.  
You realised that you hadn’t actually been introduced to him either. And he hadn’t asked for your name. You wondered if he would now. 
“None of your fucking business,” he answered, finally moving from the stool to walk behind the bar.  
He opened the cash register and took bags from a cubby just below it. He produced a tiny pencil from his pocket and tore off a strip of the receipt roll. He took out the cash and started to count. You watched his lips move silently as he flicked quickly through the notes, pausing to drop a stack onto the bar and write a number down. He picked up the next stack and repeated.  
“Don’t even think about it,” he warned, not looking up, not even, apparently, pausing in his counting. “Even if you got your urchin mitts on it, you wouldn’t make it to the door.” 
You believed him, but you weren’t planning some kind of move. You didn’t need his money. You were just watching.  
You watched until all the notes and all the coins were accounted for, until they had been put into bags and those bags into a box and Minho turned to follow his friend. You stood from your seat and went after him.   
There were two doors, you realised. Minho took the left. It led to an office. The other guy must’ve taken the right because the room was empty except for furniture and, in the corner, a safe. Minho dumped the box before it and turned to you. 
“Turn around.” 
“Worried I’ll crack the code?” you asked with your eyes rolling back in your head. 
“Just turn around.” 
You did as you were told without a fight because, at that point, there was nowhere else to go. You couldn’t admit defeat and walk out of there; you weren’t sure that Minho wouldn’t make you do just that. It was a knife-edge, being the obnoxious, vile brat that you were. You’d stormed past boundaries before but, well, look where it got you. You were tired and worried enough now to decide you would stop pushing your luck. It had been stretched far enough already. 
There was a second of silence before you heard the beeping of the buttons pressed and the shuffling of bags, the clink of coins, the thunk of a bigger, metallic something against the walls of the safe. He didn’t tell you when he was finished, didn’t say you could turn back around. He just walked past you, out of the office, turning the light off as he went. As soon as you were out of the door, he shut and locked it.  
You followed him back to the bar and he did the same thing: turned off the lights and held a door for you (not politely, not because he was being nice), following you through it and locking this one behind him, too. You walked to the end of the corridor and he gestured you down some wooden stairs that creaked as if they would break under your weight. He turned the corridor light off, too, and locked the door at the top of the steps.  
This was it. You were locked in. There were at least two locks between you and escape. When Minho shoved past you to the left and opened yet another door, your stomach sank a little further. Three locked doors. He didn’t hold this one for you but he didn’t slam it in your face either, so you rolled your shoulders back, put on your game face and walked through.  
You almost regretted it when you saw where it led. It was possibly the worst place you had ever seen. It wasn’t messy, but there was something dirty about the room anyway. Outdoor furniture inside; everything vaguely brown in a way that you didn’t think it had been fresh out of the box; everything tired and worn and sagging; the naked lightbulb dim and humming as it shone; the fridge, scratched and dented and shoved into a corner, also hummed, managing to sound as well as look tired. It was bleak. It was grey. It made you feel like things were crawling on you and you’d only just stepped foot in it.  
You half expected your feet to stick to the floor when you took a few steps forward. They didn’t but the carpet was so old and worn that you had no idea what colour it was originally; in places, you could see the floorboards clearly through the threads. 
Minho pointed to the sofa.  
“There,” was all he said.  
Then he disappeared out of the room. You gingerly sat on the edge, wondering if you should be more concerned about your health or your safety. Maybe you were sheltered here, but you pictured a thousand and one diseases squirming on the cushions. It wasn’t fair to, because you could see that it was cleaned. The room wasn’t filthy; there were no crumbs or water rings on the coffee table; there was no rubbish littering the floor; the sink was empty and a stack of plates and bowls stood beside it, washed if not yet dried. Minho was clearly diligent.  
Minho and whoever else lived here. There were too many doors leading off this room for him to be here alone.  
Your curiosity was stopped in its tracks when he reappeared with a pillow and a towel. He threw the pillow wordlessly at one end of the sofa and then he raised the towel a little. 
“I don’t have any blankets. Don’t get cold.” 
You scoffed a laugh and were grateful that he ignored it. You weren’t indignant; you weren’t being a brat this time. You were dismayed. You couldn’t believe it. A house with no spare blankets. You were going to sleep under a towel. You glanced around you for a final time, tears pricking in your eyes, fingers at your lips, picking nervously. You weren’t going to die here, you told yourself. Probably. You were probably not going to die here and that was all you needed.  
You stood up, turned off the light, tested the door handle (not sure if you wanted it to be locked or unlocked), then returned to the sofa. You took off your shoes, took your bag from your back and hugged it tightly to your chest. You lay in the dark, in a stranger’s horrible house, alone, tired, more vulnerable than you would ever admit. You cried silently, reluctantly grateful for the towel, until you fell asleep.   
SECOND 
“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to everyone! Happy birthday to you!” 
You only got one birthday a year. The whole group of you. There wasn’t enough to stretch to everyone getting an individual birthday, an individual cake, a day off. So the middle day of the year, 2nd July, was chosen and you all had a birthday together.  
One cake, one candle each, six people blowing them out. Most unsanitary, but, by now, there wasn’t much you hadn’t shared so a little spit didn’t even register.  
You were too drunk by far, which was stupid really. It wasn’t even your first time drinking legally (because your real birthday wasn’t until later in the year), so there was no reason for you to behave as if you had never had a drink before. You should have learnt a little self-control.  
But it was your birthdays. So you kept having one more and one more and one more. As did everyone else.  
“Nineteen!” Minho called as he fell into the booth next to you.  
“I thought I was Sixteen?” 
He shrugged. 
“You do still act like it.” 
You shoved him, almost hard enough to push him off his seat completely. He shoved you back. 
“Shut up, Minnie.” 
He narrowed his eyes at you, plotting death for using the nickname he loathed above all others, and you sent a simpering smile back at him.  
“You’re a little squirt, anyone ever tell you that?” 
You rolled your eyes. 
“You, literally all the time, because you are for some reason desperate to sound like the oldest grandpa in the room.” 
He let out a growling sort of cry, dramatic because he’d also had too much to drink. Then he stood. 
“BYE, Sixteen!” 
If someone didn’t know the two of you, it would seem as if nothing had changed in the time since you met: both antagonistic, unlikable, as hard as you could make yourselves, forced together and barely tolerating it.  
Those who did know you, however, knew that things were very different now. Minho had, reluctantly, taken responsibility for you and, when you had grown up just enough to realise what that had meant, you felt all your hard resolve melt.  
They had very little, this ragtag bunch of kids (barely older than you) but they shared everything between them. Never quite enough to go around, money from legitimate enterprises never stretching far enough and having to be supported by money from less than legitimate means. You were a liability. In every sense. The only girl, a stranger, certainly not (at that time) a criminal. But Minho took responsibility and the others let you in.  
When you had learnt to see past your own nose, you saw the myriad ways in which they took care of each other. The silent, invisible way Minho cared for his friends. For you. You hadn’t forgotten the sting of electricity you’d felt when he held your hand way back when. Before you’d even seen him, before you knew his name, before any of this. You felt it all the time now. You were a live wire for him.  
No one in the group was stupid enough to refer to you as siblings or even joke that you acted like them. Your feelings for Minho were your most closely guarded secret but that didn’t mean everyone didn’t know. You were pretty sure even Minho himself knew. Not that he would ever act on it. He pretended not to notice, you thought. You had pushed close to the edge of being kicked out enough times to know that some things were still precarious. To know that he would never risk his weird family by acknowledging there was anything more than friendship between you. If it even was between you. He had given you very little reason to believe your feelings were reciprocated. So you did your best to ignore them.  
They became a fact of life. Like the fact that Minho was the only one Chan trusted to count the cash (not because the others weren’t trustworthy; they just weren’t accurate). Like the fact that Chan had the final say on everything. Like the fact that he would never abuse that authority and act for anything other than the wellbeing of the entire group. It just was.  
And it wasn’t like you were stupid enough to pine. You had some pride. Plenty, in fact.  
You stood from the booth and sauntered to the bar where your sometime-boyfriend, Johnny, was getting another drink.  
“Babe,” you whined, draping yourself over his back, hooking your chin over his shoulder.  
“Babe,” he whined back, copying, mocking.  
“Entertain me, I’m bored.” 
“It’s your party.”  
You pouted and forced him to join you on the makeshift dancefloor. You refused to notice that Minho left it as soon as you joined, his face dropping, looking only at Johnny and never once pleased about it.  
Chan had cut off the booze supply hours ago and the sun was thinking about raising its head above the horizon, which meant that, far from being wasted and happy and giddy and passing out in your bed, your hangover was already crawling in and you were tired and irritable. Johnny had pissed you off sometime before the booze dried up and then pissed off entirely before you’d begun to sober up, so you’d spent the smallest hours of the morning making your bad mood everyone else’s problem.  
Everyone except Minho. Because whilst you were always determined, at these moments, to needle him, to want to get under his skin, to want to scrape it back and spit on it, he was never there. He managed to avoid your venom and, even when he didn’t, seemed immune. He would just slow-blink at you as if he were looking through you and turn away. It boiled your blood and he knew it.  
You stomped downstairs to the same shithole basement you’d walked into two years ago. Everyone else had either left or gone to bed already, you thought. You expected it to be empty. It wasn’t. 
“Fuck sake, Mouse,” you spat, using your usual nickname, his preferred one (… preferred being too strong a term; it was the one he allowed you to use without retaliation). “Why are you sitting on your own like a fucking loser?” 
“You know he treats you like a fucking loser?” 
He turned to lean over the back of the sofa, looking tired under his eyes but energetic within them.  
“Fuck off,” you returned. “As if you give a shit who I date.” 
“Date? That’s what you call it?” He scoffed, deliberately, exaggeratedly, as if you wouldn’t otherwise have recognised his scorn. “He treats you like dirt.” 
“You would know.”  
He was on his feet and in front of you before you could blink.  
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”  
You’d had about enough of it, you decided at that moment. Not enough sleep, too much alcohol, and just enough of this bullshit. You grabbed the front of his T-shirt and pulled him with force towards you. You took him by the back of the neck and kissed him, hard and like you meant it. Because you did. It only took him a second to push you back, hands firm on your shoulders, holding you away from him. His face had lost his usual mask – the blank, passive, flat-eyed one that he used to stare people out with unnatural stillness – but he was still keeping you out; it was guarded, flashes in his eyes being stamped out with every blink, his jaw held tight and his mouth shut.  
“That’s what I fucking mean, Minho,” you hissed.  
“How dare you?” he hissed back, voice so low in his throat you almost couldn’t hear it. “You have no fucking idea.”  
His blinks weren’t quick enough this time to hide all the anger burning in his eyes.  
“No idea of what? What?!” 
His lip curled and he let you go. He let his guard down around you more than he should have: shrugged you off and turned his back on you. You took both palms and pushed him. He tumbled forward, catching his foot on a side table, pulling it down with him as he hit the floor. Cat-like in his reflexes, he was on his feet before the table had stopped rocking. He charged straight at you and continued until you were pressed up against the door, until he was pressed up against you.  
“You want a kiss?” he asked and every part of you should have been screaming yes, because you did.  
You did want a kiss, but nothing about this was how you wanted it. It was a threat, not an offer. You’d been threatened with worse. You jutted your chin out a little, always standing up, never backing down. 
“You going to give me one?” 
His eyes flicked towards your lips, hovered there a second, like he was really thinking about it. They stayed there a little longer and doubt was picking up speed on its race to your consciousness. You thought he wouldn’t. You thought he would. You still couldn’t predict his behaviour. You thought you had him pinned and then he flipped you. You always thought you had him on the ropes, but you never really did.  
You were impatient, tiring of this, doubt and insecurity and embarrassment swelling up inside you and you opened your mouth to tell him to go away, to fuck off and die, to do something vile to himself. It was at that moment that his eyes met yours again, for a split second that sent a streak of ice through your blood, and then his mouth was on yours.  
You had never once looked a gift horse in the mouth, but even if you had wanted to, even if you had decided before he did it that you would push him off, return his rejection, you couldn’t possibly have done it now. His lips were soft, his hands still tight around your arms. He crowded you further against the door, your bodies pressing together as he swiped his tongue against your bottom lip, asking for entry. You gave it to him. Your hands snaked up his chest and into his hair; it was softer than you’d expected, silky. For a moment, you were disarmed by it. Soft. He never let his softness show if he could help it. Only rarely. Only when he felt safe enough to let his guard down did it ever come creeping out from its hiding place. But here it was, sprouting from the top of his head. Here it was, pressed against your lips, brushing your tongue. You felt weak at the knees. 
As far as kisses go, it was the best you’d had. Fire and ice fighting: goosebumps erupting on your skin as it flushed hot, making you shiver. His mouth was warm and wet and sweet and you were desperate for more, knowing that he was kissing you just right and that you weren’t doing the same. You were too eager, too greedy, too needy. This wouldn’t be enough. Couldn’t be enough. Just his lips on yours, his tongue rolling with yours, his hands still pinning your sides. You couldn’t stop here. You had to have him. All.  
You whined when he pulled back, when his grip on you loosened, and you opened your eyes expecting his to be soft and liquid, to be those sweet, round boba eyes he didn’t show enough of.  
They were hard and flat. He moved away from you in one, long step and back was that impassive blankness he loved so much. 
“Happy fucking birthday,” he said. 
He stalked off to his bedroom and shut the door.  
You stayed, glued to the front door, shaking. With anger, probably. With embarrassment, maybe. With something akin to heartbreak, but you would never admit it. The roaring in your ears, the screaming of invective at both yourself and Minho in your head so loud that you didn’t hear the sound of a key in the lock, weren’t aware that someone was trying to get in until they were shoving at the door, pushing you with it. 
“What the fuck?” came a quiet whine from the other side of it as he slowly pushed you away and got the door open. “Why were you trying to keep me out?” 
Jisung’s hamster cheeks were full of kimbap, the other half of the roll still in his hand, and his eyes were wide with that cute, pitiful look he carried off so perfectly. 
You ignored him. You stomped into your bedroom and slammed the door as hard as you could. 
THIRD 
Despite having your own bedroom (graciously offered up by Changbin and very ungraciously accepted by you), privacy in the small basement flat was an issue. Which is why you were huddled in the farthest corner of it, fists stuffed in your mouth, crying as quietly as you could in the dead of night.  
You lived with five men, but you had not yet found someone to date who would take the threat of them seriously. They did make threats, on occasion, when they had to. Because you had not yet found a man who could treat you as anything more than shit but you had, apparently, found the least bothered and most unfazed men in the city. The one before last had barely flinched when all five of them had battered down his door to come for you, when you had finally managed to get a message out that he was keeping you there.  
You never found out what happened to him. You didn’t ask and no one told you.  
This one hadn’t been that bad. That was the problem. You had thought he was nice. You had thought (as you had so many times before) that he might actually be the first to treat you right.  
You were wrong. So, you were crying in the corner of your room. You didn’t always cry. In fact, you didn’t often cry. Rarely, even. It meant that, when you did, the floodgates opened and you found it hard to stop. You found it almost impossible to breathe, desperately snatching air between sobs. Your head was already pounding, your face aching. It was total and complete the way it overtook you. So much so that you didn’t notice the presence of another person until they sat down beside you. 
You gasped, as much as you could amongst your shaking, shallow breaths, and were only slightly comforted that it was him. He said nothing. He pulled you towards him and held you like that until the storm had passed. 
You continued to sit in silence as your tears dried on your face, as your heartrate settled and your breathing became even. He didn’t make a move to let you go and you didn’t make one either. You were tired. You were sad. You were, though you wouldn’t admit it, a little bit heartbroken. This bit of comfort was exactly what you wanted.  
You didn’t want him to say anything. You didn’t want to hear it. That you’d done it again. That you’d never learn. That, somehow, you were gullible and easy to fool despite the fact that you had been hardening yourself against vulnerability of every kind since you were a child. That men just found a way to get beyond your defences—that bad men found a way. The good ones didn’t find you at all.  
“His loss,” was what he said. 
You lifted your head, tears still clinging to your lashes, drying on your cheeks. He had that look on his face that he saved for you: the soft, sweet one he gave you when you’d earnt it or when you needed it. The one that made your insides curdle, that even now made your heart skip a beat, that you wanted to fall into forever, that had sealed your fate so many years ago now. He blinked slowly at you, cat-like as always, and brushed your hair from your face.  
You opened your mouth to speak but nothing came. Your voice was trapped in your throat because he was still looking at you like that but his eyes kept flicking down, then back up, then down again at longer and longer intervals until he closed them completely and brought his lips to yours.  
You didn’t have to think twice. Didn’t have to think at all. Your body did the thinking for you. Your hands pushed into his hair and your legs pushed you up so you could slot them down either side of his hips. His hands found your waist and then the soft skin on the other side of your t-shirt. 
This was nothing like the first time. You remembered it all too well: the electricity, the anger, the volcano of feelings you’d tried to suppress rumbling and threatening to erupt, to blow the lid off the equilibrium you’d found. The hunger, the desperation, your own neediness spoiling it all.  
You weren’t desperate anymore, for his approval, for his love, for whatever he would give you. You wanted it all, would lay yourself on the floor and kiss his feet if he asked, with no hesitation, but you always knew he wouldn’t ask. You’d got used to that.  
Except now he was kissing you – he had kissed you – and his hands were squeezing at your waist and it was slow. Controlled. Deliberate. There was nothing accidental about the way his tongue rolled over yours, the way his teeth bit at your bottom lip, the way his hands pulled you lower on his lap, pulled you closer to him until there wasn’t so much as a breath of air between you.  
“Mouse,” you murmured, quietly into his mouth. 
He shook his head minutely, a tiny hum swallowed by you when he pressed your lips together again. No talking. Fine. You didn’t need to talk. If he kept kissing you, kept touching you, you wouldn’t need to utter another word again. But you couldn’t stop the little gasp when he sank his teeth into the sensitive skin of your neck, the moan rising in your throat when he ran his tongue over the same spot, hurting then soothing. Like always. 
It made your brain turn fuzzy, static wavering in your mind, as all your conscious thoughts turned to liquid, melting into Minho’s mouth, swallowed down by him, eaten whole.  
Then the front door slammed hard. 
“Guys!” Chan shouted, in a way that he never did.  
You heard him pounding on doors, opening them, starting with Changbin and Hyunjin’s on the right.  
You sprang apart like two north magnets, instinctively repelled by one another, just in time for Chan to burst through the door and scan the room for you, too wired, too stressed to register that it might have been weird for you to be sitting on the floor like you were, certainly not noticing your kiss-bitten lips or heavy breathing or the way Minho’s hair was ruffled like it had just had a fist in it.  
“We’ve got to go,” Chan announced. “Like, right fucking now.” 
FOURTH 
No one wanted to up the ante. No one wanted to start getting involved with the organised crime lot. Your crime was… disorganised. It was local. It was just you doing the things you needed to, skirting around the law to survive. It wasn’t really crime, not if you squinted hard enough. Then the police raided the bar (which was illegal in pretty much every way that mattered) and you had nowhere left to go.  
There was just enough of the trust your parents left you (which you got access to at 21) to secure a new apartment (one that was not underground) and a small buy-in with a group of much larger, older, more experienced criminals. There was very little else you could’ve done at that point. Or so you all told yourselves.  
The apartment was an upgrade in every way but size. It was newer and above-ground which meant it stayed warm and didn’t get damp. It had windows which let the sun in. It had enough room for two sofas so everyone could sit comfortably. It had a gas hob which really only Chan and Minho cared about, but they cared a lot. It had two bathrooms with reliably hot water and good pressure. It did not get power cuts. It did not always smell musty. It was not brown and beige and grey. But it did have fewer rooms to be parcelled out between you all.  
The last one had four rooms that served as bedrooms. This had three. Between six. There had been furious arguments and endless straw-pulling and no one was happy with the results. It took a few weeks but eventually things shook out as they always should have.  
You shared with Minho because he was the only one who was willing. You both had reputations for being scary (in totally opposite ways: you the raging bull to his still, fathomless water); you loved to take your bad moods out on one another; he was the only one you ever willingly let see you when you were sad and small and vulnerable. Besides which, no one else would dare try to take the space at your side from him. So you shared a bedroom: two twin beds on opposite sides of the room, because Minho refused to sleep in a bunk bed and you refused to sleep together in a double. There was little room for anything else.  
You complained about the sleeping arrangements almost daily. You loved the hot water and the sunlight and the not-mouldiness of the apartment, but some days, you couldn’t bear the way you couldn’t get away from Minho.  
You’d thought you had it bad. This was even worse. 
Four days. Four days, so far, staying (squatting) in a vile, empty, dilapidated villa apartment, staring out of a window, waiting for something to happen. Just you and Minho and one room. For four days and counting.  
It was Minho’s turn to watch and he sat at the monitor, diligent, hard-working, as always, whilst you were supposed to be catching up on sleep. Instead, you were lying on what passed for a bed, tossing an apple into the air and catching it, over and over and- 
“You going to stop that?” Minho asked, with his trademark tone: both light and threatening.  
“Nope!” 
“Want me to make you?” 
You flicked your eyes over to him: he was studying the monitor seriously, but you were sure he had been looking at you.  
You hadn’t spoken about that night. Partly because you hadn’t had the time. You’d jumped up from the floor of your bedroom, grabbed as much stuff as you could fit in the first bag you could find and the six of you had legged it, making it out just in time to watch the police cars roll up and trash the place.  
“There was so much fucking money in that safe,” Chan had said, plaintively, staring at the sky. That was when you’d offered up yours.  
You had had to find somewhere to live, and fast. You’d all had to find jobs, something to do, some way to make money that wasn’t connected to the bar. You had been passing like ships in the night, meeting only to argue about shower time and sleeping arrangements. Then Changbin had come home with a suggestion. You’d argued about that, too, but in the end, it was unanimous. Go in with the bigger boys or – well, there was no ‘or’. That was the point. 
So you and Minho were working recon. You’d pulled the short straw in more ways than one. It was the longest you had spent together. Ever. Confined for days in this space. 
On the first day, he refused to talk to you at all.  
On the second, you made everything into an argument because at least you could get a rise out of him.  
On the third, he had seemed to thaw. Something had softened and you talked, like friends, like you used to. You laughed and joked and it wasn’t so bad. 
Now it was the fourth day and that ice had returned. He had frozen over, doubled-down on silence. No sooner had you had warmed up than he was giving you frostbite, chilblains. Whiplash. Those ten words were the first he’d spoken to you all day.  
“No,” you answered. “I don’t want you to make me.”  
You paused, wondering if the words you were considering were a sign that you were going mad, that being cooped up in this space had sent you a little doolally. The unbearable nothingness of your days passing like sludge forcing all those hidden thoughts forward, with nothing to distract you from them. The words were certainly risky, but Minho had shown his hand. He had kissed you. Like he meant it. And you knew he would’ve continued to kiss you had Chan not interrupted. He’d have continued to do a whole lot more than just kiss you. 
And you were bored.  
“I want you to fuck me,” you said plainly, catching the apple in front of your face and turning to look at him.  
He was still studying the monitor. Nothing on his face gave anything away: surprise, disgust, lust, laughter. Nothing. You were used to that. 
“We’re on a job.”  
“Yeah, and it’s boring and nothing is happening and who fucking cares? I would rather have sex.” 
He sighed and rolled his head to look at you. 
“Really, Sixteen? Now is the time you want to bring this up?” 
“Stop calling me Sixteen.” 
“I always call you Sixteen.” 
“You always call me Sixteen when you want to put me in my place or make me feel like a child. I’m not a fucking child anymore.” 
“I know you aren’t.” 
“Then why won’t you fuck me?” 
He laughed and your blood began to simmer.  
“There’s more that I look for than just ‘is not a child’.” 
“Don’t try to act like you don’t want to.” 
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to.” 
“Well then, shall we?” 
He smirked and the glint in his eye was new to you.  
“We’re on a job.” 
“Stop saying that!” you cried, stalking the three steps from your side of the room to his.  
You manoeuvred yourself into his lap, blocking the monitor from his view, and took his face in your hands. 
“We’re on a job and nothing is happening and nothing will continue to happen for ages yet, so why don’t we make it a little less fucking boring?” 
You knew he wanted to. Could see his pupils dilate. Watched his eyes flick to your lips and your chest and back up. This might have been all he wanted: sex and nothing more. You didn’t know. Weren’t interested in having that conversation. Were convinced that it didn’t matter either way. If he only wanted sex, you would give it. Give it until it was too late and he was in too deep to come back out. Hadn’t worked before but there was a first time for everything. 
But even that was beside the point. You were desperately bored and bored of being desperate for him and there was one stone that would kill both those birds.  
“Mouse,” you said quietly, keeping your voice low, as you placed a kiss on his jaw, as you spread your knees a little wider, sinking lower into his lap. “Come on.” 
His hands were on your thighs, neither encouraging nor discouraging, just holding tight. He didn’t respond as you continued to press kisses to his face, to his neck, grinding your hips over him slowly. You could feel his pulse beat fast, noticed the way his breathing was getting heavier, his fingers dipping deeper into your skin, until it hurt. Until he stopped pretending he was going to continue to work, stopped pretending that he could resist you.  
“Fuck,” he gasped, his voice hoarse. 
He gripped the hair at the back of your head and pulled you from his neck, tumbling you both to the floor. You didn’t want it to be fast, but you’d take it any way he’d give it. So when his hands pulled at your t-shirt, you let him take it off as you unclasped your bra. He didn’t give you time to fumble with the hem of his top, to discard it for him; he dipped his head straight down, swirling your nipple with his tongue, sucking it into his mouth; he rested his weight on one elbow and his other hand descended. You were grateful you had no buttons, no zips to contend with, just the loose, elasticated band of a pair of leggings that had seen better days. Minho’s fingers slipped beneath it and he circled his fingers around your clit, the fabric of your underwear dulling the sensation only slightly.  
This was moving even faster than you’d expected but you’d been waiting so long already. Blood rushed to the surface of your skin and your breath began to shudder. Underwear now pushed to the side, you gasped when Minho ran a finger through your folds, shivered when he moaned at what he found there. He brought his lips back to yours but you turned away to let his name drop from your open mouth. 
“Mouse...” 
“Shut up,” he said firmly as he sank two fingers into your slick cunt and stole your breath with another kiss.  
You couldn’t talk but you could moan. Could whine. Could whimper as his fingers moved inside you, as he ground his palm against your clit, as he made your thighs twitch and walls spasm. You tried not to lose your mind completely, to stay grounded, to stay present now that this was finally, really, actually happening. You reached your own hands down to Minho’s trousers; he hadn’t got the no-buttons, no-zips memo and your fingers fumbled with both. They shook with adrenalin as you popped the button through the hole and dragged the metal zip down. You pushed them away from you, off his hips, and had one hand in his boxers when the crackle of the walkie-talkie cut through Minho’s moan. 
You both froze.  
“Minho? What’s happening? Chan said they’re on the move?” 
You glanced at each other, for one more frozen second, and then the world lurched into overdrive. Minho clambered to the monitor with his trousers around his ankles and, as soon as he saw the screen, started swearing viciously, tugging at his clothes and throwing your t-shirt back at you.  
“What’s happening?” you asked, breathless for all the wrong reasons now.  
“They’re clearing out,” Minho reported into the walkie-talkie, ignoring you but answering your question anyway. “Two loads have left, a third on its way.” 
“Shit! How did you miss it? What the fuck were you doing?”  
“Nothing! We lost the feed for a minute but it came back quickly and then they were already moving.” 
He shot you a glance, something between panicked plea and angry admonishment. It wasn’t often he was caught on the hop, wasn’t ever. You, however, were used to being on the wrong side of things, so you re-dressed quickly and had already started packing your shit up. No matter how sideways this went, you could take two positives from it. One, you wouldn’t have to stay locked up here with Minho any longer. Two, he definitely, definitely wanted to fuck you. 
FIFTH 
You still hadn’t talked about it. You continued to share a bedroom, sleep there every night, wake there every morning but you had not once discussed the twice now that you had almost had sex. You were waiting for him to bring it up, even though you knew he never would. He wasn’t a coward, not ever, but if there was one word to describe him it was loyal and you knew he would protect your group with his life. And that also meant not pursuing whatever it was that was between you. Because it was a risk. It could jeopardise the stability of what you had established—what Chan had established long before you ever came into the picture.  
But you were digging your heels in this time. You’d already come on too strong. Your pride was being wounded with each day that passed, with each day that he continued to pass you up. You’d crack first. You knew you would. You always did. Minho was unbreakable. You weren’t. But you wanted to pretend, for at least a little while, that you could be. That you could be impenetrable, too.  
“Shit shit shit shit shit,” Junho repeated as he slammed into the car, instructing Minho to drive before the door was even shut.  
Minho didn’t need telling twice.  
“Where to?” 
“Safe house,” he gasped, ragged breathing setting your teeth on edge. 
You didn’t ask what had happened. What had gone wrong. That didn’t matter as much as getting out. Getting Junho out. You were disposable, still. You knew that. Even Minho. You were runts; you also still had something to make up for given what happened on your last assignment. So you travelled in silence. Junho in the back, breathing heavily; you didn’t turn around to see if he was ok. You didn’t want to know. You assumed he wasn’t but as long as you could hear him breathing, you knew he was alive.  
Minho was facing forward, eyes scanning the roads ahead, reflexes allowing him to run red lights without accident – in this part of the city, no one would stop a flashy car like this for speeding, for driving recklessly. That was what they all did. His jaw was tense, eyes tight. He looked calm but you could see his little legs kicking under the water. You knew him well enough by now.  
You didn’t keep your eyes on the road. You kept them on him. Felt like someone needed to be watching out for him, too – not that there was anything you could have done to be helpful anyway. There were always two in the getaway car. That was the rule and you didn’t ask why because you didn’t want to know the answer.  
As a teen, you had thought you knew everything. You were old enough now to know not only that you knew nothing but also that you preferred it that way. Need to know basis. For everything. All the time.  
Minho slowed, driving more carefully as the car left the city, winding across hills, negotiating turns that you’d have driven straight over, plummeting you all to a miserable death. He turned the headlights off at the mile marker he’d been told about, one that you’d already forgotten, and crawled, slower still, up to the house, blanketed in darkness, hidden by an overgrown and untended garden.  
Junho grunted. 
“Thanks. Wait until I give the signal then get the fuck out of here. Do not go anywhere you’ve ever met with us. Ditch the car when you can; destroy the plates.” 
He didn’t wait for a response. You watched him stagger away and then waited until the light in the top right room flicked on and off and on and off again.  
Minho put the car in reverse and slowly backed out. At a further mile marker, he turned the lights on. He continued to climb, driving away from the city still, until the car reached the top of the hill. The lights from the city were so bright you almost didn’t need the headlights at all. It didn’t feel a safe place to stop. Too visible.  
Then Minho slowly and quietly backed the car into nook on the hillside. No doubt worn away from years of cars trying to pass each other on the narrow road, it barely contained the car, but it put it in some shadow and no one would hit you.  
He turned the engine off and let his hands fall to his lap. His head tipped back against the headrest and he sighed.  
“You ok?” 
You asked him all the time and he never gave a serious answer because he always was. And if he wasn’t, he certainly wasn’t going to talk about it. But you asked all the same.  
He nodded then turned to you. 
“You?” 
You laughed nervously, suddenly feeling the last twenty minutes as the adrenalin began to drain. 
“Kind of feel like I could hurl.” 
He laughed too and nodded again.  
“I feel like I want to sleep for a thousand years but also like I could run a marathon,” you continued.  
“I feel half-dead already but also fucking invincible.” 
He held his hand out and it trembled. You clasped it between yours and held it tight. He smiled; from where you were sitting, it looked like a smirk, but then he turned more fully towards you and it wasn’t. It was sweet. His eyes were gleaming. Your mouth dried.  
“Half-dead, huh?” And you knew you were going to say it. You always knew you would be the one with which it would raise its head. “How about a little dead? A little death, even?” 
“Sixteen…” 
His voice had that warning tone to it but the gleam in his eyes remained and you’d broken the seal now. Were going to push this as far as he’d let you.  
“Mouse…” 
You saw him waver. Absolutely, definitely, were certain that he was considering it. Until a car came over the crest of the hill and its headlights flashed in at you; at the same moment, Minho’s phone buzzed from the cup holder it had been thrown in. You jumped. He jumped. Whatever moment there had been was gone now.  
Minho took his hand from your grasp and checked his phone. Then he put the car in gear.  
“We’ve got to get out of here.” 
You expected it to be quick. Expected it to be simple. It turned out to be neither. You had managed to destroy the plates and were very near clear of the car you’d now abandoned when you, once again, found trouble (‘why did it always have to be you?’ you had asked yourself fleetingly as Minho shoved you towards your own piece of shit car that had been waiting for your getaway; he had not waited for you to be fully seated or your door to be closed before he slammed a foot on the accelerator and squealed off). The two of you were screaming around corners, tearing out of the city in whichever direction provided the easiest escape. With the headlights off and the city lights streaming into the distance, you could barely see the road in front of you, had no idea how Minho was still driving straight. You trusted him with your life and it was just as well, because it was in his hands. His, yours, and potentially everyone else’s, too. 
The summer sun was minutes away from popping its head above the horizon when you were finally able to return home. 
You sat in silence for a few moments. You had moved beyond exhaustion into this kind of frayed, wired alertness. You felt your eyelids dropping even as your heart still hammered. Minho’s hand found yours.  
“Mouse,” you said, letting the rest of it fall away unspoken.  
“Yeah,” he replied but you didn’t know if that was his answer. “Just give me a minute.” 
You were too tired to argue so you let silence fall again. You were almost dropping off, head just beginning to nod, when he tugged on your hand.  
“Come here.”  
You turned. You leant. His other hand cupped the back of your head and pulled you closer. He kissed you. Electricity crackled and a surge of energy rushed through you. It was happening again. He was kissing you. You couldn’t let this time pass by.  
You scrambled in your chair, forgetting to undo your seatbelt, being pulled back by it and swearing coarsely when your lips broke from his. You clambered over the gearstick and the handbrake and fell with one foot heavily in the footwell as Minho slid his seat all the way back. You didn’t have time to care about the jarring in your knee or the bump on your head as it hit the roof. Could barely feel it. Didn’t matter.  
Well, it didn’t matter until it did. Until there wasn’t really room enough for you to straddle him. Until you were pressing yourself up against the roof so there would be room for him to get his hands to his belt. Until you lost your balance and fell backwards, landing with bump on the steering wheel, which blared out into the dark dawn street.  
“Fucking hell,” Minho muttered. “Get in the back.” 
More willingly than you ever had, you did as you were told. He moved his seat forward again, all the way, and you watched him climb through to you, hands reaching for him. It was no less awkward. Not enough room to lie down. Still not enough height to sit. Not space enough between the back and front to kneel. It was messy and uncoordinated, grabbing for anything, taking what you could get, knocking into the window and falling off the seat, kicking and elbowing each other in a tangle.  
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Minho roared, in an uncharacteristic display of frustration. “No use. Not happening.” 
He sat back and sighed, trousers undone but still around his hips. He pushed his hands through his hair and you tried to settle demurely next to him, smoothing your own hair, zipping up your jeans, swallowing hard as you fought to accept that he was right. It was not happening. Not here. Not now.  
You stared through the car window and were sure you could’ve punched straight through it. You wanted to. It was the window, Minho, or yourself. Couldn’t effectively punch yourself. Knew you wouldn’t dare hit your mouse. Your fingernails pressed sharply into your palm as you squeezed your fists tightly.  
A hand covered yours. Gentle. You looked at Minho and there he was: your secret, soft guy. You unfurled your fingers and he linked them with his own. 
“Come on,” he said quietly. “Let’s just go home.” 
FIRST 
You tramped into the apartment, bringing your bad mood with you. Everyone was sick of it by now – you were sick of it, but you couldn’t shake it.  
Minho was avoiding you. That much was clear. He had been avoiding you since you tried and failed to fuck in the car. You didn’t know why because you didn’t care. You had reached the end of your tether with the universe. Three times now. But still no cigar. You wondered – asked yourself a hundred times a day – what it was going to take to make this happen.  
Frustrated didn’t even begin to cover it. You could go out and hook up with whoever you liked. You could get yourself off just fine. But it ran so much deeper than that. If you pulled at the thread, it tugged on your heartstrings, all tangled up in knots. It hurt. It pulled at something so deeply interwoven with your very being; all anyone had to do was follow it to its source and they could destroy you. All anyone had to do was cut it and they’d cut you, too.  
You didn’t like that. Hated it, in fact. Hated that all this tugging and wiggling had opened up a hole and you could feel your vulnerability exposed. You could feel weakness leaking out of you, seeping from your pores, visible to the naked eye, for anyone to see.  
It made you bitter. Made you angry. Made you lash out even when you shouldn’t have. Because you were always on the defensive. Even now. Especially now. 
You knew the others were talking about you. About Minho. About the two of you. Knew it from the awkward silences when you walked in a room and the furtive glances and the group chat that had grown curiously quiet, leaving you to assume that there was a separate one you weren’t a part of.  
You were beginning to lose your patience and you were not starting with a plentiful supply.  
You lay on your bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to calm your rage. You had woken with it, just like every other day this week, and it would not leave you. You breathed slowly and carefully and tried to think of difficult and boring things.  
You thought only of Minho.  
Then he opened the door. He hesitated – you could feel him standing there, assessing – and then shut it, leaving you alone. As the door clicked, you felt that tug. You felt the knots tighten, so impossibly tight now that the joins weren’t even visible. You jumped up and threw yourself through the door. 
“Stop fucking ignoring me!” 
You hadn’t meant to shout.  
Minho turned and looked at you. His stillness enraged you further. He didn’t say anything. 
“Are you going to fucking say anything?!” 
“What do you want me to say?” 
“ANYTHING! You haven’t spoken to me for weeks! You literally walk out of rooms if I’m in them! What the fuck is wrong with you?”  
“You think this is easy?”  
His voice was cold and sharp as steel. His head cocked lightly to the side and his eyes narrowed, peering at you, looking inside you.  
“You think I want it to be like this?-” 
“I don’t know what you fucking want!” 
His nostrils flared. This delighted you. He was annoyed and you loved it. 
“Not once,” you continued, still shouting because you couldn’t rein it in, “have you ever fucking told me. Not once have you ever actually said what you want! That you want me. Do you? Fucking do you? Because I don’t fucking know anymore! Every time we get close, you get further away from me! I’m not a fucking yo-yo, Minho. You can’t play with me-” 
“Play with you? You think I’m playing? What part of this is a game?”  
His voice was rising now, too, his perfectly blank mask slipping. 
“It’s never been a game, Sixteen! Not once in the entire time since we met has it been a game! How are you still not getting it? Junho almost fucking died and if he had, it would have been our fault! We all almost ended up in prison because of the fucking bar. The night we met you almost got yourself trafficked! It’s not a game! You act like life is so fucking simple! It’s not!” 
“IT IS! It can be that fucking simple! Stop overthinking! Stop taking everything so fucking seriously!-” 
“It is serious! That’s what you don’t get!” 
He was close now, had been inching closer and closer, and he was looking down at you, his eyes black as pitch, his jaw tight, his breath struggling through clenched teeth.  
“You don’t get it and you never have.”  
His voice was quiet, back to that steel that sent a chill down your spine.  
“Everywhere you go, I look out for you. Everywhere you are, I am responsible for you. It’s been nine fucking years, Sixteen, and you are everywhere I go.” 
Your vision tunnelled, stomach fell to your feet. You had to look away and hated yourself for it. You never flinched. You never backed down. You were never the first to retreat. Except for him. You couldn’t bear to look in his eyes, to see what loathing and disdain they held for you. Your embarrassment was on your cheeks already and pricking in your eyes.  
Then his nose nudged yours and he took more steps forward. He pushed you slowly against the wall and you cursed yourself for retreating to it. 
“You are in my life and in my bedroom and in my fucking head,” he whispered. “All the time. All the fucking time. And I haven’t been able to do shit about it because you are my job. You are mine to protect. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows I would burn this place to the ground for you. I would scorch the earth. I would drain the sea. For you. Don’t you get it? When it comes to you, I’m a fucking liability.”  
You risked it. A glance. Lifted your eyes for less than a second but you had to do it again. Had to stop there, be sure you were really seeing what you thought you were.  
Soft, round, liquid eyes. An openness in his face that he hadn’t let you into before. His mouth was still a grim line, turned down at the corners so slightly, had it been anyone but you, it would have gone unnoticed.  
“Mouse...”  
You tried to whisper but could barely manage that, his name creeping out on a hoarse gasp.  
He moved his face closer to yours, lips almost touching.  
“Don’t you get it?” he repeated.  
You got it. Because everything he said was true for you, too. You’d started out as a liability, for sure, but you had continued to be one because Minho was your north star. Not Chan. Not the group. Not whatever sense of purpose you might have derived from the life you had cobbled together. If he said jump, you wouldn’t ask a thing. You would jump. You’d been following him since day one and, then, it might have been desperation, a lack of options. Now... well, there was still desperation: a desperate need for him, a desperate desire to be wanted by him, kissed by him, touched by him. You had other options. Options you would never take, not as long as he existed. You would stop existing before you ever thought of leaving him.  
You nodded, feeling more like a foolish, vulnerable 16-year-old than you had when you were foolish and vulnerable and 16.  
He sighed, breath sweet with the pudding he could never resist, and you were closing your eyes, tilting your chin up, expecting him to give in.  
He turned away. You watched him, mouth agape in disbelief, as he pushed his hands through his hair.  
“FOR FUCK’S SAKE!” you screamed, bringing your hands down on his back in something that was half-shove, half-slap.  
He had whipped around before you could lower your arms and you found your wrists caught in his hands.  
“You don’t fucking stop, do you?” he hissed.  
“Why would I stop?! I don’t want to stop, Minho! And nor do you! You can’t say you don’t! Because I KNOW. I KNOW you want it. I know you want me. And I’m fucking throwing myself at you. Take me! TAKE ME!” 
His eyes were hard and dark. His fingers pushed so tightly into your wrists that you could feel your pulse against them. He was breathing heavily, nostrils flaring but lips shut tight, pressed together in a thin line.  
“Take. Me,” you repeated, level and firm, not sure if he would, but sure that, if he didn’t, things would never be the same again.  
You couldn’t do this a fourth time. Couldn’t put yourself in his hands, have him take you, and then... Not. And then stop. And then act as if you didn’t exist. That thread between you, tied up in your heartstrings, was taut, stretched, at its limit. And so were you. 
The pause was painful. Excruciatingly long. Adrenalin coursed through you, making you hot, making you shake, making your heart beat so hard against your ribs you thought they might break. Thought your heart might break. Hadn’t been willing to admit how fragile it was but it felt like venetian glass now. You could already feel the cracks forming, the web extending, the shards- 
He kissed you. Pulled you roughly towards him by your wrists and kissed you. Put his hands on your hips, then slid them under your top, and still kissed you. He was kissing you. It took a few seconds to slip back into your body, to feel it, the soft petal of his lips against yours, the sharp bite of his teeth, the wet warmth of his tongue. You forgot your shattering heart and grabbed his T-shirt, using it to pull him closer, to drag him into your shared bedroom. 
Not that he needed dragging. You stumbled over each other’s feet as you tried to kiss and walk and grope all at once. You tumbled backwards onto his bed and took the brief separation as an opportunity to lose your top, to unclasp your bra. Your hands were in the waistband of your joggers when Minho climbed over you, topless now too, breathless as he mirrored your actions, pushing his trousers and his boxers over his hips. He huffed a frustrated sigh as you giggled, as he stood back up to take them all the way off, to kick them off his ankles and take yours away, too.  
He didn’t give you time for admiration, for appraisal. He lay his body over you and his lips pressed against yours, quickly, firmly, before trailing them across your jaw and down your neck. He was every bit as vicious as you thought he would be, teeth nipping at your sensitive skin, sinking into your soft flesh. You wanted him to mark you, wanted the proof of it to last. You scraped your nails down his back and he hissed when you broke the skin. Hissed but didn’t complain. Hissed and moved his mouth lower, swirling his tongue around your nipple, sinking his teeth into that, too.  
When you tugged on his hair, he pulled off, looked at you, his face an open question. You shook your head. 
“It’s fine,” you panted. “I like it. I just want to pull your hair.” 
He laughed and clamped his teeth over your breast again, harder this time, so you keened and your back arched into him. You twisted his roots in your fist and he moaned, eyes flicking up to yours as he kissed across the valley of your chest.  
“Do that again.” 
“Fuck,” you gasped, tipping your head back, doing as he had asked and tugging hard.  
The ache you felt for him had ballooned inside you, taken up all your hollow spaces. There was your flushed skin and your fluttering heart, your rushing blood and your deep, persistent ache for Minho. Nothing more. Nothing less.  
“Mouse,” you whispered, voice tight with desire. “Touch me, please.”  
You never asked. You didn’t beg. If you liked a guy, you let them do what they wanted with you, and if you didn’t, you took what you wanted. It was always one-sided.  
But this wasn’t. It was Minho. It was the fathomless depth in his eyes as he lay his mouth all over you. It was the slip of his fingers through your soaked folds as he sucked sweet bruises against your neck. It was the sound of a moan caught in his throat when you wrapped your fingers around his hard, leaking length. It was mutual. It was reciprocated.  
It was burning you up, hotter and sweeter than you’d ever felt before. His fingers sinking into your core made you shudder with delight. The twitch in his cock as you brushed your thumb over his head made your mouth water. The sound of his mumbled sweet nothings pressed against your skin, whispered in your ear, licked straight into your mouth, made you dizzy.  
“So soft,” he said. “So wet... Fuck, you’re so fucking beautiful... I’ve wanted this for so long... Wanted you...”  
He used your name, your real one, the one he didn’t learn (didn’t ask for) for months after you met. You returned the favour, ‘Minho’ tripping from your lips, until he shook his head. 
“Mouse,” he murmured, mouth still pressed against yours. “‘Mouse’ is yours.”  
“Mouse,” you echoed and he nodded before kissing you so that you could say nothing at all. 
You barely spoke, couldn’t catch your breath enough to form the words, couldn’t engage your faculties to find any to say. Minho spoke, though, more than you had ever heard him speak: praise and exclamation and remembrance and, yes, even admonition, but it was all so sweet, syrupy, dripping from his tongue like honey. You’d never heard him speak like this before, never had him melt in your hands or in your mouth, never felt him as easy and pliable as this.  
It wasn’t just his body. It wasn’t just the perfect smoothness of his warm, soft skin. It wasn’t just the stretch, the fullness, he made inside you, the insistent rhythm of his hips thrusting his cock tightly into your slick, waiting warmth. It wasn’t just his wet, sugary mouth, at your lips, at your jaw, at your clavicle. It wasn’t just all these things he was doing to you, all the things you were doing to him. 
It was his open eyes, round and shining and fluttering closed as your walls clenched around him. It was the tenderness in them, the depth he was letting you see, for more than just seconds at a time. It was the gentle tracing of your face with his fingers, even as he fucked into you, even as his teeth drew blood beneath your skin. It was Minho, the entirety of him. Yours. Finally yours. Finally giving in to you, giving himself to you.  
You got it. You had said you did and you had, but now, beneath him in his bed as he loved you, you actually understood the magnitude of it. His feelings for you. Yours for him. Held back behind a dam for so many years and now, the dam had broken. Now came the deluge that would flood the world, could drown everyone in it.  
To hell with them, you thought. To hell with anyone else. You found what you needed almost a decade ago. He found you. You found each other, somehow, by some miracle.  
When the pleasure swelled up in your core, toes curling, back breaking, you cried out with all the breath you had in your lungs, felt tears sting in your eyes, and the following inhale wobbled and shook. Minho paused, pressed his forehead against yours, kissed you lightly, didn’t have to ask the question out loud.  
You nodded and kissed him again, then again, each time hungrier than the last. You didn’t want to stop. Didn’t want to feel anything but this, but him. He moved slower now, though, hips rolling smoothly, lips not leaving yours, even when he spoke, even when he murmured how fucking good you felt, how much better than he’d imagined, how hard he was trying not to come, how he didn’t want this to end.  
You couldn’t take it. Thought you really would cry, thought you would collapse entirely under his weight, under the weight of everything you’d been carrying around, all these feelings: all this love and fear and frustration. He pushed you to the edge again without even trying, your red thread thoroughly tangled, inseparable now, and pulling a greater ecstasy from you than you had ever known.  
He couldn’t hold out either, his final, sharp thrusts filling you with his sticky release. You held him there, as close as he could be. He kissed you, so light it was barely there, his fingers grazing your face as he pushed the hair from your brow. 
“Mouse,” you choked, tears threatening your waterline.  
He kissed you again, that little butterfly kiss; you’d never seen him be this gentle.  
“Sixteen,” he whispered and, for possibly the first time, it didn’t sound like disdain, didn’t come accompanied by a smirk or an eye-roll; it was hushed and secret and just for you.  
As it had always been.  
You lay on his chest, bodies pressed together in the small, single bed, as they would have been even if the bed were bigger.  
“I want some water,” he said, lips against your forehead before he manoeuvred himself out from underneath you. “Want a drink?” 
You nodded and he smiled down at you as he fetched clean underwear and pulled a T-shirt over his head.  
You watched him go, watched him open the door, and then heard the sound of party poppers, whoops, and applause.  
The apartment was empty. Had been empty when you entered your bedroom. In the midst of everything, you had failed to notice the gang return home. They had not failed to notice you and Minho.  
“Fucking finally!”  
“You mean, they finally fucked?” 
Laughter resounded from the living room. Minho turned around, closed the door, and climbed back into bed without a word. 
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fuckmyskywalker · 8 months
Text
"Wide Open" — Anakin Skywalker.
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— CW: 18+, smut. Pegging. Anal. Dirty talk. | Word count: 1.5k
— List of films!
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Trying new things with Anakin was always a stroll. 
And to be fair, seeing him splayed out on all fours over your bed was truly a sight for sore eyes.
Spreading his asscheeks, you see him shivering with anticipation. You know he is as eager as you are. Securing the straps over your hips, you give his ass a playful squeeze and smile at the groan that escapes from his lips.
“Are you ready?” You ask, wrapping your hand around the silicone cock and pressing the tip over his lubed stretched hole; preparation is key, so after fingering him for ten minutes you know he is ready— but asking was important as well.
Anakin nods, but you need verbal confirmation— in fact, you want to hear him say it.
“Words,” a harsh slap echoes through your room.
He hisses, “Yes! I’m ready.”
“Beg for it.” 
He looks at you over his shoulder with a frown. This is just a hint of humiliation, you both know that. He was the one who suggested this after all. Still, toying with the Anakin Skywalker is a privilege not just anyone can enjoy. 
“Please fuck me with your cock, I need it so bad,” He says, hiding his face in his arms. It’s cute, pathetic even. You think of urging him to beg more, but you are dying to split his ass open. You want him to feel how he feels every time he’s inside you— that’s why you picked a dildo that could match his size.
Slowly yet firmly, you prod his tight entrance with the tip of the toy, your smile widening when he gasps. It’s way different than your fingers. Inch by inch, you fill him up in a new, erotic manner. His hands fist your white sheets, groaning quietly. The stretch hurts, but it’s not a bad pain, he wouldn’t complain or ask you to stop. Anakin finds himself shivering for more— waiting for you to reach the base of the toy. The stretch is too much, and it quickly numbs his brain. You take your time, not wanting to hurt him, but also finding it very hard to keep your composure. The thought of seeing and listening to Anakin being fucked by you in the same way he fucks you almost every night is enough to give you a power rush. 
“There, it’s all in,” your voice is comforting as your hands massage his hips. You see him relax, letting his weight rest on the mattress, but not fully. Circling your hips, Anakin jolts, and you hear the first moan of the night. “Let me know when I can move, baby.”
He nods, slowly wiggling his hips to accommodate and get used to the feeling. He feels like the fake cock is brushing his throat. Is this how you feel every time he is inside you? Because if you do, he understands why all you can do is moan and cry when he pounds relentlessly into you. 
“Now, move now,” Anakin’s breathless tone makes you squirm. “Please—”
“Sure thing, big boy.”
Drawing back your hips, you make sure to pick a gentle pace, allowing him to feel every inch. Back and forth, your movements are deliberate, not even daring to blink. You don’t want to miss a single second of this. Anakin, on the other hand, has his eyes closed shut, biting his forearm to not scream. 
Leaving just the tip in, you reach for the bottle of water-based lube, popping the tap open and squirting some over the toy and his hole. The lube is cold, and it makes him release a high-pitched moan that makes you chuckle. Anakin is about to protest when you push your hips forward, reaching a deep part inside him that turns his words into a broken moan. Gradually speeding up, you can’t help but moan as well. The view is amazing. 
“You are taking me so well, darling,” using the same words he mutters almost every night against him, you speed up gradually— relishing in the way he squirms and shakes over your bed.
The silicone cock slides in and out, hitting right on his prostate and making him moan louder and louder. He never thought something so taboo would feel so good. 
“Look at you— you look so pretty with my cock inside you,�� you mock him, chuckling when he moans in response. “My pretty boy.”
His body is glowing with a sheer layer of sweat, he can’t even keep his mouth closed. The thrusting becomes faster and stronger. The slap of your skin against the back of his thighs is different than the one he makes when he is fucking you. It sounds louder, more filthy— more erotic and it’s a wonderful melody that will never leave his mind. The small support he had with his arms completely dies, resting his cheek over the soft duvet. Keeping his ass up with your hands, you laugh breathlessly, feeling the same dominant wave he experiences. “Fuck—” Your hand lands over his asscheek, “You are so tight, aren’t you? Your pretty little hole is struggling to take my big cock.”
This is perverted. Anakin nods, moaning like a bitch in heat. His hips are now pushing backward, desperately attempting to meet your thrusts. Is this how you feel? He felt so full. His cock is bouncing slightly against his abdomen, stiffer than ever. He has the urge to jerk off, but he can’t even move a muscle— his brain is now a puddle, all he can think of is how good that damn fake cock feels inside of his puckered hole.
“Say you love my cock,” you command him, slapping his thigh. “Say it, slut.”
Anakin’s back arches, raising his head as much as he possibly can. “I l–love it! I love it so m–much!” He bites his lip, trying to stave off the orgasm that is quickly approaching. 
“You want more?” It is more of a rhetorical question. One of your hands leaves his hip to yank his sandy locks, causing Anakin to rest on his shaking forearms. You have him in a way he had you several times, and he looks so beautiful. 
“Yes, yes! Please— fuck me harder!” A string of drool down the corner of his lips as those pretty blue eyes roll to the back of his skull. You wish you could see his face, making a mental note afterward: fucking Anakin in front of a mirror is now a must. 
Letting his hair go, you bend towards him, your breasts brushing against the sweaty skin of his back. Sneaking underneath him, you wrap your hand around his neglected cock, laughing again when you find him hard as a rock— Anakin almost yells at your touch. 
“Do you wanna come?” Your hot breath tickles his ear, your tongue licks the shape of his ear slowly savoring the salty sweat of his body. 
“Yes— I wanna come, please let me come,” he’s broken, at your mercy. Is this what being cock-drunk feels like? “I can’t hold it any longer— please.”
A cruel thought flashes through your head; you could deny him the orgasm he’s so desperately craving. Why? Payback. How many times has he edged you for hours? How many times has he laughed at your tears after being denied release?
But no, that’s something for another day. 
You want to see him fucking fall apart.
“Come then, come like the little cock-hungry whore you are,” you spit at him, speeding up your hips and rutting into him so hard, Anakin has a moment of clarity; he won’t be able to walk properly tomorrow. “You love being fucked like a little bitch, don’t you?”
Anakin curses under his breath, before moaning unashamedly: some pleading, your name, and a word you can’t quite understand, which you assume is Huttese. Your hand jerks him off quickly and hard, squeezing the tip of his leaking cock quite often. At this point, his hips would falter and he would release his cum inside of you— but that’s not the case here. You make sure to push the dildo so deep you want him to believe you are bruising his insides, rearranging his guts, reaching his fucking throat.
With a strained scream, Anakin screams your name over and over, his cock twitching and spurting multiple ropes of hot, sticky cum, coating his abdomen and your bedsheets. You don’t stop your thrusts, simply slowing them down, before cupping his balls and giving them a light squeeze. He continues moaning, panting, and thrashing over your bed. His face is flushed and you catch a glimpse of tears running down his cheeks from the intense climax he experienced. 
Carefully pulling out, you watch in awe how his outstretched hole clenches around nothing. Sitting on the bed, you take a moment to catch your breath— being on top sure is tiring. 
Anakin lets his body fall limp onto the bed, opening his eyes to raise his head and look at you. There’s a tired smile on his face, his curls are glued to his forehead, and for Maker’s sake— he looks so fucking beautiful.
“That was fun,” you giggle, wiping the sweat off your forehead.
“Take that shit off, it’s my turn to make you cry.”
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satansdarlin · 11 months
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can i request headcanons for the monster trio plus ace with a Fem!reader on her period?
Sure! Some of these are based off of personal experience of what my boyfriend does for me
Period headcanons (monster trio, plus ace)
Warnings: talk of blood (obv), slightly suggestive in ace's part.
Masterlist
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Luffy
Man does not get it at first. Straight up thought you were dying.
But after some explanation from Robin, you, and Nami beating him, he finally gets it.
Still doesn't understand it in full but gets the most part
This man is now glued to you hip, even going as far as to deny playing games with usopp and chopper.
He kinda treats it like you are recovering from a injury
So obviously you need help with everything in his mind
Taking a bath? Now luffy has to sit in the bathroom and make sure you don't hurt yourself
Hungry? Omg so is he!
You wanna lay in bed all day? He's gonna cuddle you for most of it
Once he discovered the chocolate thing he made sure you had what kind you wanted.
In short luffy is the kind of boyfriend to constantly be beside you during your period if he can help it.
"Y/N can bleed for days and still be able to work! She's so cool right?!"
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Sanji
Ngl man has been prepared for this day
He knows your cycle better than you do man
Like he is prepared with extra blankets
Red meats to help you recover the iron you loose
Mentally prepared for any mood swings you might have
And has stocked up on a stash of snacks just for you during this time
While he is the most attentive and loving during this he is also the absolute worst in the best way possible
He's just trying to be helpful and you know that
But he is also making you eat liver and kidneys because you need the protein and iron
Also the type to just straight up scream at anyone who bothers you during this
You are his baby. Gotta keep you safe and happy especially when you are aching
"Come on, sugar. Eat the kidneys it's good for you- LUFFY DONT YOU DARE EAT THAT"
"But she doesn't want it"
"Shut up stupid. Come on now honey eat the food I even have some chocolate chip cookies waiting after you finish this"
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Zoro
Unbothered king
Straight up just doesn't care about bloody sheets or mood swings
He kinda thought you had a wound at first that you had hidden from him and freaked the fuck out
But after some explanation and him examining you just to be sure, he understood.
Makes you drink water the whole time
Does not care if you complain about being bloated. you are drinking those eight glasses a day
Naps with you during your sleepytimes
Will hold his hand on your stomach to apply pressure when you ask
But will also make jokes about you being his ketchup packet
Will go shopping for your tampons, pads, period cups. Doesn't know what any of them are so he asks Nami and robin for help
Comes back with something from every brand he could find and is now deeper in debt to Nami
Also straight up growled at someone when he could see they were annoying you???
He is now your social shield. Will tell someone where they can shove it if they don't fuck off and let you rest.
"607...608...609....610- oh. Nap time already? Alright alright I'm coming woman- did you just call me your cuddle bear? No I'm not blushing shut up"
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Ace
Ahem. Ace? More like living heating pad.
More than happy to hold you the whole time
Nice and cozy against those warm man titties 🤌
Anyway. He is absolutely one of the best about things
Completely indifferent if you snap at him. Understands that you are just easily frustrated and also sympathizes with you cause he can't imagine feeling like he wasn't in control of his own emotions
Nap time? Great! He sleeps more than you.. actually he might have a iron deficiency now that I think about it
Warm hands on belly at all times
Will knead at your belly to help soothe out any cramps
None of these men care about blood. It's just the pirate way.
Has his red wings. You know what I mean ;)
"Here, lemme warm you up. Sh sh don't cry, you aren't bothering me at all baby"
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