#and don’t even try with the abuse stuff or that he’s a womanizer or any of that bullshit | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thelikesoffinn · 7 months

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„Astarion ending as the Vampire Ascendant is the correct ending for him, because it is what he wants.”

That is a claim I’ve been seeing pop up more and more often these days. And I think it’s both a very bold and a very odd claim to make.

But first things first: Hello, I’m a licensed social worker! So far, I’ve worked with children, refugees and youths with behavioural issues stemming from bullying and or abuse.

Please be aware that I will be mentioning different kinds of abuse, coping mechanisms, and victim/abuser relationships. If any of this is difficult for you, don’t force yourself through it. My jabbering about a traumatised vampire is not worth your wellbeing, not ever.

I will, however try to stick to Astarion and not use other examples. If, in any case, I do use a non-Astarion example, I’ll add a warning beforehand so that you can skip the part. And I’ll make it clear what will be discussed in the next bit, so that you have a chance to skip it entirely.

This is an effort to make this as accessible as possible for everyone that wants to indulge on a mad woman’s rambling – and I know there’s a few people that like this sort of stuff!

And, uh, there's obviously spoilers for all three acts. Serious spoilers, even.

Before I can get into the whole ‘why Astarion didn’t really want to ascend,’ we need to understand him a little more. And to understand this pretty boy’s brain, we first need to understand the gist of what we’re talking about when we throw around the word ‘abuse.’

“Abuse” is when someone is treated with cruelty, violence, or neglect – often to bad effect – on a regular basis. Repetitively. Check’s out for Astarion, I’d say, but we all knew that already. I mean, if one thing was obvious, it was this.

1. Astarions Abuse

Next we need to look at what kind of abuse Astarion faced over his long years of torment, seeing as different types of abuse will have different effects on the victim.

Not that that is anything we have to worry about with him – Astarion won the abuse lottery, to put it bluntly. In a horrible game of fate, he got everything. He himself indirectly mentions all the types of abuse he faced, albeit never using the correct terms.

The first we properly notice – fitting, seeing as it is often the most obvious form of abuse – is the physical abuse. Astarions scars are probably the biggest tell Larian could shove down our throats, only underlined by Astarion’s tale about the night itself. About how Cazador ‘misspelled something’ every time he flinched or screamed and had to do ‘many corrections. On top of this, Cazador locked Astarion up for months on end and tortured him – or had him tortured – on a regular basis both as a rite and as a punishment.

Next up, we have the fact that Astarion was forced to basically prostitute himself repeatedly. This is what we call sexual exploitation.

“I spent two hundred years using my body to lure pretty things back for my Master.” – Act 2

Two hundred years is a long time, filled with great many people. Now, we don’t know how many of those people actually tapped into the sexual exploitation and how many he could just lure back with other means, but the fact that it happened a lot is undeniable.

Next we have a form of abuse that we often disregard in adults: Neglect. It sounds odd, I know, saying that a fully grown adult was neglected. They can care for themselves, can they not?

Well. Yes and no.

Adult neglect is proceeded by the condition that one adult has to lean on another adult to fulfil their needs for whatever reason. This could be anything, from disability to income-based issues.

Seeing as Astarion had absolutely nothing, while Cazador had everything, we can assume this was the case. Cazador had the house, the money, the power. Astarion owns but one pair of clothes, assumedly, that he has fixes over and over again. Fair to say, that’s pretty neglectful. (And it’s one more reason to shower the guy in pretty armour and camp clothes. Go ham, people.)

Last we have the form of abuse we actually get to witness later in the game – emotional abuse.

Once again, it’s undeniable that this happened. Especially since we’re all seeing it in the flesh upon meeting Cazador in his crypt.

“Have you no respect for yourself?”

“I strove for perfection in all things. Even those as imperfect as you.”

“A pity you amounted to so little, despite my efforts.”

“A pathetic little boy who never amounted to anything.”

All Act 3, Crypt

Here we have just a few examples of things Cazador throws in his face. It’s like reading a textbook on emotional abuse, this one (and it’s definitely a reason to throw hands).

Blaming the victim, keeping their sense of self and their self-worth as tiny as possible to make them cower and flee. A true classic.

This pretty much shows that Astarion suffered all forms of abuse we commonly see and it is implied – once again by Astarion himself – that at least a few of those instances were ritualistic.

Now, what does that mean exactly? Well, I fear I need to use a real example here, so please skip the next paragraph.

Ritualistic doesn’t refer to a proper ritual – it can, but that’s mostly a thing for those in a cult. So, we’re not necessarily talking about a ‘Vampire Ascendent Ritual’. A husband, beating his wife every evening after his third bottle of beer is also called ritual abuse. It happens regularly. It is part of a routine. Both parties know what will happen.

I can’t find the exact quote, so I’m working of my memory here, but at one point he said that when Cazador invited him to eat and he said yes, he would be served a putrid rat. If he said no, he’d be beaten.

The way it was phrased made it clear that it happened more than once and that Astarion clearly knew what would happen. So, this can be classified as ritualistic abuse.

2. A Note on Conditioning and Compliance

By default, abuse victims are conditioned to behave a certain way or in a certain fashion. This is a natural response to avoid further abuse.

In Astarion, the thing we see most often is his inherent need to please. Not literally, he doesn’t mind being an arsehole. But he initially feels the need to follow Tav’s orders, even if they go against his own wishes.

This can be clearly seen in the conversation with Araj Oblodra. Astarion very clearly doesn’t want to bite her. He doesn’t. But he will do so, if Tav tells him to. This behaviour is not conscious – he doesn’t know why he does it, he just does – and it is to be expected. This is how he kept himself save for two centuries, so of course he will fall back into his usual pattern when the pressure is high.

This goes hand in hand with the fact that most abuse victims don’t fight. Maybe initially, but not after long term abuse. Especially not after two fucking centuries.

This is true in Astarion – offered by his ‘siblings’ during act 3 and unhappily acquiesced by the man himself. Astarion stopped fighting and, once again implied, cowered, and did as he was told in order to survive.

3. The Astarion we know and love

Obviously, all that abuse does have an impact on our vampire boyfriend. He shows various common signs of abuse and just like with the forms of abuse, Astarion raked every coping mechanism he could find. (Not really, but it feels like it.) It’s also important to note that nearly all of the following things happen inwardly. Astarion is not one of the victims, that tries to rationalise and minimise the actions of his abuser. Quite the opposite, actually.

I’ll note from the beginning, that rationalisation will not be covered in this bit, as most examples will be important later on. But he definitely does it.

One of his biggest skills is to hide every ounce of fear or hurt behind sarcasm and snarky theatrics. He doesn’t seem to hide his anger much, though, so that’s something! Our boy is cool with anger, not so much with being afraid.

“Ahahaha, now that you mention it….I might have done…that.” – Act 3, regarding the Gur children

“The thing that will decide my fate forever more? Yeees, it’s been on my miiiind. Why?” – Act 2, regarding the Ritual

And there’s many more instances that prove this. Honestly, half his dialogue is sarcasm, so it would really be too long to get into and we all know what I mean, right? We have alltalked to the guy before. It’s obvious that he’s sarcastic to a fault.

This goes hand in hand with his penchant for defensiveness. I would personally state that he’s simply not really good with guilt. When talking about fear, he usually just opts for sarcasm or avoids the topic completely, but guilt especially has his defences going up. This is also when he’s most likely to shove all the blame off to Cazador.

“Don’t look at me like that. Cazadors orders.” – Act 3, Crypt

“I just did what I had to!” – Act 3, Crypt

And don’t get me wrong, he does that anyway. And with good reason. Astarion didn’t have a choice for the most part, but he’s still easy to shove things off.

This kind of connects to his penchant for denial.

Astarion doesn’t really like to talk about most things. He firmly believes he is an ‘action’ sort of person that just does instead of plans, which invertedly just means he’s great at pushing the thinking stuff away. He also likes to get rid of stuff, so that he doesn’t need to face it ever again.

“I never want to see these little scraps of misery again. The world doesn’t need to know my shame.” – Act 3, about the children

And yes, this partly rings true. He’s probably ashamed and doesn’t want anyone to know what he’s done. But it’s also very clear that he himself simply doesn’t want to face his own actions, something that is just underlined by his extreme willingness to red rid of the other spawn.

As mentioned by Astarion himself, he’s big on manipulation. I mean, I don’t think there is much explaining necessary. The guy is willing to do a whole lot in order to get what he desires – which mostly revolves around safety and survival, to be honest – and he’s not really shy about it either. And that’s despite the fact that he doesn’t really like intimacy – especially in form of sex.

It’s not a secret that Astarion is not big on sex and anything surrounding it. This goes far enough for people to consider him either ace or ace coded.

A claim that, personally, I’m not super in line with.

Now, it’s not entirely wrong and if this is your head cannon I’m surely not going to stand in your way – but on a larger spectrum, I think he’s more traumatised than ace. And while those go hand in hand sometimes, it’s a bit difficult for the ace community if you attach traumatised characters to them because it can fuel a whole lot of stigma that is honestly neither needed nor wanted. But I digress!

If it comes to his own behaviour, he’s great at minimising his mistakes. Honestly, he’s a master of minimisation. A very obvious and famous example would be:

“’Killed’ feels like a…strong word. Not many corpses have your vigour.” – Act 1, after killing Tav

Astarion. You literally sucked poor Tav dry and left them flopping around, cold, and dead. Killed is exactly the right word and we all know it.

“Quite the deviation from my usual routine. Capture, not lure. I didn’t bring them in with sweet rolls or anything.” – Act 3, Gur Children

This is another attempt at minimising what he did, if a bit less obvious because at this point there isn’t much he can say. But at least he didn’t sexualise the gur children, right? They’re still spawn but whoo, at least that didn’t happen.

The next point would be dissociation, which is extremely common in abuse victims – of all forms of abuse.

Astarion himself mentioned certain moments that could be classified as dissociation over course of the story, which is probably the coping mechanism I personally expected the most.

The pale elf has a penchant for violence, but he’s not entirely shameless or abhorrently vile, which gets clearer the more the story progresses. So, two hundred years of forced prostitution, torture and doing whatever other horrible things? Yeah, I’d be more surprised if he didn’t dissociate.

Examples of that would be:

“A moment of disgust to push myself through and then I could’ve carried on, just like before.” – Act 2, after Araj

“I felt nothing the moment I handed them over.” – Act 3, Gur Children

“Did you enjoy it? It felt like you weren’t fully there.” – Act 1, Tav after Sex

The latter is generally more of an assumption than actual prove, but with context it does make sense.

The last common sign of abuse we find in our boyfriend would be his low self-worth. It’s a consistent trait that stays over the course of all three acts, noticeable in many different conversations.

We can see it in his reaction to wanting to break up before finishing his story. We can see it in his genuine surprise when Tav picks him over any of the other characters. We see it in his insecurity whenever Tav asks to sleep with another character. He’s fine with it, but he still worries their decision to sleep with someone else is based on something he did.

It eases up ever so slightly after Cazador is dead, but even then he’s still struggling which is once again perfectly illustrated if you try to break up with him.

“Oh shit. I- Did I do something wrong?”

That is the first thing he asks and I think it speaks for itself. He genuinely doesn’t believe he has much to offer and for Astarion, it’s likely that Astarion will always be the problem.

4. "Oh, I tried them all none of them answered.”

Another big thing that’s important to note, is that Astarion was never saved. No one came to save him from Cazador. There was no darling boy on a white steed riding into that castle to rescue him and princess carry him away. Not even the gods answered his desperate calls.

So, he never received any kindness or luck. To him, the world seems as cruel and horrid as before because he didn’t have the chance to experience goodness in two centuries.

But worse than that, he didn’t even get to save himself. Astarion didn’t stand up to Cazador, he didn’t run out of his own might.

He was beaten to near death and ‘saved’ by Cazador, who would become his abuser.

He tried to save someone and, in turn, was locked up and starved for an entire year.

He was abducted by mind flayers, i.e., saved from Cazador, only to end up tadpoled and on the cusp of getting a fancy, squiddy beard.

Anything that’s good, any kindness, any selfless action…it all came with a ginormous price tag.

5. Over the Course of the Story

Astarions behaviour changes a whole lot over the course of three acts – which is important once we talk about his quests climax – so let’s review what we’re working with!

Act 1 Astarion is guarded as fuck. The man has walls around him that are so high, even the gods can touch them.

A lot of his behaviour in act 1 revolves around staying save and staying liked. He lies, manipulates, and flutters his lashes in order to get what he wants and needs. Instead of asking, like Wyll, Karlach and Gale do, Astarion uses all he has to offer to get by. He is still very much in survival mode and tries to weasel his way through an unfamiliar situation with familiar methods.

On top of that, and most notably, he’s absolutely not fond of kindness or selflessness.

#I saved a child and now my boyfriend is mad

Here, we are most likely to gain disapproval for doing the decent thing – unless you sent him outside for a minute whenever you’re being a good person.

And I’d assume that this is because of two things.

First: The very traditional ‘Why not me?’

As I mentioned before, Astarion wasn’t saved. He hasn’t experienced kindness in a very long time so seeing that the world is literally filled with kind people is hurtful. Why didn’t anyone save him? Why was he left to his own devices for so long? Why should he care about others when it’s so clear that no one ever cared about him? No, dead to all of them. If he didn’t get it, neither will they.

“And what am I owed? What about the injustices I suffered? Am I not entitled to anything?” – Act 3, Crypt

“I was in the prime of my life when I was turned. Everything was taken from me too.” – Act 3, Crypt

And secondly is the fact that, as I mentioned, goodness always has a price. And it’s one most people won’t be willing to pay. That’s how his life has been, so why would theirs be different?

This is precisely why Astarion may disapprove of kind actions, but he mostly neither approves nor disapproves if Tav asks for payment. That’s just how the world works.

Once you venture out into act 2, after getting to know him a whole lot more, he starts to mellow a bit – if only towards Tav.

“He’s afraid, so afraid, of everyone but you, who she should fear the most.” – Sceleritas about Astarion

His approval is a lot easier to gain – or at least keep! – and he tends to approve of some more proper actions. He doesn’t throw a fit if you promise to find Mol, he approves of Tav being kind to His Majesty, of saving Aylin and he even approves of Durge apologising to Isobel after threatening to rip her to pieces.

He's slowly starting to open up, allowing Tav to see some parts of him he previously kept hidden. He accepts their offer to help, if hesitantly and, by god, the man starts experimenting with boundaries.

The social worker in me is shedding tears at this. It’s my favourite thing to see in my clients and it’s no different here. Yay to saying no!

Of course, it’s still a bit hit or miss. If Tav urges him to bite Araj, for example, he will only to later notice that he didn’t fucking have to. He recognises this on his own and he calls Tav out on it. Just like he calls them out on not helping him with his Orthon quest.

Good job, chap. Good fucking job.

And the growth-train won’t stop going even as we reach act 3.

In act 3, there’s not many things he disapproves as of right now – those he does, mostly have to do with how Tav treats him and not with anyone else. In fact, he’s more likely to approve good behaviour now, like giving Yenna food or money.

And yes, we need to consider that this could simply be because he gets used to Tav’s behaviour and just learns to roll with it. But it’s also highly likely that he notices that there’s truly good people around. At least one person. And that person is not only good, no, they’re in the process of helping him break free once and for all.

They’re helping him save himself.

By act 3, he has learned that he can absolutely say his piece where Tav is concerned and he’s more likely to disagree with them on certain things. It’s seen during a lot of small dialogue that he’s no longer terribly afraid to be honest with them, willing to listen and talk and he’ll ask for help if he needs it.

“I can do this. But I need your help.” – Act 3, Crypt

Something that can be viewed both positively and negatively is that he’s definitely loyal to a fault. He will stick by Tav’s side, no matter what.

“I really hoped we could avoid being pawns for a dark god, but here we are, I suppose. I’m with you, my dear, wherever this might lead.” – Act 3, After Jaheira confronts durge

As I said, this can be both positive and negative. On one count, it’s a recipe for disaster, seeing as he could be waltzing into a really bad situation for Tav alone.

But on the other side…this is a man who only cared about himself because that is the only person he could afford to care about. He needed to survive. He now has enough room to breathe and the capacity to care for someone else and I’d be inclined to count that as a good thing.

6. The Crypt

All the progress he made in act 2 and 3 is nearly tossed into the wind as soon as the crew enters Cazadors castle.

It’s not an immediate thing, of course.

At first, Astarion tries to stay light and simple and he hides behind flippant tones and relaxed faces. The way he recounts this is almost comically disinterested and the façade is actually quite good.

It’s start’s cracking after we meet Godie, one of the people who tortured him on more than one account, but he mostly manages to remain as upbeat as one can honestly expect for the first half of the journey.

All that, however, is done for the very moment we meet Sebastian. His mask not only slips, no, it full on shatters and there’s none of his apparent lightness left.

Which, of course it does.

The man is suddenly faced with years and years and years of victims. Innocent, unlucky people he lured back to his master over two centuries. People he liked, people he pitied.

“It’s sickening, seeing them again.”

It’s basically a room filled with guilt, exclusively for Astarion. And, as we mentioned before…Astarion is not great with guilt.

The guilt, however, is not where it ends.

No, he’s also faced with reflections of his own past. The spawn pose as reminders of what he did, sure, but also as reminders of what he was.

Weak, desperate, hungry.

There’s an abundance of images of his worst moments, reflected back at him in the thousands. It’s probably like staring into a funhouse mirror, but instead of seeing yourself in a funky way he just sees everything he so desperately doesn’t want to be.

“It should be [who I am]! I don’t want to be like them. They’re pathetic, horrible…”

He’s forcefully made aware of how darn weak he can be, which claws at all the wounds he’s barely had time to close. Something, he of course won’t admit if asked.

“THEY DO NOT [remind me of myself]. That weakness in me is dead, IT’S DEAD. I have a higher purpose.”

The high pressure of the moment brings out all of his act 1 traits in but a few moments. You can pretty much watch how he starts to shut down mid conversation, one of his old walls snapping back into place to remove himself from the situation.

Thing is though, walls usually become a bit brittle after disuse. Especially when talking to a person you don’t usually want to wall out.

Or, in his case, when talking to Tav.

After meeting Sebastian, Astarion shows extreme reactions to Tav nudging any of his weak spots. His reaction varies on whatever choice you make, but it ranges from aggression to defensiveness, to denial and even to downright begging Tav.

“Don’t hate me. I just did what I had to. I swear I did what I had to.”

This probably the most shocking out of all of them, since that is not something we got to witness before. The begging is likely a mixture of intense fear of losing Tav, his low self-esteem and pre-Tav behaviour, since we can assume that Cazador made him beg more than once.

Another old coat he puts back on would also be the least surprising of them all.

Manipulation.

He falls right back into it, using Tav’s affection to get what he want if we trigger the right action.

“If they die and I ascend, I won't have to rely on the parasite to walk in the sun. I'll be free. Truly completely free. Isn't that what you want?”

This, to me, was probably the biggest tell that Astarion was back in survival mode. He’s panicking, for fucks sake, and who can blame the guy? He’s back. He’s about to face down his abuser.

Of course he’s fucking panicking.

Panic leads to an increased craving for safety and, in his case, power. This is why he clings to Tav, why he begs them to love him still. And this is why he jumps head first into the rationalisation pool.

“I will need to sacrifice them all if I want to perform the ritual. - [You can save them.] – What’s the point? They're as good as dead! I thought they were dead. If they are unleashed, they will cause incredible carnage. […] They must die. Better they serve a purpose.”

Another textbook example.

They must die anyway. They’re basically dead. No need to save them now. They’re dangerous, I’m doing the right thing by sacrificing them. I already thought they were dead, so it’s not changing anything for me. They’re a lost cause and I deserve all this power. I deserve it, because I suffered and nothing will change if they die.

So, seeing as we already spoke about his usual behaviour in act 3 – behaviour he showed after we allowed him to breathe and be himself for a while – I think we can fairly easily conclude he’s not thinking straight.

Astarion is right back in survival mode, where all that matters is he himself. If it weren’t for the seven thousand spawns, he might have moved through this more gracefully, but seeing those tipped the scales and Astarion is absolutely losing it.

Remember that for the last section, per favore.

7. The Ascension

“Astarion wants to ascend and Tav manipulates him into doing what they want.”

That is basically the essence of what people often claim and I can’t help but shake my head at such a blatant disregard of everything he has become. This is completely ignoring the change and growth he has gone through over the course of their journey.

Astarion wants to be free. He wants to be safe. That does not mean he wants to ascend.

And the claim that Tav manipulates him into doing anything is even more baffling. We are all aware that Tav is not manipulative by nature, yes? That is entirely on you. You decide who your Tav is.

And then let’s remember: Astarion is panicked. He’s afraid and he’s not thinking straight. His abuser is on his knees before him and he still feels so weak. And there’s seven thousand spawns that need handling.

Astarion is very much not okay right now.

In fact, reading his thoughts just proves this theory.

“You can see the fear in his eyes but also the hunger. The thick smell of blood in the air and the promise of power being so close is intoxicating to him. All he can see is the power of the ritual and the freedom that power brings. The freedom to do anything. To be anything.”

Tav, however, has none of those problems. They can actually see beyond the current situation and they are fully aware what the consequences are. Astarion is not. As we previously established, Astarion is a doer. Not a thinker. He didn’t think this through, not at all.

The only thing Tav is doing – the persuasion roll – is reminding him of the very real consequences he is facing. The consequences he hasn’t thought about before.

"I know you think this will set you free, but it won't. This power will trap you, just like it trapped Cazador."

And that is the kindest thing Tav could do in this situation. They’re not bodily dragging him away from Cazador. They’re not even telling him to not do it. They’re just offering him the truth. He can do with that information whatever he desires.

“Astarion cries when he doesn’t ascend, that just shows that it was the wrong choice.”

A hare-brained point that I thankfully have only seen once so far.

That crying? That is healthy crying.

That is him, crumbling under the stress that suddenly dissipates. That is him mourning two hundred years of torment. That’s him letting out feelings he hasn’t been able to for centuries.

And, for the love of god, try to put yourself in his shoes.

Two hundred years of torment, ended in but a moment.

Astarion was abused and tortured for so long, afraid for so long only to see his tormentor die just like that.

Cazador died within a moment and all Astarion needed was a darn blade. Of course he fucking cries.

Seeing how pathetic a being the very core of your life’s misery actually is hurts. It hurts like hell because not only are you finally free – free! – no, you’re faced with the fact that this pile of nothing, the thing that’s bleeding out right in front of you…this was what tortured for so long.

This thing hurt you so much. That guy took everything from you, everything you once were, and broke it again and again and again over years.

You were so scared of this thing.

And yet he has the gall and the gumption to die just like that.

It was so easy.

And yet you suffered for so long.

8. Evil Playthrough?

An evil playthrough is really a different setting altogether.

All of this, as you can probably tell, is really only applicable on a good playthrough. Realistically speaking. I’m not sure how the game mechanics handle it.

On an evil path, Astarion never really gets to experience kindness and goodness. Evil Tav will just prove him right in his believe that the world is a vile and cold place, meaning that he realistically would be more inclined to actually want to ascend.

9. Final Conclusion

I think all of this should be enough to make it clear that no, ascended Astarion is not the best ending for the guy. In fact, it is probably the worst. Because it’s just him, running away. He’s running into a lonely and cold state of being, where cruelty and power lord over everything else and he’s running because he’s terrified of being hurt again. He’s running despite desperately wanting to stop running.

“I'll spend the rest of my life running watching the shadows, never feeling safe…no, this has to happen. Here and now.”

And, the worst part is: Nothing about Astarion is left after he ascends. Even his tone of speaking gradually changes, his theatrics fading. He’s slowly losing himself, until there’s nothing but an evil caricature left.

So, in the end, ascension will have proven him right.

That version of him is dead.

#baldur's gate 3 #baldurs gate 3 #baldur's gate #baldurs gate #bg3 #astarion #the dark urge #tav #astarion romance #astarion ancunin #astarion and tav #bg3 act 1 #bg3 act 2 #bg3 act 3 #act 3 #act 2 #act 1 #araj oblodra

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vroomvroomcircuit · 2 months

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Avocado Allergy

Summary: Max and his girlfriend are learnign to understand each other's love language

Warnings: mentions of an ex cheating, slight mentions of emotional abuse and manipulation as well as love bombing, but there is also a whole lotta fluff to make up for it

Wordcount: 2.1k

🏎Masterlist🏎

______________________ It’s quiet. A drastic change to the noise that happened mere hours earlier.

But Max relishes in that. After feeling like he is on top of the world with a first place trophy in his hands, he loves feeling grounded again. Especially through her.

(Y/N) head lays on his lap while she reads. Both sitting on the couch that the hotel room offers. Upon checking in they joked about trying not to think about what that piece of furniture has already seen.

Max massages her scalp, concentrating on how her eyes move from line to line, taking in the words that will lead her to a whole story eventually.

In this moment, Max feels at peace.

A peace he never thought he would reach.

A peace, where his thoughts are not full of self-deprecation.

A peace, where he feels enough. Secure. Without a worry.

He presses a kiss to his girlfriend’s forehead. “Will you read to me?” His soft voice cuts pleasantly through the silence. (Y/N) smiles and nods, clears her throat and starts to read the words on the pages in front of her out loud.

A peace, they both thought they would never be able to reach. And yet, they are still here. Basking in each other’s presence like it’s their form of ambrosia. Like it’s the only way that makes them invincible to what the world has against them in its pocket.

To get there, to this point, a whole process of understanding each other had to take place first.

It all started during the early days of their relationship.

“I’ll take you out for dinner tonight. Do you want to go for a shopping trip with Victoria for a new dress? You can take my credit card with you.” Max offers as he appears next to his girlfriend on the sofa.

Confused, she takes her eyes off the article she was reading in some magazine that had been laid out on the coffee table. “Is there a special occasion we go out for?”

(Y/N) thinks for herself a few moments. There is not an anniversary approaching. Neither is any of their birthdays. Or a big accomplishment.

So the question is: What did Max do? What will he be apologizing for?

“No reason except for me wanting to have an amazing date night with my even more amazing girlfriend. I just want us to have a good time.” This makes her even more suspicious.

“Oh,” (Y/N) answers, “Sounds like a good idea. But I don’t feel like going out shopping today.”

In reality, she does not want to get a special dress for a night out, just to get told that he cheated on her or that he totaled her car or something similar in that dress. The young woman does not want such negative energy clinging to a piece of fabric that is supposed to be special.

Max presses a kiss to her cheek before getting up again. “No problem, whatever you put on, you’ll be the most beautiful woman. I love you!” Off he goes, probably doing some Max-Verstappen-stuff.

His compliments and love exclamation in combination makes (Y/N) even more nervous for the upcoming dinner. He must have fucked up royally.

Several horror scenarios are going through her mind over and over again while (Y/N) is getting ready.

Did he actually cheat? Would she take him back after a confession like that?

Or maybe he hates her family and wants to tell her that he doesn’t want to spend any more time with them. That she has to decide between him and her family. Can she make that decision again? Would she make the right one this time?

“You look breathtaking.” Max’s eyes begin to sparkle, similar to the eyes of a child upon entering a toy store.

Can this face, the one of a man admiring the current love of his life like she is the most beautiful sight he has ever been blessed enough to put his eyes on, belong to the same person, that will isolate her from her family and friends? That cheats on her and acts like it was her fault for not being there for him 24/7?

For an average person the answer is simple: No, Max is the guy who nearly brought her bridal style to the emergency room because of her period cramps. He is the same one that ran to the store and back in record time to get some ice for the toe she stubbed on a chair leg.

For (Y/N) the answer is also just as simple: Maybe. Because her previous boyfriend also had a pretty face and said I love you. He also went to expensive restaurants and extravagant short trips with her. He took (Y/N) out for designer shopping trips, making her whole family say that she made the right decision by falling in love with that guy.

The same guy, who cheated on her with a close friend and got her some unimportant, but apparently expensive purse. That man, that followed her to the bathroom, giving her compliment after compliment, to make up for all the dates he canceled.

Maybe, they are not the same to the naked eye. But no one really knows what broods under the skin of any person, right?

“What’s going through your pretty head?” Max asks, putting his hand on her thigh while using the other one for the steering wheel. (Y/N) tries to shake his concern off, simply answering with “Oh, nothing much. Just something about work, you know?” But this man never lets up until he gets to the bottom of a problem. “Tell me about it. If it’s bothering you, it can’t be nothing.”

“Why are you taking me out for dinner? What did you do to try and make up for it? Is it in a public space because I can’t make a scene there?” If he wouldn’t have to watch the road, Max would have gotten whiplash by how fast he looked at his girlfriend. “Um, no? I really just want to take you out because you deserve an amazing night out. I genuinely just want to give you a memorable night. But I can turn around and we order something in. I don’t wanna pressure you into doing anything. I know that we can have just as much of a fun night on our couch watching that one show you have been raving about.”

It takes a few minutes for (Y/N) to comprehend what he said. “So, you will not tell me something bad you did? You actually take me out for no reason, no ulterior motive here?” Max caresses her thigh with his hand. “My only motive is wanting to spend some quality time with you.”

And so they did. The couple has a really romantic evening, sharing jokes and laughs over food and candle light, tugged away in a private corner of Max’s chosen restaurant.

This was the first, but unfortunately not the last time (Y/N) has accused the Dutch of having done something horrible.

Whenever he does a grand gesture, gifting her a very nice bracelet or bringing her to a place she has dreamed to see, it is followed by her asking what kind of crime against their relationship code he committed.

It’s starting to take a strain on both of them. “I don’t know what to do”, he vents to his mother over the telephone. “I love her and only her, but (Y/N) somehow has this twisted image of me that I cheated on her or have done something else wrong and want to apologize for that by taking her on vacation or so. I feel like she doesn’t trust me at all!”

The frustration is detectable in his voice. His mother feels bad for her son. “Have you asked her why she suspects something is off? Maybe you gave her a reason for not having her whole trust?” Max thinks about it. He has never really asked. He doesn’t know why.

“I think I’m losing him.” (Y/N) cries to her best friend. They both sit on her couch in her best friend’s apartment. “I’m accusing him of all these things I know that he would never do to me. But whenever he gifts me something expensive I immediately think of my ex and how he did that too, followed by him telling me he totaled my car or made out with some other woman at a party the night before again.”

Her friend looks at (Y/N) with sympathy. “He love bombed you and distorted your whole love map by doing that. You need to tell Max what he did to you. And you both need to work on understanding what the other person needs in order to feel comfortable in the relationship.”

Having been pep talked to, both find the other person in their shared four walls as soon as possible. They sit down and talk about what they need. They open up to each other and try to find compromises.

Later that night, they lie together in bed, cuddled up while some random movie plays in the background to fill the silence. “I have never felt so safe in a relationship than I do ever since we got together” (Y/N) mumbles, drawing shapes and numbers on his arm with her fingers. “I have never been able to be so true to myself while being romantically involved with someone else.”

Max’s heart starts hurting again. While (Y/N) told him about how much her previous boyfriend manipulated her over and over again, trying to win her over with both grand gestures and verbal threats. He gets it, her getting upset over him trying to be the best boyfriend by reading every wish from her lips.

They both learn to understand each other’s love languages. Max loves to spend quality time and by bringing his girlfriend everywhere with him where she could be present, may it be a simple interview where she sits in the background or the big vacation he had planned for the two. (Y/N) is more a lover of the small gestures. A flower there, holding the edge of a table when the other retrieves the fork that has fallen down during dinner here.

Rediscovering how they can love their soulmate best, it feels like diving into a new part of their relationship. They start to feel a deeper connection, a new level to finding each other. It gets to a point where (Y/N) confidently can say she knows Max like the back of her hand. She is better versed in his voice and tone indication than in her favorite songs.

They are out eating at a nice restaurant with a few of the drivers and their partners. It is a nice evening after the intense race weekend they just endured.

“Can I have some of yours?” Max refers to the pasta dish (Y/N) ordered. “Of course”, she smiles and pushes her plate towards him. Max takes a good bite from it, praising his girlfriend’s choice for her dinner. “Can I try yours?” She asks, eyeing his burger. “No.” Max answers shortly after having already taken a bite of his dish.

Lando chokes on his sip of water he just tried to drink. “No? But she just let you try her food. Why don’t you share?” But Max continues to chew his bite, taking his sweet time before answering.

“Do you want me to kill my girlfriend? Because it’s a sure way to do so by letting her have a bite of my burger, since it has avocado on it and she is allergic to that.”

(Y/N) just melts immediately at that. She mentioned her allergy to avocados once in passing to Max while he was making them sandwiches. But he still remembered it, even after it never had come up ever since.

Maybe it’s really not the big things that make you fall in love with a person. Maybe it’s the attention, the eye for the little things, that can make the greater difference.

And maybe this attention is what led to Max not proposing to her in front of a ferris wheel under the light of fireworks but rather in the kitchen of their shared home over a home cooked meal, asking for her hand in marriage on one knee while being shrouded in solitude.

#max verstappen image #max verstappen x you #max verstappen x reader #max verstappen imagine #max verstappen fanfic #reader insert #x reader #x fem!reader #max verstappen x fem!reader

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perseruna · 19 days

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heyyyy do you have any details/sources for the ca*ill being a jackass thing? ngl i watch twn for yen and jaskier so i was already planning on continuing to season 4 but i'd love some reasons to be actively excited for the actor switch. but i haven't kept up on the behind-the-scenes stuff so i'm kinda lost on that front if you're up for sharing any of what you know!

okay guys buckle up this is THE anti henry cavill megathread xoxo

First of all him dating a teenager as a 33 year old fully grown man literally gross and disgusting.

Also as this quote implies they started dating a year prior and only went public when she was 19 so they supposedly started dating when she was 18.

His entire dating history is a MESS. Sure the women he dated are not him, but he chose to date them, I wouldn't even associate myself with people like these let alone be in a relationship with them. He dated the infamous transphobic TERF Gina Carano, albeit before her loud controversy, but I doubt her harmful views were any different back then. His current gf has a history of doing black face.

His "Me Too" comments.

His comments on the Me Too movement are literally so vile. If you don’t want to be called a rapist, just don’t rape women, it’s literally as simple as that. They’re even more foul because they’re promoting the idea that women lie about their abusive for fame, promoting that harmful rhetoric especially in our times is incredibly dangerous.

Now onto his on set behavior.

We can't talk about his set behavior without mentioning the deuxmoi set leak. Here's the transcript of it:

[Transcript:

There’s something I really really wanted to read to you guys--it has to do with why Henry Cavill left The Witcher. I know that was something that you guys were super interested in when it happened, and I just recently got this message. Somebody was like “Hey, do you want to know what really went down?” And I was like “Sure!” So let me just read it. It says:

“At the beginning of the show, Henry was good to work with. A lot of difficult demands that made people feel like he wasn’t a team player, but that’s not unusual for a really big star. Though in TV it truly usually doesn’t happen until the second season. But in season two and three something shifted and he became really impossible for women to work with, which is always a big problem, but even worse here because the showrunner is a woman. He would try to overrule her and try to get changes made last minute across the board without her knowledge, which, if you know anything about showrunning, is completely fucked. The showrunner has to sign off on every miniscule detail down to the buttons on a costume. Female writers and directors were suddenly being completely ignored on set, unable to do their jobs. Every department head was complaining. He started making comments—it wasn’t a sexual thing, he wasn’t grabbing anyone or being lewd, but it was disrespectful and toxic all the same.

“He is deeply addicted to video games, to the point where it was like working with any other addict. He was distracted, he was late, he was obsessive, and a lot of people think the misogyny came from gamer world. Video game bro language is not how you talk to coworkers, and he wouldn’t stop. Someone on the show compared it to watching someone get brainwashed by QAnon, like his whole personality shifted. Eventually his disrespect escalated. He would rewrite scenes without even alerting the other actors in the scenes until it was time to shoot. He decided that he didn’t want any romantic scenes at all—no kissing scenes, no shirtless scenes, et cetera. He wanted complete control of storylines but really had no idea of the limitations of TV, structure, budget, et cetera. He formed a weird alliance with one writer who was also a gamer, who eventually got fired after multiple HR complaints were made and after that writer left, Henry did anything he could to hold up production and cause problems.

“Eventually top brass at Netflix was tired of him costing them money with delays and HR investigations and the showrunner was asked to construct a potential exit for him. Netflix reached out to him personally and he was given one final warning, and violated that warning with an email he sent to the entire writing staff right after that meeting. That was it. It’s very disappointing.”

End transcript.]

Now believe me or not, but I know from a really good source that the leak was indeed real.

There's a lot of patterned behavior that tracks with what we know of him and his past controversies.

After that leak came out, there was a lot of people from different places coming to comment that ‘yes’ they’ve heard a very similar story adding a little bit more details of their own.

this quickly deleted tweet from one of the writers/producers:

there were rumors about him being an asshole to Anya specifically.

He went on record that he doesn't "understand" sex scenes. Which I know the sex discourse is rampant nowadays and each to their own, but he specifically signed up for a role that requires those scenes and then refused to do them and was allegedly nasty to Anya about it and with the way he talks about women...

Also it’s important to touch upon the “writer he had a weird alliance with” that man in question is Beau DeMayo of the recent fame of getting fired by Marvel from X-Men ‘97. He was previously allegedly fired from The Witcher for being emotionally and physically abusive. And he allegedly got fired from X-Men for being abusive as well. One of The Witcher writers tweeted this after Beau smeared them for “disliking the books” Beau was literally the first person to start that narrative.

The fact that it was HIS idea not to say lines of his dialogue in S1 and instead grunt. To the point that Joey had to take Henry’s lines and make it his own, so the plot would make sense, he talks about it in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Oyh0t117t0U&, and then once S2 press arrived Henry was talking about how he was trying to fight the big bad writers to give him more lines. Ridiculous.

Everyone is already pointing out that the cast looks so much happier without him, and it’s very true. Henry was never present on close to any BTS pics from filming the previous seasons, or on any cast dinners or birthdays. He wouldn't even do any shared interviews with the other three mains but only had solo interviews which to me was giving disrespectful like you're an ensemble you’re not the only lead here. It felt like he was above them to sit down and answer questions with them. When they were doing press junkets in Brazil and Poland Anya, Joey and Freya would always arrive together and leave together with that man leaving all the events early and by himself. And like people who post quotes from the cast about him being perfect from press junkets as “proof” are insane to me like Obviously they’re going to say nice things about him, not only they're newcomers, and he's an established industry name, but they’re doing PRESS for a show that he’s a STAR of (well, was lmao)

The fact that he never defended Anya from the racist trolls, even though most of them were HIS fans. Like she had to go through so much and that man couldn’t make a single comment about it as a leading man BUT he could make a whole IG post because people were being mean to his gf and calling her out for doing blackface.

And sure people might say that a lot of these are unverified sources, and I’d get it if it was a singular case, but there are a ton of these accounts that all match each other. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

#anti henry cavill #the witcher #mega thread

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garbinge · 8 months

Text

You, Me, and Italy

Michael Berzatto x F!Reader From these August Prompts: Italy Word Count: 3.5k Warnings: All my fics are 18+, angsty, mentions of suicide, death, grief, loss, broken heart, drug use, addiction, being high, someone close to ODing, uncomfortable, sad, mentions of sexual situations, it's based on canon mentions of suicide and death and grieving, but a little more in depth. So just be weary of any triggers one might have in reference to these things.

A/N: This is not apart of my Richie Jerimovich multichap. This is heavy. I try and steer clear of fics like this because of my own triggers and trauma around drug abuse and addiction but this just was an idea sitting in my head probably because of all that trauma. The Bear Taglist: @drabbles-mc @justreblogginfics @quixscentsposts @dadbodfanatic-x @adorable-punk-superheroes @lodeddiperrodrick @isalver @captainweasleybarnes @musicwithteeth @fancyvoidtragedy @shinebright2000 @knight4xmas

The kitchen was always your favorite place to be when you couldn’t sleep. Something about the ability to hear every single noise in a space where usually you’d be lucky to hear the person next to you speak at a normal tone.

You had come in through the back, placed your stuff down in the locker that had your name written on a green piece of tape, your insanely patterned bandana was snug around your head just above your forehead, something you always wore when cooking. Now, the sounds of the water running as you washed her hands filled your ears and was followed by the clunks of pulling the knives out, the blade tinging as you set it free from its case. Now slicing, the quick quippy sounds of the thin slices of all the items you needed to prep. Basil, onions, garlic, fig, and parmesan cheese. All the ingredients you picked up from the grocery story that was still open this late. The chopping and the sizzling filled your ears in a similar way that music would fill someone else’s. It kept you grounded, kept you calm, kept you in the moment.

“Late night snack?” A voice interrupted that tranquility but surprisingly, there was no reaction from your side. You kept steady as your hand tossed the garlic and basil in the olive oil, other hand equipped with a spoon ready to add in the parmesan ricotta mixture.

“You’re lucky I don’t scare easily.” Your voice was steady as you focused on the pan in front of you.

Mikey looked down and laughed before he made his way from the office over to his best chef and best friend. He leaned against the prep area, hands crossed as you had your back to him.

“You should toast the breadcrumbs.” Mikey said as he took in what you were doing.

Immediately, your head turned to look over your shoulder and shot the man a look. “I’m a one-woman show here, Mikey. I’m getting to it.”

“You know, I can help you out.” He had crossed his leg over the other now as he waited for a response. “Only if you want to.” His arms were now uncrossed as he raised them in a surrender.

Your head tilted, the only invitation he needed to start helping out.

“I’m making arancini, fig and garlic arancini.” You specified.

“Rice balls. You’re making rice balls.” Mikey teased. “What inspired the fig?” He asked as he toasted the bread crumbs at the stove next to you.

“Remember when we went to that bar the other night?” You looked up at him, despite being a few feet down from you, he still towered over you in height. “While you and Richie were off doing God knows what, I ordered shit from the bar. They had this fig, arugula, and goat cheese pizza.”

“Jesus Christ, what fuckin’ bar were we at?” Mikey laughed at the fanciness of how it all sounded.

“That place, Porta. I’d say it was more hipster than fancy.”

“God, I don’t even remember.” Mikey laughed before placing his attention back on you and continuing the conversation. “So the pizza was good?”

“It was, and I just kept thinking what would go well with fig and landed at a rice ball.”

“Arancini.” Mikey corrected you with the biggest grin growing on his face.

A laugh left your mouth as you took the sauce off the heat, wanting it to cool down slightly before pouring it into the egg mixture that was already placed in the fridge.

The silence fell over the both of you and you both continued to move around the kitchen. Mikey stood with the bowl of rice in his hands, resting it on the prep counter as you stood over and poured in the egg mixture. Mikey was whisking it around rapidly, that way the eggs didn’t scramble. The smell coming from the bowl was filled with savory scents of garlic and sweet touches of fig reduction.

“You good, buddy?” Mikey was looking at you as he stirred everything around. It wasn’t so much in reference to your current state, which was focused as you concentrated on pouring the egg mixture in, but more in reference to why you were here late.

Buddy. Such a Mikey term. The two of you knew each other for years, meeting when you were smoking in the back of the restaurant you used to work out. To put it in simple terms, he poached you. He had just grabbed a bite at said restaurant, with his brother Carmy, a detail you found out later since Mikey came alone to the alley in the back where you had been taking a break. He asked if you had made the slow braised beef and proceeded to tell you about his restaurant. You never walked back into that restaurant again and started at The Beef the next day.

As time passed, things got close with Mikey. The two of you just fed off each other, you vibed effortlessly and one day that led to more. You spent a majority of the night locked in the office making a bed out of the table, the floor, the bookshelf, anything that had an inch of a flat surface, Mikey took you. That however, never amounted to more. It was always just sex. There was no label on what the two of you had, no real dates, no holding hands, just stolen moments around the restaurant, late nights in the kitchen, nights out at bars, and overnights spent at each others places. But that never made anything awkward because despite their being no label, everyone knew there was something between you two. It was impossible to miss. The way you two got along, the way you spent every waking moment together, whether you were at the restaurant or not. But what the real dead giveaway was, you two moved in the kitchen like you had perfected a choreographed dance, every, single, time. There was never any missteps, any arguing, no bumping into each other, you just glided by each other, calling out kitchen terms and directions. It was a sight to be seen, everyone thought so. Including the family. Sugar and Carmy were impressed when you came by for the first time maybe a month into starting at The Beef. Richie had already seen how the two of you worked together but both Berzatto siblings were shocked by it.

“Hey, you good?” Mikey repeated himself and bent down a little to look into your eyes.

“Yea, sorry.” You shook your head from your thoughts.

“I don’t buy it.” Mikey pressed you again for more information. “What’s with late night rice balls?”

“You ever feel stuck?” There was no point in trying to hide what you were feeling from Mikey.

“Uh, just every day of my life.” You let out a breath through your nose in a sort of chuckle. “I just, wish I could get out of here.” The frustration was littered in your voice.

“Where would you go?” He set the bowl down now that everything was stirred, and he turned to face you.

“Anywhere.” You turned too so you were facing him.

“So let’s go.” His voice raised, like what he said and meant didn’t need planning, didn’t need money, he spoke it outloud like it was the easiest thing to achieve.

“Yea, where?” You were about to start naming off places around here in Chicago as a joke but he was quick to answer you.

“Italy.”

You frowned but a smile was growing on your face. “Italy?” You questioned.

“Yea, let’s go to Italy, we’ll eat all the rice balls in the fuckin’ country, we’ll learn how to make ‘em like a true Italian. We’ll eat our way around Rome, Sicily, Naples, it’ll be great, just me and you and Italy.” He was so energetic in how he spoke, his hands were in the air, his voice was echoing off the kitchen walls.

“You, me, and Italy?” You questioned him as your head nodded in agreement.

“You, me, and Italy.” Mikey nodded with the biggest smile on his face.

____

Time might’ve passed and a lot of things might’ve changed, but sometimes stayed exactly the same. You were pushing through the back door of The Beef, bag and kitchen tools in hand as the clock ticked past 1AM.

“Mikey?” You called out, expecting to see him appear in the kitchen. You called out again and heard nothing. It was odd, but also maybe not. He had been distant lately, you picked up on that when most nights he didn’t come back to your place. You knew things had been tough for him, he was having money issues and as a result moved back in with his mother, he was stressed. Every time you did get the chance to see him, he wasn’t fully there, sometimes you’d taste alcohol on his breath, others you could tell his mind was caught in a thought or 20.

Moving to the lockers, you saw the door open just slightly and the lamp on illuminating a ton of paperwork. You saw his hand resting on the table and slowly peaked in.

Now, you had your suspicions, they were probably more than suspicions, you knew. You knew Mikey was hooked on something. But you didn’t want to accept it. But there it was, slapping you right in the face. It had been functional, he had been functional, which is what made it easy for you to question, for you to say nothing. After tonight, you’d regret it, you’d regret staying silent, not giving in to your suspicions, voicing them out loud.

You took in the sight of him, he was so out of it, you could see his glazed over eyes even from the distance you were at. The giveaway as if everything else wasn’t so obvious was the pills scattered all over the paperwork in front of him.

“Mikey.” The urgency hit you just as much as the the scene of him. You were next to him in seconds, shaking him awake.

The smile that filled his face as he stared at you, the smile that warmed your heart, the smile that melted you, the smile of your best fucking friend was breaking you.

“What–what’re you doin’ here?”

“How much did you take, Mikey?” You moved forward to the table to search for a bottle, a pill count, see how many were on the table, but Mikey’s hands began to grab your arms.

“No, no, no, no, no. Stop, you’re ruining the fun.” Mikey complained, his voice was slurred.

You pulled back immediately, uncomfortable and unsure what to do. Your heart was beating fast and before your tears could even start falling, Mikey started yelling. “You’re ruining the fun!!” It was a repetition of what he had said before and all it did was secure your feet frozen to the ground. “That’s all anyone ever does anymore. Ruin the fucking fun.” He spun in the swivel chair like a child and when it stopped spinning he looked at the bookshelf and began speaking again, but this time more at a whisper.

“Even my own fuckin girl. I can’t have anything.”

You snuck out the door, searching for your phone in your pocket. The irony that in your hastiness, you spent more time looking for it than if you searched for it with purpose and patience.

As you picked your phone up to your ear, your hand was shaking. “C’mon, pick up, pick up.” You mumbled, taking your other hand to pick at your lip.

“It’s 1 in the fuckin’ morning, I’m neck deep in shit diapers, if this is you and Mikey asking me to go out, I’m blocking your number for eternity.” Richie seemed stressed in a completely different way.

“Richie, it’s Mikey, he uh, I don’t know, there’s pills, he’s awake–sort of?, he’s angry, I don’t know how much he took but he, he uh, I just need help, I need you down here, can you get down here, please?” The shakiness in your voice was the dam holding back your tears.

“I’ll be there in 10 minutes. Keep him up.”

With that Richie hung up and you were moving back into the office, you squatted down and turned the chair so he was facing you. “Mikey, babe?” You tried to keep your voice soft. His red, glossy eyes met yours as he plopped his head down to look at you.

“My girl.” A little bit of hope filled his face, he reached his hand up to cup your face. The impulse to pull away was strong but you stayed there, you stayed there with him and let him speak to you.

“You’re so pretty, you know that? So pretty. And you’re so talented, you can throw down, you know that? Best fuckin slow braised beef I’ve ever fuckin’ had.”

The amount of compliments he was giving you, it should’ve had you elated, floating, with butterflies but instead it was making you sick–uneasy. And you just had to sit there and let him say it, over and over again. You were counting in your head, hoping that once you got to the 10th 60th second count, that Richie would be here.

“Hey hey hey, you listening to me?” Mikey moved slightly to look at you, even in his fogged state he could tell your mind was elsewhere.

“Mhm.” You nodded, tears welling up in your eyes as you stared into his eyes.

“You, me, and Italy, baby. You, me, and Italy.” The second time he said it, it was in a whisper like he was desperate for it to be true. Like if he said it low enough the world would grant him the wish. That’s when you really saw him, saw what was happening in his brain. Alongside that hopeful look was one of peace and happiness. The absolute gut wrenching emotion you felt in your heart when you realized it. How being high set Mikey free, set him free from his demons, in some weird twisted way this was the closest you’ve seen Mikey to his usual self.

Before your heart could break anymore, you heard Richie’s voice behind you and he was slipping into your spot and picking Mikey up.

______

“You know I remember this one time, we went over to Mikey’s place, the one on Courtyard, me, Carm, and Richie, and it was Sunday, Braciole night. We walk in, Mikey’s got the game playing so loud in the background, we start prepping, cooking. I remember he told me not to put raisins in the braciole even though that’s how mom did it. And he just, he had this smile on for those first 30 minutes, like he had something planned, like he was in on the joke. But the thing is none of us knew what the joke was. And then, the door opened, we were all confused at who it was and then, this woman appeared. Mikey introduced her to us, he was so happy, and we were like shocked, cause Mikey, our big brother, the player, brought this girl over to our fucked up family Sunday night dinner. She didn’t care that the TV was loud, that we were even louder, that Mikey and Richie would tell the most insane stories, over and over again, and in fact, she moved around the kitchen like, well, like she’d known us all our whole lives. I don’t know if I ever saw Mikey so happy.” Sugar was sitting in bed, her phone on speaker while you sat silent on the other line.

“You at the restaurant?” Sugar cleared her throat.

“Standing right outside it.” You spoke up, trying to hide your tears from the story Sugar just told.

“I’ll be there soon.” There was rustling on the other side of the phone, like she had started to get up and get ready.

“Sugar?” You questioned, worried she was about to hang up.

“Hm?” She hummed.

“Thank you.” It was two words but sometimes you needed to hear it. How much Mikey loved you, he didn’t tell you often, but you felt it, you saw it. But now, that he was gone, that all that was left of Mikey for you was the things he left at your place, the memories you shared, you took the antidotes Sugar occasionally told you and kept them someplace special.

“I’ll see you in the chaos.” Sugar replied back to you in which you did the same.

For a few seconds after the phone call, you stood there, staring at the gutted restaurant, staring at the mayhem happening behind the glass, which was normal for the restaurant, whether it was in business or not. But right now, standing outside, in the peace of the quiet reminded you of those late nights in the kitchen, and you were destined to hold onto that peace for just a few more minutes.

Eventually, you joined the chaos. Greeting everyone as you made your way through the renovation. Finding yourself getting swept up into something in the immediate first seconds you entered the front door. After an hour or so, when you wrapped up your job in the front, you made your way to the kitchen.

“What’re you doing?” You placed your stuff down in the office as you walked past Richie, Fak, and Marcus who were gathered around someone’s phone watching a video, arguing back and forth. Natalie stood up from the chair in the office and placed a hand on your shoulder in a half greeting and walked over to the arguing men. Your eyes lingered on the office table and chair a little longer than normal, letting the memories flood into your brain for a short few seconds before you turned to put your attention back on everyone.

“Scraping and painting and fighting over moving the lockers.” Marcus spoke up.

You turned around and stepped out of the office, staring at them trying to attempt to move the lockers. Carmy had appeared now, yelling at them to keep it down and when the mention of Mikey’s locker still being locked was announced, that’s when everyone silences.

“Just fuckin’ open it.” Carmy spoke up.

A hat. June 5th, 2010. Taste of Chicago. The booth.

You smiled at that. You weren’t there for the booth, but you heard all about it. From the family, but from Mikey, it was one of the many stories he’d tell you over and over and honestly, you’d do anything to hear him tell it 200 more times.

Carmy handed the hat to Richie, and as he turned around his eyes fell on your.

“Yo, uh, I got something for you.” He said and walked right past you into the office, searching for something. As everyone went back to working, you turned and took a few steps towards Carmy as he moved the papers around looking for something.

“So, uh, we’re sending Ebra and Tina to culinary school, for them to stay sharp, learn some new shit, and uh, I–we, Syd and I figured you didn’t want or honestly really need that, so uh–here!” He proclaimed the last word louder than the rest as he found the envelope with your name written on it and handed it to you.

You looked down at it for a second and then back at Carmy, you two didn’t talk much in general, but you definitely didn’t talk much about him.

“You and Syd…” You started to say as you mindlessly tapped the envelope against your skin. “You uh,” You wanted to say that the two of them reminded you a lot of you and Mikey, the effortlessness in the kitchen, the way their ideas just bounced off each others and how they brought this new sense of life to each other. But it was that last thought that weighed heavy on you. There was a point that Mikey brought a new sense of life to you and you did the same to him but unfortunately that emotion, that feeling, had changed at some point, at no ones fault but it didn’t stop you from not cherishing it more. “Just, don’t take it for granted.”

“Yea, yea.” Carmy nodded, getting where you were coming from but also not really wanting to get into it and you were okay with that because you didn’t want to get into it either.

Carmy’s eyes moved down to the envelope and back to you. Taking the hint you nodded. “Right.” You said quickly and began to rip the envelope open. As your hand reached in and pulled out the papers in the envelope, you saw the word United and then followed by a seat and time and that’s when you saw the airports.

ORD – NAP

Naples International Airport.

“Carmy.” You looked up, eyes shocked.

“It’s what Mikey would’ve wanted.” Carmy nodded and walked by you, taking his hand to rest on your shoulder and then tap it as he exited the office.

You stared down at the tickets, trying to take in everything.

“You, me, and Italy, Mikey.”

#The Bear #The Bear FX #The Bear fanfic #Mikey Berzatto #Michael Berzatto #Michael Berzatto x Reader #Mikey Berzatto x Reader

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waiting4inspiration · 2 years

Text

No One But You (Billy Hargrove x Reader)

Summary: Billy's always been close with you but he never realized that you've filled a hole in him until you ignore him after he unknowingly broke your heart. His loneliness drives you to get you back.

Warnings: strong language, angst, fluff, mentions of abuse, mentions of billy being a player (i guess), mentions of smoking, mentions of not wanting to live, fighting in public, crying, sweet happy ending, friends-to-lovers (kind of)

Word Count: 2,104

Request: Hi! Can you write a Billy fic, the reader is fell in love with Billy, so she always gets his attention, cheers him up, brings him food/cute stuff, comforts him when Neil abuses him. Billy loves the attention from the reader but still flirts with other girls because he thinks he doesn't do relationship then reader finds billy kissing someone else and it broke her heart then she started ignoring him and then billy realizes that he misses her and likes her to be his. Please it make it super angsty but a nice sweet ending! Pretty please. Thanks and Have a nice day! 🎊🎊

A/n: Whaat? Two Billy fic in one day?? Clearly I have nothing better to do with my time and love this boy... plus I did say I would post these requests as I finish them so tada

Billy Hargrove Masterlist II Stranger Things Masterlist

Billy loves the attention. It’s why he plays his music loudly when he drives, why he openly flirts with practically every woman he sees, and why he walks with such confidence in his step. It makes everyone in the room turn their gaze to him, and he loves it. When he met you, his feelings were indifferent about how you tried to do things to get him to notice you and keep talking to you.

The way you became persistent to have his attention ended up making him get closer to you than he has with any other woman. People might say that he considers you a friend. And perhaps he does.

You always manage to cheer him up when he’s in a foul mood at school, whether it’s by talking until you go into a rant about some teacher or some girls that have pissed you off, or by bringing him samples of treats you had baked the previous night at home for him to taste. Not to mention that he’s kept some of the gifts you’ve gotten him, despite him telling you how you don’t have to do that.

Yeah, maybe he’s gotten close to you. It’s why he didn’t try and push you away when you found him sitting on a park bench with a bruised cheek at night, recovering from a ‘rough handling’ from his father. After that, he sought comfort in your presence whenever his father hit him.

But Billy never saw anything going further with you. He always thought he wasn’t the kind of person that does long-lasting relationships. He doesn’t think he could commit. And after everything he’s been through with you, how close he’s gotten to you, he doesn’t think he could pull his moves on you.

So, he continues to flirt with girls, doing what he does best and getting them to smile and laugh at his witty comments, not thinking that it would affect what he has with you.

Until you just disappear.

He notices one morning how you’ve stopped meeting him at his car in the mornings before school, how you never seem to find him in the hallways anymore or in his secret smoking spots. You don’t look at him during the classes you have together anymore. Not even to share in a funny experience or an inside joke.

At first, he didn’t care. He told himself that perhaps without your constant presence, he’d have more time to himself and his own doings. He won’t have to deal with your ranting anymore.

Then, he started to feel small pangs of loneliness. Without you, his life felt quiet and he can’t remember when last he smiled and laughed genuinely. Without you there to comfort him after his dad hit him, Billy really felt like he had no one in the world. He would wait for you to come to that park bench, but you never came. And he asked himself why you were being so cruel to him?

He tries to drown his loneliness with music, but it only makes him think about the times he would make you listen to every tape he had as a way to ‘teach you what real music is’. It would make him remember how you would laugh as he drummed his hands against his thighs with the drum line of the song. His room felt too quiet now without you, no matter how loud he would blast his music, annoying Max in the other room.

As people file into the school building on Monday morning, Billy leans against his car, staring down at the lighter in his hand. It was a gift from you after his last one died and it has never let him down since you gave it to him. Now, he’s forced to think about you again every time he lights a cigarette.

Now, thinking about how it feels like you’re ignoring him, it makes him angry. He feels his blood starting to boil in his veins, thinking about how no other girl could manage to fill the empty space you left in his life. He’s angry that you didn’t even give him a head’s up or a reason for just flaking out on him.

He lifts his head after stuffing the lighter in his pocket and immediately spots you walking towards the school building. Quickly pushing himself off his car, he rushes forward, determined to not go another without you acknowledging him.

“Did I do something wrong?” he practically shouts, slipping in front of you and making you look at him for the first time in a week. “Or is this just a new, bitchy side to you?”

Your lip flares in a snarl, your eyes narrowing at him as you step around him. “I don’t want to talk to you,” you mutter, purposefully walking into his shoulder as you pass him.

But it doesn’t make him back down.

His hand shoots out to grab your arm, pulling you back, and giving you a stern look as his grip tightens. “Really? Because I used to struggle trying to get you to stop following me like a fucking puppy,” he snaps, letting your arm go when you pull it out of his grip.

“I doubt you’ll have trouble finding a replacement for me following you around, if my absence bothers you so much. Seeing as how you’re constantly flirting with anything in a skirt,” you shout back at him, adjusting the strap of your back over your shoulder as you attempt to walk away from him again.

“Oh, I’ll be fine finding a replacement for you. But who are you going to be following around from now on?”

“Fuck you, Billy,” you shout over your shoulder for the entire school to hear.

Your cuss at him doesn’t feel like a joke. It feels way too serious for him. And it dawns on him that this is not some kind of banter between you two. He’s done something that deeply upset you and he’s not sure what it is so he doesn’t know how to fix it. He doesn’t even know why he wants to fix it.

Throughout the day, he’s staring at you when you’re in sight, his knee bouncing up and down as he waits for it to dawn on him what he did.

Fuck, he just wants you to look at him and smile again. He just wants you to meet him by his locker to rant about whatever is on your mind. He just wants to spend those quiet moments at night on the park bench with you again.

He wants you.

He misses you.

“Fuck,” he hisses at himself in his car on the way home, hitting his steering wheel before turning it to make a U-turn right in the middle of the road. His foot practically on the floor, he zooms to your house and he doesn’t intend on leaving until he has you in his life again.

Arriving just in time to see you reach the front door, he comes to a screeching halt in your driveway and flies out of his car, slamming his door behind him as he walks towards you.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” you shout, dropping your bag at the front door before storming towards him. “What don’t you understand about ‘I don’t want to talk to you’?”

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s pissed you off so much,” he firmly says, standing in front of you and staring down at you with a harsh glare.

You shake your head, scoff in disbelief, and run your hands over your face. “God, you’re so stupid sometimes. Is that what Rachel finds attractive?”

“Who the fuck is Rachel?”

“Rachel Smith! The girl you were making out with against your locker last week,” you shout up at him.

Then he realizes what this is all about. It makes his face fall and he takes a deep breath as you laugh to yourself, turning your eyes down to hide the tears welling up in them.

“I thought you cared about me. I thought…” you trail off, shaking your head and looking up at him as you swallow a hard lump in your throat. “I thought that maybe you saw something in me that no one has ever seen in me before. I fell in love with you for that, thinking that maybe you’d feel the same way about me even if you say that you don’t do relationships. I thought that maybe you would change your mind. But it seems that I was just as stupid as every other girl you play,” you say, your voice the softest he’s ever heard.

A tear falls down your cheek, making Billy realize that he’s hurt you. He’s broken your heart without even meaning to do that. He would never intend to hurt you when all you’ve done for him is heal him. If he had known your feelings before, he would never have kissed Rachel.

Would he?

If it meant that he would lose you, then of course he wouldn’t have.

When he doesn’t say anything, you turn around to walk away. But he doesn’t want you to leave.

He grabs your wrist to stop you. Only, this time his touch is gentle and you can feel the desperation in his hold. You can’t bear to look at him now, fearing that this is just a ploy to get you to let him back in your life. The thought that he might be trying to play his tricks on you makes your head drop between your shoulders.

“Please let me go, Billy,” you beg, shutting your eyes and letting more tears roll down your cheeks,

Billy shakes his head, knowing that you can’t see it, and takes a small step towards you. “I can’t,” There’s no more shouting between you two and the atmosphere has changed, making your head crane slightly so you can see his figure out the corner of your eye. “You have no idea how miserable I’ve been without you there beside me. How lonely I felt,” he says, his voice breaking slightly as he takes another step forward.

It makes your head turn to face him fully, your throat closing up when you see that he’s close to tears himself.

“It always felt like something was missing in my life. I just never realized that it was you until you left,” he whispers, turning you around and letting go of your wrist as he raises his hand to wipe a tear off your cheek. “If this past week is what it’s like living this life without you, then I don’t want to live.”

“Don’t say that,” you choke out.

“Why not? It’s true.”

Your gaze falls, but his other hand comes up to cup your other cheek and he steps closer to you, making your hands rest on his chest. He makes you look at him, and this is the closest you two have ever been. You’ve often thought about what the build-up to a kiss with him might be like, that it would involve being this close to him. You just never thought that possibility of it happening to you would be in a situation like this where you’re crying.

“Fuck the other girls. They can’t begin to make me feel like how you make me feel. I want you.”

You shake your head, almost not believing his words as you cast your eyes down again. God, you really hate him seeing you cry.

He leans forward, pressing his forehead against yours, his eyes fluttering shut just as yours do, and small pleas falling from his lips. “Please, (Y/n). Please forgive me,” he whispers, and you almost don’t hear his words.

“You’re sorry?” you ask, lifting your head to press your forehead a bit more against his.

“So fucking sorry.”

You’re quiet for a second, only letting out a shaky breath before you snake your arms around his waist and stepping into his chest. “Don’t do it again.”

Billy smiles at your words, wraps his arms around your shoulders, and pulls in closer to his body. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

As he stands there in your front yard, his arms around you and yours around his, he feels that empty space inside him start to fill up again. It’s like someone has taken a pencil and filled out the missing part of a picture, colored in the empty, outlined shape.

No one could have filled that space as you do. No one but you.

#billy hargrove imagines #billy hargrove x reader #billy hargrove #billy hargrove angst #billy hargrove fluff #stranger things billy hargrove #stranger things imagine #stranger things fic #stranger things 4 #stranger things #soft!billy hargrove

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maccreadysbaby · 17 days

Text

A Hundred Ways to Become a Wayne

batfamily + oc insert

tw: none

wanna read more? here’s the table of contents!

want to read the first fic in the hundred days series so you understand what’s going on here? here it is!

and john’s back at it again ALSO one of his lines is FORESHADOWING babdmdkdkfjsn

part thirty-seven

❝ PLAN B ❞

THURSDAY — SEPTEMBER 3 — 12:00 PM

BENTLEY WAS PRETTY SURE HE’D NEVER MET ANYONE, NOT EVEN THE PUPPET MASTER, WHO COULD PULL STRINGS LIKE A WAYNE. Because, less than four hours later (with Bruce’s blessing), Bentley Whittaker and Jason Todd were waiting to get called into the visitation room at Blackgate Penitentiary to see his father.

Bentley hadn’t expected to be so nervous. Maybe he should’ve, since he was going to talk to the man who’d abused him for ten years, kidnapped him, poisoned him, and was now turning people into terrifying monsters whose only soul purpose was to murder his family. Not to mention that he’d just been patted and scanned and checked all over by people who, he was pretty darn positive, were carrying guns. And he was in a prison. Full of, like, murderers and stuff.

Before they’d left the house, he’d been a normal amount of nervous, but now, sitting in the empty prison hallway, he was downright horrified. He and Jason were sitting in uncomfortable metal chairs, staring down at old tile. Bentley’s knee was bouncing at a pace that might rival Nico’s superpowers. Honestly, as dreary as it was, he’d rather be back at the Manor sitting on the same loveseat watching Asten puke his guts out every ten minutes. (Because, yes, that was happening again.)

Bentley heard Jason breathe in and out. “You know, it’s not too late to back out.”

Bentley glanced over at him. They were both a little more presentable now, mirroring one another in varying colored jeans and hoodies. Jason had fixed his hair in its typical upward fashion, putting the white streak on full display. He was looking back at Bentley, a serious look on his face, his greenish-blue eyes gleaming oddly under the fluorescent lights.

Bentley looked down at his ratty red tennis shoes, at his vigorously bouncing knee. “No.”

He felt Jason’s eyes on him, and could practically feel the smirk on his face when he replied: “You sure? Because you look like you’re trying to pedal a broken bicycle.”

Bentley forced his knee to stop moving. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Jason said, patting Bentley’s knee once, quickly. “Just… really think about it. I can’t come in with you, so it’ll just be you, him, and a cop. If you really don’t want to do it, that’s okay.”

Bentley let out a puff of air. “I’m going to do it.”

“Okay,” He saw Jason nod in his peripheral, and after a moment of silence, he leaned in close and continued: “But if anything happens, I’ll blow that door off its hinges before the cops even know what’s happening.”

Bentley cracked a smile at that, and Jason sat back with a triumphant smirk.

Waiting felt like both an eternity and a split second. One minute, he and Jason were sitting alone in the hall, the next, he was being ushered through a big, thick door by a female officer who was relaying ground rules and reinforcing the fact that Bentley only had twenty minutes to talk to his dad.

“You don’t have to stay for all twenty,” Jason interrupted as Bentley was whisked down the hall, which the officer didn’t really appreciate. The woman kept talking but Bentley couldn’t really focus; he was too busy trying to peer into the visitation area.

The long, barren hallway turned into a long, barren room, lined with plexiglass booths. There were no other people in there. Each booth had a phone and desk on either side, separated in the middle by a wall of glass. There was a sign above every window that said: please don’t scratch the glass!

Bentley steeled when he spotted a mop of red hair that matched his to the tee, sitting behind one of the windows. He breathed in and out. His father couldn’t get to him behind the glass, right? Bentley didn’t see any holes or doors or ways for him to get into the room. The police officer, whose hair Bentley could now see was black, closed the door to the room and went to stand along the wall.

With a final quick glance up to her, Bentley made his way to the rickety spinning stool across from his father. Third booth from the right.

He looked… different. Not so clean cut. His hair was longer — he’d always been so anal about trimming his hair that Bentley was thoroughly shocked at the sight of the shaggy red mop that looked a lot like his own now. He had a little facial hair, too, patchy and strange looking. He was wearing a matching set of gray clothes, not a pressed suit, and when Bentley sat down, his shiny brown eyes bored into the child’s head like an electric drill.

Bentley, when he sat down, moved his feet up to the highest rung on the stool in an attempt to make himself smaller. Cut the head off the snake, right? That’s what he was here to do; stop the operation in its tracks. So… how was he supposed to manipulate the manipulator? (In hindsight, maybe he should’ve thought a little bit more before he decided to go to the prison.)

His father picked up the black wall-phone on his side of the glass and brought it up to his ear. Talking openly about, like, crime and stuff was pretty stupid, though, wasn’t it?

Bentley lifted his hands, finger-spelling: sign.

His father put the phone back.

A moment of silence passed where Bentley’s father just sort of watched him closely; contemplating. His eyes scoured what had to be every inch of his son’s appearance before he lifted his hands and signed: ‘You’ve grown.’

Bentley thought long and hard about how he should respond. He considered saying: Yeah, food helps with that, but decided against it. Instead, he just bobbed his fist yes. This was already way harder than he’d thought. How was he supposed to talk to him? After he’d… you know. After all, his father never really gave up, even in jail.

Bentley kept his gaze trained on his father’s hands like he used to, avoiding eye contact like the plague. He didn’t want to see his face.

The hands moved. ‘How is school?’

Bentley breathed in and out, fingerspelling: ‘Fine.’ Well, besides having a murdering mad scientist (who moves at his father’s command.) for a teacher, and a bully who thought it would be funny to lock Bentley in the janitor's closet. That and the fact that he was now in the public eye for living with Bruce. He didn’t even want to know what the news reports looked like lately. Bruce Wayne’s newest child, gone without a trace?

John nodded. Another brief moment of staring ensued, before he brought his hands up again. ‘Made any friends?’

Not besides the ones you tried to kill. Bentley blinked a few times, moving his fingers calculatively. ‘Yes. But you already knew that.’

His father’s expression grew curious, in an arrogant sort of way, like he was raising his brows to say oh, really? Bentley only looked at him for a second before his eyes drifted back to the table his father’s elbows were resting on.

‘I know you’re still talking to Dr. Keene,’ Bentley signed subtly, glancing at the officer behind them, who looked anything but engaged. ‘And I’m sure you know by now that he had us at the facility. Then he didn’t.’

His father said nothing. Typical, and a great way to piss off an already sort of simmering-in-his-own-silent-rage kind of child.

Bentley kept his hands moving, lest they stop. ‘You’re hurting innocent people just to get back at me? I never did anything to you.’

John lifted his hands, his fingers twitching oddly for a moment before he signed: ‘It wasn’t about you. It was about Bruce.’

Bentley fought the urge to roll his eyes. ‘But-’

‘Bruce is the reason your mother and sister are dead. And then he came along and took you away from me, too,’ His father’s hands were sort of trembling, now, his expression intense and hard. Bentley could feel his eyes but still wouldn’t look right at them.

‘You didn’t even want me. What sense is there in attacking someone who got the kid you never wanted? Now you don’t have to deal with me,’ Bentley signed, looking at his father’s hands, shaking his head subtly. ‘You hate me, and now I’m somebody else’s problem. You should be happy.’

‘I don’t hate you,’ Was his father’s reply. Bentley saw his expression change. ‘I love you.’

The child breathed in through his nose. Not this, not again. Get the conversation back on track — control it. ‘No, you don’t.’

‘You can’t tell me what I do and don’t love; you don’t know,’ His father signed. ‘I love you.’

‘No, you don’t, and I don’t care. That’s not what I’m here to talk about,’ Bentley tried, but his signs went unnoticed.

‘I do, Bentley. I love you,’

Bentley inhaled sharply, looking down at the table with a few blinks. The last time his father had said that, it was a big fat lie. What had Bentley ever done to deserve all of that? All of this? What did he do not to deserve his father’s love?

Still, he caved for the patented back-and-forth arguing game. ‘You don’t.’

‘You just don’t want to accept the fact that maybe you’re wrong.’ His father signed, lowering his head so it was more in Bentley’s view. ‘You don’t want to accept the fact that I can change. That I can be more than the monster under your bed.’

What if his father could change? Not that Bentley thought he was. He was still a crazy psycho killer. But what if, one day, he wasn’t? What if, one day, he really was more than the monster from Bentley’s past? What if one day he really wanted to love him?

What if he wanted him back one day?

Bentley tried to push the thoughts out of his mind — he was on a mission. He was the Puppeteer. Right? His father couldn’t really love him. Right?

‘You asked me in the warehouse why I didn’t love you, and I’m telling you now, that I do,’ His father continued to sign, and Bentley’s eyes began to burn. He tried to push it away with everything in him, but something didn’t want to let go of the hope. The hope that maybe his real dad could love him again. ‘I did some awful things to you out of my own pain. Terrible things I would never wish upon any child in this world. I don’t know if I’ll ever do enough good to make up for it, but the one thing I can make damn well sure I do is let you know that I do love you.’

Bentley looked down at the table. It had been almost a year. Could someone change so fast? A year was long enough, wasn’t it?

‘You’re not lying this time?’ He signed in return.

‘No, Bentley. I didn’t see it before, but I see it now — getting you taken away, coming here, spending my time thinking, reflecting… It helped me realize that you were the best thing that ever happened to me. The only thing I really wanted. Needed.’

Bentley shook his head, blinking away the beginnings of tears. Rational thought and logic said he was lying. Hope said something else. ‘I don’t believe you.’

To the child’s surprise, his father smiled. Actually, literally smiled. With teeth and all. Teeth. Bentley’s father never smiled, let alone at him. ‘That’s okay. I’ll just keep saying it. I love you.’

Bentley shook his head, breathing in, swallowing thickly. ‘Stop.’

‘I love you, Bentley. I love you so much,’

‘Stop lying,’ He tried again.

‘I love you,’

‘Stop it,’

‘Look up at me. Please?’

That strange little sliver of hope had Bentley lifting his head on command, his brown eyes meeting the identical ones of his father. His father had tears — actual, honest tears — beginning to glimmer at the bottom of his eyes, a smile playing on his lips.

‘People can change, Bentley. You’re surrounded by them. Damian Wayne went from being a murderer to a superhero. Jason Todd went from rage-killing to a full-time older brother,’ He explained with his hands, smile staying all the while. ‘I can change, Bentley. I want to change. I just need you to have faith in me.’

Bentley stared, dumbfounded, vision slightly obscured by the liquid in his eyes.

‘I,’ His father separated the signs for emphasis with a smile, and an honest to goodness tear went down the man’s face. ‘Love. You.’

All that reliable rational thought and logic went out the window, and Bentley brought a hand to his mouth. Of all the things he expected to do while talking to his father, crying was not one of them. But here he was. Crying. (He probably should’ve expected to cry anyways. He was basically a professional at it.)

For a moment, he just rested his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands. So many red flags were waving in his mind, alarm bells sounding, lights flashing, telling him his father was lying, deceiving him, but he couldn’t really bring himself to accept it. He couldn’t. Not when his father had just told him he’d loved him ten times in one conversation. Not when Bentley was so close to feeling what he’d always wanted to feel. His father loving him was different from Dick or Bruce, it was… more. It didn’t feel the same. Different, long overdue, and… really, really, really, really good.

So, there he sat for a solid five minutes at least, his palms buried in his eye sockets in an attempt to keep the tears in. (It didn’t work. When did it ever?) He was biting his tongue to keep silent in fear Jason really would hear him crying through the wall and come break it down.

Logic told him to stop. To pay attention. To use his Puppeteer mind to see through everything his father was saying. That if he really had changed, if he really loved him, he wouldn’t be doing all of this.

The part of him that wanted so badly to be loved didn’t let him.

Because what if his dad really did love him?

There was a subtle peck on the glass, and Bentley looked up again, finally letting his (watery, and red.) brown eyes meet his father’s and stay there. He was still smiling, kind of like Bruce always did.

‘It’s been a year, and you still crumble under the weight of three small words. I thought I taught you better than that.’

Bentley sat up, wiping at his eyes, and glanced around the room warily. His father’s smile fell into nothing — something cold, like Bentley was used to. This wasn’t… he hadn’t… again?

‘You were lying?’

‘I thought you lived with detectives, Bentley,’ He signed, one eyebrow raised in a triumphant manner. He leaned in close to the glass, and Bentley instinctively moved away. ‘Listen, and listen closely, because this is the last thing I’m saying to you.’

Bentley looked down at his shaky hands. That strange feeling came again, the same one he felt at the Manor. He heard water moving through the pipes in the ceiling. He felt his blood pumping.

‘Even if you get Dr. Keene arrested, even if you kill Charlie and release the other children and destroy this entire operation from the ground up, you’re going to lose. If I can’t destroy the Wayne’s alone, I’ll just watch all of Gotham burn instead,’ He signed, a strangely competent look coming across his face like he was having a normal business transaction. ‘We have a plan B that you won’t touch, that you won’t even know about until it’s too late. Think of it as a boss fight in a video game. It’s coming. And you can’t stop it.’

Bentley exhaled a shaky breath, wiping at his eyes.

‘If you find a way to stop this — if you make us change to plan B, all the thousands of lives lost here in Gotham are on your head,’ His father smiled a crooked smile, different from the last. ‘There’s no way for you to win, Bentley. This is the end. It's your choice how many people come out of it.’

Bentley’s hands were shaking when he signed: ‘You’re not going to win.’

His father laughed. Literally laughed, out loud. ‘If you really think so, then keep your eye on the news channels. If you keep your ears open you might hear the warning call before the end comes.’

Bentley looked down at his own lap.

‘And Bentley…’ His father signed, and the child looked up one last time. ‘Just to clear things up… not a single atom of my very being has ever loved you… and not a single atom ever will.’

That was the moment a part of Bentley… died. Something inside of him shifted. The little boy that wanted his dad to love him so badly faded away to nothing, and left something oddly empty and wrong in its wake. Something like rage, but muffled by something else he couldn’t place right then.

Bentley stood up from the stool, letting out a breath of air. ‘That’s okay. Bruce loves me better than you ever could. Don’t you ever get tired of being second best?’

He didn’t wait for his father’s reply, but turned to leave the room.

“Oh, and Bentley…”

He turned back to his father one last time, who was standing now, with a smile. “When the elements are pitted against one another, fire always wins.”

Bentley said nothing. The officer led him out of the room.

When Bentley made it back into the hallway and Jason noticed his red rimmed eyes, he looked like he was going to kill someone.

“Bentley?” He questioned, standing up when they got close. “What happened?”

“I think they had a heartfelt conversation. I couldn’t really hear it, of course — I didn’t know the boy didn’t talk,” Said the officer, patting Bentley’s shoulder. “He’s all yours. Make sure you check up with security on your way out.”

Jason took Bentley’s shoulder and replied with a: “Yeah…”

The walk out of the prison felt like an eternity. Somehow, Bentley was feeling everything and nothing at all. It felt like everything negative inside of him — rage, sadness, despair, desperation, terror, loneliness, disappointment, frustration, a whole entire life’s worth of guilt — it was like it was all broiling and fighting to get out, but the lid of the pot was closed too tight. Like it was seeping out of crevices and waiting for the day Bentley Whittaker breaks.

“What did he say to you?” Jason practically demanded, his hand staying firmly on Bentley’s left shoulder as they walked through the not-very-crowded parking lot. He had a very deadpan, sort of pissed off look on his face.

Bentley looked everywhere but at Jason, dutifully shutting down the urges to cry or throw a tantrum or punch something or burn down a house. “I just… can we just go home? Please? I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“Did he threaten you?” Jason continued, squeezing Bentley’s shoulder as they split to go on either side of the car. Jason climbed in the driver’s seat, and Bentley hopped into the passenger’s side.

“No,” Bentley replied once they were both in Jason’s car, buckling his seatbelt. Not directly, anyway…

“Why have you been crying?”

Bentley looked down at his lap as the car started up. “Can we just go home?”

Jason didn’t argue.

—

dedicated to @sassenashsworld 💚

—

tag list! (If you want me to remove or add you, ask in comments!)

@fleur-alise @sarcopterygiian @flyrobinflyy @skylathescholar @gayboss-too-close-to-the-sun @xiaonothere

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whisperingwillowxox · 10 months

Text

Bookworm

Hey guys! I had this idea for a fic and wanted to share it with you. It was only supposed to be a one-shot, but if anyone would like a part 2, just leave a comment and let me know.

Summary: Reader finds themself stuck at the library. Luckily our favourite Spree driver is there to save the day.

Warnings: afab!Reader/mentions of a past abusive relationship.

Word Count: 2076

It was raining. It had seemed like a nice day when you had set off in your little sundress that kissed your mid-thigh. It didn’t now though, as you watched through the library doors as the rain bounced off the sidewalk, the black clouds showing no sign of it stopping. Sighing, you clutch the book you’d just taken out closer to your chest. Today of all days you had decided against taking your backpack, and now you were having to consider how you were going to get home without getting drenched.

Resigning yourself to spending the rest of the afternoon waiting until the rain finally died off, you walk back towards the main desk where the head librarian, Eliza, was perched. “You ok, Hun?” She asked gently, looking at you over the top of her glasses. Eliza had been working at the Azusa Public Library for the last 40 years, and she had quickly become your favourite person since you moved to this town after breaking up with your ex, wanting a fresh start.

“I will be when this rain stops. I walked here today and didn’t bring any money for the bus.” You huffed.

“Let me get you a Spree.” Eliza smiled, pulling her phone out from under the desk.

“Oh no, you don’t have to do that.” You try to argue, but the older woman was already waving you off.

“That rain isn’t going to let up anytime soon, Dear.” Eliza tells you, already tapping away at the screen. “Besides, I’ve got to make sure my books stay in good condition. What’s your address?”

You rattled it off as you stood there, still clutching the book to your chest. Eliza’s kindness is something that took you a little while to get used to. You didn’t really have any friends growing up, and your parents were never home, and when they were they weren’t exactly the most affectionate. For a little while you thought you’d found what you were missing in your ex, but once you moved in with him, he changed, becoming controlling and mean. He’d play on your insecurities to knock down your confidence, until you only felt safe with him. It had taken you a hot second to realise what he’d done, but once you did you packed your stuff and got out of there. You may now live in a small town, in an even smaller apartment, but you were proud of yourself for getting back on your feet.

“Oh, that was fast!” Eliza said suddenly. “He’s just around the corner. A white Prius, the driver is a ‘Kurt Kunkle’.” She read.

“Thank you so much, Eliza.” You smile gratefully. “I’ll pay you back, I promise.”

“None of that.” She said, once again waving you off. “Just get home safe, Dear.”

The car in question pulled up just as you got to the doors. You tried to hide the book under your arms and pulled it tighter to your chest, before flinging the door open and rushing to the car.

You practically dove into the backseat, shutting the door, and scooting over to sit behind the passenger seat.

“Oh, um, hello.”

You look up and are met with the prettiest brown eyes you’d ever seen. “Hi.” You said shyly, placing the book on the seat next to you to put your safety belt on.

The driver, ‘Kurt’ you reminded yourself, looked at his phone and then back at you, a frown creasing between his brows. “Um, a-are you sure you’re in the right car?” He asked, confusion clear in his voice.

Glancing at his phone you saw that the only thing Kurt had for reference on who he was picking up was a photo. A photo of a 60+ year old woman. “Oh! Yes, sorry. Eliza works at the library; she didn’t want me walking home in the rain.” You quickly tried to explain. Kurt seemed to deem this an acceptable answer, confirming your actual name and address address before pulling away.

Figuring you’d kill some time, you reached for your book, only then noticing the camera facing you. You glanced around the car, counting 6 cameras in total, and shrank back in your seat. “Um, Kurt?” You asked quietly.

“Yeah?” He glanced at you in the rear-view mirror, a friendly smile seemingly glued to his features.

“Why are there so many cameras in here?”

“Oh!” He grinned, and you immediately noticed the excitement radiating from him. “It’s for my channel. I’m a content creator.”

He seemed happy with his own answer, somewhat proud even, but you felt a sudden wave of anxiety creep up on you. “This…” You started, nervously fiddling with the hem of your dress. “This isn’t like…a sex thing, is it?”

You watch in the mirror as Kurt’s eyes nearly bug out of his head, and it would have been funny if you weren’t mentally preparing yourself to jump from a moving car at the first moment of danger.

“No! G-God no! I just s-stream my Spree rides.” He choked out. “I just talk to my Kurties, try and make the rides more exciting.”

“Kurties?” You ask, less nervous now and more curious.

“My fans.” He grinned again, stopping at a set of lights. He whipped round to look at you, making you jump slightly at the suddenness of his action. “You should follow me! I’m KurtsWorld96!”

Watching him smile and looking so excitable, you realised how pretty this boy was. Sure, his hair was a little greasy, but it didn’t distract you from his kind face, squared with a little bit of stubble coming through. “I’d love to, but I don’t have social media.” You said sheepishly.

Kurt’s face pinched into a frown again, as if he didn’t understand what you were saying. A car horn from behind alerted him that the lights were changed, and he turned back away from you, and you couldn’t help but kind of miss the eye contact.

“How do you not have a social media presence?” He asked, seemingly baffled. “What about your brand? Like what you’re putting out for the world to see.”

“A ‘brand’ would imply that I’m someone important.” You tell him quietly. “I’m not, I’m just me.”

His frown didn’t go away but he didn’t say anything else so you assume that the conversation must be over. You swallow down the disappointment, and instead open your book and try to focus on the words, rather than your embarrassing attempt at conversation with a cute boy.

You were happily pretending to concentrate on the pages in front of you when Kurt cleared his throat. “What’s that you’re- what are you reading?” He stumbled with his words, and you couldn’t help but find it slightly endearing.

“Good Omens.” You answer apprehensively. In your experience whenever someone asks what book you’re reading, it’s either to make a joke at your expense, or you overestimate their interest and watch as they don’t bother to hide their bored expression.

Kurt glances at you in his mirror again, “I’ve never heard of that. What’s it a-about?”

You watch him for a second. His interest seems genuine, but you’ve made this mistake before. Instead, you drop your gaze and fiddle with the edge of the page. “It’s about an angel and a demon who lose the Anti-Christ. They’ve got to find him before he ends the world.

You look back up and see Kurt’s brows risen in surprise. “S-sounds super dark. You don’t look like you’d b-be into that sort of- kind of thing.”

“Oh, it’s not actually dark. It sort of encapsulates the idea that people can defy expectations, and that everyone has free will. Just because the Anti-Christ was born to destroy the world, doesn’t mean he wants to. We can be who we want to be. Plus, it’s funny and there’s this romantic subtext between the angel and demon-” You cut yourself off, realising that you had probably began to ramble the poor boy to death.

When you look back at him, you expect his eyes to be glazed over, but he’s smiling at you. Not a little polite smile either, a big beaming smile like you’ve just given him some amazing news. “Y-you like books, huh?”

You feel your cheeks heat up as your mouth opens and closes a few times, not really knowing how to react to this curveball Kurt has sent your way. “Hey, t-there’s nothing wrong with that. B-books aren’t really my vib- my thing, but that doesn’t m-mean you can’t like them.” You watched as he turned to the camera set up right next to him “You s-should never stop doing the stuf- things you’re passionate about.” He finished. He spoke in a tone that gave off the impression of wisdom, but it was immediately extinguished when he finished his speech by throwing up a peace sign to the camera.

You couldn’t have stopped the giggle that bubbled out of you if you wanted to, and it was worth it when Kurt blushed so hard the top of his ears went pink. You caught his bashful smile in the mirror and smiled to yourself as you opened your book again.

You sat in silence for a little while longer, reading your book and trying to fight a grin whenever Kurt would make a comment on something to his “fans”. But eventually you felt the car pull up and looked up to see your apartment block staring back at you.

“I think this is you.” Kurt said quietly, and you hoped the disappointment you thought you heard in his tone wasn’t just your imagination playing tricks on you.

“Yeah.” You tried to keep your tone light, but the truth was Kurt was one of the only people you’d ever met that made you feel so comfortable in such a short space of time. You blame it on the fact that he’s so awkward and dorky that you can’t help but feel relaxed.

You unclipped your safety belt and once again pulled your book close to your chest, mentally calculating the sprint from the car to your door. You looked back at Kurt to find the boy, once again, already staring at you. “Thank you, Kurt.” You smiled shyly.

Any moment that may have been forming was quickly ruined as a robotic voice sounded from Kurt’s phone, startling you slightly. “OMG man just ask for her number. You stupid?”

Kurt blinked at you, his blush coming back in full force. “I, um, you don’t have to- u-unless you want to-”

“Yes.” You said quickly.

Kurt’s eyes widened in shock, and you could practically hear the gears in his head grinding to a halt. “Yes?”

You give him a small smile as you once again felt your own cheeks heat up. “Yes, you can have my number.” You tell him quietly.

The grin that takes over Kurt’s face is almost blinding as he giddily grabs his phone from the holder and opens his contacts. You pull your phone out from the little pocket in your dress and flip it open, finding your own number. When you look back up at him, he has the most confused expression you think you’ve ever seen on another human. He’s staring at the device in your hand, an old Nokia flip phone, as if he’s trying to figure out a difficult maths equation.

“Yeah…” You start awkwardly. “I told you I’m not really one for the whole social media thing. Seemed silly paying all that money for a phone when I’m just using it for texts and calls.”

“Yeah, t-that makes sense I guess.” Kurt smiles.

You rattle off your number and Kurt quickly types it into his phone. I’ll text you so you can save m-my number too.”

“That sounds good, Kurt.” You both smile at each other. His phone pinging makes the both of you jump and he looks down at it with a frown. “Oh crap, I have another Spree request.” He says disappointed.

“That’s ok.” You smile, putting your phone back into you pocket. “Enjoy the rest of your day. I’ll talk to you later.” You tell him, throwing him one last shy smile before clutching your book and making a bolt for your apartment block.

Later, after you had showered and were curled up on your couch reading, your phone vibrated in your pocket against your leg. You smiled as you opened the message from an unsaved number.

“Hey! It’s Kurt!’

#kurt kunkle #kurt kunkle x you #kurt kunkle x reader #kurt kunkle x shy!reader #kurt kunkle x bookworm!reader #joe keery #spree movie #steve harrington #steve ‘the hair’ harrington #steve the babysitter #joseph david keery

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dasha-aibo · 30 days

Note

Same Chris chan anon, I’m back. I saw your reply, and yeah, I agree on some parts. Good people can turn bad.

What I meant was that if you’re a person with strong values, you would’ve never done that stuff. It was plain sexism. A person with strong values wouldn’t do that because their actions dictate what kind of person they are.

And while I understand that you don’t SUPPORT chris chan, you can’t be like “well! Actually, women, stfu about his sexism!!! He did it because he was bullied online!!! And shut up about how he sexually harassed his female friends beforehand!!!”

Like. Think critically. This was an actual crime. With actual victims. And now he’s out of jail??? Male privilege at its finest. He should’ve NEVER gotten out of jail.

Also, rape is like, in my opinion, the only crime that can NEVER be excused. Because nobody forced you to do it??? Nobody can use it as self defense. Nobody recovers from it like a wound. It’s not simple. It’s a complex hate crime against women.

On another note, I don’t like bullying. I’ve been a bullying victim for many years. And even worse, IN REAL LIFE. But I never would’ve done that. Because plainly, I’m not sexist.

Chris Chan was porn sick. That’s it. He harassed women, did something unforgivable to his mother, and became “trans” to intimidate lesbians into dating him. That’s a straight white man if I’ve ever seen it. The internet is cruel, but it doesn’t turn men into rapists. That’s their own doing. We need to hold men accountable for what they do. We can’t coddle them or they’ll just keep doing shit. It’s never justified!!! Never!! Even the nastiest woman doesn’t deserve it because it’s a hate crime against women as a whole!

Have empathy towards the victims. We never know what they went through, and their suffering was much worse than what a brain rotted straight white man went through. Because let’s bffr, if a man I knew told me he’s a woman because he wants to bang a lesbian, draws porn of me, and then rapes his mom AND PEOPLE ONLINE DEMAND HES CALLED A WOMAN AND THAT HE DESERVES PITY??? That would be my breaking point.

He’s a whole ass villain 😭😭 why can’t y’all see that

I don't believe in perfect villains or perfect victims.

We don't need to villianize Chris to have empathy for Barbara. We don't need to gloss over Barbara being a horrible person to feel horrible for what happened to her.

It's not a black-and-white world, no matter how much Ayn Rand wanted it to be.

Chris was severely abused and neglected by his parents. Barbara specifically fostered unhealthy attachment, which absolutely did not help in this situation.

I don't think we need to state over and over again that FUCKING YOUR DEMENTIA-RIDDEN MOTHER IS WRONG. I think that's pretty obvious by itself.

But just taking a step back and looking at the whole situation in context is important.

And it's important to realize that the collective internet didn't just "bully" Chris. They manipulated and gaslighted this person for over a decade. They derailed Chris's life and any middling chance they had at becoming a normal person. They egged on their every worst instinct and broke this person's brain and will. That goes beyond regular bullying.

I think, overall, it's the internet looking at a monster we created and then refusing to accept that harassing, bullying, gaslighting and obsessively documenting a living, breathing human being for over a decade because they're "cringe" is a bad thing. So Chris has to have been a monster from the start.

Chris is out of jail, because the judges don't know WTF to do with them. You can't hold a person in jail with no trial for more than a year, rape is really hard to prove with dementia patients, who might not even remember it, incest penalties are their own can of legal worms and trying a person as severely autistic as Chris is borderline-impossible.

The best outcome for everyone would be to put Chris in an assisted living facility. But I doubt that's gonna happen.

Also, I refuse to comment on Chris's trans status. It's between them and their psychologist. I simply don't care, because it changes very little.

Yeah, I do think Chris deserves pity. Condemnation AND pity. We shouldn't just forgive their horrible actions. But we should at least have the humility to realize that we would be capable of some monstrous shit if we were ever treated like that.

YOU don't think you would've done something horrible in that situation, but you HAVE NOT been in the same situation. And thank your lucky stars for that.

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honeybeedrabble · 9 months

Note

can i get a tsunade x fem!reader pretty please

perhaps reader is orochimaru’s experiments and tsunade has to help heal and maybe some other stuff too

I AM SO HAPPY I FINALLY GOT A TSUNADE REQUEST !!!

18+ MDNI !!

Warnings: lady tsunade x AFAB!reader, praise (good girl, etc.), hospital sex, oral (f receiving lol), scissoring, breast licking, fingering, brief mention of squirting, abusive orochimaru, mentions of bruises, naïve/sheltered reader, implied age gap (reader is early 20s tsunade is early 50s-late 40s) lmk if i missed anything !!

You remember a lot of your life in a test tube, barely any human interaction except with Orochimaru- who you aren’t even sure you can count as human. It was just another day to you, trying out different tests to see if your regenerative cells were enough to sustain the infinite life your creator wished to have. He was your creator, your father and yet you despised him with all your being. Your sole purpose was to get beaten daily to test your cells. Your father was obsessed with this delusion of surviving infinitely and you were just a means to an end.

You don’t remember much from the fight, just a lot of commotion and soon after you were knocked out cold from god knows what. You could barely open your eyes before you slipped away, but what you watched was your father abandon you for his great escape. You cursed him silently, before slipping away into the darkness of unconsciousness.

You laid in your hospital bed, opening your eyes slowly. As your blurred vision focused, you looked down to your abdomen, a blue-green hue illuminating your core. A pair of hands were clasped on top of you. You followed the arms up you saw the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. She had blonde hair and gorgeous brown eyes that were narrowed into a focused, stoic face. She noticed you staring and looked at you through her lashes, your heart skipped a beat.

“Oh, thank goodness. You’re awake.” She huffed, the glowing mass dimming down until it died out.

“Are you an angel?” You asked, assuming you were dead. She blushed, eyes widening before returning back to your wound and focusing her chakra through your abused skin.

“No, but you’re very sweet,” she said with a smile. “I’m your doctor, I’m here to make you feel better.” She returned her soft hands to your abdomen, the icy-hot feeling of her healing chakra giving off an entirely different sensation to your core. You felt your body heat up everywhere, not used to the feeling of anyone other than yourself healing you.

“Feels… so good,” you trailed off, a slight moan escaping your lips as your body slightly writhed under her care. The woman blushed again, watching you squirm underneath her and she stopped working to place a hand on your chest and gently push you down on the bed.

“What’s your name, miss?” You asked, a weak hand coming to rest on top of hers.

“My name is Tsunade…” She answered, she removed her hand from your chest with yours falling off.

“Tsunade… your name is almost as beautiful as you are. I only say ‘almost’ because I can’t think of anything else that can compare to you.” You confessed. Her cheeks darken to a deeper red, and she placed her hand on your forehead, clearing the hair away from your face. You looked deeply into her eyes, the flush on her face making your heart swell.

“You didn’t get much interaction with others, did you?” she stifled a laugh. You blush, looking away embarrassed.

“No… I’m sorry if I’ve crossed any lines.”

“No-no! Honesty is a good quality. It makes you dependable… something we all need.” Tsunade smiled at you, running her hand down your face and titling your chin towards her.

Her hand trailed up to cup your cheek, smiling at you with adoration in her eyes. You put your hand on the back of her hand and held it softly to your face. Her eyes shined bright as you turned your head and pressed a kiss into her palm.

She slowly climbed on top of you, caressing your cheek as your hands came to grab at each of her thighs. Her thumb traced a bruise against your under eye, you winced slightly.

“Tell me where it hurts, darling,” She whispered, pressing a kiss to your lips. You could feel her hands working on your face as her lips collided into yours, suddenly the bruise under your eye stopped hurting and all you could focus on was kissing back. Your hips lifted on their own and Tsunade smirked, breaking the kiss.

“So needy… aren’t we, honey?” She teased, slowly inching in to bite your lower lip and release it before kissing you quickly again. You whimpered, placing your hand on the back of her head to get more leverage. Tsunades hand ran down your face and along your ribs, you felt your body go electric as her hands slid further down.

“Oh angel, you’re going to have to be a good little patient if you want my help, okay?” She teased, tracing circles along your stomach with her pointer.

“Yes doctor,” you nodded fervently. She smirked, inching further down the bed to where her her face was aligned with your stomach. She kissed right below your belly button, her pink lipstick staining your skin and your legs opened all on their own.

“Already so obedient, so easy…” Her tongue emerges from past her plump lips and licks a stripe down to your waistband. You moan, feeling the pool of want in your panties making itself present. You arched your back and gripped the bed sheets. “And so sensitive too… I bet it doesn’t take much, does it?”

“N-no doctor,” you stammered, breathing heavily in pure lust. Tsunade hummed in amusement.

“Well then, I might as well take my time.” She gripped your waistband and tugged it down to your ankles, your panties coming down with them. You kicked off the clothing and they landed on the ground with a thump.

Tsunade sat up, shrugging off her green cardigan and discarding it along with your pants. She unzipped her pants and then dove back down to your glistening cunt.

“Oh, darling. Already so wet for me, aren’t you a good girl?” Her praise made you even wetter, and you felt your face go hot. Tsunades face got closer to your pussy and you held your breath until her tongue made its way across your slick folds, you exhaled with a shaky moan.

Tsunade gripped your thighs down with her hands as she ran her hot tongue down your folds and back up to your clit. She flicked your sensitive bud and you bucked your hips up with a loud whine, unable to keep yourself controlled. She smirked, holding your thighs down harder as her tongue went to town on your sloppy cunt.

“Ngh- so good,” you whined as she sucked on your pussy, running her tongue back down to your weeping hole to gather your slick back up to your clit.

“I know, darling and you’re doing so good. You taste so sweet too,” She breathed, letting go of on of your thighs to dip her hand into her pants and rub circles along her own clit through her panties. She moaned against your cunt, her lips placing a kiss on your inner thigh before attacking your sensitive pussy again.

“Darling, you’re going to need to be good for me. So I need to stay still for me, okay?” She asked, staring back up at you. You nod, and bring your hands to your shaky thighs, holding them down flat.

“Good girl,” she removes her hand from your thigh then rubs a finger along your pussy and you sigh, clenching around nothing. “Oh I see, you already know, don’t you sweetheart?” Tsunade teases, pressing two fingers against your hole.

“P-Please Tsunade… I need you,” you beg, eyes tearing up in anticipation.

“I hear you,” her fingers plunge themselves into you and you clench at their arrival, moaning deeply as they push through your tight walls.

She resumes eating you out agonizingly slow as her fingers curl against your spongy walls, squelching as you feel your juices run down her hand. You try to keep your thighs and hips down with all your strength, your chest heaving as you look down at her pleasuring you with her tongue.

Tsunade moans as she ruts into her hand, fingering you with the other as she soaks her own panties. She speeds up her fingers inside of you as she loses her patience and eat you out as if she were starved. You gripped the bed sheets tightly and unleash a symphony of moans and gasps, quivering under Tsunades touch as you came around her fingers hard. Your whole body felt hot as she sucked and licked at your poor folds, focusing on your clit. Your face felt impossibly hotter as you twiched in agonizing ecstasy. She moaned as your pussy gushed hot juices down her chin and she lapped you for all you had.

You felt your clit twitch as you laid down on the bed, Tsunade took your shirt off of you and your tits came out. She kissed your breasts and ran her tongue along your areola, occasionally licking your sensitive nipple and sucking it into her mouth as you squirmed underneath her.

“You did such a good job, but I didn’t finish yet sweetheart. You’re going to have to keep up with me because I’m not going to be easy on you.” She kisses you and you taste your juices on her lips, her tongue breaking through and into your mouth as it swirled around, coating your mouth with your own flavor.

She broke the kiss and pulled down her pants, sliding them off completely and tossing them to the ground. She placed a hand on your chest and pushed you down on your back, kneeling in front of you withher knees at each side of your head. She looked down at you with a smug grin.

“Care to help me?” She asked, looking down at her lacy panties. You nodded, easing yourself up and biting down on her waistband, pulling her underwear down to her knees as you sank lower back onto your pillow.

Her pussy was as wet as yours and you lifted yourself up to lick at her folds. She let out a shaky exhale then pinched the waistband and ditched her underwear too. She maneuvered her way to your thighs. You lay down on your side and she grabbed your leg and lifted it over her shoulder, nestling her cunt dangerously close to yours before grinding against you with a deep sigh. You whimpered, feeling her heat against yours and the obscenely wet squelches filled the room. Her soft cunt nestled into yours was too good, you pathetically started to grind back against her.

“You like that?” She asked, her wet clit grinding right against yours. The circular movement of her hips had you breathing impossibly deeper, throwing your head back in ecstasy.

“I can tell,” she laughed lightly.

As she rode your pussy, your combined juices leaked down her thigh and onto yours. Her cunt was hot and wet pressed against yours, each buck of her hips sent a shiver down your spine and you could feel yourself coming undone yet again. Tsunades sighs became heavier, her grip on your thighs tighter and her pace was unrelating. Her stamina had nothing to do with her age, as she fucked you with all her energy on the hospital bed you lay in.

“Please… Please let me cum doctor,” you mewled. You sat up and she wrapped her arms around your head, clutching you to her tits. Your leg fell of her shoulder and instead wrapped itself around her waist. You stuck your tongue out and wrapped your lips around her hard nipples. She moaned as you licked her breasts, her hips swaying back and forth.

“Oh, you’re so good darling. Keep doing that, you’re such a good girl,” she moaned, her hips stuttering against yours. You moaned deep into her cleavage, drooling all over her tits as you came against her pussy. You felt yourself get impossibly wetter, pleasure shooting out of you and against the princess infront of you.

“Ahh- yeah baby, come on me… Just like I’m going to all over that pretty pussy of yours.” The slippery feeling of her cunt against yours made her grip your hair tightly, holding on for dear life as her own pleasure consumed her.

“Oh sweetheart, you feel so good-“ she cried, her hips messily bucking against yours as she gripped your hair even tighter.

You maneuvered your hand to your pussy, spreading your slippery lips open so she could ride you until her legs buckled underneath her. Then she crashed onto the bed next to you with a sigh.

Your both lay on the bed intertwined, catching your breaths. She stroked your hair softly as she held you to her chest. Tsunade tilted your head towards her, thoroughly examining your face.

“Your face… you’re so much more beautiful when you’re not covered in bruises,” she softly spoke, placing a kiss under your eye. You exhaled softly, closing your eyes and laying there in post-nut content.

“Tell me everything you know about him. That bad man will never touch you again.”

A/N: TWO FICS IN ONE WEEK?!??!! y’all are getting well fed enjoy !!

#naruto #smut #tsunade #tsunade smut #lady tsunade #lady tsunade x reader #tsunade senju #tsunade x reader #lady tsunade smut #lady tsunade x reader smut

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minniepetals · 2 years

Text

cry me a river | the thorns of a rose

— summary: loyalty means to have full allegiance and faithfulness owned by a duty, a pledge, or a promise. and the reapers’ loyalty lies much deeper than that

— pairing: bts x reader

— genre: angst, mafia!au

— word count: 5.6k

— warnings: mentions of breaking, emotional trauma, implied sexual harassment/abuse, implied forceful age-gap relationship (we're getting to more dark stuff here so please read at your own discretion, PLEASE)

— PART 11 / previous part / masterpost

“They say she’s the actual Grim Reaper herself.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“She’s on a rampage, going around killing anyone who has done her wrong. She’s already taken out Gwon Daejung!”

“Grim reapers go around collecting souls, she’s out here trying to collect the heads of all her enemies!”

“Surely that’s an exaggeration.”

“That monster killed her own father to get the throne.”

“What if we’re next?”

Knock, knock, knock.

A click of the door opens and he stares in horror at the said Reaper who’s out to collect the heads of all her enemies. With a smirk plastered on her face, hands resting behind her, and a flicking shine from the scythe earrings she wears, he can feel the beat of his heart drumming hard against his chest.

“Hello there, Mr. Choi,” you greet with a sinister expression resting well on your face, “it seems death has just knocked on your door. Would you mind giving me the pleasure of taking your life?”

“Why did you call me, Namjoon? You do know that I’m a pretty busy woman, don’t you? I have heads to sever and hearts to stab out.”

“Seems you’ve become quite the bloodthirsty mobster.”

You shrug lightly at his comment, adjusting the black gloves in your hands that are tainted with blood. “Well, life is pretty cruel to women so there’s quite a lot of people whom I have to go after now that I have the power to do so.”

“This is why you killed your father off?” He asks, eyes narrowed at you who only seems to be paying attention to your gloves. “Now that I think about it, you say you’re out to kill all the people who have done you wrong. Was your father your first target in all of this?”

Your hands freeze in place and when you look up at him, those eyes of yours are as cold as a stone, showing no sign of weakness, no amount of emotions for him to try and see through your facade. He can’t read you.

“What are you talking about?” You feign a smile. “If my father never cared for me, would he have accepted me so easily when I returned home after divorcing you? Any sane mobster who’s thirsty for power would have never let that slide. Yet father welcomed me in very well with wide, open arms.”

“Fool,” you hear your father’s disdained voice in the back of your mind.

“You’ve always been useless from the second you were born. For a moment I thought things were going well, finally made useful to me. But here you are, crawling right back and begging for forgiveness at the foot of your father. I told you to make yourself useful.”

No matter how foolish and stupid you were ten years ago, at least you understood what to do in order to keep the image of a happy family alive and well.

Divorcing Namjoon was one of the hardest decisions in your life but you were left with no other choice. Returning that ring, asking him for a divorce, even that moment of weakness where you asked them to give you a second chance, all of that was planned.

After all, divorcing Namjoon meant facing father’s wrath so you had to do it smartly, hence you asked him to sign a contract with you before you left, before the divorce was finalized. It was the only way you could get through to your father. He would be angry either way but at least then he didn’t have to worry about losing power.

Power was all father wanted after all, and you allowed him to keep that.

That contract saved you from potentially dying at your father’s very own hands.

“Open arms…”

You stare at Namjoon with a small, playful smirk, knowing he must be thinking back on his own father. “Envious?”

He sends you a glare and you look away with a shrug, amusement plastered on your face.

“Did all those silent vows of keeping each others’ secrets safe not matter after the divorce?”

“Of course it does!” You say at his suspicion on you. “You don’t really think I’m the type to go around spreading every traumatic story of you and the boys to the world just because we don’t care for each other anymore, do you?”

“I don’t know who you are anymore, Y/N.”

“Right,” you nod. “Let’s keep it that way, yeah? Anyways, what am I doing here again?”

Namjoon lets out a sigh and reaches from the back of his pants to hand you a simple envelope. You stare at it, blinking.

“If it’s a letter of some sort, you could have simply sent it through the mail, old man.”

“I figured you’d rather keep the envelope as is rather than having words painted on them.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s Jungwon’s.” You freeze and he takes a moment to look at the envelope before beckoning for you to take it once more. “One of the letters was meant for you.”

A letter was written for you? What for?

If Mister Butler had anything to say to you, why didn’t he just speak them to you when he had the chance? Perhaps it’s something secretive that he couldn’t say aloud?

No, can’t be. All his letters were basically his diaries but, why would one of them be addressed to you?

You pull the gloves off your hands, not wanting anything to taint the envelope before taking it from Namjoon. “Did you read it?” You ask and he shakes his head.

“Those are your initials, yes?”

They are.

“The content of the letters addressed to you,” you look back at him, wondering, “what were they about?”

“His daily life. A diary, as you said.”

“He never mentioned anything about what he was doing at the Reaper’s manor in the first place?”

Namjoon shakes his head, a sigh leaving his lips. “Nothing of that sort. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help much with my investigation.”

“Surely your father had some answers.”

“Anything that has to do with my father has already been searched and burned away. None of them ever mentioned anything about my brother. It’s almost as if it disappeared along with him, as if my father knew.”

Did his father get word of Mister Butler’s death? He must have, hence all evidence about what he had done were all destroyed for Namjoon to never find out.

“When did my brother disappear?”

“The eighth of January,” you tell him. “I was nine.” You were hurt that night, severely injured. You don’t remember exactly the events that went by, just the fact that the next thing you knew, you were standing in front of the man you loved so much, staring into his unblinking eyes. “He never said goodbye and after that night, I never saw him again.”

“Something must have happened.”

Yeah, your father killed him and blamed it all on poor little you.

“Well, I have to go now,” you say as you turn around and begin to walk off, “as I said, I’m a pretty busy woman.”

“Y/N if you know anything—”

“I got into an accident that night, Namjoon, so I don’t recall much of what happened.”

“Then those workers—”

“Are dead,” you say. “I killed them all.”

You hear him let out a frustrated sigh. “Honestly, you’re too impulsive. If one of them were still alive, they’d know what happened and have better intel than what we have now.”

“Well,” you shrug, “even if one of them were still alive, those workers didn’t really pay much attention to Mister Butler. To them, he was just another one of them, and if someone disappears out of nowhere, they’d only think what they know.”

Any sane worker would think they’d died at the hands of the leaders of the mafia they’re working in.

In Jungwon’s case, it was exactly that. No exception.

“See ya.”

With that, you walk off without looking back again, the letter tightly grasped in your hand.

You stand alone in the garden of the greenhouse, eyes staring blankly at the red roses right before you. With a white suit on, your overcoat drapes on your shoulder as you cross your arms against your chest, the gloves gone as blood still stains your clothing from your previous endeavor.

You don’t care to clean up just yet.

The rose bushes intrigues you as you stare at them, a reminder of someone you used to know.

“The roses remind me of you, Y/N.”

“...Why is that, sir?”

He lets out an exasperated sigh at the title you call him by, but falls understanding that no matter how much he asks of you, you’d never call him by name. “Is this your way of telling me you don’t wish for a close relationship, my dear?” He asks, a small pout glanced your way. “Despite the fact that we were almost engaged?”

You don’t answer his question, giving him anything but a blank stare. It’s all he’ll ever see from you, all you will ever show him. He will never witness your anger, your sadness, your happiness, or any emotions out of you.

Relationships do not matter to you, after all, he’s just another pawn for your father.

“Why do the roses remind you of me, sir?” You speak as if reading off a script; emotionless, robotic.

His brows furrow slightly but he’s used to this. “You’re pretty and you look innocent and sweet and precious, but anytime anyone tries to get any close to you,” he holds his hand out to caress your cheek, stroking it tenderly with his thumb as he flashes you a small smile, “you will put up a guard and have your thorns protect you. They are your walls, aren’t they?”

“I haven’t hurt you in the slightest, sir.”

He chuckles. “But you resent me, don’t you?”

“I do not hold any feelings towards you.”

“...Right.” He looks down at your figure, the way you sit on the bed obediently, and will not move unless instructed otherwise. You dress in a silky nightgown, one of the straps fallen from your shoulder, and he takes his hand from your face to trace over one of the visible scars held against your skin. You say nothing, you do nothing, and despite his gentle touches, you feel nothing.

He watches you as if trying to monitor your reactions, and when you give him nothing to see, he trails down to your hand and gently takes hold of it.

“You may not hold any feelings towards me but…” he traces the purple ring around your wrist, “you resent my father, do you not?” You say nothing so he goes on. “I may not know you as well as I hope to, Y/N, but even I understand that a lady would never want a man she doesn’t desire to touch her whether in a precious hold or not. You come here, walk into a man’s room whether you like to or not, just like an obedient puppet, and do nothing to go against your father’s words. So whether it’s me touching you or my father…you will not speak up against it.”

So he knew of his father’s doings, yet the closer you watch him, you realize that he’d only learned of that fact recently. Your potential fiance, despite the whole ordeal being to his benefit, has never once taken advantage of you. He holds onto his morals, a man of principles, and when he finds the truth of your relationship with your father, he expresses opposition.

But the two of you are one and the same, living a similar life.

He cannot go against his father, just as you cannot go against yours.

You’re both far too weak against the men of the house.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He asks, almost a whisper, and you see the way he tries to hold onto his anger for you, the way his hand trembles slightly as he does his best not to hold onto your hand too tight. As if afraid he’d hurt you.

He reminds you of someone, but you don’t wish to remember so you look away, not wanting to see that little spark in his eyes.

“I had no reason to.”

When you say that, he looks back up at you, a flash of hurt and disbelief in his eyes. “No reason?” He scoffs. “You have purple bruises on your wrist and you’re saying you had no reason to tell me these things? My father did this to you, Y/N, and I can only imagine what other horrible things he’s done to you.”

“It doesn’t matter.” You look off to the side, taking your hand from his hold to look out at the window where a bird perches on the tree just outside. “In the end, we can do nothing.”

He hates how right you are, and hates the way you seem to shiver slightly from the cold, goosebumps forming along your skin, yet you say nothing against your pain. You do not care for your well-being, and you guess by now he’s probably realized you’re already broken.

A broken doll for your father to use at his disposal.

You hear him let out a grunt of anger yet when he slips your strap back onto your shoulder and holds the blanket over you, his actions are as gentle towards you as ever.

“When you decide to let your thorns be known to the world, I hope you can come after my father and kill him yourself.” He stands from the bed, going for the door but not before looking back at you for one last thing. “I will wait for you until then.”

How long has it been since you heard those words fall from his lips? It was the last conversation you had with the man, before he went away and did all that he could to drive the relationship between your gang and his to fall apart.

You’re not sure how he did it, but he somehow made it possible for the two of you to never see each other again, and in doing so, saved you from having to see his father ever again.

He was different from Ying, because while Ying always watched you get belittled and hurt and went to console you afterwards, the second he found out the truth, he did all that he could to at least save you from one less burden to carry.

He could do nothing about your father, but he took his father away for your sake.

The roses remind you of him, yet despite the little moments of good memories you have with him, they will always be overshadowed by all the things his father has done to you.

And the longer you stare at the roses, the more you wish to cast the memories away, the more you wish to never remember his face, his voice, and the way he held you.

You feel disgusted.

Perhaps if I touch them…maybe the pain will take over the pain of having to remember him.

You hold your hand out as if in a daze, a chant repeating in your head to try and convince you that marking yourself with physical pain will give you a chance in forgetting the past pains.

Hurt me hurt me hurt me. Let me forget.

You feel your teeth clenching, brows knitted, and just as your hand is about to grab a handful of the rose bush filled with thorns, someone grabs ahold of your hand with a force, stopping you mid-way.

“Please don’t touch the roses, all the plants here are important for the antidotes and poisons we work so hard to create.” It’s Han, one of the young researchers working alongside Yeonjun. He watches over the greenhouse, keeping the plants well-fed and healthy, always holed up in here to help aid the young genius hacker in his researches.

You know just how important each and every plant here are, yet it doesn’t stop you from the hypnotized state you’re in.

You ignore his touch and warning, further hoping to grab a fist full of thorns.

“Boss, please.” Han’s voice fades into the distance as you see nothing but the thorns before you. “Boss-”

“Y/N.”

Someone rips your attention from the flowers, hands held onto both your shoulders, forcing your body to turn their way, and that’s when you seem to come back to your senses.

“..Mingyu.”

“Have tea ready,” your second in command orders to Han, who in turn nods and walks off, knowing Mingyu always knows what to do.

“I’m fine.” You push him off you to turn from the flowers, a bit weak in your legs, and when he sees that, Mingyu reaches out to help you keep steady.

“I guess we have our next target, huh?” One look at you and the flowers and he understands in an instant. “Yuna will be happy.”

“Yuna’s happy with everyone we face.”

“Well,” he shrugs, “can’t really blame her.”

“Forget it,” you begin to walk off without his help, towards the bench just under the wisterias to take your seat. “I don’t want to face them just yet.”

Mingyu watches you with an observing gaze, and when Han returns with the tea, he lets out a sigh when you sip the drink to help you calm your nerves. The more people you go after, the more drained you become, and the more hysterical your state grows. He can’t blame you, after all, these are the people who have done you so wrong in the past, leaving you with scars both physically and mentally.

“Alright,” he says upon your orders when you give him the cup after a good couple of gulps, body laid over to rest your head against the pillow that’s already there for you when you wish to take your afternoon breaks. When your eyes start to droop, he takes a step to the right to block the glaring sun filtering into the greenhouse.

And Mingyu stays there watching after you like a personal knight whose only job is to watch over and protect the princess.

He hates every second of seeing you suffer all alone.

“The longer you keep this up, the harder it’ll be on your body.” When you look up at him from your cup of tea, Namjoon goes on. “Going after the people that’s pissed you off isn’t an easy job. Not only are many of the people that belong to the shadows tough but they do crazy things to one’s mind as well. You’re a victim to the shadows both physically and mentally.”

“Get to the point, Namjoon.”

“You need to slow down, take a break,” he says, “before you break.”

Break.

Hah. What a strange word.

“You needn’t worry about that, I’m already a broken doll.” It’s such a simple sentence that leaves your lips, as if you were speaking about the weather. You show no amount of emotion, eyes as dead as they were the first time he saw you again after ten whole years.

But even then, your ex-lover can see how drained you are by all of these endeavors. You’re stubborn, refusing to admit to the truth, but he knows just how tired you must be both physically and mentally. What if one day you go too far and there’s no one to save you from the drowning?

“I’m serious,” he states against your protest. Namjoon may not understand what happened through the ten years of your disappearance, the extent to which you were hurting, but even he knows just how much it has affected you.

After all, no sweet person can ever turn dark and emotionless without reason.

“I want to get rid of them as soon as possible.” You look up at him from the hood of your lids, taking a sip of the tea that’s been served for you. You were never really one who desired coffee, and ever since Yeonjun joined the gang, all that’s ever helped to calm your nerves were his tea. “You understand how that feels, don’t you?”

Namjoon doesn’t say anything but you can see the answer in his hesitation.

“So whether you want to stop me or not, I’m not going to rest until they’re all dead. I can’t.” Because your body refuses to let you. Each time you rest your eyes, nightmares will plague your thoughts, and unless your Reapers are there to help you through the episodes, you can never calm from the fear.

Everything scares you the more people you face, the world closing in, the walls suffocating you. Every second you face them, it feels as if your lungs are weighed by a heavy boulder, refusing to let you breathe. But you’d rather face these disgusting, vile creatures, than to know that they still live, walking the Earth as if all the things they’ve done to you is something that should not be considered a crime, as if they had simply crushed a bug with their foot.

You hurt from their pains while they hold their heads up, laughing in their own freedom.

You want your own freedom.

You need it, you crave it.

And you can never achieve it unless they’re gone from the torture they do to your head.

“Fine.” Namjoon knows he can’t stop you, so he relents. “Who’s your next target then?”

A man you’ve been avoiding.

You put the teacup down, resting against the chair, and cross a leg over the other. “I’ll need your help again, if you’re up for it.”

“And this is?”

“Ever heard of the Black Rose?”

He thinks over the question, a slight purse of his lips. “Isn’t that the gang that left for London? They were faring well here so no one knows why they left when the streets of London is much harder to gain control of.”

“They left because of me.”

He looks at you, blinking. “What?”

“The son, Hwang Hyunjin and I had somewhat of a relationship,” you explain. “I wouldn’t say we were close nor would I say we were friends but he supported me as a friend would. He cared for me.”

Namjoon’s brows knit in just the slightest way. “If he cared for you, why would he leave Korea?”

“He cared for me, that’s why he left.”

Hyunjin was the only decent human being that did the things he did in a respectable and accurate manner among all the mafiosos you’ve met. Even though you could never escape the abuse and pain, he still did you a favor by getting rid of someone who would have traumatized you even more than the man already had.

“So then, if it isn’t Hyunjin you’re after, who is it?”

“Who else but his father?”

“You’re walking into dangerous territory, Y/N.”

“Isn’t everything we do dangerous?” You flick your hair to lay behind your back, not wanting to back down. “He has more power in London than you but that doesn’t mean you aren’t influential there either. That’s why I need you on this mission. Hyunjin will be on my side, as well as you. I’ll need both of you to take Mr. Hwang down.”

“How are you so sure Hyunjin will be on your side? This is his father we’re talking about.”

“And you understand just how broken that relationship can be in this world.” Because his own father was never one to care for him. “It may be different from yours, Hyunjin and his father trust each other, but at the end of the day, he left Korea all for me.”

He left Korea for you.

Namjoon wonders what sort of relationship the two of you had, and the reason why the Black Rose left for you.

When he stares at you from across the table, he sees the determination in your eyes, as well as the trust you hold for a man he does not personally know. So you do know how to trust people outside your gang after all.

“Fine.” There’s no reason to refuse you. At the end of the day, he still needs intel on his brother.

With a satisfied smile resting on your face, you stand from your seat. “Great. I’ll see you in London next week.”

“You’re planning to what?” Mingyu is quick to look at you with alarm, his expression screaming protest. “Live out the fantasy he so wanted long ago?” He repeats your words with a disbelief scoff. “I’m not letting you do that.”

“You have no right to protest.”

“I’m your underboss, I have every right to protest.”

“Please my lady, can’t you think of something else?” Yuna speaks up, her lips forming into a tight frown when she looks your way.

“This is the only way to take down Hwang Leehyun and you know it,” you say against their dismay, standing firm in on your decision no matter what they say. “That man thrives off control and if I can manipulate him into thinking he can take me, we’ll have our score settled and I’ll have taken another man down. He has no reason to suspect me.”

“And if it breaks you?”

You laugh sarcastically at Mingyu’s words, a dark chuckle leaving your lips. “How do you break again after you’ve already broken? But then again, perhaps you’re right. A broken glass can never mend itself to the way it used to be, the only thing it can do is break even more.”

“Boss—”

“But I don’t care for that,” you cut him off, the only emotions detected in your eyes are filled with rage and anger. “This is the path I’ve chosen for myself, so whether you like it or not, I will never stop until every last one of them are dead. You have chosen to follow me, do so in silence.”

With that, you turn your back on your Reapers and they know that no matter how against they are with your plans, once your mind is made up, you will never go back on your words.

“And if something goes wrong when I’m with him, I expect you to do nothing.”

You leave them with no room to protest and they can do nothing but watch you from where they stand, a heavy silence hung in the air because they know more than anyone that stopping you is something that can never be done. You live to seek revenge and you will stop at nothing.

Even if that means meeting death on its way.

Even if it will break you even more.

“Boss?” You don’t hear his call even when he runs up to stand before you, an alarming concern marking his features. All you do is stand there, as still as a corpse, with your head lowered and your eyes staring blankly at nothing before you.

Mingyu sees the state you’re in; dressed in a white silky dress, spaghetti straps hanging off your shoulders, disheveled hair, with possessive markings splattered around your skin.

He can feel his hands trembling into a fist as he holds himself back, knowing that whatever he does, he can never let his anger get the best of him. So he settles with trying to reach out for you. You don’t see him, you feel numb and dull, like a living corpse, but when his hand holds out to touch you,

You flinch.

And Mingyu freezes.

His hand hovers in the air, frozen in time, and no matter what anyone tells him, he wants to storm out here right now and land his fist on the very man that did this to you, no matter the consequences.

But he has to consider the consequences because if he tries to do anything to go up against the people that have done you wrong, you will face the consequences and he knows more than anyone that that must never happen.

He wants to protect you yet why is this the only way he can save you?

Why can’t he do more?

Mingyu balls his hand in the air and settles it back to his side, turning to the Reapers that have come along as he clenches his jaws, keeping his emotions at bay.

“Yuna, Dasom. Get her a blanket, clean her up, and take care of her. Make sure she eats well.”

He only addresses the girls and they know. They know why.

Because normally you would never flinch in the presence of Mingyu. Never.

“Yes, Mingyu.”

Yuna hurries to grab a soft blanket and drape it over your shoulders, hiding your revealing skin, and the two of them lead you away from the small little group. You follow willingly without protest, as if you can’t even speak, as if your only purpose in this world is to obey and survive.

Right now you cannot make a decision for yourself, right now you’re numb, you’ve locked yourself out from the world, eyes nothing but dull, empty sockets. Right now you are lost.

Lost in your broken, empty mind.

This is your body’s way of protecting yourself.

Yuna turns to Mingyu, her hand held against his shirt to grab his attention, and a tremor falls in her hand as her grip holds tight.

“I want to save her,” she whispers, a voice barely audible but they hear her. It is a wish they all hold dearly in their hearts. “She…she can’t face him again, Mingyu, not in the same way. Or else…or else…”

“She gave us her command, we can’t go against that,” the second in command states, his emotions held back despite it all. “But there are some people who aren’t obligated to go against her.”

“You don’t mean..”

“They’re the only ones we can rely on to bring Y/N back,” he says despite Dasom’s disapproving glare. “At least we can trust in Jung Hoseok, if anyone.”

“I ask that you protect her well.”

Namjoon sits in his chair, a silent stare at the man who bows before him, and when he looks over at Hoseok, the older man just spares him a silent glance, unsure of what was going on as well.

“You don’t think those are the obligations between two allies, do you?”

“I’m serious,” Mingyu says, his words firm and heavy without an ounce of jest in them. “This mission may as well be one of the most difficult ones my boss will have to face, yet I am not allowed to interfere with her plans.”

“And why is that?” Seokjin asks.

“Because she knows that if I were to be there with her, I may as well stop her and in short, ruin the plan of revenge. Whatever you do, do not stop her, however…” he holds his jaw in, fingers held in a tight fist behind him, “save her…if it so gets to that point.”

The man before them is a man who’s been through a lot, who watched over you and cared for you, a man who truly hopes for nothing but the best out of you. He frets over your safety, concern clearly marked on his face, yet as your subordinate, he is obligated to heed your every order.

“If you’re that worried about her, why don’t you try harder to have her revise her plan? Or better yet, persuade her to leave this be?” Namjoon asks, genuinely curious about his strange resolve.

“Because this is the only way I can save her,” Mingyu says, his expression a sharp, piercing seriousness. “She may be impulsive at times, maybe even bloodthirsty and cruel in her ways of only seeking revenge towards the people that have wronged her, but Y/N’s ambition lies in wanting to seek peace. You and I will never understand her heart but she holds her resolves and she holds her morals and I have every intention of giving everything I can to see her ambition come to pass. I believe that is why I follow her. She has saved me so I will do all that I can to save her. And if saving her means stepping back and having you take care of things for the moment…I hold no protest.”

So that’s how it is.

Both Mingyu and the rest of the Reapers refuse to stand in the way of your dreams. They have sworn themselves to you, from whatever point you’ve met and managed to steal their hearts and souls.

You have a way with people. Even back then when you held no ambitions in killing people, the authority you held had never dissipated. There’s something about you that people can never forget, no matter who they are, and you will always leave an impression in the end.

The Reapers now, your Reapers, are different from any other followers they have ever seen before. They heed your every word, holding them as if they were laws of the world, never to go against you, coming to you the instant you call their names. Loyalty means to have full allegiance and faithfulness owned by a duty, a pledge, or a promise. And the Reapers’ loyalty lies much deeper than that. This isn’t just simple loyalty, this is something much deeper than they can ever imagine.

You saved him, Mingyu stated, which meant you saved the rest of them as well, and in turn, they’ve vowed their lives to you.

“So as someone who cares deeply for Y/N and as people who once held her at the center of the world,” he looks at them with a pointed stare, eyes refusing to look away or even blink, “don’t you think you should at least give her what she deserves?”

What a loyal companion you have.

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angelasscribbles · 8 months

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The Dark Kingdom Chapter 5: Fated

Series: The Dark Kingdom

Fandom: The Royal Romance

Pairings: Riley x Liam, Riley x Drake, Riley x ?

Word Count: 1,555

Rating: MA

******TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual Assault mentioned, physical, verbal abuse/assault described. Lead up to sexual assault described*******

My other stuff: Master List.

Riley tossed and turned uneasily as the sun dipped behind the mountains. Her body twitched as soft whines of pain and fear slipped from her.

The fingers twisted painfully in her hair, as putrid breath hit her in the face, “Did you really think I’d let you marry my son?”

“I…ow! Please! I didn’t…how did you-“

He yanked her forward hard enough to separate a hank of hair from her scalp, “He came to me asking for my blessing, the stupid boy. What have you done to him you little whore? Have you been spreading your legs for him? Seducing him with your filthy commoner ways?”

She tried to scramble away from him, tears and snot streaking her face as she backed into the corner with no way to get past him, “No! I…I love him, he loves me! We-“

“There’s no way I’m letting my son marry common street trash! You’ve been given all the privileges of royalty but that doesn’t make you one of us!”

“But…but you said that if I made a good enough marriage match-“

A harsh laugh accompanied the stinging backhand across her face, “No nobleman is going to want to marry you. You’re only good for one thing. And if you go near my son again, I’ll fucking kill you. But not before I tell him how you’ve been fucking his father all this time. Now get back over here and let me remind you what you’re good for. Now!”

“NO!” Riley bolted upright in her bed, sweat drenching her nightgown, heart thundering in her chest. Her hands grappled at the covers, fighting off an attacker who wasn’t there.

“Riley!” Liam was suddenly in her room, in her bed, wrapping her in his arms, “Riley, Riley, it’s okay, I’m here, you’re safe now. It was just a dream!”

She pitched forward into him, clinging to him as all the pain and agony of her whole wretched life poured out of her. She shouldn’t have felt safe in his arms, but she did. She had no reason to trust him, but she did.

“It wasn’t just a dream,” she sobbed into his chest.

“What was it?” There was nothing but concern in his voice as he held her tightly against him and rocked her back and forth.

“A memory,” she whispered.

He stopped moving as he considered that. His voice held some kind of barely restrained emotion when he spoke, “What happened to you, Riley? Who hurt you? Please tell me.”

“What good would it do?” She hiccupped.

Liam pulled back so he could look at her face. Placing a finger under her chin, he tilted her head up so she was looking into his eyes when he replied, “Because I will kill whoever did this to you.”

She shook her head, “You can’t.”

“Oh, I assure you, I can!”

“No, I mean you can’t! The treaty….”

“So, someone did hurt you. A human.”

She nodded.

“And this is why you ran away?”

She nodded again.

“Please tell me why you scaled my mountain. I can protect you, but I have to know who my enemies are.”

Life had taught her not to trust people, especially men, but something deep inside her told her she could trust this one. She felt as drawn to him as she did to the mountains themselves and she had no idea why.

Besides, not telling him certainly wasn’t going to absolve her transgression of crossing the partition and breaking the treaty. She had to try, “I want to. It’s just not easy to talk about. The man who raised me-“

“Your father?”

“That monster is not my father!” she spat with a vehemence that took him aback, “My parents…they died when I was quite young…I don’t even remember them.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I was sent to live at the…I was sent to live with a different family…”

“And they abused you?”

“Not at first. The woman who raised me, she was kind and loving. She didn’t treat me any differently than she treated her own children but then she died…” Riley broke off as renewed sobs racked her body.

“Take your time,” he soothed.

“Everyone told my foster father to remarry, but he never did. He started coming into my room in the middle of the night-“

Liam cursed in some ancient language she didn’t understand, “You don’t have to give me details, I get the idea. How old were you when it started?”

“Twelve,” She whispered.

“Christ,” he ran a hand down his face as he struggled to maintain his composure.

And they called the Esseri monsters. Not a single species under his domain would treat a child, any child, in such a manner.

She had been brutalized by the man who should have protected and cherished her. And she had risked certain death to get away from him. She had literally scaled a mountain, shredding her hands and feet in the process, for a bare chance at freedom.

He couldn’t punish her for it, nor could he send her back to the person who had hurt her.

He pulled her closer, pressing her against his chest, “You’re safe here. No one will ever harm you again.”

“But I broke the treaty-“

“Don’t worry about the treaty. You had good reason for your actions. This wasn’t a violation; it was an act of seeking sanctuary and I grant you asylum.”

“You’re not going to punish me?”

He laughed bitterly, “I think you’ve been punished enough and for no wrongdoing on your part.”

“And you won’t send me back?” She held her breath, not daring to entertain hope. Hope that had so frequently been ripped from her in the past.

This was not her first escape attempt, just her first successful one.

“This is your home now, for as long as you want it to be,” Liam released her and propelled himself away from her bed, unwilling to do anything that she might interpret as unwanted touch, “Please join me downstairs in the dining room when you’re dressed. I’ve had the kitchen prepare breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” She laughed as she glanced out her window at the deepening night sky.

“We’ve both just woken. It is breakfast,” he rummaged through the small desk in the corner of the room and came up with paper and pencil. He quickly drew a map to help her find the dining room then slipped out her door and disappeared.

Joy filled her heart as she bounded out of bed and got ready for the day…well, night. Whatever the future held, she was never going back to Cordonia and that was the best news she had ever been given in her entire life.

After a couple of wrong turns, she found herself in a grand dining room lit by golden candelabras. Liam rose from his chair as she entered.

She had taken three steps into the room when the door on the other side burst open and Leo stormed in with Drake hot on his heels, “Leo, you need to calm down!”

Liam turned toward the source of the commotion calmly, “Is there a problem?”

“Yes, there’s a problem!” Leo spat as he glared in her direction, “We went into one of the human towns and scouted as instructed and the humans are in an uproar over their missing princess and if they figure out that she’s here, there’s going to be a problem! There are already rumors circulating that she has been kidnapped…by us!”

Liam’s head swiveled back toward her, “You didn’t tell me you were their princess!”

“I’m not! I was raised by the royal family, but I am not one of them!” That had been made abundantly clear to her. “Barthelemy Beaumont is not my father!” Angry tears sprang into her eyes.

Leo strode toward Riley as his voice rose, finger pointing at her accusingly, “She shouldn’t be here! I should have killed her where she stood and thrown her body back down the mountain!”

Drake moved from Leo’s side and almost instantaneously appeared at hers, a low growl issuing from his throat in warning.

She flinched, then moved quickly, angling to put herself behind Drake as he stepped between her and her would-be attacker, but Leo never made it to them.

There was a resounding thwack as Liam intercepted his brother, the back of his hand sending him flying across the room to slam into the far wall. “You will not touch her!” His voice rolled like thunder across the room.

“What the hell has gotten into you?” Leo demanded as he picked himself up off the floor and rubbed the back of his head, “Why are you protecting some random human who’s going to get us embroiled in a war?”

“She is not a random human!” Liam’s fury coalesced all around them, like a living, breathing thing as he roared, “She is my mate!”

“Mate!” Drake snarled in Leo’s direction as one arm curled behind him, wrapping around her waist.

Leo froze, eyes wide as they flicked from Liam to Drake to Riley then back again. “I apologize, Stăpâni,” he said with a stiff bow before backing through the doorway.

Riley stood rooted to the spot, a heavy thickness still hanging in the air, the sound of both men’s labored breathing filling the room, “Uh…guys…what just happened?”

#trr au #trr au fanfic #the royal romance #trr poly #liam rys #drake walker #riley brooks #the royal romance fanfic #angelasscribbles #trr #choices fic writers creations #cfwc fics of the week #choices #the dark kingdom #dark romance #paranomal #paranormal romance

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ceruleanwhore · 9 months

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Since I’ve seen so much Silvio hate since his route release, I wanted to take a minute to talk about why all 3 of the visiting foreign princes make me uncomfortable because I believe in equality. Please keep in mind that I am on a break from the ikepri app rn so I have not actually played Silvio’s route, though I did read a translation of it on here previously, but I’m going to try to avoid using stuff from that.

Starting with the man of the hour, first to be released, I’d sum up my feelings about his character as “eat the rich — literally not sexually ya numpty.” He is the embodiment of everything I’ve ever hated about capitalism and the 1% and genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, it would delight me to watch him die because of how he represents that. His jangling, the way he throws his money around (the fact he has, what, 10 billion for Rio to waste on a gem at auction in Rio’s route), and, most importantly, the complete lack of any apparent morality or humanity. He demands everyone respect him because of that money (respect as in deference that comes with authority) while he throws around his bullshit bootstrap rhetoric and refuses to treat anyone at all with respect (respect as in the basic human decency kind). There’s also a seriously sadistic streak in him and so it’s not enough to be a billionaire prince, he also has to take this random woman as his indentured servant and constantly upset her on purpose and demean her to punish her for someone else’s accident.

Next up is Gilbert who, to me, is just plain annoying more than anything else. He and Chev never really scared me or anything with all the violence since it’s super predictable with them, so that doesn’t really bother me, per se, but the way he’s a pushy little dick in social situations pisses me off and if I were Emma I’d be dead because I would’ve yelled at him within like 5 seconds of meeting him. The hell of it’s that he’s supposed to be this master manipulator but he doesn’t seem to even be all that good at manipulation since his is so ham-fisted, he’s just a pushy asshole. My thing with both him and Silvio is that I fucking hate money and I fucking hate authority and I believe that no one, including myself, should have it the way they do, and it makes me immensely angry to watch them use those things to abuse others.

Now, I saved Keith for last because he’s actually the worst of the three in my opinion and he genuinely scares the shit out of me, and not because he happens to have DID, but because of what sort of people main!Keith and alter!Keith are.

WARNING! MENTIONS OF VIOLENCE AND TRUE CRIME

Main!Keith just strikes me as being the kind of guy who would beat his gf and eventually kill her and, every time I see him, he reminds me of the Yellow Dress assembly my high school did about domestic abuse. He seems like the shy, insecure nerd who, in the early days, would worship the ground his gf walks on and just be so grateful that she decided to give him a chance, etc., until that turns into possessive jealousy over time, which then would feed into him isolating her, turning more violent, and then maybe killing her and hiding her body in the woods. Genuinely, the last event story I read with Keith made me INTENSELY uncomfortable from the very beginning because he had these vibes and I don’t know if I’ll be able to read his story because, in my head, Emma will already be dead, basically.

As for alter!Keith, he seems like the kind of guy who would literally be a serial killer, just going off the event stuff I’ve read, plus the second prologue and other act II routes. I could genuinely see him killing with no real rhyme or reason, unlike Chev and Gilbert who are so completely predictable. If main!Keith gives me true crime vibes in a OJ Simpson way, alter!Keith is more like a David Parker-Ray sort of true crime, and they both scare the living shit out of me. I can’t tell you how uncomfortable it is seeing so many people in the fandom talk about how much they love Keith and how nice and cute they think he is when, to me, he’s one of the scariest fictional characters I’ve ever encountered, mainly because I know he’s supposed to be a romantic lead in spite of everything I just said. Silvio and Gilbert would annoy me to death but Keith would do arts and crafts with my skin and hide my chopped-up body in the woods.

#ikemen prince #ikepri #ikeprince #ikepri critical #ikepri salt

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nerves-nebula · 7 months

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hi there, i want to ask about your usage of it/its pronouns, sorry if this might make you uncomfortable or if its weird or confusing

are your it/its pronouns any different from it/its pronouns for an object? I don't know how to word it sorry, I'm just trying to understand more about other types of pronouns

It’s fine. They aren’t different from an objects it/its to me, because objects & animals & concepts aren’t inherently inferior to humans, so I wouldn’t really mind being in the same group as them conceptually.

It’s a mindset I haven’t fully gotten into but I’m trying to rework the way I see the world, inspired partially by the things I’ve heard native Americans say. Like, I am not better than the food I eat because I’m human. A bear isn’t better than me because they can eat me & kill me. Humans are a part of the earth and would do best to work inside of it and with it than to try to control it or put ourselves on a higher level than it’s other creatures.

I mean clearly we can’t be all that much smarter & more important, what with what we’ve got going on.

But anyway, my pronoun change was at first honestly just the most logical conclusion.

Here’s my train of thought: I didn’t like he or she, Im not a man or a woman. and they/them don’t tell you anything about my gender. If you hear someone call me they/them you aren’t even gonna know I have a weird gender!

Similar to how man and woman are genders, but Non-binary isn’t. Non-binary just describes what you aren’t, its an umbrella term not (inherently) a specific gender. it’s very broad and most nonbinary people I’ve seen & met still identify in parts with man and woman. They/them is so vague that no one would bat an eye if you slipped in a they while describing a cis person who clearly reads as their assigned gender.

And I’m too forgetful & lazy to use neopronouns so, it/it’s was the natural choice. It’s easier to integrate because people already use it/it’s for stuff all the time.

And see, here’s the thing: I have a gender, I’m not vague or in between or a mix. And it’s much closer to like, the idea of a Third Gender. This was something that frustrated me a lot in high school because I would go looking for labels and most of them were about proximity to manhood & womanhood. Or about being agender or neutral. Or about concepts I fully did not relate to. I am not one of those things.

Another issue I had was that a lot of these gender labels had “-gender” at the end which doesn’t make sense to me at all. It’s not mangender and womangender so I didn’t vibe with this naming scheme.

I was also hesitant to use a label a white person made because I’d noticed that white people kind of have a different experience with nonbinary gender than people like me.

Luckily I found the perfect label! Maverique! It had no weird -gender suffix and it was made by a black person who created it online after realizing neutral/agender didn’t fit right.

And yea so it/its is a signifier of me as a third thing. not male, not female, not neutral or in between or lacking gender- just a different kind of person.

And this isn’t even getting into all the ways that I related to monsters in media, which were frequently called by it/it’s pronouns. Or how being abused factors into seeing myself as a non human THING and how embracing that makes me feel much more alive & like a person.

So yea, that’s the run down :)

#nnstuff #ask #it pronouns #trans #nonbinary #transgender #queer

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pixelchills · 1 year

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My Celestial mutants got isekai'd last night.

You know how my dreams tend to be so vivid and have actual clear storylines that inspire me with a lot of my stories sometimes. Last night I had one of those dreams. I kinda blame the concept for binging Lookism the other day, but somehow my brain generated a whole new story loosely based on that, my Animutant AU, and the celestial characters in it.

So, in this universe, Animutants were not lab-created creatures, but born to human families yet treated like a “curse”. Animutants were not ageing slower than humans, nor were they bigger than them like in my original AU. They were immune to most human illnesses, but somehow the people seemed to think they were just abominations; most of them were hunted, killed, and banned from cities or public places. No rights for almost anything.

I think this could’ve been because they were alien offspring or something.

If an Animutant baby was born to a family, the government would pay the parents for killing it. The reason why they were so hated was never fully mentioned, but I might need to work on the details if I ever wish to expand this story.

Animutant kids were not allowed to attend schools, and adult Animutants couldn’t really get almost any type of job. Most bigger cities and towns had them banned from entering completely, leaving most of them to live in smaller villages, the mountains and the woods or small abandoned islands.

Sunrise was a human, 20 years old when the dream started. He was a high school dropout, living with his abusive alcoholic father after his mother had left them when he was in middle school. Sun worked as a cashier in a convenience store, and did a lot of babysitting on the side.

He was nervous, clumsy and wimpy, liked superhero comics and art. He was trying to save the money he got from his jobs to move out from his dad’s place, but his dad kept stealing his paychecks as “rent” for letting Sun live with him.

Not was he only abused by his father, but the reason why Sunrise had dropped out of high school had been bullying, and his old bullies seemed to somehow torment him once in a while even when he was just working his jobs. His life was really just miserable.

Then one night he has a really weird dream, and in the morning, when he wakes up, he realises he is no longer a human.

Panicked about his sudden change in appearance, he calls work sick, and hides in his room trying to do research. He realises he has been turned into an Animutant. He reads about all the horrible stuff that happens to Animutants in places where they’re not allowed to be, like his city.

Sun runs away from home.

After days of dodging cities he’s not allowed to enter, he finally arrives at a small village which claims itself to be Animutant friendly. He tries to book a room from the motel in the village, but his ID doesn’t match his face, and he’s denied the stay.

Before he continues looking for a place to stay he is stopped by a woman, who asks if he's a friend of the (Surname missing) family, because his facial features remind her of their son, who was born as an Animutant.

“That poor family,” she said.

Sun gets the address of the house and rings their doorbell. If they had decided to keep their son, maybe they wouldn’t mind him staying over for a night or two if he pays them.

Moondrop opens the door, and Sun is immediately taken back by his pretty pretty eyes. A bit of an awkward first meeting, just like in the original story, and Moon’s mother invites Sunrise to come in.

Moon’s parents let Sun stay over, and he tells them about his issue of suddenly turning into an Animutant despite being born human. Moon’s parents don’t think he is lying, but tell him about this Animutant traveller who stopped in their village about 10 years ago, who was also born human but turned into an Animutant overnight. They said the traveller had been rumoured to settle somewhere in the mountains, but no one knew exactly where.

Moon was going to be sent to the mountains to work for this “mage” after his 21st birthday. Because getting money as an Animutant was a difficult thing, most parents who kept their children would usually send them to work to another family and get the money from it, and Moon, who clearly loved his parents, wanted to support them financially.

Sun learns that Moon was homeschooled by his mother, because Animutants were not allowed to attend schools. I think Moon also had an older sibling, and their family had a lot of cats. Sun is so taken by the difference between his own father, and Moon’s parents, who were supportive and not even a little bit abusive to their son, who wasn’t even human.

Sun gets to stay with them until September, when Moon turns 21 and leaves to the mountains. Moon becomes Sun’s first and most important friend during the summer they spend together. Moon’s parents wrote a letter to the mage for the boys to take with them, asking him to let Sun stay with the mage until he figures out how to turn back to human.

The mage approves it, but only if Sun will work for him too, yet refuses to pay Moon’s parents more than originally planned. So Sun works for the shelter and meals.

Their job is basically to just take care of the house; do firewood, cook, clean, take care of the garden etc.

In their freetime they explore the mountains, looking for the traveller for answers. Eventually they meet him (it’s Solar!) and get some answers about a some sort of spell casted upon Solar and Sunrise by a goddess of unfortunate souls. Solar said he has given up looking for the goddess to revert the spell, and doesn’t mind his life as it is; a bit lonely at times, yes, but at least no one bothers him.

Eventually Sun and Moon finally get a hold of this goddess (the details how exactly they did that are missing). When she asks Sun if he truly wishes to return to his life as a human and get back to the city, Sun becomes hesitant. As much as he has tried to pursue his goal to return to being human, he has also been given a life he would’ve never been able to have as a human. And he has fallen in love.

He needs to choose between his own humanity, or staying with Moon.

He chooses the latter.

At the end of the dream, they got married! What a wonderful ending! :D

If I ever decide to write an original book, this is the story I’m going for.

#pixel dreams #sunrise #moondrop #solar #animutants

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