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ugh-yoongi · 2 months

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the very last thing i decide | pjm

(or, the one in which a love exists that's easy and instinctual as much as it is painful and self-destructive.)

✘ PAIRING jimin x f. reader ✘ SUMMARY you learn what it means to love with blood on your hands. ✘ GENRE hitman/assassin au; angst, smut ✘ RATING explicit. minors dni. ✘ WARNINGS they are both hitmen (hitpeople?) so there's all the content that goes along with that: violence, death, mentions of blood (a lot) and weapons, murder, but no explicit gore. everyone is morally grey at best and downright psychotic at worst (especially yoongi). reader gets stabbed. no one knows how to be a functional human being. swearing, smoking, light smut (penetrative & oral sex), miscommunication and unrequited love but not really, i drop a classic tumblr meme in a line of dialogue. ambiguous/hopeful ending!! some of the themes here are kinda heavy and i am not entirely sure how to tag them so if you have any questions pls don’t hesitate to ask! ✘ WORDCOUNT 12k ✘ LISTEN TO manchester orchestra - telepath ✘ THANK YOU i cannot remember everyone i’ve showed this to over the years. @the-boy-meets-evil for looking this over and brainstorming with me today. @hot-soop for always being a help. @effortandmore because you told me an embarrassingly long time ago this was worth finishing. and i’m pretty sure i also sent this to @jihopesjoint at some point too. i did a quick edit of this on my own, but after nearly three years i just wanted it posted and out of my wips so i'm sure i missed things. pls ignore them. ✘ AUTHOR'S NOTE fic drops two days in a row?? who am i?? i started this in may 2021 and it was supposed to be a simple pegging fic. i abandoned it bc i was convinced no one would want to read it. between today and yesterday i have written thousands of words and made it across the finish line. i hope you like it. the violence is a metaphor for love or whatever.

[37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA]

Jimin’s hair had been red the first time he met you.

How fitting, he thinks, considering he’s currently bleeding out on a table.

Well, there’s still a bit of fight left in him. He hasn’t lost consciousness yet, which he assumes is a good sign; he can still hear Hoseok barking out orders quite clearly. The edges of his vision are fuzzy and the pain in his abdomen is sharp and unrelenting, but he still has enough brain power left to wish he’d died instead.

Because you’d saved his life. And now he’s further indebted to you.

(Jimin never leaves a debt unpaid, but he’s not sure how to make even on something like this.)

Jungkook and Taehyung are fetching supplies faster than Hoseok can ask for them. Two pairs of frazzled, spaced-out eyes. Four sets of trembling limbs. Namjoon’s wearing burn marks into the floor, his cuticles bloody and nearly worried to the bone since he can’t keep them out of his mouth.

And then there’s you.

Sitting cross-legged in a chair as you scroll through your phone. Jimin’s blood is still drying on your hands, leaving smears as you drag your thumb back and forth across the screen, and this doesn’t seem to faze you one bit.

Behind you, Yoongi takes a seat at the piano and starts playing Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and Jimin simply cannot die like this. He can’t die on a wooden table in a room with a piano on which Min Yoongi is playing Baroque organ pieces.

“What is this, a fucking funeral?” Hoseok snaps, though there’s a desperation creeping into his tone that Jimin does not like, does not want to hear. “Cut it out, Yoongi.”

Said man staunchly ignores the doctor, transitioning flawlessly into the fugue. Jimin barely hears the tinkle of your laughter but he hears it all the same, and he wants to pretend it doesn’t calm him, bring him back down to earth when he starts drifting too far away. But you do, and it does, and all he can think about is: will you miss him if he dies? Will it take you long to wash his blood from your hands?

Hoseok’s absolutely incensed, pushed to the limits of his stress at the thought of not being able to save Jimin’s life, and Jimin appreciates this, really, but not when Hoseok pushes two gloved fingers deep into the wound in his stomach so hard all he can do is cry. “Yoongi—”

You snort. You don’t even look up from your phone.

Namjoon, for all his leadership and stoicism and poise under pressure, is just as frantic and panicked as the rest. It’s not everyday one of his people is inches from death ten feet away from him. Most people usually die in the shadows. Kim Namjoon has faced down death more times than most, yet watching the life slowly fade from Jimin’s eyes is too much even for him. “Yoongi, please—”

But the fugue keeps going, tempo change after tempo change, the two pillars of this organization spiraling completely by the time the coda starts, unfocused and sweating and praying. To gods they don’t believe in, to hope, to chance—whatever and whoever might be listening. Jimin usually loves hearing Yoongi play. It’s the only thing that humanizes him, and Jimin had spent so many restless nights shoulder to shoulder with him on that exact bench in the blue hours of the early morning, hypnotized by the way the older man’s knobby fingers moved across the keys.

This is it, he thinks.

Jimin’s going to die with Toccata and Fugue in D minor playing in the background.

He’s imagined his death so many times. Stupid not to in this line of work. Violent, quick and painless, in his sleep, drawn out and gory, a message. And in all of those scenarios, it’s either jarringly silent or there’s someone screaming. Usually him, sounding much like he is now, two fingers stuck in his gut. In all of those scenarios, Min Yoongi is never playing Bach as everything fades to black.

You sigh. “Shut the fuck up, Yoongi,” you say, your tone as blasé and inconvenienced as ever.

Shocked at your audacity, one of Yoongi’s fingers slips and hits the wrong key, something dissonant and metallic as it rings out. But the music stops all the same, the silence nearly giving Jimin whiplash. Now he can hear the clinkof Hoseok’s tools, the squelching of his wound, Jungkook’s desperate pleading for him to just be alright, please God, just hang on. He wants the music back. He doesn’t want Jungkook’s crying to be the last thing he hears. Doesn’t want the sound of his own organs imprinted into his memory.

“What’d you say?” Yoongi asks, because no one talks to him that way. They wouldn’t dare. Most people try not to talk to him at all.

But you do.

And, inexplicably, Yoongi listens.

You roll your eyes. “You go deaf in your old age? I said shut the fuck up. Hoseok’s two knuckles deep in Jimin’s fucking stomach and you’re over there having your little Amadeus moment.”

He bristles. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” Yoongi repeats, and Jimin can’t see him, but he knows his eyes are narrowed, lips pulled back in a snarl, fists clenched at his side.

“Oh, princess,” you coo, and Yoongi’s fury is palpable, permeates every inch of this place, overrides all the fear and anguish. “I’m talking to you, baby. I know Jiminie’s busy trying not to die and that’s stressful for all of us, but please do try to keep up.”

Jimin hears the flick of Yoongi’s switchblade. Then he hears him say, “Please let me fucking kill her,” in that lazy Daegu drawl of his, like forming full words are beneath him. Not worth the effort when they’re directed at you.

Still seated, you uncross your legs and, through blurred vision, Jimin watches you grab Yoongi by his belt loops to tug him closer, grab the wrist that holds his knife and press it to your own throat. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, Yoongi. Be a good boy and make it hurt.”

Jungkook’s near hysterics at Jimin’s side. “What the fuck is wrong with you two? He’s dying!”

Jimin tries to say I’m not, Kookie, I’m okay but the pressure on his abdomen is too intense. He can barely breathe, and Hoseok’s still digging around, still looking for that stupid fucking bullet, had to do something and do it quick so there’d been very little anesthetic and finesse, and he’s silently screaming for someone to just comfort Jungkook, tell him everything’s going to be okay, but instead—

“Serves him right for being a fucking idiot,” you say, words muffled by the knife still pressed to your throat. “What a painful, permanentlesson in not forgetting your fucking vest.”

“Stop it!” Jungkook sobs, fingers ghosting along Jimin’s matted fringe.

Yoongi’s still scowling. “Just say the word, Joon-ah. I’ll make it quick.”

You actually laugh at that. The kind of full-belly laugh Jimin would kill to be able to produce. “You wanna fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid.”

Someone snarls. Probably Yoongi. “You’d look so good gutted on the floor like a fish,” he replies, and if Jimin knows him at all, he knows he’s got that dreamy, faraway look in his eyes. The one he always gets when he’s about to kill—the one that makes him so unhinged and dangerous. “Left there to bleed out and die all alone like the trash you are.”

No one’s survived that look before, but you just grin, as if being on the receiving end of it is nothing more than another simple inconvenience. “Do it, then,” you prompt. “You’re so big and bad, yet here you are, waiting for Namjoon’s permission like some kind of pathetic fucking dog.”

“I’m no one’s dog.”

Your eyes slowly flick over to Namjoon. “No?” you ask, smile widening as Jimin watches you drag your heeled foot up the inside of Yoongi’s calf, his thigh, stiletto coming to rest in the center of his sternum. “That’s a shame, princess. That pretty neck of yours was just made for a collar.”

There’s no doubt in Jimin’s mind now that he actually died back in that penthouse and is now residing in whatever level of hell is watching you give his associate a semi despite him being a millisecond away from murdering you.

Yoongi would do it, too. No hesitation. You’ve been on his shit list for as long as Jimin can remember, and you’ve been daring him to put his money where his mouth is and just kill you already for just as long.

Taehyung groans. “Can you two just fuck already so the rest of us can be spared of this?”

You click your tongue, tone melting like butter. You’re fond of Taehyung, soft on him. “No can do, angel. Yoongi here knows I only have eyes for our Jiminie, and god does that hurt his little feelings.”

Your wicked smile gives away nothing—whether you’re telling a bold truth or just unnecessarily needling Yoongi further—but Jimin’s caught off guard and chokes on your words nonetheless.

Hoseok’s forceps still digging around in his stomach, there’s a quiet hurrah of triumph as he finally locates the bullet. Jimin feels nothing as he retrieves it and plucks it out, a reverberated clank! as he drops it into a kidney dish, your words the anesthetic he’s needed as they play on a loop in his head.

When he finally blacks out, either from the pain or the adrenaline or both, it’s your face that greets him. He never gets the chance to tell you why he forgot his vest.

[64.1466° N, 21.9426° W | Reykjavík, ICELAND]

Jimin’s hair is blue when it happens the first time.

It’s November. Namjoon has sent the two of you to Reykjavik and it’s dark all the time, the midnight hue of his hair blending into the impenetrable nighttime that surrounds you. Jimin works best like this—out of sight, part of the shadows. He’s light on his feet, lithe in ways no one else is, not even you, and he’s impossible to anticipate under the cover of darkness.

That’s why Jimin always takes care of the appetizers.

It’s your job to clean up the main course.

The two of you are two halves of the same lethal coin, working together flawlessly after years of carefully honed practice. Jimin slams an unsuspecting man’s head into a wall and you’re right behind him to put a bullet in it.

It’s just how it goes.

And he trusts you. He has to, otherwise he would’ve gotten taken out years ago. You’re not always in his line of sight, but he always feels you, senses your movements before you’re even on your feet. The times it’s gone wrong—and it’s gone wrong so many fucking times, despite how cautious and skilled the two of you are—you’re always right there to catch him before he even hits the ground. Just like a ghost, as if your only purpose in life is keeping Jimin safe and alive.

(It isn’t, but it sure feels that way.)

Tonight it’s another hit carried out in an overpriced penthouse overlooking the northern shore. You’re in and out, don’t waste a second more than you need to. Jimin doesn’t spare a glance at the carnage left behind. Nothing he hasn’t seen a hundred times before. All blood bleeds the same, but he still wonders, foolishly, if his looks different to you. If it feels wrong when it stains your hands and seeps into your clothes.

Jimin has never been covered in your blood before, but he likes to think it would.

The two of you don’t speak until you’re in the quiet safety of yet another hotel room, chain lock thrown across the door, deadbolt secured. A small arsenal of weapons is retrieved from ankles and waistbands and cleaned and packed away meticulously. Jimin’s the one who makes the call to Namjoon, tells him in code that the job’s done. You’ve barely broken a sweat, but under the fluorescent light of the bathroom, Jimin can see a small smattering of blood just along your temple when he closes the distance between you.

Someone else’s, of course.

Anyone who made you bleed your own blood wouldn’t be a quick, clean kill. Jimin would make sure of that.

There’s less to be done about the half-inch scar in the hollow of your throat—a pearlescent reminder of the twin scar he has just below his navel; a callback to the day your devilish mouth said the words Jimin can’t stop thinking about.

“No can do, angel. Yoongi here knows I only have eyes for our Jiminie.”

Maybe it’s stupidity. Maybe it’s the feral, years-long build up that’s been simmering between the two of you—low enough to keep warm, contained enough to never evolve into a rapid boil. Maybe Jimin’s just finally desperate enough to go seeking out answers to questions he’s far too scared to put a voice to.

(Really, Jimin knows it’s adrenaline. Nothing more than chemicals. The two of you high on it, heads floating above the clouds. Powerless; or, at the very least, indifferent to stop the very clear path that’s unfolding on the ground below.)

But, god, he needs to know.

Needs answers.

Needs to know if there’s even a chance you feel it, too: the magnetic ebb and flow the two of you have been dancing around for years. If you see how fondly he looks at you. If you have any idea how easy it is for him to get lost in you. If you know he’d let someone put a bullet between his eyes before he placed his life in the hands of anyone else.

Jimin knows he loves you. He’s known it for a long time, just like he knows all those other things that are second nature to him. Loving you is easy and instinctual as much as it is painful and self-destructive.

At least that’s what he’d thought. Until your devilish mouth said those devilish words and sent him into a tailspin he’s yet to recover from.

You have to feel it. God, can’t you? The way the air crackles between you. The way his skin ignites with a simple look from you. The trembling of his fingers at his sides, desperate to just reach out and touch you—fingers that have been bathed in blood, that have taken life. Fingers that now just want to graze softly across your cheekbones, catch on your bottom lip. Fingers that want to hand you the world on a silver platter. Jimin would do anything for you, give you whatever you wanted. You wouldn’t even have to ask.

Can’t you feel that?

He needs to know.

Jimin is composed, elegant. He kills with grace and still maintains as much of his softness as he can. Isn’t ruled by emotion the way Yoongi and Jungkook are. But now, as he teeters on the edge of the unknown, all he wants to do is jump. Wants to buck all his training, all his resolve and forethought, and jump.

“Did you mean it?” he asks, voice thick. Fingers curl into the expensive silk of his shirt just so they have something to do—something to keep them from reaching out and touching you. “Back in Seoul.”

You’re the smartest person Jimin knows. When you ask, “Did I mean what, Chim?” he knows you’re fucking with him. Dragging this out. You know exactly what he’s asking and he knows you’ll never give anything away so easily.

“What you said to Taehyung,” he answers.

You tsk, eyebrows raising in intrigue. As much as Jimin trusts you, as well as you know him, know all those dirty, dirty secrets he’d never tell anyone else, he’s never been so bold with you. “That those long fingers of his would look good wrapped around my throat? Yeah, I meant that.”

Jimin’s jaw clenches at your taunt. “Don’t play games with me.”

A smirk graces your lips. “Trust me, sweetheart,” you say, voice sickly-sweet as the affection starts popping at the last seams holding him together, “if I wanted to play with you, there’s nothing you could do to stop it.”

With Jimin pressed into the wall behind you, you turn to meet his eye in the mirror. Another smile, teeth bared as you run your tongue across your lips, and this one is his undoing. Makes his cock twitch in his dress pants. Makes him bold. “Do you want to, then?” He takes a step forward—close enough to smell the gunpowder stuck to your clothes, your hair. Close enough for the sulfur and metal to sting his nostrils each time he breathes you in. “Do you want to play with me?”

You love Jimin. Maybe it’s a trauma bond or the implicit, unwavering trust the two of you have in one another, but you know you love him limitlessly. But you also know you can’t love him the way he loves you, the way he deserves to be loved by someone, which is why your mask slips as you say, “I can’t give you what you want, Jimin.”

You try to make him understand that. Really, you do—because Jimin is the smartest person you know, and you know he’s thought about every possible consequence down to the most minute detail and has decided this is worth it anyway. You want to believe in something the way Jimin believes in you, even though he’s wrong. You want something worth throwing all of this away for.

Maybe it’s Jimin, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just been so fucking long since someone has looked at you with any gentleness in their eyes at all that when Jimin meets your gaze and says, “I don’t want anything more than you’re willing to give,” you take his hand and jump, too.

And there’s nothing gentle about the first time.

It’s all raw, urgent need, Jimin trying desperately to convince himself it’s more than it is while you convince yourself it’s less.

It’s the two of you finally giving up and giving in, letting yourselves be pulled taut by that invisible string tying you together.

It’s Jimin’s sharp intake of breath when you fully step out of your clothes, the sight rendering him immobile. Whatever plans he’d had before seeing the curves of your body, all the scars from years of working by his side, the mottled yellow-greens and purples from the bruises lining your skin—he has no plans now. Can barely think. Wouldn’t be able to tear his eyes away from you with a gun to his head.

It’s the final bricks of the wall he’d built around himself—around his heart, around all those words and feelings he’d never put a voice to—crumbling into ash at his feet. Now he knows he can’t go back. Can’t return to a reality where this isn’t his truth. Where there’s no you and him, him and you. Where it’s just a physical exchange, a give-and-take, tit for tat.

And god, he knows he shouldn’t think like this; knows he’s keeping the truth buried somewhere deep behind lock and key.

…But now that he knows how it feels to move inside you, what else is he supposed to do?

You’re everywhere. Clenched around him. Your taste on his tongue. The feel of you on the pads of his fingers. The smell of you making a mockery of all logical thought. No—no, he can’t do a goddamn thing to stop the avalanche now it’s started.

“Fuck,” he whines, fingers digging into your hips. The soft skin he finds purchase in such a contrast from your hardened exterior, but Jimin knows. He knows you, knows the person behind the mask, sees straight through you each time it slips.

What stared back at him had always been just out of reach.

Taunting him.

Screaming come and get me, come make me yours, come and fucking take what you want.

Until now.

Now it’s tangible. Now it’s breathy, fractured moans that echo off tile walls. Now it’s the sound of his name thatleaves your lips like a prayer. Now it’s the sheen of sweat that covers both of you. Now it’s nails scraping down his back, tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck.

(And Jimin won’t tell you this, but those red welts are proof that this is real, this happened, and later on when he’s alone, when his mind is working overtime, he’ll look at them and he’ll smile. Because they’re real. Because this happened.)

Now, it’s the way blue becomes his favorite color. Because he can see his reflection in the mirror as he unravels and comes to his own demise as he spills inside of you; can see the fluorescent lights reflecting off the hue of his hair.

Jimin’s hair is blue when he realizes he’s in love with you.

[34.6037° S, 58.3816° W | Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA]

Jimin is blond when Namjoon sends you to South America.

The details had been scarce: a diplomatic advisor with a rap sheet of human rights violations that have been continuously swept under the rug and his equally-corrupt lawyer. A candid photograph paperclipped to another manila folder, Namjoon a fan of all those old cliches. Likes being a little cheeky that way when he can get away with it, because god knows he can’t get away with much, doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.

It’s a simple job. You and Jimin will have it dealt with in a matter of hours. Less if you’re lucky and the universe is agreeable. But the humidity sticks to your skin, has sweat seeping into your clothes and rolling down your temples, and if there’s one thing you can’t stand it’s the heat. Makes it hard to think. And Namjoon—Namjoon, who makes sure all of his agents want for nothing—is a cheap bastard. Rarely approves nice lodging, says it’s too risky despite your arguments to the contrary, that people don’t care what you do when you have money, so you’re stuck in some shithole motel room with an aircon unit that keeps blowing out stale, warm air.

And maybe you shouldn’t, maybe you should be more cognizant of Jimin and all his feelings, but it’s fucking hot, so you peel your shirt over your head and undo the button of your pants. Sit on the edge of the bed and try to think about anything other than the temperature, how it’s starting to prick uncomfortably at your skin.

Jimin clears his throat, keeps his eyes glued to the disgusting carpet. “Got a text from Seokjin-ssi,” he says, words strained. “Looks like they’ll be solo jobs.”

You groan. Leave it to Seokjin to change the plan at the last minute. “Tell Kim Seokjin he’s a useless piece of shit.”

“Done. Anything else?”

“Tell Kim Namjoon if he ever sends us to South America in the summer again I’ll kill him myself.”

Jimin has a laugh like an anodyne. A laugh that takes all those broken, bleeding parts of you and soothes over them like a balm. “Seokjin-ssi says he’s not passing along that particular message.”

“Tell him he’s a bitch, then.”

“He’ll kill me if I say that.”

“He hasn’t done field work in years and he’s probably too vitamin D deficient to leave the basement. He couldn’t even kill a fucking rat.”

There’s another laugh. More forced, less tinkling. You recognize it right away, the sound of anxiety. Solo jobs aren’t common for the two of you. For Yoongi and Taehyung, sure, but not you and Jimin. You’re a team for a reason, and though you’re more than capable of getting this done and out of the way, it doesn’t feel right. Settles in your gut like something rotten, knowing you’ll be without Jimin.

And you know he’s thinking it, too. How he turns the burner over and over in his hands, as if there’s some combination of words he can send back to Seoul to get Seokjin and Namjoon to reconsider. Plans don’t change often; not like this, anyway. These have been declared solos for a reason, and that’s a thought you can’t linger on too long.

“Are they leaving it up to us?” Jimin nods, still not meeting your eye. “Do you have a preference?”

He shrugs, tossing the phone on the small table in the corner. Nothing else to be done. “Not really. What do you think?”

“Nah, don’t care, either. Just toss me one.”

Santiago Aguirre… 47 years old… Resides in a high-rise luxury apartment in Retiro…

Your eyes skim the file, study the black and white photograph of the lawyer. Read over the list of all his high-profile, degenerate clients and all their high-profile crimes. You read about the previous attempts on his life, the seemingly never-ending list of people who want him dead. Your eyes go back to his photograph, frowning at the smug look on his face. What stares back at you is a man who thinks he’s invincible, who thinks a penthouse apartment on the top floor and a security team in the lobby means he’s impervious to harm. A man who has made money off people just like him: dirty, corrupt, hands stained red.

“Okay?” Jimin asks, looking up from his own file.

He’s so striking. So safe. And you know what he’s done, giving you the hit he thinks is easier, willing to risk himself on a solo mission to ensure you make it out. There’s no guarantees in this line of work, in life in general, but Jimin’s brand of selfless love is certainly one.

So you just nod, knowing someone slimy like this can quickly go sideways, and decide you can do the same.

“I’m gonna get ready,” you say. “The plan is the same as all the other solo jobs. Get in, get it done, get out as quickly as possible. Lay low. Don’t come straight back here.”

Jimin rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Anything else?”

You exhale. Try to quiet the nerves roiling in your stomach. Barely resist the urge to press a lingering kiss to Jimin’s forehead before you swallow hard and say, “Yeah. Stay alive.”

It comes out more like a plea.

—

You’re good at your job.

Rarely feel much guilt over it, either, which—well, you’re not sure what that means. That something is permanently broken in your psyche, probably. Being able to take life so easily and without remorse. It’s not natural.

Kim Namjoon is a man who plays God, is the one who decides who gets to live and who has to die. His word is the only law you adhere to. And that’s… that’s something. Makes it less burdensome, takes some weight off, because Kim Namjoon wouldn’t accept a morally-ambiguous job. He wouldn’t ask you to put your life on the line for some petty bullshit.

This is how you’ve lived for the last four years. Four years of blindly following Namjoon’s word, of being a good little soldier and doing whatever is asked of you. Four years of being responsible for not only your own life, but Jimin’s as well, just as he is for yours. Four years that have served you well, all things considered.

Until now.

Something about this job hits you hard. Doesn’t settle quite as quickly as the ones that have come before. For the first time, you’d looked down at the lifeless body at your feet and couldn’t stop the trembling, could barely quell the nausea. Thought what the fuck am I doing, what kind of life is this for the first time. Thought back to that day four years ago when Kim Namjoon saved your life and offered you a job and wondered, for the first time, what would’ve happened if you’d said no.

Now, as you suck on a cigarette, legs dangling off the roof of a building looking not far from collapse, a new thought:

Would Namjoon let you go if you asked?

He’s taken care of you. For four years you’ve wanted for nothing. Have socked away more money than you’ll ever be able to spend, even if you live to a thousand. You could go anywhere, become anyone, and no one would suspect a thing. There’d just be you and a million lifetimes’ worth of transgressions, alone under the weight of all that burden; alone, except for all the ghosts that come to greet you every time you close your eyes.

Doesn’t matter. Namjoon might be willing to let you go, give you the chance to salvage something from this life in the name of normalcy, but Yoongi would gladly put a bullet in your head before he let you disappear with all his secrets.

Doesn’t matter.

You stub out the cigarette and put the butt in your pocket. Make your way down to the street. Stay under the shadows—just visible enough to redirect any suspicion shot your way. You pretend to take a call, flawless Argentinian Spanish falling from your lips as you tell the imaginary person on the other end all about your fucked up day at work. How your manager never gets off your ass, doesn’t trust you, thinks you’re too fucking stupid to run a simple executable.

No one spares you a second glance.

Not here, on this nondescript street in a nondescript Argentinian neighborhood, and not when you stumble into the tiny lobby of your shithole motel. The poor kid behind the desk doesn’t even glance up, just mutters a good evening, miss under his breath that you return in a voice far too high-pitched to be your own.

Better to be seen and be unremarkable than draw attention to yourself trying to stay invisible, you figure.

The cameras in the stairwell are broken so you take the steps two at a time. Pull the room key from its place inside your boot, happy to no longer have it digging into your skin. Pause just long enough to make sure you don’t hear anything on the other side of the door before you’re unlocking it with your free hand wrapped around the trigger of your gun.

It’s empty.

Of course it is.

Jimin stashed the burner in a place no one but you would think to look. You text one simple word to Seokjin—Hey!—and you get two in return: Who’s this?

You know who it is, you fucking dickhead.

It takes a few seconds, but the reply is a simple—

Sorry.

Then you toss aside the phone and float in the darkness of the room. There’s nothing to do but wait, because you don’t dare to do anything alone. There’s sweat and blood and fuck knows what else stuck to your skin, your hair, but you can’t risk taking a shower. Can’t risk the water dampening your senses. Can’t risk being cornered in a moldy bathroom, only one way out. Can’t risk doing anything alone. Can’t take a fucking shower.

It’s this thought, more than anything else, that has your body flushing with rage.

What kind of life is this?

Namjoon had never mentioned repaying your debt. He’d never insinuated you owed him anything at all for saving your life, but you know something like that never comes for free. Namjoon doesn’t do anything just because. Has no goodness in his heart to do anything in the name of it. Watching Jimin nearly die in front of him had been the exception to his usual nature; a rare slip-up by an otherwise detached, uncaring man.

Still, whatever you owe him has surely been repaid by now. Tenfold, if the bloodstains along your collar are anything to go by.

It’s time for Namjoon to let you go.

—

Something is wrong.

Two hours have ticked by and there’s no word from Jimin. No word from Namjoon or Seokjin, either, which is the only reason you’re still in this nauseating motel room and not out on the streets searching for him. Solo jobs don’t go like this. The two of you are always in and out, tragically efficient. Back to where you started and then back on a plane, nothing left behind except a singular bullet hole and another fragmented piece of your conscience.

You’ve had a lot of jobs go wrong, but never two hours.

You’re about three minutes from coming out of your skin. Sick to your stomach with worry, anxiety weighing you down like an anchor. You wouldn’t be able to go out searching for Jimin like this even if you could, and there’s no point in dwelling on that, examining it further. All you can do is wait.

It’s another hour before you hear the click of the lock. You’re nearly on your knees in relief, but you stay rooted to the flimsy mattress. Try not to think about how you’ll have to sleep on it, even though you’ll be up half the night with residual worry. All those lingering ghosts.

Jimin doesn’t say anything, so neither do you.

[55.6761° N, 12.5683° E | Copenhagen, DENMARK]

Jimin’s hair is orange when you go to Copenhagen.

Not for a job, just to breathe. You wanted to see the city at Christmastime; Jimin’s never been.

You crack a joke. Point out buildings of similar color, have him stand in front of one as you take a picture. Everyone smiles when they pass the two of you on the street, Jimin’s eyes fond even though he rolls them as you pose him how you want. Still stands against an apricot-colored wall and flashes a smile and a peace sign, cheeks pink from the cold. Does a good job of pretending the two of you aren’t here just for fun, that this is something more.

It’s not.

The two of you fucked in a hotel room in Reykjavik and haven’t spoken a word of it since.

You nearly lost your mind over him in Buenos Aires and haven’t spoken a word of that, either.

Instead, his hand finds yours as the two of you walk around Tivoli Gardens. You marvel at the lights and Jimin marvels at you. You share mulled wine and spiced doughnuts. Jimin tries to drag you on the swings but you plant your feet and refuse, laughing through your refusals. As dangerous as your lives are, motion sickness might be the most. He gets his revenge and poses you in front of a giant nutcracker, then again in front of one of the endless Christmas trees.

Jimin pays for the two of you to decorate honey cakes. You’re surrounded by families with shrieking children and palpable adoration, and it’s all you can do not to wonder if anyone you’ve taken out had ever had something like this. Something that makes your soul warm; something that still lingers in your bones years later.

The two of you take a selfie when it starts to snow. It stings when you have no one to send it to, so it just lives in your phone. Maybe it’s enough.

On another day, Jimin holds your hand through Torvehallerne. This time you marvel at him while he marvels at all the food, eyes wide each time he turns to ask if he should buy something. You always say yes and he always shares, and it’s all you can do not to think about why you don’t have to budget yourselves. Why you’re able to walk through the market and buy whatever you want; how you could buy every item for sale and it wouldn’t make a dent.

(You pick up small trinkets for Taehyung and Jungkook. Not because you want to, but because it feels nicer than remembering that you have no one to buy gifts for. Not really. Not anymore.)

Jimin wants to ice skate, so you do. He holds your hand then, too. More out of necessity than anything else, and he has none of his usual grace. Someone hands you a free cup of hot chocolate, just because. Jimin pouts and then it’s his hot chocolate. It’s all you can do not to kiss away the whipped cream on the corner of his mouth.

Back in your lavish hotel, after countless days have blurred together and Jimin’s fresh from a shower, skin flushed, you finally ask yourself if it’s worth putting up such a fight. If it’s really all that bad to care for Jimin and be cared for in return. If it’s all that bad to be someone else, just for a little while: someone with a normal life who makes a normal living and has a normal capability to love. Someone who isn’t damaged beyond repair.

That will never be you. Not fully, and certainly not in this lifetime, but maybe it could be, a little.

“Jimin,” you say, because you need to try. Jimin loves you in ways you’ll never understand, and you want to be better for him. “We should talk.”

Your voice is small and hesitant, and Jimin hates it. Sees trouble where there’s only vulnerability, so he misreads. Shakes his head. Takes a risk and stands between your legs at the edge of the bed—yours, because there’s two—as he tilts your head back, thumbs pressing into the contours of your cheeks. The scar still sits in the hollow of your throat, and that version of you feels so far away. That life feels so far away.

There’s no violence here. There’s no blood, no fugues. There’s just you and Jimin, whose voice is small like yours when he shakes his head and says, “You should kiss me instead.”

The second time is nothing like the first.

Jimin moves delicately. Feels like silk lace, tastes like spun sugar. Moves both his mouth and his body fluidly, no hesitation, yet he still takes his time. Still pauses to look at you with endless devotion; with awed reverence. Makes a map of your body and marks all his favorite places with his lips.

“Tell me what you want,” he says. Speaks the words against the skin just beneath your ear. “Anything. I’ll give you whatever you want, just have to ask.”

What you want isn’t tangible, isn’t possible, so you stay quiet. Thread your fingers through Jimin’s hair, gasp when he mouths along the column of your throat. Jimin reserves all his softness for you. Bathes you in it. Would kill anyone to keep it that way.

So you say, “Want your mouth,” and let slip a quiet moan when he gives you what you’ve asked for. When he situates himself between your thighs and sucks and licks until you’re writhing, making a mess, grasping fruitlessly at the sheets, his hair, his shoulders, only calming when his hands find yours and your fingers interlock.

Jimin mouths at you until you’re trembling. Until you’re needy and desperate, hips moving on their own, fucking yourself against his face. Until nothing exists except the heat in your belly, the stars behind your eyelids, the heady, fucked-out sound of Jimin’s voice as he talks you through it, murmurs praise against your cunt.

Jimin mouths at you until you forget.

This isn’t your life. This is not something you can have.

But, in the grand scheme of things, what does it matter? You’ve made peace with death, and there’s only one of two ways it’s going to come for you in the end: by Namjoon’s hand or someone else’s. So what does it matter?

This time, Jimin fucks you slow. Kisses you with your taste still in his mouth. Thumbs over a hardened nipple just to see what earns him a reaction, and what you truly want is more time—something else that’s impossible.

Jimin’s hair is orange when you think you might be in love with him.

[ 48.8566° N, 2.3522° E | Paris, FRANCE ]

Jimin’s hair is pink when—

“Sit,” he says, gesturing to the toilet.

Soaks a washcloth in warm water. Wrings it out. Stands in front of you, and there’s water dripping onto the floor and Jimin doesn’t care, doesn’t seem to see anything in this moment except for you, your hands covered in someone else’s blood, and he reaches out, gently grabs your wrist. Palm up. Someone else’s blood. Everything smells like copper and iron. Looks too surreal beneath the fluorescent lights of this hotel bathroom for your mind to make sense of it.

There is care in the way Jimin cleans your hands. There is tenderness in the way he both refuses to see what you really are and the way he’s the only one to ever see you so entirely, when you look down at the blood he’s washing away and all you can see is stigmata. When all you see is sin.

“I know you don’t love me,” he says, and there is a conviction in his words that stuns you into silence. “Not the way I love you, anyway.”

That tenderness is still there as he says this. As he presses the wet fabric into the meat of your palm, wipes the stains away, and the warmth is as calming as it is undeserved. It feels like something forbidden. It feels like salvation and condemnation all at once, like whatever sick depravity permeates you is contagious, will take over Jimin, too, just from touching you.

Jimin is close enough to reach out and touch. Close enough to see the violence that he exists in alongside you: the rips in his clothes, the scars that decorate his skin. Close enough to know he smells sickly-sweet, just like death. Your hand shakes as it reaches for him and never follows through. Doesn’t want to contaminate him.

“I do,” you finally say. Whatever is in your voice is not conviction. “I can’t.” You suck in a breath, try to steady your breathing. This is where it all comes crashing down, you think, because in all the years you’ve done Namjoon’s bidding, you’ve never cried. You can take life so freely and without thought, but you cannot love Jimin. “Someone like me isn’t capable of it.”

Jimin pauses, the washcloth stuck in the space between your ring and middle fingers. “And who is someone like you?”

Water is still dripping to the floor. Serosanguineous: blood tainting something untouched. Not something one thing or another but both, watery-pink. Looks like Jimin’s hair. “I’ve killed a lot of people,” you answer. “More than I can count. More than I can name. More than the ones that come to haunt me at night.” Your free hand moves to your chest, covers your heart. “There’s nothing here, Jimin. I’m not sure there ever was.”

The washcloth drops to the floor, and all that blood belonging to a man whose name you never bothered to learn before you put a bullet between his eyes finds a new place to rest. “I think,” he begins, clasping your unclean hand in his own, voice dropping to a whisper, “you forget, sometimes.” You gasp as he places your palm to his cheek, drags it across his face, smears a stranger’s blood across his skin. “That we’re the same.”

Jimin is always overwhelming, but the love he has for you is even more so. It consumes you entirely, embeds itself beneath your skin, makes a home, would tear you apart, body and soul, to return to him.

[ 47.4979° N, 19.0402° E | Budapest, HUNGARY ]

Jimin’s hair is lavender when it all goes to shit.

“You’re being followed.”

Seokjin’s voice is garbled through the earpiece, tinny and metallic, and you roll your eyes. Some things don’t need to be said, because you’ve known someone was following you for the last three blocks. Average height, black peacoat, close-cropped haircut. Not the kind of person that’d stand out here, and that’s exactly why you’d sent Jimin in the other direction.

“No shit,” you respond in Hungarian, because you already know the man following you doesn’t speak or understand it. “Give me somewhere to go.”

It takes Seokjin a few moments to run the translation. “There’s a side street up on your right,” he answers. “It’s tight, but there’s an alleyway at the end. You can buy some time if you’re quick.”

“Where’s Jimin?”

You pass a vendor selling lángos and duck into the street behind the stall. Just as Seokjin had said, there’s a small alleyway up on the left, and your footfall is near-silent as you break into a sprint to reach it. “Safe,” is all Seokjin says.

You take a second to steady your breathing, knowing you’re good on time—the man following you was close enough to know where you’d turned, but, if you’re lucky, not much after that. That plays on a loop: if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky. What is luck, what does it look like, in a life left entirely to chance? In a life with no guarantees?

You tuck yourself away, focus on Seokjin’s metallic breaths. Think about his basement in Seoul, why he’s in it. Ask, “What happened in Addis Ababa?” because it feels important to know.

There’s not much you know about Seokjin’s life. Whatever happened in Ethiopia had been before your time, reduced to hushed whispers and gossip fodder after your arrival. No one spoke of it, Seokjin especially, but every now and then something would slip in the same way weeds grow in sidewalk cracks.

A job gone wrong. A bombing at the consulate with Seokjin inside.

His reply is simple, words spoken carefully: “I loved someone once, too.”

He can’t see it, but you nod nonetheless; an answer that doesn’t require a response, because you know. It’s enough to fill in the rest. What Seokjin’s trauma looks like. Why he doesn’t do field work anymore. Why he prefers the solitude of the basement, rarely a sound beyond the electric thrum of the server racks.

Who had gone in to retrieve him, and why Yoongi has the scar over his eye.

“You loved someone,” you conclude, “and he would’ve been willing to die for you.”

“Yes,” Seokjin says, and it’s like the word’s been punched out of him. Sounds like something repressed, something left to rot in the darkest corner of the world.

Love, to Seokjin, looks and sounds the same as death.

“I think most people spend their entire lives searching for a love like that,” he continues, and if you could see him you think he might look dazed, off-kilter. You think he might be an avatar. Seokjin is prying his ribcage apart, unwrapping the barbed wire from his heart, saying I once was in love and this is all I know of it. “But, to me, in this life, it’s a prison. Once someone is willing to die for you, how do you keep them alive? How do you—I kissed that skin. I worshiped it. I pressed my lips to it with whatever softness was left in me. How do you look at that same skin and know you’re the reason it’s mangled?” He exhales, all tremor. “You can’t. You can’t.”

You know this all too well. You know what it feels like to look at Jimin and know, intrinsically and subconsciously, that you wouldn’t even hesitate. You’d take and give life to keep him alive and safe. You know that when you exit this world at someone else’s hand his face is the last thing you want to see.

You know it’s a liability.

You know it’s a target painted on your back. Between your eyes.

You know there’s nothing left to say, that this particular conversation has run its course. The two of you sit in an amicable silence, and you hope Seokjin can hear the life that surrounds you, however mundane. Hope he can hear the lángos vendor trying to hawk his goods; hope he can hear a city 8,000 kilometers away; hope he can hear these regular, everyday people going about their lives and remember there’s hope beyond his four walls.

I think you’d like it here, you think, but you don’t dare to say it aloud.

Time passes in a meaningless blur. Could be minutes, could be hours. No one’s come to kill you, so you reckon you’ve long since been in the clear. And maybe it speaks to Seokjin’s idea that love is a prison, because you know something’s happened to Jimin long before Seokjin speaks it into existence.

You’re up and out of the alleyway before you’re told to move. Have no idea where you’re going, but you’re racing through the streets of Budapest with a panic you haven’t ever felt in your life. Feels like quicksand; feels like molasses; feels like you have to wade through all the blood you’ve spilled, now congealed, to get to him.

“Where am I going?” you demand. Your lungs are on fire. In the split-second of silence it becomes a desperate scream. “Seokjin, tell me where the fuck I’m going!”

“The—fuck, the wa-warehouse up on your right.” You can’t think about why he’s crying. “I don’t—I don’t know wha-what’s there, you need to be careful. Please, you have to—”

Twenty seconds and you’ll be there, you’ll be with Jimin, you just need to keep running. You need to keep your head on straight. Remember your training. Remember you’ve built a life in a viper pit.

A man in a uniform is unloading a shipment around the back of the building. Faces away from you, bent at the waist. Takes very little effort to smash his head into the stone exterior and knock him unconscious, pocket his badge. You can’t get stupid now. Tell Seokjin to make sure all the cameras are cut, ask what floor when you shut yourself inside the freight elevator, unwilling to take the stairs and run into anyone who might be waiting. All the way to the top, he says, so all the way to the top you go.

—

Over the course of your life, you’ve made peace with death. Have stared it in the eye more times than you can count. Have dealt it out, evaded it, shook its hand.

You are wholly unprepared for the sight that greets you.

Red. Everything is red—the walls, the floor, what used to be a beautiful parquet pattern in the wood. In the center of the room: two bodies, maybe three. Not much that’d be able to identify them beyond a pile of teeth, no saying whose is whose. Slaughterhouse scraps.

And this is not—Jimin doesn’t work this way. Isn’t his MO. Jimin’s kills are elegant and neat, topped with a bow. What you see before you is ultraviolence. It is unhinged, it is fury, it is a complete loss of control. It’s what love looks like to Jimin, because he sits at the very edge of a rotted chair, legs crossed. Face streaked with blood, clothes covered in it.

“Jimin,” you say, because what else is there?

He tilts his head to the side, smirks a little, looks at you beneath his lashes. Eyes that used to find you across a room and calm you. Eyes that have locked onto you in the throes of pleasure. Eyes you’ve seen yourself reflected in, bathed in love and adoration.

Eyes that now contain nothing.

“Jimin, what the fuck happened?”

He removes his gloves with his teeth and doesn’t flinch away from the taste of iron. “They said they hurt you,” he states simply, “so I did what needed to be done.”

“What—” Nausea claws at your throat; for the first time, it’s all too much. This isn’t Jimin. This isn’t your Jimin, who smiled as you posed him against apricot walls in Copenhagen, who took a bullet to the stomach to protect you and never, ever told you. This is not the Jimin who wasted the last of his goodwill on loving you. “What did you do?” you whisper.

He rises to full height and it makes you flinch. You are scared of Jimin for the first time in your life: scared of who he is in this moment, what he’s capable of. And he sees it, lets that brand of anguish overtake him. Reaches for you before he decides against it and lets his hand drop to his side. Says, “I would never hurt you,” as if the words could brand themselves into your skin so you’d never forget.

“No, you’d just—” You squeeze your eyes shut. Don’t think about how one of the men nearly embedded into the floor was the one trailing you earlier.

Instead, you think about Seokjin: Once someone is willing to die for you, how do you keep them alive? You think about: How do you look at that same skin and know you’re the reason it’s mangled? You think about: In this life, it’s a prison.

You drop to your knees. Let the blood seep through your clothes and into your skin, undeserving of shying away from it.

Namjoon should’ve let you go.

You think about the men in front of you. Who they were, who they loved. The grief all of this is going to leave behind, and it becomes impossible to breathe. You grasp at your throat, think about all the times you’ve been strangled and who’d been there to cut the rope. There is no limit to Jimin’s devotion, and you understand now, how it drove Yoongi to madness. How he loved someone so much he would’ve retrieved their corpse from a building and how that same person can no longer bear to look at the damage they’d caused.

“This isn’t love, Jimin,” you choke out.

He stands in front of you. Stigmata. You’re worshiping at the altar of some kind of devil. At least his hands are clean when he places his fingers beneath your chin, forces you to look up at him. “What is it, then?”

“Destruction.”

A quiet huff of cruel laughter. “See, this is the difference between me and you, darling.” He takes back his hand, runs it through his blood-streaked hair, and your chin sags to your chest without his support. “Because I already knew that. Because I have destroyed myself every single day loving you.” He squats down, eye-level, and he says, “I need you to listen to me when I say this, sweetheart: you do not love me the way I love you, because I would do worse. When it comes to you, there is nothing on this earth I would not destroy to keep you safe.”

He clears his throat. Collects whatever’s in his mouth and spits onto one of the bodies. “If this is enough to have you tucking your fucking tail between your legs, then go, because this doesn’t even scratch the fucking surface.”

You can’t bring yourself to say anything, and sometimes that says it all.

Jimin presses a kiss to the top of your head. Makes a call. Cleaners will be here soon, he says, better get going.

You watch him go.

[ 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA ]

Jimin’s hair is black when Namjoon calls the meeting.

He takes the seat across from Namjoon’s desk because they don’t meet like this often. Assignments are usually manila folders slipped under doors, hushed whispers in hallways confirmed with a nod or a text on a burner phone. Assignments are not last-minute assemblies in conference rooms and offices.

But the way Namjoon is looking at him, with his clenched jaw and a gaze that’s meant to look barbed to anyone who doesn’t actually know him—Jimin doesn’t need to ask what this is about.

Had he bothered to look, he would’ve known by the way you stood in the far corner of the room, face obscured by the mid-afternoon shadows. Yoongi’s close to you, for some reason: dressed head to toe in black, perched on a lateral file cabinet, using a metal corner to sharpen his switchblade. Just like a harbinger of death. Some sort of fucked up omen, a warning that’s come too late.

Didn’t I tell you this would end badly, he hears Yoongi taunt in his head. This is what happens when you lay with trash.

Easy for Yoongi to say when he doesn’t know what it means to be cared for by you. Doesn’t know how it feels to give in to the freefall and plummet at your feet, stripped back and laid bare. Doesn’t know how it feels to kiss secrets into your skin like constellations, to map his tongue along every unspoken confession.

Easy for Yoongi to say, because he doesn’t have to survive the aftermath. Doesn’t have to feel the heartbreak, the agony of having you and watching as you slip through his fingers. Yoongi doesn’t have to struggle just to breathe, doesn’t have to endure the nights staring at the ceiling, watching as the daylight creeps into the corners of his vision. Doesn’t have to watch you looking so unaffected.

“Jimin.” Namjoon’s tone is flat, needlelike.

Behind him, Yoongi chuckles lowly. “What?” Jimin asks, his gaze trained on the painting behind Namjoon’s head. Looks like one he’d seen in Berlin, the time the two of you had gone just because and spent an afternoon ducking in and out of museums to escape the rain.

When he closes his eyes, he still sees the raindrops stuck to your eyelashes. The beads of water rolling off the sleeves of your leather jacket. How blinding your smile had been. The laughter in your voice as you ordered beer after beer after beer for the two of you in flawless Berlinisch. A brief, fleeting glimpse at normalcy. At the kind of life the two of you could have if you were just… different. Lived different lives. Were different people.

“You’ve gotten sloppy.”

Namjoon’s words are a cold bucket of water. Snap him back to reality, yank him back to the present where he’s forced to leave those river-lined streets behind. You’re silent and Yoongi’s still snorting laughter. “Okay,” is all Jimin can bring himself to say.

Jin had gotten sloppy once, too, and Namjoon stuck him down in the basement to work logistics. Might not be so bad, Jimin reckons. He’d be away from you, spared of this fucking misery. “So you know that’s unacceptable.”

Jimin just shrugs, resigned to his fate, whatever it may be. “I’m reassigning the both of you,” Namjoon continues. “You’ll both have new partners for your next assignments, since you clearly can no longer be trusted together.”

“Who?” Jimin manages to choke out.

Namjoon raises an eyebrow, clearly having expected an argument. “You’re being sent to Shanghai with Jungkook. You,” he says, turning his attention to you, “are going to Moscow with Taehyung.”

She’s fond of Taehyung, Jimin wants to say. But you’d been fond of him too, once upon a time, and that’d only ended in heartbreak, so who fucking cares.

They’re cruel, the tricks Jimin’s mind plays on him. How he convinces himself you look pained. How his fingers wring together at the thought of entrusting his life in the hands of someone else, someone new. At your life being just as at stake; at Taehyung being tasked with keeping you alive. Would you die for him, too, the way you’d always told Jimin you would for him? Would Taehyung take a bullet to the stomach to keep you safe the way Jimin had?

Even more cruel is the way you scoff, pushing yourself off of the wall as you fold your arms across your chest and say, “That’s bullshit, Kim Namjoon.”

No one talks to Namjoon that way except you.

Yoongi’s knife stops twirling. Just like a bird sensing a storm, senses on high-alert as he flicks his gaze over to you. “I’m sorry?” Namjoon says. “What part of Jimin losing his mind and nearly outing all of us seems like bullshit to you?”

“Hm, let me think,” you retort, a manicured finger tapping against the hollow of your cheek. “The part where you’re reassigning me for someone else’s mistake?”

Which part was the mistake? Jimin wants to ask. Needs to know how much you regret. Was sleeping with you the mistake? Falling in love with you? Getting too caught up in all these daydreams and letting reality get away from him?

“This organization is more important than Park Jimin getting his goddamn dick wet,” Namjoon snaps. “Keeping all of you safe—keeping you alive—is more—”

You scoff. Take an entire container of gasoline and pour it right on top of Namjoon’s flammable ire. “Then perhaps you’d be so kind as to explain to me why Min fucking Yoongi can fuck damn near everyone in this establishment, yet I have to sit here and listen to your goddamn mouth—”

Jimin doesn’t think Yoongi even knows his arm is moving.

There’d just been the trading of barbed words. His own name being spoken into the ether. Yoongi’s arm moving away from his body, switchblade clasped tightly between his fingers as he plunges it into your flesh.

Jimin watches it puncture your arm in slow motion. Feels the bile in his throat, the heat in his belly. Looks first at Namjoon whose jaw has gone slack, skin pale, as he stammers over words that won’t come. Then he looks at Yoongi—expects to find shock or guilt but finds only a muted disinterest and flared nostrils.

Finally, he looks at you. Watches the white cotton sleeve of your shirt slowly turn red and sticky-wet. Watches as your lips move around syllables and vowels and consonants Jimin can’t decipher.

“—fucking piece of shit, this is my favorite shirt! I’ll never get all this goddamn blood out of it—”

Jimin thinks he hears Yoongi say you deserve it. But Jimin isn’t really thinking much as he clambers out of his chair and moves in Yoongi’s direction. Doesn’t think at all as he lets instinct take over, lets adrenaline steer him headfirst into yet another bad idea.

He’s always known there’d come a day he’d be face-to-face with the sight of your blood. Had always known it’d come from someone else’s hand. Had always promised himself that hurting you would be the last thing anyone ever did.

Jimin has his fingers wrapped around Yoongi’s throat and he finally understands it—the joy Yoongi finds in taking life.

“What’s the matter, Jimin-ah?” Yoongi taunts. Jimin tightens his grip. Suddenly hates that fucking scar across Yoongi’s eye. “You’re never on clean-up duty. Always make your girlfriend do the dirty work. Finally grew some fucking balls, huh?”

“Fuck you,” Jimin says stupidly. Can’t think of anything more to say. Not that he needs to. Wrapping your hands around someone’s throat sends enough of a message, he thinks.

Namjoon’s still tongue-tied as you yank Yoongi’s blade from your arm, immediately pressing your other hand over the wound to stem the bleeding. The sight of your blood is making Jimin dizzy; the smell of the iron hanging in the air. All he wants to do is choke the life out of the man in front of him, but more than that, he just wants to hold your hand. Wants to comfort you, even though he knows you don’t need it. Not from him, not from anyone, but he still wants to. Wants to press his lips to the sweat at your brow.

And Yoongi can see it, too, because he starts laughing. It’s an odd, fractured noise. Jimin isn’t sure if he’s ever heard him laugh before, decides he also hates the way it sounds. Feels all wrong watching it leave his crooked smirk. Makes Jimin’s stomach plummet to the ground.

“Oh, you’re fucked, aren’t you?” Yoongi teases around Jimin’s slackened grip. “You weren’t just fucking her, you’re in love with her.”

Weird how Jimin is the one with his hands around someone’s neck and feels like he’s the one suffocating.

[ 31.2304° N, 121.4737° E | Shanghai, CHINA ]

Jimin watches the life drain from an innocent woman’s face and feels nothing.

Jimin watches Jungkook cut a man down and feels even less.

When it’s over, he cleans up wordlessly and doesn’t eat for three days.

[ 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA ]

Jimin’s hair has faded to brown by the time he returns from Shanghai.

The more complicated job had gone to you and Taehyung. Jimin had tried not to take it personally. The Russian hits are always unnecessarily violent and Jungkook still isn’t fully trained. There’s still a phantom pain in Jimin’s stomach that warns him of the consequences of taking on more than he can chew. So, sure, Shanghai had gone fine, but his mind had been nearly 7,000 kilometers away the entire time.

Good thing he’d returned to Seoul unscathed, too, because he’s sure Namjoon would’ve eliminated him without a moment’s hesitation if he’d fucked up again.

But Shanghai had only served to prove the leader right. Jimin can’t work with you anymore. Can’t focus, can’t stomach the violence, can’t keep his goddamn head on straight.

He sighs as he glances at Jungkook to his right. Jimin had watched him murder two men in cold blood not even thirty-six hours ago and now he’s doe-eyed and sucking down his third banana milk of the morning. It really makes his head spin, being paired with this grown-up infant of a man now instead of you, but for all of Jungkook’s apparent shortcomings, he’d kept Jimin alive. He isn’t dead.

And then you walk in with Taehyung and he wishes he was.

Because you’re laughing and Taehyung’s got his arm slung around your shoulder and you look happy. It’s the kind of happiness that should be contagious, bloom warmth in his chest, but it doesn’t. It just takes the last frayed strand of hope he has and sets flame to it.

You don’t look like you miss Jimin at all. Don’t look like you’ve lost sleep or skipped meals.

“Didn’t take you long, did it?” Jimin says, because he’s wounded and lashing out. Not because he means it.

You must know he doesn’t, too, because you don’t react. “Watch your mouth, Park Jimin,” Taehyung warns, because he doesn’t know, and this only sets Jimin off more. You don’t need defending. Or had you, and Jimin had simply thought it wasn’t his place to provide it? That you wouldn’t want it?

“Or what, Kim Taehyung?”

Taehyung is cherubic. It’s part of his charm, one of many reasons why he’s so effective. If you’re looking to die, you look for the guy who looks like Yoongi, not the one who smiles wide and warm like Taehyung. So when he sets his jaw and pokes his tongue into his cheek and says, “Or I’ll cut your fucking head off, you stupid fuck,” your attention is finally piqued.

“I’m so sick of this,” Jungkook wails, banana milk tossed carelessly in the trash. “All of you need to get your fucking shit together!”

Taehyung rolls his eyes at the same time you pretend to inspect your nails. “Is that why you’re so temperamental, Chim?” Taehyung prods, looking every bit the pretentious, murderous angel he is. “Because you got sent to China on a babysitting mission while the grownups did real work?”

“Fuck you,” Jungkook snaps, rising to full height. “I’m not a fucking child.”

“Oh? Could’ve fooled me.” Taehyung’s words are razor-sharp and smell like kerosene. “Tell me, then: were you on babysitting duty? Had to look after our precious little Jiminie while he nursed his broken heart?”

You sigh, full of faux-exasperation, and place a gentle hand on Taehyung’s forearm. Dig your nails in just enough to be a warning, and if Jimin hadn’t been looking he’d miss it: the way Taehyung deflates instantly, anger dissipating like smoke, back in control. Just because you’d touched him. Just because you were there. Jimin knows that touch, how it feels to be under your control, and it makes his chest ache. Makes everything feel like it’s sitting wrong in his stomach, and he’s either going to be sick all over Namjoon’s overpriced fucking rug or wrap his hands around Taehyung’s throat the way he’d done to Yoongi.

He’s out of his goddamned mind; he feels untethered. Helpless. Like it was always going to end like this, and maybe Jimin knew that and had just ignored it. Maybe now he’s paying the price—maybe he’s finally found something he can’t afford.

Jungkook’s still going off, nasty gaze set on Taehyung because he’s the only one playing along. They’re exchanging words Jimin can’t make heads nor tails of. Words he doesn’t care about. Words that ring empty and hollow because they sound nothing like the way you say his name. Shapeless, unlike the way your lips move around those syllables.

“Jimin,” you say, the sound finally registering and bringing him back down to earth. All he can do is stare. “Can we talk?” Taehyung and Jungkook are still trading barbs.

Wonders how he got here. Looks around the room and wonders if each and every one of them is destined for this same fate, this madness. Wants to tell you why he forgot his vest, why he was three hours late in Argentina. Wants to grovel and beg and leave this place and never look back.

More than anything, he wants to know what it feels like to actually be human.

So he shakes his head. Tries not to be haunted by the way your face falls at the rejection.

There is a scar on his abdomen and a scar on your arm that both tell the same story. There is a man in the basement who is in love with a man above ground and is too weighed down by guilt to do anything about it. There is a man here who plays god, has soldiers to do his bidding, and there is very little here that Jimin has only for himself.

The two of you will have that conversation, but he needs to be human, first.

[ 34.6901° N, 135.1956° E | Kobe, JAPAN ]

This is a waste of your fucking time.

Whatever Namjoon had thought would be here doesn’t seem to exist. Yoongi can barely tolerate you on a good day, threatens to stick a dagger in your neck at least twice an hour, but the more time the two of you waste chasing ghosts, the closer he comes to unraveling entirely.

“Stop fucking staring at me,” he snaps, blowing the smoke of his cigarette right in your face.

You tut. “But you’re so beautiful, Yoongi, I just can’t help it.”

He digs his switchblade from his boot. Makes a show of flipping it open. “I can cut your fuckin’ eyes out of your skull,” he intones. “Maybe that’ll help.”

In your ear, Jimin’s laughter rings like crystal.

Ricochets off of all the corners of Seokjin’s basement, makes the echo sound warped through the earpiece. “Please tell Yoongi-ssi to keep an eye on the man with the shaved head. In front of him, roughly sixty degrees to his right.”

You relay the message. Watch as Yoongi transforms—sharpened gaze, rigid posture, disappears into the shadows. More apex predator than man. “And me?” you ask.

“Backup,” comes Seokjin’s voice. “We haven’t found your mark yet.”

You hum. Pick up the cigarette Yoongi left behind and stick it between your lips. Smoke it nearly to the filter. “You got it, boss,” you tease, just because it flusters him.

“I’m—that’s not—knock it off.”

Exhale. Stub out the cigarette. Butt in your pocket. ��Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Jimin says, and his voice is soft, sounds like spun sugar. “Stay alive, all right?”

Jimin’s hair isn’t dyed at all.

if you've read this far: thank you so, so much! i am more appreciative than i can put into words. this is very different from what i typically write, but i hope you enjoyed it nonetheless.

i would love to hear your thoughts if you have any. <3

#jimin x reader #jimin smut #bts x reader #bts smut #jimin imagine #jimin scenarios #jimin fanfic #jimin x you #jimin x y/n #bts imagines #bts scenarios #bts fanfic #bts x you #bts x y/n

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ethers-moth · 1 month

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Autistic people with the same special interests (the two of you) are about to have a field day.

So. Repo! The genetic opera. The magnus archives. The Archival Repo!. The Repo! Archives.

Anyway

Shiloh is developing corruption

- bug collector

- not a full blown avatar but is kind of in the Jonathan Sims position to be influenced by a LOT of them

- feeds on Nathan’s anxiety (she thinks it’s her illness, but it’s more likely just dread that he’s a failure of a parent. He is.) (I love him why is he like that)

- 17 has her say “I always longed for true affection, but you compared me to a corpse”, so when she leaves at the end of the movie that signifies her evolution into an avatar (or rejection of it?) bc she is left with nothing but her bugs. We don’t really know

Nathan is either Slaughter or Hunt

- I definitely am more inclined for hunt for Nathan

- the hunting at the beginning and later when he and Shiloh are on the phone he definitely could do it a lot faster and less dramatically

- he definitely enjoys it is my point

- “thankless job” is also a prime example of his feelings on this job and or its moral implications

- obviously he’s unstable too and that influences jt but he kind of reminds me of Daisy Tonner where he’s over the ethical issue mostly

Luigi is definitely slaughter

- there’s not a really a need for question man is violent and angry I feel like there’s no question he shanks and yells and gets half naked for fun.

- his treatment of the gentern bringing coffee is a great example, he had no reason to freak out other than. Being like that. And also bc he can

- that’s about it actually he feeds on subordinates fear of his unforgiving temper it’s pretty CUT and dry

Pavi is. Hmmm. Flesh??

- I’m stuck on this one, however I think flesh fits best

- his face stealing reminds me of specific serial killer behaviors (usually due to parental issues) that involve using others body parts, usually skin (Ed Gein with his skin suit of his mother I think??) though I think his environment is part of why the face thing is a little less wrong in canon. Idk he’s a fucking FREAK okay

- also we never see his actual face so I feel an argument that it’s tied with dysmorphia isn’t unreasonable

- Pavi feeds off of adoration (even if it’s fake) from the Genterns as well as the fear of having your face skinned

- seriously what is wrong with him

- with the Genterns his boisting of “ask a gentern who they prefer” and overtly unacceptable sexual behavior (“my brother and sister should fuck”) feel like someone who wants validation and attention even if it’s not positive attention

Amber is Flesh too

- I think for a different reason from Pavi, she doesn’t have “inferiority” Dysmorphia that I think he has

- instead, I think Ambers behaviors are “superiority” dysmorphia (both terms I made up)

- in Ambers case she’s changing her appearance to cope with a shifting sense of self and strive for perfection caused by her notoriety and never being told no

- Amber feeds off of being desired and seen and is one of the most famous people in the known canon universe, but her blatant jealousy of Mag really depicts her motivation for perfection

- she also feeds herself to graverobber for drugs (deleted song ‘try my new parts’) I don’t care how good their surgical techniques are nobody is healing their hole that fast without hurting themselves somehow

- basically if Pavi is MAG 90 Amber is MAGP 2

Graverobber is End or Buried

- the end is for obvious reasons with corpse robbing and his lack of fear or caution around death @brainvomitintheparkinglot ‘s idea

- for buried, he’s literally a crack dealer

- he basically feeds the entire cities drug supply (trapping them in addiction that is hard to escape)

- the web usually deals with addiction but I don’t think he has manipulative or controlling motivation, he just works the system against other people

(Rottis corporation supplying everyone is the web, graverobber is a chunk of dust caught in it)

- as shown with Amber, he wont supply without money either, hypothetically pushing his clients into further debt (esp if they have geneco loans) AND addiction

- graverobber feeds off of the metaphorical suffocating nature of debt and addiction as mentioned, and well as literal suffocation

- following the drug thread, I will be treating zydrate like Heroin, in the idea it can be a powder or liquid (even though we only see it as a liquid in canon)

- like most painkilling drugs it can be assumed zydrate can induce vomit and therefore asphyxiation OR in the case of a powder that is inhaled, generally that isn’t optimal for breathing

- also graverobber is probably covered in corpse dust and like. Anthrax

Rotti is web (again, thank you @brainvomitintheparkinglot)

- his company owns the entire city (corporatocrocy)

- he literally controls everyone, his money controls his fucked up kids, and the entire system is his

- the rift with Shiloh and Nathan was organized by Rotti, and I feel like Ambers problem with Mag is somehow his fault too

- as far as I know, Mags blindness is never canonically explained, Rotti could easily be responsible like he was with Marni

- Rotti feeds off the obvious, control over everyone. He also is disappointed his kids found ways around his authority, and yet they’re STILL in his web (addicts and also fucked in the head bc of the circumstances he raised them in)

Mag is. The eye

- yeah. This one is the most direct

- I have a headcanon that she can see through cameras (how she found Shiloh) and how she seems to know all about what is happening in Shilohs life

- mag is both a victim and an avatar of the eye, she sees everything going on around her with the people she loves, but all eyes are always on her, trapping her where she is.

- literally had to do a Melanie king except she didn’t escape, the web and the eye often work in opposition in TMA while also being quite similar, she and Rotti much the same.

- “take these eyes I’d rather be blind” is an inadvertent argument with Rottis control of the web, he kills her for it

Lastly, Marni is either End or Desolation

- she’s not actually present in the film

- End is bc she died and yet is still so so important to the plot

-desolation is bc her actions are kind of why everyone in the story has issues

I could make a whole separate post on Rottis fucked up crack zydrate addicted kids

#repo! the genetic opera #repo!tgo #TMA #the magnus archives #r!tgo #tma entities #smirkes 14 #tma au #is this actuslly an AU this could have happened in canon

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marcymeow · 4 months

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Okay, okay, y'all, y'all. Hear me out. This is a complete crackship that I've thought about since before TD2023, and it might seem kind of random but like, hear me out. We know from Jasmine and Shawn what Jasmine's type roughly is- people that Jasmine can sympathize with, people she finds similar to herself. Shawn is somebody on the outskirts of normalcy, everybody finding him kind of weird and he is very much a loner. Shawn has extreme skills in survivalism and foraging, able to know a Manchineel when he sees one. Generally, Jasmine's main insecurity is that people dislike and are intimidated by her, and thus quickly connects with somebody that she finds similar to herself. And she lashes back when she thinks that even the person most like herself is willing to throw her away. Okay, we got all that? Good. Cause I ship Jasmine and Dawn together and I'm going to elaborate why and how they could be interesting.

I am very aware that this could easily end up being just "Jasmine & Shawn but it's wlw", but I want to try to show that this has different layers and can be portrayed in a unique way. But before getting into their differences, we have to get into their similarities, because it's impossible to pretend that this ship didn't originate from what we know of Jasmine's canon ship. Because what we know of Jasmine's type gives already a pretty cut and dry motivation for why Jasmine would be into Dawn. Dawn's the quiet one, a loner pushed away by horrible social skills, who Jasmine always finds because of how regularly both of them are in the wilderness. Dawn is extremely helpful in foraging, knows her sense of direction, and is even able to seemingly communicate with animals, which Jasmine either sees as a joke or as Dawn exaggerating things. And Jasmine sees Dawn in a sympathetic light, somebody who never learned what boundaries were and where her attempts to help others backfire. That's already a good backbone for a ship, or even just a one-sided love plot! But it is, basically, already what we have for canon. So here's where we diverge. The relationship of Jasmine and Shawn is about Shawn not letting his paranoia break down the relationships of the people he cares about. And it's about Jasmine allowing people in, not having such a cold guard up around others. They honestly have a similar arc, they're mirrored in that the resolutions of their story is to let their partner in and to let their partner be who they are. Because they both love them. So the ideal of Jasmine and Dawn is, of course, to do something that is, at the least, a different flavor. To make it feel different enough that it's not literally just lesbian Jashawn. To headcanon land! So Jasmine fell in love with Dawn due to being a survivalist able to keep up with her and being sympathetic towards being an outcast. And we need a reason for Dawn to be into her. How about the fact that Jasmine treats the animals kindly but fairly, that Jasmine is willing to indulge Dawn in her practices, that Jasmine is proactive and puts her own morals over others. Dawn sees the world through the lens of an ecosystem, so Dawn sees Jasmine like a trustworthy mate. While Dawn has difficulty understanding her own emotions, she's able to tell that Jasmine is into her, and Dawn interprets her own romantic feelings as just an animalistic desire to mate and pair up. And over time, Dawn is pushed into actually accepting that she feels actual romantic love rather then viewing it through a sense of practicality. Dawn's biggest character flaw is a severe lack of boundaries. The fact that she's an outcast is why Jasmine got attached to Dawn, but it is important to realize that she's an outcast for a reason, and they need to get through that. Jasmine has a tendency to hold grudges, to get angry, to jump to conclusions without asking for an explanation first. Whenever Dawn first casually says something really sensitive to Jasmine, Jasmine will blow up and get mad. This is inevitable. But Dawn is willing to give Jasmine the space.

Dawn's not used to having an actual human relationship. Of any kind, romantic or platonic. Dawn is actually able to talk to Jasmine about animals, about survival, and not only have Jasmine listen and understand but have a fleshed out conversation. Jasmine realizes that she likes having somebody who gets what Jasmine feels. Even if Jasmine is a little uncomfortable with Dawn knowing so much about her, Jasmine thinks that's worth it. Jasmine's all about honesty, she would've told Dawn about it if it came up. Jasmine had lashed out due to anger.

So they resolve the situation. Dawn doesn't super get why Jasmine got angry, but Dawn understands enough. Dawn is always learning new things about animals, and humanity is just another animal, a complicated one. And Jasmine is willing to try to be patient with Dawn as long as Dawn tries as well.

And it's worth it. Jasmine has somebody who she can be around, who she knows, maybe a little less then she is known but that can be fixed in time. Dawn can understand human needs that she never really understood before, due to her treating herself like a non-sapient animal. And they can be in love, together. It's difficult. But it's worth it.

#total drama #td dawn #td jasmine #rarepair #character analysis #i literally just rambled for 900 words about a relationship i thought up a year ago #well hey!#at least it was an excuse to talk about jashawn

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slow-burn-sally · 11 months

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Ok, yeah, so I think I'm autistic, and through studying up on autism traits, I've started looking at the world around me very differently. Which in turn, led me to reevaluate why I like my favorite characters, and so here's a list of my favorite characters that I believe are autistic, and why. This is just my interpretation, and my headcanons, so please don't assume I'm trying to state this as unassailable fact.

ps. I'll totally do an ADHD version of this next.

1 - My precious bean, Thomas Jopson - The Terror AMC

I mean, just look at him. He's so well organized and dedicated to his job. He's riddled with childhood trauma, and this results in him doubling down and trying really really hard to keep history from repeating itself (losing a parental figure or someone deeply important to him to illness and death). He only really makes eye contact comfortably with Crozier, and he's very single minded. Being a steward is his special interest, and he is EXTREMELY INTO IT. He's uncomfortable talking about himself, and once his order and routines are taken away, he pretty much goes off the deep end. My poor bean. Very autistic.

2 - Gilbert Norrell - Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

Probably the most cut and dry example of an autistic character in entertainment media history. He loathes socializing, hates parties, and just wants to be left alone with his books and his magic (his special interests). He's also ace, so he finds most human beings, with their obsession with sex, and their need to gather and talk loudly together, completely incomprehensible. He's always felt like an alien, and a loner, and struggles to make social connections. When he does, he hangs onto them (namely Childermass). My grumpy, socially inept baby. Ily Gilly, and now I know why I identify so strongly with you.

3 - Sherlock Holmes - All Media Types (but for the purposes of this post, I'll focus on BBC Sherlock).

I almost don't have to say anything else. The whole fandom knows this bad boy is neurodivergent. He's got insane sensory issues, will disappear into his special interests (criminology and deduction) until he literally keels over from lack of food and sleep. He's socially inept, blunt, uncomfortable with touch, and doesn't like anyone but Mrs. Hudson, John, and Detective Inspector Gary Lestrade. He's probably a virgin, and could be ace, depending on how you see him, but as I've written a lot of Johnlock smut, I don't see him that way all the time. He's incredibly intelligent, and knows a lot about the world, but with strange gaps in his knowledge that can only be explained by not at all being able to drag his focus away from his special interests to learn things like basic astronomy, or what to say to people at a party.

4 - Tintin - The Adventures Of Tintin

This boy is very autistic to me. I'm not honestly sure why I feel this about Tintin. Based on the 2011 movie, which I'm the most familiar with, he seems both driven, goal oriented, and socially naive. He stumbles into danger by not reading the situation, and he lives alone with his dog. His best friend is a hyperactive-type ADHD alcoholic, and he strikes me as queer and autistic. If you feel the same way, let me know what you think.

5 - Fitzwilliam Darcey - Pride and Prejudice

I saw this hc in a recent youtube video by Yo Samdy Sam, and I cannot unsee it. Look at this autistic boy. He's grumpy, anti-social, and really into reading, but he also cares deeply about his loved ones, and strives to do what's morally right. He is so socially unaware, that he can't understand why Elizabeth would have rejected his proposal, even though he just totally ripped on her whole family. To be fair, Elizabeth's family are an autistic person's nightmare. All the wild cackling and gossiping, and obsession with who's marrying whom. Four sisters in law, two of whom are inordinately obsessed with ribbons and giggling, and only one of which is also autistic (*cough*Mary*cough*)

6. Bunty Windermere - Father Brown

She has zero filter, and often does not understand why the things she says are hurtful or inappropriate. She's obsessed with fashion, and she's got a keen mind. She could sit around in some posh mansion somewhere, but she chooses to spend all her time with an old priest, and a grumpy church lady, solving crimes and putting herself in danger. She likes fast cars, (and can get under the hood to fix them too) handsome men, and really cute handbags, but is also perpetually single. She doesn't fit in in the world of cocktail parties and society events that surround her, because she's just too blunt, and bucks convention by being independent, unmarried, and slutty).

8. I know this is turning out to be a list of grumpy introverts, and I don't want it to seem like that's all there is to autism, but JUST LOOK AT THIS AUTISTIC BOY - Hermann Gottlieb - Pacific Rim

Hermann is pretty classically autistic. Obsessed with math and numbers. Needs order to feel safe. Is very frustrated with other people's messy, inexact opinions. He only really warms up and comes out of his shell when he falls head over heels for his ADHD-as-fuck cannon boyfriend Newton Geiszler.

9. Last but not least (for this list anyway) DI Richard Poole - Death In Paradise.

Another clear cut case. Tons of sensory issues to light, heat and crowds. Everything must be in its own special place. He's rumored to have never had a girlfriend, and can't understand people's obsession with frivolous things like friendly greetings, small talk, or anything that's not crime solving. He falls madly in love with Camille Bordey, and pretty much flubs any chance he has with her, before dying because he's bad at facial recognition. I love you so much Richard. Never change.

Again, just my opinions. This is helping me figure out my own internal world. There are definitely more than one way to read these characters, but to me, they feel autistic.

#autism #neurodivergence #neurodivergent #autism spectrum #autistic characters #headcanons

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maschotch · 2 years

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I started watching cm from season one again because i got to season 12 and realised that basically all the castmembers have been changed, and then Hotch was on his way out and I just can’t handle change too well… anyways, what I’ve realized is that Hotch was a lot more funny at least in the first season than in the rest of the seasons. Like, he’d just get these funny one-liners that are probably made even funnier because I know him from season 11/12 where he’s as bland as white bread (affectionate)

early seasons hotch my beloved…

i do think some of the tonal shifts were just from writing changes as they settled into the typical archetypes associated with crime dramas (especially after they gideon was replaced by rossi, since they needed a serious counterpart to restore the balance). they lost a lot of nuance very early on once they got into the rhythm of pumping out episodes that would ensure more viewers. which is to be expected, i guess, but there really is something truly special about the first season of the show.

that being said, i think it’s also kinda fitting for his character?

season one hotch is still new to being unit chief. he was accustomed to a supporting role, which allowed him to be more casual and laid back around the others (though he was always at least somewhat serious). we meet him right as he starts to shift into the mode of professionalism, and from the easygoing way the older team members, like morgan and garcia, interact with him—teasing, flirting, complaining, just overall seeming more comfortable—they’re used to him being at least somewhat responsive to their banter. and he still is—especially in season one—but there’s a modicum of gravity to his actions, realizing that there’s more at stake

it becomes all too clear to him when he’s not overtly clear with his instructions to anderson, and elle nearly dies because of it. we get a vague sense that some things have changed in the time before the show begins, but the contrast between season one and season two hotch is glaringly obvious. he slipped up. he failed them. he doesn’t have time to mess around like he used to; he has to prioritize the team’s safety, even if it means establishing a barrier that hadn’t existed before. i think the importance of that is amplified by gideon’s struggles: hotch realizes very quickly that ultimately it is his responsibility to maintain order within the team. he cuts back on the jokes and establishes a more severe demeanor—especially with the obvious plant sent by strauss to keep an eye on him (though emily wasn’t aware of it at the time)

the final nail in the coffin is gideon’s departure. from a writing standpoint and a character standpoint: gideon had his moments but he was pretty dry, whereas rossi is more sardonic and playful in nature. not wanting to overburden the team dynamic with goofiness, they needed to sober hotch’s character a bit. within the story itself, hotch as a character feels even more pressure to be the voice of reason, transitioning from the protective older brother to the attentive and morally upright father. he can’t mess around with the team as much as he used to. even if he could, with the mounting guilt of losing elle then gideon—plus all the other crazy shit that happened in season two—it would be hard for him to engage with them so flippantly

as the trauma continues to build over the seasons for both the team and himself (haley leaving, kate dying, the foyet business, haley dying, jj getting ripped away, emily “dying”), by the end of season six he’s haggard and weary in an entirely new way. the last few years were brutal for him, and he takes responsibility for everything that happens to the team as well. the jokes have all but disappeared. he can still find it within himself to be lighthearted at times, especially around garcia and reid, but overall he’s just too stressed out to even feel the urge

with emily’s return i think things begin to settle. the team is healing, and although they’ll never be the same, it’s still a little easier for him to smile. whether it’s because he feels some sense of accomplishment from finally being able to save someone or simply because it’s been enough time for him to process all that other shit, he gradually opens up and allows himself to appreciate the warmth of those around him. as the seasons continue, i think it gets easier and easier. he’s still serious and hard to read at times, but the best example i can think of is how cheerful he is when he hugs kate goodbye and how supportive he is of tara splitting the job so she can follow her dreams. he’s not as uptight anymore, not nearly as high strung. there’s still a little tension, he still blames himself for too much, but he has enough support that he can enjoy a night out at a jazz club with dave or karaoke with the team.

i do like the early seasons way more and i did have to stop around season 12 the first time before finishing the show a few years later. truly i didn’t really mind the main cast starting to break away (i had already faced that particularly brand of heartache when i watched season 8 for the first time and emily wasn’t there), though i do see how it can be jarring. it’s been more than a decade: changes are bound to happen. thankfully it’s just a show, so we can take a break before coming back to it later when we’ve had more time to adjust

most of my complaints from the later seasons are more about the writing than anything else. starting with season 11 i think the overall plots get sloppy and it’s clear they’re just trying to crank up the drama. which again, i suppose, is to be expected. truthfully i think the genius of criminal minds was just a fluke to begin with. but it’s still kind of painful to see the steep quality decline—and jumping from various eras in cm is always a bit jarring. i’d like to think it’s more than just nostalgia that keeps the early seasons special, but it’s entirely possible it’s been shit the whole time and it’s just easier to notice when it’s shot in high definition

#and to be fair i love some of the newer cast members!!#luke is my best friend!!#so i'd encourage you to give it a shot when you're ready for it :)#oh and don’t fucking kid yourself—hotch has ALWAYS been normcore saltine white boy #he was just willing to crack a couple jokes in the beginning #asks #cm crit #<- kinda ig #all this to say i'm not utterly disappointed by the changes in hotch's character #i do wish we got to see a bit more of his playful side later on (and we get a glimpse every now and then)#but it's not the same #there's something about the season one team dynamic.. where they haven't explicitly labelled each other family ..#but they all still feel it...#idk. it's just. special #ANYWAY. stop sending me asks that i have to write essays for kajshdlgs im tryna write for today's prompt

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mister13eyond · 1 year

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i want to infodump hcs about vin, asphodel & their world so i AM below the cut!

so asphodel is very capable and informed on a lot of skills that have since become obsolete- they're an experienced garment maker, tailor, cook, and know a lot of very traditional handwork skills, but they can't use a smart phone to save their life. meanwhile vin is a twitch streamer and uses the internet for everything, but has absolutely no idea about the offline world (especially since he stays inside as often as he does) and is easily baffled by, like. driving. or cooking. or navigating w/o google maps. (also his sense of direction is Awful)

i think vin has only RECENTLY come to the human world; he remained in Hell for the majority of time and worked there and scarcely interacted with humans & wound up summoned by accident & bound to the human world like... within the last couple years. meanwhile i think asphodel is like, way more knowledgeable but also Not; they're kind of stuck in an archaic mindset and have not kept up well with the progress of technology, but Vin knows like, NOTHING about human history or worldly happenings yet adapted to technology VERY fast.

they both have extremely large blind spots in their human knowledge that make them very fun, especially since they're both kind of contrary to the perspective you'd expect them to have as a demon and an angel. like, vin generally thinks people are neat, and fun, and enjoys them even if it's in kind of a theoretical way. while asphodel is generally disillusioned with people and finds them simultaneously worth learning from but also generally lacking and not worth personal interactions with.

also tbh my views of this universe's "heaven" and "hell" are largely inspired by things like kuroshitsuji and hades, because i LOVE the afterlife being a big bureaucracy

IMO they're like... ok so my idea for the afterlife in this universe is 90% "every religion and lack thereof is simultaneously right, and what happens to you after death is a matter of belief and personal conviction, so careful record-keeping is the main duty of all celestial beings". so like, christian heaven & hell are just one of several Large Bureaucracies and their jobs are to keep track of believers, record their lives & then moderate where they should go once that life ends. Everyone gets a Trial at the end of their life where they have a defense lawyer (angel) and prosecutor (demon) who argue which outcome they should get. permanent sentences in hell are actually pretty rare and hell has adopted more of a greco-roman "serve time for your crimes & then get to go to heaven when your sentence ends" system (with the permanent sentences being Notable Punishments a'la sisyphus, tantalus etc who break Big Fundamental Rules in the Most Egregious Ways). and those who go to hell are essentially doing community service to help the company and/or act as Human Batteries (demons feed on human energy monsters inc style, and collect said energy from sinners) until they've served their sentence and are allowed to go to heaven, which is pretty much, like, just an endless existence where all needs and struggles are no more & people can just Vibe Forever)

mostly because the idea of hell just being dry capitalism & the prison-industrial complex is very funny to me & also i can't think of anything Worse than being forced to endure Capitalism for a little longer

anyways it means that asphodel's outlook is kind of moralistic & judgemental- they were a celestial defense lawyer & therefore are predisposed to judging people based on their actions & hypocracies- while vin's is very neutral, like. well bad people are just more people who need to get their shit together & serve their sentence & then they'll be fine. (and/or they're just Food Sources so no hard feelings.) so he's generally pretty friendly & amenable while asphodel has a very moral judgement model of thinking & cares deeply about Humanity Overall & heavily judges those who act against the good of Humanity, Collectively.

It's part of why they're so anti-technology & why Vin is so chill w/it- they believe much of the progress made in the 21st century is against the Good of Humanity, while Vin generally views it as "some people are cool some people suck but mostly it's just what it is". also ALSO! demons and angels are both beings made of just, like, pure energy. the main difference between them is essentially whether they have a positive or negative charge, basically. angels are tapped into the Universal Source Of All Energy (think lifestream a la final fantasy; this is also the outcome for those who don't believe in an afterlife- their life force becomes one with the universal energy source & melds with all other energy) & can endlessly Produce it, needing no source of energy to maintain life; "tiers" of angels are basically determined by the strength of that connection & how easily they can draw from it; archangels can draw more than angels, etc. while demons are NOT connected to that source and must draw from alternate sources such as humans.

this is why they use sinners as batteries in hell, & also why concepts like incubus/succubus exist- demons who go draw life directly from the living. that 'life' can be collected via strong emotions & strong feelings- they don't have to be negative a la torture BUT that is a very quick & easy way to collect; incubi/succubi generally use seduction to evoke strong emotions; some demons do even use things like comedy to collect. vin has an interest in horror media & horror games BECAUSE he can harvest fear from an audience that way; it's a safe haunted house way of collecting a lot of small snacks instead of one big meal. and the strength of demons is largely determined by how big their stockpile of energy is; higher tier demons have larger stockpiles, while lower tiers like vin usually just collect enough to sustain themselves & don't have much Extra. ANYWAYS I HAVE TO WORK BUT THANK U FOR COMING TO MY OC TED TALK, I THINK THEY'RE FUN

#my ocs #my writing #ocs #asphodel #vin #vtubervin #headcanons #concept #concepts #writing #freewriting

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the-lightning-strikes-again · 2 years

Text

MCU’s Multiverse of Madness vs. VLD

A friend streamed for me Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness today after hearing that it was similar to Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 8, but if s8 were good? So I’ve watched it, and I have thoughts. There are definite similarities, but I’m not sure these are enjoyable similarities, lol. So I’m just thinking out loud about what in the world I just watched...

(Spoilers for the MCU movie and VLD under the cut):

Unsettling Similarities:

A witch woman goes evil and rejects the sanctity of life because she can’t be a mom to the very children she...*checks notes*...previously rejected maternal obligations over in her own backstory (WandaVision, VLD s6), and then decides at some point off-screen that she just can’t live without them? (Did I miss something about Wanda’s character arc into depravity? I feel whiplashed after watching WandaVision?)

It’s a Dr. Strange movie in title, but he’s not the focus in his own movie. It instead is really Wanda’s story and to some degree a totally new character, a magical teenager named America. Similarly, the all-powerful Voltron mecha takes a pretty major backseat to VLD s8 Honerva, her evil mecha, and Altean magic as the final showdown focus in VLD despite Voltron being the title character of the show.

Both shows intentionally push the limits of their rating. They both have an increased tolerance for showing melty bodies and using specific horror tropes compared to previous setup for these characters...and yet the rating is not increased to reflect that update. (For example, while other MCU PG-13 movies swivel away from showing blood or frightening/focused images of decay, it was surprising that this movie focused on Dr. Strange’s decayed body as a center point of the visuals, a monster’s eye being ripped out in a very bloody way, and Wanda consistently covered in blood from her mass murders, with scenes taking inspo from the 1986 movie Alien, which is rated R. Likewise, while VLD’s earlier seasons were not afraid to show skeletons and a couple jump scares, earlier seasons used visual direction to avoid showing an active character’s state of mutilation in death. Meanwhile, s8 just up and shows a mutilated Lotor body on top of the original, living Haggar being sucked dry of life, Mummy style in a flashback. In addition, s8 capitalizes on monsters hunting the team in classic horror-trope fashions, with later seasons in general pulling content from the ages 16+ Voltron comics and the TV-14 GoLion anime, which were rated higher than the VLD show’s rating of Y7.)

Both shows update certain characters to be women of color (a black Captain Marvel, for example), only to kill them off for shock value specifically in a way that is not supported by the worldbuilding for that character. (For example, Captain Marvel suddenly can’t survive a statue falling on her despite this character being one of the most powerful in the MCU, with god-like abilities and the power of foresight? Did I miss something about this variant version? And Allura is supposed to be dead at the end of s8 despite her own life force being connected to a limitless power source, and despite regenerating the multiverse in an area of space-time where life and death don’t even exist as concepts?) I get that beloved fictional characters die in stories sometimes, but damn. If it doesn’t even make sense for that character on top of not making sense for the story’s surrounding context, why are they being killed off?

The men with the noodle hair (Dr. Strange, Lotor) have their bodies used as zombie puppets during a fight scene. (Which, sure, it serves a purpose in either story, but also that’s just…hm. The concept of possessing a dead body was tolerable in Men in Black (1997), but I don’t feel it works under the circumstances in these other shows. At least to VLD s8’s credit, we didn’t see a decayed Meltor actively moving around for himself or talking.)

Both Dr. Strange and Lotor are heavily criticized for their morally gray tactics used to achieve an end of peace, but then the other characters capitalize off of said tactics or even repeat said tactics themselves or agree later that it was the only way.

There are some generally pointless cameos, in reference to Professor X appearing in the MCU (how is he defeated that easily by Wanda after all the crazy stuff he’s put up with in the X-Men universe?) and Merla in VLD s8 (she goes from being Voltron franchise’s ultimate femme fatale supervillain to a loyal sidekick of the shoehorned supervillain?). Like…why even include them, then?

That said, both shows did have some interesting visual direction. Me and my friend felt Multiverse of Madness might have been more enjoyable to watch if it were in 3D, just based on the type of the shots used to capture action. And VLD in general, while having quality issues, still did some pretty cool stuff from a visual perspective and set an animation quality precedence for future reboots of the franchise.

But overall, I’m not...feeling this Multiverse of Madness as a positive successor for VLD’s concepts? The concept of a multiverse is ubiquitous in the science-fiction genre, with the heartbeat of both MoM and VLD s8′s worldbuilding having been previously explored in Michael Moorcock’s ~1960s stories about a multiverse that can be damaged in attempting to travel it. But both shows here feel ultimately anticlimactic in regards to that very concept (in MoM, America magically and unexplainedly obtains control to fulfill Wanda’s demands without multiverse destruction, while in VLD, Allura pulls a deus ex machina with an unprecedented and logically unsupported magical fix to undo the undo-able damage).

I don’t at all begrudge anyone who enjoyed Multiverse of Madness or VLD; in fact, there were things I did enjoy about both. I’m just very fascinated at how both suffer from trying to squeeze life out of a story that’s been stretched beyond its limits.

#Voltron #MCU #Multiverse of Madness #Dr. Strange #Lotor #Wanda #Scarlet Witch #Honerva #Haggar #I think MCU is really slipping tbh #just based off what I've seen lately with WandaVision and Loki and the latest blockbusters #there's some shows like Ms. Marvel that I haven't seen yet #but overall it just feels like MCU and VLD both suffer from trying to beat a dead horse #in which sometimes more isn't always better a;dsfj #I did actually appreciate the horror elements of Multiverse of Madness #But it def felt like it was pushing the limit of PG-13

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ghoul333 · 3 years

Text

serial lover

chapter one(?)

pairing: billy x f!reader

wc: 2.8k

summary: billy wants to kill you, but you change his mind last minute.

warnings: angst, murder, swearing, fluff(?)

a/n: i used both their point of views so i hope it came out alright. i definitely want to write another chapter. hope you enjoy! <3

He looked at you from afar. Lurking in the bushes, watching your every move. It was pretty much turning into a daily routine. He wanted you, bad. Billy was heavily debating when to break in one of these nights to kill you. Lucky for him, tonight might be the night, your parents weren't home and your siblings were nowhere to be seen. Just you, sitting pretty on your bed and staring at the ceiling.

You were the perfect victim. It had been a few years since the first killing spree in Woodsboro. Everything for the most part had gone back to normal. They thought about it for a while, and considering they had succeeded the first time, Billy and Stu decided to give it another go. Only for this job was Billy on his own, Stu being with his girlfriend.

A kind, innocent girl like you? That would be fun. Though you had never wronged the pair, you were somewhat of a loner. Quiet but willing to help when needed. Might've been a distasteful move, but damn was Billy eager to hear what your screams sounded like.

And now that you were alone, it was the perfect time to play a game.

Only you weren't.

Your brother in law, Ian, was in the living room, watching a hockey game.

Billy got into a stance when he saw you getting up from the bed, figuring you would leave the room. Instead, you paced in circles. He looked down at your hands, you were flicking your index finger against your thumb, as if it was out of anxiety. You seemed to be contemplating something.

You looked at yourself in the mirror. Billy having to duck down so you wouldn't spot him. It would be a different story if he was dressed up as himself, you two were acquainted after all, having one or two classes together. But he wasn't exactly 'himself' right now, he was Ghostface. Though he and Ghostface were one in the same, you didn't know that. You would only see a masked psycho hiding in your bushes.

He was about to pick up his cellphone to call your house phone, but something stopped him. His hand was frozen in place. When he looked back to you, he noticed a change in your expression.

You were crying in the mirror.

Billy cocked his head. What the fuck was this? One minute you're fine and seemingly calm. Then the next minute you're crying as if something traumatic happened.

He raised his brows, surprised when you stopped crying immediately, as if on cue. Your eyes had been glossy but were now completely dry.

Holy shit. Where did you learn that? He thought.

You didn't look sad anymore. In fact there was no emotion at all and for some reason, Billy loved it.

—

You wiped the tears off your face and stared at yourself in the mirror. Taking a deep breath.

Was that believable? I think so.

A part of you wished you had someone here to let you know, but this was something you needed to do by yourself. You didn't even know if you were gonna go through with it, but the urge wouldn’t leave your mind.

Hearing a loud cheer from the other room, you groaned in disgust. You had a hard time believing your family would leave Ian here with you. Especially after all the shit you've taken from him.

You could confidently say that you hated your brother in law. Your sister disappointed you, putting up with trash like him and you resented your family for tolerating it for as long as they have. For over a year, he had lived in your house. Being nothing but a bum. Always being a fucking asshole to you and your family, then making you feel like shit when you call him out.

He could get away with it too. The fact your father was rarely in town made it easy and you hated it. You hated him. You wanted him gone, for good.

You knew there was only one way. No matter how many fights, he wouldn't leave. Refused to.

If he was gone, everything would be fine. It'd take time for some people to heal, but this was for the best.

Thinking about it put a smile on your face. Even though the inhuman thoughts ashamed you, you couldn't help but let them excite you at the same time. Never in your life had you wanted to do something like this, but you craved to see that piece of shit suffer. This would be the only time, and hopefully you wouldn't get caught.

You opened up your drawer, pulling out some scissors, studying them for a few seconds before putting them back.

You weren't ready to get blood on your hands. You looked around your room, trying to find something easy and simple. You looked down at your rack of shoes. Suddenly, an idea popped into your head.

You pulled the lace from one of your old sneakers, you'd have to dump them afterwards but you wouldn't miss them. While you wrapped the string around both your hands, something came over you. You didn't even realize you were walking to the living room, until you were standing right behind him while he watched his game. At that point, your body was doing the talking. Fuck what was actually right. Fuck morals.

Billy watched all this, following your every move. He cursed himself for not noticing the other obvious person in the house. How stupid. If he decided to pursue you there was a greater chance he wouldn't get away. Stu would've had to come. You kind of saved him there.

Seeing the single shoelace in your grip and standing so close behind Ian, he was actually anticipating your next move. Which surprised him, you had him on the edge of his seat. You had opened his eyes in those last few minutes. You had him so confused.

He had been watching you for days, basically knew your day and night routine. So, where did this come from? You put on an act, even for yourself?

He couldn't deny he thought you were, somewhat, adorable. Many victims had been adorable, but being adorable doesn't mean shit to Billy. If he wanted to gut you, he would.

There were times where you would just sit and stare into a void, but he didn't really think anything of it. He didn't realize how fucked up in the head you really were.

He couldn't kill you now, definitely not. You were turning out to be just as insane as he was. Billy felt drawn to you. He was rooting for you.

You stood there long enough for Ian to notice your presence behind him. Not even turning around, he opened his mouth.

"What the fuck do you wa-" He didn't even get to finish his sentence before you wrapped the shoelace around his neck, attempting to strangle him.

Hearing him speak irritated the fuck out of you. You'd rather cut your own ears off, but why do that? He should just simply stop talking.

He was strong, but you gave yourself props for not wearing socks, your feet were planted firmly on the ground, and they weren't going anywhere. His arms were violently swinging, voice coming out in gargles. How long did I need to do this for? Maybe a plastic bag would've been easier.

It felt like forever until he quit moving. Eventually, his arms fell limp and his breathing stopped. You stood there for a moment, the lace still wrapped around him. Had you killed him?

You decided you wanted to be sure, jerking the shoelace against his neck just one more time.

Suddenly his arm flew up, grabbing the shoelace and trying to jerk your body forward. You begin to struggle against him, pulling the lace as tight as you could so he couldn't grip it, but he was able to overpower you within seconds. Yanking you over the sofa he had been sitting on, you groaned in pain as your back hit the floor. The air being knocked out of you.

Where did that adrenaline come from?

Watching you flip like that, for some reason, worried Billy. Even he thought you had him. He couldn't let this happen, he felt the strong urge to come to your rescue. Sure, some random guy dying by the hands of ghostface didn't fit the route they were trying to take, but Billy was going to protect you tonight. He needed to.

He quickly got up from where he was crouched, beginning to creep his way towards the house. He figured he needed to move fast considering how much smaller you were compared to the man you were trying to murder.

"You little fucking bitch!" Ian managed to seethe, voice extremely hoarse. He got up from where he was standing and grabbed you by the hair, making you cry out pain. Billy heard the commotion from outside, and the sound he'd been wanting to hear. He didn't like it. Why?

Why did it make him angry to hear you in pain?

You wanted to avoid eye contact with Ian, but he yanked your hair again, making you face him. The look in his eyes seemed hungry, and not in a good way.

He gave you a vile smile, before slapping you across the face, making you tumble to the floor once again. You slowly reached up, touching your cheek. A single tear threatened to fall but you quickly blinked it away. It burned, almost vibrating from the impact. You knew the slap was hard enough for blood to come through.

Fuck.

You figured you were screwed, if you knew he was gonna grab you like that you would've just duct taped him to the coach. You really did not think this one through, even though you had been thinking about it for months on end.

You felt his body heat centimeters away from you. Looking up at him, he hovered over you.

"Thank you for finally giving me a reason to do that." He said, his tone spilling venom. "I'm gonna enjoy this."

You just stared at him, you weren't scared or upset. You couldn't even be mad, you just attempted to strangle your sisters husband. What could've been expected? You probably didn't have a great chance of succeeding anyway, but you couldn't fight your urges anymore.

People like him deserved death.

You didn't have time to process another thought before Ian picked you up, throwing you against the wall. You yelped as your side impacted harshly against the wood floor. You didn't even want to look at him anymore, you had failed and were probably gonna die, or get beat into a coma.

You didn't feel him grab you again. You didn't feel him pin you against the wall. You didn't feel the corner of the table next you digging into your side. You didn't feel anything. Not even the tears falling from your eyes.

"Don't cry now darling," He whispered in your ear, you shuddered in disgust. "This is what you wanted."

His voice made you want to vomit. Cigarettes and cheap beer leaking off his tongue. Even with him up to your ear, you could smell it. He was so fucking close. Everything about this man made you sick. You couldn't understand how your sister slept beside this thing at night.

He held your body against his while he shifted his hands. They wrapped around your throat and squeezed, very hard. You couldn't breathe. You wanted to just let it happen but your body was thinking ahead of you, once again. You grabbed his hands, trying to pry him off.

You actually couldn't fucking breathe. You were going to die, staring into this mans lifeless eyes, hearing his heaving breathing...his body pressed against yours. You would rather get stabbed to death. Or burned alive. You just didn't want him to be the last thing you saw before you died. You didn't want to die.

I fucked up.

Maybe you were selfish too. You were better off just hurting yourself to ease the pain. You couldn't get him off you and it was painful. Your vision was starting to blur.

You used your feet to try and push him off you, but your attempts failed.

Unexpectedly, you fell to the floor with a thud. You quickly inhaled a large breath of air, a small coughing spell following. You couldn't hear or see anything in that moment, just trying to get up, desperately trying to regain your strength.

Breathing had never felt so good.

Weak and in pain, you used one hand to guide your way up the wall, while the other one held your throat. As you regained your vision and started to focus on your surroundings, you began to hear struggling. Lots of struggling. You were confused, you thought it was just the both of you. As you looked up, you noticed a cloaked figure on top of Ian.

Billy had gotten into the house from your laundry room window, finding the entrance a few days ago when he was planning how he would kill you. He crept in, being as quiet as a ghost. When he turned the corner, he saw Ian pressing you deep against the wall. He watched you struggle and fight, a few tears falling from your eyes.

He tackled your brother in law to the floor, making him lose his grip on you. Billy managed to gain the upper hand quickly, getting on top of him and wrapping his hands around his throat. Ian kicked his legs, but it did no good. Billy was too far up on his chest, sinking all his body weight onto him.

You stood there and watched. You were confused and shocked on what was happening, on where this guy came from. You looked down, noticing a knife next to the person in the black cloak. You begin to panic a little inside, wondering whether this person was saving your life or here to take you both out.

It only then hit you that the knife and the black costume seemed way too familiar.

Oh shit...It can't be.

Was this, The Ghostface?

From what you and the rest of Woodsboro knew, that killer who committed all those murders years ago was supposed to be dead. So what was he doing here?

You snapped back into reality when you heard Ian trying to speak. Looking at the both of them, you saw Ian's arms swing violently once again. Billy had managed to dodge most the swings, his arms steadily pressing down on Ian's throat. He did take a few hits to the face though, but he had been through worse.

It wasn't until he started reaching for the mask.

Billy could only lean back so far, if he tried anymore Ian would gain the upper hand in a matter of seconds. He usually didn’t care, since they were going to be dead anyway, but he wasn’t going to kill you.

You noticed what was happening, even with Ghostface's back turned to you. You slowly crept your way towards them, until you could see Ian's face again.

His eyes were wide as plates and his skin looked tight as the killer pushed down on his throat. Ian's eyes snapped to you, making Billy turn his head a little to see you in his peripheral vision. You could tell by the look in Ian's eyes that he wanted your help.

Tough shit.

You slowly walked around the two, Ian was convinced you were gonna help him, beginning to reach for the mask again, fingers brushing the mouth, trying to find a grip. You kneeled, grabbing Ian's arms, pinning him down. Your gazed flickered towards the mask killer, to find he was already looking in your direction.

You decided to flash him a smile. Though you couldn't see behind that mask, Billy had the same expression.

You lowered your body down, until your mouth was leveled with Ian's ear. He was trying to fight against you, but he had no more strength. He was done for.

"See you in hell, fat shit." You spoke into his ear.

Gargles could only be heard, and the hockey game playing on the tv was basically non existent. The life Ian once had, was now gone. You slowly stood up, ghostface doing the same. You both looked at his lifeless body.

“I don’t know whether I should say thank you, or start running.” You said, letting out a laugh. It hurt like hell to speak. Your eyes moved to the masked killer and once again, he was already looking at you.

You both stared at each other for a few seconds, before he took a step closer to you. You didn’t back up, and for some reason you didn’t feel afraid. Billy reached out his hand, lightly touching your throat.

You weirdly didn’t mind the feeling, you weren’t scared of his touch, in fact, it was very gentle.

His hand trailed up, cupping the cheek that had been slapped. His thumb lightly rubbed your cheek and you couldn’t help but sigh.

“Thank you.” You told him, but he didn’t say anything. You knew he couldn’t speak, he wasn’t gonna let you find out who he was. If you recognized the voice or didn’t there was still a chance.

A car pulling up into the driveway made you and Billy snap your attention to the front of the house. He looked at you once again, seeing the fear in your eyes. He had to help you out some more, and you couldn’t be awake for it to work.

“I’m sorry.” Billy lowly mumbled, before knocking you unconscious.

#slasher x reader #billy loomis x reader #ghostface x reader #ghostface #billy loomis #slasher fanfiction #scream #slasher fucker

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gaiuswrites · 3 years

Text

Ashore

Part one | Open Waters

Pairing: Frankie Morales x fem!Reader

Summary: You and Frankie leave the beach with only one thing on your minds.

Rating: Explicit

Word count: 3.6k~

Warnings/tags: smut, ✨butt stuff✨, oral (f receiving), some lovey-dovey shit

Notes: Here we are friends. You don’t necessarily have to read Open Waters to understand the contents of this chapter (considering it’s mostly just booty bumpin’). You can thank heathens @javierpcna and @whataperfectwasteoftime for the debauchery to follow. It’s been a while since I’ve written and I’m genuinely nervous to post this lol but alas. We have arrived. Is it shit? Is it pure filth? Who’s to say hehehe. Cheers bebes x

Masterlist | read it on ao3!

The worst part was, you had to get gas.

Frankie drives. You sit beside him.

The return trip is hushed with anticipation—with sullied stain-glass imagery occupying the void. You've said next to nothing since you packed into the car; the only noise comes from the radio—the preset station phasing in and out as you wind along the backroads leading away from the shore—Journey, Jimi, Led Zep and the like all crackling dry through the speakers.

Everything, each micro-movement, feels stifling— like burning ants under a magnifying glass— each gesture riddled with intention, Frankie’s words echoing clear in the caverns of your mind.

He glances left right at an intersection.

‘Anything?’

He flips on the turn signal, blinking one two one two one two.

‘You gonna let me have your tight little ass?’

He steers the wheel with the heel of his palm.

‘When I cum, it’s gonna be here—filling you up.’

The engine rumbles as you idle at a red light—stalling. Dawdling. The sun spills lazily from the horizon, draining the last of the afternoon’s light with it, bleeding the sky scarlet—emboldening the horizon— and you watch as the setting glow catches the hair on his arm—there, resting on the console between you. His hand fists over the gear, knuckles creasing as they tense around the worn, leathered head. You’re playing a game—a silent, ruleless game. You know he can sense you observing him, can feel the heat of your gaze weigh on the flex of his fingers—the same fingers that had ripped an orgasm out of you not two hours before.

You almost unbuckle your damn seatbelt and fly out of your chair. You nearly break with it, with the unspoken tension filling the car like gas and fuck, how you crave him; how you yearn to put those fingers in your mouth and suck—lave the summer clean off his digits and bob around the long width and—

The light turns green.

Frankie resumes his hand to the wheel, your lewd fantasy dissipating along with it.

It’s minuscule. You would have missed it save the fact that you’re so acutely aware of every fucking breath you two share in the aluminum confines of your old Jeep. It’s a subtle thing: Frankie adjusts his hips— innocent enough— but your eyes flicker over to find the groin of his drying swim trunks tented.

You’re not ashamed to say it— your mouth fucking waters, you salivate— and as if on cue, he squirms again, seeking relief from both the blood rushing south and the blister of your stare. His lips part— the rasp of an inhale as he prepares to speak—before his focus is torn down to the dashboard, an orange symbol popping up in the gauge stealing his attention.

“Shit,” Frankie mumbles under his breath. Looking around, he scans for a nearby station and groans at the realization that he’s just passed one, spotting it in the rearview mirror. “Shit.”

You swivel towards the passenger side window, attempting to hide the I told you so expression pulling wry at your mouth. Not that you’ll hang it over him, but you did inform Frankie that the tank was empty on the way to the beach. You hear another muffled curse come from the man beside you, and the world goes topsy-turvy and reverses itself— the act of Frankie making a grumbled U-turn.

He puts the gear into park with a huff, Van Halen’s solo abruptly cut short mid chord.

The car door opens with a rusty squeal and Frankie clambers out, fishing his wallet from his back pocket and swiping his card through the reader at the pump—but not before he squeezes a palm into the plush of your thigh, thumb searing like a brand into your skin. I’ll be quick.

Fuck, you could have cum right then.

Your gaze follows his movements, dogging after him as he waits on the gas to fill— arms folded across his chest, strong build leaning on the frame of your car.

It’s not a novel concept to you, but God is that man broad. The ratty t-shirt he wears clings to him, pulled taut between the plane of his shoulders, the cut of his tricep apparent even from your vantage point; the corded muscle running up his neck flashing as he watches the digital numbers on the screen tick higher.

Shit, you’re aching for him— you can feel yourself throb into the crotch of your swimsuit. You’d have him right here—in the backseat, steaming up the glass— if it weren’t for the overencumbered bags and rickety beach chairs crowding the space.

With herculean effort, you wrench your eyes off him in search of a distraction, letting them drift to the dark flooring of the car. It’s been dirtied—white flecks speckling the interior—and you won’t be able to get the sand out of the matted carpets for weeks. It’s a nuisance, to be sure, but you have to admit that you’re sort of fond of it; little memories, vestiges in the grains, lingering long after the season ends.

Hello, remember me? each granule chirped, remember when we laughed giddy for hours, maddened by the grace of the sun? Remember when we burned red that time we forgot sunscreen? Remember when we bought soft serve from the surf shack and it globbed sticky down our wrists? Remember when we when we when when when…

Frankie, ever practical, hates it. It’s a pain in the ass, he’s told you, regaling you with the woes only a mechanic would care to know. It ruins the upholstery.

You’ve had your exchanges about the topic—your faux-squabbled back and forths—and yet despite himself, he can’t help but like that you like it. Conceptually, he gets it—it annoys him to kingdom fucking come and he’ll almost certainly take the vacuum to the mats first thing tomorrow, but he understands. He understands it.

He understands you.

You’re like that, you and him. You’re different. You are made of different things, a compository of fractures and fragments. Mosaic tiles. You don’t quite fit—not all of you—but you never force the pieces into any sort of place. You admire each other’s mismatched bits, those sweetly quilted jigsaws, and you hold each one up to the light and point at the unique curves, the notches and swoops there, and say I love you, I love this, I love this too.

When Frankie keys up the ignition and puts the car in drive, he keeps his hand on your lap. Arm resting over the median dividing you, calloused palm sealing over your quad, his fingertips knead a pulse into the meat of your leg with each bump in the poorly paved road— a reminder. A vow. Almost home.

You think he does it just to torture you.

It fucking works.

The sound of laughter parts the front door as you enter— Frankie had made some colorful comment about your absolute favorite neighbors, the ones who always leave their damn garbage bins in front of your driveway— and your key ring clatters as it hits the bowl on the side table.

You discard the bags, plopping the sandy things down in the entryway, and kick off your sandals— bare soles padding along lacquered wood paneling as you head to the kitchen for some much needed water.

The sound of the tap running camouflages Frankie’s movement, you don’t hear him behind you. He’s got stealth in him, harbored there from before. He’s light on his feet when he chooses to be—nimble-like, bordering on feline—and you startle with a bubbly chuckle when you spin around to discover him far closer than you anticipated.

“What are you doing?”

“Keeping us hydrated,” you grin, as if it were obvious. You’re welcome.

He hums, the note rumbling against the cage of his ribs, and lessens the distance between you with a single stride. “That can wait.”

He rids you of the glasses, hurriedly placing them on the counter, and meets you in a kiss—and fuck can that man kiss. Frankie, like with all things, is responsive—attentive. His lips are fever-laced and wanton, and he roves against yours like they’re designed to— fated for no one else’s but your own— nipping and tonguing at your honeyed whines, orphaned there in the well of your mouth.

His hands vine up your body, so deprived of the luxury of your form - of touch - and he grabs at anything he can— your hips, your waist, your breasts through the cotton of your shirt— their half moon curves sitting ripe in his palms.

After ushering you up to the countertop, he strips you of your jean shorts, your bikini bottom sloughing down your calves along with them, and hoists your feet onto the fake granite, prying your legs wide for him.

When he gets an eyeful of your gleaming pussy, pearled with arousal, the wind gets punched straight out of him.

“Jesus honey,” he groans, “you been like this the whole ride home?”

Your brain is numb, lagging with lust. You don’t trust your voice to speak—all you can do is nod.

“Poor thing,” he simpers. “Poor pretty thing, all wound up for me—all wet.”

You whimper at his tone—graveled, just shy of condescending—and your knees weaken shut before he snatches them apart.

“Sit still.”

It’s a command, there’s no room for disobedience; he orders it with a soldier's voice—that dead thing he wears like dog tags around his neck. Vice grip widening your legs, Frankie sinks down onto his shins, head leveled with your core, engrossed with the sight of your damp sex quivering.

Blotchy warmth creeps up your neck, like ivy crawling over brick.

He’s staring at you— hungry and possessed and simply staring at your open cunt and you begin to fidget once more—riling under his umbered appraisal.

“Sit still baby girl,” he murmurs, softer now and desperate too—intoxicated with the heady perfume of your heat. “Lemme just— fuck, I gotta taste you…”

When he swipes the deft muscle of his tongue through your slit, your head careens back onto the cabinets, plates and bowls rattling behind the wood.

Oh god, Frankie.

He’s got a talent for this— an excruciating, body wracking talent. He thirsts for you something dangerous, something unquenchable; he tugs at your labia, forming his lips around your clit, lapping at your essence— the ocean musk, that sea foam wet.

You fumble through his hair, mussing the saline woven strands with urgent fingers as you grind grind grind, rolling your hips to meet him in a covetous show of want and he purrs into your pussy as you fuck his face, the scratch of his stubble chafing at your legs.

It doesn’t take long, not with the fervor of how he’s claiming your cunt with his mouth. You soak Frankie’s chin— you nearly fucking drown him with it—and he’s glistening with you when he finally emerges for air, pulling you to him to slant his lips against yours, letting you savor your own taste on his hot tongue.

“Bedroom. Now,” he husks, breath hitching as his nose grazes along your ear, and with two hands under your armpits, he gathers you off the countertop. Frankie lands a swat at the plump of your backside, sending you scurrying through the living room with a shriek—completely bypassing the abandoned pile of laundry left lying on the couch.

He smirks—delirious and ramrod stiff—sauntering behind you, enamored with the pendulum sway of your hips as you lead him to the bed.

You’ve never been here. You’ve never gone this far. You both have tiptoed this narrow line for months; he’s fingered your ass plenty—you have even gone so far as to don a butt plug. You’ve discussed anal—toyed with the idea, flirted in circles around it like tittering birds.

But you’ve never taken Frankie’s cock. Not yet.

He’s been working you loose and limber for the better part of fifteen minutes, delving himself knuckle deep into your slicked hole until you’re sputtering for more— until you’re downright sopping and fucking shaking— and not with trepidation but with desire. Frankie’s made you gluttonous. Frankie’s made you voracious.

You’re starving for him.

“You gonna let me have this now?” He presses a digit over your ass, kissing his thumb into the knot there.

You tremble, nodding frantic.

“Think this pretty little ass can take me, baby?”

He serves you a slap, plush skin jiggling and pricking pink under his palm. You keen into him, in search of the promise he’s been baiting you with and you arch your hips, gyrating back onto fucking nothing.

“Yes. Yes—” You twist, chin corkscrewed around to see him. You want to watch. You want to watch as he disappears inside you— as you swallow him.

“A-Are you sure?” he asks, suddenly gone gentle around the lines fraying from his eyes—those wrinkles he’s hard-earned and won, like badges, like medals—from all his years spent under an unforgiving sun, all of that which he has seen and endured. Survived. Your Frankie, always thoughtful, always checking. A goddamn gentleman, even now—even as his dick brays hard and angry against the soft of his tawny stomach. “Because really, we don’t have to—”

You cut him off with a whimper, splaying your pelvis up to him—spreading yourself, letting him see the filth dripping from your seam, dappling your inner thighs. “Fuck me,” you whine, both holes puckering for him. “Fill me up, like you said you would— please.”

Something shifts across his features like a shadow and his expression morphs until it steels— his pupils dilating to a predatorial onyx— and he spits into his palm, coating his shaft, jerking himself with it.

He hisses as he guides himself into you, as you accommodate around him, as you envelop him entirely— inch by veritable inch. He has to station a hand to the base of your lumbar, struggling to maintain his composure—air rattling in and out his lungs as he attempts to breathe.

“Shit,” he gasps, “t-this okay?”

You fist the comforter, coiling the fabric into a ball. It’s a stretch— it’s a real goddamn stretch— and briefly you consider that he might, in fact, snap you in two...

Francisco Morales is going to split you clean in half—and God, if you don’t you love it.

“Yes - yes baby - keep going. D-Don’t stop.”

He pitches into you, setting a legato tempo— transfixed by the lurid juncture where you converge into one. “You- you’re so tight. Shit, you’re—”

He silences himself with a delicious moan, biting at his lower lip until the vessels there burst and it purples, and deals a particularly aggressive thrust— one you respond to with an ugly wail of your own, eyes somersaulting in their sockets.

You’re both impatient, verging on rabid, and it doesn’t take long for him to set a rougher pace and fuck you faster - harder - hammering into your ass until you see stars, popping and fizzing in front of your retinas, a symphony of guttural grunts and carnal praise fogging up the bedroom.

Your pussy feels so empty you could cry—weeping and gaping and fluttering for him as he takes your tight ring of muscle, fucking himself to the hilt. It’s like he’s behind your brain—like he’s carved his way up your spine and nudging at the nape of your neck with how deep he’s driving into you—restless. Ceaseless. His balls slap slap slap against your puffy cunt and you pant— girlish and buoyant with the dulled smacks to your sore clit.

“Please,” you sob, “Please, I need—”

You can barely push the words out—your mind is of no help and your tongue lolls useless, languid in your mouth. Your motor functions have all but puttered to a halt, every scrap of you fighting to stay above the sensation that’s threatening to drag you under its current. The rip tide of it all, of Frankie’s cock, coursing through your ass, tempting to hurdle you out into the dark, wet blue.

“Tell me,” Frankie rasps, scraping through his throat. “Tell me, pretty baby.”

Your response is pathetic—you can hardly dignify it as a response at all. Your temple is pressed into the mattress, hair knotted with brine and sand, and all you can do is coo.

Frankie folds over you, angling himself to graze his teeth over your shoulder—savoring the salt and sex tang bathing your skin, all those pheromones and velveteen chemicals anointing you—baptizing you anew for him. He’s gruff when he murmurs, his beard grating your freshly tanned skin.

“C’mon sweetheart - hng, fuck - what do you need?”

“My clit,” you rush out, needy. “My clit. Please, oh my god Frankie I-I need you to, I need – oh fuck—” And your pleas are mummed by a rapturous moan as he trails his hand from the hollow of your hip to the apex of your cleft and flicks.

Fuck. Fuck, oh Christ—

There’s a ringing in your ears, buzzing you deaf, making you dumb—or maybe it’s just your heart, beating loud and errant against your skull—you can’t say. You don’t feel human. Frankie’s pounding into that cinched channel and playing with your clit—swiveling eddies into your swollen nub—and you feel like an animal. You feel debased. You feel disgusting and perfect and you’re fucking drooling; cheek squished and mouth agape, saliva pools from your wagging maw, darkening the white linen you’re being driven into.

“You need me in your pussy, too?”

He doesn’t wait for you to answer him— he already knows what you need, how you need to have every part of you gorged on him— and Frankie dips his fingertips into your entrance, hooking them up and up and in, fucking in time to the cant of his hips.

He’s in you. Everywhere, everywhere—every possible neuron and synapse consumed with him.

“You need me like this—fucking you this deep? Fucking both your pretty holes?” he growls, weaving his hand lower to grab a fistful of your hair, rucking your head up. Throat stretched bare for him, your mewls muddle to cock-drunk cries as he spears you on himself again and again and again.

Yes yes yes fuck harder please please Frankie

You're pleading with him—you’ve been reduced to meager begging— and a chorus of slurs sings your release as you contract around him and cum, the cradle of your hips bucking reflexively.

“Fuck, that’s it,” he seethes, “you’re so good for me baby, Jesus fuck—”

He’s close now—his blissed finish drawing nearer and nearer with each sharp snap of his hips. Frankly, he’s shocked he’s managed to last as long as he has; it’s a small miracle he hadn’t cum the instant he slotted himself inside you with that very first stroke.

“Baby,” he warns, losing his rhythm. You saddle your spine, hollowing out the valley of your back and arch pretty and supple for him— preening under his weight. He moans at that, and through your fucked out haze you have the wherewithal to smirk at him, devious and prideful, a wild look owning your eye.

Frankie has to brace himself on your hips, untangling from your locks to bruise into the pillow of your skin— gripping on for dear fucking life as he plows you. You’re strangling him. You’re strangling the thick of his cock until he’s dizzy with it—until he’s feral and blind and he can’t hold on, can’t keep fighting this fucking monsoon that’s raging in his core.

“Baby, I’m gonna cum. I’m gonna—fuck me, oh shit—” He shouts, spurting inside you thrust for thrust, painting your virgin walls with his seed. It’s too much— after all that, and you’re still too tight— and he’s overstimulated to the point of delirium. Frankie roots himself still, cum dribbling out your stuffed hole while he rides out the high of his orgasm—his vision, his senses, his goddamn soul, slowly oozing back into him. When he slides free from you, he does so with a pained heave, leaving you yawning with his absence.

You feel shredded. Vacant. You’ve been sent to another fucking dimension all together.

Without wasting another second, Frankie claws you up. You’re easy and malleable, bones and muscles too strung out to protest, and he whirls you around to bar you to his chest—crushing your sweaty body to his with bullet marred arms— the same arms that have taken lives, that have spared them, too. The same arms that link around you, delicate and daisy-chained, like you’re the most precious thing he has.

And you are.

You are.

Frankie kisses you breathless, drinking rich from your cup— tongue greedy and reverent as he kneels there at your altar, praying his sins into your mouth.

So gorgeous, he croons, peppering your face—your flushed cheeks, your perspired brow—with his lips as he tells you over and over and over again.

So good for me, pretty baby

Was that okay?

Fuck, you’re a dream

You’re my best girl—you’re my only girl

Was that okay?

God, you’re my whole fucking world

Was that okay? Was I okay?

Are you okay?

You swoon, helpless to the contented sigh that seeps out from you like mist. You’ve gone limp against the breadth of him. He has reduced you to rubber, left wobbling in his grasp, and you’re so damn full—your heart and your body—all of it. You feel unequivocally complete. You feel safe, you feel home.

You are home. Francisco is home.

He’s flattening out the nest of your hair, taming the damage he previously delivered to it, earning from you a sleepy grin into the muggy crook of his neck. And with the last of your waning strength you hold his pieces up to the light—the light you left on in the hall as the night grew dark around you, the one who’s yellow glow your naked bodies bask in now, and you say

I love you

I love this

I love this too

tags:

@krissology @heartsofbeskar @madhattervanessa @andiesturgss @sharkbait77 @tenderwhat @javier-pena @pedros-mustache @frannyzooey @chasingdreamer @djarinsbeskar @thosewickedlovelies @juletheghoul @not-the-droids @filthybookworm @pilothusband @letterfromvienna @keeper0fthestars @greatcircle79 @day-off-inkyoto @mermaidxatxheart @lawfulgranola @heatherbel @quica-quica-quica @stuckonthefiction @janesbrontes

#frankie morales x reader #frankie morales x you #frankie morales x fem!reader #frankie catfish morales #frankie morales #francisco catfish morales #triple frontier #triple frontier fanfic #Frankie morales fanfic #Frankie catfish morales x reader #frankie x you #frankie x reader

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tommyspeakycap · 3 years

Note

Can we get baby little Shelby find a bunny and ask Tommy and John to take it home. And get scolded by Polly when they at home? 💕💕

more pre war Tommy fluff ;)

Bunny

“Tommy!”

The dark haired man’s heart flies into his throat, his mind immediately kicking into gear as he drops the coin he was about to flip. He was deciding whether or not to buy a horse with a new inflow of cash they had recently gotten. That horse is lost the second he hears the shriek that came from somewhere behind him. The heavy boots on his feet make easy work of crushing through powdery snow, but give a very little to prevent him from tripping and slipping; although the fear coursing through him and his extreme haste may well have contributed to his somewhat uncoordinated limbs.

In the maybe a minute that it takes form Tommy to get from where he was to where he had traced his little sister to, a million and one thoughts race through his mind. He fears every worst case scenario his mind can conjure up and immediately blames himself for bringing you out to the country to play in some fresh snow with John and Finn. The air was much clearer out here and so too was Tommy’s mind. He could think, be free of the city smoke and the harsh environment that appears to be tacked to his work in the family business. There was so much pressure on the raven haired bookmaker to uphold his own personal morals while also living a notoriously immoral life. He tried to keep his hands clean, prevent himself from muddying the line between pointless violence and the necessary survival and protection of his family.

So going with his 5 year old little sister out to the county was something not uncommon for him. And the snow had only given him more reason to. He regretted that now.

“What-” Tommy wheezed out, unable to speak for lack of his breath after attempting to run through the deep, deep snow. “What’s happened,” he coughs, “Are you alri-“

“Tommy!” The little girl whispers harshly, waving her hands at him disapprovingly, “Shhhhh, you’ll scare it away!” Tommy snaps his mouth shut, instead opting to take the five year olds outstretched hand and crouch down as she instructs him. On her other side is John; crouched down with one arm around Finn to keep him still. “What are we looking at?” Tommy asks quietly, his neck craned to try and spot whatever his other siblings had noticed.

“It’s a bunny, Tom. Look.” (y/n) points with her little hand and Tommy follows the general direction in which her hand is showing him. In doing so, he squints and finds his gaze falling upon a small white rabbit sitting picking a blade of grass that it had pulled through the snow. “They want to take it home.” John states, grinning at Tommy something like a Cheshire Cat because he knows for a fact that man isn't able to say no to the puppy dogs eyes of (y/n) and Finn Shelby when they truly wanted something.

“Hm, I don't think so.” He mumbles, trying to keep his eyes off of the disappointed face of his younger siblings. “You know Aunt Polly’ll go mad.” The second he does turn his head to see his youngest siblings gazing up at him in the desperate way he knows always works, he regrets it. “Please Tommy, pleeeease?” (y/n) begs, clasping her cold little hands together and pulling her most convincing puppy eyes Tommy might've ever seen. “Yeah Tommy, please? Pretty pretty please?” Finn joins in, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement and anticipation at the idea of having the little bunny as a pet.

“Yeah Tom,” John sniggers, stubbing out his cigarette on the snowy ground. The elder brother puts on a pout to mimic (y/n) and Finn, not serving to make things any easier for Tommy as the youngest two weren't able to pick up on John’s teasing nature and sarcastic reiteration of their words. They took it as encouragement while Tommy knew John would be going home to Martha and his own kids, thus wouldn't have to be on the reviewing end of Polly’s temper. Tommy rolls his eyes and inhales deeply, thinking briefly about how angry Polly would be compared to how much it would make you and Finn giggle to have a pet even if only for a while before Tommy would free it back into the wild and tell some lie about a magic bunny farm. The kids chanting brought his mind back. “Please, please, please!”

“Alright,” Tommy cuts them off, “Alright. But we’re not chasing it around all afternoon.”

How on earth Tommy ended up holding his little sister as he stood in the doorway of the Shelby family home kicking the snow off his boots while said little sister had his big trench coat wrapped around her and her smaller jacket used as a blanket for their new bunny rabbit friend, he will never know. He genuinely felt like if he had been outside for one more minute he would have actually frozen stiff, however it was always his top priority that his littlest sibling was as safe as she could be; so it was suffice to say the idea of her getting frostbite and slash or hypothermia after she insisted on wrapping the little rabbit in her own coat was less than appealing to Tommy, so she could keep his warm winter jacket as long as she desired.

“Right Finn, straight into the living room and not a peep to Pol alright?” Finn nods vigorously in a show of his determination to follow his brothers order as he places the wrapped up bunny into the young boys arms. Finn tries to run as unsuspiciously as he can past Polly in the kitchen to go through to the living room where only Ada sat, reading a book by the fire underneath a blanket.

“Tommy?” The little girls voice draws an “Mhm?” from him as he battles to get her stiff winter boots off of her tiny cold feet. “What're we going to name him?” She enquires, her voice as inquisitive as any other curious 5 year old is. Tommy hums in thought, tapping (y/n)’s other foot in the way that he does that tells her to put her foot down and lift the other one for Tommy to pull that boot off too. There was a distinct routine between the two that had been established in the last five years of her life with Tommy acting as her primary caregiver.

“I don't know, love. Whatever you want to call him. Just remember to stay quiet about it yeah?” He looks up to see his little sister nodding firmly, placing her finger over her lips just as Tommy had done so many times when secrecy or silence was needed.

“Alrighty then.” Tommy says, lifting both the pairs of boots easily in one hand and putting them by the other shoes. He moves his hands to under the small girls armpits and hoists her gently back up onto his hip as to avoid her stepping small puddles of water that had collected from the snow on her boots and his by the door. “Shall we go see what your brothers gotten up to with that-”

“Jesus fucking Christ Tommy.”

Both siblings turn their heads quickly to face Polly when they hear her speaking with her stern scolding tone turned on. Polly immediately notes how Tommy looks slightly secretive, like he was ready to start either lying or making some form excuse for something for which her niece looked rather guilty. Deer in the headlights kind of expression. “Look, Pol...” Tommy begins, but is interrupted by his aunt firmly shaking her head and marching towards him.

“I’ve told you a million times Thomas. She’s five. That means you do still need to put her bloody hat on when you take her out in the cold but you don’t need to fucking carry her everywhere.” She huffs, pressing both her palms against (y/n)’s cold rosy cheeks, “Shes bloody freezing.” Her scolding tone never fails to make Tommy feels as though he’s still a young boy who’s been caught misbehaving by his aunt. However now he’s an adult with responsibility for his little sister and somehow, he ends up on the receiving end of that tone far more than the littlest member of the family ever will. Polly peels Tommy’s coat away off the little girl in his arms so she could hang it up to hopefully dry some before he next needs it and (y/n) doesn't mind not wearing her brothers jacket anymore, however the words that Polly speaks about putting her back down only serves to make her cling a little tighter subconsciously.

“She's only little, Pol.” Tommy defends, “And we had long day, haven’t we sweetheart?” Polly wants to scoff when (y/n) nods her head and offers up that angel smile that wins the hearts of her entire family, but the woman can’t help but smile back and shake her head. “Well,” she huffs slightly, her hand reaching back up to the little girl to to brush the snow off (y/n)’s hair, “I think the very least your brother could do if he was going to have you out in the freezing cold all day would be to put a bloody hat on you.”

The little girl giggles, flicking her eyes to Tommy to inspect his reaction to their aunts words.

“Remembered.” He notes flippantly with a grin and Polly knows fully well that it was not remembered because putting a hat on top of that little girls soft locks of hair was something he had never once remembered to do without a reminder since she was merely a little bald baby.

“Course.” She responds teasingly, “Dinner’s out soon.”

Tommy nods his head before Polly walks away in the direction of the kitchen again, where Tommy had no doubt Arthur is now lingering to pick off the scraps of dinner before its put out on the table for everyone else.

“That was a close one, Tom.” The little girl on his hip whispers quietly, her wide eyes causing Tommy to chuckle heartily as he takes them both through to the living room to see what Finn and now likely Ada were doing with this rabbit. “Yes,” Tommy agrees, walking into the living room “It very much was. Hello Ada.” Ada immediately rolls her eyes at the sound of Tommy’s voice.

“Pol’s going to kill you, you know.” She states, standing and crossing her arms firmly over her chest as Tommy sets his youngest sister down on the floor to run over to where Finn sat with the bunny close to the heat the fire was giving off. “Probably.” Tommy nods.

Ada turns away to wrap her blanket around her only sister, the one she had wished and prayed for since she had been merely a little girl herself. Tommy vividly remembers the many occasions when Ada was not only his youngest sibling, but also his only sister and recalls how unhappy she had been about those facts. Finn being born eased only one of those issues, but Ada rested a while for the time that Finn was a baby before again pestering their mother about wanting a little sister again.

She had been ecstatic when (y/n) was born, and she had been besotted with that sweet little girl ever since.

“You always forget to put her hat on, Thomas.” Ada chastises, the reprimand drawing a chuckle from her brother who takes a seat down on the couch and crosses one leg on top of the other. “So I’ve heard.” Tommy mumbles under his breath, just loud enough for her to hear and stretch out her leg to kick his when she too sat back down on the couch.

“Twat.” She hisses.

It was Tommy’s turn to role his eyes at his sisters flippant comment, paying no mind to her words thrown in a light tease that he knew she only ever half meant.

“That’s not very nice, Ada.”

(y/n) doesn't do so much as turn around when she chides those words in dismay to Ada’s insult aimed at her Tom. There was no hiding how the little girl adored Tommy. “Exactly Ada,” Tommy grins widely, giving Ada the biggest shit eating look he can muster as he tried not to laugh, “And that’s why you're my favourite, aren't you my love?” The 5 year old simply nods her head in response to her brothers words before turning straight back to play with her new pet.

“Well, she might be your favourite but you certainly won’t be Polly’s once she sees you’ve brought that home. She’ll go mad.” Ada nods her head in the direction of the fluffy white animal in their living room. Tommy shrugs his shoulders indifferently, “They're happy though, aren't they? and quiet. Worth it really.”

Ada knew very well that Tommy was right, although it was likely that she wouldn't even think to much on that in his vicinity, just incase he even got the sensation that she was thinking he was in the right. They’ve got a big family and a lot of hard work had to go into making business run smoothly to provide for everyone. The younger kids can sometimes go amiss to the elder siblings on particularly busy days. Sometimes playing and talking to them gets overlooked or their clothes go on back to front because everyone forgot they sometimes still needed help with things like that.

So giving them the simple pleasure of almost a normal childhood - not one living with the Shelby name and subsequently the future of the Peaky Blinders tacked to them - by letting them a pet that they can look after and love on for a few days at least was something Tommy was willing to grin and bare the wrath of Polly Gray for.

He was a sucker for that little girl, so when she’s happy there are few things in the world Thomas Shelby wouldn't endure to keep it that way.

#tommy shelby x sister reader #tommy shelby x sister!reader #shelby!reader #shelby sister reader #baby shelby #peaky blinders #peaky blinders blurb

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bratz-kitten · 3 years

Text

attack on titan characters - birth chart analysis 🌙

Here is my take on the big 6 of Levi, Eren, Armin and Mikasa of attack on titan/shingeki no kyojin! I kept their sun signs since we know the day and month of their birthday and since I think they’re absolutely perfect. If you want me to do my take on the others (like Jean, Historia, Erwin, Hanji, Connie, Sasha, Reiner, etc) please let me know! (spoiler warning!)

Levi Ackerman

sun in capricorn - levi mf ackerman is fuelled by three things and three things only: LOYALTY, a strong moral code and power. he is seen by most people as a heartless, unemotional bastard but is canonically the most emotional character - he shows love through very indirect ways and he’s the peak of capricorn in the sense that he represses his emotions – he smiled literally ONE time in four seasons, and didn’t once shed a tear. he’s very hard to read. has a lot of respect for his superiors and follows the orders of only those he’s loyal to. he’s driven by his moral codes in the sense that the protection of humanity is his prime motive for fighting titans. like a true capricorn, is the master of his field of work and cares the most about being a survey corp member. please protect this tragic baby.

virgo rising - two words: CLEAN FREAK. this man has a strong need to be presentable at all times and hates getting blood on his hands for the single fact that he needs himself and his environment to be clean. his obsession with being clean is very much due to his childhood trauma and how he lived in in poor conditions in the underground. he has many quirks that correlate with this: the way he holds his cup, the carvat he uses bc of his mother, and the way he always cuts his own hair because that’s the way his mother used to do it. intimidating and demands respect. DRY HUMOUR.

moon in scorpio - i think he has many similarities with mikasa, especially in the moon and venus. introverted and hates people but will go to the ends of the earth to protect the ones he loves and respects. represses emotions and internalizes his hatred until he has a mental breakdown - which happens in the form of extreme violence. VERY sensitive and emotional even if he doesn’t show it. he’s very intuitive and often acts based on gut; he’s secretive and vindictive. very wise and great at giving advice. doesn’t let himself get manipulated and uses shitty situations to his advantage (like with the reeves company). trust is the most important thing to him.

mercury in aquarius - levi is extremely logical, and hates when others involve their feelings in the making of decisions. his decisions are always backed up by strong arguments and others often see him as cold and detached. i saw someone mention something extremely interesting about aquarius mercury’s/people with their mercuries in the 11th house: despite not being very sociable, others are drawn to them for friendships – and often they’re the introverts who get “adopted” by extroverts. this is 100% levi’s case, hanji and erwin practically adopted him. being very vulgar with his words and having a distinctive sense of humour, he’s very humanitarian and is actually really talkative but only when he’s very comfortable around someone. blunt, always tells it like it is – like when he tells eren he can’t know what the right choice really is and he needs to choose it himself. teases and insults his friends as a form of affection.

mars in scorpio - levi’s a fighter, a survivor. he knows what it’s like to come from nothing and have to build himself up. very confrontational. reclaims his power by exerting intimidation and mastering violence. others fear doing as much as make a joke at his expense. understands other’s motivations and characters very easily. he’s very intuitive. very serious due to his need for having an intense and demanding presence, for being respected and valued. he’s the one who everyone sighs of relief when things go to shit and he appears because you know he’s the strongest and most dependable person.

venus in capricorn - good luck getting this motherfucker to open up. his trust is very hard to gain but is necessary for working with him – he places his full trust in his comrades and demands the same from them. very work-oriented and takes relationships very serious; it’s really telling that he cares little for romance because capricorn venuses are the ones to date to marry, and will only devote themselves to someone once they believe they’ve met the one. they either want a more powerful and mature partner or they exude that energy (levi is the latter). slightly parental – we see this in the way that levi is pretty much the dad figure. it’s called squad levi for a reason, after all. very responsible. takes care of loved ones and often uses tough love as a form of discipline.

Eren Jaeger - im not even kidding with this one, he has extreme aries energy

sun in aries - eren feels the need to be very independent and he hates whenever he has to depend on mikasa and others, wanting to be strong enough to reverse the roles. he’s very self-confident, bold and direct. very impulsive, he’s quick to anger but is also very quick to forget - especially seen with his arguments with jean, fighting him is basically a love language at this point. aries suns are very fast thinkers and their strong energy may come off as intimidating. they have great intentions but that often becomes muddled with their impulsivity and the fact that they don’t think ideas through. eren is unabashedly himself and fights relentlessly for what he wants. his aries energy also makes him extremely motivated! he believes in the impossible and will make it happen no matter what.

aries rising – aries risings are the trailblazers. they ooze intensity. eren has very much a baby face and, due to his impulsivity and childish charm, people tend to baby him a lot – in the sense that he’s this kid surrounded by adults who needs supervision at all times or he’ll get into deep shit. aries risings are also marked by their extreme need for action, they’re the ones to do now and apologize later instead of asking for permission to do something in the first place. he is guided by his passion and is a natural leader who inspires everyone to fight alongside him. aries risings have a lot of energy which they need to express in a physical way, making them be prone to be very athletic and lead very active lives. he’s also extremely competitive and is driven by the force of becoming stronger than mikasa, and often feels angry when he realizes how stronger than him other people can be. at the same time, this pressure to be better is put solely on himself. he’s a dumbass with a good-heart and pure intentions.

moon in sagittarius – all this motherfucker talks about is freedom and seeing the world past the walls. he craves adventure and is extremely optimistic. but even if a sagittarius moon needs their freedom, they are still absolutely ride-or-dies and once they’ve commited to something, NOTHING or NO ONE can stop their determination. these are also the people to try their best to always appear cheerful and full of determination to hide their sad façade – like when he was nearly vomiting when talking about the titans to the other recruits when they began the training in the military but still forced himself to say that the titans aren’t scary at all and that they aren’t a big deal; he naturally inspires others and fills them with courage. but the way they put on this strong and brave façade leads to a strong emotional turmoil, violent urges and a sudden hostility to others. they are filled with surpressed anger that can lead them through very destructive paths – and the happy-go-lucky child might just lose her hope. we see this in eren in the most heartbreaking way.

mercury in aries – LOUD!!! eren speaks what’s on his mind with NO hesitation whatsover. he’s very quick to defend his friends and points of view, and speaks openly about his passions and dreams. he’s very assertive and tenacious. short attention span and not afraid to give a different opinion from someone else’s. very passionate about what he argues about. very expressive and when an aries mercury disagrees with you, you’ll know it immediately by their facial expression. confident and thrives on inspiring others. remember him being mad when it was discovered the possibility of all titans being humans because now he didn’t know who the enemy is and he NEEDS to hate someone and blame them in order to keep going? ARIES MERCURY ENERGY!!

mars in aries - people look to mars in aries to lead them. they’re full of energy and dynamic, and very athletic - eren exceeds at hand-to-hand combat and, in the other subjects where he’s not so good, his determination makes him push forward and become better. VERY hot-headed and confrontational, which is both the source of all their problems and their strength - they are not afraid of going after what they want and are willing to go through any obstacle to do so, and they’re also not afraid of upsetting other people in order to do so. eren is courageous, loves to take initiative and is very enthusiastic - something that is very contageous. competitive and hates compromise, he likes getting his own way. aries mars are also very individualistic and can have a huge ego.

venus in pisces - i know this is going to confuse a lot of people - like, how does he have so much aries energy, how is he so intense yet has one of the softest venus placements? i deeply believe he’s a pisces venus, and here’s why. his friends are EVERYTHING to him. pisces venus’ love very deeply and are very dependent on their loved ones, and eren is extremely protective of his loved ones and is willing to do anything to protect them. pisces venus’ are very vengeful, too, something that people seem to brush off about them - they might not do anything when you mess with them but as soon as you mess with their friends it’s game over. i also get a lot of “there was no other way, the word had to be fixed” vibes from this placement? like, this placement gives me the energy of someone willing to commit awful crimes under the excuse of it being for the greater good, which is something he dramatically experiences as he grows older and witnesses the cruelty of the world.

Armin Arlert

sun in scorpio - armin very resourceful!! he easily adapts to the circunstances he’s in and works his way around it. very intelligent and with great memory. extremely manipulative, cunning and perceptive. scorpios are known for their capability to be great investigators due to their natural curiosity, and armin has this deep need to see the world outside of the walls and he studies all there is to know about it with great passion. determined to succeed.

cancer rising - armin just wants to achieve his dream and it’s so soft. cancer risings are very receptive of other’s emotions and incredibly sensitive, but it’s difficult for them to open up to others. his appearance is very soft and delicate. loves to help others and has a naturally warm presence that makes others feel comfortable in his presence. give off a very grounded and stable energy, but this is often because they try to hide their most intense emotions and don’t know how to deal with them/don’t want to bother others by opening up about it.

moon in pisces - one word: EMPATHY!!! very compassionate. tendency to become a martyr and be very self-sacrificial. VERY imaginative, he is the strategist, after all. can feel others emotions and read them very easily. avoids confrontation but feels a strong need to take the weight off of others’ shoulders and to solve all their problems. very loving and giving, in tune with his emotions and emotionally intelligent. on the other side, this caring side of him can make him see other people through rose-colored glasses, and he is prone to believing in the best in people and giving them the benefit of the doubt. but when they’ve proven their true nature to him, he’ll see them for what they are and will no longer defend them, even if still feeling remorse. notice how he’s always like “this had to be done, we had no other choice” to justify his actions.

mercury in scorpio - bro armin’s eyes are so intense. when he gets on his manipulative bullshit it’s IMPOSSIBLE to look away from his gaze. he practically communicates through the eyes. armin is very sharp and his innocent appearance has everyone still thinking of him as a sweet angel as if he isn’t a whole war criminal. he easily psychoanalizes others to know what they want and uses it to his advantage, like how he used berthold’s love for annie to manipulate him to let eren go after him and reiner kidnapped him. scorpio mercuries be knowing shit, they be knowing everyone’s secrets and others usually confide in them as if they’re their therapists.

mars in pisces - mars in pisces makes a person avoid physical confrontation at all costs. notice how armin’s first response to everyone wanting to kill reiner and bertold/the marleyans was “please let’s just talk about this first”? he hates violence and deems it not worthy most times. he is very physically weak and aware of his limitations, unlike eren and levi, whose first instinct is to use violence in order to get what they want. no, armin has developed a much more subtle and effective way to get what he wants without using violence: emotional manipulation. he is the KING of appearing innocent and naïve and having people feel bad for him and want to baby him and protect him, and due to his extremely intuitive nature, he knows EXACTLY what to say to someone to get under their skin. he twists his words and emotions to get what he needs out of people and it’s both incredible and dangerous. also, very self-sacrifical and his goals are based on his emotions.

venus in cancer - he loves so much and it’s so beautiful and heartbreaking. he gives everything to the ones he loves and thrives off of being helpful and keeping everyone safe. reads a lot into the behaviour of the people he loves. very emotionally intelligent, wants stability and to maintain peace and may bend over backwords to achieve that. needs to feel understood and has a soft spot for troubled people, those who are more demanding and assertive (eren and mikasa), people he can take care of and who can take care of him in return. very affectionate and communicative. warm presence, you can pretty much feel the love radiating out of him.

Mikasa Ackerman

sun in aquarius - if you get past the emotional walls of an aquarius that has them appearing detached and distant because they’d rather use intelligence than seem emotional, you’ll be met with an incredibly soft, loving and caring person. an aquarius strength is their ability to be very unique, individualistic and humanitarian individuals - they truly march to the beat of their own drum. mikasa possesses a great deal of determination and isn’t afraid of being rebellious, especially when her loved ones are in danger.

capricorn rising - people with capricorn rising had to learn to be very independent from a very young age. mikasa is very intimidating but she has a very doll-like beauty, common to many capricorn risings. these people have had to deal with a lot ever since childhood, but they are fighters and their determination has them being able to survive even unsurmountable odds stacked up against them. capricorn risings tend to be serious and disciplined, and with a melancholic aura to them – which mikasa perfectly embodies. but the fact that these people have cancer in their descendant makes them strongly emotionally attached to their loved ones.

aquarius moon - even under the most stressful and dangerous situations, mikasa always remains in control of her emotions. she thrives in those situations, it’s the adrenaline of the moment that has her being so good at controlling her emotions until it’s safe to be anything but racional again. aquarius moons are feel very misunderstood and tend to racionalize their emotions a lot. however, it’s only due to their fear of vulnerability that they build this emotional walls, because they experience very intense emotions. i always think about that survey corp member saying “what did you have to go through for you to be like this?” when she was perfectly stable in a life-or-death situation.

mercury in capricorn - mikasa is incredibly action-oriented and she speaks in a structured but confident way. although she’s on the quieter side and is reserved, she’s able to inspire everyone when all hope seems lost, and she’s taken up eren’s words of “if we don’t fight, we can’t win” and uses it constantly in order to keep going. she’s very hard to read due to her usually expressionless face, giving her a mysterious aura. she’s very ambitious, persuasive and determined.

mars in capricorn - when people say that mars in capricorn people are the scariest when they’re angry, they’re not wrong. they act so calm and collected until suddenly they’re fixing you with a death glare and you’re rethinking all your life choices up until this point. mikasa might be extremely rational and calm, but as soon as someone threatens the ones she loves, she’ll stop at nothing to eliminate the threat. it’s like she fears nothing but ever being unable not to save them. she’s very responsible and reliable, with a lot of physical strength and stamina. very PROTECTIVE, grounded and GIVING

venus in virgo - this is one of the things that makes mikasa so similar to levi, the way they love. this bitch is LOYAL to her very core. she knows very well where her loyalties are - eren and armin - and is ready to kill all her close friends and superiors in order to protect them. she threatened to kill historia if she got in the way of getting eren back home safely, jumped levi on sight when he wanted to save erwin instead of armin, and got pissed at connie for doubting eren’s intentions after the whole marleyan ordeal. acts of service are very much her love language - she constantly picks up eren’s and armin’s stuff and carries it herself or orders them to rest while she works. it’s very hard to gain her trust and loyalty but once you do it’s forever, she’s very selective about the people she cares for. she’s possessive, too - giving historia the coldest death glare in the world when she saw her with eren. i’ve also noticed that venus in virgo are very difficult to declare their emotions!! they’ll just wait for the person to notice their indirect acts of affection. very attentive to the needs and details of loved ones.

#attack on titan #shingeki no kyoujin #levi #levi ackerman #eren #eren jaeger #eren yeager #mikasa #mikasa ackerman #armin #armin arlert #birth chart analysis #astrology

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