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#like they were just trying to find some way for there to be an impossible decision for the player at the end
sirfrogsworth · 3 days
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Let's talk about vintage lenses.
Here is your cool samurai show with modern lenses.
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Here is your cool samurai show with vintage lenses.
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Hollywood is no stranger to fads.
We are currently in the middle of a "make everything too dark" fad. But that fad is starting to overlap with "let's use really old lenses on ridiculously high resolution cameras."
This is Zack Snyder with a Red Monstro 8K camera.
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He is using a "rehoused" vintage 50mm f/0.95 Canon "Dream Lens" which was first manufactured in 1961.
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This old lens is put inside a fancy new body that can fit onto modern cameras.
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Which means Zack is getting nowhere near 8K worth of detail. These lenses are not even close to being sharp. Which is fine. I think the obsession with detail can get a bit silly and sometimes things can be "too sharp."
But it is a funny juxtaposition.
The dream lens is a cool lens. It has character. It has certain aberrations and defects that can actually be beneficial to making a cool photograph. It's a bit like vinyl records for photography.
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[ Peter Thoeny ]
It has vignetting and distortion and a very strange swirly background blur.
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[ Gabriel Binder ]
Optical engineers have been spending the last 60 years trying to eliminate these defects. And I sometimes wonder if they are confused by this fad.
"I WORKED 70 HOURS PER WEEK TO GET PERFECT CORNER SHARPNESS!"
And whether you prefer to work with a perfect optic or a vintage one... it is a valid aesthetic decision either way. I think vintage glass can really suit candid natural light photography. You can almost get abstract with these lenses.
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[ Peter Theony ]
Personally I like to start with as close to perfect as possible and then add the character in later. That way I can dial in the effect and tweak how much of it I want. But even with modern image editing tools, some of these aberrations are difficult to recreate authentically.
That said, it can be very easy for the "character" of these lenses to become distracting. And just like when someone first finds the lens flares in Photoshop, it can be easy for people to overdo things.
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Zack Snyder decided to be his own cameraman and used only vintage glass in his recent movies and it has led to some complaints about the imagery.
I mean, Zack Snyder overdoing something? I can't even imagine it.
Non camera people felt Army of the Dead was blurry and a bit weird but they couldn't quite explain why it felt that way.
The dream lens has a very wide aperture and it lets in a lot of light. But it also has a very very shallow depth of field. Which means it is very difficult to nail focus.
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[ Peter Thoeny ]
Her near eye is in focus and her far eye is soft. You literally can't get an entire face in focus.
There is no reason you have to use the dream lens at f/0.95 at all times. But just like those irresistible lens flares, Zack couldn't help himself.
Here is a blueprint that you can't really see.
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Extreme close ups of faces without autofocus at f/0.95 is nearly impossible to pull critical focus on.
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Looks like Zack nailed the area just above the eyebrow here.
Let's try to find the point of focus in this one.
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Ummmm... she is just... blurry. Missed focus completely.
But Zack isn't the only one going vintage. I've been seeing this a lot recently.
Shogun is a beautiful show. And for the most part, I really enjoyed the cinematography. But they went the vintage lens route and it kept going from gorgeous to "I can't not see it" distracting. And perhaps because I am familiar with these lens defects I am more prone to noticing. But I do think it hurt the imagery in a few spots.
Vingetting is a darkening of the corners of the frame.
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Light rays in the corners are much harder to control. A lot of modern lenses still have this problem, but they create software corrections to eliminate the issue. Some cameras do it automatically as you are recording the image.
Vintage lenses were built before lens corrections where a thing—before software was a thing. So you either have to live with them, try to remove them with VFX, or crop into your image and lose some resolution.
It's possible this is the aesthetic they wanted. They felt the vignetting added something to the image. But I just found my eyes darting to the corners and not focusing on the composition.
And then you have distortion.
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In this case, barrel distortion.
This is mostly prominent in wide angle lenses. In order to get that wider field of view the lens has to accept light from some very steep angles. And that can be quite difficult to correct. So you kind have to sacrifice any straight lines.
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And sometimes this was a positive contribution to the image.
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I thought the curved lines matched the way they were sitting here.
But most of the time I just felt like I was looking at feudal Japan through a fish's eye.
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It's a bit more tolerable as a still, but when all of these verticals are bowing in motion, I start to feel like I am developing tunnel vision.
I love that this is a tool that is available. Rehousing lenses is a really neat process and I'm glad this old glass is getting new life.
This documentary shows how lens rehousing is done and is quite fascinating if you are in to that sort of thing.
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But I think we are in a "too much of a good thing" phase when it comes to these lenses. I think a balance between old and new can be found.
And I also think maybe Zack should see what f/2.8 looks like. He might like having more than an eyebrow in focus.
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tiredfox64 · 3 days
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Hi! How are you? First of all, I love your way of writing, it's amazing! I wish I had that magic that you have. UwU <3 Can I ask you to write a Bi-Han x Chubby!Afab!Reader? Where the reader is Liu Kang's apprentice, but since he does not have time to train her, he takes her to Bi-Han and he mocks her for not seeming strong, but when they face each other, things change and for the first time Bi-Han meets He is attracted to her and wants her for himself. But the reader feels insecure, thinking that this was some kind of mockery. There can be a lot of fluff and a possessive Bi-Han. Please :3
Thick Thighs Can Change Lives
Prior notes: Hoi!! I’m doin fine just trying to finish the semester strong. How bout you? And thank you for liking my writing! (´・ω・`)
Pairing: Bi-Han x Chubby! Afab reader
Warnings ‼️: KICK HIS ASS!!! AHHHH
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It’s an honor to be an apprentice to Lord Liu Kang. He treats you well and always saw potential in you no matter what. Your body did not change the fact that you had a fighting spirit. There was strength in you that was hidden. Though others will doubt you they will eventually find out the truth that you are mighty.
If only Bi-Han saw that from the beginning.
You were unsure of Liu Kang’s decision to send you to the Lin Kuei for more training. He apologized profusely for not having enough time to do it himself. You understood since there were many others that he had to train. He trusted Bi-Han to take good care of you during your stay. If only the first interaction was good.
“This is the woman? Are you sure she is capable of fighting?” Bi-Han looked you up and down with a look of uncertainty.
“Trust me, Bi-Han. She is more than capable. There is a reason why she is my apprentice. Do not judge, lest ye be judged.” And he means it.
Bi-Han grumbled at Liu Kang’s response. He thinks the god is foolish for taking you in. You have proportions he hadn’t seen before on a warrior. He expects abs and flat stomachs, not chubby bellies. He circled you, checking you out from all angles and not in a good way. He pokes you to check for any muscles. You keep hearing a disappointed sigh.
“If this task is too hard for you, Bi-Han, I can always have the monks at the Wu Shi train her.”
Liu Kang’s words infuriated Bi-Han. He makes it sound like he can’t train you himself. That this task is impossible for a man like him. Forget it, he’ll take you in.
“No, I will take her in. She will be better than before. Come on.” He grabbed your hand and yanked you before you could even say goodbye to Liu Kang.
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There were many in the Lin Kuei who questioned their grandmaster’s decisions. You were not like them, that was evident.
He didn’t even work with you at first. After about two days you had to go up to him to ask if he was actually going to train you or not. Clearly it’s not that he’s into training other cause when you found him he was watching all the other Lin Kuei assassins train.
“Grandmaster, when are you going to train me? I thought that was the reason Lord Liu Kang brought me to you.” You reminded him of his purpose.
He groaned as he remembered that you were still here. If he’s going to train he will do it separate from the clan.
“Fine, come with me.”
You followed him to a secluded area of the temple. Your heart was pumping. You were excited to show that you are capable of anything but afraid of failing. Liu Kang’s words echoed in your head telling you to focus on your actions, not the outcome. Give it your best shot and kick his butt!
“Show me what you are capable of. I hope you can show me that you are a worth opponent.” He sounded like he already had little faith in you.
From the start of the fight you were already proving him wrong. You were blocking every attack. Bi-Han was going easy on you for now but seeing as you could at least defend yourself he was hoping you would attack soon.
Hell, you were even dodging his ice attacks. He couldn’t even freeze one of your legs in place. Looks like he was wrong to think that you would be an easier target to hit.
Throughout it all you watched as he grew more and more frustrated. He set the bar too low and seeing that he was wrong was the worst thing he could have expected. Though your special move was probably way worse than having his ego be tampered with.
You finally attacked him. A palm strike to the jaw caused him to fall back. Before he could comprehend what you just did and get himself up you were already above him. You pressed down on him which put one of his legs in an uncomfortable position. You pinned his arm down before swinging your right leg behind his head. With all your strength you managed to flip both of you before locking his head in with your legs. And there you have it, you got him in a triangle choke.
This was just humiliating for Bi-Han. He didn’t think it was possible to lose to you. You had him right when you wanted him. Your legs made him feel like he was being squeezed by a vicious anaconda. The more he struggled the more he lost his breath. It didn’t stop there oh no. You started bending his arm and leg that were trapped between you two. You bent them in directions that would be impossible to achieve unless you broke his bones. His free hand came and slapped your thigh. He tapped out. He couldn’t take it.
You unraveled your legs to set him free. You were panting a bit and felt a bit sweaty. But compared to how he was now you looked like you never even fought him.
“I’m sorry, grandmaster, if that was too much.” You apologized even though you didn’t need to.
Once you were back up on your feet you stuck your hand out to help Bi-Han up. He looked up at you, taking in all your details for once. Maybe he lost too much oxygen when you were chocking him because for some reason you seem so cute right now. Yet he was still upset from being beaten by you. He didn’t take your hand but got up himself and walked away. Not a word was said from him and you were left wondering if you did something wrong.
I can guarantee you didn’t do anything wrong. Bi-Han just needs time to think of where he went wrong and what kind of woman he is attracted to. Looks like he might have an unexpected type.
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No matter how many breaths of fresh air Bi-Han got his new stance on you didn’t change. He has enough oxygen going into his brain this new liking is not a delusion.
He was wrong but he won’t say it out loud. You have the strength of a warrior with a heart of gold. It was all hidden in that plush body of yours. What a fool he was to doubt you.
Now his eyes are always on you. Without the mindset of you being weak he sees now that there is much more to you.
Why didn’t he see it before! Just look at that cute face of yours, especially your cheeks. He wants to squish that face and not in a skull crushing way. And those legs good heavens! Those thighs could kill a man yet he would gladly put his face between them again. Your chest is a good alternative as well. He won’t deny he noticed that from the beginning but he would remind himself about it constantly. It just took him a while to realize the whole package was enticing. Screw it, let him get his hands on your tummy.
Look, Bi-Han likes his women strong. That’s one thing. But if chubby is the new strong well he won’t hesitate to take it. And don’t tell him that’s wrong he can’t be wrong two times in a row.
You did notice his stare. It was different now. You noticed one of his eyebrows would raise as he looked at you. His eyes wandered up and down. Before he could even walk over to have a word with you, you would start walking away. You were concerned he would insult you about your looks. Why else was he checking you out like that?
No one walks away from the grandmaster. You will listen to what he has to say. Bi-Han walked quickly towards you before yanking you back by your shirt.
“Where do you think you are going? Do you not see that I am trying to talk to you.” He is giving you his gentlest voice but it still feels like he will rip your spine out.
“I’m sorry, grandmaster.” You turned around quickly to look at him.
Suddenly his hands were at your face. He had a good grip on your soft cheeks, pinching and squeezing them. You looked up at him with confusion. You brought your hands up in an effort to remove his hands only for him to quickly slap them away. Bi-Han isn’t done admiring your beauty.
You thought he was being mean to you again. He was taunting you by bringing attention to your round face. This ain’t the first time something like this has happened. The only difference is that Bi-Han seems determined to look at you. He’s not saying anything which confuses you even more.
Yes, yes, she is perfect. She will look perfect standing next to me. No one will dare touch her unless they wish to feel her wrath. if anyone dares to say something negative about her weight I will make them pay for their disrespect. They will be forced to watch their hands lose function when I freeze them-
“Bi-Han, what are you doing to her?” Tomas’ voice rang out.
Bi-Han broke away from his inner monologue. He wasn’t done making plans on making you his. His eyes caught onto the sight of Tomas’ hand reaching out to grab your wrist. You looked at him in desperation as you were so confused by what was happening. But suddenly you were flung over Bi-Han’s shoulder. He did it as if you weighted as much as a kitten. He started walking away but he had something to say to Tomas.
“Mind your business, Tomas.” He snapped at his adopted brother before walking off with you.
You were humiliated by the fact that all of the Lin Kuei were watching their grandmaster carry you away. His arm was wrapped around your thighs. You didn’t see his face but he was satisfied that his arm was squeezing your thick thighs.
“Please…just put me down already. I got it you’re strong enough to pick me up.” Your disappointed voice was muffled by your hands covering your face.
“Silence. I will put you down when I want to.”
Were you silent or were you silenced?
Bi-Han brought you all the way to his office before placing you down on the ground. Don’t think you can catch your breath now because his arms quickly wrap around your waist and pull you onto his lap. This day just keeps getting weirder and weirder.
“What are you doing?! Don’t you think I’m a little too heavy to be sitting on your lap?”
He looked offended by your words. As if you were the one who was calling him heavy. It only made his grip on you grow tighter, making sure you won’t leave now.
“Do you see me as a man who is unable to handle anything? Don’t be so foolish. Just sit here and look pretty for me as I work.” He instructed you.
Pretty? Did he just call you pretty? Maybe you hit him too hard during practice. But right now you don’t feel like disobeying any orders from him now. Even if this is a joke you rather wait to get pushed off than get off yourself and face a possible punishment. So just sit there and look your prettiest. You already are a gorgeous lady so there is no need to push yourself.
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It’s not a joke anymore. It stopped being a joke a long time ago.
Every day since that weird interaction it’s like Bi-Han can’t keep his hands off you. He would go near you just to squeeze some part of you. It started with your arms which you really hated at first. You thought he was pointing out how he couldn’t feel muscles in that area. Wrong, he just liked the feel of it.
In general he likes the feel of you. But may the gods help anyone who tries to grab at you. Only Bi-Han can do that.
The one and only time you practiced with the others in the Lin Kuei it ended with someone’s face being smashed in and you being dragged away. Hey, he shouldn’t have smacked your stomach and called you names. He was just a sore loser who couldn’t comprehend losing to you. Well now he just lost his face privileges and respect from the grandmaster.
If anyone doubted you they had to face the fury of the Lin Kuei grandmaster. If fact they can’t even look at you at this point. If they looked at you for at least five seconds Bi-Han would start holding onto you like a child who is afraid their favorite toy will get taken away.
Wherever he went, you had to be with him. He needed to keep his eyes on you. In his mind you are already his, there is no arguing about it. You didn’t even know that’s what’s going on. It just happened.
Bi-Han loves to have you on his lap. It shows everyone that you are his now. He loves having his arms wrapped around your waist and squeezing it. Occasionally he would rest his head against your shoulder. That’s the calmest anyone has ever seen him. He would compare his hand size to your thighs. You thought it was another insult before you felt him squeeze them.
Squeezing, poking, squishing, grabbing, holding, secretly loving, that’s all he seemed to do. If you ever asked why, Bi-Han would silence you. You’re not allowed to question his actions nor hint that there was anything wrong with you. The only time you were allowed to have space was when you need to use the bathroom, eat, or sleep. And even getting him to go away so you could sleep was an issue.
You thought your saving grace would come once you heard Liu Kang would be visiting. He wanted to check on your progress and see if you wanted to return to the fire temple. He manages to make more time for you. No matter how much time you were away from him you were still Liu Kang’s apprentice.
Though that depends if Bi-Han will let you go.
One of the clansmen alerted Bi-Han of the god’s presence. Liu Kang soon came walking into the office. He was shocked to see you sitting on Bi-Han’s lap. Clearly it wasn’t fully your decision since you looked shy about it.
“I see you have gotten along with my apprentice. Is there any reason she is sitting on your lap instead of training?” Liu Kang addressed Bi-Han.
“Is there an issue with this. You brought her to me, I make the decision on what she is supposed to be doing right now.”
“I mean, I think I should have been training at this point but you were barely letting me do that.” You talked back, barely caring about what is happening anymore.
Liu Kang’s glowing eyes kept shifting between you and Bi-Han. If what you say is true, which it is, that means the grandmaster has been lacking in his duties. Though to Bi-Han he hasn’t lost anything from this experience.
“If that is the case it might be best to come back with me, my apprentice. Perhaps Bi-Han has other things he would prefer to attend to.” Liu Kang gestured for you to come with him.
The moment you tried to get off, Bi-Han pressed your body against him more. He glared at Liu Kang who looked back in shock. There is no chance in hell that he will let you walk out of this temple. No one will take his strong, chubby woman from him.
You sighed, realizing he will never give up. It dawned on you that he wasn’t making fun of you. He genuinely liked you now that you have shown your potential. You shrugged your shoulders at Liu Kang since you didn’t know what to do now. You would like more training but it might be a whole battle just to get Bi-Han off you. In a way you’re not complaining all that much.
“What is the meaning of this, Bi-Han? You have lacked in your duties to-“
Bi-Han didn’t want to hear anymore from Liu Kang. He carried you in his arms like a princess and walked out of the office. Liu Kang followed close behind him, still scolding him for his actions. All Bi-Han would respond with was a blunt no and continued walking on.
You’re left to think while this madness is going on. There is one thing you are certain you are feeling. Pride. Pride in the fact that you not only beat Bi-Han and proved your worth but proved that you are worth his affection. You changed this man’s perspective and his type. His eyes have been opened to the possibility of having a bigger figure in his arms and in his life. This is the way.
In an effort to get Liu Kang off his back he walked into his bedroom and slammed the door shut before Liu Kang could get another word out. He placed you on the bed before laying down next to you and resting his head on your chest. It’s hopeless, he’s too attached to you. I mean just look at that face. You didn’t think he could unfurrow his eyebrows. This is a moment in history!
“You’re not gonna let me go I’m guessing.” You asked.
“No.” Plain and simple from Bi-Han.
You held yourself back from chuckling. He’s clearly the possessive type. And if he can see that there is beauty in you then you will take it even if you had to beat him up first for him to see that.
“Fine, you win. Just this once.” You said softly.
Are you happy with your prize, Bi-Han?
After notes: Good amount of people don’t expect me to be strong because I’m chubby. A lot of my strength comes from my legs. But I’ve had instances where I have slapped and even punched people by accident. Literally told a story yesterday of how I punched someone I knew by accident and they folded. Anyways I was very happy to get a request like this. I hope you are happy with the outcome I did my best! I’m sorry i didn’t post yesterday I was very tired and mentally drained from all the bs. Hopefully that didn’t affect what I wrote. Adiós!
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sportswriters · 1 day
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dating a rival - j. swayman
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pairing: jeremy swayman x reader | suggestive, a bit smutty | established relationship | wc: 729 | warnings: swearing, dirty talking, sub!jeremy
welcome post!
dating a rival wasn’t easy. when you had to move from north carolina to boston for a job opportunity, being present as a carolina hurricanes fan became impossible. you cheered from the comfort of your home, missing the energy that only raleigh could build at the pnc arena. game day. you were split between your home team and your boyfriend’s performance. the hardest thing to deal was that jeremy couldn’t help being a fucking great goalie. the bruins weren't doing that well, but jeremy blocked every single shot from the opponent. frustrated groans left your mouth the whole game. no water, no pacing around, no hair grabbing were enough to calm you down.
“fuck. jer, why do you have to be so good?” you muttered, answering yourself seconds after, “yeah, that’s what caught my attention in the first place. fuck.”
he texted you as soon as he finished his interview, so you called him.
“hi, baby! congrats on the win, i’m so proud of you for dealing with the canes all by yourself!”
he laughed, knowing how pissed off you probably were for the loss.
“thank you, love. how are you feeling? don’t pretend to be only happy for me.”
“it was a great game, i’m proud of my other goalie too, okay?” you sighed. “you should come over, i’m gonna get us some food. it’s gonna be delivery, though. i have no brain cells left to cook.”
“no plans on poisoning my food?” he joked.
“i have some plans for you, but none of them are deadly.” you bit your lip, trying to contain yourself. lowering your voice, almost as a whisper, you said:  “come over.”
jeremy froze on the other side of the line.
“okay. be there soon.”
after dinner, you talked about the game from two different perspectives. it was chill, a moment to catch up as a couple, some laughs and all of that. but deep inside jeremy couldn’t stop thinking about the real reason you’d invited him over. couldn’t stop thinking of having you all over him tonight after this win.
“i can see your thoughts working, jer. do you want to say something else?”
“i was wondering if you, hum, if you had something other than dinner in mind.”
you tilted your head, faking a confusion jeremy didn’t notice because of how nervous he was.
“well, in fact, i was thinking of congratulating you. but i didn’t want to jump right into it.”
jeremy nodded.
“do you want that right now?”
he was trying to put himself together, finding it hard to do such a thing when your eagle eyes were watching him like that.
“tell me what you had in mind.”
you got up from your cuddling position to sit on his lap. with a soft caress on his bearded cheek, you said: “i’m really proud of you. i’m proud of how fucking great you were out there.” you gave him a peck, his eyes didn’t lose focus once. “so, this is how it’s going to be… i’m going to give you everything you deserve, you’ll decide what it is. i’ll give you everything you want, jer, because you worked for it.”
you adjusted yourself on his lap, getting a helpless moan from him. he was gone already.
“i need you to tell me what you want, baby, i need your words.” your voice turned into a whisper as you got close to his ear, leaving soft kisses on the side of his neck. “want me to start by sucking your cock? let you go all the way down my throat? or do you want me to slide over it right now? i could let you come inside, you know? i think it’s a proper special occasion.”
you could feel him hardening. all the talking with soft kisses were leaving his mind blurred.
“jer, i need your words. this time it should be all about you, then in my turn i would get what i deserve. don’t you think that’s fair enough?” you grabbed his chin, facing his fucked up expression.
you waited for his response, noticing his every move. it was fun to have him like this once in a while, you were going to enjoy every step of the long way.
“please, just… just kiss me and we’ll go from there, okay?” he gulped. “just fucking kiss me right now.”
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juuuulez · 1 day
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📰 | brat taming, richie jerimovich.
(pure filth guys…blowjob, facefucking, lowkey degrading anndduhhhh then some more sex…)
(also i’m crazy i just wrote another whole richie fic so expect that tomorrow i’m insane.)
“i can’t take it.”
“you can, and you fuckin’ will, princess.”
the punishment for being a brat has always been the same, so really, you should’ve expected this.. but at the time, it seemed like a good idea.
it was richie’s day off, and you had this whole mental plan about staying in bed, getting to enjoy your boyfriend and keep him all to yourself. but apparently the beef was short staffed, and he’d decided to go in anyway, despite mikey’s insistence that it was fine. in truth, it probably wasn’t fine, but that didn’t matter: today was your day.
so you’d stopped by on his lunch break. except richie skipped the break in favour of a cigarette and getting back into the muck. now, you had his best interest at heart, you swear! all you wanted was for him to take a moment. or maybe that’s the excuse you told yourself.
“don’t be a baby ‘bout it.” richie grunts through a clenched jaw, one hand with a firm grip on your cheek, and the other at the base of your skull. “you asked for this, sweetheart. now you’re gonna fuckin’ take it.”
your jaw is opened impossibly wide, his cock buried to the hilt, struggling to breathe through your nose. his grip is unforgiving and doesn’t let you move, willing down the urge to gag around his length as air forgoes you as he rocks his hips deeper. tears have sprung in your eyes, messily slipping down red cheeks and making wet tracks on your neck.
it was the tiny skirt that did it. when you’d sauntered into the kitchen, trying to find richie. it barely covered the globes of your ass, the ends of little spandex shorts peaking out: he would’ve preferred you completely naked, because fuck, those shorts really did it for him, the way they hid absolutely nothing.
and you’d done it on purpose. made sure to linger in the office doorway for an extra moment, having some offhanded conversation with mikey that didn’t even fucking matter, because what were you doing? then you’d offered to help out with the rush, going out front to buss some tables, undoubtably attracting the attention of anyone else in the restaurant.
your hands fist at the fabric of richie’s sweats, the garment pushed down just enough to release his cock. his work shirts still on, as the pair of you had landed on the couch, where you were promptly shoved to your knees. he revels in how small your hands look on his spread thighs, rocking once, twice more into your hot mouth, feeling ten times more aroused simply by the power he holds over you.
and you know when he’s about to cum, of course you do, and it has you trying to pull off. you had been hoping he’d still fuck you, as part of the punishment, spilling his load deep inside where you’d still be able to get an inkling of satisfaction.
“nu-uh,” he chastises, voice rough and breathy, “stay right where ’ya fuckin’ are.”
so, you do. and when you pull off, your tongue is sticky with it, a salty taste that clings to the back of your throat. richie’s hand squeezed your jaw, putting pressure on the hinge that forces your mouth open, admiring his work. “swallow.” he’ll tell you, to which you do, sickeningly obedient for someone with a habit of causing trouble.
he won’t fuck you, either. you’ll try to beg for it, pulling out all the stops, batting your wet lashes and kissing at his neck. it takes everything in him to deny you, but he does, successfully.
it’s not until later, curled up in bed, that you finally huff out somewhat of an explanation. “just miss you.” you’ll mumble, face pressed into his fresh shirt, the cotton tickling your nose. “think you work too much.”
it’s not like richie is oblivious, he caught on pretty quickly, but thought it’d be easier to make you work for it. so he relents, previously rough hands now soft as they skim your back, blunt nails gently tracing the curve of your spine.
“could’a used your words,” he’ll shoot back, and despite the scolding tone, he’s already rolled atop you to kiss down your neck. “or do you just get off on bein’ a brat?”
the crude remark makes you roll your eyes, one arm hooking around his broad shoulders, while your other hand rests on his head where it’s tucked into your neck. a sharp bite to your shoulder finally elicits a response, “maybe a little,” you mumble.
it’s okay, because richie still fucks you into the mattress that night. its a bit softer, at least to the best of his abilities: richie isn’t exactly one for slow or gentle, so it ends up being equally as unforgiving as the punishment itself, with the reprieve of his words turning praising and sweet. telling you how good you feel, how much he loves this pussy, so perfect for him. just him.
and he’s right: it’s just for him.
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celestialwhoree · 10 hours
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𝐒𝐚𝐲 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐧 𝐆𝐨 - 𝟔
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You're not sure whether asking Nikto how he worked out what your favourite foods are is a good idea. Realistically, you know that men in his field are required to be perceptive, to pick out the smallest of details which may be useful later. He's been in your house so many times, in your fridge for a left over slice of pie, or the less that you can barely consider a garage to grab whatever tool he'd needed to fix your wobbly fencepost. On the one hand, his awareness of you, what you like and dislike, is comforting. It feels safe to have someone so constantly tuned in on your frequency. Safe. On the other? Having someone so impossibly attentive to your needs is unsettling. It's been far too long since you've had someone shadowing your day-to-day life - and Nikto is, undeniably, like a shadow.
The picnic is - it's really sweet. Well intentioned. The execution, admittedly is rudimentary, but you're just splitting hairs. A guy set you up a picnic after you practically sucked off his face in your kitchen. You're pretty sure most would've run had they felt the sheer reverence, the need in your kiss. He fixed your fence.
Now you're sat rather awkwardly beside one another, picking at a strange assortment of cheeses and fruits, making stilted conversation as you watch a herd of cows graze a couple of fields down.
"How did you know my fence was broken?" You hum in an absent, obvious attempt to keep the conversation going. Tough considering you barely know anything about Nikto, and yet he seems to know everything about you. Your weak endeavour towards filling the stillness between the two of you obviously doesn't go unnoticed - nor does the way your make an effort to dig deeper and see just how much of you Nikto actually catches.
"You hit it with your car a few weeks ago." He states bluntly, leaving you flushing a beet red. Foolishly, you'd always believed that your sub-par driving skills were just imagined, that no one saw you the way you saw yourself. Clearly, you've been wrong all along.
"You do have your drivers license, yes?" Nikto continues to chide, unable to help the way his blood rushes south when you blush, fluttering your lashes as you avert your gaze to the strawberry you'd been just about to eat. "Mhm." You mumble, trying to feign an indignant look - futile, seeing as he's already caught you in the act of your embarrassment.
"I can help you if you would like." Nikto utters, before he too turns his burning face towards the gingham blanket he'd found whilst trawling the grocery store in the small hours of this morning, trying to be as prepared as possible for your date. He's far too quickly become accustomed to your little quirks and reactions, the way you flinch like a frightened bunny from loud noises, or worry at your lip when you're nervous but still trying to seem nonchalant. You're hardly ever nonchalant about anything. He sees that too. "Is it the car that you struggle with?" He tries, so desperately, to claw himself from the hole he's seemingly fallen into, painfully aware that he's probably coming off as some condescending, patronising prick. He knows you can drive. Kind of. However, the thought of helping you, spending time with you, taking all of the menial tasks of daily life out of your hands, he can't help but to yearn for it. Or maybe it's just you. You're the one thing he finds himself wanting for after a life of solitude. You, your silly little shoes, and strawberry flavoured lips, your bows and pearls. You with a smile so bright it's blinding, and a laugh that could bring the cruelest of men to his knees. You are what he yearns for. The silver lining to the rainclouds which have so long darkened his days. You, you, you.
He doesn't even realise you'd been talking until you stop. Only, of course, to take the next best course of action towards capturing his attention, shuffling towards him until you're sat flush against his side, blinking up at him with a look that clearly suggests that you're asking for permission. The fact that he doesn't get hard right then and there is a miracle - though he's not sure if it's one that'll last. At least, not when you finally work up the guts to crawl up into his lap like a needy cat, searching for attention by any means possible. Last week he was barely refraining from tearing your clothes off and taking you on the counter in your kitchen. This is far more intimate. This is what he wants.
He wants to see the way your cheeks flush pink when his hands slide up your skirt, just enough to brush the calloused pad of his thumb over the delicate lace of your underwear. With bated breath, he wants to watch the way the late afternoon sun turns your hair into a halo of molten metal, cascading from the crown of your head in some glorious inferno.
The little sound of your breath hitching as he noses at your jaw is only the first nail in the cruelest of coffins, burying him alive under the crushing weight of his adoration for you. This, he thinks, this is what he's waited for. This is both his reward, and his punishment for the toil of his career, of his life. His reward, you, so sweet and soft in his lap, pliable as gold, glittering as the brightest of precious stones. Breaking you, breaking your pretty, trusting heart, is entirely out of the question. He'd rather shoot himself in the kneecaps. Walk headfirst into enemy territory and beg to be tortured. Step on a landmine. Any and all of it would be better than seeing you hurt.
Whilst he can't find the words for the way he adored you, he can most definitely find the actions.
Nothing, no man, has ever made you feel the way you do as Nikto eases you to lie back on the picnic blanket, hooking your knees over his shoulders. A kiss to your inner thigh. "I hope you don't mind people hearing, Princess. I intend to make you scream."
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unoriginal-and-dumb · 13 hours
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heello do you have any tips for noobie artists? ur art is just so very neat to me :) plz never stop arting
Never do what I do unless it is drawing all the time
Use references!! Always use them!!! Seriously please use references never let a stupid little rat in your ear take that away from you, they are always so valuable
If you see art you like, don’t be afraid to basically try recreating the same exact thing. All you have to do is not claim it as youre own, and better yet don’t post it online! It’s for practice, people don’t need to see practice in the end it’s only for you
Tracing is NOT wrong. I’m tired of people saying ohhh tracing is bad don’t do it ITS LITERALLY NOT!!!! Just don’t trace over someone else’s work/images and claim it as your own it’s that easy. If youre struggling with hands take photos of your hands and trace over it! Break them down into simple forms until you have an understanding of them in a meaningful way!
Do some studies of specific things. Struggling with leg anatomy? Draw a page full of legs, just push and pull and scribble and see what works, study images and see how you can reproduce it or stylize it
Never feel like you need to find your own art style immediately, that task is practically impossible. Everything comes from something, be inspired by others take little art bits from styles you like and only then can you create your own style!! (I mean dawg my style can be broken down into adventure time, owl house, invader zim, gooseworx, eddsworld, sr pelo, a few others im probably forgetting)
Don’t worry about broadcasting your work, not everyone needs to know all that you draw, the internet can be a hateful place and it really does suck a lot but also try not to rely on strangers online for support on everything you do, I know it is hard and that approval feel good I cannot deny it but remember to keep some stuff for yourself, a little treat where nobody can criticize you :)
Try to draw everyday! Or having a sketchbook where you make it a goal to completely fill 2 pages a week, and if that’s too much then just some doodles! Art takes a lot of constant practice, and there’s really nothing more fun than just having a little sketchbook with you where you draw random stuff all the time. When I was doing that I would make 2 page mini invader zim comics
I feel like a bit of a hypocrite because I do maybe 1 of these things but i know they are really good, I have done them before and they were super helpful! But in the end I think the best you could do is just keep at it! Don’t let people get you down, do your own thing, break rules if you want, it’s all art and art is AWESOME!!!!!!!
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starlight-bread-blog · 12 hours
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My Interpetation of The Southern Raiders: Part 2 – Zuko
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Warning: The views expressed in this analysis will be somewhat uncritical of Zuko. If you aren't likely to agree, you aren't going to enjoy this post. This is your chance to leave. I probably won't have a debate for personal reasons.
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This is the second part out of a three part series trying to answer every question posed by the discourse on The Southern Raiders. If I take some things for granted, it's because I discussed them in part 1, in which I delve into A\ang's role in the episode. Today, I'll set my sights on Zuko.
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1. Was Zuko a negative influence on Katara?
No, he did not. When Zuko merely presents the possibility of tracking her mother’s killer, it cuts through her reply right to her already leaving. In literature, what isn’t in the text holds no relevance and is to be disregarded as mere speculation. We don’t see Zuko convincing her, therefore he had no influence on her, and that she made the choices she did because she wanted to.
All Zuko did later on was defend a decision Katara already made on her own. And in both the first and second disagreements with Aang she had the last word. Ergo she was making her own choice.
Additionally, before they enter the room of who they think was her mother’s killer, Zuko asks her if she’s ready. And when she finally spares Yon Rha, he supports her decision. If he were to influence her, he wouldn’t have done either of these things. He only wanted to help Katara heal and never brought up anything that wasn’t already there.
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2. Was Zuko being too harsh on Aang?
(1) That's cute, but this isn't air temple preschool. It's the real world.
(2) [Forgiveness]'s the same as doing nothing!
(3) Okay, we'll be sure to do that, guru goody-goody.
He was definitely disrespectful towards Aang's culture, although his disrespectful remarks are a response to Aang’s own disrespect, imposing his beliefs onto Katara. And he didn’t say that until after Aang compared Katara to Jet. It was still wrong to come after the Air Nomad teachings, but they’re not as insulting as people paint them to be.
And it’s not like he didn’t take them back by the end of the episode. Zuko had good intentions, made a mistake and learned from it. That’s how characters grow, through mistakes. (More on that later).
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3. What motivated Zuko to find Yon Rah?
He wanted to earn Katara’s trust. The show makes it explicitly clear.
Zuko: What can I do to make it up to you?
And so later:
Zuko: Katara mentioned it before when we were imprisoned together in Ba Sing Se, and again just now when she was yelling at me. I think somehow she's connected her anger at that to her anger at me.
I’ve seen many describe this motive as selfish or manipulative, but I have to disagree. He has no reason to do anything to earn Katara’s trust. He saved her life on that very day, is fully accepted into the GAang, and in this episode he found out that some of her anger at him is rooted in projection. But he still goes out of his way to do the impossible, to give Katara the closure she needs in order to put faith in him.
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4. Why did Zuko think revenge\murder would help Katara?
Katara is a kind soul and murder wouldn’t have helped her heal, but Zuko had good reasons to think it would have. He didn’t know Katara’s soul, she didn’t even consider him a colleague, at that point she hated him. However, he did see Sokka killing Combustion Man in The Western Air Temple. So he has no way of knowing whether revenge would help, but he’s under the impression that murder isn’t a big taboo at least for some of the GAang.
Moreover, he knows that the person who took his mother away from him will receive justice, and that it helps him sleep at night. Katara doesn’t have that, Yon Rha retired in peace. So he offers her the justice he knows helps him.
But the main reason why he thinks revenge would help Katara, is that she told him it will. Zuko plays a largely passive role in the episode, simply assisting Katara in whatever way he can.He’s only fulfilling Katara’s wishes, and she told him that her wish is to seek justice on “the monster”.
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5. Did the trip have an effect on Zuko?
It did. By the end of the episode, Zuko delivers the following line:
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This is an important part of his arc of unlearning the Fire Nation’s black and white philosophy that values aggression above all else. He comes around to Air Nomad pacifism and non violent solutions from seeing them work first hand. And as the good (redeemed) person that he is, he admits he was wrong and changes his views. He grew as a character to become a better version of himself.
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In conclusion, despite the somewhat questionable nature of Zuko's actions in "The Southern Raiders", his underlying good intentions shine through. His role was not a devil on Katara’s shoulder, but a natural force backing up whatever decision she makes. And this allows him to emerge with a valuable lesson learned.
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raaorqtpbpdy · 1 day
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The Only Way Out is Through (2)
Vlad overshadows Jack as part of a diabolical plan to get rid of him and win Maddie's heart. Unfortunately, the plan goes awry when Vlad finds he can neither take control over Jack, nor leave.
For the prompts: Vlad's murderous plan for vengeance goes awry when he finds himself unable to stop possessing Jack's body. Jack is very much still alive and complaining about the "insufferable spook inhabiting his form". He's forced to live Jack's life until he can come up with a solution. IF he can... [from Balshumet], Vlad wishes his friendships could go back to the way they were in college, little does he know that Jack and Maddie have similar sentiments. [from @half-deadmagicperson], and Jack wants to save Vlad, but he'll have to face the harm he caused twenty years ago in order to accomplish this. [from @kuzann]
Read also on AO3
Chapter 2: Forgive, but Never Forget (Chapter 1)
[Warning for past trauma, guilt and blame, and mentions of death]
Jack stared.
Before him, he saw the rotten specter who'd tried to possess him and gotten stuck... and he also saw his best friend, Vlad Masters. And he had no idea what to make of it.
"I... I don't understand," he said.
"Of course you wouldn't understand, you oaf," the Wisconsin Ghost sneered at him. "I can't stand to be near you for even another second."
Then, with a flourish of his cape, the ghost flew through the portal and was gone, leaving Jack alone with his friend and no less confused.
"Vlad, are you alright?" he asked. He reached out to his friend, only to have his hand slapped away.
"Don't touch me," Vlad said, though there was little bite to it.
He looked... sad. Sadder than Jack had ever seen him, and he was overcome with the desire to help, though he still hadn't the foggiest idea what he needed to help with.
"Vlad... what's going on?" he asked, trying and failing to put all the pieces together. It just didn't add up.
Had the Wisconsin Ghost possessed Vlad before coming to do the same to Jack? But... how would it have even done something like that? It was impossible. Still, Vlad would know better than Jack, he always did, so it probably would be best to ask.
"Did the Wisconsin Ghost overshadow you, too, Vlad?"
"I wasn't overshadowed by the Wisconsin Ghost," Vlad muttered darkly. "I am the Wisconsin Ghost. Or I was, anyway. Your device seems to have separated me from my ghost half, and now it has apparently abandoned me in its disgust. I hardly blame it for wanting to get away from you."
"I don't understand—"
"I told you, didn't I?" Vlad replied. "You killed me. I came to get revenge. It's as simple as that."
Jack shook his head, still as confused as when he'd first dispossessed himself of that ghost and seen Vlad standing there, if not more so. It certainly didn't seem like anything about this situation was at all simple. Actually, it seemed quite confusing. Most confusing of all, however, was that, even though Vlad's words should have sounded angry... he just sounded sad.
"Is... is something wrong, Vladdie?" Jack asked. "Are you alright?"
"Oh, I'm fine, why wouldn't I be? The man I once called friend betrayed me by stealing away the woman I love, sending me to an early grave in his incompetence, turning me into a half formed freak, neither truly human nor truly ghost, trapped me in his body for a week, and then split my two sides apart from each other, leaving me a broken man in every sense of the word."
Jack wasn't always the best at picking out sarcasm, but he didn't think Vlad was being genuine when he claimed he was fine. He actually sounded rather displeased and depressed about the whole thing. But Jack knew the cure for that.
"Come on, old chum," he said, grabbing Vlad by the arm despite his protests. "I'm taking you upstairs for some hot-chocolate and a warm blanket and we're going to talk this out."
Too bad Jack didn't know what to do about any of the rest of Vlad's problems. He didn't even know what Vlad was babbling about when he said half those things. Stealing away the woman he loved? Jack didn't know Vlad was dating anyone, or even crushing on anyone. And the only person Jack had dated since meeting Vlad was Maddie. By all accounts, it didn't make sense.
Once they got upstairs, Jack sat Vlad down on the sofa, grabbed a blanket from under the coffee table, and threw it over his friend's shoulders. It was a good blanket, thick, and warm, and soft. Jack knew because he'd knitted it himself, and he said as much. Then he told Vlad to stay put while he made some cocoa.
While Jack went through the familiar process of warming the milk, and mixing in the powder, and hunting down the marshmallows from wherever Maddie had hidden them this time, he tried to think over what Vlad had said before. There was something about a woman, and a half-formed... something, and a ghost? Or rather, not truly a ghost.
He felt like he was trying to put together a puzzle when he had only been given every other piece, and he'd gone and lost half the pieces he did have. It was, admittedly, rather frustrating, but Jack had done many puzzles with missing pieces—because he had a tendency to lose real puzzle pieces as much as metaphorical ones. He never gave up until he could see what the picture was, missing pieces or no.
When he returned to the living room with two cups of cocoa—he'd made one for himself while he was at it, just because—he saw Danny standing across from Vlad with an angry expression.
"I don't know what you're playing at, Vlad, but I want you out of here. Fly home. Now," he said in a low, growling tone.
"I would love to, Daniel, but alas... I don't have my powers." Vlad replied. "I won't be flying anywhere."
"What do you mean you don't have your powers?" Danny hissed. "You've been overshadowing my dad for like, a week, you're telling me you've lost your powers in the last ten minutes?"
"He used something called a 'ghost catcher' to separate us." Vlad shrugged.
Danny cringed hard. "Oh."
"Worked a bit too well, it seems. My ghost half flew off who knows where. I'm sure it'll come back for me when Jack's asleep."
"Fine, but I'm watching you, Vlad," Danny told him. "If you try anything funny, I'll dropkick you into the Ghost Zone and let you flail. Play nice with Dad, don't flirt with mom, and generally don't be such a fruit loop, or you're done here. Got it?"
"Loud and clear."
"Good."
With that, Danny turned around and left Vlad sighing behind him.
"What was that all about?" Jack asked as he entered the room, at last, two mugs of hot-cocoa in hand.
"You really have no listening comprehension, do you?" Vlad sighed, accepting a mug of cocoa, but not drinking it yet.
"Or maybe you haven't explained anything very well," Jack replied, starting to get a bit huffy.
Vlad couldn't put this all on him, when Vlad had just been saying things that didn't make any sense and expecting him to just know what they meant.
"Like that thing about me stealing the woman you love," Jack continued. "What's that all about? You never told me you were dating anyone. I didn't even know you liked anyone. And the only person I've dated since we met is Maddie, so how could I have stolen the woman you love?"
"Maddie is the woman I love, you utter buffoon," Vlad grumbled, then took a sip of his cocoa.
"Really?" Jack asked. "But... you never said anything. You never told me. How was I supposed to know?"
"I would have thought I was rather obvious about it."
"That's not fair," Jack replied. "With the number of times you've talked about how oblivious I am, it's not fair of you to assume I know things just because they're obvious. You know more than anyone how bad I am at noticing things. You're my best friend, if you liked Maddie, you should have told me."
"And what would you have done if I had? Hm?" Vlad asked. "Let me have her?"
"Well... no," Jack said obviously. "I couldn't do that. Maddie's a person, not something you can just have. If I knew you liked her too, we could have told her together and let her decide. At the very least I would have wanted us both to have a fair chance, instead of just making a move on my own. In fact, we can call her down now and ask her what decision she would have made."
"Really?" Vlad asked skeptically, raising an eyebrow. "And what happens if she says she would have chosen me?"
"Well... then maybe we can work something out," Jack said. "I'll always support Maddie a hundred percent, no matter what she chooses. And no hard feelings from either of us, whatever she says, right?"
"Very well."
Maddie was reading a book in bed when Jack went to get her, telling her Vlad was here and they had an important question to ask her. She grimaced.
"Something wrong?" Jack asked.
"No, nothing," she said, putting on a smile. "Oh, is that ghost still attached to you?"
"No, I used the ghost catcher to separate it, and it flew off into the Ghost Zone," Jack said. "Then Vlad showed up, which... still not sure how that happened, but I'm working on it."
"The ghost catcher!" Maddie put her palm to her forehead. "I can't believe I didn't think of that. I totally forgot we made a ghost catcher."
"Don't feel too bad. I forgot, too. Now come on, Vlad's waiting downstairs."
"Right...." Maddie got up and followed, but she was walking slower than usual.
When they got to the living room, she took a seat on the armchair and Jack sat next to Vlad and started to explain.
"Did you know V-man also had a crush on you in college?" Jack asked. He opened his mouth to continue his speech, but Maddie interrupted him.
"Yes, I knew," she said.
"You did?"
"It was obvious," she and Vlad said in unison.
As much as he loved them both, they sure knew how to make Jack feel stupid at times.
"You and Vlad were both ridiculously obvious about your crushes on me," she continued. "At the time, I wasn't sure if I liked either of you, or who I liked more, so I decided that whoever asked me out first, I would go with, and if it worked, it worked, and if it didn't, it didn't."
"So... what if we'd come to you at the same time to confess our feelings and asked you to choose?" Vlad asked. "What would you have done then? Who would you have chosen?"
Maddie's eyes widened in surprise. "I... I don't know."
"Humor us," Vlad insisted. "Imagine that that had been what happened."
"Well... I suppose there are two possibilities," Maddie said. "You were both very good friends, and I wouldn't want to alienate either one of you by favoring the other. Either, I would have turned you both down to avoid hurting one of you so much that I would have lost him. Or I would have proposed an experiment to go on one date with the both of you and see which one I liked better as a boyfriend and which I preferred as just a friend."
"You always were very scientifically minded," Vlad commented.
"If you'd done the experiment, who do you think you would have picked?" Jack asked. More curious about her thoughts than actually concerned about whether she loved him or Vlad more.
She sighed. "I don't know. I really don't. It would have depended entirely on how you both met the challenge. But I was young, and naïve in college. I'd never dated anyone before, and I didn't know what to look for to know if a relationship would last. What I would have done back then, with the knowledge and experience I had back then, it doesn't really matter now, in the present.
"Knowing what I know now, I know I chose the right guy back then, even if it was just coincidence, or luck... I'm sorry Vlad. You were a good friend then, and I wish our friendship hadn't fallen apart, but the way you are now... you're pushy, and controlling, and I couldn't be happy married to a man like that. I know you both love me, but Jack understands me, and supports me, and even though he's forgetful, he cares about me as a person, and doesn't just want me, like you seem to.
"I just... I just wish we could all be friends like we were before," she said. "Before the accident, before all the resentment, and the pain, and separation. Before you turned into such a creep," she tacked on. "I miss those days. But it's too bad we can't just ignore all the time that's passed, and everything that's happened."
"That would be nice, wouldn't it?" Vlad agreed miserably, then took another sip of his cocoa.
"Well why not?" Jack asked. "Why can't we just go back to the way things were between us in the old days?"
"Because you killed me!" Vlad snapped. "Because you were overeager, despite our warnings, and by your incompetence, made me spend two years in a hospital, suffering poor care and constant mistreatment in addition to extreme pain as the ecto-acne simultaneously killed and healed me.
"Did you know, That ectoplasm can do that? Kill someone and resurrect them at the same time? I found that out the hard way. Guess who else found that out the hard way, twenty years after I did?"
"Danny," Jack breathed out.
If the ghost really was somehow Vlad, like he'd claimed to be, then that thing he'd said about Jack killing his son and not even realizing it was starting to make sense.
"In the portal accident," he realized. Killed and resurrected at the same time.
"What?" Maddie asked.
Jack just shook his head. He couldn't explain now. He felt sick to his stomach. He couldn't even imagine how horrible something like that would be to experience. The way Vlad put it, it sounded like agony.
"Vlad... it was an accident," Jack said.
"That you caused."
"I never meant to—"
"But you did, didn't you," Vlad said. "You pressed that damned button and I didn't hear from you again for twenty years."
"We tried to visit you in the hospital, Vlad," Maddie said. "We tried so many times we were permanently banned from visitation there. They wouldn't let us see you because we weren't relatives. We didn't even know if you'd survived."
"And what about after?" Vlad asked. "After I left the hospital, I became a millionaire. I was all over the news. Why didn't you reach out then?"
"I tried!" Jack told him. "Your receptionist said she was told to screen all calls from me."
"You killed me," Vlad repeated. "Why the hell would I take your calls?!"
"He's only trying to say that we're not the only ones to blame for losing touch," Maddie intervened, leaning forward, though she didn't have the reach across the coffee table to put herself between them. "You shut us out because of your bitter resentment. How were we supposed to reach out to you when you put a wall between yourself and us?"
A wall. That was a perfect metaphor, Jack decided. Ever since they'd reconnected with Vlad, it had felt like there was a brick wall between them, as much as Jack tried to ignore it, and pretend it wasn't there, even he wasn't so oblivious that he didn't notice.
It felt like a Cask of Amontillado situation, except that Vlad was both the one who'd built the wall, and the one trapped behind it, isolated, stuck, and suffering. Jack had burst through many a wall, but he couldn't break down this one. He wanted to help his friend, to save him... he just didn't know how.
"I... I'm sorry, Vlad," Jack said.
It didn't feel like the right thing to say after everything, after what he'd done, intentionally or not. Especially now that he realized the true extent of the consequences of his poorly-thought-out actions. It wasn't strong enough to express his remorse, or tangible enough to fix the damage, but he'd realized, out of nowhere, that he'd never actually said it.
In all these years, he'd never actually apologized. Or, if he had, he didn't remember, which wasn't exactly unlikely. Still, it couldn't do any harm to say it again, if he had said it at all.
"I know I can be overzealous, and clumsy, and thoughtless," he continued. "I didn't choose to be like this, I don't do it on purpose, but I know I do it, and I'm sorry. I don't know what I can do to make it up to you, but say the word and I'll do it."
"You could give me Maddie—"
"No, he couldn't," Maddie cut in sharply. "I am not something that can be kept or given away. I thought I already made myself clear about all this."
"Worth a shot."
"Wasn't," she scowled.
"I can't do that," Jack said. "But I will try to do better. Jazz is always suggesting things I can do to help with my forgetfulness, and I never remember to try them, but I'll work with her to start doing that. I'll find ways to stop me being so impulsive. And I'll try to think more. You're always getting on my about how I don't think enough."
"That'll be a real challenge for you," Vlad replied.
"I know," Jack replied with a short laugh. "But I'm willing to do it. Whatever else you are, dead, alive, even a ghost—you're my best friend. And I hurt you, and I want to make amends. If you'll let me."
Vlad looked down his nose at Jack, and sipped his cocoa once more. Jack realized he hadn't even touched his own drink during all this. It was probably lukewarm by now.
"I'll consider it," he said finally. Then he put his drink back down on the table and added, tersely, "It's late, you should go to bed. I'm sure I'll be gone in the morning. I'd like to be left alone for a while... to think."
"Of course," Maddie said. "Come on, Jack, let's leave him be. I'm sure we've bothered him more than enough for one evening."
She stood, and took Jack by the hand to lead him upstairs to their room.
"So... what exactly happened?" she asked once they were alone in their bedroom and Jack was changing into his pajamas. "Why was Vlad doing here? And what happened to the ghost that tried to overshadow you and got stuck? And what did you mean about Danny and his accident with the portal?"
"Slow down, Maddie, I can only answer one question at a time," Jack replied. "I'll start with Vlad and the ghost. Vlad was the ghost."
"What?"
"When he said the ecto-acne killed him and brought him back at the same time..." Jack trailed off to swallow back the discomfort at that mental image. "I think it made him a ghost... but also not a ghost?"
"What, like... a half-ghost?" Maddie asked, he eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
Jack imagined he must look like that pretty often. Confused, that is. He knew he didn't look anything like his wife.
"I guess so," he agreed. "When I used the ghost catcher to get rid of the ghost possessing me, it separated me from him, but it also separated Vlad's human self from his ghost self. That's what he said, anyway. Then his ghost self said he couldn't stand to look at me and flew into the portal."
"Rude."
"What do you expect from a—uh..."
Jack had been about to say 'what do you expect from a ghost', but he reconsidered when he remembered who he was talking about. We half-ghosts completely different from regular ghosts? Or were he and Maddie completely wrong about ghosts altogether.
"He was just upset," he said instead. "I think he'd been poking around in my memories, and he saw some things that upset him. He confronted me about my brother."
"I didn't know you had a brother," his wife said.
"I don't anymore," he looked down at the floor and tried not to recall to much and upset himself. "His name was Johnny, but he died falling through ice when we were kids. I... I was supposed to be watching him at the time, but I got distracted."
"Oh, Jack..."
"It was a long time ago," Jack said before she could try to comfort him and only made him linger on the guilt he still felt. "We all made mistakes that day. I should have learned from mine, and not let anyone else get hurt because of my negligence, but I guess I didn't learn well enough."
"How old were you?" she asked gently.
"I was ten," he replied. "Johnny was seven."
"I'm sorry."
He shook his head. It wasn't something he liked remembering, let alone talking about.
"You had other questions," he said, redirecting the subject back to what they'd been talking about before. "I'm sorry, I can't remember what they were...."
"Oh, Danny," Maddie said. "You said something about Danny when Vlad was telling us about what happened to him. And his accident with the portal?"
"Right... I think Vlad was trying to tell me that Danny was like him. Half ghost, I mean," Jack explained. "He told me I'd killed Danny, before I knew it was him. And then he said that thing about ectoplasm and—"
"Someone else found out the hard way, twenty years after he did..." Maddie realized. "Oh, Danny."
"Should we say something to him?" he asked.
She shook her head, although he wasn't sure if she actually meant 'no', or if she was just thinking.
"Why wouldn't he tell us?" she asked.
"Maybe... for the same reason as Vlad?" Jack guessed. "Maybe he blames us for what happened."
"Do you think so? Or maybe... maybe he doesn't feel safe telling us?"
"What?"
"We're ghost hunters," Maddie reminded him. "What if he's worried that our feelings for him might change if we knew he was a ghost."
"Oh no... what should we do?"
"I think... we should let him come to us when he's ready," she said. "Can you imagine how scared he might be if we brought it up to him now? We should wait for him to feel comfortable telling us, and in the meantime we can have some fun reexamining all the research we've ever done on ghosts in order to draw new, differently biased conclusions so Danny doesn't think we think he's evil just because he's half ghost. If he's half-ghost."
"And if he's not, we can reexamine our research so Vlad doesn't think we think he's evil," Jack enthused. "Should we start tonight?"
If reexamining their research and studying ghosts even more carefully than before was the worst thing that came out of this whole situation, than they really were on easy street.
"No, let's start tomorrow," Maddie suggested. "I don't think we should bother Vlad any more for tonight, and no offense, sweetie, but I don't think you'll be able to sneak past him to the lab without being noticed."
"I am pretty hard to miss."
"So come to bed for now, Jack," she said, patting his side of the bed invitingly. "A good night's sleep is a good start."
"Right you are, Maddie!"
He climbed into bed, and the two of them fell asleep cuddled up in each other's arms.
That night, Vlad paced the lab, waiting for his ghost half to decide to come get him. Lousy, good-for-nothing spook, leaving him behind. He'd examined the ghost catcher, and discovered that, for whatever reason, one of the sides separated people from ghosts, and the other side merged the two. Why it would be designed that way, Vlad couldn't fathom, but it was certainly convenient.
While he waited, blanket still hung round his shoulders because it really was quite comfortable, he considered all the things he'd learned, both from Jack's memories, and from the conversation he'd had with his two old friends upstairs.
They missed the old days as much as he did. All three of them wanted their friendship to go back to how it had been. But they all knew now why it couldn't.
Perhaps... perhaps that didn't mean they could never be friends again, even if it could never be like back in college. Perhaps it wasn't too late to forgive and move on.
Finally, Vlad's ghost half returned, as expected. They weren't meant to be separate, after all.
"There you are," Vlad said. "Come now, we can use the device that separated us to merge us back together."
"Good," Plasmius replied. "I scared the butler half to death when he saw me."
Together, they went through the merge side of the ghost catcher.
It wasn't as seamless as Vlad would have hoped. It seemed his ghost half had taken much of his anger with him when they'd been separated, and having it back made him less willing to forgive.
But the reflection stayed with him to. The sting of Maddie telling him off for being possessive and controlling, of both her and Jack pointing out that he wasn't treating her like a person, but a prize. Was he really that awful? He'd never thought of her that way before he'd developed feelings for her.
Perhaps it would be better to just let those feelings go, after all. She'd made her decision, and she didn't regret it, or want anything other than she got. Maybe he should cut his losses and give up before it further ruined a good friendship on the verge of rekindling.
Perhaps he should forgive Jack, too.
He would never be able to forget what had gone down between them. For years he'd tried to erase those bad memories from his head, of his accident, and his long hospital stay, and his slow and painful death. He'd even gone so far as to get plastic surgery to remove the pitted scars all over his skin, but even though he couldn't see them, he couldn't forget them either.
Jack was giving him a second chance, even though he'd tried to kill him, and steal away his wife and children, and even though he was a ghost, the very thing Jack hated most in the world. Perhaps Vlad could extend the oaf the same courtesy... for old times' sake.
There was much to consider as he flew, whole again, through the Ghost Zone to his own portal, and his home.
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scary-grace · 3 days
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Skin Hunger (Chapter 2) -- a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic
There's no such thing as a good night at work when you work in the world's most infamous brothel for monsters, but your night takes a turn for the worse when you find yourself serving drinks to visiting half-vampire Shigaraki Tomura. You don't mean to catch his interest, and you don't mean to start a conversation. You definitely don't mean to get him drunk. (cross-posted to Ao3)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Life in Asylum continues, and in the endless scroll of days and nights, cleanups in empty rooms and mop-ups in private parties, it’s almost possible to forget about the half-vampire who will be back at the next full moon. Almost, but not quite. Vampires are a rare enough occurrence in Asylum that everyone’s talking about Shigaraki Tomura and his master, and since they’re going to be regulars, Overhaul provides more than a little education for the staff about the one type of inhuman next to no one has experience with.
Most of the workers don’t care, but you pay close attention. Your knowledge of vampires contains next to nothing concrete. You need to learn, if you want to hold your own during your next conversation with Shigaraki Tomura.
Vampirism is spread through a bite – true. Everyone who’s bitten becomes a vampire – false. Apparently, creating a new vampire requires intention on the part of the vampiric sire, which probably helps to keep the population down. The mechanism that causes half-vampirism is unclear, but what’s perfectly clear is that half-vampires are something unusual. They need to consume blood, just like vampires do, but unlike vampires, they also need to eat. They still have heartbeats, still need to breathe, still need to see the sun every so often. Beyond that, though, no one’s able to describe what powers a half-vampire has, or the degree of strength advantage they have over an ordinary human, or whether they can turn into a true vampire – or how they do it. The question of what Shigaraki’s capable of is one you’re not able to answer, and it bothers you. Then again, if Shigaraki had correctly guessed what you are, he’d be equally in the dark as to what you’re able to do.
Most inhuman species have some sort of biological limitations, just like humans do. Werewolves still need to eat and sleep, and while bullets will damage them, silver bullets are the true threat. Liches and demons can’t set foot on holy ground, no matter which faith has consecrated a given spot, and shapeshifters lose their forms if they get too tired. Everybody knows all about vampires and sunlight. Faeries don’t have limitations. Faeries have rules.
Faeries can’t lie. Lying has physical consequences. Faeries have given names and true names, and while the true names are the most dangerous, even knowledge of a title or nickname can grant some degree of power over them. Faeries are vulnerable to iron, but not in the same way werewolves are vulnerable to silver. A gift offered by a faery is never just a gift; either it comes in repayment for an earlier favor, or it comes with strings attached. Nothing your father’s people give is ever given freely.
And that’s where you got yourself in trouble. You did Shigaraki a favor by using your glamour on him. If that particular rule applies to you as a half-fey, you’ve bound Shigaraki to you until he can repay the debt.
All of that would be enough to deal with heading into the next full moon, and you feel like it’s possible to handle. But three nights before the vampires are set to arrive, the itching starts, and things go from manageable to impossible in the space of an hour.
The last time this happened, you took a few days off of work until it was over, but it’s occurring over a much larger area on your body – your entire left arm, shoulder to wrist, and it’s not going to peel away until it’s ready. If you try, you’ll open yourself up to infection, and if that doesn’t kill you, the way it’ll look once it’s healed will probably make you wish you were dead. You can manage not to scratch while you’re on shift, but when you’re off, you’re scratching constantly, and every last one of your coworkers has something to say about it.
“Better not do that where the boss will see,” Nemoto remarks as you’re all eating in the cramped servants’ mess. “He finds fleas disgusting.”
Nemoto knows damn well you don’t have fleas; he just doesn’t like you, because his demonic ability to force confessions doesn’t work on faeries, and that includes you. The maid you’re sitting next to recoils away from you, and across the table, Tengai rolls his eyes. “It’s not fleas,” he says. “Haven’t any of you seen a half-fey molt before?”
“It’s not molting,” you say uselessly. It would only be molting if you did it regularly.
“Of course none of you have seen it,” Chrono says. Usually he eats with Overhaul, but sometimes Overhaul can’t stand being around even his right-hand man. “Half-fey in general are rare, and her variety of half-fey is rarer still.”
Everyone looks at you. You can’t tell if they’re waiting for you to explain or thinking that they’ll figure it out if they just stare hard enough. Either way, your face turns red, and Chrono heaves a dramatic sigh. “For most of you half-breeds, it doesn’t matter which of your parents was the inhuman. It matters for faeries.”
Tabe burps. “Why?”
Why questions are usually safe to ask Chrono – asking Overhaul a why question results in either a flat, irritated look or a two-hour lecture about the minutiae of the topic. “It’s unclear,” Chrono says. “What is clear, however, is that half-fey children take after their fathers in appearance and lifespan, and their mothers in magical ability.”
“Huh?”
Chrono doesn’t have his mask on. This time you can see him roll his eyes. “Children of human fathers and faery mothers resemble humans, and have human lifespans. Despite that, they have significant magical abilities.”
“How strong are they?” Rappa asks through a full mouth. “Stronger than regular human magicians?”
Chrono shrugs. You, meanwhile, think about a conspiracy theory you read in one of Overhaul’s books – that all human magic-users are secretly matrilineal half-fey, whose mothers either abandoned them to their fathers or swapped out the child of an unknowing human couple for one of their own. If that was the case, nobody would ever know. Other than the magic, matrilineal half-fey are indistinguishable from ordinary humans. “Hang on,” Setsuno says. “If half-fey take after their fey parent in how they look, how come she looks so human?”
“She doesn’t,” Chrono says. He looks to you, and you lower your hand from your shoulder. You’ve been using the cover of the conversation to scratch to your heart’s content. “Show them.”
You give him a pleading look, which he ignores, and finally you rise from the table and back away. You’re still wearing your uniform, so you pull up the skirt on your right side, revealing your leg. The table recoils as a group, and you’re pretty sure everybody’s thinking exactly what comes out of Rappa’s mouth. “What the fuck?”
“Patrilineal half-fey inherit their father’s lifespan,” Chrono says, “and their appearance – or some of it. They appear to be completely human until they reach physical maturity, at which point they begin a partial transformation. You can see the patches where fey skin has grown in to replace human skin, creating a patchwork which renders the half-fey unable to conceal their true nature.”
It’s not just your skin. Your ears have begun to change shape, growing pointed at the tips, and the natural color of your eyes has taken on a strange iridescent overlay. You need to blink less than you used to, sometimes – other times, it’s a struggle to keep your eyes open in the light without sticky, pearlescent tears oozing from them. If your father had been one of any of half a dozen varieties of fey, you’d have seen changes with your mouth, with your hands, even with the way you breathe. But while your mother never told you anything concrete about your father, she was at least able to confirm that he didn’t have gills.
Your transformation is mainly cosmetic. That doesn’t make it any less terrible, and cosmetic is a relative term. “Due to their appearances and lack of other gifts, half-fey used to make frequent appearances in human freak shows,” Chrono continues. “Some also theorize that the reason they’re unwelcome in faery society is due to their ugliness.”
“Oh.” Your coworkers are nodding at this, like it makes sense to them. Nemoto’s looking right at you when he responds. “I get it.”
You know you’re not pretty, but that doesn’t mean you like having it hammered home. You drop the right side of your skirt back down and sit again, and spend the rest of the meal picking at your food. Your appetite’s gone, and your shoulder is still itching. Even though you’re exhausted from your shift, you’re going to have a hard time falling asleep.
You’re making a beeline back to your quarters, with the intention of trying to shower off the itch and falling asleep immediately afterwards, when Chrono catches up to you. “Aren’t you going to thank me?”
“Thank you?” Backtalking to your boss is a terrible idea, but you can’t hold onto your skepticism. “For what?”
“I explained your situation, so you wouldn’t have to.” Chrono looks pleased with himself. “I did you a favor.”
“You could have done that without calling me ugly.”
“Should I have lied? It’s not as if you’re unaware,” Chrono says. He reaches out, hooks the neckline of your uniform with one finger, and pulls it aside. “How much skin are you going to lose this time?”
“Everything on my arm,” you say. Chrono looks surprised, and you seize the opportunity to shy away from his hand. “Goodnight, boss.”
“Your arm,” Chrono muses. “That’ll be a sight to see.”
Yes, it will. The juxtaposition of smooth, perfect, oil-slick shimmering faery skin with plain human skin on the same body is enough to make anyone’s skin crawl, yours included. You turn away from Chrono, and you’re almost out of earshot, almost to safety, when you hear him speak again. “You’ll have to show me when it’s done.”
That’s not the first comment like that you’ve heard from Chrono in the past year or two. They’re becoming increasingly frequent, and you know what they mean, just like you know you don’t want anything to do with them. You mumble another goodnight and duck into the female servants’ quarters, shedding your clothes and slipping a faint glamour over yourself as you step into the shower. You’re pretty sure there aren’t scrying mirrors in here, but at the same time, you’re pretty sure that if any guests wanted to pay to watch the maids shower, Overhaul would find a way to make it happen.
The hot water helps dull the itch, for now. You dry off and change into your sleeping clothes, noting every spot on your body where your heritage has surfaced. Your right leg is covered, thigh to calf, wide sashes and ribbons of fey skin interrupting your skin, jagged and gaudy. Your torso is covered, too, but you were smarter with that – when it was time, you peeled your dying skin away in a single piece rather than clawing it to ribbons. There’s some on your lower back that you never tried to peel away at all, and as a result, the fey skin is pitted and scarred. It looks hideous. You look hideous.
You know it’s true, but at the same time, you know you’re lucky. You’ve seen photos of half-fey whose fey skin broke through on their faces, unmistakable and impossible to hide. At least you’ve got a prayer of hiding this. Or you will, once you’ve peeled this next sheet of skin away to reveal what’s beneath. You crawl into bed and close your eyes, hoping that the itching will wake you in the middle of the night, so severe that you’ll have no choice but to peel the skin off right then and there. The waiting is the worst part. You just want it to be over before the full moon.
But it isn’t over before the full moon. It’s the biggest piece of skin you’ve lost – the last big piece you’ll lose, if only half your skin changes – and it’s clinging on for dear life. You beg Overhaul to help you, to employ the magic he uses to reshape the workers’ bodies when they’re injured, but he refuses. “The reaction between your meager magic and mine is too unpredictable,” he says. “I can’t help you.”
“Then let me have the night off,” you plead. He shakes his head. “Please. I won’t be any use if the skin breaks through.”
“You have my full permission to take your break to remove it,” Overhaul says, and you bite back tears. You were barely functional after you excised the skin on your torso. There’s no way you’ll be able to work with your left arm freshly peeled. “Not only is it a full moon, it’s also the autumnal equinox. We’ll need your glamours if any of the half-dozen rituals scheduled to take place here get out of hand.”
The equinoxes are the only nights where ordinary humans are allowed into Asylum, and they’re barely ordinary – they’re cultists, devoted to the worship of specific demons, conducting rituals that would get them thrown in prison in the human world. “And even if that were not the case,” Overhaul says, “there is a certain half-vampire scheduled to arrive with his master, and I doubt anyone else will be able to get him drunk.”
You were already stressed about running into Shigaraki Tomura again, but the idea of seeing him tonight sends you into a near-panic. “Sir –”
“That’s enough,” Overhaul says, and you fall silent in a hurry. “The moon is about to rise in Kiribati, and you aren’t in uniform. Get changed.”
You won’t win this. You know you won’t. You leave Overhaul’s study, hoping that the skin on your arm will hold out for another twenty-four hours – and hoping that Shigaraki Tomura’s master decided to leave him at home.
The autumnal equinox is fairly quiet as far as equinoxes go, but it’s not often that it occurs on a full moon, and from the moment the moon comes up over an even slightly populated area, Asylum devolves into barely-controlled chaos. The casualty count for workers exceeds an average full moon within the first three hours, and for the first time in a while, Overhaul comes out of his study to help repair the bodies rather than expecting them to be brought to him. Chrono equips the workers with alarm sigils, which will trigger a warning if their heart rates drop below a certain threshold. It’s an unusual precaution, but you know better than to think it’s out of any concern for the workers’ health – more that if too many of them die, Asylum won’t be able to serve all the guests who are flooding through the door.
You’re doing some of everything – a little cleaning, a little mopping up, a little belting a demon in the face with a mop when they won’t let go of the badly injured worker you’re trying to take back to Overhaul. You’re busy enough that you can almost forget about the itching, about the faery skin that’s trying to erupt through your skin on your left arm. For the first seven hours of the night, you run yourself ragged, doing whatever Overhaul’s ordered you to do, racing from floor to floor and trying to spot trouble before it begins. You’ve lived in Asylum your entire life. There’s nobody who knows their way around better than you do.
At hour eight, Overhaul summons you to the makeshift infirmary. When you get there, you spot a pile of discarded gloves on his right, a bubbling cauldron on his left, and a newly healed worker sprawled out in front of him. “Get out,” Overhaul orders the worker, and she scrambles upright, falls, and crawls unsteadily towards the exit. The instant she’s gone, Overhaul plunges his hands into whatever’s boiling inside the cauldron.
You don’t want to know what’s in there, and based on the grimace on Overhaul’s face, you don’t even want to go near him. But he summoned you. You step forward. “Sir?”
“The first ritual is about to begin. You’ll be supervising it.”
Your stomach drops. “I can’t,” you say. Overhaul mutters a curse under his breath. “I can’t! I don’t have magic –”
“You think throwing more magic at an out-of-control ritual will solve the problem? Playing stupid won’t get you out of it.” Overhaul lifts his hands from the cauldron and you startle at the sight of them. His fingers have been eaten down nearly to the bone, and in spite of the fact that he’s repairing them before your eyes, you can’t help but feel nauseous. “There are supply kits in my study, with the measures necessary to contain a ritual. All that’s required of you is to deploy them. Go.”
“Sir –”
“I don’t have time for this,” Overhaul snaps at you, and you flinch. You’ve never seen him this stressed before. “Chrono is needed elsewhere. None of the others but you possess a sensitivity to magic, and no one other than me is able to perform the repairs. Succeed at this and you’ll be rewarded appropriately. I don’t need to tell you what will happen if you fail.”
You know exactly what will happen if you fail. You nod mutely. “The supply kits can be found in the furthest cupboard. Hold out your hand,” Overhaul says. When you do, he traces a rune into your right palm. “Use this to unlock them. Go.”
You have more questions – like how to figure out which countermeasure to use first, or how to tell when they’re needed in the first place – but Rappa’s coming through the door carrying another worker, and Overhaul’s attention shifts from you. He’s not going to change his mind, and there’s no one else who can do the job. There’s nothing for you to do but head for Overhaul’s study. Being expected to supervise a ritual is bad enough. Being late to it is probably worse.
The cultists are making final preparations for their ritual in the smallest of Asylum’s three gardens. You’re not sure which cult this is, but they brought their own sacrifice, bound hand and foot in spite of the fact that they’re unconscious. You try not to look too hard at them. You don’t look too hard at the cultists, either. You pry open the supply kit and study the items within. Now that you’re looking at it, they seem pretty straightforward. Salt and consecrated chalk, for sealing the paths leading to the garden off from the rest of Asylum. A set of wardstones to keep anyone from entering once the ritual begins. A sheet of runes to trace in midair, as an extra precaution. None of it requires more than the tiniest amount of magic. Maybe this is doable.
You confirm that all the cultists are in the garden, then get to work, starting with the salt and chalk across each path leading into the garden. Next it’s the wardstones. The cultists are using a pentagram in their rituals, which means you need a hexagram to contain them properly. Wardstones are simple enough to set. You set them spinning with a twist of your fingers and leave them to hover. A few more of these, then a few sigils, and then you’re all set. You can do this.
A single footfall and a shadow falling across yours are the only warnings you get before a familiar voice rings out from behind you. “If you don’t want people to think you’re a witch, you shouldn’t spend so much time casting spells,” Shigaraki Tomura says, and you nearly jump out of your skin. “Did you miss me?”
It takes an effort not to throw the wardstone at him. “I’m not a witch. And this isn’t a spell.”
“It looks like a spell,” Shigaraki says. He looks way too pleased with himself for reasons beyond your understanding. “That’s two spells I’ve seen you do. Your boss is a warlock, so I don’t get why you’d lie about being a witch.”
You were dreading meeting Shigaraki again, in part because you were sure he’d guessed that you were half-fey. Apparently not. “That wasn’t a spell, and neither is this,” you say. “I’ll show you.”
“Huh?”
You motion for him to come forward, and he does, looking way too suspicious. What does he think you’re going to do? You’re not the one who drinks blood. “Hold this,” you say, and push the wardstone into his hand. “Now, do this –”
You show him the proper gesture to activate it, and he tries it – and drops it, just like you did the first time you tried it. Before you can tell him to try again, he picks it up and looks at you. “Show me again.”
You show him the gesture, and this time he copies it much more closely. The wardstone spins out of his hand and hovers in midair, the last piece of the hexagram you’ve been constructing falling into place. Shigaraki looks surprised, then pleased with himself again. You’re less annoyed with it this time, mostly because it’s given you a chance to prove your point. “You can do it, and you have even less magic than I do. It’s not a spell.”
“This one isn’t a spell,” Shigaraki agrees. He’s mimicking the gesture again, even better on the third try. “The other one was.”
A glamour’s not a spell. If it was a spell, it could be replicated by anyone else, but your glamour is an extension of your nature as a half-fey. You won’t be able to convince Shigaraki otherwise without outing yourself, so you keep quiet, and you set back off around the garden, headed for where you left the supply kit. Shigaraki follows you. “I went to the bar. You weren’t there,” he says. “Are you avoiding me or something?”
“I don’t work in the lounge most of the time. That night I was just filling in.” You’re conscious, suddenly, of the fact that you’re in the maid uniform – and that the maid uniform doesn’t come with even the most useless of masks. “To be honest, I didn’t know you were here.”
Shigaraki makes an affronted sound, but you’ve reached the supply kit, and you have runesigns to trace. In the garden, the cultists are moving into position to begin their ritual. You hold the sheet in one hand and begin to trace the sigils in midair. “What do you do most of the time, then?” Shigaraki asks. “If you’re not down there.”
“I clean.” You make the mistake of gesturing at your uniform, and Shigaraki takes the invitation to look you up and down. “And whatever else Overhaul needs me to do.”
“Like this. What is this?”
“There are cult rituals happening tonight. Overhaul and Chrono are both busy, so they asked me to keep an eye on this one.”
“Huh.” Shigaraki looks away from you, into the garden. “My master had a cult for a while.”
You really don’t know what to think of that, except that if it had been relevant, it would have been the first thing Overhaul and Chrono told the staff about. “How old is your master?”
“Old,” Shigaraki says, which tells you absolutely nothing. “What about your boss?”
“Also old.”
Shigaraki snorts. “What about you?” You clam up instantly, and he rolls his eyes. “Come on. Either your name, what you are, or how old you are. Give me at least one.”
Out of those three pieces of information, your age is the one that won’t get you in trouble. That doesn’t mean you won’t make him work for it. “You first.”
“Come on,” Shigaraki complains. You wait, watching as the cultists pick up their unconscious sacrifice and lay him out on the altar they built out of bones they brought from home. “Not that it matters or anything, but I’m twenty-three. Your turn.”
“Twenty-three,” you repeat. You can’t tell if you’re surprised by his age or not, but the fact that he’s still counting it means he’s still mortal. Your age stopped mattering two years ago, but you’ve kept count anyway. “Me, too.”
“Was that so hard?” Shigaraki grins, just a little too widely. The only thing that keeps you from calling it a leer is an instinct that it’s not born out of triumph at getting one over on you. A moment later, you’re proven right. “I knew it.”
Why does it matter to him that you’re the same age? A low hum begins to vibrate through the air, and the sigil hovering just in front of you wavers. The ritual’s beginning, and you need to focus. Unfortunately for you, Shigaraki’s still here. You need to shake him off. “I’m surprised you’re not with your master. Aren’t you here to feed?”
“He’s here to feed. I’m here to learn,” Shigaraki says. Learn what? “This looks more interesting than whatever else is going on around here.”
The hum in the air intensifies. Beneath the sleeve of your uniform, you feel your skin beginning to crawl. “If you’re going to stay, keep quiet. I need to concentrate.”
“Right. Witches need to concentrate when they’re doing magic.”
You’ve decided not to respond to any more witch jokes. The cultists are chanting in one of the demonic languages, drawing in close to surround the altar and obscure the sacrifice. Now that you think about it, you’re not sure what kind of sacrifice this is, and regardless of whether it’s symbolic or literal, you don’t want to watch it. You especially don’t want to watch it with Shigaraki – Shigaraki, who’s standing next to you, head tilted to one side, scratching idly at his neck. Seeing him scratch makes you want to scratch. You peer down into the supply kit instead, wondering which of the objects inside you’re supposed to use first if things get out of hand.
“Is there food here?”
Out of all the things Shigaraki might have said, you weren’t expecting that. “Huh?”
“Food,” Shigaraki says again. “Is there food here?”
It feels like round two of the WiFi conversation, except this time, you’re able to give him the answer he’s hoping for. “Yes. Why?”
“After this. We should get some.”
“Um –”
“You get breaks, right? Even witches have to eat.” Shigaraki’s scratching harder than before, and he’s not looking at you. “I’m hungry.”
He is really skinny, but he’s also a half-vampire. You know half-vampires still need blood, and you focus on that question instead of the other, worse one. “Not thirsty?”
“I have money. I can pay for it,” Shigaraki says, ignoring you. “And you helped me out the last time I was here.”
“I’m the one who got you drunk.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I don’t owe –”
“Stop talking.” You’ve interrupted him, but it’s not enough – he’s already opening his mouth again, and you slap your hand down over it before he can get another word out. “I mean it.”
Shigaraki’s red eyes are wide. You can’t tell if it’s with affront or with shock. His lips move against the palm of your hand, dry and rough, and a weird jolt travels through you, raising the hairs on your arms and the back of your neck. It’s drowned out a second later by a vibration through the air that makes you stagger. The sigil in front of you dissolves, unable to stand in the face of another wave emanating from the site of the ritual.
The wave abates, for a moment, and you think you’re safe – but the next thing you know, you and Shigaraki are both staggering as the vibration travels through the ground in addition to the air. You don’t need anybody to tell you that the ritual’s gotten out of hand, and you dive into the supply kit, searching desperately for something that can counteract a demonic curse. Something whips past you from the opposite direction, slicing your cheek. You don’t look up. You’re busy.
Shigaraki catches Overhaul’s message and pries it open, reads it aloud. “Your boss wants you to play a song. How are you supposed to play a song when phones don’t work in here?”
“Tell me you don’t really think that music only comes out of phones.” You pull a music box out of the bottom of the supply kit, dust it off, and open it. No music comes out – you must have to turn the handle. “Be quiet.”
Music begins to emanate from the box after two turns of the handle – a thin, quiet voice, singing what sounds like a lullaby in a language you don’t speak. You doubt the cultists speak it, either. But it doesn’t matter what the words are, or even that the singer is at least a little tone-deaf. All that matters is the glamour that drips from every note, stronger and heavier than anything you’ve ever called up. It’s a faery’s voice, and it’s already affecting Shigaraki. He sways sideways, falls hard against a column, the curse he mumbles more slurred than his voice was when he was drunk. The glamour is almost overpowering. If you weren’t half-fey, you’d fall prey to it yourself.
It’s strong enough to stagger Shigaraki and disorient you, but it’s not having much of an effect on the ritual itself. The vibrations are still traveling through the air, and worse, you can feel them in the ground beneath your feet. You keep turning the handle of the music box with no change in the strength of the demonic curse emanating from the center of the garden. Why isn’t it working?
The answer occurs to you just as Shigaraki speaks up. “It’s too quiet,” he mumbles. “Witch. Make it louder.”
You can’t. The despair barely has time to settle in before the answer occurs to you. You can’t make the voice from the music box louder, but you can make sure it’s not the only fey voice in the garden. You clear your throat, coat your voice in your glamour, and begin to sing.
It’s nothing – some song you liked when you could walk freely in the human world, the first thing that comes to mind. You make an effort to match the key the music box is singing in, and you project both your voice and your glamour, doing your best to build on what the faint fey voice is already providing. You think it might be working. You’re not sure.
What you do know is that Shigaraki’s figured you out. You can see him out of the corner of your eye, still slumped against the column, staring unabashedly at you as you turn the handle of the music box and sing. You’re able to console yourself with the thought that your uniform hides your patchwork fey skin before you realize what a stupid thing that is to think about – right now, or ever. Your throat is starting to hurt, your vocal cords straining under the weight of the glamour. You aren’t sure how much longer you can keep this up.
The vibrations from the ritual begin to fade just as your voice begins to crack, and it gives you the willpower to hold on a little longer, the notes you sing growing increasingly fractured and hoarse. By the time your voice gives out completely, the demonic energy’s faded to the point where the music box is enough to counter it. Your ears are ringing, so much that you almost miss Chrono’s footsteps as he approaches. He notes Shigaraki, then looks to you. “You should have called for help.”
“From who?” Your voice sounds awful. You cough. “I took care of it.”
“If that demonic energy had gotten into the flux field, it could have destabilized the entire dimension,” Chrono snaps. “Someone as weak as you has no business trying to contain –”
“If she can’t contain it, you shouldn’t have sent her to watch it.” Shigaraki levers himself upright. “Something was off about that ritual. Isn’t it your job to catch things like that? Or are you really okay with a bunch of human cultists sacrificing half-demons in your pocket dimension?”
“Half-demon?” Chrono swears. “They wouldn’t dare.”
“I can smell its blood.” Shigaraki shrugs. “She saved your ass. Give her a bonus or something.”
Chrono handles being told what to do by people other than Overhaul about as well as Rappa handles being told what to do by anybody. His shoulders stiffen, and his hand closes around your upper arm, venting a sharp jolt of magic into you rather than loosing it at Shigaraki. At least, that’s what you think he’s doing. Then the skin on your right arm, itchy and crawling since three days ago, erupts with an itch so sharp and acidic that it almost feels like a burn.
Your arm is on fire. You’ve felt this before, and you know instantly that you can’t leave it a second longer. “I need my break,” you say to Chrono, your voice strained.
He lets you go with a sharp nod. You turn and all but run from the garden, already clawing off your apron.
No time to get back to the servants’ quarters, but Asylum is full of places to hide if you know where to look. And you know where to look. With a master rune like the one you carry, you can open up passageways and closets that even the savviest of guests don’t know exist, and you’ve used them more times than you’d like to admit. You reach the nearest of the passageways and raise the rune to tap against the wall, only for the agonizing itch in your left arm to flare to new heights. Your body contorts in discomfort, and your right hand falls back to your side – and then, so fast that you barely register it, someone slips the rune from around your wrist.
It's Shigaraki, and he’s got enough of a height advantage over you that he can hold the rune out of reach just by extending his arm. You don’t have time for this. You really don’t have time for this. You can feel the fey skin beginning to eat through yours from below. “Give it back!”
“So that was why you wouldn’t let me say I owed you. You’re a faery, not a witch.” Shigaraki’s grinning like he’s figured something out, even though the clue you gave him was a thousand times more obvious than the clue you got a month ago. “Why didn’t you want me to owe you one? My master is powerful. You could have asked me for anything.”
“I don’t want anything from you.”
“Except this.” Shigaraki studies the rune. You reach for it again and he holds out his other hand to forestall you. “You want this, and I want a straight answer. The ritual’s done. Do you want to go get food with me or not?”
The small part of you that’s not panicking, caught in the desperate need to get the rune back, to get away, notices how he’s phrased the question. He knows that faeries can’t lie, and for some bizarre reason, he’s decided to corner you on a question so mundane that you wonder if you’re hallucinating it. Why would he waste a question he thinks you’ll have to answer on something this stupid?
It doesn’t matter, because half-fey can lie as much as they want, and because you’re done playing around. You glamour your left arm, faking a clumsy feint, and when Shigaraki shifts away from it, you snatch the rune from his hand with your right. He’s between you and the wall, so you turn away, pressing the rune against the opposite wall and opening up the passageway there. You dive through it, the relief at being out of the hallway marred only by the fact that Shigaraki followed you in.
The passageway you were aiming for originally had space. This one is a close fit for one person, tight for two, but you’re out of time to be picky. You can’t get your arm out of your dress without unbuttoning it partway. “What are you doing?” Shigaraki asks, clearly startled, as you undo the buttons one-handed and draw your arm from your sleeve. “Are you transforming?”
Even the slightest motion of your arm sets off a wave of pins and needles, and you grit your teeth as you work it free. Bared from wrist to shoulder, your arm looks awful, mottled, bulging in odd places, almost writhing in others – like the fey skin really is trying to claw its way to freedom from the inside out. Seeing what it looks like only hardens your resolve. You dig your fingers into your shoulder, trying to pry up a piece of skin. If you get a good enough grip on the first one, you can peel off the rest in one sheet.
But you can’t get a grip. Your hand is shaking too much, or your nails are too short, or something. You remember too late that the only other time you peeled the skin back, you made the first incision with a pocketknife. Overhaul doesn’t let the staff carry weapons. You don’t have anything on you that’s sharp enough to cut through your skin, and if you can’t – there’s no way you’ll be able to scratch all your skin away before the fey skin eats through. It’ll be agonizing. It’ll take forever. And Shigaraki will be watching you the entire time.
Shigaraki. You turn to him, desperate and hating yourself for it. You know that guests are searched for weapons when they arrive, but maybe – “Do you have anything sharp?”
“Like a knife?” Shigaraki shakes his head. Then his expression shifts, and he raises one hand to his mouth, pressing the pad of his thumb against one of his incisors. You see blood well up where the tooth breaks his skin. “My teeth aren’t as sharp as my master’s –”
If they can draw blood, they’re sharp enough. You beckon him forward. “Please.”
Part of you is expecting him to bargain. Any inhuman would, if they had one of the Fair Folk at their mercy – they’d never get better terms for any deal they wished to make. But Shigaraki steps forward, closing the slight distance between you without asking what you’ll give him in exchange. His hands are dry, his palms rough like before, as they close around your wrist and raise your hand towards his mouth. “Here?”
His breath is hot against your wrist. You shake your head. “My shoulder.”
Some part of you is terrified at the thought of letting a vampire this close to your throat, screaming in terror at the thought of those teeth meeting your skin. Shigaraki edges even closer to you, as close together as you were when you were dragging him drunk down the hall. His mouth brushes against your shoulder, and you freeze in place. What is he waiting for? You don’t need him to peel the skin off for you. You just need him to –
At least one of Shigaraki’s incisors punctures your skin, and you flinch, hiss – less at the pain, and more at the fact that he’s touching you, one hand on your waist and the other around your wrist, keeping your left arm extended and keeping the rest of you close. But you’ve got what you needed from him. You dig your fingers into the breach, get a good grip, and pull.
It hurts when you peel your human skin away from the faery skin that’s grown beneath, but the human skin is already dead. As it breaks contact with your body, it goes ashen, then transparent. There’s next to no blood. The faery skin glistens, slick with serous fluid, as it’s bared to the air for the first time. You mess up a little bit at the end, peeling away a piece of healthy human skin on the back of your hand by accident. It feels like a hangnail, and your entire arm stings. The pain would be worth complaining about if you didn’t know exactly how bad it was before.
Shigaraki’s still way too close to you. You try to sidle away, and he lets go of your waist, but not your arm. He’s peering intently at it, almost fixated. You brace yourself for the kind of comments you’ve heard every time someone’s seen what you really look like. “Wow,” Shigaraki says. “It looks even cooler than I thought.”
You’re not sure you heard him right. “Cool?”
“Don’t fish for compliments. I’m getting to it,” Shigaraki says. He hasn’t looked up from your arm yet. “I thought it would look cool, and I was right. Do you have more of it?”
You’re feeling weirdly lightheaded. You nod, and you can tell Shigaraki’s grinning just by the sound of his voice. “How much more?” he asks. “Can I see?”
That question snaps you out of whatever fog you’ve been floating in. “No,” you say, and pull away from him completely. “You weren’t even supposed to see this.”
“But you’d have been in trouble if I wasn’t here.” Shigaraki’s eyes follow you closely, not just focused on your arm this time. You can feel his gaze roving over you. If you had to guess, you’d say he’s trying to figure out where else you’re hiding fey skin. “I helped.”
He helped you, after you helped him. “We’re even, then,” you say. “Is that why you did it?”
Shigaraki’s not even subtle in how he ducks the question, and before you can press him for an answer, you hear someone or something knocking against the wall outside – a sharp, uneven rattle that startles you both. You start wrestling your arm back into your sleeve. The serous fluid will glue the fabric to the fey skin and removing it will be painful later, but you don’t have a choice. You need to get out there, and you need to beg whoever’s knocking not to tell Overhaul that they found you in the world’s smallest secret passageway with Shigaraki Tomura and your dress unbuttoned.
The knocking intensifies. You miss a button at the collar of your dress and Shigaraki’s hands knock yours aside, undoing it and buttoning it properly again. Is he trying to get you in his debt officially? You decide that’s a problem for later and open the wall again. There’s no one there but one of Overhaul’s paper cranes, battering itself to death against the wall. You grab it clumsily out of the air. Overhaul’s message is blunt and to-the-point – he wants you to assist Chrono in containing the next ritual, which starts in half an hour. Shigaraki is peering over your shoulder. “I can’t read it.”
“That’s because it’s not for you. They can only be read by the person they’re intended for,” you say. Half an hour. That’s not much time. “Look, I have to –”
Another paper crane zips past you, headed for Shigaraki. He whips his head to one side to avoid it, but he read the trajectory wrong. The wing slices into the dry skin on the side of his neck and he swears, clapping his hand over the now-bleeding paper cut. You capture the crane instead and hand it to him. His expression, already annoyed, deepens into frustration and discomfort as he reads. “What does it say?” you ask.
“What does yours say?”
“Mine says I have half an hour before I’m supposed to help with the next ritual,” you say. “What about yours?”
“My master wants me to feed while I’m here.” Shigaraki scowls. “I don’t want to feed. I’m hungry.”
He’s hungry, and he helped you, and he’s a guest – but it’s not any of those things that decides your course of action. It’s something else, something you’d go mute rather than admit to out loud. “I’ve got half an hour,” you say. There’s almost certainly something else you’re supposed to be doing with that half an hour. Overhaul can be angry with you later. “We can go get something to eat.”
Shigaraki looks surprised. “Really?”
“Sure.” You can’t figure out where that surprise is coming from. He’s been bothering you about it since before the ritual went sideways. Was he not expecting you to say yes? “And we should cover that cut on your neck.”
Shigaraki pulls his hand away from it, grimacing. “It’s not that bad. I get worse all the time.”
From scratching? “It’s still not a good idea to walk around bleeding in here. Let’s go.”
You steer clear of the infirmary and make your way instead to one of the supply caches, using your master rune to open it, and then to open an alcove where you can patch up Shigaraki’s injury in peace. Shigaraki complains as you try to clean the wound. “Why does he fold those things so sharp, anyway?”
“So people will snap to it faster,” you explain. “Most of us would rather drop what we’re doing and do what he wants than risk getting a papercut like that.”
“Your boss is an asshole.” Shigaraki tilts his head to the side at your request, then freezes. “What are you doing?”
“I just moved your hair. It was in the way.” You don’t care that he’s uncomfortable. After what happened tonight, after how much of you he saw, you feel like he deserves it. You get a fingertip full of some salve from the supply caches and start daubing it onto the cut, to the tune of a sharp hiss. “Sorry. I’m trying to be gentle.”
Shigaraki doesn’t respond to that. It’s quiet as you fish through the supply kit for a bandage, a quiet that feels awkward but not necessarily tense. Shigaraki doesn’t speak again until after you’ve placed the bandage. “Can you use one of your spells on it? Whatever you did last time,” he says. “If my master finds out –”
“It’s a glamour, not a spell,” you say. “No problem.”
A phantom itch travels along your left arm as you set the glamour, fading before you can scratch it in earnest. You store the supply kit, open another passageway that will lead directly to the kitchens, and start off, counting on Shigaraki to follow you. The awkwardness follows, too, and just like before, Shigaraki speaks first. “I get it now. Why you wouldn’t tell me what you were.”
You find yourself tucking your left arm close to your body, shielding it. Shigaraki keeps talking. “You helped me just now. I owe you a favor again. Ask.”
Earlier tonight, you’d have asked him to leave you alone. Now – “We’re even. Don’t worry about it.”
“You can’t do that,” Shigaraki says. “I know how this works. You can’t just cancel a debt because you don’t want anything from the person who owes it.”
“I’m only half-fey. I don’t know which of the rules applies to me,” you say. “You’re off the hook.”
“What if I don’t want to be off the hook?”
You can’t imagine why he’d want to be on the hook. The Fair Folk are notorious for driving cruel and twisted bargains. Whether it’s due to their morality, which doesn’t map onto human morals particularly well, or due to a desire to hurt others, everyone who’s ever found themselves in debt to a faery has been keen to get out of it as quickly as possible. Why on earth would Shigaraki want to carry around a possible debt to you?
You don’t want to ask that question. You stay quiet. “I guess I’ll have to stick around, then,” Shigaraki muses. “See about paying you back.”
You glance at him and find him smirking, or grinning. You can’t tell which. Your glamour is shimmering at the side of his neck, obvious to you but subtle enough to escape his master’s notice, and his lips, which would have cracked at a smile this wide even an hour ago, look smoother than before. You have a bad feeling about why that is – and at the same time, you aren’t as worried about it as you were before. Now that he knows what you are, interacting with him is significantly less stressful than before. It’s not something you’ll look forward to. But it’s not something you’ll dread.
“I guess you have to,” you say, and his smile brightens. Even that’s not enough to dredge up the ambivalence you felt before. “Let’s get some food.”
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skitskatdacat63 · 8 months
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Fernando Alonso × Unconventional Drinking Implements
#if i had a nickel for every time nano drank out of a trophy id have two nickels. that's not a lot but its weird it happened twice#dont ask me if theres more i didnt have the mental capacity to look up all his podium pics...theres 20 years worth#but if you do have more somehow miraculousy do of course hit me up#this is one of these things i think that youd have to experience by watching a lot of races bcs finding it by keywords is impossible imo#though i did look up various trophies and now i want to make a tier list of trophies by drinkablity 😭#but yeah some people in the tags of the pics i posted were like 'he did exactly what i wanted to do![drink from the big cup basically]'#so this is like: hey! not the first time hes done it 🤭#but like if these are the only two times hes done it thats hilarious#bcs its been 18 yrs so was he suddenly like 'oh my god wait i just remembered what i can do with this'#but like the 2005 is the wcc win so it makes sense why he did smth so over the top#but this one i really really feel like he let the impulsive thoughts win and was just 'this looks like a giant cup....'#not pictured: flavio also drinking from the trophy. he was so indulgent of his boy 🥹#also i wonder if theres footage of him pouring in the champagne in 2023 cause i didnt even know he drank from it until i was looking at pic#cause thats my fav thing about the 2005 one is watching him trying to aim and pour it from way too high hahaha#oh also there is the brazil 2005 gp as well but he doesnt directly drink from it so i dont think it fits well here#but at the same time he really is looking at trophies like 'hmmm how well would this work as a cup'#f1#formula 1#fernando alonso#2023 dutch gp#2005 chinese gp#fa14#we do a little bit of f1#formula one
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zincbot · 2 months
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played through tunic so fast i didn't even process anything besides filling my noteapp with "left right down up", but yo the production line for the obelisks? that was fucked
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gamingofkenna · 9 months
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Oxenfree 2 spoilers, re the 'final choice'
I played the whole game in a solid 7 hour chunk yesterday and I'm still trying to decide how I feel about it, and I'll have to do another playthrough when I can, because there's so much of the way the characters are that seems based on your choices so I wanna see what happens when I make other choices
but I'm seeing that a lot of people let Olivia go through the portal at the end, and that everyone who didn't is saying those who did are monsters for letting this grief-stricken teenager kill herself
and. i don't think there is a 'right' choice at the end there in most circumstances. but i did let Olivia take the radio, because as awful as it felt I just kept thinking that I couldn't do that to Rex
especially since we just had a ghost moment of Rex telling Riley she has to keep fighting, even though she's going to keep failing? to follow that up with 'or you can just kill yourself now to save these kids'? like it is a horrible thing to do to Olivia but it's a horrible thing to do to Rex too?
honestly, based on my playthrough, the 'right' thing seems to be Jacob going through the portal. few players forced him to because apparently the only way for him to do it is if you force him - I didn't even let him come on the island with me. I saw the prompt that I could stop him and immediately knew that if I didn't he would die. Riley kept seeing visions of her future but Jacob never did. Jacob kept talking to me about how he feels he never did anything important in life, how he likes just chilling in his hometown, how he doesn't have any grand ambition but also wants to do something important and meaningful
when that prompt popped up I thought 'if I go to that island I'm getting sucked into this loop too and I'm not coming back; Jacob doesn't deserve that' and I made him stay. I'm curious now if there's a specific dialogue tree that leads to Jacob deciding, at the end, that him going through that portal and saving everyone by doing what he's always been doing is his way of being a hero. but that wasn't the option i'd been given. instead I had two suicidal people, who both had their whole lives in front of them
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goldensunset · 1 year
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what
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#aaaaaaugh dude I MISS HIM i dont know what to say that hasnt already been said#but posting is so hard talking about him is so hard#every day i wait for his youtube to post a new video or for the technodad account to be like 'LOL YOU NERDS ACTUALLY FELL FOR IT'#he was just playing a long-con prank and It'll Be Fine and he just wanted to distract us while he worked on some new insane project#how am i still fully in denial 5 months later. it's almost been half a year#i cant watch his videos anymore. it was easy the 1st week and then it was impossible then it was easy again now it's impossible again#drawing in general is hard bc he was all i was drawing. he still is but im drawing WAY less and with pretty much no passion behind it#cant draw stuff for myself i just wanna draw him. partly bc of him but also bc that's where i made all my friends with you guys :(#i dont wanna go back to what i used to do. i wanna stay here. but it's really hard#i know i dont *have* to make my own posts and i can just reblog and ramble n stuff but. it feels weird not to#i save all my favorite things here. there's still clips i havent taken. art i havent made. fics i've never wrote (and never will lol)#i dont WANT to stop. it's hard to force myself to get back into it tho. there's no easy way to talk about him#it feels borderline unhealthy trying to keep it up#but i keep going into swings of ''i love it here so much i love you guys'' and ''i cant keep going im not strong enough''#so like. which is it. what's REALLY wrong??? i wish i could just go back to how things were aaaaa#idk what i mean by that really. just wish i could find some normalcy in it all whatever that would mean for me#idk if my issue is Him Being Dead or trying to run a blog for a guy who died. some combination. some secret third thing. augh#chat#tw death
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tonycries · 28 days
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Unhoneymooners!? - G.S.
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Synopsis. The universe was surely playing a joke on you. Here you were, trapped on a luxury getaway with your - dangerously handsome, extremely obnoxious - ex. Either you were going to kill each other or end up pinned beneath him, split apart on his cóck. You just didn’t know what would come first.
Pairing. Gojo Satoru x Reader
Content. MDNI, fem! reader, exes to lovers, unprotected, argument as foreplay, slight enemies to lovers, more like annoyances actually, cunnilingus, oral (male + female), spitting, creampié, one bed trope, rough, Satoru is still EXTREMELY down bad for you, and unfairly hot, forced proximity, cúmplay, pet names (sweetheart), swearing.
Word count. 8.5k
A/N. It’s impossible to not write Satoru without bullying him at least a little bit.
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You broke up with Gojo Satoru exactly 5 months, 2 weeks, and 16 hours ago - not that you were keeping count, of course.
So why was he outside of your resort room blasting “Kill Bill” by SZA like he’s auditioning for the world’s most dramatic comeback tour? On what should’ve marked your fourth anniversary, no less.
Well, given you were the one to lock him out, but still - the stubborn bastard could at least have some decorum. 
With an exasperated sigh, you throw yourself onto the king-sized bed of your honeymoon suite, trying to will away that annoying, grating voice - not SZA, no, more so Satoru singing along at the top of his lungs to the chorus. 
How did you even get here? And with Satoru of all people - your Satoru. Or at least he was this time a little over a year ago. 
You first met Satoru when you were in university, back when he wore those pretentious circled sunglasses and waltzed around those halls like he owned the place. And after a single literature assignment together, he wasn’t just your (self-proclaimed) best friend; he was the reluctantly favorite thorn in your side. 
Like the rest of him, Satoru’s introduction into your love-life was anything but subtle. It wasn’t like he strolled in, gave a polite nod, and blended into the background. Oh no, he bulldozed his way in and dragged you to dance with him on the tables of some dingy frat party in what you could only assume was some joke from the universe at your expense.
And damn him, you think bitterly, you couldn't resist him that night. Spinning you into a dramatic dip, silver chain brushing your face as his half-lidded eyes bored into yours. You couldn’t not kiss him after the way his hands were just searing into your skin. 
God, you’ve never been able to listen to “Gasolina” the same way ever since.  
Satoru was in love as he was in the rest of life - a force of nature, and it was too easy to find yourself caught up in him.
That night at the frat party was just the beginning. From then on was a rollercoaster of everything from heated debates over the best flavor of ramen to impromptu road trips where you’d end up under a carpet of stars. Wrapped in each other’s arms and sharing whispered secrets for an unpromised future - oftentimes where Satoru would crack a joke or two about running away to Tokyo with him. To which you’d laugh it off with a “Yeah yeah, I’d leave everything I’ve known behind in a heartbeat for your dumbass, Toru.”
You just didn’t think that it would be the downfall to your relationship. All the empty promises. 
Because as those heavenly days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, eventually two years had gone by. The whirlwind romance settled into a comfortable rhythm, but with it came the looming promise of graduation and Satoru moving to work under his family company in Tokyo.
Under pressure, it wasn’t long before the cracks began to show, the arguments more frequent, and the silences more deafening. And as your relationship slowly turned into nothing more than a husk of what it used to be - so did the both of you.
Long story short, graduation was a bittersweet goodbye - and you think both of you knew long before it was actually over. Neither of you attended the afterparty - with Satoru on a flight straight to Tokyo and you at home to stuff your face with chocolate. Hey, at least you could blame your tears on finally leaving university, right? 
You had meticulously erased his name from your phone, your social media, and even your dreams - well, almost, the bastard still came around to bother you occasionally. It was messy, painful, and final.
But “final” really didn’t explain your current predicament. Because if there’s one thing you’ve learned about Satoru is that he’s always there - whether you liked it or not. He was there when you needed a partner for that literature assignment, and he was there to turn your world upside down at that dingy frat party.
Hell, he was even there to help you stubbornly chug mountains of ice cream and win that raffle for this five day-long getaway trip to the Maldives. Though, you think he might’ve chugged the ice cream without the promise of a vacation anyway.
But, when ultimately those shiny tickets came in the mail - Satoru wasn’t there. Oh well, it might’ve been a couple’s trip - but you could have a hot girl summer, right? Maybe you could even snag a hottie by the end. You’d almost forgotten that he’d be getting his copy of the tickets as well.
Yet, unfortunately - as the beginning notes of P!nk’s “So What” bursts through the heavy wooden door - you were inevitably reminded of the fact that he was here. Right now. Goading you into coming outside.
You find yourself groaning inwardly (and outwardly) because of course, why wouldn’t he come back even more obnoxious than before? You haven’t seen him in ages, yet here he is, crashing back into your life with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Or - you furrow your brows at his purposefully off-key singing carrying over the sounds of the waves outside - with the subtlety of a manchild with a JBL and a premium account on Spotify.  
Rubbing your temples in frustration, you contemplate how much longer of this it would take before you’re both kicked out of this resort. And after you ate so many ice creams to win this getaway trip? No chance.
With a resigned sigh, you rise from the bed, smoothing out the bathing suit you’d just put on before the devil incarnate showed up knocking at your door. Something hot and prickly pools in your stomach as you approach it, and you can’t help but roll your eyes at the sheer absurdity of the situation. So like Satoru.
Taking a deep breath to steel yourself, you shakily reach for the handle. It’s fine. It’s not a big deal actually.
What’s the worst that can happen?
Slam! 
The door swings open, and there in all his smug glory stands a very shirtless Satoru. Gojo pain-in-your-ass Satoru, the same asshole you’ve blocked on even Gmail. 
Except, you’re momentarily struck by how high you have to raise your eyes to meet his. Are growth spurts even a thing anymore? You didn’t have a chance to take a good look last time before slamming the door shut at the first flash of white hair and a smug grin.
But right now, traitorously, your gaze catches on just how broad his shoulders look and…since when was he so chiseled? Damn you, Tokyo - you were doing him too good.
His hair is slightly longer too, curtaining those slightly more mature features, stopping just above that ever-immature grin. One which moves as he hums, “Well, happy fourth anniversary to me, If I knew this came with the suite then I’d have swam here myself.”
You scoff, suddenly feeling strangely self-conscious as he wiggles his brows, striking blue eyes sweeping your figure from head to toe. “I’d prefer if you swam back. What are you doing?” 
“Why, just showing up to our room on our lil’ honeymoon, sweetheart.” Satoru sing-songs, leaning against the doorframe to fully prevent you from slamming the door in his (admittedly) pretty face again. “And before you try to break my nose with that door again, I won that ticket here fair and square, y’know. I ate just as much ice cream as you did for it.”
“You ate most of those before you knew about the getaway raffle.” you sigh over his nonchalant shrug, pinching your nose, “And stop calling it our honeymoon, I dumped you five months ago.”
“Well aren’t you just the gift that keeps on giving. Keeping count?”
“No. Don’t be a pest.”
“Always thought you had a thing for pests. After all, you did date me.” As Satoru grins impossibly wider, you couldn’t help but roll your eyes. He winks, “And if I’m a pest then you’re an itch that just won’t go away.”
“At least I’m not the itch that shows up uninvited to someone’s honeymoon suite.” you hiss. And with that you start shutting the door ever-so-slowly, delighting in the panic that overtakes Satoru’s features as he reaches out frantically.
“Hey!” he sputters, “I didn’t know you’d be here! And besides this ‘pest’ forgot his slippers all the way in Tokyo and can’t stand on flaming-hot boardwalks for too long so let me in.”
And sure enough, you glance down to see that Satoru isn’t wearing any slippers on the scorching boardwalk. The realization almost brings a smirk to your lips. This idiot. 
“Wow.”
“‘Wow’ at my feet or-”
“I should leave you here to rot just for your pure idiocy.” you deadpan, eyes locked on the way he’s burning his soles off yet still has the audacity to flash you a cocky smile.
“But you won’t.” he hums.
A beat passes. One. Two. And Satoru’s grin almost falters, before you finally relent - opening the door just a crack, cursing his entire bloodline under your breath. “You’re incorrigible” you mutter as he saunters inside victoriously, dragging his hefty luggage behind.
“Why change perfection, sweetheart~” he calls out, heading straight for the bedroom, only to let out a delighted “OooOOo” at the sight of the king-sized bed in the middle. The only bed. “How scandalous, maybe you’ll even fall in lov-” 
“Don’t. I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a seashell.” you warn, holding up both keycards threateningly, “I get the bed, you take the couch.”
“But-”
“And I’ve got the keys, so slippers or not you’ll be back out on that boardwalk.” 
A slight smile tugging at the corners of your lips at the way Satoru looked so dramatically crestfallen, you continue - just to be petty, “And no more ‘Kill Bill’ that’s on my angry ex playlist.”
With a heavy sigh he sulkily makes his way to the bathroom, calling out as he does, “Fine. But I’m showering first.”
As he disappears from sight you throw yourself onto your bed, basking in what little peace and quiet you’ll have because of your unwanted guest. This was going to be a-
“And I’m using all of your body lotions.”
“...”
“I will use one of your body lotions.”
Groaning, you sink into the plush mattress, just wishing it would swallow you whole and spare you from this torment. And this was only Day 1? This was going to be a very long five days. 
---
The first night with Satoru, honestly, wasn’t too bad. 
You don’t know what you expected exactly - maybe for him to pour hair dye in your shampoo or something. But he actually stuck to his word, slept on the couch after only a bit of taunting, and used only one of your body lotions. Your best-smelling, most expensive one, but one nonetheless.
Feeling slightly more optimistic, you spent most of the second day at the beach, meanwhile he stuck to lounging by the pool. Add in a bit of pretending you didn’t know him by the salad bar at dinner and that made for an almost-perfect hot girl summer. 
Well, considering that you were rooming with your insufferable longtime ex - in a honeymoon suite of all places. 
The only catch came that night, fully content at the burning soreness from being pushed around by the waves outside. You got ready to splay out on your bed, humming along to the tunes of your playlist and…Satoru’s lamenting?
“I swear my back feels like it’s been run over by a truck. Five of them, and a zoo.” he complains from behind you, dramatically draping himself over the couch - his impromptu bed. 
“Good.”
“What if that was my last straw?”
“Even better.”
His exaggerated, disappointed whine is both embarrassing and almost-endearing as you roll your eyes, resisting the urge to suffocate him with a pillow. “Maybe call your chiropractor guy.”
Satoru shot you a pointed look, his expression a mixture of faux innocence and irritation, which you knew too well. “I wish but he’s trekking through the Himalayas. C’mon~ Don’t you think that lovely king-sized bed is too big for just one?”
“No, but the boardwalk sure is. Maybe you should try it out.” you monotone, getting ready to end this conversation once and for all. 
But when has Satoru ever let you off easy? He sits up abruptly, a devious smile curling his lips. “Ohh, I get it.” he taunts, batting his long lashes mockingly, “You’re scared to sleep in the same bed with me.”
Huh?
“Out of all the idiotic-” you cut yourself off by whirling around to face his smug grin, “Why would I be scared to sleep in a bed with you. I’ve done that far too many times already.”
“Exactly,” he chuckles. “And all those times you could barely last an hour before without keeping your hands off of me. Scared you’ll end up pinned underneath me and stuffed full like old times, sweetheart?”
You narrow your eyes at him despite the heat burning your face. “The only thing I’m scared of is your icicle feet on my side.”
He laughs, a sound that’s equal parts irritating and endearing, and stands up from where he was slumped on the couch. Making his way slowly, but surely towards you, “Oh, c’mon. For old times’ sake, admit it, you miss me.”
"Yeah, missed the peace and quiet I don’t have because of your big mouth,” you scoff. Finding it hard to meet his twinkling gaze as he comes close enough that you’re toe to toe with him. Your cheeks burn at the proximity - hot enough to match the heat radiating off his body. 
Satoru shakes his head, undeterred by your threats. And suddenly you get the overwhelming urge to throw him out the window and straight into the ocean. “You can deny it all you want, but you still have feelings for me.”
Your jaw clenches at his audacity. “You wish. I’d never.”
“Then prove it.”
Damn, he was good.
Which is probably how you found yourself lying in the same bed as Satoru, with a wall of all the pillows in the room erected between you two - and a few extra from room service just in case. 
“Sweetheart, this is a king-sized bed. Is the fortress really necessary?”
You wrap your blankets tighter around yourself, trying to ignore the figure radiating warm right next to you. Muttering out a muffled little, “Yeah, so you can keep your mitts off of me.”
Satoru groans dramatically, bed creaking as he shuffles what you can only assume to be closer to you. “You keep your mitts off of me, you lecher.” he quips, voice dripping with sarcasm as he inches closer.
You stiffen at his proximity, feeling his warmth seep through the layers of blankets and pillows as he chuckles softly, the sound sending shivers down your spine, “Oh, come on, don’t be like that. We used to share a bed all the time.”
“That was before,” you interject. God, you didn’t like where this conversation was going. 
“Before what?” Satoru presses, his voice low and insistent. 
Now, you might’ve let yourself be goaded into sharing a bed but these were old wounds better off left alone. You hiss, tone firm, “Before. Now sleep” 
Before when you didn’t have to make a wall of pillows. Before when he would hold you tight and whisper sweet secrets into your ear. That he’d buy you the biggest ring he saw and promise you the world. Before- 
“I missed you, y’know.” Satoru breaks the silence barely audible over the sound of your own thoughts. The word pangs through your mind and claws at your chest. And at your silence he continues, tone a little lighter, “And stop hogging all the blankets, I’m gonna freeze to-”
“Boardwalk.”
“My apologies, ma’am. Goodnight, ma’am.”
And he sinks back into his pillow with a huff, you let out a sigh of relief. Something hot coiling in your stomach as you close try to catch as much sleep as you possibly could with the bane of your existence laying right beside you. The suddenly taller, dangerously handsome, still as-obnoxious-as-ever bane of your existence. 
You just wonder if he remembered “before”.
Oh, how Satoru remembered “before”. So much so that he had sixteen different playlists dedicated to you even after the breakup.
It’s divine punishment - it has to be. Satoru thinks there’s no reasonable explanation for the series of unfortunate events happening to him other than punishment from his ancestors above for being such a pussy and losing the love of his life.
First he forgets his slippers, then he ends up locked out of his own honeymoon suite by said love of his life. Granted, all thoughts of his poor burnt soles went out the window the moment he caught a glimpse of you in that positively sinful bikini. God, were you glowing. A goddess upon Earth - he could really give the Gojo Satoru of five months ago a good, hard kick.
And now he’s stuck in a - very comfortable - prison with you just inches away, tossing and turning in that way he knows means that you can’t sleep either. 
Honestly, very funny universe, the great Gojo Satoru demands a refund. Way to punk’d him into confronting the feelings he’s desperately been trying to bury these past few months - ever since he got on that plane to Tokyo and contemplated faking a heart attack just to get off. 
Realizing just then that he lost the love of his life - and the only woman who’d tolerate his karaoke nights. But with that realization came another, more jarring one: he was too late. 
Every touch, every laugh, and even every time you rolled your eyes was etched into his very soul, and it felt like a montage from a sappy breakup movie directed by a sadistic screenwriter who had it out for him. 
And it really didn’t help that this was the exact suite he was planning once upon a time to propose in. God, how you’d feed him to the crabs if he said anything about that - nevermind the fact that he was actually one that booked this-
But still, some traitorous, annoying part of his heart interrupts, she still hasn’t made you sleep on the boardwalk yet.
Maybe - just maybe - he’ll wake up to a second chance?
Ha. As if.
“I can’t sleep.” Satoru groans out loud, more so to drown out his own thoughts than anything.
“Well, I can. Goodnight.”
Ah, his girl was such a lil’ liar. Undeterred, the mattress creaks as he shuffles his weight to excitedly face you, taking a moment to admire how pretty you looked under the dim moonlight. He plows on, “Hey, if you promise not to make me crab food, wanna walk along the beach and watch the stars?”
A beat of silence. One. Two. so deafening and tense that Satoru was half a second away from obnoxiously laughing it off as a joke and pulling out his Emo Times™ playlist. 
“Or I can go back to the couch and-”
“Shut up. Let’s watch the stars, Satoru.”
But what do you know - maybe the universe hasn’t given up on him just yet. 
And, well, if he woke up the next morning breaching your fortress - your warm breath tickling his neck and his arms wrapped tightly around your waist, like the lifeline he never knew he needed - then, neither of you mentioned it.
---
“Hey, Satoru. You think we’ll always be like this?” you hum into your boyfriend’s chest, barely a whisper as the looming fears of, well, everything ring in your mind. 
He pulls you close, flashing a mischievous grin before planting a dramatic kiss on the top of your head. “Duh, I’ll always be around to drive you dangerously close to a stroke, sweetheart.” 
You roll your eyes, yet bury yourself closer to his warmth anyway.
“Besides, it doesn’t matter if I have to drag you by the leg to Tokyo. Wherever you are is where I belong. ”
---
You’ve come to learn that a resort island is only so big when you’re actively trying to avoid your 6’3 manchild of an ex.
Now that you were rooming with Satoru, sleeping with Satoru (in a literal sense only, of course), and just-so-happening to bump into him at the beach - somehow, talking with him is a little easier, his presence just a bit more exciting than you’d care to admit. 
If the you of four days ago could see what had become of you, then she’d probably slap some sense into you faster than you could say “Kill Bill”. Sleeping in the same bed (still only literally), having dinner, watching the stars - with Gojo Satoru? You’ve gone completely off your rocker. 
But could you really be blamed? These last few days have you feeling like maybe you’ve been dropped into an alternate universe, where you and Satoru never broke up. 
Yet, reality is a persistent little bastard. And with the end of your trip looming dangerously closer, the past you would be cackling mockingly in your face, flashing a large sign in big, red letters reading “I TOLD you so.” 
Whatever. Maybe by this time tomorrow both of you could laugh this all off as a silly little adventure and call yourself somewhat begrudging friends. Maybe you’d even end up unblocking him by the end - on Gmail, at least.
At the very least, dinnertime was a solace - both from your thoughts and the smug bastard talking your ear off about how he could “make that spaghetti better than a thousand Italian grandmothers.”
Until the fourth - and final - night, that is. When the resort, deciding that your current torture wasn’t already enough, arranged a special candlelit dinner. A romantic one. By the beach. With Satoru of all people. 
Great. Wonderful. Perfect, in fact. Going out with a bang. Was this really part of the all-inclusive package? It was like the universe was playing some twisted joke on you - or some awful version of wingmanning. 
You grit your teeth silently as you’re ushered to the beachside table, thoughts barely audible over the waves crashing against the shore and the soft, romantic music drifting from the band nearby. 
The complete opposite of Satoru, who was already seated at the table and enjoying himself far too much for your liking. He lounged back in his chair, a self-satisfied smirk playing on his lips as he watched you sit opposite him uncomfortably.
You hated to admit it - but God was he dangerously beautiful in that crisp white button-up, one that you knew was from his overpriced collection for special occasions. You found yourself fighting to avoid the amber hues twinkling in his eyes as the sun dipped below the horizon, casting warm shadows that bring out his pretty features.
Pretty? So frighteningly pretty - until he speaks, that is.
“And here I thought our honeymoon couldn’t get any worse. You’re sweating bullets, sweetheart. This your first date with me or something?”
“We’re not on a honeymoon, Satoru. And no, it just brings back memories.” you scoff. Relishing in the way he inches his chair closer to listen, clearly not expecting this sudden sentimentality. “Memories of why I blocked you on every social media.”
All but slamming his head down on the table, Satoru whines out, “Ouch, straight for the jugular. That mouth is still as bitchy as ever, huh? Though I do prefer it choking on my-”
“I’m going to throw you into the ocean.”
“Ooo, kinky~” he hums, swirling his wine glass, “But you know what this reminds me of? That one time we had dinner under the stars.”
You froze, the memories suddenly flashing back to you despite your best efforts to suppress them. “Oh yeah,” you muse. A chuckle leaving your mouth despite yourself, “Wasn’t that where you spilled ketchup all over your shirt and then insisted it was a fashion statement?”
He leans in closer, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Hey! It worked, didn’t it? I got compliments from everyone including you.”
“I was just trying to stop you from bursting into tears.” you roll your eyes, shaking your head at the memory. 
“Exactly, sweetheart. Like moths to a flame.”
“More like to a bug-zapper.”
Satoru throws his head back and laughs, loud and unabashed. A sound that echoes across the beach and makes something warm and sticky strum at your heartstrings. And at that moment, that stupid, little part of you didn’t even mind that you were at a special candlelit dinner. A romantic one. By the beach. With Satoru of all people. 
And he didn’t even have to goad you into it with SZA this time.
As the orange glow of the setting sun melded into the cool blue of the night, it almost felt like slipping back into an old routine. The food had long since been finished. Jabs and shared memories flowing through the air like the gentle waves lapping at the shore.
The cool air was now thick with contentment and something so unknown yet so familiar that it made your heart race. 
 “I swear.” you groan over Satoru’s loud cackles, “He tried to charm his way out of the bill by flirting with the waitress. In front of me.”
Satoru doubles over, clutching his stomach as he laughs uproariously. “Classic move! If he’s going to be a cheapskate then he should’ve at least been successful with it.”
Damn, was he eternally grateful for these dim candles. Otherwise you’d surely have caught the rosy flushing tinting his cheeks. How dare you sit there so gorgeous and perfect in front of him. Perfect for him - you haven’t changed one bit.
“Right? She looked ready to fling us both out.” You chuckle, eyes catching on the little dimple just at the corner of his mouth as Satoru shoots you a sly grin. “Mhm, I know if it were me I would’ve charmed us out of the bill successfully.”
You raise a brow, retorting, “Oh please. I’ve had the pleasure of being on the receiving end of that ‘charm’. You’d probably end up charming us into washing dishes in the kitchen.” 
Ah, right now, he doesn’t think he wants to be anywhere but here - bickering with you. 
“Ouch, you wound me, woman!” Satoru feigns offense, placing a hand over his heart dramatically before leaning down to whisper, low and conspiratorial, “Besides, I doubt you even remember what pleasure feels like since being with me.”
A thrill goes down your spine as you realize the insinuation of his words, steady and searing - matching that of  Satoru’s fingers on yours - which had snuck their way across the table, lazily tracing patterns along your skin. 
When did they even get there? Sly bastard.
Your mouth drops into a soft oh! at the dangerous glint in his eyes. But you refuse to back down, “Don’t flatter yourself, Satoru. I’ve had other guys make me cum much harder than you have.”
Touch burning. Mapping every curve and dip he’d known so well, and this time - you graze them back. A challenge. God, you missed that warm little flutter in your chest. 
That seems to catch him by surprise, as those darkened blue eyes widen. But there’s a dangerous edge to his grin as he purrs, voice low. “Is that so?” 
And with that, Satoru’s chair is scraping softly against the sand as he stands up, “C’mon, you’re gonna regret that, sweetheart.”
Oh. 
Satoru knows that it’s been 5 months, 4 weeks, and 8 hours since you two lasted an entire dinner civilly - not that he was counting, duh.
So when he begged the resort staff into setting the two of you up on this special candlelit dinner, he was expecting you to drown him in the lobster tank halfway through or at least end the night with a slap. 
What he certainly did not expect was to end dinner with you shoved against the closed door of your suite, legs wrapped impossibly tight around his waist, and lips trailing hot, openmouthed kisses down your neck. He angles your neck, body pressing so impossibly close to yours.
Inwardly, you curse his button-up for being so goddamn thin that you could feel his abs rub against you with every little movement. Toned chest rumbling as he groans at your hands tugging at those soft locks - just a tiny revenge, for your body lotion. 
“S-Satoru,” you whisper, and he breathes it in with an almost-pained sigh - not wanting to part for even a second. Because fuck it took so long to get you back and he wasn’t going to waste a single moment. 
Pulling just a hair’s breadth away, “Tell me what you want. Always knew we’d end up-”
“Just shut up and kiss me, you smug bastard.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
And, well, who was he to deny you? So he does. 
His lips are searing on yours, hasty and greedy. With a tinge of something so painfully familiar. Your hands make their way onto his chest, feeling the thundering heartbeat against your fingertips - matching that of yours. 
Sweet. You tasted so sweet. Just like honey, and all the dreams where he didn’t leave you behind. Where he didn’t get on that damned plane but instead ran to you all the way from the airport like those sappy romcoms you love. 
He licks at the seam of your lips, drinking in your gasps as he intertwines his tongue with yours. Kissing you like he’ll never be able to again. Because, God, knowing his luck - he probably won’t. 
One hand cups your cheek so gently - a tenderness that doesn’t translate to his lips as he kisses you deeper. Meanwhile the other wanders the expanse of your body, leaving a burning trail of fire in their wake.
Satoru parts with a playful nip to your bottom lip - and before you realize what’s happening, the zipper hits the ground. He’s ripping your pretty dress off - mumbling something about “buying a new one” before large hands surge forward, groping and kneading your tits.
His mouth waters at the sight of your bra. Light blue - to match his eyes. “You evil, evil woman.” he mutters into the soft valley of your breasts as you giggle delightedly. Oh, how he couldn’t get enough of you.
And if there was ever a moment that Satoru thinks he could cream his pants right there, then this would be at the very top, followed very closely by the sight of that withering glare you shot after opening that suite door to him just a few days ago.
He unhooks your bra with one hand, throwing it blindly across the room as if it killed him to see you clothed. 
Immediately, Satoru drops to his knees with the desperation of a madman, coming face-to face with the heavenly sight of your clothed cunt, soaking through your thin panties. 
“Didn’t specify where I had to kiss, sweetheart.”
Your gaze pierces through him, as it always did. “What are you-” Your words get choked up in your throat as his tongue darts out. Licking a long, languid stripe over your clothed cunt. 
“Shit. So sweet f’me, jus’ like I remember. Just one taste and I feel like m’gonna cum in my pants.” Satoru groans, urgently sliding your wet panties down your quivering legs. 
“F-flattery won’t work.” you stammer out as his hot breath fans your quivering entrance as he waits just a second - one, two.
Drinking in the view of your pretty pussy with dazed, half-lidded eyes. Wet - so wet, he almost wants to tease you - just a bit, to see if you’ll get even wetter. Ah, he doesn’t have enough time to take in this view - probably never will. Would it ruin the mood if he took a picture?
“Oh, I’d say it worked pretty well.”
Cock twitching carnally, Satoru needed to taste you now. He immediately surges forward. Breathing you in so sinfully, pooling your juices on his tongue. Eyes rolling to the back of his head as he tips his head back back back to let it slide down his throat. 
Shit, if you were the forbidden fruit then he would gladly be cast out of the garden of Eden. 
Half-delirious thoughts running through his mind, Satoru flattens his tongue across your swollen folds. Leisurely sliding between them, catching on your throbbing clit up and down up and down up and-
“Oh- hngh, Satoru faster-”
“So bossy.” he hums prettily around your swollen clit, the vibrations stimulating it just right. But of course, what his girl wants, she will get. 
Lewd squelches and your mewls of his name ring in the heady room as he speeds up his ministrations. Rolling his tongue harshly along your clit, sucking so sensually. Licking at your sweet cunt, dipping just into your sloppy hole. 
You almost miss the long fingers that deftly slide their way up your thigh, spreading your folds with his thumbs. A low groan sounds at the back of his throat as your walls flutter so sinfully around nothing - aching for more friction. 
Urgently, Satoru bullies his fingers past your folds, sinking deep into your plushy walls as his tongue continues its abuse. So warm and wet around him. Curling his fingers just right.
“Ah- fuck, Satoru- Feels s’good.” you gasp as he starts thrusting his fingers back and forth. A ruthless pace that has tears stinging your eyes, hitting that spot over and over and-
“Oh yeah? Thought you didn’t like my ‘big mouth’?” he purrs, muffled around your clit, “Look at you, sweetheart, now falling apart cos’ of it.”
You scoff, fingers tangling in his silky hair, pushing him deeper into your dripping pussy - mostly because you needed it, but somewhat because you really needed him to shut up. “Yeah, I like it better when you shut the fuck up.”
And with a dark chuckle, his mouth is back on your cunt. Your slick glossy and dripping down the corner of his mouth as he alternates between sucking unforgivingly on your ravaged clit and fucking into you at the same time as his fingers. 
And in the delicious stretch of your cunt, you barely register the metallic clinking of a belt before Satoru presses his clothed erection into you.
Shit. You clench so obscenely around his tongue at the feeling of his clothed, painfully hard and throbbing against your leg. Fuck - as big as you remember. You weren’t gonna be able to walk for a while.
“You like this, huh?” he murmurs, speeding up the rhythm of his fingers. Vibrations sending white-hot jolts of pleasure down your spine.
Cracking an eye open you risk a glance downward. Greedily eyeing the hand wrapped tightly around the base, moving up up up. Pumping in small, jerky movements at the same pace of his fingers fucking into you. “Like the way m’getting off to tonguefucking my girl?”
“Like thinking about how this is what I thought about all those lonely fucking night without you?” You arch into his touch, fingers searing on his scalp and angling Satoru just right to make your knees weak. 
He’s so close that you can feel the precum smearing onto your leg. Mouth fucking you in a way you knew he wanted to with his cock right now. Rough and unrelenting. 
“Like thinking about how you’re all I can fucking think about.”
“Hngh- Yes, Satoru! Yes-” 
You see stars as you cum - or maybe those were the tears in your eyes. Pulling Satoru impossibly closer to your quivering pussy so that you could ride out your high on his pretty face. And he readily accepts it - letting himself be handled roughly with the conviction of a man that wouldn’t mind dying if it was suffocating in-between your pretty thighs. 
Your vision is hazy, blood still roaring in your ears as Satoru stands up. Not even bothering to wipe away the wet trail of your slick prettily glossing his lips before capturing yours in a searing kiss. 
“Y’know, sweetheart,” he gasps in between heated kisses. “We got a king-sized bed so we better make use of it, hm?”
Your back hits the mattress before you can even react. Reeling from shock and the audacity as you bounce at the sheer force of his throw. 
“Next time you do that you’re-” 
Whatever insult at the tip of your tongue melts away immediately at the purely pornographic sight of Satoru stalking his way towards you from the foot of the bed. Eyes hooded, cock rock-hard, kiss-bitten lips parted slightly in a way that was so fucked-out.
Unhurriedly approaching you with such a predatory glint in his darkened eyes as he fucks his fist slowly - so agonizingly slowly. Eyes locked on you.
Despite cumming not even minutes before, your pussy jumps in anticipation. Immediately reaching over as soon as he’s close enough - as if in a trance - to replace his hand with yours. 
He was big - so mouthwateringly big. Flushed your favorite shade of pink at his leaking tip, pulsing veins glistening in the dim light - every part of Satoru was so unfairly pretty.
So hot and heavy in your hand as you pump him at a steady, methodical pace. Precum smearing on your palm, trailing down your wrist as you pump. Tighter on the base, thumbing teasingly under his slit the way you knew he used to like. 
“Oh fuck, sweetheart. Still remember, huh?” he hisses lowly. Ah, the way he still likes. 
“Mhm.” you hum absentmindedly, thighs clenching together at the way his hips grind in shallow, mindless little motions into your soft hand. Meeting your strokes as if trying to fuck something so delicious out of him.
And, well, you just couldn’t resist a taste. Bending down in one, fluid motion to delicately lick at his angry, hard head. Slightly salty taste on your tongue as you swipe at the droplets of precum pooling on his tip. Tracing lightly - ever-so-lightly - down his prominent veins. 
Satoru groans, low and hoarse with desire, “Shit, hah- you don’ ngh- have to-”
“Shut up, Satoru.” 
And with that, you’re shoving down as much as you can of his throbbing erection down your throat. Cunt clenching at the way he hardens impossibly as you choke and gag around him.
“Shit, oh- Oh fuck, m’girl. Yes yes yes-.” Satoru lets out a guttural moan. Fingers threading through your hair as he uses it as leverage to fuck himself slowly, deeper and deeper into your heavenly mouth. Hips stuttering and jerky with pleasure. Yeah, he definitely missed this. 
Half-delirious and cock-drunk, you take him all the way till your nose was buried in the tufts of white at his toned pelvis, already so wet with saliva and precum. 
Still got it, some smug, utterly debauched part of yourself titters. 
It was dizzying, the way he was pulsing in your throat, his heady scent filling your senses. Beginning to move up and down up and down in hasty, desperate bobs of your head. Pulling such lewd gasps and moans from his lips. 
You moan around Satoru’s thick cock, clawing at his toned hips for some semblance of stability. Some truly animalistic part of yourself relishing in the neat, red lines down his milky skin. The sight hazy through the tears that spring to your eyes at the way his fat tip hits your abused throat. A relentless, sinful tempo you were steadily losing your mind to.
Messy.  It was so fucking messy.
You just wondered if his orgasm would be the same…
But, alas, one can’t always get what they want. Because Satoru pulls you off of his achingly hard cock with a lewd pop! that rings in his ears and makes your cunt twitch. 
“Shit, sweetheart. Any longer and I’ll have to start thinking about ol’ Prof. Gakuganji to not cum.” he pants through ragged breaths, flashing you a deceptively innocent grin. “Now, lay back and spread ‘em f’me and let me see if your pretty pussy can still handle me.”
And that you don’t argue with. 
It’s almost embarrassing - the way you scramble desperately to sink back into the mattress. Letting Satoru manhandle your legs open so shamefully for him, throwing them over his muscled shoulders. But that’s a problem for the future, not lust-drunk you. 
Right now you couldn’t give less of a fuck as his hungry gaze locks on your glistening pussy. Pausing for just a split-second before spitting once. Twice. Thrice onto your waiting cunt. Making you feel more and more like an object as the warm saliva mixes obscenely with your slick, trickling down to form such a sinful pool on the sheets below. 
And you liked it.
Almost as much as you loved the way Satoru drags his tip along your swollen folds, catching so maddeningly on your clit. Teasingly pooling your slick on his leaking head. It was so sloppy. And too slow. 
“Satoru, I’ve waited five months too long for this. If you’re going to fuck me then fuck me like you mean it.” you grit out, frustration and pure need boiling over within you. 
“Oh? So it’s like that, huh?” 
And maybe you were a mastermind, maybe you were an idiot - probably both. Because Satoru immediately pushes in one, long thrust into your dripping cunt. Your words catch pathetically in your throat as he loses grip on whatever semblance of restraint he had - or his sanity - whichever one would break you first. 
Fuck, it feels so heavenly. Oh, how you missed him.
Bowing his body down down down till his damp forehead met yours. Folding you completely underneath him in the way you’ve found that only the smug bastard, Gojo Satoru can. 
You could almost sob at the stretch as he presses in - deliciously painful, borderline insane, and exactly what you’d been trying to deny that you’d been craving all these past five months. Being split apart on his throbbing cock, feeling like you were about to be absolutely devoured underneath him. 
It seems Satoru was just as needy for you, hot and throbbing agonizingly inside you, each little bump bump bump against your walls matching that of your heart thundering against your chest. 
Or was that Satoru’s? At this point you couldn’t even tell. 
“Oh, god yes-, jus’ like that ah shit shit shit-”
“This what you wanted, yeah?” A low growl leaves his throat at how sinfully your walls were milking him as he pulls back. All the way till his leaking tip was just innocently kissing your sloppy hole - only to ram his cock all the way back into your snug cunt. “To be split apart on my cock?” 
Shit, he could just about pass out right now with the way your cunt was sucking him in so greedily like she never wanted to part. 
Guess she missed him too, he thinks deliriously. Not even having to think about it as he starts fucking into you in shallow, mindless little thrusts. Pushing himself deeper and deeper into your plushy cunt. 
“Äh- fuck, yeah. S’all I’ve wanted.” you mewl, feeling so vulnerable and exposed under the hungry eyes boring into yours. A dark gleam in them as he grins, “Then take it back.”
Disoriented, you gasp out a strangled, “What?” before Satoru’s hips become rougher, chasing his high as much as yours. 
“What you said at dinner.” your lips fall into a soft oh! as you realize just what he’s talking about, “Admit that no man makes you cum as hard as I do.”
God, you don’t think you could answer even if you wanted to, choking on the harsh, purposeful movements of his hips just to fuck your soul out. 
Heavy balls stinging your skin, the lewd sounds of skin-on-skin fills the heady air. Driving you to insanity. An absolutely unforgiving cadence that has the bed creaking in protest. Ah, whatever, he could buy them a new one anyway if this one just so happens to break.
“Take it back yet?” He had to break you first though.
Slick gushes out of your heated cunt, dripping down his length and pooling at his heavy balls, stinging your ass at each merciless thrust. “No.” 
A large hand hastily makes its way down to draw rough, frenzied little circles on your throbbing clit. Voice strangled, sweat beading on his forehead, thrusts becoming increasingly sloppier. “How about now?”
“Ah- hngh- oh fuck. Satoru!” You could only moan softly in response, broken whimpers leaving you each time his tip kissed your cervix. Angling his hips just right to expertly brush against that one spot he knew so well would have you keening and bucking up into his cock. Your face almost burns at the sheer familiarity of it all. This bastard knew you too well. 
And something about that made such an uncomfortable, prickly feeling pool in your stomach. 
Something which you knew would only be sated if you looped your arms around his neck. Nails digging into his sculpted back as you pulled him impossibly closer.
Kissing his flushed cheeks as he murmurs, “Take it back, sweetheart.”
Despite the thick cock splitting you in half till you probably couldn’t walk tomorrow morning, you find it in yourself to huff out a soft laugh at the way Satoru’s tone teetered on just that endearing side of sulky. “Fine. You win, Toru.” you whisper into his lips,
And then you’re cumming. White-hot pleasure flashing behind your eyes and Satoru’s lips gently slotting against yours as he fucked you through your high. Acting as if the fucked-out whimper of his nickname is one he’ll never forget. 
As if he couldn’t cum simply from hearing it leave your pretty lips. And he does, shooting thick, hot ropes of cum painting your plushy walls white with a raw groan of your name. It oozes out of your cunt and onto the mess of sheets below as he fucks his seed into you as a lover would. As he would. 
It was intoxicating - everything from the way you milked his cock so sinfully, to the arms tight around his shoulders. Pulling him close, running soothingly along his skin as Satoru collapses onto you with a final, fucked-out thrust. 
And despite being a lightweight, Satoru’s never been so easily drunk off of something than he was off of you. God how he missed this - how he missed you. 
So much so that he can’t put it into words - and probably won’t ever be able to. But it’s alright, because your sticky body snug against his, and Satoru arms tenderly around your waist - but you didn’t mind. Both of you understood.
Satoru traces his fingers lazily along your side, neither of you bothering to tackle the mammoth task of cleaning up for now. Each movement slow and gentle, as if any sudden movement might shatter the delicate balance between you. 
All is quiet in your little haven, and you could almost fall asleep. The most contented one you’ve had in a while - 5 months, 3 weeks, and 7 hours ago to be exact.
But, of course, Satoru can’t keep his mouth shut for nothing. You jolt out of your reverie as he hastily tries to stifle the startled laugh that huffs out of him. Your dazed eyes meet his in the dim lighting, raising a brow in question.
“It’s just…” he starts, voice soft, “You still call me Toru. Feels like home.”
Ah.
You find yourself chuckling softly with him. Heat rushing to your cheeks, burying yourself deeper into his warm chest, to hide the embarrassingly flustered smile breaking out across your face if anything. 
Chuckling, Satoru shifts closer, touch now feather-light against your cheek, tracing the line of your jaw with his fingertips. Faltering ever-so-slightly as you mutter out, “Happy anniversary, by the way. I didn’t say it earlier because someone was being a public menace.”
“Hey! It’s not my fault that someone locked me out of my own honeymoon suite.” he laughs, drinking in your pretty lil’ smile. 
Ah, you were perfect. As you always were. Satoru can’t help but utter out a little, “Hey, if I tell you something absolutely stupid, would you promise not to make me fish food?”
“Absolutely not.”
He knew you’d say that. So he flashes you an easy grin, a hint of nervousness in it that he’s sure you see through - you always do. 
“So…” he begins, “First thing’s first, I’m thinking of expanding my father’s company further overseas and it might just so happen that I’m leading the branch development and get to pick where exactly.”
God, you made him feel like such a teenager. At your stunned silence, Satoru could barely raise his eyes to meet yours as he plows on, stumbling so uncharacteristically over his words, “You, I picked where you are.”
You’re breathless, words barely audible as his sinks in. “What? Toru that’s-”
“And don’t be mad but you kinda sorta didn’t-win-the-raffle-so-instead-I-planned-this-getaway-when-we-were-together.”
Any and every trace of breathless euphoria leaves your tone as you narrow your eyes at the very guilty Satoru beside you. Fidgeting under your intense scrutiny. Finally - after what seems like an eternity - you find your senses after his whiplash-inducing information dump. 
A hand immediately shoots out to squeeze his side, right where you knew he was dangerously ticklish.
“You sneaky little-” you scold over his laughed out yells of, “Mercy! No murder on our honeymoon!” squirming helplessly beneath you.
“I can’t believe you let me chug all that ice cream.”
“Exactly- hah- help! You w-would’ve been so sad that you ah- didn’t win.” he manages to choke out under your attack.
Finally relenting, only once you’re sure he’ll be feeling the burn of laughter until your flight tomorrow, you release him from your grasp. A satisfied smirk playing on your lips as you lean in close. “You’re lucky I still love you, you smug bastard” you deadpan.
“Aww, you beat me to it.” Satoru whines. Yet he reaches out to cup your cheek, “And I love you,” words hanging in the air like a promise. “With every fiber of my being.”
You let yourself be begrudgingly pulled into his embrace again, hands caressing along your skin like the highest form of worship. Satoru sighs out a contented, “Best honeymoon ever.” 
But of course, you couldn’t help but bully your idiotic boyfriend. “This is not a honeymoon, Toru.” you mutter into his heated skin.
He only presses you closer to him. Yeah maybe not, fingers deftly dancing along your left hand. But maybe next time. 
“Wanna watch the stars and tell me all about that branch development?”
“Of course, sweetheart, but first can you at least unblock me on Gmail now?”
“...”
You broke up with Gojo Satoru exactly 5 months, 3 weeks, and 12 hours ago. And as for how long it’s been since he won you back - well, you think it might just be one of the few things you didn’t keep count of.
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A/N. Based on my vacay at Lily Beach except I didn’t meet my future husband there :0
Plagiarism not authorized.
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troglobite · 8 months
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"this method though is definitely the hardest to pull off, is the best for very experienced dms to do, and also runs the biggest risk of messing with player backstory in a way that they don't like."
me, absolutely trying to do that in my first ever longform campaign: This Is Fine. :)))))
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