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heartpascal · 1 year

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is it freedom?

▹— spiderverse (future) found family x platonic!reader

▹— summary: after losing everything, you struggle to accept the one thing you needed all along.

▹— a/n: ok i have been enabled by exactly two (2!) people. (thank you both) SO dare i start a spiderverse series??? IF YALL WANT MORE OF THIS… I WILL DO IT. this is really just a set up thing idk but i feel like arachnid has potential for further parts and ACTUAL found family!! also haven’t tagged people on my general taglist bc idk if you guys want to be tagged in ALL works or just all pedro works :(

▹— warnings: slight across the spiderverse spoilers, not really found family yet, injuries, blood, treating own injuries, stitches, fighting (canon-typical violence yall), dead parents (mentioned a LOT), a whole lot of angst (it’s a spider-person so what do we expect), reader has a whole lot of bad thoughts, loneliness, isolation

masterlist PART TWO

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Had you known what this, this thing, would lead to, you would have never started it. Not that you had done so purposely, at least to begin with, more so happening as an event of pure chance. You were in the right place at the right time, and since then, you had been addicted.

But if you could go back, look at yourself just a year younger than you are now, tell that kid what would come if you went through with saving a life for the first time, you wondered. It was a question that scratched deep in your brain, sending you off balance the more you thought about it; would you have still done it? Would you have saved that person’s life, knowing it would lead to your own falling apart?

You would like to think yes. In fact, you know that back then, when your eyes were bright at the prospect of helping people, when you still marvelled at the world like it was good, you would have been certain that it would be worth it. Why should that person die, just to save you? It’s a harrowing realisation. A conclusion that makes your fingers tremble, your voice shake. Now, you’re not sure you would do it. You don’t think you could bear to face that decision knowing what you know of the world around you now.

It’s something cruel, really, that the spider that bit you gave you these powers, and nothing to go back and fix your mistakes. Your perceived victories. Your losses.

But the worst has already happened, and the only one left to die is you, so you carry on. You don the suit every day, you sew up your own injuries on the top floor of the abandoned offices that you’ve claimed as your own. Each day, you wake when you choose, you sleep when you want to, and you work yourself down to your very bones with nobody to object.

The hollow feeling in your gut is a pain you have no choice to ignore, to smother with assurances that this is freedom. What else could it be? You do whatever you so please, you spend your time swinging through the streets of New York rather than doing schoolwork at home, you eat all the junk you could ever have wanted.

It’s freedom. It has to be.

You tell yourself that you don’t miss the home part of having to do schoolwork, promise your heart that you don’t miss home-cooked meals as opposed to greasy food that leaves you unsatisfied. You swear that you like having nobody to tell you what to do. There’s no other choice, after all.

And each day, when you spend a little bit longer out on the streets, getting yourself into needless fights that the police could certainly handle, you tell yourself it’s because you’re protecting the city. You convince yourself that it’s not because of having an unending rage to satiate, or a permanent feeling of breathlessness when you leave police to handle anything, as if you could relive the moment your father, the captain, was left to handle something he couldn’t.

So, you’re almost relieved by the appearance of something… strange. Something dangerous. This is what you live for — this is your job.

You crouch against the wall, fingers splayed and suit itching where you had crudely sewn it back together across your ribs at an almost too-close call. You hold your breath, you watch. The lenses over your eyes shield your sensitive sight from the harshest colours of this new opponent, who looks almost… unreal. Too different to be a part of reality. He yells out, seemingly glitching? A distorted scream of what is apparently pain, accompanied by flashes of colour that are unfamiliar to you.

“Well, that doesn’t look good.” You comment, eyebrows raised beneath your mask, and the strange looking guy snaps his head towards you, long hair slapping across the goggles over his eyes. He bares his teeth at you, something almost resembling a grin marring his face.

“Spider-man!” He yells triumphantly, cackling as he wipes the hair away from his face, tendrils unfurling from behind his back and lifting him into the air.

“Not quite!” You call back, dodging below the metallic arm that shoots towards where your head was, crumbling through the wall. You try to think back to the jokes you used to tell to rile up whoever you were facing, but find your mind is blank. Instead, all you can think of is questions. “Where the hell did you come from, anyway?”

The man follows you as you spring from wall to wall, heading towards the center of the building where it tunnels up for about forty floors, balconies overlooking the fountain below. “A new spider, eh? Well I’ll take you down just as easily as I have the other!” He tells you, though you’re immediately suspicious of his statement. You’re the only Spider-related hero around, and even if you weren’t, you doubt this guy could squash a worm, let alone you.

“Sure thing, man.” You say, sighing, already exhausted by the repetitiveness that comes with every fight. Your opponents always say they’ll beat you, kill you, squish you, take you down, and yet you always get back up at the end of the fight, and they always remain defeated. When you started doing this, you never would have thought you’d get so tired from winning all the time.

And yet here you are, slipping further and further up the building with the octopus-looking guy chasing after you, metal arms crumbling walls and bannisters on his way up. He falters once more, another one of those glitch-like movements sending him down a few floors, but he’s quick to recover. Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy.

You crouch down on one balcony, somewhere around the thirty mark floor-wise, peering down at the guy as he shakes lingering pain from his body. He charges upwards, aiming to reach you quickly with an almost predatory smirk on his face. Before he can even get close to you, however, you’re back on the move, setting a trap for him that he doesn’t even seem to notice.

It’s only when a group of late workers emerge on what you’re pretty sure is the twenty-first floor that you become more anxious about this fight. You don’t like when civilians are involved.

There’s about a dozen of them crowding the balcony, looking up to where you’re facing off with octopus-man above, some having begun to descend the stairs to the next floor before catching on to your presence. You try not to draw attention to them, but their pointing and whispering sets the Spidey-sense off, ringing loudly between your ears, almost deafening in its intensity. Maybe you underestimated this guy. The flash of a camera sends the last hope of him not noticing down the drain, and he grins at you as he switches targets, climbing down towards them with some semblance of caution.

You’re much faster than he is, dropping down and using a web to catch yourself rather than having to climb. It’s hard to stop yourself from yelling at them, cursing them out for being so damn foolish — who in their right mind would stick around a very dangerous fight to take pictures?

Instead, you choose to yell, “Get out! Go, go, go.” And usher them down the stairs, but it’s not difficult to realise that this guy is going to get to them before they manage to descend to the bottom. You shouldn’t be surprised, really. Nothing is ever as simple as it could be, not for you.

The split second decision to drop down and form a net-like web low enough to catch the workers worked out for you in the end, as you swung back up and pushed the workers off of the balcony and stairway just as the octopus man was reaching them. He cursed at you, refocusing his efforts on you as you vaguely noted the workers clambering down after their screaming had stopped. Honestly — did people really have so little faith in you? Had you ever sent anybody to their death before?

“You are just as pesky of an insect as Spider-man!” He growled out, teeth gritted, and came after you with renewed force. He kind of reminded you of that doctor you faced not long after getting your powers, but this guy looked completely different. The doctor you faced — aptly named Doc Ock — had turned himself into some form of a mutant, he had reinforced tentacles which sprouted from his back. Was this guy some kind of copy cat? Maybe he was just delusional.

“I don’t know who Spider-man is, man!” You shout to him as you ascend the building again, trying to figure out the best way to take this guy down. His tentacles seem electronic, so surely you could disable whatever machinery resides on his back?

“That’d be me.” A voice came from above you, two floors ahead of your position. Your head snapped towards it, seeing a man in a blue and red suit, framed by a burst of orange behind him. He didn’t linger up there long, instead moving to leap down to the guy who had turned his attention to the new guy. The closer you looked at this new guy, the more similarities you saw to yourself — his webs looked remarkably similar to your own, the pattern that went across his suit matched your own, even the wide white lenses that shielded your eyes on your mask. Who the hell was this guy?

The octopus man grinned widely, shaking greasy hair from his face. “Ah, finally! The real Spider-man. Got yourself a new protégé, I see.” He drawled, dodging this new guy’s hit straight off of the bat. You tried not to get annoyed at being referred to as a protégé, considering as far as you were aware, you were the only Spider-person around. Where was this guy when you were holding a bridge full of civilians together? Where was he when you took down villain after villain, never once failing to get the guy? No — you were the real Spider-man, if anyone.

“I don’t know who you are, man, but I’m handling this just fine.” You call to the guy, swinging down to rejoin the fight, webbing the villain’s metal tentacles to the wall behind him, before dropping down to kick him towards the wall.

“Oh, so you know how to send this guy back to his own dimension?” Spider-man asks you, eyebrows raised beneath his mask, and as if on cue, the guy glitches once more, ripping his arms away from the wall and just about catching himself on a balcony below before he could fall into your net.

You gape at the new guy, glancing back up to where the burst of orange remains opened, and is that a portal? Is this Spider-man from another dimension? Is that why you’ve never heard of him before? God, if your mother was alive, she’d kill to find out about this. Inter-dimensional travel was something she had spent her life researching. If you didn’t remain so bitter toward her even after her death, you might’ve been sad she wasn’t alive to see this.

But you were bitter, and it made the experience all the worse.

Because you’re pretty sure that that bitterness takes the place of grief within you. It’s hard to understand why you crave to feel that pain, that grief, as opposed to the aching resentment that floods you with the thought of her. It’s such a sharp contrast to thinking of your father, your kind father, the man who threw himself into a battle he couldn’t have hoped to survive, just on the off chance he could save somebody. You hope you take after him.

“Wait— you’re from another dimension?” You question anyway, eyes flickering between the battle and the looming portal above. In fact, you’re so distracted by finding out about that tidbit of information that you miss octopus man aim a tentacle for you, and it snatches you around the ankle. “Oh, you gotta be kidding me—!”

The man waves you around like some kind of rag doll, and you try not to be too bitter about being caught off guard. You should probably learn that getting caught up in your little pity party always ends up badly, always distracts you from that renowned Spidey-sense. You formulate a plan in your mind when the drip of blood around your ankle draws your attention back to the battle at hand.

You web the wall opposite and hold on tight, pausing the movements and letting the dizziness that had come over you fade away. The man growls out in annoyance, and gets closer to cut the webs with another tentacle, which is exactly what you planned for. The tension from the webs launches you towards him when you let go, and in his surprise, the metal tentacle releases you. You wrap around him, and start webbing up the machinery embedded in his back as Spider-man distracts most of the tentacles, keeping them from pulling you off.

His tentacles start faltering, clearly not obeying his movements, and you wrap them up where they emerge from his back, continuing along until the movement is so limited that he has to use them all to clutch onto the nearest balcony.

You crawl up the tentacles in the very same spidery manner that you’re known for, and crouch, watching the octopus man struggle as Spider-man observes from the balcony opposite. “You wanna finish this one off, Spider-man?” You ask, unable to hide any bitterness from your tone at his mostly unhelpful actions throughout the battle.

“Hey, not bad!” He praises, and it annoys you. You’re good at what you do — for the most part. You manage without help constantly, and that’s the way you prefer it. “You’d make a good addition to the Spider Society!”

Now, you don’t know what the Spider Society is. But honestly? You don’t care. You don’t need help, and you prefer working alone, and you certainly don’t like feeling patronised.

“Whatever, man. Just send him back to whatever dimension he came from.” You tell the guy, and drop down as you hear sirens outside, landing on your injured ankle and just about stopping yourself from cursing. Through all the adrenaline and fighting, you’d forgotten about the way the metal had ripped into your skin, drawn blood. It’s just be another place you’d have to sew up your suit with itchy, uneven stitching. “Officers,” You greet as they open the doors, guns drawn, radios murmuring. “All taken care of. Civilians okay?”

“Shaken up, but fine.” The leading police officer says, immediately relaxing and holstering his weapon. You wish it reassured you that the police trusted you now, but it didn’t. Nonetheless, the other officers follow suit. “Thank you, Arachnid.”

The name your world has bestowed upon you has yet to grow on you, but you nod your head regardless, and salute them as you make your way out, swinging across the city, trying to put the existence of the multiverse and inter-dimensional travel out of your mind. Surprisingly, it’s pretty easy when you have a busted ankle to fix up.

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You’re halfway through stitching up your suit, having already sewn your skin back together with as much skill as you possessed in the matter — which was, not much. But the bleeding has stopped, and your stupidly slow healing will take care of it within a few days. You know that the itchy stitches on your suit will just irritate the injury, and though you wouldn’t lose anything if your identity was revealed, it doesn’t feel right to go out into the city with any part of you on show.

No, you wear the suit for a reason. You keep every part of yourself covered because nobody can know it’s you underneath the suit. Not because you had anything to lose, no, you had already lost everything. It was because then you could never make a mistake, you would have to be absolutely perfect, flawless, to make up for the fact that it was you underneath the layer.

So, you settle with a sewn suit that will itch and make the stitches on your ankle sting.

However, when there’s a burst of orange across the room, you have no choice but to forgo the suit, to simply drop the needle and thread and hover your fingers over your web shooters. You wait, nervously, for some other villain to appear. You’re not sure if Spider-man appearing would be better or worse.

But when a foot steps through the portal, it’s nobody familiar. In fact, it’s a suit you have never seen before, made up of dark blues and bright reds, sharp edges and long claws. It’s… unnerving, and considering the silence coming from the person wearing it, you’re not entirely certain of what they’re here for.

A moment later and another person steps through, a woman, with bright yellow lenses across her eyes that filter her irises into an amber. She steps forward, standing beside the person who had stepped through first, and if she hadn’t showed up, you would’ve been tempted to attack. With that being said, you remain on edge, but there’s something… comforting about her presence. Like her presence softens the man’s jagged edges.

She says your name, and then adds, “Arachnid.”

You furrow your brows and curse as you glance back at the suit so crudely laid out on the floor. Still, it doesn’t explain how she knows your name. Was it an inter-dimensional thing?

“Spider-man told us about your work in capturing Doc Ock earlier.” She tells you, as if that explains their presence. You did what you were supposed to do, which was take out the bad guys. “We’re here to offer you a place in the Spider Society.”

You can’t help but wonder if this is some kind of good cop, bad cop thing. She presents an offer which doesn’t sound too bad, and then her sharp-edged companion presents all the drawbacks and the catches. They don’t seem like the type to take no for an answer, either way. You still don’t even know what this Spider Society was! Was it some kind of multi-dimensional cult?

“I already told Spider-man that I wasn’t interested in joining whatever cult you’ve got going on.” You practically hiss, though you didn’t exactly tell him in such blatant words. You were more dismissive earlier, so you’d have to be clear now.

“It’s not a cult,” The man speaks, voice harsh and sharp much like the blades that branch from his forearms. “We work to protect the multiverse from anomalies that threaten to destroy it.”

The woman glances at him in a way that you translate as being vaguely annoyed, like he wasn’t approaching you in the way she had wanted him to. “He means to say that it’s a big job, and we need all the help we can get.” She says, softer, but only in comparison to the man’s harshness. “Listen, kid, you’re good at what you do. We need that kind of talent.”

“You’ll have to find it somewhere else.” You say firmly, because why would you want to leave your universe? This was a lot to think about when you had only learned of the multiverse existing mere hours ago. Regardless, you weren’t about to abandon your city just to go across the multiverse to help other heroes who couldn’t keep a leash on their own villains.

The two of them shared a look, a mere glance, before the woman heaved a sigh. “Look,” She sighed, heavily, like whatever she was about to say was something she didn’t want to be voicing. “Before you make your choice, you should know, your Green Goblin is currently terrorising another universe.”

You couldn’t work out if this was some kind of recruitment tactic, or something. That just wasn’t possible. You had put Gwen Stacy in the highest security prison after all antidotes to her goblin-tech failed. She was stuck in there — permanently. There was no way she had gotten out, let alone gotten out to another universe.

…Right?

It’s hard not to think of the memories at the mention of her—Green Goblin, not Gwen Stacy. Never Gwen Stacy. You wonder if this is where your fear comes from, the terrifying fact that you are remembered only for your mistakes. Because before she was the Green Goblin, she was Gwen. She was everything to you. She was the sun you orbited, the stars that charted your path. And it hurts, it hurts that you can only remember the blood and the dust and the destruction when you think of her.

People aren’t born as monsters, are they?

Like the spider that bit you, that invertebrate that so many fear, it was born the way it was. It was born with those fang-lined maws, with those eight legs and dozens of eyes. It was made into the monster it became, artificially crafted to deliver a venom that changed you forever. But it wasn’t born that way.

Surely, Gwen wasn’t either. She was kind. You remember that about her. You can remember her soft hands that used to hold your own, the loud laughter that always ended in a snort when she laughed at her own jokes, the gentle eyes that stared into your very soul. But those eyes are the very same ones that let her see through your mask, let her see exactly where to hit you to make it hurt. Was that what she was born as? Or is that what she was made into? A killer. A monster.

“Show me.” You say, because what else could you possibly respond? If what they’re saying is true, if the Green Goblin is loose once more, then people will die.

You can’t let her get fresh blood on her hands. Not when somewhere, deep inside your chest, so far down it’s almost unreachable, you have hope for her. You have an innate desire to look for the best in her, even when the Gwen you knew was the first life that the Green Goblin took.

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If there’s one thing you’ve taken from being Arachnid, it’s to expect the unexpected. And you go through the orange portal after Jessica Drew and Miguel O’Hara with that exact mindset about you, staring at where an orange watch-like device is wrapped around your wrist.

It’s in your nature to be suspicious, and these people weren’t an exception to that.

In fact, their presence only heightened that behaviour. After all, what were you to expect from two Spider people, who supposedly came to you for your help?

You weren’t blind, you saw the aged lines of their faces the moment you got close enough to see them clearly, away from the dim lighting of the building. They were adults, adults who had clearly been doing this type of thing a lot longer than you had. You, who was barely bordering on adult, who had fought enough battles already to last a lifetime — so why would they need you?

It didn’t feel right.

And when this Miguel person summoned Lyla the moment you walked through the portal, it felt all the more wrong. She was a hologram of some kind, much higher tech than the kind of thing you saw on your earth. But then again, you had never really been in high tech labs back in your earth. Still, it unsettled you. “Lyla, get me the location of Green Goblin, Earth 5011.” He commanded, and they argued in hushed voices for a moment, before a wider hologram appeared, stamped at Earth 3899.

“How did she get to another universe?” You ask, then, because it doesn’t make sense, and you’re shaking underneath the thin material of your suit. You’re hyper aware of each drag of stitching against the wound on your leg, each patch of fabric you had sewn on in hopes of the suit lasting you just a little longer, because you didn’t have the resource to produce a new one.

“It’s an anomaly.” Jessica Drew tells you, her tone softer than you’d heard it, as if she was attempting to reassure you in some way.

It didn’t help. But how could it? The last time you had faced Gwen Stacy—Green Goblin— you had lost so much. It had been the beginning of the end of everything good in your life. The explosion she had caused at your mother’s laboratory was the very same one that killed her, the very same explosion that sent you and your dad miles apart all while living in the same home. And still, you found a way to hope that there was something to salvage within Gwen.

But not only had you lost your mother, and not long after — your father, you had also lost your closest friend. The one person you had confided in, who knew you from your surface to the deepest level, and she had used that against you the moment the Goblin had taken over.

It had taken everything in you to beat her, back then.

And that was on home turf! How did these people expect you to do that a second time, in a completely unfamiliar place?

“Specifics aren’t important right now. Jessica, you take Arachnid. Lyla, send another one of the teams.” Miguel instructed, dismissing your questions right off the bat. It was frustrating. They were leaving you completely in the dark, and sending you to fight the worst enemy you had ever faced, and they were sending you alongside others like you from different universes. It was like asking you to bare your soul in front of them, to reveal your secrets, your deepest regrets, everything that you wanted to stay buried.

You knew Green Goblin. You knew that’s exactly what she would do. She would undermine you, she would lay your life out in front of you like tiles on a scrabble board. In the end, none of it amounted to much.

Jessica Drew made her way out, glancing at you and nodding for you to follow along. Your moment of hesitation had drawn Miguel’s attention, and he called out to you after a moment of hesitation. “We’ve all faced one like it, kid. It’s easier with others.” He told you, though he held a pained expression on his face all the while. Instead of admitting to the way he had hit the nail right on the head, you simply nodded and followed after Spider-woman.

It was a whirlwind from there.

Meeting up with others. Travelling the length of the so-called Lobby to wherever it was that Jessica was taking you. When you finally arrived, she offered an empty glass box with a mannequin inside, bare. She gestured towards it like it should’ve been self explanatory, but soon realised she’d have to spell it out for you.

You shouldn’t have been so upset by the offer of a new suit.

But you were.

This suit was your life. You had nothing outside of it, not anymore. You couldn’t just throw it away, as if it meant nothing, as if every rip and patch and wonky stitch didn’t mean anything. These were proof that what you were doing was real, that it was worth something. Each stitch proved you had value. You weren’t about to throw all of that away, especially for whatever overly technical suit these people would provide.

You had everything you needed.

And so Jessica led you to the next destination: Earth 3899.

The moment you stepped through the portal, it was like you were hit with a wave of familiarity. And not in a positive, slightly nostalgic way, no— this was chaos. This was the state your world had been in when Green Goblin ran riot, unchecked. She had torn apart buildings, blown up parks, she had set New York City aflame. And she was doing exactly the same here.

It was more contained here than it had been on your earth, and you had to assume that was thanks to the Spider-man already on site, coordinating police, ambulance and fire responses to douse the fires as quickly as she set them. If only the police in your city had trusted you so much, back then.

“Where is she?” You ask, the moment you get close enough to speak to the resident Spider-man of the universe. He looks at you as if you’re familiar, but doesn’t comment, instead just pointing a finger toward a skyscraper just a short way ahead. You’re gone the moment he tells you where to go.

She had the uncanny ability to stay quiet. It had freaked you own back on your own earth, but it was even more terrifying here, where things were ever so slightly different.

“Arachnid.” Gwen’s voice called, and for a moment, you could forget. You could forget every horrible thing the Goblin had done, and you could remember your friend, your Gwen, who had called out to Arachnid more than once without knowing it was you behind the mask. Whether it was for a story or to provide information on your most recent opponent, the voice calling your alias was familiar. But then there was that crackle of laughter, an unnatural gurgle in the way it left her throat, and you turned to see the green-tinged pallor of her skin. “I was so hoping you’d show up.”

You didn’t know how much her appearance would effect you, until you were stuck to the side of the building, staring at what had once been your best friend. You’re so choked up that you can’t even formulate a response, because you want that to be Gwen so badly, but you know it isn’t. The more you look at her, the more Goblin you see, the more you know that the Gwen you love is never coming back.

“Nothing to say?” She asks, and then says your real name, the name she used to say down the crackle of a phone line, or across the school hallway, and she smiles. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

“You should’ve stayed in prison, Gwen.” You say, your voice unsteady as you say her name aloud for the first time in what must be forever. She seems to relish in the tremble of your voice, and you have to curse yourself for being so stupid, for already showing the vulnerability she was so easily able to pick out.

The Green Goblin tutted at you, stood atop her glider, but the smile you saw didn’t belong to Gwen. “You’re pathetically predictable, you know. You’re like a moth to the flame.” She tells you, and you fear that she’s right, that you’re the same person you were back when you fought her, back when she almost won. She sighs, like something heavy is weighing upon her, but it turns wistful in the blink of an eye. “I’m just glad your dad isn’t here to see this. He’d be so disappointed.”

“Arachnid, focus.” Jessica’s voice interrupts, before you can spiral down that rabbit hole. How did Gwen even know about your father? She was in prison long before he died. It didn’t make sense.

“Maybe,” You say, that familiar tremble around your words. “He did always hope for the best for you.”

She bares her teeth at your words, the only visible reaction before her mask is slipping over the bottom of her face, stretching out up to pointed ears, all metallic and tinted a murky green. Then, she’s attacking.

It’s muscle memory, mostly, you think.

If you don’t think too hard about it, it could be like playing a game with a longtime friend from your childhood. You know the moves to make, you know how she’ll respond. It’s a constant push and pull, a balance which leaves only destruction behind, the path of the Green Goblin’s wrath tangible in each battle scene the two of you leave behind. You can’t beat her like this.

It’s her glitching that gives you a slight upper hand — and you send her careening off of her glider to the ground below.

Your heart squeezes suddenly in your chest as you watch her fall, her eyes wide in what could almost be perceived as fear. If you didn’t intervene, would she die? Would you have put an end to her story, once and for all, when you secretly hope there’s a cure out there for her? You can’t bear the thought of finding out, of watching her die, and so you foolishly dive after her.

A web to her midsection allows you to grip her before she hits the ground, and you set her down with a far more gentle hand than you would ever admit.

She says your name, then, a whispered version of it that sounds like Gwen. You think you can see her in those wide blue eyes, in that stare, and you approach with some caution. “Gwen,” You say, more of a question, “You with me?”

“I’m with you,” She answers, as you reach her side, as you resist the urge to pull off your mask. You’re so preoccupied staring at her expression that you don’t see the blade until it’s too late, your Spidey-sense failing you as you wallowed in your search for someone who was gone. “You sweet, predictable bug.” She spits then, twisting the blade she had sunk deep into your side, and you writhe, trying to move away from her.

“Arachnid!” Jessica Drew calls out, drawing the Green Goblin’s attention, allowing you to pull away from her slackened grasp. You leave the blade where it is, knowing your only slightly enhanced healing wouldn’t make up for the onslaught of blood that would pour from the wound. “I think that’s enough, Green Goblin.” Jessica says, riding a motorbike that you swore she didn’t have earlier. Nonetheless, she uses it to put even more space between you and your villain.

“You need a hand, kid?” A new voice asks, and a gloved hand reaches out for you where you had knelt against the tarmac. You look up, seeing a new Spider-man, but this one has his mask up, showing off his aged face and the bags underneath his eyes. You wave him off, staggering up to your feet, and clench your jaw as you stare at Green Goblin, watch as she pulls bombs from her waistband, barely the size of a chocolate bar, but capable of causing irreparable damage. “Get back to HQ, Arachnid, we can handle this.” Spider-man tells you, in what you suspect to be a fatherly voice, but you ignore him.

Time flies, slips out of your grasp, and you don’t know how long you and the others spend fighting Green Goblin, but she proves to be just as difficult of a foe for them to face as she was for you. Each time the three of you manage to get the drop on her, she slips away before she could be caught. It’s frustrating, and you can even see the way irritation thickens in the air, tangible.

Spider-man, or Peter, as Jessica had called him, is with you, focusing on trying to take Green Goblin down, whilst Jessica Drew is focused on damage control, blowing up Gwen’s bombs before they could hit their intended targets. You’re pretty sure the resident Spider-man is around here, too, pulling any lingering citizens out of harms way before Green Goblin could end them. You’d admit, it works better than you had done alone back on your own earth.

But it doesn’t work well enough, and more than one building is damaged almost beyond repair, and in the dust and rubble, Peter was distracted by the few citizens poking their heads out of the gaping hole in the side of their apartments. He didn’t see Green Goblin coming until it was too late, until she had thrown two of her bombs, one towards him, and one towards the already wrecked building.

Your throat dries up as you try to figure out what to do, who to go for, but in the end, you don’t have to choose.

Beams of glowing orange webs shoot into the bombs where they arc towards their victims, blowing them up and leaving both Peter and the civilians in the apartments without a scratch on any of them. Well, nothing that wasn’t already there before. You see him then, running alongside Jessica Drew, none other than Miguel O’Hara — who clearly didn’t think that the three of you were capable of handling Green Goblin.

“We’ve gotta end this.” Peter tells the three of you, glaring over at Green Goblin after coming so close to one of her bombs.

“You distract, I’ll go in.” You say, the only plan that makes sense. The only plan that’ll work. You wouldn’t be much use as a distraction, not with the blood still pooling around the blade hanging from your side, but you could beat her. You knew you could.

Peter nodded, and he, Jessica and Miguel went in one after another, landing hits on Green Goblin before she could even think to withdraw another bomb, or land a hit of her own, whilst you made your way behind her, swinging as high as you dared to go in your state. She was getting angry, you could tell, a distinct flush rushing up the back of her neck, a tell that Green Goblin shared with Gwen.

It was only when she was starting to turn the tide that you jumped down from your spot against the side of a building, looking for your opening.

She sent Jessica Drew tumbling off of her motorbike, which was your chance.

Green Goblin heard you only a moment before you were on her, not giving her a chance to make a countermove. Instead, you were curling your arms around her, as tight as you could, holding her hands away from her waistband. You gripped the blade in your side and yanked it out, holding it to her chest, breathing heavily through the pain as you bared your teeth at her, her face beside your own.

“Don’t make me kill you.” You say, and try not to hear the pleading in your own voice, the distinctive tone of a beg. You may have the upper hand on her, but as always, she had the power. “Don’t.” You repeat, because you can feel it in your bones that you would do it. If it was the choice between her or the hundreds that she would kill on this world, it would be those hundreds. There was no doubt about it, no questions to be asked.

You may have resented your mother, but she wasn’t the only one who died because of the Green Goblin. You wouldn’t let that happen again.

Perhaps she heard the plea in your voice, the giveaway that you weren’t bluffing, because she went still in your arms, still enough for the other Spiders to approach with some caution, eyes on her hands where you held them away from any weapons, using your forearm connected to the hand holding the blade to her chest to keep her left hand from grasping anything.

“I won’t be asking again.” You tell her, which is as much of a threat as you can muster. Or, more so, a promise.

As Miguel pushed you back with a firm hand, throwing a machine at Gwen’s feet, you think she understands. If the two of you are ever in that position again, there will be no hesitation about it. You will kill her.

“Good work, kid.” Peter says as Miguel and Jessica get to work with getting your Green Goblin through a portal to the HQ. He glanced down at where your hand is now pressing into your side, blood pouring steadily. In your other hand, you still hold the blade that had pierced your own skin, that would have killed Gwen Stacy had she not surrendered. He winces as if it’s him who got hurt, and guides you through the portal after the others. “C’mon, we’ll get you checked out. You not got enhanced healing?” He asks, though you suspect he doesn’t expect you to answer, and you’re glad.

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

“I can do this myself, you know.” You sigh, wincing as a Spider-man — who apparently is also a doctor and works in the Spider Society’s infirmary — stitches up the wound on your midsection. It’s uncomfortable, though less painful that when you do it yourself. Still, it’s uncomfortable to accept help from these strangers.

“Ooh, shouldn’t say that to him.” Peter B. Parker laughs, one of the many Peter Parkers of the Society, but the same one who had fought Green Goblin with you. “He’ll lecture you on proper healthcare for days if you give him the opportunity!”

The Spider-doctor glares at Peter, or you assume he does, from the slight squint of the lenses of his mask. He kisses his teeth under the mask, tutting, muttering about “Spiders and their complete disregard for their health. Lucky you haven’t died ten times over from infections.” But he doesn’t say anything that requires a response from you, and he soon finished up the stitches. He goes to offer to fix up the injury on your ankle, but you’re up on your feet before he can even get the words out.

“Now, I gotta get back home to the wife, but Miguel wants to see you. He’ll take you home,” Peter tells you as he walks out of the infirmary by your side, but he stops you in the hallway with a hand on your shoulder, surprisingly gentle. “If that’s what you want.”

Your eyebrows furrowed before you could stop them, and the confusion over his words must’ve been written all over your face.

“Why wouldn’t I want that?” You ask, defensively.

Peter opens his mouth, but nothing escapes. Instead, it’s his expression that tells you everything he’s thinking. The crease between his brows screams pitying, or sympathetic. He’s talking about the way you live back on your earth, about the life you lead, Arachnid by day, and by night. With no room for you, no room for your secret identity. He’s thinking of the way you’ll be returning to a world with nobody awaiting you, with not a soul to look out for you, to stitch you up after a battle. Nobody but yourself, anyway.

You pull away from him, brows furrowing further, into an almost angered expression, and you don’t watch the way his hand falls away from your shoulder back to his side. He sighs when you turn away, scoffing as you make your way through the hallways of the Lobby towards where you think Miguel will be.

It’s overwhelming, all of these people. They all believe that they know you, that they know your circumstances, your story, but the truth is that they don’t. Nobody does, and that’s the way you prefer it. You don’t need a Society of Spiders surrounding you, breathing down your neck, telling you they’re sorry, or not trusting you to handle yourself in your own fights, because you can handle yourself. You’ve spent the last year of your life trying to prove that, trying to prove that you can do good things, that you’re worthy of the title Arachnid. You certainly shouldn’t need to prove that to a whole Society of people like you, most of which had been doing the job a lot longer.

You’re capable and you’re content.

You don’t need a life as your secret identity to be content, in fact, it’s better without one. You don’t have to tell so many lies, don’t have to worry about hurting the people you love, because there are none of them left. There’s nobody to hurt, and there’s nobody to lie to. Why would you want to change that?

The hallway ahead looks familiar, and you follow it until you enter a room where Miguel stands, looking at orange tinted screens on a platform halfway up the room. You enter with the absolute certainty that you want to return to your own earth, and you’re not going to let anybody stop you.

“I’m ready.” You tell him, expectantly.

He scoffs, saying nothing, still staring at the screens in front of him. For whatever reason, the reaction makes you angry — inexplicably so. You’re slinging up to the platform before you can have a second thought about it, and you’re pushing his shoulder so he’ll face you, so he’ll acknowledge you.

He stares at you, unimpressed.

“Send me back to my earth.” You press, brows furrowed beneath your mask, but you’re sure he can see the anger in the way your shoulders tense up.

“Sure,” Miguel said blankly, staring at you as if you’d suddenly change your mind or something. “But you know, there’s a lot more like her.” He added on when you said nothing, waiting for him to send you back to your world so you could give him back the stupid watch still wrapped around your wrist.

You stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language. “There are no more like her.” You respond, feeling that hot press on your chest. You don’t want to talk about Gwen Stacy anymore than you’re sure he’d like to talk about whatever he had gone through in his life. Hell, you don’t even want to think about her, but you know that nobody else you would ever have to face would hurt you in the way that she did. In the way that having to see her as an enemy, rather than your friend, had hurt. So, yeah, there was nobody like her, not for you.

Miguel seems ready to let you go for a moment, but then he’s shaking his head at you. “You have a place here. You can be with people like you. You don’t have to do this alone, anymore.” He says, and you think that is ironic, because you don’t see anybody else in here. To you, it seems like he is doing exactly that; doing the job alone. You can practically see the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“I prefer being alone.” You tell him, and it has to be true. It has to be.

His jaw sets, acceptance, you think, and he nods. He glances past you, to where a portal was open on the floor below. Considering that you hadn’t seen him set up the portal, you’d wager that his AI Lyla must’ve listened in and done it for him. You pull the watch off of your wrist, relishing in the way your very atoms seem to sag with the weight of being in another dimension.

“Thanks.” You say, and drop down, landing on your sore ankle but not murmuring a word about the pain. You walk back to your world with your head held high, despite your tattered suit and multitude of wounds that would take days to stop hurting.

Miguel stares after you as the portal closes, eyebrows furrowed. He barely acknowledges Jessica Drew’s arrival in the room, already having known she had been lingering in the hallway, listening in. “Well, that went well.” She comments, glancing between where the portal had been and where Miguel stands, brooding. She knows how much pressure he puts on himself, and she knows that he cares about each and every Spider-person in the multiverse. It doesn’t take a Spider-sense to see the way in which you struggle. It’s a familiar struggle, sure, but there were so many Spiders across the multiverse who had a shoulder to lean on in their hardest times. Who did you have? There was no Aunt May for Arachnid, or Gwen Stacy, or Harry Osborne, or, well, anybody.

Jessica thinks that if anybody were to know exactly how that felt, it would be Miguel.

#heartpascal writes #across the spiderverse spoilers #atsv spoilers #spiderman atsv spoilers #miguel o’hara x reader #miguel o’hara x you #miguel o’hara x platonic reader #jessica drew x platonic reader #peter b parker x platonic reader #peter b parker x reader #spiderverse x reader #spiderverse x platonic reader #spiderverse x you #spiderverse imagines #spiderverse one shot #spiderverse imagine #spiderverse angst #miguel o’hara angst #struggling idk how to tag with a new fandom shhh

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elmhat · 6 months

Text

DSMP TUMBLR SIMULATOR

🟩 escapedwarcriminal Follow

On vacation! Check out the fancy hotel :)

🦆 stabbyduck69 Follow

gufys please mass report this he's trxying to fucking dox me and also kill me pls guys

7 notes

❌ god Follow

I just finished writing my latest book! To thank everyone who stuck with me through this process, I'm giving away one copy to a random follower! All you have to do is reblog 😊

#bookblr #writeblr

2,963,086,652,755 notes

🐝 what-if-bees-had-nukes Follow

Anyone know where the boomerville residents went?

🐝 what-if-bees-had-nukes Follow

No one replied so I guess I own their house now

3 notes

🥇 dreamsno1traitor Follow

#I'm actually so sick of these mfs #no joke if I have to spend another day around these people I might kms #one more comment about how "evil" he is and I'm gonna snap #I can't believe I used to be friends with them? #they're so bloodthirsty for no reason #sorry just needed to vent #can't say any more than this or I'll blow my cover #neg

2 notes

🧁 the-girl-who-burned-your-tree Follow

New strawberry cake recipe! (Safe for pigs)

Try out this delicious dessert that all the family can enjoy!

Keep reading

#baking #recipes #I just wanted to make something that my friend can eat too #he has some rather unique dietary requirements

130 notes

🐷 bloodforthebloodgod Follow

"average person destroys 1 government a year" factoid actually just statistical error. average person destroys 0 governments per year. technoblade is an outlier and should not have been counted

💿 fuckdream123 Follow

this is so fuckign disrespectful to doomsday survivors take this down you egotesticle fkng prick

45,687 notes

🟩 escapedwarcriminal Follow

@warden-of-the-vault How's idiotville idiot

🟩 escapedwarcriminal Follow

Wait you can't reply cause you're in IDIOTVILLE

5 notes

🪶 philzaminecraft Follow

My good friend has entrusted me with looking after his lovely dogs, haha! 😂 Do any of you fine young people have advice for me as to how to take care of this many hungry hounds? 🤔 I look forward to hearing from you.

From Philza Minecraft.

P.S. Please also instruct me as to how to increase the number of messages I receive in response to my questions. This internet website is a tad confusing. I had enough bother attaching the photograph. 😂

89 notes

🐷 bloodforthebloodgod Follow

woke up to the dash full of drama again. sigh

🦆 stabbyduck69 Follow

fucking Die

🐷 bloodforthebloodgod Follow

oh so you're the one sending all the anon hate

🦆 stabbyduck69 Follow

i don't send anon hate i'll hate to your fucking face bitch

🦆 stabbyduck69 Follow

please go out with me

11 notes

🔱 warden-of-the-vault Follow

🔥 murdered-yo-fave-pet Follow

But fr guys, as much as we're memeing around in the tags dream is actually out there and he's dangerous. If you see him call me or sam immediately. DON'T fight him. You'll /gen die.

6,210 notes

🐈 antthecatmaid Follow

won't be around for a while, going on vacation!

🐈 antthecatmaid Follow

fuck I'm back fuck fuck fuck

27 notes

💿 fuckdream123 Follow

i'm too sad to commit terrorism like what's the fucking point anymore

6 notes

🧨 zombiepresident1 Follow

World's First NFT Burgers

(Ignore the poor photo quality, my good camera got confiscated by authorities)

"An explosion of the senses, and I don't just mean that time the place exploded!" ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

"So much better than Quackity's horrible grimy SHIT FUCKING RESTAURANT" ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#reviews are all from verified sources #don't look into it #someone blaze this I have no money

204 notes

✨ quirky-cake-duper-teleporter Follow

Genuinely fuck dream.

✨ quirky-cake-duper-teleporter Follow

Ignore this I wasn't in my right mind

16 notes

🐷 bloodforthebloodgod Follow

The Teletubby and the Pig

Fandom: Original Work Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Characters: Technoblade, Dream (me and my friend) Additional Tags: Pandora's Vault Prison, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort

Summary: idk man I'm bad at summaries, just something I wrote with my friend to pass the time (he was too embarrassed to post it)

284k words so far

-> Read here!

#I actually wrote this a while ago but I wasn't allowed to post it for legal reasons #don't worry though I'm planning to murder the legal reasons soon #writeblr #original fiction

35 notes

💍 im-from-the-future Follow

WARNING - PLEASE READ

My murderer showed up at my house today. Police refused to arrest him. I feel sick to my stomach, I don't know where he is or what he's doing, if he comes back I have no way to protect myself. Please stay vigilant and don't trust anyone you don't know.

🥕 catsncarrots Follow

i'm so sorry to hear that karl :( hey what's the new pfp?

💍 im-from-the-future Follow

No idea

43 notes

🥚 baddestboi-withahalo Follow

we all accepted the prison way too quickly. there's like no safety measures? are we forgetting someone DIED THERE? and i've literally seen the main cell myself and it's a mess. pretty sure there was some real blood on the walls too. idk just doesn't feel right

🔱 warden-of-the-vault Follow

I'm tired of people reblogging posts like this without checking their sources. There are some obvious red flags here. For starters, op claims they've witnessed the main cell personally, but if you actually check the prison's rules, visits have been banned for several months now [x]. The prison is armed with state of the art security measures, including lava, barriers, and numerous manual searches, to name just a few [x]. Speaking as an authority on the prison myself [x], I can safely confirm that these security measures, as well as the prisoner, are in perfect condition. Don't be so quick to buy into conspiracy theories.

🥚 baddestboi-withahalo Follow

I LITERALLY WORK THERE????

🔱 warden-of-the-vault Follow

Not anymore you don't.

972 notes

#long post #I wasted so much time on this and every second was worth it #dreblr #dream smp #dsmp #dashboard simulator #lore thoughts #dsmp dashboard simulators

844 notes · View notes

virgincels · 4 months

Text

NYMPHOMANIA !

ft. leon s. kennedy x fem!reader

tags. daddy-daughter incest, femcel reader :3, reader wants to get raped so she talks about that, dub-con for like a paragraph, suicidal thoughts, awful thoughts in general, tiny bit of somno, threats, spanking, slapping

note. HAII :3 back on my femcel shit… god i rewrote this like 15 times and restarted over and over so i hate this 😭 it’s clunky so ignore any mistakes!!! feedback n rbs always so appreciated <3 was thinking of og4 leon but.. honestly idk atp !! anyway sorry again for the slow decrease in quality in this .. title has nothing to do w the fic ack ok bye :3

tumblr removes fics that use, for example, tw non-con and any nsfw tags in general from the tags. for this reason, as i’d like my fic to appear in the tags, please understand that this fic contains dark content under the cut. reading this comes at your own risk.

There are two things you want to get off your chest.

You are not, under any circumstances, ugly. Your face just takes getting used to. (This is a cope.)

You have a crush on your dad. No excuse for this one. Cupid is a conniving bastard. That’s that.

These might not seem like related issues, but they most certainly are because being ugly is hard, and having a crush on your dad is equally as hard.

You’re a sweet girl, you didn’t choose to come out ugly, it’s not your fault you turned out this way. It’s unfair, but ultimately no one meant for it to happen

(Well, you hope no one meant for it to happen unless someone had a vendetta against your mother and cursed her firstborn. She’s an irritating lady, you can see why someone would do so.)

You won’t even be the kind of below-average woman who marries a mediocre man to have mediocre sex to make mediocre kids to live in caustic mediocrity. You have one friend, she’s an online friend, and she might be a lonely old man. To be entirely honest you would prefer that. ‘Cause that would mean someone out there wants to creep on you.

If you weren’t ugly, having a crush on your dad would be socially acceptable. That’s why daddy-daughter porn spans pages and pages and pages of Pornhub. Everyone loves to watch a busty, blonde slut on her dad’s dick. If you didn’t have a crush on your dad, being ugly would be perfectly fine— No, that’s wrong.

Being ugly is never fine. Being ugly is on the same level as being a rapist. Being ugly in the presence of people who are objectively not ugly is, like, worse than being a rapist. ‘Cause all the dudes in high school were rapists in the making. Ted Bundy-style shit.

Grope an ugly bitch in the bathrooms and she wouldn’t speak up, and if she did— She just wouldn’t actually. Would be burnt at the stake Salem style. Hung. Crucifixion perhaps. Ugly girls aren’t good enough to die like martyrs did, however. Especially not ugly girls who cry wolf.

Why on God’s green earth would a hot guy go out of his way to slap a freaky-looking girl’s ass, right? Got girls lined up down the halls waiting for him to sign their perky tits, he doesn’t need to rape. It must be wishful thinking on her part, right? A wet dream she took as reality.

Why would you say that? Do you want to throw what he’s worked for down the drain? Accusations like this, they’re not jokes, y’know that? He’s got a scholarship, college wouldn’t take something like this so lightly.

Aw, you miss her. This goth chick in senior year. Your sorta friend. When it all went down and she had nowhere else to go, you invited her over because you’re a nice girl with no nefarious intentions. None at all. When she lay beside you at night, and she opened up, and she thanked you for believing her, you totally did not have your hand in your panties. And you totally did not rub yourself raw while she spoke about it in excruciating detail. You did not treat her rape case as erotica.

The dude got away with it of course. He was on TV the other day in fact. NFL. Baltimore Ravens. Still stupid hot. God, you wish it was you he picked - wouldn’t have told a single soul. Would’ve sucked the sweat from his jockstrap without complaint.

You’re too repulsive to be touched or raped, and you’ve learnt to live with that. Passing out in alleyways would result in rapists who frequent the area to avoid those very alleyways. Only your hand knows the cushiony softness of your tits, the wetness between your legs, how great your mouth feels— Only your dildo knows that, but you can imagine it’s good. You’re a total catch. A nympho. Men love nymphos when they’re pretty, which you are not. So you’re a nympho without the sex appeal. So in other words you are a pervert. A degenerate. A fucking freak.

It’s time to start sticking your fingers down your throat. ‘Cause that’s what gorgeous girls do to achieve that grave-robbed look. Heroin chic. Modelesque. It’s all the same type of beautiful. Emaciated and sickly. Dead girls are the sexiest ‘cause they can’t say yes or no and if there’s no no then it’s a yes. A nymphetic loophole of sorts. Men love dead girls that double as nymphos. Unfortunately, you are well and alive. Walking into traffic seems like fun, but you would be classed as roadkill, and it wouldn’t be tragically beautiful, just embarrassing to get scraped off the concrete like that. Even in death, you would be ugly because you are ugly to your very core. Your bone marrow is so ugly no scientist would want to make stem cells out of it, polynucleotides so deformed— You’re ugly. No need to wax poetic about it. Nothing poetic about being ugly.

Dad is the closest a human being can get to perfection. A divine image. Michelangelo is, like, dead and gone. David should've died alongside him. Dad deserves to take his place in the Accademia Gallery. With the way people gawk at him, he might as well be art. You’re surprised he doesn’t sell tickets to merely exist in his presence. He’s hot like a Calvin Klein model, and mom is hot like a regular model. Due to how you’ve turned out, you have a few qualms with your mother.

Like, what the fuck happened to you in her womb? Did someone take a mallet to one side of her belly to ensure her child came out as asymmetrical as one can be? A lack of nutrients maybe? Was she dieting during the pregnancy? Did dad fuck her too hard? Busted her womb up or some shit.

It simply might be that two rights make a wrong.

Or you were a tester before she popped your siblings out. Little ichor-filled putto. They were child models, scouted in their diapers, and you would stand behind your mother and the cameraman so hurt you couldn’t even feel jealous. Now they’re all grown up, fully-fledged erotes, and they’re working and doing all this shit you still haven’t managed to get a grasp on. Navigating the world as an ugly bitch is terribly hard.

Rape kinks are developed, dads get crushed on - awful, terrible things happen when girls are ugly and alone and unable to leave the comfort of their bedrooms.

Pretty girls have daddy issues that are dealt with in standard pretty girl fashion - finding emotionally unavailable, salt-and-pepper-haired men to fill every hole, including the one in their doll hearts. The thing is pretty girls don’t go for their dads. ‘Cause a lot of the time dads are gross. Dads do not look like your dad does. And to be fair you don’t exactly have daddy issues. Your dad is present and he doesn’t hit or shout or do anything out of the norm. Maybe this is a you issue.

It is a you issue, not even an ugly girl issue or an any type of girl issue. It’s your issue and yours alone.

It is your issue that when Leon asks what you want for dinner you almost ask for his hand around your throat or his hand in marriage. Either would be fine. Both would be preferred.

Severing your relationship would be even better. Goddamn, girls with absent fathers are lucky. You wish he was anything but your dad— It’s just that if you weren’t his daughter, dad wouldn’t ever look your way, he would pass by you like every man does.

Dad is a busy guy, and he’s a strange guy in the sense that he’s never really bothered with you. He loves your sister, and he loves your brother. But everyone loves those two. You don’t think he likes you very much, you can deal with that. Doesn’t mean you have daddy issues ‘cause no one likes you very much. So it’s a you issue and you should try harder.

Leon’s home early today. He’s collapsed on the couch, withered into himself like he always is after business trips. Mom said not to disturb him. You don’t. Then you do. This is like crack to you. Dad.

More specifically, dad without mom hovering over him. Dad’s sleeping so your brain is not stewed by his intense gaze. It only ever lingers on you for merely a second, but your stomach flips like you’ve got appendicitis and your legs spread involuntarily.

He’s a light sleeper, you’re well aware. He’s also a living, breathing Ken doll so you don’t put much thought into it when you reach out to ghost your fingers along the bridge of his nose. So pointy it could pierce your clit. Your clit. His nose. Oh, it could work so well, you want to grind yourself to mush against it.

Until dad shifts, he’s so beautiful up close you almost forget he’s real, not a wax figure. You trace the straight edge of his jaw, then thumb his petal lips, dragging your pointer finger over the fuller bottom one to push the tip into his wet mouth. Your dad is a slut. ‘Cause he sucks for a good second or two. Heat licks at your insides. You might vomit. His spit glistens like cobwebs when you take it back. That hand is shoved down your pants. That finger finds your clit, uses what spit is left to get it nice and wet. Which is totally unneeded, you’ve been soaked since god knows when, your pussy doesn’t know when to quit.

Feels good knowing that a part of dad is in you, his spit pushed into your hole. You’ll give him something back, it’s only fair, you smear your slick on the spot you traced. His tongue pokes out, likely to combat dry mouth, it swipes along his bottom lip— He tastes you. Heat engulfs you, chars your body from the inside out, the scent of rotting meat is in your nostrils.

Dad tasted you.

Holy fuck. You sit there with a trembling smile, staring down at him and he does not rouse. Shit, you’re creepy and you know it, but you’re not stupid. What other chance do you have? You unzip his old shearling jacket, underneath is that compression shirt that fits him too well. You map out the ridges of his abs, the slight dip between his pecs, every hard line that makes up his body. He smells so sexy, lavender and leather, must be some sorta pheromone ‘cause all you want to do is drop your face into his tits to bathe in that scent, to have it stick to your skin. Shit. Holy fucking shit. You’ve got a sex doll instead of a dad. That explains the distantness. He’s made of silicone.

The door clicks the moment you find it in yourself to click open his belt.

“What're you doing?” Mom ruins everything. She’s had it out for you the moment you formed in her womb. “He’s sleeping, don’t disturb him.” She says tersely, placing her Coach Tabby on the coffee table.

“He was cold.” That’s why his nipples are peaking, piercing the fabric of that shirt. Should be illegal to wear that in public. He’s asking for it.

“Yeah?” She asks, unconvinced, bending down to unclasp her heels.

“Yeah.” You stand up, dad’s indirect kiss on your cunt, shoot her a nasty sneer before you scuttle away to your bedroom for the rest of the day.

There are stairs that creak and stairs that don’t. You hang around down here at midnight often so you know the right path to take as to not alert your parents of your presence. They’re speaking about you.

“—be careful around her.” Truly, you hate your mother.

“What is there to be careful about?” Right? You tell her dad.

“Just, just be careful. She doesn’t y’know.”

“She doesn’t what?”

“She doesn’t get off her ass, she doesn’t talk to anyone but, well, I don’t know actually, she doesn’t talk to anyone at all.” You could pretend and say it hurts, but it doesn’t. There’s nothing insulting about the truth.

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“You’re a guy, she doesn't talk to guys.”

“We don’t talk much either.” Dad is too stiff to make conversation, and you collapse anytime he breathes in your general direction.

“Yeah, but, Leon.” Mom sounds exasperated, but she’s not getting her point across well. She should know better, dad’s skull is thicker than cement. “I’m worried.”

“What, for me or her?”

“Her, obviously, I don’t want her to… I want her to get out, like, I want her to do stuff,” mom sniffles, she is so putting this on to make dad feel guilty. “It’s so hard to watch your adult daughter just sit in a room and do nothing all day, Leon, she’s like a big fucking baby, why is she like that?”

“Babe,” he coos, and your knees buckle.

“Go talk to her.”

“What?”

“Go talk to her about it,” Mom repeats, voice shaking. “She doesn’t listen to me.”

They go back and forth for a few minutes, and then dad sighs and says fine. You make haste back to your hovel that doubles as a bedroom, crawl into bed and try to look natural.

Leon clears his throat before he knocks, when you don’t answer he pokes his head in. He says your name and you stir, sheets taut to your body as you peek up at him.

“You should open a window in here.”

When you don’t respond, he sits at the foot of your bed, looks around and nods. His gaze is scathing. Not purposefully. You just take it that way.

“Dinner’s ready,” he lies, then he leaves. His perfume lingers, and you touch the space he was sitting in, his warmth remains.

The day after that, you’re in the living room, tuckered out after mom forced you to help her with the groceries. You’re not cut out for this sort of life. The living sort of life. You were made to rot.

“Door wasn’t locked,” Leon says when he steps in, he puts his keys down, shucks his jacket off, tracks mud halfway down the hall and into the kitchen.

“Your shoes, Leon,” Mom groans, “she came in last.”

“Oh, sorry,” you say absentmindedly. If it doesn’t include tits or dicks or pussy it is none of your business. You have enough energy to keep up with one thing and that is your porn addiction. Groceries really took it out of you.

“You should be careful, rapists might come in, murderers or some shit.” Leon is speaking to your mother. Not you because he has seen your face and he knows very well that an ugly girl like you would survive out of sheer ugliness.

Mom snorts, “I think you’re the scariest thing that could walk through that door, honey.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, huh?”

You’d like to know what that means too. Well, you get the gist, ‘cause you’ve heard all those stories. Dad and his wandering hands.

“You know what that means.” The sound of lips smacking is enough to have you feeling sick, dizzy as you cling to the walls and make your escape. “Did she leave— Quit it, Leon— Hands off, can you go talk to her, please? Properly this time.”

He forgets to knock this time, or he can’t bother to knock. Dad sits in that same spot, he opens his mouth and closes it about five times.

“Mom’s worried about you,” Leon says robotically. “You good?”

“I’m great.” Your tone is unconvincing, but he clearly doesn’t care enough because you're his dirty little secret. Not in a sex way. You would do anything for it to be in the sex way. Dirty little secret as in the ugly kid he chooses to ignore purely because you’re ugly. Dad doesn’t like ugly girls, you know that. He doesn’t think they’re worth a second glance, even a first glance is too much. Dad is superficial and his love is plastic.

These are all things you’re making up in your head based on assumptions. This is how all attractive men think. Ugly girls aren’t worth rape, dirtying your dick in ugly pussy sounds like a hassle. If you were pretty, you wouldn’t fuck an ugly guy. Even as a self-proclaimed ugly girl, you still wouldn’t fuck an ugly guy ‘cause they’re gross, and it’s not like they want you. Ugly guys shoot high and aim for pretty girls. Duh.

So you get it. Honestly. Whatever. Dad doesn’t like you. That’s okay, you don’t like him as a dad anyway. You love him like an obsessive lover. A hallway crush that stars in your late-night rape fantasies. And you’re fine like this. You’re so fine.

“Can I… Can I actually have a hug, dad?” You muster up what is left in your hollow heart to ask him that. It’s a big deal.

Leon blinks at you, levels you with his blank stare. He’s so handsome you want to blow your brains out, it’s an easy feat because you’re always looking for reasons to blow your brains out. Every straw is your last and yet you’re still here.

“Sure, sweetheart.” Dad opens his arms, and you crawl towards him, head on his shoulder as his arms loop around your waist. Oh, god, you will your heart into giving out. Dying right here in dad’s arms is ideal.

He holds you so gently it’s brutal. He crushes you with the weight of his loveless love. Dad’s so good at pretending you almost think he cares.

“Can you… I want to stay like this.”

“Uh, sure, sweetheart,” Leon calls everyone sweetheart. Sweetheart is his default. Sweetheart ranges from Auntie Ashley to babysitters to lifeguards and retail workers who aren’t getting paid enough to deal with some old man making eyes at them. Not that anyone minds dad’s attention. It’s fucking unfair. Mom is babe, and your sister is baby, and your brother is buddy or sport or tiger or whatever shit he pulls out of his ass. And you’re sweetheart because you’re not important to him. His firstborn daughter is not important to him ‘cause she’s ugly. More of a specimen than a human.

You would do anything to keep him here.

“Dad?” You whisper into his neck.

“…Yeah?”

“I want you to…” Your lack of life flashes in front of your eyes. Bedroom. Bedroom. Porn. Bedroom. Porn. Porn. Dad. Not much. What have you got to lose? “I want to— I want to fuck you.”

Dad is silent. Then: “Oh.” He never makes the move to pull away, so you sit snugly in his grip for a few seconds longer.

“I— Dad, I touch myself thinkin’ about you.” Your stomach ties itself into a Gordian knot.

“Yeah, okay, why don’t we— Yeah, fuck, I see what she meant, okay. Wow, that’s a lot. Sweetheart, why… Listen.” Dad says a whole lot of nothing as he takes your hands off him.

“Please… I love you, dad. I really like you— I know it’s weird, dad, I do, seriously, I know, but please I just… I just like you.” There is no explanation for it. “Dad… Daddy.”

He full-on winces. It’s like you’re being flayed. Something inside of you just— Just shatters. Not your heart ‘cause it’s pumping more blood than it ever has. Fragments of your sanity splinter into even smaller segments until there is nothing left but nauseating levels of mental disturbance.

“If you don’t…”

“You seriously trying that right now?” Leon scoffs, and he’s so cocky you get hot under the collar.

(Between your thighs too, but that’s a different story.)

“Yeah, I’m serious— If you don’t… If you don’t do it- do it with me, I’ll tell mom you… I’ll tell her you raped me.” In actuality, you would never tell mom if daddy raped you. You would treasure it, keep it in a heart-shaped locket and think about it when you get off twelve times a day. Getting your pussy reamed by dad’s cock would fix you right up.

“Don’t— Are you okay?” Leon smacks your hand away, his tone is even.

“You do it too— I know you’ve done it, I know how you and mom met.”

His face drains, pallor yellowish. “That don’t… That’s different.”

“How is that any different?” Different ‘cause he’s hot and mom is hot. Leon passed it off as a drunken mistake and they end up getting together. It’s not rape if the perpetrator is a hottie. You agree, but still— It’s not fucking fair.

“‘Cause I didn’t do this.” Leon gestures abstractly.

You kiss him, hands braced on each of his tits, digging your fingers into the meat to feel him tense and harden like he’s wearing a chest plate. “You’re so hot dad,” you whine into his mouth, and Leon is quick to push you off, your wrists in his hands. Makeshift handcuffs.

“Listen, sweetheart,” Dad is using his dad voice. It’s like porn to you, only makes you wetter. “I don’t like hitting girls, but you’re givin’ me a damn good reason.”

“You can hit me, daddy.” You offer your face to him, stretching your neck forward, closing your eyes as you wait for the impact. It lands firm on your cheek, his fingertips catching the tip of your nose. Fuck that felt good. Shit. You think you’ve creamed your panties. “Again, dad, hit me again—“ He does. Harder than the last time. Your head knocks backwards, and your brain must have a dent in it.

Dad puts you over his lap and you’re so sure you’ve entered the pearly gates. Or the innermost circle of hell. Probably that ‘cause Jesus Christ are you steaming.

“I hate stupid little sluts that try it out on me,” Leon drags your sweats over the swell of your ass, “Do you have a dick?”

“What, dad— No!” You tell him, more mortified at his question than you are by your bare ass under his palm. Fuck— You’re so wet it’s disgusting, dripping down your thighs and surely staining his lap. Thick like treacle.

“No? Were you gonna rape dad with this stupid cunt?” Oh, you hope he spanks your pussy. Porn makes it look delicious. “You look like you might have a dick with that face of yours.” He traces the seam of your cunt through your panties. “Or is your pussy just fat?”

Good fucking lord.

“Dad…” You arch into him, only to have a hand come down on your left ass cheek. One. Two. Three. They all hurt bad as each other. Four. “Ouch!” That one hurt real bad. Five. You feel like a naughty child. This is not as hot as you thought it would be. More dull and embarrassing. Not even the good kind of embarrassing.

Leon puts you on your knees, the hand wrapped around your jaw forces your lips into a pout, and you think he is going to kiss you— God, you close your eyes and wait for it, lean into him, shit you’d pop your leg if you were standing up. He spits in your face and it trickles down the bridge of your nose.

“Got me dirty with that filthy pussy.” Dad speaks offhandedly, he speaks to you like you’re dog shit. Not dog shit stuck to the bottom of his shoe. Just dog shit on the side of the road. Like the sort that bothers you enough to complain about it, but it doesn’t ignite any real anger.

His hand remains tight on your jaw, then he drops it to fish his fat cock from his pants to slap the drippy head on your cheek. The sound ricochets off the walls. Hits you like a bullet. Holy fuck. Dad really just did that. You giggle, batting your lashes up at him as pretty as an ugly girl can, and he grimaces so it can’t be pretty.

“Christ, you nasty fuck,” Leon snickers at the look on your face, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Daddy,” you whimper, nosing the tip of his dick, he smells so good you want him in your mouth, “I jus’ love you lots.”

“God, I hate ugly little freaks like you.” He said that already, no need to rub it in. Another slap of his cock on your face. Your heart beats for him and him alone. “You know what I think?” Dad guides his cock into your warm mouth. “Shit, that’s good— I think your mom is a liar.”

His dick is all you’ve ever wanted. It’s heavy on your tongue, though the longer you suckle on the tip, the weightier it gets, and he’s wet. Dripping all over the place. You must get that gene from your dad.

“‘Cause I don’t think,” he grunts, palm resting on your forehead to push you off his shaft, “I don’t think I could make a kid this ugly.”

“No,” you say breathlessly, “No, you’re my dad, my daddy.” Crouched down below him, you lave over his balls, putting more effort into this than you have done with anything else in your life. Gargling dad’s balls is your best work. Nothing else you have to be proud of.

Your pussy is pulsing, shit has its own heartbeat, you drop your hand down to soothe your poor cunt, rubbing figure eights into the bulge of your clit over your panties. It’s not enough, you push them to the side, your fingers slip a couple times, not enough, only dad’s fingers are enough, only his cock will plug up your leaking hole.

“Get off me,” dad instructs, and you might be glued to him, but you detach yourself immediately. “C’mon, stand up.” You use his thighs as leverage, standing on shaky legs that threaten to give out at any second. He takes your shirt off. “Cute tits gone to waste,” dad sighs like it’s heartbreaking. “We could've done something about it, y’know? Could fix your face right up, just had to ask daddy.”

“Really, dad? I want to be pretty, daddy, I want to be pretty for you, you never call me pretty— Daddy, I want to be pretty, please.” You clasp his shirt, and he brings you into his lap once more, raising your legs to slide your panties down so you’re free bleeding on his lap. Free bleeding without the blood. Just good old pussy.

“Messin’ with you, sweetheart, can’t fix that dog face,” dad coos to you tenderly, and the plain-as-day insult flies right over you. Dad could get you to sell both your kidneys if he keeps talking to you like that. “Just gotta live with it.”

You have. You have lived with it. That’s what you do. Live with your ugly face. You could die, that’s an option, but you choose to wait it out. ‘Cause dying is pretty scary no matter how much you want it. And Leon’s dick is hard beneath your pussy so there are things to live for. The world isn’t all cruel.

“Up,” he taps your lower back, you raise your hips and he presses his cock to your stretched hole. Toy after toy after toy. All to ready yourself for dad. When you sink down on him, your body convulses. It’s the sweet release of death. Or an orgasm. Fuck. Dying on dad’s cock is— You haven’t died on his dick, he fucks you through your high, feet planted firmly on the ground as he thrusts upwards, dick angled just right.

Heroin is meant to be good. You’ve seen Trainspotting. Better than any cock— You don’t believe that for a minute. Unless he’s leaking smack straight into your pussy, numbing your walls. Could be that ‘cause god— You’re not really thinking, not that you think much, when you decide to shove your fingers into his mouth.

“Daddy, can you taste me?” You ask him, giving a languid grind of your hips down onto his cock, you regret it immediately ‘cause it’s so good your cunt squelches loudly. “Do you taste me, dad? Dad—“

“Yeah,” Dad says, muffled, “Shoving your fingers down my fuckin’ throat, you little psycho, ‘course I taste it.”

Shit. Shit. Shit. Daddy looks so pretty with his lips wrapped around your fingers, you fuck them in and out of his pink mouth, his tongue runs along the length of your fingers like he’s sucking a nice cock. Treating your fingers better than you did his dick.

Daddy’s splitting you in two. He fucks you without a care in the world. ‘Cause he doesn’t care about you. One-time-use pussy. You’re disposable like the gloves you get with box dye. Like a plastic spork. His cock is so deep he might as well tear open your middle and fuck your guts. Leon grabs your hips, forces you up and drops you down. The air in your lungs has no time to build up— You grasp at his shirt, bouncing in his lap like you’re a fleshlight, and you would be so happy with that title. Dad’s personal fleshlight. It makes you giddy.

Leon’s cock twitches inside of you, when he lifts you off of him, your pussy clings to the tip, holding on for dear life, insistent on milking daddy’s dick, taking every drop of his cum.

“Daddy…” Your head drops to his shoulder. “Please, daddy, am I pretty? Can you call me pretty?”

His hips stutter, and you don’t have to see his face to know he hesitates. It’s a struggle to call a girl like you pretty. “You’re so pretty, sweetheart.” Then he dumps his load so deep— So deep, you warm to the thought of having your daddy’s baby. You already fucked so why not go the extra mile?

Dad doesn’t kiss you, but he lays you down and tucks you in like he never has before. “Your mom’s worried.” He goes back to the topic at hand and you groan, covering your face with a pillow. “Hey, we can, uh…” Leon scratches his head. “We can y’know…” He shrugs, glances down at you. “Can do that if you try pulling your weight a little.”

The promise of your dad’s cock is enough to have you applying for every job in a thirty-mile radius. Dad’s cock is a fix for an ugly girl like you. You’ve got a pussy only your daddy could love, and you think you’re more than okay with that.

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

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minustwofingers · 1 year

Text

exoplanet p.3

pairing: ellie williams x fem! reader (ur a girly girl in this one!!) (she/her pronouns)

summary: you’ve won the life lottery as one of the few people on earth with parents who gained admittance to the most prestigous safezone in the world after the outbreak. but after a lab accident sends you out to jackson, wyoming, real life hits you fast. it’s a good thing that a hot lesbian finds u. (lol). mean ellie at first, slowburn, enemies to friends to lovers, fem reader asf

warnings: (PLEASE READ!) explicit language, violence, description of a medical procedure sans anesthesia, recreational drug use (idk how else to put it ellie gets absolutely zonked in the beginning), reader overthinks asf and is a little neurotic but that's why we love her x

a/n: hey guys! thank you so much for the wait! it's been genuinely insane how sweet and incredible all of you are. i've never felt so appreciated for my writing!! also, some notes: this chapter is heavily inspired by my last relationship. sorry if it's not as immersive bc of it! and also i don't have ANY medical knowledge so...cast a blind eye when u get to that scene

part 1

part 2

tags: @prettyplant0 @666findgod @sawaagyapong @rystarkov @buzzybuzzsposts @addisonnie @galacticstxrdust @parkersmyth @pinkazelma

wc: 6.6k

enjoy x

“One more time.”

You gave Ellie a withering look from where you were sitting at the end of her bed.

“Please,” she said, drawing out the s. “Just once more. I promise.”

“Fine.” You rolled your eyes—a habit of hers that you were quickly picking up—and took in a deep breath. “Fuck.”

Ellie lost it, peals of laughter bouncing off the walls. “Another one. Say something else.”

“I don’t understand why you think this is so funny,” you said.

“You say it so weird.”

“I enunciate,” you clarified. “I don’t ‘sound weird’. It’s called pronouncing every letter in the word and not having a lazy mouth.”

“Please,” she gasped. “At least say bitch. You haven’t said that one yet.”

You looked her dead in the eye. “Bitch.”

If you weren’t already certain that Ellie was high out of her mind by the smell of her room and the general haze in the air, the way she howled with laughter and fell back on her bed would’ve made you entirely positive.

This was new. You’d begun to hang out with her in her room after dinner—that was normal—but when she’d knocked on your door smelling heavily of weed once you’d said goodnight to Joel, you were nothing less than shocked. Of course, she had none left for you. Which was probably good, because only a sober mind could navigate a night sitting on Ellie’s bed without doing something really, really stupid.

“I can’t believe you call me weird,” you said, tucking your feet under her and giving her a pointed look.

“You’re so lucky you didn’t grow up where I did,” Ellie said, wiping a tear away from her cheek as she tried (unsuccessfully) to rein in her giggles. “You would’ve been eaten alive, good lord.”

“What were you like as a kid?” you asked, resting your chin on your knees.

She considered for a moment, growing more somber. “Um…I don’t know if you would’ve liked me very much.”

“What do you mean? Of course I would’ve liked you.”

“No,” she said, swiping at her face so she pushed a strand of hair away. “I don’t think you would have.”

“Why not?”

“I was…” She paused, picking at her cuticles. “Back then I didn’t have anyone. I was an orphan, you know. My parents were never in the picture, so I was the only one I could count on. I was really rough around the edges and could be nasty. But I probably would’ve ignored you like I did everyone else. “

“Everyone? You didn’t have anyone? No friends at all?”

Ellie blinked, and her gaze remained fixed on her hands. “Basically, yeah. I mean, there was one girl, but that’s…I don’t want to talk about that right now, actually.”

“That’s okay,” you said, reaching forward to touch her knee. She flinched at the contact but didn’t brush you away. The image of a young, scared Ellie living somewhere alone made your chest ache. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“What were you like?” she asked, tilting her head and meeting your eyes.

“Hmmm…” Mirth crept into your tone. “What do you think?”

“What do I think?” Ellie echoed, her eyes cloudy as she thought. Then a small smirk formed on her face. “Oh god, were you one of those spoiled brats? Were you a mean girl?”

“God, no,” you said, raising your eyebrows. “Not mean.”

“Then what?”

You paused. “I was really shy, I guess. And quiet, too. I didn’t do much but read for a good 10 years of my life. I used to have awful pronunciation because I would spend more time reading than talking to anyone. But I think I would’ve liked you.”

Ellie shook her head.

“Yes,” you said. “Maybe I would’ve been a little scared of you. I probably would’ve never had the courage to talk to you. But I would’ve liked you, I think.”

“Scared of me?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? I was a kid.”

“I was mostly going off of how I felt when I actually first met you,” you said, shrugging.

She gasped theatrically. “You’re scared of me?”

“No!” you said, smacking her knee. “That’s not what I mean. You’re just really intimidating.”

“Intimidating?” She looked at you incredulously.

“You’re so tough,” you explained, feeling heat grow in your cheeks. “You seem just—I don’t know, just so capable. There’s nothing you’re too afraid to face, nothing you’re too afraid to say.”

“That’s not true,” she said lightly.

“Well, of course I’m sure there are things that you’re afraid of,” you amended. “But you hide it so well. You just seem so…fearless.”

“Hm,” Ellie said, letting her head rest against the headboard. “I think you would’ve made me a nervous wreck. If we’d met when we were kids, I mean.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I’ve never met anyone quite like you before. You’re just so untouched.” She winced. “God, no. That sounds gross. I just mean…I dunno. I wouldn’t have known how to act around you. You haven’t had to harden up like everyone else I know.”

“Are you saying I should develop trust issues or something?” you asked, your voice a teasing lilt.

“You know,” she said, nodding seriously, “That is part of it. It was really off-putting how quickly you trusted me. But I guess that’s just a product of where you grew up.”

“Yeah,” you said softly. “I wonder how I would’ve turned out if I’d grown up like you.”

“Can I be honest?” Ellie asked.

“Sure.”

“I don’t think you’d still be here if you were me,” she said, her eyes crinkling. “No offense. You just have zero survival skills. I swear that shit has to be genetic. I’ve never met someone more averse to violence in my life.”

You sighed, pressed your hands deep into Ellie’s comforter as a thought hit you. “I think if you’d been born in my position, you would’ve been greater than anything either of us could ever dream of. Much greater than me.”

“Definitely not,” said Ellie. “There’s no fucking way I’m studying the way you apparently do. I honestly think I’d take being an orphan over the study schedule I saw in your bag.”

She was of course referencing the time table you’d roughly sketched up the morning before you’d ended up in Jackson. It was blocked to the minute, citing the study content and the location of said study session. She’d been beyond horrified to see it.

You laughed, nudging her socked food with yours.

“Is there music? In Terranova?”

“Oh,” you said, startled at the abrupt change of subject. “Uh, yeah. Of course. I listened to it all the time.”

“I used to have a Walkman,” she said, leaning back as she reminisced. She was lying flat on her back now. “It ended up breaking a while ago, but it was like my child.”

“Have you ever seen a movie before?” you asked, sitting up rigid straight as the thought occurred to you.

“Duh,” she said, giving you a weird look. “Do you think I live under a rock?”

“How many?”

“Hm.” Ellie began counting, ending on her second hand. “I think 6?”

“You’ve seen a total of 6 movies in your life?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to see more?”

She shrugged. “I mean, I guess. It’s just tough to find CDs that are still functional after so long.”

“Hold that thought,” you said, holding a finger in her direction as you stood up.

“Hey!” she called as you bolted out the door. “Where are you going?”

You came bounding back to her room in a matter of seconds, your laptop in your hands.

“What the fuck?” she said. “Isn’t that your homework thing?”

“Yes,” you said, feeling around for an outlet, “But I also have a ridiculous amount of movies downloaded on this. Our dorm wi-fi is shit and I have way too much storage on this thing, so I just download, like, every movie I’ve ever wanted to watch.”

“Your dorm what?”

You waved your hand. The last thing you wanted to do was explain to her how the 802.11 standard allowed wireless connections a few years after the outbreak. “Not important. Here, come look at this.”

Your laptop roared to light with the help of your charging cord. Quickly, you typed your password in and opened your downloads. Ellie hovered over your shoulder, squinting at the screen with confusion.

“Here,” you said, opening up the album that had everything you had seen for your entire university career and passing the laptop to Ellie. “Use the touchpad—there, yeah—to navigate. Press to click. These are all movie files that I’ve seen. We can watch them on my laptop. Some of them were filmed in Terranova, too, so they’re post-apocalypse.”

She perused the selection you had for quite some time, the glow of the screen lighting up her face against the dim room. “Okay. This one.”

And thus began a tradition. Each night after you’d finished showering and Joel retired to his room, Ellie would come knock on your door and ask if you wanted to come over. You’d talk for a while, then open your laptop and pick something out to watch. Ellie was never high after the first time, which was unsurprising considering that there definitely wasn’t a way to get any in Jackson. Where she found any the first time was still a mystery to you.

A week or so after your first patrol with Ellie, Joel had taken it upon himself to teach you how to shoot. You were surprisingly not as bad as you’d expected, but the rebound was tough to get used to, and you were still hung up over the whole “killing living things” part.

Your first patrol—first real one—came quickly, and before you knew it, Ellie was handing you the same gun you’d dropped the first time with a suspicious look.

“Don’t kill one of us with that thing,” she warned. “Be smart, okay?”

“Sure thing, boss,” you said to her, mock saluting as best you could while you were leading Japan to the mounting block.

She rolled her eyes. “Please act normal or I’ll make you carry around that glorified pocket knife instead again.”

The patrol began as usual, Ellie leading you down the same path you went last time. It was a beautiful day out, with the early spring sun filtering through the evergreen trees that populated the woods and birdsong filling the air.

Though conversations with Ellie were getting easier (given that it actually seemed like she wanted to talk to you now), you were still starstruck. Nothing that you did and nothing that you thought could get you to stop seeing her the way you did. You were routinely distracted by everything about her. It was a wonder that you could even function as a normal person around her, much less handle a weapon and a horse.

You two had nearly made the full rotation when your surroundings exploded in action.

“Fuck,” Ellie hissed as someone behind you two fired a shot that narrowly missed Shimmer.

You whipped around, gun in hand, to see two men—two normal men who weren’t infected. One held a bow, the other a gun.

The one who had fired the first shot never even stood a chance. He was down on the ground seconds after you’d seen him, Ellie’s aim taking him out before you could even ready your gun.

The second man notched an arrow and managed to draw it back and release into the air right as Ellie’s bullet struck him, sending him falling back.

“I don’t think there’s any more,” said Ellie, slightly breathless as she scanned the forest. “Sometimes outsiders pull this shit—try to kill us for our supplies. I’ve never seen them this close to the wall, though. I’ll have to tell Maria and Tommy.”

Normally, you would’ve felt up to making some sort of sarcastic comment about how that was a really unconcerning thing for her to tell you and that you actually felt so much more comfortable going on patrol knowing that there were also just run-of-the-mill people trying to kill you, but a twinge in your lower body distracted you.

Slowly, nervously, you looked down. Air immediately left your lungs.

“At least we’re done,” Ellie was saying, wiping her hands off on her thighs and slinging the gun over her shoulder. “What a crazy end for your first actual patrol, huh?”

When you didn’t answer, she turned to you and saw the arrow sticking out of your side,

“Shit,” said Ellie, jumping off Shimmer and reaching you in seconds. “Shit, shit, shit. Oh god.”

“Am I going to die?” you asked, staring starstruck at the blood escaping the outline of the arrowhead. You couldn’t feel anything anymore. Were you in shock?

“No,” said Ellie firmly. “Absolutely not. Do you need help getting off?”

Before you could answer, she was already helping you down, carefully avoiding the protruding arrow.

“Listen,” she said, back to being her unwavering self, “We’re right by the wall. I’m going to help you walk in, and then I’ll grab some supplies, okay? Don’t try to pull the arrow out. You hear me? Don’t.”

Swallowing hard, you nodded. She helped you walk the few steps to be carefully concealed by the wall, then grabbed the two horses and darted past you, making a break for Maria and Tommy’s cabin.

In a haze of confusion, you could see Maria running out, holding a box out to Ellie in exchange for the reins of the horses. Ellie said something that made Maria point towards you. She nodded, then ran back to you.

By the time that she’d reached you, the shock had begun to wear off, replaced by the stinging pain from the object that had impaled you. It was worse than anything you’d ever felt before in your life, and it took all you had not to keel over.

“Hey,” she said, reaching out to grab your face so you had to look at her. “Don’t be afraid. I’ve done this before, okay? I’m, like, the master. It’s going to be alright.”

“Done what before?” you managed to grind out.

Ellie let go of your face to dig through the box Maria had given her, producing a needle, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and what looked like a spool of thin thread.

Horror slowly trickled through you as you realized what was about to happen.

“It doesn’t look all that deep,” Ellie was saying as she examined the arrow. “So I don’t think it’s hit anything. It’s just going to be a nasty hole. I’m going to pull it out now, okay?”

You let out a strangled scream as she grasped the arrow’s end and yanked it out without warning.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Ellie repeated. She threw the arrow over her shoulder and knelt so she was hovering over you. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” you gasped. You were most certainly not. You couldn’t quite get your eyes to focus, and your heart was beating out of your chest.

“Alright,” she said firmly, grasping your shoulders and pulling you up so you were slumped against the wall. “Sit up straight, alright? Also, this is going to hurt.”

At first there were just snipping sounds as she cut part of your shirt away—then something cool and wet pressed to your wound. You cried out again as a fresh white hot pain bloomed in your middle.

“I know, I know.” Ellie’s voice was consoling as she reached up to brush away the sweaty strands of hair stuck to your forehead. “Just a few more seconds.”

“Fuck—off—” you gritted out from your teeth.

Ellie’s eyebrows shot up. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Just this once.”

She released the alcohol-saturated cotton pad, throwing it aside and fussing with the thread and needle until she was satisfied.

By the time her fingers were ghosting over your abdomen again, you couldn’t pull your eyes away from the puncture wound and the needle she was wielding.

“Don’t look,” said Ellie. “Pick something else. You don’t need to watch.”

“I hate needles,” you whispered, choosing the air over her shoulder to be your focal point.

There was a prodding at the top of your wound, and you hissed.

“I can’t say I’m a fan myself.”

Something pierced through your skin, and your midriff exploded in pain.

The edges of your sight went fuzzy, stars forming in the corners of your vision. Someone that sounded suspiciously like you cried out. Your cheek rammed up against something solid and warm.

Once the initial sting had faded, you realized that you’d slumped into Ellie, your face buried into her neck. She didn’t make any move to push you off, instead just taking one hand to brush up and down your arm with a feather light touch.

“You're fine," she said firmly. "Everything's going to be fine."

Your fingers curled around the hem of her shirt as the needle exited through the other end of your wound, pulling another whine from your throat. It was easier to not feel like you were about to pass out when you were crushed into Ellie, clinging onto her and just focusing on the way she felt against you.

“Hang on, I'm almost there,” she muttered a few stitches later. You’d quieted down, only letting out the occasional gasp as she pulled the thread through. “You're doing so well. Just one more.”

Now that you were more conscious, you had no idea how she was managing to stitch your side while you were nearly on her lap, but she continued to weave her needle through your skin, pulling it taut.

“And done,” said Ellie. You felt her take another cotton square to swipe against your skin.

You laid against her for a few more moments, panting as the shock slowly began to fade. She shifted, and for a moment you were sure that she was going to shove you away, but then the hand she’d lifted hesitantly rested on your head, her fingers parting to card through your hair.

“How did you learn how to do that?” you asked, your voice muffled from where you were pressed against her.

“Trial and error.”

Her joke was enough for you to finally let go, sitting back against the wall. Her hand slithered out of your hair, resting back in her lap.

“Shut up,” you said. “That’s awful.”

Ellie shrugged.

“I’m sorry,” you said, feeling the bumpiness of the stony wall press into your back. “I have a really low pain tolerance.”

“So I’ve noticed,” said Ellie, the side of her mouth quirking.

“I’ve never been hurt before,” you heard yourself saying. “Like, beyond the occasional splinter or bee sting or accidental scrape or ankle sprain. It’s just not something that happens.”

“Must be nice.”

You smiled sadly. “Yeah. It’s not nice being weak, though.”

Ellie looked away from you then, silent as she packed up the first-aid kit. Then: “I don’t think that’s true.”

She’d said it lightly, like it was meant to be an offhand comment, a throwaway addition that wouldn’t be remembered by either of you. But the sentiment still struck you, twisting your heart.

You were less capable because your survival had never required anything more. You were weak because you could be.

Her voice from the night she’d been high floated back to you. You haven't had to harden up like everyone else I know.

Out here, weakness was a luxury few could afford.

“Not so untouched anymore, huh?” you said, since you didn’t know how else to respond.

“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,” quipped Ellie. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. I still consider needing to be held to get 4 stitches as being soft. You haven’t changed a bit. No offense.”

Your cheeks burned bright red. “I—”

“I’m teasing,” she said before you could defend yourself. “Arrow wounds suck. I get it.”

“Right.” You turned away, keeping your gaze fixed firmly on the ground beside you. With feeling more yourself came the inevitable shame at what you’d just done. What had you been thinking, touching her like that? Grabbing onto her like that?

This was going to haunt you for the rest of your life.

“Don’t make that face,” said Ellie. “I’m sorry for saying that. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. It really is fine.”

It was not fine. It would never be fine. You wanted the thugs to come back to life and finish you off, and then have the earth open up and swallow you for good measure.

Ellie probably thought of you as an overgrown child. You doubted that there was ever a point where she could see you as anything equal. If she ever knew how often she appeared in your imagination, she’d probably be disgusted.

She called you pretty a contrarian voice in your head reminded you. Don't you remember?

But maybe she hadn’t meant it. She hadn’t said it explicitly: “Y/N, I think you’re pretty.” She just hadn’t argued when you’d pointed it out. Maybe because she was being nice, or maybe because she was actually being sarcastic.

“You were really brave, okay?” said Ellie. “Your first armed confrontation and you did well.”

“I didn’t shoot anyone.”

“It could have gone worse,” said Ellie. “You could’ve accidentally shot me. Or died. And neither of those things happened, so that’s successful in my book.”

“That’s very glass half-full of you.”

“That’s me. Ever the optimist.”

You snorted.

That night, Ellie knocked on your door and asked you if you were up for another movie. You found yourself sitting on her comforter, plugging in your computer and booting it up minutes later.

Physically speaking, it had always been a little awkward to fit two people on her twin bed if they weren’t right next to each other, given that your laptop screen was a very unimpressive size. When you’d first started watching with her, Ellie would rest against the headboard, her legs stretched out in front of you while you would sit with your legs crossed, positioned sideways so you weren’t accidentally pushing her legs off.

But after the day you had had, your back was sore and your whole body ached. Sitting on something soft without any back support as you angled yourself to look at the screen was quickly proving unsustainable.

“Pause,” said Ellie about ten minutes in. You’d been watching an older sci-fi flick—Ellie’s choice.

You complied, leaning forward and pressing the spacebar. “What’s up?”

“Are you even comfortable sitting like that?”

“Yeah,” you said.

“Liar,” accused Ellie, crossing her arms over her chest. “Don’t think I don’t see you ‘discreetly’ cracking your back every 2 minutes. It’s ruining the movie.”

“Sorry,” you said, shaking your head and smiling in exasperation. “It’s from all the years I spent hunched over a textbook.”

“You know, you can sit up here,” she said, patting the space beside her. “I don’t bite.”

“Jury’s still out on that,” you said, though by the time Ellie let out a laugh you were already unfolding your legs and moving so you were next to her.

She leaned forward, grabbing the bottom half of the laptop and lifting it. “Hey, do you want a blanket?”

“Sure.”

Ellie’s other hand grabbed the edge of her comforter and held it up.

Hesitantly, you slid your legs under and watched as Ellie did the same, awkwardly holding the laptop in the air before you were both settled enough to rest it on your covered right thigh and her left. “Better?”

When you nodded, she reached her tattooed arm out and pressed play. The audio picked back up, but you couldn’t for the life of you focus on the movie.

When Ellie had asked if you’d wanted a blanket, you were expecting her to toss the throw blanket that would really only fit one person at you, not invite you to get under the blankets with her. That was significantly more intimate.

You two were sitting close enough that your sides were touching, from shoulder to thigh. You could feel her chest lift with each breath, feel the heat coming off of her.

After a while, Ellie properly laid down, taking the laptop and hoisting it up so it rested on her lower abdomen as she settled into her pillow.

You gulped, your eyes flickering between her face and the screen. Ellie’s gaze was fixed intently on the screen, her eyes half lidded with exhaustion.

You could be tired too. You weren’t, of course—your heart was racing a thousand miles an hour. But she didn’t know that. It was normal to lay down next to her, right? You’d done that with Irena more times than you could count, and it was never weird. Yeah, you could do that.

Also, if you were totally horizontal, you would stop getting distracted by the sliver of her skin that her crooked shirt showed of her chest.

In a moment of blind courage, you scooted down so your head was lying right next to Ellie’s. She didn’t seem to react, just extending her hand from under the covers to steady the laptop as it wobbled from the movement.

Her sheets smelled like the soap that you used to wash your hair—a cottony freshness that had the slightest hint of lavender.

“Are you going to fall asleep on me?” asked Ellie after a while, her voice nothing more than a whisper.

“I could ask you the same thing,” you responded, equally quiet. Then, because you hadn’t made enough rash decisions for the night, you angled your head so it rested in the space right above her shoulder.

She inhaled sharply but didn’t move. On her next exhale a piece of her auburn hair tickled your forehead.

“How’re your stitches?” she asked suddenly, like she'd just remembered.

“They’re okay. I think. As stitches go.”

“After this is over, I’ll check on them,” she said. “Don’t let me forget, okay?”

“Okay,” you whispered, suddenly feeling shy. It was one thing for her to cut off your shirt and see your skin when she was trying to save your life while you were mentally gone. It was another thing altogether to pull up your shirt without adrenaline coursing through you.

You didn’t pay any attention to the rest of the movie, instead hyperfocused on the rhythm of Ellie’s breathing and the fact that if you moved just a little your chin would be on her shoulder.

Her mention of the stitches wasn’t helping at all, either. Now all you could think about was the embarrassing way you’d basically tried to crawl under her skin, burying your face into her and clutching at her clothes like you were a child.

A part of you was disappointed that you hadn’t been more lucid at the time. If you had, you would’ve been able to clearly remember the softness of her skin against yours. You would’ve been able to enjoy it for what it was—the only time you’d be able to touch her like that.

Because you couldn’t go around just grabbing onto her shirt and getting into her lap. That was a one-off, the only time that the rules were waived. You couldn’t touch her like that now, now that you didn’t have any excuse. It wasn’t allowed.

But sometimes you wanted to so badly that it hurt.

The movie ended abruptly, wrenching you out of your thoughts.

“Hey,” whispered Ellie. “Sit up so I can see.”

Reluctantly, you pressed yourself up from your back and began rolling up the hem of your shirt. Ellie twisted to face backwards, her thin top riding up and showing part of her back as she reached for the lamp.

Once golden light returned to the room, Ellie turned back and bumped your hands away. She bent over, tilting her head so that she was looking at the stitches straight on.

They didn’t look bad, you had to admit. Though you wouldn’t consider the actual experience of getting the stitches a 5-star experience, Ellie had clearly known what she was doing. The surrounding flesh didn’t look angry or irritated, and she’d pulled the stitches just tight enough without it puckering.

She prodded at the side, then gave a satisfied nod. “Looks good. What did I tell you? I’m really good at this sort of stuff.”

“I think you would’ve made a really good doctor,” you said once she’d sat up straight again. “Under different circumstances.”

“Is this you telling me that you don’t think I’m a good doctor now?” she teased.

“Your bedside manner could use some work,” you offered.

Ellie laughed then, shaking her head and crossing her arms over her chest. “Yeah, yeah. You lived. You'll get over it.”

“Did you go to school?” you found yourself asking, hung up on the thought of Ellie as a potential medical student. If she’d been in one of your intro biology classes, you never would’ve been able to pay attention. That was a fantasy you could shelve away for later.

“Sort of,” said Ellie, looking down at her arms. “I went to a military prep school run by FEDRA. I didn’t graduate though—obviously. I was long gone by then.”

“Right,” you said, remembering that she’d mentioned that she’d been 14 when she’d left Boston. “And what was it like?”

She paused, opening her mouth before closing it. “It was—unkind. Joel's told me about schools before the outbreak. It was nothing like that. There were some normal classes, but most of it was meant to prepare us to be soldiers.”

“Is that where you learned how to do sutures?”

“Among other things.”

Terranova had no military academies, given that there was hardly any military presence. The founder of Terranova had bodyguards and there was a police force that controlled the borders, but it was nothing like Ellie described. With invisible borders and a social order that valued peace and tranquility over all else, there was no real danger posed to any of the citizens.

But from what you had learned from movies and books and comments from older people, you had gathered a very dim picture of what a military academy looked like—harsh, strict, and cruel.

“I’m sorry you had to grow up like that,” you said.

“It’s okay.”

“Is there anything you would want to study? If you could?”

Ellie’s eyes closed. “Yeah. There are a couple things.”

She did not elaborate.

It didn’t take long for you two to settle back into your routine of meeting in her room each evening and watching one of your downloaded movies. Following the night after you’d gotten your stitches, you wouldn’t even have to ask—Ellie would pull up her comforter and let you slide in next to her without giving you a second glance.

You’d also gotten over the fear of touching her. Now, when you flopped back so your head was on her pillow, you’d adjust until you were nestled into the crook of her neck. She never once reacted to it, remaining perfectly still unless she was adjusting the laptop or messing with the sound.

Because it was normal, of course. You and Irena would rest your head on each other’s shoulders sometimes. That was something that friends did.

One night a week or so into April, you and Ellie made a harrowing discovery: there was only one movie left in your collection that you two hadn’t seen together.

“Damn,” said Ellie, furrowing her brow. “And there’s no way to get more on here?”

“I’m afraid not,” you said, frowning. “To download more or stream one, I’d need either an Ethernet cable or a wi-fi connection. Neither of which function out here anymore without cell towers and maintained cables.”

“Right,” said Ellie, though her face told you that she didn’t understand a word that had come out of your mouth. “So—this is it?”

“Yeah.” Your finger hovered over the play button. “Savor it, I guess.”

When you settled back and into her side, the heavy weight of dread settled into your stomach. Now that you’d finished showing her your entire collection, it’s not like she’d have a reason to invite you over every night. And there was especially no reason for you two to lie so closely together unless you were both trying to watch something on a small screen.

Once again, your excuse to touch her was gone.

You pressed closer to her as your mind raced. There was no way that Ellie didn’t see what you were doing as platonic, right? Was it possible that she was creeped out by how touchy you were but just tolerated it to be nice?

Maybe. You swallowed hard, keeping your eyes fixed on the screen. Ellie didn’t see you like…like that. She spoke to you like you were an obligation, a burden. Because you always had been. You’d been a responsibility thrust on her by a father figure who felt like he was indebted to you from that stupid bag of coffee you were lucky enough to bring.

Oh, god. Had Joel told her to befriend you? Had he asked for Ellie to pretend like she enjoyed spending time with you and to put up with your privileged, soft-hearted nonsense?

The knowledge that you were spiraling wasn’t enough to stop you. You did the best that you could—tried to remind yourself that it’d been a while since she’d looked disgusted with you, recall that she was outspoken enough to tell you to fuck off if you did something she didn’t like—but it was to no avail.

Ellie reached forward and hit pause on the movie, thrusting you both into silence.

“Is everything okay?” she asked after a moment.

“Yeah, why?”

“I can feel your heart going, like, crazy fast.”

You froze. “Oh. Uh, yeah. I was just thinking.”

Ellie pushed the laptop off of her, sitting up to give you an odd look. “About a near death experience or something? You running a marathon up there? That shit’s not normal.”

You laughed nervously. “It’s really nothing. Just an, uh, suspenseful movie.”

Which was actually really stupid of you to say, because you were watching some obscure Tarkovsky film that did nothing but pan over burning buildings and pensive men. For the past 5 minutes, there had been nothing on screen but the back of a car driving through traffic with minimal sound. Also, it was in Russian, and the English subtitles made zero sense.

There was a reason why this was the last movie you chose.

“This is the most boring fucking movie I’ve ever watched in my life, so you’re a dirty fucking liar,” said Ellie. Then her face pinched in worry. “Wait. Have you taken a look at your stitches lately?”

Before you could answer, she was grabbing a flashlight off her nightstand and yanking the comforter off you. She was pulling your shirt up when you finally found your voice.

“Wait!” you said, grabbing the bottom of your shirt and yanking it back in place. “It’s not—I don’t have an infection, okay? There’s nothing wrong with me. I really was just thinking, okay?”

“About what?” She reached back to place her flashlight back on the stand without taking her eyes off you.

“It’s nothing important.”

“If you say so.”

She picked the laptop up and placed it back on her thighs, lying back down. You followed suit, but this time you didn’t touch her, opting to keep as much distance as you could so she wouldn’t hear the stuttering of your heart.

Not even 5 minutes had passed before Ellie sat up to pause the video again.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No. Why?”

“You’re acting weird,” she accused, but there wasn’t much conviction behind her voice.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you’re acting weird,” she repeated, shutting your laptop off and moving it to the bottom of her bed, despite the protests that left your lips.

“I don’t understand,” you said. “I’m just watching the movie. I’m not doing anything. “

“You’re not watching the movie,” she said. “You weren’t even looking at the screen. What’s got you so bothered? Did I do something?”

“Of course not.” You pulled your legs under you so your legs were crossed and your back was against the wall. “You don’t need to worry. It’s honestly fine. I’m sorry if I’ve done something to imply otherwise.”

Ellie rubbed the bridge of her nose, sighing. “You stress me out. You can just tell me, you know? No need to be so cagey. I promise I’ve heard worse.”

“Don’t be so quick to say that.”

“Okay, now you have to tell me,” she said. “I’m never going to know peace again with a hook like that.”

You were about to open your mouth to tell her that it was stupid and that it didn’t matter, but something stopped you.

That was the coward’s way out. That’s what you’d always done—hid your feelings and concealed your emotions. That’s how you’d been raised. That’s how you thought everyone was. But now that you’d spent 2 months in Jackson, you’d realized that some people actually just said what they thought. And that, in the grand scheme of things, it was a better system than the Terranovian culture of superficiality.

Just because the you 2 months ago would have shook her head and changed the subject didn’t mean the you now had to.

Maybe this you could be different. Maybe, for once, this you could be brave.

“I really—” You stopped yourself. Saying I really like you didn’t even begin to encompass what you felt for the girl sitting across from you. To distill the sheer magnitude of your feelings down to four words felt criminal. The swell in your chest that never went away whenever you were near her could never and would never be adequately represented in the puny offerings of the Latin alphabet and the English language, and if you were going to do this, you were going to do it right.

You dared to look up at her for a moment. She was completely still, her green eyes reflecting the dim moonlight from outside. Once you met her gaze, you couldn’t bring yourself to pull it away.

“I’m really sorry that I’m putting you in an uncomfortable position for saying this,” you began (because old habits ran deep, and you would rather die than be impolite), “And I totally understand if you don’t want to talk to me after this. And I’m sorry for not telling you earlier.”

“As much as I’m sure that this is some sort of cultural cornerstone for you, please spare me the 6 foot long disclaimer script,” Ellie drawled.

“Right.” You gulped. “Anyway. As I was saying.”

“Any day now.”

At that moment, she had never looked more perfect. Your eyes had adjusted to the dark lighting, so the weak moonlight that spilled in from the window above her created a halo around her head.

“It’s you.” Your voice came out tiny. “You’re all that I can think about, and I don’t know what to do.”

There. It was off your chest.

For a moment, it was as if you’d suspended time, stopping Earth on its axis as you both held your breaths. There was nothing but silence and the occasional wooden creak of the old house’s foundation in the wind.

Ellie’s face betrayed nothing, save for something in her eyes and the disappearance of the smirk that had been on her lips moments before.

Then she spoke, her response whispered.

“Come here, then.”

final a/n: NOW HOLD ON before you show up outside my dorm with pitchforks and torches 🗣️🗣️🗣️ i'm so sorry but this was a necessary evil as this was going to a massive scene without the chapter break. also a disproportionately massive chapter compared to the other ones coming out. i write very quickly and should get the following part out in a timeframe similar to the first 3 parts. thank u for reading ! tell me what you think abt this chapter while you wait x

#ellie williams x reader #ellie williams x you #ellie williams x y/n #ellie williams self insert #ellie williams x oc #ellie williams fluff #ellie williams imagine

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astonmartinii · 1 year

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pen pals | max verstappen instagram au

pairing: max verstappen x reader

after years of being pen pals, y/n finally gets to meet max.

yourusername

liked by maxverstappen1, yourbffname and 1,023 others

yourusername pasta fridays have my heart

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maxverstappen1 unbelievably jealous rn

yourusername you're literally in italy spare me

yourbffname looking beautiful as always i wonder who took these lovely photos ???

yourusername you're a wonderful photographer bestie

maxverstappen1

liked by yourusername, danielricciardo and 620,541 others

tagged: redbullracing

maxverstappen1 big win in canada this weekend after a massive effort from the team - the best way to finish off the first half of the season, now we relax!

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redbullracing have a good break max, don't miss us too much

yourusername congrats maxy!! always so proud of you xx

maxverstappen1 thank you care bear, my letter is on the way, see you soon xx

veryverstappen so are we all gonna ignore this ^^^

dutchlion33 she's been in his comments since like 2016, i think she's just a dedicated fan that he talks to sometimes

babymaxy idk they seem much closer than just a fan, but that's just me

yourusername added to their story

[caption: cool people still write to their pen pals]

f1wagsupdates

liked by violetverstappen, redbullgirl1 and 523 others

tagged: yourusername

f1wagsupdates this is y/n y/ln and she's the girl we've all been seeing in max verstappen's comments since at least 2016. from what we know they've never met but they always allude to sending letters to each other. her instagram suggests that she's at least 22, having finished university recently. do we think they actually know each other, or could potentially be together?

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redbullmaxy am i the only one who finds this kinda weird?? the letters??

babymax idk i find it cute if it's true

parcfermemax it's straight out of a fanfiction i love it

yourusername added to their story

[caption: quick lil trip]

maxverstappen1

📍japan

liked by yourusername, victoriaverstappen and 579,043 others

tagged: redbullracing

maxverstappen1 that's pole!!! thank you japan, we'll try to convert this into a win tomorrow

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danielricciardo pure dominance maxy

martingarrix crazy pace dude

yourusername you are a wonder to me maxy

maxverstappen1 save the poetry for letters care bear

yourusername i'm sorry, getting creative while waiting for your letter from singapore

verstappenmax wait so they weren't lying when they said it was a pen pal

yourusername

📍tokyo, japan

liked by yourbffname, maxverstappen1 and 1,101 others

yourusername travelling is kinda fun actually

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yourbffname take me with you next time please

yourusername i shall, i nearly went crazy having no one to talk to the whole flight

maxverstappen1 you're in japan???? care bear what ???

yourusername all will make sense soon maxy

yourusername added to their story

[caption: woah so these cars go really fast]

redbullracing

liked by yourusername, danielricciardo and 701,665 others

tagged: yourusername

redbullracing we've got a surprise guest for max this weekend - his life long pen pal y/n! these two have been sending each other letters since they were kids but had never met, until now!

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goatverstappen okay y'all convinced me - it's cute

dutchking1 yeah i really hope they're together, she seems genuine for him

danielricciardo is this what the kids call rizz

landonorris pen pal rizz, you heard it here first

yourusername thanks for having me :)

maxverstappen1 WHAT IS GOING ON ????????

maxverstappen1

liked by yourusername, redbullracing and 1,0233,781 others

tagged: yourusername, redbullracing

maxverstappen1 number two babyyyyyyyyyyy. Incredibly thankful for the entire team and everyone who has supported me along the way. and to address the elephant in the room, i met my pen pal y/n for the first time today, and her being there made the victory that much sweeter.

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danielricciardo congrats big man, crazy crazy good driving this season. when do we get to meet the special woman?

maxverstappen1 i fear i've booked her up for at least the next week

redbullracing glad we could unite the two of you

yourusername ahhhhhhh maxy you were so so good!!! meeting you was insane, now we've met i don't know how we ever went without each other before. here's to more wins and more adventures xx

maxverstappen1 you're not getting rid of me now care bear, stuck with me for life xx

yourusername

liked by maxverstappen1, landonorris and 3,074 others

tagged: maxverstappen1

yourusername post world championship celebrations, i can never drink champagne ever again. anyhow, CONGRATS MAXY. words cannot describe how proud i am of you, seeing you grow from an anxious boy in karts to a two-time world champion has been a real pleasure xx

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maxverstappen1 writing our letters kept me sane for so long... your support has been so important to me, thank you for being there when i crossed the line xx

maxverstappen1

liked by yourusername, pierregasly and 927, 089 others

tagged: yourusername

maxverstappen1 people may laugh at pen pals, but mine is not only the love of my life but she also saved my life. travelling so much at a young age made me lonely and writing to you gave me someone to turn to. racing has been my life for so many years and now it's not something i can only share with you in letters. love you care bear xx

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yourusername you've always had a way with words maxy, i've always loved you and always will xx

landonorris the pen pal rizz is actually insane

danielricciardo put some respect on max's name

maxyverstap okay i'm obsessed with this relationship

f1fan33 the letter has killed me, when is it my turn?

yourusername

liked by maxverstappen1, yourbffname and 6,721 others

tagged: maxverstappen1

yourusername i've meant every word i've said to you in my letters, you were always more than a pen pal to me. when life felt lonely you were always there, no matter what stamp the country was from. you deserve all the success in the world and i'm glad i can now be by your side for your future successes xx

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maxverstappen1 i love you care bear xx

yourbffname does this mean you can now introduce me to the other drivers, i'm lonely

yourusername you'll have to ask max, he knows them not me

maxverstappen1 go for it, but just not lando

landonorris way harsh bro

a/n: i kinda love this one lmao - do feel free to send in any requests!!

#f1 instagram au #f1 #f1 imagine #f1 x you #f1 x reader #max verstappen x reader #max verstappen instagram au #max verstappen imagine #max verstappen

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waayfo · 13 days

Text

To you, who have lost yourself:

aventurine x gn!reader. a/n : guess who just broke up w their first ever bf 🤓☝️ tags. light angst, (not rlly) hurt/comfort, breakups, mainly just aven’s letter 4u. might add p2 but idk

Everything went like a dream at first; everything tastes sweet, all of Aventurine's demeanor and words always leave an impression on your mind. He was born to be a gentleman, you think.

But you should know more than anyone, that every sweet attitude and speech is a trap. A trap that pushes you over the edge of a cliff.

The cliff is that will lead you to an endless darkness.

“You look breathtaking, Ves'tacha.” and his hand always guides you.

You always loved it when you woke up in the morning, and looked at him still asleep in awe. How can there be a human who looks so stunning?

Stroking his hair, you always say good morning as soon as you see him start to open his eyes. The birds are chirping, and you both are still rotting in bed.

But saying goodbye was never in your vision. The ‘in the end, everyone you’ve ever loved will became a lesson’ was never be your wish. But you can't deny that not falling for sweet words is a lesson for you.

“This is not your fault, but mine. I.. i just need some time alone.” you are now reluctant to hear the words that came out of his mouth.

“But not breakup!” You can’t help but try to hold back your tears. But all you heard next were excuses coming out of his mouth.

How many days have passed since that day? You don't remember it anymore. You start to overworking yourself to forget it.

Forgetting how to eat on time, and how you miss sleeping with someone in your arms.

That first week was like hell, all you remember is crying. Staring at the letter you were holding, you just listened silently to Topaz—your ex's friend—excuse herself.

You ignore the letter for eight days, reluctant to open and read it. Or maybe you are afraid that you will remember everything again?

Day nine, you try to read it. Aventurine's handwriting that you've been missing all this time is clearly visible on the letter.

The “For you, who have lost yourself” writing is clearly visible on the front of the letter, written a little large by purpose.

‘Dearest,

I hope this letter is delivered safely to you.

I don't want to take back my apology. I also don't regret knowing you all this time. I can be happy and finding out about happiness all this time thanks to you. I can feel what love is thanks to you. I can live and love this life thanks to you. The other side of my heart desperately seeking for you, but it’s all too late now..

I can’t change the fact that i’ve hurt you— someone who loved me, also who’s important to me.

After spending a lot of time thinking and asking Topaz for advice, I decided to write a letter of apology—or rather the words I wish I could have said to you sooner:

Your presence always brings calm to me. I don't know how I can describe all the things you make me feel. And you are appreciated, please remember that well. You must love yourself more than you love other people.

I’m very proud of you. You are enough just as you are.

And I never lie when I praise you. I never lie when I say 'I love you'. I didn't lie when I confessed my feelings to you at that time. I never lie about everything I do and say to you.

I'm sorry I couldn't say this sooner.

I'm sorry I didn't have the courage to tell you everything, especially my past.

I'm sorry for being such a coward hiding behind my words.

I'm sorry I didn't say this directly because I knew you would hate me

I’m sorry for all my mistakes.

It was while writing this letter that I realized the real reason I asked to break up; I want you to find someone better than me. Who doesn't just rely on his words even though he is actually a coward.

All my apologies are not enough to replace your feelings which were hurt because of my actions and words.

‘To love is to let go.’ That's the advice Topaz gave me. And it took eight days for me to understand it.

So please, find someone better than me.‘

#i swear this is just a phase that i write angst #konstelasiv fanfic #aventurine x y/n #aventurine x you #aventurine x reader #hsr aventurine #kakavasha x reader #hsr x y/n #hsr x gender neutral reader #hsr x you #hsr x reader #aventurine honkai star rail #honkai star rail x reader #honkai star rail x you

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babydollmarauders · 7 months

Text

MEDIA MANAGEMENT — JACK HUGHES (23-24 SZN PART 17)

au masterlist

y/ndevils00

liked by jesperbratt, tofff73, and 383,624 others

y/ndevils00 WE ARE SO BACK, BABIES!!

your mighty lil hell raisers won 5-2 tonight against the flightless birds, and SURPRISE!! I WAS THERE!!

what a happy “welcome back to Pitt” to my lovely former-bumblebee-color-wearing bestie, Johnny Rockets!

i’m so proud of all of our goal scorers tonight, one of which is not pictured because he wouldn’t let me order a drink at dinner last night (*cough* Bratter *cough*)!

it was also AMAZING to see my sweet Edward Cullen again, you can see in the fourth photo how much he missed me! doesn’t he look positively overjoyed?!

oh, and: p.s. that one player, number 87 on the penguins? yeah he got a penalty. HA! don’t trip my boys, Sidney. i know where you sleep.

tagged curtislazar95, naterbastian, john.marino97, ryangraves27, dawson1417, holtz_10, tofff73

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user19 IS THIS WHAT THE CROSBY HATTY THING LAST RECAP WAS ABOUT?! SHE WAS HINTING THAT SHE WAS COMING TO THIS GAME?!

naterbastian that’s a blurry pic

y/ndevils00 hop off my dick, nathan

naterbastian no

y/ndevils00 NO?!

y/ndevils00 @/dawson1417 how do i solve this?

dawson1417 maybe you could take less blurry pictures? i’m not sure about this one tbh

y/ndevils00 @/dawson1417 USELESS!

dawson1417 oh :(

y/ndevils00 @/dawson1417 WAIT NO! I’M SORRY! I DIDN’T MEAN IT! YOU’RE MY BESTEST FRIEND AND I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! EVEN MORE THAN JOHN

john.marino97 HELLO?! I’M RIGHT HERE?!

y/ndevils00 @/john.marino97 oh hi John!

user35 DID Y/N JUST THREATEN SIDNEY CROSBY?!

user99 I FEAR THIS IS WHEN SHE GETS FIRED

holtz_10 why is Crosby pictured?

ryangraves27 what i look is terrified because i didn’t even know you were in town

y/ndevils00 it was a surprise!! were you surprised?!

ryangraves27 did he know you were coming?

y/ndevils00 nope! showed up at his house like “BOO!”

user01 who the hell are they talking about?

jackhughes i’m glad the team won and i’m glad you’ve had fun, can you come home now?

y/ndevils00 aww you miss me 🥹

jackhughes yeah, sure, but also, LSH has chewed through my phone charger, has been scratching at the couch, and bit Nico’s hand

y/ndevils00 i put her in charge of keeping the house in order while i’m gone. sounds like she’s doing great!

jackhughes i’m a human and she’s a cat??

y/ndevils00 she’s also smarter than you, my love

jackhughes did you just call me dumb?

y/ndevils00 oh my sweet, sweet himbo, i love you to pluto and back

jackhughes um, yeah, i love you too, dove

holtz_10 hello??? why is Crosby pictured??

y/ndevils00 shhh i ignore stupid questions

jesperbratt i didn’t want you to get drunk, please don’t hold it against me

y/ndevils00 aww okay 🥺 i’m sorry for leaving you out of the post, thank you for looking out for me!

jackhughes how do you do it?!

jesperbratt @/jackhughes i’m cute 🤷🏼‍♂️

jackhughes oh fuck off Bratter, obviously i’m cute too, i’m her boyfriend

curtislazar95 WE WON

y/ndevils00 YOU WON!! I’M SO PROUD OF YOU FOR NOT MAKING US LOSERS ANYMORE

curtislazar95 thank you?? i think??

y/ndevils00 YOU’RE WELCOME!!

y/ndevils00 notice how we win when @/tmeier96 isn’t playing… it’s cause he called me a bitch and the universe has my back

tmeier96 if i could insult you, you would be so sad right now

y/ndevils00 hmm but you CAN’T insult me! because i’m perfect!

tmeier96 actually it’s because after tuesday nights comments, Jack threatened to slap-shot a puck to my face if i insult you again

y/ndevils00 awww @/jackhughes that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever threatened for me 🥹🫶

jackhughes do people often threaten others for you?

y/ndevils00 of course?? i’m lovable and everyone i know wants me to be protected and loved!

tmeier96 well… i highly doubt EVERYONE you know…

y/ndevils00 watch it, Meier!

user56 idk, thats two posts in a row with Sidney Crosby… i’m starting to get suspicious

user13 i wanna know who the mysterious “he” is that they keep discussing!

user07 same! like, is it the same “he” every time?! and if so, if she showed up at his house, does that mean he lives in Pitt?

user22 all i’m saying is it’s suspicious and she better not be cheating on Jack

user91 @/user22 oh please! not only is she obviously head over heels for Jack, but if she were to cheat, i highly doubt everyone on the team, including Jack, would know and openly discuss him on a public platform

liked by @/y/ndevils00

#media management au!#media management series <3 #jack hughes #jack hughes x reader #jack hughes imagine #jack hughes blurb #jack hughes fic #nj devils #nhl fic #nhl imagine #faithlynn’s insta edits <3 #faithlynn’s writings <3

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acerathia · 8 months

Text

Magic Shop || S. Todoroki

Summary:

After 'accidentally' getting cursed, you seek the witch of the forest to fix this problem. Only did you not expect a beautiful man to reside there...

Wordcount: 12.4k

Read on AO3

Pairing:

Witch!Todoroki Shoto / GN!Reader

Tags/CW:

witch!shoto, contractual partners to friends to lovers, pining!! lots of pining, aged-up characters, GN reader, honestly mostly vibes in the woods idk what to say, fluff, innuendos, but sfw, maybe shoto is ooc, forgive my transagression <;/3

Note:

Please note that information about witches may be inaccurate as I was only using my fantasy. And any links are safe!! Also!! This is part of the 'Haunted House Collab' by Willow's House, check out the other works!!

Your hand slaps against the surface of your ringing phone, hoping to silence it with a lucky stroke back to sleep. But that only works for a couple of minutes as it starts once again relentlessly chiming, with no way to stop it. With a groan you remember the infinite number of alarms you had set yourself the night before, your past self too aware of your strong desire to sleep overpowering your need to go to work. So you don’t have a choice, you’d like to keep your job for as long as possible, even with your current sleeping habits.

Slowly you swing your upper body up, and blink blearily, just staring into your room for a couple of seconds, just trying to force you to properly wake up. You take your phone into your hand to stop the still blaring alarm and of course every subsequent alarm after that one. You run your hands over your face, once again trying to wake yourself up before getting up. Shuffling your feet, you make your way to the bathroom to freshen up. A good splash in your face does wonders against this fatigue, but only sometimes, so you hope it works today.

It actually helped a bit, your eyes stinging from the direct contact with the flying water. After finishing the rest of your routine, you go back to your room and put your work clothes on, ignoring the crinkles in them, even if your hands mindlessly try to flatten them, they will eventually disappear, hopefully. You just don’t have time nor the patience to iron them out. Nobody is going to notice them underneath a blazer. A last look in the mirror tells you that you do look presentable enough to show up at work. So you grab your necessities and hurry out of the door.

You don’t hurry because you might be late, you just like to be a bit early on the street, never sure what might delay your way, a traffic jam leading every car to link its arms with each other, making any other form of transportation nigh unusable. This especially accounts for you being stuck between arms and torsos of other people, holding for dear life on a pole in the bus, trying your best to avoid falling onto the ground with every rumbling stop.

Your stop draws near, and you’re finally able to leave the suffocating transportation can, you take a second to breathe, to collect yourself once again. The shaking of the bus has almost begun to lull you back to sleep, even if you were standing with hands in a death grip. So you slap both of your cheeks and continue your way to your workplace.

At your arrival, you think that luck must be on your side, as you still have a couple of minutes until your shift starts, enough time to calm down after all that speed walk, and simply drink some water. You put your stuff into the locker and begin your work. And you hope to keep that luck running for the rest of the morning.

But it seems that your luck is already strained thin, as you mess up some of the dates by accident, inconveniencing a visitor at their work. So you hurry up to apologize for this mistake before they can ask for your boss.

“Oh, no, I’m sorry. We’ll fix this as soon as possible, so feel free to take a seat, Mrs. Nukarumi,” you offer her with a smile, not moving a muscle as her face shifts at the name-drop. You don’t realize your mistake until she steps closer, a menacing aura clogging your airways. You begin to panic, but you keep your face professional, a smile, a questioning tilt to the head.

“Listen, I can excuse some mishap at work, happens to the best of us. But getting my name wrong, and to such a distasteful degree is arrogant, especially after being quite the regular at your establishment,” she puts two fingers on your forehead, her nails pressing against your skin, and now you drop your smile for a frown, as the shadow of her hand covers your face, suffocating in a way only air can be. “It’s Nakamura, and I’d like to know how you will live your life without a soul ever recognizing you.”

Her fingers begin to feel warmer with each second, and at first, you thought it might be due to the prolonged skin contact. That is until this warmth turns into heat, her fingerprints searing themselves into your skull, your skin non-existent. Some kind of pain spreads all over your facial features, not painful enough to coax out a scream, but enough to make your muscles twitch in response. At this sensation, you try your best to pull away, but you seem to be glued to her fingertips, like she’s holding the strings of your body between her knuckles with this simple touch.

You finally manage to take a step back the moment her fingers leave your skin. She seems to be satisfied with whatever she just did, as a grin spreads over her face as she glances over your face. Mischief is coloring the outlines of her lips before she just leaves without another word, not caring if the situation is fixed any time soon.

For some reason, this is the least of your worries, as you make your way to the bathroom with quick steps in search of a mirror. But the moment you stand in front of one, you can’t see anything wrong with your face, not even a small print of her fingers on your forehead. Everything looks normal and proper to you, so you just shrug it off, keen on returning to your post behind the desk.

On the walk back to your space, you come across the manager, who gives you a weird look, and you glance down at yourself, thinking your clothes might have gotten in disarray. But there’s nothing wrong with them. You still straighten your blazer a bit, which doesn’t seem to help, as he finally comes up to you.

“Excuse me, this area is for staff only,” he tells you with a warning in his voice, and you can only furrow your eyebrows at that.

“Uh, yes, I am a staff. It’s my shift right now,” you reply, confusion tinting your voice.

“Lying is useless in this case, I don’t recognize you, and I know all of my staff.” He shakes his head in some form of disappointment before threatening to call security if you don’t clear the space immediately.

Absolutely confused, you just leave the space, and even the building altogether, just heading home, because what else are you supposed to do? You got kicked out by your boss, for some strange reason, and nothing makes sense to you.

What did he say again? He doesn’t recognize you? That’s the wildest reason to kick someone out, ever. Does he want to fire you, or is he pulling some kind of elaborate prank or scheme? You honestly don’t care, you just hope you still get paid for your work.

As you have some time to spare, for obvious reasons, you decide to take a short trip to the store to get yourself some groceries, and maybe you could chat a bit with your acquaintance there, letting a couple of minutes pass in idle talk.

So you enter the store and begin collecting whatever your heart desires, and whatever your wallet allows you, before making your way to the register, where your almost friend works. You smile and greet them, hoping to be able to listen to whatever gossip they have at the moment. But they only give you the usual customer service smile, the usual greeting voice, no recognition sparking in their eyes at all.

Your chest constricts and you try to think of what you might have done to offend them, yet nothing seems to be the problem. And you could hardly bother them while they’re working, so you leave the place without inquiring any further about any possible reason.

Trudging home, you can’t help but wonder if you had done something for all of this to happen. There’s no way this day is filled with one unlucky incident after the other. There’s no correlation for this bad luck, you started your day as you do every single day. The only weird moment was with that weird woman, who just grabbed your face for no reason. But whatever she did, it didn’t work, you checked yourself in the mirror and everything looked fine to you, normal. So why does it seem like no one can recognize you?

You enter your home as the final puzzle clicks, and everything makes sense, well barely. A gasp escapes you at this revelation, and you almost throw your groceries onto the table, grabbing for your phone. With a frown, you open the front camera, seeing yourself, with every feature you know and are used to. Maybe the effect is similar to the one with a mirror?

You decide to take a picture of yourself, not focusing much on looking good, but rather on verifying your thoughts. After you take one where you’re sure your whole face can be seen, you open the gallery to click on the newest picture. But instead of a picture, you’re faced with a blurred mess. Did your hands tremble? There’s no way they moved that much while you took the picture. Still, you take another one, and another one, and another one. And all of them turn out to be blurry.

Chewing on your bottom lip you scroll further to some of the older pictures you have on your phone and they all look normal, your face still visible and clear. So there’s only one conclusion: only the ones you took today have that particular problem, so that means the woman had actually done something unexplainable to you.

With a sigh you put your phone away, driving your hand over your face. You screwed up, you accidentally messed up with the wrong person today, and now you reap the consequences. What are you supposed to do now? How could you even undo this? You can’t go to work if no one recognizes you, and you can’t just not work! You’re ruined, your life will be in shambles over a little mistake, this is so ridiculous.

Panic is running hot through your veins and you do what every sensible human being would do in such a dire situation. You take your phone and look it up, even if you don’t know how to phrase the problem properly. So it isn’t surprising when the first couple of hits you stumble across are different subreddits and medical pages about loneliness. But no matter how far you read into those, there is just no correlation between them and your current problem.

Thus, you dive deeper and you discover some shady-looking forum, all small font and 2000s style of blogging, in which you read a rather recent post.

Does the witch in that forest actually exist? Cuz I heard rumors, but no one has shown real pics smh. If yes, how do you meet them? Like, I wanna get some potions or stuff, idk

– i guess that’s one way to touch grass – that’s some witchful thinking LMAO – ofc, u just gotta go that fb page, there’s proof

Your curiosity gets the best of you and you click on the link, which turns out to be a rickroll. You don’t know if you’re supposed to laugh or groan in frustration. The only upside of this is that you had gotten some form of lead to… something. You’re not quite sure what the whole witch thing is about, but if there’s smoke, there must be a fire. At least you hope so, because it’s the only thing that could solve your problem at the moment. You’re pretty sure the woman put some kind of curse or spell on you, there’s no other way to achieve this kind of effect.

Naturally, you’re going to look for that witch now. You have quite some free time left, so maybe there is some upside to that too…

Trying to be positive about the whole predicament, you trade your current clothes for something more robust, something suitable to endure a visit to the forest. The place mentioned in the post isn’t that far from your living place, so you plan to walk there, getting some blood running to prepare you for the worst.

With a bottle, your phone, and whatever is necessary for your trip, you leave the building. Your phone in hand, you try to discover the fastest way to these woods to avoid losing time.

Finally arriving at the entrance of the forest, you decide to take the already existing paths, leisurely walking along them. And you have to admit it has taken you some time to realize something important in your current endeavor: there’s no way a witch is going to be living on the equivalent of a main street of the forest. No one would do that if they’re actively trying to get by without notice, and witches don’t want people to know where they live. That’s like, their lore or something.

This makes sense, and you nod to yourself, convinced by your own logic before you step off the path. At first, you paid attention to where you put your foot down, careful to not destroy any plants or to get stuck somewhere. But after a while, you simply forget to look at the ground and where you’re going. As a result it shouldn’t be a big surprise when one of your feet gets caught in something, you’re not quite sure what, because the moment you topple over you immediately begin to roll down a hill.

Scrunching your face, you brace yourself for the upcoming impact, hoping sincerely you won’t get knocked against a rock or a stump, breaking something or injuring you in any other way.

Nothing happens. Slowly the rotations come to a stop and you feel your back thud against the ground one last time, even if you still feel the turbulence in your head.

After taking a couple of seconds to get your head straight, you hesitantly open your eyes, only to glance at the face of another person. And for a moment you feel like nothing is real, he’s beautiful. Soft plush lips, slightly agape in surprise, eyes widened and sparkling in the early afternoon sun, and you need to look a couple of times back to notice the different colors, gray and blue, a storm separated from its lightning. His lashes brush against his smooth skin on one side, and against a burn mark on the other, as he blinks, trying to understand what just happened.

You immediately close your eyes again, hoping to fool him into thinking you had passed out, even if he probably saw you staring at his face like a fish out of water.

A slight chuckle, air fanning over your face, tells you that he is no fool. So you have no other choice but to take a breath and to slowly sit up, avoiding looking into his eyes with all your might, even if you’re compelled to look at him just a while longer.

Instead, you start looking around and you notice that you have fallen onto the edge of a beautiful meadow, flowers sprouting all around you, colors bursting underneath the late afternoon sun. The wind dancing between the petals. The delightfulness of this place fills you in awe, and it only grows bigger when you glance back at him, seeing the perfect man sitting underneath the rays of the sun, the wind ruffling his red and white hair playfully. You think about how it feels to touch this cloud in the afternoon sun.

That is until you finally register his gaze lingering on you. Your eyes widen in surprise and you can’t look him in the face anymore, once again. Nerves get the best of you, as you realize that he must have caught you staring at him and you fiddle with your fingers before you gather some courage to talk to him.

“Uhm, sorry for that, heh… You might be wondering why I’m here, and honestly you won’t even remember me when I’m gone, which is for the best I’m not going to lie. But I still wanted to ask, and I know it’s a weird question, but honestly, my whole day has been so weird, you can’t even believe it. What I mean is, do you happen to know where maybe, just maybe, where the witch of this forest is? I kinda got into that situation and I need help…” After getting everything off your chest, you take a second to take a breather.

“Oh, yes, I know where the witch is–”

“Really? Wow, that’s cool, rad, cool, cool! Oh, do you mind telling me? That would be awesome, for real,” you interrupt him, leaning forward in an outburst of excitement, once again just staring at his face

“No, I don’t mind. It’s simple really. The witch is here,” he answers, and if you’d known it better, you could have sworn to see some mischief glinting in his eyes.

But you’re too distracted, squinting your eyes trying to see anyone else in this open meadow. The witch can’t be hiding in such an open space, so you turn around to look behind you.

You jut your lips out when you couldn’t see anyone in the near distance. “Where? There’s no one here?”

The corners of his lips raise slightly. “Well, because we’re the only two people here, the best conclusion is that I’m the witch, is it not?”

You can only nod slowly, mouth agape and eyes roaming over his figure once again. Now that he mentions it, if you focus a bit on his blue eye, the one seemingly illuminating and softening his scar, you could discern symbols circling his iris, whispering secrets only he is to know.

It takes you a moment to bring these two concepts together, as this turn of events just swept you over in a cold rush. Even if you’re going to be honest with yourself, what did you expect? Some beautiful woman with long black hair, miraculously emerging from the waters of some shallow pond? This probably is your sign to read less fantasy… Does it count as fantasy if witches are apparently real?

You blink and push this thought away, this is really not the time to contemplate the structure of your world. So you take a breath, trying to formulate your thoughts more coherently this time.

“Oh, okay. Uhm, so… hold on, no, how am I supposed to call you? Because there’s no way I’m calling you a witch for, I don’t know how long, but that doesn’t matter… Uhm,” you veer off topic before just introducing yourself in the same breath.

Wow, you did amazing, you should pat yourself on the shoulder, because how can someone start at a point and finish at the wrong place? You bite on your bottom lip, slightly crunching your face. But the moment he says your name, the strain seems to melt off, you’re so taken aback by how elegant your own name sounds from his mouth.

“Nice to meet you, I suppose you can call me Shoto.”

With a nod, you do your best to memorize his name and to replace the imaginary picture of a witch with a replication of him, sitting between the flowers, and you’re aware that your memory could never truly replicate this look, this moment; it always be something faded compared to this, and you curse your insufficient brain capacities. Until you remember the actual reason you came looking for him.

“So, Shoto. I need your help, you know, as the witch, because, uh, I don’t know if you noticed already, but I guess someone cursed me? For some reason. Unrelated to anything really…” you laugh nervously and avoid his gaze “Like no one is able to recognize me, which is weird! I look normal in mirrors, but not in pictures? And, uh, see, I kinda need my face to work, you know? Is there something you could do to help me? You’re my last resort, pretty please?” You had hurried to explain your reasons for arriving at this place before the silence between you could even start, or worse, before he got the time to just stand up and leave.

He leans back and his eyes glance over your face, examining you, and you notice how the contrast between his eyes seems to grow for a moment; one almost glowing eerily while the other darkens to reach the depth of the universe. It feels like you’re in the presence of a supernova, a star about to burst by its seams.

But the moment he blinks with a nod the moment is gone, almost like it never was any different. At least he looks like he found whatever he’s looking for, the curse probably.

“I will help you. But in exchange I do need you to aid me in the time it takes me to break this particular spell,” he sets his condition and slightly cocks his head to the side, waiting for your response.

A wide grin splits your face as he agrees to help you. excitement thrumming through your veins at the prospect of working with an actual witch, and even getting rid of this problem altogether. But you still take your time to weigh the choices in your head.

You don’t really have another choice, do you? Because if you refuse, what are you supposed to do? It’s either you help him with his potions, whatever that requires of you, you’re ready to even give your blood for this, or you just suffer for the rest of your life under this horrid curse of unrecognition. Even if you have to admit that this condition of yours could be a real killer in the shady business of the underground, assassinations, break-ins, or whatever illegal activities they entertain. No one would ever be able to catch you, as you practically have no face to be identified by. If you only possessed more usable skills to pursue this potential path of corruption, but you don’t. So you only truly have one choice left.

You readily agree to his terms, on your own condition, you want to be able to go home at the end of the day. You’d like to enjoy your sleep if you involuntarily have to miss work. With the same reasoning, you promise him to come back tomorrow before you’re already on your way home. You hadn’t noticed how late it already was, because the meeting didn’t feel like it took hours off your day. But who are you to judge the sun for packing up a bit earlier, at least it’s still bright enough for you to walk on your own. And on your trek home, you see his captivating eyes every time you blink, almost being able to feel the difference in temperature, coals and ice, hot and cold.

They haunt you, no matter how often you shake your head to get rid of them. You do have bigger problems to concentrate on. But your worries vanish once you land on your bed, all washed up and in clean clothes. The short hike seems to have taken a toll on you, or maybe the revelation of the whole situation, as you fall asleep as soon as you could even think of sleep.

The next morning you wake up all sore, and you whine into your pillow, already despising the possibility, the simple thought of getting up. Yet you sit up and grab your phone to tell your boss that you’re sick. Which technically isn’t a lie, if something does belong in that section, then it’s a curse for sure, and it’s the best option to not get kicked out again, or fired for not showing up to work.

With that you pat yourself on the back for finding a solution to that particular problem, and for giving yourself at least a week to solve this mess. If it doesn’t work out by then, you’d have to get a doctor’s notice, and you honestly doubt that a doctor can diagnose you with this if they even can recognize anything in the first place.

One problem out of the way, you go through your morning routine to head out to start solving the main problem. You put on some proper clothes for this trip, and this time you’re not keen on not tumbling down a hill, and being aware of the hill in the first place will definitely make it a lot easier.

The way to the meadow turns out to be a lot easier once you know the way, and as a consequence, you gain fewer bruises on the way down. You’re glad for that because the ones you earned yesterday throb every time they get touched, even by the barest breeze. But you will survive this horrendous pain, everything to reach your goal of getting rid of this curse.

If only everything is as easy as you wish it to be. Because the moment you arrive at the border of the meadow, you encounter another problem: Shoto isn’t here today.

You curse under your breath while glancing around the empty open space. What are you supposed to do now? You can’t just walk aimlessly and shout his name into the darkness of the woods. That would be stupid, you don’t know what lurks in its insides, and you’d like to avoid disturbing the wildlife and him, probably, if he is actually living in this forest.

Should you just take a seat in the middle of the meadow? Would he be able to see you from wherever his residence is? Once again you curse, but this time at your inability to plan forward, because you really should’ve asked for some details, but for some reason, his agreement seemed enough for you to just up and leave. Now it is obvious how you didn’t think any of this through.

With a sight, you lightly kick the ground. After you take one last look over the meadow, you decide to walk up the borders of the open space in hopes of finding some sort of hint about his possible whereabouts.

It takes you some time to come across a small river, water glistening clearly under the sun. and you decide to follow it on a whim. Honestly, this is probably the next best thing, because everyone needs some form of water, and this forest has no lake, so the river makes absolutely sense.

The flowing water leads you deeper into the woods, but you can’t actually get lost if you just follow the river in the opposite direction, so you’re not really worried about that.

This decision turns out to be the right one because after some time you spot a cottage in the near distance. Surrounded by bushes and the ivory sparkles under the rays of the sun breaking through the ceiling of leaves. As you step closer, leaving the river behind, you’re able to see the veranda filled with all different kinds of plants in pots, hanging, standing, thriving. You think you can even discern some form of garden on the other side of the building, but you decide to stop in front of the door rather than visit that small space. Who knows how a witch is able to protect their place.

Before you even think about knocking, you note how this place doesn’t look like what you expect of a lair, but honestly, you don’t have any other visual than the gingerbread house, and to be fair, that’s a fairytale and as much as Shoto looks like he came straight out of one, there’s no connection between these two. Not that it matters, you’re certainly not a kid, so you doubt he would eat you, which is unlikable in the first place.

You raise your fist to finally knock on the wood of the door, but before your knuckles could even connect with it, the door actually opens, and you make eye contact with Shoto. You slowly lower your fist and notice how he’s holding a basket in his hand, eyebrows raised in silent surprise. For a moment you both just look at each other in confused surprise until he finally starts speaking.

“Oh, good morning. I didn’t expect you to be here so early. Come in,” he steps aside to fully open the door, inviting you into his home.

With hesitation you step inside, looking around as curiosity tempts you with its soft claws. A smell of a mix of herbs wafts in front of you as you inhale. There is a small seating arrangement, a loveseat, a sofa, an armchair, all resting on top of a soft carpet, inviting you to sit on the ground and enjoy some tea or read a book.

Connected to that space is an open kitchen, to which he heads to, and you hurry to follow his lead. It takes you a moment to take your shoes off, so you can’t help but follow his path carefully, too scared to accidentally disturb this calm space of his.

His home seems rather normal, but once again, what did you expect? Some kind of massive cauldron, some random stuff hanging off the ceilings, or body parts in a mysterious liquid? You should’ve expected this, this is just a normal cottage in the depths of the forest, the only exceptional thing, or person, is Shoto, and you don’t mean him being a witch.

Once you arrive in the space of the kitchen, he motions you to sit at the table, and you do, your expectations getting the best of you and waiting for some form of grimoire to thud onto the table. But nothing of that sort happens, he just sits on the opposite side, leaning his chin in his hand and just looks at you with slightly furrowed brows and a small pout on his lips.

You try your best to stay silent, even if the urge to say something is getting stronger with the second, but you withstand his piercing gaze resting on your hot skin. You bite on your tongue to swallow your question down. Especially when his eyes begin to emit a low light once again, all stormy weather, dark clouds shrouded in lightning.

It abates the moment he hums. “I see. Well, I guess I am able to undo this spell, but we both don’t know anything about the workings of the spell, it probably will take me some time to fix the proper counterspell. For that, I need your presence. Should we get started?” He leans back, his eyes glowing under the sunlight, but this time it feels a lot softer, less like magic and more like a fairy tale.

The next thought you have is filled with indignation because he just assumed you don’t know anything about the spell. Well you don’t, but it’s about the assumption itself, not the fact that you have no idea about this craft. So you can’t really say anything in your defense, because there’s nothing to defend but your pride, and it’s not worth it at the moment.

“Sure thing, but I have to let you know: I know how that woman put this spell on me, and… uh…” you start confidently, only to peter out, not knowing how to continue this trail of thought.

Despite that, he does seem surprised by that in some way, indicated by the way his eyebrows shoot up. “Is that so? Would you mind telling me?”

You almost think to hear some sort of accusation in his tone, but you have no reason or idea why that might be. So you just shrug it off before delving into a short explanation of the events that had occurred to you, until you recount the first meeting with him. Of course, there are some details you omit, because you’d rather not embarrass yourself in front of such a graceful person, because he’s a witch, not because you think he’s so beautiful you might turn blind if you look at him for an extended period of time, that would be ridiculous. Also, telling him about your fall is just unnecessary to the plot of this story, isn’t it?

He nods, eyes telling you that he realizes the omission, but he doesn’t comment on it. At least he seems like he understands more about the situation than you, simply from the description of whatever she had done to you, from whatever you had felt.

“This does help quite a bit. Doesn’t make the process much faster, just easier. Not that it matters, I’m qualified to undo this spell either way.” He stands up and begins to open the cabinets, rummaging through their insides before pulling out a notebook and a pen.

There’s no way this is his spellbook. The place where he keeps his most secret, most important spells. It looks like any ordinary notebook from the store, and it probably is, considering how normal everything looks. Maybe he has a special way of safekeeping?

You squint and stare at the notebook, trying to discover something hidden, but the only thing you see is how Shoto is writing some stuff down, the signs clear and elegant.

Only occasionally does he look up, eyes roaming over your face without sitting still on anything in particular. You doubt he could even if he wanted to.

And now your thoughts wander to the possibility that he would actually want to look at you, how his gaze would soften when caressing your skin, the sun sparkling against his dual-colored eyes, making them glisten with adora–

No, you have to stop here, or you’re not going to survive his presence in the upcoming brewing sessions. Healing sessions… Yeah, healing sessions, because he’s healing your hurt ego, getting rid of your predicament. There’s nothing else to call them. Uncursing? Spell Deletion? No, that sounds ridiculous. Healing sessions sound like some form of therapy, and being in the forest is kind of therapeutic, well, his presence sure is. Not that the name matters, you’re never going to talk about it with anyone, ever.

You blink a couple of times to come back to reality, only to make eye contact with him and your breath hitches. You do your best to act casual and prop your elbow onto the back of the chair but you slip and you have to catch yourself with a jerk.

A nervous laugh escapes you and you lean back, crossing your arms in front of your chest to get rid of your fidgeting. You avoid looking into his eyes this time, focusing on the fringe falling onto his forehead, red and white braiding into each other seamlessly.

He doesn’t even bother to say anything about what just happened and just goes straight to business. “Here’s what we’re going to do in the next few days,” he starts explaining like you just didn’t utterly embarrass yourself in front of him. “I doubt a counterspell will work without consequences because we don’t know the exact working of your curse, even if I have a good idea of it. Still, I don’t want to risk it, so I’m simply going to brew a potion, which will wear it out until it disperses on its own. That means we have to go out and collect some necessary materials. We’re going to do that later though, as there are some preparations I have to make first.”

With that, he closes his notebook and leaves it on the table as he stands up. He motions you to follow him and you leave the house at his heels.

Outside he pulls some sort of platter from below a table and hands it to you before he kneels on the ground in front of a pot in the form of a long rectangle. Inside it is a green plant, stalks spreading out like rays of the sun, leaves tiny and feather-like.

“These are Maidenhair Ferns, also called The Hair of Venus. They could have some effect on your current condition, but we have to dry them first for their potency to unfold. I’m going to take care of the cutting of the plant and I ask you to put them neatly onto the platter. That way we can continue our work at a faster rate,” he explains, his gaze only brushing over you before leading his focus back onto the plant in front of him.

You nod, even though you’re not sure he could register this movement with the way he’s intently looking at the leaves of the ferns. You still take a seat by his side and put the big plate on your lap, ready to receive the first leaves and stems.

At first there isn’t a lot for you to do, so you’re busy looking around, taking in the sights of the forest, enjoying the sun on your face, but soon enough you start taking the stalks filled with neat leaves and arrange them properly on the plate, trying to avoid stacking them as much as possible.

Luckily, he doesn’t pick that many plants for you to even begin thinking of that possible problem too much. With a platter covered with just the right amount of leaves, he finally turns around to face you.

“We need to pluck the leaves from the stem because each part is different, and will need a different time to properly dry. We only need the leaves for the potion, but I’d hate to waste the rest,” he murmurs, his long, nimble fingers already running along the stem of one of the plants, picking the leaves off with careful fingertips, barely staining his nail beds in the process.

You proceed to take one fern in your hand, trying your best to imitate him and to rip the leaves at the right spot and not rip them apart accidentally. Sticking your tongue slightly between your teeth in concentration, you manage to not destroy the first fern, even if the process has gotten a bit messy, your fingers turning slightly green. You begin to understand why people who garden have a ‘green thumb’.

You both work in a comfortable silence for some time, simply enjoying the repetitive motion. Before you even dare to think about standing up, you both make sure that everything is properly separated and not layered. Just then you stand up and follow him around the corner to some sort of backyard. You reckon this is the place you glanced at earlier. There’s a table standing out in the open, and he motions you to put the platter you were carrying onto its surface. In that position, the sun is going to dry them for you, essentially doing the work for you.

The moment your hands are free, you get the urge to stretch into the rays of the sun, your blurry, lidded gaze glancing over the edge of the open space between the bushes. And that’s where you spot it. A beautiful deer.

With a silent gasp, you blindly try to tap Shoto on the shoulder, accidentally brushing against his jaw in your hurry. Normally you would apologize, but you don’t dare tear your eyes away from the deer, much less make a noise, in fear of it disappearing without a trace. The doe, you correct yourself, as it lacks any form of horns.

“Oh,” you hear Shoto say softly under his breath, finally spotting the deer too.

For a moment you both just stay silent, not daring to even move too much, simply enjoying the mesmerizing sight of a doe under the shining sun, framed by the lush green of the forest. That is until the deer just turns around and jumps away like it just doesn’t care about you both just staring at it in awe.

You release a small puff of air, some tension releasing as you had been too caught up in the moment. Turning around in his direction, you regret even breathing the second you lock eyes with Shoto, his face closer to you than you had anticipated. It seems like you both have moved closer in that short moment, huddling together for some reason at the mere sight of the doe.

Your eyes jump over his dark eye to the lightning blue one, electrifying you like a summer storm, and you wonder if he’s gotten hit by lightning itself, resulting in these mesmerizing eyes, and the scar around that bright eye, the only blemish on his smooth, soft looking skin. Maybe it’s connected to his powers, to these symbols deep inside the blue, unreadable to you.

To avoid staring at his scar, your gaze travels over his high cheekbones to his plumb lips, and you could almost imagine them quirking slightly, the moment before he reveals a true laugh of joy out of his soul. This thought startles you and you immediately take a step back, bumping into the corner of the table.

A low whimper escapes as you double over, clutching your wounded side in a dramatic manner. At least now you’ve got a reason to avoid looking at him, to avoid getting lost in all these daydreams about him and…

“Are you okay? Did you hit a sensitive spot?” he asks, worry tinting his voice as he puts his hand softly on your back.

You nod at first before you begin to shake your head, these two questions colliding in your head, all while you try to ignore the possible innuendo. If you step into that territory of thought, you might as well run into the woods and bury yourself in some random cave, to never face him again.

The pain slowly abates after you take a couple of breaths to calm yourself down. It’s going to form a bruise, which isn’t that big of a deal, but you wish it wouldn’t feel like something had impaled your guts.

Straightening up, you show him a thumbs up, even if his slightly furrowed eyebrows and jutted lips show that he isn’t quite convinced. But he doesn’t look like he’s going to fight you over that, so his hand leaves your back. The spot is suddenly so cold, and you can’t help but miss the warmth of his skin, even through clothing.

You try your best to divert his attention away, and maybe yours too, as you look around, in particular to avoid looking at his face. You spot some form of wooden fence, probably a small garden, and you step in its direction with a craning neck to see what he could have planted there.

“Oh, is that a garden? What did you put there? Do you sustain yourself like that? How do you know what soil to use for what plant? Are these to eat or just for your potions?” These questions pour out of your mouth, the perfect distraction for you both as you don’t have to pull out some random question out of nowhere. And you’re genuinely interested.

He seems to have noticed your attempt at distraction according to his rising eyebrows, but he still indulged you and steps closer to the high edge of the garden and you join him close behind him.

With a soft voice he starts explaining the use of each herb, each fruit and plant, patiently pointing toward them, all while mentioning neat little details, like their harvest season, how picky certain plants are. And you can’t help but be captivated by his knowledge and the way he shares it. Even if you sometimes break out of the immersion of his voice when your eyes begin to roam over his face instead of listening.

Time passes with you both kneeling in the soft grass and inspecting the little space filled with love. You only notice how late it has gotten with the way your eyelids feel heavy, your gaze unfocusing and hazy. And as much as you’d love to just take a nap in the middle of the grass under this beautiful weather, you have to get home before that.

So with a goodbye and a promise to return tomorrow, you make your way home, the way easier to walk as your body starts to memorize the path. You could say you could find the way to the cottage in your sleep with how tired you currently feel.

It’s no wonder you barely remember getting ready for bed, much less going to sleep because your brain is practically already out of commission before that happens.

The next day you wake up with a satisfied groan. You’ve never felt this refreshed in your life before, and when you glance at the time, you startle, realizing why. You’ve overslept, you’re late for work! You immediately stand up, heart beating a frenzy in your chest and your arms tremble slightly. With a sudden rush, you remember how you had taken sick leave just yesterday, and you slump back onto your bed.

With a shaken sigh, you sink back into your pillow. You could have slept a bit more, but it seems like your internal clock was keen on terrorizing you today. And with that rush of adrenaline, you might as well stay up and get ready to visit Shoto today.

You take your time to eat breakfast and just enjoy the silence of your home before you make yourself ready for the way. You also check on the state of your food, in case you need to get some groceries. But you don’t, so you clean your place a bit before heading out.

And once again you step through the same path you’ve been visiting the last few days, and you wonder if it would inevitably become some sort of established path with the amount of walking you’ve been doing between the same couple of trees. Maybe you should start changing the route a bit the next couple of times.

You arrive in front of his door and this time you’re able to knock on the door before it’s ripped open, and you startle by the look Shoto throws out of the door, all narrow eyes and downturned lips, almost resembling a snarl. You hesitate in asking if something is wrong. His eyes blink before recognizing you, in the widest sense, and his whole face seems to almost soften. With no exchange of words, he steps to the side and opens the door for you to step in.

Mirroring the day before, he makes way for the table and sits down, waiting for you to do the same. And you do, because you’ve been walking closely behind him.

His notebook is already open on the surface of the table, and he leans slightly forward. “The leaves of yesterday still need some time to fully dry, so today we should go out and collect some other stuff I mentioned yesterday. Is that alright with you?”

You would do anything to get rid of that curse on your face, so of course it’s alright with you, and you nod to show him that. He also nods in confirmation before closing his notebook and grabbing a basket to put whatever you will collect today inside.

While he is doing that, you hurry to the door to open it up for him, even bowing slightly with a grin across your face and the moment he passes by you, you think to see a small smile on his lips, amusement sparkling clearly in his face.

After closing the door behind you, you follow him to take his side as he ventures deeper into the forest. His steps are purposeful, and you’re sure he knows where to find the target material. Still, you wish you could help with whatever he’s looking for, but you doubt you would be able to recognize it even if he told you the name of it. Despite that, you’re happy to listen when he starts talking, explaining what he’s looking for.

“I have some vague idea of what could help against your current ailment. Right now, I’m looking for a Bird’s Eye…” he trails off as he seems to have spotted something.

This revelation confuses you. What does he mean with a Bird’s Eye? Is he going to pluck the eyeballs of some poor bird? Is that something he usually does? He doesn’t seem like the person to entertain such thoughts. You want to ask him if there’s another way, but he had vanished between some bushes.

You swallow down the tremble in your throat and fight through the shrubbery to catch up to him. You emerge a couple of steps next to the spot he’s bending over. With some paces to place yourself at his side, only to see him hold some sort of purple plant delicately between his fingers. Petals growing upward the long stem to a soft point. A lavender plant… A Veronica… And suddenly you feel stupid for still assuming something without real proof. Still, you can’t help the relieved breath you let out.

Straightening up, Shoto shoots you a look, all hidden crinkles, and creasing eyes, almost like he’s making fun of you, like he’s amused at your obvious relief. “Seems like you had expected something else, didn’t you?” he asks, his gaze resting somewhere on your cheek.

“Uh, what else am I supposed to think? Telling me, ‘oh yeah, we need some bird’s eye’, doesn’t sound like, I don’t know, like you’re about to pluck an eyeball? How am I– hold on, did you do that on purpose?” you gasp at your own accusation. “You did! That’s so mean of you, I can’t believe you would use my trust like that!”

You pout slightly, even if you doubt he could see it properly, so you cross your arms in front of you to show your stance on things right now, even if you’re aware that you look overly dramatic. But that’s the point.

Your stance doesn’t seem to affect him, because you suddenly hear a light chuckle escape his lips, and when you glance at his face, you can clearly see how his lips quirked up in a silent laugh, all soft and delicate.

While you’re staring at him, you’re suddenly glad he can’t see your face clearly, because you probably look stunned, amazed, stupefied, and every other word to describe the way your eyes widen and your mouth standing slightly agape.

His eyes wander over your face, eyebrows scrunched up as if he wants to see whatever the fog is hiding behind that blur. Whatever he’s looking for doesn’t seem to be there, because the frown only deepens before he turns back to the flower in his hand, putting it carefully into the basket.

“These are the flowers we’re looking for. Do you mind picking some up?” he asks, already doing so himself, inspecting each one carefully to only select the ones most fitting.

You nod and diligently begin to pick the ones you seem worthy, collecting them into some sort of bouquet in your other hand. After a while, your hand is barely able to hold onto more, and you’re quite content with the look of your makeshift bouquet. Not being able to resist the urge, you tap him on the shoulder and hold it under his nose.

“Please accept this!” you say dramatically, acting like you just confessed your undying love to him, but you couldn’t stay serious long enough to wait for his response, especially after seeing his raised eyebrow. You burst into laughter. “Sorry, sorry! I just thought it looked like a bouquet, so–”

“Oh, so you wanted to offer me the Eye of a Bird? How romantic,” he drawls, his mouth puckered and eyebrows high on his forehead. Only the gleam in his eyes seems to betray his serious stance.

You nod with a muffled giggle. “The peak of modern romance, of course! You deserve nothing less than the best.”

He takes the flowers from your outreached hand and inspects them, acting too critical of your offering before nodding in approval. “I shall accept these, but only this time.”

You gasp, a hand over your heart. “Only this time? My good sir, then I shall prepare something more glamorous, something you can’t refuse for the next time!” you declare with a boisterous voice and a puffed chest.

Once again his lips purse in consideration. “Well, I don’t know if this is possible, there won’t be a next time, that’s for certain. You shan’t woe me this easily.”

“We shall see how this turns out,” you puff with arrogance, only to break down in little giggles.

The moment you break the immersion, he too breaks his facade with a broad smile, pearly teeth on display and eyes crinkling with happiness and mischief. With the breeze ruffling his hair he looks like the image of pure bliss.

His obvious happiness makes you smile, and you have to catch yourself before you let out a dreamy sigh. You have no other choice but to break the line of sight, lest you do something you might regret, especially with the way your insides feel all soft and malleable at his sight, full, ready to give something to always enjoy the way he seems to be in such peace. But you can’t give in, no matter how much your heart seems to plead with your senses. You should not do this, you shouldn’t even think like this in the first place.

So you redirect all your focus into picking the perfect flowers, paying close attention to the details. With that, you both slowly fill the basket, and before you know it, the evening sun is shining through the leaves, putting everything in a soft orange glow.

The full basket has gotten quite heavy and you both decide to share the burden, each one of you grabbing a side of the handle to carry it together. This arrangement is there to make it easier for you both, so no problems should arise. Even if the path you’re taking is narrow in some passages and trying to get through them together, side by side, his shoulder ends up bumping, brushing against yours more often than not. And every time this contact happens, you do your best to not flinch away or to think too closely about the warmth he radiates; avoiding leaning closer to him than you already are.

Finally, you arrive at the cottage and you feel like you have lost all breath in your lungs, most of it evaporating by the simple look at him, by the simple brush. Despite needing some space, you continue to help him carry the basket to some sort of designated space inside the house. And once you get rid of that weight, you stretch your arms above your head, hearing a silent yet satisfying crack.

Feeling the need to rest outside, even if you just were under the open sky, you take some slow steps out of the door, because you desperately need a moment to breathe without being scared of brushing against him.

That’s how you end up sitting on his veranda. The sun had already set and darkness is swallowing the forest, which is now filled with entirely new noises and movements. Despite the lack of light and the unknown biting at your toes, you don’t feel unsafe or in danger, rather the silence and the cool breeze have a calming effect on you.

With a roaming look into the sky, you notice the amount of stars visible against the deep blue of the night. Without any trees obstructing your sight and no artificial lights destroying their twinkle, you can’t help but be entranced with them. You’re so fixated on their beauty that you almost miss Shoto taking a seat by your side.

For a moment you both stay silent, arm against arm, shoulder against shoulder, knee brushing a thigh, and this time you don’t even dare to hold your breath. You feel the desire to lean against him, to feel his breath flutter against your skin. But you’re satisfied with this moment, with the way he seems to glow under the stars, giving him a halo of silver light.

Only because you’ve been staring at him do you notice when he stretches his hand into the sky and lets his finger connect individual stars into constellations. You squint, trying to see the lines from your perspective but you struggle a bit as everything is shifted, so you don’t even know which stars are connected despite following the way his finger moves.

He seems to notice your struggle, as he scoots closer, his front now almost touching your back, his head hovering over your shoulder to get down to your height. After settling like that he carefully grabs your fingertips and waits for you to pull away or to react in any way to show him your rejection, but you don’t. You rather marvel at how soft his skin feels against yours in that feather-light touch.

His hand leads your fingers to make a fist with only your index finger pointing out. With your hand like that, he rests his palm against the back of your hand, on your wrist. Positioned like that he slowly begins to show you the constellations with your own finger, all while making sure it’s visible from your perspective. While guiding you, he softly murmurs their names and the planets and stars, explaining everything and yet nothing, because you’re almost too focused on his breath against your face, the way his chin brushes against your shoulder, and you try your best to not turn around to directly face him.

After some time you do begin to relax and to enjoy all this information and the light contact. You end up leaning against his torso, his cheek resting on your head, and you both remain like that for some time, simply soaking in the presence, the silence and the warmth between you.

So it’s no wonder how you barely notice the atmosphere wrapping around you, lulling you into something peaceful and welcoming.

You only notice how gone you were when the sun's rays hit your face softly, waking you up with their soft kisses, and you can’t even be mad at being woken up like that. It is comfortable and warm. Still, the moment you open your eyes, you startle slightly at the sight of the unfamiliar, yet familiar ceiling. You slowly sit up and a patchwork blanket slides off your shoulders to bunch around your waist.

With a quick look at your surroundings, you realize where you are: the cottage. And with that realization you put the pieces together: You fell asleep on him, while stargazing, while holding his hand.

You bury your face in your hands, embarrassment flooding your ears. You hope you didn’t mumble, or worse, drool in your sleep. Or you might simply never look him in the face again.

Peaking between your fingers, you spot him in the open kitchen, silently working on something over the stove, his back turned towards you.

“Breakfast is almost done. You can freshen up a bit, I put some clothes that might fit you in the bathroom,” his voice sounds and you flinch, surprised he had noticed you being awake. “It wasn’t difficult, you made quite some noise.”

You frown, jutting your lips out. Is he reading your thoughts? Is that one of the abilities of witches? You sure hope it isn’t, or else he would know about everything that had crossed your mind in his presence… You desperately want to avoid this possibility, but it can’t hurt to try. So you think of something so stupid, so outrageous, he has no choice but to react.

I couldn't read the witch's handwriting at all, she always wrote in curse-ive.

You almost hit your own face with a groan, but you keep your gaze on his back, trying to see if this entices any form of reaction out of him. But nothing happens and you just sigh, even if you’re still curious how he had guessed your thoughts to that degree. Maybe you should ask him later…

A shrug and you stretch the last bit of heaviness out of your limbs before you grab the blanket to fold it and to put it neatly onto the sofa you’ve been sleeping on. It would be rude to leave it crumbled like that, especially after he put the effort to carry… you… For a moment you stop in your tracks and just blink blanky at the blanket in front of you.

He carried you… and put a blanket over you… He carried you…?

This realization hits you like a swinging bat and you have to bite on your lower lip to suppress a gasp. Your eyes jump to his figure, making sure he’s not looking at you, his back still turned towards you, and you slowly make your way to the bathroom, your joints feel like they’re locked up and creaking like a bad oiled machine.

Once you arrive in the bathroom, you close the door behind you and lean heavily on the sink. You feel like you just gave yourself some serious whiplash. So, with a deep breath, you begin to splash your face with cold water, trying to calm yourself down before you turn around to look at the clothes he had prepared for you. Holding the shirt in front of you, you decide that it will fit you even though it might be a bit loose, but you can’t complain about that.

With that you change into the fest pair of clothes, folding your clothes neatly. You don’t even take the time to look into the mirror to check how they fit, almost afraid of what you might see.

You leave the bathroom with another stretch and enter the open kitchen to offer your help to him, but he refuses politely because he already plated the table and there’s simply not enough space for the both of you to cook something without elbowing each other.

So you take a seat at the table, resting your head on your palm, content with just watching him being busy with the food preparation. He moves with a practiced hand, movements smooth and elegant. You can only observe as his surprisingly broad shoulders move, muscles stretching and filling his shirt. Your eyes wander over his lean back and you purse your lips the moment you see his small waist. You wonder if you would be able to put your arms around his whole torso, or your legs…

You inhale sharply, immediately averting your eyes to the window, trying to divert your thoughts to something else, anything but to look back to his direction. It’s a beautiful day outside, there’s no need to stay in the bedroom, or inside, no need to have any thoughts relating to inside activities.

Your gaze jumps around, looking for something to latch onto, but there’s nothing but the wonderful depth of the forest, which isn’t quite enough to distract you from the possible way his muscles could coil when he leans over you…

A bite to the inside of your cheek brings you out of that train of thoughts, and you’re aware of how you need something more concrete for your distraction, like that deer. But you could only vaguely discern some movements in the bushes and nothing really stepped out of the shadows.

The clatter of a plate disrupts your almost desperate search as Shoto puts a plate in front of you, and you can’t stop the excited grin spreading over your face at its contents. He made some waffles, toppings dripping down its sides and its smell luring you in to take the first bite. It looks delicious, an absolute masterpiece. And you can’t resist it, barely taking your time to thank him properly for his efforts, before digging in and letting the soft dough melt over your tongue. You close your eyes and you almost moan out of delight, the taste an explosion of pure bliss. Instead of embarrassing yourself like that, you just stuff your mouth with another bite.

And before you know it, the plate is empty, leaving you full, yet yearning for more. But you doubt you could even manage to get another bite down and just slump backward into the back of the chair, feeling some kind of satisfied drowsiness.

“Shoto, my man, this is the best thing I’ve ever eaten. You got some magic hands,” you tell him and grin widely when he raises his eyebrows at your choice of words.

Instead of properly answering your compliment, he lets out a puff of air before beginning to collect the empty dishes. You immediately stand up, keen on helping him this time around, especially when you don’t need much space to do the dishes. That’s how you end up drying the washed dishes and putting them away in their respective places. Of course not without him showing you where they belong first.

With this arrangement, you finish doing the dishes at a faster rate. He’s drying his hands as he turns around to look at you. “I’m going to brew the potion today, or at least try to. Feel free to take a book to entertain yourself for the time being.”

He points to the huge shelf covering the entire wall of the living room and you gape slightly at its size. How did you miss that in the first place? Even if you have been distracted by a lot of things, this thing is huge, there’s no way you could have just not seen it.

You barely give him a nod before immediately stepping closer to the shelf, running your fingers along the spines of the books. So many different topics, genres and authors, and there is no way Shoto didn’t read them all. No wonder he has such huge amounts of knowledge. After you have taken a couple of strides along the length of the shelf, you finally choose one of the books and take it out of its place.

With it firmly in your palm, you go and make yourself comfortable on the couch. Once you’re in the perfect position you start reading, thumbing through the book about heroes and their powers, and your brain rattles with all the possibilities and the groundwork of this fictional world.

The background is filled with the sound of utensils clashing and clattering, soft blubbering of his potion, and after a couple of pages, you decide to take a look from afar.

He’s still in the kitchen, bending over his work, a slight furrow between his eyebrows, a thoughtful pout tugging at his lips. And you just look. Just admire the evenly split hair of red and white softly falling, framing his face, the calm demeanor revealing his kind heart. You smile. You can’t help but think, these thoughts filling your veins, coming from your heart, how charming he looks, how beautiful, how handsome. Despite being aware that this relationship is entirely contractual, the chance of seeing him again after this ordeal is slim, you admit to yourself, you like him, a lot. And there’s no way to truly know how he feels about you. To him, you’re probably just another person requiring his services, nothing more, nothing less, only bound by the verbal deal you’ve made.

This realization makes you smile bittersweetly, already accepting the outcome. So you try to get back into the book, to put your focus back on the ongoing plot. But your thoughts circle back to the endless ways this could end, the endless ways this could turn and bend. And no matter how badly you wish for it to end otherwise, every path leads to the same blocked path, a deal done, a face regained and a connection lost. Who are you to interfere with fate?

You force yourself to face it, to accept it, no matter how much your heart resists. It will hurt, but everything turns out to be how it’s supposed to be.

A breath and you begin to digest the story word by word, forcing yourself to take them in until you finally relax and get into the flow of the story and its plot, all while the background noises fade out of your consciousness.

You feel yourself clutching at your non-existent pearls as you near the end of the book when Shoto walks up to you, nudging your foot with his to get your attention. And once you look up from your book, he holds a cup with some sort of tea in your direction. With thanks you take it and immediately sip from the warm liquid.

“I thought you’re supposed to brew that potion?” you ask him, cupping your hands to warm your palms on the glazed ceramic.

“I was. That’s the potion in your hand,” he answers and the corners of his mouth slightly dip upward.

You startle at this revelation and almost let the cup drop. “Wh-what? You could’ve said that earlier!”

“How could I when you so eagerly took it from my hands before I could even say anything?” he chuckles and cocks his head to the side, eyes crinkling at your shocked face.

You gape at him and look at the half-empty cup in your hands, then back at him. “Are you messing with me? It feels like you’re messing with me…”

He shakes his head. “As amusing that would be, I’m not. You’re drinking the potion right now. It will probably take some odd hours to take full effect, if at all.”

Slowly you nod and just down the rest of the tea-potion in one big gulp. You exhale and the warmth of the tea coupled with the late hour begins to make you quite drowsy. There’s no way you’re staying two nights at his place, that would be just so utterly rude of you, especially if you’re going to lend out some of his stuff. That means it’s time for you to head home, as much as you’d like to stay on the couch and continue reading.

You close the book and return it to its place before you thank him once again and take your stuff. With everything in hand you begin your way home, the evening still young and the wood still filled with enough light to not get hurt when crossing it.

Finally arriving home without accidents, the first thing you do is change out of the borrowed clothes and prepare them to wash later so you can return them to him. And you start doing your nighttime routine, even if the initial drowsiness is now gone for some reason, but you’d like to be prepared for the moment you feel tired again, and maybe you need some distraction. If you don’t, you might as well go insane with anticipation, literally expecting something to happen immediately.

This anticipation fills you with adrenalin or something, because for some time you just walk around your place aimlessly, not able to settle down without feeling your heart race. You finally settle on your bed with your phone in hand, trying to calm down to the best of your abilities. It doesn’t quite work, because you realize you never asked Shoto for his number, you never felt the need to, and maybe you shouldn’t even ask in the first place.

You sigh and roll around, beginning to scroll through whatever apps you have in rotations, and you only stop to scratch at your tingling face. At first you don’t think too much about it, as it only itches around your mouth. But then the itch begins to spread over your cheek and you have to stop everything you’re doing, because you have to know if you suddenly have some sort of allergic reaction. After thinking for a while, you don’t remember eating something that could elicit such a reaction, so it can’t be that.

It takes you a moment to realize what that could mean and you jump off the bed, rushing to the mirror only to stop in the middle of the way when you remember that mirrors don’t show your problem with your looks. So you race back and dive for your phone, almost hitting your head on the headboard. You don’t pay attention to that though as you’re opening the camera, facing it towards you.

After you take a picture in semi-good lightning, you click into your gallery, only to see the newest pic and stare at it. There’s you! With every single feature you remember and cherish.

And before you know it, you’re already out the door, dashing through the streets and into the woods. You know you should be careful about tripping, but the need to see him, to thank him, to hug him, is overwhelming. Excitement is coursing through your veins, giving you a boost in energy and you feel laughter bubbling through your lungs.

Then you stumble. Unlike the first time, you don’t immediately take a tumble down the hill, because someone catches you right on time, long before you could even get closer to the ground. You grab their arm to straighten up and end up looking directly into Shoto’s eyes. For a moment you just stare at him, mesmerized by his glittering, compelling eyes, by the way you can so clearly see them despite the darkness surrounding you both.

His words bring you back to reality. “Oh, back so soon?”

“Wh– huh? How? I mean, yes, but how did you know it’s me?” you ask bewildered, shutting your mouth with some force before you keep it open when you remember that he can see your expressions now.

He smiles, plush lips revealing perfect teeth, eyes crinkling with obvious joy while roaming over every detail of your face, taking their time over every little feature; almost like he finally found whatever he has been looking for every time he glanced in your direction. One of his hands cups your face, caressing your skin. You lean involuntarily into his touch, enjoying the soft skin on yours more than you should have.

His next words make your heart beat faster than you thought possible, and suddenly a new path opens itself before you.

“My dear, I would always recognize you, no matter what.”

#shoto todoroki x reader #todoroki x reader #shoto x reader #todoroki shoto x reader #shoto todoroki x you #todoroki x you #shoto x you #todoroki shoto x you #mha x reader #bnha x reader #shouto x reader #shouto todoroki x reader #todoroki shouto x reader

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just-some-random-blogger · 1 year

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Hello!!! Since your fics did this to me, I have a truly unhinged request. Can we get one where Daemon is forced to marry a Hightower (Alicent's sister or someone) after his 'divorce' from Rhea Royce and while Daemon is his usual 'pretend like that marriage never happened' stage, going about ignoring her and fucking whores instead, thinking this wife is probably as boring and meek as Alicent and won't say anything. But, surprise! This one's a complete nutcase and turns out she had long since wanted to marry Daemon (I mean look at the man, reader's me) and now that she has him so close, she won't let him ignore her or escape. He HAS to fall in love with her. So one night, while he's drunk she tries him to their bed and when he wakes up, gets a Valyrian dagger and carves her name upon his chest, telling him something like "See, now I'm so deep into you, you cannot pretend I'm not here." And surprise! Masochist unhinged Daemon actually does fall in love with her. I mean, how can he not! Name carving?! Beautiful! So fucking hot! They fuck (him still tied but she rides him GOOD, like they made her for him only.) And once done, she untied him and then HE carves his name on her back. Because she too wants him so deep engraved into her skin.

Please let me have this!!! Pleasee!!!!!!!

Made For You

Daemon Targaryen x Hightower!Reader

Summary: You grew up in not one, but two shadows, your older sister's and your sister's best friend's. People often mistook your silence for docility, and perhaps to an extent you were, but in truth, you inherited all the desperation, the eagerness, and the nefariousness of from your family.

Word Count: 2k+

Warnings: Fem!reader, yandere!reader, mentions/depictions of violence (blood, gore?, murder), smut (dubcon?, fingering, bdsm themes, masochism, knife play [but they injure each other 💀], marking, scratching, vaginal penetration, degradation kink, breeding kink, bondage, choking), just general dark/grotty themes, typos, etc.

A/N: ok very much MINORS DNI hello im calling 911 this is crazy and i love it HAHAHAHH update i am very confused if i love it lol HsaL:FHASHFAF. i had a little problem with believing daemon would marry a hightower 💀 so i had to add a part explaining that to convince myself. anyway. i hope you enjoy. idk what happened to be honest. im just glad i got this over with. Tagging: @pinksirensong @aralezinspace @deniixlovezelda @targaryenmoony @risefallrise @sloanexx

My compulsive habit of chewing my lip had made me addicted to the taste of blood. And though I was heading to the library, the same one I did every single day, my heart was pounding because I knew today would be different. I knew today the prince would be here.

The moment I walked in, I headed straight for the bookshelf that held the only tomes I knew Daemon read. I sucked the iron off my swollen lip and released a sigh as I began to go through the books.

I snort in a sharp breath when I hear a voice to my side. I turn left and find him, short sliver hair spilling down his forehead, a faint line between his brows, and a slight curve in his lips. He had spoken to me in High Valyrian.

I bring my hands to the side. I pull at the inside of my bottom lip. He watches me, awaiting a correct response to his words.

"Iskan..." I start slowly, "kesīr naejot jurnegon rȳ se tembyr."

I'm here to look at the books.

My stomach flutters when he chuckles.

"Very good," he says, standing straight, walking over to me, "though it's Iksan," he adds, reaching out for a book. He opens it but keeps his eyes on me and repeats, "Iksan."

"Iksan," I mutter, looking down at his book.

He closes the book and mindlessly puts it back, "good," he leans on the shelf, "now once more. All together."

I dart my eyes up to him and lick my lips, "Iksan kesīr naejot jurnegon rȳ se tembyr."

He chuckle, reaching out for my hair, "had you not inherited the ghastly color of your father's locks, you'd have me fooled to be of my blood."

My breathing heavies.

He laughs, muttering words in his mother tongue too quick for me to understand.

When he pulls his hand away, I am eager to say something that will elicit the same response, "I am glad I amuse you, my prince Daemon."

Daemon hums and turns about, "you are eager to please me so. How could I not?

I follow after him as he makes his way back to his chair. I spot the heap of books on his side as he sits down.

"Would you like me to take those back, your grace?"

Daemon turns from me to the books on his side then tilts his head, "I don't suppose you are trying to get a job as a librarian."

My eyes widen at his words, "no, I am not."

He straightens in his spot and crosses his legs, "then tell me, will you make no attempt to escape from your hundred year old prospect?"

I grip my skirt.

Daemon raises his brows along with the corner of his lips.

"You know of this?" I mutter softly.

"Your cunt of a father spoke of it to Viserys in the morn," he pouts in thought, "he spewed some crap about the old man from wherever the fuck being enchanted by you when you met him two nights before at the banquet."

I clear my throat, "Lord Sheperding was... quite eager to speak to my father about my prospects."

Daemon bounces his foot up and down. He grips the armrest, "so tell me," he stands and marches over, catching my face in his hands, craning my head up, "did the cretin that fucked you into your mother ask you to come here and seduce me like he did your bitch sister?"

My throat constricts in panic, "I-"

He pushes me back until my I was pressed between him and the side of the bookshelf. His hands come around my neck, "don't you dare fucking lie to me."

I gulp at the fact he was not putting pressure in his grip. My stomach flurries. I shake my head frantically, "my father would rather kill me than ever allow me to yours."

"But that is what you want," he blurts, beginning to tighten his hold on me, "what you have wanted for long, no?"

My heart hammers in my chest. My hands dart to his sides. I moan out, "yes."

Daemon leans close to me, "then I will give you what you want." He releases my neck and begins to pull up my skirt, "but if I find your father pleased by our union, I will make sure your death is more painful than that bronze bitch's."

I let out an involuntary whine but then bite my lip tightly when I feel Daemon's hands make their way to my inner thigh.

"Oh you filthy girl," he moans, "you don't seem to need my fingers at all with how worked up you've gotten yourself."

I cover my mouth when I feel his fingers brush over my burning core.

Daemon pulls away and rip my fingers off. He tuts me and flips me over, shoving my chest against the shelf, "this will only work if you're loud enough for someone to hear."

And someone very much did hear. As swiftly as Daemon had made me come undone by the shelves of library, the news came to my father of the disgrace I had done to my maidenhood, to our name, to him. So when he came to me, he chastised me and left physical evidence of his sore displeasure and then he came to the king demanding justice.

Upon seeing the state of me, King Viserys called for his brother, and Queen Alicent offered me comfort. Daemon came with haughtiness and scorn. My father and my sister eyed him dirtily. Upon seeing the mark on my cheek, the only mark on my body that he had not left, Daemon looked to the enraged king and agreed to the demand of taking responsibility of his actions.

So with a violet cheek hidden behind makeup, reddish marks on my neck hidden behind a high collar, a swollen eye, and bitten lips, I was wed to the prince.

I was now his princess, his wife.

Yet a month later, I was just a stranger that lived in his house that inconvenienced him. Why just this morning, he came from his chambers where he would bring his whores to fuck them, then came into our shared chambers to sleep, knowing I'd be gone and awake by now.

I watched him from the mirror as he walked across the room.

I stopped brushing my hair by the time Daemon jumped into our bed. I release a breath, "tired, my love?"

"Dorea kept me up all night," he chuckles, "filthy girl."

I cringe at the nickname. He had called me that when he made me his wife. That was my nickname, mine.

I turn over to look at him. He was curled up under the blankets, embracing a pillow. I stand from the chair in front of my vanity, "there is a banquet we must attend in the afternoon."

"Go by yourself," he mutters.

I clench my jaw and walk over to him, "the bastard lord, as you affectionately call will be there."

Daemon, who had his eyes closed, furrows his brows, "which one?"

"The one who called you a tyrant in the making."

He chuckles, rolling over on his chest. He begins to curse in High Valyrian.

I reach our bed and sit by the side, looking at him, wanting so badly to brush back his hair, to snuggle next to him, to make love to him, to cage him in me. I press my hands on the bed. I purse my lips before I whisper, "would you like for me to handle him?"

Daemon does not respond nor move.

"I will do anything for you... I can kill him for you if that is what you want."

When I move to stand, my groom speaks, "kill him then."

He turns to his face to the other side of the bed, I watch as he rubs his cheek on the pillows. He mutters idly, "bring me his head."

"And then you'll let me have you to myself?"

He laughs, "whatever you want."

But he betrayed me still. He couldn't fucking wait to get his cock wet.

I came to him that night with the lord's severed head. He was in his other chamber room, with a whore I have not seen before. And she had been going ah-ah-ah in pleasure as he straddled my prince, but then she made the mistake of turning over her shoulder. She ripped out an ear-piercing shriek upon seeing my figure, drenched in red, both hands clutching things of horror.

She fled the room promptly after seeing me, screeching loudly. Daemon however, was reeling at the sudden loss of contact. It became apparent to me that he was drunk, possibly out of his mind.

I walked over to him, beholding his naked form, his wet erection. I raise one hand, the one holding the severed head. I frown deeply, "your prize, husband."

I throw it to him.

Daemon, instinctively swats as he evades it. The lord's head rolls on the floor. He groans and pushes himself up on his elbows. He looks at me and narrows his eyes, slowly speaking my name, as though he was only recognizing it was me now.

I begin to shudder. I begin to shake in rage. I clench my jaw and my fists. I grab my skirt and lunge at him, pinning him down beneath me, raising my other hand, still clad with the weapon I used to slay the man with. I press it to his throat, screaming as tears fogged my eyes, "I HATE YOU."

Daemon clutches my arms and pushes me back, not before I manage to nick his skin and make red gush down the side of his throat.

I feel like he is pushed into a semblance of sobriety after this, and yet in my rage, I still managed to subdue him in his still very much intoxicated state.

We struggle against each other, but the only important thing to know is that my fury managed to best him. Now here we were. I was straddling his hips and he was tied to the bed, hissing at the feel of my cold blade on his chest.

Daemon was wide eyed and very much sober with the pain at this point.

"It's so nice of you not to scream and call for help, prince husband," I mutter as I etch my initials on to his left pec, "your pride will be the death of you, you know. Be glad I have no intention to kill you. even now."

"Mad cunt," he spits in anger.

"You told me I could have you to myself!" I scream, body trembling in rage, "now I must mark you so your whores know who you belong to."

He huffs, shifting his hips beneath me. I repel him and force him still.

Daemon growls as I toss my blade on to the bedside table and lean and lick the blood on his skin. His blood tastes so much better than mine. I moan at the iron and shift from how I was straddled atop him. My skirt bunches up by his midriff as I suckle on his flesh and nipped at his skin with my teeth

He strains against the bounds I managed to put on his wrists and releases a moan.

I lift my head at the sound of it and breathe hotly against him, "wicked dragon," I sit up then slap him across the face, "you're not meant to enjoy this," I rub his cheek down to his chest, "not really. This is meant to satisfy me."

Daemon looks at me, frazzled by the hit.

"You've been nothing but spiteful even though I've been nothing but obedient, prince husband," I mutter, leaning into him, digging my nails into his chest, "and you insult me so greatly by wasting your precious seed on whores who could not bear you any heirs."

I prop myself up on his chest. Daemon pants at the rocking movement of my hips. I scowl at him as I gather my skirt up until my skin was bare against his. I whimper at the feel of his still hardened member pulsing beneath my own pulse. I recall the whore he was with just moments ago, and how her slick was glistening on his manhood. I feel ire and jealousy burn through me.

"Is it not painfully obvious to you that I can be your whore, your grace?!" I bark through tears as I grab his hair and pull his head up.

Daemon grunts, "fucking bitch."

I desperately retort, "I'll be your fucking bitch, Daemon. I want to be your fucking bitch, your slut, your plaything, your executioner, your bride, your darling. Everything, whatever you want from me, I can become it."

I release his hair, making his head fall down. He looks up at me as I lift myself up and grab his veiny girth, aligning him into my core and burying him deep with me.

"Fuck," he huffs.

I whimper at his reaction, licking my lips as I do so, "I want to hurt you so badly, Daemon, but I love you so much that I'll make you feel good while do it however."

I begin to bounce on top of him while I dig my thumb into his fresh wound and choke him with my other hand.

Daemon begins to exclaim in his mother tongue, gripping tightly on the bounds on his wrists.

I groan and lick the blood off my thumb as I fuck myself on him. I move up and down on his hard erection, mind going wild with the fantasies I've thought of him long before we were even wed. When he begins to let out a strangled sound, I release the pressure on his throat and lean on his chest as it heaves up and down.

"Don't wanna see you with anyone else, Daemon," I mutter as I quicken my pace a notch and begin to feel my stomach tighten, "I'll kill your whores cause I can't kill you. Never you, my love."

Daemon groans as he catches his breath, "faster."

I whine at his command and eagerly give into him, adjusting myself atop him and allowing myself to plop up and down him at a quicker and rougher tempo. I feel my insides flutter at the sound of his moans. I scratch his chest up and down with my nails and look down at his face, mouth ajar, eyes shut, neck straining.

"I was made for you, husband," I mutter, biting my lower lip as I feel my core tighten and my climax build, "was made to be your confidant, your right hand, your bride, your baby maker."

He groans, "is that right, come slut?" He lifts his head up, "you want to bear my children so badly you tied me up to fuck yourself on me?"

I whine and nod my head, "yes," I muffle out, "s'all I think about. Wanna be good to you. Wanna give you everything. Wanna give you sons and daughters."

Daemon replies in High Valyrian. I vaguely recognize it as compliment and a curse.

I begin to lose my breath as I ride him more desperately than ever.

"Then take what you want from me and come on my cock, come slut."

I nod my head and clench around him, "yes, Daemon, yes, yes, yes-"

I feel my body begin to burn and flare at my ministrations. I fuck him eagerly and begin to feel grow manic with every thrash and every grunt.

Daemon huffs and rips at his bounds, "you better not disappoint me, my Hightower bitch."

"No, husband," I grunt,

"You better take me good."

"Yes! Gonna be so good to you, so good."

I hear him say something after, but I don't have time to make sense of it as I feel myself tighten then shatter all over him. I cry out his name in pleasure, and as I ride out the pleasure as much as I can. Only then do I realize that Daemon was thrusting into me as well. It is twice as evident as I begin to slow my pace.

And then my toes curl and my nails dig into his skin when his heat shoots into me. It makes my flesh quake and intensifies my undoing.

I scream out his name. He calls me dirty ones. I bask in our union and slowly come down from my high. Slowly making sure he was just as spent as I was like a dutiful wife.

What remains is a mess. I am a mess of short breath, sweat, and blood as I slowly sink down and fall onto Daemon's chest. I whimper against him, dazed by it all, but completely and utterly satisfied with myself.

I lap at his wound, soothing myself as I enjoy the remaining stretch inside me, the fullness and warmth planted in my belly.

I knit my brows when I feel hands come around my form.

"Take off your clothes."

I lift my head out and look at Daemon's face, his eyes blown and his lips parted. I push myself up, "how did you get o-"

I whimper when he chuckles, my tenderness sensitive to vibrations if his body. His hands run up my back, to the ties on my dress. His fingers begin to tug and he undo them, "you cannot seriously believe to have overpowered me, little girl."

Before my pulse could even calm, it's racing all over again when Daemon easily flips us over and begins pushing my skirt up, "your knots are shite. I'll teach you how to properly tie a victim up."

He arduously rips my dress off my body overhead, up until I was as naked as he was beneath him. He looks down at my bareness and grips my thighs, roughly ripping his nails in a downward motion, making me reach out to him as I whine.

Daemon grunts before he chuckles, "I can feel you clench around me, dirty whore."

I squeak when he pushes forward and reaches out for something. He places my blade between my breasts then adjusts my legs around him as he pushes himself up on one arm. He then grabs the blade and eyes me darkly as he presses the steel on my skin. I slap my hand on my mouth when he begins cut into my abdomen. He looks down at his work as my tighten my legs around him, holding back my sounds as he did.

"Don't be selfish, slut," he mutters, "I own your womb. I ought to mark it now."

Daemon's eyes flick up to me as I scream into my hand and screw my teary eyes shut.

I silently sob at the sting of the blade and try to control my cries until he finishes. I begin to heave when I hear the sound of something being dropped to the floor.

I whimper and open my eyes when I feel Daemon sigh as he sinks back down onto me, face coming to the side of my own. He pushes my hands off my face in order to press our chests together. I lean into his shoulder and suckle at his skin to soothe myself.

"Shhhh," he kisses my cheek, "I'll make you feel better, my bride. Make sure to fill you up until you're full with my seed, okay?"

I nod my head and wrap my arms around him.

"Olvie sȳz," he mutters, "good little slut for me."

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mono-dot-jpeg · 1 year

Text

nap time - k. leona

summary; being sent into this world wasn't so bad. at least you found people like you.

genre/extra tags; jaguar hybrid! reader, reader is mc but not really???, grim is their child and reader refuses to accept it, cat habits instilled into humans, fluff, comedy, consensual violence as affection, reader has vitiligo that looks like jaguar spots but i never address it in the story, reader is referred to as mc and prefect

word count; 1.07k

[gender neutral reader] [can be romantic or platonic? idk]

a/n; hey lol, i write for twst now ig. i wont do it often bc i think i havent grasped some of the characters well enough. but i'll take some requests

and im also on a stardew valley grind for this month so... not really playing twst often. but nonetheless, hope you enjoy. i wrote this thinking abt tank the jaguar. love that big cat fr.

anyways insert obligatory leona nap time fanfic.

you were quite glad that you landed in a different world where beastmen/hybrids were just common occurance. it's not like you didn't have them before you got here, they were just not as common in your past home. though, you've been here for a while, can you even call your old world, home?

if you were being honest, you found a new home with the savanaclaw dorm. despite being a more solitary animai, you found some comfort in the other beastman. though ruggie liked to annoy you in your times of silence, you consider him a good friend. jack was nice, he was awkward at times but he meant well. but you were much more interested in leona.

something about being so similar yet so different attracted you to him. and also the fact that grim was more than willing to let you be friends with leona if it meant free cans of tuna and money.

but you really like the moments you had with leona.

it was an unlucky day really. having to wake up to attend class, terrible. having to drag grim by the scruff to wake up, little brat gets an extra 5 minutes while you have to actually get ready. and then losing grim because... why would he listen to you for more than 5 minutes? sounded more like a normal day than you liked to admit.

"hey. herbivore." he chuffs. while it's typically a nice greeting between your shared kind with leona, you can't help but think it's more teasing than usual.

"i'm in the same family and genus as you. who are you calling herbivore?" you grunted. you bat at his arm once, causing the male to snicker.

"i believe you're looking for an annoying little cat?"

"myah! i'm not a cat!" you hear the familiar squeal of your tiny companion. "i don't want to go to class!" he's hanging by his scruff and being held by leona who's looking over at you in amusement.

"well, you cost us half an attendance mark!" you swipe him from leona's grip, pressing a hand against his cheek. "you can't just do what you please all the time! if i could, i would be sleeping right now!" you huffed. you turn to leona, who was watching you as if it was an interesting tv show, "thanks for finding him. i'm getting sick of chasing him all the time."

"ironic for a jaguar. don't you like the chase, being fast and all?" leona chuckles as you give him a pointed glare.

your arms soon cradle grim properly while your hand stays against the back of grim's neck. the loud cat yowls, "stop grabbing me there! myah!"

you ignore the small cat to answer the big cat, "i'm not that fast!"

he gives you a look, "jack thinks otherwise."

"jack is a wolf, completely different species!" you two bicker. but there's a growing grin on leona's face as you both start walking, grim wrapped up in your arms. "you better not leave this time, grim." he grumbles, eventually stopping his twisting and turning and gets comfortable in your arms. "as i said before, we're from the same genus, so naturally, we're gonna be built similar. but you're a big lazy cat who naps all day. of course you're gonna be slower than me!"

"for someone who is a solitary animal, you sure yap a lot. maybe you should be a chihuahua instead." his pointer and middle finger move to pinch your cheek for a second. "you like to scold me a lot. you're starting to sound like ruggie."

"you like being just as troublesome as grim." with a free hand, you push the side of leona's head.

"hey!" the cat shouts, offended.

"you need to relax a bit. i'm sure you're stressed out, right? grim doesn't really do much to help."

"so mean! and why does my henchman get to rest but i can't?!" grim whines. you shake your head.

"i'm not resting anytime soon. i have a lot to do. mostly just keeping grim in line but... no rest for me yet." you give a weary smile. "maybe later, i'll come by the gardens to see you." you hummed.

he huffs, "get someone else to care for grim. you need rest." you can't even say hi to your friends as leona grabs grim and tosses him to your friends, who are just as confused as you are.

"you didn't have to toss grim like that!" you slap the back of leona's head, "and i'll be fine!" you walk over to the adeuce duo, only to get tugged away again. you're tempted to throw hands as leona continues to have the audacity to try to get you to rest.

"the teachers like you anyways, you can skip one class to rest. we all know how biased crewel is when it comes to you." with enough bickering between you two, you make it to the gardens. the sun is warm against your skin as you huffed.

"do i really need to rest during classes?! i could just sleep after school!"

"do you really want to nap in your dorm, prefect?" he's already laying down on a comfortable spot. you stare at the already sleepy beastman, who only stares back as if to challenge you. it takes about two minutes for you to fold. might as well as this point. you grovel over in defeat as leona smiles smugly at your behavior.

you sort of force your way into his arms and rest your back against his chest, to which he presses his face to your neck. you can hear him chuffing. you can't help but comment, "you're chuffing an awful lot. sounds like you care for me. ack-!" his hand reaches over to your face, pressing his palm under your chin to tilt your head up.

"talking too much for a jaguar." your eyes are forced to stare into his own for a moment before he lets go and gets comfy. "just sleep." his face is buried against your head as he starts to fall asleep.

"well, you never denied it." you snicker as you turn to face him. "i don't know much about lions but something tells me you like me." he opens one eye to look at your cheeky smile.

"yeah, i do." he moves to kiss your forehead, "you're stupider than i thought, you should've figured it out sooner."

you can feel blood rushing to your face as you stammer, "y-you can't just drop that out of nowhere!" it's too late to scold him as he's already asleep.

#twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #disney twst #twisted wonderland #leona x reader #leona kingsholar x reader #leona kingscholar #twst leona x reader #twst leona kingscholar

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k4katsujin · 1 year

Text

a lonely night (miguel ohara x gn!reader)

‼️ consider this as the second part of the series‼️

disclaimer: it's still an ongoing series and i'll organize it when i will have written more episodes though i don't like the idea of a timeline bc it's like one shots and 🧍🏻‍♀️ idfk bro i js specified for clarity

this is the very first part of my lonely series! idk if i will make this series a miguel x reader only but :> even made my own tag 🦦

part two/one here !

also you don't need to read all the stories to like understand the plot they're js one shots and a good way to cope w my crippling loneliness (this is actually a call for help /srs

Warning: implied suicide (not really because it’s a cliffhanger but it may be triggering to some people idk so I’m still putting a warning.)

Also I’m not really sure abt the “don’t put words in my mouth” bc I’m not a native speaker but in case it isn’t clear I meant that reader basically said “don’t make me say what I didn’t say”

Also 2 there is no mention of gender bc I’m trying my best to like write for my fellow enby pals but jk reader will be fem bodied.

Also 3 I’m asking this once again but please reblog this if you liked it it helps small writers a lot please and fank yew

Also 4 BIG THANKS TO DEEPL WRITE FOR PROOFREADING THIS WHEN I WAS LAZY TO IT MYSELF some AIs need their ass ate fr

(ignore the random ass banner lmao)

You were chilling on a rooftop before you felt a familiar presence.

-What are you doing up this late, carino? Asked the voice.

You didn’t know why neither how, but somehow you instantly knew it was him.

The one who was known to save every universe despite everything.

He sure was a good leader, sometimes he was mean, but it was all for the sake of the many universes he had to protect.

He was a good leader for sure, but a good lover? There’s no way you could count on that.

You loved him very much and you know how painful it was for him to show any kind of affection, but tonight you had too much of holding everything inside.

He put his hands on your waist, sneaking a kiss on your lips before sitting next to you, both your legs dangling in the shining lights of the city.

The weather was cold for a beginning of summer, but it was nothing compared to the cold residing in your heart.

Your relationship was bound to come to an end, and you were here for this end to come.

-Is something wrong my love? Miguel hastened to ask when he noticed your expression was off.

-Do you truly love me? You asked, ignoring his question.

He stiffened at the hearing of your question.

-Of course, why wouldn’t I? he asked worried.

-Listen. I’m going to be straightforward with you. I’m pregnant. And I want the baby to have both parents when they grow up. And I think, with both of us being heroes, this won’t work. Don’t put words in my mouth, I do love you with all my heart and you know it. But I can’t do it anymore. (tears start falling on your cheeks but you continue anyway:) I am grateful for all the things we lived but I think our relationship is meant to end anyway. I’m sorry but I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

You stood at the edge of the building and disappeared in a snap.

-Goodbye, Miguel.

~~~~

You woke up in a hurry, instinctively looking for your husband.

-Is everything ok, my love? Miguel was quick to ask. (he put a hand on your forehead) did you catch a cold or something? You seem to have a fever.

-I’m okay don’t worry! You say with a frank smile. I just had a nightmare but nothing to worry about I promise.

-Mm. If you say so, he said with a tint of doubt in his voice. I’ll stay in bed with you just in case something happens, ok?

Without waiting for your response, he forcefully got into your bed, which made you move.

You inevitably fell into your husband’s arms as he put his arm on your shoulder with your head on his chest, feeling his soft breathing and hearing his heartbeat.

Despite everything, the work he had, the countless nights you spent waiting for him to return home, even wondering if he ever would, the arguments, you were in love with him. And it even if it was hard, he and him only was the one you decided to love.

And that was beautiful.

#kaheri's lonely series #kaheri's chronicles #across the spiderverse x reader #spiderman atsv #atsv x reader #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara #miguel ohara #spiderman across the spiderverse #spiderman 2099 spiderverse #spider man 2099 #spiderman 2099 x reader #x reader #writers on tumblr #queer writers

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ashes-writing · 2 years

Text

burnin for you | stranger things ; g.emerson

A/N ; So this little shit hijacked my brain around lunch today and I've been writing like a woman possessed since the idea presented itself. I know, I knowwww.. let's just ignore the million other x reader wips I have, alrighty? Like... Idk how popular Gareth Emerson is as a character but lowkey, I thought he was pretty bitchin. So.. here I go again, I guess.

What I'm posting is all I got.. for now. LMK if you wanna see more of this -or any of my x reader things, tbh. Feedback really does help. Some of y'all giving feedback are the very things that have actually inspired me to carry on with certain fics, jsyk. I love you all for it too.

[ writer firmly believes that Gareth Emerson enjoys bands like Blue Oyster Cult, hence the name of this one. ]

Pairing ; Gareth Emerson x Sweet!Girly!Fem reader

Timeline / Other Stuff to Note ; Set during season 4 but free from the Upside Down and all of it's assorted fuckery and nasties. Nobody dies, all we get are high school shenanigans and some pining slash angsttt... and hopefully some real cute filth at some point. So if you like that, stick around yeah?

Tag List ; @musichealsscars @aries-arcade @allelitesmut @hcloangcls are the only people on my Stranger Things taglist.. if you'd like to be added to my taglists for anything including Stranger Things, please let me know or add yourself -> here.

Warnings ; Jocks being assholes, reader may be cute+smol+sweet but she's got a very dry wit + razor sharp tongue, hints of reader having a lonely absentee parent homelife / rich girl probs, awkward fluffy flirting, mutual crushes. Eddie Munson being a covert lowkey matchmaking shit for his bestie cos I felt like it.

Other Stuff ; tag list doc || my rules - fandoms and some characters I write for || requests are open -> send me things. Headcanons or fluff/filth alphabet letters only. No wrestlers, please and thanks.

I do not consent to my work being reposted elsewhere or copied/reworked/rewritten and reposted here or elsewhere. You don't own this, I do. So like... don't steal my shit.

Gareth Emerson is on the verge of dozing off at his desk until the classroom door opens and you make your way inside quietly. You pause by the teachers desk and hold out a piece of paper and the teacher looks out at the classroom to address them.

“We have a new student today.” the teacher nods to you and your only response is to fidget with the sleeve ends of the pale pink cardigan you’re wearing while shuffling your feet. Gareth’s eyes fix on you and he swallows hard, drums the pencil in his hand against his desk. The teacher finally seems to realize that you’re dead set against introducing yourself to the class so with a roll of her eyes, she nods in the direction of the vacant desk right across the aisle from the one Gareth sat in.

You make your way down the aisle and sit down, digging around beneath the desk to try and find a textbook. The teacher notices and gets Gareth’s attention. “Mr. Emerson, be a dear and share your textbook with ____ until I can slip down and pick up one to go in her desk?”

Gareth glances across the aisle at you just as you look up and lock eyes with him. For a second or two, you’re just staring at him with your head tilted. Gareth gets up and moves his desk closer, putting the book between the two of you.

The scent of cotton candy hits his nose and at first, he thinks somebody’s eating the stuff in class. But then you lean into him slightly to get a better view of the page in front of him and it’s in his nose and he realizes that the scent is coming off of you and it’s your hair.

You can feel the boy with bright blue eyes staring at you. When you finish reading the page in front of him and move on to the page in front of you, you glance up for just a second or two and you flash him a cute little smile as you suck in a bubble with the pink gum you’ve been chewing for the duration of class.

Gareth manages a smile in return and goes back to reading. When your hair softly grazes his arm, he feels like someone’s dragging a live wire across his skin and he tries not to tense up but he can’t help it, it’s not like girls -especially the really pretty ones like you, are going out of their way to touch him or smile at him and he doesn’t really… know how to handle it.

You gaze up at him with your brows knit together, twisting a strand of hair around your finger. “Sorry, uh..” you mumble, your words trail off softly before you’ve even finished the sentence.

By now, he’s starting to realize that you’re just this shy little thing, all soft and pink and sweet like candy. Or this is the image he’s building of you in his own mind at the moment, either way.. One of you has to make things less awkward and for some reason, he doesn’t think two,three and four times about him being the one to do it this time.

He tears a strip of paper out of his notebook while nobody’s paying attention and picks up his favorite pen.

Hey. What’s your name?

He slips the paper over to you using the thick textbook as a cover. At first he doesn’t think you’ve seen him do it, but then, just as he goes to pull his hand back, you place your hand on what you think is the slip of paper, only to discover it’s his fingertips. You glance down at your hand on top of his fingers and you slowly pull your hand with the note in it closer to yourself.

You pick up your favorite pink pen and start to write back.

It’s ___. But I hate it, so you can call me literally anything else. What classes do you have? I can show you my schedule, if you want me to??

You slip the note back towards Gareth and he’s staring at the words on the page. When he feels the softness of your fingertips against his hand, he lowers his hand on the slip of paper. You pout a little because he doesn’t really look up, but you shrug it off. You’re probably annoying him already.

You’re doodling in your notebook, delicate little flowers and suns, stars and hearts and you really don’t expect him to answer because you’ve come to the conclusion that you were annoying somehow, and so when you feel him sort of awkwardly nudge you and nod down, you’re surprised. You slip the strip of paper towards you and your eyes scan it.

I’ll come up with something then. Yeah, if you want to show me, you can. You smell like cotton candy.

The last part is scratched out, almost like he didn’t mean for it to be seen. You giggle softly and reach out to the textbook to turn the page before picking up your pen to respond.

Yay! When the bell rings I’ll give it to you. Uh… can I walk with you? I promise I won’t annoy you or anything… Thanks. It’s my perfume, I think? You smell nice too. ;)

You slip the paper back towards Gareth and quickly turn your attention back to the book in front of the two of you. As your eyes scan the page, you twirl hair around your fingertip and you can feel him when he stares at you. You glance over at him and you give him that cute little grin.

He wants to kick himself because the grin is yet another thing about you that he has the feeling will be what dooms him.

He nearly chokes on air when he reads the last part of the little note and before he can stop himself, his face is on fire. The more rational side of his brain keeps trying to tell him that the popular kids are gonna find a way to coax you over to their side so there’s no sense in getting all caught up in you, but no matter how hard he tries to keep that in mind, there’s this small part of him that knows it’s already way too late.

He’s thrown for a loop by you promising not to annoy him or anything and it actually makes him look up from the little strip of paper and stare at you as you doodle in your notebook and twist hair around your finger.

The bell finally rings and you gather your things. You’re pretty sure he’s not going to want to lead you around all damn day, so you start to walk out of the classroom. He catches up to you just as you reach the classroom door and taps your shoulder.

Before you can stop it from happening, you can feel your face and body getting a little hot when you turn to look up and find him standing there, staring down at you with his brows knit.

“Sorry, I..” you stammer. He chuckles quietly. “It’s okay. You were gonna show me your schedule..?”

You dig around in your notebook as you two step into the hallway and you hold it out to him after you’ve found it. Gareth takes it and scans the classes you’re taking and as luck would have it, you have every one of his classes but one.

“We have everything together until our last one. I have shop. You have Home Ec, I think?” Gareth takes the paper back and nods. “Yeah, Home Ec.”

You giggle quietly.

“C’mon. I don’t mind walking with you.” he knows it’s probably stupid as hell and in a few days, after you’ve been at Hawkins High long enough to learn the social system, you probably won’t even look at him in the hallway anymore, but he also feels this overwhelming urge to be around. To be protective. To just be near you.

They say this shit doesn’t happen at first sight. And maybe it doesn’t.

But Gareth would be lying if he didn’t own up to the fact that he feels… Something.

— ( lunchroom, same day )

“Okay, so where do you usually sit?” your eyes scan the crowded cafeteria and you somehow instinctively shift so that you’re standing closer to Gareth. You pull your eyes off of the room itself to tilt your head to the side slightly and look up at him. He nods to a table full of guys of varying ages who all happen to be wearing the same tee shirt that he’s wearing underneath his flannel vest.

“Over there.”

At the table, Dustin nudges Eddie. “Who’s she?”

“I have no idea. She’s cute though. Definitely not the kind of girl you picture with him, but cute.” Eddie muses thoughtfully as he takes a bite of his apple.

Jeff is gaping. Wiggling his brows and just being a teasing shithead as you and his best friend make your way over to the table. He notices how you seem to squish yourself into Gareth’s side just a little when you pass the noisy assholes on the basketball team sitting at the jocks table when one of them calls out.

“Hey! Sweetheart you are worlds better than that freak. C’mon, come sit with us. Let me show you around Hawkins High.”

Gareth stops in his tracks and so do you. You point to yourself. For at least fifteen seconds or so, Gareth is convinced that this is it, it has to be. That you’ll figure out you don’t belong with him or his friends and you’ll go to the better table.

But your response surprises him.

A lot, actually. Because you haven’t really acted like you possess any certain fire or sass until your mouth opens to respond to Mason Allen.

“I’d really rather not..” you bite your lip, gazing at the jock. “Don’t all of you like… carry unidentified airborne STD’s usually? Yeah, no thanks. I’d really rather not.” and you start to walk away. Gareth is still frozen in place and as soon as you realize it, you walk back over and gently grab his wrist. “C’mon. Don’t let those Stepford assholes get in your head.” you say it loud and with a smirk in the general direction of the popular table.

Still in shock, Gareth lets you lead him to the table he’s told you he usually sits at.

“Okay, where the hell did he find her? Asking for personal reasons…” Jeff mutters, making Eddie chuckle quietly beside him as he leans in to whisper, “I was thinking the same thing, man.”

“Guys, this is ___.”

Eyes fix on you and you bite your lip, giving a soft little smile and wave. “Hi?”

“What’d that jackass Mason say to you?”

“ Oh yeah… He called you guys freaks. He was trying to get me to sit with him I think? I unno.” you shrug and go quiet again, eating your lunch.

“And you didn’t. Interesting.” Eddie muses, mostly to himself. Giving Gareth a smirk that has Gareth giving him a dirty look. And before he can stop himself, he’s sitting just a little closer to you. He knows that look and he knows that nine out of ten, his best friend is being a shithead, but he’s also still not willing to risk even losing you as a friend.

Because a friend is better than nothing at all.

You happen to overhear Eddie and you glance up, taking a bite of your chocolate pudding. “Yeah. I didn’t. I hate jocks.”

What you don’t explain is that at your old school, you were popular. But then a boy you thought cared about you went around spreading rumors about you and after that, nobody wanted anything to do with you.

So yeah, you’re not falling into that trap anytime soon.

Besides, there’s just something about Gareth. You feel just a little less ill at ease in your current situation with him around, even if you’re scared to death that he’s going to wind up being annoyed by you. Or sooner or later, being around you will be such a pain in the ass for him too that he won’t want to anymore.

After all, your own parents can’t be bothered to stick around very long. No sooner did they have the furniture unpacked and in place and everything settled in than they were leaving again. Another business trip, so they said.

This is the first time in days since your arrival in Hawkins that you’ve felt even a little secure at all. So maybe it’s needy, maybe it’s clingy as hell, but you just don’t want to lose the feeling. If being around Gareth Emerson is comforting for you, then that’s exactly what you’ll do. At least as much as you can get away with.

“You. I like you.” Jeff grins as he chuckles. “Since Gare is gonna be a bag of dicks and not introduce us to you, I’m Jeff.”

The boy with curly hair and a baseball cap speaks up next with a bright grin. “Dustin. Where’d you move here from?”

“Vegas.” you answer quietly, raising the straw in your milk carton to your lips as you take a noisy sip.

“That’s cool.” Dustin smiles at you, hoping that maybe it’ll ease you a little. He can just kind of tell you’re wary of everyone right now and he wants to make you see that you don’t have a reason to be.

The boy with black hair goes next. A cocky sort of little smirk that kind of makes you think he’s probably all mouth. You discover this is true when he introduces himself. “Mike Wheeler. You know Gareth’s an idiot, right?”

You snort in laughter and shrug. “Yeah, I’ll uh… Keep that in mind, kid.” you reply, smiling at him.

The boy sitting next to him chuckles. “Ignore Mike, he’s an idiot. I’m Lucas. Probably the only nice jock you’re gonna meet here.” and you smile a little. “I think your mom asked me to babysit one of your little sisters this weekend, actually.” you nod, remembering seeing him in the store with his mother when she’d stopped you because you were posting an ad on a bulletin board nearby.

“Hey, yeah! I remember seein you now! Cool. My sister Erica’s gonna be a pain in your ass though. Just gonna tell you that now. Kids always annoying the hell out of me.”

“Dude, Erica’s not that bad. At least you have a sister. It’s just me, my ma and the new cat.” Dustin laments. You laugh softly. “I’m an only child too.”

The boy with long hair, tattoos and fingers full of rings with almost black brown eyes is the next one to introduce himself. And he’s giving you this little smirk. You return the smirk. “And you are?” you question quietly.

“Eddie Munson.”

Gareth tenses up just a little at your side and you glance over at him while he’s not looking.

You can feel tension between the two but you don’t say anything about it. What you do instead is shift just a little closer to Gareth.

“Hey, Gareth is in the band with me, Grant and Jeff.. You should come hang while we practice.” Eddie is grinning. He’s at least seventy five percent sure that Gareth thinks he’s trying to flirt with you but that’s actually not what he’s doing.

He’s inviting you because he knows his friend too well. And he knows that grumpy dumb fuck won’t invite you himself. Or make any sort of first move. So he’s assuming that maybe if he hits on you just a little, it’ll do what it just did and make you kind of draw closer to Gare instead.

When he sees your reaction to his lingering gaze, he pumps his fist in victory under the table because he called it nail on the head. You immediately smushed yourself into Gareth just a little more. Not enough to really be noticed by anyone else, but Eddie gets one glance at Gareth’s flushed face and he knows damn well that Gareth has noticed it at least.

You mull over the question Eddie’s asked you as you drink your chocolate milk.

Gareth speaks up quietly. “We uh… practice in Jeff’s garage or Grant’s basement. Today it’s Jeff’s garage… If you wanted to come.. I mean you don’t.. Like you don’t have to.” he’s stammering and holy shit he’s making a mess of it because he really wants you there, but he doesn’t want Eddie to keep subtly hitting on you.

He’s gotta do something and he’s gotta do it fast.

#gareth emerson #gareth the great #gareth emerson imagine #gareth emerson fanfiction #gareth emerson fanfic #gareth emerson x reader #gareth emerson x reader fanfiction #gareth emerson x reader imagine #gareth emerson x fem!reader imagine #gareth emerson x fem reader #gareth emerson x fem!reader fanfiction

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