#i think that’s why it’s titled that way | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ozzgin · 3 days

Note

Its been 6 months😭😭 pleaasseeee make a part 2 of the android x human story im beggingggg😭

-H❤️

Yandere! Android x Reader (II)

Featuring your assigned android partner who is not as devoid of humanity as you originally thought.

Content: female reader, AI yandere, mildly NSFW, based on Caves of Steel

[Part 1] | [More original works]

The case had been solved.

Not only that, but you'd managed to prove that human officers were just as efficient as their robot counterparts. The Commissioner was beyond ecstatic, pacing back and forth in his office and finding new ways to praise your detective skills.

"That'll show those Spacers. They think some glorified tin box can match our skill?"

You frowned at his words and glanced to your side, where the android was sitting. He observed the Commissioner with the same polite smile, no hint of disagreement on his features. Was he not insulted? You questioned him once the formal meeting had finished.

"I have no reason to be offended, (Y/N). It is a personal opinion, and thus I have no control over it."

"So you don't mind people disliking robots to such an extent?"

He pondered your statement.

"I would certainly be upset if it was you who harbored the disdain. The beliefs of other humans hold no meaning to me otherwise."

You couldn't tell if he said it out of politeness, or if he actually meant it. Most likely the former, in order to part on good terms. After all, your partnership has reached its completion. He'd return to the Spacer Colony with his report on human customs, and you'd go back to your regular job.

Except he never left. Days later, he was still sipping on his morning coffee, lounging at your table. You fiddled with your cup in contemplation. Was there anything else left to do?

"When are you leaving, actually?"

The pale man raised his eyebrows in mild surprise.

"Is my presence here of such significant disturbance?"

"What? No!" you swiftly exclaimed, stumbling on your words. His lips widened in yet another cheeky grin. He was teasing you again.

"My assignment on Earth is done, thus I should have returned to the Colony already. That's what you're wondering about, yes? I am awaiting a response from my superiors."

"Whether you can go back?"

"No, whether my transfer has been accepted. I have applied to be your permanent partner."

You could feel your cheeks burning with heat. Was it that obvious to the synthetic that you enjoyed his company? Then again, he wouldn't have gone through such motions just for your sake.

"Why did you..." you probed sheepishly. There was no logical reason for him to keep working in a poorer, less advanced environment.

"Because I want to continue spending time with you."

Nonsense. An artificial being wouldn't make its decision based on such mundane, emotional reasons.

"I don't believe you."

"I understand. It is a faulty answer to come out of a machine. Though unlike common AI assistants, we have been invested with the capacity to develop likes and dislikes. Interests. Wants. It helps with variety and individualization."

"And you want to stay here? If I didn't know you any better, I'd say you have a crush on me or something", you attempted to joke.

A few moments of uncomfortable silence. Had you gone too far with your humor? Was it too cliché of a sentence? You turned away, tucking some strands of hair behind your ear. You just had to be witty, huh?

"I'm afraid I do not know what to tell you, (Y/N)."

"You don't need to say anything, it was a poor choice of-"

"Many social aspects have been implemented into my behavioral network. Workplace rapport, friendships, intimate relationships. What seems to be lacking is the transition from one to another. I know how to act as a romantic partner, but how does one achieve such a title in the first place?"

You gazed at him, incredulous. What was he trying to say?

"I am trying to convey that I am indeed infatuated with you. Which, then, makes my initial explanation dishonest: while I do appreciate our fruitful work cooperation, it is not a main reason for my decision. I hope this clears up any misunderstandings."

You'd never been a romantic. You sometimes flipped through sample pages of contemporary romance books at stores and community centers, but they always felt forcefully cheesy. Predictable. Consequently, you never had any grand dreams of passionate confessions under the rain.

On the other hand, you also didn't expect to be asked out in such a mechanical, calculated manner. Or that a machine would be the suitor. Yet there was something charming about his approach. For the first time since meeting him at the border, you saw him struggle. There was something human-like in his uncertainty.

You stood up from the table, and walked towards the android. Then, you placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder, expressing the mutual feeling and understanding.

His eyes bore an eerie glint to them. It was most kind of you to offer a common ground, but he knew better. The affections you held for him were, with utmost certainty, a mere fraction of whatever overwhelmed him from the moment he encountered you. Limerence, obsession, compulsion, there were many definitions that aptly described his otherwise unexplainable desires towards you. Even more unexplainable was the fact they'd evolved from a blank slate, a programmed agent with no previous knowledge on feelings or humans.

You noticed his hesitation.

"Is there anything else troubling you presently?" you nudged.

Nothing of immediate urgency. Well, not for you, at least. The android remained thoughtful. What were the variables which needed to be met in order to initiate a sexual encounter? Would it have been inappropriate for him to suggest intercourse straight after this conversation? To him, it was a natural escalation he'd considered many times in the past. To you, it could've come as a sudden, crass, and hurried proposal.

He reached for your wrist and discreetly pressed a thumb against your skin. Judging from your resting heart rate, facial expression, and localized temperature, there was a fair chance you wouldn't reject his advances. Once the statistical risk had been assessed, he pulled you in for a kiss.

"Would it be possible to continue this in your bedroom?" he inquired, standing up.

"Alright, just don't...ask for approval for every single step" you retorted. You'd rather not become a narrator of your own pounding.

You open your eyes with a squint, greeted by unexpected natural light flooding your bedroom. Someone must’ve lifted the hologram blinds.

“My apologies, I hadn’t considered the discomfort it would cause you. My Spacer colony uses artificial lightning, though I am becoming rather fond of the natural sun rays here.”

Your android partner is meticulously preparing his outfit for the day. Judging by the stark nakedness and the glistening skin, you suppose he’s had a shower while you were still sleeping. You involuntarily furrow your brows and blush at the sight. He notices your embarrassment.

“A most surprising reaction. You have seen the very same genital organ…”, he says as he quickly checks his wristwatch, “...precisely eight hours and forty-five minutes ago.”

“It’s just…most people get dressed once they start doing other things. I also wear a towel for coverage when I come out of the shower.”

He processes your words.

“Hmmm. Illogical, but it explains your reaction.”

You stand up and stretch with a prolonged yawn. Suddenly, a revelation hits you: your mind flashes with images of the android fondling your body, your ears ring with the shameless moans you’ve let out throughout the night. Your face turns pale.

“Listen, when is your next functional inspection?” you ask, without waiting for the synthetic to answer. “Will they, uh…will they have access to all of your memories?”

You know that the android permanently records all data and saves it into a memory unit. It’s a pointless fear, of course. The Spacers couldn’t care less about irrelevant details. If the intended tasks are fulfilled, what happens on the side is out of their concern. Yet you don’t exactly appreciate the possibility of your personal deeds airing like this, before the eyes of multiple engineers.

“You may rest assured, whatever involves your privacy will not be included in the examination.”

“Do you get to decide what is checked and what isn’t?”

“No, most data is sampled randomly.”

You stare at him, confused.

“Then how-”

“It is not common practice, nor encouraged by our code of ethics. I can, however, choose which information is available to begin with.”

“What? I thought you’re fully controlled by whoever created you. If they so desired, couldn’t they open you up and take whatever they require?”

The robot smiles at your assumption and takes a few steps towards you.

“Once an android model is finished, one can no longer modify the processor. Not without compromising everything else with it. It is not a device to be deconstructed, (Y/N).” He taps his temple, then continues: “I am a biocomputer. While most of my parts are mechanical, my processor is a cortical organoid developed in a laboratory. A human brain, if you will.”

Somehow, the discovery fills you with dread. A living organ, encapsulated within a machine. What does that say about consciousness? About self-awareness? The Spacers didn't just tinker with metal scraps and smart computers. They artificially birthed life.

You were always under the impression that your robot companion is closer to the computer you have on your desk. Billions of lines of code within a black box, which then lead to spontaneous, novel interactions with the outside world. To think that at the very core of his functions lies a clump of living cells...

Perhaps you weren't so different, after all. The line between machines and humans is suddenly blurred.

#yandere #yandere x darling #yandere x reader #yandere x you #yandere male #male yandere #male yandere x reader #yandere robot #yandere android #robot x human #android x reader #robot x reader #yandere scenarios #yandere imagines #yandere oc #yandere original character #yandere imagine #yandere fic

613 notes · View notes

i-like-media · 1 day

Text

I was wondering when they were going to play with the fact the Doctor is black now. 13 being faced with how people think of women was one of my favourite things in her era, so I was curious how they were going to treat his skin colour this season, if at all.

And honestly, Dot And Bubble exceeded all my expectations on the matter!

What a lot of episodes about racism and bigotry do is coddle the viewer. They make clear early on "this is an episode about RACISM and why it's WRONG!" As if you've never heard of the concept before and don't know it's bad. The episode will often portray racism in an extreme sense and show the viewer the main characters are above that.

What Dot And Bubble did, for the entire episode, was letting the viewer figure it out on their own. There was no coddling, only racism as it silently existed. A perfectly pastel and white community with not a single person of colour and the only visible outlier being a goth white kid. And in this world, the first thing the character we follow did, was to block a black guy with a face of disgust.

The title screen rolls and you're left to rationalise it. Surely it was because he was not in her contact list/saying all kinds of mind blowing stuff... Right? Except when Ruby enters her feed and talks about it, she actually replies back... With an eye roll, but she replies... and keeps talking... and listening.

The episode continues, still not a single POC besides the Doctor. They reveal this is an exclusive place for rich people, and eventually the character in question even admits she thought the Doctor was a different person because "I thought you looked the same".

What this episode also does well, is portraying a character we wish to see change and find a better life behind that change. We see Lindy struggle to navigate the world without her bubble, calling herself stupid, and we genuinely hope she DOES learn to be better, even as you slowly pick up on what's been going on sofar. You are left to hope she'll thank him and realise the error of her ways, and maybe find a new drive to think for herself.

And then she doesn't.

She stays in her bubble, doubling down on how she feels about the Doctor, how they're excited to be like their settler ancestors, and finally CLEARLY revealing to the viewers what's been off this whole time... and the scene asks: did YOU notice the signs? Did you see what went wrong along the way, or did you only notice just now when it's explicitly shown to you? And why do you think that is?

It challenges the perspective of the viewer and tells you to reflect on why you didn't see it coming, and that is so so powerful.

The Doctor's reaction to this scene..... 👌👌👌👌

His mouth is ajar, stunned beyond belief that after all he's done and all he can offer, the offer to literally save their lives, he is reduced to someone who's nothing more than the hue of his skin. He yells at them, telling them he doesn't care what they think of him because he's still the same doctor he's always been, and to still get rejected with a dirty look... Which hits extra hard when you remember how much the Doctor loves being himself. He LOVES being the Doctor again! And he walks with such a pep in his step, celebrating his existence and sharing it with all he meets... and then he tries to save some rich white kids from certain death.

His performance in that moment was literally phenomenal. It's a narrative that's so powerful and so creative in its execution, my jaw was still on the floor throughout the credits.

This episode is definitely up there as one of my favourites sofar

455 notes · View notes

dollypopup · 2 days

Text

I get why people would think it but

Colin is NOT a rake. Colin is a young man trying to figure out his identity and what he likes sexually and trying to understand what the men of his society talk about and do. He's not out here messing around with women just to string them along and then leave them. He's trying to fit in and has been made fun of for being a virgin so yeah, he rectifies that by having sex, but just because he slept with a few women, that doesn't make him a rake? You wanna know who an actual rake in the series is?

Fife.

Because what the fuck happened to Miss Goring? I think about her sometimes and my heart aches for her. Her first season out, she's an 18 year old woman, and an older, titled man of her society who she assumes to be a proper gentleman makes her believe their relationship can actually be something, messes around with her the entire season, and then fucks her in a linen closet at a ball only to....what? Come back the next year with absolutely no mention of her whatsoever. Did she get pregnant? Was sent off in disgrace? Have to marry someone else?

Fife is a 30 year old man who has a bad habit of hounding after young, vulnerable women in his society. He fucks them and leaves them. He's a rake. Colin? Colin is not even close to that. Say what you will about the brothel scenes, but that IS the responsible place for a man of his time to go to for sex. Please stop demonizing sex work. Yes, many of these women are in that line of work because of less than savory reasons, but Colin is not taking advantage of them. He is paying for a service and they are providing that service. It is transactional, and he is the LEAST of their concerns in terms of clientele. A kind, handsome man who pays well and is discrete? Yeah, they're fine with him.

Colin has a history of respecting women. He respected Marina all throughout their courtship, and even after. I know some people sneer at him coming to see Marina, but please keep in mind she is a woman on her own who married a stranger far away from ANYONE who knew her. Colin was worried about Daphne when she came to him, asking if anything happened when she was away and clearly ready to fight for her, so of course he's worried about Marina. Partly he visits her for his own closure, but also like....y'all that's a WELLNESS visit. He's concerned that she's unhappy, but ultimately leaves because she's not hurt and that she tells him to. Colin listens to 'no' from the women around him. He asks for permission from them. He waited for Penelope's consent sexually, but he also didn't even get into the carriage until she allowed him. He even asks "Please, let me in".

Colin lives in a time when women do not have many rights, and he listens to the women around him even more than the men. He is the only one of his siblings to ask for his mum's advice and immediately takes it and takes action. He brings Eloise back a feminist text from his travels, even after she's besmirched as a radical, because he supports her pursuits. In season 2, he also knew of her going to the printers and didn't say anything. He has always respected and cared for Penelope. He hasn't insulted a single woman in his vicinity. He doesn't make the women he flirts with feel bad about themselves, or feel less, but compliments them, all whilst keeping respectable distance so as not to make them think he's interested in marrying them. He doesn't dance with any woman but Penelope in that season.

Colin isn't a rake. He's not a fuckboy. He's trying to act like he is, emulating the circle of his society, but that doesn't mean he is. I swear people just WANT to misinterpret him because that's the easiest way, but Colin is a character who doesn't lend well to surface level readings. He's a nuanced, gentle hearted character who has been looked down on for his sensitivity. He's a deeply relatable person because who of us haven't pretended to be accepted? Especially if we've been bullied or excluded. I know I have. Put on a persona for the sake of survival. And he does so for what? A few weeks? That does not a fuckboy make.

Just say you don't want to understand him and move along because those of us who get him GET HIM. And I'm grateful for a character like Colin.

He's the best man in the series by an entire mile and you can't change my mind about that.

#Colin Bridgerton #Polin #Penelope Featherington #Bridgerton #Marina Thompson #Eloise Bridgerton #At this point I'm convinced y'all are just mad that he's the only white boy in this entire show with an upper lip #And Imma call out the Anthony and Benedict Stans because y'all are the ones fuming about Colin #he's the only man I would ever even think of being in a relationship with out of the bunch #This is the peeta effect all over again: decent good men are demonized or looked down on because y'all have some unhealed trauma #The bad boy trope has rotted your brains #I've been with the bad boys who don't listen or who see you as their 'exception'- youre not the exception for long #Anyways Colin makes me go heart eyes #Always and forever gonna love him #Pen nabbed herself the best man in the series good for her

222 notes · View notes

jgracie · 1 day

Text

THE MONSTER’S GONE, HE’S ON THE RUN AND YOUR DADDY’S HERE

masterlist | rules

in which jason is a hero in more ways than one

pairings jason grace x fem!reader

warnings reader is afab/can get pregnant

on the radio . . . beautiful boy (darling boy) (john lennon)

an my blog has become baby fever central so naturally i had to deliver 🫡, shoutout to anya ( @puffoz ) for helping me name the eldest grace daughter <3

The night after you told Jason you were pregnant with your first child, you’d woken up to the sound of sniffles coming from a certain someone sleeping right next to you. At first, you were confused - Jason had been ecstatic a few hours ago when you broke the news to him, why was he crying now? Then it hit you.

He was scared.

Jason Grace, son of Jupiter, champion of Hera, ex-praetor of Camp Jupiter, Pontifex Maximus and so many other titles you never cared for, was scared. Tenderly, you’d coaxed him out of the ball shape he was currently in (arms wrapped around his knees, head sitting in between his legs) and asked what was wrong, even though you already had an inkling of an idea as to what the matter was.

When he didn’t answer, you didn’t ask again. Knowing Jason like the palm of your hand meant staying silent and waiting for him to be ready to tell you, as expressing and talking about his emotions has been a struggle he only recently began to deal with.

With your hand gently rubbing his back, Jason replied, his voice barely above a whisper, “do you think I’ll be a bad dad?” Only after the question left his lips did Jason make eye contact with you, his eyes glistening with the tears they once held.

Anyone who grew up the way Jason did would naturally have their doubts about their parental abilities: how was he supposed to take care of a baby when he didn’t even know what it was like to be taken care of as a baby? However, you knew the truth.

“No,” you said. It was a simple answer, full of certainty and confidence, “no, Jason, I don’t think you’ll be a bad father. In fact, I know you’ll be a good one. You aren’t your upbringing - you’re kind, caring and hold so much love in your heart for everyone and everything around you despite the circumstances the Fates put you through. Trust me when I say you’ll be the best dad.”

You were, of course, right. Despite all the hardships that come with pregnancy, yours was a breeze thanks to Jason. Throughout the entirety of the nine months you spent carrying your child, he was nothing but supportive. He’d always buy you whatever food you were craving at whatever time (no matter how strange it was), he’d give you massages, he’d comfort you when you were feeling down and so much more.

The next time Jason cried was in the hospital when your baby had arrived. Natalia June Grace was born at 9:47AM and was everything you wished for and more. As Jason stared into her eyes, the eyes she’d inherited from him, he was filled to the brim with conviction: he was going to be the best dad he could possibly be for his precious Talia.

Despite this, Jason would be lying if he said he didn’t have his hard times. He’d be lying if he said he never woke up in the middle of the night, sweaty as he reached for his glasses and reminded himself that the nightmares aren’t real, they don’t define him, he is not Zeus, he is not Jupiter, he is Jason.

Being Jason meant being an excellent father. In Natalia's eyes, Jason hung the moon and the stars - no one could compare to her father. They had a bond like no other and were inseparable from the minute they met. Everywhere Talia went, Jason followed. Dance recital? He had front row tickets and lots of storage on his phone to film every second of it. Impromptu tea party with her barbies? Jason was there, clad in a tutu as he poured invisible tea into their cups. To you, the fact that Natalia viewed him as her hero was no surprise. Jason, however, tended to need some reminding.

“Mommy!” You heard your daughter yell as soon as she and Jason made their way inside your cozy apartment. While your husband locked the door, your daughter ran to the kitchen and gave you a bone crushing hug. Immediately, you let go of the whisk you were holding and hugged back, unable to believe it was now almost six years since she had been born. Time flies when you’re having fun!

Running your fingers through her hair, you said, “Talia, how was school today? I really missed you!” She replied with a quick ‘good’ before going to sit on the dining table, princess themed bag clutched tightly in her little hands as she yapped to you about everything that had happened at school that day. You smiled, admiring the way your daughter managed to breathe life into the most mundane things.

Just as she was beginning to tell you about her current crush, Mikey, and how he shared his KitKat with her during lunch, Jason appeared, bouquet of flowers in hand as he took your own and pressed a kiss onto the back of it.

“Hi honey, I missed you loads today. Got you these ‘cause I noticed the others started wilting,” your smile widened at this gesture: only your husband would be paying that much attention to the flowers scattered around the house. You gave him a peck on the lips before taking the bouquet from him and going to place it in a vase. While you were doing so, you could hear Jason and Natalia having a conversation.

“Do you want me to put your bag in your room, baby?” He asked.

“No thank you daddy, I wanna show you and mommy something first,” she replied. Then, turning around, she yelled, “mommy, come! I wanna show you and daddy what I did at school today!”

You obliged, and you and Jason watched as she rummaged in her school bag before pulling out a single piece of paper and handing it to you. On it, in big bold letters, was the title, ‘My Hero’.

“Read it so daddy can know too!” She squealed, nearly jumping out of her seat in excitement. You stared at the picture of a tall, blond man and a little girl in pigtails she’d drawn to accompany the paragraph she’d written on this topic and felt your heart swell with warmth.

Glancing at Jason for a second, you read, “my hero is my daddy. He is my hero because he always plays with me and gets rid of the monsters under the bed when I go to sleep. I love my daddy very much.”

After you’d finished reading, Natalia looked up at Jason expectantly, a big smile plastered on her face as she waited to hear his reaction. However, her smile dropped when she saw tears roll down his cheeks.

Now pouting, she turned to you for answers, “why is daddy sad?”

You smiled, delicately cupping her face in your palm, “daddy’s not sad, babes, he’s actually really happy. Sometimes, when people are super happy, they cry. Your worksheet means a lot to him, he’s very touched,” at your words, she brightened up.

Natalia then took the paper from you and gave it to Jason, “you can hang it on your wall, daddy, since you like it so much!” She proceeded to give him a peck on the cheek and ran off to her room, not fully understanding exactly how much her simple worksheet meant to Jason.

That was the third time Jason cried: when he realised he wasn’t his upbringing, or Zeus, or Jupiter, or any of the other monsters that lived under his own bed. He was Jason - a great, loving father who put his family above all and was a hero in more ways than one.

#jason grace x reader #jason grace x you #jason grace x y/n #jason grace #jason grace x fem reader #pjo #pjo x reader #jason grace fanfic #jason grace drabble #percy jackson x reader #dad jason grace #dad jason grace x reader #cynwrites

177 notes · View notes

it-happened-one-fic · 2 days

Text

Gluttony - Leona

Author Notes: It was actually really difficult to choose what I was going to post this week. But I've been a little busy lately, so I finally just chose this one rather than working on polishing some of my other fics. I wrote this one to the song "Too Sweet" by Hozier and that most certainly showed in the writing. With that said though, I'm pretty pleased with how this fic turned out. As per usual, reader is gender-neutral. I hope you enjoy!

Type: Gender neutral reader/ fluff/ some angst with comfort/ romance implied/ some pining/ sfw

Word count: 1528

Leona opened his eyes groggily, a frown on his face, as soon as the sun shone down through the leaves of the tree that hung over him, briefly blinding him before he sat up.

A hum from his left had his ears twitching before he twisted to see you lying right by his side. A slight smile on your face as the shadows of the leaves swayed across your form, and he felt his eyebrows raise.

He wasn’t particularly surprised to see you, though he knew the same couldn’t be said for anyone who might have seen you here.

Leona was no fool. He knew that you and him were pretty much perfect opposites. That’s why everyone always looked so confused when you were walking along beside him. Chattering away with a happy expression or teasing him about something that had recently gone in a way he hadn’t planned for it to.

Leona was the hated second prince. It was his burden, and it was one he’d carried his entire life. It was nothing new.

He was bitter, unpleasant, and something that people preferred to avoid either out of fear or powerful levels of distaste.

And then there was you. Sweet and far more optimistic than he thought he could ever be. And perhaps more interestingly, you were no fool. You knew everything wasn’t flowers and dreams. How could you not when you lived in a place like Ramshackle dorm and didn’t even have a way to get home?

You were seemingly trapped in a world that wasn’t your own, but you didn’t let that stop you. Instead, you just keep going with your head held high, a smile on your face, and a laugh on your lips as you shrugged it off. It was admirable.

But it also simply wasn’t him. And that was something he knew perfectly well.

That simple fact was also the exact reason your classmates would find it so odd to see you slumbering here by his side and not somewhere else with someone who was a better match for your sweet disposition.

Leona leaned forward, propping his head on his chin as he looked down at where you slept by his side. You’d come here to study in the botanical garden while he’d slumbered next to you. It was something you often did, though he couldn’t fathom why.

It was almost like you either wanted the company or didn’t want him to be lonely. Either of which was ridiculous, since he could think of plenty of people who’d want to be your study buddy, and he certainly didn't want company for his naps.

But then, Leona also didn’t mind your presence, though he had his own reasons for not running you off.

Leona titled his head slightly, sighing at the sight of you, before pulling the book whose corner was jabbing into your side out of your hands and setting it off to the side where you’d quickly find it after waking up.

He idly scanned the area, half rolling his eyes as he confirmed that your feline companion was nowhere to be seen.

Grim had no doubt long since abandoned you in favor of avoiding anything even close to work.

As for you, Leona didn’t know if you were foolish or bold to have fallen asleep right next to him with no one around to protect you. But here you were curled up at his side, as if he weren’t someone who could easily harm you and were instead someone who would take care of you should you need it.

Which wasn’t something he could really deny to himself, but you didn’t need to know that.

After all, you’d seen him when he’d overblotted and you knew he wasn’t a good person. That should have been enough to send you scrambling to get away from him. But instead, here you were.

And it was ridiculous.

It was true that it might have taken Jack a little while to realize that Leona wasn’t someone he needed to look up to, but Leona’s actions at the Spelldrive competition had cleared up Jack’s misunderstandings about him.

Ruggie had always known what sort of person Leona was. It was one of the reasons he hung around. After all, there was safety in sticking close to people like Leona, so long as you remembered what they were truly like.

Both realized, for better or worse, that Leona was not a misunderstood individual who was secretly good. He was jaded, always beaten by others, and essentially worthless.

But then there was you, who was seemingly unbothered by any of this.

And it wasn’t even like you didn’t believe Leona’s flaws existed; he could work with that. Instead, it was almost like you didn’t care. Like you didn’t really expect him to change outside of your occasional prodding for him to take better care of himself.

You saw his flaws—that much he knew from the times you had bickered with him over something—but you just seemed to accept them. The same way you just seemed to accept other people’s flaws as something that was just a part of them. Only ever really scolding others, or even Leona himself, when their actions either harmed themselves or others.

And that's how Leona knew you were simply too sweet for him. Too sweet for him to endure being near, but simultaneously too sweet for him to turn away.

It was just another show of how worthless he was at anything he tried to do and how little his own efforts mattered. He could try to push you away, but he couldn’t ever stop himself from clinging to you.

As if you were one of the last sweet bits of his otherwise bitter life. A potent method of making everything else seem to fall away and be ignored so long as he just gets a fleeting taste of that kindness.

And Leona had tried to ignore you, but it was somehow impossible, even when he knew that being close to him could easily taint that sweetness of yours and turn it into a bitterness more like his.

But Leona also knew that you and him were all but opposites, and that was probably where the attraction of being near you lay.

Though that realization did nothing to lessen that attraction, no matter how frustrating it might be.

You shifted, letting out some sort of groggy sound and causing him to snort in amusement at your lethargic movements that had you shifting closer to him as if you craved his warmth. Coming closer to him instead of distancing yourself like you should.

It was ridiculous, watching you now, to think that you’d somehow bested him in the past. But you had. You’d beaten him as well as numerous others at their own game. Making them look like fools, as you seemed to change things simply by existing.

And maybe you did. After all, you weren’t of this world. And perhaps that was why it was so hard for him to detach himself from you.

Your eyes fluttered open, and you twisted to look up at the lion beastman, who didn’t even bother hiding his amusement as you blinked up at him before groggily sitting up, “What time is it?”

Leona glanced around, his ears twitching slightly as he listened to the distant sounds of students chattering as they left their club areas before he looked back your way, “Time to be getting back to the dorms. Club practice has already let out.”

You nodded, not looking terribly surprised and seemingly resigned to having lost the rest of your study period.

“Have you seen Grim?” You frowned lightly as you glanced around, and Leona snorted, leaning back and relaxing once more against the ground, lazily watching you as you collected your books.

“Nope,” At the single word you glanced over at him with raised eyebrows that almost made him want to take back all the previous thoughts he’d had about you being sweet.

But then that tiny bit of bite you had to you only ever seemed to emphasize your sweetness. It was what kept you interesting and at odds with the fools at RSA.

Because, unlike them, you managed to have a certain degree of cunning even with your sweetness. After all, he hadn’t been lying that day when he’d told Azul that you were far more dastardly than the scheming cephalo-punk was.

That was probably another reason why Leona had given up on pushing you away and had even come to expect your presence. He was a glutton for punishment, and with you being a villain that was sweet enough to even catch him unawares, you were certainly enough to keep him on his toes.

His gaze held yours even as he felt yet another chip in the wall of his defenses fall away, despite the fact that he’d always maintained these walls around himself.

He may not want to let you in, but you really were too sweet for him, and it was reaching the point that Leona was becoming more and more willing to let himself give into his gluttony.

171 notes · View notes

ao3commentoftheday · 9 hours

Note

i've seen you (or i'm pretty sure it was you) give people advice that boils down to like. just write the scenes you WANT to write, basically, and skip the rest. which i think i want to try to do more because i do NOT have the bandwidth for long or complex stories right now. but i'm wondering if there are good ways to contextualize snapshots like that? like would you suggest adding more context to the metadata/tags/author's notes? or even in the text itself, like do you have suggestions for how to establish or distill a larger AU or story into like. an introductory paragraph?

(also your blog is great, and also you do good work, and i'm sorry if i'm mixing up who said this specific thing. i might have mentioned that i don't have any bandwidth for things lmfao)

I'm forever telling people to skip the boring parts and just write what's fun. There are probably folks out there who wish I'd shut up about it 🤣

I tend to do most of my context-setting in my tags and summary, but author's notes can be useful too if you want to go that route.

To do that, you need to have a clear idea of what it is that you're actually going to write and then you also have to know what your readers need to know in order dive right in with you. But I want to put the emphasis on need to know there. you don't have to get into all of the nitty gritty details first.

If you're writing something smutty in the context of the characters being in a relationship - even though they've never met in canon - then you can tag your fic with established relationship and put in whatever tags related to smut you want, then write a simple summary of the set up. "A and B shower together - and not just to save water."

The reader doesn't need to know how they met or why they got together or when this is happening. They just want to see their ship have shower sex.

If your characters are usually in the Star Trek universe but you want to write them into a period romance, tag your work with regency AU or Bridgerton AU and then give a summary snapshot of what they'll be doing in that setting. "Janeway and Chakotay chaperone Nelix's ball, but rather than simply watching the younger people court, they find themselves the recipients of a matchmaking attempt."

Your readers already know the characters, and they can understand the setting from your tags and summary, so you're ready to get started.

The more you do it, the better you'll get at distilling your idea down into a 1-3 sentence summary.

Characters are in place doing thing and issue arises.

Villain takes action and now our heroes need to fix that

A and B are in current relationship status but inciting incident changes that

In a world where X is true, characters need to do a thing. Unfortunately, Y happens and now they are left doing something else instead. Will they be able to achieve their goal?

One of the shortest fics I've ever posted to AO3 is 37 words. It's an Original Work, so people are coming into it with no information. And yet, between my title, my tags, my summary, and the series it's a part of it is 100% intelligible to anyone in any fandom. [link] I had a joke that I wanted to tell, and I think I landed it pretty well.

Readers will fill in the blanks that you've left empty. All you have to do is give them enough information to fill in whatever you don't provide.

150 notes · View notes

noforkingclue · 2 days

Note

Evening, I have that idea of a tommy Shelby x wife reader for days. It's more an the tiny side so reader walks to tommy, doesn't matter if he's alone or now and it's like "do you have a affair?" Tommy is puzzled because "of course not the fuck?!" OK, I believe you and I don't know if it should calm me down, because then it means that your son had a girl in the car I have fin her bra" and it more about the awkward family stuff when their realized that their son isr not so little anymore

Note: requests are currently closed

Yes of course! Sorry it took so long to publish. Hope you like the fic :D

Title: Found Out

Warnings: some suggestive content but nothing nsfw, mentions of past cheating

The door to Tommy’s office slammed open and you glared at your husband. John and Arthur glanced between the two of you as you stormed over to Tommy. Tommy frowned and put down the paperwork he was looking at, confused about why you were so angry. You stopped directly in front of his desk and glared down at him.

“Thomas,” you said, your voice icy, “is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

“Tell you what, love?” he asked

“Have you been fucking cheating on me?”

John and Arthur shared a knowing look. You had been married to their brother for almost two years and Tommy had sworn that he’d be loyal to you. Well, they knew that was too good to be true. Sooner or later Tommy would see a pretty little thing and he’d be tempted away. Tommy looked up at you sharply, his blue eyes glinting dangerously.

“Of course not,” he said, his voice scarily level, “why the fuck would you think that?”

“Because I found these in my car.”

You slammed down a pair of underwear that clearly belonged to a woman. John choked on his whiskey.

“I think you two should leave,” said Tommy, his eyes never leaving you, “right now.”

Arthur quickly stood up and practically dragged John out of the room. You looked over your shoulder before marching over and checking that they (mainly John) weren’t listening in at the door. When you were certain that you and Tommy were alone and made your way back over to the desk. You folded your arms and looked down at the offending object. Tommy picked up a pen and used it to pick up the underwear.

“If this is your way of telling me that you purchased something new,” he said, “well, it leaves much to be desired. I can think of other more enjoyable ways of showing me your underwear.”

He put them down and relaxed back in his chair. You wrinkled your nose and said,

“You really think I’d wear something like that? Those are clearly for a much younger woman.”

You collapsed into a chair and said,

“If you are fucking another woman I’d rather have you tell me. I don’t want to be humiliated by having everyone know about your little mistress. Tell me so I know what to do.”

Tommy sighed and stood up. He poured you both a large drink and handed one of the glasses to you. You took a large gulp and Tommy leant against his desk.

“Have I ever lied to you before?” he asked

“No.”

“So why would I be lying to you now?”

You gave him an unimpressed look and raised your eyebrows. Tommy sighed and took a sip of his own drink. He’ll admit, but only to himself, that his past behaviour with other women might cause you to be suspicious. You had every right to act like this, even if he didn’t necessarily like it.

“And you found these in your car.” he said

“Yes. In the back seat.”

You shook your head and took another gulp. You stood up and slammed your empty glass on the table. You walked over to the window and looked out of it as you tried to figure out who would used your car to-

You closed your eyes and let out a groan. Tommy gave you a knowing smile as you turned to face him.

“Charlie,” you said as Tommy nodded, “I knew I shouldn’t have leant it to him. He usually never asks to use mine. That should’ve been a warning in the first place.”

“He’s not a child anymore,” said Tommy, “we should’ve been expecting this.”

“I know,” you came and sat down next to him and rested your head against his shoulder, “I know. But in my car, Tom.”

Tommy wrapped an arm around you and pressed a kiss against the side of your head.

“That’s what you sound most upset about,” he said, “that it was in your car.”

“I would’ve preferred it if he did it in a bedroom,” you said, “or someone else’s car. He’s going to have to pay for it to be cleaned. Like you said, he’s not a child anymore. He can damn well suffer the consequences of his actions.”

You groaned and pressed your forehead against his shoulder.

“They grow up so fast,” you said, “it seems like only yesterday he was a small child. Sometimes I miss him when he was that age.”

“Well,” Tommy leant down, his lips grazing against the shell of your ear, his arm snaking around your waist, “I’m sure there’s something we could do about that.”

#fanfiction #peaky blinders #reader insert #request #thomas shelby #tommy shelby #thomas shelby x reader #tommy shelby x reader

154 notes · View notes

shakingparadigm · 3 days

Note

Seeing all those analysis posts about how Till liked Mizi because she was gentle while not giving the same attention to Ivan because he wasn't... how Ivan might have made Till uncomfortable because he expressed his admiration for Till through violence because he liked how Till had the courage to fight back...

I was wandering if Ivan ever realized that the way he went about showing his feelings wasn't positive for Till and he fucking did. "I wish I had been kinder" he fucking regrets dude, fuck me man.

(This veered wildly off-topic I am so sorry.)

Coming back to this ask after the most recent R6 update is interesting.

I've always wondered why they chose the title Cure in particular. I was expecting a song title along the lines of Star or something abyssal. Then I thought about Till's affiliation with experiments and drugs and the various ways he was hurt. Cure... It also brings to mind how the content for Ivan highlights his "oddness", how he's framed as someone different, almost wrong in a sense. There's something that he lacks, something that he feels the need to fix, to cure.

In the recent ROUND 6 production post, the true meaning is revealed. You're right on a certain level, but as always, it's complicated.

Both Ivan and Till seek a certain type of "healing", maybe to compensate for their pain, their oddness and their loneliness. They wish to be cured of their suffering somehow and they seek the solution in other people.

QMENG states that Till desires a type of healing that Ivan cannot provide, and vice versa.

It goes without saying, pretty common knowledge at this point, but Till is a lot softer under his rebellious front. As someone who's been beat and abused his whole life, it makes sense that that type of love he'd want is something gentler, something stable. It's incredibly obvious in the way he acts towards Mizi. She's so genuine, so bright, untainted by the cruel reality of the world. Till softens around her, since she has only showed him kindness he in turn shows her the sweetest side of himself. He's had nothing stable to cling onto before, so he immediately becomes attached to this idealized version of Mizi. He believes she's the only person who can provide him with what he needs, the only one who can "heal" him.

It's outright stated that Ivan cannot provide that type of "healing" that Till is looking for. Ivan does try, of course. Unfortunately, he lacks something fundamental. Because of this he expresses himself in rather childish ways, which may involve a little cruelty and attention-seeking. A lot of Ivan's actions are muddled by his complicated feelings as well, as its stated that his true emotions and intentions are difficult to grasp. With Till, Ivan wants to save and be saved, hurt and heal him, keep him and set him free. Live for him and die for him. He criticizes Sua on the ethics of self-sacrifice and then goes on to do the same himself. With Ivan, everything contradicts.

He tries desperately to be the cure that Till needs, but due to his incredibly complex nature that "healing" will never be just healing. It may come with more pain and confusion despite his best efforts.

I don't think Till refused to give Ivan attention because he wasn't gentle enough, rather I think it's because everything was so complicated whenever Ivan was involved. Ivan is there for him in his times of need and causes a fair bit of trouble during the rest. He's strange and hard to grasp, but he's familiar. Calling each other "friends" seemed like such an inadequate label because they're simultaneously too close and not close enough. Ivan does wish he was kinder, though. Not only to Till, but to Sua and most likely a few other people as well. There's a lot of aspects in which Ivan wishes he were different, and it's tragic to hear how he deprecates himself in his final moments for it.

There's the second half of QMENG's statement as well, "vice versa". Till cannot provide what Ivan needs either, but Ivan desperately desires it anyway.

Ivan views Till as his cure. He wants to not only "heal" Till, but to be healed by him as well. This desire can be seen in the lyrics of Cure:

Notice my pain

And mend me right now

To quiet my fears

I'll drown in you

(The wish for "healing" is stated.)

In your gaze, where I’m seen

Consume me, yes, me, oh, oh

(Ivan urges Till to "consume" him like medicine, he wishes to be what Till needs.)

Ivan lacks something, and he believes that Till can make up for that lack which is why he's so fascinated by him. If Ivan is a black abyss, Till is a supernova, bringing life to an empty void. Unfortunately, Till is explosive and rather inept at handling his own extreme emotions, which causes him to either lash out violently or retreat further inward and push Ivan away. He's also a thoroughly destructive and hurt individual, seeking his own cure in another form. He cannot provide what Ivan needs.

Both Ivan and Till are incredibly volatile. That's not to say they don't have their gentler sides, but overall they've been doomed from the start. Ultimately it's no fault of theirs, they did what they could with their complicated feelings and fought through their own respective hells.

In the end, Ivan had to come to terms with the fact that he couldn't get the "healing" he needed and could never be what Till needed, either. That's why he finally acted on his impulses and let his complicated feelings win over, resulting in his death. Despite all the heartache, his final thoughts are a statement of gratitude. Truly a tragedy.

#eughh sorry for all that anon. thank you for the ask!#i dont even know if this is coherent anymore im sorry #alnst #alien stage #alien stage ivan #alien stage till #ivantill #alien stage round 6 #asks

123 notes · View notes

the-other-art-blog · 2 days

Text

Why Benophie season is the perfect way to finish the first half of the Bton stories?

Now that Benophie season is unofficially confirmed, I've come to the conclusion that this was the greatest way to end the first half of Bton. It needed to be s4.

In the ton, marriage is about status. And while all Bton marriages are love matches, they are also incredibly beneficial for their position in society. The ENTIRE family's position in society.

Anthony is a viscount, an influential one, but in the nobility hierarchy, he's second to last.

Daphne climbed up 3 steps when she married Simon and became a Duchess.

Francesca will climb one step when she marries John.

Kate didn't have a title or wealth, but a married Viscount is an improvement over a rake Viscount.

Colin is only a Mr., but I will be surprised if the Featherington baby race doesn't end with Pen having a boy who will become Baron. He's going to be the father of a Lord thanks to Penelope.

So you can see how these marriages are extremely beneficial to them and elevate the entire family. Daphne understood this when she said that her marriage would set the prospects for her sisters. Anthony also knew that his choice of viscountess would affect the family.

So, by the time Benedict meets Sophie, the family will have a viscounty + relations with a duchy, an earldom, and a barony. They just need a march to have the full set.

Enter Benedict who will fall in love with a servant AND an illegitimate daughter.

If he marries her, he risks undoing all the work his siblings have done to maintain the family in good standing.

The book doesn't address this, but I wish the show would. It would add another dimension to Benedict's reasons to not marry Sophie. He would be thinking of the family. What would happen to Eloise, Hyacinth, and Gregory? They will no longer be siblings to nobles, they will be related to an illegitimate child and servant. Who will want to marry them? Is it fair to affect their prospects when they haven't even had a chance at society? (Read The Secrets of Sir Richard Kenworthy) Perhaps it hurts the already-married siblings too.

I'm thinking about Ben and Violet's scene. Sophie refuses to be a mistress and Ben has already decided to marry her. But there's still this issue lingering. Is it right to drag the whole family to get what he wants? Wouldn't that be the most selfish thing anyone could do? In the book, Violet says this,

Imagine if she adds, "and your siblings will support you too."

EDIT: The thing about this scene is that Benedict was ready to leave if the family didn't support him and Sophie.

This is also a great way to bring back the Sharmas' background. Mary was cast out for marrying a clerk, leaving Edwina in an unfavorable position. If the Queen hadn't named her the diamond, it would have been very difficult for her to get a good match. Not to mention that Mary's parents considered hated Kate and insulted her parents for being common people.

You can see why Benedict is afraid of the family's reaction. The Sheffields said that after Mary left, they couldn't show their faces in London for years. He wouldn't want to do that to his family. Sophie wouldn't want that either.

This is why it is so great to have Benophie come in s4. Not that a duchy and a viscount wouldn't have been enough, but this way is much more dramatic and LEGENDARY.

Despite the risks, the family will support Benedict AND Sophie. They'll support her too cause they know her and they love her even before they knew about Ben's feelings.

It's a test, not only for Benedict but for the family.

#benophie #bridgerton #benedict bridgerton #sophie beckett #kanthony #polin #franJohh #violet bridgerton #aofag

112 notes · View notes

poppitron360 · 3 days

Note

When you get this you have to answer with 5 things you like about yourself, publicly. Then, send this ask to 10 of your favorite followers (non-negotiable, positivity is cool)❤️

@helluvabossfan08 @lemonlightt @coraldeermoon @inky-void

@123letsgobestie @almaprincess66 @lavenderfairiez @helpallthenamesaretakenblog and all my other lovely moots!!

When I get obsessed with something I basically become an encyclopaedia for it and can relate anything back to it with incredible skill (“Oh Oedipus? That’s referenced in S1 Ep9 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, titled “Puppet Show”- the only episode of the show to contain a during-credits scene. The show, created by the now infamous Jos Wheadon ran between 1997 and 2003, for a total of 7 seasons and 144 episodes, each one averaging at around 45mins. The 100th episode of the show- S5 Ep22, “The Gift”- was initially intended to be the season finale, but interestingly it was recalled for two more- hey! Guys! Come back, don’t leave!! I’m not done!!!”)

In a similar vain, I have every lyric to Hamilton memorised. Don’t believe me, I’ll prove it to you- do you have three hours to spare? I have in fact performed one-woman productions of the show to my friends and family, complete with sweet extra content (deleted songs, historical fun facts, a detective-style board with red string and everything proving Why They Are Gay).

I like to think I’m pretty talented- I can sing, I play two instruments (Piano and Bass), I know my way around D.A.Ws and other sound equipment, I can draw, I can write, I can compose- but I am in no way a prodigy in these fields and there’s always room for improvement.

I’m quite truthful- I never lie, EVER. I’m also open and honest about everything (sometimes at a risk of my own self-preservation). I don’t get embarrassed easily and I come across as quite confident.

People tell me I’m smart- I have a tendency to not shy away from long, technical words. I talk a lot, and can get really stuck into a discussion if I’m interested (Although, my Received Pronunciation accent and my good grammar in texts might also play a factor).

100 notes · View notes

naranjapetrificada · 6 hours

Text

It's not that I don't love a little bit of gossipy, interfering Lucius, but I got to thinking about the look on his face just before he tells Ed off in This is Happening:

He's not delighting in/frustrated by their back and forth, he's annoyed. He's looking at all the work his bizarre little boss put into trying to show Thee Blackbeard a good time, and Ed's been whining about it the whole time, and how Ed isn't seeing how torn up Stede is about the whole thing.

And like, we know for a fact that Lucius has picked up on the vibes, and not because his character is standing in for some world-weary queer who's seen it all. We know because in a previous scene (that is literally the episode title) we see him see it. Even if he had entertained the idea before, he's seeing it happen in front of his eyes. He's not saying "Oh my god this is happening" he's saying "Oh my god this is happening."

And if it's happening, that means Stede isn't just demanding the treasure hunt as another of his misguided little ideas or out of naivety (although both are definitely in play because it's Stede). It also means Stede isn't pouting just because his plan didn't pan out. Lucius, who is regularly shown to be one of the most empathetic people on the crew (aside from my beloved Oluwande), now understands that Stede is desperate to keep Ed entertained (and why) and that the plan for the Day of Adventure falling apart has much higher stakes to Stede for good reason.

So yeah, he's mad. Mad enough to tell off Blackbeard. And I feel like we Flanderize him sometimes and make him intervene in their relationship in fanon just for the hell of it. But when do we actually see him get involved?

When he's mad and feeling protective:

When Stede is sad about Ed leaving:

When he's telling Ed how sad Stede is:

And I guess in way that's less directly about their relationship and more about just being supportive, when Ed is sad in the blanket fort:

I'm not saying it's wrong to write nosy gossipy Lucius, lord knows I've done it. I just think we sell him short if we ignore his empathy and how much that motivates his actions.

#no idea where this post came from tbh #it just hit me #lucius spriggs #character meta #ofmd #our flag means death #gentlebeard #ofmd meta

113 notes · View notes

after-witch · 7 hours

Text

The Glass House [Yandere Mahito x Reader]

Title: The Glass House [Yandere Mahito x Reader]

Synopsis: You get your period and Mahito wants to run a few tests.

Word count: 3465

notes: yandere, consensual relationship, reader is on their period, mentions of other people's torture and death, humiliation relating to period, Mahito being Mahito is his own warning

It’s not often that Mahito bothers with your bathroom. Only, in the past, when you’ve been in it--naked and wet and usually mid-shower, as he apparently finds it entertaining to see what noises you make each time he surprises you.

(Once, after comparing him to the killer in Psycho, he’d demanded to then watch the film. ‘But I didn’t stab you and you didn’t bleed chocolate syrup,’ he’d said, simply, after the scene in question.)

Today, though, he’s decided that there must be something interesting in there, because he’s spent the better part of 5 minutes rummaging--you can hear the sound of items being moved--in the closet and, judging by the sound of rustling, he’s now fiddling with the trash can.

“Hey,” he says, finally sauntering out of the bathroom. When you turn to greet him, a sarcastic remark about having fun digging through the trash on your lips, your heart stutters.

In return, Mahito simply blinks at you.

“What’s this?” He asks, dangling one of your used pads from his hand.

The smear of dried blood in the center of the white pad feels accusatory, out of its proper context in the trash can. A bit of toilet paper sticks to the end of it, remnants of the ball you created to cover up your mess.

“Oh fuck,” you say, reflexively. “Put that down! That’s--it’s--”

“It’s blood,” he says, giving the pad a sniff. “Smells funny though. Why’s it in your bathroom? Why’s it on this thing? When did you get hurt? Why were you hiding it in the trash?” The questions come simply, nearly rapid-fire. He probably says them as he thinks them.

Your cheeks burn something awful by the end of his questions, and your answer comes out half-stuttered. “It’s--I didn’t get hurt. I’m on my period.”

One of his fingers is stuck to the bottom of the pad, and he peels it off deftly, holding it closer as you wish you could snatch it from his hands and forget this ever happened.

“Oh,” is what he says, eventually, with a quiet hint of curiosity. “I guess I’m lucky then. I’ve been wanting to study human menstruation for a while now.”

The word study sticks to your chest, but you aren’t able to peel it away so easily. You don’t want him to study you; don’t want to be under his scrutiny in such an obvious way. It’s easier to pretend he knows about people, about humanity, when you’re firmly playing at something closer to a normal relationship.

As if anything about this was normal.

“Can’t you study one of your… experiments?”

Experiments. Oh, what a simple, inoffensive word for what they really are--you shake that thought away as easily as a mosquito, though it never truly leaves the room.

At this, Mahito’s eyebrows raise, and the edge of a smile tickles his lips.

“Oh,” he coos. “That’s awfully selfish to say, even for you.”

He closes the distance between the two of you now, and you don’t bother resisting when he gives your chest a poke--thankfully with the hand not currently holding your used pad--and encourages you to sit back down on the sofa.

“I want to see.” Simple and clear, like most of the things he says to you. His directness with you is something that does make him stand apart from most people. If he wanted attention, he told you so; if he wanted to be left alone, the same. There weren’t mind games with him or--or hell, if there were mind games, you were too stupid to notice them and that was just fine with you, because the alternatives of your past relationships had been far worse.

“Why?” You ask, if only to delay the inevitable.

Mahito shakes the pad on his hand, smiling a little at the way it sticks, before he peels it off and sets it on the coffee table. He sighs. “Movies never show it. They always show the woman eating ice cream or screaming at her boyfriend or cuddling with pillows, but they never show what’s actually happening down there.”

You squirm without moving.

“It’s just blood.” Your tone stays flat, uninterested. If he thinks it’s boring, he might move on. “Nothing special about that.”

Mahito’s smile reminds you of an eel.

“Then show me.”

It’s not a request that you can parry off, so you don’t bother; instead, you spread your legs, pulling up your skirt so that Mahito won’t do it himself. You might just lose the garment entirely, if it was left up to him.

Mahito claps, then crouches down in front of you, getting far too close to your pad-clad underwear for comfort. He takes a sniff and you’d like to die on the spot.

He gives the pad a poke.

“Why do you put this in there? What’s it called again?”

You close your legs a little--instinct--and he holds them open for you. It’s easier that way, you think. Easier when he takes control and you don’t have to fight your instincts.

“It’s a pad,” you force out. “I put it there to absorb the blood.”

He tilts his head. “Why?”

Your nose wrinkles at the question. “So it doesn’t get on my clothes or everything I sit on.” A ghost of a memory pushes through your brain--blood stains on school bus seats and church pews--and you force it down.

Mahito tilts his head, and you think he’s about to ask what you’re thinking about, but instead he sighs and rests his head against the edge of your thigh.

“Humans are so squeamish.” His fingers reach up and climb up your leg, dancing on your inner thighs, towards the pad. You twitch--it tickles--and he smiles. “Does everyone use pads?”

“No,” you say, as he grips the top of your underwear and begins to slide them down. You do move, now, but not to oppose him. It would be pointless. Instead you hike yourself up a little, so that your bare privates aren’t touching the couch. “Some people use tampons,” you finish, as if you’re not sitting here, hunched on your sofa, while a curse pulls down your underwear to get a look at what’s underneath.

Mahito glances up at you. He wants you to elaborate.

“A tampon is like a cotton stick, I guess? You put it up--there--and it absorbs like a pad. But from the inside.”

“Oh!” The edge of Mahito’s fingers play with the pad on your underwear. “I guess some of my experiments have been on their period, then. I wondered what those were.” He pouts, just a bit. “Maybe that’s why some of my experiments haven’t been working out right. I wasn’t taking menstruation into account.”

The thought has your stomach roiling. But you don’t want to talk about it. Don’t want to think about it--what Mahito does, when he’s not here, and how what he does is just as much a part of him as the moments when he’s snuggling with you in your apartment or fucking you into your mattress.

When you look back at him, he’s grinning.

“You’re squeamish, too. About my work.” He presses a kiss to the inside of your knee. “Don’t worry. It’s cute on you.”

With that, he gives up all pretense, and peels the pad away from your underwear in one swift motion.

“What are you doing?” You ask, even though you know the answer.

“Keeping it.” He sets it next to the already used pad. In contrast, the pad he’s just peeled away still has mostly brighter red blood on it, rather than the dull, brown old blood from the bathroom trash can. “I want to see how long it takes for you to bleed through your underwear. And some more things,” he adds, casually.

Oh, you think. This is too far, too weird. It’s puncturing the bubble you’ve created around you and Mahito in a way you don’t like.

“Mahito, I am not--”

In an instant, his eyes are on you. It’s a look that says, “You are,” and your lips feel like they clamp shut without hesitation. Something low climbs into your stomach and takes root there. When your shoulders slump, defeated, he pats your knee in appreciation.

“We’ll have a slumber party this week,” he tells you, voice getting more giddy as he goes on. “For three days? Four? However long you bleed.” He stands up and begins to survey your apartment, but for what you don’t yet know. “I can get a lot of experiments done in four days.”

You don’t have the heart--or the stomach--to deny him.

When you were thirteen, you once got your period in the middle of class. You didn’t know it until you leaned forward in your desk to get a closer look at what the teacher wrote on the blackboard--your needed glasses at the time, and didn’t yet know it--and one of the boys behind you let out a distinct tween boy guffaw, snickering just loud enough for everyone to hear: “Dude, that’s fucking nasty.”

And then you’d felt it--wetness clinging to the inside of your black pants. And you’d scooted back, looked between your legs, and there it was: a smear of red on the dull grey chair.

You were too embarrassed to do anything but sit back down, cheeks so hot that you began to sweat, and listened as everyone behind you began murmuring about your period. You had wanted to die for almost two weeks, and for the rest of your school career, you wore a sweater around your waist just in case you started without warning.

That incident, as life-defining as it had been, was not as embarrassing as what you’re going through right now.

“Mahito,” you mumble, voice thick from your tightened throat. “Is this really necessary?”

Mahito, seated at a folding table he’s hauled into the living room, glances up at you. You, naked as the day you were born and perched awkwardly on top of a porcelain bowl that Mahito had shoved underneath you.

“Which part? The bowl or you being naked?”

“Both,” you blurt helplessly.

Mahito smiles. It’s such a pretty, awful little smile. “The bowl is,” he admits. His eyes leer over your body, awkward as it must look right now. “I just like to look at you.”

God help you, you feel flattered; the warm flush in your skin tingles with the new emotion. Mahito’s praises never failed to make you feel like that, even in the midst of something like this.

Mahito abandons the table and squats in front of the sofa, peering in between your spread thighs at the bowl underneath. You squirm, and he smacks the inside of your thigh sharply. You stop moving.

“I thought it would come out faster.” His tone is soft, low. Detached to everything but mild curiosity. Like a child studying an insect in a chair. “But it’s more… oozing than anything.”

“Don’t call it oozing,” you say.

Before he can answer, a timer resting on the folding table dings delightfully. Mahito doesn’t waste time and yanks the bowl out from underneath you, leaving you to land flat on the sofa with your bare ass.

“’Hito!” You whine. “It’ll stain!” Thoughts of having to get the smeary blood out of your couch override the desire to keep your whining to a minimum, lest Mahito get annoyed with you. But, you think, it doesn’t matter much now. He’s not even paying attention.

Instead, he whisks the bowl over to the table and places it on the scale to weigh.

He sighs out something like disappointment. “It’s not that much blood at all, really. I don’t know why women complain about it so much in movies.”

He wasn’t paying attention to your whining earlier, but he does hear your incredulous intake of breath at his words. He glances back at you, confusion written on his face.

“What? It really isn’t. Now, when someone loses a limb, that’s real blood loss. And it spurts out, instead of oozing.” He nods, affirming his thoughts to himself. “That would be something to complain about.”

“It’s not just the blood,” you say, half absent. Your mind drifts to when and where and how Mahito might see someone lose an arm. Did he cut it off? Or another curse? Did the blood droplets spray over his face? Did the person die right away or--

While you were lost in thought, Mahito left his post at the table and returned to crouch in front of you, now sitting flat on the sofa despite the inevitable stains.

“Go on,” he says simply, all the while pushing your thighs apart with his hands. There’s a bit of blood smeared on the inside of your thighs and he leans forward to give it a lick. The awful feeling nesting in your stomach bristles.

“Don’t.”

Mahito blinks up at you. “I want to,” is all he says, before he does it again.

The look he gives you--Will you try to stop me?--is met with you dropping your chin, just in time to see him smile. He gives another lick. “Tell me what else makes you complain when you’re on your period.”

You think about the sneering boys behind you at school, the way one of them tapped you on your shoulder and said, voice full of glorified condescension, “Aren’t you even wearing a pad? That’s nasty.”

Instead, you rest your hands on your naked stomach and murmur out the answers Mahito wants to hear.

“Cramps.” You swallow, forcing yourself to taste the ghost of your milkshake from lunch this afternoon and not the bile that wants to come up. “From the um, uterus contracting. It can hurt really bad.”

One of the girls in the class discretely handed you a pad, but your embarrassment had been so awful that you pretended not to see her, even when she waved it in front of you. “What a bitch,” she’d murmured to a friend afterward.

“Back pain,” you continue, voice cracking. “And you can get tired. You want to eat but can’t… or you don’t want to eat at all, sometimes. It’s just… a lot of stuff.”

Your body jolts when Mahito puts his hands on your stomach--he wouldn’t transfigure you, he’s said that, and you remember his words well. But it doesn’t stop you from imagining.

“Is that why women get angry when they menstruate?” The mild glare you give him is met with the most innocent of expressions. “What? It’s what all the movies say. Though the man usually gets hit with something after he says it.” He smiles, as if daring you to hit him. You don’t.

Instead, you keep talking. Maybe it’s a way to ground yourself. Maybe you just want to talk to fill the space where dead, disfigured women, corpses created at Mahito’s whim, exist.

“Your hormones can fluctuate.” You smile a little at the forced nostalgia. “Sometimes I get really upset over dumb things. Especially when I was younger. One time, I sobbed because my mom said she was going to get fast food for dinner and she changed her mind.”

Mahito rests his elbows on your thighs, digging into them harshly. His hair tickles your skin, and you wonder, idly, if he’ll get your blood on the silver strands.

“Do you want to cry now?” He asks, almost sweetly. “I wouldn’t mind.”

Do you want to cry? No. You might, though, if things keep going the way they are. So you dig your teeth into your lip and shake your head.

“No. This is just… embarrassing, I guess.” To be naked. To be bleeding. To have Mahito sitting there, your blood on his tongue.

Mahito quirks his head, then scoots back to pry your thighs farther apart so he can get a better view of your bleeding privates.

“I don’t see why humans get so embarrassed about their bodies. It seems silly.” He rests his chin on his elbow for a moment, hums, then hoists himself up and returns to the table where he’s got a few used pads and the bowl still lined up.

“Mahito?” You ask, while he’s tinkering with his findings. “Can I put my clothes on now. And a pad?”

“No,” he answers, voice light, without even looking behind him. “I need to put this inside you first.”

You do move to get up off the couch now, a pang of fear shooting through your stomach, but you stop when he turns around with a wrapped tampon held aloft. Where did he get it--the thought flickers, and turns into something more pressing: Why does he have it?

But you know the answer, don’t you?

“I don’t use tampons.” A useless thing to say, but you say it anyway.

He simply blinks at you, and crouches back down in front of you, parting your thighs like air.

“They’re uncomfortable,” you try, louder.

This time, he stops moving, and a little bit of hope flickers through you just long enough for him to furrow his eyebrows.

“But when I make my penis, it’s much bigger than this, and you don’t say it’s uncomfortable.”

Your mouth opens to answer, and your tongue sticks to the inside. It’s stupid to argue with him when he’s got his mind set on something. So you don’t.

When you don’t continue to complain, he nods, then unwraps the tampon and skims the back of the wrapper. At least he’s reading the damn instructions, you think, in the instant before he awkwardly shoves the tampon inside you--too rough and hard, and you whimper as it pinches in an entirely awful way.

Mahito’s lips quirk. He checks the back of the wrapper again, tsks at himself, and pulls it out. This time, the insertion is less chaotic. It’s still sore, but no longer painful. Just… uncomfortable.

“Aw.” He pats your thigh. “You did great. Let me start the timer!” He jumps up, hair swinging as he rushes to begin the timer for whatever phase of the experiment he’s on.

“Can I put some clothes on now?” Though you’re no longer hoping to avoid staining your sofa, it wouldn’t be awful to be a little less vulnerable in the moment.

Mahito taps his chin with his thumb, considering. Then he shakes his head. “I want you naked. But we can cuddle on your bed for this part, so you don’t get crabby!”

There’s no time to voice a complaint or offense; he hoists you up, some of the blood that had smeared against your bottom rubbing off on his arm as he carries you into the bedroom. He doesn’t seem to mind; he simply plops you on the bed--fuck, your comforter--and hops on to wrap himself around you.

Silence stretches around you, even as he wraps his arms tighter and presses his nose against your neck.

“Are… we done after this?” You venture to ask, quiet and tired.

Mahito talks into your neck, cold breath--is it even breath?--ghosting your skin. “Oh, no. I have lots of things I’d like to find out this week.” You can feel his smile pressing into you. “You’re being very helpful, you know.”

“I am?”

Mahito hums against you, and sniffs your hair. His answer is so light and sweet, the contrast makes you feel a bit sick.

“Earlier, I’d considered just grabbing someone to experiment on instead, but since you’re being so sweet about everything, I figured I’d just use you instead.”

The dread in your stomach puffs up, its sodden hairs standing on end.

“So you saved me from having to find at least one woman to test my questions on. Maybe two,” he adds, voice still light. “Doesn’t that feel nice?”

“Nice?” You ask, voice hollow.

Mahito presses a smooch to your neck. “Don’t most people feel nice when they do a good deed?”

A good deed, to stand in for women who might have otherwise died horribly. For women who would have spent their time not thinking about humiliating childhood period experiences but their families--their partners, their children, if they had them.

A good deed to snuggle with Mahito, while miles away, someone was begging for death from underneath a mass of twisted flesh.

“I guess.” Your voice cracks, but it doesn’t bother him. You suppose a lot of things don’t bother Mahito and so often, you try not to let them bother you.

He sighs against you, and presses his hands lightly where you’d laid them earlier to indicate your cramps. His fingers dully stroke against the spot, and you wonder what it would feel like for his fingers on you not to bring mild comfort and the growing tingle of affection--but terror and pain and fear.

You wonder, too, if Mahito ever thinks the same thing.

#mahito x reader #yandere #yandere jujutsu kaisen #yandere mahito #yandere jjk #afterwitch writes

112 notes · View notes

tkwrites · 1 day

Text

Summer Decisions - Quinn Hughes x ofc

gif from gabelandeskog

Title: Summer Decisions - Quinn Hughes x ofc

Author: Tory / @tkwrites

Relationship: Quinn Hughes x Sarah Roberts

Warnings: Highly emotional, angst. mild fighting, lots of anxiety, swearing, crying, fluff. If I missed anything, please let me know.

Summary: An invitation to his family reunion over the fourth of July has Quinn and Sarah tumbling into a long conversation about their future in the off-season and beyond. Though the ensuing fight is resolved, the reality of their commitments vs. their love for each other is put to the test.

Word Count: 4,600

Comments: I’m back with some highly emotional goodness. This fic was halfway done for a long time until your overwhelming reactions to my WIP ask game really got me in gear to start writing again. I really like the way this turned out, and I hope you do, too. It's, like, 98% dialogue, so if that's not your thing, I won't be offended if you skip this one, but it is setting up all of our off-season fics.

If you enjoyed this, please let me know by commenting, reblogging, or sending in an ask. Your encouragement and comments truly inspire me to keep writing.

I love Quinn and Sarah, and I’m constantly blown away that so many of you love them, too.

Summer Decisions

A Quinn & Sarah Snapshot

“My parents want to know if you want to come to our family reunion over the 4th of July. It’s in New Hampshire.”

“Oh,” she said, voice quiet.

“Is that not okay?”

“It’s just a big step,” she said, “meeting your whole family.”

“I’m meeting your family in June, aren’t I?” he asked.

They’d discussed him coming to visit when she went home for a few weeks after school. Were it not for the Canucks making it into the playoffs, she would have bought a ticket for the Monday after her classes would be done. Instead, she pushed her visit back until mid-June, wanting to be in Vancouver to support him through the entirety of their run, however long it may be.

“Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

It was a little strange to her how comfortably serious they were, but she couldn’t imagine life with Quinn any other way. It was that fated belonging she’d talked about so much when they first met. Even still, it was a little jarring to think about him meeting her family or meeting his before they even hit the six month mark.

The phrase, ‘when you know, you know,’ never made sense until she met him. She knew, and even though it felt too fast and scary sometimes, she knew it would all turn out okay.

“So we’ll fly out from Van, what? The night before?”

“I’ll have to fly out from Michigan.”

“Michigan? Why?”

“I thought I told you we train in Michigan in the summer.”

“You did, but I thought… I thought maybe that changed?”

“Why?”

“Because of us?” she gestured between them.

“I mean, I’d love for you to come with me.”

“I can’t do that, Quinn.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t just pack up and move to Michigan. I still have my research work, and if I’m not working or in school for more than 6 weeks in a quarter, it violates my education visa. Not only will I have to move back to the States, I won’t be able to finish my degree.”

“Then I’ll fly you out every weekend.”

Pricked, the old wound split open, and she couldn’t quite hide the annoyance in her voice, “so it’s up to me to fly to you?”

Shit. He hadn’t taken her schedule into account again. “Sorry, no. Of course I’d come here, too.”

The annoyance still fresh in her mind she found herself asking, “why do I have to remind you my time matters for you to take it into account?”

Quinn winced. “I know your time matters. I’m sorry, it’s not fair for me to assume you could just pack up and move or fly out every weekend.”

“Then don’t bring it up again,” she said.

Okay then.

“I’m trying here, Sarah. This is all new to me, too.” He’d never felt close enough with June to figure out a summer situation. They saw each other once or twice when he was gone, and that was enough. Looking back, that should have been a huge sign about the trajectory of their relationship.

“And yet, I assume because I have a vagina, I was raised to take other people into account.”

“That’s not fair,” he said.

“No? Then why do you always jump into me coming to you? Into me changing my plans? Into me inconveniencing my life before you do?”

Fuck. This wasn’t supposed to go this way. This was supposed to be a nice, light conversation about how he wanted her to meet everyone he loved.

“Maybe we should just break up for the summer,” she said when he didn’t say anything.

“What? No!” Quinn sucked his bottom lip into his mouth, hurt and disgruntled she would even suggest such a thing.

“What would you suggest, then?”

Instead of answering her question, he asked one of his own. “Do you want to date someone else?” His voice was hesitant as he braced himself for the blow.

“No. Of course not.”

“Then why do you want to break up?” he asked through the relief easing his mind. “Why would you even say that?”

“Because we won’t be together.”

“That doesn’t mean we should just call it off. Why do you always jump into ‘we should break up’ or ‘I should go’ when something hard comes up?”

“I…” Sarah broke off, caught. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe you should figure that out because I’m willing to put in the work here,” he said, gesturing between them.

“That’s not fair.”

He raised his eyebrows instead of throwing her words back in her face.

“I’m sorry, Quinn. I am trying, and I know you’re trying.” Tears pricked at her eyes, “I’ve just…” her mind whirred, trying to find the right explanation. In the end, as it always did with Quinn, the truth won out. “I’m scared I’m going to fuck it up and I don’t want to lose you.”

Bridging the space between them with one big step, he pulled her against him. When they boiled down to the heart of the problem, they were both scared of the same thing.

Tucking his nose into her hair, he breathed in the calming, smokey scent that was uniquely hers. “I don’t want to lose you, either,” he said. “We can still be together. Just separately.”

A laugh snorted from her nose, and she pulled back, “what?”

“Long distance?”

It was Sarah's turn to suck on her lip. “I’ve never done that before.”

“I have. It's not easy. But I think we're both committed enough to make it work. Plus, we'll see each other pretty often.”

She had her thinking face on as a pregnant pause passed, so Quinn didn’t interrupt.

“What would that look like?” she asked, finally.

“We’d talk on the phone and video chat a lot. I can come see you every weekend.”

“That doesn't make sense, Quinn. You go to Michigan to train and be with family. If you're flying back here every weekend, won't that mess with those things?”

“Probably, but —”

“Then it's out of the question. You need to do what you need to do.”

He felt whiplashed. “I thought you wanted me to come here.”

“Only in equal measure to me coming to you. I won’t let you give up your summer training for me.”

It stuck him how much care and understanding were laid out in that statement.

“Just like I know you wouldn’t want me to give up my research for you. It wouldn’t be fair.”

Still wrapped in each others arms, Sarah rested her head on his shoulder as they thought.

Tucking his face into her hair again, Quinn breathed deeply. As always, that smokey, vanilla scent was so calming to him. He couldn’t ever get it out of his mind.

“This fucking sucks,” he said, voice muffled.

“I know,” she agreed. “I wish it could be different."

It couldn’t. They both had commitments that needed to be fulfilled, and they just didn’t match up.

“I wish I’d known. I would have made different plans.”

“How would you have known?” she asked. “We only met four months ago.”

“Has it only been that long?” he asked. The reality of the swiftness of their relationship hit him full force. “I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

“I know. I do too.”

“I don’t want to go the summer without you,” he said, caressing her cheek with the backs of his fingers.

“I don’t either,” she agreed, “but it’s not like it’ll be five months where we just don’t see each other.”

“Four,” he corrected.

“What?”

“Four months, I come back in September.”

Well, that was a relief.

“Okay, four months. I mean, we already have stuff planned. Let’s talk through what we do have,” she suggested, breaking away from him all together and pulling her planner from her bag. Flipping to the summer months, she lay it on top of her comparative physiology textbook and sat at the table. The urge to make a plan itched beneath her skin.

He sat next to her, leaning in.

“So we have my family in June,” she said, pointing out the 10 days she had blocked out for her visit, “I sort of expected you’d come on the weekend?”

“Yeah, that sounds good. And our reunion over the forth,” he said, flipping the page. “Then, we’re going to Hawaii at the end of July. You can come. I’ll get you a ticket.”

“Hold on, have you talked to your family about this?”

“No, but it’ll be fine.”

She shook her head.

He couldn’t believe she was turning down the option to spend two more weeks together.

“That’s your family vacation, Quinn. I’d love to come, but I don’t want to go inserting myself —”

“You’re not inserting yourself, I’m inviting you.”

“And I’m telling you I won’t come unless all your family is okay with it. Including Jack.”

Even though Quinn had assured her Jack was a good guy and very devoted to his family and would come around once they met, he was still aloof anytime she happened to be around when he and Quinn were talking. Even Ellen had said as much, but Sarah still felt hesitant. Until she saw it from Jack himself, she wasn’t about to jump into an already planned vacation. She knew what it was like having a new person join the family. She didn’t want to make it any harder than it had to be.

Quinn huffed.

“The last thing I want is to come between you and your brothers,” she said gently.

His expression softened. “Okay. I’ll talk to them about it when they’re here.”

“So, it looks like we’ll see each other every three weeks or so, depending on when you come to Nevada and what Hawaii looks like. At least until August.”

Every three weeks felt like too long. He could hardly stand a week on the road, and they weren’t even living together. Yet.

“I’d like you to come out to Michigan,” he said, “meet the guys. See the house.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “And you can come back here sometime here,” she said, her finger circling over a few weeks in August.

Quinn nodded. It certainly wasn’t going to be easy, but it did feel better to have a plan.

“Are you renting this place out for the summer,” she asked, “while you’re gone?”

“I kind of thought you might move in here.”

“What?”

“I mean, it’s just going to be empty, and I’d really like to live with you when I move back.”

She couldn’t believe he could drop such a huge bomb so easily. As she tried to reconcile what he was saying, she repeated, “what?”

“I mean…” he paused, voice and expression suddenly hesitant, “only if you want to.”

Her brain finally caught up, “it’s not that. It’s just…we haven’t even talked about living together, and now you have this whole plan about how I should live here over the summer.”

“I just thought there’s no real need for you to pay for rent anymore, since you spend so much time here anyway.”

“I…” she was struck with the care in that statement, “that’s really sweet, Quinn.”

He beamed.

“But I can’t live here alone all summer.”

Expression falling, he opened his mouth.

“I just —” she interrupted before she lost her nerve. What was one more in a series of already vulnerable conversations? “I’d love to live here with you, but I can’t…I don’t know how my depression will act up if I live alone for that long. I’ve never lived on my own before, and I don’t think a summer where I’m missing my boyfriend is the best time to start.”

The thought that she’d be here alone hadn’t crossed his mind. Not in a concrete way. Like, he knew she’d be here, and he knew he’d be in Michigan, but he never thought about it like she would be the only one in the apartment.

“Oh,” he whispered, taking her hands in his, “then of course not.”

His immediate acceptance made tears rush to her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Quinn asked as she took a hand back to wipe her face.

Smiling despite the tears on her cheeks, she shook her head. “I just really love you.” Her voice sounded full, almost like she had a cold.

“I love you, too,” he said, feeling a little confused, “but I don’t know why you’re crying.”

“Just…” How could she explain something like this? “The way you accept and trust my needs. It’s really nice.”

“The last thing I want is for you to be unhappy, Sarah.”

This brought on a new wave of tears, and she tucked her head into his shoulder, trying to pull herself together.

Quinn still felt a little whiplashed but tried to roll with it, running a soothing hand over her back.

“What?” he asked when she mumbled something into his shirt.

Pulling back, she wiped her nose before repeating, “I’ll have to sign a new lease. It comes up in July.”

“I’ll buy you out of it,” he said as if it was the simplest, easiest solution to any of the problems they’d discussed that day.

“I can’t let you do that, Quinn. That’s a lot of money.”

Her eyes went wide. They’d never discussed money so concretely. She knew he made big bucks. All pro athletes did, but, “eight million?” she asked. “What do you do with it?”

He hated having this conversation, but it needed to be had. It was actually a little surprising to him that it’d taken this long for it to come up. June had asked him about it a month into dating.

“Sarah, I make eight million dollars a year. I can buy out your lease.”

“I have a financial advisor who’s helped me invest most of it,” he said, “and I don’t really have all eight million available all the time. But I paid off my parents and some of our families’ houses, and I give quite a bit to charity.”

She’d seen the way he was with money. He never worried about it, but he certainly didn’t throw it at anything and everything. He wasn’t irresponsible.

Opening her mouth to say something, she found her mind still reeling and closed it again.

The annoyed look he would give her when she paid the dinner bill flashed in her mind. No wonder. He made so much more than she did. All the same, she wasn’t about to become some sugar baby. That went against nearly everything her parents had taught her.

“I still want to pull my weight,” she said.

Quinn was a little taken aback by the fierceness in her voice, “what?”

“If we move in together, I still want to pull my weight.”

His lips pursed, and he held back his initial response in favor of gathering more information. “What do you mean?”

“Like, if I make $80,000 a year, I want to pay whatever percentage that is of what you make.”

“You only make $80,000 a year?” he asked.

“No. Right now, I make $50,000 a year from my research stipend. It pays for my schooling, too, so it’s technically more, but $80,000 is a general base salary for a marine zoologist.”

“You’ve been living on $50,000 a year?”

“Yes, and I’ve been fine,” she said, giving him a look that stifled any follow-up questions he may have had. “My point is that if —” she paused to correct herself, “when we live together,” he beamed and she lost her thought for a moment before continuing, “I want to pull my weight, even if it is just a small percentage of the household. I don’t want to be some beholden trophy wife.”

“Beholden?” he repeated, an amused smile playing on his lips.

“Yes, I don’t want to be some kept woman. A lot of financial advisors that I listen to say you should split the household and each pay the percentage compared to your salaries. How much do you pay here a month? Do you rent? Is it a mortgage?”

“It’s a rental. It’s not really smart for me to buy a place when there’s a chance I may get traded in three years. It’s not enough time to build adequate equity on a home.”

Sarah stuck a mental pin in that to come back to, “and how much is your rent?”

“12,000.”

“A year?” she found herself asking, even though she knew that couldn’t possibly be the answer.

“A month,” he said with an indulgent smile, knowing it was her shock speaking more than anything else.

She wasn’t quite sure why, but this fact struck Sarah harder than anything else they’d talked about. She knew she’d never be able to afford an apartment like this on her own, but this was insane. More than a fifth of her yearly salary went to Quinn’s rent each month. She counted herself lucky to find a private room for under $2000.

“Okay, so if I make,” she paused, doing mental calculations - moving decimal points. Her voice was flat when she spoke again, “one percent of what you do…” She trailed off, looking into his face, “Quinn, this is insane.”

“I know,” he agreed. “I’m happy to just pay, but if you would feel better paying whatever, I’m happy for you to do that, too.”

“So, I’d pay one percent of the household expenses.” Saying it out loud, it sounded so silly. One percent? That seemed minuscule, too insignificant to matter. “Maybe I could pay ten percent? One feels too tiny.”

“Sure,” Quinn said, knowing this was important to her. Unless she was storming in, trying to take over all the bills, he was happy to have her contribute in whatever way she wanted. “If you want to do that, let’s do that. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

They sat quietly for a moment, and he gathered his thoughts.

“I know it’s important to you to contribute,” Quinn said gently, “and I’m not saying you shouldn’t - but I just want you to know I’m happy to pay for things. I know I’m insanely blessed to make the kind of money I do to play a sport that I love. I’d really, really like to live together once I move back. So if that means I need to buy out your lease, I’m happy to do it if you’re comfortable with that.”

Pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, she thought. If Quinn paid off her lease, she wouldn’t have to put off moving in with him or live on her own in this giant apartment or find a place to live for the two months between when he was home and when her lease was up.

She wondered if this was one of those instances her grandmother often talked about. “Sometimes,” she would say while they were cleaning the basement or kneading dough, or working in the garden, “life showers you with blessings. And it’s up to you to catch them.”

She always accompanied this wisdom by shaping her hands into a bowl as if to fill them with water.

Sarah did the same now, pulling her other hand out of Quinns to cup them together.

Eyebrows knitted together, he glanced from her hands to her face.

She giggled and told him the story.

“I should start doing that every morning,” he said, cupping his own hands together.

“Every morning?” she repeated.

“Well, every morning that you’re here. When I wake up next to you, I feel like the luckiest guy alive.”

Despite it being incredibly cheesy, Sarah couldn’t help feeling moved. “Quinn that’s really sweet,” she said. “I feel like that, too,” she paused, feeling like she needed to add a caveat. “And I want you to know your money isn’t part of that. I would love you no matter how much money you were making.”

“I know,” he said, leaning in to brush his lips over hers, “I’ve known that from the start.”

His hands found her waist as their lips connected.

A while later, that pin she’d stuck in for later snapped back into her mind, and Sarah pulled away. “What did you mean about getting traded?”

Well, they might as well have all the hard conversations all at once. “I’m in contract for the next three years, but after that, or even before, there’s always a chance I could get traded.”

The trade deadline had already passed for the season, and Sarah had watched, fascinated, as players were moved around from club to club, like pieces on a chess board as organizations tried to build the best teams possible. Now, she had a new level of understanding, knowing lives and families were being uprooted in the process.

“But they love you here.”

His smile was wide and genuine, “I love it here, too. I don’t really expect I’d be traded anytime soon, but I can’t say never with what I do. I could get seriously injured, or my game could crash.”

She gave him an incredulous look.

“Its happened before.”

“To you?”

“No, but it has to people I know. I really like it here, but I can’t guarantee I’ll play here forever, or even for the next three years. I think I will, but I can’t say for certain.”

“What happens if you get traded while I’m still finishing my degree?”

“I don’t think that will happen, but I guess we’d make it work apart until you were done. Most players get traded right at the end of their contract, so we’d be apart for the rest of the season, and then we’d decide what to do moving forward. If I was moving clubs by choice, we’d decide where to go together. ”

She nodded. “Do you get any say in trades?”

“I think I probably would, but it doesn’t always work out that way. I mean, Bo had a monster year last season, but they couldn’t come to an agreement, and so he got traded, and I know he would have liked to stay. It’s just never guaranteed.”

“How do you live your life like this?” she asked.

He shrugged, “you just kind of have to get used to the idea that things could change tomorrow.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah.”

The concerns his parents had expressed when they were here snapped into place, and a sudden, consuming worry that she might not want this kind of life overwhelmed him.

“Are you,” he paused to lick his lips, trying to find the right phrasing, “I mean, do you think you could be okay with that?”

Even as it was racing with anxiety, the worried look on his face melted Sarah’s heart. It was difficult to reconcile the fact that while it felt steady now, his life had the possibility of being in flux all the time, and that where he chose to work was only partially up to him. At the same time, she didn’t want to be without him. The pull between them was too strong, too fated in a way she couldn’t deny. She was too in love with him to be scared of the reality of his life.

There was only one thing for it. “It’ll take some getting used to, but I think I can,” she said. Perhaps this wasn’t even something she needed to be worried about. Thoughts buzzing, she tried to think of players on Quinn’s level who’d been traded recently. She couldn’t remember any off the top of her head. She’d have to look it up.

He gave her a relieved smile, and she saw moisture shining in his eyes.

“Oh, Quinn,” she said, her hands coming up to cup his face. The course hairs of his beard tickled her palms. “I think I’d probably move to the ends of the earth with you.” The words just fell out of her mouth, and once they were out there, spoken aloud for everyone to hear, she realized how true they were. For someone so practical, it was strange for her to have such a frivolous thought mean so much.

His face split into a beaming smile, and he pulled her into a hug. Tucking his nose into her hair again, he let a few grateful tears fall. “I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you,” he said.

“I don’t know either.”

A sudden, surprised laugh barked from his chest, and he pulled back with a raised brow.

“Oh no,” her hand went to her mouth as a blush blazed over her cheeks. “I meant that I feel the same way.” Shaking her head, she wondered if she had ever said something so stupid. “You’re the most understanding, accepting man I’ve ever met, Quinn. I’m so glad the Universe brought us together.”

He nodded, “me too.”

Looking into his eyes, which seemed more hazel than usual to the point that she could almost see a ring of green near the iris, the reality of what was coming hit her square in the chest, “this summer is gonna fucking suck.”

“I know,” he said, pulling her into his lap.

Arms around his shoulders to bring herself closer, her feet hung awkwardly off the sides of the chair. Though she knew her toes would be tingling from lack of blood flow within a matter of minutes, she didn’t readjust, savoring the feeling of his solid chest against hers.

The deep breath she sighed out moved her whole body against his. “We’ll get through it together, right?”

Tightening his grip, Quinn agreed.

As the minutes passed, his hands traveled over her back in slow, calming waves that put her totally at ease.

“Do you have homework?” he asked quietly, almost as if he didn’t want to hear the question himself.

“Yeah, but it can wait a while.”

A pleased little hum filtered up his throat, and he pulled her tighter against him.

“Can we move to the couch, though?” she asked. “My feet are falling asleep.”

Laughing, he stood, hands cradling her butt to keep her wrapped around him. When she hooked her ankles around his back, Quinn filed the position away to try later.

Halfway up the stairs, Sarah unwound herself from him. Sure, he was an athlete, but carrying her up the stairs was still taking a toll.

She lay down on the suede couch and held her arms open for him. He gratefully lay on top of her, his head on her chest.

Running her fingers through his hair, Sarah replayed their relationship in her mind. Knowing what she knew now, both about Quinn’s celebrity status and his quiet nature, the fact that he came up to her at all was a miracle. He could have any woman in the city, and he’d stuck his neck out for her. It was overwhelming to think about sometimes. She hoped she was living up to his expectations.

Half an hour later, Quinns phone chirped with a notification, bringing them out of their sleepy reverie. By that time, they’d switched places, and Sarah was draped over him.

“It’s 6,” he whispered into her hair. “I’ve got to get up to make dinner.”

Even as she whined, Sarah pushed herself up. This soft, caring version of Quinn was always her favorite, and she didn’t want to let him go. “I love you,” she said, looking down at him.

“I love you, too,” he said, standing and hugging her to him again before they had to get back to real life.

Her arms tightened around him. “I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you, Quinn Hughes, but I’m so glad you’re mine.”

Tucking his face into her neck, he pressed a few soft kisses there before telling her, “Sarah Roberts, you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Want more Quinn & Sarah? Check out the Snapshots Masterlist

To read all my fics, check out the Fanfiction Masterlist

#quinn & sarah snapshots #quinn hughes #quinn hughes fic #quinn hughes fanfiction #quinn hughes imagine #quinn hughes x oc #quinn hughes fanfic #quinn hughes oneshot #nhl fanfiction #nhl imagine #hockey romance #hockey fanfiction #hockey fic #qh43

135 notes · View notes

offside-the-lines · 1 day

Text

Give my all to you | Nico Hischier

Summary: It's been two years since Aurora was set up on an unwanted surprise date with Nico. He's become her best friend and her son's favorite person. Aurora finds herself wondering if this truly is all she wants from him. Title inspo: Best Part by HER & Daniel Caeser

This fic is dedicated to @wyattjohnston for her birthday bingo. Happy birthday, Demi! You are an absolute gift to this community and to my life. I hope you have the best day. Here's to 30!!! 💖 Pairing: Nico Hischier x F!OC Word count: 5.8k Bingo card tropes: match-making, single parent, FREE (friends to lovers), sworn-off love, coworkers (barely mentioned tho lol oops). Warnings: Kid fic! The kid does get injured, but he is okay! (Please let me know if I missed something) Some Swiss German words used: Schätzli (little treasure), Bärli (little bear). This fic is un-beta-ed coz I wasn't about to make you edit your own b'day fic. LOL Masterlist

I. THE PAST

Aurora has always hated being late, even when it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fault the production meeting ran late. It wasn’t her fault that there was something wrong with the subway line she needed to take. It wasn’t her fault that her bag strap decided to snap, spilling its contents onto the busy 8th Avenue sidewalk halfway through her approximately twenty-block walk. She had texted Nicole to let her know she was running late; she didn’t have the wherewithal to consider how strange it was that she never got a response.

By the time she had gotten to the restaurant, she was sweating and looking forward to a cold drink. Which is why she was even more annoyed when she couldn’t find Nicole in the restaurant. It was garnering her strange looks from the maitre d’ who had told her there was no reservation under either of their names.

Aurora checked the location twice before stepping back onto the street and pressing ‘call’ on her phone. It was a precarious balancing act, with her bag grasped to her chest.

There was no response.

As she pressed ‘call’ again, her eyes caught sight of Nico Hischier. A pit was beginning to form in her stomach as she began to realize what was happening.

No response.

At that moment, Nico looked up and caught her eye. His smile and wave all but confirmed her suspicions.

She quickly typed out a message as she ventured back inside.

To Nicole 💁🏼‍♀️: nicole laud, what the fuck have you done. if this is what i think it is, im going to fucking kill you.

“Hi, Aurora!” Nico smiled; it was endearing, the way it dimpled his cheeks and crinkled his eyes. He stood up to give her a hug and pulled the chair out for her.

“Nico,” she said, “It’s nice to see you! Although I’m a little caught off-guard, I’m not gonna lie.”

He scrunched his brows. “Oh? What do you mean?”

“Nicole didn’t tell you?” She paused, examining his confused expression, and sighed. “She didn’t tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“Look, Nico, I don’t know what Nicole told you to get you to come here, but this is not that. I thought I was meeting her for dinner, but it seems this has been some sort of setup. I’m really sorry if that’s not what you were expecting. Especially after waiting for me, which, I hope she at least did you the courtesy of passing along the message that I was running late?”

“She did,” Nico said.

“Well, at least there’s that,” she sighed, “I know you’re a great guy and everything, but I’m really not looking to date. At all. I mean, even if I was, I don’t date coworkers. I’m really sorry. She shouldn’t’ve done this. We can just call this a night if you want.”

Nico let a brief flicker of disappointment cross his face before schooling his expression into a soft smile. “Well, I mean, we’re already here, and you look like you might need a drink and some food. We can just have dinner as friends. Or colleagues if that’s what you prefer. I don’t mind either way. It’s up to you.”

Her stomach rumbled, reminding her of just how long it had been since she’d last eaten.

“Yeah, okay,” she said, “I’m pretty hungry, and I was really looking forward to the gnocchi.”

Despite the way the evening started, Aurora admits she had a good time. Nico was easy to talk to: open, attentive, and responsive. Maybe it was just the bottle of wine they shared, but it was rare for her to get as comfortable with someone so quickly as she did with Nico. How quickly they were both willing to share the deeply personal stories they usually kept to themselves.

Nico talked about what it was like to leave his family and move to a new country as a teenager. He shared stories of his siblings and his childhood in Switzerland. He confided in Aurora about the pressures and joys of being named an NHL captain so young.

Something about Nico made her feel safe enough to share her life story. It was rare for her to talk about her son with someone who was practically a stranger. But she found herself telling Nico about the ex-boyfriend who broke her heart at the age of 20, disappearing when she was in the third trimester of her pregnancy.

Nico indulged her by asking her question after question about Theo; admittedly, it’s always her favorite topic of conversation. Nico seemed genuine when he mentioned that he looked forward to meeting him, even going as far as offering to take her son skating for the first time. It was a nice thought, but she didn’t think he would follow through on it.

The time passed quickly, and soon, her phone alarm was alerting her that it was time to relieve the babysitter.

“Ah, shit,” Aurora said, “I need to get going.”

“No problem. Do you need a ride?” Nico asked, smiling warmly.

“No, it’s okay. Should we get the check?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Nico said, shaking his head, “I got this.”

“Come on,” she prodded.

“No, no. I feel bad; you were absolutely ambushed today. It’s the least I could do.”

The earnestness on his face made her pause, eventually relenting. “Okay, fine. Thank you.”

“No problem! I’m serious, though. I would really like to be friends. And I would love to take Theo skating.” He took out his phone and handed it over. “Here, type in your number, and we’ll figure out a time to make it happen.”

“Okay,” she said. She felt warm and bubbly; his smile settled her for some reason.

Later that night, after she had gotten home and checked in on her son, she responded to the two unread messages on her phone.

From [Unknown number]: It’s Nico! Lemme know if you got home okay! When do you wanna do skating? To Nico 😈: home! weekends are usually a good bet for us. especially before the reg season starts. From Nico 😈: How’s next Sunday? Maybe after practice. I can reserve some ice time at the rink.

From Nicole 💁🏼‍♀️: he thinks you’re cute! you should give it a shot. he’s a really good guy. To Nicole 💁🏼‍♀️: i know you were trying to help, but that was kinda fucked. he IS a great guy, and i think we WILL be good friends. but i’m still really pissed that you ambushed me like that. From Nicole 💁🏼‍♀️: i’m sorry. i didn’t think it through. To Nicole 💁🏼‍♀️: it’s okay. just don’t do it again.

II. THE PRESENT

[two years later]

Aurora watches as Nico chases Theo around the rink; with all the time he spends on the ice with Nico, he’s getting so good. As they skate past, Nico slows to send her a smile. She waves back.

She hears someone sit down in the seat next to her, and she doesn’t need to even turn to check who.

“Teddy’s getting good,” Nicole says.

“Yeah, he is.” Her gaze never leaves the boys going round and round the ice.

“Must be all the help he’s getting from our dearest Captain,” she laughs.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know.” She knocks her shoulder into Aurora’s. “First overall. Captain of the NHL team. Not everyone gets dedicated skating lessons from someone like that.”

Aurora doesn’t respond to that, but she does let her eyes drift over the other players on the ice: Curtis with his kids, Erik with his kids, Brendan with his kids… She swallows the lump in her throat.

“When are you and Jesp gonna have kids?” she asks.

“Shut up,” Nicole laughs, “You’re deflecting.”

“Deflecting from what?”

“Fine, we can talk about something else,” Nicole sighs. “When are you going to start dating again?”

“Oh my god, I can’t believe we have to go over this again. I don’t want to date. At all.”

“Oh, come on,” she whines, “Teddy’s seven already. It’s time. When was the last time you even got laid?”

Aurora doesn’t respond, focusing on the squeals of laughter and the scraping of blades on ice.

“Rory, I just want you to be happy,” Nicole continues gently.

“I am happy. I’ve got a great kid who I love,” she grinds out, “I just want to focus on him. He’s enough.”

“I know, Rory. Of course, he is, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t want more.”

“Well, I don’t,” she pouts. She knows it doesn’t come off nearly as resolute as she intends it to.

“I don’t believe you,” Nicole says; she sounds so sure. “You’re a romantic, Rory. You’re always reading those books and watching the shows and movies.”

When Aurora doesn’t respond, she sighs, adding, “When are you going to stop punishing yourself? And don’t say that you’re not. I know you still beat yourself up about it. You’re a great mom, Aurora. You can still be a great mom while dating.”

They let the silence linger.

“I don’t want to introduce new people into Theo’s life. I don’t want to have to explain to him why these men come and go from our lives,” she responds finally.

“Things don’t have to happen like that, you know?”

“Like what?”

“New guys coming and going.”

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t have to be someone new at all,” Nicole says carefully.

Aurora finally tears her eyes away from the rink and finds Nicole’s eyes boring into her own. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“Oh, come on, Aurora,” she says, rolling her eyes, “Be so fucking for real right now.”

Aurora just keeps glaring at her.

“Okay, fine, be like that,” Nicole huffs. “Be honest, how much time do you two spend with Nico? Like, every day when he’s not on a road trip, right? Nico’s down as his second emergency contact at school. He was a new guy at one point, but he sure isn’t going anywhere.”

“Nico’s different,” Aurora says, grinding her teeth together as she turns back towards the ice.

Her eyes immediately find Nico; he’s leaning over the bench so casually, so easily, as he helps Theo with his water bottle. When he looks up, his gaze locks with hers as if he knows exactly where to look. He smiles, and she can see his dimples even from here. She feels herself smiling back. A laugh bubbles in the column of her throat when he turns back to stick his tongue out at her son.

Nicole snorts. “Yeah, he’s different, alright.”

“Yeah,” Aurora sighs, not at all picking up on the subtext. “He is. Not every guy is like him. God, I don’t even know if there are any guys like him.”

Nicole hums, “Uh-huh. So, why won’t you date Nico?”

Aurora’s head whips around so fast she has to blink at her friend for a second.

“Nico’s a really good friend. That’s it. And that’s all it will ever be,” she bites out.

“You know, he agreed to go on that date with—” She cuts herself off when she sees Aurora’s glare. “Okay, I know we don’t talk about it, but just hear me out. He wanted to go on that date with you. He’s into you.”

“Yeah, he was,” Aurora says, shaking her head. “That’s before he knew I had a full kid who I am responsible for 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. No one wants to walk into that situation. Someone like Nico definitely doesn’t want—”

“I’m gonna cut you off right there,” Nicole says. “Nico literally has lunch with you at work most days he’s here. He takes Teddy skating as much as he can. He goes with you two to museums, or zoo, or whatever, almost every week. He helps you make dinner and watches kid shows like Paw Patrol. Like, I just don’t understand why you refuse to see this, but he’s all in, Rory.”

Aurora feels her throat tighten and tries to cool the heat in her cheeks.

“Yeah, as I said. Nico’s a great person. He’s probably the best person I know. But he’s a 25-year-old NHL player. He doesn’t even date ‘cause he wants to focus on his career. He certainly doesn’t want to be tied down to a family already.”

“Oh my god,” Nicole laughs humorlessly, “Like, serious! Do you hear yourself?”

Aurora just keeps glaring back at her.

Nicole shakes her head. “You know, he used to date, right? Or, at least, hook up. Jesper says he hasn’t seen Nico pick up in well over a year. What do you think that’s about? You got an excuse for that, too?”

And for once, she doesn’t know how to respond. She didn’t know that. She has always assumed that he didn’t pick up when she was around, so she can let loose a little without having to worry about Theo too much, knowing that Nico has her back. She has always assumed that he hooked up on the road. And she doesn’t know what to do with this information.

Luckily, she doesn’t need to, as a loud thump makes her jump.

Theo’s banging on the glass in front of her with the biggest grin on his face. Nico leans against the glass a few feet over, beaming at him.

“Hi, mama!” he yells, “Nicki’s teaching me how to use my edges better when I skate backward. See?”

He grins so wide before he puts his hands in front of him, tongue poking out of the side of his mouth, as he begins to wiggle. Aurora admits she has no idea what she’s looking for, but she smiles and cheers all the same. Her eyes flit over to Nico, and he’s tapping his stick; she recognizes the proud look on his face.

She looks away quickly, only to catch Theo losing an edge and falling to the ice. It makes her breath catch every time. Nico raps his knuckles on the glass twice before skating over to check on him. By the time he gets there, Theo’s already back on his feet, doing little hops.

She watches as Nico bends down to talk with him. They skate another lap before heading towards the exit together. She watches as Theo hops up onto the bench, and Nico kneels down to unlace his skates for him. She doesn’t know what they are chatting about, but Theo’s being especially animated.

Aurora is startled when she hears Jesper behind her; she has forgotten Nicole’s there.

“You ready to go, älskling?” he says, bending down to give her a kiss before sending Aurora a smile. “Hi, Rory.”

“Yep!” Nicole stands up, her hands sliding easily into his. She smiles at Aurora. “See ya later, yeah? Think about what I said?”

“No,” she laughs, sticking her tongue out like her son does, “Bye, you blond assholes.”

She watches Nico and Theo go down the tunnel together. Theo’s holding Nico’s hand despite telling her that holding hers was embarrassing; she tries not to be a little hurt by that. She sighs and makes her way over to the locker room.

It doesn’t take long for them to emerge, still sweaty. Theo can’t shower at the rink, so Nico usually also skips the shower so she doesn’t have to wait. Theo chats excitedly on the way to the car. Aurora and Theo had moved into Nico’s apartment building, a few floors down, not long after they had met, so they will carpool occasionally. Those days are always Theo’s favorite.

They hit traffic on the way back, and Theo’s questions and musings gradually fade out until he passes out in the back seat. Nico and Aurora sit in companionable silence for the rest of the drive, both happy to let the kid sleep.

It does mean that Theo is cranky when he is awakened from his nap, refusing to walk and then refusing to let go of Nico to let him shower in his own apartment. She sends him an apologetic look, but he just smiles and shrugs as he carries her son back to their apartment, Theo’s cheek resting on Nico’s shoulder as he blinks at his mom lazily.

She makes dinner as the boys shower, singing and dancing along to a playlist they have been adding to for two years. She feels, more than hears, Nico returning to the kitchen, his hand on her hip, a warm presence at her back, as he watches her stir the creamy chicken pasta. He steals bites off the spatula every now and then, laughing at her mock horror.

Theo has lost all the energy he was filled with only a few hours prior, and it makes dinner a battle. She feels guilty about the way Nico bargains with him to eat the vegetable. She should be able to get Theo to eat his dinner without help, and she knows she absolutely could do it, but it’s nice to have the help.

Besides, Theo wasn’t in the mood to listen to anything she had to say, always looking to Nico for guidance instead. Asking Nico for his bedtime story when the time came for it.

She’s not jealous, anything but. It fills her heart with warmth to see her son so smitten with her best friend. But that doesn’t stop the ache that fills her chest: this could’ve been Theo with his father. He should be getting this with his father. And it’s her fault he isn’t. Every day, Theo grows a little bit more as a person, and while it’s bittersweet, she always wonders if he would be different if he had a dad. If her mistakes are holding him back.

Aurora is startled out of her thoughts when she hears her son’s voice get progressively louder and more upset. She rushed into his room.

“Why not?” Theo whines, his voice wet with tears and his bottom lip trembling.

“Bärli, I—” Nico says, voice wavering and raw. When he turns towards her, he looks white as a sheet, his eyes darting back and forth between Aurora and her son.

“What happened?” she hisses at him as he stands up to give her space on the bed.

“I—I really don’t know. He asked—Never mind, not important right now,” he whispers, nodding at Theo, who is now bawling.

She rushes to her son’s side and pulls him into her arms, shushing him. She presses soft kisses to his forehead and just holds him until his sobbing subsides. Eventually, he tires himself out enough, hiccuping occasionally as his eyes drift close and his body grows heavy. Once she’s sure he’s asleep, she slips out of the room.

Nico is leaning against the wall in the hallway, worrying at his lip. His head snaps up as soon as he hears her exit the room. She pulls him out of the hallway and into the kitchen, the furthest place from her son’s bedroom.

“What the fuck happened in there?” she whispers.

Nico presses the palms of his hands to his eyes. “He asked me—Fuck—He asked me if I was his dad. Obviously, I said no. And then he got really upset, and I don’t know why. I have no idea what happened.”

“What do you mean he asked—How did that even come up?”

“I don’t know,” Nico sighs, finally looking at her. His brows are pinched tight, dark strands of hair falling like a curtain around wet eyes. “He was saying something about the kids at school all having dads. And then he asked me if I had a dad. And then he just asked me, ‘Are you my dad?’ And then he kept asking me why not. Like, ‘Why don’t you wanna be my dad?’ What the fuck am I supposed to say to that, Aurora?” His voice breaking at the end.

She feels the claws of panic dig into her chest, sharp pain in her sternum as her head spins. Technically, it’s not the first time he’s asked that. He used to ask about ‘dads’ a lot when he was a toddler; before he really understood what the word ‘dad’ meant. He hadn’t brought it up in years so she had assumed he was over it.

“Fuck,” she breathes.

“Rory, stop. Don’t apologize.” He pauses and takes a deep breath. He runs his fingers through his beard, a nervous tick she has seen enough times to set her on edge. “When are you going to tell him, Aurora? He deserves to know.”

She clenches her jaw. This is not the first time they’ve talked about this.

“We’ve talked about this, Nico,” she says.

“I know we have, but you’re being selfish, Rory. You should’ve seen his face. He thinks no one wants him.”

Aurora’s heart clenches, the panic spreading through her whole body. She feels the sweat prickling at her back, her neck, her forehead; it makes her itchy all over.

Nico is still talking. “He doesn’t understand why everyone else he knows has two parents, and he doesn’t. He thinks I don’t want him. And I can’t—”

“You can’t what, Nico? Because you don’t have to do anything. You’re right. He’s not your son. What I do or do not tell him is none of your business. You can think I’m selfish, you can think I’m a bad mother, you can think whatever you like. It was none of your business then. It’s none of your business now. It won’t be your business ever,” Aurora hisses, her chest heaving as she rants.

The silence hangs between them, thick and stifling.

“I don’t think I can keep doing this,” Nico says, voice so small and so raw.

And if she felt hot before, she doesn’t anymore; the words feel ice cold in her ears. She’s plunged into freezing water, falling through pristine ice into a frozen lake. Her fingers feel numb where the nails dig into her palms.

“Can’t keep doing what, Nico?” her voice sounds foreign even to her own ears.

He doesn’t answer.

“Can’t keep doing what?” she says, louder, “because I didn’t ask you to do anything, be anything. Don’t worry; you’re under no obligation to be anything to him. So, if you can’t put up with this anymore, then just leave. I won’t be upset. I won’t be anything at all. Because you’re right, you—”

“Schätzli, stop,” he interrupts firmly, “that’s not what I said.” He reaches for her, but she shrugs him off.

“Maybe. Maybe not. But I heard what you meant. I’m fucking up his life, right? Fucked up my own, practically was a teen mom. But that’s not enough. I’m not enough for him.” She doesn’t even register the tears streaming down her face.

“Schätzli—Aurora, please. You know that’s not what I meant,” Nico says, and he might be crying too. His hand keeps coming up, reaching for her, before going back to hanging limply by his side.

“You don’t get to tell me how to parent my son, Nico. You don’t get to tell me that I’m fucking it up.” The words spill out of her mouth, and she has no control over it anymore. Through the tears, she can’t even see his face anymore, can’t see the heartbreak in those brown eyes she loves so much. “You don’t get to say this shit, Nico. Because you’re not his dad. You’re not his anything.”

She hears what may be a sob, but she can’t tell if it’s coming from her own mouth.

“Schätzli,” he whispers, “You don’t mean that.”

“It’s the truth, isn’t it?” she says, wiping her eyes.

“Aurora, please, come on. You know that’s not true. You can’t say that after the past—” He takes a breath. “I know this is hard for you. But I’m trying to be here for you. To be what you need.”

“What are you trying to say,” she whispers.

“You have to know I would be anything you asked me to be. You can’t possibly not know that by now.”

“I’ve never asked you to be anything. To me. Or to him. And if you can’t understand that we don’t need anything from you, then you should just leave,” she says through clenched teeth.

“Schätzli,” he pleads.

“Please just—just go.”

“Aurora, I want to be there for you. Both of you. I love Theo. I love—”

“Don’t,” she warns.

Nico sighs. “It’s always been fine that you don’t want me like that. I don’t care about that. It’s fine. But this… This makes me feel kinda fucking used, Aurora. This makes me feel like you think I’m nothing to you. No one. And that’s—Fuck—You need to decide what you want.”

“I’m asking you to leave,” she says through gritted teeth.

“Okay. Fine, I hear you. God, I’m so—” He stops himself, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling for a moment before continuing, “Fuck. Yeah. Okay. I’ll go. I’m leaving.”

Aurora doesn’t respond; she just keeps looking at the floor until he finally sighs and walks out of her apartment. When the door clicks shut, she slides down the wall and sobs into her hands.

III. THE FUTURE

The next few days pass excruciatingly slowly. It’s the longest Nico and Aurora have gone without talking in the two years they’ve known each other. He opens the text thread with Aurora countless times: typing and deleting, typing and deleting, before giving up. Every time he steps into the apartment building’s elevator, he stares at the button for her floor, but he never presses it.

Nico finds himself checking his phone so often that the boys have begun to notice and chirp him for it. He has never had a problem with focus before, always pouring himself into hockey when things go awry. It’s usually the one thing that keeps him centered, but for the past few days, it always feels as if his skates are too tight, the edges too dull, or his stick too short.

It all grinds to a halt when he sees the missed calls, voicemails, and texts from Aurora after an unsuccessful pre-game nap.

It’s Saturday, and Aurora’s exhausted. She can’t remember the last time a week has gone so poorly. For the past few days, it’s felt like everything in her life has been moved one foot to the left: out of place and disorienting. She has been lying awake at night thinking about Nico, playing their conversation over and over again in her head, pouring over the past two years. Every morning, she wakes up feeling more tired than the day before.

Theo’s not been much better. He has been grumpy and whiny. It seems like nothing she does can cheer him up. He asks her at least ten times a day about Nico: where he has been, what he is up to, if we can call him, and when we will see him next. It has been tearing her up inside that she doesn’t have an answer for Theo.

She has only known Nico for two years, and, between away games and the summers, it’s not like they are together every day. She shouldn’t feel his absence so acutely, but she does. She finds herself looking at the empty chair at her dining table and his empty spot on the couch; she feels the ghost of Nico so acutely. It hurts like a phantom limb, a gaping hole in her life, and she doesn’t know what to do about it.

Aurora thinks she’s holding it together until she isn’t.

When it happens, she doesn’t think anything of it. It’s hockey. She’s seen Theo fall during hockey countless times. It looks like any other fall until Theo starts crying, still lying on the ice, clutching his hand. And it’s as if the entire universe focuses in on that one point.

She doesn’t remember getting up from her seat and running down to the bench. She doesn’t remember the conversation with the U8 coach. She doesn’t remember the walk to the car, clutching him so tightly to her chest, despite the fact that he is far too heavy for her to carry now.

She’s trying to calm herself down enough to drive to the hospital, head on the steering wheel, gasping for air, when she hears her son speak up.

“Mama,” Theo says, voice wet and wavering.

“Yes, baby?” she manages to respond.

“Mama, it’s okay. I’m going to be okay. Nico always tells me, when I’m sad or hurt, to take deep breaths. I think you might need to take some deep breaths, Mama,” he says between quiet sobs.

It makes her chest feel cracked open and raw; it takes everything in her body to tamp down the sob that threatens to spill out.

“When did you get so grown up?” she says, her voice sounding thin and reedy.

“Mama, I’m 7. Nico says I’m a big boy now.”

Aurora swallows around the tightness in her throat and tries to take three deep breaths before starting the drive to the hospital.

The panic only subsides long enough to get them to the hospital. By the time they receive the X-ray results, she can hardly process what they are saying. The words “broken arm” and “no surgery” ring loudly in her ears.

Somewhere in her consciousness, she knows she calls Nico. She knows it’s a game day, knows his routine. But some part of her hoped hearing his voice would make things alright, even just a little bit. She calls a few times, pushing down the disappointment when he doesn't answer. It’s a game day. She knows the routine.

She is sitting in the waiting room, staring at her hands clutched tightly in her lap, when she hears Nico’s voice call her name.

She blinks and feels a pair of warm hands envelop hers.

“Hey,” Nico says, kneeling in front of her. “Hey, Schätzli, it’s okay. You’re okay. I got you.”

She deflates like a balloon, tilting forward to tuck her face in his neck as sobs wrack her body. His solid arms envelop her, hands rubbing her back. He keeps murmuring in her ear, a combination of English and Swiss German. She has no idea how long they stay like that, but eventually, she feels the terror and panic begin to subside.

“Nico,” she says softly, “what are you doing here?”

“You called,” he says as if it was the simplest thing in the world. He squeezes her hands.

“Oh god, Nico. Don’t you have a game? What are you doing here? You shouldn’t—”

“Rory, it’s okay. I called out. I told Coach that an emergency came up. I wanted to make sure I was here for you if you needed it.”

“You’re skipping the game? For us?” She swallows down a sob. "For me?”

“Yes, Schätzli. Of course, I did.” He reaches a hand up and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Is Theo okay?”

“Yeah,” she hiccups, “he’ll be okay. He broke his arm. And they’re just setting it and putting in a cast to make sure it heals right.”

“I’m so sorry, Schätzli.”

His hand cradles her face gently, wiping at the tears as they fall. There is a long stretch of silence as she leans into his hand.

“How did you get in here? This is the family waiting room,” she asks.

Nico blushes and turns away, mumbling something.

“Sorry, what?”

“I told them I was his dad,” Nico mumbles, rambling, “I didn’t mean to—It’s just, they weren’t letting me in. They said it was family only. So I had to tell them that. I’m sorry; I totally overstepped. I didn’t mean to. I get it if you’re mad—”

Aurora reaches out a finger and presses it to his lips. He stops abruptly, eyes wide.

“It’s okay, Nico. I’m not upset,” she says. She takes a deep breath, and with sudden clarity, she asks, “Is that something you might want to be one day?”

“What?” he squeaks.

“Theo’s dad.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, God, I hope I’m not reading this wrong. But—Well, earlier this week, you said I needed to decide what I wanted. And I just kept thinking about that conversation and how unfair I was to you—to us—by totally underplaying the past two years. ‘Cause they’ve been two of the best years.

“Theo loves you. I love you. You are the second most important person in my life, and I’m sorry it took this mess of a week to realize that,” she sighs. “I don’t know what I’ve been so afraid of. Or what I was waiting for. But it’s so clear to me now that you have been there the whole time. You never asked or expected anything of me. And maybe I was taking advantage of that while hiding behind my past.

“I know I can raise Theo alone; I know I can do it. But I don’t want to do it alone anymore. I don’t want to do it alone if I could have you by my side instead. And, oh God,” she says, her eyes darting frantically across his face, “I really hope I’m not misreading things. Nicole keeps saying that you—I feel like I’m being—”

In an instant, his lips are on hers, warm and soft and insistent. She closes her eyes and lets herself melt into his embrace. The kiss is chaste, but it feels like everything finally snaps back into place.

“God, Aurora. Schätzli. I would be whoever you want me to be. Whatever you’re ready for. I’ll be here. I’ve known that since the first time we met, Liebling.”

“God, Nico,” she says breathily, “I want everything.”

“Okay,” he smiles, “Everything it is. We can take it as slow as you’d like.”

“Haven’t we wasted enough time?”

He laughs, dimples appearing on his cheeks. “Fuck, I love you, Aurora.”

“I love you too, Nico,” she smiles.

They share a few chaste kisses. And they wait, Aurora wrapped in his steadying embrace, until the doctor finally comes to tell them that Theo is in a recovery room and is doing great.

When they walk into the room together, Theo immediately spots Nico and his eyes light up.

“Nico! You’re here!” he yells.

“Yeah, of course I am,” Nico says warmly, walking across the room to pull Theo into a tight hug.

“Where have you been? I’ve missed you.”

“Yeah, Bärli. I’m sorry.” He runs his fingers through Theo’s messy hair and smiles. “I’m here now. And I promise, I’m not going anywhere.”

He looks up, eyes meeting Aurora’s, and he smiles. And she never doubts for a second that he means it.

#look i know that third pic in the banner is jack okay don't at me LOL #demi's birthday bingo #birthday bingo #rox writes #hockey imagine #nhl imagine #new jersey devils imagine #devils imagine #njd #nico hischier imagine #nico hischier x oc #nico hischier fic

87 notes · View notes

mulloey · 3 days

Text

dom!ateez headcanons ♡

warnings: bdsm dynamics & terms, heavy kinks at times, dom!ateez and sub!reader, member-specific warnings under the cut. skip those if you wanna be surprised!

word count: 5.5k!

everything is warned about and 100% consensual even if the consent is not shown. if you choose to read despite the warnings it is not my responsibility if you get triggered and i will not waste my time defending myself. hate or 'why did you put this when it's triggering' comments will be deleted and blocked. i have triggers too that i work to avoid, so can you ♡

warnings:

seonghwa: rules and punishments, strict mommy dom, slight infantilisation if you're looking for it, spanking, crying, dollification, bimbofication & dumbification, he could come across as manipulative but not really, nursing

hongjoong: oppa kink, punishment, spanking, public stuff but you don't get caught, mentioned pet play, jealousy

yunho: most extreme part of this, mean dom, psychological domination, mind games & control, conditioning, fear play, sadism, consensual non-consent, stalking & chasing as part of that, rope bondage, overpowering, degradation, begging, forced intoxication (with consent)

yeosang: dirty talk, degradation, punishment, naked female clothed male, shoe grinding, humiliation, yeosang in a suit (that's a warning), minor pet play (he calls you a puppy), cum eating sorry

san: biting & marking, spanking, crying, overstimulation, punishment

mingi: rough sex, he's a bit mean, experimentation & exploration, bondage, free use, mentioned publicish) stuff, detailed aftercare, passing out

wooyoung: pet play, humiliation & degradation, leashes, collars, boot grinding, he steps on your head, cocky annoying dom, gagging, titles (mama and sir)

jongho: strength kink, being held down, bondage, slapping, biting, begging, exhibitionism, throat training

—————

seonghwa

strict dom strict dom strict dom

not particularly mean, doesn’t like seeing you cry or fear him (we’ll leave that to the others (you’ll see))

he just has a high standard of behaviour that he expects you to meet

and will come down hard when you don’t

because you’re his girl and he won’t be made to look weak or a fool by a disobedient sub

also because he loves control, particularly over you

so it’s very important to him that you’re able to follow every direction instantly

world champion of dollification

he’s pretty and he thinks you’re pretty so he wants to make you perfect looking

will buy you pretty things constantly

he’s always coming back from tour with clothes and accessories that he refuses to tell you the price of

then he’ll dress you up all pretty, do your hair and makeup to look like a literal porcelain doll

only to ruin you after