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kikufuku01 · 1 year

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I Love You, Always

Sukuna x Reader

Part 7 Too Much to Drink ♡ ♡ ♡ Part 8 Alcohol on Your Tongue series m. list

Reblogs, likes and comments are appreciated!

Warnings: Alcohol consumption, sneaky drinking, slight teasing, drvgs, sexual tension

Note: I’m sorry if it’s hard to read! The format might be ugly and not spaced out enough, but none of this is proofread and it’s transferred from my google docs!

Taglist is open, just message me if you’d like to be tagged in upcoming posts! Must be 18+!

Loud music blares through the air, blending in with the scent of musk and sweat. Loud laughter and drunken conversations are lost and muffled through crowds of bodies while Sukuna’s lips curl into a seductive smile as he watches a group of women in the club. They’re practically tipsy, on the verge of being drunk. Their previously styled hair is tossed and tussled while their party outfits are wrinkled and crooked, a sign of constant movement. In his eyes, he sees a fat tip, so he makes sure to keep an eye on them. He’s done this a number of times, so it’s easy to lure them. With just a single glance, he’s caught the big fish, the prettiest woman of the group. Red, blue and green lights flash onto his skin that bears a sheen layer of sweat. His button up shirt is completely undone, and he wears nothing underneath, revealing the muscles of his chest and abs while his gelled back hair is slightly undone. She smiles eagerly and gathers her things, leaning in to tell her friends to go to his area, the bar. One thing about this club he works at is that they hire people with looks. That’s their first priority, since it brings in more money.

Sukuna hands another customer their order and then proceeds to do his job all while maintaining eye contact. The woman and her friends make it over, immediately taking the seats. She bats her false lashes at him, “a paloma for me.”

“Right away, sweetheart.”

He types in her order to start her tab and then prepares her drink, mixing in the tequila, lime juice and grapefruit soda. It’s a simple girly little drink but who is he to judge? He slides the glass over to her and begins making her friends’ drinks.

“What’s your name?”

“Sukuna.”

He purposely licks his lips to gain her attention and it works like always. Her eyes linger on his glistening lips and she can’t help but gulp, “Sukuna,” she repeats, now leaning on the counter, “you’re pretty handsome.”

“Of course I am,” he boasts, shooting her a wink.

He finds it ridiculous that this stupid shit works all the time. And maybe it’s the effect of liquor that makes these people so desperate, but he really can’t talk either since he does this shit for extra cash. He makes sure to serve all his customers with the same small flirting, but he makes sure to give this woman special attention, from lingering gazes and subtle touches. When he’d slide a drink over to someone near her, he’d make sure his hand grazed hers and then he’d smile that cunning smirk of his. She’s obviously reeled in. After ordering a few rounds of shots for her and her friends, she reaches over to grab his hand that rests on top of the counter.

“When’s your break?”

She’s quite bold. Pretty reckless. Her nimble fingers push her curled hair back as he finishes off his other customer. He looks at the time and then his co-worker, “I can take one right now if you want.”

“Great.”

He hands her the tab and she pays. Then, she slides him a pretty little stack; one he takes with ease. Sukuna walks over to the other bartender and tells him that he’s going on break. Just like that, he leaves the bar and walks up to the woman who discards all of her friends. He wraps his arm around her waist and drags her somewhere else, but not before turning back and shooting a wink at her group of friends.

Sukuna has never done it. He’s never gone that far with any of his customers. He takes her to the back alley of the club and leans her against the brick wall while his left hand trails from her thigh up to her hip. She has a pretty little silver dress on. It makes her stand out a lot, almost like a disco ball. He likes the way the sequin feels beneath his fingertips too, but his face remains the same, like a mask as he takes her in. She breathes harder just from the anticipation and her arms come up to wrap around his neck, “kiss me.”

It’s a demand he usually does easily. He had no problem at all before so why would he have one now? Sukuna chuckles deeply and leans down, hovering just above her lips. All he has to do is kiss her. He already got the tip, so just kiss her. When she notices that he’s taking too long to connect, she moves towards him, only to have him pull back. Why can’t he kiss her? Why can’t he do it? The woman chuckles, “oh? Don’t tell me,” Her right hand trails down from his neck to his crotch, “guilty heart?”

She grips him and laughs to herself. Not because he’s not hard but because she can tell he’s just massive based on how he feels soft. She coos at him gently as her eyelashes flutter seductively, “what’s wrong, baby? You in a relationship? Guilty of cheating?”

“Nah,” Sukuna sniggers, “I just realized you ain’t my typa gal.” He digs into his pocket and hands her back the stash of cash, “maybe you can try again with my other buddy behind the counter.” With that, he leans down and plants a teasing kiss on the top of her head before pulling the heavy metal door open and going back inside.

Fucking bitch. It’s because of you, isn’t it? You’re playing with his money, you know that? You’re messing with his snack money. Not that he needs it, but still. Irritation rises in his chest as he moves to the back where all the other staff reside. The boss spots him and shakes his head, “bad day?”

“Something like that.”

“Here, this always calms you.”

Sukuna looks at the small bag he holds out and takes it, “thanks.”

He digs in the bag and takes a pill, dry swallowing the bitter thing. He washes down the aftertaste with a can of beer. What did he ingest? Molly. This is a side you don’t see. This is the version of him that you don’t know of. You already think he’s bad as he is, so would you think he was helpless at this point? Thing is, he’s been doing this for years, even back in high school. He hasn’t consumed molly as often in his adult years, but he still does every now and then. It’s horrible, he knows, but who fucking cares. It makes him feel great inside.

“You haven’t been coming into work lately. Something happen?”

His boss sits down on a leather seat as he eyes him with his dark eyes. Sukuna shakes his head as he patiently waits for the pill to kick in, “just been distracting myself with other things.”

“Why’re you even here, kid? You’re loaded.”

He takes out a cigarette and begins smoking on the floor. His shined shoes are glistening under the dim lights as he taps his foot to the muffled beat from the other side of the door.

Sukuna just shrugs, “dunno.”

“It’s not too late to get your life together, you know? You can still do other things.” He picks up a glass and stirs the drink around with a circular motion, “you’ve still got a long life.”

He barely laughs at his boss, “I’m much too lazy to do anything else.”

All his boss can do is share an empathetic expression. About half an hour has passed and the drug begins doing its work. Sukuna’s vision is blurred; It’s like he’s seeing tunnel vision while his pulse races his heart. The music’s vibrations dance around him as he continues to make drinks for drunk customers all while all his senses become heightened. Sukuna feels fucking euphoric and it’s the most amazing thing ever. He doesn’t even remember coming back home. He can’t remember showering or even getting in bed, but apparently it all happened because he’s staring at his ceiling, and it’s spinning.

♡ ♡ ♡

Sukuna’s eyelids pull open and he realizes that he’s in his bedroom. It’s empty and dull. His first instinct is to text you, but he refrains from doing so. Instead, he gets up and gets ready for the day while his head pangs from last night’s consumption. His throat is so dry that it hurts to swallow so he sits at the table while the housemaid pours him a glass of water.

“You can leave for the day.”

Sukuna decides to scroll through his phone for any news of some sort. He takes the time to quickly reply to both you and Kaede before getting to his other friends who have been trying to get in contact with him. Apparently one of his friends is throwing a party soon and the only reason why that caught his attention is because you keep bothering him about one. Do you seriously want to go? If so, he guesses he can bring you around just for the experience. Maybe after experiencing one, you’ll never want to go back. He titters at the idea, even though he knows he’s damned. Sukuna has no idea why you want to party, but he’ll always give in to you, even if you won’t ever feel the same way.

He walks with a baseball cap on and enters the shop with a stoic expression. His usual cold face breaks as he sees who he’s meeting up with today, “hey, Kaede.”

“Took you long enough,” she huffs, offering a cute pout.

Sukuna sits across from her and picks up the drink that she had ordered for him, “sorry, I missed the bus.”

They spend their day exploring all around Tokyo while Sukuna smokes until his lungs suffocate. He texted you the details about the party but made sure to tell you not to mention anything to Kaede. It’ll be bad enough having to watch over you, so he’d prefer if Kaede didn’t know. Something that does make his chest weigh down is your reason for wanting to party.

Halfie: I just want to hook up with someone. I don’t know how I feel about Kazuya, but in case I do decide to date him, I want to make sure I’m ready in all ways.

Halfie: Sorry if that was tmi. You asked, so I provided an answer.

Kaede leans down and pokes her head into his line of vision, “are you coming?”

“Right,” he mutters, standing from his spot. Kaede said that they could watch movies together at her house, in her room, so that’s where they’re going. Although he does the same thing with Kaede as he does with you, it doesn’t feel the same. With you, his heart is always racing and pounding, and he finds himself thinking about the stupid things. With Kaede, he finds comfort in being able to relax. He’s able to just chill and watch whatever is on the screen. Cookie points go to Kaede, since she’s not as annoying as you. You’re always feeding him better though, so cookie points for you too, maybe.

Kaede goes into the house first and then opens her bedroom window after a few minutes pass by. He crawls in with ease and settles into her bed as soon as possible. Her bed is way bigger than yours, the sheets are silk, and the room smells like lavender. Kaede’s color scheme for her room is violet and cream, and he thinks they complement each other well. He still prefers your room though. It just feels more… homey? Is he being biased? Probably.

Due to Kaede’s easily spiked fear, they decide not to watch horror movies. They spend most of the night watching romcoms, pure comedy and some romance. It’s easy to watch movies with Kaede because they can both talk and focus on the movie at the same time. With you, he can’t fucking focus. You talk so fucking much. All. The. Time. But, as annoying as you are, Sukuna always finds himself answering you every time. Besides, sometimes it’s him that is the talkative one. Kaede is currently bawling her eyes out at the current scene.

“Stop being such a crybaby,” Sukuna laughs.

He reaches over to her and wipes at the fallen tears. Kaede sniffles softly and points at the screen, “but this scene is so sad! She can finally see again but she can’t recognize her lover since he just disappeared and suddenly reappeared.” More tears slip past her eyes as she speaks, “like, she massaged his back in the hospital and her hands recognized him, but his name was different because he never told her his real name–”

“I get it,” Sukuna cuts Kaede off and proceeds to laugh at her. He doesn’t understand the point of crying about a movie. It’s all fake anyway. He cocks his head to take a better peak at her and offers a small grin, “you already know they’ll end up together in the end. Why cry about–”

Kaede sits up in the bed and clamps her hand over Sukuna’s mouth, “shh! Shut up! The other guy just told her he bought the night jasmine!”

Sukuna’s eyes shift from her to the tv. It shows the female lead slowly realizing the situation and now she’s running on the streets as she cries to her heart's content. He’s not fazed in the slightest, but Kaede is. She stretches her hand out to her bedside table and grabs a few tissues to wipe at her nose and tears. A sympathetic laugh comes from her, “she just realized it was him! Noooo~”

She doesn’t want to face Sukuna. She can’t. She’s afraid she’ll look stupid for crying so hard at the movie. Sukuna remains silent as he watches the film and he smacks Kaede’s shoulder at the upcoming scene, “see? She fucking found his ass. They’re together, now stop wailing.”

Kaede slaps his arm back weakly and lets out a new stream of tears, “stop making fun of me…” Her eyes flick to the screen again but she looks away immediately, “oh no! Now she’s touching his face like she did when she was blind. It’s all too sweet. Now kiss! Kiss…”

They don’t. The movie ends with the couple hugging and then the credits begin to play. Sukuna leans back into the bed and chuckles at the mess that Kaede is, “you’re such an ugly crier sometimes.”

“That’s so rude,” she barely argues, a whimper falling from her lips towards the end.

What time is it? Sukuna looks at her digital clock and gasps softly when he realizes the time, “I’m gonna go now.” He lifts the blanket off of him and is already throwing his legs off the bed, “see ya.”

“You’re going home already?” Kaede’s hand grips his wrist with gentle firmness, “it’s not that late.”

He’s thinking about you again. Fuck. He hasn’t seen you all day and has barely texted you at all. He’s not even sure if you’re aware that he’s here. He knows that he didn’t say anything to you but he’s not so sure on Kaede’s end. He takes his phone out, “yeah, but–”

“I still wanted to watch all these other movies with you.” she looks at him with puppy-like eyes, “do you really have to go?”

He’s always stayed later at your house anyways, so this should be no different. And it’s only eleven so, he shoves his feet back into the sheets and fixes himself, “I suppose not.” He points a stern finger at her, “they better be good movies or you would have wasted my time.”

Kaede clicks her tongue at him in offense, “don’t be mean!” She exits from the previous rented movie, “you didn’t like ‘Always’? I thought it was a great movie. A real tearjerker.”

“It was interesting. A little slow but still good.”

♡ ♡ ♡

Kaede yawns first and begins to stretch her body a bit while still laying down. They were so caught up on movie marathons that she had completely lost track of time, so she peeks at her phone, “oh, when did it get so late?”

Her question gains his attention and he too, looks at the time. 3:37am. His eyes widened a bit at the lost track of time, “shit, I gotta go home.”

Sukuna gets out of bed to rearrange his wrinkled clothes before leaving but Kaede flips the lights on and sits up straight in her bed, “just sleep here tonight.”

Though that’s an offer he’d usually never mind with you, he’s never actually stayed over at Kaede’s like this. Sure, he doesn’t care about your boundaries, but Kaede is different. He’s not sure how, so don’t ask him. She just is. He looks back, “I wouldn’t want to intrude or make you uncomfortable.”

Kaede giggles out loud while making a sarcastic face, “you already laid in bed with me to watch movies.” Her hand taps the spot he was in previously, “if I was uncomfortable then none of that would have happened, Sukuna.”

He doesn’t really answer her. He spins around to meet her eyes but stays quiet so she puts on a more serious face. One that lets him know she’s being serious, “the trains and buses have stopped running, and I’d feel bad if you had to walk home in the cold. Besides that, I’d feel worse if you had to wake your chauffeur up at this hour to come get you.”

She does have a point. He usually wouldn’t care about his chauffeur but he’s feeling kind of lazy too and he’s beat from all those movies. He remembers to keep his voice low in case there are any family members awake at this hour for god knows what, “you sure about this?”

“I don’t see why not.”

He thinks about it once more before finally giving in, “alright.” Sukuna crawls back into bed and rubs his eyes, “g’night.”

Sukuna pulls his phone out and begins to text someone. It interests Kaede, so she leans over his shoulder to snoop, “what’re you doing?”

“Texting y/n.” His reply is curt and monotoned.

Kaede’s eyebrows raise with surprise, “she messaged you? At this hour?”

“No,” a small smile creeps up on Sukuna’s face as he thinks about your sleeping face, “but I always tell her goodnight.” And he never once mentioned to Kaede that before sending you a goodnight message, he sent a short, detailed text about how he and Kaede spent the day together and now he was spending the night because it was too late.

“Oh…” Kaede’s voice dies down a bit but she playfully shoves Sukuna, “you always leave me on read. Even worse, delivered.”

This time Sukuna laughs with her, “I send you a message back sometimes. You should be grateful.”

“Yeah yeah, whatever, big boy.”

Kaede sticks her tongue out at him and reaches over towards the lamp, “go to sleep.”

“Night~” Sukuna sings in a mocking tone, which earns him another smack. He rubs his back, “ouch. See? That’s why you don’t get goodnight messages back.”

She giggles while the lights turn off and then lays in bed. It’s silent between them now with only small shuffling as background noise. Sukuna has his back facing Kaede and he’s still awake. He’s tired, yes, but he’s not sure if he should sleep yet or not. About ten minutes pass and that’s when Kaede shifts in bed once more.

“Sorry, but, can I hold you to sleep?”

Sukuna’s voice gets caught in his throat at her sudden request. He knows what he feels for you. He knows that he’ll burn for feeling this way, but he can’t help it. You’re just so annoying, always infiltrating his mind. Is it okay for Kaede to hold him? He doesn’t belong to you. You don’t belong to him. Matter of fact, you’re not even interested in him, despite your odd behavior and slight hints of jealousy. You don’t even see him as a man, and you’re talking to someone else. Oh, and to make things worse, you want to party and mingle. You want a quick hook up so you’re prepared for pretty little Kazuha. Ugh, that pipsqueak. He knows his name isn’t Kazuha, but he doesn’t care to fix it. Just thinking of all these things has Sukuna feeling ugly inside, so he shoves them aside and hums softly, “hmm, go ahead.”

He feels her arms snake over his waist and she shuffles closer to him to feel his body heat against her skin. He notes how she still keeps a safe distance between them, unlike you and him, then he focuses on himself. His heart doesn’t pound erratically for her and it’s not making him feel any special way, but sleeping doesn’t feel as lonely anymore so he finally closes his eyes and falls asleep.

Sukuna wakes around 7am and finds that he and Kaede are still sleeping closely. He has one arm wrapped around her while her head lays on his chest. He’s not too sure when they ended up in this position but it’s comfortable. His eyes close for another second as he considers sleeping for a bit longer, but he knows he has to leave soon, so he carefully removes himself from her arms and gets ready to leave. But first, he checks his messages.

Halfie: Sounds like you had fun.

Your text sounds bland. There’s no emotion to it. Don’t ask him how he knows that, okay? He just feels like it is. If anything, you almost seem bitter. Are you upset? Okay, if he had to be realistic, you probably don’t give a shit in the end. He’s only reading it that way because he wants you to behave that way. He decides to leave you on read and listens closely to the household for any sign of someone being awake. When he hears nothing, he leaves from her bedroom window.

If only he knew that when you woke up this morning to his texts, a part of you swelled and your eye twitched. All the more reason for you to disregard the weird things you feel when he spends the night with you. You were beginning to think that the reason you can’t like Kazuya is because you’re too close to Sukuna; and it appears he’s like that with just anyone, so you can’t understand why he sounded so offended that one time you asked if he ever slept at Kaede’s. You know what? You’re crazy. Just focus on your mission! If you go to the party and hit it off with some man, then that means you just see Kazuya platonically, no matter how hard you try, and that you spend too much time with Sukuna, so it makes you confused.

♡ ♡ ♡

The day has come. You’ve been curt with your responses to Kazuya lately, but it’s so you won’t feel as bad. Of course, you’re not obliged to him in any means, but it still feels wrong. You feel like you’re cheating, even when you’re translucent with your uncertainty about romantic feelings. It’s normal to feel this way in any circumstance, right? Okay, whatever. There is something bothering you deep inside. You’re not sure if you’re in denial and are just choosing to be blind, but you’ve been feeling a bit shallow. You’ve caught yourself giving glares or odd looks towards Sukuna and Kaede, and you’re not sure if it’s because you’re upset at how close they’ve become that you’re now sometimes excluded, or if it’s because you’re still jealous that he smiles so kindly at her. He doesn’t have a stupid nickname for her, still. And he still calls you halfie. It’s a bit irritating to your soul. Okay… maybe it’s because you don’t feel special anymore. Before, it was just you and him. Now it’s you three, and that’s not bad, it’s just harder to keep up with them because you’re also busy with Kazuya. Kaede has met him numerous times, but Sukuna is still yet to meet him officially. It’s because he’s mean and brutally honest. The man can act, for sure if he wanted to, but you just can’t trust that he’d be all smiles and giggles for Kazuya. And now he sleeps over at Kaede’s place too. Sure, it was once, but once can turn into many more, so you no longer feel special. It’s stupid right?

Your thoughts are interrupted when your phone buzzes. It’s Sukuna telling you that he’s almost there, so you send him a short reply and continue to get ready. Your makeup is softly dramatic, your rust velvet cami dress is skintight against your body, long enough to just barely cover your ass and your hair is left as it is. Oh, and even though Sukuna argued for you to not wear heels, you do so anyway, making sure to grab the crocs he bought just in case.

You may have lied to your parents and said that you were going out to dinner with the girls, but they don’t have to know. With that excuse, they easily let you slip out of the house in your attire and you quickly run to the gates to get in the car. He’s dressed nice as well. If you were crazy, you’d openly say that he looked yummy. Good thing you aren’t! He tells his chauffeur the address and the ride begins. There’s an instrumental playing from the chauffeur’s radio station choice. It doesn’t calm your nerves at all. You’re fidgeting in the back while Sukuna watches you.

“Just letting you know, I’ll be watching over you. All night.”

“I know,” you sigh, finally looking him in the eye.

You see the pendant dangling from his neck and smile to yourself, “but I think you should take this as a chance to mingle too. I feel like it’d be good for you.”

Sukuna’s jaw clenches, “I’d rather make sure you were safe. I’m the one bringing you to a party full of strangers.”

Right, anything could go wrong. Maybe it is better for him to babysit you all night. What started off as a nerve wrecking night soon became one you could relax in. The vibe was chill and you enjoyed the company of others, mainly because everyone was friendly and not in a pushy way. There was, however, a certain man looking at you throughout the whole night and no, it was not Sukuna. Another reason why you might feel more at ease is because you’ve been drinking. How? Okay, Sukuna won’t let you smoke because he argues that it would ruin your insides, right? Isn’t alcohol just as bad? It is. But! He was willing to let you drink under his supervision, and you didn’t have too much– or so he thought. When he was too caught up in catching up with his other friends, you’d sneak drinks with the other women you met there. It was fun! The experience was extremely different than you imagined and now a part of you could understand why Sukuna might like this kind of setting or even indulge in liquor. You always ask him to let you try smoking but he’s always batting you away, so maybe after this, he’ll finally teach you how to smoke. You’re just curious, that’s all. But, all those secret shots might’ve been a big mistake because you’re starting to feel a little loopy. In a good way, at least.

What you were originally here for was to test if another man could woo you, but you’re too immersed in partying with these strangers, both men and women, to care at the moment. A good thing is that you stopped taking shots like, twenty minutes ago? The conversations become muffled as you try to focus on your own vision. The girl that is drunkenly talking to you is talking about more shots but you pout at her, “sorry, I promised my friend I wouldn’t drink too much. We’ve already snuck so many shots, I can’t.”

“Exactly!” She boasts, a dopey smile on her lips, “we’ve already snuck so much. What’s one more?”

She’s already shakily pouring another round of shots, so you give in and grab your glass, “cheers to you~” you shout in sync. Your glass clinks against hers and you bring the little cup up to your mouth to drink, but a big hand grabs your wrist and they snatch the drink right from your hand.

“Hey–” your new friend shouts, eyeing the mysterious man. Her tone softens when she recognizes him as the friend you came with, and she mouths a short “shit” at you. You glance up at Sukuna and grin when he downs the shot for you.

“That was mine.”

“Now it’s mine,” Sukuna grins back.

There’s something off about him too… What the fuck? When did he get drunk too? You’re thinking back to when he kept getting swept away from you by his other friends and come to the conclusion that they must’ve peer pressured him into drinking, even when he wasn’t supposed to. And if he isn’t drunk, then he’s at least tipsy, given how laid back and smiley he is. You’ve never really seen drunk Sukuna before and he’s never seen you drunk before, so this should be interesting. Funny at most. You turn to your friend and pat Sukuna’s back, “this is my friend, Sukuna. He looks big and mean, but don’t worry, he’s big and mean.”

“What??” She bursts out laughing at your introduction but shakes his hand anyway, “I think y/n might’ve forgotten my name, so let me introduce myself. I’m Imai Emiyo.”

Sukuna holds the glass out, “great meeting you. Pour us a shot.”

Emiyo grabs a different bottle of liquor and pours herself a shot first and then fills the shot glass that Sukuna has to the brim. Your eyes follow him as he drinks half the shot. When he swallows, his left hand comes to grip your face and he squishes your cheeks, making you look like a fish.

“Your turn.”

Before you could think properly, he poured the rest of the shot into your mouth. The only person laughing along with you two is Emiyo because everyone else is so immersed in themselves or other people. After a few more minutes of talking, Sukuna drags you into the living room area. It’s more crowded than the kitchen but it’s not too bad. You’re currently standing against the wall with Sukuna in front of you.

“You know,” you start, speaking slowly to make sure you make sense, “I never asked if you were single.”

To be clear, you don’t know what you’re trying to say but you do at the same time. Well, you know what you’re trying to get at, but you’re not sure if you can deliver it correctly in this state. Does any of that make sense at all? Even you can’t understand.

Sukuna’s lip curves into a sly smirk and he steps a bit closer, “so, you wanna try asking me now?”

He’s taking on a playful tone with you, so you decide to too. Your head leans back against the wall and you tilt it while keeping eye contact, “are you single??”

Sukuna lets out a maniac chuckle, “do I seem single?”

See, this is where he confuses you. You know jack shit about Sukuna and he’s both hot and cold at times. “I dunno,” you lilt, “you’re all reserved and shit. Who knows, this whole time you could’ve had a girlfriend while I was with you like,” you pause for dramatic emphasis, “almost every day.”

All he does is laugh at your dumbness. He finds it cute, almost.

“Don’t laugh at me. What if you were in a long-distance relationship this whole time?”

Your concern seems valid enough, but it still is funny to Sukuna, so he decides to keep on teasing you. With a wide smile on his face, he goes on, “I might be. If anything, my girlfriend would be just as bad as me.” Sukuna brings his hand towards your stomach and pokes at it, “she might kick your ass, y/n.”

You grab his wrist to stop him from poking you but hold his gaze, “so then protect me.”

His eyebrows genuinely raise at your statement. That’s something he’s never heard from you ever. Sadly for you, his surprise is shoved aside and he’s back to being mischievous, “protect you? From my girlfriend? You’re crazy, y/n.”

You shove his hand away from you and roll your eyes at his unseriousness, “so do you have one or not?”

“Why should I tell you?”

Sukuna looks through the big crowd of people and titters when he sees the man who’s been watching you all night. He can tell that he’s trying to be discreet about it, but it’s not working. It’s you that makes him break focus.

You’re frowning at him, “so I know whether to run or not…”

The sudden seriousness that you wear alarms him and Sukuna is no longer trying to tease you. His smile drops almost instantly, “don’t run.”

“Well that depends on your answer. Are you single or not?”

“Y/n,” he sighs, “I was literally by myself until you came. Isn’t that clear enough for you?”

You roll your eyes, like you always do, and push yourself off the wall, “no, so answer me before I leave.”

Sukuna’s head drops down for a quick second before it raises again, “I don’t have anyone currently.”

You still don’t believe that Sukuna is a virgin, so suspicion rises on your end as you narrow your eyes at him, “any exes?”

“Nah.”

Right then, a few of Sukuna’s friends surround you two and he briefly introduces you to them but you’re a bit too tipsy to even care or try. Their names and faces go by in a chaotic blur. A new face comes to join, and he wraps an arm around Sukuna’s shoulder, “it’s been a while since I’ve last seen you,” he proceeds to poke at Sukuna’s core, “you’ve put on some weight.”

“Have I?”

Sukuna looks down to check himself and the friend laughs loudly, “yeah, but not in a bad way. You look good.”

That’s when Sukuna pats your head and pinches your cheek, “thanks. Y/n here has been feeding me a lot.”

You introduce yourself and you quickly excuse yourself from Sukuna so that he can have fun on his own. Their eyes linger on you until you disappear and then the friend opens his mouth again, “she your little girlfriend?”

Sukuna deadpans, “dude.”

“Just asking!” His hand raises up in a defensive manner, “lover, at least?”

“Friend of mine.”

Why did Sukuna instantly regret saying that? Why didn’t he just claim you for the night? It’s not like his friends would ever hit on you, but now he feels even further away. The friend sucks on his tooth, “yikes,” his hold on Sukuna loosens, “seems like there’s something more going on. From my eyes, I’d say.”

Sukuna grabs Junta’s beer, takes a long swig and then hands it back, “I like her.”

Junta’s eyes widened just a bit, “you do? Sukuna, you do?”

“Yup. It’s one sided though.”

Sukuna hates how dejected he sounds because it’s just not him. The fucking alcohol is making him show all of these stupid emotions and he hates it. Junta gives him a sympathetic stare before trying to cheer him up, “aw, that sucks. Next time, right?”

“Nah,” it’s not even something he hesitates to say.

The blonde shifts on his feet and taps his chin mischievously, “or you could swoop her up and snatch her away from whoever she’s with.”

Sukuna’s eyes are on him and he wears a relaxed smile, “she likes to argue, so no.”

“But you like her.”

“Cause she’s real.”

Junta’s face scrunches up in confusion, “so am I.”

That earns him a light smack from Sukuna.

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m just playing along,” Junta sulks as he rubs his arms.

You go off on your own to find Emiyo but can’t. She’s somewhere mixed in the crowd and that’s just something you’ll have to sulk about later. By now you’ve lost track of time and you’re too tipsy to even care anymore. One thing is for sure and it’s the fact that your feet hurt! You remembered something about how Sukuna said he placed your crocs in his friend’s bedroom since no one should be up there, so you make your way up the fancy steps and stumble past the small crowd of people hanging out up here. If you’re lucky, you can quickly find the bedroom and swap your shoes. Just as you’re about to open a door, someone shouts at you from behind, “hey!”

You jump up at the voice and whip yourself around. You meet those pretty blue eyes again and a smile forms on your lips, “oh, it’s Adonis.”

“Oh, it’s angel face. I didn’t know you were here.”

Satoru flashes you his pearly whites and takes a swig from the red cup in his hands, “what were you doing? My friend said no one is allowed in the rooms up here.”

“I came with Sukuna and he put my crocs in one of these rooms. Since you’re friends with the host, can you help me find my crocs?” You’re already beginning to stumble so Satoru catches you and holds you up by your waist.

He observes you carefully with a sugary smile, “you’re pretty wasted, aren’t you? That punk doesn’t know how to take care of his friends.” He shakes his head at no one and then continues to beam at you, “well, since you’re drunk and your feet hurt, let’s go find your shoes. Better I help you than some strange man. Sit here.”

With Satoru’s help, he sits you down on the wooden floors and unbuckles the straps of your heels for you. He gathers them with one hand and begins to check the rooms, “I’ll be quick.”

Quick is a promise he fulfills. He’s back with those cute pink crocs, “here ya go. Are you okay to go off on your own?”

He holds both hands out for you to grab and you stand with his help and nod, “pretty much. I’m a bit tipsy but I should be fine. He’s right downstairs anyway and if I can’t find him then at least I know there’s another pretty face I recognize here.”

Satoru blows raspberries at you, “yup. Can I ask something?”

“Of course.”

He eyes your crocs and taps it gently with the tip of his fancy dress shoes, “did Sukuna buy you those?”

You chuckle softly and lift one foot to take a look as well, “he did!” You beam, “he bought it for me after I had a date with this guy named Kazuya. See, I wore heels and my feet were hurting so he offered to piggyback me and then he carried me until I got hungry. When we ordered, he saw the blisters on the back of my ankles and ran all the way to the crocs store to get them. Cute, aren’t they?” You step away from Satoru and twirl a bit to showcase the shoes and he rubs his chin with one hand while an amused smile shows.

“They’re super cute. Tell him I said hi.”

♡ ♡ ♡

The night is still young and the music is blaring excitedly. You’ve danced with your fair share of people and snuck a couple more shots even after you told yourself you’d stop. The reason was just because you were having too much fun. You were enjoying it all, was that so bad? Maybe you’re drunk now, but you’re still aware, so it’s okay. You can see Sukuna. He’s sitting on the couch beside some woman and they’re talking. It looks like a serious conversation but then you see a flirtatious smile dance on her lips at something he says. Oh god. Did he lie? Did he have a girlfriend this whole time? You don’t want to get your ass kicked! You weren’t even aware he had one because you never bothered to ask him. Technically, you’d also be a victim in this case. Thankfully all of your fear is swept aside when another man approaches them, and he kisses the woman on the lips. You avert your eyes from them and look around. There he is again, the man who keeps looking at you. He’s handsome, but he seems shy. He’s had all this time to talk to you, yet he hasn’t. Are you that mediocre? Jeez. Instead of thinking about that man, you decide to walk over to Sukuna after the couple leaves his side.

“Come here,” Sukuna demands, looking more intoxicated than before. When you come, he taps his thigh, “sit.”

You raise a brow, “on your lap?”

Sukuna’s eyes glint while a relaxed smirk remains, “did I stutter? Sit.”

You’re not completely sure you want to… You usher with your head, “there’s other seats. I’ll just sit there.”

Before you can even move to sit on the couch, Sukuna’s smirk drops and he pats his thigh once more, “I won’t ask you again, y/n. Sit down.”

“So fucking bossy,” you groan, marching at him. You spin around and plop down on his lap. Oddly enough, it’s quite… comfortable. You mold into him pretty well. It’s a little scary knowing that. Sukuna chooses to sit up now and presses his whole chest against your back. He leans forward towards your ear and begins to speak, “you see that guy over there? Right across from us?”

You tense up and shiver from the chill that runs down your spine. The feeling of Sukuna’s lips on your ears makes you feel something dangerous. It's something that should not be acted on, so you move away from his lips just a bit, “don’t do that, Sukuna. It tickles.”

“Oh?” he muses, leaning towards your ear again, “do you like it when my lips rub against your ears?” His arm wraps around your waist to hold you in place, “because I can sense how tense you are, and I can see the goosebumps on your arms. You’re breathing harder too.”

You choose to ignore his dangerous words, “shut up, before I leave. What are you even going on about?”

“He’s been eyeing you all night and I can see the desire in his eyes for you.”

Sukuna’s hold on you becomes tighter, “stay by my side tonight.”

Feeling ignorant, you laugh, “why should I? We came here to meet people and have fun, didn’t we?”

Sukuna releases you and shrugs, “well you’re my responsibility, and it’ll kill me if you end up hooking up with the wrong guy and I have to come to your rescue, so, just sit still by me.”

You turn back to grin at him, “I’ll be fine on my own, Sukuna. Don’t let me stop you from having your fun. Besides, he’s a looker.” You poke your own cheek, “just look at his dimples.”

Sukuna looks over at the man and sees him smiling at the person he’s talking to. He indeed has deep dimples, but so what? He smiles widely at you, “mines are cuter, I must admit.”

Your body twists a little so that you can get a full look at Sukuna. Your index finger comes up and you poke his dimple, “indeed they are, but they look cunningly sweet, just like you. Maybe I’ll go talk to him.”

Sukuna has moments when he handles you gently and this is one of those moments. His big hand wraps around your wrist but his eyes speak threats, “don’t you fucking dare. Stay by my side. I’m serious. His aura is bad.”

Maybe since you’re drunk, you’re acting more careless. You shrug nonchalantly, “so is yours, but I’m still here, aren’t I? Go have fun already. I’ll find you later tonight–”

“I won’t ask you again, y/n.” Sukuna’s tone is stern like before and you’re not sure why your heart is racing at this.

“I–”

“Look at him, getting hard from seeing this shit,” Sukuna cuts you off. His hand reaches around you and he grabs your chin to direct your line of vision. He leans close to you again, “should we put on a show for him? His pants are tighter just from seeing me manhandle you.”

Your heart is pounding and there’s a throb in your pussy at everything he’s saying and doing, but you still have some sense, so you push his hand away from your face, “Sukuna, stop, before anyone else thinks wrong.”

A loud laugh rumbles from Sukuna and he leans on the couch again, “I’m just teasing you a little, sweetheart. Besides, messing with him was fun.” He lightly slaps your thigh, “but all jokes aside, stay near me tonight and don’t wander off too far where I can’t see you. There are creeps everywhere. Understood?”

“I understand–”

“And don’t even think about getting near that guy. I’ll break his neck if I have to,” Sukuna threatens lightheartedly. It’s almost like he’s done it before, cause how can he say that so casually?

“I won’t, okay? Can I go now?”

You stand with him following after. Sukuna grips your shoulder firmly, “call me if you can’t find me in the crowd. I’ll come find you and throw you over my shoulder.”

“Okay, daddy.” you mock him with the name, not knowing that it would stir a raging boner in his pants. Now he’s the one who looks like a creep. Great. Sukuna groans, “go have fun.”

“You too. I won’t stray off too far.”

“You better not. I’ll be super mad if I can’t see you.”

You sneer, “shut up.”

Sukuna’s arms cross over his chest and he chuckles, “I mean it. I’ll flip the whole place upside down.”

You ponder for a bit while rocking on your feet, “what if I find someone to hook up with?”

You’re fucking seeing things! Was that just a pained expression on Sukuna’s face?! No, you’re drunk as fuck… He puts on a coy expression, “then, just text me before you go so I’ll know. When you’re done with them, let me know as well so I can take you home.”

“Okay, I will,” you chirp cheerfully, hoping it’ll change the sudden change in mood. There’s a shake to his head while he grins lazily, “have fun, halfie.”

Taglist open! @lucyrocks86 @mykyoon @hxlalokidottir @wo-ming-bai @adoraspace @yourusernames

#sukuna x reader #sukuna smut #sukuna angst #sukuna fluff #jjk x reader #ryomen sukuna angst #ryomen sukuna x reader #ryomen sukuna fluff #jjk angst #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen angst #jjk fanfic #sukuna fanfic #sukuna #ryomen sukuna #friends to lovers #strangers to lovers #alternate universe

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plutorine · 4 months

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Making Raskolnikov's Birthchart

as per my post about doing a birth/natal chart analysis for rodya, i have finally gone and crafted this chart for him!

the process:

i needed to establish a couple of important information about our beloved babygirl 23-year-old student failure:

his birthday/year: crime and punishment was published in 1866, which makes rodya, from what i understood, 23 years old (turning 24, since i headcanon that he's a scorpio; will elaborate further) at the time of the plot; it doesn’t really make sense to me why rodya would only be born in 1866, because by the time he’s 23 it’s going to be 1889/1890 already (and Russia would have changed quite a lot by then) AND in doing this, we consider the hypothetical situation that rodya is a real person, thus 1866 is the book’s “birthday” and c&p is a story of what happened to him that year; ergo, i took the liberty to run it back by 23 years, but with some exceptions: i ended up with the year 1842 — i purposely subtracted a year (bc well, 1842 + 23 is 1865 so we’re short by a year) since the events of the book happen in july. this leads me to my second talking point:

i (and perhaps a couple of other readers) maintain that rodya is indeed a scorpio. like, come on. there’s no way he isn’t. ambitious, intelligent, mysterious (but is actually really obvious about damn near everything LOL) deeply emotional (but denies it), prone to extremes, and proud as HELL; there’s no other sign that fits rodya other than scorpio. for that reason, i headcanon that he’s a scorpio sun, born some time in early november. i didn’t want to risk putting him in the late october range, because it seemed to me that he’d have more sagittarius-capricorn influence instead of virgo-libra (which, from my experience, kinda “softens” out some scorpio traits)

his birthplace: in the book, we are given this passage that hints about rodya’s hometown:

“A minute later the letter was brought to him. That was it: from his mother, from the province of R—.” (Constance Garnett translation)

Now, a disclaimer: I am not from Russia, and have no idea which provinces existed in the 1860s, so I had to make shot in the dark #1: I had to look up “provinces in Russia that started with the letter R” (no joke) just to have an idea which province Dostoevsky might have been talking about (it's times like these where i wish he didn't censor those places out but oh well). i found two oblasts (Google says it is often translated into English as “region” or “province”) that started with the letter R: Rostov and Ryazan. i literally went “well FUCK which is it?” when i saw it — since it was like almost 3 AM when i was doing all this, i just went with my gut and chose Rostov.

his birthtime: okay, for this part, i had to make shot in the dark #2. when i made the post, @vintageshits suggested that rodya could be an aries rising. that was the first thing i kept in mind when i was tinkering around in astro-seek/astrodienst. this was a bit tricky to do, because i needed to check back and forth in between tabs to make sure that rodya’s birth time was going to align the way it has to to make him an aries rising. again, i was half-referencing from the transits at that time in 1842 (which was, again, no joke u guys it was kinda tedious) and half-choosing numbers from gut feeling, but in the end, this was what i came up with:

Rodya's hypothetical birth details:

November 7, 1842 3:21 PM, Rostov-on-Don, Russia

Plugging these in astrodienst gives us this chart: (yes ik it’s in whole signs don’t @ me on this i did it bc it makes my job easier even though i’d normally use placidus)

This makes our beloved twink ax murderer a:

Scorpio Sun

Capricorn Moon

Aries Rising

Sagittarius Venus

Virgo Mars

Scorpio Mercury

i’ll go into further detail about his chart in the next post I’ll make about this! I might do another one on his big six placements, and then maybe a couple of others about his major aspects. i'll link these under this post in the future when I get to do them.

edit: 08/02/2024

sun, moon, rising analysis post

#rin's stuff: astrology #crime and punishment #rodion romanovich raskolnikov #fyodor dostoevsky #russian literature #classic literature #astrology #natal chart #birth chart #scorpio sun #capricorn moon #aries rising #sagittarius venus #virgo mars #astroblr

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where-theres-smoak-2 · 1 year

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Do you think there is a real change for Shadow and Bone to be renewed for a 3rd season, and for netflix to give the green light for a Spin Off on the Crows ? 😟

This one is really going to come down to views and engagement in the show. I do think at the moment we are in with a decent chance for getting a season 3 and spin off. It does seem to be getting the views, its currently number one in around 50 countries, it all depends whether it can maintain that position as we go into the second week of its release.

The ratings on sites like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes are also good, RT has a audience rating of 83% which is a little down on Season 1's RT rating which is 88%, but it is still good and we are only in the first week so people will still be watching and so that rating may change. With IMDB the ratings for season 2 are very similar to season 1. Season 2's lowest rated episode was 7.6 and its highest was 8.5 which again is good. Season 1 on IMDB the lowest ep was again 7.6 and the highest 8.4. I don't know how much influence ratings have or whether netflix even looks at the ratings like these but it can give us some idea of what the response to the season has been and it does seem like people have enjoyed this season as much as they did the first. Which again is a good sign.

Another thing that will determine whether we get another season and the spin off is engagement on social media, specifically twitter, which again is something that is happening, I just hopped over on twitter and the hash tag is buzzing, there are loads of people talking about their favourite moments from the season and lots of people making it clear they want a season 3 and that they would be interested in a season 3 which again is all really good.

The high viewership, the high ratings and the high engagement on socials are all telling Netflix that this show is something people will continue to watch and is popular which all increases the chance of us getting that renewal and green light for the spin off, the important part now is maintain it for as long as possible, the longer its at the number one, the longer its in the top ten, the longer its being talked about on the socials the higher the chance we have at getting the show back.

I will say if you do want a season 3 then stream the show as much as the can, even if you just have it open in a muted tab whilst you are doing other stuff, or if you have it muted on a different device. The more views the better. Also if you have a twitter account put out a quick tweet to say that you would want a season 3 and the spin off and make sure to use the tags so it can be seen.

#shadow and bone #six of crows #shadow and bone season 3 #six of crows spin off #answered

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sunlithalo-goldeneyes · 1 year

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Hello, Happy New Year, and Goodbye

Hello hello everyone, how are you doing? How is life treating you? I try to keep tabs on my friends in the same quiet way I always have, but over the years people have come and gone. I think about everyone I have talked to over the years here, everyone I’ve written with, or almost written with. You all matter to me a great deal, which is why I’m deciding to make this post, rather than slip quietly into the oblivion of an inactive blog. I am done with Tumblr RP. It’s been years that I’ve gone inactive for months, come back for a few weeks, then left again. There’s a lot of reasons why. The most recent, and I think the last and final nail of me enjoying rp on Tumblr, is the new post editor. The incompatibilities caused by not everyone having the new update, or some still using xkit, have caused issues in cutting threads, something I really need to do since I am a paragraph rper. It’s not the only reason. Since notifications for Tumblr is a blog platform, not a messenger, I tend to forget when it’s my turn. When I maintained a thread tracker it helped immensely, but in general I’ve found over time I just, do not prefer to write with Tumblr. There’s other reasons in here too. I don’t have as much fun with plotless rp then I used too. Most of the people I once rped with are themselves inactive, or I keep in touch with over discord instead, or have disappeared into the ether, never to be seen again. I am a spoony, and it became a lot of spoons for me to be always trying to start the number of threads I would need to keep my brain interested Tumblr rp. It’s hard to always be the one to approach, and to plot, and to maintain, and I just don’t really have the mental energy to do it. So the couple of you that are still around and use mostly Tumblr, unfortunately, got consigned to the part of my brain struggling to maintain interest because I wasn’t meeting said brain’s stimulation needs. And that’s fair to neither of us. You don’t deserve to be ignored because I’m nurodivergent, I don’t deserve to have to deal with a system I find hard to use. I am not, per say, leaving. This is actually my main blog and I really do not want to move my multitude of side blogs. I figure this is actually a pretty good “hub” for my presence on tumblr. I will make sure my discord link is up to date so I can be found there if you so wish. I am not sure what I am going to be using this blog for now, I haven't decided, but I will be around. Just, I am not taking any new threads, and I won’t be replying to the old ones here. I am willing to move old threads to discord if that would interest anyone, but, if discord doesn’t work for you, then I wish you the best, and may you find what you are looking for. There are no hard feelings here, I understand that not every system works for everyone. Best wishes, Happy New Year, and take care.

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ladyprince202 · 2 years

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So… I had the strangest dream. Not gonna get all deep into interpreting my dreams…

But… I decided to do a Tarot reading for y’all!!!

(Btw thank you for the previous likes & repost on my last reading… i been feeling under the weather. But I’m back!)

Pick Your Tarot Reading of the Afternoon ✨

Please pick one of these, as the message will convey to you personally. (It has been shuffled and laid out with crystals and/or cowrie shells)

Now that you’ve picked the number✨

Card #1 : (Reverse) Cups 7 - A lost sense of wonder and awe. Your creativity and imagination 💭becomes your saving grace. You wanna do so many things in your life which eventually you procrastinate. TIPS: Sometimes your mind can imagine great things.. but it can also kill so much time in not doing anything. ⏱Time is ticking⏳… you are not getting any younger, what are you waiting for? Try to put as much time in doing something as much as you think .🤔💭 Since there’s 12 months in a year, it takes 30 days to form a habit. Try to form a consistent plan for 30 days and see if anything change in your life. Was what you were thinking about it a great idea to do? Or was the idea was just good to think about and not do it? I suggest you do things you LOVE to do… that way it’ll be worth it doing something about it.🤍✨

Card #2: (Reverse) Malika Swords - Absentminded. Forgetful. You may not think things through and are subject to the influence of others’ opinions. A widow. Divorcee. Broken Ties. TIPS: Sometimes collecting others opinions and theories to gain a better understanding is good; what is not good is NOT thinking for yourself. Do you like the color red because your parents or friends like it? Or because YOU like it? Ask yourself why? Question and answer yourself to understand where your head is really at. When you only subject yourself to other’s opinions, you sabotage your message, your viewpoints, your own opinions and theories. What you have to say is less important which the “widow” concept is death to your internal relationship. You don’t really take yourself seriously which means is you are stuck in this situation because you are stubborn about change. You must learn to “divorce” taking the advice of others and start taking your OWN advice. If you do come across someone with an advice, make sure that it is mix with your internal advice as well as theirs. That’s what makes you a character. 🤌🏾✨

Card #3: Wands 2 - You act as surveyor to all that you have accomplished and seek to research and develop new things. You contemplate that which success brings and a sense of responsibility. TIPS - Having responsibilities means to take on more roles you have to do. But being able to do it well means you organize your environment to keep tabs on your responsibility. You should be proud of yourself for maintaining responsibility; Especially, if you are a student or a worker during the pandemic or even a parent, then you have the ambition to keep going. Keep that positive uplifting attitude and you will be blessed in the long run. Someone will recognize your hard earn work.. don’t give up on yourself. 🤍✨

Card #4: (Reverse) The Sibyl II - Lies, ulterior motives, aloofness, isolation, and lack of awareness. TIPS: Are you ignorant? Did you know that ignorant means to ignore? Why are you trying ignoring the truth? Even though the truth hurts, you can move on faster than the long-term lies you projected in your mind. It’s time to grow up.. talk to the little kid in you and tell the kid, adult you wants to learn how to handle the truth responsibly. Adult you will meet many kinds of people in your life, some will stay in your life and others will leave for many different reason.. but these are the truth you have to face and let it teach you about yourself, your mind, emotions and spiritual views. Little kid you will cry internally but will trust you because you are all you got. Trust that you will be okay even when you are facing the truth.

If you want more Oracle readings, please reblog this post. Thank you ✨🙏🏾

#africa #african spirituality #african #afro witch #astrology #black spirituality #blacklgbt #lesbian #lgbt #spirituality #black tarot readers #tarot reading

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productsreviewings · 1 year

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I really like the Samsung Galaxy S23 Extremely, however an obvious S Pen bug is resulting in loads of complaints. The Galaxy S23 Extremely's built-in S Pen is having hassle connecting to Bluetooth, one thing I've observed since getting maintain of a overview unit, and it is apparently affecting a number of customers complaining on Reddit. (opens in new tab), Twitter (opens in new tab)and the Samsung Group Discussion board (opens in new tab) (Supply by PunicaWeb (opens in new tab))Taking the S Pen out of the silo prepared to make use of can generally trigger a "Connecting..." dialog field to hold above the Air Motion menu. Often, it connects utterly after just a few seconds, however generally it fails utterly. For those who verify the S Pen's standing within the Settings menu, it suggests you reconnect the S Pen to allow Bluetooth, which requires you to pop the stylus again into its slot to pair once more after which strive a second time.(Picture credit score: Tom's Information)You do not want a Bluetooth connection to put in writing on the Galaxy S23 Extremely's show with the S Pen, so it isn't a troublesome subject. Nonetheless, you want Bluetooth to make use of Air Actions, which helps you to use the S Pen as a distant to navigate your telephone and working apps with out touching the display.My S Pen expertiseIn my case, and as some complaints have identified, this isn't a consistency subject. In reality, I do not bear in mind this taking place in any respect for the reason that final software program replace, though it nonetheless occurs to some customers on the identical model of One UI. Nevertheless it's undoubtedly a problem that diminishes the utility of one of many Galaxy S23 Extremely's most original options.Whereas this does not get in the best way of the S Pen's core perform of writing on the show, it was annoying having to place the stylus away and pull it out a number of occasions once I wished to check out its superior capabilities. It has Air Motion but additionally helpful capabilities like off-screen notes, a characteristic that allows you to jot issues down rapidly with out unlocking the telephone.Potential corrections There are two potential options talked about by customers in these threads The primary is enabling the "Preserve S Pen Related" setting below the S Pen part of Superior Characteristic Choices.Second, you possibly can attempt to utterly reset the S Pen from the identical menu. Once I first encountered the issue I attempted resetting the S Pen, however nonetheless skilled Bluetooth disconnection. Nonetheless, I have not tried the Preserve S Pen Related setting, so I've enabled it now. It does use a bit extra battery to take care of the connection, however hopefully which means no shock disconnects the subsequent time I begin doodling.Different TG workers aren't certain if the S Pen is one thing most Galaxy S23 Extremely patrons will truly use, but it surely's one of many telephone's finest promoting factors alongside the highly effective Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 due to its 200MP essential digicam, Galaxy chipset and exquisite show. All of this combines to make the Galaxy S23 Extremely our present high decide of the very best telephones promoting at the momentExtra from Tom's InformationAt the moment's finest Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Professional offers

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creatiview · 1 year

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[ad_1] In this week’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Mozzer Meghan Pahinui takes you through the process we use to implement customer feedback, in the hopes that you can take it and apply it to your own content creation and maintenance strategies. Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Hey, Moz fans. Welcome back to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Meghan, and I'm on the Learning team here at Moz. Today, I'm going to talk to you about harnessing the power of feedback when it comes to content iteration. So one of the projects that I contribute to in my position here is taking care of our customer help center, which we call the Help Hub. If you're not familiar with the Help Hub, this is where we house all of our how-to guides, tips and tricks, workflows, and troubleshooting guides for the Moz tools. I do encourage you to check it out if you have some time later or if you have questions about the tools. A key part of maintaining the Help Hub includes gathering, monitoring, and implementing customer feedback, and this is a crucial component for us. Why is that? Well, because we want to be sure that we're providing quality, helpful content to our customers. In addition, this process allows our customers to find answers to their questions quickly and easily at any time. It does take some of the lift of our Help team as well by reducing the number of tickets that they receive asking these very questions. So I'm going to go ahead and take you through the process that we use to implement customer feedback, in hopes that you can take it and apply it to your own content creation and maintenance strategies. Gather data So what is the first step? Well, first, we gather data, because we don't know what feedback people have if we don't ask for it, right? So if you are familiar with the Moz Help Hub, you may have seen our surveys that are at the bottom of all of our articles. Here, we ask if the article was helpful, and we do this with a series of emojis that indicate if it met their needs or not. If the customer indicates that it did not, they do have the option to enter a comment letting us know why. When it comes to gathering data on your own content, you may opt to add a survey like this, or there are plenty of other ways that you can start to gather data to work with. So if you have a social media presence, you can start keeping track of feedback there or ask your followers directly for insight into what they find most helpful and least helpful about your content. Or you can send a survey out via email, ask your customer service team for feedback, look at customer emails and tickets to see what questions the customers may be asking, which you're not currently answering on your site. We do that as well. We work closely with our Help team to ensure that everything that we can answer is answered in the Help Hub. Analyze So once you have that data to work with, it's time to analyze it. So we review both vote counts, meaning helpful versus not helpful, as well as comments here at Moz. When comments are left, we look to see if there's an opportunity to implement a change in that guide based on the feedback. Additionally, if we're seeing a trend in votes for a particular page or section, we will take a look at how we can improve or reword, update the content to better serve the customer. One thing to keep in mind during this step, however, is that not all feedback you receive will be actionable, and that's okay. A few questions that I like to ask myself when looking at feedback for an article are: Was the customer on the right page to find their answer? If not, how did they get to this page? Is there an opportunity to help them find their way to the correct page, whether that's through links or additional resources, etc.? Is there a question that I can answer on this page, or should this question have its own dedicated page? Sometimes we end up writing whole new guides based on feedback that we get from customers.

What was the customer trying to achieve? How did this guide fall short in helping them achieve that goal? Implement change So now that we've identified areas for improvement, it's time to implement changes to that content. So this may be as simple as adding an FAQ to answer a specific question or as involved as writing a new workflow or troubleshooting guide, as I mentioned previously. Just as an example, some specific things, some specific changes that we implemented based on customer feedback include adding quick links to all of our pages for easier navigation, creating separate pages for each of our keyword metrics, and building out multiple workflows based on questions that customers have asked. This step in the process may look different depending on the type of content that you create and the type of feedback that you receive. For example, if you primarily work in creating video content and you receive feedback that customers wish the videos had subtitles, you may opt to implement those on past videos as well as any that you release moving forward. However, if you have a blog or a newsletter or some other type of long-form content, it may not make sense to use resources to update older pieces of content. Instead, you may opt to start implementing those changes in your content moving forward. It may be a combination of those. Maybe you have some really popular articles that can be updated from the past and start implementing those changes in your content moving forward. Track results So after implementing your changes, you want to be sure to track your results. We track our votes and survey responses regularly to help monitor for update opportunities and to see if the responses have changed for that particular piece of content. Finally, we start the cycle all over again, gathering more data, analyzing it, implementing changes, and then tracking the results. Implementing this process here at Moz has allowed us to see a correlation between changes that we've made to the Help Hub content and the number of helpful votes that we receive. We treat this part of our content library as a living document that is always evolving to not only account for tool changes but also to take into account customer feedback. Gathering feedback on your content can help to identify trends in what your customers are engaging with and how you can further improve your offerings moving forward. That's key. You want to always be improving. It can also help to identify resources that may need updating or ideas for future content. For example, if you have a blog post about how to bake a cake and your readers are commenting that they don't know how to pick the right kind of pan for the recipe, there may be an opportunity to publish a new blog post about the best types of cake pans. Or if you publish help guides, like myself, if a customer says they couldn't find the answer to their question in that article, there may be an opportunity to look into questions like the ones that we outlined earlier in our analyze step. What are they trying to achieve? How did they end up on this page? How can I help them to reach their goal? I hope that you found this helpful and that you're ready to get out there and start harnessing the power of feedback. Thank you so much, Moz fans. We'll see you next time. Video transcription by Speechpad.com [ad_2] Source link

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lakelandseo · 1 year

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Harnessing the Power of Feedback — Whiteboard Friday

In this week’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Mozzer Meghan Pahinui takes you through the process we use to implement customer feedback, in the hopes that you can take it and apply it to your own content creation and maintenance strategies.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, Moz fans. Welcome back to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Meghan, and I'm on the Learning team here at Moz. Today, I'm going to talk to you about harnessing the power of feedback when it comes to content iteration.

So one of the projects that I contribute to in my position here is taking care of our customer help center, which we call the Help Hub. If you're not familiar with the Help Hub, this is where we house all of our how-to guides, tips and tricks, workflows, and troubleshooting guides for the Moz tools. I do encourage you to check it out if you have some time later or if you have questions about the tools.

A key part of maintaining the Help Hub includes gathering, monitoring, and implementing customer feedback, and this is a crucial component for us. Why is that? Well, because we want to be sure that we're providing quality, helpful content to our customers. In addition, this process allows our customers to find answers to their questions quickly and easily at any time. It does take some of the lift of our Help team as well by reducing the number of tickets that they receive asking these very questions. So I'm going to go ahead and take you through the process that we use to implement customer feedback, in hopes that you can take it and apply it to your own content creation and maintenance strategies.

Gather data

So what is the first step? Well, first, we gather data, because we don't know what feedback people have if we don't ask for it, right? So if you are familiar with the Moz Help Hub, you may have seen our surveys that are at the bottom of all of our articles. Here, we ask if the article was helpful, and we do this with a series of emojis that indicate if it met their needs or not. If the customer indicates that it did not, they do have the option to enter a comment letting us know why.

When it comes to gathering data on your own content, you may opt to add a survey like this, or there are plenty of other ways that you can start to gather data to work with. So if you have a social media presence, you can start keeping track of feedback there or ask your followers directly for insight into what they find most helpful and least helpful about your content. Or you can send a survey out via email, ask your customer service team for feedback, look at customer emails and tickets to see what questions the customers may be asking, which you're not currently answering on your site. We do that as well. We work closely with our Help team to ensure that everything that we can answer is answered in the Help Hub.

Analyze

So once you have that data to work with, it's time to analyze it. So we review both vote counts, meaning helpful versus not helpful, as well as comments here at Moz. When comments are left, we look to see if there's an opportunity to implement a change in that guide based on the feedback. Additionally, if we're seeing a trend in votes for a particular page or section, we will take a look at how we can improve or reword, update the content to better serve the customer.

One thing to keep in mind during this step, however, is that not all feedback you receive will be actionable, and that's okay. A few questions that I like to ask myself when looking at feedback for an article are: Was the customer on the right page to find their answer? If not, how did they get to this page? Is there an opportunity to help them find their way to the correct page, whether that's through links or additional resources, etc.? Is there a question that I can answer on this page, or should this question have its own dedicated page? Sometimes we end up writing whole new guides based on feedback that we get from customers. What was the customer trying to achieve? How did this guide fall short in helping them achieve that goal?

Implement change

So now that we've identified areas for improvement, it's time to implement changes to that content. So this may be as simple as adding an FAQ to answer a specific question or as involved as writing a new workflow or troubleshooting guide, as I mentioned previously. Just as an example, some specific things, some specific changes that we implemented based on customer feedback include adding quick links to all of our pages for easier navigation, creating separate pages for each of our keyword metrics, and building out multiple workflows based on questions that customers have asked.

This step in the process may look different depending on the type of content that you create and the type of feedback that you receive. For example, if you primarily work in creating video content and you receive feedback that customers wish the videos had subtitles, you may opt to implement those on past videos as well as any that you release moving forward. However, if you have a blog or a newsletter or some other type of long-form content, it may not make sense to use resources to update older pieces of content. Instead, you may opt to start implementing those changes in your content moving forward. It may be a combination of those. Maybe you have some really popular articles that can be updated from the past and start implementing those changes in your content moving forward.

Track results

So after implementing your changes, you want to be sure to track your results. We track our votes and survey responses regularly to help monitor for update opportunities and to see if the responses have changed for that particular piece of content.

Finally, we start the cycle all over again, gathering more data, analyzing it, implementing changes, and then tracking the results.

Implementing this process here at Moz has allowed us to see a correlation between changes that we've made to the Help Hub content and the number of helpful votes that we receive. We treat this part of our content library as a living document that is always evolving to not only account for tool changes but also to take into account customer feedback. Gathering feedback on your content can help to identify trends in what your customers are engaging with and how you can further improve your offerings moving forward. That's key. You want to always be improving.

It can also help to identify resources that may need updating or ideas for future content. For example, if you have a blog post about how to bake a cake and your readers are commenting that they don't know how to pick the right kind of pan for the recipe, there may be an opportunity to publish a new blog post about the best types of cake pans. Or if you publish help guides, like myself, if a customer says they couldn't find the answer to their question in that article, there may be an opportunity to look into questions like the ones that we outlined earlier in our analyze step. What are they trying to achieve? How did they end up on this page? How can I help them to reach their goal?

I hope that you found this helpful and that you're ready to get out there and start harnessing the power of feedback. Thank you so much, Moz fans. We'll see you next time.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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bfxenon · 1 year

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Harnessing the Power of Feedback — Whiteboard Friday

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Gather data

Analyze

Implement change

Track results

Finally, we start the cycle all over again, gathering more data, analyzing it, implementing changes, and then tracking the results.

I hope that you found this helpful and that you're ready to get out there and start harnessing the power of feedback. Thank you so much, Moz fans. We'll see you next time.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

0 notes

demirglass44 · 1 year

Text

Minecraft shouldn't ever Feel Clingy, Mojang Says

Mojang is still paying attention to the other survival games doing well.

Just before the latest Minecraft 1.19 (opens in new tab) update launched I inquired of Mojang what the future of Minecraft looks like. Game director Agnes Larsson and developer Nir "Ulraf" Vaknin weren't willing to discuss specific features for the next major update. No surprise, they're likely to save that for the next Minecraft Live showcase. Instead, we talked about how they're still learning from other crafting competitors and how they'd like to "keep the excitement of Minecraft" for the next 10 years and beyond.

When Minecraft's beta launched in 2010 it put survival and crafting on the map. A thousand other crafting games later-many also made from voxels-Minecraft remains the gold standard for sandbox creativity. It's not difficult to Mojang to get complacent after having worn the crown many years, I can imagine that they would become solitary and source ideas only from its own developers and players.

Larsson and Vaknin both insisted they wouldn't call Minecraft superior to the others. (I would, though. It's not risky to sound boastful coming from me). They do say they know what makes Minecraft unique and will maintain the uniqueness of Minecraft.

Larsson called it intrinsic motivation. Larsson called it intrinsic motivation.

Vaknin agreed with the assertion that Minecraft's success is due to encouraging players to be self-motivated "A number of games are deviating from that because a lot of players want to be guided, and that's okay."

I've tried all blends of crafting games for survival throughout the years. The most recent one was the viking crafting experience in Valheim that enticed me for a couple months, session-based survival in Icarus for a few weeks and crafting with vampires in V Rising for a couple days. Even Valheim, which was my favorite game for over 100 hours, and which I lobbied for to be the game of 2021 (opens in a new window) has not kept me coming back like Minecraft.

Vaknin said that he's kept up with the competition as well. Like me, he was intrigued in the way food and hunger interact in Valheim. It got me to genuinely consider food as a part of my gear, whereas I felt allowed to not have food systems, or treat all foods as essentially equal-in so many other crafting games, including Minecraft. tecelana "I think about it and wondering if we can learn from that," he says.

Vaknin said that V Rising has a very unique goal and boss tracking system. He also spoke about the need to track bosses throughout the map to locate them. It was like the way you find the End stronghold in Minecraft with the eyes ender.

Vaknin hopes Minecraft will not chase its users even though it can learn from Minecraft.

"Minecraft is really not clingy," is how he said later in our chat and compared it to an old friend who will be there for you even if you choose to leave and return months later.

Minecraft update What's new? Minecraft skins: Minecraft mods beyond vanilla: Spotlight Minecraft seeds. New worlds Minecraft texture packs. Pixelated Minecraft servers. All cheats

Vaknin spoke about a typical experience that is common in the Minecraft community: playing a lot for a few many years ago, then returning every year when the mood strikes. This is exactly how I've dealt with for years and I'm glad that it's a pattern that Mojang feels confident cultivating.

"So many games you play can pull you in a bit too hard and then you don't want to let it end. It's incredible that Minecraft does not do that. It is so important to me that this is maintained."

"One thing that has been added to our core values is that you play Minecraft because you want to, not because you are forced to," Larsson added.

As I start looking ahead to the inevitable announcement of Minecraft version 1.20, it's good to hear that the people in charge are confident enough to keep up with all the most recent trends in survival and crafting without having to chase them.

#tece lana #tecelana

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ironprint60 · 2 years

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Want Extra Money? Begin Minecraft Launcher

Most exploration video games give gamers a backpack to present them extra space to carry their objects. By using dyes, you'll be able to change the coloration of your backpack. There is a set of shade video goggles on the inside that shows regardless of the camera sees, so all interaction with knobs and sliders needs to be dealt with in a unique perspective. There are quite a few individuals posting videos about Minecraft on many social media levels like YouTube, Instagram, and so forth. Video makers will want a banner or thumbnail for their content. In keeping with Bloomberg's sources, media previews are occurring for a brand new MacBook Professional that squeezes a 16-inch display into the laptop computer's 15-inch body and features a brand new keyboard design to substitute the current model's notoriously unreliable butterfly switches. If Mpservers ’re not too bothered in regards to the Star Wars options within the Minecraft mod talked about above, but you want to wield a lightsaber, the Advanced Lightsabers Mod could be a greater selection. The nice thing about MaggiCraft’s Star Wars mod is that it’s nonetheless getting a whole lot of love.

But there was much more to it than that since you had to group up, struggle your approach to the spot, break the camp (which wasn't a certain thing), after which hold the camp. There may be an unimaginable demand for Minecraft merchandise. The guns in this Minecraft mod are also way more superior. Do you find out about some more Minecraft mods which are rattling thrilling? In case you are taking part in Minecraft on an older Computer or working a laptop that isn't optimized with gaming specs, fret not, Fastcraft is right here to help. Any semblance of "trying to outlive" is undercut by the fact that nobody taking part in the sport actually cares, in any respect, about dwelling in the fact of the world. There you go. It's Mario characters playing tennis with crazy power-ups. Discovering one may be challenging, however luckily there are lots of useful resources. Cloud Hosting is a kind of internet hosting the place you get devoted sources from a community of servers to ensure maximum efficiency and uptime. Our official server companions, which you discover on the in-sport Servers tab, even have chat filters that take away dangerous language, e mail addresses and phone numbers, maintaining your personal deets safe and safe.

Even your instruments and weapons that have misplaced its durability are mechanically changed. You can even get your companion with the OreSpawn mod! Each of these mods offers players multiple options, distinctive animals, and even more gadgets. The place can I study more about Minecraft? JurassiCraft is one of the best Minecraft mods of all time as a result of it provides dinosaurs into Minecraft. DaftPVF’s Tree Capacitator mod is without doubt one of the best Minecraft mods of all time because it makes chopping down trees one million instances simpler. I previously posted a Minecraft mod that makes it easier to mine; now it’s time to share a mod for Minecraft that makes it simpler to cut down trees. The error is likely to be brought on as a consequence of corrupted or incomplete set up of Minecraft Launcher. That is why we have put together an inventory of our favourite Minecraft mods. If you're searching for that distinctive expertise ultimately, then look to the modding group, which has created a wide range of mods that target improving the player's expertise in the long run dimension. It looks like the top simply exists to "complete" the sport, quite than an space of its personal for gamers to take pleasure in. Only those the participant allies with will be capable to work together or affect blocks within the claimed area.

Despite having amassed an energetic participant base of more than 126 million worldwide, many gamers haven't formally "completed" Minecraft. This permits you to achieve the boldness to discover far without the fear of never making it again to your own home base. Most of these blocks allow quick access to the gadgets displayed on them, which lets you free up storage area when they don't seem to be needed anymore. It allows players to teleport to each other, change nicknames, set houses, and extra! Place down sofas, kitchen units, ovens, higher beds, and way more. You should use the Special Armor Mod to fly, glide by way of the air and do a lot, way more. Generally, building your constructions is simply too much laborious work. In order for you to build a server spawn area, construct a metropolis within seconds, or just wish to have enjoyable with constructing in a brand new method, the moment Huge Buildings Mod is for you.

#Multiplayer servers #MPSERVERS

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productsreviewings · 1 year

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young-dumb-and-vaccinated · 3 years

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The Sommelier (Hannigram x Female!Reader) pt. 15

Hannibal gives y/n an idea and y/n negotiates.

@viviace @deadman-inc-bikeshop @dovahdokren

Trigger warnings: graphic descriptions of violence

Aftercare was Hannibal's favorite part of the evening. He loved to spend long, indulgent hours pampering his darlings. But usually, there was only one. And that was Will. And Hannibal's clawfoot bathtub, although beautiful, was not big enough for both of you at the same time. Meaning, you had to take turns.

You and Will argued back and forth about who was in more desperate need of aftercare; each advocating for the other, of course. That was Hannibal's fault, really. He should have known better than to ask you to make a decision.

Hannibal emerged from the bathroom, sleeves rolled up and arms soaked to the elbow. "Who is first?"

Before you could speak, Will shoved you forward. "She is."

Hannibal knew better than to let the argument go on, and so did you. You followed him into the bathroom, the smell of lavender bath salts filling the air.

He removed your fluffy robe and watched you step into the warm bath. The water was just hot enough to soothe the aches in your muscles. Hannibal took his seat at the end of the tub where you rested your head. You leaned back and submerged your whole body.

“You have such soft hair.” Hannibal said, pouring a bit of expensive-smelling shampoo in his palm.

“Thanks, I use fabric softener and tumble dry it on low heat.” You answered.

“You have a hard time accepting compliments, don’t you?” He probed, beginning to lather the shampoo into your hair. “Between that and the self-deprecation, I’d say you suffer from low self-esteem.”

You felt yourself melting into him. The hypnotic motions of his hands chipped away at your defenses. “Is that really that surprising?”

“For such an intelligent, sophisticated young beauty?” Hannibal chuckled. “I am surprised you don’t understand your worth.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” You offered. “The fact that a psychotic cokehead fundamentalist Christian cult leader wants me dead tells me I’m doing something right.”

“You are a force of nature, my indulgence.” Hannibal assured you, still massaging your head. “But you don’t need me to tell you that. You already know your power.”

That got you thinking. Would it be so bad to just find a hunting rifle and blow Chase Mulvaney’s head off? What was stopping you? It certainly wasn’t your conscious. All your remaining moral fiber had been ripped to shreds over the course of the last month.

“Tell me something about yourself, Hannibal.” You said, leaning back.

“What would you like to know?” He asked, retracting his hands. He cupped his hands in the water and poured some over your hair.

“Do you ever think about morality?” You said, bluntly.

The question pleasantly surprised him. “Quite a bit, actually. I like to think of myself as a student of philosophy, which deals heavily with the subject of ethics, human behavior, and yes, morality.”

“Do you believe morality is subjective?” you tilted your head.

“There’s not a doubt in my mind about it.” Hannibal smiled. “Those who think otherwise usually exemplify some of the best arguments for subjective morality.”

“Religious nuts like Chase Mulvaney.” You said. “He and millions of others believe in objective morality, but can’t even keep it consistent among themselves.”

“Darling,” Hannibal whispered. “You don’t have to wait for aftercare to talk philosophy with me. I would be happy to do so anytime.”

You spent a half hour in the bath, Hannibal stroking, kissing and cuddling you. As much as you wanted to enjoy the affection, your mind was elsewhere. Perhaps it was just a hyperfixation, or post-multiple-orgasm clarity, but the only thought in your head was that Chase Mulvaney had to die.

Your train of thought was chugging along smoothly until it was derailed by the violent buzzing of your phone against the tile floor. You leaned over the side of the tub, trying to make out the contact name from across the room.

Hannibal dried his hands on a nearby towel and picked the phone up from the ground.

“Who is it?” You asked.

“This number is logged into your phone as just a picture of a...red demon?” Hannibal answered.

“Oh, yeah.” You dropped your head. “I’ll call her back, just let it ring out.”

“Who’s the demon?” Hannibal chuckled.

You stepped out of the bathtub and reached for a towel. “Just somebody I know from work. Probably calling about covering a shift or something.”

“Would that be the same person who believed I was the devil?” Hannibal raised an eyebrow, watching you wrap the towel around yourself.

You were about to say yes, but caught yourself. “No. Just some lady I work with who always refused to share her tips with the buses. Super entitled, total pain in the ass. I’ve been looking for an excuse to tell her off.”

“Well, we can’t keep you from that, now can we.” Hannibal cupped your cheek in his hand and looked at your face admiringly. “There should be a clean nightgown for you on the bed. Please tell Will I’ll be ready for him in a couple minutes.”

“Wow, you really did think of everything.” You rocked back on your heels and swung to your tip toes to give him a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll let him know.”

He kissed you back. “Thank you, my indulgence.”

“Just one more thing.” You stopped in the threshold. “Could I please use your computer?”

“I don’t see why not.” Hannibal looked up from the quickly draining tub. “By all means, what’s mine is yours.”

You smiled and blew him a kiss before absconding into the bedroom.

The nightgown he’d laid out for you had far more ruffles and lace than you’d consider appropriate for sleepwear, but it was comfortable and fit you well.

You passed the message along to Will, but hurriedly. You were in a rush to be alone. You had some business to attend to.

You sat at Hannibal's desk, turned on his lamp and logged into your google drive on his computer. While you waited for the content to fully load, you scrolled through your contacts. When you found the demon, you pressed the green dial button.

It didn't take her long to pick up. "[F/N]! Finally, I've been trying to call you all night."

"Yeah, I know." You rolled your eyes. "Some of us have lives to live. Not that you'd know anything about that."

"No need to be snippy." She scolded. "I have an offer for you."

"If it doesn't involve a portion of ad revenue, I'm not interested." You shook your head. "I'm not settling for a flat fee while you make the real money off my experience. My goddamn trauma."

"Sounds like we woke up and chose bitchy today." She teased. "You're not even going to hear me out?"

"Freddie," you began, pulling up a document on the computer. "I happen to have a four-page, comprehensive statement of what happened that night right here. Half of it was cut out for the FBI report."

You could practically hear Freddie drooling already. "And?"

"I won't accept anything under $1200 for it." You finished. "Or 30% of all ad revenue on this article."

"That's not fair." She protested. "Best I can do is $750."

"You made ten times that off my first article." You leaned back in the chair. "Don't try to lowball me, Lounds, I can do this all night."

"Since when were you the assertive type?" She asked, deflecting the conversation.

"Remember when you told me my fifteen minutes of fame was running out and you were my only option to get my story out there?" You recalled.

"At the time, I was right." Freddie contested.

"That was before Chase went from a cokehead to a domestic terrorist." You said. "Now I actually can take it to a more reputable outlet."

"But here you are anyway." She said. "Extorting a small, woman-owned independent news site just for the hell of it. I've got bills to pay, y'know."

"With gaslighting like that, I'm sure they're astronomical." You rolled your eyes. Sighing, you propped your knees against the desk. "Look, I don't hate you, Freddie."

"I don't hate you either." She agreed. "I thought trashing each other was just our mutual love language."

"The only reason I'm considering TattleCrime at all is you." You admitted. "You're loud and unapologetic and it makes people listen to you. I need someone who can take the heat."

"Because you know that mainstream news outlets are going to cut your writing down to maintain the status quo." Freddie finished your thought.

You pursed your lips. "Exactly. You're the only one who's got the cajones to run the whole story."

"I'm flattered." She said, then paused. "If I move some things around, I can probably get you $1000."

You opened a new tab and typed some words into the search bar. You scrolled through the results, leaving Freddie without an answer.

"Hello?" She said. "[F/N]? Did I lose you?"

"How soon can you pay?" You asked.

Your phone buzzed. You had a notification from paypal. A thousand dollars from Fredrica Lounds.

"Right fucking now." She answered.

"You've got yourself a deal." You said, firmly. You typed out Freddie's email address and pushed send. "It's all yours."

#hannibal lecter #hannibal x reader #hannibal nbc #hannibal x you #will graham x you #hannibal x will #hannibal x you x will #hannibal x reader x will #will graham x reader #will graham #the sommelier #hannigram #hannigram x you #hannigram x reader #aftercare #fluff #freddie lounds

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theenderwalker · 3 years

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re: DSMP "unsolved mysteries"

I've seen lots and lots of posts about the "unsolved mysteries" on the Dream SMP that focus on the TNT on top of the prison and the missing nukes. One of those I am very confident was implied canonically to be Ranboo, and the other I'm confident in my theory that it was him. Putting it under a read more bc its fuckin Long, but its worth the read! Word count: 2482

First: TNT at the prison.

This was implied to be Ranboo across a couple different streams, albiet subtly. I'm not surprised it went a little bit under the radar, but it's simply untrue to say we have no indication of who it could be.

This point doesn't hold true across everything of this nature, and if it did, it would be a dead giveaway, but I think it's relevant here for a couple reasons: Ranboo was online at the time of the explosions. Tommy tends to reflexively open the tab menu during his lore streams, almost as a nervous habit, so we saw multiple times that Ranboo was online, and would seen it have even if Tommy had chat turned off. Online at the time were Sam, Dream, Tommy, Foolish, and Ranboo. Foolish could not have been the culprit, as he was live at the time. In the case of this incident, it would have to be manually triggered by someone. Afterwards, when Tubbo was doing his "interrogations", his first bit of evidence was checking who was online when it happened. For these reasons, I feel this is a valid point for this incident.

That night, Ranboo was live on the SMP. This stream is notable for most people because it was when Ranboo did the odd code in his inventory, that read "He is in control" (or he is in control of me, if you count the to do list). Many people focused on this as a indication that Dream controlled Ranboo to set off the TNT, but this line of thinking was abandoned over time, especially as we saw the implication that the message was actually referring to the Enderwalk, talking about Ranboo stopping himself from doing anything to save Tommy from the prison during that week. However, other details in that stream also hinted it was Ranboo. Most notable to me was Ranboo reading chat or a dono asking him what he had done that day, and him answering that he had "probably gone mining," with some uncertainty. Later that same stream, he went down into his mines , found no ingots in the furnaces, and commented "maybe [he] didn't go mining", and that he wasn't sure what he had done that morning. This comes across to me as an indication that he had a blank spot in his memory that day--that he had been Enderwalking. He drew attention to this here, where he otherwise wouldn't, because it implies he was Enderwalking while he was visibly online, on Tommy's stream, where he would have been able to set off that TNT.

Ranboo was one of the only people on the server with a positive relationship with Dream, of any sort. It is true, especially at this time, that many people had negative opinons of Tommy, but Ranboo was the only one who didn't outright hate Dream... in his Enderwalk state. (with the sole exception of Punz, if you think the vault confrontation was staged, but that's definitely theory territory.) Dream has repeatedly stated that he finds Tommy "fun" and enjoys fucking with him. Tommy was locked in the prison after Ranboo could no longer visit, so assuming he has no supernatural means of communication with Dream (which is likely, as we have no real indication otherwise), he would have been acting without instruction. What better way to help Dream out than getting him his 'plaything' for at least a week?

Alternatively, you could frame it as a distraction or a break in/out attempt... which also doesn't make sense for anyone but Ranboo. Either way you frame it, Ranboo is the only person who makes sense without having to stretch their relationship with Dream into something it isn't.

Tubbo's investigation was the only real in character investigation into this incident we saw. He started out investigating people who were online, which is why I believe it's uniquely relevant to this incident. As I mentioned earlier, Foolish's alibi was that he was live. Ranboo's alibi was that he was mining. If you recall, the day Tommy was locked into the prison, Ranboo acknowledged that he did not know what he had done that afternoon, and that he distinctly had not been mining. This investigation didn't get much further than this because Tubbo refused to acknowledge that Ranboo could have done something like this. Because Ranboo has hidden his enderwalking so well, no one has any reason to believe he would do something to intentionally hurt one of his friends, or to help Dream.

Canonically, there isn't much evidence outside of Ranboo's comments to the audience because the characters absolutely cannot find out that it was Ranboo. He cannot be revealed as a traitor, narratively. Not yet, at least. So all of the evidence has to be directed towards the audience, which leads to it falling into subtext more often than not. The Enderwalk arc has the potential for an absolutely disastrous reveal at some point, where others discover exactly what he has done. It's unlikely that something like this will be confirmed explicitly until that point, but I believe the details I have explored above are foreshadowing, and will be explored again at this reveal. This point applies to the nuke, as well--perhaps even more so for reasons I will explore below.

Second: The missing nuke.

This one treads a little more into theory territory, but I think some of the subtextual implication is in this one too, it's just a bit further apart. Instead of being implied in streams the day of the incident and one week later, these implications are a little bit further out. I don't think I'm necessarily stretching by making these connections, though I can see why someone may think it's a stretch.

Ranboo was not online during this stream. This is why I think that's only conditionally applicable to the last point--Tubbo does not check tab habitually, and he had chat turned off intentionally. The tab list isn't necessarily canon to this stream. If we go by that, Jack Manifold is physically the only person who could have taken the nuke. The only other people online were Philza and Foolish, who were both live. Since this wasn't taken into consideration for the investigations, it's not relevant here.

Out of character, Jack took the nuke. Jack did not stream his perspective of this incident, he hung behind when Tubbo went ahead to start building the silo, and when the two came back together later, it was gone. This was intentionally done, as Jack usually streams his perspective for lore like this. If he had been the one to take the nuke, we likely would already know. His secret plans are not a secret from the audience, they are a secret from other characters--this leads me to think that in character, he did not take the nuke.

Very few people knew about the nukes, so we already start with a pretty small pool of suspects. One of these people was Ranboo. Even if Ranboo did seem to forget what Tubbo told him, the nuke would have been taken while he was Enderwalking--y'know, when he remembers everything, or at least remembers more.

The backbone of this theory, and the reason why I even began to consider it, is that Ranboo has a very solid and clear motivation to want the nuke. Ranboo has been helping Dream. The nukes were made specifically to be a deterrent/protection against Dream. If Ranboo takes one of the nukes, Dream now has access to that nuke, and the playing field has been re-balanced. Essentially, it's creating Mutually Assured Destruction between them. To take it one step further, only one of the nukes went missing. Tubbo was left with one nuke, and Ranboo and Dream have one nuke. Why not just take both? Well, leaving both parties with a nuke essentially ensures neither side will use it. It protects Dream, but it also helps to maintain (a semblance of) peace. Neither side can use their nuke without the other retaliating in kind. This leads to tensions, but prevents outright warfare from either side. It's not pretty, but it aligns with Ranboo's broader goals of keeping the peace.

So we've got the motivation, it makes sense. But that's not enough to make the claim on its own. What's the evidence?

This is a touch convoluted, so I get why it doesn't necessarily come up in relation to this as evidence often, but it's pretty solid to me. Especially compared to how vague most of Ranboo's subtext can get.

It's in the lessons! The highest number of lesson we were given was 94, though when Ranboo was repeating it outloud, he said 93. He later clarified saying 93 was intentional. This stream was on April 23rd. 93 days earlier, to the day, was January 20th--the day Dream was locked in the prison. 93 lessons for 93 days. If we take this to imply the lessons were daily, starting when Dream was locked in the prison, each lesson corresponds to a specific day. March 26th was the day the nuke went missing. 67 days from January 20th is March 27th, the day after the nuke disappeared without a trace. Neither Jack nor Tubbo had any real leads on the nuke. Lesson 67, the day after the nuke was stolen... "Leave no evidence of what you have helped with." This EXACT thing is why the nuke is so hard to pin down. There was no real evidence left. This lesson lining up so closely to the nuke's disappearance is not a coincidence. Further, at this point Ranboo no longer had contact with Dream. He had locked himself out of the prison and couldn't visit. If the lessons are daily, the things he writes down are things he's figured out for himself. The lesson being the day after the nuke was stolen makes sense, when framed like that. He stole the nuke, left no evidence, and wrote that down because it worked.

All of the hints/foreshadowing for the eventual reveal of where the nuke disappeared to has to be done in retrospect, and it has to be either from Ranboo, or from some other source that knows more than the characters. Which leads into my second bit of evidence: the Tubbo Texts. Across like, a week of streams (starting on April Fools Day), spooky half transparency cryptic text appeared on screen periodically, that c!Tubbo was unaware of. Those texts have never been explored in canon, it seems that none of the characters are aware of them or of their contents. So they are posed directly to the audience. The second one in particular stands out to me here:

"Quick, I don't have much time. Stay away from the North. A strange metal weapon washed up. It poisons the nature, the water. No it's not. That's it, we are leaving."

The 'strange metal weapon' seems to refer to the nuke, the poison being the radiation. Geographical direction is rarely paid any mind on the server, but north is distinctly the direction of Techno, Phil, and Ranboo's house. I think I remember Ranboo telling Sam he lives "up north" while trying to visit the prison. The arctic commune is the only notable northward location. The nuke disappeared, and reappeared in the north, in the direction of Ranboo's home. The rest of the texts refer to the north as well. We don't know where Ranboo's base of operations is in the Enderwalk, but we can assume he has at least one, and we can assume the nuke is hidden there, if he has taken it. If Ranboo has taken the nuke, it makes sense for it to be in the North.

Ranboo has proven he can take things without any evidence left behind. Remember his first beacon, that disappeared like, a day after he set it up? He never tracked it down, just replaced it. Within a couple days, he made a comment about his pickaxe durability being suspiciously low... maybe because he was using the stolen beacon to mine far from his home base so it wasn't noticeable that he had been mining. That's beside the point. I mean this to say, he knows how to take and hide things, he knows how to keep secrets, and he almost definitely has at least one secret base we've never seen onscreen.

So maybe Ranboo took the nuke, maybe he set off the TNT at the prison, that's cool, but why have they abandoned the plotlines? Why have we never gotten more explicit answers? Why won't they come back to it?

Ultimately, it seems a lot of these plans have been pushed back and delayed for one reason or another. Beyond that, an untimely reveal of either of these things to other characters would be a huge letdown. The arc seems to be building to a catastrophically large reveal, and each thing that gets revealed before then makes it much less impactful. Keeping it subtle towards the audience, while still offering some hints, stops a certain degree of the chat spoiling "metagaming" we see sometimes, that makes some streamers have to fully ignore their chats during lore streams.

This part is very much my own opinion, but I don't believe the missing nuke plotline will be resurfacing until after Dream is out of prison. Ranboo has no reason to reveal he has it until it will be put to use, either as a nuke or as a threat, and that won't happen til Dream is out of the prison and the nuke is in his hands instead.

The TNT on top of the prison will be an insanely gratifying reveal if it comes out with the rest of the enderwalk stuff. Any of this taken out of that context just kinda falls flat. So people know Ranboo set off the TNT, or know he has the nuke. How does that propel the plot? Ranboo won't do much of anything about it. People will distrust Ranboo, sure, but they won't know the depth of the issue, and that just makes the reveal frustrating. It will be revealed in time, I'm sure, but I think the enderwalk arc has to reach a climax first, or it's just disappointing.

I agree with the general frustration that these plotlines appear to be dropped or greatly delayed, but it's a symptom of a bigger pacing issue than solving either 'mystery' on its own will fix. And the answers aren't as obfuscated as they first may seem, it just takes a little digging!

#dsmp ranboo #dsmp dream #dsmp tommy #dsmp tubbo #enderwalk #endersmile #dsmp analysis #dsmp #proud of this one tbh #it gets a little more meta than just talking about what happens on screen yk?#rbs appreciated!!

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mooniefics · 3 years

Text

— in the grand scheme of things [ 1 ]

pairings : zeke jaeger / reader, referenced eren jaeger / reader

word count : 8.4k

tags : unhealthy relationships, relationship discussions, implied cheating, drinking, break ups, eventual smut, praise kink, mutual infidelity, dubious morality, love triangles

warnings : contains nsfw, sexual coercion, intoxicated reader, rlly toxic behavior

summary : you and eren hadn't been doing the best these past few months, and no one that you knew seemed to have any answers for you, or pointers in the right direction. who better to offer you some sound, insightful relationship advice than his older brother. or so you thought.

note : i apologize if the text convoformatting is a little yucky, i pinky promise it looked wayy better on ao3 (//▽//)

— originally posted 1 / 20 / 21 on ao3 —

you would reluctantly admit that you and eren had been experiencing a few issues as of recently.

it was the run-of-the-mill turbulence: ignored texts and phone calls, unexplained hostility, hanging around with your shared group of friends—more his than yours—without you. you'd been able to ignore it around midterms, being so busy with studying and getting all your family affairs in order for the end of the year that you didn't have much time to worry about how he hadn't bothered to respond to your "happy new year, baby!!!" message you'd sent days ago.

but winter break came and went with no reply from him, you spent christmas and new years in the company of your parents, who couldn't seem to keep quiet about asking about "that jaeger boy". you couldn't really blame them for their questions, you'd been friends for nearly four years now, in a relationship since the night of senior prom, even followed each other to the same university with a few other high school friends just to stay close. the summer that preceded your first year of college was so full of love and life, celebrating your newfound freedom that you had always thought would come with adulthood. but you supposed that it was just the hopeless romantic in you talking, it was called the honeymoon phase for a reason.

consulting his best friends about his sudden detachedness yielded nothing—mikasa had never held much besides poorly hidden disdain for you, and all armin had to offer was nervous glances over to the uninterested girl as he assured you that he was probably stressed about his classes, or had another disagreement with his mother about his choice of major, just excuse after excuse for his friend's behavior. you were feeling desperate. you had little desire to break things off, to throw away nine months of commitment despite how your relationship had soured. you were in love with him, and he hadn't explicitly expressed that he wanted to end things, just left you out of the loop for a bit, nothing that couldn't be fixed with a nice long conversation over dinner, right?

but how could you reach him if he wouldn't answer your calls, if his friends only seemed to want to placate you rather than actively help, you felt like there was nobody to turn to—except him.

zeke, the ever-elusive older brother. you'd met him upon one of your first visits to eren's house, a brief, somewhat awkward exchange when you'd ventured into the kitchen by yourself to grab a few things for your friends in the living room. he'd startled you when you turned out of the pantry to find him standing by the fridge, eyeing you and your armful of chip bags curiously, only wearing a pair of thin-framed glasses and grey sweatpants, revealing the sculpted expanse of his muscular arms and torso, an unopened can of beer in his hand.

"you one of eren's friends?" he'd asked, cracking open the tab and taking a generous gulp.

you replied with a quick nod, adding a sheepish "yup..! everyone else is in the living room, i'm on snack duty" with a shaky smile.

he chuckled, shaking his head and running a hand through his shaggy blonde hair. "typical eren. 'm zeke, good to meet you."

he didn't bother to ask your name before he disappeared into the adjacent hallway, the distant sound of a shutting door finally letting you release the breath you didn't know you'd been holding. that was how a majority of your exchanges went over the last few years, the longest conversations you'd had was when he'd offered to help you on your physics homework more than a couple times, his number was only in your phone because of the one time you'd worn the teeshirt of a band he happened to like and he wanted to send you a playlist. there were plenty of things you didn't know about him, but he was eren's older brother—half-brother, if you wanted to get technical—and after seeing the deflective nature of his closest friends, zeke seemed to be your next best option.

so now you were here, nervously standing at the door to his new apartment, dressed nicely so you didn't risk making a bad impression after not having seen him all these months. he seemed sympathetic over the phone when you'd called him last night, not minding how you'd contacted him out of the blue or that it was only for the sake of asking something of him, inviting you to discuss things more thoroughly over dinner. you didn't know whether he'd extended a helping hand for his brother's sake or your own, but you would be grateful no matter what if he gave some sound advice and a few words of reassurance.

you were startled out of your thoughts by the sound of the lock unlatching, the door swinging open to reveal zeke, smartly dressed in a pair of dark jeans and dress shirt, the top few buttons left undone. "sorry if i kept you waiting," he said, stepping aside to allow you in, "dinner's just about ready."

"no worries." you replied quickly as you slipped off your heels, hoping the heat warming your face wasn't flushing visibly on your cheeks.

he had always been a good-looking guy, an effortless sort of attractiveness that was only magnified by the relaxed yet perceptive air he carried. but he'd changed since that day you first met—his shaggy hair had been trimmed back into a shorter, more manageable style, the usual scruff of facial hair had grown out into a well-maintained beard, frames that similarly complimented his handsome features perched on the bridge of his nose. flashing a polite smile, you stepped into the apartment, trying not to let your anxiety get the better of you as the door was shut and locked behind you.

"nice place." you mused, peering about at the spacious, well-decorated interior as you followed beside him.

"thanks, honestly i'm glad i could find someone that was willing to split the rent," you felt nerves stir in the pit of your stomach, the thought of having to meet the other tenant leaving you feeling a bit uneasy. he turned down to glance at you, grey eyes glinting as he offered you an easy grin, "you don't have to worry about my roommate, i kicked him out for the night so you didn't feel uncomfortable."

you were sure the blush on your face was evident now, biting at the inside of your cheek as you both entered into the kitchen. "oh.. thank you. sorry if i caused any trouble, i know this was kind of last minute."

"no worries." he echoed your earlier sentiment, motioning you to the table just beside the kitchen before he returned to the skillet on the stove. the warm scent of coriander and turmeric filled the air as he lifted the lid and set it aside on the counter, stirring the simmering contents within. "hope you like curry," he said over his shoulder, turning down the gas on the stove and opening up the cabinet beside him to pull out the plates, "i didn't make it too spicy, just in case."

"i don't really eat it too often, but it smells amazing."

you felt yourself starting to relax into the chair, shedding your jacket and hanging your purse on the side of the chair as you watched him scoop a generous portion of white rice onto each plate. it was just you two here, he was willing to help, and you were incredibly grateful for his hospitality.

you pulled your phone out of your pocket to fiddle with while he was still plating the food, aimlessly tapping through your apps to kill some time. your text to eren from a few days ago still read "delivered", and you felt a slight twinge prick in your chest as you closed out of your messages, opting to scroll through your feed on one of the few social medias your friends had convinced you to download. it was relatively safe to look there, seeing as eren didn't post all that often, if at all, but seeing everyone your age, people that you knew from your classes posing with their boyfriends and girlfriends and going out on excursions with their peers made you feel jealous. you couldn't have imagined what you had done to deserve such a shitty situation.

your thoughts were interrupted by the dull clink of the plate being set before you, the clatter of silverware following as he rounded over to the opposite side of the table to place his things down. you switched your phone on silent just in case, tucking it back into your purse and sitting up a bit straighter in your chair. but instead of sitting down, he wandered back over to the kitchen, reaching up into a different cabinet to fetch two glasses.

"i'm assuming talking about your relationship troubles isn't the easiest, so pick your poison. i've got gin, tequila, beer—" he listed off the myriad of drinks he had at his disposal, pausing to throw you a glance. "but i honestly pegged you as a vodka kind of girl."

you felt a nervous giggle bubble up in your chest, fingers twisting in your lap, feeling more than juvenile as you replied. "i'm still under twenty-one, so i'm not really much of a drinker.."

"come on, you're in college now," he said, pulling a bottle of vodka from one of the lower cabinets and stepping over to the fridge, "most of the people hosting parties don't give much of a shit whether you're of legal drinking age or not, and i've got a feeling that you really don't either. i know i got shit-faced plenty of times during my freshman year."

you mentally debated the principles of accepting, he was right in saying that you had attended plenty of parties where you drank with your friends, suppressing a grimace at the memories of you throwing up in a stranger's bathroom while an equally drunk historia or sasha held your hair back. but those times you'd been looking to get wasted, drinking in this context would just be for the sake of loosening up, easing the sting of ripping off the metaphorical bandaid that was the thought of your relationship slowly crumbling right before your eyes.

"you're right," you relented, much to his delight, "and, yes, i guess i am a vodka kind of girl."

you didn't appreciate how charming the grin your words garnered was, fixing your eyes on the steaming plate of chicken curry in front of you before you could embarrass yourself. you were here to figure out how to smooth things over with your boyfriend, not oogle at his unnecessarily attractive older brother.

"here, something simple to start you off." he set down the glass on your place mat, finally taking his seat across the table, "there's plenty of ginger beer and limes in the fridge, and plenty of vodka still left."

you stole a glance at his drink. "whiskey, on the rocks.. how refined."

he gave a low chuckle at your sarcasm, taking a slow sip. "it's an acquired taste, i wouldn't expect someone your age to appreciate it." that was right, he was older than you, significantly older than you. just because you were legally an adult didn't mean your life experience could crop up to zeke's.

"old man." you murmured, a small smile perking up at both of your lips as you spooned some of the curry and rice into your mouth, "wow, thi' i' really gu'!" you managed to speak around the mouthful of food, grey eyes watching you intently with an obvious bemusement from across the table.

"i'm glad you like it. guess those years working at a couple restaurants around town weren't a complete waste." he said, tasting his own bite of the food, "cumin's a little off, hope you can forgive me for that."

"are you kidding me? this exceeds restaurant quality. i can barely put eggs in a pan without burning the kitchen down."

you were nearly a quarter through your plate already, setting your utensil down to take a sip of the drink he'd made for you. it was simple, bubbly, a nice mix of ginger, vodka, and lime to cool off your tongue. you could barely taste the alcohol, which somewhat eased your worries of becoming a drunken mess that required him to babysit you for the rest of the night.

you were both silent for a moment, the air occupied with the scrape of spoons and quiet sips from your respective glasses, and you were beginning to dread ruining such an easy mood with the topic of your emotional turmoil. but zeke beat you to the punch, clearing his throat as he settled his gaze onto you.

"so, you and my brother. you wanted to talk about that, right?"

you allowed yourself to frown a bit, taking a generous sip of your drink before you answered. "yeah. i don't really know where to start.."

"when did you first start noticing problems?"

you felt somewhat eased by his calm tone, bright grey eyes that were entirely focused on you, wordlessly reassuring you that you could trust him with this. you'd come this far, there was no point in trying to back out now.

"well, i guess it was around november." you began, scraping all of the food left onto one side of your plate to keep your hands occupied, "we'd all met up for halloween, me and eren and mikasa and armin—" you prattled off the other names of your friends, even some that you weren't sure he knew from your high school days, but he nodded along all the same. "and we all had an amazing time. got all dressed up, wandered around campus and crashed in on the frat parties, drank ourselves stupid, like you said. and at one point i just completely lost track of eren, and i didn't see him or anyone else besides sasha, connie, and mina for the rest of the night. after that, he kind of dropped off the face of the earth, wouldn't pick up my calls or answer my texts, always told me he was busy when we ran into each other on campus, and he wasn't at his dorm most of the time i came to try and check on him."

by the end, you'd finished off your drink, zeke wordlessly getting up to grab everything to pour you a new one without you asking. you were more flustered at his attentiveness, forcing yourself to chalk it up to him being an excellent host as he returned with a freshly opened can of ginger beer, pouring it over the ice in your glass and adding at least two shots of vodka, finishing it off with half a lime before returning to his seat. had he put that much alcohol the last time?

the thought slipped your mind as he swallowed a few spoonfuls of curry and spoke. "hmm.. so everything was going just fine, and then all of a sudden radio silence?"

you nodded, working on your remainder of rice, watching his face take on a pensive expression.

"if i'm being honest, eren has always been a little shithead." you suppressed a giggle at that. "he's rude, he's immature, and most of all, he's a terrible liar."

"mhm, the ears are a dead giveaway." you added, earning a grin over the rim of his glass.

"exactly. my stepmom— his mom always called him on his shit with that." you shared a moment of laughter at that, the memory of how defensive he would get over in when you'd first pointed it out making you feel a distant nostalgia creeping in the back of your mind.

you remembered how easy the days where all you had to worry about was catching up on all your late work and forcing yourself to learn about nintendo games for the sake of impressing your crush. now on top of school, you had bills and parties and shitty professors and an even shittier situation with your first long-term relationship that had started off so well yet devolved into feeling like you were a million miles away despite living on the same campus.

"so, eren is a shithead. and a terrible liar. go on." you took a long sip of your drink, unable to distinguish the warmth of the alcohol from the warmth of the curry in your stomach.

"well, he's just— how do i say this..." zeke murmured the last bit more to himself than you, pushing up his glasses on his nose and scratching the back of his neck, "he doesn't know a good thing when he sees it." you felt your heart skip at that. "like that mikasa girl, her and eren have been friends since grade school, and never once in all those years has eren ever acknowledged the way she's fuckin' head over heels for him." the mention of mikasa made you feel a sharp pang echo through your chest, suddenly feeling much more disheartened than before, especially at the mention of her perpetual affinity for him.

"but, i do have to give the kid some props," he continued, taking a sip of his whiskey, "at least he had enough of a brain to realize that you're a real catch. if i'm being honest, you're out of his league, and when you first started dating, he knew that."

you couldn't tell if your face was feeling hot because of his words or the fact that you'd just finished off your second drink in one long gulp, already reaching for the unopened ginger beer and vodka. blinking away the glassiness starting to settle over your vision, you met his gaze, suddenly feeling much smaller before him. he waited until you'd finished refilling your drink before he began again, not saying anything about how you'd accidentally poured much more vodka than you meant to.

"i think eren's problem is that he's getting too cocky," your appetite was starting to disappear as you focused on his words, still trying to finish what was left on the plate, "doesn't know his ass from his elbow, but he still thinks he's got everything figured out. you know what i mean, right?"

you nodded with an affirmative hum, a series of incidents that made you want to rip the boy's head off flashing through your mind only added credence to his claim. your tongue was starting heavy in your mouth, movements sluggish as you washed away what was left of dinner with more of your drink. you hadn't been truly drunk in months, not since that halloween party, only indulging in the occasional mimosa over breakfast with your family and your celebratory champagne for new years.

you hoped the heaviness weighing at your lids didn't show on your face, or that your words didn't string together when you replied. "i know exactly what you mean, can't imagine how hard that was to deal with for the last nineteen years."

he chuckled, finishing off his whiskey. "i've saved that kid's ass more time than i could ever care to count. being the older brother is a thankless fuckin' job if i've ever seen one. you done with dinner?"

"yeah. thank you again, it was amazing."

he grinned at your praise, rising from his seat as he spoke. "here, table's kind of crowded, we can move to the couch. i'll take care of dishes later. you want a refill?"

"sure." you responded before you could really think about your answer, trying to subtly steady yourself on the table as you got to your feet, head already starting to spin.

blinking away the blurriness fuzzing at the edges of your vision, you wandered past him through the kitchen and into the adjacent living room, falling into the cushions of the couch before you could trip up over your own feet. you felt embarrassed by your lack of tolerance, but felt some of that tension ebb away when he made his way over to sit next to you, fresh glass of ginger beer and vodka in hand. you didn't expect to feel the warmth of his thigh pressing into yours when he settled down, placing your drink on the coffee table before he turned down to speak to you.

"alright, i haven't said much in the way of advice, so here's what i think."

you grimaced internally, reaching over with an unsteady hand to grab your glass and take a long sip to brace yourself for his thoughts. you weren't expecting that it would be an easy pill to swallow, he'd probably be realistic about things and tell you to just suck it up and break things off while you could still maintain a shred of dignity.

"i know this is probably not what you want to hear, but i really think you should break up with him."

your lips pressed into a thin line, partly from his assertion but mostly because of the burn of alcohol sliding down your throat. there was definitely much more vodka in this than there should be, but you didn't want to seem weak before him, trying not to shudder as you continued to take small, fast sips.

you nearly spat it up on yourself when his hand settled on the skin of your thigh exposed by your skirt, wide eyes raising to meet his intent gaze. "don't tell me you think a guy that ditches you for just about three months now is worth your time, even without everything else considered."

"everythin' else?" your words were starting to slur together, but you still tried to drown out the dread tangling in your gut with the bubbling contents of the glass.

"you haven't figured it out yet, have you.." he faltered, a slight frown drawing across his lips when you gave a hesitant shake of your head, sighing as he pulled his glasses off of his nose and folded them neatly to place on the coffee table. "think about it; he disappears on you while he was drunk at a party, most likely with hanging around alone with the female friend that's clung onto him for a majority of his life, and then after that night he just completely gives you the cold shoulder, avoids you every time you try and come talk to him, like he's running away from you." he paused, adam's apple bobbing in his throat. "like he's hiding something."

you felt your heart sink, biting firmly down on your bottom lip, a thick lump forming in your throat, eyes stinging. "s-so, you're saying th-that—"

you couldn't blink away the first tears as they dribbled down your cheeks, choking back a small sob. he carefully took the nearly empty glass from your hands and replaced it on the coffee table, you could make out the expression of pity drawn across his handsome features through your watery gaze. you didn't protest when the arm closest to you moved to wrap around your waist, the other curling around your shoulder and drawing you against him. restrained sniffles gave way to hiccuped sobs, your own hands linking around his neck and squeezing him tighter against you as you wept out into the empty air behind him.

normally you would've put on a brave face, maybe excused yourself to the bathroom to let out a few silent tears before you returned to thank him and stammer out some excuse to leave and spend the rest of the night wallowing on your own. but the alcohol had melted away any barriers you would've put up against zeke's compassion, made you crave the security his warmth provided as he pressed his face into your shoulder, a large, gentle hand rising to stroke over the crown of your head. he let you cry on your own for a while, not minding how your fingers clutched tightly at his shirt or how your snot and tears wet the pale fabric, petting your hair and rubbing soothingly over your shuddering back.

your adjacent thighs were nearly overlapping each other, but all you could think of was how your hammering heart felt like it was one beat away from bursting at the seams, the dim glow of the lamp in the corner that blurred into a shapeless ball of light, his steady breath fanning across the skin of your neck.

"that asshole doesn't deserve you." he murmured, voice low as his lips ghosted over your shoulder, strong arms fastening their hold around you.

you couldn't help but shudder at the feeling as you sniffed, swallowing down the tension balling in your throat before you managed a shaky reply. "h-he's your brother, i thought you'd b-be on his side.."

"what makes you think i'd be on his side after hearing how he treated you?" his fingers worked their way deeper into your hair, palm cradling the back of your head. you forced yourself not to squirm when his face nestled further into the crook of your neck. "you deserve someone mature, someone who can treat you right.. someone who can make you feel good..."

you let out an alarmed breath at the feeling of a soft kiss over your skin, then another, posture stiffening as your grasp around his neck slackened. "wait, i c-can't," you started, the sudden sensation of his fingers sinking into your waist and drawing you closer against him making you lose your words for a moment, "i haven' officially broken up with eren, just because he might've ch-cheated on me doesn't mean-"

"there's no use trying to deny what he did.. what's done is done, you need to do what's best for you—right here, right now." his voice lowered even further, barely a whisper as he implored, "what do you want to do?"

you bit back a weak sound when his tongue drew a slow lick over the sensitive skin, the involuntary heat stirring between your legs making your thighs clench. this was wrong, you shouldn't be here, you shouldn't be letting this happen, an endless stream of muddled thoughts flashed through your mind as you desperately searched for some sort of excuse to buy yourself a few more moments to think. a distant memory popped into your head, the blurry mental image of zeke with his arm draped around a dark-haired woman when you'd dropped by to visit eren just before you'd both moved in on campus.

"g-girlfriend!! don't you have a girlfriend?!" you blurted desperately, a small whimper slipping out of you as he gave a brief suck over your pulse.

"girlfriend?" he paused his motions, chuckling lowly and giving a small shake of his head when he realized who you were thinking of, "oh, pieck? i'd hardly call her a girlfriend, just an old buddy. honestly, it's no wonder you got stuck in this sort of situation, you manage to find an excuse for everything."

you couldn't ruminate on his patronizing tone for longer than a moment before he returned to kissing at the sensitive skin of your neck, testing the waters of your resilience. you were afraid of your responsiveness to his touch, your body's unabashed honesty, afraid of how your protests had devolved into uncertain whimpers and shifts in your seat.

"good girl," he murmured, sending a jolt of heat racing up your spine, "see how easy that was? this is what you want, isn't it?"

you allowed the fingers in your hair to gently tug your head back, exposing more skin to his eager mouth as he teased a bite just under your jaw, drawing a soft whine and an even deeper flush of heat over your cheeks from you. your movements were sluggish, limbs leadened with inebriation falling down easily when he urged you down onto your back. in one slow blink he'd settled on top of you, warm lips melded easily against your own as his fingers began to work at unbuttoning your blouse.

maybe he was right, maybe you just needed to accept that you and eren's time had come to pass and indulge in what you really wanted—and now that he'd made it an option, what you really wanted right now was to feel the warmth of his bare flesh on yours, taste more of the whiskey on his breath as his tongue slid between your teeth, replace every hint of eren that still resided on your skin with his scent of expensive cologne. you could already feel the ache of a forming bruise at the base of your neck, fingers messily tangling in his hair and back arching up to his hands when they began to smooth across your chest, snaking under your body to undo the clasp of your bra.

"you never told me what exactly you wanted, baby.." he murmured over your lips, low-lidded eyes meeting yours, "do you want us to just kiss, or do you want me to touch you?"

"touch me, please.." you mumbled restlessly, quickly becoming impatient with the fact that his hands had halted after slipping the straps of your bra free from your arms and tossing it somewhere behind him to be forgotten.

but even after you answered, he didn't continue, a smug smirk tugging at his lips as he gazed down at you. "and then what after that? do you want me to touch you here? his fingers ghosted over the swell of your breasts. "or here?" one hand trailed down the length of your abdomen, forefinger just barely hooking onto the waistline of your skirt and giving it a teasing tug.

"zeke." you whined in frustration, mind foggy with lust and alcohol, uncoordinated hands wrestling with his shirt despite not having undone the buttons first, "you're being mean.."

"sorry," he said without a hint of remorse in his voice, only pride as he returned his hands to your chest, "you're just too easy to tease, so responsive, i'd never get bored of playing with you."

you took it as a compliment, as praise, rather than what it really was. it was easier to think of it like flattery in the moment, to push the obvious reminder that his brother had gotten bored of you out of your mind. despite the implication of such a statement, you couldn't help the odd sense of safety you found in such an equivocal intimacy, hazy, not sound of mind, not entirely yourself as you offered him your body, his to kiss and grab and bruise if only for the night.

you hummed with approval when his lips trailed down to the valley of your chest, fingers sinking into the soft flesh of your breasts, but making a point to avoid your nipples, only further denying you the stimulation that you thought he'd finally assured you with that last arrogant taunt. you could feel his smile on your skin, nearly huffing at the realization that you couldn't squeeze your thighs together to give yourself some friction with him positioned between them like he was, buzzing with warmth yet entirely unfulfilled.

"patience is a virtue.." he murmured sagely, unfazed by your second sound of annoyance.

"what about trying to fuck your brother's girlfriend is virtuous." you bit back, momentary anger leaving you in a surprised pant as he gave a gentle tug to one of your nipples.

"ex-girlfriend." he corrected after a quiet chuckle at your forthrightness, mouth closing around the pert bud not being rolled between his slender fingers.

you moaned out a soft curse, hand threading back into his thick hair and pressing him further against you. the fog that had been momentarily sobered clouding your senses once more, hips rutting up into nothing as he worshipped your skin with his lips, teeth, and tongue. you felt the spark fully reignite when one hand moved back down your stomach to wrestle with the button of your skirt, the zipper sliding down easily after it was undone, fingers delving under the loosened waistline to palm at you through your underwear. he pulled away from your nipple with one last gentle bite over the tender skin, low voice at a husky mutter.

"have you ever had sex before?"

you quickly nodded down at him, seeing your own dazed stare reflected in his darkened eyes, pupils almost entirely overtaking the cool grey.

"was it with him?"

you swallowed thickly, suddenly finding yourself unable to meet his gaze, turning away to focus on your long finished drink on the coffee table, ice already half melted in the sweating glass. "yes." you barely whispered.

"was it good?"

you bit the inside of your cheek, blinking fast, trying to dispel the blanket of unease that was quickly settling over you, suffocating you. you only answered with a non-committal shrug, feeling your face burn with a humiliation that he couldn't have thought such a line of questioning would have not inspired.

he maintained a steady gaze with you for a moment longer, lowering his head back to rest at your shoulder without another word and picking a place on your neck to bite and lick at, fingers rubbing slow circles over the drenched fabric beneath them. a small moan bubbled up in your chest, squirming at just the easy attention over your clit, lids falling shut as your head sank back into the cushioned arm of the sofa.

you sighed out a small whimper of relief when he finally tugged your underwear to the side, fingers instantly slicking with your arousal when they met your bare skin, sliding in with little resistance. he'd started out with just two, but the incessant desire to be filled was quelled for the moment with them, drawing a pathetic mewl out of you when they curled just right within you.

"are you always this excited?"

another question you didn't know the honest answer to, but you shook your head anyways, accompanying it with a weak "n-no" to stroke his ego like you knew he wanted you to. you went stiff with a sudden tension when felt a third finger prodding at your pussy, eyes flying back open as you made a disconcerted sound of protest.

"relax.." he murmured into your shoulder, biting softly over one of the fresher marks, "if you can't handle this, how can you take me?"

you took a shaky breath, taking your bottom lip between your teeth as you let your thighs fall open a bit more, doing your best to not clench your muscles. and you could feel how he let out a low groan over your skin when he finally slipped in all three, burying them knuckle-deep, rewarding you with a smattering of open-mouthed kisses across your bruised flesh.

"good girl. good girl." he nipped at your jaw, adjusting the speed of his wrist to match how your hips rolled up to meet his hand, the pad of his thumb rolling firmly over your clit.

you could feel that warm knot in your stomach tangling further, the tantalizing thought of release ebbing every bit of trepidation out of you as you allowed your moans and whines to spill out into the open air, heels digging into the felt of the couch around him. but just moments before you could find your high, his touch gone, and he was rising off of you to sit back on his calves, absentmindedly wiping the wetness from his fingers away on his pants, making quick work of his shirt, standing briefly to kick off his pants and help you out of your displaced bottoms before he settled back over you.

your skin was hot with need against his own, arm linking around his sturdy back and pressing his lips back over yours, letting him guide one leg up against his side as he lined himself up with you. you squeaked when you felt the tip of his cock press into you, hands bracing themselves on his shoulders, wide, unfocused eyes gazing up at him for some sort of reassurance. and that sense of security filled your heaving chest, that knowing look he focused solely on you, only made for you in this moment, forehead pressed to yours, breath fanning over your lips.

a strained, shuddering whine broke from your throat as he eased himself inside of you, inch by inch, barely able to hold your eyes open enough to maintain his fixed stare, mouth falling open in a feeble attempt to gasp back in all the air he'd pushed out of you.

"fuck." he growled lowly, fingers sinking almost painfully into the thigh in his grasp, trying to fit his body as close as it could possibly be to your own.

another sound rumbled out of him from deep in his chest when your nails dug into the firm muscle beneath them, hungry, greedy lips capturing yours. his pace was mercifully slow, given that he was probably just as eager for his own release as you were for yours, but the overwhelming fullness that you felt each time his hips met yours drove whatever tiny breath you'd been able to catch between his kisses.

you spread your legs as far as the narrow space of the couch allowed it, whimpering, feeling how you were already making a dripping mess of your thighs and the fabric beneath you. your heart was practically beating out of your chest, so loud in your ears that you wouldn't be surprised if he could hear it too, his mouth catching every pant and moan he drew from you, the steady pace of his movements falling away into an ardent, frenzied rhythm. his mouth strayed back to your neck, grunting and biting into the abused flesh, and without the barrier to muffle your sounds you were whining out into the open space of the apartment, gasping in the air humid with your shared arousal, nails scratching down his back without care for whether they'd leave a mark, only dragging them back across his hot skin over and over again just to hear him groan out your name once more.

you could feel yourself climbing back up towards that delightful precipice, legs wrapping around his body and forcing him deeper into you so he could reach that spot that made white stars burst across the darkness of your close-lidded eyes. you tried to force your mouth to form coherent words, to warn him about how dangerously close you were, but all that spilled from your lips was more breathless sounds, body arching up to press against his as heat scalded over every inch of your bare skin, limbs shuddering and clinging desperately to him as he continued to roughly thrust into you.

tears were pricking at your eyes by the time he moaned a jumbled string of curses into your neck, arms nearly giving out beneath him as he spilled himself inside of you, your chests heaving in an unmatched, ragged unity against each other. he stayed there for a few moments, still inside you, struggling to catch his breath but still pressing the occasional kiss over your neck and shoulders. your fingers released their grasp on him, not realizing how hard you'd been clenching your hands until you felt the stiff ache resonating through your joints.

you tried to murmur something to him, but all that escaped was a weak whimper, legs slipping back down to lay on the couch, arms resting heavy on his back. you hadn't meant to fall asleep so fast, but your head had already been spinning from warm shocks still echoing through every fiber of your body, let alone the alcohol and the sheer physical exertion. you let your eyes fall shut, lids far too heavy to keep open, and slipped away easily into a dreamless slumber.

─── · 。ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

zeke blindly reached about for the towel he'd set aside near the sink, finally grabbing it and pressing it to his dripping face, patting his skin and beard dry before tossing it into the hamper by the door. replacing his glasses onto his face, he blinked away the grogginess in his eyes, running his fingers through his hair to flatten it into a somewhat presentable style. he turned to the open door, catching a glimpse of you nestled under the comforter of his bed, a small smirk tugging at his lips.

he'd carried you to his room last night, but didn't get the chance to clean you up until this morning. by then, the bruises that had been an angry shade of red over your neck and chest had settled into your skin and darkened significantly, some bordered by deeper teethmarks that still had yet to fade. you hadn't stirred when he'd pulled the covers away from you for just a few moments, peeling off your underwear that he'd haphazardly replaced on your body to keep the mess to a minimum and gently wiping his cum away from your skin with a wet washcloth. he'd really tired you out, and something about seeing you so exhausted after just one night with him made a flicker of pride swell in his chest.

flicking off the light in the bathroom, he didn't bother to add a shirt over his relaxed attire of just a pair of sweatpants as he left his bedroom, making sure to quietly shut the door behind him.

"rise and shine." his back was still to the kitchen when he heard reiner's voice, turning to face his roommate who was looking at him with a mix of disapproval and curiosity, most likely having gotten a good look at the scratches you left down his skin last night.

"how was your time at bertholdt's?" zeke asked, ignoring reiner's frown as he glossed over his intrigue, wandering over to the fridge to grab some water for himself.

"not great." he grunted, reaching into the cabinet below the stove and fetching a pan, "he decided to invite annie over when he heard i was coming. you can imagine how boring it was to watch those two make eyes at each other the entire night."

zeke chuckled at that, cracking the top off of the cool bottle in his hands and taking a refreshing gulp, glancing at the table and noticing its lack of plates and the leftovers of night-old curry. "oh, you did the dishes. thanks."

"yeah, yeah, just glad you had your fun last night without me having to hear it." he stepped aside to let reiner put a carton of eggs and the butter out of the fridge. "but seriously man? the couch? you're gonna have to get that dry-cleaned or something, and i'm not helping you pay for it either."

"don't worry about it, i'll take care of it." he replied with a lazy smile, quickly adding on to his smooth response, "and be nice, alright? it's someone we know."

"who?" he asked, not at all looking it but obviously interested in his answer, flicking on the gas under the pan and dumping a spoonful of butter into it.

"one of eren's friends." reiner's eyes shot briefly over to him at that, prompting him to give a brief description of you, "remember? you saw her that time we all met up to watch that horror marathon while i still lived with my parents."

"wait.. you told me about her. isn't she dating your brother??"

"was dating my brother." he corrected, rolling his eyes at the disgruntled bewilderment etched across his friends face, "what? i had to show her that this generation of jaegers wasn't a complete disappointment.."

"whatever, man. your business." he finished off his water bottle in silence, watching reiner crack a few eggs in a bowl and whisk them together with a fork, finally breaking the silence with a generous offer. "you want me to make something for her?"

a slight grin broke out across zeke's face, dumping the empty plastic into the recycling bin, slapping reiner's back affectionately. "thought you'd never ask. thanks again, man."

"at your service." was his grumbled, monotone reply, the shadows weighing under his eyes clearly showing how late he'd arrived home last night and how little sleep he'd gotten. zeke was sure that once he'd got some coffee in him he'd cheer up a bit.

he was sure reiner wouldn't be done for another few minutes, so he wandered back into his room, wondering if you'd woken up yet so he could direct you to the shower if you wanted one. in the time that he'd been in the kitchen, you shifted around in bed, having rolled onto your back and knocked the covers away to reveal your bruised chest, hair covering half of your face but still identifiable. perfect.

zeke fished his phone from the pocket of his sweatpants, unlocking it and tapping into the camera app, taking a few steps closer to the bed and zooming in a bit before he snapped a picture of you.

10:39 am you you sent an image to eren

eren 10:40 am uhhh did you send that to the wrong person

eren 10:41 am wait hold on who is that zeke who the fuck is that

eren 10:42 am is that my fuckingngirlfrined

you missed a call from eren

eren 10:43 am why the fuck aren't you fuckign picking up

you missed a call from eren (2)

eren 10:45 am holy shit what the fuck this can't be fucking happening zeke what the fuck is wrong wjth you you piece of fucking shit

zeke tapped out of his messages with his brother, sliding over his notifications setting to "do not disturb" before dropping his phone back into his pocket. he couldn't help the low chuckle he let out at his frantic replies. maybe if he'd held the same enthusiasm with you then he wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. moving over to your side of the bed, he took a seat on the mattress beside you, perking up at the sound of your small groan, eyes sleepily fluttering open to gaze up at him.

"g'morning." you murmured, letting out a quiet yawn as you sat up in bed, holding the sheets up to cover your bare chest despite him having already seen you naked.

"how'd you sleep?"

"like a fucking rock." he laughed softly at your bluntness. "my head kinda hurts.. sorry i fell asleep on you last night."

you looked positively adorable right now, and he was glad you weren't panicking or having any second thoughts about him, that you had fully digested the reality of your situation and come to peace with it. well, at least the situation before he'd sent that picture to eren.

"don't worry about it," he assured you, keeping the thought of his brother probably blowing up his phone and leaving the usual voicemails of him screaming at him when he was angry in his inbox, "i'll get you some breakfast soon. need any ibuprofen?"

"yes please." you smiled gratefully up at him, his heart twinged. "and could you grab me my purse? i left it in the kitchen, my roommates probably wondering why i didn't come back last night."

he began to say yes, but thought of how you were probably receiving a similar slew of alarmed messages by this point made him stop. "how about a shower first? you'd probably feel a lot better after that."

you hummed thoughtfully for a few moments, rubbing the sleep from your eyes with the back of your hand. "a shower sounds nice.. if you don't mind."

"wouldn't have offered if i did, babe." he grinned at the way your cheeks flushed, waving a hand over to his bathroom door, "shower's in there, plenty of towels on the rack by the tub."

he stood, turning to begin making his way to the door to give you some privacy, but felt your fingers gingerly wrapped around your wrist. "zeke.. thank you. for everything. i've been in a really tough spot for the last few months, and now everything seems... it all seems a lot clearer to me, like i just took the hardest step and it'll be a breeze after this."

your smile was genuinely, infectious, eyes full of gratitude, and had it not been for the heavy news that you would most likely be finding out about within the hour, he probably would've responded with one of equal radiance. but he managed to perk up the corners of his lips for you, tracing back to press a quick kiss over the top of your head.

"at your service."

he was pleased to see that his copied, more charmingly delivered words garnered such a positive response from you. and so he made his way back out into the kitchen, pulling out his phone to briefly check the amount of notifications that had racked up on his lock screen. thirty-six messages and sixteen missed phone calls. damn was that little brat persistent.

despite having essentially thrown you under the bus, he didn't feel any semblance of guilt for the action of having sent that incriminating photograph. the only remorse he felt was for leaving you as the sole recipient to his brother's rage, and the fact that he was starting to feel a strange sort of affinity for you, something lighter and more innocuous than the lust that he had shown you the previous evening. so he slipped over to the dinner table, acknowledging reiner's announcement that your eggs were ready with a short hum, finding your purse exactly where you said it had been.

he could hear the sound of the shower being turned on, and he felt safe unzipping the small bag and rummaging around to fish your phone out from beneath your other belongings. as he'd expected, there were a few missed calls from a "sasha", who he assumed to be your roommate, the messages from "eren <3" quickly beginning to pile up on your home screen. and as the "incoming call" text showed on the screen and the phone began to vibrate, zeke held down on the power button, completely shutting it off before he pocketed the device.

he just had to keep you busy, get you to focus on anything besides your desire to get to your purse and check your phone, or figure out a polite way to quickly shoo you out of the door and get home before you realized that you didn't have it in your bag. he hadn't really planned for this outcome, he usually didn't have this sort of compassion for others when he set his mind to getting something done, but he had a feeling that the extra work would be worth it in the grand scheme of things.

⥼ next chapter

#zeke yeager #zeke jaeger #zeke yeager x reader #zeke yeager x you #zeke jaeger x reader #zeke yeager smut #zeke jaeger smut #snk zeke #snk x reader #snk x you #snk x reader smut #aot x reader #aot x you #aot x reader smut #shingeki no kyoujin x reader #shingeki no kyojin fanfiction

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