#and again I should have expected it because | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ginnsbaker · 2 days

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fic: if i bleed (you'll be the last to know) (10/?)

Part Summary: “Leigh, are you jealous?” you ask, taking a deliberate step towards her. You hold her captive with your eyes, making it impossible for Leigh to look away.

“I’m with Danny.” Her voice cracks as she takes a step back.

“That’s not an answer,” you whisper softly, closing the distance between you again.

Pairing: Leigh Shaw x Fem!Reader | Word count for this part: 6.200+ | Warnings: UST, fluff, very light angst | Author's note: I think the summary should tell you what to expect *winks*.

Despite going to bed very late, getting up in the morning isn't hard for you. Though it’s mainly because you barely had any rest at all. The real reason you couldn't sleep wasn’t the couch’s fault—it was the soft, irregular snores drifting in from the bedroom and the new, quiet awareness of someone else in your apartment. Every so often, Leigh would make a sound or shift in her sleep, and you would clench your fist hard against the blanket, resisting the urge to go check on her.

The stillness of the early dawn settles around you, and Leigh’s words come back to you like a quiet sail. “Do you know how intimate it is to sleep at someone’s house and not have sex?” she had said once, during one of your long, winding confrontations about Matt. It was a statement that had deeply affected you then, and even more so now, with her just a room away. You remember recoiling when she nearly spat the words at you. You wonder if Leigh also remembers, especially considering last night.

You rise from the couch before your alarm has a chance to ring, padding softly into the kitchen.

Cooking breakfast has become a kind of ritual, an act of service between the two of you. Smiling at this thought, you crack eggs into a bowl, add milk and vanilla, and start whisking. You soak slices of bread in the mixture, heat up the pan, and place them down to cook. French toast is on the menu today, and you hope Leigh likes it.

You set the table quietly, arranging the plates and cutlery, pouring orange juice into glasses. As you lay down the last slice of French toast on the plates, you add a light dusting of powdered sugar and a few slices of fresh strawberries for a pop of color and sweetness. With everything prepared, you sit down at the dining table to wait for Leigh to wake up.

After a while you glance at the clock and see it's 6:30 AM. You need to be at the clinic in an hour. With a sigh, you cover Leigh's plate with a napkin to keep it warm and start eating alone, just as you've done since moving here.

Finishing your breakfast, you wash the dishes and put everything away, your movements mechanical. You know you should get in the shower soon, but everything you'll need to prepare is in the bedroom. Pushing the door open just a crack, you peek inside to see Leigh sleeping peacefully, her face so different from its usual, more troubled visage when awake. She’s lying on her back with her mouth slightly open. The sheets have slipped past her hips, and her shirt has ridden up, exposing her stomach to the cool air. You tiptoe into the room and carefully pull the covers back up over her, tucking them around her gently.

Afterward, you crouch by the bed for a minute, simply observing her steady breathing. You feel a surge of affection as you watch her, wondering if she feels safe here, with you. Her face, relaxed and unguarded, is the very same one that Matt woke up to every day of his life for the past decade until he left this world. You think to yourself what a privilege it was for him, to have shared so many mornings with her, to have been woven into her waking thoughts and dreams.

While you’re cautiously sweeping a few strands of hair from her face, Leigh’s lips suddenly move in her sleep. They part slightly as if she's talking, but no sound escapes. Her forehead creases into a frown—she's clearly dreaming. It's a serious, focused expression that makes her look like she’s deep in conversation with someone in her dream world, and you cover your mouth to stifle a giggle at the sight.

Realizing you've lingered longer than intended, you force yourself to stand. You quietly retrieve a towel and some clothes, deciding to take your shower in the living room bathroom. As you lather soap over your torso, the image of Leigh’s exposed skin haunts your thoughts—the small, soft patch of her stomach you saw earlier. Your fingers inadvertently brush over your own nipples, and you can't help but compare the sensation to what touching Leigh's skin might feel like, if the rest of her body feels just as smooth and supple as it looks. The thought sends a shiver through you, goosebumps forming despite the warm water. Your fingers wander lower almost of their own accord. A gasp escapes your lips when the tip of your forefinger brushes against your clit, the touch sparking an unexpected surge of arousal. Shocked by your own reaction, you quickly turn the shower knob, the water temperature dropping to a chill that snaps you out of your fantasies.

Get a grip, you mutter to yourself, feeling a combination of embarrassment and frustration. Leigh is just in the next room, trusting you, and here you are getting carried away. Shivering a bit under the cold spray, you finish up quickly, wrap yourself in a towel, and get dressed.

You take one last look at Leigh before you leave. She’s still sprawled out in the same comfy position, deep in sleep. Waking her doesn't feel right—not just to say a quick goodbye before you rush off to work. Instead, you jot down a note on a piece of your prescription pad. It’s a quick message letting her know breakfast is ready on the table, she should feel at home, and you’ve left an extra set of keys for her. You apologize for the early exit and sign your name with a flourish. You tuck the note under her plate of French toast, placing the keys beside it. Then, remembering the night might have left her with a bit of a hangover, you put a glass of water and an aspirin by her bed. You're trying to think of everything she might need to start her day off right.

“Bye, Leigh,” you whisper as you give the room one final glance. You step out into the morning, locking up but leaving a part of your mind behind, picturing her waking up comfortable and cared for. It’s ironic that just when you decided to keep your distance, you start running into situations that make you fall even harder for her. It's as if fate is constantly nudging you in her direction.

And frankly, you don't mind it at all.

Leigh stirs slightly, her eyes fluttering open to a room that isn't hers. For a brief, groggy moment, she thinks she’s in Danny’s bed, but the scent is all wrong. Where Danny’s sheets carried a distinct note of sandalwood, they smell of lavender and something more… feminine. The soft difference in fragrance tugs at the edges of her memory, pulling forward the events of the previous day.

She blinks slowly, her mind piecing together the snapshots: the sharp words exchanged with Danny that morning, the solo trip out on Halloween, finding herself unexpectedly in Matt’s favorite restaurant. That’s when you came into the picture, dressed up for a date that never showed, and Leigh stepped in. You both shared a beer on the hood of your car, surrounded by glimmering, dreamlike sights, but all she could focus on was how the streetlights played over your face, making you look almost magical as you laughed, a half-empty box of donuts on your lap. You looked so... pretty, she thinks, the image stubbornly etched in her mind.

The night didn’t end there. She took you to a party. It was loud, crowded, but when you danced, the world seemed to shrink down to just the two of you. She remembers drawing you to the dance floor, guiding your hands to her hips as she swayed. She recalls gazing at your lips, wondering how they would feel against hers.

Leigh buries her face into your pillow, her cheeks burning as she reminisces how close you were, your lips barely an inch apart. She tries to laugh it off, but it’s hollow, and her face grows hotter as she recalls you pulling away, the almost-kiss dissolving into nothing. The last-second rejection stings, but what really makes her squirm is the heat flooding her body just from thinking about it. In an attempt to distract herself, Leigh snuggles deeper into your bed, but it backfires. One deep breath and she’s engulfed by the scent you left on the pillow. It feels as if you’re right there beside her, the illusion so convincing that it briefly soothes the ache of your actual absence.

And it's in this moment, surrounded by traces of you, that Leigh finally allows herself to fully acknowledge the attraction she’s been trying to ignore. It's been a slow, maddening realization, an interest that has compounded until it could no longer be overlooked. It’s ridiculous, really, because it sort of feels like she’s proving Matt right, wanting you just like he did. She sits up, clutching the sheets close, her heart racing as she turns over everything in her mind. It feels contradictory yet somehow... inexorable, as if it were always meant to happen.

But Leigh pushes back against the idea that anything in her life is fated, especially when it comes to who she might fall for. She's always believed in steering her own ship, picking her paths, her battles, her loves. Not just going with the flow of something because it feels like the universe is pushing her that way. She wraps the sheets tighter around her, needing to feel safeguarded, needing to remind herself that she calls the shots.

She climbs out of bed and starts pacing restlessly like a mad woman. Yes, there's something about you that pulls at her, but that doesn’t mean she has to lose herself to it. For all she knows, it’s just a silly crush, perhaps amplified by the thought that you might have liked her first. It's probably just that—reciprocal attraction—nothing more.

A sudden noise from the living room jerks Leigh out of her tumultuous thoughts, and she frantically whips her head towards the door. It’s been so loud inside her head, that she hasn’t even considered the possibility that you might be out there—in your own apartment. Leigh stops pacing and strains to hear more.

There’s another sound. Thud. Thud.

With a shaky breath, she calls out, “Y/N?”

When no answer comes, Leigh edges out of the bedroom tentatively, as if stepping into her own trial. Her nerves are strung tight with anticipation of confronting you, the newly-minted object of her affection. However, as she rounds the corner, she finds only an empty living room. The quiet is almost startling. Another thud makes her jump—a dull, persistent noise. Turning towards it, she sees only pigeons at the living room window, poking their beaks against the glass, and Leigh exhales a long sigh of relief.

Intrigued, Leigh approaches the window to observe the pigeons. They remain undisturbed as she draws closer, diligently pecking at seeds scattered on the windowsill. So, you’ve been feeding them. It’s a small, charming detail about you that she hadn’t known, and it warms her heart to see this caring, tender side of you. Much like the way you took care of her last night, she feels like one of those pigeons.

Leigh leans against the wall next to the window, watching the pigeons bob their heads and shuffle around. Her eyes then drift to the dining table and land on a plate, invitingly covered, with a piece of paper peeking out beneath it. She walks over and lifts the cover to reveal a hearty serving of French toast, artfully arranged and topped with a sprinkle of powdered sugar and fresh strawberries.

The sight of the breakfast makes her mouth water, and without thinking, she reaches out with her hands and takes a bite. It's still slightly warm, a sign that you haven't been gone long. Comforted by this thought, she pulls out a dining chair and settles in, making herself comfortable. Then, picking up the note, she unfolds it to read while she enjoys her breakfast.

Hope you enjoy the French toast. I had to head out early, but I wanted to make sure you had a warm start to your day. Please make yourself at home, help yourself to anything you need, and here’s some extra keys to the apartment just in case. Sorry to miss saying goodbye this morning. I hope we can catch up later when I'm back - Y/N

Leigh bites her lip, staring down at the note and the keys beside it. It feels so... domestic. Almost too familiar, but too quickly. She can't help but recall the countless times she left similar notes for Matt, scribbled in haste before dashing off to her early morning classes at the Beautiful Beast. Her trips to Danny's apartment never felt quite like this. It had always felt more like a love nest, designed for pleasure, not partnership. It was somewhere to escape to, not a space she could ever see herself belonging in, being her own. But here, with these keys in front of her, it's different. This feels like stepping back into an old pair of shoes that doesn't quite fit the same way anymore.

Leigh hesitates, unsure if this is a good thing. If you are a good thing. With Danny, everything was safe, predictable. He wants her more than she wants him, and in a twisted way, that imbalance has become an assurance. It’s easier, requiring less vulnerability on her part. But with you, the balance feels equal, perhaps even tipping in a way that makes Leigh unsure of where she stands, unsure of her control over the situation.

That terrifies her. And she hasn't felt this scared since Matt left.

As if on cue, a loud ringing blares through the apartment. Leigh blinks, pulled abruptly back to the present, and realizes she has no idea where she left her phone. She scrambles to her feet, her search for the phone turning into a clumsy dance as she trips over herself in the process. After a brief, frantic search that feels longer than it probably is, she traces her steps back to your bedroom. There, beside the bed where she'd woken up, her phone is vibrating against the hardwood floor. The screen lights up with the name “Jules”. Leigh swipes to answer, holding the phone a bit shakily to her ear.

“Danny’s here.”

Shit, shit shit.

“Just get rid of him, Jules. I'll call him later,” Leigh says.

There's a brief pause on the other end of the line, and then—

“Where are you, anyway?” Jules asks.

Leigh glances around, fiddling with the phone in her hand before answering, “I’m at a friend’s place.”

“Oh,” Jules lets out a low whistle. “Anyone I know?”

Leigh takes a deep breath. “Y/N.”

Jules falls silent, her breath the only sound coming through the phone. Leigh can almost visualize her sister on the other end, puzzling over why Leigh spent the night at your apartment and wondering if something happened between you two. She anticipates the barrage of questions that will greet her when she gets home.

“Leigh, I—” Jules starts to say.

“Don't. I'm leaving soon. Please make sure Danny's not there when I arrive. Please,” Leigh says.

“Okay,” Jules says simply, and then the line goes dead.

Leigh leaves the keys where you left them and takes your note with her.

As the day wears on, your phone remains dishearteningly quiet. You keep checking, hoping for a simple message from Leigh—a thank you for the bed, a comment on the breakfast, or just a note to say she’s left your apartment. But nothing comes through. Each passing hour stretches your patience thinner and makes you question every detail of last night.

Her lack of reaction leaves you with too much time to think. After the debacle with Sara and the no-show date you met from a dating app, you had felt a surge of disillusionment. So much so that last night, after Leigh left your car and walked into the party, you found yourself uninstalling the dating app from your phone in a moment of clarity. You decide it's time to focus on what feels more real, on what your heart has been screaming all along.

Leigh.

You want Leigh, and you’re going to go after her. Forget about Danny. You won't let Leigh spend another Halloween alone, or Christmas, or New Year’s. You're resolved to be there for all the important dates—and, if you're lucky, every day in between.

Hey Leigh, just checking in to see how you’re doing. Hope your day was good, you type and hit send. You won’t wait anymore for her to reach out when you can just let her know you’ve been thinking of her. You toss your phone down and rub your hands on your face. Now it’s just a matter of waiting to see if she feels the same.

Leigh postpones meeting with Danny until later that evening, having spent the day lounging in bed and replaying the songs you had on in your car the previous night. She received your text, but she hasn’t even opened it yet. It's silly, but she feels that if she starts talking to you, a dam will burst—and she's not ready for that. Instead, she reaches out to Danny, asking him over so they can talk.

When Danny arrives, she doesn't invite him inside. Since Jules and her mom are home, they walk to the front steps and sit side by side, maintaining a slight distance between them.

It’s Danny who breaks the silence first. “Leigh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push you so hard. Look, I just think it's a great opportunity for us—or for me, at least. And since you’re not tied down to the Beautiful Beast anymore, and your writing and part-time job are flexible, I thought... Why not?”

Leigh's expression hardens at the mention of her old job, at Danny's reasoning, and his diligent insistence. She didn’t call him over to rehash the fight they just had yesterday.

“Just because I can work from anywhere doesn't mean I want to leave,” she says. “And if we're going to have the same argument again, then you should just go.”

When Danny told Leigh he had landed a job as a retail associate at a high-end hotel in Vegas, he expected she’d be happy for him. She was, but when he suggested they move there for a fresh start, her response was an unflinching no, leaving him feeling wounded.

“But what's really keeping you here, Leigh? I mean, besides your family. Is there something else?” he asks.

At the question, Leigh feels the past and present colliding. First, she sees Matt's face, always Matt's face—his smile, the comfort of his presence that used to fill her days. Then her mind flickers to the times she found herself passing your clinic after long, aimless drives meant to clear her head. Your face starts to overlap with her memories of Matt, not replacing but somehow intertwining.

“Matt,” Leigh forces herself to say, forces herself to believe. “If I leave this place, it's like... it's like I'm leaving him for good. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s how it feels.”

“Matt's been gone for a long time. You think he'd want you to just stop living your life? Waiting for what? For a ghost?” Danny argues, his voice rising just a little. He looks away, down the shadowy street. His hands ball into fists and then relax. Under the weak glow of the streetlamp, it’s as if Matt’s shadow stretches beside him, a long, imposing figure that Danny can never seem to escape.

“Leigh, I’m just trying to help us move forward, that’s all,” he continues, softer, more defeated. Leigh catches the tightness of his expression, the effort it takes him to stay calm. She reaches out, her fingertips lightly touching his knuckles. Danny grabs this small sign of affection, quickly cradling Leigh’s face in his hands and drawing her into a fervent kiss. Leigh doesn’t respond immediately, but then she melts into its familiarity, allowing her lips to be pliable to his.

Danny breaks the kiss, his breath ragged as he searches Leigh's eyes. “Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to leave Matt for good,” he whispers.

She shakes her head, her voice trembling. “I-I don't know, Danny—”

“Leigh, I love you.”

It's the first time either of them has said it. Leigh had imagined fireworks or something clicking into place when it happened. She expected the grand declaration to sweep her off her feet, but instead, she finds herself still teetering on the brink, not quite ready to leap. But what she cannot ignore is the sincerity in his words. Danny has loved her through her worst—in his own way. It's not easy to dismiss or reject such devotion.

“You don’t have to say it back,” Danny says quickly. He's afraid of hearing her say no again. Silence would be better; he could let himself believe that maybe she felt the same way. Silence could mean ‘yes’, right? he thinks, grasping at straws.

“Leigh, I’m taking that job, and I’m leaving after Thanksgiving. That gives us about a month,” he says, cradling her face now with both hands pleadingly. “Please, just think about it. Think about coming with me.”

Despite her reservations, Leigh ends up saying, “Okay, I'll think about it.”

Danny’s face breaks into a smile. He kisses her again, a soft, reaffirming kiss that seems to thank her for even considering his request.

The next second, Jules interrupts the moment, opening the door unceremoniously. Leigh throws her a sharp look, which her sister disregards with a shrug.

“Logan's been barking at the door for some time now, in case you didn't hear,” Jules drawls, cradling a bowl of cereal—her dinner.

At her words, Logan bursts through the opening and makes a beeline for Leigh. He leaps straight into Leigh's lap, settling in with a decisive huff, his eyes darting possessively from Leigh to Danny. It's as if he's laying claim to her, telling Danny without words that Leigh has roots here too deep to simply pull up, saying, she’s mine, you’re not going to take her away from me.

Leigh pulls Logan closer, thinking about how much you’ll miss him if she decides to go with Danny.

You get home from work just after nine, tossing your keys on the kitchen counter with a weary sigh. A quick check of your phone confirms what you'd been dreading all day: Leigh still hasn't read your message from the afternoon. That sinking feeling of disappointment hits you again—harder this time. It’s like a pattern with her: warm and engaging one day, distant and cold the next. You can't deny that this inconsistency is starting to wear on you. It's bordering on cruel.

What are you doing wrong? Why can’t you figure out what makes her switch off like this?

And then, unable to help it, you send another text.

[9:10 PM] You: Is everything okay?

Dinner is a microwave affair tonight, not that you're really tasting any of it. You sit down to eat, your phone still within sight. That message never gets read either.

Leigh has always been unpredictable, but she has never actively avoided you like this before. She knows what she's doing, leaving your messages unread for the past three days. Just when you declare to the universe that you'd pursue her, she shuts you out completely. You can't even feel sorry for yourself; somehow, you brought this on, right?

When the day rolls around for Logan's next vaccine appointment, you catch yourself nervously checking the time more often than usual. But when the appointment time comes, a different Shaw brings him in. Jules holds onto Logan's leash as he excitedly sniffs every corner of the waiting room, his tail wagging a mile a minute.

“Hey,” Jules greets you, a bit out of breath from handling Logan's forceful tugs. “Leigh had some things to take care of, so I'm on Logan duty today.”

“Of course, no problem at all. How’s he been?” You try to keep your tone light as you kneel down to give Logan some attention, scratching behind his ears the way you know he likes.

“He’s been great, a real bundle of energy,” Jules replies, watching you with Logan. She hesitates before adding, “And Leigh’s been... well, you know Leigh.”

Actually, you think, you don't know Leigh—not as well as you thought. “Yeah,” you respond, looking up at Jules with a forced smile. “I know.”

After you administer the vaccine, the appointment passes with small talk, mostly about Logan’s antics and not much else. Jules is friendly but doesn’t venture into whatever might be happening with Leigh.

Just as you’re seeing Jules off, the clinic door swings open again. And you’re completely unprepared for the person who steps in.

“Hi,” Sara smiles at you, and then lifts the kitten in her hands. “Think you can help me with her, doctor?”

In a moment of unpreparedness, you cough awkwardly to cover your reaction, a flush creeping up your cheeks. “Hi, Sara,” you say, a bit flustered as you usher her inside. “What do we have here?”

“It's a rescue. Found her all alone by the roadside,” Sara explains, handing the tiny kitten to you with a concerned frown.

Jules catches the interaction, her eyes narrowing slightly—not missing how your entire demeanor changes around Sara—who is undeniably beautiful.

“Right this way,” you tell the blonde, leading her to the examination table. “Let's see what we can do for her.”

As soon as you and Sara are out of earshot, Suzie muses aloud, “They'd make a lovely pair, don't you think? If only Y/N wasn't so hung up on a widow…”

Jules stiffens slightly, her voice cool as she says, “And you are?”

“Suzie,” Suzie responds cheerfully, extending a hand to Jules with a bright smile. “Y/N’s assistant and friend. Nice to meet you.”

Jules shakes her hand, her smile polite but reserved. “Jules,” she responds tersely, omitting her connection as Leigh's sister. “So, what about Sara and Y/N?”

Well, Suzie can’t resist a juicy bit of gossip now, can she?

You don't usually pour yourself a glass of wine on a weeknight, but after today, you've cracked open a bottle that's been gathering dust for a year. Sara’s surprise visit at the clinic left you rattled. She had called you out for being distant after the two of you ran into Leigh one morning, and it embarrassed you how right she was. You hadn't been upfront about your emotional availability—or lack thereof—because of your feelings for Leigh.

When you finally admitted to Sara that you were in love with someone else, you braced for a fallout. But instead, Sara laughed, a light, carefree sound that took you by surprise. “I don't mind if you're emotionally unavailable,” she had said with a shrug. “I'm just looking for something casual.”

For a split second, her proposition—friends with benefits—was like candy being dangled in front of you: appetizing and readily available. But that conversation was at work, in the middle of your clinic, and the timing felt all sorts of wrong.

You let the moment pass without responding, and Sara backtracked a little with a noncommittal, “Well, you have my number. I really like you, Y/N. We can be friends, and if you ever need to…unwind, well, I can be your best friend.”

You're midway through your glass of wine when you decide to check your phone again, automatically opening the chat window with Leigh. It's almost become a habit, expecting your messages to remain unread. But this time, Leigh's avatar is right there under the last text you sent. She's read them. Today.

Why now?

Before you can dedicate the rest of your evening into that question, a knock on your door pulls you from your thoughts. It's late, and you don’t remember ordering food delivery. You set your glass down and head over to see who it is.

Upon opening the door, you're greeted by a downcast brunette. She looks nervous, clutching her purse as if it were a lifeline.

“Leigh?”

“Hi,” she says, lifting her eyes to meet yours, searching your face for a reaction. As confused as you are, your heart kicks up a notch simply because she’s there, so close you could reach out and touch her. For a moment, you wonder if you're dreaming, if the alcohol is taking effect and conjuring up your desires right before you.

You notice the slight tremor in her hands, the way she’s standing—a bit too rigid, like she’s bracing for something tough.

Clearing your throat, you start to ask, “Would you like to come—”

“Is she here?” Leigh interrupts abruptly.

You blink in surprise.

“Who?”

“Sara,” Leigh replies, her chin jutting forward. She attempts to peer past you, as if she might find the answer somewhere inside your apartment.

“No, she's not,” you say slowly, puzzled and a bit annoyed by her tone. “Why would she be?”

You can't hide your surprise at her directness, or the discomfort it stirs in you. It's a bit ridiculous, even rude, how Leigh has been avoiding you, leaving your messages unread, and now she's here, asking you about another girl without a preamble. Leigh doesn't wait for an invitation; she brushes past you and steps further into your apartment, her eyes searching every corner of the room.

“I thought you said it didn't work out with Sara,” she says, almost accusingly, turning to face you again. The way she's acting—like she has any right to demand answers about your personal life after days of silence—is starting to grate on your nerves.

You press your lips together, taking a deep breath to quell your rising irritation.

“It didn’t. She brought a kitten to the clinic today, that’s all. We're not seeing each other, Leigh,” you tell her. Although she did tell me she’s interested in sleeping with me, you nearly say aloud.

Leigh’s mouth twists into a sneer. “Then why did Jules…” she trails off, her expression falling as it finally clicks.

Jules lied to her.

“Jules…?” you echo incredulously. “What did she tell you?”

Leigh's confidence wavers even further as she says, “She... she said she met Sara at your clinic. Called her your girlfriend.”

You shake your head, exasperation seeping through your features. “Sara is not my girlfriend,” you repeat firmly. The situation is quickly becoming absurd, and you decide to push a bit, to get to the heart of what's really bothering her. “But what does it matter to you if she was?”

“It doesn’t,” Leigh replies in a flat, unconvincing tone.

“Then what are you doing here?” you ask gently, as if addressing a child mid-tantrum.

Leigh doesn't answer right away, her cheeks glowing red as she looks anywhere but you. She's clearly embarrassed by the entire ordeal, and you find yourself struggling not to smile at the implications of her visit. She's bothered by the idea of you with Sara because—

“Leigh, are you jealous?” you ask, taking a deliberate step towards her. You hold her captive with your eyes, making it impossible for Leigh to look away.

“I’m with Danny.” Her voice cracks as she takes a step back.

“That’s not an answer,” you whisper softly, closing the distance between you once more.

“No, I... maybe. I don't know,” she stammers, then sighs deeply, her shoulders slumping as she finally meets your gaze. “Yes, I guess I am. I don't like thinking of you with someone else. Is that answer enough?”

As you take another step forward, Leigh instinctively moves back, and this dance continues until she finds herself against a wall. You're close now, close enough to feel the tension radiating from her. Her back is pressed against the concrete, your body just inches from hers, effectively trapping her in the corner.

Leigh doesn’t know at which point she’s closed her eyes. Was it when she felt your breath whisper across her upper lip as you sighed, clearly as affected by the proximity as she was? Or was it when her back met the cool wall, the hard reality telling her she had nowhere else to go? Perhaps it was simply the anticipation, the tightening expectation of your lips meeting hers, the thought of surrendering to this—whatever this is becoming between you.

But then, two seconds pass. Five. Ten. Nothing happens.

The anticipated kiss doesn’t come.

When she finally opens her eyes, the question in yours is unmistakable. You’re near enough, she could just lean in, but you’re giving her a choice, asking without words if this is what she wants. And that’s when she remembers how she ended up at your doorstep. Leigh's mind reels, darting back to Jules' little lie. She's struck by the realization that Jules probably felt compelled to lie because Leigh had been inadvertently pushing you away, leaving a door open for someone else to step in. And if she keeps this up, it might be Sara who ends up here, against your wall, in your arms. The image stabs at her heart, jealousy tightening her chest.

No, she can’t let that happen.

Summoning a courage she didn’t know she had left, Leigh reaches out and gently takes your hand. She brings it to her face, pressing her lips against your palm in a kiss so tender it steals your breath. It’s a silent plea. A tender claim.

It's just a small kiss, simple and soft, but it rushes through you like wildfire, stirring feelings deeper and more intense than any long, drawn-out foreplay ever did. You realize just how much you've been holding back, shielding yourself from potential pain. But now, as Leigh's kiss sears into your palm, all those defenses seem pointless. With a fervor driven by weeks of restrainment, you close the distance entirely.

Your kiss lands on Leigh's lips with everything you have, as if this moment, this single kiss, might be your only chance. Yet, even in your urgency, there's a tenderness, a reverence in the way your lips carefully slot between hers. As you kiss, there's a meticulous attention to the details—the softness of her lips, the way they fit perfectly against yours, the gentle give when you press a little harder. It’s as if you’re trying to memorize her through this kiss.

Leigh matches your ardor, her fingers weaving into your hair, tugging you closer as if she can't get enough. You react instinctively, your hands sliding from her hips to her waist, lifting her shirt just enough to feel her skin beneath your fingertips. The slight pressure of your nails makes Leigh gasp, a sound that breaks the seal of your lips just enough for you to deepen the kiss, slipping your tongue past her defenses. The act draws a guttural moan from her—a sound that vibrates through your core, sending ripples of desire pulsating through your body.

It shouldn’t be this perfect the first time, but it is.

The kiss grows wetter, more urgent. It's selfish, a relentless chase of sensation where both of you are simultaneously taking and giving everything you have, until it feels like there's nothing left to offer. While Leigh’s tongue explores every inch of your mouth, her hands find their way to either side of your neck, fingertips lightly grazing your skin, sending tingles straight down your spine. Your own hands aren't idle. They roam up her back, feeling the smooth expanse of her skin under your fingertips. As you slide your hands upward, you discover something that emits a low groan from you—she’s not wearing a bra. A part of you, the rational part that's still functioning, slowly begins to recognize the gravity of what’s unfolding. It's too easy to get lost in Leigh, in the rush and the heat, but something stops you. You want this—more than anything in the moment—but it has to mean something. Because once you cross this line with Leigh, there's no going back to the uninhibited, distant longing you've managed until now.

Just as the thought crystallizes, Leigh breaks the kiss with a wet pop. Her eyes flutter open, slowly, lazily. Her gaze is unfocused at first, pupils dilated, the vibrant green of her irises almost swallowed by the black. Oh, she definitely wants you too.

“Why did you stop?” you murmur, your voice unmistakably laden with desire as you rest your forehead against hers.

A grin tugs at Leigh’s lips as replies softly, “I just wanted to see you.”

Your smile widens as her fingers absentmindedly play with the little hairs at the nape of your neck. She seems mesmerized by your eyes, now darkened with lust, and without thinking, she blurts out, “You really do have espresso eyes.”

Her words make you freeze in her arms. That nickname—it's the same one you use anonymously for your submissions to your favorite advice column. Maybe it's just a coincidence, right?

But Leigh's reaction a moment later suggests otherwise. Her face blanches, eyes widening in a sudden flare of panic as she realizes what she's just said.

“Y/N—” Leigh starts but you cut her off by stepping out of her embrace, your stance becoming guarded.

The warmth vanishes from your eyes. “What did you just say?”

#unbetad #my writing #my fic #elizabeth olsen x reader #elizabeth olsen #leigh shaw x reader #leigh shaw x female reader #leigh shaw #sorry for your loss au #leigh shaw x you #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff x you #sorry i had to tag wanda x reader for visibility

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dandylovesturtles · 3 days

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Hello, I'm back again with another fic. This one is set right after the Hidden City episodes.

I got inspired by this pic of Leo, because I thought it was funny that they included the little hairs sticking out even while he's in the jail cell:

-----

Splinter's light is on. Which is odd, because he's certain he didn't leave it that way.

He'd fallen asleep in front of the big projector, and woke up to the sound of his sons playing one of those racing games they love. He'd told them not to stay up too late (something he was sure would be ignored) and then made his way back to the atrium to fall asleep in his room in front of his tube TV.

But light spilling out from under the door. When he gets closer, he can hear the sound of someone rummaging around inside.

Immediately, the worst case scenarios flood his head. One of their enemies has found them and is just inside, plotting some kind of attack against his life, or the lives of his children. They are just feet away, their shouts echoing down the corridor and into the atrium. Should he run and warn them? Or should he fight off the intruder?

In the end, he decides to go forward rather than back, creeping closer to the door. Silently he slides it open, just enough that he can look inside.

And there... is Blue, rummaging with intent through his nightstand drawer.

(Now that he thinks about it, there had been only three turtles in the TV room when he left. He'd just assumed Blue was in the bathroom, or getting a snack.)

He opens the door the rest of the way with much more sound, causing his son to jump a solid two feet in the air. "Blue! What are you doing?"

"GAH!" Blue whirls around, his hand held tight against his chest. "Holy crap, Dad! You gave me a heart attack!"

"Ninja should be more aware of their surroundings! Were you even watching the door?"

"I didn't think I would have to in my own house!"

"Well, let that be a lesson to you." Splinter folds his arms. "What are you looking for?"

Blue lowers his hands and shuffles back a step, grinning. "Looking for something? Whaaat makes you think I was looking for something?"

Splinter looks at the drawer Blue had been digging in when he arrived, its contents a mess. Blue glances at it as well, then back at Splinter.

"It was like that when I got here."

Splinter is not impressed. "Mm-hm."

"Heh, well... okay, I was looking for something, but I don't see it so I guess you don't have it." Blue eyes the atrium beyond Splinter, clearly trying to figure out how to slip past him. "Sooo I'll just be going now, haha!"

He tries to make his escape, but Splinter is quicker - he leaps up in the air, suspending himself in the doorframe, so that he is eye level with Blue just as he approaches.

"Blue. Tell me what you were looking for."

"Nothing important, seriously-"

"Leonardo-"

"A razor," he says quickly. "I was looking for a razor."

That... was not an answer he would have expected. Splinter can't keep the bafflement off his face. "A razor?"

"To shave with," Leo elaborates.

Splinter can't help but laugh at that, squinting at his son's smooth and hairless face. "Don't you feel like that is some wishful thinking, Blue?"

"Ugh!" Blue scowls at that, folding his arms. "I'm serious! Here, look at my head."

He bends his neck, and Splinter now sees what he's talking about: blonde hairs, scraggly and uneven, that dot his sons scalp in no discernable pattern. Splinter hadn't noticed it earlier, but his eyesight isn't what it used to be.

"What- where did those come from!?"

Blue straightens his head back up, looking both irritated and embarrassed. He doesn't seem eager to answer, but now that Splinter is thinking about it, this feels familiar...

Right! Yesterday, in the Hidden City! He'd gone to find Blue to borrow his odachi, and when he'd gotten there, Blue had a full head of blonde hair...

Ah.

Splinter lets himself drop to the ground. "Your hair yesterday... it was not a wig?"

Blue chews his lip for a moment before finally admitting, "It was some kind of... living hair yokai."

"Oh no... you let one of those on your head!? They are very dangerous! They sap your energy for themselves and take control of your sleeping body!"

"Yeah, that would have been great information to have a day ago." Blue rubs the top of his head self-consciously, then scowls. "Some of the hair stuck around, and... It just looks stupid, and it's kinda itchy, so..."

"Ah. Well, if I remember correctly, it will fall out on its own in a few days."

"Oh." Blue hesitates, then starts out the door again. "Okay. Well, uh... I'll get out of your hair, then."

He grins awkwardly as he slides past, and Splinter realizes just in time that he has not handled this correctly.

"Blue, wait," he says, and his son freezes just outside, glancing back over his shoulder. Splinter leaves him standing there, and goes to his dresser, pulling a thin black box out of one of the top drawers. There's an old shaving kit inside, complete with a razor that is still sharp. Splinter's not sure why he's kept it around, since he doesn't shave since becoming a rat (unless he's sick with the Rat Flu, of course, but for that he uses the electric trimmer), but he supposes it will come in handy tonight.

He walks back to Blue, holding the razor above his head. "Aha! Here we go."

"Oh! Thanks, daddio," Blue says with a grin, reaching out to take it - but Splinter does not hand it to him.

"Absolutely not. If you try to shave your own head you'll just carve yourself like a turkey." He lowers the razor and steps past Blue, into the atrium. "Grab a stool and meet me in the bathroom. I'll do it for you."

He doesn't hear Blue's footsteps moving. "Seriously? Come on, I can do it myself."

"No complaints!" He beckons Blue on with his tail. "Come on! I know exactly what I'm doing!"

"...Ough boy," Blue mutters, but he moves to do as Splinter's told him, and that's enough.

-----

They reconvene in the bathroom, as he instructed. He has Leo sit on the stool in front of the sink - it just works out that he can lean his neck against the basin, while Splinter perches in the sink itself for a good view.

"Now, I think we might have... Aha, here we go!"

He pulls shaving cream out of the medicine cabinet; again, he's not sure why they have this, since none of them shave, but he wouldn't be surprised if the boys use it to pull pranks on each other. Besides, it just feels like a normal thing to have in a home full of men, even if they don't strictly need it.

He squirts some into his hand, then layers it across Blue's scalp. Blue giggles like he's ticklish, and Splinter shooshes him, even though he can't keep a little grin off his face at that.

Then he carefully starts to shave across Blue's scalp, starting in the middle and working his way out. The hairs are pretty sparse, but some of them are too fine for him to see, so it's better to just do the whole scalp and be sure to catch them all.

"Why is it that you let the yokai on your head in the first place?" he asks a few strokes in. He's curious about it, after all.

"I didn't let it," Leo argues. "I got tricked. The guy who gave it to me told me it was just a potion to grow hair."

"Aaaah... And it was a scam. I'm guessing that's how you came to be in jail when we got there?"

"Yeah."

"Well, that's alright." Splinter pats his shoulder. "Live and learn!"

Though, that didn't answer the question Splinter had actually been getting at. Blue says nothing else, so he tries again.

"But... why did you want to grow hair?" When Blue doesn't answer right away, he adds, "Do you wish you had hair?"

"No," says Blue. "...Yes. ...Maybe?"

Splinter has to bite back a chuckle. "I see."

Blue sighs, wringing his hands in his lap. "I mean, I guess I never really thought about it too much? It's fun to wear wigs sometimes, but I never really cared about being bald, before..."

He trails off. "Before?" Splinter prompts.

Blue is chewing on his lip again. "Have you ever heard of Hirsute? The fancy beach club?"

"Oh, of course!" Splinter grins at the recognizable name. Now that he remembers, wasn't that where he'd found Blue? "They have veeery strict requirements for membership, but of course I was always allowed in because Lou Jitsu had such perfect-"

He cuts himself off, looking down at Blue, the peeks of his bald scalp through the shaving cream. Finally, he has all the pieces.

"...They wouldn't let you in, would they?" he asks, hands stilling in their task.

Blue chuckles dryly. "Even better. I got in but they threw me out."

"...Hmph." Splinter gives his foot a stomp against the porcelain. "Well, who needs their resort, anyway? Honestly, their drinks were overpriced and their steaks were always too dry."

"I already saw how nice it was, Dad, but thanks for trying to help."

"Mm, well, we will find an even nicer one! One that does not discriminate."

"Yeah, sure," says Blue, but he sounds downcast. And really, Splinter doesn't know what to tell him. He doesn't know how they would find this mythical tolerant beach club.

"You've... always told us to be careful, with humans," says Blue after a few moments of silence. His eyes are locked on the ceiling, hands still held tight in his lap. "About not letting them see us, and all that."

"...Yes," says Splinter sadly. He wishes it wasn't so, but it was for their safety. "I was worried... about how they would treat you boys."

"I know," says Blue. "And I get it. I know not everyone is April."

"Unfortunately not," Splinter agrees.

"But even most of the humans who've actually met us... They were cool with it, or at least, if they hate us, it's for non-turtle reasons. So it was like, I knew that there were humans who would be scared, or who might even try to hurt us, but they were always... You know." Blue waves his hand in the air. "Like... a concept, or whatever."

"Hmmm... Abstract?" Splinter suggests, and Blue snaps his fingers.

"Yeah! Abstract. I didn't have a face or a voice, just a vague idea that someone could be a jerk to me. And..." He lowers his hand and rubs it up and down his arm. "I thought since I knew that, I wouldn't be surprised when it finally happened? But... then an actual person was looking at me, a real person, and telling me that I wasn't good enough. Telling me that I wasn't allowed in just because of something I can't even help, just... the way my head is, and... and I don't know. It was just way worse than I thought it was going to be."

Splinter's hands still again, his heart clenching in his chest. Oh, his son. His sweet Baby Blue...

"And," Blue continues quickly, "I know it's dumb, it's just a snooty beach club, and it's just hair, and I just need to get over it-"

"Blue," Splinter cuts him off urgently. He nudges his shoulders, trying to get the boy to sit up. "Leo. Please look at me."

Blue sits up, slowly turning on the stool to face the sink. His eyes are suspiciously red-rimmed, and Splinter feels a rush of emotions so strong they nearly sweep him off his feet. Hurt, for his son who was made to feel bad over something so trivial, and fury, for the people who caused the injury.

He reaches out and cups his son's face, rubbing the pad of his thumb over his cheeks. His sons are more muscular than other children their age, but Blue still has baby fat on his cheeks. Splinter resists the urge to squish them.

"I wish they could all see what I see," he says softly. "A young man who is so handsome, strong, and clever."

Blue's lip trembles slightly. "But they won't."

"Some will," he promises. "Not everyone is April... but she is not the only one, either."

"Just wish I knew who was an April and who wasn't," Blue says. "Before I get kicked out on my butt."

"Mm. It is hard. Some people make it obvious, and so many more do not." Splinter sighs. "When I came to America, I was already a celebrity. And still, there were many who did not accept me, or who did not think they needed to listen to me, or who were cruel. And it was the same, when I was taken to the Hidden City."

Blue gives him a sad, crooked smile. "You felt like an outsider, too, huh?"

"Very much, yes. Human and yokai... there are prejudices everywhere."

"So how do you deal with it?"

"Mm... there is no easy answer." Splinter guides Blue to turn around and lean against the sink again, before rest of the shaving cream drips. "I wish I could tell you that this is the worst you will ever face, but I can't promise you that. But I do not wish for you boys to hide from the world forever, either. Even if it is only among the yokai... I want what all parents want for their children."

"For them to have grandchildren?" Blue asks.

"Yes!" Splinter chuckles. "Cute babies to play with and then give back." He finishes shaving the last of Blue's head, then grabs a wash cloth to wipe him clean. "But no. I meant that, for all the people who may be cruel to you... I want there to be many more who are kind. And who love you as I do."

Blue's voice is soft as he mutters, "Oh."

"And I also want you to remember," Splinter leans forward, and kisses Blue on his forehead "that you are accepted here no matter what." He snorts. "Even if you want to make that hairstyle permanent."

"Oh, come on!" Blue huffs and gets up from the stool, his deeper green blush visible even though he is trying to look annoyed. "It wasn't that bad!"

"I'm just saying, I think you can do better!"

"What do you know, old man?" Blue scowls, but it's playful.

"Old man!? Hmph, the disrespect..." He folds his arms, then nods at the door. "We're done, so I'm going to bed. Your brothers are having some kind of go-karting tournament in the TV room."

"Oh shoot, I'm missing it!" Blue turns to run out, then skids to a stop and spins on his heel, running back and scooping Splinter out of the sink and into a hug.

"Thanks, Dad," he says, and Splinter can't help but chuckle, giving his shell a pat.

"Of course, Blue."

Blue sets him down, then turns and runs off again. Splinter can hear him yell, "Dibs on next race!" from down the corridor.

Splinter rinses the razor clean, then puts it back in his box. He considers taking it back to his room, but in the end he changes his mind, slotting it into the medicine cabinet.

Who knows? Maybe someone will need it again, one day.

#rottmnt #rise leo #rise splinter #dandy fanfiction #I feel like you can feel the moment when I lost my mojo haha #OH WELL #I hope I conveyed what I was getting at well enough #this has minimal proofreading I'm sorry #hope you enjoyed!

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selfaware-bungou-stray-dogs · 2 days

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Dazai Osamu is in your bed, and he demands love, protection and cuddles

Self-Aware! Dazai Osamu x GN! Reader

Description: You really should have think twice, before giving kids "Clifford, The Big Red Dog" book and ask Dazai to look after them.

Warning: OOC. English is my second language. Fluffy.

_______

You can't tell, for sure, how long you have been in a shower. But, you have a feeling, that it wasn't that long. Still, somehow, Dazai not only managed to get into your room. He also managed to stole your blankets, and hide them somewhere in a house.

"How?" was the only thing that you managed to say. You know, that you were supposed to feel angry, or, at least, irritated, but, you have your curiosity, and you want to satisfy it.

Dazai, dressed in his pajamas, and who was now laying on your bed, looked into your eyes. At least, tried. Because you, in return, try not to look at him.

"I have my ways, Iris Flower. So, listen to my demands, if you want to see your blankets again!" Dazai patted the mattress near him. "I demand cuddles, love and protection! If I didn't get them, you will never see your blankets again!"

You probably could go to someone else's room and ask to spend a night with them. Then, in the morning, go with Fitzgerald and buy new blankets, then ask Oda to help you install a locker on your wardrobe, where you kept blankets. For a few hours your blankets will be secure. Then Dazai will pick up the lock and everything will start again.

Dazai reached his arms towards you. His smug grin was replaced with a pout.

"Please, My Kind Iris Flower, I was searching for a sanctuary! Please, let me stay! And give me love and cuddles! Come on~ Look at me~!"

You rubbed your temples. You need to stay focused.

"Why do you even need to a sanctuary?" asked you, looking at your chair. It was a good chair. Interesting chair. You will look at the chair. And not at Dazai.

"Well…"

__________

Earlier, today

__________

"Uncle Dazai, can you read us this book?" Sakura was holding one of the books you recommend Oda to get for his kids. Yuu, Katsumi, Kousuke, Shinji and Aya were standing behind Sakura, making their best puppy dog eyes. Dazai rolled his eyes, but took the book from Sakura. You asked him to babysit kids, and he will do his job perfectly. For you.

"Clifford, The Big Red Dog." Dazai read the title.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was the bad. This idea was on his mind ever since he started reading that book. Bad idea. And a golden opportunity.

Dazai smiles, looking at kids.

"Kids, you know, that Clifford became big, because Emily Elizabeth loved him so much? Do you want to help a red chihuahua pup became as big as Clifford?"

Kids eagerly nodded, waiting for Dazai's instructions.

______________

"You asked kids to pamper Chuuya?!" You turned your head towards Dazai, staring at him. Big mistake.

Dazai came to you prepared. He did his best to look adorable and cuddly. He brushed his hair, and it looked extremely fluffy. His pajamas have a cute cat paw print and looked cozy and warm. He was constantly doing a puppy dog eyes, pouting a little. You could swear, that Dazai apply something, to make his eyelashes look extra thick tonight. And on his cheeks. Otherwise, you can't explain, why he has blush on his cheeks. Dazai rolled on his back, opening his arms for a hug. He stuck a tip of his tongue.

He literally made a "blep face". Is it your payment for comparing Dazai to a cat?

"I knew, that Chihuahua Nakahara won't yell at kids~ And the opportunity was rare and golden! Yet, I didn't expect kids to get busted and told Chihuahua about me!"

Dazai smiles, closing his eyes. You probably should look away and broke the "Dazai's cuteness" spell. But you can't! His hair looked too fluffy! His chest looks too comfortable to lay on! He looked squishable!

Now, you will say no to him, you will get him out of your room and make him to deal with the mess he has created!

"Comfy, [Y/N]?" asked Dazai, stopping showering you with kisses. He was laying on top of you. His body pressed tightly against yours. You were trapped. You can try to wiggle out of Dazai's grasp, but he has you pinned firmly enough down that only a burst of effort could free you. And you don't want to hurt him. Or stop cuddling.

"Mhm" mumbled you, running your fingers through his brown hair. With your second arm around his waist, you move your hand down from time to time to dance across his side.

Dazai's grin became bigger, and he returned to showering your cheeks with kisses.

"Good. I can't let my benevolent savior be unsatisfied with cuddles."

Suddenly, Dazai rolled down from you, laying on the opposite side of your bed. He, asked, looking deep into your eyes.

"Now, it's your turn. Remember, I still hold your blankets hostage!"

He lay his head down, looking at you. His eyelids were half-closed.

"Be grateful, that you are cute." You huffed, getting on top of Dazai. Now you were pinning him firmly against the mattress. Dazai's quiet laughter was your answer.

You nuzzle against his neck, leaving a trail of kisses. Dazai's laugh end in a cough. You knew without looking, that now he was blushing again. You lift your body a little, so you can put both of your hands on his tummy, while having access to his neck and face.

Your hands roam around his chest and stomach, while you planted kisses on Dazai's cheeks, temples, nose, forehead and chin. Dazai left out a soft moan, before putting his hands around you, pressing you against him. Dazai turned on his, still holding you.

You two were laying face to face. Dazai's hold on you was firm. You can feel the warmth coming from him.

Dazai pull his face into your hair.

"Heaven..." whispered him. "True bliss..."

He yawned, pressing you even closer to himself.

"Thank you, [Y/N]."

You also yawned, nuzzling against his neck.

"You are welcome. Good night, Osamu."

In the dark of the night, quiet words were your answer.

"Good night. I love you."

#self-awarebsd #self-awareau #bungou stray dogs au #bsd #bungou stray dogs #bsd anime #bsd x gender neutral reader #gender neutral reader #Self-Aware Dazai Osamu #dazai osamu x reader #dazai bsd #dazai x reader #bsd dazai #bungou stray dogs dazai #dazai x you #dazai x y/n

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sehodreams · 1 day

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extra points

TW and tags: professor!Eunseok x student!reader, anxiety (lots of it, with added overthinking), pet names, reader is a crybaby, clothed humping, fluff (comforting I believe), even if everything sounds nice here, obviously a relationship with your professor is not okay (there's power imbalance just for the fact she's a student and he a professor).

WC: 5.2k

Summary: You want to always make him proud of you.

Comment: A bit self-indulgent since I've had a crush on a professor each semester and I also had anxiety when they praised me. Hope it makes other academic weapons here feel a bit seen. Also, tried to check the grammar and times, but idk, now it feels a bit robotic, please tell me if I should write everything in the past time again, just wanted to try something new. A bit ass, sorry, it feels as if I've forgotten how to write.

Staring at the words on your screen that no longer make sense, you try to calm your nerves down, except, you can’t forget the way your professor looked at you before he dismissed your group.

You want to cry, but you have already cried enough. Then you want to scream, but it's 3am and your parents will kill you. You start to ponder your last choice, kill yourself, but even in your head that’s a bit too much.

You just don’t know what to do with everything you’re feeling at that moment. Wishing you could be as nonchalant as your friends, you want to stop thinking about his disappointed face when you finished your exam, because maybe you’re overthinking it, perhaps it wasn’t even that bad.

No, you’re wrong. It wasn’t perfect, and for you, that’s already bad enough.

You try to go to sleep, that should help you. You watch the bottle of melatonin in your nightstand, so closing your laptop, you grab it, take three pills instead of one, and beg the gods you’ve never believed in to make you sleep until the next morning.

Of course, before you drift away, you set your three alarms to arrive on time to his class.

You’re used to walking there filled with anxiety. You always wonder if you’re going to have the answers he wants to hear that day, or if you did good in your last test. It’s terrible, stressful, and the knot on your chest is, for anyone else, a sign that they should chill out, but to you, is a sign that you should do better.

Your mother always says that the person who knows they’ve done everything they could has no reason to feel nervous, and that has pushed you to think you never do enough because she also says you can always do more.

It’s always been the same since that semester started, you go there filled with anxiety, you raise your hand whenever he makes a question to the public, and you feel the knot loosening with each minute that passes and with his smile when you say the correct answer.

You have to admit that, when the class finishes and he says goodbye with that proud smile, you feel as if all your stress and your time invested in reading all the material he has shared makes sense. It feels a bit good, and you’re addicted to that sensation.

He only wants you to reach your full potential. He has said it to the entire classroom, that all those articles and books he has shared are only for them to always have an answer out there in the real world. He says it to the public, but the extra material he emails you makes you feel special.

You’re special, right? He wouldn’t be going out of his way to give you more knowledge if it wasn’t like that.

When you arrive to the classroom you’re pale, and your friends try to tell you that everything will be fine to calm you down, but you can’t.

You’re spiralling into anxiety, and not because you have done bad, but because you have disappointed him.

When he dismissed you, he hadn’t smiled at you, he hadn’t shown you that happy expression he always has when you’ve met his expectations, and even more, he hadn’t said well done.

And if you weren’t his best student, you didn’t want to be there.

Not much later he arrives and tells everyone that he will share the grades in his office, so all of you should go to have a private talk with him when you have time if you want feedback, and if you don’t, the grades would be in the platform the next day.

The class goes as it usually does, smooth, and silent.

He does a couple questions, and you answer them after no one raises his hand and you leave the five-second space in case anyone else wants to talk first, so everything is as normal as it can be, but instead of feeling relaxed with the time passing, you feel worse.

One of your friends tells you to meet her in the cafeteria after you finish talking with the professor, that she will buy you a coffee to cheer you up, and you smile to pretend you’re okay, but you’re fucking not.

You feel like throwing up while walking to his office, but you haven’t eaten anything since yesterday, what would you throw up at that point?

It doesn’t take too much time for him to tell you to come in after you respectfully knock on his door two times. You hear him moving papers inside when you open the door, and when you walk in, you both say good afternoon before you sit.

He doesn’t search for anything, the paper he had in his hands was yours, as if he knew you would be the first person to go and see him.

‘’Well done’’ it’s all he says.

He gives you a sheet with your grades until that date and you want to feel relaxed because all of them look good, just one, the last one, is not the perfect grade you’re used to, by one point. Then, you look at his eyes, waiting for more words from him, anything, just something, a praise you hope.

‘’Are you okay?’’ he asks you. You don’t need to be a genius to know how your face must look at that moment, pale and unfocused, like any person at the border of fainting.

You’re not about to faint, you’re about to cry, which is even worse.

Your eyes prickle and your shoulders shake. They’re coming, and you wish they didn’t, because they’re the kind that can’t be stopped for a long time.

‘’Yes’’ you say and almost immediately you start crying. ‘’I’m sorry’’.

Eunseok’s eyes open and he circles his desk to meet you. He doesn’t know what to do to help you, you’re shaking, and your tears come out like a flood that nothing will dry.

‘’What’s wrong?’’ you feel he wants to say another word, maybe a baby, but of course, it is not appropriate.

‘’I’m sorry’’ it’s the only thing that comes out of your mouth.

It breaks him to see you like that, his best student, falling apart.

He knows a lot of things, he has a career teaching, yet he’s completely lost there with you shaking in front of him.

His hands move before he can think, which is a stupid move for someone his age, used to always thinking twice before doing anything.

He had to think about taking that position a month before he accepted. He was never one for teaching, more into working on his own. If he had to admit it, he was never into interacting with a bunch of kids even when he was a student, but you had changed his perspective, making him happy to go to work every morning you would sit in his class, knowing someone would happily answer instead of leaving him talking all alone for two hours.

‘’It’s okay’’ he murmurs, caressing your shoulders with his wide palms. ‘’You did good, what’s the problem?’’

You don’t answer him, standing and denying with your head, trying to go to the door.

Looking at your trembling lip and your furrowed eyebrows, his heart flinches, and he doesn’t let you leave, holding you in his arms instead.

Your arms wrap him back, tearing face pressed against his chest while he caresses your hair and lets you sob.

It’s so embarrassing you feel like crying even more, because what would he think of you from that moment on? So pathetic, crying like a child when you were a grown woman.

You’ve tried to look perfect for him for so long, and everything had gone to shit in just a second.

Still, you don’t want to let him go.

He is warm and comforting. His aroma is earthy, woody, manly. His hands feel good against you, one on your back, slowly patting you to soothe you, and the other on the back of your head, feeling your hair. However, the best thing has to be his voice so close to your ear, deep and calming you with the way he doesn’t shush and lets you cry as much as you want.

‘’It’s okay’’ he murmurs, letting you hug him even harder. He doesn’t want to think you’re crying because of him, but what else could be the reason for those fat tears bothering your pretty eyes? ‘’Is it me? Have I done anything to you? Am I being too much?’’ he had never thought he was pushing you that much, but now that he realizes, he had never treated another student, or person, like he had treated you. He wants to excuse himself with the thought of all the potential you have, you’re so smart, he couldn’t treat you as if you were just any student.

But in the end, he reminds himself, you’re just a student. He doubted you had even worked once in your life, because no one working or that thought about other things that weren’t his classes would be able to keep up with everything he was giving you.

You denied his questions, even if it was, you couldn’t tell him it was because of him. It was because of you and your stupid head not letting you sleep with the thought of disappointing him.

‘’No’’ you sob, and your hands grip his shirt, wrinkling the pristine fabric. ‘’It’s just me, I’m sorry’’.

His arms get tighter around you, almost too much. You sniffle to make your cries stop. ‘’It’s okay, I’m sorry too’’ he says because you hadn’t said out loud, but he knows you’re like that because of him.

‘’Please don’t treat me differently’’ you beg because you don’t want him to change. You want to continue receiving his emails with more work, you want him to keep having expectations of you, and you want him to keep being proud of you.

You want to be special to him because he’s special to you. You weren’t like that for any other professor, and not any other treated you like that either.

You have good grades with everyone else, but none of them make you want to give all of you to their courses. You do exactly what’s necessary and then you leave it there. But, again, none of them were him.

It’s not something that you wanted that to happen.

The ability to follow him with your eyes, concentrating on every of his moves while your hands moved on your keyboard on their own was something that had developed with time, like your feelings for him, and everything started with that silly smile gifted to you when you made him a question about something you hadn’t understood in one of the articles.

‘’It’s the first time anyone has asked me about it, I had started to think no one read the material’’ he had said, innocently smiling at you, no idea forming in his head about what your insides felt when he showed it to you.

Everyone said that he was evil, grading all his students without compassion and telling them without an ounce of fear if they didn’t meet his expectations. He said there was only one person who did good in his class all the time, and everyone (including you) knew who that person was even if he didn’t say the name. All that had made you feel things you shouldn’t for him.

Another knock on his door startles you two, and you have to move apart. He looks at you, and one of his hands goes to your cheek to clean the gleaming left by the tears, but you’re faster and clean your eyes with your hands before you say you should leave, not giving him time enough to say anything.

The same afternoon everyone starts to get anxious in the group chat and you silence them. The student who saw you running out of his office says that you were crying, so everyone believes that you flunked, and if you did bad, none of them had hope to even pass.

When your friend calls you and asks why you were crying you say that it was nothing, just stress, and that you didn’t do as bad as everyone thinks.

She believes you because, of course, you're a good girl and you don't have a reason to lie. You have no reason to feel you’ve done anything wrong, but you feel as if you had done something you shouldn’t.

First, you were embarrassed for crying in front of him, but if you had done only that, you doubted you would be having that pressure in the pitch of your abdomen. Then, you recognized what you were feeling, desire, and you definitely shouldn't be feeling that towards your professor.

It’s weird, even if it’s not okay for you to feel that way, you admit to yourself that it felt good to be held by him. He shouldn’t have hugged you, you know that, and you fool yourself thinking it was the only thing he could’ve done in that situation and that he’d have done it with anyone too.

When you receive his email with the extra material you notice that there’s less than usual and that he has written something extra apart from the typical small message listing the titles with a Best regards, Dr. Song.

He starts with a Miss next to your name, and you read it with his voice, hearing him close, just like when he whispered next to your ear. If there is any occasion in which my office or advice is needed, please do not hesitate to come to me, my door is always open.

You don’t know what to say.

You want to say thank you, but an apology feels more correct, and just like in those exams in which you get points deducted for answering wrong, you prefer to not answer at all.

The next class, you sit way in the back, and you don’t answer any of his questions after your five-second stop, to what other students, not daring to let the silent tension stay, start to give short unsatisfactory answers that make Eunseok nod instead of proudly smile.

By the end of it, you slip out of the room with your friends, which is unusual for them since they’re used to waiting for you in the cafeteria.

‘’Don’t you have any question today?’’ one of them asks you.

‘’Not today’’ you say with the excuse of not feeling good, walking faster for them to follow you.

You feel ashamed every time you’re in front of him. The sensation of his arms around you keeps replying in your head, and you shiver when you hear his voice in your head at night. You want him in a way you shouldn’t, and it doesn’t feel like an innocent crush anymore.

You can only continue like that for two more classes before he calls your name and asks you to stay back.

Your friends don’t ask anything, but they direct a suspicious sight at you two. They had joked before saying that you two had a love quarrel when you didn’t answer his questions the second time, which had started to feel weirdly real.

‘’Don’t be silly’’ you laugh. ‘’I just don’t want to stress myself more than necessary anymore.’’

What you say makes sense in everyone’s ears, you really had to chill out, especially after that last crisis.

You nod at them, and they leave without question.

You stay away enough from him, waiting for him to talk. He sees it and sighs, shoving papers into his portfolio without a second look.

‘’I can’t help but notice there’s something different in your participation in class’’ he says. ‘’And I’m sure is related to what happened in my office.’’

‘’Nothing happened Sir, I just haven’t been feeling good’’ you don’t entirely lie. You can’t seem to function around him anymore, even in that moment, you have to resist the need of pressing your thighs to stop that need you’ve developed for his touch since that day.

When he folds his arms in front of his chest and leans back into the big desk, you gulp. He looks so fucking good you can’t pull away your eyes from the way they flex and how they look covered by his simple black shirt with the first button open.

‘’I expected more from you Miss’’ he says, and you, like instinct, feel incredibly bad again.

‘’I’m- I’m sorry’’ you say, trying to stop your eyes from prickling again.

He notices your change. It’s not hard to recognize. Suddenly, you become smaller, and you blink faster, biting the inside of your cheek.

‘’I’m not scolding you’’ he clarifies. His hand gets closer to you, touching the border of your hoodie to get your attention on him instead of the floor. You didn’t notice the way you had moved your eyes from his arms to the floor, and when you see his focused eyes on your face, you feel vulnerable. ‘’You’re my student and if you’re acting this different, I can’t ignore it’’ his eyes are on yours and his thumb and his index are still holding your clothes, playing with the fabric, ‘’I just want to know you’re okay’’.

Warmness floods you. You want to hug him again, you want him to hold you, and for him to whisper that everything is okay over your ear. No, now, you want more than a simple hug.

‘’I’ll do better Sir, I’m sorry’’ you say, and he feels you’re saying the truth this time, so he slowly nods, and his hand leaves you.

You have to gulp the whimper that wants to leave your throat after he smiles at you.

You’re fucking disgusting you tell yourself when that night you want to find relief with him in your mind.

The next days are full of pain. You want to feel him so bad you don’t even know what to do anymore. Your hands are not enough, and the hands of the boy you had let touch you on that stupid Tinder date weren’t enough either.

You had started to answer his questions in class again, lifting his mood and freeing everyone from the uncomfortable moment of having to talk to fill the silence.

‘’Did you reconcile?’’ someone jokes.

‘’We never fought to start’’ you laugh and push their shoulder to leave you alone. ‘’I just want to keep my good profile and my grades��’.

Wanting to be closer to him, you’ve even volunteered to help him grade his tests, reason why you were on his office’s couch at that moment, with a thousand papers spraddled in the little coffee table in front of you and a hand full of red tint marks.

You have less time for yourself now that you’re his little assistant, but you continue reading everything he sends you at night, feeling a bit more tired from the lack of hours of sleep.

Still, everything is worth it when you receive his texts asking for your help or when you buy yourself a cup of overly sweet coffee with the card full of coffee cash he had gifted you.

‘’For your time’’ he timidly slid the gift card to you, and you couldn’t believe your eyes because you were sure no professor gave their assistants anything at all.

You wanted to say no, and you were about to, but the wide smile on your face had been faster than your brain.

‘’I was afraid you were going to reject it’’ he laughed, showing you a new face of him you hadn’t seen before. When he truly laughs, you notice, his cheekbones become more notorious, and his grin is big, showing a bit of the gummy area of his teeth, to what you tell yourself, you wouldn’t dare to deny him anything anymore.

Waking up to the sound of your alarm, you see that it is not the alarm for waking up, but the one that tells you to go out if you don’t want to lose the bus.

You get ready quicker than ever, only brushing your teeth and running out, thanking the world that you took a late-night shower just in case.

Your look is terrible, not that you dress nicely every day, but not as bad as that day, and the world you thanked before seems to laugh at you now, making you lose your bus and making you spend money that you don’t have as cab fare.

When you arrive, you’re almost an hour late, and you don’t dare to push the door open, watching through the little window how your professor is already talking loudly inside.

Eunseok doesn’t turn to you, and you prefer that. You know that he’s exigent with times, he doesn’t even give extra minutes to people that talk too much in presentations. We have to respect everyone’s times he has said on too many occasions for you to forget.

It’s the first time you’re late to his class, and you blame yourself for not putting in more alarms when you went to sleep so late after reading the last paper he had sent you.

You don’t dare to stay there; you don’t even dare to go to the only coffee shop around to wait until your next class because you feel undeserving of spending the coffee money he had given you. You walk to the library with sad eyes and hide in the archaeology section to cry.

No one studies archaeology in your school so you cry in peace until you receive a couple of texts from your friends asking where you are and one from him.

Are you okay? you read.

Yes, I’m sorry, you reply.

Come to my office.

You knock on his door and wait for him to talk even when he has told you multiple times to just go in if you don’t hear voices inside, but you still don’t dare to do it.

‘’Come in’’ he says, and you finally open the door. You don’t walk inside as soon as he talks. He’s ruffling between documents, and you first stand and just look at him from where you are, and then, when he makes eye contact with you, you close the door behind you and give a few steps closer, leaving your bag on his coffee table before you sit in front of him. He waits for you to talk and when he notices that you won’t, he does it, ‘’What happened?’’

‘’I was late…’’ you say, ‘’It’s my fault, I’m sorry’’.

‘’But why? Did anything happen to you on the way here? I need you to talk to me, I don’t know what happened to you if you don’t’’ what he says makes sense, but you feel like saying more would be making excuses. Your parents hate excuses and have always taught you to only say what’s necessary if you’ve done something wrong. In this case, you’re sure you did something wrong.

‘’I’m sorry’’ your breath starts to get harder, and your eyes get a bit wet.

He stands up and walks to you. You think he’s going to lean on the desk like he usually does when he explains something to the room, but he surprises you by moving your seat and caging you in it, slightly bending and inspecting your face.

‘’I’ll repeat my question, and I want you to stop saying you’re sorry’’ he talks, obliging you to maintain your eyes on his with how close he is. ‘’Did anything happen to you when you were coming here?’’

‘’No’’ you answer like you can.

‘’Then what happened?’’ he asks.

‘’I-I fell asleep’’ you finally say.

He sighs, looking relieved, however, you think he sighs because that's the worst reason you could’ve given, and that makes you more embarrassed.

‘’No, wait, it’s okay’’ he smiles when your eyebrows frown to contain what he recognizes as dangerous tears with how shiny your eyes are getting. ‘’Such a crybaby’’ he laughs then, cupping the side of your cheek and cleaning one of the tears that escaped with his thumb.

‘’I’m-‘’

‘’For fucks sake, stop saying you’re sorry, you’ve done nothing to be sorry for’’ he interrupts you before you finish talking and you have to contain another sorry inside your chest. ‘’Sorry’’ he says, making you smile without knowing why. ‘’I’m just glad nothing bad happened to you, I was so worried the whole time, it’s the first time you’ve ever been absent from my class.’’

‘’I was almost an hour late’’ with his palms still on your cheeks, you felt a lot calmer, ‘’I know you don’t like late showers, so I didn’t dare to knock on the door’’.

‘’Oh doll, you should know by now that you’re always the exception.’’

He’s so tender with you, and his voice is so comforting, that you want to close your eyes and just stay with him in that position.

So, you do it, you close your eyes and exhale through your nose, feeling all anxiety disappear from your insides, and you only open them again because Eunseok is kissing you, and you can’t believe what you’re feeling.

The kiss is so soft. His lips feel perfect against yours, smooth and slightly damp. You don’t know what makes you so bold, but your hands go to his neck to not let him move away. At first it was superficial, just lips touching, to then get deeper after you showed equal eagerness.

It’s not much after, as if both of you had been needing to feel each other for a long time, that his tongue caresses your lips to make you accept him, which you do immediately.

The kiss is getting so messy that for a second, he has to breathe over your mouth. Both breaths are hot and fall over each other’s open mouths, making you let a low moan out with the sensation.

Everything is really happening, and you feel your panties get wet with his simple kiss.

He takes your breath again with a groan, making you stand from your seat to pose his hands on your back and press you against his body.

You whimper feeling his belt pinch you and his hand on your back getting lower. Your hands want to do something, so instead of staying still on his neck, they go to feel his hair.

Even his hair felt good.

Silk on your hands, you let him press his thigh on your sex, moving your hips to feel him more.

‘’Fuck, this is so not okay’’ he frowns, lips going to attack your neck while you close your eyes and let him move your hips to meet his thigh and make you more of a mess inside your pants. He stops for a minute, frowning because of how his common sense screams that what he's doing is wrong in so many aspects.

‘’No- don’t stop, please’’ you beg in a whisper. You can’t be loud, you know that what you’re doing is not okay, yet you’ve been needing him for so long, you can’t stop him, and he doesn't want either.

‘’Such a good girl, always making me so proud, fuck, I won’t be able to let you go’’ he says, retaking his past action and making you hump him with both of his hands pushing your hips back and forth his tailored pants.

They’re black, simple, elegant, like him, and you want to cry because it feels like a dream.

‘’Always being so good to me, you’re gonna cum for me like this, right?’’ he asks, biting the side of your neck, making your eyes roll with how close you are to finding your orgasm.

You can’t talk or you’ll moan, you know your body, so you bite your lip and nod while gripping onto his shirt.

His chest is big, and you can’t help but rub your own to his. There, you notice that your sports bra and your hoodie do nothing to impede your hard nipples from feeling good.

He must notice the way you desperately need his attention on your chest, so one of his hands goes from your hip to directly touch you under your shirt.

‘’My pretty girl, can’t believe I’ve endured so long without touching you’’ you can’t believe he calls you pretty when at that moment you feel you look like shit, but he proves you wrong, groping your chest with need, fondling it, to then play with your nipple. His thumb is sweeping it with experience, making you dizzy with all the stimulations together.

Your cunt clenches when you press your clit on his leg, you start to hump him on your own, setting your own pace to cum, and opening your eyes to look at his face, you see shiny white dots.

Your drunken expression makes him let a breathy laugh free, and you cum with a louder whimper the moment you see his smile directed at you.

He stops his attention on your chest and lets you ride down your high while lovingly caressing your back and holding you in his arms.

You need a minute before all clearance is back in your mind and shame starts invading you because you just… well, you haven’t fucked, but you know you’ve done a lot more than a simply making out session.

Your trembling legs and the mess inside your pants are enough proof of that. You’ve never felt anything close to that in your life, so good you had no doubt you could get easily addicted.

Shame is not enough to stop you, and feeling his erection against your abdomen, you feel bad for being the only one who has had an orgasm.

‘’I- I want to make you feel good too’’ you say, inhaling his aroma and hiding your face on his shoulder.

‘’We can’t do more…’’ his arms get tighter around you, not letting you get away before he can finish, knowing the ideas that were already forming in your head about him not wanting to touch you. ‘’Not here.’’

You nod relieved.

Your phone starts ringing, and he lets you get apart enough for you to grab it out of your pocket to see who’s calling you. It’s your alarm for your next class.

‘’Busy?’’ he asks, reading the clear Math II that appears on your screen.

‘’Nah’’ you say. You hate math, and you like Eunseok, so it’s not hard to choose between them. Shoving your phone in the back pocket of your jeans, you press your body to his and hug him again.

He laughs and his hands move from the small of your back to your ass, to where your phone is, and he gives you a soft smack on the free area.

‘’Go to class, can’t let my star student get distracted if I want to keep showing off how good you do in mine’’ he says, and you feel so happy with the idea of him talking about you with others that you become weaker in his arms. ‘’I’ll call you later.’’

You reluctantly move apart from his arms when he pushes you to the door and gives you your bag. In front of his door, before he opens it for you, he gives you a long-lasting kiss that feels more like a peck. Then, pushing you out softly, he makes you leave his office, and when you turn back to see him one last time, he’s smiling at you, which makes you smile the rest of the day too.

#riize smut #riize x reader #eunseok x reader #eunseok smut #riize fluff

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minty364 · 2 days

Text

DPXDC Prompt #58 Part 4

The living room and kitchen were deserted, neither Danny nor Jazz expected anyone as it was normal for their parents to essentially live in the basement only coming up for meals once or twice a month to ‘eat as a family’, these would consist mostly of fast food as no one trusted anything cooked in their kitchen.

They shared a glance as they opened the basement door and headed down. The dimly lit basement held the giant hole in the wall, the so-called portal, a massive metal spectacle with wires and interconnected circuitry met together to create an unholy abomination of science. Or at least that’s what Jazz called it once when they were in her room venting about the situation.

“JAZZ!! DANNY!!” their overzealous father yelled as he bounded over.

Their mom walked over too, seeming to be happy for their return, “your father and I could barely contain our excitement all day!! Go on put on your hazmat suits.” their mom gestured over to the lockers that held the suits. Both of their parents' lockers tended to be quite empty since they practically lived in them, to the point where they had several copies of the same suits that they’d wash and reuse. Danny and Jazz only had the ones, Jazz had a nice dark violet color with black gloves and boots. Danny had black gloves and boots too but his was white to make it look like he was an astronaut, something that he had mixed feelings on. Both of these used to have a giant picture of Jack’s head on it but it was quickly removed by both siblings.

They quickly put the suits on over their uniforms and joined their parents behind some glass near the portal. It wasn’t closed off or anything and Danny didn’t think it would be able to prevent something like an explosion from charing all of them but it’s hard to have faith in parents who've missed so much because of the stupid portal, or at least that’s how Danny felt.

Jazz and Danny huddled together behind their parents as their mom did some final checks on a clipboard, “alrighty we should be all good, Hun you ready to throw the switch?” their mom asked their dad. “As ready as I’ll ever be!” Jack yelled as he threw down the switch.

…

A few sparks erupted from the portal but other than that nothing happened.

Their dad, frustrated at this angrily tried turning it off and on again but nothing but another smaller spark and then truly nothing.

Another low frustrated growl left their dad as he and mom walked back up the steps, “alright I’m taking a break.” Jack said, almost defeated, sounding, “I’m sorry but I really thought we had it this time.”

“Oh come on, Jack, let’s go out, I’m sure the kids were probably going over to the Wayne’s again anyways. Let’s go out and have a fun night then sleep on it.” their mom said, patting dad on the shoulder. They shared a fond look and then went upstairs probably to get ready.

Danny and Jazz stood at the bottom of the stairs and shared a look.

“They gave up too fast again…” Jazz noted.

“I guess, what do we do now?” Danny asked.

“I’m still a little curious about the portal but I don’t want to keep Damian, Tim or Alfred waiting,” Jazz said with a hand on her cheek.

“We could invite them in, I know we haven’t before but maybe Tim would know how to get it working, he is pretty good with technology.” Danny reasoned. Neither of them really wanted to involve the Wayne’s in their family’s shenanigans but at this point they were all friends and Damian and Tim were bound to find out how weird their family was at some point anyways.

Jazz stood there seeming to think things over before she nodded, “alright I trust your judgment but we’ll have to be careful okay?”

Danny smiled at her, “of course, what’s the worst that could happen?”

This is what led to the four of them standing at the bottom of the stairs. Their parents had left about an hour ago. Danny and Jazz were still in their suits with Tim without one and made to sit with Jazz behind the glass and Damian and Danny planning to explore the actual tube.

“I don’t want to chance you getting hurt,” he said to her as he made her stand next to Tim.

Damian and Danny shared a look and nodded before heading into the tube.

They looked around for a while but didn’t see much besides the interconnected wires on the floor of the lab. Damian took the right side while Danny took the left. They worked their way up and down the tube. Damian was a little ahead of Danny on their way out. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary.

When they were almost out Danny lost his footing, his hand flying out in front of him. A soft click was heard and time seemed to crawl to a stand still.

Danny couldn’t stand the thought of his friend getting hurt because of him and he felt a rush of adrenaline. He ran as he felt a swirl of energy and electricity surround his body.

“DANNY!! DAMIAN!!” he heard both Tim and Jazz shout as he reached Damian who was at the mouth of the portal.

A quick shove was all it took to get Damian, who had turned towards him at the sound of the shout, out of the portal.

“DANIEL!!” he heard Damian shout as the portal activated on top of him, surrounding his body with swirling green.

Blinding pain shot through Danny, feeling as if he was being torn apart and put back together again and again.

He figured he was dying but at least he could protect those he cared about. He was able to shove Damian out of the portal in time, and Tim and Jazz were safely behind the blast glass.

He wouldn’t ever be able to fly among the stars as an astronaut but he was able to protect. His family and friends were safe and that’s all that mattered.

He could allow himself to succumb to the darkness as the electricity and pain consumed him whole.

#dp x dc prompt #danny fenton #danny phantom #dp x dc #dc x dp #poor danny #Main character death #Danny died #Jazz Fenton is traumatized #Tim Drake is traumatized #Damian Wayne is traumatized #Everyone gets traumatized #Danny himself gets majorly traumatized #Character Trauma #Depictions of death #Described death scene #Everyone is going to struggle with this #I bought a new chromebook and it's easier to type so I should be getting these out sooner #It'll probably get worse for Danny before it get's better but that's how these things go #Tim was thinking it was safe to let them search in the tube because Damian was with Danny #Damian thought it was safe because he's an ex-assassin and robin #Jazz trusted his brother to know how to be careful #Whoops Danny tripped and now he's dead #my asks are open #all my prompts are free to use #no beta we die like Danny #Google Docs is my beta

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evidence-based-activism · 3 days

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you’re still ignoring WHY the rates for men are so high, because women get underreported and don’t get taken seriously at all when they commit crimes. Women abuse children more and initiate 70% of domestic violence, yet men are still portrayed as the villains. You should read the comments or some of the reblogs under that post. Full of people who have been abused by women and have been safer when around only men,and never been taken seriously. You say it’s a strawman fallacy but no it’s not, radfems say this shit all the timesee. and are very gender essentialist themselves. Maybe you’re not saying it but a lot of popular radfems are, to mostly agreement from other radfems,so you can’t really blame people for seeing that and understanding it to be a popular TERF take.

Hi -

So, I'm going to answer this ask and the one that includes the bustle link that I expect was also sent by you? However, I'm not going to continue putting in this degree of effort (i.e., reading and researching the information you send) unless you start matching that effort. It will be difficult for you to do so in an ask (although I suppose you could try), so I suggest you reblog this post to further discuss.

So, on to the response:

---

No, there is not a significant reporting gap (at least, not one caused by sex).

You said "women get underreported and don’t get taken seriously at all when they commit crimes", but there is no evidence that is the case. Let's take the crime data from two sources: the criminal victimization survey by the BJS [1] and the FBI crime data explorer [2]. These two sources are helpful for this discussion because the BJS attempts to determine total offenses including those not reported, while the FBI only looks at reported offenses.

For 2022 (rounding numbers) and looking at violent offenses (excluding homicide as the BJS report is interview based):

Male violent crime: 4,750,000 estimated by the BJS and 1,990,000 reported by the FBI for an overall 42% reporting rate

Female violent crime: 1,220,000 estimated by the BJS and 777,000 reported by the FBI for an overall 64% reporting rate

These numbers would suggest that more female offenders than male offenders are reported (i.e., a greater percent of female offenders, even though in absolute terms there are far fewer female offenders). However, there are some caveats to this data that makes me reluctant to state this conclusion:

The crime definitions between the BJS and FBI differ slightly. For example, I had to search through the "other crimes" for the FBI to find simple assault and several additional sexual assault categories to try and match the overall BJS "violent crime" statistic.

These stats are incident based not offender based. So, for example, if John commits 10 aggravated assaults and 5 of his victims report the assault to the police, 5 incidents are recorded in the system. Therefore, recidivism may or may not play a role in reporting rates.

I calculated the rate using the offender stats for individual offenders and "both male and female offender". Proportionally speaking a greater percent of female offenders are in the "both" category (23% vs 6%). Other statistics suggest more severe crimes are more likely to be reported to the police (e.g., 50% of aggravated assault is reported vs 37% of simple assault). If we make the assumption that violent crimes involving multiple offenders are more likely to be severe, then this could partially explain the disparity.

However, this point is essentially irrelevant, as the statistics previously discussed in the CDC report don't rely on reported crimes, they specifically interview representative samples in order to determine prevalence rates. (The difference between this data (and data in the BJS report) and the number of reported cases is how we know these crimes are under-reported.)

Just to drive the point home: the BJS study, which again, looks at both reported and unreported crime indicates:

Men take part in 84% of violent crimes and the only offender(s) in 79% of violent crimes (the stats for women are 21% and 17% respectively)

The offender-to-population ratio is 1.6 for men and 0.3 for women. That means the share of men in the "offender population" is 60% more than the share of men in the US population. The share of women offenders is 70% less than their share of the US population.

And before you send me another debunked myth: no men are not victimized more: the victim-to-offender population ratio for all violent crimes is 1.0 for both men and women.

I've also talked about how men don't under-report abuse (at least, not anymore than women do) in the past, so see this post for a couple more sources.

There's also no evidence that crimes committed by women get taken less seriously. However, it is true that when women do commit crimes, they tend to be less severe than the crimes committed by men (i.e., women commit more simple assault and aggravated assault). Given this, women's crimes may be taken "less seriously", but that's because the crimes are less serious, going by the accepted definitions of the crime. (And this is not my personal opinion! There is an actual "crime hierarchy" used in the American justice system that ranks crimes by degree of severity.)

In terms of legal consequences, women and men receive similar sentence lengths with one major caveat [3]. Caretakers of children, especially, young children, routinely received shorter sentences. Since women are more likely to be the primary caretaker of children, they'd be more likely to see this sentence reduction. However, this gap has been closing since the introduction of mandatory minimum sentencing. Some research suggests women may receive harsher sentences than men for "traditionally male crimes" [4].

Either way, crimes by women are clearly taken at least as "seriously" as crimes by men.

---

No women do not abuse children more.

You said "Women abuse children more", but this is an oft-repeated statement from terribly misinterpreted data.

The misconception comes from data from the child maltreatment report from the HHS [5]. This report looks at reports of child abuse and neglect. In it they found that 52% of victims had a female perpetrator and 47% had a male perpetrator. At first glance, this looks like women abuse more children (hence the wide-spread misinterpretation), however this neglects to take several things into consideration.

First, since about 51% of the population is female, even if we considered nothing else, these values would suggest parity in maltreatment (abuse + neglect) rates. Of course, even this interpretation is deeply flawed, but I thought it merited pointing out.

Second, and perhaps most important, these stats are not looking at incidence or even prevalence rates. This isn't a rate at all. For example, you may be tempted to interpret these as "52% of children in a women's care are abused" or "52% of women abuse children". These are, and I must stress this, completely incorrect interpretations. These stats say only that of child maltreatment (abuse+neglect) victims identified by CPS, 52% of them were maltreated by a women.

Next, these stats fail to take into account the fact that many more women are the primary caretaker of children. According to the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), mothers spend 80% more time caring for children than fathers. This disparity widens even further when you exclude the "entertainment" categories like playing or reading to children (130% increase, or more than double) [6]. This matters because it provides some insight into how rates of abuse would be different. You need to adjust for time spent with children to get a meaningful rate. Another way to look at this is that despite mothers spending almost twice the amount of time around children as fathers, they account for the same number of perpetrators. This alone should tell you that a child is more likely to be safe in the company of a randomly selected woman than a randomly selected man.

In case you still aren't convinced however, the report also clarifies that the perpetrator sex varied widely by maltreatment type. Women were the perpetrator in 58.5% of neglect cases (vs 41%) and 70.5% of medical neglect cases (vs 29%). But men were the perpetrator in 49.5% of physical abuse cases (vs 49%), 89% of sexual abuse cases (vs 8%), and 59% of emotional abuse cases (vs 41%). While no form of child maltreatment is ever acceptable, I hope I don't need to explain how abuse (which "requires an action") is different from neglect (which "occurs from an inaction") and requires different responses.

Speaking of neglect: there is much discourse on how much of the neglect (and medical neglect) registered by CPS is "true neglect" and how much is a result of poverty. This is particularly relevant considering single mothers are much more likely to live in poverty than married couples or single fathers. Examples of this may include: a mother doesn't have enough money to buy food and pay for rent so she and her child eat very little until her next paycheck, a single mother can't miss work without being fired so she sends her sick child to school, a single mother can't pay for child care so she has to choose between leaving her child home alone or having an unfit adult (her own abusive parent? an unsuitable boyfriend?) watch her child. In all of these situations, something absolutely needs to be done to help the child, but it likely isn't the same something as a child who's being beaten or sexually abused by his father.

Other notes on neglect: even the relatively higher proportion of female perpetrators for neglect and medical neglect in this sample are well below parity when adjusted for time spent with the child. It’s also likely that men’s rates of neglect are likely severely under-reported here. Why? Because a neglect case is rarely (if ever) opened for absentee ("deadbeat") dads; it's also unclear how many men with non-primary custody are listed as perpetrators of neglect. (I ask you: if mothers are considered neglectful for failing to intervene on behalf of their child in abusive/neglectful situations, why aren't fathers?)

Other studies on child abuse perpetration (sadly no national reports) show:

Evaluations of child fatalities in Missouri over a 8-year period showed men inflicted 71% of fatal injuries on young children [8]

Evaluations of fatal and nonfatal abusive head trauma over a 12-year period at the Children's Hospital of Denver found 69% of the perpetrators were male (including 74% of the perpetrators of fatal head traumas) [9]

Data from conviction rates and victimization surveys suggest that 4-5% of adult, child sex offenders (as in child sex offenders who are adults) are female, meaning that 95-96% are male [10]

Altogether, this indicates that men are more likely to abuse a child in their care than women. Unsurprisingly, it’s safer for children to be around women than around men.

---

No, women do not initiate more domestic violence/commit the same amount of abuse.

You said "women ... initiate 70% of domestic violence". It took me a while to find a source for this statistic, but I eventually found out it comes from a poorly done study that unfortunately finds company with a number of other poorly done studies touted by MRAs and anti-feminists.

Before we address that study specifically: a brief history of the nonsense plaguing domestic violence research.

To be clear, this is not a new discussion, we (the general we) have been having this same discussion about whether there's gender parity in domestic violence for, oh, 50 years or so. It is, possibly not entirely, but certainly mostly the result of the "Conflict Tactics Scale" (CTS). Intended for use in family violence research, it has several methodological flaws which make its results ... let's go with unreliable.

I really thought I'd discussed the CTS before now ... but can't find anything on my blog. But there is this post which is a nice pictograph about this next topic, which I will loop into our discussion of the CTS.

So ... why is the CTS so unreliable? Because "domestic violence" is not a homogeneous phenomenon. If I asked someone to picture an abusive relationship they are almost certainly going to imagine an abusive man controlling his partner through intimidation, likely restricting her behavior, and possibly hitting or otherwise physically harming her. This "typical" dynamic is what we think of when we hear "domestic abuse/violence". (I'd argue that it's what we should think of when discussing domestic violence, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise.)

Notably, what this doesn't include is the -- far more common -- case of situational violence. A "typical" example of situational violence is arguments that "gets out of hand" and end with one partner slapping/shoving/etc. the other (switching between perpetrator for different incidents) or two people who routinely get "nasty" (name calling, personal insults) to each other during arguments. There's no intimidation or controlling behavior and it doesn't escalate. It also is generally not associated with significant victim hardship (i.e., no/little increase in depression, anxiety, or PTSD; little fear or feeling unable to escape the relationship; no or few physical injuries; little or no economic hardship; etc.). It's also what's predominately being measured by the CTS.

This isn't to say that situational violence is "okay". It clearly isn't, no more than a bar fight or slapping a co-worker is okay. It is, however, far more comparable to these examples (bar fight, slapping a coworker, etc.) than it is to the standard conception of domestic violence (which itself is more comparable to being a prisoner of war [11]). Some people have tried to resolve this by renaming the standard conception to "intimate partner terrorism" or "domestic abuse with coercive control". I have ... mixed thoughts on this, so I'm going to leave it at this for now.

If you'd like to read more about this, Michael P. Johnson at PSU (who originally proposed this division back in the 1990s!) has written a book and also has numerous articles about the topic.

I have a lot of sources about the CTS/differences in violence perpetration rates, but this post is already very long and I plan to make a whole separate post about this at some point. So, I'm going to briefly summarize the points and give some references that would be particularly helpful.

So, the issues with CTS include:

Failure to include a full range of possible violent behaviors, including many that are almost always perpetrated by men, including: rape, murder, choking, and suffocation.

Failure to examine post-breakup/divorce time periods, despite post-separation being one of the most dangerous time periods for abused women (but, notably, not men).

Failure to examine context. This gets back at the paradigm I mentioned above: studies that do examine context have shown that the vast majority of coercive controlling violence (i.e., traditional abuse) is perpetrated by men and the vast majority of responsive violence (i.e., self-defense) is perpetrated by women.

Failure to examine the severity of the violence and/or violence impacts. Studies have also shown that women routinely receive the more severe injuries than men. That applies to both the injuries received from coercive controlling violence and from situational violence. Notably, men are rarely ever injured from responsive violence. Women also routinely report more severe psychological and social problems as a result of abuse.

Extremely poor phrasing of the questions. The CTS is unique in its false positive rate, as has been established by several other measures of violence. For example, simply adding the stem "Not including horseplay or joking around..." reduced the number of violent incidents reported and also showed higher rates of female victimization than male victimization.

Inconsistency with every other scale/measure used for determining prevalence rates of abuse! Hopefully it is obvious why this is an issue, but as an example: if I created a new measure for "depressive symptoms" and I found that it correlated very poorly with every other accepted measure of depressive symptoms then my new measure would be considered to have very poor "convergent validity". In non-politicized situations, my measure would likely never make it to the publishing stage, and would certainly fall out of use once this poor validity demonstrated by another study. Unfortunately, science is not immune to politics any more than the people conducting it are, as we can see with the survival of the CTS.

I gathered this information from a bunch of sources, but I've selected a few reviews (i.e., papers that "review" or condense many other papers into one) that would be helpful to you [12-16]. I recommend [12] in particular, although [13] touches on much of the same information and is much shorter. Ultimately, the CTS can, at most, be considered a measure of situational violence (and it's not even very good at that!).

---

So, finally, why is the 70% study [17] particularly bad?

All of the above problems with CTS apply, but in addition to all of that, they didn't just use the already flawed measure as it was ... no they, narrowed it down into 6 total questions. In total it asked about the respondent's perpetration of victimization of the following forms of violence: threatening with violence, pushing/shoving, throwing something, slapped, hit, kicked. They then "assessed" severity by asking a single question about injuries ("How often has partner had an injury, such as a sprain, bruise, or cut because of a fight with you?" and the corresponding victimization version.)

So, let's see ... failure to include predominately male forms of violence? Check. Further exclusion of even the existing items on the CTS that do examine this? Check! Failure to examine time past the relationship? Check. Failure to examine context? Check! Failure to examine severity of violence? Check. (Asking about a sprain or a bruise but not hospitalizations? broken bones? concussions?) Inconsistency with all other measures? Definitely!

Other problems with the study: they asked individuals to rate their perpetration and victimization, they did not examine their partners responses to such questions. This is a problem for a study like this, given that men tend to over-estimate their partners violence towards them and under-estimate their own violence towards their partner, and women do the opposite over-estimating their own violence and under-estimating their partners [12]. A note that a related problem has also shown up for the original CTS (i.e., if you asked both partners to complete the scale, their responses may agree on the "explaining a disagreement" item pair, but there was little if any agreement on the severe items like the "beating up" item pair).

To make a bad problem even worse: they condensed their multi-item (8-point) scales into binary (yes/no) categories and 3-item (low/medium/high) categories. This reduction in variance likely created artificially high rates for women and artificially low rates for men.

Hilariously (infuriatingly), they make it all the way through this data and then acknowledge that their study may not actually have examined domestic abuse at all! Instead it describes "common couple violence or situational violence", which, again, goes back to what the paradigm I introduced earlier. Of course, they don't revise their title or abstract to be less misleading ... that wouldn't be sensational enough.

Also, just to point this out: even this poorly designed, misleading study still showed "men were more likely to inflict an injury on a partner than ... women". So ... there you go. Even tipping the scales/design as far in favor of a "gender symmetry" result as they can possibly go, women still end up injured more than men.

---

So, for the rest of your ask:

"yet men are still portrayed as the villains"

well when 1 in 3 men around the world openly admit to abusing women, and they are the perpetrator of 90+% of homicides, and 10-67% of men openly admit to believing non-defensive physical and sexual violence against women is at least sometimes okay it's pretty easy to see why women can see them as the villain/enemy.

"You should read the comments or some of the reblogs under that post. Full of people who have been abused by women and have been safer when around only men,and never been taken seriously."

This is one of those cases where critical thinking skills are pretty important! Let me start you off:

Do I think that a social media post will garner a representative sample from which to draw conclusions? Or is more likely that people who agree with the post will comment on and re-blog it, spreading it more people who are more likely to agree with it?

Can I see the re-blog I'm making comments about (i.e., evidence-based-activism's re-blog?). If not, (hint: it's not in the re-blog viewer :)) is it possible that there are other hidden replies that are disagreeing with this post?

Maybe most importantly: do I need female-on-male or female-on-female violence to be as common as male-on-female and male-on-male violence in order to show compassion to those who do experience it? (Hint: you shouldn't!! Something doesn't need to be common to deserve sympathy and rare =/= excusable.)

In addition, this is touching on a pretty common issue with discourse these days -- the prioritization of "feeling" over "being". Someone (male or female) may feel safer around men, but statistically speaking they are safer around women. It's reasonable to respond to and accommodate people's feelings on an individual basis, it's not reasonable to base an ideology or policy around them.

"You say it’s a strawman fallacy but no it’s not, radfems say this shit all the timesee. ... Maybe you’re not saying it but a lot of popular radfems are, to mostly agreement from other radfems,so you can’t really blame people for seeing that and understanding it to be a popular TERF take."

Similar to the last point ... views on social media are not representative of a population. Views that you, specifically, are seeing are not representative! If they were, then "well, I see more posts preemptively criticizing people for not including men than I see posts excluding men" (which is true, almost every post I read now-a-days includes caveats like "but men are abused too!! and women can be abusers!!") would have been a valid counter-argument to your ask. But see, I know that my experience on social media is not universal, and I should hope you can acknowledge the same of your own!

Also ... to be fair to all these unnamed "radfems", I'm guessing that you would consider my posts (like this response) to be an example of someone "saying this", which is very much not the case. I am acknowledging social trends and making reasonable generalizations to allow for communication about a complex topic (you know, the way people do for any and every topic ever), but I'm not claiming that no women is ever abusive or that no man has ever been abused. I'm guessing that these other posts are pretty similar (if less verbose).

side note, you also said: "radfems ... are very gender essentialist themselves".

Either you don't know what "gender essentialist" means or the people you are talking to/about are not radfems. I acknowledge that there are a number of people going around and saying they're radfems, but the nice thing about a political group like this is they have (at least some) defined beliefs.

So, for example, if someone went around saying they are a communist, but then when asked to describe their desired economic system, describes an economy based around the free market and decentralized production ... then they aren't a communist no matter what they call themselves. A command economy is a central tenant to communism, so much so that a desire to implement one/have one is intrinsic to being a communist.

In the same way, if someone is calling themselves a radfem, but supports the preservation of gender/gender roles or believes that femininity/masculinity is biologically innate ... then they aren't a radfem.

---

TL;DR:

Violent crimes for women and men are reported at similar rates.

Women and men are punished similarly for violent crimes (i.e., people do take crimes by women seriously).

Children are safer in the company of women than men. There is insufficient research to accurately describe perpetrator demographics of "minor" child abuse/neglect, but there is significant research indicating that men are the perpetrator of the the vast majority of severe injuries, fatal injuries, and sexual abuse.

Men commit the vast majority controlling domestic violence (the type of violence people think of when thinking about domestic violence); women's violence is predominately responsive. Women are also the recipients of the vast majority of injuries (minor and severe) and are the victim of almost all fatalities.

Social media posts are not representative studies.

Critical thinking skills are important!

And, everyone -- regardless of sex or any other demographic characteristic -- deserves compassion when harmed. It is still appropriate talk about trends and create policies that assist the majority of those harmed.

A reminder that I will expect a reasonable degree of engagement with this information if you plan to engage in further discussion! I'll answer the bustle link ask, but after that I'll simply delete asks that don't make a genuine attempt to think critically about this information. (Clarifying questions are okay to ask though :)).

---

References below the cut:

Criminal Victimization, 2022 | Bureau of Justice Statistics. https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/criminal-victimization-2022.

“National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) Details Reported in the United States .” Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime Data Explorer, https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend.

Myrna S. Raeder Gender and Sentencing: Single Moms, Battered Women, and Other Sex-Based Anomalies in the Gender-Free World of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 20 Pepp. L. Rev. Iss. 3 (1993) Available at: https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/plr/vol20/iss3/1

https://web.archive.org/web/20240406064949/https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2019/jan/12/intimate-partner-violence-gender-gap-cyntoia-brown

Child Maltreatment 2022. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/report/child-maltreatment-2022.

“Average Hours per Day Parents Spent Caring for and Helping Household Children as Their Main Activity.” Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/activity-by-parent.htm.

Shrider, Emily A., Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen, and Jessica Semega, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-273, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020, U.S. Government Publishing Office, Washington, DC, September 2021.

Schnitzer PG, Ewigman BG. Child deaths resulting from inflicted injuries: household risk factors and perpetrator characteristics. Pediatrics. 2005 Nov;116(5):e687-93. doi: 10.1542/peds.2005-0296. PMID: 16263983; PMCID: PMC1360186.

Starling SP, Holden JR, Jenny C. Abusive head trauma: the relationship of perpetrators to their victims. Pediatrics. 1995 Feb;95(2):259-62. PMID: 7838645.

McCartan, K. (Ed.). (2014). Responding to Sexual Offending. Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137358134

Comparison Between Strategies Used on Prisoners of War and Battered Wives | Office of Justice Programs. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/comparison-between-strategies-used-prisoners-war-and-battered-wives.

Michael S. Kimmel. (2001). Male Victims of Domestic Violence: A Substantive and Methodological Research Review. The Equality Committee of the Department of Education and Science. https://vawnet.org/material/male-victims-domestic-violence-substantive-and-methodological-research-review

Flood, M. (1999, July 10). Claims About Husband Battering [Contribution to Newspaper, Magazine or Website]. Domestic Violence and Incest Resource Centre Newsletter; Domestic Violence and Incest Resource Centre. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/215068/

Walter DeKeseredy & Martin Schwartz. (1998). Measuring the Extent of Woman Abuse in Intimate Heterosexual Relationships: A Critique of the Conflict Tactics Scales. VAWnet.Org. https://vawnet.org/material/measuring-extent-woman-abuse-intimate-heterosexual-relationships-critique-conflict-tactics

Shamita Das Dasgupta. (2001). Towards an Understanding of Women’s Use of Non-Lethal Violence in Intimate Heterosexual Relationships. VAWnet.Org. https://vawnet.org/material/towards-understanding-womens-use-non-lethal-violence-intimate-heterosexual-relationships

Whitaker, Daniel J., et al. “Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 97, no. 5, May 2007, pp. 941–47. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2005.079020.

#feminism #male violence

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dontbesadsanaexist · 3 days

Text

𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬

Danceteacher!momo x Trainee!fem!reader

Warnings: bad language, mouth fucking, cunnulingus, smut, mention of sex, choking, friends?withbenefits

Word count: 3.4k

Summary: Momo has always acted weird towards you. Treating you more harshly than the other trainees. But what can possibly happen in an empty building, at night, when you started to show your brat side?

Nda: sorry I suck at summarizing 🫡🫡 (I promise the story is better)

*★*―――*★**★*―――*★**★*―――*★*

"Start again."

The music coming from the speakers was loud. Your body sweaty, clothes almost drenched. A few lights illuminated the room as opposed to the dark corridors that you could only see thanks to the half-opened door. One of them was flashing.

It's okay, your agence never put in much efforts for their groups anyway, always buying the bare minimum.

Your body moved on his own, despite the obvious tiredness visible on your face. Your movements almost reached perfection but still,

There she was with her angry face.

You stopped yourself when the sounds stopped. The dance practice room went silent again. A glance at her let you know that she was the one who paused the music.

"Same mistake, start again."

Your throat almost burned by the desire to say something. It's been hours since it started. You felt like you would never see the end, because there was nothing to change. You came to thought that she had a wicked pleasure to make you stay, knowing you couldn't say anything.

She tapped on her phone's screen. You didn't have time to recover. Your ears are sick of hearing the same sounds again and again. Your eyes dared to close, but you promise your leader you would thew few mistakes you make, so you didn't let that happen. Instead, you restarted the same choreography.

A exasperated sigh left her lips as you almost trip on your own laces. It must have come undone during the training.

"Are you going to dance properly or should I already ask you manager to add hours for you at the end of every training day?"

"But I dance properly!"

Oups, came out on its own.

Your frustration and stress accumulated during the day heard in your replied. You didn't want to sound so disrespectful, but it was just too much. Watching all of your members leave just to stay here and make extra practice until you felt sweat slide down your body, no thanks you, if you could you would have gladly pass the offer.

"Excuse me?"

The next things coming out of your mouth were completely unexpected.

"Seriously, it's been like 4 hours since we started and you're still here saying there's something to fix when there obviously isn't."

At first she just seemed shocked by your sudden switch of behavior. But then, then, she aggressively slammed her phone on the table near her and tapped her right foot on the floor, corner of the lips trembling with angryness.

"Because you thought that i wanted to be here in the first place? Losing my time and sleep for a girl that can't reproduce a simple fucking dance?"

Okay, you had made her more angry that she already was.

"I never asked for extra help."

"See, that's your second problem. You need extra help. You suck at dancing. Everyone see it except you."

Ouch, it hurts. I mean, it would have hurt a lot more if it wasn't for your tiredness and growing angryness clouding your mind with thoughts you would never come across before. And you knew she was lying. She just saw you progress and had too much pride to admit that she was wrong. So now she put all the problem on your shoulders, and just expects you to go with it. That's what you thought, though.

You knew it wasn't true. But your fists clenched on their owns and your eyes watered. You weren't the sensible type but it was 10 p.m and you were just so done with it.

A thought crossed your mind, and your mouth was quicker to speak than you had time to comprehend what you were about to say.

"At least I've never been fired because I was too lazy to practice!"

She was shocked.

She definitely was.

Not by what you said, but by your sudden brattiness. You got some nerves to speak to her like that. She was at least 6 years older than you plus your dance teacher. She literally accepted to help you even though she was forced, but still. How dare you?

Something occurred. You heard an annoyed sound coming from her mouth then she walked towards you. A firm and straight walk. When she arrived at your level she didn't even dared to stop. She just grabbed your wrist, and dragged you with her.

She was walking way too fast. You were struggling to keep up the pace.

The entire building was empty. And since Momo had turned the lights of the room off you were both moving in the dark with, as only lighting, the flash coming from her phone. You soon arrived at a sliding door. You quickly read the inscription marked on it.

Bathroom, ladies only.

She forced you in it and harshly closed the door, creating a loud thump resonating inside.

"What are we doing here?" You dared to ask. She tilted her head to the side as if the respond was obvious.

"Do you think the way you talked to me back earlier was appropriate? Don't you think you need a little something to remind you that I am the idol here, that you're nothing but a trainee?"

She took you by the shoulders and made you enter an empty stall.

You were surely about to protest, if it wasn't for her to push you roughly on the wall. You let out a small whimper of pain and you hand came resting on you back where the impact has been made.

(You see, if anyone ever read that without context, they will surely be confused as to why she was so comfortable with touching you this way, if you were a trainee like the others. But the thing is, you weren't. To her eyes, you weren't just a simple trainee.

Let me explain:

The relationship that you and Momo shared was beyond weird. Everything started in the manager's office. You didn't even remember what you were doing here, nor how it happened. But one second, you were with momo waiting for him to arrive, and the next, your were against the desk, kissing her.

At first, it was simple make outs. In the bathroom or an empty closet, she was usually the one who initiated them. But then, it started to take a more serious turn. You would find yourself in her apartment when Nayeon was away. Or sometimes it was at your dorm (which was very risky but you both didn't care).

The first hook up was supposed to be the last one, in your head. That's what you told yourself at the end of every session. But she always finds a way to make you fall in her trap. I mean, who can resist the gorgeous and hot woman that Momo is?

The excuses that you would tell the girls from you dorm to go out were piling up, and the minutes spending with Momo were gradually transformed into hours. Hours of doing nothing but pure fucking.

But of course, you were coming after her career. That's why in Jyp's buildings, she was ignoring you. Like, completely ignoring you. She didn't even bother to throw a single glance at you. You understand how she remained clinging to her image, even though you were a bit disappointed that you were traited like any other trainee.

The only thing you didn't understand was the way she acted when you make a mistake. With the other girls from your group, she would just show them the correct movement. But with you, she would just look at you, and expect you to get the right move on your own. And when you didn't, it frustrated her. To a point where she would be so irritated she would just complains about you to your manager, as if it was your fault. And right now, it was one of those moment. But instead of calling the number she knows so well from you, she decided to take care of the problem on her own.)

You jaw ached when she grabbed it firmly to make you look at her. "So, what are you gonna do know hm? Are you gonna keep responding ? I can let you go if you politely apologize to me."

You looked at her dead in the eyes. You could apologize. But you're certainly not going to do that. She irritated you too much and you weren't going to let go of your pride.

"Go to hell." Your respond left even though she pressed your cheeks together making difficult for you to talk. Your hands tried to push her arm away, and that only made her grip on you stronger, to the point it started to hurt. Like really hurt.

She huffed as she expected an apoligize. She didn't think for you to put such an attitude towards her. Usually, you would obey her every command, like the good little trainee you were. This, this was none of that. And she didn't like it.

Your eyes landed on her other hand, which was going way too close to your face to your liking. Then, you felt two of her fingers pressing against your lips. You immediately sealed your mouth, without even knowing what she was going to do next. Of course, you could just submit to her, like always. But your pride was way too big for that.

"Open your mouth."

Her command felt harshful. You tried to shock your head as no, but she didn't take that as a respond. She forced past your entrance and the next thing you know, two of her fingers were deep in your mouth, almost reaching your throat.

Now your hands were desesperatly trying to get her grip off of you. You felt her fingers retired completely, just to push back in with full force.

And in continued like this.

Her digits reaching the far back of your throat.

Her breathing on your ear made you close your eyes tightly. "Isn't that a good idea? Fucking your mouth will make you learn how to shut it like how it's supposed to be."

Her deep chuckle when she heard you chocke send a shiver down your spine.

Each time her fingers would push in, spit would dripped down your mouth making a complete mess on your chin and neck.

It felt like hours before her mistrations stopped, which left you caughing with a hand rubbing your aching throat.

Momo smiled at your state. Her fingers were covered in your drool, almost reaching her wrist. She took you aback when she pushed your shoulders on the wall, her fingers replaced with her lips.

Your whines of rejection could be heard in the room which weren't really of rejection but you couldn't let her know she turned you on. Your nails digged them self on her shoulders to try and hurt her. But she didn't care really. A little girl like you isn't going to do much against her anyway.

She kissed you deeply, swallowing your whines and parting your lips. Just like before, you felt something slipping in your mouth. A wet, warm thing.

The feeling of her tongue against your own made you release a small whimper. The kiss left you breathless and panting, like every time you were alone with her.

"Enjoying it?" She teased you, but it wasn't funny for you. Your mouth opened to say something but she beat you to it.

"I didn't think you would be such a brat today. What happened to my good girl? That attitude you pulled me earlier has put you in so many troubles..."

She didn't let you respond. She never. Her hand wrapped around you neck and you felt a pressure on your throat, choking you a bit.

"How should I punish you? I've got so many ideas in mind..."

Okay, now your body was... betraying you.

A sudden wave of heat arose in your body at the thought of her touches. You didn't want to let her notice that the way she talked to you made your panties soaked, but at the same time the ache between your legs was starting to be bothering. You refused the thought of taking care of the problem yourself later in your bed. Her doing it for your was a better idea. And you know what, fuck it.

Your hands stopped trying to get her away from you, and instead, grab her waist and brought her closer. Momo looked at you with a confuse look. Your behavior was indeed weird.

"What it is n-"

"Kiss me"

Your request was followed by a small please that even you could barely hear. Her lips slowly turned into a smile, and she was quick to catch your mouth with her own. The previous painful pressure on your neck feels now deliciously pleasuring

The kiss felt even better than the one before now that you fully enjoy it. Her rosy lips that you would stare at so many times were now moving against yours, creating a delicious pressure.

"Didn't you want to punish me or something ?" You dared to ask her as your bratness was showing again.

"Just shut up please."

The wet sounds of lips touching each other echoed in the purple bathroom stall, such as small sighs of pleasure. You two would parted away from time to time, getting the minimum of oxygen in your lungs before diving into the other's warmth again.

Before everything started, a kiss from her would've been enough to make you melt in place. But now you had all freedom to do whatever you wanted, and your fingers tingled with the desire of more. Your hand slipped on the skin of her neck to her nape, before being stopped by a firm grip on your wrist.

Momo pushed her lips away from yours. A string of saliva connected your mouths for barely a second. She was glad to see her lipstick embellished the lower part of your face, the color suited you better, especially with those swollen lips of yours.

She observered you.

How your would bite your bottom lip, cheeks blushed by the lack of air. How your carbage would move up and down, breathlessly. The way you were shamlessly eye-fucking her, thigh clenching together. God, what a sigh.

The succeed in making you go from a brat to a mess had increased her ego. Her hand wandered around your face, thumb caressing your bottom lip and slightly playing with it. Her lips touched your cheeks, and traveled lower. The hand she wasn't holding immediately attached to her hair and pulled her locks as soon as you felt her warm breath on your neck. Of course everybody would be able to see all the marks she leaves on you, but she didn't care really. It's not like she's the one who is risking a futur career.

You sighed blissfully as she bit your neck, making your nails dig into her skull. Her hands were quick to undo your sweat pants, sliding it down and making you shiver from the cold air due to the lack of heating in the building. She tugged your T-shirt up and stuck it in your bra, not even bothering to remove it.

"Oh, look at this." Momo rapidly noticed the wet spot on your panties that you were desperately trying to hide, even though you couldn't.

She hummed in satisfaction and brushed her fingers softly against the frabric, before pulling it harshly towards her. The sudden movement made you yelp as you hands pushed her shoulders, but she was way stronger, and the grip she had on your thighs stopped you from whatever you were trying to do.

"Let's do this. I'm gonna eat you out. If you cum before I say you can it'll be the last time for 2 weeks, okay?" She asked, which basically wasn't even a question but more of an order.

Her being so bold had definitely done something to you. You nodded your head, wanting her to hurry up and ease the feeling you had that started to overwhelm you. She dropped a small peck on your lips, making your dizzy, and proceeded to kneel down. One swift movement and your panties were gone, letting her a full view of your dripping arousal. She placed your legs on her shoulders and her hands on your waist for support. That position could be quiet uncomfortable but not for Momo, thanks to the hours spending at the gym she found you rather light.

You whined as the only friction she gave you was marking you thighs.

"Momo don't do t-" Momo glaring at you was enough to shut you up and take whatever she wanted to give you. You're not in a position to protest anything, and she was already furious at you for thinking you could talk back.

She continued kissing your flesh for a minute, before her breath change place and she blew hot air on your wet crotch. You tried to squirm but couldn't move much because of the hard grip she had on your waist. Another whine almost came out of your throat, until you felt the tip of her tongue against your folds and instead you whimpered her name. Your hand gripped the toilet paper dispenser. The edges of it were rounded so you couldn't really hold on to it but it was still better than nothing.

Momo took your clit between her lips and slowly suck it. Your eyes closed instantly as you felt the pleasure starting to consume you. Her touch were so gentle it was almost torturing. Your body enveloped in a warmth that increased your desire for more. As if they had come to life, your thighs started to buck against Momo's mouth. It was miserable how you were practically rutting on her face.

Momo release your clit from her lips and let her tongue travel lower, until it was right in front of your entrance. Your hand grabbed her hair as soon as you felt her tongue slip inside of you. "S-shit Momo... Momo!" You chanted, too focused on the way she was moving, tasting you, to care about your volume.

Her hands withdrew from your waist to grab your thigh instead, guiding you on her tongue. Your hand runs through her dark hair. You attempted to push her even closer, even deeper inside you.

The flick of her tongue against that one particular spot made your hand involuntarily grasp her hair fiercely. She released a deep groan in your core at the death grip you had on her, creating vibrations that ascended up your mouth and turned into a loud sob.

Your walls clenched firmly around her tongue, your clit throbbing continually as the tip of her nose pressed against it.

You opened your eyes all of a sudden as you felt that your climax was near. Your stomach tighten, you knuckles turned white at the hold you had on the dispenser. When you looked down, you saw a version of Momo only you could (probably) ever see.

Her eyes were tight shut. Her mouth and chin covered with your arousal. Her rosy cheeks could suggest that she was the one having an orgasm. You bet she was enjoying it as much as you do.

She reopened her eyes, meeting your pleading gaze. "Please..." was the only thing understandable you could let out between broken cries and incoherent words. You were at the verge of crying. Your orgasm was just so closed.

Momo didn't seem to be affected by your desperate state. Because as soon as she felt your legs started trembling she pushed her head away, leaving you all confused and bothered. She wiped the mess you made on her face with her sleeve and stood up.

You have returned to an almost normal state when she turned the lock of the bathroom stall's door open.

"W-wait Momo y-you said-"

"I said I would allow you to cum if I felt like it. Which I don't really. So... Guess it's for next time?"

She stepped out of the stall and took a last look at your condition. You were on the floor, eyes watered, cheeks wet and red. She gave you a brief smirk before adding one last thing. "If you're not in the dance room in 10 minutes, I'll let your manager know about your very, very, bad behavior."

She was now completely gone. You were crying, sobbing and sniffing in your arms. She left you all alone, leaving you just enough time to put your clothes back on. This was so unfair. You did everything she told you to. She was ruthless! She took time to build up your pleasure just to leave at the end, making the denied orgasm even more painful.

You were too tired to keep crying, and also a bit afraid of Momo's threat. So you just stood up, cleaned yourself and get yourself dress again. Half an hour left before you could head back to your dorm. And it promised to be long...

*★*―――*★**★*―――*★**★*―――*★*

#Twice #Momo #Smut #Jyp #Nayeon #Sana #Tzuyu #Jihyo #Jeongyeon #Chaeyoung #Mina #Dahyun #momo smut #Top!Momo #😵‍💫😵‍💫#Twice imagines #Twice x reader #Twice smut

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justagalwhowrites · 3 days

Note

Gurll, lavender is my go-to reread everytime. Ig u are taking requests (😂🫶🏻), I would really like to see how Joel found out Doc was pregnant of Sylvie and those sweet pregnancy exchanges - like him being worried (‘cause in the original we skip the whole pregnancy). 😎

OMG Hi Bestie!!!

So you'll see some of this in Girl Dad, a canon one shot I did for Doc's birthday back in October. You see some of Doc panicking about Sylvie on her birthday because she's never made it further in a pregnancy and her birthday has just such an awful personal history for her and Joel loves her through it. We also see Joel being just a precious father to his newest baby girl.

BUT... here's some more of the pregnancy for you ❤️

Expecting

20 years after your first pregnancy, you find yourself expecting again. Things are a bit different this time. A Lavender Drabble.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader from Lavender

Warnings: Pregnancy. Smut adjacent. No use of y/n. 18+ only Minors DNI

Length: 2k

September 2, 2024

The first time you threw up, Joel was on patrol.

It's not like you'd gotten your period since the two of you had started trying but you didn't put much stock in that. You'd never been regular and you were nearing menopause now. Missing a period or two was hardly monumental.

But the nausea the morning you woke up alone was.

You rocketed to the bathroom, doubling over the toilet, everything left in you from the night before coming up.

"Shit," you whispered, wiping your mouth on the back of your hand as your stomach still churned.

You knew this feeling. It had been a long time but you knew it.

And you knew you should be happy about it. It wasn't like last time. You and Joel were together now. Not just together, you were married. Things were secure - as secure as they could be in the apocalypse, anyway - and you were trying for this.

But it was still the apocalypse.

It was no small part of you that thought this wasn't going to happen. That you were going to try and try and then menopause would kick in and you'd never have a child you made with Joel. You'd resigned yourself to that a long time ago, that you'd never be a mother to someone that grew inside of you, never raise someone that you'd brought into being through love. You had Ellie who was your child in every way that mattered and that was more than enough.

But you were pregnant. You were sure of it. And you should have been happy about that - thrilled, in fact. Part of you was. The rest of you was terrified.

What had you been thinking? Bringing a child into this destroyed world? Would Joel even still want this now that it was real and not some imagined, idealized thing on the distant horizon? How were you supposed to protect a baby from the horrors of this reality? Even here in Jackson there was fear and risk and you'd gone and done this on purpose.

You didn't tell anyone, though the nurses at the clinic could tell you were off all day. You assured them that you were fine while trying not to panic. What if Joel changed his mind? What if, when faced with the reality of it, he didn't want to bring a baby into this world?

You threw up again that afternoon, the sickening feeling hanging around after everything came back up and you tried not to cry.

Joel got home after Ellie was already in bed that night, his patrol keeping him out late. You were pacing the kitchen when you heard the front door open and close quietly, the squeak of the floorboards under his heavy boots.

"Baby?" He frowned poking his head into the kitchen. "What're you still doin' up, it's late..."

"I know," you smiled a little, looking him up and down and taking stock to make sure he was still in one piece. "I'm glad you're back."

He smiled back, coming all the way into the kitchen to take you in his arms and kiss you, gentle and deep.

"You and me both," he said. "Gettin' too old to be sleeping rough like that, feel like I did my time with that shit getting out here..."

You laughed a little and nuzzled into him, breathing in the sweaty, woodsy scent of him.

"What's wrong, baby," he whispered, his arms enveloping you totally, holding you against him. "Can tell you got somethin' on that big brain of yours."

You pulled back from him just enough to see his face, his arms still holding you loosely. His face was smeared with dirt, the grime of the trail and sweat on his skin and his eyes were soft and warm and like home.

"I'm pregnant," you said softly. Those eyes got wider. "I know we've been trying but... It's real now and..."

"You're pregnant?" He breathed, stepping back from you, his hands going to your shoulders. You nodded, tears stinging the corners of your eyes. "Oh Baby..."

He took your face in his hands and kissed you again, so hard you could taste the passion on his tongue.

"Really?" He asked, his eyes searching yours as he pulled back from you and taking your shoulders again. You just nodded again, your heart pounding. "Fuck, that's... that's amazing, we're gonna... Baby, you're pregnant!"

"Yeah," you laughed a little. "Yeah, I am... You're happy?"

"Happy?" He laughed back. "Baby, I'm... I'm so far beyond fuckin' happy that word don't even begin to cover it."

He got to his knees in front of you, his hands on your hips, sliding around to cradle the small of your back as he looked lovingly at your stomach.

"You're pregnant," he said, awed, almost to himself. He pressed a kiss to you, over your womb, before one of his hands came to hold you reverently there. "Our baby is in you, right now."

"Yeah," you smiled, voice wet. "Yeah, they are."

"That's amazing," he whispered before looking up at you. "You're amazing, you're the most amazing thing I've ever seen..."

You ran your fingers through his curls before cupping his cheek.

"Thank you," you said, your whole being feeling lighter now, knowing that he was really in this with you.

"For what?" He asked, getting to his feet and pulling you against him again. "You're the one doin' all the work."

You smiled a little.

"For wanting this with me," you said quietly. "I was afraid... I'm still afraid. But we can do this."

"We can do this," he echoed you, kissing your temple. "You, me, Ellie, this baby. We're a family. We can do this."

You put a palm over your womb again, cradling where the child you'd made with Joel was growing inside you.

He was right. You could do this.

But things were different after that.

Joel hovered. It reminded you a bit of when he first came to the QZ, back when he thought his fear was something he could push past if he just got close enough. You’d be working at the clinic, turn around to pick something up and then Joel would be there. You’d be relaxing on the couch and decide you needed a cup of water and, the second you started to move, he was up instead asking what you needed.

“I’m perfectly capable of getting my own drink, you know,” you said a two months after you’d told him you were pregnant and Joel had damn near held you down instead of letting you go to the kitchen. “Also capable of walking to the mess hall on my own, making my own lunches…”

“All the work you’re doin’ growing my baby, I should do something,” he replied, bringing you a glass of water. “Seems like this is the least of it.”

You might have believed him if it wasn’t for the other things, too.

You’d become insatiable during pregnancy, all but demanding sex at least once if not twice a day. You couldn’t get enough of Joel but he seemed to be able to get enough of you.

It was close to Christmas when you finally brought it up, Joel’s hands more gently roaming over your skin rather than with any desire or need.

“We don’t have to do this if you’re not interested, you know,” you said, hoping you didn’t sound too desperate.

Joel frowned, looking over your face for a moment.

“What?” He sounded completely puzzled. “Why would I not be interested?”

“I know I look different now,” you ran a hand over your growing bump and took a deep breath. “It’s OK if you’re not as attracted to me at the moment…”

“In what fuckin’ universe am I not attracted to you?” He asked, his eyebrows knitting together. “Baby, if I could spend the rest of my damn life inside you, I’d be a happy man.”

Your confusion must have shown because he brushed your hair back before adjusting your face to look at him.

“What’s goin’ on,” he asked gently. “Why are you saying this stuff.”

“You don’t touch me like you used to,” you said quietly, hoping you didn’t sound too wounded by it. “And it’s OK if you don’t want me like that right now, I don’t want you to do anything you don’t really want and…”

“Baby,” he cut you off. “I’m gonna stop you right there. I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted you more than I do right now. Not when I first met you and you were some hot young thing, not when you first got off the plane to come visit, not when I first saw you again in the QZ. Seeing you grow our baby is the most beautiful, most sexy thing in the damn world, don’t go thinking otherwise.”

“Oh,” you frowned. “Then… I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

“I just…” he sighed, closing his eyes for a moment before looking at you again, a pained look on his face. “I’m scared, baby. I’m scared in a way I ain’t been since we came to Jackson.”

“Joel,” you whispered, running your fingers through his hair. “We’re OK here, we’re safe here…”

“I know,” he said. “You’re safe from infected and you’re safe from raiders but… baby, what if you get hurt? You’re the doctor here, what if something happens to you or the baby? What if there isn’t someone who knows how to save you? What if I do somethin’ to you on accident, what if I’m too rough because I’m caught up in touching you the way I want? I can’t risk that, baby, I can’t.”

“Oh Joel,” you breathed, pressing yourself closer. “You’re not going to hurt us. I promise, you’ve never been too rough with me. If something doesn’t feel right I’ll tell you but it’s OK. We’re safe. You’re safe.” You guided his hand to your breast, his large palm curving around the soft flesh. “And I want you to touch me, really touch me. Please.”

He was cautious at first, hesitant. Now that you knew he was afraid, it was easier to see it on his face and feel it in his touch. But you guided him through it, holding his hand, reassuring him, until he was lost in you and things felt right for the first time in months.

You learned how to head things off after that. When he would appear in the clinic, you would give him a kiss and tell him how you were feeling. If the baby was moving, you’d guide his hand to your stomach to let him feel them alive inside you. When you needed something at home and could see that he was restless and distracted by worry, you’d ask him for help. You started meeting him at the gates after patrol so he could see you and touch you as soon as he was back, feeling how he relaxed when his hands were on you.

When you went into labor, though, you were worried. You knew he was afraid but then, so were you. You were afraid not just of what could happen, of how it would hurt under the best of circumstances, but of how to help Joel through it, too.

But he sensed what you were doing right away, so in tune with you now. He climbed into the bed behind you, pulling you back so your head was resting on his chest.

“Don’t you dare worry about me,” he said, kissing the crown of your head. “I’ve got you, baby. Got both of you.”

You smiled a little as the contraction eased and he held you a little tighter.

“I know you do,” you relaxed into the firm, strong body of your husband. “I know.”

#fanfic #joel miller x female reader #kit answers #send asks #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x oc #lavender #lavenderversary

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slutmegeto · 12 hours

Text

pet.

sometimes, it was better to listen. and sometimes, it didn't matter a damn thing.

tw. yandere, noncon, dubcon, restraints, collared, use of leash, pet play, oral (male receiving), past physical abuse, reader is also kicked, use of sir, use of baby/slut/cumslut/pet, scars, eating his cum (on rice), master/slave, captivity (mention of being locked in a cage)

pairing: gojo satoru x f!reader

a/n: i will work through your guys' requests soon! i just had this pre-written and decided to post it before i head to bed :)

“come on, pretty. open that mouth for me.”

his words are taunting, and without even having to look up at gojo’s face you can already tell he’s smirking that wide grin of his.

forced to your knees, hands tied behind your back with rope that bites into your sensitive skin. you have ever present marks all over your body, bruises and marks that will never fade because every day, no matter how hard you try to behave – you still end up tied up in some way or another. it’s long been made clear that gojo doesn’t tie you up for punishment or the fear of you running away; he likes it.

he likes tying you up, bending you in every little way that fits his fancy. he likes seeing you at his complete mercy, held together by some kind of rope or restraint. it doesn’t matter how. it doesn’t matter when. he gets some sort of sick enjoyment out of you bound; ass in the air, suspended so even your feet are hanging, hands locked behind you back so that you can’t do a damn fucking thing to defend yourself as he manhandles you into every position possible.

today was the first day in a few he hadn’t left.

when you’d woken up in your cage that morning, you’d expected the same thing it was every day. gojo’ll let you out of your cage, to the bathroom, some breakfast that is usually something mashed together in such a way you can’t even really tell what you’re tasting (something tells you though that it’s not always made for humans) and then you’re locked back up in your cage until he gets home later that day and does whatever he wants with you then. every day is different. the only sense of normalcy is your morning routine and then being left in the cage all day. you’ve even begun enjoying your days in the cage – it was the only time gojo wasn’t there, wasn’t hovering over you, touching you, pleasuring you, torturing you… fucking you.

it was your only time alone and you’ve started to crave it.

started craving being left in a cage, on your hands and knees where you’re forced to hold in your piss and shit unless you want to face the wrath of gojo when he gets home. hours spent like a dog with no company, no entertainment and yet, you love it.

you think that’s what hurts the most.

but gojo hadn’t left this morning. after he’d let you out to pee, watching you as you wiped yourself and brushed your hands and teeth, he’d dragged you by your leash over to the bed. after tying your hands behind your back, you were spun, forced to your knees in between his legs.

“i won’t ask you again.”

pulled from your thoughts, you’d nearly forgotten the order given to you seconds prior.

you already know what to expect without having to ask. so, you don’t. instead, you obey his order without a second more of hesitation, fearing your punishment should you do so, and let your lips part. you open your mouth wide, wide enough it strains along the corners of your mouth, and stick your tongue out, tilting your head back ever so slightly. there’s a hum from gojo’s lips, before you feel the familiar sensation of his coarse and lean fingers in your mouth.

they press against your tongue, pushing hard that makes your eyes squint in discomfort; you have to fight the urge to close your mouth and pull your tongue back.

peering through squinted eyes, you watch gojo grin madly.

his fingers push back, two sliding along your tongue until it hits the back of your mouth. gojo doesn’t stop, keeps pushing back until that tickle floods through you and you can feel yourself gagging around the intrusion.

“keep your mouth open, kitten.”

the order is clear and your eyes squeeze shut to try and obey, coughing and gagging around his lips as you try not to throw up as he ruthlessly pushes his fingers further back. the intrusion burns and you try to pull back, only for gojo’s free hand to fall on the back of your head, holding you in place. all you can hear is your gagging, the sound of your spit building up and throat choking around his fingers all whilst he simply watches you. you can’t see his face anymore, but you can feel his eyes digging into you, watching with undivided focus as you choke on his fingers.

then, finally, he’s pulling away, and you cough, trying to catch your breath, swallowing back the spit that’d built up. a harsh slap to your cheek pulls you from your own suffering, and through teary eyes, you watch him, letting your lips part once more, sticking your tongue out like he’d taught you.

he spits in your mouth.

it’s sudden and without hesitation. you see him staring back at you one moment, vision blurred, and then feel the cold, foreign hit across your tongue.

“swallow it.”

he keeps his hands to himself, watching. Waiting. ready to punish should you disobey.

closing your mouth, you swallow the spit, ignoring the disgust you feel well within you as it slides down the back of your throat. and then, when you’re done, you part your lips once more, showing him.

“good girl,” he soothes, brushing back a strand of loose hair and tucking it behind your ear. “now keep your mouth open for me. i have a surprise.

your brows furrow in confusion, but you don’t have to wonder long before there’s metal being pressed in between your teeth, prying them apart. the familiar sensation of something foreign being forced between your lips quickly registers in you, and you feel gojo lean forward, looping the gag around your head and locking it in place firmly.

except, this ball gag is different from anything he’s used on you before. there’s no hard plastic ball in between your lips and instead, you can stick your tongue through the opening around the metal ring locking your mouth in place.

“remember that gag I told you about?” gojo explains at your confused face, pulling back to meet your gaze. “we’re gonna try it out today, okay?”

the memory comes to mind then, heart sinking.

"i planned to make you suck me off too," he explains, "bought a special gag for it too. but we'll save that for later."

that horrible day – the first day of the rest of life spent in captivity. you’ve never experienced peace since.

the words hit you like a slap to the face and you can’t help the whimper that leaves your lips.

“no, no, kitten. no need for that.” gojo shushes, shaking his head at you as he grabs your jaw, pulling your gaze up and back on him. you stare into his eyes fearfully, feeling the way your heart starts to pound madly against your chest, and try to shake your head. gojo just tightens his grip, frowning. “stop arguing.” it’s a simple order, but his voice is laced with threat, and despite the terror pounding at you, you quickly halt, digging your nails into your palms behind your back.

he watches you a moment longer, making sure, and when he’s satisfied, you watch him move to his jeans. he easily unbuckles the jeans, pulling down the zipper and pulling his cock from its confines with ease. almost immediately his dick slaps back into his stomach, standing straight up and very clearly hard. His cock chokes and hurts you to take him even without the gag.

there’s precum leaking from the tip, slightly red, and you can tell by the expression on gojo’s face it had been aching before; it makes you sick to think that he’d gotten hard watching you choke on his fingers and then swallow his spit.

“i haven’t fed you breakfast yet, have i?”

confused, your eyes flicker away from his dick and back up to his face.

gojo reaches behind himself, pulling a bowl of rice from behind him that you’d never even noticed him grab. you blink at the sight of it, stunned at how you could’ve missed him hold that and also the fact that it’s the first bowl of real food you’ve seen in days; let alone the fact that it’s in a real bowl and not a dog bowl like he usually made you eat out of it. it was real food. rice. and even though it was so incredibly simple, you felt your mouth water, drool pooling down your chin at the thought of finally being able to eat something… human.

and out of a bowl made for humans.

you’re too excited to notice the lack of chopsticks.

“if you suck me off and make me cum, i’ll let you eat this.”

eyes falling back on gojo’s, your gaze glows.

“oh, i know, y/n,” he coos at you, petting your face with his free hand, fingers ghosting across your cheek. you’re too distracted by the food and his words to even really notice his touch, or the way your stomach has started to growl in response. “it’s been a while since you’ve been able to eat human food, huh? forced to eat all that gross dog food.”

so, it was dog food.

you’d practically already known, but it was a whole new experience being told that what you’ve been eating for the past few days has been… dog food.

still, you hardly care now if it means you’ll get to eat that rice. you’ll give no response and happily suck gojo off if it’ll mean he’ll give it to you. maybe… maybe if you do a good enough job, he’ll continue to let you eat human food.

even if it’s just rice.

you’ll eat rice for the rest of your life if it means you’ll never be forced to eat dog food again. even if it’s out of a dog bowls.

“suck me off and i’ll let you eat it, okay?”

you eagerly nod, shifting forward on your knees to try and get closer, ignoring the way you nearly stumble forward and fall right into his laugh. gojo laughs at the action, but you pay it no mind, quickly sitting up and tilting your head back. your lips are already parted due to the gag, but you let your tongue loll out, staring gojo right in the eye.

gojo chuckles; “if i’d known it’d take a bowl of rice to get you so eager, i would’ve done this a lot sooner.”

“please,” you try to beg through the gag, words gargled.

gojo takes them as eagerness to suck his dick, and you don’t care either way.

gripping the back of your head, gojo slowly guides his cock past the ring of the gag and slowly into your mouth. the intrusion is strange, even more so with the gag in your mouth restricting your movements, and you feel your eyes squeeze shut as his cock hits the back of your throat, making you choke lightly.

“keep your eyes on me, baby,” gojo guides, “i want to see you fall apart.”

you’re quick to listen, forcing your eyes open and staring up at him through your lashes. he’s grinning down at you, wide and clearly pleased as you press your tongue to the base of his cock, the only part of this you can control and you make sure to use it to please him, hoping it’ll reward you in the end.

gojo starts off slow. guiding your head by your hair around his dick, before slowly up, and then back down. but second by second his pace quickens, and you can see the way it makes him feel as his face twists in pleasure, soft grunts echoing in the air. you try to control your own gag reflex as you’re forced down on his cock repeatedly, hitting the back of your throat and causing you to cough. you can feel the saliva building, drooling down your chin and neck and hitting your breasts before making a puddle on the floor beneath you. the wetness helps lube gojo’s dick though, making it easier down your throat as he pulls and pushes you up and down.

the only sound heard in the room is his soft moans of pleasure and you choking around his length.

his cock is long and lean. It’s not so much the girth, but rather how far back it goes down your throat, hitting the back of your throat and causing your eyes to water from the pressure. you’d only given gojo head a few times before all of this and that had been with more control (as much as gojo would allow) – you’d been allowed the use of your hands and been able to set your own pace. when you’d done it then, it had been because you loved him and wanted him to feel good. you’d taken your time, kissed up the base of his cock, played with his balls, licked him up and down, kissed the tip and had slowly, but surely brought him to an orgasm.

with your hands behind your back, there’s no way for you to steady yourself. you’re completely out of control, and the thought brings the faintest bit of panic to the surface, unable to stop or control the way he ruthlessly pounds your mouth on his cock. you can’t even argue in defiance with your mouth not only gagged but currently sucking on his cock.

but you never close your eyes. staring through the tears, you make sure to keep looking at him, letting him laugh at you and ignoring the way it burns in embarrassment.

“look at you,” gojo grunts, voice cracking slightly in pleasure. “taking my cock so well.”

you gurgle around his length, coughing.

“your mouth was made for me. this is what you were made to do.”

and it burns. his words. but you simply just let him continue moving your head to his discretion, trying to nod in agreement if that’ll make him happier.

“my little cockslut, huh? right, baby?”

you nod to the best of your ability, humming and sending a vibration through your throat that has his head flipping back, a loud groan falling from his lips.

he’s growing close, you can tell. his movements become frantic and his face beads up with sweat as his nails dig into the back of your head, pulling on your hair faintly.

and then, just as you think he’s about to cum into your mouth, he pulls away. gojo basically shoves you back, without a care for you, and it takes you a second to find your balance, fumbling on your knees and bending your arms awkwardly behind you as you try to push yourself up. you feel a wad of spit dribble down your chin, and your confused gaze turns back to gojo, not sure what happened or what you’d done wrong; only to see him holding the bowl of rice up against the tip of his dick, and his cum pour all over the rice.

your entire body freezes, shoulders tensing, eyes widen in disbelief as you watch him cum all over your rice. his hand holds the base of his cock, directing the cum all over the bowl, hitting every corner.

gojo’s eyes fall on you then, grinning wildly.

“just had to add the final touches, baby.”

your heart falls to the pit of your stomach, shoulders slumping in defeat as you watch your semblance of hope fade right in front of your eyes. it was sad enough that a bowl of rice had been your reasoning for hope but after days of being forced to eat dog food out of a dog bowl, degraded beyond belief, treated like nothing but a glorified pet used for someone else's pleasure… being able to eat rice out of a bowl had seemed like a miracle.

and gojo had ripped that from you with a simple reminder that you weren’t human anymore. not to him at least.

you didn’t have freedom. you didn’t have the choice to eat what you wanted, how you wanted. you couldn’t walk anymore, you couldn’t even talk when you wanted.

all you were was his pet.

“oh, baby, don’t tell me you thought I’d really just give you the rice, did you?”

at his mocking tone, your eyes flicker from the rice to his eyes, watching as he frowns at you, mocking your expression, shaking his head.

“of course you had to have some seasoning with it, right?”

of course.

“come here, y/n.” he grabs your leash, the one attached to that stupid pink collar that hasn’t left your neck in days and probably never would again. he pulls, guiding you forward, and you have no choice but to listen unless you want to fall flat on his face. and when you’ve shuffled in front of him once again, snug between his legs, he reaches behind and unlatches the gag, pulling it from your lips. you swallow the second your mouth is free, eyes flickering from the bowl to his gaze.

he nods, “go ahead.”

and you know exactly what he means.

you notice then the lack of chopsticks. he’s not even going to let you use your hands. it was silly to ever think otherwise.

lowering your head, you hesitate only a second longer before parting your lips and pressing your face into the bowl. the rice is cold, clearly having been cooked a while ago, but his cum is still warm, the mixture of it is absolutely disgusting in your mouth. but you chew and swallow anyway. you keep chewing and swallowing, bite after bite, digging your head further into the bowl, until all that’s left is nothing but a few crumbs.

when you look back up at gojo, rice smeared on your lips, cum across your cheek, looking like nothing but a pig, he just glances back down at the bowl; “lick it clean.”

you do so without complaint.

sticking your tongue out, you lick the bowl until it’s completely clean – not a single trace of anything left and then some more.

Gojo grabs a handful of your hair, yanking your head up and out of the bowl, right up so he can lean forward and meet your eyes. he watches you for a moment, letting his eyes flicker across your face which you’re sure looks like a mess, before he sneers; “you’re disgusting.”

and the words hurt. shoot straight to your heart. but you don’t argue.

you are disgusting – at least, you certainly feel that way.

“you just ate my cum like it was a glorified meal,” he laughs, shaking your head by the hair, “and now my cum is smeared all over your face and you can’t do a single thing about it.” leaning in close, he pulls harder, causing you to wince. “how does that make you feel?”

you stare back at him, unsure how to answer. gojo hardly lets you speak and more often than not, your mouth is in a gag.

“i asked you, how does that make you feel?”

“g-good, sir,” you stumble out, not sure if you’re saying the right thing. terrified that you aren’t. “your cum makes me feel good, sir. It’s delicious.”

he grins wide, and you ease when you realize you’ve said the right thing.

“and what are you?”

“i’m your cumslut, sir.”

Gojo tilts his head; “that’s right. you’re nothing but my little cumslut. and cumsluts are only good for one thing. pleasuring their masters and taking all their cum, isn’t that right, slut?”

you nod the best you can in his grip.

“isn’t that right?”

“yes, sir, that’s right,” he tugs on your hair, scalp burning. “thank you, sir! thank you!”

letting go of your hair, you collapse once his grip is gone, falling to your side, unable to catch yourself. gojo stands then, setting the bowl aside and towers over you. you wince at your fall, before flickering your gaze up at him, staring fearfully up at him.

“say it again,” he orders, “say thank you to your owner.”

before you can even get the words out, there’s a harsh kick to your stomach, flipping you over so you’re on your back, arms pinned beneath you, staring straight up at him.

“thank you, sir! thank you so much!” you cry, afraid he’ll kick you again. just wanting to stop. You barely register what you’re saying. you just want it to stop. you need it to stop. “thank you for letting me be your cumslut! your cum was delicious, sir! I loved it! thank you so much, sir!”

his laugh has you pausing, watching as he throws his head back in pure bliss.

“that’s right,” he stares down at you. “thank your owner for giving you the privilege of eating his cum.”

body curling in on yourself in shame, you nod.

“thank you for letting me taste your cum, sir.”

#jjk #jjk x reader #yandere jjk #yandere jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x reader #yandere gojo #gojo satoru x reader #gojo satoru #gojo x reader #gojo smut

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sadnymi · 1 day

Text

「 ✦ Fortnight. ✦ 」

[Mattheo riddle × reader] [TTPD Masterlist]

Summary: Y/N and Mattheo had a deep love for each other, but a misunderstanding led to a fight and a hasty decisions to lead them to different paths.

Warnings: Angst , Angst , and a lot of angst, strong language.

Words: 3.8k

Mattheo and I sat on the plush armchairs, a suffocating silence stretched between us. We hadn't spoken in hours, not since the argument at the Three Broomsticks.

"Just say it, Y/N," Mattheo finally broke the silence, his voice laced with a frustration that mirrored my own.

"Say what?" I challenged, my own voice tight with unshed tears.

"This," he gestured vaguely between us, "whatever this fight is about. Spit it out."

"It's not a fight, Mattheo," I snapped, the words sharper than I intended. "It's… it's your career choice."

He scoffed, a humorless sound that scraped against my raw nerves. "Here we go again. You think I'm going to be some Ministry drone pushing paper?"

"No! That's not what I—"

"Then what is it?" he interrupted, his voice rising. "What is it you want me to do, Y/N? Follow in your father's footsteps and chase Dark wizards for the rest of my life? Is that what makes a good man?"

My heart hammered against my ribs. Where was this coming from? "Mattheo, of course not! It's not about the Ministry or Auror training. It's about…" I faltered, the words catching in my throat.

"About what?" he pressed, his dark brown eyes boring into mine.

"It's about… about you not even considering it," I whispered, the sting of unshed tears burning my eyes.

He seemed to flinch at that, his expression unreadable for a moment. Then, a bitter laugh escaped his lips. "So that's it? My dreams and aspirations don't matter because they don't fit your perfect Auror wife mold?"

Anger flared within me, hot and destructive. "Don't be ridiculous! It's not about some 'mold'! It's about… about having a future together. A future where we at least talk about these things, where you consider my feelings."

"Your feelings?" He repeated, a humorless smile twisting his features. "Do you have any idea how this makes me feel, Y/N? Like I'm not good enough for you, like my dreams are somehow lesser than yours!"

“No! That's not…" I began, reaching out to touch his arm, but he pulled away.

"Then what is it, Y/N?" he demanded, his voice tight with held-back emotion. "Do you want me to follow you around like a lost puppy while you explore the world? Is that your idea of a future together?"

"That's not what I meant… you know it's not!"

He took a deep breath, his eyes hardening with a newfound resolve. "Maybe not," he conceded, his voice devoid of warmth. "But maybe that's enough."

And with that, he turned on his heel and walked away, leaving me standing alone, the weight of his unspoken words crushing me. Pride, that stubborn, suffocating thing, kept me rooted to the spot. I should have chased after him, explained myself, begged him to stay.

But the words wouldn't come. We were both too caught up in the sting of hurt, our love momentarily overshadowed by a misunderstanding neither of us had the courage to unravel.

That was the last time I saw him.

The weight of his final words hung heavy, each syllable a tiny hammer blow to my already fractured heart. We were supposed to spend the summer solidifying our plans, weaving our dreams together. Instead, we were left with a tangled mess of unspoken desires and a chasm of wounded pride.

Days bled into weeks, each sunrise a fresh reminder of his absence. I clung to the hope that he'd return, that this was just a lovers' spat, a temporary blip in our otherwise perfect story. I kept expecting to see his familiar silhouette at the window, to hear his knock on the worn wooden door.

Foolishly, I refused to believe that our fight, fueled by misunderstandings and misplaced anger, could be the end.

But the days stretched into agonizing silence. No owl arrived with a heartfelt apology, no apologetic voice graced the other end of the floo network. My phone, a muggle invention I rarely used, remained stubbornly quiet. The silence was deafening, a constant reminder of the gaping hole his absence left in my life.

Finally, the day arrived for my departure to France. Packing was a blur, each item I folded a silent goodbye to the life I'd envisioned with Mattheo. I clung to the faint hope that maybe, just maybe, he'd show up at the station, a last-minute attempt to mend what was broken. But the platform remained empty, save for the bustling crowd of eager travelers.

Did he leave Hogwarts? Where did he go? Desperate for answers, I reached out to his closest friend, Theo. His reply was short: "Ireland. Apprenticeship with some Potions Master."

With a heavy heart, I boarded the train, the rhythmic click-clack of the wheels echoing the beat of my shattered heart.

Five Years Later:

My fingers traced the spine of a well-worn copy of "Advanced Potion-Making." Lost in thought, I barely registered the figure brushing past me until a familiar voice sent a jolt through my system.

"Excuse me," the voice said, polite yet laced with a hint of amusement. "Do you happen to know where they keep their floo powder?"

I turned, my breath catching in my throat. Standing there, looking every bit the accomplished Potions Master, was Mattheo. Five years had passed and he looked even more handsome if that was even possible, but his eyes – those dark brown eyes that still held the power to disarm me – were unmistakable.

For a moment, we were frozen in time, a silent conversation unfolding in the space between us. A thousand unspoken words hung heavy in the air – apologies, explanations, the weight of years spent apart.

"Y/N" He finally spoke, his voice a low rumble that sent shivers down my spine.

I managed a shaky nod, surprised at how easily the name slipped past my lips. "Mattheo."

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, a hint of the old mischief I remembered. "Auror Y/L/N, I presume? Quite the impressive career you've built for yourself."

"And you," I countered, forcing a lightness into my voice that I didn't quite feel. "Master Alchemist, they say.Congratulations."

He chuckled, a low, melodic sound that echoed in the quiet bookstore. "Exaggerations, but the work keeps me busy."

An awkward silence descended, heavy with unspoken questions. Did he know about France? About the scholarship? Did he ever regret leaving? The urge to blurt it all out, to bridge the chasm of the past five years, warred with the fear of rejection.

He cleared his throat, breaking the tension. "So, floo powder?" he gestured towards the back of the store.

"Right," I stammered, leading the way with a pounding heart. "Second shelf on the left."

As we walked, a million questions danced on my tongue, but before I could voice any of them, he spoke again.

"How are you doing?" he asked, his voice laced with a hesitant.

I lifted my chin, forcing a smile. "I'm doing great," I replied, meeting his gaze head-on. I lied, the words hollow in my mouth.

"I'm glad," he said, a flicker of something crossing his face that I couldn't place.

We reached the shelf and retrieved the floo powder. As I handed it to him, our fingers brushed. A jolt of electricity shot through me, a stark reminder of the connection that still simmered beneath the surface. Both of us pulled our hands away quickly, as if scalded.

"Did you meet someone?" he blurted out, his voice betraying his usual composure.

The question hung in the air, a painful echo of the unresolved past. "I've been focusing on work," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. And I'm trying to move on from you still, I wanted to say, but the words wouldn't come.

"What about you?" I managed, my voice shaky.

A shadow crossed his face. "It's complicated," he said, and my heart shattered. He met someone, and it's complicated with them, while I'm still here, nursing the wounds of a love lost.

I plastered a smile on my face, forcing back the tears threatening to spill over. "It was nice to see you again, Mattheo," I said, trying to sound genuine. And to my surprise, a flicker of pain mirrored mine in his eyes.

"Me too," he replied, his voice rough with emotion.

And with that, he tossed the floo powder into the fireplace, disappearing in a swirl of emerald flames. I stood there, alone amidst the lingering scent of his cologne and the ghosts of a love that might have been, my heart heavy with a renewed ache.

Two years later

The cheers echoed around me, a cacophony of joy and pride. My family and friends beamed, their faces flushed with excitement.

Tonight was the culmination of years of relentless work. I had secured the biggest Auror investment in Ministry history, a project that would revolutionize magical law enforcement. It was a dream come true, a shining testament to everything I'd poured my heart and soul into.

Yet, amidst the celebration, a hollowness resonated within me. The champagne flute felt heavy in my hand, the celebratory clinking of glasses a jarring counterpoint to the deafening silence within.

Success, once the ultimate goal,tasted like ashes on my tongue.

I excused myself, slipping away to the secluded balcony overlooking the bustling city. The cool night air wrapped around me as I leaned against the railing, gazing at the luminous moon, a silent witness to my fractured happiness. Seven years. It had been seven years since that fateful night, the night a misunderstanding ripped our world apart.

Mattheo. The name echoed in the quiet corners of my mind, a bittersweet melody. I never wanted to break up with him.The memory of that fight remained a vivid scar, a constant reminder of the words left unsaid, the choices I hadn't had the courage to make. Deep down, I knew, with a certainty that transcended time, that I would have chosen him over everything – my career, my dreams.

Two years ago, that unexpected encounter at the bookstore had ripped open the scabbed wound. Seeing him again, alive and breathing, reignited a flicker of hope. But the news of someone else in his life, the complicated entanglement,extinguished it as quickly.

A sob escaped my lips, a tear tracing a warm path down my cheek. The celebratory chatter from inside seemed miles away, a muted echo in a world devoid of sound. The clinking glass in my hand remained untouched, a forgotten symbol of a victory that felt hollow.

Tears streamed down my face, blurring the city lights below. I wasn't crying for the career I built, nor for the recognition I finally received. I was crying for the love lost, for the unspoken words, for the future we could have had. I was crying for the silence that resonated louder than any cheer, a silence filled with the weight of "what ifs" and the haunting melody of a love song forever unfinished.

The move-on drugs they all are temporary.

A loud banging startled me awake. I sat up in bed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and peered out the window. A moving truck stood parked in the driveway next door, boxes stacked precariously in its open back. A knot of apprehension tightened in my stomach. A new neighbor.

The next day, the evidence of their arrival was clear – vibrant flower pots adorned the previously bare porch. A woman knelt before them, her hands gently adjusting the soil. As I caught her eye, she flashed a warm smile. I returned it, a small flicker of hope igniting within me for a friendly connection.

Before leaving for work the following morning, I saw her outside again.

"Hi there, I'm Gianna," she said, extending a hand. "We just moved in, my husband and I."

I shook her hand, forcing a smile. "Y/N," I replied. "I live right next door. If you need anything at all, please don't hesitate to ask."

"That's so kind of you, thanks!" she chirped.

Suddenly, a voice boomed from inside the house. My smile vanished. That voice, deep and familiar, sent a jolt of electricity through me.

"Coming, my love!" Gianna called back, her sweetness radiating even over the distance. "Can you give me a second outside, please?"

A figure emerged from the house, his form momentarily obscured by the doorway. Then, he stepped into the sunlight, and the world seemed to tilt on its axis. It was Mattheo.

Everything froze. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, the chirping of birds the only sound breaking the deafening silence. My breath hitched in my throat, caught somewhere between shock and disbelief.

"Mrs. Y/L/N," he finally managed, his voice tight.Then, he glanced towards Gianna, a subtle shift in his expression.

I tried to maintain a veneer of normalcy, but my voice betrayed me. "Mr. Riddle," I replied, the title a barbed wire fence between us.

"We used to go to Hogwarts together," I said, forcing a lightness that felt utterly false. My insides were a churning mess of emotions.

"She's being humble, Mrs. Y/L/N," Mattheo said, his next words a dagger through my heart. "She secured the biggest Auror investment in Ministry history. Quite impressive."

Those words, once a symbol of pride, now hung heavy in the air, a cruel reminder of the chasm that separated us. This was his life now, married, settled. While I, despite my achievements, was still left with the lingering ache of a love lost.

Gianna, blissfully unaware, beamed. "Oh my goodness, that's absolutely fantastic!" Her smile was so genuine, her eyes so kind, that a wave of self-loathing washed over me. Here was a woman radiating warmth and sunshine, and all I felt was a twisted mix of envy and despair.

"Thank you," I croaked, the word scraping against my throat. "I need to get going. It was... lovely to meet you." I forced a smile to her and, managed a small nod towards Mattheo

My legs turned to lead as I walked away, every step a struggle. , refusing to break eye contact for even a fleeting second. The weight of unspoken words hung heavy between us, a poignant reminder of the life we could have had.

As I walked away, my legs felt like lead. I didn't dare look back, afraid of what I might see. Reaching my car, I slumped behind the wheel, tears blurring my vision. The sobs came then, a torrent of grief and jealousy that threatened to drown me.

He was married. To a woman who was everything I wasn't – warm, cheerful, seemingly perfect. My successful career, once a source of immense pride, felt like a hollow trophy in the face of this devastating realization.

Once safely inside my car, parked far away from the house, the dam broke. Tears streamed down my face, hot and relentless. Sobs wracked my body as the full weight of the situation slammed into me. He was married. To an angel, by all appearances. Sweet, kind Gianna, whose happiness felt like a knife twisting in my gut.

The joy of my achievements, once a beacon in the darkness, seemed to dim. All I could see was the life I might have had, the love that slipped through my fingers, all because of a misunderstanding and a misplaced sense of pride.

Daniel had been asking me out for years. A kind, successful Ministry scientist, he was everything one could want on paper. Yet, his invitations always landed on deaf ears. My heart, still clinging to the shattered remnants of a love lost to a misunderstanding, had no room for new beginnings.

He'd been asking me out for years, and in the numb aftermath of seeing Mattheo with his wife, Gianna, I found myself saying yes.

Yes to a date, yes to another date, yes to sleepovers, yes to becoming his girlfriend. Then, in a blur of emotional chaos, yes to becoming his wife. It happened fast, a desperate attempt to fill the gaping hole in my heart.

The white dress felt heavy, suffocating. The lace trimmings brushed against my skin like a constant reminder of the life I wasn't living. Daniel, handsome and successful, stood beside me, beaming with pride. Yet, as the priest declared us husband and wife, I closed my eyes, and the image that filled my mind wasn't his.

The kiss felt like a performance. My lips brushed against Daniel's, a hollow touch that mirrored the emptiness within me. Applause erupted around us, a joyous cacophony that somehow felt distant, muted. My smile was practiced, a mask for the turmoil raging inside.

As congratulations poured in, I felt a tear roll down my cheek, a solitary drop staining the pristine white of my wedding dress. It wasn't a tear of joy, but a tear of grief, a tear for a love lost, a tear for a life that could have been.

Months bled into one another, each day a monotonous echo of the last. Living with Daniel was like existing in a carefully curated museum exhibit – everything pristine, perfectly placed, yet utterly devoid of life. Our interactions had become a practiced dance – polite smiles, small talk about work, and a hollow routine that felt more like obligation than affection.

Even sex with Daniel felt mundane. Today, as he thrust into me, I felt nothing but a desire for it to end so I could finally sleep. His heavy breaths and quick finish only added to the monotony. With one final thrust, he came and collapsed on top of me. I didn't bother faking an orgasm; there was no point. I simply didn't care anymore.

"Do you want me to help you with—" he started to say, but I cut him off.

"No, I'm going to shower," I replied, getting off the bed.

"I promise next time I'll make sure you cum first," he offered.

"Sure, whatever," I responded dismissively.

I couldn't feel anything, not even the pain. Numbness consumed me, and I moved through life like a robot. So, when I received a message about my husband cheating, it didn't even register.

I went to the location mentioned in the message, using my wand to open the door. Inside, I found Daniel with Sandra, one of our colleagues. They were oblivious to my presence, lost in a passionate moment.

He was everything he wasn't with me. His hand caressed her cheek with a tenderness I hadn't seen before. Words spilled from his lips, sweet nothings that he must have forgotten existed in our vocabulary. "I love you, Sandra," he murmured,his voice husky with passion. "It's always been you."

And he made her fucking cum .

As they finished, I stood in the doorway with my arms crossed. Sandra gasped, and Daniel tumbled off the bed when they noticed me. Without giving him a chance to speak, I cut through the tension. "I need a divorce," I said simply, then turned and walked away.

I don't know how long I'd been wandering, aimlessly traversing the deserted park, the night sky a tapestry of uncaring stars. My legs finally gave out, and I sank onto a damp bench, the chill seeping into my bones unnoticed. Tears had become a constant companion, blurring the already indistinct world.

Then, a rustle beside me. I looked up, startled, to see Mattheo perched on the opposite end of the bench. Silence stretched between us, thick with unspoken emotions. Finally, the dam broke, and the words tumbled out, a torrent of raw pain and frustration.

"He was cheating on me," I confessed, my voice hoarse. "I felt nothing for him, yet I married him anyway. How foolish can one person be?" The bitterness in my voice surprised even me. "I want to strangle him," I added, surprising myself with the dark intensity. "Why would he even marry me if he was in love with her?"

"Y/N," Mattheo said, his voice gentle, "It's not that simple. Sometimes we make choices based on what we think is right, what seems the safest path. We try to play it safe, and sometimes, we live to regret those decisions."

"But it has to stop we need to control it so what Daniel did is unforgivable," he continued, his gaze holding mine. "We've caused enough hurt. We can't keep dragging innocent people into our mess."

I nodded, wiping at the tears that streamed down my face. This wasn't about Daniel anymore. It was about the truth that hung heavy between us, the words I'd buried for years.

"I was going to choose you, Mattheo," I whispered, my voice cracking. "If you had just listened, if you hadn't…” My voice hitched, the pain raw and exposed. "If you hadn't disappeared, I would have told you that France, that any achievement wouldn't have mattered without you."

For the first time in years, I felt a sense of catharsis, a release from the burden I'd carried for so long.

"I know," Mattheo said, sadness etching lines on his face. "That's why I didn't show up. Your dream was so important, and I couldn't take that away from you."

A sob escaped my lips, not for Daniel, but for the life we could have had, the love we'd let slip through our fingers.

"But it wasn't as important as you," I confessed, my voice barely above a whisper.

The longing in his eyes mirrored my own, a silent acknowledgment of the love that still burned beneath the ashes of time. Yet, a shadow crossed his face, a stark reminder of the reality that lay beyond this stolen moment.

"I'm so sorry," he said, his voice thick with regret.

"Me too," I replied, the words a bittersweet release.

"I love you, Mattheo. And it’s running my life. I'm leaving after my divorce is finalized. And this time, I'm not coming back."

A flicker of surprise crossed his face, followed by a deep sadness.

"It's selfish to say," he admitted, his voice barely audible, "but you're the love of my life and that will never change,Y/N."

We sat in silence, tears falling freely now, a shared grief for what could have been and the bittersweet acceptance of the present.

Looking at my watch, I realized it was late. "You should go," I said, my voice hoarse. "Don't make her worry."

He nodded slowly, his eyes lingering on mine. "At least," he said, his voice husky, "at least we got to say goodbye properly this time."

"Yes," I croaked, the words a bittersweet echo hanging in the air. "We did."

As he stood up, I took one last look at him, the image forever etched into my memory. Then, with a heavy heart, I watched him disappear back into the darkness, leaving me alone with the ghosts of our past. This wasn't a happy ending, but it was a closure, a bittersweet farewell to a love story that didn’t get the chance to be.

Maybe, in another life, under different circumstances, that wall wouldn't have existed.

Maybe, in another life, our dreams wouldn't have clashed, and our paths would have intertwined. But this wasn't that life.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

#slytherin boys x reader #slytherin boys #slytherin boys x you #mattheo riddle masterlist #mattheo riddle angst #mattheoriddle #mattheo riddle imagine #mattheo smut #mattheo riddle x reader #mattheo riddle imagines #mattheo riddle smut #mattheo riddle #thetorturedpoetsdepartmentmasterlist #the tortured poets dept #taylor swift ttpd #ttpd #ttpdmasterlist

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lunarspiral1127 · 2 days

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X-Men 97 episode 8 *SPOILERS*

Bastion

Not gonna lie, I busted out laughing when I watched his origin story. This is the second time an antagonist had to wait for a couple to make a child and use said child for their plans. Nimrod was lucky that the guy he infected was in a relationship. Plus, I thought it was gonna make Bastion sympathetic due to his childhood flashbacks, but nope.

So, he made a Utopia for humans, but the mutants are enslaved. Saw old Polaris and the Phoenix. But, what bugs me is that he claims that many of the humans consented to be turned into Prime Sentinels without knowing all the details and won't have any memory of being turned. I find it hard to believe that every single one of them would've consented, especially his elderly mother. Dude omitted many details and I'm pretty sure he turned some of them without them knowing. Plus, I'm still mad at him for killing Gambit.

Cameos of Dr. Doom and Zemo (hydra n@zi Zemo, not the MCU version). Wasn't expecting to see them being members of OZT.

Mr. Sinister's just in it for the mutant experimentation.....y'know what? I shouldn't be surprised with that reason why he "teamed up" with Bastion. More test subjects.

Summers Family

Not gonna lie, I was really annoyed with the drama between Cable and Scott. If this was comics Scott, I can understand why Cable's giving him the cold shoulder. But, this Scott didn't wanna abandon Nathan like his dad did to him! It was Madelyn that gave him to Bishop. So, if Scott was there with her, things would've been cool?! God, I'm so sick of this drama. Thank goodness that it didn't last long and that Jean stopped them from escalating it further.

Summers family vs. Prime Sentinels was pretty cool. I like that father/son fistbump, which means things will get better between the two.

It's funny that Jean's being the mom at Cable who's like this big man in his 50s.

Also, Jean and Scott's relationship is getting better which is a relief.

Nightcrawler

Once again, precious boy and MVP. What he said to Jean was really nice. He's always been there as someone's shoulder to lean and cry on. When he talked about Mystique, I felt so bad for him. Honestly, I hated what she did to him just because he was born that way. In the 90s show, she did feel guilt for what she did when Nightcrawler talked to her. But, I still didn't like her for what she did to him. However, with all the words and hugs he's given to others, I hope he has someone who'd give him words and hugs too. He also needs a shoulder to lean and cry on too.

SWASHBUCKLING NIGHTCRAWLER HELL YEAH!!! I've been waiting to see him use swords and it was worth the wait. Him teaming up with Wolverine was really cool. Plus, seeing how his teleporting works was cool too. Love that he was protecting his sister, and I'm glad that we got something with him and Logan cause we haven't had anything like that since he first appeared.

Beast

Why the hell would he let the reporter stay in?! Even if she's not doing her job, she's shouldn't be involved! It has nothing to do with her, plus, I'm pretty sure he revealed a lot of classified information that only the X-Men should be allowed to hear and see. Dammit, Beast. And, dammit Morph for letting her in too.

*sigh* Anyone else think, he's been done dirty in this episode? Cause having her stay in there got his butt kicked. Sure, he didn't know that she was a Prime Sentinel, but they do know the possibility that any human could be one, right? Now, Beast is knocked out along with Rogue, who hasn't woken up still.

Jubilee and Roberto

Okay, so they are gonna be part of the main plot, good. I was worried that they were gonna be sidelined, especially Jubilee.

His mom is a beech. She sold her son out to the Prime Sentinels and didn't believe him and for what? Her reputation?! Man, f**k this beech, she sucks. Poor Roberto though.

Finally using his powers more than once! I counted four times in this whole series so far of when he used them. It's also something that annoys me about the character. He said that he was training in the Danger Room to surprise Jubilee, but why couldn't we have seen that?! Why couldn't we have Roberto training with one of the X-Men's help and see him develop his abilities?! Hell, have Jubilee be there to train him! That way we could've seen more of his abilities and see him grow more and have him interact with other characters, bonding with them. Not just Jubilee. Maybe have him open up to when he first awakened his powers and why he wants to hide them, instead of just telling us.

On the plus side, they should be okay thanks to Magneto's magnetic EMP ability. Speaking of which....

Magneto

I'm glad he didn't get turned into a Prime Sentinel, but I still don't understand how Bastion and Mr. Sinister got his hands on him from Genosha. That blast should've killed him along with the Morlocks. I don't even think it's gonna be explained how they captured him.

His prisoner numbers....yeesh. 😬

The one good thing that Cooper did. Letting him go and realizing that he was right. Aside from that, f**k her. Seriously, was the only good human (regular human, not enhanced) shown in this was Moira?! Cause that's what it feels like.

Now, I was confused at first with what Magneto did, but I think he went to the North or South Poles and used the Earth's magnetic field which is strongest there to cause a worldwide blackout, disabling all the Prime Sentinels. Not killing them, mind you. All while in his underwear, too.

Honestly, I wouldn't blame him if he wages war. He tried to be good. He tried to respect Xavier's dream. But, look what happened. So, I wouldn't blame him if he did this.

HOWEVER! I like that Magneto was good. Part of me doesn't want him to go back to his old ways cause that's gonna be more conflict between him and Xavier. Plus, only Logan claimed that Magneto waged war. If he did, he would've killed the Prime Sentinels, but he didn't. If anything, he'd be waging war on Bastion since he's the one responsible. But, yeah, I'm sorry Xavier. You're cool and all, but Magneto was right.

Cameos

I mentioned Zemo, Doctor Doom, Future Polaris and Future Phoenix. But there were much more.

Omega Red and the Silver Samurai, but one that made me so excited to see......SPIDER-MAN!!! I was so happy to see 90s Spider-Man. I know many would want a sequel to the animated series, but we'll have to wait and see.

The rest I wanna talk/rant about

Professor X shows up finally, but I got miffed when he said "I hope I'm not too late". CHARLES! YOU ARE VERY VERY LATE!!! I know space travel takes time, but COME ON! He better do something real quick to help stop all this crap that's been happening. Dunno how, but it better be something good.

By the way, I'm still annoyed with that black hole excuse. Why couldn't he just contact Scott and the others and stay in touch with them right when he was fully recovered or was well enough?

WHERE THE HELL IS STORM?!?!?! I know she's with Forge, but you'd think the moment she heard about Genosha, she'd head back home flying. She'll probably show up next week, but it's been like two episodes since she got her powers back. Is her not being there sooner a choice the writers made cause if she was there, the fight with the Prime Sentinels would've been over quicker? *sigh* I just wanna see one of my favorites come back and kick some butt like she used too.

I dunno if Forge is gonna come back with Storm, but I hope he does. I want him to help with this Bastion mess. Plus, he did take a photo with him, which has me worried that he was connected somehow but I hope not. It also would be cool, if he contacted the rest of X-Factor and meet up with the X-Men and team up. But, I don't think that's gonna happen.

So, Bishop is definitely out of the picture for the rest of this season, which is bullcrap. It would've been cool to have him and Cable work together again like before along with the X-Men. But, instead, the excuse was they got separated from the time stream. So, we don't even know if he's okay or if he's lost again, or if he actually made it back home. God, I feel like his character's purpose of the show was to help create another characters origin.

Okay, I think that's pretty much it. It was a good episode, even though I did rant on a lot of stuff. We'll see how parts 2 and 3 play out in the next two weeks and hope that the finale will stick the landing.

#x men 97 #xmen 97 #x-men 97 #xmen 97 spoilers #x men 97 spoilers #x-men 97 spoilers #episode 8 #episode eight #marvel

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cirilla-fiona-riannon · 1 day

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The Beast Wants to Tempt the Little Rabbit (Matias vs Clavis)

Translations may not always capture the exact nuances or tone of the original text. Expect grammatical errors and inaccuracies. Not proofread.

Part 2

Clavis: "This is rather unsatisfactory."

(!?)

Matias: "Is it? This is the first time I've been welcomed this warmly."

Clavis: "Haha, you should aim higher. After all, you should be welcomed by all the citizens."

Clavis: "But unfortunately, I've noticed some of them not paying attention. Therefore..."

Emma: "It's almost lunchtime!"

I grabbed Clavis' hand as he was about to put it inside his coat.

(I'm pretty sure he's going to come up with some kind of outrageous trap.)

Emma: "Prince Matias, are you hungry?"

Matias: "Now that you mention it, I do feel a bit hungry."

Emma: "In that case, let's have lunch!"

Emma: "Prince Clavis, your guest has a request. As your tour guide, I suggest we eat."

Clavis: "Hmm, you really know how to handle me."

(That's because I've made every mistake imaginable back when I was Belle.)

Clavis grasped my hand lightly with a pleased expression, his golden eyes gleaming seductively.

Clavis: "I've already made arrangements for lunch. Let's head there."

Emma: "Thank you, but what's with this hand?"

Clavis: "I'm just responding to your passion. You want to hold my hand, right?"

Emma: "I never said anything like that!"

Clavis: "Come on, don't be shy. Let's hold hands."

Emma: "I don't want to. Hey, your grip is too strong!"

Matias: "Are you two...?"

Emma: "No, absolutely not!"

Clavis: "Matias, stop asking such a bold question. You're making Emma embarrassed."

(This guy is trying to get back at me.)

Clavis gently held my hand and started walking, leaving me feeling embarrassed under the sympathetic gazes of the people around us.

(I tried to regain my composure and think about lunch, and yet...)

Clavis: "Now then, I will treat you to my homemade cooking."

Emma: "Why? Just why?"

I almost collapsed to my knees.

The place Clavis chose was one of the most famous restaurants in Rhodolite.

I thought that for entertaining a distinguished guest like Matias, he would have prepared dishes made by top-notch chefs, but for some reason, he declared that we were going to the kitchen.

Matias: "Miss Emma, you look pale. Are you alright?"

Emma: "Yes, I apologize for causing concern."

Emma: "I just remembered a lot of intense memories from the past."

(I've had Clavis' homemade cooking a few times before that's why I can say this with confidence: his homemade dishes are too unconventional to be served to a distinguished guest.)

(If by any chance someone got food poisoning and it turned into an international incident, then...)

For the royals, poison was the most important thing to take into consideration when it came to food.

(If I were to give up now, there would be no one to protect Matias.)

Clavis: "You should rest. When you're able to eat..."

Emma: "Prince Clavis, there's a dish that I really want Prince Matias to try."

Emma: "It's a classic Rhodolite home-cooked dish, but I thought there might not be another chance like this, so please, let me cook this time!"

When I said this in one breath, the two men widened their eyes, perhaps taken aback by the momentum of my words.

(My cooking isn't something that should be served to state guests, either, but I think it's better than risking an international incident with Clavis' unconventional cooking. Or at least, I want to believe so.)

Matias: "Home-cooked dish..."

(Hmm?)

Matias: "Clavis, I'm also interested in her cooking."

Again, I thought I heard him mutter something, but Matias' serious expression didn't change.

(I can't believe he's so interested.)

Clavis: "I see. Come to think of it, you've always had a fascination with home cooking."

Clavis: "Very well. Emma, I appoint you as our tour guide and personal chef."

Emma: "Thank you! I'm honored!"

(Thank goodness, I managed to avert the worst-case scenario.)

Clavis: "I thought something like this might happen, so I actually had an apron prepared for you."

Clavis pulled out a white apron from the cupboard.

When he unfolded it, I noticed it had a bunch of frills.

Matias: "A frilly white apron, huh?"

(What's with the occasional sigh-like voice I've been hearing?)

Even when I glanced at Matias, his expression remained unchanged.

(Well, whatever. I have a feeling I shouldn't pry.)

Gathering my courage, I put on the apron I received.

I pushed aside the suspicious ingredients on the counter and picked up only the safe ones.

Matias & Clavis: ".........."

Emma: "Since this will take some time, would you two like to chat elsewhere?"

Matias: "No, if there's something I can help with, I'd like to assist. I'll stay here."

Clavis: "It'll be lonely here by yourself, so we'll stay and keep you company."

(It's awkward and nerve-wracking!)

Still, I couldn't exactly chase them out, so I worked while receiving their intense gaze.

Clavis: "By the way, was your queen also good at cooking?"

Matias: "Yeah, it all begins with watching my queen in the kitchen every morning."

Matias: "Cooking together, tasting each other's dishes to understand the flavors, and laughing together after waking up."

(So Matias is already married. He looks so in love, it makes me smile.)

Matias: "But you know, even if she's bad at cooking, it's still fine."

Matias: "It makes it more worthwhile to cook together, and it'd be nice for me to cook for her and serve her as well."

Clavis: "Isn't there a royal chef at Acroite?"

Matias: "Of course there is, but the idea of homemade cooking is just romantic."

Clavis: "Haha, you're really saying that?"

Clavis: "I'm relieved to see that you still have the same perverted qualities you had as a student, even more so than me and Jin."

Matias: “I'm not a pervert. I'm just a regular guy who is devoted to his ideals."

(What's that supposed to mean?)

Their conversation was so outlandish that I couldn't help but stop.

Emma: "Prince Matias, you're married, right?"

Matias: "No, not yet."

Emma: "But a queen?"

Matias: "I'm talking about my future queen."

Emma: "Ah..."

(I see.)

(I've always wondered why such a kind-hearted person would be friends with Clavis, but maybe it's because they both walk their own paths and understand each other.)

Realizing this, I resumed cooking as if nothing had happened.

Matias: "Miss Emma, you're an undeniable genius."

Clavis: "Right? She really is a genius."

(Though it's not much of a dish, being praised like this makes me feel a little embarrassed.)

The main course was a simple beef and vegetable stew cooked in cream, accompanied by mashed potatoes with butter.

I also prepared a soup and salad consisting of tomatoes, and edible roses.

For dessert, I made simple madeleines.

It might seem lacking compared to the dishes the princes usually eat, but both Matias and Clavis were eating so happily that it made me feel happy.

Matias: "Rhodolite is a wonderful country. To be able to enjoy such gourmet food as home cooking is amazing."

Clavis: "Right? We should praise Emma even more."

Emma: "You've already praised me more than enough!"

Emma: "Anyway, Prince Matias, why did you come to Rhodolite?"

Feeling embarrassed, I quickly changed the subject, and Matias placed his cutlery on the table.

Matias: "I was invited as a legal advisor."

Emma: "Legal advisor?"

Matias: "Acroite is known as the country of snow and law, and I'm called the guardian of law."

Matias: "I'm well-versed in the laws of not only my own country but also those of the major nations, including Rhodolite."

(That's amazing.)

Matias: "I've heard that several new laws are being considered in Rhodolite this time."

Matias: "However, these new laws have few precedents. Setting them up requires the establishment of various systems."

Matias: "That's why they invited me. They seek the expertise of a legal specialist."

Clavis: "Originally, Jin and I were already good friends with Matias, so when I sent him a letter, he responded warmly."

(Ah, so that's why Clavis is personally putting so much effort into welcoming him.)

This was not a story that is irrelevant to me, either.

The law is a set of rules that everyone living in Rhodolite must follow.

Emma: "If you've come for the sake of Rhodolite, then we must put even more effort into welcoming you."

(We have to do our best this afternoon.)

Matias: "No, quite the opposite."

Emma: "The opposite?"

Matias: "I should be thanking you."

Matias: "This falls under the Asbrink family's 23rd precept, which states that one must always repay kindness received."

Matias: "So, could I have some of your time this afternoon? I want to repay your cooking."

Emma: "Please don't worry about it. Your sentiment alone makes me happy."

Clavis: "The Lelouch family also has a similar motto."

Emma: "Yours is just nonsense."

Clavis: "Haha! What are you saying? It's not nonsense. I just decided on it now."

(See? Nonsense.)

Clavis: "So, I also want to repay you for your cooking."

Emma: "Your gratitude is more than enough!"

Matias: "Clavis, I brought it up first."

Clavis: "Unfortunately, Rhodolite doesn't have a 'first come, first served' law."

Clavis: "We can't let a guest like you repay your gratitude."

Clavis: "So, let me express my gratitude to Emma on your behalf."

Matias: "Fair enough. But then it loses its meaning. Shouldn't you respect the will of your guest?"

Clavis: "Hmm."

Clavis: "Emma, what do you think?"

Emma: "What do I think?"

Clavis: "Between me and Matias, whose gratitude would you like to accept?"

(Huh? Is this what this is about!?)

Part 1 ╎ Part 2 ╎ Premium ╎ Epilogue

#ikemen prince #ikepri #ikepri jp #ikepri translations #clavis lelouch #ikepri clavis #matias asbrink #ikepri matias

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