#teeth are very cathartic to draw.
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hungry
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Teeth And Claws || Irumi Zoldyck x fem!reader
A/n : Prompt 13 of the Smutember 2023
The list of promps is HERE
Smutember 2023 Masterlist ⚜
Warnings : rough sex, biting, blood kink, scratching, mention of cum, 18+ READERS ONLY and wrap it before you tap it
Masterlist ⚜
I don’t give permission to repost my work, if you want to share it just reblogue it
Word count : 600
He was always portrayed as a cold-blooded assassin. One whose victims never saw his face, never emerged from his bloodthirsty madness. Even his own family knew him to be vicious and ready for anything. His little brother Kirua was even his most fervent accuser. But that's the way he was. And most strangers found themselves extremely uncomfortable when his presence made itself known in a room or around a corner.
But with you, on the other hand, even the worst of his personality - which could scare off even the bravest of people - excited and drew you even deeper into his net. His roughness for you was a direct manifestation of the passion for you that burned within him, but also of your strength. He knew that no matter how hard he pushed, you weren't going to break under his force or his bites.
Because yes, he bites you. It's a cathartic way for him to express and release the overflow of emotions that run through him. His white teeth dug into your soft skin like a marshmallow, leaving behind traces of deep violet-blue. It didn't matter to him where - your thighs, breasts, neck, shoulders, belly - as long as he marked you with his imprint on your person, so that everyone would know correctly that you belonged to him and him only.
But he didn't just stick to the mark. When he sank his teeth in, it wasn't just to mark your skin but to touch your soul. Most of the time he didn't stop until the mark was inked, but once he managed to draw a little blood from your flesh. Because it was just at that point that the passion he felt for you drove him mad.
"I-Irumi... p-please I n-need you" you whimpered as your dom boyfriend kept teasing you with his teeth, with rough nibbles.
"But that color looks so good on you" he said, his lips red as he stuck out his tongue to lick some of the blood that had just dripped from your abused skin. He groaned at the taste, he'd already seen blood on countless people and yet "Blood just looks better on you"
But that wasn't his only way of marking you, and no, we're not going to talk about the way he always comes deep inside you, or the way he stays nestled there you to make sure not a single precious drop of his semen leaks out.
We'll mention the way he loses control when he reaches the peak of ultimate pleasure. Your walls squeeze him so tightly that he feels like he'll never stop pouring into you. He clings to you - his body usually so strong - trembling with ecstasy, as if he'll disappear for having felt such great pleasure. Except that in a moment like this, he's out of control, his hips buck uncontrollably against yours and his nails become as sharp as claws as he digs into the soft, immaculate skin of your back.
It's very rare that when you finish making love to him, you don't look like you've just come out of a fight. But then again, that's his way of expressing his passion, and it doesn't mean he's not angry at himself, once the tension and excitement have died down to see the state he's left you in. He's always looking after you, lest your wounds get infected if you go on a mission soon. But be careful, anyone who touches a hair on your head will end up in worse shape than they ever had a nightmare about.
#hunter x hunter#hunter x hunter imagine#hunter x hunter smut#irumi zoldyck#irumi zoldyck imagine#irumi zoldyck x reader#irumi zoldyck smut#irumi x reader#irumi smut#illumi zoldyck#illumi zoldyck imagine#illumi zoldyck x reader#illumi zoldyck smut#illumi x reader#illumi smut#smutember 2023#smut#miri-writes
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NSFW thot for Thursday:
Listen— I enjoy a mean and dominant Ghost as much as the next girlie; but the thing is, given how much violence he faced in his upbringing, I really don’t think he’d want to bring that same energy in the bedroom. He’s still a person outside of being a death machine. I think Simon would be slower, softer, more attentive. Probably not very good at dirty talk, but very focused on making his partner feel good, feel safe— and I think he’d want the same in return.
Simon’s a softie and loves to cuddle, this is canon.
I agree anon! Mean dom Ghost will be a weak spot for me always, but I absolutely concur that with Simon's background he requires a lot of trust and soft handling too.
There's different types of sex with Simon. There's the post-mission sex, the rough, teeth clacking in a kiss, smothering you into the bed, trying to erase the taste of blood with the heady sensation of pleasure kind of sex. The kind that's fueled by leftover adrenaline and the uneven thumping of heartbeats, the desperate, almost manic need to reassure each other that you're alive, whole.
There's the sex where you have more time, where he's in control, where he's drawing shuddering gasps and moans from you with orgasm after orgasm, rendering you pliant, open and wanting under him. It's about you in those instances, getting you out of the cacophony of your thoughts, the noise replaced with sinful, sickly sweet pleasure that he sinks his teeth into, feels you go rigid then soft under his touch.
Then there's the sex about Simon. It doesn't happen often, and when it does it's usually an emotional affair. He's so hurt, and he carries his wounds so so deep that it takes a massive erosion in which to expose them. You're the one in control then, making him feel good, talking low and sweet to him, coaxing him from the chaos of his mind and back into your embrace. It's in this instance that you witness the only time you've ever seen him cry, a cathartic release in which he finally sobs the words "I love you."
You cuddle after. You always do, when you have the time. Usually he hauls you to him, keeps you there buried in his arms as a reassurance to himself, a comfort extended only to you. Yet in this moment, where his words linger in the darkness, his truth shattering like a thousand crystal fragments that remain in the silence, he curls into you instead. Completely vulnerable, raw like an exposed nerve he shudders, surrenders to you, drawn from the prison of his mind and into the serene, blissful adoration you bestow upon him with a beloved, gentle kiss as you echo his words back to him
"I love you too."
#simon ghost riley x you#simon ghost riley#simon ghost riley x reader#simon ghost riley imagine#mw22#mw2#drabbles#thursday night thots
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They've fought before, all friends do. Will can remember their first spat, it was over a campaign, Mike made it too hard, the party kept getting injured, it was stupid, really. It was resolved pretty quick, like most childish fights.
Their next big fight hurt, it had a lot more built up anger behind it, it being just the two of them certainly didn't help, but that was also resolved, Mike and Lucas had biked out to apologise, and after Will had calmed down he could understand why the other boy was so mad.
Their fight at Rink-O-Mania was very similar, there was just a lot of bottled up emotions that exploded.
However, this fight felt different. Both boys were stressed- for good reason- and tired, and on top of it all Will had blatantly lied to Mike's face, something he had never done before, hid things, sure. Never outright lied. Will knew what he was doing when he lied about the painting, deep down he knew it would be a Trainwreck when Mike found out El did not commission the painting, but he was not expecting the reaction he got 'What is wrong with you?!' Will sucks in a sharp breath through gritted teeth, shooting into a sitting position on El's bed. He bites the inside of his cheek as his knees draw up to his chin. He should be sleeping.
A knock from the door yanks him from his spiral, he shifts to face the opening door. El gives Will a soft look, the latter responds with a strained smile.
"Can I sit?" She gestures to the bed, Will nods.
"You don't have to ask. It is your room after all." El just shrugs, flopping down next to Will.
"Ours." A comfortable silence settled between them, El gazing blankly at the ceiling. Will feels his dark thoughts come crawling to the forefront of his mind, festering, growing, spreading, he is unsure which ones are really even his, "Why would I commission a painting without me in it?" El doesn't pull her eyes from the ceiling, Will cringes.
"I- I'm sorry."
"No. Don't be. I'm not mad, just curious." El immediately cuts in, rolling to her side to look at Will, propping herself up on her elbow.
"Mike was scared you were going to end things. and I thought that what I told him was how you felt, I guess I was wrong." El smiles.
"I was going to end things, at surfer boy's, but after- Everything. I felt like I needed him, I didn't wanna risk our whole relationship until things felt more..." El trails off.
"Stable. I get it." Will finishes, El nods.
"I would never want to lose my friendship with Mike, he was there for me, I do love him. Just not like- that." Will nods.
"How did you find out about the painting?" Will asks, looking away, El hums.
"It was only a matter of time, but Mike made a joke about it. I forget what it was but I remember saying that I have never seen that painting before. Then he asked me questions about how I felt about him while in California. I was very confused but I answered honestly. No point in lying. Then he said he had to go." Will glues his eyes to the floor, remembering exactly where he had gone.
"We argued." Will starts, still not looking at his sister, "bad. Worse than any of our other fights, and that's saying something- I don't know. I don't want to hurt him, but I also don't want to be hurt by him. I just-" he clears his throat, blinking rapidly, "I don't want our friendship to end, it can't. But it's like, I can't- I can't fix it." Will feels himself cracking, he knows he should shut his mouth but it is almost cathartic to say it aloud and El wasn't making any attempts to stop him, "I don't- It's just. We have been friends for ten years. Ten. So why can we not just work through this like we did with everything else?" He takes a shaky breath, suddenly finding himself lost for words despite the avalanche of thoughts rushing through his mind "Why?" He swallows, ripping his eyes from the floor to gage his sister's opinion. El sits up quietly.
"I know Mike wouldn't want your friendship to end either." She speaks, tilting her head so they can be eye to eye. Will purses his lips, he knows that, "I think you should speak to him. By now he is probably moping about his basement, whining about how much of an idiot he is." El giggles, quickly stopping when she catches the look in Wills face.
"Yeah. I will. First thing tomorrow."
"After breakfast?"
"No. First thing."
"Well you better sleep then. If you want to get up early enough to leave before mum starts shoving a plate of food in your face." El's joke lands well this time.
"I should. Do you want to sleep in here?"
"Nah, I'm all good on the couch. Stop trying to get me to sleep in here."
"I'm just offering." Will shrugs.
"Yeah, but you promised you'd sleep in a real bed tonight, no couches, no floors. And no tables."
"That was one time."
"One time too many." Will laughs as El shuts the door, turning off the light on her way out. The former laying down and throwing a blanket over himself.
---
Will thinks he might explode
It feels as though has been lying here for hours. He got lost in his thoughts, but he was always led down the worst possible paths, so he would think of a random thing he liked, a therapist recommended something like that to him after he came back from the upside down, although it didn't really help against the supernatural, so he never used it, he figured this time it might help. After a while of failing at that strategy he started making noise to quell the raging thoughts, but that stopped working around three hours ago. He tried laying dead still, but he started to feel phantom vines encircling his lungs, so that was a no go. No matter what he thought of, one singular person always managed to come up, Mike. Will swallows, sitting up and throwing the blanket off his legs. '1:58 ' Will sighs, walking out of the room. He grabs his jacket off the side of the couch, giving it a quick smell test before giving a half hearted shrug and putting it on. He grabs his shoes from the side of the door and sits on the top step of the cabin to throw them on, before begining his journey to the Wheelers.
The forest feels different at night, his brain is screaming that he needs to turn around. He can't, 'You can't really be that much of an idiot! ' he needs to apologise. He vaguely thinks he should have taken Argyles van, considering Argyle was willing to drive his friend, his friends little brother and a random stranger across the country Will assumes he wouldn't have much issue driving to the Wheelers. Then again, he would also have to wake up Jonathan who get very suspicious, but that would have been an inevitability, considering the side eye he has been giving Will since the fight. He was so deep in his thoughts he almost missed the figure standing further down the path.
"Mike?"
(Edit: This is part 1. I will put any parts I add in the Edit tag)
#lmk if you want me to finish this#I make my best work when it is late at night and I dont wear my glasses so the words get all weird after a bit#stranger things#byler#will byers#mike wheeler#i know what you are#El and Mike are broken up at this point btw#no cheating on my watch#el doesnt deserve that#and I mad the time 1:58 cus its like 8:15#*made#if Will had gotten up the next morning I would have made it so he wa strying to get out but things kept slowing him down.#and he would have left at 8:15#yeah. so...#sorry if I was unclear on anything btw#I will answer any questions#I tried to hint at sleeping arrangements but... I dont think it turned out that good.#did you notice how El came to see Will because she was a bit confused#but then she started to see eye to eye with Will#so I made it literal. she literally saw eye to eye with him#it represented her fullt understanding Wills feelings#Edit#The Painting Fight. Sage Edition
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3, 26, 42 and 50 for the fic writer meme!
3) What are some tropes or details that you think are characteristic of your work?
My worst habit is getting a really big idea for a fic, writing part of it, then losing steam and not being able to finish. I will come back to you WIPs, I swear!! I also tend towards very introspective narrators, for better or for worse, and whenever I edit I have to constantly ask myself what is the character DOING to make sure I'm not relying too heavily on dialogue. I've also noticed I tend to be annoyingly meticulous and have difficulty eliding details. If a character picks something up they WILL put it back down, I do draw little diagrams to make sure everything's spatial positions stay the same, and I will find myself writing an extra thousand words to explain how a character got to where they are rather than skipping to the good part... which definitely contributes to my difficulties finishing WIPs 😅 As far as pairings and character relationships generally, I'm a sucker for complicated and ambiguous relationships, and pairs who have overcome some kind of inequality to be together. I'm frequently a fetid phone poster so I often notice annoying little typos after publishing, which makes me gnash my teeth. As far as tropes, I like "slow burn build up to big cathartic moment", and "character wrestling with humanity/sense of self", and a lil bit of outsider POV. I also have a tendency to focus on the characters hands in descriptions, and there are DEFINITELY a few phrases I catch myself reusing when I reread my fics, I should probably go through and make a call out post for myself at some point with those ram-isms 😅
26) Would you rather write a fic that had no dialogue or one that had only dialogue?
I know this would only further my bad habit, but definitely dialogue only.
42) Have you ever received a comment that stood out to you for any reason?
Love and light to all commenters everywhere 🥰 But I think the comment that most stood out to me when I received it, was I gave Rescue Bots (my beloved) a chance because of a specific Tumblr user who hyped it up, and then they left a very nice comment on Discretion. I was too depressed to respond at the time, but I was very bemused they found my fic and happy they liked it!
50) Using my free space here to muse on something I've noticed, in reading older fics recently and comparing them to newer fics... There is a lot less homophobia in fics nowadays. I mean this in a neutral way. I think it generally says good things about our culture and LGBT acceptance, and also is probably part of the trend of stronger taboos on controversy in many parts of fandom. But in reading older fics, it wasn't that the characters are haters or anything but homophobia is just an embedded assumption that has to be wrestled with. A lot of pagespace is given to characters working through their own internalized homophobia, wrestling with the closet or coming out, and facing varying levels of rejection from the rest of the cast. Nowadays, it seems like most fics are written as "Everything is canon except these characters have always been gay/bi", or in AUs where things like DADT never existed or gay marriage has always been legal, so there a lot less on page conflict over the characters' sexualities. Yay for people now being able to treat broad acceptance as unremarkable and a given nowadays, is the plusside!
I really started thinking about this the other day after reading two fics. One was a West Wing fic from the year of our Lord 2000, where Toby was both broadly supportive of a relationship between Josh and Sam... and also homophobic. Like, he loved them both and supported their relationship and was the best man at their commitment ceremony, AND was repeatedly vocally grossed out by PDA between them and actively got in between them in public out of fear they'd accidentally out themselves. This behavior was both accepted by the characters and totally uncommented on by the narrative. It was a pretty good fic, but that characterization struck me as being very of its time. In contrast, I was then reading a MASH fic from like last year, and it had Potter say something like "Love is love" and I was just immediately jarred out of the fic. Not in the sense that I think Potter would necessarily be hateful or something- I think he's both compassionate enough and pragmatic enough to decide what two consenting soldiers of similar ranks do in private is none of his business- but like, he's a Presbyterian Regular Army Colonel who was born in 1890-something, "Love is love" does not scan as natural or inevitable for the character to me. It felt like either a missed opportunity for a little character work- maybe Hawkeye is shocked by his easy reaction and they exchange a few lines on how he came to acceptance- or a missed opportunity for drama. And if the author just didn't want to get into it- completely valid- then writing Potter out of the scene would've preserved the suspension of belief better IMO. Reading those fics close together got me thinking about that broader pattern, which again I just find interesting... and also left me a little curious if the extremely frustrating and unfortunate resurgence in atmospheric/cultural homophobia in many places means that older pattern is going to reemerge in the psychosphere of fandom. I think my own fics tend more towards the "background homophobia" side of the force because of my own experiences. And I guess that's my "deep fandom thought" of the week.
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Chapter 3: Which part of me makes you most hungry?
I wake up, fully clothed and completely uncomfortable. I blink a few times; my eyelids fused together with mascara and tears. I try to rub the kohl out of my eyes, and roll over to reach for my phone. It’s 16:48; I have 5 missed calls, all from work. “Oh shit!” I hiss but, truth be told, I don’t care. Maybe I can fake an illness to get a bit of time off work to recover emotionally. I don’t think “Sorry, I got attacked by a vampire!” would go down well with my boss. I decide to think of excuses and maybe call in tomorrow with the best one. Huh, vampire. Vampires exist. Although this is a completely wild and INSANE concept, it isn’t my biggest fear. Ville tearing my throat out and murdering me isn’t my biggest fear, either. I guess my biggest fear is never again being as happy as I was last night. Once I admit this to myself the tears start to fall once more. I remove my bandages and take another look at my puncture wounds. They still look sore and will probably take a week or so to heal. I take a shower to mask the sound of my sobbing.
…
I towel dry my hair and brush my teeth. I know that I should eat something but the thought of doing so makes me nauseous. I switch on the TV and stare into the void for a bit. #And next on ITV starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, it’s Interview With The Vampire.# I blink. “You have got to be fucking kidding me!” I switch the TV off and sling the remote across the room. “FUCK this!” I say out loud; I am fed up of feeling sad and worthless. I turn my lamp on and close the curtains. It’s Autumn so it’s starting to get darker sooner in the evenings. I walk into the bathroom to take a look at myself. Pink, puffy eyes. I tie my hair into a messy bun, and put on some leggings and a black tank top. I go rooting through the bathroom drawer for a cleanser. “Ouch!” I draw my palm back to see I accidentally caught it on a razor I had haphazardly thrown in the other day. There is a clear slot in my left palm and it begins to bleed. “Fucking great” I mutter, trying to remember if I have any bandages left. Suddenly there is a knock at the door: I freeze. I don’t know if it’s someone from work doing a well-being check or even Ville himself since he knows where I live.
I walk hesitantly to the door and stop a foot or so in front of it. “Who is it?” I say, throat hoarse. “It’s Ville, please, please let me explain” he begs. I feel sick, “Explain how you confused me with a snack?” I say angrily. This is good. Anger is much more manageable and cathartic than depression. “I hate myself for what I did to you”, his voice breaks slightly. “Please at least let me heal you” he asks. I hesitate for a moment. Heal me? How? I unlock the door and open it very slowly, my hands shaking. He takes a step into the room and I take three steps back. “Please, I’m not here to hurt you.” My eyes begin to well up and my hand instinctively flies to my neck. His eyes are pink too; he looks like he has spent his day similarly. Somehow he still looks incredibly beautiful. He has signature black skinny jeans and converse allstars on, a black v neck shirt and a blazer. I glimpse part of a tattoo on his chest and have to snap my gaze away from him to refocus. He approaches me slowly, “Do you trust me?”
“No… yes… I don’t know” I become flustered and start to cry. I want so desperately to believe that he is the same man from nine hours ago. “I’m going to heal your wounds, okay?” He moves closer. He opens his mouth and bares his sharp fangs, and bites down into his wrist. He starts to bleed thick and deep and red. He puts his wrist to my neck and I feel a warming sensation. He pulls back and I run to the bathroom to look in the mirror; the puncture wounds are no more. There is no trace of Ville’s blood. “W-what? How?” I begin to shake again. “Shhh, sit down”, he takes my hand firmly but gently and sits me down on the sofa. He sits next to me and takes my hands in his. I flinch when I remember the wound from earlier. “When did this happen?” He asks as he bites down into his wrist again, which appears to have miraculously healed from a moment ago. He puts his bloody lips in my palm and kisses lightly. I watch the skin heal, the wound close and the blood dry up and dissipate. I am in awe. “There” says Ville with a smile “Healed”… “Huh” I say, “I guess I know who to call when I get a papercut.” Sarcasm is always my go to when things get tough; masking the discomfort with humour is my way of coping. “I would give anything for you to call me; I’d heal every part of your body for just an ounce of forgiveness” he looks sad, but hopeful. I want to trust him, to give this a shot, but I cannot let him off this easily. I move my hands from his and stand, my arms folded. “You came to explain”, I state coldly. He looks morose, “I want you to know I don’t take what I did lightly. I don’t expect you to forgive me or for us to ride off into the sun-“, “Well obviously not because you would burst into flames, seeing as you conveniently forgot to tell me you’re a fucking vampire” here comes the rage again. I give myself a moment to take a breath. “Would you have believed me?” He looks at me with his beautiful pools of green and I try my hardest not to melt. “…no” I say, and sit back down on the couch, defeated. “Please let me just explain what happened. Then you can hate me, you can punch me, you can scream at me. I just want you to understand.” After a few seconds of silence I concede, “Okay.” He removes his black beanie hat and runs his hands through his hair, visibly stressed. “When you met me, outside the bar, I hadn’t been drinking alcohol. I’d fed from someone. I didn’t realise they were inebriated until I was giggling like an idiot in your car.” My eyes widen as he talks about feeding. Ville seems to pick up on it. “It’s fine, I healed him and he went back to his friends. Anyway, vampires are nocturnal. We sleep during the day and waking us from sleep can make us feel pretty disoriented. I hadn’t fed properly - I woke confused - and I could smell your blood. I became overwhelmed with bloodlust. When I heard you scream it snapped me back into reality and I was horrified…” he looked down and ran his hands through his hair again. “Last night I… I had the best night of my life. All day I’ve been thinking about listening to your playlist, your eyes when I played my guitar, the way you held me, the way we kissed”… he looked up at me with his beautiful green eyes, his lashes wet with tears. “I have never felt this way before and I would do anything to earn your forgiveness, anything.” I fought the urge to hold him, to comfort him.
“I…” the tears rolled down my cheeks before I could speak. Ville moved closer to me and took my hands in his again, kissing my healed palm. “Please don’t be afraid of me. I promise I will never hurt you again.” I took a deep breath and swiped the tears from my face. “I’m not afraid of you, Ville. I probably should be, but I’m not. I lost my parents when I was very young, I became fiercely independent. I never wanted to rely on another human being because life is so fleeting, and they will leave. Everyone leaves. We’re born, we kill time, we die. I am afraid of the connection we had last night, the feelings I felt… and never having those feelings again.” The tears silently rolled out of my eyes, pooled at my chin and fell to the floor. In an instant Ville wrapped his arms around me and held me tight. I buried my face in his chest and sobbed. A moment passed and I looked up to gauge how Ville was feeling. He looked at me with sparking emerald eyes, like his life had returned. He placed his thumb on my chin to tilt it upwards, and kissed me sweetly. “Mina rakastan sinua, baby.” He whispered. “What does that mean?” I asked, looking up into his eyes. He blushed “It’s Finnish… maybe I’ll tell you when you forgive me?” I giggled into his chest; his v neck wet with my tears. “I’m sorry, let me dry your shirt?” Ville promptly unbuttoned his blazer and pulled his shirt over his head. My eyes raked over his smooth waxed chest and the little path of hair which led down… he had some portrait tattoos on his chest, a tattoo of would looked like a mix of a heart and a pentagram around his nipple and a swirly decorative tattoo just above his… “Ahem”, Ville cleared his throat, “My eyes are up here”. I blushed furiously. “Um… I think I’m the hungry vampire now”. Ville threw his head back and laughed loudly as I placed his shirt on the radiator. He walked over to me and softly placed his hands on my hips “Forgive me?” He purrs. “Oh, no, baby. You need to earn it” I smirked with sass. “Oh, I will” he promised, “So tell me, baby vamp, which part of me makes you most hungry?” He pressed his body to mine and before I knew it we were kissing passionately. My tongue claiming his; my hands grabbing at the luscious curls atop his head. All of the pain, the sorrow, the anger; every single emotion of the last twelve hours thrown into our physical connection. Breathless, Ville whispered, “Where is your bed?” I hooked an index finger beneath the button of his jeans and pulled him forwards. He shuddered at the touch. I moved backwards, leading him to the bedroom. Softly, I fall backwards into my cold cotton sheets, exposing my midriff as my tank top rides up. Ville crawls atop me and kisses my lower abdomen. I gasp and start to feel wet in my underwear. He begins to unbutton my jeans with his teeth.
“No…” I whine. He promptly stops. “I’m sorry, you don’t want to?” I sigh “I want to, so badly, but we need to slow down and you need to earn this. We need to reestablish trust, and you need to prove your self restraint.” I am so mad at myself for being my own cock-block, but I want this to last, and I want more than just sex. Ville nods and moves up my bed to lie next to me. “Is it okay if I kiss you?” he asks, with hope. “Absolutely” I grin, and our lips lock again. We spend hours making out; I run my hands up and down his waxed chest, enjoying the curves and texture of his highly toned abdomen. He cups my breast through my top. I pull his bottom lip forward with my teeth, and the only sounds are soft moans and gentle bed creaking as we rock back and forth, grinding against each other through our jeans. It gets to 4am and I am visibly exhausted, my tired eyes illuminated by the full moon hovering proudly in the sky above my window. “Do you want me to stay?” asks Ville, but we both know it is too soon. “No, baby, I have damage control to do with work tomorrow and I need a good night’s sleep. You’ll have all day to think about how to make it up to me” I smiled. “Let me take you for a romantic date?” asks Ville “Let me treat you like the goddess that you are.” His eyes shine. “Mmm, okay” I say, sleepily. He gets up and fetches his clothes. I pout as he throws his blazer and beanie back on. His shirt still wet, I ask him if I can keep it. He smiles genuinely and brilliantly. “Only if you sleep in it and imagine my arms around you” he teases, but I know that is exactly what I will do.
I follow him to my door, “I thought I was clear about burning the hat”, I raise an eyebrow. “Hey, I got rid of the flat cap! The beanie stays, though” he laughs. “I’ll come and pick you up tomorrow, 7pm? I’ll leave all my hats at home” he flashes his brilliant white teeth at me as he grins. “Okay” I smile. He kisses my forehead “Thank you. I will make it up to you. I’ll be thinking about those lips all day” he walks out of the door, down the corridor, and out of the apartment complex. I do as I’m told. I undress completely and slip on his shirt. I slide into my sheets and touch myself, thinking about his tattoos and the mystery lying beneath the button of his jeans. The last thing I think about are his beautiful eyes, as the rain against my window lulls me into a deep sleep.
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"Zuko is a dweeby little turtleduck"
As some of you may know, especially if you've been around me for a while, especially if you knew me in my Livejournal days, I've got a complicated relationship with the hurt/comfort genre. In theory, the genre hits pretty much all of my narrative kinks. I write a lot about abuse, trauma, recovery, finding or not finding love and support, and just the general range of terrible things happening to my favorite characters, and/or the aftermath. I should love hurt/comfort, right? I should eat it up with a spoon. Right?
And some of it l do. But a lot of the genre, and the attitudes and assumptions baked into a lot of the genre, really sets my teeth on edge. Some of this is the structural limitations of the genre. Hurt/comfort as a genre typically begins with the hurt, unless the hurt is something that happens in canon, and then it's just quickly summarized. but either way the point of the hurt is the comfort. It's about the setup and release of narrative tension, the problem of the hurt, the solution of the comfort. This hurt can be physical, emotional, or both, and can be as simple as a character with a minor injury or the flu, to a character experiencing permanent disability and/or life-altering trauma. There is nothing wrong with this format, in the sense that it is a satisfying narrative format, with a satisfying build and release of tension, but it doesn't really fit well with portraying trauma in a realistic way.
Which makes sense, because the genre tends towards wish fulfillment rather than realism. To be clear, there's nothing wrong with that, but I think my wishes tend to be a bit misaligned with a lot of people with regards to the portrayal of trauma.
Trauma is deeply isolating, and the more isolated you are to start with, the less social power you have, the fewer people who will come to your defense, the more likely you are to be traumatized, to be victimized, to be hurt. And of course if you don't have a lot of social resources to draw on to start with, once you've been victimized it's really hard to build them, and it is much more likely that you will not find support in your pain. In this, I was extremely lucky. Yes I was abused as a child, and yes in some ways I was isolated, but I was abused outside the home, by people who weren't my close family, and I had a loving, supportive family who did everything they could to help me through. Sure, the world outside my family didn't believe or trust me, and didn't care about supporting me, but I had people who cared about me, and who were ready to walk through fire for me. Many if not most people who experience childhood trauma experience it within the home, and don't have that good fortune that I did.
But because of my good fortune, because I always had people supporting me and helping me and loving me, I don't really go looking for narratives where a character identify with is being supported through their trauma, and this makes them better, or heaven forbid, heals them and takes the trauma away. I was loved and supported, and this made it possible for me to recover in the ways I have, but it was still a long and really ugly road, and nobody could heal my trauma for me. I still had to put in a shit ton of work. So instead of functioning as wish fulfillment for me, I find those narratives alienating.
There are a lot of very nuanced stories in the hurt/comfort genre that don't fall into that, and who's build and cathartic release of tension tends to be less neat, and the endings tend to be less unequivocally happy. And I don't actually think that the wish fulfillment stories are inherently bad, since for people who didn't get lots of love and support initially, it's kind of a way of writing yourself getting that support, of writing what you wished happened, and that is good and healing and healthy and reading that is also good in healing and healthy for many people. Realism is not always what you need or want, sometimes wish fulfillment is good. I am simply pointing out a common pattern and why it doesn't work for me.
But there is a much less benign reason a lot of hurt/comfort makes me want to scream, and this is the way victims in hurt/comfort tend to be portrayed.
The very first story that I actually gave up on writing was in the Harry Potter fandom. It was a story about if when Sirius told snape how to find Remus as a werewolf, Snape had been bitten. In this process, not only did Snape become a werewolf, but he was also permanently physically disabled. Part of the reason I stopped writing this fanfic was because I had Marauders fans versus Snape fans in my inbox constantly, each insisting I was being unfair to their favorite characters, because I was writing them all as assholes (which to be clear, they are), but an equally large part of why I ended up dropping the fic and deleting it, was because of how many people were angry or puzzled by the fact that I was writing disabled teenage Snape as just as angry and snarky and nasty as he was in the books, because being made disabled should have softened him, right?
I'm physically disabled, and I was kind of horrified by how many people insisted that because of a physical disability, Snape, or indeed any character, or worse any real person, should suddenly become a different person with a different personality. Not only is that not how it works, but that expectation is rank ableism. I couldn't deal with this attitude as a writer, and certainly not a decade ago when I was much younger. These comments made me angry, but they also killed my joy for the story.
I come across this attitude in explicit form much less often now in fandom, at least when it comes to physical disability. But it hasn't entirely gone away, and the place where subjecting a character to misery is still a mostly socially acceptable way to make them soft and approachable, is with emotional trauma. This is the reflection of broad cultural attitudes towards disability, mental illness, trauma, gender, Christian ideas about suffering, I mean there are a lot of things that go into this strange idea that trauma makes somebody nicer and sweeter. But it's bullshit, as anybody who has had to deal with anyone who has been traumatized, or who has been traumatized themselves, knows full well. Trauma doesn't make you stronger, but it does usually make you less, not more approachable, less, not more sweet.
I like to write, and read, about what society judges as bad victims, people who react to trauma in the ways that actual people react to trauma, with maladaptive coping mechanisms, fear, anger, suspicion, self sabotage, lashing out, manipulation, attempts to control others, or drive them away, all the things that people do when they're in pain and afraid. It's never pretty, and it almost always ends with even more pain. I like to read and write about people going through trauma, or in the aftermath of traumatic happenings, who struggle, and fail, and who might have help and support but ultimately have to do the work and make the choices to move their lives forward. And a lot of times, I write about people who have been traumatized lashing out at, or otherwise hurting, the people trying to support them. That's what I find validating: watching their pain acknowledged and respected, even when they're not doing anything right yet, and watching them get through it, even though nobody wants to wrap them in a blanket, or if someone does, it doesn't fix anything.
So why did I title this long post about my relationship to hurt/comfort and depictions of trauma after the tag I use for Zuko? Two reasons. The first is that Avatar: the Last Airbender is full of stellar depictions of traumatized characters, who are all afraid and hurting, and sometimes hurting each other, learning and growing, in many different ways. Zuko is a stand out example of this. His abuse at the hands of his father, his banishment, and his constant anxiety and humiliation at the hands of officers like Zhao, have left him anxious, angry, prone to lashing out, and the kind of prideful that only comes out of a deep sense of shame, and fear of being humiliated and disregarded. He is, well, the audience, including me, loves him, but he's clearly deeply unpleasant to be around in universe. He is constantly making everything worse for himself and everybody around him, while trying to keep his head above water.
And then, as the icing on the cake, he's got his uncle. His uncle, who loves and supports him. His uncle, who would give almost anything to be able to make Zuko see that what his father did to him is wrong, to make him see that the war is wrong, that capturing the Avatar is wrong, to love him into healing and making better choices. Iroh would love to do that. Iroh can't do that. Only Zuko can change Zuko. And of course, it's Iroh who takes the brunt of so much of Zuko's frankly appalling, if entirely understandable and deeply compelling, behavior. Zuko is an open festering wound, and Iroh is constantly getting sprayed with pus.
And I love it.
But of course, Zuko is very obviously deeply traumatized, and as I mentioned, that trauma is deeply compelling, and he is beloved by the audience. So of course, there is going to be a lot of hurt/comfort fic featuring him as the hurt and comforted character. This is all well and good. It's entirely natural. However, because there is a lot of hurt/comfort focused on Zuko, there is also a lot of hurt/comfort content that contains those basic assumptions about trauma and suffering that would mean that a character who is traumatized is made somehow nicer, or sweeter. Zuko in canon is not very nice, not very sweet, and not very approachable, so to fit him in with this view of trauma and suffering, he needs to be made nicer, needs to be softened and sweetened and made more palatable. Zuko in these fan works is a soft creature, who shuts down or cries, or has some other softer response to trauma, rather than yells, lashes out, and grows angry and suspicious, like Zuko does in canon. In short, Zuko is made into a "good victim."
And I hate it.
So the reason I titled this essay after my tag for Zuko is that I have seen this phenomenon dubbed the awkward turtleduck Zuko or the dweeby turtleduck Zuko phenomenon. And at least one person has actually blocked me because of my Zuko is a dweeby turtleduck tag, which I presume caused them to assume that I write this kind of softened Zuko content. Which is of course not true, anyone who's actually read my fanworks is well aware that my characterization of Zuko is the shouty, angry king of lashing out at the people trying to help him, and making everything worse for himself. But I feel like I should address some confusion here, especially since part of me, hopefully a part of me that thinks I have more influence in this fandom than I do, is worried that perhaps my language on the subject might be a contributing factor to the name of this phenomenon.
So why is this my Zuko tag? Because I have been on Tumblr since 2012, and that's when I chose this tag, and the Avatar fandom back then was a very different place. Softboy Zuko was not the obnoxious bad characterization of him that was most prominent. Back then the characterization that I kept seeing over and over again that made me want to roll my eyes and hide under a rock, was perfect super zuko, who could do no wrong and could do everything and was better than all of the other characters and was so cool and so perfect and just like really really cool, guys. Super Zuko showed up a lot in ship fic, but he was hardly exclusive to it, and he came in different flavors, the ship fic version tending to be sexy broody Zuko who needed to be healed by the chosen love interest, while genfic super Zuko tended to just be so much cooler than everybody else. This showed up everywhere constantly and I hated it so much. It's a complete misunderstanding of Zuko's character, and the point of his character, just as softboy Zuko is. And my response was, oh no no no Zuko is not cool. he is so uncool. When he took a social and emotional intelligence test, the score came back negative. Zuko is the opposite of cool. He's a fucking dweeb. I love him, he's a dweebly little turtleduck.
And that's the story of my Zuko is a dweeby little turtleduck tag.
#avatar the last airbender#posts i created#zuko#Uncle Iroh#always reblog fannish history#zuko is a dweeby little turtleduck#i ship iroh/tea
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OKAY finally finished with eliot hand pain hurt/comfort fic, and i couldn’t actually decide whether i preferred it in second or third person POV. this is the version with the third person POV, otherwise nothing is different from the other version !
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Contrary to what the four crazy people he spent his time risking his life for nowadays thought, Eliot didn’t like the pain.
There was nothing cleansing about it, nothing satisfactory. A ringing hit to his jaw didn’t feel like penance. The actual protection aspect was a different story. Standing like a wall between your people and danger, there was nothing that made Eliot’s ribs ache with pleasure like that; a wall didn’t feel, didn’t think, it was just an immutable fact. He was an immutable fact. The problem was that the wall-as-Eliot, or perhaps the Eliot-as-wall, had to become human again sometime after the last man went down and the last dollar bill was stuffed into a duffel. To hurt was human, and not just to hurt but to remember the wound long, long after, for it to live in your knees and wrists and between the vertebrae in your spine. Some days— and this was a product of how long after a job it had been, how hard he had pushed—some days were worse than others. The fact that some days the first sound out of his mouth wasn’t even a groan, but a whine, or worse the half-awake pleading for please please make it stop i’ll do anything just make it stop—
No, Eliot didn’t like the pain.
Comparatively, today was a good day. Today, he could get out of bed. His head and body were blessedly in agreement that it was in his best interests to swing his twinging knees to the side of the mattress, push himself up onto legs that were sore but stable, with arms that shook only slightly. But compared to Eliot’s best days, the ones where except for the old shoulder injury which would never let him forget it and the scar on his hip that put a falter in his giddy-up in all kinds of weather, the days on which except for those he sometimes even forgot the pain, this didn’t hold a candle. Today his hands were so beat and weak that the ache radiated up to his mid-forearm, settled into him all familiar-like and made its home in him.
In the bathroom, Eliot used his wrist to turn on the faucet and stuck his mouth under the water to drink. Holding a cup was off the agenda. His morning routine was interspersed with winces, not unusual for his post-job bathroom adventures, and if it took Eliot longer to shimmy on the sweats he knew he wouldn’t be getting out of today, it made him appreciate the comfort of wearing them a little more.
Going handless was fine until he was face to face with the fridge, and resisting the urge to growl at it, like that would solve anything. Taking a deep breath, he put a hand on the stainless steel handle, testing his grip. A light flex had Eliot drawing it back like the metal had burned him, like someone had snapped a tight clothespin onto each ligament. He took a moment to pace a couple steps, let out a loud but cathartic expletive, and then wedge his hand between the handle and the door so he could open the fridge with his elbow strength. The feeling of triumph behind his collarbone faded quickly as the hitter scanned its contents and realized there was nothing he wanted to eat, or at least nothing he wanted to hold and eat. The thought of grasping a fork brought another growl to his throat, and he slammed the fridge door to stomp to the couch and throw himself down, cradling his hands in his lap.
Eliot knew the drill: in an hour, he would grit his teeth and get to up to try and fumble open his bottle of painkillers, and if he succeeded, he would wait another hour for them to truly kick in so he could handle the tv remote, put on whatever game was on, and vegetate on the couch until further notice. The phone he had left on the nightstand rang loudly, fully audible from the other room, blaring out the chorus to “Macho Man” that Hardison had put as his ringtone and Eliot hadn’t figured out how to get rid of yet. If it was important, whoever it was would call again, so he ignored it. His ire rose when the same noise sang out from the bedroom a couple minutes later, a bit-off groan escaping from his clenched teeth as he levered himself up to get to it as fast as he could, awkwardly accepting the call and maneuvering the phone between his shoulder and ear. “What?”
“Man, we haven’t heard from you since we split yesterday, I thought we were gonna get a beer downstairs last night?”
He rubbed his eyes with his wrist, frustrated that he had forgotten he was supposed to get together with Hardison the night before. Getting home, washing the sweat and blood off, and falling into bed had seemed like the only goal in his mind. “Look, sorry, I’ve been busy. And if this ain’t important, you—“
“Bullshit. Absolute bullshit, you’re using your tough-guy, bullshit voice. And you actually apologized, so something is double wrong.”
Eliot snarled. “I don’t have— Hardison, I don’t know what you’re talking about, just leave me alone.”
“Too late, we’re already at your place.”
Before he could open his mouth, his doorbell rang, drawing a groan from him. If he was correct about who the “we” was, it seemed silly to even ring it. His suspicions were confirmed thirty seconds later as the door clicked open anyways and Parker and Hardison came in, having the decency to at least look slightly sheepish. Eliot had already moved back to the couch, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. “Make yourself at home, why don’t you,” he growled.
“Excuse us for being worried about your wellbeing, Mr. Suffer-In-Silence,” Hardison scoffed.
Parker leapt onto the couch cushion next to him. “We thought you might have been captured by ninjas.”
“You would know if I had been captured by ninjas,” Eliot muttered. “It’s a very dis— look, you’ve seen that I’m not kidnapped, it’s our day off, can you please leave and let me rest.”
“You still owe us a hangout from last night!” Parker chirped. “Don’t worry, we won’t stay long.” She vaulted back over the couch to go rummage through his snack cabinets, getting into the granola bin by the sound of it. Eliot made a note to restock it before she came back next.
When he next opened his eyes, Hardison was lightly sitting on his coffee table, looking at the hands still resting in the hitter’s lap. “What’s up with your hands, Eliot?”
Eliot’s first instinct was to deflect. He trusted his team, sure, but this was different. They weren’t supposed to know that he had these days. That he wasn’t invulnerable. “Nothing’s wrong with them, stop sitting on my coffee table.”
“Mhm mhm, sure,” Hardison said. “Go like this for me?” He wiggled his fingers in a “hey sailor” kind of fashion. Before Eliot could tell him just what he thought about that, Parker’s ponytail swung into the side of his face, the thief reaching down to poke one of his hands faster than he could stop her.
By the time Eliot was able to refocus and pull himself back from the whiteout of pain, Parker and Hardison were looking at him with open concern, the hacker leaning back slightly, a little pale. Eliot thought he might have howled; he wasn’t sure. Both his hands were clenched tightly to his chest, wrists together, arms outward, wishbone shaped. He felt just as brittle as one, with their stares on him. He summoned the anger from his throat, the only weapon at his disposal (only half-expecting that it would work, always defenseless when it came to their prodding).
“Can you leave me the hell alone now?”
Hardison looked at him, taking his time formulating his thoughts, but it was Parker who spoke. “Nope.” Eliot turned to her where she was perched on the couch. “You get hurt taking care of us. Now you let us take care of you.”
Eliot looked at Hardison pleadingly, hoping he at least would take pity on him and let him wallow by himself. The hitter wanted to hide like the trap-escaped, half-dead badger whose den he had accidentally put his foot into half a lifetime ago in the Italian Alps, earning him an earful of hissing that scared the shit out of him. He wondered if he seemed as belligerent as that now.
Hardison just shrugged and smiled gently. “Hey, you heard the woman.” He leaned forward slightly, just enough in Eliot’s space to let him feel his warm presence without crowding. “Couldn’t get rid of us if you tried.”
He didn’t want to try, was the thing. It was only that it wasn’t their job to take care of him. It was his to take care of them. They just seemed to be wholly unaware of this.
“You taken anything for those yet?” Hardison asked, pointing at his hands. He hummed at Eliot’s slight head shake. “Thought so. Which ones?”
“White bottle, red pills. Only need a half,” Eliot mumbled, slouching. Parker was already up and heading to the bathroom.
“We need to get something you can actually open when this happens, some kind of spring-loaded catch maybe,” Hardison mused. “Alright, let me see them.” He patted his legs, frowning at Eliot’s growl. “C’mon, none of that. I know they hurt, I’ll be really, really gentle. I won’t even touch without asking.”
Eliot looked him in the eye for the sincerity he already knew would be there, the eagerness to help that (damn him) was one of his favorite traits of Hardison’s. Hesitantly, he extended his hands, rolling his eyes at the hacker scooting forward to offer his knees to rest them on.
“I assume you got antiseptic and ointment on these knuckles already, so totally disregarding those, even though it sucks. Nothing broken?”
“No, just. Aches. Like a son of a bitch. Can’t make a damn fist. Happens sometimes.”
Parker bounded back in, armed with a glass of water and half a pill in her open hand. “So no jobs for a while. Easy, I’ll tell Nate. Open up.” With a scowl, Eliot took the medication from her fingers with his teeth (gently, gently), and let her raise the glass to his lips, nearly choking as she tipped it a little eagerly, and choking for real when Hardison said, “Whoa, woman, let him swallow.”
“It’s not just the last job, Park, it’s jobs two years ago, or five, or ten,” Eliot managed, once he had his breath back. “Part of the package that comes with the lifestyle. It just happens sometimes, don’t matter what schedule we’re on.”
She frowned. “Still. We shouldn’t be doing jobs if you’re hurt. Nate should know that.”
Hardison leaned forward a little more while he was distracted trying to find the right response to that, that they wouldn’t be doing any jobs at all if that were the case, that Nate trusted him to get the job done no matter what, reaching out to his forearm and stopping just a hair’s breadth shy of touching. The hitter froze, and Hardison did too, meeting his eyes. “It’s ok. I’m just trying something out. Is it alright if I touch you here?” At his tiniest of nods, the hacker placed his fingertips on his arm, rubbing circles so lightly that Eliot almost couldn’t feel it. “Let me know where it starts to hurt, okay?” Hardison applied the slightest pressure as he added his other hand and lightly started rubbing down his forearm. When he got to his wrist, Eliot couldn’t help the strangled noise that partly escaped through his nose, high and strained. Hardison moved away from there immediately, going back to tracing soothing, gentle patterns. “You’re ok, you’re ok. I can work with this, no problem. Where do you keep your hot pads, man?”
“Bathroom, lower right drawer,” Eliot grit out. Parker was zipping off to get it and warm it up before he could even process. Hardison applied a little more pressure with his fingertips, rubbing the meat of his forearm. Eliot breathed out long and slow at how good it felt once the initial ache had ebbed.
“I want to try giving you a hand massage, but I don’t wanna hurt you more than it would help,” Hardison said, pausing slightly. “You up for it? I’m not gonna pressure you either way.”
Eliot’s thoughts stuttered, and then bolted in different directions. The feeling that he didn’t deserve this, that this was too much to ask, which had been simmering this whole time leapt to life again. It joined with the wounded, snarling animal part of him that still wanted to hide, burrow down with the covers over his head until his pain faded into the muted background noise of the world. He didn’t even know if a hand massage would work, might make the pain worse.
But it might be nice, a small, hopeful part of him murmured. Eliot couldn’t remember the last time he had been offered something like this, let alone the last time he had taken the person up. If there was anyone he trusted to do it, if there was anyone he wanted to receive it from, it was these two. How could he refuse them even he wasn’t fully on board with what they were suggesting?
“Sure, just…” Eliot said as Parker returned with the hot pad, pausing from tossing it hand to hand like a hot potato to fix her stare on him. He licked his lips, swallowed around a dry throat. “Just be gentle.”
“I will,” Hardison said earnestly, taking the hot pad from Parker to gently maneuver it under Eliot’s hands, resting on his knees. Eliot tensed slightly as the thief leapt up onto the back of the couch, perching above his head, but otherwise relaxed as the warmth of the hot pad started to loosen the ache in his hands. Hardison started where he had before, applying the slightest pressure to the hitter’s forearm. Parker ran her fingertips lightly through his hair, humming.
“Your hair is kinda wonky,” she said, fingers catching on a tangle. Eliot winced.
“That’s what happens when you go to bed without brushing it properly, you know that,” he grumbled, breath hitching as her fingertips grazed his scalp. His breath stuttered again as Hardison’s hands started working towards the sore meat of his wrist. Eliot’s hand began to shake.
“It’s ok baby, I got you,” Hardison murmured under his breath, more soothing sound than words. Eliot cracked open an eye to see him looking between his hands and his phone, playing a video where it was propped on his thigh.
“Man, are you watching hand massage tutorials right now?” he gritted out, doing a poor job of masking his genuine amusement with frustrated disbelief.
The hacker tapped his index finger against Eliot’s arm lightly. “I’ve been watching videos dude; think you’re so slick, tryna hide your hand pain from me. I just wanna make sure I get it right in real time.”
Parker’s fingers running through Eliot’s hair more boldly silenced any follow-up thoughts he had, mind going fuzzy with how good it felt. Without thinking, he insistently pushed his head up further into her touch, making her laugh. The sound reverberated in his chest, leaving him longing to hear it again. Instead a half-whine left his throat as Hardison probed the bottom of Eliot’s palm, the ache drawing him back to full awareness.
The hacker backed off for a moment. “Sorry, sorry. You still cool to keep going?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Eliot breathed shakily.
“Just tell me if there’s anyplace else that needs to be handled more delicately, or you don’t want me going at all,” Hardison said, putting his clever hands to Eliot’s again and taking up his gentle, slow pace. Parker’s fingers had paused in his hair a second, but went back to running through it again, scratching his scalp on every other pass.
Slowly, slowly, the vice of pain on Eliot’s hands started to dissipate, bone by bone, finger by finger. He don’t know how long he sat there in a haze, as Hardison and Parker patiently touched him, fixated on the single task of caring for him. The thought made the tender space behind his breastbone twinge. When he surfaced from the half-asleep contentment of their efforts, the television was on, Star Trek playing at the lowest volume. Eliot grunted, lifting his head from the couch to look at the two of them sitting beside him, grinning at his movements. Hardison’s warm hand was still in his, but instead of massaging he was just holding it softly.
“Hey sleepy,” teased Parker, throwing herself over Hardison to get closer and forcing an “Oof!” out of him.
Eliot looked down to his hands, flexing one experimentally, in disbelief at how the ache had faded to an almost imperceptible hum. With the other he tightened his fingers around Hardison’s hand, moving his thumb lightly over his.
“Hey,” Eliot simply said back, a real smile rising to his lips.
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listen i know there’s deep-seated societal issues and also like. mental health issues in General cannot be solved this easily (Trust Me I Am Personally Aware Of That) but like. i think humans as a species should:
a) get to destroy small things more. throw rocks very hard at ice. smash ice on the ground. build a sand castle and kick it over. hit something hard. throw flooring tiles into a dumpster and listen to them shatter. swing an axe into a log. throw bits of debris into a fire. kick a hole through drywall in a condemned house. break a stick over your knee. just let LOOSE! just go APESHIT! break things in a way that doesn’t cause harm! i think it’s cathartic!
b) scream!!!! just..... scream! just a little bit more! trust me i do this when i make the drive home and it’s great. bonus points if you get some music to scream along to
c) make dumb shit. and like, sure drawings and writing is good, PLEASE make all the dumb shit you think no one else will like that you want to see in the world but more than that, physically make dumb shit. fold paper until it Kind Of Sort Of Looks Like Something. it’s lumpy and gross and absolutely not origami but it’s a thing! you made! get some cardboard and a hot glue gun and elastic bands and shit and just... make a shitty little car! or whatever your heart desires! make a crown! make something that’s gonna be thrown out in like three days because it’s ugly and has no use and mostly just takes up space! it’s not ABOUT the thing it’s about MAKING!
d) bake. bake bread. MAKE BREAD genuinely i made bread alone a month ago and the experience was genuinely life-changing. there is.... god there’s really something about like. having a good thing to eat. that you made. that YOU made, with your own hands, and get to tear up, with your own hands, and your own teeth. its good. its really fucking good.
#maybe it doesn't solve the big problems. but it's good. these are good things.#good things that people should get to do.#GOD i hate covid i want to go to the library and make cardboard robots again#i wanna see if the science area place will let me make bastard creations w/ the 3d printers
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Depression Tips from Someone who is Currently Beating Depression (plus some anxiety stuff mixed in)
Keep a schedule, but start small. Plan one thing you do every day and build from there. For me. it was watching an episode Game Grumps at 4:00pm. From there I would schedule other activities around my “treat” and this helped me fill the day with more than just lying in bed.
Speaking of bed, don’t let anyone shame you for sleeping more. Depression takes it tole on your body and sometimes all it needs is more rest. That said, getting up and doing something else, no matter how small, even just moving to a char, will have a better impact.
Wash your face!! Don’t worry about facial cleansers, just water a a clean wash cloth. Try to do this twice a day if you can. It does wonders.
In order to get out of a panic attack quicker, name things around you that you can sense. What do you hear? What do you see? What do you smell? What can you feel? Ground yourself in reality.
Brush your teeth. Even if you only do it at bedtime, and if you have the energy, try flossing and using a mouthwash (I use ACT kids watermelon flavor because it’s more fun, making me WANT to use it) Your teeth and dentist will thank you.
Positive Self Talk. My therapist taught me to counter negative feelings with positive ones, even if they don’t correlate, try saying something positive about you or your life if a negative feeling comes up. It does work if given enough time. Keep doing it, over and over.
Depression lies to you, it is always lying. More often than not, you are a victim and your trauma is not your fault. You did those things because you had no other choice, you were just trying to stay afloat.
Of course, you should take accountability for yourself hurting someone else, but if the only one hurt is you, do not put pressure on yourself.
Create something! It can be so cathartic! And guess what, it doesn’t have to be a drawing or a story, you can make a gif or edit your favorite photograph in photoshop. You can have a journal, or perhaps bake something! Create Create Create!!
Don’t be shy about asking for medication, like a good therapist, you have to find the right meds. Sometimes it’s more than one pill, or a “cocktail” of medications that will help. Some anxiety stuff helps with depression, and vise versa. (also don’t be shy in asking to take more or less of a certain medication if needed, but consult your doctor first before trying anything at home!)
If you have to quit a depression medication, (I’m sure this is the same with anxiety medication, but don’t quote me) you CAN NOT quit cold turkey. That can make things worse. You have to titrate down, meaning you have to take the dosage in increments. (10mg > 5mg > 3mg)
Baths can be difficult, but if you spruce them up with some fancy bubble bath or a nice bath bomb, it can be viewed as a treat. In the same vain, do something fun while shower, but some shower crayons and draw on the walls! Make it enjoyable.
Treat Yo’ Self. My treat is a birthday cake flavored cupcake and some of my favorite of juice. You can make your special treats anything! Treat yourself daily if you can, use that expensive lotion, or spurge some of your savings on a collectable. Even if your treat is something small, like a snack at the gas station, do it. No matter how small, if you can find a reason to feel joy, you’re doing it right.
Ask for help, even if you’re asking for something small to begin with. (Sometimes the little comforts help more than anything) Don’t keep your feelings bottled up, talk to a professional if you can afford it (there are places for those of us who are low income, and they can help you with payment plans. Therapy doesn’t have to cost hundreds of dollars)
Yes, you are allowed to switch therapists and shop around. When I went to therapy, the first session was very general and didn’t delve into my problem.s. It was me simply feeling out the therapist and seeing if they were right for me. The best thing that happened, was the fact that she suggested a different therapist who specialized in art therapy. We clicked instantly.
In ADDITION to medication, there are supplements that can help with depression and anxiety. Do some research and see if adding these into your routine would be right for you. (Important Note: don’t rely on these alone to help like actual medication, they are as the name suggests, supplementary. And what works for one person, may not work for you. Experiment.)
Find reasons to get out of bed, whether that be feeding your pet, or hugging a sibling, watching your favorite TV show in the living room, or watering plants in your garden. Sometimes caring for others helps you care for yourself.
Get some fresh air if you have the energy. Open a window, or sit outside for five minutes in the sun. Soak it in if you can. Take a trip with a friend to do some errands, and leave the car window down so the wind hits your face. Nature is healing.
Drink lots of water! Juice is okay, and any drink is better than nothing but a fresh glass of ice water can be very refreshing and calming.
Wear clothes that make you feel good. Wear that nice pair of underwear (Bonus tip: changing your underwear every day even if you don’t want to will help so much. a clean pair is so nice!!) or your favorite fuzzy pajamas. Maybe you have a favorite shirt or hoodie. Wear it! Find reasons to smile.
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I'm very fond of the mental image of modern AU Karin and Suigetsu screaming at each other in public to the point of like. Drawing way too much attention because they are legitimately about to start throwing each other into that decorative fountain, but then someone insults Suigetsu, and Karin just FLIPS around and threatens to rip out their throat with her teeth, just try her!
Like they are making the kind of scene that bystanders will call cops on in case it’s a sign of trouble at home but no, they’re just dicks with shared trauma who find that screaming at each other about the dumbest possible bullshit is really cathartic.
Sakura, who only met them yesterday: Is this... normal?
Sasuke, who shares a house with these people: Yeah.
Sakura: What are they even--
Sasuke: Whether or not moths have a sense of smell.
Sakura: ...what.
Sasuke: Last time it was about whether or not you can make pasta by boiling it in coffee. If they start doing arm bars, Juugo can handle it.
Sakura: Do they not listen to you? I thought you were friends. I thought they were friends. You’re telling me they wouldn’t listen if you asked them to stop?
Sasuke: Oh, they would, I just don’t feel like getting up and they’re too far away to hear me.
#Naruto#Team Taka#Uzumaki Karin#Hozuki Suigetsu#Uchiha Sasuke#Juugo#Haruno Sakura#friendship#Phoenix Posts#abuse mention#at least as a reference#I adore these idiots#they're surprisingly competent but also massive assholes#and kind of dumb
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Where do you draw your inspiration for writing
oh wow ! what a question ! i find it in literally everything my little brain can process LMAO
i think it's a bit of a curse because i can't just enjoy something to enjoy it, most often i think about how i would write and do and change things with such-and-such trope or setting or genre. that's part of why i have always written fanfiction, i think, since i was probably 13, because i always wanted to rethink every story i consumed with my own OC's and twists and turns. so i tend to take everything to bed with me, so that i can reimagine it my way, even if i never do anything with it, just to rewatch it in my head. that's why i had to start posting, because - 12 years later - there is just no more room in there LOL.
i mean, i like to write, so that is, of course, a foundation for wanting to find things to write about, so that's why i probably find something in all the things i see. even things in my personal life; and there's this burning is actually based off a small and sad period of my own life, and i think certain events in pleased to meet you will actually be, hmm, cathartic for me to write about. tomb raider: underworld was on sale on steam the other day and i bought it because ☆my childhood☆, and while playing it, my brain immediately was like OKAY TREASURE HUNTER READER WHO FINDS A FORGOTTEN TEMPLE, ONLY TO COME ACROSS SUN GOD BAKUGOU bc i can't just play things LOL if you look at the text post/ask i made/answered for assassin!toji x princess!reader, you can see my thought process there in the tags LOL i basically just rattle off ideas to myself until one sticks.
in terms of like motivation to actually sit down and do the thing, that feels a bit like a different ball game because it's hard, plain and simple. when i was very active in my writing groups, i was sitting down and writing at least 1-3k a day - which sounds insane, in hindsight, considering i write nowhere near that much these days - so i'd like to say i developed a bit of a habit for it, since that continued for maybe a year or more, but there was a time when i wasn't writing at all, and i'm sure that habit would have faded in some capacity - so here i am now, after the peak, coming down the other side of the mountain. i so despised not writing during that period, and maybe that could be a factor in what drives me? because i know how i feel when i neglect this thing that i love to do, so i don't want to feel that way. another big motivator for me is just you guys (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡ it's very surreal to me to be asked things like this, that anyone cares enough to wonder the answer, and i am still bad at taking compliments and responding to comments because i feel very out-of-body reading them, but it's so uplifting to see even one person say hey i like this thing that you made. it really just makes me want to keep making the things.
if this question is meant to give insight into how you or anyone else can find inspiration to write, i'm so sorry because this is all over the place LOL but i think it comes back to making sure that you're writing because there is something that you want to create and share with the world. the compliments are nice, obviously, and i am forever grateful for them, but i think i would still be doing this thing that is akin to pulling teeth even if i never got them, because i love to do this ! and so i constantly want to and am constantly finding/recycling ideas that i have stashed away in my head over the years. i wish that there was a few solid answers i could give you but - it just comes from everywhere, and i take what i can get !
#'sun god bakugou' shout out to mermie for the concept#not going to write it but LOL that's where the concept originated from in my brain#oh man if you could see my google doc of ideas#there are so many things in that bad boy#and i go back through those also#it's way to early to say this but i am working on a short bkg fic#and i have taken pieces from different unfinished things i have written and pieced it together to make what i have now#and it took me starting and stopping and starting and stopping#and picking through other concepts in order to find what i really wanted for this story#anyway#because i really exposed myself in this LOL#✿ ask willow#✿ refrog
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OKAY finally finished with eliot hand pain hurt/comfort fic, and i couldn’t actually decide whether i preferred it in second or third person POV, so i’m going to put the second person POV under the cut here, and make a separate post with the other version so folks can read which they prefer. nothing is different between the two besides the POV !
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Contrary to what the four crazy people you spent your time risking your life for nowadays thought, you didn’t like the pain.
There was nothing cleansing about it, nothing satisfactory. A ringing hit to your jaw didn’t feel like penance. The actual protection aspect was a different story. Standing like a wall between your people and danger, there was nothing that made your ribs ache with pleasure like that; a wall didn’t feel, didn’t think, it was just an immutable fact. You were an immutable fact. The problem was that the wall-as-you, or perhaps the you-as-wall, had to become human again sometime after the last man went down and the last dollar bill was stuffed into a duffel. To hurt was human, and not just to hurt but to remember the wound long, long after, for it to live in your knees and wrists and between the vertebrae in your spine. Some days— and this was a product of how long after a job it had been, how hard you had pushed—some days were worse than others. The fact that some days the first sound out of your mouth wasn’t even a groan, but a whine, or worse the half-awake pleading for please please make it stop i’ll do anything just make it stop—
No, you didn’t like the pain.
Comparatively, today was a good day. Today, you could get out of bed. Your head and body were blessedly in agreement that it was in your best interests to swing your twinging knees to the side of the mattress, push yourself up onto legs that were sore but stable, with arms that shook only slightly. But compared to your best days, the ones where except for the old shoulder injury which would never let you forget it and the scar on your hip that put a hitch in your giddy-up in all kinds of weather, the days on which except for those you sometimes even forgot the pain, this didn’t hold a candle. Today your hands were so beat and weak that the ache radiated up to your mid-forearm, settled into you all familiar-like and made its home in you.
In the bathroom, you used your wrist to turn on the faucet and stuck your mouth under the water to drink. Holding a cup was off the agenda. Your morning routine was interspersed with winces, not unusual for your post-job bathroom adventures, and if it took you longer to shimmy on the sweats you knew you wouldn’t be getting out of today, it made you appreciate the comfort of wearing them a little more.
Going handless was fine until you were face to face with the fridge, and resisting the urge to growl at it, like that would solve anything. Taking a deep breath, you put a hand on the stainless steel handle, testing your grip. A light flex had you drawing it back like the metal had burned you, like someone had snapped a tight clothespin onto each ligament. You took a moment to pace a couple steps, let out a loud but cathartic expletive, and then wedge your hand between the handle and the door so you could open the fridge with your elbow strength. The feeling of triumph behind your collarbone faded quickly as you scanned its contents and realized there was nothing you wanted to eat, or at least nothing you wanted to hold and eat. The thought of grasping a fork brought another growl to your throat, and you slammed the fridge door to stomp to the couch and throw yourself down, cradling your hands in your lap.
You knew the drill: in an hour, you would grit your teeth and get to up to try and fumble open your bottle of painkillers, and if you succeeded, you would wait another hour for them to truly kick in so you could handle the tv remote, put on whatever game was on, and vegetate on the couch until further notice. The phone you had left on your nightstand rang loudly, fully audible from the other room, blaring out the chorus to “Macho Man” that Hardison had put as your ringtone and you hadn’t figured out how to get rid of yet. If it was important, whoever it was would call again, so you ignored it. Your ire rose when the same noise sang out from the bedroom a couple minutes later, a bit-off groan escaping from your clenched teeth as you levered yourself up to get to it as fast as you could, awkwardly accepting the call and maneuvering the phone between your shoulder and ear. “What?”
“Man, we haven’t heard from you since we split yesterday, I thought we were gonna get a beer downstairs last night?”
You rubbed your eyes with your wrist, frustrated that you had forgotten you were supposed to get together with Hardison the night before. Getting home, washing the sweat and blood off, and falling into bed had seemed like the only goal in your mind. “Look, sorry, I’ve been busy. And if this ain’t important, you—“
“Bullshit. Absolute bullshit, you’re using your tough-guy, bullshit voice. And you actually apologized, so something is double wrong.”
You snarled. “I don’t have— Hardison, I don’t know what you’re talking about, just leave me alone.”
“Too late, we’re already at your place.”
Before you could open your mouth, your doorbell rang, drawing a groan from you. If you were correct about who the “we” was, it seemed stupid to even ring it. Your suspicions were confirmed thirty seconds later as the door clicked open anyways and Parker and Hardison came in, having the decency to at least look slightly sheepish. You had already moved back to the couch, tilting your head back and closing your eyes. “Make yourself at home, why don’t you,” you growled.
“Excuse us for being worried about your wellbeing, Mr. Suffer-In-Silence,” Hardison scoffed.
Parker leapt onto the couch cushion next to him. “We thought you might have been captured by ninjas.”
“You would know if I had been captured by ninjas,” you muttered. “It’s a very dis— look, you’ve seen that I’m not kidnapped, it’s our day off, can you please leave and let me rest.”
“You still owe us a hangout from last night!” Parker chirped. “Don’t worry, we won’t stay long.” She vaulted back over the couch to go rummage through your snack cabinets, getting into the granola bin by the sound of it. You made a note to restock it before she came back next.
When you next opened your eyes, Hardison was lightly sitting on your coffee table, looking at the hands still resting in your lap. “What’s up with your hands, Eliot?”
Your first instinct was to deflect. You trusted your team, sure, but this was different. They weren’t supposed to know that you had these days. That you weren’t invulnerable. “Nothing’s wrong with them, stop sitting on my coffee table.”
“Mhm mhm, sure,” Hardison said. “Go like this for me?” He wiggled his fingers in a “hey sailor” kind of fashion. Before you could tell him just what you thought about that, Parker’s ponytail swung into the side of your face, the thief reaching down to poke one of your hands faster than you could stop her.
By the time you were able to refocus and pull yourself back from the whiteout of pain, Parker and Hardison were looking at you with open concern, the hacker leaning back slightly, a little pale. You think you may have howled; you weren’t sure. Both your hands were clenched tightly to your chest, wrists together, arms outward, wishbone shaped. You felt just as brittle as one, with their stares on you. You summoned the anger from your throat, the only weapon at your disposal (only half-expecting that it would work, always defenseless when it came to their prodding).
“Can you leave me the hell alone now?”
Hardison looked at you, taking his time formulating his thoughts, but it was Parker who spoke. “Nope.” You turned to her where she was perched on the couch. “You get hurt taking care of us. Now you let us take care of you.”
You looked at Hardison pleadingly, hoping he at least would take pity on you and let you wallow by yourself. You wanted to hide like the trap-escaped, half-dead badger whose den you had accidentally put your foot into half a lifetime ago in the Italian Alps, earning you an earful of hissing that scared the hell out of you. You wonder if you seemed as belligerent now.
Hardison just shrugged and smiled gently. “Hey, you heard the woman.” He leaned forward slightly, just enough in your space to let you feel his warm presence without crowding. “Couldn’t get rid of us if you tried.”
You didn’t want to try, was the thing. It was only that it wasn’t their job to take care of you. It was yours to take care of them. They just seemed to be wholly unaware of this.
“You taken anything for those yet?” Hardison asked, pointing at your hands. He hummed at your slight head shake. “Thought so. Which ones?”
“White bottle, red pills. Only need a half,” you mumbled, slouching. Parker was already up and heading to the bathroom.
“We need to get something you can actually open when this happens, some kind of spring-loaded catch maybe,” Hardison mused. “Alright, let me see them.” He patted his legs, frowning at your growl. “C’mon, none of that. I know they hurt, I’ll be really, really gentle. I won’t even touch without asking.”
You looked him in the eye for the sincerity you already knew would be there, the eagerness to help that (damn him) was one of your favorite traits of his. Hesitantly, you extended your hands, rolling your eyes at him scooting forward to offer his knees to rest them on.
“I assume you got antiseptic and ointment on these knuckles already, so totally disregarding those, even though it sucks. Nothing broken?”
“No, just. Aches. Like a son of a bitch. Can’t make a damn fist. Happens sometimes.”
Parker bounded back in, armed with a glass of water and half a pill in her open hand. “So no jobs for a while. Easy, I’ll tell Nate. Open up.” With a scowl, you took the medication from her fingers with your teeth (gently, gently), and let her raise the glass to your lips, nearly choking as she tipped it a little eagerly, and choking for real when Hardison said, “Whoa, woman, let him swallow.”
“It’s not just the last job, Park, it’s jobs two years ago, or five, or ten,” you managed, once you had your breath back. “Part of the package that comes with the lifestyle. It just happens sometimes, don’t matter what schedule we’re on.”
She frowned. “Still. We shouldn’t be doing jobs if you’re hurt. Nate should know that.”
Hardison leaned forward a little more while you were distracted trying to find the right response to that, that you wouldn’t be doing any jobs at all if that were the case, that Nate trusted you to get the job done no matter what, reaching out to your forearm and stopping just a hair’s breadth shy of touching. You froze, and he did too, meeting your eyes. “It’s ok. I’m just trying something out. Is it alright if I touch you here?” At your tiniest of nods, the hacker placed his fingertips on your arm, rubbing circles so lightly that you almost couldn’t feel it. “Let me know where it starts to hurt, okay?” Hardison applied the slightest pressure as he added his other hand and lightly started rubbing down your forearm. When he got to your wrist, you couldn’t help the strangled noise that partly escaped through your nose, high and strained. He moved away from it immediately, going back to tracing soothing, gentle patterns. “You’re ok, you’re ok. I can work with this, no problem. Where do you keep your hot pads, man?”
“Bathroom, lower right drawer,” you grit out. Parker was zipping off to get it and warm it up before you could even process. Hardison applied a little more pressure with his fingertips, rubbing the meat of your forearm. You breathed out long and slow at how good it felt once the initial ache had ebbed.
“I want to try giving you a hand massage, but I don’t wanna hurt you more than it would help,” he said, pausing slightly. “You up for it? I’m not gonna pressure you either way.”
Your thoughts stuttered, and then bolted in different directions. The feeling that you didn’t deserve this, that this was too much to ask, which had been simmering this whole time leapt to life again. It joined with the wounded, snarling animal part of you that still wanted to hide, burrow down with the covers over your head until your pain faded into the muted background noise of the world. You didn’t even know if a hand massage would work, it might make the pain worse.
But it might be nice, a small, hopeful part of you murmured. You couldn’t remember the last time you had been offered something like this, let alone the last time you had taken the person up. If there was anyone you trusted to do it, if there was anyone you wanted to receive it from, it was these two. How could you refuse them even when your heart hoped so badly for what they were offering?
“Sure, just…” you said as Parker returned with the hot pad, pausing from tossing it hand to hand like a hot potato to fix her stare on you. You licked your lips, swallowed around a dry throat. “Just be gentle.”
“I will be,” Hardison said earnestly, taking the hot pad from Parker to gently maneuver it under your hands, resting on his knees. You tensed slightly as the thief leapt up onto the back of the couch, perching above your head, but otherwise relaxed as the warmth of the hot pad started to loosen the ache in your hands. Hardison started where he had before, applying the slightest pressure to your forearm. Parker ran her fingertips lightly through your hair, humming.
“Your hair is kinda wonky,” she said, fingers catching on a tangle. You winced.
“That’s what happens when you go to bed without brushing it properly, you know that,” you grumbled, breath hitching as her fingertips grazed your scalp. Your breath stuttered again as Hardison hands started working towards the sore meat of your wrist. Your hand began to shake.
“It’s ok baby, I got you,” Hardison murmured under his breath, more soothing sound than words. You cracked open an eye to see him looking between your hands and his phone, playing a video where it was propped on his thigh.
“Man, are you watching hand massage tutorials right now?” you gritted out, doing a poor job of masking your genuine amusement with frustrated disbelief.
He tapped his index finger against your arm lightly. “I’ve been watching videos dude; think you’re so slick, tryna hide your hand pain from me. I just wanna make sure I get it right in real time.”
Parker’s fingers running through your hair more boldly silenced any follow-up thoughts you had, your mind going fuzzy with how good it felt. Without thinking, you insistently pushed your head up further into her touch, making her laugh. The sound reverberated in your chest, leaving you longing to hear it again. Instead a half-whine left your throat as Hardison probed the bottom of your palm, the ache drawing you back to full awareness.
The hacker backed off for a moment. “Sorry, sorry, you still cool to keep going?”
“Yeah, yeah,” you breathed shakily.
“Just tell me if there’s anyplace else that needs to be handled more delicately, or you don’t want me going at all,” Hardison said, putting his clever hands to yours again and taking up his gentle, slow pace. Parker’s fingers had paused in your hair a second, but went back to running through it again, scratching your scalp on every other pass.
Slowly, slowly, the vice of pain on your hands started to dissipate, bone by bone, finger by finger. You don’t know how long you sat there in a haze, as Hardison and Parker patiently touched you, fixated on the single task of caring for you. The thought made the tender space behind your breastbone twinge. When you surfaced from the half-asleep contentment of their efforts, the television was on, Star Trek playing at the lowest volume. You grunted, lifting your head from the couch to look at them sitting beside you, grinning at your movements. Hardison’s warm hand was still in yours, but instead of massaging he was just holding it softly.
“Hey sleepy,” teased Parker, throwing herself over Hardison to get closer and forcing an “Oof!” out of him.
You looked down to your hands, flexing one experimentally, in disbelief at how the ache had faded to an almost imperceptible hum. With the other you tightened your fingers around Hardison’s hand, moving your thumb lightly over his.
“Hey,” you simply said back, a real smile rising to your lips.
#this is one of those times where i am like WHY cannot i write like [insert fandom greats here]#but. its good enough to post i think#plus this frees me up to write the next part of megverse which is SO vivid in my mind#stay tuned#miko speaks#parker leverage#fic#my fic#ot3
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But the One I Love : Poe Dameron x Reader
Word Count: 1.2k
Excerpt: “But maybe you were the answer. Maybe you were the one thing that could take his pain away.”
Warnings: Suggestive themes, cursing, sad Poe.
It hurt.
Poe couldn’t even begin to describe the pain in his chest, the relentless ache that just wouldn’t go away no matter how hard he tried to free himself of it, no matter how hard he tried to feel anything else but the stabbing and the twisting of a knife in the place where his heart should lay.
Nothing helped. Nothing worked.
Not flying, not his precious droid. Busying himself with work and reports proved to be useless, because he couldn’t fucking focus on them and would only end up angrier with himself for screwing something up. Alcohol didn’t help. Not the burn as it slid down his throat and entered his bloodstream. Not the way his head would spin as his thoughts became clouded, subdued. The pain was persistent and maddening and Poe just wanted it to stop. He just wanted to be able to breathe again without his lungs feeling as if they were about to collapse.
He’d tried everything he could think of.
Well, almost everything.
He hadn’t tried sex.
Poe had messed around before, of course he had. But after being in a relationship that he thought meant something more to the both of them, only to learn that his love had been unrequited the whole time, the last thing he wanted was sex that was completely meaningless. There wasn’t a single person he could think to coax into his bed that meant anything to him, that could give him what he needed.
Except, that wasn’t entirely true.
He knew one person, and he knew that she’d be down for it. He knew that she would do anything for him.
He knew because you had told him so, numerous times. Had promised him that you would give anything to keep him smiling, to make him happy. He knew that included sex, the way your eyes had drifted down his body had told him that.
And Poe had thought about it before, having sex with you, taking you up on your silent offer. Taking you back to his quarters and having his way with you, spending the night claiming you, marking you as his. But that had been before he started seeing Lena, back when things were simple and the hole in his chest wasn’t threatening to swallow him whole.
But maybe you were the answer. Maybe you were the one thing that could take his pain away. He cared for you, he loved you, and he knew your feelings for him were the same. He knew they were genuine, unlike Lena’s, and he knew that the emotion you would pour into every single touch of your fingers across his skin would evoke some buried, suppressed feeling inside of him that he needed to break free from the pain. He needed you.
He needed you, but you were his best friend, and using you for some sort of cathartic release wouldn’t be fair. It wasn’t right. Poe couldn’t ask that of you.
Except he knew you’d do it. You’d give yourself to him and you would make him feel good. He needed to feel good.
But he couldn’t.
And fuck, and that was you knocking on his door.
You always did the same short sequence of knocks before letting yourself in, just so he would always know it was you, and so that he wouldn’t have to get up if he was in bed or sitting at his desk.
Poe rubbed his hands over his face, sniffling from where he sat perched on top of his mattress, the covers strewn all around him. The sound and the sight broke your heart the moment you walked into the room. His bed only looked like that after a nightmare.
“It’s late,” he croaked, his voice hoarse. He cleared his throat, swallowing thickly.
You walked further inside, your arms folded across your chest, your eyes staying locked on his frame. “And yet you’re awake.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“No,” you mumbled, shaking your head as you sat beside him. “You tried.”
“Let me rephrase. Couldn’t fall back asleep.”
“There we go.”
You patted his thigh — an innocent gesture that set his skin ablaze. He shifted slightly, and you didn’t think much about it.
“What about you? What are you doin’ up?”
“Got a little behind on some reports, but I gave up. Couldn’t focus.”
Poe tilted his head to the side, watching you carefully, nudging your knee with his. “What’s on your mind?”
You hesitated, a sigh leaving your lips as you glanced up towards the ceiling. You pulled your bottom lip between your teeth, and Poe decided to focus his eyes there, copying your movements, but for what he assumed was a very different reason.
“You.”
He blinked, leaning back a couple of inches, your admission catching him off guard. “Me?”
“Yeah. You.”
Your tone refused to give anything away, and he couldn’t at all tell where your head was at. He was just about to ask you for the specifics, to explain it to him when he was taken even further aback by your legs swinging over his lap, your hands on his shoulders as you straddled his hips.
“What are you doing?” he asked, furrowing his eyebrows though his hands found your waist, as if there were tiny little magnets drawing them there. It was effortless, automatic.
“We both need to sleep, and I know a few things we could do to make ourselves tired.”
Your sentence stopped, but your thoughts, your reasoning didn’t. Poe could see it in your eyes. He knew you better than he knew anyone, better than he knew himself and better than he had ever known Lena.
You knew he was hurting. You knew he was trying to learn how to deal with a broken heart, how to heal it — searching for distractions and ways to bury it, looking for a cure. It was impossible, but it was almost as if you had known what he was thinking about before you entered his room.
Poe knew you, and you knew him just as well.
And you would always be willing to give him any piece of you he might need. You were always so eager and willing to be whoever, whatever he needed, and right now, he needed a lover.
That was simple enough, easy to give him.
Poe loved you. You were his best friend and you loved him. There wouldn’t be anything for you to fake, nothing that you had to try and exaggerate for his benefit because it was all so real, and completely genuine.
The hard part was going to be holding yourself back. Giving him a glimpse without showing him too much. Reminding him that he was cared for and loved without letting him know that those feelings emanating from so deep within your soul weren’t merely platonic.
Poe loved you, and you were in love with Poe.
Not simple. Not easy.
But you’d make it be, force it to be. Mold the situation and yourself into something that couldn’t be complicated, because that’s what Poe needed.
He didn’t need you.
He needed a release.
And there you were, offering him deliverance and a night full of something so sweet, he had no choice but to let himself indulge.
The perfect release, a sweet disaster, and entirely his for the taking.
#poe dameron#poe dameron x reader#star wars#tros#poe dameron fanfiction#poe dameron imagine#my writing
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For the prompt list, would you be able to do 36?
Oh, nonnie. This is probably not what you had in mind. It’s VERY ANGSTY. But it was cathartic for me to write - so thank you for the prompt. Beware that Alex has a vaguely dissociative panic attack below. Take care of yourselves. It’s a tough read. And if you are super sensitive to even slightly negative Forrest portrayals, you might want to avoid this as well. Past child abuse implied, toolshed references, blood.
The morning Forrest leaves for Austin Alex goes outside and stays there. It’s chilly – the winter hanging on long past its welcome. And the hour is early – the songbirds still slumbering in their nests. But Alex is too dazed to care.
He watches a cottontail mosey across his patio, tiny little hands searching for breakfast. Some dark part of Alex laughs – the rabbit won’t find any sustenance here. Not in his empty house.
As the morning drags on, he tries writing in his journal. A new song perhaps – one that will help him through all the things he’s not working through. But his pen is out of ink and inside is too far away. He wraps his arms around himself instead and hums an old tune. Some lonesome breakup ballad he’s sure he spent hours listening to in that ancient beat-up Chevy.
He bites his tongue so hard it bleeds. Turns his thoughts elsewhere.
But elsewhere is no good either. His brain keeps replaying his father’s voice in his head – no matter how dead he might be, it doesn’t stop. Because that caged part of his heart still believes his father was right and that there’s no home for love in his life. And never will be.
A ship without a harbor.
The birds finally wake up and Alex thinks about taking a nap. Maybe when he wakes up, he’ll be past this hurt. Like he thought he already was. But then the sweet emo boy with pretty eyes and a penchant for history left him.
Everyone who was ever supposed to love him has done the same. Starting with his mother and ending with Forrest. His brothers, his father. Liz and Maria in their own ways. Michael. Michael. Michael.
That night at the Pony. Looking up to meet Michael’s eyes was like watching a dream shift and form into reality. He’d thought he’d seen love there – reflected back at him. Unable to keep the smile off his face, his nervousness had disappeared with his next breath.
But then he’d looked away – for only a split second. And he was gone. Vanished. Because it wasn’t love after all. Never is. Never will be. Not for Alex.
The breeze begins to pick up, shimmying the branches over his head. A hawk prowls the midday sky as the clouds begin to hug the sun, swallowing her light. The smell of rain is in the air. And Alex’s fists clench and worry around the iron edge of the seat beneath him. The temperature plunges.
Alex doesn’t move.
Even when the rain starts to fall, battering his skin like icy bullets. The downfall slow but steady. Gradually increasing as the storm draws nearer. Eventually, his body goes so numb it evaporates – only his head left floating in the wind.
He recedes into his own mind. Disassociating. His brain a possessed projector sliding through the highlight reel of his torn life. There’s nothing he can do against the onslaught. Nothing but sit and bear it. His father’s fists, his mother’s blank birthday cards. The combat, the IED, the missing leg.
And then, a hammer. Blood splatter. Screaming.
Angry, urgent fucking, sneaking away before the dawn, no goodbyes.
‘We’re not good for each other.’
‘I like Maria, okay.’
An abandoned beer and an empty spot at the bar before a lovesick song has ended.
Alex doesn’t hear the Chevy rumble into his driveway. Doesn’t hear the squeaky hinges on his patio gate. Doesn’t hear Michael shout his name. Over and over again.
But he does feel the moment Michael’s warm hands cup his jawline. A balm against the storm. An anchor in the middle of the sea. His eyes focus and he looks at Michael.
‘What are you doing out here? It’s freezing. And you’re soaking wet.’ Michael’s hands are everywhere, trying to figure out if there’s some wound he’s not seeing. But Alex’s wounds are all safely tucked away, hidden deep on the inside.
Michael tries to tug Alex up out of the chair. But he won’t budge. ‘I’m fine, Guerin.’
‘You’re not fine. Your teeth are chattering and your lips are turning blue. Get up.’ He grips Alex’s bicep and tries again to get him standing. Alex just looks at him with dead eyes, the dark circles underneath like razor sharp sawblades swinging down to slice at his cheeks. His skin pallid and clammy, riddled with goosebumps.
‘Go home, Guerin.’ Michael hates the words but the small angry flare that dilates Alex’s pupils gives him hope.
‘I’ll go home if you go inside and get dry.’
Alex doesn’t have the energy for this argument. He grabs his crutches and lets Michael walk him to his front door. But the moment he’s inside, he slams it in Michael’s face. The whole house rattling.
Michael climbs back into this truck. Watching the house waiting to see a light turn on. Some sign that Alex will be okay. He’s soaked and freezing now too. Fingers trembling as he cranks the motor and blasts the heat. But he can’t leave. He can’t. He’s too scared.
He cuts the engine again and slides back into the deluge, running back to Alex’s doorstep. Bangs on the door, shouting for Alex. No answer. No lights either.
He twists the doorknob. ‘Alex, I will break in if I have to. I just want to know you’re okay.’
No answer.
Several minutes pass and Michael makes the only decision he knows how to make. He unlocks Alex’s door with his telekinesis and crosses the threshold tentatively. Yelling out that he’s inside.
There’s a trail of water leading through Alex’s bedroom. Michael drops his hat at the front door, shrugs off his sopping jacket. He follows the watery footsteps until he reaches Alex’s bathroom. His heart breaking at the sight before him.
Alex is curled on his shower floor. Sobbing. Wet clothes still stuck to his body.
Michael yanks off his boots and frantically falls to his knees behind Alex, lifting him into his arms. He reaches overhead and turns the shower on, faucet handle pushed all the way to scorching. The hot water burns their frigid skin. But Alex’s violent, racking sobs begin to subside as Michael rocks him back and forth.
*
Later that night, they are both in Air Force sweats drinking tea in front of Alex’s fireplace. Michael has Alex tucked tight against him. They haven’t said much. Just sat holding each other long enough for time not to matter.
As the sun begins to set, Michael presses a kiss into Alex’s slightly damp hair. Sets aside their empty mugs. ‘We’ll figure it out. You and me. I promise.’ Whispered wishes tossed like pennies into Alex’s ear.
They fall asleep tangled together with the fire crackling – embers burning slowly to ash. The storm outside fading away.
#ilu prompts#anon asks#malex#malex fic#alex manes#michael guerin#full on angst#but a soft epilogue#Anonymous#implied child abuse#toolshed incident mention#blood
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heartless
Wordcount: 2400
Warnings: Murder. Violence. Infidelity. Divorce. Reference to past abuse.
Notes: They say that every tale has three different versions. Mine, yours, and the truth.
This is the story of the death of a marriage, and what came after.
Henry is one.
His first word is “Dada”, followed closely by “Mama”, so Nicole can’t sulk for too long.
These days, he sleeps through the night more often than not. Some semblance of normality has finally fallen over the Barber household, after their rather chaotic beginning. It is ... nice.
Nicole’s figure has almost reverted back to how it was before. When Charlie reaches for her, she does not deny him. Her body is warm and welcoming, just as he remembers.
Now, if he stays out late sometimes, it is only to walk and think. His blades are gathering dust. He has remained faithful for over a year.
He cannot remember the last time he felt lonely.
Everything is perfect.
***
Henry is two.
Every other word out of his mouth is “No”. He is irrational, defiant, and wonderful.
Nicole mentions L.A. once or twice in passing, but Charlie dismisses it as a fleeting fancy. His career is going well, and New York is his home.
The attraction between them is still utterly magnetic. Charlie recognizes every inch of her body almost as well as his own. The taste of her spit, her sweat, her cum are all imprinted on his mind indelibly. The feel of her flesh under his hands is familiar and satisfying, and he cannot seem to get enough of it, even after several years of marriage.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter that they never seem to talk.
Everything is good.
***
Henry is three.
His curiosity about the world around him is vast. His capacity to ask questions is seemingly limitless, and often exhausting.
He also has no filter, which Charlie discovers to his utter mortification when Henry announces to the cashier at the supermarket checkout – and indeed to the entire queue, due to the volume of his innocent little voice - “My Daddy has a huge penis.”
Charlie claps his hand over Henry’s mouth, stammers his apologies, and retreats as soon as he has paid for his groceries. But when he gets home and begins to unpack them, he notices that a phone number has been scribbled on the back of the receipt. Interesting.
He puts it in his pocket. Just in case. It’s not like the cashier was extremely attractive. It’s not like she looked at him in a way that Nicole hasn’t for a while now. It’s not like he’s going to call her.
(But he does. Of course, he does.)
Other than that, though …
Everything is fine.
***
Henry is four.
For some reason known only to him, he is going through a clingy phase. He doesn’t want to go to day care anymore. He only wants his Daddy. He holds on to Charlie’s legs with a vice-like grip, and refuses to let go. And Charlie cannot bring himself to force him.
So for two weeks, Henry becomes Charlie’s unofficial assistant director on his latest production. If Charlie is seated, Henry is on his lap, face tucked against the crook of his shoulder. If Charlie is standing, Henry is right beside him, holding onto his hand or the hem of his cardigan. When the more kindly members of the cast and crew try to engage with him, he peeks out at them from behind Charlie’s back, but as the days pass, he soon warms up to them, and soon everyone is quite distracted by his joyful presence. He eats pizza for lunch every single day, and has all the paper and crayons that his heart could possibly desire. When he’s tired, he naps on a makeshift bed of jackets in a quiet corner of the rehearsal space. And finally, at the end of the second week, he asks Charlie when he’s going back to day care.
Nicole finds out about this little holiday after a phone call enquiring as to whether or not he’ll be attending the following week, and is furious. “You’re spoiling him!” she accuses, once Henry is in bed. “He has to learn he can’t always get what he wants!”
He’s four, Charlie thinks. But also … The audacity!
Nicole grew up in the lap of luxury, with a father who gave her whatever she wanted, as she reminds him all too often when he denies her some outrageous request. She has no right to comment on anyone else being spoiled. When Charlie tells her as much, without any of his usual attempts to soften the harshness of his words, she reels away with a shocked look on her face, like his mother used to after his father struck her.
Suddenly, Charlie feels awful. Like an utterly heartless bastard.
He spends the rest of the evening apologizing. The make up sex that occurs once she has forgiven him is so cathartic that afterwards, as they sprawl across the couch together, he finds himself telling her a few details about his past. Not much, but more than he’s ever trusted anyone with before, except perhaps his dear cousin Pat.
He wants her to understand him so badly. She is his wife, after all. The mother of his child. His life partner. Til death do us part.
Nicole presses her lips together, and doesn’t say anything in response. After a moment, she gets up, and goes to take a shower.
They never talk about it again.
Charlie openly embarks on a string of affairs, because why the hell not? He dusts off his knives, and becomes the scourge of the city again. Nicole doesn’t seem to notice that anything has changed. Or maybe she just doesn’t care.
Everything is not okay.
***
Henry is five.
He is tall for his age, but not exceptionally so. His report cards are full of praise for his positivity and kindness to others, though they do also mention how inattentive he is at times, especially when it comes to math. He has a gaggle of girls who follow him around the playground with dazed expressions and starry eyes. When Charlie asks him about them, Henry shrugs. “They’re just my girlfriends,” he says. Christ.
For the first time in his life, Charlie feels old. This is probably due to the permanent backache he has from sleeping on the couch on the nights he bothers to stay home. Or maybe it’s because he’s acting like he’s still twenty-five, and fucking every woman who spares him a second glance.
His body count has increased exponentially of late. Most of his victims won’t be missed, but enough of them are noticed that it draws NYPD’s attention, and he has to take a couple of weeks off to let it all blow over.
It works. But everything else blows up.
Trapped in the apartment with Nicole, tensions rise, until finally his infidelities come to light. In a hushed voice - so as not to wake Henry - she calls Charlie a narcissist, and a womanizer, and a drunk.
Charlie stands there and takes it stoically. Just like he used to when he was younger, and it was his mother spitting venom at him. The words wash over him, barely registering. He doesn’t respond.
After a while, enraged by his lack of reaction, Nicole screws up her pretty face into a nasty sneer, and informs him that he’s a heartless bastard just like his father was.
In spite of all he has done, it is a low blow to throw those secrets he trusted her with back at him like a weapon. And it triggers him, like nothing she has ever said or done before.
Suddenly, he finds himself looming over her, with his fist raised, and the urge to strike almost overwhelming him.
But he is not like his father.
He is not.
HE IS NOT.
Biting back a howl of pain so as not to wake his sleeping son, he punches a hole in the wall next to her head instead.
Even though they have been trying to be quiet, the silence that comes next is deafening.
Charlie stares at the damaged wall. At his hand. At his wife.
As if in slow motion, he crumples to his hands and knees on the floor, and begins to sob.
For a moment, Nicole stares at him with her mouth open, and her eyes wide. Then she leaves the room.
That night, she packs a bag and leaves, taking Henry with her.
Charlie is alone again.
Everything is broken.
***
It ends, as it began, with a great deal of expense, more of an audience than Charlie is comfortable with, and the signing of several pieces of paper.
***
Henry is six.
According to Nicole, the teachers at his new school say he is doing very well. Charlie speaks to him almost every day over Skype or on the phone, so there isn’t much about his life he doesn’t know, given Henry’s tendency to overshare.
But he misses the little things. The boring, mundane activities he took for granted. Helping with homework. Reminding Henry to brush his teeth, and tuck his shirt in. Quietly spending time together; Charlie absorbed in his writing, and Henry filling page after page with his colorful imaginings. Charlie loves hearing about Henry’s life, he really does. But he misses living it with him.
Meanwhile, Charlie’s latest play – ironically enough about the breakup of a relationship – is receiving rave reviews.
Even that one critic who panned him years ago has reached out via email to apologize after attending the preview, showering him with some gorgeous words of praise. They have been conversing back and forth ever since, the messages growing more and more explicit. He wonders if he will ask her for a review of his performance after he fucks her. It would be fitting. But he is so looking forward to killing her that he thinks he might not be able to wait. Her apology was just meaningless, empty words, and she deserves his punishment. Charlie never forgives. And he never forgets.
By day, he is in great demand. He works long hours, and doesn’t have even a moment of time to himself, so surrounded is he by others in his workplace.
But at night, he is alone.
So, at night, he drinks, and he fucks, and he kills.
He is relentless. He is ruthless. He is reckless. He is heartless.
He has nothing left to lose.
***
“Most men are just stone cold,” his mother told him years ago, bitter after a bad breakup with her latest beau. Charlie must have been about twelve at the time. “Heartless bastards, the lot of them. Just like your father was. Like you are.”
Her words were slurred and she could barely stand, although it was only three in the afternoon. She was drunk, but Charlie didn’t doubt the truth of her words. He never did. She was his mother, so why would she lie to him?
Heartless.
Charlie thinks about it often, even now.
Heartless bastard.
Late at night, when he’s being kept awake by an ache in his chest so intense that no amount of booze or cunt or blood ever seems to distract him from it, even for a single moment.
I am heartless, he thinks.
I am alone.
***
It is nearing the end of summer, but it is still far too hot and humid to be dressed to the nines for a black tie event. Charlie has been sweating in his suit all evening, and it hasn’t improved one bit since he retreated to his air conditioned apartment.
In the kitchen, he removes his jacket and tie, draping them carefully over the back of one of the chairs that sit at the small table in the corner. He unfastens the top two buttons of his shirt, and rolls his sleeves up neatly. That’s better.
After taking a few seconds to compose himself, he fills two glasses with ice water, and returns to the living room. Only a minute has passed at most since he left the room, but in this time his companion has traveled from the couch where he left her, to stand in front of the bookcase. She appears to be examining the few photos Charlie has of himself and Henry, in happier times.
His footsteps sound very loud as he approaches her. The apartment is always so quiet, these days. “That’s my son,” he says, quietly. “He is seven. He lives with his mother in Los Angeles.”
His companion nods, but doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t turn around, so he cannot see her expression. He wonders what she is thinking. Probably that he is damaged goods. Which has always been true.
Charlie suddenly becomes aware of how close behind her he’s standing. He can smell her perfume, combined with the scent of some expensive shampoo. There is a light sheen of perspiration on her bare shoulders, which glistens in the faint lamplight of the room. He wonders what her sweat would taste like. How her lips would feel like against his. If her skin is really as soft and as smooth as it looks. He wonders how well it would bruise for him, and if she would enjoy it.
“Here,” he says, reaching around her with one of the glasses of water. She takes it from him, and lifts it to her lips to take a sip, making a small sound of appreciation. As he retracts his hand, he allows it to brush against her arm, so gently that it almost seems accidental. She shivers, then goes very, very still.
“His name is Henry,” he continues, apropos of absolutely nothing. “I miss him. I don’t miss his mother.” He can’t understand why he is blurting information out like this, to a stranger he met at an incredibly dull party only a few hours ago. “It was a strange relationship, and I suppose I am still not really sure what even happened.”
His companion takes another sip of water, then places the glass on the bookshelf. The lack of coaster underneath it makes Charlie cringe, but only for a moment. His head empties itself of all coherent thought when she turns to look at him. It feels like the breath has been punched out of his lungs. It’s only been a couple of minutes since he last saw her face, but it feels like somehow he’d managed to forget just how lovely she is. Or perhaps his reaction is because he is only now able to truly appreciate her radiance, given their new proximity to each other.
“I understand,” she tells him, in a voice that sounds like the most beautiful music he has ever heard. Quite boldly, she takes the glass of water out of his hand, and places it next to the one he gave her. Again without a coaster, but Charlie doesn’t even care. “My last breakup was less than ideal. It turned out my partner was rather heartless. Or … perhaps I was.” Her tone is self-deprecating, and Charlie can sense some pain behind her words.
And there it is again. Heartless.
That word that has haunted him for years.
I am heartless, he thinks. I am alone.
And there is is again. That ache inside his ribcage.
But this time, it feels different. This time, it is accompanied by a warmth that is spreading from the center of his chest, through his torso, and into his limbs. How strange.
Unbidden, an odd thought floats into his mind, and takes up residence there. Am I heartless?
Slowly, Charlie reaches out and takes her hand in his. He brings it up to the middle of his chest and holds it there. Even through her hand, he can feel the rapid thump of a heart that he has been told over and over again does not exist.
His beautiful companion blinks, and then her lips twitch into the faintest of smiles. She understands, he realizes, right before her fingers curl around the hand that still hangs uselessly at his side, and she reciprocates the gesture.
Her skin is soft and smooth under his palm, just like he thought it would be.
Her heartbeat is perfectly in time with his own.
Oh.
Oh god.
Charlie takes a deep breath, and then leans in, until his lips are just the barest whisper away from hers. “It seems you are not heartless,” he tells her, with a small smile.
“Neither are you,” she whispers.
Charlie closes his eyes, and he kisses her.
And he kisses her.
And he kisses her.
***
Much later, his bedmate sleeps quite soundly, tired out by hours of play. Charlie’s body is exhausted, but his mind remains frustratingly awake. His thoughts are very loud, and the pounding in his chest is almost deafening.
I am not heartless, he thinks incredulously, over and over again, trying desperately to process this new information.
I am not heartless.
So maybe ...
Maybe ...
Next to him, his companion stirs, muttering something in her sleep. Charlie pulls her to him, and strokes her hair until she has been lulled back into the depths of peaceful slumber once more.
Earlier, she was so responsive to him. So strong. She gave him everything he asked for without a single whimper, and politely asked for more.
And ...
The way she looked at him afterwards, when he attempted to tend to her welts and bruises, even though he had never done it before ...
The way she smiled at him after she pulled on the old t-shirt he gave her to sleep in, and it swamped her ...
The way she gazed at him through heavy-lidded eyes right before she fell asleep ...
It was almost as if she liked him.
Charlie chews on the inside of his trembling lower lip, and squeezes his eyes shut. Surely this is too good to be true. He wouldn’t be surprised to wake up in the morning and realize that this whole thing has been yet another one of his fantasies. It has been quite some time, after all, since he has bothered to take his medication.
But ... what it it’s not a hallucination? What if it’s real?
His arms tighten around her. She doesn’t wake, but she does snuggle closer to him, all soft and warm and sweet. Charlie swallows thickly, and presses a tender kiss to the top of her head.
“If you stay,” he whispers, “I am going to call you Kitten.”
Please stay.
#charlie writes#family man charlie#tw: reference to murder#tw: violence#tw: reference to past abuse#tw: infidelity#tw: divorce
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