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sister-lucifer · 1 year

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The Things That Find You

Laughing Jack x Male Reader

Genre: Smut

Summary: Reader finds an antique Jack-In-The-Box at a yard sale, unaware that by purchasing it they would also be taking home an unwanted guest.

Content/Warnings: Dubcon elements, horror elements, LJ being a stalker creep (so some non con voyeurism), LJ is just fucking weird in this one, clown fucking shenanigans, big stripey clown dick and also long stripey clown tongue, comically large clown penis, LJ eats ass, LJ is massive so big size difference, tummy bulge, that dick should NOT be able to fit in you but it’s my story i can bend the laws of anatomy however i wish, LJ is very mean in this one and doesn’t really care if he hurts you, some degradation, unprotected sex, creampie, reader is kind of a slut boy (same), there’s a lot of build up but please it’s worth it i prommy (but also feel free to skip to the porn that’s totally fair)

Like my writing? I take requests! NSFW or SFW for any fandoms in my bio (request rules + masterlist in pinned post)!

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Not fully proofread! Let me know if you see any errors!

A/N: Jack is british just fyi so if you’re like me and you read with accents there you go!

The antique jack-in-the-box was certainly an odd find at a garage sale, but there was no denying that it caught your eye the moment you saw it. It was incredibly ornate, clearly hand painted in all black and white and decorated with balloons and candy, not to mention it was preserved wonderfully for a piece that had, presumably, been stored in an attic for who knows how long. You could run your fingers over the edges and feel every detail of the tediously carved borders. You carefully turned the wooden box over in your hands, looking over the large, carefully painted words on the front:

“Laughing Jack In The Box!”, surrounded by all sorts of patterns and shapes.

Your face immediately lit up. Everything about this box screamed one of a kind. You could already see it sitting on your collectors shelf, safe behind the glass for you to keep and observe. You absolutely had to have it.

“Excuse me miss?” You called, looking around for the old woman who was running the garage sale. She got up from her lawn chair and made her way over about as fast as you’d expect from one as antique as some of the items currently being sold.

“Could you tell me about this jack-in-the-box?” You asked, trying to hide your elation.

“Oh, this old thing…” She began, looking at you over her comically oversized glasses. “It belonged to my great, great grandfather, Isaac, and was handmade by his father. It was given to me as a young girl, and I was keeping it in the hopes I could pass it on to my own children.”

You couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sadness at the comment, but it seems the woman had no qualms about selling it.

“Well, it may please you to know that I’m an antique collector,” You explained in an effort to reassure her. “This is a beautiful piece. If you’ll sell it to me, I can promise you it’ll be safe on my shelf.”

“Oh, I have no worries about that. No one would pick this old thing up unless they knew what they were buying. So, what’s your offer young man?”

You thought for a few moments, weighing the box in your hands. You didn’t want to completely rip her off, but a one of a kind antique like this could go for thousands in the right place, and you weren’t looking to break the bank for this thing. Besides, who else would possibly buy it if you didn’t?

You pulled your wallet out and flipped through it, debating with yourself.

“How about…a clean fifty?”

And with that, a deal was made. Before you knew it you were proudly walking back to your car with the box tucked under your arm. You placed it carefully in the front passenger seat where you could watch over it, glancing back one last time to the now empty place on the table where the box once sat before driving away.

Immediately upon getting home you rushed to your room and swung open your shelf, eyes scanning over every row as you tried to find the best place for your newest treasure. It took a bit of rearranging to keep the shelf organized to your liking, but eventually you were able to place the box neatly right in the middle. You carefully closed the glass door and took a few steps back to admire your work. It was absolute perfection, and you couldn’t stop yourself from happily clapping your hands together. You deserved to applaud yourself a bit, after all.

You flopped down on your bed and grabbed your phone, eager to share your find with anyone who would listen, giddy with excitement. You really couldn’t believe how lucky you were! No one else would ever lay hands on a jack-in-the-box like this one, and now it was all yours.

As the hours of the afternoon dissolved into the night, you found yourself peeking into your room just about every time you walked past. You smiled wide whenever you saw the pristine box sitting on your shelf. It was especially beautiful when the sun hit it just right and made it shine. Your chest was still swelling with pride even as you climbed into bed for the night, able to peacefully fall asleep knowing that you’d filled another spot on your shelf today.

Unbeknownst to you, you had just given up the privilege of peaceful sleep.

That night you had one of the worst, most vivid nightmares you could remember.

You were standing in your room late at night, and everything seemed deathly silent, as if all the birds and insects that would normally be chirping outside had up and died off. A shiver ran down your spine as you looked around in confusion. You tried to turn on your lamp, but it wouldn’t come on. Trying the light switch yielded the same distressing result. You moved to open the door, but the moment you reached out for the knob it disappeared as if it had never been there in the first place. When you turned back, your bedroom window was gone too. Both of your escape routes had dissolved into thin air without so much as a sound.

The hair on the back of your neck stood up as your eyes slowly wandered to the jack-in-the-box. It was the only object left on your now open collectors shelf, but it seemed to take up so much more space than before. It had captured your gaze in an iron grip, and no matter how hard you tried you couldn’t look away. A terrible feeling began to bubble in the pit of your stomach, becoming heavier and heavier until you felt as though you may collapse from the weight, but nothing was happening. Something about the box itself felt so…malicious, so threatening, but it was simply sitting dormant on your shelf.

What were you so scared of?

That was the question replaying in your mind when you woke with a start, nearly falling out of your bed in your disoriented state. You shot straight up as you fought to catch your breath, taking a look around just to make sure your window and door were still there. Fortunately, they were. It really was just a nightmare.

A wave of relief washed over you as you slowly laid back down. You took an extra minute to catch your breath, silently scolding yourself for being so easily scared. You turned your head to look out the window, now noticing the very first little shreds of the dawn coming up over the horizon.

However, you noticed something else as well. Something that set off just a bit of unease in you.

The glass door of your shelf was open.

Not wide open, or broken, just slightly cracked as if it hadn’t been closed all the way and was now just barely ajar. You could’ve sworn you shut it all the way, you could even remember hearing the little click.

But we all make mistakes, don’t we?

That seemed enough of an explanation to calm you as you slipped out of bed to close the shelf once more. This time you double checked, just to be sure. When you were satisfied you went back to bed, finding sleep rather easily and this time without incident.

When you awoke some hours later you couldn’t help but question which parts of the night were a dream and which were reality. The memories of when you had woken up the first time were hazy, not to mention you were still shaken up from the nightmare. You tried to push it out of your mind, though, when you found your shelf securely closed and seemingly untouched. That was really all that mattered.

It seems you had the green light to go about your day as usual.

First thing’s first: you need to change out of your nightclothes. The stained band tee and baggy sweats would not cut it for running errands. You decided on something that would be comfortable for the day, but still made you feel confident and happy with yourself.

As you undressed you couldn’t help but take a moment to appreciate yourself in the mirror, standing there in just your boxer briefs. You ran a hand over your sides, turning around halfway as you admired your own figure. It was a silly habit to have, really, but what was it hurting? After all, you were one handsome man. You deserved to be seen.

You weren’t the only one who thought this, and you certainly weren’t the only one who enjoyed admiring you.

Completely hidden out of your view, just how he liked, two achromatic pinwheel eyes spun manically behind the shadows of the jack-in-the-box. He only had to lift the box just slightly, so little that you would never notice, and even if you did you would likely brush it off as your imagination. Jack was skilled like that, able to slowly lure his victims into madness in such a way that they wouldn’t notice until it was too late.

You, though, had caught his attention in a slightly different manner.

You had piqued his interest the moment you picked up his box, handling it with a curious yet careful manner. For generations he had been packed away in dusty attics and grimy basements and long forgotten storage units, completely disgraced by the family line that was supposed to cherish him. But you had plucked him from that miserable cycle, dusted him off, and placed him carefully on your shelf in a secure little spot where you could see each other every day.

This was certainly unusual behavior.

That ache of contempt that he felt for nearly everyone else somehow had yet to creep in. On some level, Jack was just as curious about you has you had been about him, and now he was safe behind the glass to keep and observe you as he saw fit. Human bodies in particular had always been an odd interest of his seeing as they looked so different from his own. Seeing you flaunt yours so proudly with no one else around was honestly a bit amusing.

He watched silently as you slipped on your day clothes, turning around a couple more times in the mirror and adjusting your outfit a bit before finally deciding you were happy. He didn’t slip back down into his box until he heard your car pulling out of the driveway.

He sat there with himself for some few hours while you were gone. He had lost any sense of time at this point, used to spending his days alone in his box. Although, this time, there was one reoccurring theme that all his thoughts seemed to circle back to:

You.

What made exactly you so interesting, hm? He could venture a vague guess, but something was just…different. His affinity for humans had long since waned to nothing nearly two centuries ago, and yet a small part of it was beginning to stir in him once more.

It seemed this would require further observation, which was certainly no issue to him.

You, on the other hand, were blissfully unaware that you were currently sharing your humble abode. There were a few times when the events of the earlier night managed to worm its way back into your mind, but you always managed to push it away. You were simply being silly, that was all. It was a random occurrence with absolutely no significance.

Yeah, sure, that made enough sense.

By the time you were unlocking your front door, you had been lucky enough to truly forget about your nightmare. It seemed that you had finally calmed yourself and managed to stay grounded.

At least you had until you stepped through the door.

The second you had both feet in the doorway, the nightmare came rushing back in vivid flashes. It felt like your grocery bags were filled with cement, your limbs suddenly going weak. Your entire body had gone stiff, paralyzed with an indescribable sense of anxiety, the feeling that something was terribly, deeply wrong in your home.

You swept through the whole house and found not a single thing out of place, though every time you turned a corner you were sure you’d see something you didn’t want to.

No smashed in windows, no kicked in doors, nothing taken or broken, no other sign of an intruder. Nothing that would indicate anything out of the ordinary.

Then why was your stomach churning with the same heavy dread you’d felt in the nightmare?

You wracked your brain as you tried to figure out what could possibly be making you feel so uneasy in your own home, but nothing came to mind. Even as you put away your groceries you were mumbling and muttering to yourself, attempting to fetch any semblance of an explanation.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Jack was more than happy to watch you spin yourself into a tizzy over his little tricks. He giggled to himself when you paced back and forth where he could see you outside the doorway of your room, proud to see he hadn’t lost his mischievous touch.

You felt absolutely exhausted by the time you were trudging your way to your room, the subtle thrum of an oncoming headache already threatening to floor you for the rest of the day. You were so drained, in fact, that you had to do a double take to realize that your collector’s shelf had been completely opened.

Not just creaked open like last time, completely opened. If it had been pushed any farther, the hinges would’ve snapped.

You stared in disbelief, mouth hanging half open. You couldn’t even will yourself to move. It felt someone had just lit a match to the pile of questions that had been accumulating in the back of your mind. As if on autopilot, you walked over numbly and shut the glass door of the shelf. This time, you triple checked that it was shut.

Of course, this time you weren’t satisfied with that.

The first thing you did once you had thrown on sweats and laid down was go to order a lock for the shelf online. You even paid extra to make sure it would be delivered the next day. After all, the last thing you needed was one of your prized possessions falling out and breaking.

Yes, that was the very normal, rational reason why you needed a lock.

You sighed with exhaustion as you struggled to get comfortable in your bed, figuring maybe a nap would help you recharge a bit. By some miracle you actually managed to fall asleep, and by another you slept peacefully for a full hour uninterrupted.

Damn, you needed that. You actually felt better when you woke up, stretching and cracking your back a few times before getting up.

Suddenly your fearful reaction earlier seemed so silly! Why were you so upset anyways? Because of a bad dream and a dingy old shelf? How stupid. Really, you were lucky you lived alone. If anyone had seen you like that they’d think you were crazy, irrational, completely out of your—

The shelf is open again.

The fucking shelf is open again, and the box has moved an entire shelf down on its own.

The box has moved on its own.

You were suddenly feeling light headed.

You sat back down on your bed, your head already beginning to ache once more. You were dizzy, confused, struggling to find your bearings in reality. You held your head in your hands as you tried to take a breather. Part of you hoped that if you simply looked away then back up, maybe the problem would fix itself.

No such luck.

You groaned with frustration, practically stomping over to your shelf. You moved the box back to its original place in a quick and jumpy manner, as if it was burning hot and it would hurt to hold onto it for too long. This time you quadruple checked that it had been closed properly, and even threw a blanket over the shelf to cover it.

It wasn’t a fix, but it could at least give you some semblance of security.

“Stupid broken thing…” You muttered to yourself, speed walking out of your room to head to the kitchen where hopefully a snack could distract you.

Jack was giddy with excitement, unable to stop himself from snickering with smug self-satisfaction. It had been so long since he had someone to play with, and you were so fun to scare it almost felt too easy.

He would have to play his next cards perfectly, though, if he wanted to keep this up.

He didn’t mess with you at all the rest of the day, even when he really, really wanted to. You peaked into your room every time you walked by, breathing a sigh of relief when you saw the shelf was exactly as you’d left it every time.

Maybe, you thought for the umpteenth time, you really were just being irrational. You didn’t even have another nightmare that night, and when you awoke the shelf was still closed with the blanket untouched on top of it.

When the lock came in that day you wondered for a bit if you really needed it, but ultimately decided it was better to be over-prepared than under. You could finally remove the blanket cover on the shelf, feeling much better now that you could properly shut and lock it. You stored the key away in the drawer of your nightstand where you knew it would be safe.

For you, it seemed like everything was finally back to normal again.

For Jack, this was the perfect opportunity to increase his antics tenfold. He was becoming more and more impatient, wanting to badly to properly greet you, and with each scare he only felt himself grow stronger. He was feeding on your anguish, allowing it to fuel him until eventually he would be ready to come out and play.

For the next few weeks, Jack made you sure you found absolutely no peace. He was relentless and cruel, even by his standards. He broke your stupid little lock, and the two others you ordered after that. He couldn’t count the amount of times he’d made you shut the glass door to the shelf again. Whenever you tried to cover him with the blanket, he let you know he was particularly upset with you by not only swinging the shelf door wide open, but moving his box right to your bedside table. That way, he got to see your terror up close when you jolted awake, nearly tripping over yourself to get away when you saw the box a mere couple of feet from your face. He made the house creak and jump every time you got a moment of quiet. Hell, he was petty enough to mess with the thermostat when you were out, meaning you got to return home to a freezing cold or blistering heat that was surely running up your bill. Speaking of running up your bills, it wasn’t unusual for Jack to leave the water running either.

The thing that got to you the most, though, was the incessant nightmares.

God, they never stopped.

They were almost all the same:

You’d be trapped somewhere familiar, like your room or a store you’d been at that day. You’d be completely alone and no lights would work, and when you tried to leave all the doors and windows would disappear. And every time, every goddamn time, that jack-in-the-box would be sitting there to greet you when you turned around. That was by far the worst part. Just looking at it would make you weak and nauseous, but you always woke up just before you’d collapse. Whenever you awoke from your nightmares you tried to take comfort in the sunrise beginning to slowly come up over the horizon, but deep down you knew the daylight could no longer save you.

Each day you woke up more exhausted than the last, too tired to go anywhere but not able to stand being in your house with whatever entity was making your life hell.

On the contrary, Jack was merely becoming more and more energetic every day. He hadn’t felt this eager in a long, long time. He was even feeling a bit bold, working up the courage once or twice to open the shelf while you were in the room. That scared you the most, making you jump with fear and scramble out of the room as fast as you could.

He knew you didn’t really have anywhere else to go. You could leave for the day, sure, but sooner or later you’d have to come back home. The stars must’ve aligned for him to find you, the perfect little plaything that could never really escape and gave him endless entertainment. You were certainly a funny one.

Although, there were times he enjoyed simply watching you just as much as tormenting you.

Countless times he’d find himself occupied with quietly observing you as if you were a completely foreign creature. He’d peak out of his box to watch you toss and turn at night, to watch you dress in the morning, and he even got to see you walk back from your showers a few times. You looked so soft, even from this far away, with so many places for him to grab and squeeze and wrap his massive claws around.

It was shameful, really. Or it should’ve been at least. Jack didn’t know the meaning of the word. All he knew was that the urge to reach out and grab you in his claws was growing stronger, and fast. His already minimal patience was beginning to thin, and he knew that soon it would run out completely. Watching you from afar wouldn’t be enough.

But that was okay.

He was finally ready to properly greet you, and he knew exactly how he’d do it.

That night you experienced one of the usual terrors, but this time you couldn’t recognize the room. It looked to be the bedroom of a victorian mansion with tall wooden walls decorated with dusty paintings that seemed to go up forever, closing you in on all sides. A child’s toys were scattered around the room, and the blankets on the bed had been tussled and pushed around. It was clear someone had been living here, but who? And why were you in a room you had never seen before?

And why, God—

Why was that jack-in-the-box still sitting on the shelf? And why was the crank turning on its own, playing the quiet, foreboding tune of “Pop Goes The Weasel?”

The feeling of dread that filled you was nothing new, but what you didn’t expect was to see the box slowly open as the crank continued to turn.

The movement wasn’t sudden, but it was absolutely shocking, so much so that you fell back onto your hands. You tried to scoot backwards, to somehow get away, but you couldn’t move. All you could do was watch as the lid of the box clicked into its open place, and a dark shape began to emerge.

It took a moment for you to figure out what you were looking at. The shape had sharp edges and moved slowly, in a controlled manner. It wrapped around the edge of the box and tapped against it.

It was a hand.

A massive hand with pitch black claws, each nearly as large as your palm, much too big to belong to something that should’ve been able to fit in that box.

A second clawed hand reached up, grabbing onto the opposite side of the box. They looked to be pulling up the rest of the body.

You watched, mouth agape in silent horror as the claws were followed by long striped sleeves, then a head and face covered by long black hair that fell past broad shoulders, until eventually the entire body had dragged itself out of the box. The creature sat there limply with its limbs bent unnaturally as if its own body was too heavy for it to move. There was one thing about it, though, that made your blood run cold:

Above a sharp toothed smile that was stretched impossibly wide were two achromatic pinwheel eyes, spinning manically behind a curtain of dark hair. They pierced your soul with their stare, almost seeming to glow in the dark.

There was a split second where you knew you were about to wake up, but the sight before you when you forced your eyes open was so similar to your nightmare that you weren’t sure it had worked.

That…thing from your dream was hovering over you.

Its visage was completely clear to you now, hair falling around its face and on either side of your head as it peered down at you. A single glance towards its body showed it was even bigger up close, easily twice your size. It resembled some sort of clown, in line with the theme of the jack-in-the-box, but nothing about it seemed comforting or humorous.

Your first instinct was to thrash, but you couldn’t move. The clown had pinned your arms down with its massive claws, not even flinching when you tried to fight it off. It took no effort to hold you down.

Its razor-toothed mouth began to crack open, and for a second you expected it to lunge forward and end it all with one fatal snap of its jaws.

But that didn’t happen.

No, instead…

It laughed.

The laugh itself didn’t even sound malicious or evil. In any other context it could easily be mistaken as an innocent giggle, a sound you might make when you saw something particularly cute.

That was what you were to Jack:

Cute.

But not in the way you’d think.

You were cute in the way a helpless, injured animal is cute.

Cute in the way that something you could hold in the palm of your hand is cute.

Cute in the way that something you knew you had complete control over is cute.

Cute in a pathetic, pitiful way that Jack loved.

He had waited so long to have his fun with you, he was trembling with excitement.

“Oooh, there you are!” Jack spoke in a lighthearted tone, drawing out his words in a playful manner. You weren’t sure what you were expecting him to sound like, but it definitely wasn’t that. You couldn’t decide if his oddly happy demeanor and sing-song tone with the cartoonish lilt of his accent was more or less frightening than the classic demonic voice of a supernatural killer.

Suddenly something uncomfortably wet slid from your shoulder to your cheek, and it wasn’t until he pulled back that you realized it was his tongue.

It was impossibly long and had the same striped pattern as his sleeves, moving in a much too articulated manner, as if it was another limb. You watched with wide eyes at it slowly retracted back into his mouth with a sickening wet sound. You could imagine it coiled up in there like a snake; after all, that was the only feasible way it should’ve been able to fit back in his mouth.

“You taste even better than I imagined…” The clown continued, taking no notice of (or at least not caring about) your discomfort. “You’ve been teasing ol’ Jack, haven’t you?”

“J…Jack?” You echoed in a whisper. You could hardly hear your own meek voice.

He only chuckled in response, taking great delight in hearing you say his name.

One of his hands released your arm, though you didn’t dare move either way. It slowly slid its way under your oversized nightshirt, pushing it above your chest and exposing your entire midriff. Both of his hands ran along your sides slowly, two claw-tipped thumbs barely scraping over your skin. Just a bit more pressure could’ve drawn blood, and it wouldn’t even take much effort on Jack’s part.

You tried not to move, to not even breathe, terrified that one wrong move would get you torn to shreds. You could imagine one razor sharp talon digging into your chest and dragging to your stomach, slicing you open in a mess of gore and intestines and oh, God—

You winced when Jack’s tongue unfurled once more, this time running from your navel all the way to your chest. It left a cold trail of saliva that made you shiver. You had to turn your head away, unable to look at Jack any longer, only to yelp in pain when you felt the sharp sting of a bite.

When you looked down again you were greeted with Jack’s smug grin.

“Pay attention to me and I won’t have to do that again.” He ordered, unblinking stare piercing through you. The tone of the demand was almost whiny, like he would throw a tantrum if he didn’t get his way.

“Wh…What the hell do you want?” You choked out.

Jack didn’t answer. It would be more fun to watch you figure it out on your own.

He adjusted you in his hold, allowing him to sit up as he moved to grasp your thighs. It was then you realized you’d neglected to put on any actual pants before bed, your lower half clad only in your boxer briefs which were doing very little to keep you modest, especially as Jack lifted your clothed bulge closer to his eager mouth.

“W-Wait—!”

But your plea came a moment too late, and any other attempt at words died in your throat when you felt Jack’s tongue run over your cock through your boxers.

“Shit—! Jesus Christ…” You huffed, “What the fuck…are you doing…?”

You dug your teeth into your bottom lip and watched helplessly as Jack’s tongue ran over you once more, making you tense as you felt your cock twitch. Damn, that felt good…

You really shouldn’t have been enjoying this. Especially not this much. You expected to be much more disgusted, and yet you weren’t. In fact, there was a little voice in the back of your head that was eager to take much more.

But what choice did you have, really?

Jack certainly had no intention of stopping, and you certainly weren’t going anywhere. Besides, for all you knew you’d wake up tomorrow and realize this was all a shameful wet dream.

You tried to relax a bit in his grip, which proved difficult when he was staring at you like he wanted to eat you alive.

Before you could blink Jack had suddenly flipped you onto your stomach, making quick work of your boxers with one swipe of his claws. The sound of ripping fabric caught you off guard, and everything happened so fast you weren’t sure what had happened until you felt Jack’s tongue run over the bare back of your thighs.

“Oh my God—!” You cried out, barely managing to muffle yourself with a pillow. You held it tight against your face, and even had to bite down on it in an attempt to stop yourself from screaming when Jack slipped his tongue inside of you.

It felt even longer than it looked, squirming inside of you and leaving absolutely no spot untouched. Every time you thought he couldn’t possibly go any deeper, he somehow did, filling you with his tongue until you couldn’t fit anymore. A shame, really; he had lots more to offer, but he couldn’t expect much from such a little human.

His hands were easily large enough to grasp your waist and hold you against his mouth. You had no way of knowing, but Jack was more than aware of his own strength, even taking care to make sure he didn’t pierce you with his nails. You’d be much for fun alive, after all. Although, this didn’t mean he didn’t have a bit of fun scaring you, occasionally giving a rough squeeze just to feel you flinch. He was thoroughly invested in tasting every inch of you, but that didn’t mean he’d stop toying with you at every opportunity.

Despite his hold on you, you couldn’t stop yourself from writhing desperately in his hands. You weren’t trying to fight him, but the sensation of his tongue wriggling around so deep inside of you was certainly an odd one. Your cock was already throbbing between your legs and dripping precum onto your sheets. There was a nagging urge to reach down and give your needy member some much needed attention, but you couldn’t force yourself to release your painful grip on your blanket. It was the only thing providing you any sort of purchase.

Jack was making quite the show of eating you out as well, moaning and slurping in a rather dramatic manner. He certainly wasn’t afraid of being noisy, though he made sure to stay quiet enough to listen to your encouraging noises. You sounded so desperate and needy, he just couldn’t get enough. You became especially loud when he began to slowly move his tongue in and out. He could even feel you squeeze around it, and it made his cock ache as he imagined what it would feel like to finally be inside of you.

You shuddered when Jack finally retracted his tongue, his saliva completely soaking your hole and beginning to run down your legs, leaving you now feeling thoroughly stretched but unpleasantly empty. He only let you rest as long as it took for him to close and wipe his mouth before he was manhandling you once more, this time flipping you into your previous position on your back. It happened so fast that just the impact of your head on the pillow made you dizzy.

When you looked up again Jack had leaned back a bit, looking down at his hands as he unbuckled his suspenders and soon after his pants. You followed his gaze just in time to see his own massive length spring free from his trousers.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

It was bigger than anything you’d ever even imagined, and suddenly you felt embarrassingly inadequate. It too was striped, and shaped in such a way that you could easily tell it was a cock but definitely not a human one. He laid it over your stomach and you couldn’t help but gasp at the sheer size. It was thick and heavy too, throbbing eagerly against your skin.

“W-Woah, wait, no way—“ You stuttered, attempting to crawl backwards and away from Jack. “That’s fucking giant, holy shit…You can’t— T-That won’t—“

“Shhhhh!” Jack interrupted as he roughly pulled you back to him, “Calm down, you whiny little thing. You’ll be fine.”

You only whimpered in reply, watching with bated breath as he spread your legs wide to make room for his cock. He groaned with delight when his leaking tip brushed against your waiting hole.

“A-At least be careful…!” You pleaded in a last-ditch effort to earn yourself some mercy.

“I make no promises.” Jack replied shortly, as if he was annoyed with your request. Maybe it was a bit cruel to be so careless, but surely you were being dramatic. Humans were meant to stretch, right? Surely you weren’t that fragile.

The noise that struggled out of your mouth when he forced himself into you was downright inhuman, followed by a string of curses and other equally nasty exclamations of the sort that could’ve barred you from getting you into heaven all on their own. Not that you were going either way at this point.

When Jack had finally filled you as much as he could, only about two thirds of his cock had managed to disappear inside of you. That was still rather impressive, all things considered, and it’s not like he could complain. Your tight hole squeezed around him in all the right places.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” You repeated under your breath as you tried to adjust to Jack’s size, a borderline impossible task.

“Foul mouthed one, aren’t you?” He scolded, grabbing your chin roughly. “Behave, or I’ll have to wash your mouth out.”

He seemed to find that hilarious, laughing to himself as if he’d never heard a funnier joke in his life.

“You…fuckin’ freak…” You spat back at him half-heartedly. It was hard to sound angry when you were trying to catch your breath after being filled to your limit. Jack feigned a gasp of disbelief at your lackluster insult.

“Naughty, naughty thing you are! Someone simply must teach you to behave!”

He squeezed you in his grip, testing his hold one last time before he began to pull back. You thought he’d stop halfway or at least start slow, but you were left speechless as he pulled out nearly all the way, leaving just the tip still nestled inside of you. You grabbed his shoulders in an attempt to brace yourself for what was sure to be a brutal impact.

“Brutal” was an understatement.

Shit, it felt like he fucking impaled you. You choked on what would’ve been a shriek when he pushed into you again, nails digging into his shoulder so hard it would’ve drawn blood if he had any. You felt unbearably full as his cock bullied its way back inside of you until it was laying heavy in your stomach.

Jack let out a shuddering moan that dissolved into a breathy laugh as he watched you struggle to keep it together. Your mouth hanging open in a silent scream and eyes going wide with panic was exactly what he wanted to see.

“Aww, did that hurt?” He asked, and honestly the condescending tone stung a bit. You only glared in reply.

He pulled back again, slamming into you with even more force than the first time. You could feel the bed swaying beneath you from the sheer strength. You could only hope he didn’t wind up breaking it after he broke you.

Jack was never one to take things slow, and as soon as he had gotten the hang of his thrusts he set a brutal pace. Each movement made your head spin with the impact. You really weren’t built to take something so massive, you shouldn’t have been able to, but you were taking it despite your body’s protests. You didn’t want to look down, unable to even stand the thought of seeing his gigantic cock disappear inside of you.

Desperate, animalistic noises spilled through your gritted teeth and out of your mouth. Each thrust hit deeper than the last and there were times you swore he was literally rearranging your guts. Of course you would eventually adjust to Jack’s size and strength, but that didn’t shake the fear that this encounter could land you in the hospital. This fear would fade as he continued though, the overwhelming fullness and ache soon melting into a pleasure like you’d never felt before. You grasped at anything you could, whether it be your sheets or Jack’s sleeves or hair, hopelessly clawing at anything you could get your shaky hands on.

Jack’s tongue laid limp out of his mouth as he panted, shamelessly rutting into you like a toy. You were nothing but a rag doll in his clutches for him to hold and use to his black heart’s content, and then some. While you couldn’t bring yourself to look down, he was more than happy to watch his cock thrust in and out of you. The wet squelching sounds made by each little movement were like music to his ears.

He knew he must’ve been hitting deep when he noticed the bulge he was making in your stomach.

Oh, you simply had to see this!

He grabbed your hair roughly and forced you to look down.

“Ahah! Do you see that? Do you?” He asked eagerly. He took your choked noise as a ‘yes.’

“You’re so small, ahah…I wonder how deep I can go before you break in two!”

He tugged on your hair once more, this time pulling it back to expose your neck. You couldn’t stop yourself from moaning as he dragged his tongue slowly up your neck before pulling you into a messy kiss. It only took one second of your surprise to allow him to slip his tongue into your mouth, and it quickly found its way down your throat. You were caught off guard and nearly choked, which only made Jack laugh against your lips. You could feel every little twitch or jerk it made as it explored your throat with no regard for your comfort.

Jack didn’t pull away until he could tell you were struggling for air, retracting his tongue incredibly quickly. You were coughing and heaving to catch your breath, which he apparently found very amusing. It seemed to send him into a giggling fit every time he scared you half to death.

Suddenly Jack came to an abrupt stop. You looked up at him in confusion, but he wasn’t looking at you. He was focused on something else. You felt yourself being jostled around as he shifted his position, sitting up on his knees and lifting you from the bed with one hand still around your waist and the other under your back. You were entirely supported by his hands now.

What the hell is he thinking?!

You felt him retracting once more, but this time he wasn’t moving his hips. He was moving you.

He showed no signs of struggle or even the slightest strain as he began to thrust into you again, your weight practically nothing to him. He was using you like a goddamn fleshlight, nothing more than a sleeve for his cock.

And honestly…It wasn’t so bad.

That seemed to be your breaking point, any sense of dignity you had before completely going out the window as you gave into him fully. If he was going to use you like a toy, you could at least put in the effort to be a good one.

“F-Fuck! Ah—! Jack, m-more…!” You begged, and for a moment a look of surprise flashed across his face. The last thing he was expecting was to hear you pleading for him so shamelessly, but it was a welcome surprise. His signature grin returned quickly, stretching from one pointed ear to the other.

“Oh, more he says?!” He replied, “More, more! What happened to ‘wait, Jack!’ and ‘you can’t, Jack!’, huh? Sudden change of heart?”

He was mocking your voice, degrading you so blatantly that he expected you to recoil at his nasty words, but instead you tightened around him.

Oh…you liked that.

He was more than happy to keep going.

“What is it then, hm? Or have you already gone too stupid to answer me? Aha, you really do love this!”

You nodded quickly in response, managing to push out a slurred reply that sounded vaguely like an agreement.

“Fine then,” he conceded, “I can give you more…”

And just when you thought he couldn’t possibly go any faster or shove in any deeper or make you cry out for him even more.

He fucked you like his current life and the next depended on it, each thrust slamming the headboard into the wall so hard it left a mark. Your legs trembled as you began to get lost in the pleasure. It all felt like a blur, a wonderful blur only broken up by the realization that you were much closer to your orgasm than you realized.

“Jack, J-Jack—! I’m close, I…I’m…” You couldn’t even choke out a single sentence of warning. Jack was more than aware of what you were trying to tell him, but he was content to let you pathetically struggle for words.

“Go on, why don’t you? If you need it so bad I won’t stop you.”

His attempt at an impartial tone was greatly hindered by his obvious excitement, a result of how close he was to his own peak and how much he desired to see you cum. He wanted so badly to see you make a mess for him, to feel you spasm around him and know that he was the one who brought you to that.

“Oh, please—!” You whined, “Please, please, please…”

You had no idea what you were begging for. You didn’t have to, though, because it seems like your pleas worked anyways. Every muscle in your body tensed on instinct, your back arching up into Jack and one last high pitched cry managing to leave your throat as you came. The force of your orgasm hit you like a truck, more intense and prolonged than any other you’d had, helpfully hastened by Jack’s increasingly erratic thrusts.

“Ahah, you squeezed so tight!” He gushed, “You feel so, so good…”

Faster, faster, faster, he had to go faster. He was so close, so close. He had to fill you, he had to. He had to see his cum dripping out of you and to know that he’d filled you with all he had and you had to be filled.

He went silent for a split second, and you knew what you were in for when his hips stuttered before going still, but you weren’t ready for the sheer amount of cum he pumped into you. He held you on his cock until he was completely done, continuing to make small ruts with his hips until he’d ridden out his orgasm to the end. There simply wasn’t room for it all inside of you, but even as it flowed out of you and down your legs and onto your sheets he continued to spill into you. You’d gone limp in his hands by the time he was done.

You barely processed the feeling of being laid back down on your bed, but you definitely winced when Jack pulled out of you. Damn, you were already sore. Not to mention your forehead was drenched with a thick layer of sweat and your thighs were soaked with a multitude of bodily fluids that you were trying not to think about right now.

You managed to crack an eye open when you heard Jack snickering.

“Tired already? A shame. I had fun.” He said casually, as if the both of you had just returned from an outing and he hadn’t practically jumped you in your own home. Your only answer was an exhausted sigh.

Jack cocked his head to the side as he stared down at you. Were you really so worn out already? He wasn’t tired at all! Then again, “tired” wasn’t really something he felt…

Humans are so strange.

He laid down beside you and draped an arm over you. When he leaned in you expected him to lick you again, but instead he brought you into a kiss. An actual kiss, the first real gesture of affection he’d given you, even if it was rather brief. He pulled away to nestle his face into the crook of your neck, and you could feel his laughter against your skin.

“You’re a funny one, do you know that? I hope I get to play with you a lot more…”

Oh, fuck.

He wasn’t leaving, was he?

#creepypasta #creepypasta smut #creepypasta x reader #male reader #laughing jack #laughing jack x reader #laughing jack smut #clown fucker #creepypasta x male reader #laughing jack x male reader #laughing jack x you #creepypasta x reader smut #laughing jack x reader smut #tw dubcon #tw dubious consent

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virgincels · 20 days

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black water - one !

ft. og4!leon s. kennedy x fem!reader

tags. cop!leon, corruption, mentions of harassment/rape/drugs, body horror, raccoon city incident never happened but there r bioweapons, suicide ideation bc leon, character death, there’s smut in later chapters i promise, public sex, creampie, hate sex, slapping, choking, gore descriptions

note. hi trying something new! i know raccoon city is in the midwest somewhere but to be frank idgaf ab the usa and know nothing about any part of it so i decided that it’s a southern state in this fic bc i wanted to make reader have the cute accent bc she’s a farmer :3 only the first chapter so like um this is honestly just more of a test to see if anyone would like this erm smut comes soon prommy.. reader implied poc but like um :3 PLEASE GIMME FEEDBACK N IGNORE MISTAKES!!

summary. there is something in the water, you want it gone before it eats more than just your livelihood.

You know pigs, so you know men.

This one has blue eyes, it is the type of blue you’d dip your toes into, you let the waves lap at your calves until it drags you under. His gaze taps a gun to the back of your head and demands full attention.

He is subjecting you to himself, and you hate it.

The glint of his blue-gold badge is nebulous in the dark. “Officer Leon S. Kennedy.” He offers you a look at his ID card - has the sort of face that lets him get away with things. “Criminal Investigations Department.”

Beside him, a dog with intelligent eyes stands sentinel. Officer Kennedy drops the leash and the dog sits back on its haunches. “Now, what’s this about pigs?”

The RPD is one great big circle jerk. Brian Iron’s doctrine is an easy one to follow, and Leon is not opposed to easy. His innards spill into the middle of it all as the lump in his throat dislodges, adding to the slurry of toxic waste that coats their blackened underbelly.

There is a horrible liminal quality to the place, footfall echoes in halls lit by jaundiced bulbs. The scent of sex is a wisp of smoke in his nose as he passes the chief’s office.

Raccoon City is a backwater bog, and to match the inhabitants are insular primitive beings who cling to antiquated ways. To be stationed here by choice was a lapse in judgement - snark is the currency of social interaction.

Leon is often taken by women.

He met this one back in Brooklyn, where he and his family lived above a Deli, an older southern lady with a gap in her teeth. Had the pleasure of crossing her path—Something about her just stuck. Led him to believe that all women round these parts had big hearts and even bigger bosoms. A place to rest his head for the night, a neck to hide his face in, blonde curls just shy of silver to tickle his skin flower-pink.

She talked all like:

Well, ain’t you just the sweetest peach I’ve ever seen! Oh, I could just eat a feller like you up, get me full as a tick.

Whatever it was that she said and meant, he liked it. And so guided by the expertise of his dick, Leon landed himself here.

There are a handful of beautiful women that Leon has seen, met, fucked.

(He weeded out the ugly ones the moment he was given access to the file room.)

The thing is, small town beautiful is different to New York pretty.

He has an ex over in Manhattan who could turn the sidewalk into a catwalk. She had Leon, a man built like a god, fumbling like a teenage girl. The last girl he fucked here was homely - she had the hushed urgency of a military wife and her monotony was sobering.

One girl he dated on and off for a year or two. She worked at a car wash and she was needy. Real needy. She missed the taste of his dick so he provided her with the scent of pussy instead. Every weekend he’d drive over and watch her clean the sex from the backseat of his cruiser just because he could.

Things are slow in this marshy cesspit, a never-ending conveyer belt of nothing much. The wind carries the scent of magnolia blossoms and sewage. It gives Leon a lot of time to think of the filth that is his underfurnished life. He lowers his head to the desk, allowing himself to fall in and out of spasms of lucidity.

Leon has done bad things, but he doesn’t qualify as a bad guy. The badge and the blue forbids it. Take Redfield for example, that guy got deployed in Penamstan. Y’know what happened there? He shot a kid or two and now he can’t get it up. He’s not a bad guy, not at all, he’s got a photo of his smiling face plastered in the lobby.

He’s a hero.

The only problem folks have with him is that heroes have nice, hard cocks and they fuck for hours. No matter his sex drive atrophied by gore splattered on the barrel of his gun, or how the studded underside of his boot caused flesh to crumple like the newspaper with his name on it—It doesn’t matter. To be built like a brick shithouse and have something soft between your legs, well, that just ain’t right, is it?

Over in Penamstan, he would say, you introduce yourself over the sound of gunfire, shake hands as the earth is split in half, kill an orphan to bond.

A good man for sure. So good his little sister went ghost.

(Leon finds her postcards in the mailroom. For Redfield’s sake, he hides them in the bottom drawer of his desk alongside all sorts of ephemera. He’s acquired quite the stash.)

Valentine is alright. She’s quiet. The moral fibre has been plucked out of her with a pair of forceps, and now she doesn’t think much about where she points her gun. They often sit in shared silence, and sometimes it is like looking in a funhouse mirror that creates a shape far slinkier than his bulk.

Chambers is too nice. Vickers is fat. Burton is old. Frost is ugly. These are all irrefutable flaws, but none of them are bad, and none of it is intentional. Not bad by Leon’s standards at least.

(The entirety of the STARS unit would be better off if they stopped kissing Captain Wesker’s flat ass, but that is like asking for sympathy from the devil.)

Man, he has too much time on his hands.

“Kennedy, you busy?” Rita knocks on his desk. The fabric of her shirt creases inwards to grasp the dip of her waist as she places a hand on her hip. She’s poised, but something about her gait is wobbly.

“Mighty busy.” He nods.

What they have is not history, but something much smaller. It is a word blotted out on a torn page from a burnt book, it is ground into powder by mortar and pestle.

It is Leon’s hand in her back pocket when nobody’s around.

“I’m sure.” She straightens her spine, eyes heavy with the weight of her lashes. “Up in Black Water, something about a dead pig.”

“They have gators,” Leon points out. He may be bored to the point of suicide, but he is not in the mood to wrangle any gators.

“I know,” she says, lifting her eyes from the ground to meet his sidelong gaze, “go check it out, she sounded real spooked, take a dog if you have to.”

She, huh.

Wonder what she looks like. He hopes she has big tits. He hopes she isn’t a cousin-fucking, peat-smelling hick.

Black Water has a lot of those.

“Took ya long enough.” Your voice skims the air like a bullet, it strikes Leon in the chest.

You are she. And you, well—You’re both the needle and the spoon.

Doused in the lantern glow, the egg-whites of your eyes are streaked by small, bloody streams, your mac is zipped up to the chin, and your rainboots are the same colour of boxed rubber duckies.

You’re no sole-crushed peach, making the ground its canvas in a pitiful splatter, you’re a tart cherry that he would like to pick, melt into a glaze and store in a jar.

“Oh, we’re mighty busy.” Leon wipes Rita’s wet from his fingers on the front of his tailored pants, it’s gotten sticky like pomade. He thinks of her tailbone digging into the flesh of his stomach as he sits her on his lap.

“I bet.” You raise your brows. “How many lines did’ja do?”

Leon leans forward to watch your face with unblinking eyes. “Don’t say that too loud, Wesker’s gonna get worried, y’know, start digging through his stash.”

“Hah.” Your laugh is hidden into the collar of your mac. “He seems like the type.”

“You met him before?” An unpleasant squelch is heard when he steps where you do, it seems deliberate for a moment, that you’re avoiding a well-trodden path to give him a hard time. He stumbles forward in the dark—His shoes are fucked, and these socks deserve a funeral service.

“Think we all have.” Your body is lost in the shapelessness of your attire, clothes draped over your frame like you are more hanger than human. Effortless femininity lost to androgyny. “You’re not from these parts.”

“You don’t look like you’re from these parts, pumpkin pie,” he mocks your twang and is met with a tut.

You stop and Leon bumps into you with a grunt.

He shines his torch at the ground and isn’t quite sure of what he’s looking at. “That’s a pig alright.”

#leon kennedy imagine #leon kennedy angst #leon s kennedy x reader #leon s kennedy smut #leon kennedy x reader #leon kennedy x you #leon kennedy smut #leon s kennedy x you #leon s kennedy angst #resident evil angst #resident evil x reader #resident evil smut

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ezlo-x · 4 days

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“Wow I hope BotW gets a sequel someday…” - my TotK summary <3

It’s been a year, and honestly. I did not complete that game at all. I watched lets plays and cutscenes in youtube and a few playthroughs of my friends. And every time, my regret of buying this game grows ever so slightly. I know I sound mean and harsh but I prommy I got nothing against ppl who actually enjoyed TotK. This is more of my personal experience of how my excitement playing this game completely burned me out less than halfway through the game.

Gameplay

I’ll start with gameplay first, as I have issues with it. Let’s start with the physics of the game itself. Ngl, there was a small worry in the back of my mind when I realized there would be in-game physics and that you have to rely on those said physics. I personally don’t have a good experience with game physics and they usually tend to frustrate me. Which somewhat happened when playing the game. It didn’t happen too often, thankfully, maybe because the zonai parts didn’t tend to last long. Speaking of Zonai parts and builds

I wish building Zonai stuff was a bit more fun. Or at least give us more time to experience our builds. We already have a disadvantage by having a limited amount of batteries that you have to slowly upgrade throughout the game. So, seeing that one of your Zonai pieces starts to flash and disappear is annoying. I understand we can obtain more zonai parts throughout Hyrule, but I wish it lasted long enough. Also, the fact that you can’t really travel a lot in many of the builds, oh how disappointing it was to build a cool Zonai truck with big ass wheels but get frustrated that it couldn’t pass through a few bumps on the road. I feel like the Hoverbike is the best Zonai build of the game.

The Ultrahand is fun when trying to solve puzzles or merge random items. Fusing weapons, on the other hand, is my favorite thing in the game. There’s something really satisfying about fusing a really powerful weapon together. I really don’t mind that the weapons are breakable if that means I have a spot to make a strong weapon. Weapon durability never really bothered me. Both games push you to explore around to look for weapons. I think it would be boring if they weren’t breakable.

The shrines are a big improvement from BotW's shrines. I wished there were more challenging Shrines over the many King Rauru blessings. I can't really say much about the dungeons as I only completed two out of the five. But I think there was a bit to be desired; it's almost a Zelda dungeon.

Sage abilities. I want to speak to the game designer who thought it was a great idea to activate the sage abilities with the same button you click to pick up items on the floor. A total downgrade to the way you’d activate the Champion abilities in BotW.

Rupees. I would like to speak to the game designer who thought it was a great idea that you now have to manually press A to pick up rupees from the floor rather than casually walking in front of it to automatically pick it up. From my previous point, do you know how many times I’ve tried to pick up rupees only for Tulin’s ability to fly them away from me?

The sky islands, ohh boyyy, finding out that they had to reduce the amount of sky islands is disappointing, but I understand in a game design aspect. BUT it is disappointing that the game was advertising itself for the sky islands, only for there to be very few in the final. Like remember back in 2021 when they were advertising SkSw HD, and then i think a year later a totk teaser dropped and Link was falling from the skies? Good times ❤️

The Depths: I enjoyed the Depths a bit more than the Sky Islands. But it does get boring after a while if you’re not there to fight monsters or look for treasure, which is also disappointing. I love the OST descending down a chasm and entering the depths. Also, don’t get me started on how frustrating it is to use Zonai builds there compared to the surface or sky islands.

I think those are all my thoughts on the gameplay. I still have a few more issues with it but I feel like it mixes with the story so lets get that over with

Limitation vs Freedom

My biggest issue with this game is that it gives you the freedom to do whatever you want. However, there is still a story attached, and the story still wants to play out linearly. So, we have a game that grants you total freedom on how you want to play this game, but the story is still linear. But even if you decide to experience the story while doing dungeons and shrines. The game doesn't update with the piece of information that you discover.

The Dragon Tears are a really flawed way to experience the story. Zelda's memories are scattered across Hyrule; the number of times I've seen ppl say they accidentally got the tears out of order cause they thought it was similar to BotW's way of getting the memories. Basically, if you happen to be near one memory, you might as well get it cause it'll get annoying to go back and forth. Only to the person's shock, they got a cutscene meeting the Queen and King and then going up the Hebra region as that's the closest memory from the previous one. Just to see Queen Sonia dead on the floor.

What also bothers me is that the game doesn't update when you make a discovery in these memories. For example, I found out that Phantom Ganon can transform into Zelda in the memories and walk up to the NPCs in hopes of a change of dialogue. But getting nothing, walking up to Purah, Tulin, then Yunobo, and seeing no change of dialogue got really tiresome. It's as if the game doesn't believe you're smart enough to connect the dots.

Also, for people who decided to explore and get the Dragon Tear memories before entering any dungeon. There is very little change of dialogue, suddenly the game strangely punishes you by not letting the npcs acknowledge what you just discovered. While it's not an actual in-game punishment, you're stuck with characters asking a million questions that you already know of. Suddenly, the game's freedom to do whatever you want gets put to a halt because you decide to have the freedom to experience the story however you'd like.

NOW I get to move the part that I’ve been waiting (dreading) for!!

Lore

Sheikah Tech…I don’t care how simple the explanation is on why they are gone. It is probably the dumbest explanation I’ve seen. The fact that it wasn’t even questioned in-game and by the developers baffles my mind. How does it vanish in thin air? Their explanation is that the Calamity no longer exists doesn’t make sense to me either. The Sheikah tech has been there for more than 10k years but only in a dormant state. I don’t want to ask any more questions, or I’ll be here all day, but it drives me up a wall how the lore of the Sheikah got shafted to the side for the new stone technology aesthetic. Speaking of which-

Zonai in general. The fact that WE DONT EVEN GET LORE from the Zonais aside from being viewed as gods is sooooo ughhhhh I wish there was more. Why are there two remaining Zonais? (This probably got answered tbh but idc to look) Who’s the ancient hero and how come he looks like a Zonai or just in fact a different race we’ve never seen before?

Draconification…god. I have many thoughts and also many thoughts about the secret stones. It is an idea that I find interesting and could’ve worked for me. If it didn’t contradict itself in many aspects, as in how becoming a dragon, you will lose your sense of self. I think it would be a nice foreshadowing of the fate Zelda could’ve had. I think making the other dragons take a role in that and expand on it would’ve worked. Idk I think instead of implying it, it could’ve been expanded and shown a lot more severity of the situation.

Apparently I don’t got much on lore, but you know what I got much of????

STORY

This one is going to be a FAT one so bear with me. God where do I even begin here, I'm going completely omit the part where the game feels like it’s gaslighting you through the npcs cause I feel like everyone knows that.

My biggest frustration with this game is that it has such interesting story concepts and cinematic moments. But I can’t but feel like these moments were there first, and everything else was built around it. However, whatever suspicion I feel about how they created this story, only to my shock and horror that there isn’t a credited group of people in the credits, only an outside team (company?). Before I continue, I think it’s dumb when people say TLoZ didn’t have much of a story when previous Zelda games had a storyline to follow (OoT, MM, WW, TP, fucking…even Link’s Awakening, and more). So yes, TLoZ does have stories. It’s not just about the dungeons if I'm being honest.

What I find so odd is that Monolith Soft has games such as the Xenoblade games, where the latest game of that series does have a credited team of writers. Hell, BotW had two credited writers. But I won't go far speculating why they decided to hire a company outside the team to write TotK; it is only interesting to me why they did that. Since there really isn't a solid team of writers, I will focus my issues on Fujibayashi as a story writer; after all, he is the director of this game. And I've seen multiple interviews after the game's release where he explains a lot of the game's "lore" and story that should've been easily explained in the game in the first place. I think this will be me sharing my opinions rather than critiques... boy where do I even begin...

Sages—the ancient sages, not counting Mineru, are pointless. I felt no connection seeing the Ancient Sages meet their predecessors. Can't believe Age of Calamity made me feel more strongly about the Champions meeting their predecessors than the ancient sages did. - I also think they really don't share anything important. Maybe the first time, yes, but you could easily remove their cutscenes and just have Mineru explain how everything went down, and nothing will change. - Now, to the present Sages, I can't really say much, sadly. Tulin and Yunobo were the only characters for whom I completed their quests, and I enjoyed their character arcs, especially Yunobo's. If I could pick up TotK again, I would try to do Riju's arc, as it seemed really fun to play from the playthroughs I've seen my friends do. I don't really care for Sidon. Before I dropped the game, I was going through his quest and got really irritated fast for many reasons that I have mentioned here previously.

King Rauru and Queen Sonia – There has never been a character that I've enjoyed where I think they deserved much better than what they were there for. I get it; Sonia was only there as the character to be killed off to move the plot forward, but oh my god...I could've saved her. I wished we could've seen her more involved in the story than just standing by Raruru's side. - King Rauru, my brain turns foggy when I think of this man, and sometimes there are too many words to explain my issues. But to water it down, I feel we centered ourselves too much on these characters who don't even affect the main protagonist to some degree. Sure, King Rauru first appears at the beginning to show you his magic hand abilities. But I guess I was hoping something like how the previous TLoZ games had your companion help you throughout your journey and are the key fact of many things in the story (Midna and KotRL appear in my head when I mention this).

Zelda—sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I think this game would've been 10x better if she had been the protagonist. I know it probably wouldn't make sense because she turns into a dragon by the end but Idc. What frustrates me about Zelda is that she's given very few options. It's a war or nothing. It's becoming a dragon or being stuck in the past forever. I guess that's the tragedy of her story, but instead of me feeling sad, it frustrates me.

Link—Oh god, here we go. Link has a very small role in this, and you can disagree with me. But how is it possible that this is one of the few Links that has little involvement in the story? Link just happened to stumble into a bigger mystery than it already was. Link didn't even prove himself to Ganondorf why he's a threat to him aside from the first cutscene and Rauru.

Ganondorf - .........I hope this is the last time we see Ganondorf in the series. I know that sounds shocking, but if Fujibayashi is going to take the lead in storytelling for future games, I don't want him to make another iteration of Ganondorf. To me, Fujibayashi works better by making completely new Zelda villains. Ghirahim and Kohga are perfect examples. Ganondorf in this game was so underwhelming and disappointing. He never directly confronted himself with either Link or Zelda. Gameplay wise, he's great, but the story? What is he doing here? Literally, it feels like they only brought Ganondorf back because people questioned about Ganondorf back in BotW.

Conclusion

There are many aspects of the game that I enjoy; however, in my case, the bad outweighs the good. That's why this game frustrates me: There was a lot of potential to be seen. There is probably more for me to say that I'm either intentionally leaving out or just forgetting cause there are many things. Happy one year TotK 🎉🎉🎉

#txt #i am a little anxious sharing this so no hard feelings if i lock the post

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starlightkun · 4 months

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➠ word count: 4.6k ➠ warnings: cursing, vomiting, depictions of illness, hospital settings, etc. (but he gets better! i prommy!) ➠ genre: fluff, a touch of hurt/comfort, suggestive? (i mean they’re mentioned to shower together but it’s in a very tender caretaking sort of way, it's a ‘you cannot perform this task of hygiene and i love you and will assist you in performing this vital task’ sort of thing), established relationship, former hockey captain sungchan, chronically ill reader (chronic migraines), shortfic in the buzzer beater series (after 27JSC, before garbage goal) ➠ extra info: the title is directly lifted from the title of this academic article on pubmed that came up in some googling i was doing for this fic the reader in this has chronic migraines, which i have. when the reader’s migraines, experiences as a chronically ill person, and thoughts about being chronically ill are described, that is me writing directly from my own life. i am not generalizing the lives of all people with chronic migraines/chronic illnesses, but i am sending all my love to any readers out there living with a chronic illness, and here’s a reminder to go take your meds! ➠ author’s note: i did NOT expect this to turn into a literal series but these two have rlly captured my lil heart tbh. i’m obsessed with them. they’re in love. i’m not sorry and i will not pretend to be in order to be cute on the internet. anyway enjoy 🫶 ➠ series masterlist

The utter relief that you felt having Sungchan home again was a feeling unparalleled. Having him home, in his own clothes, in your bed, holding you and laughing at something stupid he’d just said but thought was the funniest thing ever—that was the most you’d ever loved someone, you decided.

Stirring slightly in the middle of the night, you were aware of being uncomfortable, hot, and sweaty under all your sheets, blankets, and boyfriend.

“Mmh,” you groaned, pushing at Sungchan, who was of course passed out on top of you like you were the mattress. “Channie, off. ‘m too hot.”

He readjusted slightly, but just grabbed you to pull you to his front like the cuddle monster he was. You were now acutely aware of your clothes sticking to your back and chest.

“No, let go.” You grabbed at his arms. “Come on, Channie, aren’t you hot too?”

He suddenly vaulted himself out of bed, throwing the sheets and blankets off of him in a mad dash towards the bathroom. You sat up in bed, blearily watching him in confusion until he kneeled down at the toilet and you finally put the pieces together, hurrying in after him and turning on the light on your way in.

He didn’t have any hair to hold back from his face as he emptied his stomach, so you mainly rubbed his back through his damp t-shirt. With the bathroom lights on, you were able to see that the front and back of his white shirt were entirely soaked with sweat, his face pink and sweat-sheened, and his hair stuck to his forehead. His whole body radiated with an unnatural heat as you sat beside him, coaching and comforting him through it as he gripped the toilet bowl with white knuckles.

When it seemed like he had gotten to a pause in his retching, you coaxed his head up away from the opening, then flushed it. Grabbing some toilet paper from the roll hanging next to you, you bundled up enough to wipe around his mouth and nose, then tossed that into the bowl as well as the water was still draining.

“We…” He stopped to cough, then spit into the toilet. “We ate the same stuff last night… Why aren’t you…”

“Baby, I don’t think this is food poisoning,” you replied, moving his hair off his forehead to press the back of your hand there. “I think you’re sick.”

“But my immune system is so good! I haven’t even gotten a cold in like five years! I got my flu shot two weeks ago!”

“I know, I was there holding your hand.”

His whining was cut off by more puking, and you continued to soothe him through it.

“Channie, you can’t send this.” You shook your head, reading over his email to his research head again.

“But I have to… to tell him why I can’t come in,” Sungchan reached for his phone from your hands.

“Baby, this is gibberish.” You held the phone away from his grabby hands so you could delete the nonsense email and exit out of the app before setting it on his nightstand. “You go back to sleep, I’ll call the lab for you, okay?”

He sighed, laying back down in bed and closing his eyes. “Okay… don’t take too long… miss you…”

“And he’s out,” you commented to yourself fondly.

It was quick work to look up the office line on the university’s website, and you took the call in the living room as he napped in your room. Hearing the click of it being picked up first, it was answered by an older-sounding, stern man.

“Yoon Taekyung.”

“Hi, Dr. Yoon, this is Y/L/N Y/N, I’m—”

“Jung Sungchan’s girlfriend.”

“Oh, yes, Jung Sungchan’s girlfriend.” You laughed nervously, caught off-guard. You’d never met Sungchan’s research head before.

“Jung talks about you a lot. I don’t stalk my PhD candidates online, in case you were wondering.”

“No, I wasn’t, but thank you for clarifying,” you chuckled. “Anyway, I’m sorry to bother you, but unfortunately Sungchan has a stomach bug and is not going to be able to come in for a few days. He had typed up his own email to you but when I proofread it… you could tell the fever was boiling his brain.”

“I would have appreciated the laugh,” Dr. Yoon said dryly. “We certainly don’t want Jung bringing any outside germs into the microbiology lab. Keep him home.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Goodbye, Y/N.”

“Goodbye, Dr. Yoon.”

Having already finished your master’s degree, you didn’t have any professors to email about missing class today. It was a Friday, and you weren’t scheduled to work all weekend, so you were free to stay home and take care of Sungchan.

Walking back into your bedroom, you stopped next to Sungchan’s side of the bed, pressing your hand to his forehead. He really was burning up.

His eyes fluttered open, and he mumbled something that sounded like your name.

“Yeah, baby, I’m here,” you reassured him, stroking his head. “Go back to sleep, I’m going to make you something to eat, okay?”

His eyes closed again, and you gave his head one last gentle pat.

Poking your head back into the bedroom some time later, you were pleasantly surprised to see Sungchan awake again, scrolling on his phone.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” You walked over, grabbing the thermometer off his nightstand.

“Mm… great,” he groaned, setting his phone down.

“Liar.” You held the thermometer out. “Open.”

He pouted up at you with the thermometer sticking out of his mouth as the two of you waited. It beeped, and you took it back, frowning as you read the display.

“I don’t like that…” You sighed, taking a picture of it with your phone. “I’m going to text your mom. How’s your tummy?”

“Fine…”

“You think you can eat? I made some food.”

“Sure, sure, yeah.”

“Okay, be right back, Channie.” You kissed his hair.

In the kitchen, you hurriedly opened your text conversation with Sungchan’s mom. She was a family medicine doctor, and you’d been updating her on how her son was doing throughout the day.

[you: attached image]

[you: his fever keeps going up, even after the meds he took this morning. no more puking so far]

As you spooned out small portions of dishes, loaded them up on a tray, and reheated a mug of some tea you’d prepared earlier, you continued texting back and forth with Dr. Jung.

[dr. jung: Give him another dose of the acetaminophen. If it keeps going up take him to urgent care]

[you: will do, thank you. he’s about to try to eat some lunch. wish us luck!]

[dr. jung: Good luck sweetheart]

Tucking your phone away, you grabbed the tray of food to take back in to Sungchan. He had pushed himself up against the headboard, letting you set the tray down on his lap. Putting the now steaming mug on the nightstand, you started pointing to everything.

“Ginger tea, and easy tummy foods. Some rice, soup, crackers, and for dessert—” You pulled out a small package from the pocket of your hoodie.

He gasped softly. “Chocolate biscuits…”

“Chocolate biscuits,” you confirmed, setting them on the tray table then stroked his hair gently. “I’m going to go clean up the kitchen then I’ll come sit with you. Holler if you need me before then, okay?”

He grabbed your hand before you could get too far, his skin burning hot against yours. “Hey. Thank you.”

“Anything for my Sungchannie,” you smiled, gently swinging your linked hands where they hung in the air. “Small bites, and don’t force anything down, okay? You’ll only throw it back up if you do that.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And how are you on water?” You picked up the water bottle on his nightstand with your free hand, shaking it. “Eh, half. I’ll refill it for you, too. Be back in a sec.”

After putting the leftovers away and refilling his water, you shook out a couple more tablets of acetaminophen and brought both of them back with you.

“Here.” You placed them on the table next to him. “Your mom says to take another dose, and if your fever keeps going up then we’ll have to take you to urgent care.”

He nodded, thankfully opting not to talk with food in his mouth. You scooted back into bed next to him, resting your head on his shoulder as he slowly picked at his food.

“Good food, baby, thank you,” he sniffled, taking a sip of his tea. “I mean, my nose is so stuffed up I can’t taste most of it, but it’s still good.”

You chuckled, patting his chest. “Thanks, Channie.”

“Are you sure you should be sitting so close to me? I don’t want to get you sick too.”

“We live together, I’m either going to get sick or I won’t. It’s not like I’m asking you to spit in my mouth or anything,” you scoffed.

“Yeah, right now.”

Before you could even make a retort, he suddenly careened forward in a fit of violent coughs, and you surged to first steady the tray table so he didn’t knock the liquids everywhere. After moving it off his legs and onto an unoccupied area of the mattress, you rested a hand on his back as he continued coughing, wincing sympathetically at how painful they sounded. Finally, he stopped coughing, and paused to catch his breath.

“Mm… I think you should keep your loogies to yourself for now, Channie,” you tutted. “Drink some water.”

Setting his water bottle back down, he blinked slowly. “Ugh… that hurt.”

“Do you want the food back? Or are you done?”

He shook his head. “I’m done. Don’t want anything coming back up.”

“I’ll put it in the fridge in case you get hungry later.”

You had just closed the fridge when you heard retching sounds from your bathroom.

It was almost two hours later before the two of you left the cold tile floor of your bathroom. There were impressions of the grout in your knees and your joints ached from the unforgiving, hard flooring. And it was only to get Sungchan to sit on the equally hard, cold, tile floor of the shower under a lukewarm stream of water—you were afraid of making it too hot with how high his fever already was, and he whimpered like the water was hurting him if it was too cold. With how much fever-sweating he’d been doing since the wee hours of the morning, you could only imagine how uncomfortable it was for him (you yourself still hadn’t had the chance to sneak in a quick shower since being awoken in sweat that morning either). Not even to mention just all the puke that the both of you had been around.

You knelt behind him to very gently work some shampoo through his hair, then tilted his chin up with your hand to direct his head back into the spray and rinse out the suds. You used your other hand to block his eyes from any stray shampoo that may accidentally run down into them. With his hair off his forehead, you could catch a glimpse of a light scar, from taking a puck directly to the face your senior year of college, soon after you started dating. You’d taken care of him then, warned him to be careful when washing his hair, and he’d joked about having you do it for him. You couldn’t help but run a finger over it lightly.

After finishing up washing his hair, you reached behind you to blindly fumble for the handle and turn the spray off. It was a bit dicey getting the two of you to stand up in the confined space with Sungchan’s less-than-optimal coordination at the moment, and you toweled the both of you off in the bathroom quickly.

Back in new clothes, you let him fall into bed as you appraised the nightstand. “Did you take the meds before you threw up? I don’t— Oh, there they are.”

You grabbed them from behind the water bottle, nudging Sungchan’s shoulder. “Baby, you can take a nap after you take these, okay? They’re going to help your fever.”

“Uh?” He squinted one eye open, then dropped his mouth open. You placed the tablets on his tongue, then held the straw up to his lips. He swallowed with minimal difficulty, then dropped his head back down to the pillow.

You crawled into bed too, curling up behind him and throwing an arm over his middle. Sungchan groaned and shifted in place.

“Are you warm?” You asked quietly. “I’ll scooch if you’re too warm.”

“No,” he whined, grabbing at the blankets and pulling them up higher. “Cold… ‘n everything hurts, baby. My head hurts, my throat hurts, my stomach hurts, my muscles hurt from throwing up so much. Everything hurts.”

“My Sungchannie.” You scooted in closer to him, burying your face in his neck. “I’m sorry… I wish it didn’t hurt, baby. I’m so sorry. I wish I could make it stop for you.”

“I’m going to take a nap, I think…” He sniffed.

“I think that’s a good idea.” You kissed his shoulder. “I’ll be right here when you wake up, baby boy.”

“That’s it, we’re going to the urgent care,” you declared with a shake of your head, looking at the most recent temperature readout on the thermometer. Up again.

Despite all of Sungchan’s grumbling about not being that sick, you still managed to get him into the car and to the doctor, keeping a wary eye on him as you took all of your turns very carefully and accelerated and braked as smoothly as possible so that he hopefully wouldn’t vomit all over your car interior as well. After staying in the waiting room for an agonizing amount of time, you two finally went back.

The doctor took one look at Sungchan’s vitals, and you explained just how many times he’d thrown up in less than twelve hours, before deciding to admit him.

You had been asked to step out of his room for the moment, and walked up and down the long hallway, continuing to update his mom.

[you: he just got admitted. doctor says he probably just needs fluids and something stronger to bring the fever down but wants to keep him overnight for observation]

[dr. jung: Who’s his attending?]

[you: dr. chen]

[dr. jung: Oh good. He’s good, our Sungchan’s in good hands. I’ll be by after clinic closes.]

[you: thanks, i’ll let him know you’re coming]

A nurse left Sungchan’s room then, and you perked up as the older man seemed to be walking towards you.

“I’m so sorry, miss, this is going to sound weird,” he began with a sheepish smile. “But has your husband been on TV?”

“Oh, uh, boyfriend…” You corrected him distractedly, way more focused on said boyfriend. “And uhm, not exactly. Why?”

“He just looks very familiar.”

You thought for a second, then suggested, “Do you like hockey?”

“Yes, my wife and I have season passes for the local university’s team’s home games.”

“Sungchan played for the Raptors a couple years ago.”

“Oh! I was wondering why the name was so familiar too…”

“Sorry, did you need something from me?”

“Yes, I need to put his IV in, uhm, but he’s asking for you…”

You nodded. “Yeah, he has a fear of needles. Shouldn’t that be in his chart or whatever somewhere?”

“We just have the records from the urgent care doctor who sent him up here, sorry,” the nurse admitted. “But I’ll make a note of it.”

Following the nurse in, you saw that Sungchan was all by himself, and had to bite your lip at the image of him already hooked up by wires to a bunch of other machines. He still smiled when he saw you, though.

“Hey, baby…” he held his hand out towards you, and you took it, giving it a squeeze.

“Hi. Heard you were asking for me.”

“Thought you might feel left out if I got a needlestick and you weren’t here.”

“Yeah, it’s my favorite hobby, watching you get pricked over and over,” you replied sarcastically.

“Which arm?” The nurse asked.

“The right. He’s a lefty,” you answered immediately.

He looked between you and Sungchan for a moment.

“What she said,” Sungchan confirmed.

As the nurse prepared his arm for the IV, you distracted him on his other side.

“So, I was texting your mom in the hallway,” you told him. “She said she’s going to come by after the clinic closes. She also knows your attending, says you’re in good hands, we’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Oh, that’s good.” He suddenly squeezed your hand tight.

You rushed to find another topic and keep talking, “Also, I have to tell you about this new book I was reading. Really, it was a collection of short stories, but you know how I am with those. God, it’s incredible. It’s like surrealism, and sort of psychological horror, and some of them toe in body horror, but also magical realism, but all of them sort of explore like womanhood and societal expectations of women and that kind of thing. They’re so fantastic. There’s one about a teenage girl who just starts eating birds one day. Like, live birds, the kind of birds you’d keep as a pet. Feathers and all. She’s not actually the POV character, though, you get to follow her dad as he tries to take in this change and adjust and acclimate to it as his otherwise normal teen daughter has to consume live birds while his estranged wife tries to convince him to just accept it and that it’s really not that bad. And obviously that can be a metaphor for how fathers—”

“Done.” The nurse announced. “Dinner’s in an hour, Mr. Jung. Buzz if you need anything before then.”

“I think you freaked him out with your ‘eating live birds and scaring your dad is a metaphor for being a teen girl’ story, baby,” Sungchan chuckled.

“But it is!” You defended yourself. “And it’s so good, really!”

“I’m sure it is.” He scooted over in the tiny bed to make a little bit of room, then patted the empty space he’d just created. “Want my girl to tell me all about it.”

You clambered up next to him, still with one foot hanging off the bed to let both of you fit, but just all too happy to be with him again.

Just a little while later, and the nurse was poking his head back into Sungchan’s room. Dr. Jung paused the funny story she had just been telling from her seat on the small recliner next to the bed, and all three of you looked over at the newcomer.

The nurse focused his apologetic eyes on you, “Miss, I’m sorry, but visiting hours are over.”

“Oh.” You looked around awkwardly, starting to get up from the bed. “Sorry, I thought he was allowed to have one person stay overnight.”

“Spouses and immediate family only, I’m sorry.”

“That’s fi—”

“No, we’re married,” Sungchan insisted, grabbing your hand. “It’s fine, she can stay.”

“Sir…” He trailed off, clearly debating about whether or not he wanted to just outright call Sungchan a liar.

“Channie, I told him earlier we were dating,” you informed your boyfriend quietly. “It’s fine, I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

“Baby…” He sighed.

“It’ll be okay, Channie, I’ll be back tomorrow,” you promised him, grabbing your go bag off the floor and hoisting it onto your shoulder. “You just worry about resting and getting better for me, okay?”

“I’ll walk you out, sweetheart,” his mom offered kindly, standing up as well.

“Thank you.”

“Goodnight, Channie,” you leaned down to drop a peck on his forehead. “I love you.”

“Goodnight, Y/N.” He continued to keep a deathly tight grasp on your hand. “I love you too.”

You gave his hand one final pat before regretfully, gently shaking him off and walking out of the room. Dr. Jung slowly meandered down the hall with you.

“I’ll be there, in case they have to inject him, or draw blood, or anything else,” she reassured you.

“Right, thank you,” you nodded, looking down at your feet. “Has he always been afraid of needles? He never really talks about it with me, it’s just one of those things. I go with him for his shots, blood draws, all that.”

“Since he was a kid. He used to run from the room crying. We at least wanted him to be able to handle it on his own by the time he was an adult, even if it wasn’t comfortable.”

“He gives me my monthly injection now, the one I take for my migraines. Did you know that?”

“Really?” She did sound surprised at this tidbit of information.

“Pretty much since we started dating, yeah. Still wants me to go with him for his shots but…”

“It’s different when you’re the one being stuck.”

“Yeah, it is,” you agreed, swallowing down the lump in your throat. You pressed the down button on the elevator. “Usually I’m the one that has something wrong with me and he’s taking care of me. It’s so… it doesn’t feel right, seeing him like that.”

“I know, sweetheart, I know.” She rubbed your arm. “But he’s strong, he’s healthy. I’m sure they’ll discharge him tomorrow to go back home with you.”

“Of course.”

“Now you go home and take care of that migraine that’s been coming on for the last fifteen minutes.”

You looked up at her with one eye open, shrugging. “Well, I don’t know if it’s a full migraine…”

“You’re squinting at the lights, sweetheart. Go home so you can take your meds, okay?”

The elevator dinged just then, the doors opening on your floor.

“Okay, thank you.” You gave her a tired, but genuinely grateful smile as you stepped onto the elevator. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

You spent that night going through your first migraine alone in almost two years, curled up on Sungchan’s side of the bed in one of his huge hoodies, feeling like your head was exploding. But that wasn’t even the reason that you were crying.

In the morning, you were awake before visiting hours opened back up, and despite your instinct to drive to the hospital and wait in the parking lot, you pulled yourself into the shower instead. You didn’t have a lot of time nor mobility for your own shower routine yesterday, and were in desperate need of a good thorough clean and refresh now. After eating some of the leftovers you made the day before, you packed up a small to-go meal for Dr. Jung as well, unsure of how good the cafeteria food was there. She had given you an update during the night that his fever had finally broken, then another once she woke up that he slept through the rest of the night fine, and was still resting as of her text.

By the time you got to the hospital, it was open for daytime visitors, and you were let in with no issues. You’d let Dr. Jung know when you were on your on way, and she was standing outside the door to his room when you arrived.

“Morning, sweetheart,” she smiled, giving you a hug. “How’s your head?”

“Fine,” you waved off her concerns, reaching into your bag to grab the container of food you’d packed. “Brought you breakfast. Wasn’t sure what they were serving downstairs…”

She accepted it gratefully. “Thank you. Now: How’s your head?”

“Last night kind of sucked,” you admitted. “And I’ve got a rebound headache, but I’ll be fine. We don’t need to tell Channie right now, though. He’ll just worry too much and he won’t get better. How’d you sleep? That recliner looked pretty comfy.”

“Would’ve slept better, except he snores like a freight train,” she scoffed. “How you get any sleep is beyond me.”

You let out a round of genuine laughter at that. “He doesn’t usually. Must be the congestion.”

“Must be.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I’m going to take my breakfast downstairs. He’s awake, been asking when you’d be here.”

“Thank you.” You gave her one last fleeting hug before hurrying in.

Sungchan already looked better than yesterday, still tired, but not as deathly pale as before, with no sheen of fever-sweat over his skin. He really just looked… tired.

“Good morning, Channie,” you said breathlessly, setting your bag down. “Heard your fever broke last night. How are you feeling?”

“Morning, baby.” He reached out for your hand. “I’m feeling a lot better. I wish I could’ve made my girl breakfast this morning…”

“You can make me double breakfast after you come home.”

“And what’s double breakfast?”

“Guess you’ll have to figure that out.”

“Breakfast and breakfast for dinner.”

“Sounds pretty good to me.”

He looked up at you with a thoughtful frown on his face, reaching out to gently touch his fingertips to your cheek. “Are you okay, baby? You’re not feeling sick now too, are you?”

“I’m fine, baby. Just a bit tired. I’ll sleep like a baby once I have my Sungchannie back home with me.” You mustered as big of a smile as you could, squeezing his hand.

“I’ve got to get better quick then, can’t have—” he was cut off by loud, violent coughs, throwing his arm up to cover his mouth with his elbow. You rubbed his back as he continued coughing, and he reached for the bedside table. Handing him a couple of tissues from the box sat there, he spat out some of the mucus that had come up, and you used a few more fresh tissues to grab it and throw it away without complaint.

Returning to his side, you continued rubbing his back as he caught his breath. When he started slowly easing back into his bed, you took your hand away and grabbed his cup of water to give him.

“Here.”

He took a few sips before handing it back, and you took his hand again.

“As I was saying,” he cleared his throat. “Before I was so rudely interrupted by my own phlegm: I can’t have my girl all alone in a cold bed at night…”

You laughed, feeling the smitten smile on your face as you looked down at him. “There is some horndog switch in you that gets flipped when you’re unwell, I swear. Scientists need to study you.”

“I’m a scientist, remember?”

“You study a disease in one kind of fish,” you pointed out. “I mean like… sexologists or something. If those exist.”

“They do.”

“Well they’re missing out on… something here.” You gestured to him.

He half-laughed and half-coughed, which devolved into another full coughing fit. After recovering, he said, “Anyway, once my doctor rounds again and checks me out, he’ll be able to say if I can be discharged today or if he wants to keep me another night.”

“Fingers crossed.”

You suddenly rolled over to lay on top of him, pressing your face to his chest, wrapping your arms around him, and throwing your leg over him. He let out a slightly punched-out noise at the unexpected force of your affections, but nevertheless readjusted to wrap his arms around you.

“Hey, baby… Everything okay?” His throat was still hoarse, and he let out a half-cough half-throat clearing noise between his sentences. He added jokingly, “I’m not going to float away, you know?”

“I never want you to leave again,” you mumbled into his clothes. “Never. Never ever.”

“Okay, yeah,” his voice softened, one of his hands cradling the back of your head and stroking your hair. “I’ll never leave, ever again.”

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#sungchan x reader #riize x reader #sungchan imagines #riize imagines #sungchan #sungchan imagine #riize imagine #nct x reader #nct imagine #nct imagines #jung sungchan #i: sungchan #f: onsaom #s: buzzer beater #writing #text #mine #bias tag #*100

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shibaraki · 1 year

Text

OUR MOURNING GLORY ┊ TODOROKI TOUYA

synopsis: everything born in his body will eventually outgrow it. his love for you should be no different.

tags: GN reader, hanahaki au, strangers to friends to lovers, falling in love, requited unrequited feelings, quirkless reader, villain dabi, vomiting, hanahaki as a chronic illness, quirkless discrimination, lack of self worth, hurt + comfort, mild body horror, morally ambiguous reader, first kisses, very hopeful ending (<- I prommy lol)

wc: 5.4K

A/N: now with lovely cover art from momo! thank you so much!

Dabi really fucking hates doctors, has since he was a kid.

They’re too sterile. The strong antiseptic smell burned his sinuses and being surrounded by entirely white walls set him on edge. As though he had been deposited into a liminal space where time does not exist. A cacophony of suffering, incessant beeping, wheels rolling on old gurneys, echoed footsteps, all coalescing into prickly white noise.

Finding a place that would actually treat him was a hell in and of itself. Bigger hospitals and university medical centres weren’t viable options, given how beefed up security usually was. Seedy back-alley places existed in the areas he liked to haunt, but even the thought of stepping foot into one gave him sepsis.

Quirkless clinics were rare. Most that existed ran out of funding— the government saw no reason to care for a dying species. If you didn’t have a quirk then you had it bad. Citizens were legally required to have it listed under a disability on their medical records, and it wasn’t uncommon for people to be turned away in the emergency room because of it.

Dabi almost walked away that first night. As bad of a guy as he is, there was something inherently wrong about infringing on space that did not belong to him. But you had stepped out into the street for a break, jacket pulled close to your chest, took one look at the blood dried to his cheeks and rallied him inside.

He finds himself back here again, for the nth time. Today makes it an entire year since he met you, and ten full months since he coughed up that first bud. A mild inconvenience turned into an invasive bloom.

“…Hanahaki is a serious disease. It is a condition where vine-like buildup in your airways forms into buds, eventually flowering into…”

Morning glories. Buds of deep-blue, trumpet-shaped blossoms and leafy stems. The delicate petals taste surprisingly bitter, with a bite that lingers in the fissures between his molars after it has been ground into thin paste and swallowed. He had long since gotten used to the astringency— drying his throat, twisting his stomach.

“…At best it causes severe breathing difficulties and discomfort. Worst case scenario, it can be fatal…”

In the beginning he thought it would pass. Dabi has endured sickness all his life and a cough wasn’t about to stop his long laid plans. But it worsened, mutated into something he could not control. He remembers sitting in your bathroom on the toilet lid, the little blue burgeon rolling in the shallow of his palm. It’d been covered in bloody mucus, but still a pip, still harmless.

Any sane person might have been afraid at that moment, realising what fate awaited them. Dabi, however, felt oddly resigned. One in one hundred million. Of course this would happen to him. Death clung to him everywhere he went.

“Dabi, are you listening?”

Doctor Tereda had been the one to stitch him up back then. A quack with a near useless cell activation quirk and glasses lenses thick enough for a bullet to bounce off. You’d dragged him into her office, sat him on the bed with surprising strength, and she attended to him no questions asked.

Dabi tried not to make a habit of visiting one place too often, but between your pleading eyes and his rapidly worsening health, he ended up back in her office more times than he cared to.

He makes a noncommittal sound.

“As a medical professional I must strongly advise you to talk to the individual these feelings have bloomed for,” Terada says. Dabi does not like the sympathetic pinch in her brow. “That is the least invasive option”.

Prying open his chest and baring himself to you seems pretty damn invasive. “Not happening,” he mutters airily.

There’s a sense of satisfaction when her frown strains with frustration. Her glasses slip down the bridge of her nose. “Your case is incredibly advanced. It may be your only chance to tell—”

“You got something wrong with your ears?” he interrupts. The stitches beneath his eyes sting, pulled taut by his glare. “I said no”.

Tereda sighs and turns to her screen, pushing her frames back up. The keyboard clicks under her fingers. Every computer here was ancient, their systems totally outdated, but they made do.

“You have two more options. The best results are produced if both treatments are done together,” she explains. “First is surgery. You’ll be put under general anaesthesia and the disease will be removed along with some surrounding tissue in the lungs for biopsy. Memories of the loved one are usually lost”.

Dabi slouched to feign disinterest, betrayed by the restless bounce of his knee, “And?”

“Your second option is to attend an interpersonal psychotherapy programme,” she lifts her hand to silence him before he can interject. “This is highly recommended to patients after surgery to prevent relapse. But you can do it regardless, as it is helpful in reducing your symptoms, and while the disease becomes chronic, it is more manageable”.

Dabi’s jaw shifts as he grits his teeth, pulling at the staples by his mouth, “Calling me fucking crazy now, eh Doc?”

“No,” she replies cooly, schooling her features into something kinder. “As people we underestimate the influence our mental well being has over our physical condition. Hanahaki disease is rare, yes. But over a quarter of all cases are found to be psychosomatic”.

Dabi laughs dryly and brings a fist down hard, smoke squeezed from between his knuckles marred the desk with black. “So this is of my own making, is that what you’re saying?”

“This isn’t something you plant into yourself, Dabi. It isn’t your fault and I could be completely wrong. I’m not all knowing, I’m just a doctor,” a smooth hand is placed over top of his own in effort to comfort, “But torturing yourself will only feed it”.

He scrambles to his feet, the chair legs scraping piercingly across the tile, and snatches his fist back to hold behind his back. The doctor levels him with a sad, soft look, her upper body still leaned across the table.

“If you leave this as it is it will only hurt you. It is already hurting you,” Tereda continues critically. “We can mitigate this, Dabi. Before it kills you”.

That unearths some ill-gotten memory from the recesses of his brain. A film strip he replays often in solitude; the day Endeavor sat him down and told him he shouldn’t use his quirk anymore. At first it was a fatherly suggestion, unnaturally low and soft. “You should stop. It’s hurting you, Touya,” as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

That never made sense to him. In training they used to focus on fire, usually— on intensifying his flame power— but on occasion they would spar. Between poor footing and wrong steps, Endeavour always reprimanded tears and quick surrender.

“But it hurts…”

“Strong heroes fight through pain,” he said. “The world does not stop just because you are crying. Get up! Or are you weak?”

Touya took it to heart, back then. Clenched his chubby little fists tight and got to his feet with a wobbly snarl on his damp, swollen face.

Young minds are impressionable and his own had already been moulded by the very hands on his shoulders. Endeavour’s fingers had held on tight, dwarfing Touya’s frame; heat soaking through his shirt from those searing palms and the sting of old wounds had been enough to keep him grounded in reality. You should stop this. It’s hurting you.

Those words festered and ate away at his soul like an infection. Giving up was against everything he knew— and against everything Endeavor told him a hero should be. It was not an option he was willing to take, and so Touya trudged forward, just as he was taught.

Eventually Endeavour’s words evolved into demand. He became furious. Touya became accustomed to long sleeves and learned how to treat burns alone. Hands made for saving left oval shaped bruises and finger painted the entire family.

How do you abandon something stitched into the very fabric of your being? Being the Number One hero was his hereditary purpose. His father gave up on him so readily but Touya would have rather died than surrender when it got tough. Giving it up would be dying all the same.

Pain was a toll necessary for growth. He grew until his ambition and greed swallowed him whole. And now, there was you. A garden of weeds in his lungs. You were rooted into the capillaries and harvesting his yearning. Every time he coughed it felt like self immolation; a cruel cycle he can not stop repeating.

Hanahaki discriminates. It happens to those who feel deeply, people whose hearts are hemmed by the ones they love. Dabi is selfish but more than that he is lonely, and you’re the one good thing he has in this shit hole.

Accepting the surgery would just be another loss. A surrender. It wouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things; Dabi is going to die either way. A walking corpse. Skin, esophagus, tear ducts, tissue— his fire burns all of it. Deep within him, eating away at his soft insides like dry grass. And what withstands that heat are the seeds you have unknowingly sown.

There is something disturbingly satisfying about carrying a piece of you to the grave with him, flowers proliferating around the earth that houses him. Call him twisted. It isn’t as if he’s unaware he’s got a few loose screws— he also has no desire to get better.

The silence is broken by the quiet scratch of pen to paper. Doctor Tereda offers a thin smile and slides a prescription across the table, signed and ready to be collected. “Here. This should help with the pain for at least a week or two. We know how easily you burn through medication so… don’t take too long to make your decision,” she hesitates before shaking her head. “And go to the emergency room if your breathing worsens”.

Dabi eyes her suspiciously, grabbing the slip and shoving it into his coat pocket. Worrying at his lower lip he offers her a short nod, the ‘thanks’ implied.

As he turns and makes his way toward the door, Dabi pauses just before turning the handle. He doesn’t look back as he mutters, “Keep this to yourself, yeah? That means no putting it on my records”.

Tereda hums curiously, “No one else has access to your records”.

He scoffed, turning his wrist and pulling the old door to demonstrate his point; a groan reverberates throughout the room as it opens, “Yeah right. This is hardly a fine establishment”.

“I resent that!”

Dabi strides through the familiar corridor toward the waiting room, ignoring Tereda’s indignant shout. He wasn’t off the mark about how shoddy the place is— atleast, in comparison to other medical centres. The building is small and narrow. It was built during the pre quirk era and handed off to the quirkless by the government to honour their status. The whole thing stank of ridicule and it pissed him off the more he thought about it.

You’re exactly where he expects you to be. Sitting pretty at your desk, twiddling your thumbs, keeping watch over the empty space and quietly mumbling some melody from Mount Lady’s latest hair care advert over the unremitting whirr of the fan above.

A laugh bubbles in his chest, drawing your attention, and it chokes him in effort to smother the sound. You are alarmingly predictable. There, plain as day on your computer screen, are his supposedly secure medical records.

Dabi pressed the heel of his hand to his sternum as he violently coughed. You’re talking to him now, on your feet and rubbing along his back. A viscous lump of petals forces its way into his throat and he feels his quirk react. Still, you don’t pull away.

“Deep breath,” God, that’d be nice. “You’re okay. I’ll get you some water,” Don't go.

You stop and let him drag you back by the wrist. He rights himself on his feet and forces the flowers down. “I’m—” bile stings the back of his mouth and he gags, turning his face into his coat collar to hide a grimace.

Dabi exhales and it sounds so thin. “Fuck. I’m fine. Don’t start,” he croaks, hardly convincing. Rooting through his pocket, he shoves his prescription slip forward to distract you, the paper crumpled into a small ball. “Doc gave me a prescription. It’s just a chest infection”.

He lingers and observes as you unwrinkle it. You’re careful to smooth out each corner and wrinkle. The tension swells as the silence stretches. He tempers the urge to snatch it back.

You squint at him, “A dosage this high for a chest infection?”

He shrugs and reaches over his head to yank his coat hood forward. “Doctor’s orders”.

After a beat, you relent and glance over to give him an exasperated smile, “Whatever. As long as it helps clear your lungs. You freaked me out last night with all that wheezing”.

You begin switching off your monitors, patting down at your pockets for the keys. To synchronise with the end of your shift, Dabi purposely chose the last appointment. That was another thing he has been doing a lot— trying to fit his life around yours.

“Watching me sleep now, perv?”

“Yeah. I love when a guy sounds like a punctured squeaky toy, really gets me worked up,” you drawl, falling in line with him after turning off the lights and checking the locks. Tereda would close up the rest.

You brought a tonal shift to his life he couldn’t have anticipated; enough that he regularly spent nights crashing on your couch to wait out the bad weather. There was something about you from the beginning that he couldn’t put a finger on. Nothing as simple as your attractiveness— you had a good heart, but not by society's standards, much like Twice.

A quick internet search would pull up listings of buildings he had burned and the trail of bodies left in his wake. But it didn’t matter. Villain, vigilante, hero, a person is a person, even him.

That first meeting, winter settling in, you admitted to him you were quirkless. A shitty olive branch effort, he’s sure. That whole instinctual radar that comes with being a misfit in this world. You left a strong impression. He recalls how he gave you the name Dabi, cackling harshly as if he were leaving you with a ticking time bomb, and you simply said: “Maybe I’ll see you again. Hopefully without all the blood, next time”.

He latched on and desperately wanted to hate you for it. Yet your arm is linking through his once again, pressed close to his side as the rain hammers down onto the empty street, and everything he can’t bring himself to say has taken root in his windpipe.

“Wanna come up?”

“For coffee?” he swipes his tongue over his teeth, raising a suggestive brow. Your offer is as innocent as it always is, and the sight of you flustered is as welcome as ever.

“Tea, actually,” is your poorly veiled response.

Dabi knows he’s getting too comfortable. You might be quirkless but you’re not stupid. Infact, at times you’re unsettlingly perceptive; his only mercy is that you are too nice to pry.

He should tell you ‘no’. Giran could probably set him up. He might even get away with crashing at the bar. Instead he says, “Not like I’ve got anywhere else to be”.

Your apartment building is nothing to write home about. Slightly run down, maintained by residents rather than their pig landlords. It stands shorter than the neighbouring buildings, the entire right side eaten by withered wisteria. Nobody bats an eyelid at his appearance in a place like this.

Inside is a mirror of the outside. Unremarkable in every way, yet he feels remarkably at home. You go in first, kicking off your shoes without bothering to line them up, waddling to the narrow linen closet in the hallway. You’ve managed to cram a dryer right beneath the shelves, since there was barely any space elsewhere.

“I can grab you something to wear while I put our stuff on a spin”.

The rain sticks to his forehead, thin streaks of black dye running down his temple. Grinning, you hand him an old towel, already stained and fraying at the hem, “You look harmless like this. Like a wet cat”.

He pats carelessly at his face while shucking off his coat. The nerves are long dead and it’s painless. You squawk when the heavy fabric hits the genkan floor with a wet slap. “Dabi!”

“That’s what you get,” he rolls his neck and bends to untie his boots, the towel thrown over his shoulder. “Harmless. I burned down a money laundering front just a few hours ago”.

“I saw it on the news. You’re such a dickhead,” you laugh, heading into the kitchenette. “There was no good reason for you to melt the asphalt of that entire city block”.

A smile works its way onto his face. Gross. “Can’t have them mistaking me for a good guy”.

“You are a good guy”.

“You’re delusional,” he shoots back, an unbearable fondness swelling in his chest. The pressure is the worst part. Spools of vine and leafy green pierced into lung tissue, stems squeezing through his rib cage.

You’ve been staring at him for too long. That sweet smile hasn’t wavered. Dabi clears his throat, first to dispel the awkwardness he feels and then again as a stray petal sticks to his throat. It brushes against his tonsils and he quickly covers his mouth.

“Sure you’re okay?” your voice is quiet, testing the waters.

A fingernail catches on a staple by his chin as his hand drags down his face, answering on an exhale, “Fine. Stop asking. Didn’t you say something about tea?”

“Can’t help it,” you huff, shutting the overhead cupboard with too much force. "You’re not a good liar, you know”.

Dabi gives a dismissive wave and heads over to the couch. The distance is barely four strides but he manages to unbuckle his belt, jeans unbuttoned and falling loose around his hips. Kicking them off with little to no grace, your eyes are heavy on his back as he pulls his shirt over his head and throws it at the laundry pile tucked away near your bathroom.

The quaint studio can barely house you, never mind him. Dabi was always small for his age but here it feels like he could stretch and touch every wall.

You’re moving in his periphery, following his lead and gradually revealing swaths of bare skin. You’ve seen him half naked before, in the clinic, but never the reverse. Dabi swallows thickly, ignoring the intimate atmosphere he unintentionally created. The kettle is electric and he takes comfort in the loud gurgling sound that comes with it, fixing his gaze on the blank TV screen.

“You can turn it on, you know. You are allowed,” you coaxed, voice warm and teasing. You’ve rummaged through the pile of clothes and found a hoodie that falls below your hips. “Or are you just going to sit there with your dick out?”

“You fucking wish,” he objected, reaching for the remote. Is it? His eyes fall to his lap. No, it isn’t.

He slouches, reclining into the cushions as some old rerun of Mighty Man plays. “Hey,” idly picking at a loose thread, he asks, “do you get many people come through with hanahaki?”

That gives you pause, and immediately he regrets asking. It’s hardly a common question. Hell, a good percentage of the population thought it to be an old wives tale, even in the wake of quirks. There was no plausible excuse as to why it would be on his mind.

Cautious in your approach, you stop by the couch with a steaming mug cradled in your hands. He sees those naked thighs, soft and uniquely yours. “Is… is that why you’ve been coughing?”

“No,” Dabi scoffs. In one forceful yank he rips the seam open and watches the foam innards spill out. You linger, weight shifting between your feet, and irritation prickles under his skin. “Who the hell do you think I would be chucking up flowers for? Not like I’ve got friends”.

Your shoulders lose tension and he tries not to think too hard about it; he doesn’t want to know. He feels his own airways clear at the sound of your laughter, “I dunno. Stain, maybe?”

Pursing his lips, he sucks back the copper from between his teeth, “Fuck you”. You try to smile. You pass his tea and he forgoes the handle. The warmth of the mug seemed to seep into his bones and ease the ache.

“Right right. Big bad villain. I forgot you’re supposed to be an empty husk without a heart,” you teased, sitting unnecessarily close and burying your feet beneath his thigh, careful not to touch his staples. The hoodie slips and pools around your hips. Dabi’s throat constricts as his body goes rigid. “Ah shit. Are my toes cold? Want me to grab a blanket?”

Forcing himself lax he clicks his tongue and tastes iron, grip tightening on his mug as he brings it to his lips. “Doesn’t matter. I run cold anyway”.

The tea is soothing. Sweet for a ginger tea— brown sugar, maybe. You must’ve boiled it for his sore throat. Molasses swirl on his tongue. They wash down the blood and clean his palette. A smooth, mellowed out aroma fills his senses and overpowers the delicate anise fragrance lingering at the back of his throat.

You concede, tucking your knees under your chin and regarding him with that look again. The one that feels as if you’re reading him like a page in a book. He has never been the type to worry about appearances but when it’s you he can’t help wondering what you think of him.

A cartoonish explosion fills the room with streams of orange and yellow as the episode comes to the halfway point. The light paints your silhouette gold, reflecting in your irises as they retract from the brightness.

Taking another gulp, he winced at the sharp twist in his chest. Two weeks was generous and Tereda knew it. He’s already vomiting full flowers. Corpses make for fertile soil, apparently. He read that somewhere online while he searched for information on morning glories; you are fast growing and frost tender.

A soft note breaks the silence and your toes start to wriggle. “I can hear you thinking. What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?”

Despite what you thought, he was a good liar. To those around him but most of all to himself. This is when he should retaliate with a biting comment and keep the equilibrium. He would, if not for the wave of heat that rolls through him at your words, and how obviously you felt it displace the air.

Dabi can lie. His body can not.

“Just that thing you said earlier, about being an empty husk,” he begins, bringing the warm mug to rest against his sternum, incognisant to the ring of heat stinging his skin.

Your expression wanes with regret and he hates it. “I was joking—”

“If you say sorry I’ll burn your couch to a crisp,” he fumes. Vulnerability made him defensive. Angry. It felt like cold air blowing on exposed muscle. “Didn’t ask for a meaningless apology”.

Deep in the cavity of his ribs another bud unfurls. Your patience with him is not endless but it is more than he deserves.

“Then what are you asking?”

Nausea curdled in his stomach. He feels it climb his gullet. “Guess I wondered what you really thought”.

“About…?”

He snarls, hackles raised. “Do I have to spell it out?”

A few beats pass. Your answer comes in a gentle murmur. “Well, our capacity to hate reflects our capacity to love. So, yeah. I do think you’ve got a pretty big heart. It’s just a bit bruised up”.

“Jesus,” he mutters. The worst part is you’re being entirely honest. His knees spread as his hips shift, the after credits begin to roll and reflect off the sutures around his thighs. It reminds him that he is half naked, literally and figuratively. “Forget I said anything. I need a smoke”.

“No smoking,” you bat lightly at his shoulder. “Not until you’re better. If I catch you I’ll kill you before that cough does”.

And isn’t that fucking hilarious.

Pressure prickles behind his eyes that he can never relieve. There’s a florid mass in his thoat; his pulse is thrumming now, singing in his ears. He needs to throw up.

You shout after him as he stumbles over toward your bathroom. He slams the door behind him, hears you curse as his ceramic mug hits the floor and breaks. This isn’t romance, or a fairytale. It isn’t like it is in the movies.

Lifting his fist, he brings it down hard on his sternum. The force barrels him over and he retches. Sour, viscous threads of saliva drip from his mouth into the toilet bowl, but nothing more comes up.

You’re banging at the walls. “Dabi, open up!”

Dabi lurches again, forcing a deep cough and watching a few small heart shaped petals dance in the air as they free fall. Again, collapsing to his knees, he can taste your ginger tea. He vomits a clump of bloomed morning glories, wrinkled and smooshed into a misshapen ball. Blood muddies the water.

Another knock, this one somewhat pitiful. There’s a soft noise that sounds like you’re sliding down the door. “Please don’t make me break this open. My landlord will kill me”.

Trembling. Dabi reaches his fingers into his mouth and feels around the teeth to dislodge what was left. Settling back on his feet, his hand uncurls like a slow sprouting shoot and reveals another morning glory in the shallow of his palm.

Colour streaks across his vision, filled with hazy undulations. White noise drowns out the frantic tone of your voice. Mouth hung open, Dabi inhales until his lungs bloat, and keeps it held until the lights begin to fade.

His consciousness tips from one dream to another. When he wakes up on his back surrounded by soft, freshly washed sheets. A sigh escapes his lips as he turns into the downy pillow beneath his head. It smells like you.

Fingers comb through his hair, pushing the bangs away from his forehead. It’s then that he notices the mattress dipped towards the weight of another.

Dabi squints, prying his eyes open. You’re laid beside him. At first he considers that he’s dreaming, but you feel so real. Your thumb strokes over his cheek in a tender back and forth motion, “You comfy?”

“Better than the couch,” he rasps. There’s an awful taste in his mouth. Intermingling mint and copper. “Did you brush my teeth or something?”

“I rinsed your mouth out,” you admit bashfully. Now that he’s looking he notices your eyes are red. Puffy like you’d been crying. Your smile fractured as you added, “I had to make sure nothing else was stuck”.

Realisation creeps in slowly. It’s gentle with him, like you are, acclimating him to reality. Just like that— you know.

“How’d you get me in here?” he deflects.

You prop yourself up on your elbow and reach to trace the topography of his scarred chest. His breathing stutters and your fingers stop right over his heart.

“Might’ve pulled a muscle or two but it wasn’t so hard. You weigh almost nothing,” you reply. Quiet, as though you were afraid to break the illusion. “Kinda concerning but it seems you have bigger stuff to worry about already, huh?”

Eyes falling closed, he inhales, counting to three. He replies on the end of a long exhale, “Didn't want you to know”.

“Tereda does?”

Dabi nods and the movement knocks his brain loose. He hisses at the throbbing pain. You take him into your palms with a frown, “You hit your head on the way down. You’ll have to come in with me again in the morning”.

“Fuck that,” he groans. You tap at his temple and pout your lips, glaring disapprovingly. “You can’t make me”.

“I can and I will,” his eyes widened at the crack in your voice. Tears gather along your lash line and you sniff harshly, “You could have died, Dabi. And now you might have a head injury. How the hell could you not tell—?!”

“Alright, alright. Shit,” uncharacteristic of him, Dabi let himself have this. His hand cups round your neck and brings you down into his bare chest. He hushes you softly, running his palm down the length of your spine, wrapping you in a clumsy embrace. “Don’t cry about it”.

You settle into the crook of his neck, nose bumping his jaw as you turn to speak, and he suppresses a shudder. “Don’t cry about it,” you repeat mockingly. “You really have no idea, do you?”

“Enlighten me”.

Frustration bursts, and you lift your head to look at him. You’re so close. “I care about you, idiot. I don’t want you dead on my bathroom floor! Sue me!”

Dabi cracks a crooked smile. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me”.

“Who is it?”

And he sours, his stare fixed on the ceiling above. “Does it matter?”

“It matters,” you lean over him until all he can see is you. “…Is it me?”

There’s an echo in his ribs; a phantom knife’s twist. Sure, Dabi is a good liar, he thinks. Touya never was. Touya wore his heart on his sleeve. He was terrible at concealing his hurt. Dabi tries to find the words and comes up short.

The silence is answer enough. Your mouth wobbles and you nestle back into his neck before he can see you cry in earnest. “You are so fucking stupid, Dabi”.

Despite the seriousness he laughs, tucks his nose to your crown and tightens his hold around your waist. He’s only ever imagined what your weight would feel like pressed against him like this. Maybe he’s imagining it, but his lungs are lighter.

“What did Doctor Tereda advise you to do?”

He pouts where you cannot see it. He doesn’t want to think about that quack right now. “She told me either I get the surgery and go to therapy, or I get the symptoms to calm down with therapy on its own”.

“Of course you’d…” you huff. “She didn’t tell you to talk to me?”

“That too,” he shrugs, grinning at the warning press of your teeth to his throat. It’s disturbing how comfortably you both fell into place. A soft kiss replaces your bite, and he holds his breath.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” you tell him, kisses trailing up his jugular to his cheek, unperturbed by the scar tissue and metal in his skin, or the tremors rumbling through his body. “I’m sure there’s no way in hell I can get you to agree to therapy. So instead I’m going to take you out on a few dates and see how your symptoms change”.

Dabi’s mouth opens for air and your lips brush, stealing his breath. “What the fuck?” he says. “Why?”

There’s no point, he wants to tell you. It won’t change a thing.

“Because I want you to believe me,” you murmur, nose knocking his own. Inexplicably drawn to you, Dabi tilts up to align your mouths again, barely a kiss. “If you die it won’t be because of me. And I atleast want you to go out knowing that I love you too”.

The swell in his throat is different this time. He has never been so glad about his inability to cry. Dabi grins, wide and all teeth, pushing the staples in his cheeks up by his eyes. “There’s something really wrong with you, you know that?”

“No kidding,” you laugh. “Guess we make a good pair”.

#bnha x reader #mha x reader #dabi x reader #todoroki touya x reader

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happy-beeeps · 1 year

Note

Jumping on the band wagon since I’m a massive TCW fan and found your account! Hear me out

What about reader having to dress up for a dinner meeting and Rex sees them in a dress for the first time? 💃🏻

Anon, I adore you. This was so fun to write. Fair warning, I absolutely blacked out the first part of this request and it's definitely not a dinner meeting, but I feel like the vibes still work, I'm so sorry!😭 This was so fun to write though omg

Lucky Hand

Summary: When reader goes to Cantonica to find a Separatist arms dealer, Rex reacts to seeing her dressed to impress for the first time

WC: 1.4k

Warnings: Alcohol mentions, reader gets her thigh touched by a weirdo but that's it I prommy, Rex is not saving room for the holy spirit but it stays PG-13, no editing because I haven't before so why start now

* * *

This isn’t the worst plan Anakin’s ever had, but that isn’t saying much. It’s also not the worst plan you’ve ever had, so that gives you slightly more comfort. It’s simple, in theory. There’s a separatist arms dealer who frequents the sabacc table at Canto Bight. You are supposed to slip in, get his attention, and hopefully some intel. You’re prepared to meet resistance, but you’ve been assured it won’t come to that. Still, you don’t know how you’re supposed to access your saber in this dress, maker forbid it comes to that, or how you’re going to get access to this arms dealer in the first place. Anakin can sense your discomfort as you enter the room, picking at the sheer, glimmering fabric as you walk, willing it to stop clinging to your body for just a moment so you can pull yourself together.

“Where does Senator Amidala even wear this?” you mumble, grateful that the Senator had a dress she didn’t mind donating to the cause, but you wished she had sent you with something a little less revealing. The skirt is full and floaty, with layers of sparkling sheer fabric dyed in a rainbow of blues and greens. The bodice sweeps off the shoulder into two sheer long sleeves that clip around your fingers, but is centered around a plunging neckline that cuts nearly clear to your belly button. It’s through the will of the force alone that you haven’t had a wardrobe malfunction just from walking.

“Yeah, I was gonna ask the same question.” Anakin grumbles before walking over to you and placing a firm hand on your shoulder. “Snips and I are behind you the whole time, we’re going to keep a close perimeter to Canto Bight once you touch down on Cantonica.”

“Remind me why we can’t send you on this mission?” You grumble, crossing your arms over your chest. You try not to blush when you feel Rex’s force signature shift from where he’s standing across the room, your Captain’s stoicism failing him in ways only you can see.

“Because, frankly, I’m too distracting, we can’t have everyone in the casino offering to buy me a drink.” Anakin chides, and you send an elbow into his ribs with a laugh. “Rex and Bubs are going with you as security. Figured they’re pretty much the only two without face tattoos, hopefully the guards will just think they’re brothers. You’ll take one of the transport ships we have on the Resolute.”

You swear you hear Bubbles snort from where he stands across the room, but the sound is soon silenced by a motion from Commander Leo.

“Ok, I think I’m ready.”

The small squadron that will be landing on Cantonica with you begins to prepare their weapons while Anakin pulls Ahsoka aside to find an ideal landing zone. You’re watching the chaos unfold from the back of the room when you feel a presence begin to enter your orbit. You say nothing, but slip out quietly, making your way down the hall until you pass by a small supply closet, ducking in without turning around. Just as you suspected, the door slides open a minute later, and you find yourself chest to chest with Rex, breathing heavily as he takes you in in the cramped space.

“Mesh’la” he breathes, reaching out towards your face before you intercept his hand, catching it, and placing it on your waist.

“It took me and Ahsoka nearly a full hour to do my hair, can’t have you ruining it Captain.”

“Wanna ruin more than that,” he breathes, his eyes focusing on your perfectly painted lips, but shakes himself out of it, holding you firm on your waist. “I think this is the first time I’ve seen you dressed up.”

“I think this is one of the only times I’ve been all dressed up.” You can’t say you hate it, both the way you feel and the way his eyes burn as they devour your form. “Are you ready for the mission?”

“It’ll be easy,” he shrugs, cooling off back into the casual nonchalance Rex always has. “You’re good at negotiations,” he taps your hip where your saber is carefully guarded beneath layers of expensive silk.

“I’m not worried. I’ve got you and Bubbles to back me up.” You shrug and Rex laughs a quiet, breathy laugh.

“Kid’s got spunk, I’ll give him that.” But he looks at you fondly, placing his pointer finger and your chin and tracing your bottom lip with his thumb. “I trust him.” He backs away from you too quickly, and you barely suppress the sigh that threatens to escape your lips as he ducks out the door. “Follow me out in a few minutes.”

* * *

So, it wasn’t entirely going wrong. You were able to get in with Rex and Bubs, and quickly located the arms dealer, a Theelin man with bright purple skin and coiffed blue hair. Bubs quickly broke away under the guise of getting you a drink, and Rex maintained a close detail, just as any security agent would. The casino was busy, you were able to float through with near anonymity, and you quickly sidled up the man sitting at the sabacc table, placing your handful of credits next to his. “Can a girl get dealt in?” you crooned, and the man gave you a wide grin before moving his chair to the side.

“For a beauty like you, I’d nearly offer my hand.” He said, and you could feel Rex start glowering from where he stood a few feet back. “I’m Grafan Thif.” He extended his hand and you shook it delicately.

“Amila Shula,” you smiled, offering him the pseudonym you’d landed on. “Let’s play.”

The mission had been going well, Grafan had been slowly letting on intel the whole night as you followed him through the casino, your hand loosely through his arm. The two of you settled at a quiet table near the patio, he looked at you, his eyes barely focusing from the drinks he’d consumed. “You should come with me, see my new vacation home.”

“Oh?” Your eyebrows rose, and Rex and Bubbles stood straighter, listening to his words, “Where are you going to take me?”

“Got a new job on Agamar, some backwater system, overseeing a new factory out there.” His hand began to slide up your thigh over your dress and you tensed, trying to urge him to stop as his hand grew closer to your saber.

“Sir, if I may-” Rex stepped forward, his face a blend of calm and barely concealed jealous rage when Grafan’s hand grazed the shape of your saber beneath your dress.

He glanced at you, then at your two guards and his eyes grew wide, as if he was connecting all the pieces. “You, you-”

“Are leaving.” You hoisted your dress up to grab the saber out from where it hung around your hip, gesturing for Rex and Bubbles to follow. The three of you ran towards the patio as Grafan shouted for security, and you pressed the concealed comm on your bracelet to reach Anakin. “We’ve got company!”

“Already on it!” came his reply, and as the three of you ran down the stairs, you were greeted with the always reassuring sight of the Twilight near crashing onto the beaches of Cantonica.

“Are you waiting for an invitation!” Shouted Ahsoka as the ramp lowered, and the two troopers rushed towards the ship.

“This karking dress!” You grumbled, a few feet behind them as the security team scrambled down the steps. Rex turned around and saw you fumbling with removing the shoes and ran towards you, picking you up and tossing you over his shoulder in one fell, seamless beat. “I don’t need to be rescued.” You grumbled, pulling out your saber and deflecting the blaster fire that now approached you.

“Yeah, I know. Been looking for an excuse to hold you since that sleemo touched you earlier.” His hands gripped you tighter and you couldn’t help but grin as he brought you both on the ship, setting you down gingerly as Bubbles helped Ahsoka and Anakin pilot their way out of the atmosphere. Rex gave you one more wicked grin before whispering in your ear. “Think Senator Amidala would notice if you never gave the dress back.”

You winked back at him before giving his arm a pat, “I’m sure I can think of more excuses to wear it.”

#star wars #rex x reader #captain rex #captain rex x reader #captain rex x f!reader #captain rex request #commander rex #clone trooper rex #requests #platonic!anakin

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whumpwillow · 11 months

Text

Demon’s Haven 9

I’m also working on Hazeshift I prommy but I’m just feeling this series again, though I’m a little rusty and tryna get back into these characters, so sorry if the writing or interactions feel a little stilted

—

masterlist

warnings: blood, past torture, description of wounds, basically just more comf but they are both sad and awkward about it

—

The demon seemed relieved when Haven finally finished washing the wounds on his chest, but it was a short-lived comfort. She moved behind him to start cleaning the blood from the wreckage of his back and knew the worst was yet to come. The demon had been doing well so far, wincing only slightly without uttering a whimper of pain as Haven had dabbed at the cuts and burns on his chest. Looking at his back, such a thing seemed unavoidable now.

She cringed at the sight. Sitting down in the chair behind him, Haven took stock of the damage. There was almost too much blood for her to even see where the wounds were. She couldn’t tell where one injury began and one ended, as if they all melded into his flesh so that there wasn’t a speck of unbroken skin. Long, ropy scars dragged from the tops of his shoulders and down his body, ending at the small of his back, crisscrossed over one another.

Haven sighed. This was not going to be pleasant. For either of them.

The demon’s head turned slightly to the side, as if he meant to catch a glimpse of her, but his hair had fallen into his eyes so it was likely not a clear picture.

“Are you alright?” Haven asked.

She knew he wasn’t, but what else was she supposed to say? How did she comfort someone who had been through something as horrific as this?

The demon nodded lightly, ignoring what Haven could not. Red stripes gouged his back, stretching from his shoulders and moving downwards. Ropes of bloodied wounds overlayed on top of each other, some healed more than not, others fresh and weeping. A grotesque sight that made Haven want to gag, though she swallowed and contained herself.

She wanted to look away. She wanted to run from the room and forget this had ever happened. That this was something that could happen to someone.

But she was done with fearing for nothing—the demon had been hurt already, and there was nothing to undo that fact. Only to cleanse the wounds and bandage them would they disappear from her view.

“This might sting.”

It would do a whole lot more than that. The wounds that littered his skin…Haven didn’t want to believe they could be from a whip, but she didn’t know how else to describe them than as lashes.

The demon nodded again.

Haven touched the wet cloth to the back of the demon’s shoulder and instantly he flinched, drawing out a hiss. Haven drew her hand back.

“Sorry,” the both of them said at the same time.

A beat. Neither of them spoke, neither of them moved. The demon clenched and unclenched a fist.

“Silver,” he said.

Haven waited for him to explain, but as the seconds passed and turned into minutes, she realized he wasn’t going to. She touched the cloth to his shoulder again and ignored the flinch this time, as there was no way to avoid it. She brushed the cloth along a long red gash, trailing in between his shoulder blades and down to the small of his back. Again. And again.

“It’s the silver,” the demon said. “The angel liked the silver-lined whip because it leaves scars.”

Haven paused. Lifted her hand away from his skin. Blinked. She had no idea how to even respond to such a thing.

“That’s horrible.”

The only words she could manage, the only consolation to a man now forever marked by what had happened to him that no healing powers would ever be able to fix. The demon seemed to feel this knowledge as keenly as she did, for he trembled under her fingertips. His skin jumped as tiny tremors ran through him, muscles taut and unyielding.

Haven set her cloth in the bowl of water, already pink with blood. She moved from behind the demon and sat in the chair facing him, and saw that he was crying. Silent tears rolled down his cheeks and his breaths hitched, but he bit his tongue to keep himself from crying out.

“You don’t have to do that,” Haven said.

The demon tilted his face up to look at her, a few more tears escaping from those viridian eyes. He blinked at her. Droplets of water caught in his lashes like morning dew.

“Keep quiet, I mean,” Haven clarified. “Cry all you want. Scream, if you must. I don’t mind.”

The demon blinked a few times, his face pinched in confusion. “You would…like me to scream?”

Haven’s eyes widened. “No, no, that’s not what I meant!”

“I can, if you’d like me to. The angel said it was a pleasing sound, though she was rather more vicious than you.”

Haven exhaled, seconds away from pinching the bridge of her nose in exasperation. “I meant, you don’t have to be quiet! You’ve been hurt, terribly and irrevocably, so you can react to it however you want to, and you needn’t feel ashamed or that you must soften your grief in front of me.”

“Oh.”

The only word that fell from the demon’s lips, plainly and without intonation. He stared at her, watching her again as if she were the only thing he had to keep him from falling into an endless abyss. Haven leaned in and wrapped her arms around him, making sure not to startle him as she enveloped him in a hug. She felt the demon lean into her and nuzzle his face into the crook of her neck, just as he’d done when she’d helped him from the cave she’d summoned him to. Some of the tension in his body dissolved, and while he still shook either with fear or with pain, Haven took it as an improvement that he could find some modicum of comfort with her.

After releasing each other, Haven found her hands red with blood. The demon opened his mouth, no doubt to apologize, but Haven shushed him before he could. She washed her hands with her cleaning cloth before dropping it back in the bowl of water.

“I could draw you a bath, if you’d like? It’d help you get clean faster than this, and it’d probably feel better too.”

The demon drew back from her as if she’d just told him she was going to waterboard him. The thought occurred to her that, given what had already happened to him, that wasn’t too far out of the realm of possibility for him to believe.

Haven held her hands up, palms out, to reassure him she meant no harm. “Just a bath. Nothing to hurt. No holy water. Just cleaning.”

The demon hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “And you won’t…try to drown me?”

Haven really hated that her suspicions were correct.

“Of course not,” she said, offering him a tight smile.

She held out a hand to him, which he took shakily in his own. Haven wrapped his arm around her shoulders so that he could lean on her and they made their way up the stairs. It was a slow procession due to his broken ribs, and that every time he whimpered, Haven wanted to stop, but knew they had to keep going since it would do neither of them any good being stranded halfway up the stairwell.

Haven pushed open the door to her bedroom and wished she’d had the foresight to pick her things up off the floor beforehand. The demon didn’t seem to mind. His eyes had glazed over, hazy with pain and exhaustion. The night had been tough on him with the journey here. Being thrown from the front door by her protection ward she’d foolishly forgotten about and then being made to sit while Haven fruitlessly tried to scrub the blood off him with damp cloths from the kitchen had likely exhausted him beyond what he could reasonably stand.

“I’m sorry,” Haven found herself saying.

She wished she could convey just how sorry she was in those words, but didn’t know how else to say it. I’m sorry you were tortured. I’m sorry you were hurt so terribly. I’m sorry I didn’t help you when I first saw you, that I doubted you, that I don’t know how to help you, that you’ll have to live with these scars for the rest of your life and all the comfort you have is me when you deserve so much more—

The demon shook his head. “The cell I was held in was far dirtier than this, so pay it no mind.”

Haven found her cheeks reddening. She’d meant to apologize for not letting him rest as she’d wanted to get his wounds cleaned first, but huh. It seemed he had noticed the mess of her room after all.

Turning her gaze away from the wreck of her floor, she lead the demon into her bathroom en-suite. Sat him down on a little round stool she had by the door. Fetched some water for the bath and a few towels. Busied herself with getting everything ready, trying not to think about what she was doing and how she was likely breaking so many rules of what a good witch should not do.

Making a contract with a demon? Check. Letting a demon out of the summoning circle? Check. Bringing said demon not only into her home, but into her bedroom? Double check.

Oh well. She’d never particularly considered herself a stickler for the rules.

A quick spell, and the water was heated, good and steaming. Haven plucked a bottle from the windowsill next to the tub and dripped a bit of floral oil into the water, hoping the scent of lavender would soothe the demon enough that he wouldn’t panic at the thought of being left alone for however long it took for him to wash.

Haven looked back at him and saw his head lolled to the side, resting on the wall next to where he sat. His shoulders had lost their tension and his hands no longer fidgeted restlessly. No more tremors wracked his body, fraught with pain and terror. Haven stood motionless, not wanting to disturb him when he was clearly so exhausted, but it was as if he sensed the lack of energy where there previously had been an abundance of, and his eyes flickered open.

Blearily, his gaze found hers. He lifted his head from the wall and Haven made her way over to him with a towel.

“Here, for when you’re done,” she said, then placed it to the side of the stool he sat on.

The demon looked at it, then to her, then to the bath. Haven moved to help him up, then drew back when she was sure he wouldn’t fall without her support.

“Well, I’ll be waiting outside if you need me.”

Haven made to leave. She’d barely touched the doorknob when she heard the demon voice a single word, small and fearful.

“Stay.”

Haven whirled around. “I’m not going far.”

The demon squeezed his eyes shut, clenching his hands into fists. “Please,” he said, forcing the word from his lips like it pained him to do so. “Please just…” He opened his eyes and fixed them on hers. “I don’t want to be alone.”

He stood there, body rigid, barely holding himself upright without her help. Bruises painted his skin like he were abstract art and the holy water that had been drawn on him trailed lines across his chest and shoulders and even around his neck. Scars—thick bands around both of his wrists—were inflamed and red. Even more Haven couldn’t see lined his back, a permanent reminder.

Haven nodded. she could do at least that much.

“Okay. I’ll stay.”

—

(taglist in reblogs)

#whump #whump writing #my writing #willow writes #original work: demon’s haven #oc envy #oc haven #demon whumpee #demon whump #witch caretaker #platonic bathing trope my beloved #that's what's coming up

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cruelsuhmer · 2 years

Text

unraveling velvet

This is a repost of one of the fics from my previous blog. I am the original author of this fic and thus have full permission to post it here. Minor revisions have been made.

word count: 2.9k

pairings: jaehyun x reader

genre & au: angst w/ a happy ending, university au

warnings: none

a/n: originally for @/flirtyhyuck (now deactivated). inspired by mitski’s “lonesome love” and “washing machine heart.” the title sounds kind of smutty, but this fic is rated g, i prommy.

You don’t expect to see Jaehyun much after a chance encounter on the roof, but he’s everywhere, and it’s not long before all you can think about is him: his smile, his eyes, his dimples, and the way a simple hello from him feels like velvet against your ears.

For you, Jung Jaehyun is becoming a problem—a very big, very beautiful one.

“You know, they usually lock the doors here.”

The voice startles you, your shoes scraping across the tiles of the roof, producing an ungodly noise that breaks the quiet of the night more than the voice ever could. You look over to see Jung Jaehyun, moonlight illuminating his profile, a silver halo around his head and starlight in his hair. Your breath catches.

Jaehyun continues, “Surprised they left it unlocked tonight.”

After your embarrassing scramble, you tuck your legs against your chest, crossing your arms over your knees. “Really?” Jaehyun nods, and you look out across campus, seeing a lone night jogger crossing the street and two friends stumbling across the commons. “Safety reasons?”

Jaehyun laughs, shrugging. “More or less. Ghosts, too.”

Your legs tense, and your nails dig into the tiles. Jaehyun gives another chuckle, and you turn to glare at him. Relaxed, he’s stretched back, arms out behind him, a smile on his lips. He looks over to you, a slight tilt of the head. When you speak, your voice shakes. “What do you mean?”

“What else can I mean?” Jaehyun lifts his chin, eyes on the stars. “Apparently it happened back in the ‘70s. I don’t know. A senior hasn’t told you this already?”

You shake your head.

Jaehyun sighs. “Let me think. I’ve heard the full thing, just been awhile.”

You nod, and a minute passes of you staring at Jaehyun with wide eyes, heart pounding in your chest, him humming quietly to himself as he tries to remember the full story.

After another few seconds, he sits up, angling himself so he can look at you properly. You readjust, too, getting as comfortable as you can, knowing the story you’re about to hear won’t be a happy one. Jaehyun smiles before he begins, like that’ll help—it only makes you feel sick, an explosion in your chest. When he tells the story, he leaves in all the gory details, and after an explicit description on the student’s mangled fingers, you’re starting to wonder if he’s adding to the lore himself. Despite this, you find yourself enthralled. The night passes quickly after that, and when you realize the time, you’re rushing to head back inside the dorm, class in less than an hour.

You don’t expect to see Jaehyun much after that, him a year above you and the night on the roof a chance encounter, with you stressed about upcoming midterms and Jaehyun apparently one to frequent the roof. But you do see him. Often.

You see him on your way to class, you see him in the cafeteria, in the library, in the computer lab—you even see him in one of your block courses, though you’ve never noticed him before (and that was the hardest part to believe, especially now, with the way your eyes are drawn to him like clockwork).

And every time you look, he looks too, greeting you with a bright smile on his face, dimples ever so charming. It almost makes you dislike him. The reality, however, is that he quickly becomes the only thing on your mind, midterms a mere worry shoved to the back, completely covered by thoughts of his smile, his eyes, his dimples, and the way a simple hello from him feels like velvet against your ears.

It gets to the point of an intervention. On your way out of a Jaehyun-less class, the professor calls your name. You about-face, brows raised in a silent question, and your professor smiles, polite.

“Are you alright?” she asks, reaching out to place a gentle hand on your forearm.

You fight the urge to shrug it off.

“You seem distracted,” she continues.

You realize then that Jung Jaehyun is becoming a problem—a very big, very beautiful one.

When Tuesday rolls around, you stride into your block course—a power-walk if your classmates have ever seen one—barely giving your professor a nod before your eyes lock on Jaehyun. Like every other time, he’s already looking at you, and, like every other time, that dumb smile lights up his face. You come to a stop right in front of his desk.

“Hi,” he greets. His smile stretches the tiniest bit wider, making his dimples pop and his eyes disappear into crescents. The worst part is the new set of dimples that appear, like whiskers around his nose. They’re precious, and he looks precious, and despite your best efforts, your heart stutters in your chest. Great.

You glare for another second before pivoting and dropping your things on the desk next to his. Begrudgingly, you take a seat. “Hi,” you finally reply. Then, Dr. Han rises from his chair, turning on the projector and starting the class. The lesson is an important one—in fact, it will be on the final; Dr. Han takes great care in saying this, pausing every couple of equations to repeat it. Jaehyun never looks away from your face.

When class ends, you gather your things, the fight having left you, your drive to rid yourself of your Jaehyun-shaped problem gone without a trace, but Jaehyun stops you with a hand on your wrist. You look down, and he immediately lets go, an apology falling from his lips.

“Sorry,” he says again, “I was just wondering,” and a smile, smaller this time, makes a brief appearance on his face, “if you’d maybe want to get coffee or something. Tomorrow. With me?”

You have classes most of tomorrow. You really don’t have time. You need to water your dog and walk your plants. You should tell him this.

“Sounds good,” you say instead.

Jaehyun’s eyes widen like he expected you to say no—and you blanch at the memory of your attitude at the start of class; if he had asked then, you would have said no—before he smiles, dimples flashing. “Great. Is two okay?”

You have a class at two.

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

Jaehyun’s smile only grows, and you find yourself smiling back, even as unease settles low in your stomach. “That’s really great.” When Jaehyun’s tongue swipes just barely at his lower lip, your eyes take in the movement like a man starved. “Meet outside the dorm?”

You nod, and your smile stays for another second, before you turn to go, ducking your head at Jaehyun’s delayed great, and you’re about to leave, finally, when Jaehyun makes a small noise.

“Wait.”

You freeze, then turn back around. In an outstretched hand, Jaehyun holds your pencil case.

“It fell out of your bag,” he says, lips curled at the corners. “Probably not good to lose.”

“No,” you reply, “it’s not.” When you take it, your fingers brush his. The air conditioning has started; goosebumps spread on your skin. You look at him from under your lashes. He’s already looking at you. You snatch your hand back, deciding to just hold onto the case rather than putting it up. A stuttered thanks falls from your lips before you finally spin precariously on your heel and hurry to your next class.

Tomorrow comes before you’re ready, and you find yourself rushing across the commons with your backpack hitting you uncomfortably in your lower back, a steady thump, thump, thump that will ache for the days. You keep moving.

Until you see Jaehyun. Your heels dig into the soft earth and your backpack makes one final jab into you. The pain doesn’t register. Jaehyun’s head is tossed back, laughter bubbling from his lips, while his arm wraps tighter around a stranger’s shoulders. He doesn’t see you. His laugh follows you on the way to class, where you scroll through your phone before realizing you never got his number. You pocket your phone and think about your 2pm. He doesn’t have your number either. You’ve never skipped a class before. It’d be dumb to start now.

Thursday, you return to your usual seat. It doesn’t take long before you feel Jaehyun’s gaze weighing on you. You don’t look back, even when minutes pass and he hasn’t turned away. Class ends, and he still hasn’t let up, so you make a quick escape, slipping through the door before he can reach you. By the time you collapse into your seat two buildings over, your chest is tight, exertion and want putting a strain on you—want, especially.

It’s your own fault—you could have gone to the cafe, you could have talked to him—but you arrange your pencil and pens and highlighters on your desk and you keep your head down and you ignore the ache that’s replaced the heartburn. Most of all, you ignore any and all thoughts of Jaehyun, just like you did to the man himself.

The end of the semester has given up on creeping towards you, opting instead for a full-blown sprint, yet the only thing that has changed are the trees, leaves scattered on the ground for you to kick at and crush. Jaehyun’s heavy gaze is a constant companion, following you wherever you go. Sometimes you slip up and search him out too, as if by instinct, but whenever you happen to catch his eyes, you’re quick to look elsewhere.

Despite these looks, despite the crushing pressure of Jaehyun’s stare, the two of you leave words unsaid. After a week of failed attempts to talk to you following the abandoned coffee date, Jaehyun hasn’t tried to stop you from leaving since. You can’t say you prefer it that way, but it’s better than swallowing your pride and the jumbled ball of feelings that Jaehyun has created in you and facing him, but this acceptance only lasts for so long. Soon, you’re overwhelmed, finals no longer looming over you because they have instead taken you into their claws and are about to swallow you whole. You escape to the roof.

Someone else has escaped there, too.

“Jaehyun,” you breathe. In your stress, you had forgotten his habit, and now Jaehyun is staring you right in the eyes, and you can’t look away. He cuts a lonely figure against the night sky, hair once again threaded with stars. Your fingers twitch at your sides.

“Y/N,” he says. “Hi.”

You make your slow way over to him, unsure how close to sit. You clutch at the tiles. “Hi,” you reply. “It’s been awhile.”

Jaehyun hums, turning back to the sky. You bite your tongue. Your teeth clamp down too tight, but you don’t let up. Jaehyun glances over at you, and you let go. “Exams,” you say.

He tilts his head.

“Good luck.” You look away, out at the sky then down towards the commons. Someone is out there alone, their laptop giving their face a bluish glow. You swallow. “I’m nervous.”

Besides you, Jaehyun huffs out a laugh. You look over. “Me too,” he says.

There’s a second, then, where you see beyond this moment and beyond yourself, and, for that one second, the mess inside you sorts itself into something coherent, but it’s gone in a flash, and all you can do then is bump your shoulder against his. “You’re smart,” you say. “You’ll do fine.”

“Keeping tabs on me?” he asks. A smile curls on his lips and he makes it look so easy.

You duck your head. “Not that hard to find out you’re seen as the smartest student on campus. Not hard to realize it’s true.”

Jaehyun hums, looking down, and, if it weren’t so dark, you’d have noticed the redness of his ears, but you don’t. “Ah,” he gives a soft laugh, “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Don’t act shy,” you nudge him again. “It’s not a good look on you.”

The conversation continues, and it actually is easy. You unravel next to Jaehyun, slipping further down the roof, reclining back more and more, tension leaving your body with every word. Jaehyun’s a warm presence at your side, and you swathe yourself in the velvet of his voice. The bitter cold that snaps at your nose is nothing. You close your eyes and smile. It isn’t until the dark gets a bit darker that your eyes snap open and you realize the sun has started to creep over the horizon. Blocking your view, Jaehyun’s arm hovers awkwardly in the air. It falls back to the roof. You look over at him.

“About what I said earlier,” he starts, and you can feel the calm drain from your body.

“What,” you ask, “did you say earlier?” You push yourself up, scooting back up the roof until you can properly meet his eyes.

“I’m not the smartest student on campus,” Jaehyun says. “There’s just something—some things, really—that I can’t figure out.” He looks away first, and the crisp light of morning seems to take the color from his body. You shiver and wrap your arms around yourself.

“It might be an exaggeration,” you blink, gaze dropping to your lap, “but it’s not like you’re not smart.” You glance over to see Jaehyun shaking his head, looking out at the horizon. You swallow, squeezing your eyes shut. “Okay,” you try again, tilting your head, “what’s the thing that you can’t figure out?”

Jaehyun smiles, but you don’t feel better at all. “You didn’t show up for coffee,” he says. “I waited an hour for you, by the way. But you never showed.”

There’s a lot of things you could say. You work your lip between your teeth before you answer, “My 2pm is an hour and fifteen minutes.”

It’s grim, the face Jaehyun makes, lips pressed into a straight line and eyes narrowed. He nods, propping an arm up on his knees. “Fair enough.” He takes a breath. “Can I ask why?”

You don’t reply. Jaehyun turns to you. Still, you are quiet. Another heartbeat passes. Jaehyun waits, studying you. Even with the light of the sun, his eyes are unreadable. You huff. You want to snark about attendance being mandatory and how your grades aren’t good enough in that class for you to be risking it, but Jaehyun is stubborn and can play the game. You know that. You give another rough exhale before speaking. “I saw you that morning.”

Jaehyun continues to wait.

“Don’t laugh,” you say, but you don’t give him time to promise he won’t. “I saw you with someone.”

Jaehyun’s brows disappear into his hairline. His lips twitch. “With someone,” he echoes. You bite your lip. His eyes flit to the library. You hold your breath. “Okay.”

Your stomach churns. “You’re making fun of me,” you say. You can see the glint in his eyes now, and it makes you sick, in a way you haven’t felt in awhile. It’s pure bubbles, threatening to burst from your throat in the form of sweet words and whispered confessions. You swallow it down.

“No,” Jaehyun replies, but the word is colored with a laugh. Still, Jaehyun continues: “I’m not. I just… think it’s funny.” He turns to you, then, one foot out to stop him from slipping. His gaze presses into yours. “There isn’t anyone,” he swears. “There hasn’t been. You just… should have said something, alright?” He shakes his head. “After, I mean. I can take being stood up once or twice, but being totally ignored? Ouch.”

A lump has grown in your throat. Saying you don’t have his number will mean nothing. You look away, head dropping.

“I could’ve waited,” Jaehyun continues, “or we could’ve picked a different day. And don’t skip class for me.” When your mouth opens to argue, Jaehyun’s lips stretch, leaving his dimples to indent his face. “You would’ve.”

You look away.

“So give me a time,” Jaehyun finally proposes. “One that works for you. When you don’t have class—or a final, now.”

“I didn’t want to stand you up,” you admit. Jaehyun’s lips twist. You chew your own before deciding. “My first final is tomorrow. When it’s over, I won’t want to think about it at all. It ends at one.”

When you look over, Jaehyun’s smiling, a proper one, illuminating his face quicker than the sun ever could. You smile back. Jaehyun turns away. “Alright.”

You hesitate, but it’s more out of courtesy over anything. When you poke Jaehyun’s shoulder, he looks back at you. You stumble towards him. In the fall, your lips meet his. It’s not the best first kiss, your mouth having gone stale and his teeth clacking against yours, but—your heart squeezes in your chest—it’s not like this kiss will also be the last. You pull away. “I wouldn’t skip a final for you,” you say, “just… by the way. Maybe class—which I didn’t—but not a final.”

Jaehyun’s laugh is vibrant. His hand is warm against your back, where it had slipped just slightly beneath your sweater. “Of course,” he says. “Of course.”

The smile that’s threatened to blossom on your face finally blooms, and you duck your head, tucking it against Jaehyun’s shoulder. You plan to sit back up, maybe even get in another kiss, but Jaehyun’s fingers have started to thread through your hair, and your body finally feels the strain of twenty-four hours awake. You yawn. Jaehyun’s chuckle vibrates through you. It’s a comforting rumble. You fall further into him, and he lets you—sleep comes easy.

DISCLAIMER:

This is a work of fiction. The characters herein are based on real people, but the events portrayed in this story are fictional and do not reflect on the actual people written about. They are not intended to be mistaken for fact, and no libel is intended.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider giving it a reblog!

#jaehyun x reader #nct fanfic #nct oneshots #nct 127 oneshots #nct scenarios #nct imagines #nct 127 imagines #nct jaehyun #jung jaehyun #jung jaehyun x reader #jaehyun scenarios #jaehyun imagines #jaehyun fanfic #jaehyun au #my writing

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arlertdarling · 11 months

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❥ WRONG PLACE, RIGHT TIME — levi ackerman x gn!reader, swearing, death, loss, mourning, modern au, angst, hurt/comfort, maybe slightly ooc levi, this is kinda sad but it has a good ending i prommy<3 PLS read the warnings and enjoy!

The columbarium looks even more miserable than usual, soaked in rain and grey under the clouded daylight. You’re standing in front of it, one hand tightly gripping your umbrella, the other gripping your late spouse’s favourite flowers even tighter. You’re wondering if it ever gets easier and holding back hysterical laughter at the same time. Of course it had to be raining on the day of the month that you’re visiting their urn, like a scene from some depressing drama.

You always knew that death is a part of life, the conclusion we’ve all had pre-written for us since the opening paragraph. And you knew it was hard. You’ve had distant relatives pass, and felt some of the weight that comes with grief and accepting death; you’ve seen and been told your fair share of how loss changes people, both temporarily and permanently. But it’s clearer now more than ever that knowing something is not the same as being prepared for it. You knew it was hard, but no amount of knowledge could ever make you understand just how hard it really was.

You know now though. When someone dies, they freeze in place and time, into a forever still-life image of what was and will never be again; a catalogue of memories that lasts for as long as you can remember them. They become a concept, an imaginary something whose existence can only be proven by what they left behind in the physical world. A name — and the anecdotes and personality traits others think of when you say it. Preserved in your mind like a pocket of air in ice, they’ll stay; never moving forward, only back to the moments and memories that make up what’s left of them.

You’ve had the same moments and memories playing on loop for weeks. Not really on purpose, they’re just kind of there. There when you wake up, when you check the fridge with an empty belly and no appetite, when you decide to put off showering for another day, when you’re alone, when you’re with friends, when you’re trying to sleep away the feelings in your chest. You feel as ghostly as the images of them that flash behind your eyes, comforting yet haunting all the same.

Wet footsteps pull you out of your thoughts. There’s sweat between your fingers where they’re still clinging to the plastic-wrapped bouquet. You tilt your head in the direction of the footsteps. A man stops some feet away from you, face concealed under his umbrella and one hand tucked into the pocket of his dress pants. If he notices your presence or stare, he doesn’t show it.

You’ve been coming here every few weeks, and every time without fail, this man is here too. At first, you thought he was a stalker, but he never approached you or stood closer than three feet, let alone looked at you, so that feeling was short-lived. He asked you for a light once, but other than that, you’ve never interacted.

You often wonder which one he is there for, who the person was, what his relationship was to them — but you never bother to entertain that thought for more than a few seconds. He never brings anything with him either, aside from the occasional lighter and cigarette packet, and tends to stay longer than you. You’re only really here to soothe a healing wound and replace the flowers once they start drooping. The ones from last month droop more than normal under the weight of their wet petals, and you hope that the heavy rainfall won’t do more harm than good to the fresh bouquet you just put up.

A month later, the sky has just a few clouds dotted across it. The weather has been hectic, so as you’re approaching the columbarium, you’re curious to see how the flowers have been holding up. Before that though, you notice him first, standing in that specific spot that’s all his own by now. He’s dressed in the usual: a long-sleeved shirt, a blazer and matching trousers, all well-ironed and spotless, and a pair of polished Oxfords. You’ve always imagined him as a lawyer or office-worker of some kind; he certainly looks the part, especially with his tired face and perfect posture. There’s so much you don’t know about him, you can’t help pondering over things like what he eats for breakfast or if he has any pets or allergies, and imagining him in scenarios like typing away on a computer at a tidy desk or yelling ‘Objection, hearsay!’ across a courtroom. You’ll never know if any of those things exist beyond your imagination, and you have no way of knowing for certain either, but you like to think about it from time to time.

Two months after that, you notice he’s had a haircut. You can never tell when his undercut starts to get thicker, but once it’s trimmed, it becomes so obvious that it was overgrown before. It’s clear that it’s done professionally, and that he must be particular about his hair in general, if the perfectly combed middle-part and licks of gel are anything to go by. He looks good, you think, but as with most thoughts about him, you drop it before anything else can follow. You watch out of the corner of your eye as he lights the cigarette between his lips, then pockets the lighter and takes in a drag. His form is slanted and controlled in an effortless kind of way. He looks good, even in your peripheral vision.

The following month, you’re switching out the flowers with a different kind than normal since your florist didn’t have your usual. You think it’s the first time he ever looks at you, at least with any sort of interest in his eyes. It seems like a trick of the light at first, the way his silver eyes dart away when you glance at him. In fact, you’re still not really sure it actually happened, but you like to think it did, if it means he’s at all as curious about you as you are about him.

Three months later is the one year anniversary of your spouse’s death. For once, you’re not on your own; their family and close friends hover near their niche, paying their respects and exchanging embraces. You’re off to one side, not feeling particularly talkative or social, which is no surprise given the occasion. He arrives as he always does, but stands further away than usual, and with a more guarded expression. You wonder if the number of people intimidates him or makes him uncomfortable, or if there’s just something on his mind. After a short while, everyone starts to head off for the memorial service. You’re the last to take your leave, looking over your shoulder at him and hoping for a second of eye contact that never comes.

The month after that, he is nowhere to be found. You don’t think much of it initially — he’s never late but sometimes you’re earlier than he is — but he never arrives. You stay embarrassingly longer than you normally would to see if he shows up. He doesn’t, and you chalk it up to some minor thing, like a change of plans or a visit cut short. It isn’t until two months later, when he still doesn’t show, that you start to worry. You’re not sure what exactly you’re worried about, or if it’s something to even worry about in the first place. You start to visit every week and convince yourself that the only reason for it is that you’re just missing your lover more these days.

The relief you feel when you see him four weeks later is monumental. You’re practically buzzing as you walk up to him and you don’t even know you’re smiling until you feel your mouth corners drop at the sight of him. He’s always had faint shadows under his eyes, but you’ve never seen them this dark before, and his gaze is so heavy that it’s akin to a dead man’s. You wonder how much sleep he’s had, if any, and if it has anything to do with why he hasn’t visited these last few months. You wonder and you wonder but none of it leaves the confines of your mind. You’re just strangers, after all; two strangers who regularly see each other, but strangers nonetheless. All you can do is sigh, the joy of seeing him subsiding, and go to switch out the flowers.

“You’re later than usual today,” he says so quietly that you almost think it’s just a voice on the wind that you hallucinated in your desperation to speak to him. You stare at him, waiting for any sign that his low, hoarse words weren’t just a figment of your imagination. He just stares back at you, one eyebrow arched and his eyes expectant.

“Um, yeah,” you say, slowly, just in case you imagined the look on his face too. “I missed my bus so…” You trail off, tempted to smile at the fact that you’re actually, finally speaking to him. The swarm of unanswered questions that you’ve been trying to avoid suddenly floods you all at once. “It’s been a while since I last saw you here,” you say on impulse, but nothing else makes it past your lips. Lingers of why is that? and where have you been? and are you doing okay? die on your tongue.

He sighs. “Shit happens, I guess,” he mutters. His tone is void of all emotion, apart from maybe the exhaustion of someone who has been carrying too much for too long. You’re not sure what to say, about to opt for a hum of agreement when he speaks again. “I just needed some time away. Got two of these to take care of now, after all.”

You swallow nervously, trying to think of how, if at all, you should respond. How could he say that so casually? Like a comment on the weather or an arbitrary greeting? Your stomach hollows at the thought alone. Two urns; two whole people. That’s two names, two different faces and personalities, two lifetimes full of memories and smiles and tears, two amounts of habits and mannerisms, two lists of likes and dislikes and hobbies and pet peeves, of favourite films and colours and animals. That’s two whole people that he knew and he’s standing here like he hasn’t lost them both.

“Spare me,” he says, the flame of his lighter dancing over the tip of his cigarette. “My mother died when I was just a kid, so I don’t remember her. And that old bastard’s lived long enough, if you ask me. It was about time he kicked the bucket.” He tucks his lighter away and exhales some smoke, staring at the cigarette between his fingers. “Besides, it gets pretty tiring hearing the same shit the second time around, let alone the first.” His lips purse as he breathes in and pulls out the cigarette again, along with a slow trail of smoke. His eyes are on you as he says, “You, of all people, should know what I mean.”

Your gaze gravitates toward the flowers beside your partner’s urn. He’s right. It’s comforting the first few times — the condolences, the ‘sorry for your loss’s, the sympathetic glances — but after a while, it loses its warm touch. It starts to feel like an awkward finger, prodding at a bruise to point it out, even though you know it’s there, and all you wish is for it to heal already.

“Levi,” he says next, and all you can do is look back at him, puzzled.

“What?”

“My name,” he says through another trail of slithering smoke. “It’s Levi.”

You smile at this break in character, this rare show of warmth. You might not really know this Levi guy, but you get the impression that he doesn’t do things like this — whatever ‘this’ is — very often.

“I’m (Name),” you say, and that’s all it takes for the rest to pour out. “It’s good to officially meet you, by the way. I know we’ve technically known each other for over a year now but, also not, I guess…” You chuckle awkwardly. “Since this is the first time we’ve properly spoken to each other and… I don’t know. I suppose it’s just nice, is what I’m trying to say? If that makes any sense?”

Levi just takes another drag of his cigarette and for a second you think this is it — you’ve fucked it up by being weird, you could not have made it more obvious how deprived you were of human interaction if you tried — but then he turns to face you. You get a good look at his eyes, almost appearing sunken in by the dark shade of purple under them, and the dips in the hollows of his cheeks that make themselves known in the change of lighting. Then you spot the creases in his suit and shirt, his loose, ungelled hair, the scuff marks on his shoes. And that’s when you think: who am I kidding? This is a man who is mourning a second person before he could understand how to mourn the first. He is just as deprived and sad and lonely as you are; if anyone is to understand you, it’s him.

“The feeling is mutual,” he says. Then he smiles, faint and fatigued, and it feels like a shift. Right then, you feel your heart nudge forward. For the first time since your partner’s death, you feel really, truly present; like all this time you’ve been on autopilot with your consciousness trapped in the memories of your lost love, stuck in moments long gone. You know the deceased are chained to who they were, unmoving and silent and still, but somehow you’ve only now realised that you don’t have to be. You’re allowed to move on.

So you decide to take the leap. “Do you…” you start, and figure it’s too late to go back now. “Do you want to go get a coffee or something?”

Levi lowers his head as if thinking. “Well, I’m more of a tea guy myself,” he says before dropping his cigarette to the ground and stepping on it. He smiles again, and your heart nudges forward some more. “But sure. Let’s go get coffee. Or something.”

After that, the rest is history.

Sometimes you wonder if he ever would have spoken to you at all, if not for you being late because of that bus, or if the entanglement of your lives was inevitable from the beginning; pre-written since the opening paragraph. You were two lost people whose paths happened to cross — and maybe it was the wrong place, but God, was it the right time.

#divider by benkeibear #cw death #tw death #tw loss #tw mourning #aot fic #levi fic #levi fanfiction #levi angst #levi hurt/comfort #levi ackerman x reader #levi x reader #levi x y/n #levi x you #levi x gender neutral reader #x gender neutral reader #gender neutral reader #{♡} juno writes !!

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