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tropes-and-tales · 1 year

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Five Times Vigilante Definitely Does Not Have Feelings (and the One Time He Does)

Characters: Adrian Chase/Vigilante x f!reader

CW: Crude language; yearning.

Word Count: 3982

Adrian Chase will tell anyone: he doesn’t have emotions like people do. He doesn’t feel sad or angry or embarrassed. When Peacemaker gave him the nickname “Thimble,” he certainly didn’t cry. When Peacemaker was sent to prison, he certainly didn’t feel lonely.

Not having emotions is what makes him a more evolved human.

And yet, when ARGUS springs Peacemaker and sets up a black ops outfit in Evergreen, Adrian finds himself toeing the line of feelings. He doesn’t have emotions like people do, but he comes awfully close a handful of times…until he crosses the line entirely.

The Time Vigilante Definitely Does Not Feel Vulnerable

As the Vigilante, Adrian gets hurt all the time. He’s become proficient at stitching up his own wounds. His body is littered with the scars of his own handiwork.

But when Goff tortures him for information, and when the ARGUS team comes to his and Peacemaker’s rescue, he finds himself missing half of a pinkie toe. It’s the most important toe on the human body, and he’ll probably never walk again…and no one seems to care.

Except for you. In the van as they return to headquarters, you sit across from him, watching him as he studies his mangled foot. You murmur something that sounds sympathetic, but he barely hears it over Peacemaker laughing at him.

At headquarters, you look at him and jerk your head in the direction of the back office.

“I can stitch you up, if you want,” you offer.

He starts to shake his head, but the mean blonde woman—Harcourt, her name is—makes an offhand comment about your superior patch-up abilities, so he accepts your help. He limps painfully behind you, follows you into a room that has been converted into a rough sort of exam room and budget clinic.

“Hop up on the table,” you tell him, and even though he doesn’t trust you—or any of your team—he does as you say. It’s clumsy. He hurts in a hundred different places: his half-amputated toe, his electrocuted crotch, all the scrapes and bruises from the fight with Cobra Kai.

“I won’t take off my mask,” he warns you. “I take my secret identity very seriously. If you saw my face, I’d have to kill you.”

“Duly noted,” you reply dryly. “But I only need to see your foot.”

He pulls off his boot and regards his mangled half-pinkie toe sadly. You pull on a pair of latex gloves and turn on a bright lamp, angling it at his bare foot.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” you say as you prod the wound gently. “In fact, you really didn’t lose anything but a couple layers of skin.”

“The blade was as dull as fuck,” he replies.

You wheel your stool over to a cabinet, then pull out some supplies: needle and thread, disinfectant, gauze and tape. Then you wheel back over to him and set to work.

The mean blonde woman was right—you’re quick, efficient. He looks down at your bent head as you stitch him up, and he sees that your needlework is better than his own. He doubts he’ll even have much of a scar once it heals.

But it’s the strange feeling that creeps over him: makes his vision waver, makes him feel a little light-headed. Your hands are deft but also gentle. Adrian can’t remember ever being touched so gently. Maybe when he was really small. Maybe his mom was gentle like that when he was so small that he can’t remember it now. It makes him break out in goosebumps. He shudders at the touch of your warm hand bracing his foot, and you misunderstand the involuntary gesture.

“Almost done,” you murmur, and a moment later you tie off the last stitch and snip the thread. You wrap his toe in gauze, pat his knee softly in a reassuring way. Then you straighten up and ask if there’s any other injuries he needs patched up.

“Goff electrocuted me,” he blurts out. “With a car battery.”

You look at him, level, but the corner of your mouth quirks in a near-smile. “You want me to look at that for you?”

“Oh, no. No. No, I just wanted to mention it. I’m not asking you to look at it.” He’s grateful for the mask; he can feel his face heating up at the idea of taking off his suit in front of you, and the sudden flush confuses him. Irritates him. Something about the thought of being exposed makes his stomach churn in a way he doesn’t understand.

You hum thoughtfully, then turn back to the cabinet of supplies. You rummage around, then pull out a small white tube that you hand him.

“Antibiotic gel for cuts and burns,” you say. “You can put a cool cloth on…well, any burns you may have. If there’s blistering, don’t pop them.”

“Okay.”

“And, you know…if you have any lingering side effects of being electrocuted, you should see a specialist.”

Vigilante reaches down and pulls his boot back on, but already his toe feels better. “What sort of side effects?” he asks.

He looks up at you in time to see that same half-smile. You peel off your gloves, toss them in the trash.

“I can imagine where you were electrocuted,” you reply. “So if those parts don’t typically work the way you’re used to, see a real doctor.”

Adrian Chase is not good at nuance or subtlety. “Huh?”

You blink at him before you say, “if you can’t get or maintain an erection, see a urologist.”

“Oh.” He blinks too, behind his visor. “Okay.”

You turn to leave the room but then glance over your shoulder before you do. “Thanks for your help tonight,” you say. “The mission was a success because of you.”

Neither Vigilante nor Adrian Chase ever get any thanks. He flushes even hotter under his mask, and he grumbles in reply, uncomfortable to be seen, to be recognized for the first time.

To be vulnerable.

The Time Vigilante Definitely Does Not Feel Embarrassed

The next afternoon, he’s at Peacemaker’s trailer, helping him clean up from when the police tossed the place. They are blasting Guns and Roses, drinking beer…it’s like the old days, almost.

A knock at the door then, and Adrian has only a second to pull on his mask before you stroll in.

“Hey, Chris. Vigilante.” You nod in greeting, then reach into your bag to pull out a thick manila folder. You hand it to Peacemaker.

“Murn wanted me to bring this by. It’s the latest intel we got from Goff’s place.”

You stand there as Chris takes the folder and sinks down onto his couch, already paging through the information. Vigilante stands there too, awkward, so he crosses his arms to keep from fidgeting. There’s a long stretch of silence once the Guns and Roses record ends, and Vigilante struggles with silence.

“I got hard last night,” he tells you. “And this morning too.”

“Dude, what the fuck?” Peacemaker sputters. “She doesn’t want to hear that!”

“She mentioned it last night!”

Peacemaker scoffs, twists his face into an expression of disbelief. “Yeah, I’m sure she mentioned your dick last night. Sure. Okay. Fantasize much?”

“She did!”

“You seriously need to get laid, dude. Stop making shit up.”

“He’s not lying,” you tell Peacemaker with a sheepish shrug. “Though I mentioned it in the context of his injuries and not…some other context.”

“See?” Vigilante says, and Peacemaker rolls his eyes, makes a jacking-off motion with his hand.

You don’t linger. You beat a hasty retreat, waving over your shoulder as you leave the trailer, and Peacemaker gives him more hell—calls him weird, calls him annoying.

“No wonder you’ve never had a real girlfriend, dude,” he says as he turns back to his folder of intel. “You say the creepiest shit the minute a cute girl is around.”

Vigilante doesn’t think about it much more until later. That night, in bed, he lies awake for far longer than he usually does. He replays that moment, tries to understand why he just blurted that out.

He wonders if you would have stayed at the trailer longer if he hadn’t been creepy. His face burns in the darkness of his bedroom, and his stomach twists painfully as he replays the moment over and over. He replays his stupid blurting out about his dick, and he has no idea what it means. He never obsesses over his stupid mouth like this.

If he had feelings like other people, he’d recognize the emotion as embarrassment.

The Time Vigilante Definitely Does Not Feel Despondent (and Comforted)

Adrian gets himself arrested on purpose. It’s the best way he can help Chris: get arrested, get booked into the same prison as Chris’ racist supervillain father, then kill said racist supervillain father.

Easy enough. It’d set Chris free and make his life so much better. Allow him to move forward and not be bogged down, like Adebayo said.

Adrian fails. He only manages to make things worse—clues Auggie into his plan accidentally, possibly points law enforcement in Chris’ direction. So Adrian doesn’t just fail—he fails miserably.

He’s released that night. He’s surprised at first, but as he changes back into his clothes and collects his personal effects from the guards, he realizes that ARGUS has its sticky fingers in all sorts of things and probably sprung him with just a few keystrokes.

When he leaves the prison, you’re sitting out front in your car. You lower the passenger window and call out to him.

“C’mon,” you say. “Harcourt sent me to take you home.”

He’s too upset to even feel bad about his cover being blown. He climbs into the car.

“I think I made things worse,” he says, and he tries not to cry. He only wanted to help his best friend (even if he’s not Peacemaker’s best friend). Somehow he messed up, and it could ruin everything.

“Okay,” you reply softly. “It’s okay.”

You drive him home. He doesn’t give you his address, but you know it—another screw-up, he thinks, getting tangled up with people who easily cracked his secret identity. You know his name, his face, where he lives. Some instrument of vengeance he is. You probably even recognize him from his job at Fennel Fields.

Outside of his apartment, you park, then turn to face him. In the half-light from the streetlamps, he can just make out your soft smile.

“This entire ops is nothing but mistakes,” you tell him. “And yet, we’re doing okay. We’ll figure out how to handle Auggie Smith. Don’t worry about it.”

He nods, and something about the barest bit of comfort—paired with your smile—makes him turn to face you too.

“I’m Adrian,” he says, even though you know his name.

Your smile broadens and you say your name, even though he knows it. You hold out your hand and after a beat he takes it.

“Good to finally meet you, Adrian,” you reply as you shake hands.

For whatever reason, as low as he feels, he falls asleep that night with a weird lightness in his chest—because he doesn’t dwell on his failure at the prison.

Instead, he falls asleep with the memory of your smile, your kind words. Your warm hand in his.

The Time Vigilante Definitely Does Not Feel Protective

The attack on Goff’s house yielded some leads, and the team travels three hours away to take out a nest of Butterflies. Everyone is exhausted, filthy, and bruised up.

It’s in the van—you sitting beside Adrian—when you start to nod off. He catches it the first few times, the way your head dips forward, the way you jerk back awake. It’s cute, the way you fight sleep, and then it happens.

You fall asleep and you don’t wake up. Your head drifts towards him, then settles against his shoulder.

Adrian freezes.

He and Peacemaker—they used to go out together, looking for crimes or bitches or both. He’s no virgin. He fucks. He’s no stranger to touch, and he’s certainly no stranger to women. And yet…this feels different. It feels new.

Peacemaker notices. “You got a new girlfriend, dude,” he points out with a laugh.

Harcourt rolls her eyes at the teasing. “Leave her alone. She puts in way more hours than you, asshole.”

“I put in plenty of hours,” he replies, defensive. “It takes a lot of time to maintain this impressive physique. Do you know how long I work on my small muscle groups alone?”

Harcourt rolls her eyes again, then returns her attention to her phone. Peacemaker turns back to where Adrian sits, rigid, as you sleep against him.

“If you get hard, just don’t tell her about it,” he advises the younger man. “You’ll creep her out again.”

It’s strange, the feeling of your head against him. It’s not sexy at all, obviously—in fact, it’s a little uncomfortable. He doesn’t want to move you, doesn’t want to jostle you and wake you up. Harcourt said you’re tired, and you took a hell of a beating as you fought the Butterflies.

Adrian has always approached his work as Vigilante from a perspective of vengeance, not protection, so the feeling is strange: how he wants to let you sleep, how he wants to protect your sleep. How he wants to make you comfortable.

A quiet falls over the team; the swaying of the van lulls everyone into comfortable silence. Adrian breathes in carefully through his nose, then shifts his body. Slowly, carefully. He leans away from you, allows you to lie against him more. He changes the angle enough that he can get his arm out from where it’s trapped between your body and his. He shifts again, gets his arm around you. Gently moves you—changes it from your head awkwardly pressed against his hard molded shoulder pad to your head tucked against his chest.

You wake, a little, as he moves you. You blink up at him sleepily, say his name—Adrian, not Vigilante or Vig or V—and your voice is husky with exhaustion. There’s a questioning lilt to how you say his name, so he shakes his head softly.

“Go ahead and rest,” he says, quiet. “Everything’s fine.”

You nod, then settle back against him. It takes only a moment until he feels your breathing slow down, deepen. He feels your body go heavy and lax against him. Tucked against his chest, his arm holding you against him, he can smell you, feel how warm you are. If he moves his head just a little, he can press his cheek against the top of your head.

Go ahead and rest, he thinks. Everything’s fine. I’ll keep you safe.

Vigilante has always been an instrument of vengeance, but this is the first time he’s felt protective of anyone.

The Time Vigilante Definitely Does Not Feel Fear

The 11th Street Kids have one chance to eradicate the Butterflies forever: if they can kill their only food source, the so-called cow, they will eventually all die off. When they make their final assault on the farm, the team splits up: Adebayo and Economos stay back, while the warriors—Peacemaker, Vigilante, Harcourt, and you—charge into action.

Whether the cow is killed or not, Adrian doesn’t find out until after the battle is over. He fights off the onslaught of Butterflies, but for the first time, his attention isn’t entirely on his own fight.

His attention is on you, now, too.

He manages to keep you in his sightline for the beginning of the fight. He sees you, admires the sight of you when you’re in your berserker mode: furious and deadly, well-fitted black suit, guns flashing as you empty clip after clip into the skulls of the Butterflies.

Then he loses sight of you.

His chest clenches in an unfamiliar tension, and when he finally catches sight of you again, that tight-chest feeling cedes to something else, something worse: an ice-cold shard of fear that lances through him, settles in his gut where it sits like a stone.

When he finally catches sight of you, it’s the exact moment you are shot by a Butterfly.

One shot hits your shoulder, spins you around.

Another shot hits you square in the chest, makes you stagger backwards as the force is absorbed by your vest.

The final shot hits you low in the belly, and Adrian (who has studied your gear closely) knows you have little protection there. The icy fear blooms in him, fills up every bit of him until it feels like it’s in his veins.

He screams your name. He barely even feels the bullet that hits him (“oh, shoot” he mutters, and tosses a knife behind him to kill his own attacker), but then he stumbles and falls, and he loses consciousness.

He wakes a moment later. He has no idea how much time has passed, but he manages to get to his hands and knees, then to his feet. He makes his way to where you fell and he finds you.

It’s bad. It’s so bad that the icy fear turns acidic in his veins, makes him burn with fear. With terror. You gaze up at him but you don’t seem to see him, and each breath makes a fresh pulse of blood trickle from your mouth.

Adrian has never been very good at social situations. He never knows the right thing to say and if he does, he doesn’t know the right time to say it. He wishes these things came more easily to him; if it were Chris here right now instead of him, Chris would know the right thing to say. He’d know how to keep you awake, how to give you comfort.

All Adrian can offer is what you told him the night he got out of prison, when you drove him home. Now, as you lie under the night sky, dying in front of him, as he presses one hand against the worst wound to try and staunch the bleeding, he repeats your words back to him.

“It’s okay,” he says, and he says it over and over and hopes you believe it. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

The Time Vigilante Definitely Feels Love

You have no memory of the fight at the farm. The last thing you remember is the drive there, but everything after is a blank. Adebayo stops by when you finally wake up and fills you in on the salient details.

She tells you how Vigilante—who was also shot, who had been blown up earlier in the day—carried you to safety. How he kept you from bleeding out, how he held your very life in his hands and kept you from dying. How hospital security had to separate him from you, once you were laid out on the gurney and being wheeled into surgery.

How he still tried to fight to stay by your side, and how he only failed because of his own injuries and blood loss.

“That man is stupid crazy about you,” Adebayo chuckles with a shake of her head. “I don’t even think he’s really a psychopath.”

You chuckle with her, wince when the action pulls at the thousand stitches and staples that are keeping you held together. “He’s not bad, right?”

“We’re literally the Island of Misfit toys,” she replies. “But yeah, he’s alright.”

-----

Adrian is hospitalized too, and once he’s healed up to a point, he starts sneaking into your room to visit. It’s not really sneaking—every time he undoes his IV and heart monitor, it sends the nurses into a panic—but after Adebayo’s press conference revealing the existence of Task Force X, the hospital staff is pretty tolerant of his harmless shenanigans.

He helped ward off an alien invasion, after all. You both did.

You have to agree with Adebayo. You’ve never quite believed that Adrian is a psychopath or a sociopath or whatever. You certainly never believed him when he said he didn’t have feelings or emotions. The guy is nothing but a walking ball of emotions: obvious love for his friends, a yearning to belong, a sweet desire to be liked and included. Sure, he kills without compunction, but he seems to love in equal measure, even if he doesn’t believe he does.

When he visits you, he doesn’t talk about feelings. He chatters endlessly about his and Peacemaker’s exploits—criminals they’ve busted, ways they’ve destroyed old appliances in the woods behind Peacemaker’s trailer. He talks about how it was when Peacemaker was in prison, how he kept calling and leaving voicemails to make it seem like everything was normal. He talks about his job at Fennel Fields, all the terrible customer service stories he has.

He discharges himself against the advice of the doctors (he’s healed enough, he tells you), and you think he’ll stop visiting, but he doesn’t. He visits every day still, and when you start physical therapy to build up the muscle tone and endurance you’ve lost, he sits in a nearby chair, watching you. Cheering you on.

Adebayo wasn’t wrong. You know Adrian has feelings for you. You’re more socially adept than him, and you’ve had relationships before. You’ve had crushes and been the object of them. You guessed his infatuation early on, and you can guess that it’s only grown for him since then.

It probably confuses him, you guess. You know what love feels like. What a crush feels like. All that feeling, in so many places: the fluttery stomach, the pounding heart, the thoughts that just circle ‘round and ‘round about a single person.

You’d be lying if you said you didn’t have similar feelings for him. He’s easy on the eyes, sure—but he’s earnest and sweet, a brutal killer with a heart of gold.

You can also guess that Adrian might never make a move. This has to be unfamiliar territory for him. You know he’s no virgin (he’s chattered endlessly about his and Peacemaker’s exhaustive threesomes too), but he seems to have no relationship experience.

But your entire short working relationship with him has been give and take. You stitched him up, comforted him when he was feeling low after his failed attempt to kill Auggie Smith. He let you rest against him, held you gently as you slept after a mission. He saved your life, kept you from bleeding out.

Give and take. The best kind of relationship, in your opinion.

“Hey, Adrian,” you say one afternoon after PT. You’re exhausted and sore, but you’re quickly approaching your own discharge. You are healing up nicely. You have things to look forward to.

“What’s up?” he asks, and he bounces over to your bedside like a Golden Retriever puppy, eager.

“Doctor says I’m good to go in a few days.”

“That’s great!” His face breaks open in a wide grin that transforms him from nerdy-handsome to downright gorgeous. “That’s good news!”

You swallow, push down the nerves that flare up. “I thought maybe we could celebrate.”

“Yeah!” He grins at you. “I can call Chris—”

“I thought maybe just me and you,” you cut in, clarifying. “Just this time. Maybe we include Chris some other time.”

“Oh.” The smile falls from his face, and he looks at you. His brows are knit in confusion.

No sense in backtracking now. “Like a date. Would you like to go on a date with me?”

“Oh.” A beat. “With me? Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

What you’re asking him finally sinks in—a beat longer than it might with someone else, but that’s just part of Adrian’s charm. The smile returns to his face, brighter and wider than before.

“Yeah,” he replies. “Hell yeah, dude. I’d love that.”

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pascalconfessions · 2 months

Note

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please Y'all, make sure to check their master lists right now!

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❤️

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tropes-and-tales-archives · 2 years

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Sonny Carisi: Hold My Hand

Word Count: 2192

TW: Fluff; pining; needle phobia.

To say that you intimidated Sonny Carisi was an understatement.

You had worked together briefly in Brooklyn’s SVU (you had spent most of your career there, he had lasted almost a month) before you both – separately – transferred to Manhattan’s SVU. Sonny only beat you by a week, so he was technically more senior, but no one bought that line – not even him.

You were an impressive detective: you knew every square inch of the borough, you spoke three languages fluently (and could fumble some basic questions in Mandarin), and you were an encyclopedia of proper police procedure. Sonny had admired you – you had fit in so well with the Brooklyn squad while he had floundered.

In Manhattan, though, you were both the new kid. You were paired off with Fin while Sonny was paired off with Amanda, but after your respective training periods in Manhattan were over, Liv made you partners.

He liked you a lot, but he couldn’t seem to get any closer than arm’s length. You were the dictionary definition of professional, so offers to grab a beer after work were usually declined with a polite smile. Once, when he was dealing with car problems, you picked up him and dropped him off at home every day – but you always declined offers to get dinner or come up to his apartment and let him cook for you as thanks.

Still, it cut both ways: while he couldn’t seem to build a cozy rapport with you, he also wasn’t teased mercilessly by you. He could run his mouth, talk about his ma, press cannoli onto you, and you never gave him grief for it.

Sonny eventually just resigned himself to a purely professional partnership with you. It was too bad: he was harboring a painful little crush on you, like a piece of popcorn kernel stuck under his gum line that he couldn’t unstick. You were gorgeous in a buttoned-up sort of way, and in the rare times you genuinely smiled at him, he felt a sick sort of queasy feeling that could only be love.

On the other hand, the two of you worked extremely well together, and before long, your solve rate was rivaling Fin and Amanda’s. You had started gifting Sonny with air high-fives, which was something.

At that rate, he’d maybe get a hug within the next fifty years.

-----

He didn’t have to wait fifty years, ultimately. The circumstances around that first hug between the two of you were this:

A patrolman who had been aiding in the pursuit of a rapist was shot on duty. While the man was in fair condition and in surgery, he had lost a lot of blood. When you and Sonny arrived at the hospital, Liv was already there.

“How’s he doing?” Sonny asked. He felt, as he always did in these situations, the sick, heavy feeling in his stomach. It could have just as easily been him…or you. The detective’s badge wasn’t a guarantee for safety.

“He’s lost a lot of blood,” Liv informed the two of you. “The blood bank is sending over some, but he’s got a rare type. B negative.”

“I….I’m B negative,” you said in a small voice, and Liv turned and pointed you to the nurses’ station. You didn’t move, though, and Sonny glanced down at you.

Your face was as white as paper, and your eyes were wide in animal fear. “I, uh, need to take an Ativan first,” you stuttered.

Liv pointed a second time. “Go,” she ordered. “There’s no time.” Then her phone rang, and she spun off to go answer it.

Sonny put his hands on your upper arms and turned you to face him. “You okay?” he asked, confused. “You look sick.”

You gazed up at him with eyes that were already filling with tears. “Sonny, I can’t,” you pleaded. “I know…I know I have to, but I can’t.”

“Of course you can.” He rubbed your arms briskly through your coat. “It doesn’t hurt at all. Just a little pinch – “

“I know it doesn’t hurt!” you yelled back at him, and your voice was an entire octave higher than usual. “But there’s a needle in my vein, Sonny, and a plastic tube, and they slide the tube into my vein…” You trailed off, practically gagging on your building hysteria, and Sonny realized suddenly what the problem was.

You had a needle phobia.

It all made sense, all of a sudden: the NYPD paid for annual flu shots, but you always spent two weeks combing the city for the nasal spray vaccination while everyone else just got the shot on-site. And during those on-site clinic days, you always kept carefully away, running lab work or killing time in Barba’s office. Sonny just now put it all together.

“Hey, hey, listen to me,” he replied. He shifted his hands from your arms to your face, cupping it gently and forcing you to look at him. “You can do this. I’ll stay with you the whole time, okay?”

“I can’t – “

“You can.” He nodded at you encouragingly until you started to mimic him and nod back. “You’re the strongest person I know, and you can do this.”

“But I don’t – “

“There’s not a lot of time,” he cut you off gently. “That officer in there needs you, okay? And I know that you’d never turn away from someone who needs you, right?” It was a dirty trick, channeling his Catholic guilt at you like that, but it convinced you.

“Okay,” you said, but giant tears were rolling down your face, and you were outright sobbing as Sonny led you to the nurses’ station.

“She has the same blood type as the officer who was brought in,” Sonny informed the nurse. “But she’s got a bit of an issue with needles.”

The nurse, God bless her, smiled and led the two of you to a private room, promising in her most soothing tones that she’d get the very best on staff to come draw your blood. You settled onto the exam table (dragging your feet the entire way, and so tense that Sonny could feel your urge to bolt coursing through your frame), but when you saw the little plastic vials sitting on the counter, you burst into fresh tears.

You sat at the edge of the exam table, so Sonny stood beside you, and after a moment’s hesitation, pulled you into a hug and let you cry. And you didn’t just cry – you babbled out a torrent of words, apologizing to him for being unprofessional, apologizing for crying, apologizing for being weak…you were saying terrible things about yourself, calling yourself names, a coward and an idiot and worse, and he had to hush you.

“Everyone’s got something they’re afraid of,” he murmured as he cradled your head against his chest. He could just make out the scent of your shampoo, and that painful little crush he was nursing was dangerously close to tipping into love. “I’m terrified of Mr. Met.” That made you laugh against him, and he added, “it’s not rational, but those cold black eyes are scary.”

“Yeah, but your fear of Mr. Met isn’t putting someone’s life in danger,” you muttered as you pushed yourself away from him a little. You refused to look at him, and Sonny could feel the shame radiating off of you.

“You never know,” he teased. He kept one arm around your shoulders, unwilling to give up the sudden closeness with you. “Mr. Met looks like he’d be good for a string of subway flashings. We might have to catch him one day.”

Finally you looked at him, your eyes wide and solemn. “I’m sorry I reacted badly,” you said.

“Don’t apologize.” He tightened his hold on you and hoped it felt comforting. “Now I know you’re a regular ol’ human like the rest of us.”

You smiled at that and started to reply, but there was a knock on the door. A nurse entered and settled into the chair and took down all your information. Sonny could feel you trembling against him as you answered her questions, and then he felt you slide your hand into his own, unbidden.

The nurse then made her way over to you and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. Sonny went to release you, but you only squeezed his hand tighter.

“Can you keep holding my hand, please?” you asked, and you sounded so small and plaintive that he only nodded and squeezed your hand back.

“That’s right, hon,” the nurse said in a thick Jersey accent. “Keep holdin’ your boyfriend’s hand. I’ll take the other arm and you’ll be outta here before you know it.” You didn’t acknowledge her faux pas in calling him your boyfriend, and Sonny felt a warm flush at the suggestion.

The nurse had you shed your coat and then unbutton your sleeve, rolling it up until the crook of your arm was exposed. When you saw the rubber tourniquet, you gave a pitiful whimper and turned your face into Sonny’s chest again.

“Maybe talk to her,” the nurse suggested, sotto voce as she prodded at the delicate skin in the fold of your elbow. Sonny reached with his free hand and stroked your head, and he told you an embarrassing story about his prom when he split the pants of his rented tuxedo as he was trying a dance move he in no way was capable of pulling off.

You were rigid in his arms, but when you felt the prick of the needle, you went limp, and Sonny realized that you had passed out. The nurse noticed too.

“Just ease ‘er onto the table,” she told him, and he did. Your face was slack, and the nurse taped the plastic tubing to your arm and monitored the filling bag. She placed her fingers on your wrist and counted your pulse.

“It’s low,” she said a moment later. “Probably why she passed out.” She went back to her computer and added the data to the screen, then added, “if the two of you ever wanna have kids, might want to get that needle issue of hers resolved now.”

Sonny only nodded at her – no point in correcting her now, and you were still out like a light and hadn’t heard it. Still, when you slowly came to and focused your eyes on him, you broke into a dazed grin that completely obliterated his crush and transformed it into love.

“You’re almost done,” he murmured, and he squeezed your hand. You shut your eyes and nodded at him, and it was all fine from there: the nurse removed the tubing and gave you a Band-Aid (with Hello Kitty on it – she informed you that she was the children’s phlebologist, which made Sonny snicker). Then she left and told you to take all the time you needed.

When you went to sit up, you swayed a bit, and Sonny was there to steady you again. Little by little, you became steadier, and you eventually stood up and pulled your coat on slowly. You started to apologize again, and he stopped you before you could get the words out. Instead, he offered you his arm, and you took it with a grateful smile and let him lead you out of the room.

“How’re you feeling?” he asked.

“Tired,” you answered truthfully. “Embarrassed. Wondering if Brooklyn SVU will take me back now that I’ve shamed myself in Manhattan – “

“Don’t you dare,” he cut you off. “This really wasn’t as big a deal as you think it is.”

The two of you stopped by the waiting room, but Liv was nowhere to be found, so Sonny took you outside. The cold wind seemed to revive you a little, and you released his arm and turned to him.

“Thanks for not being a jerk about my meltdown,” you said. You still looked ashamed though, and after tonight, the last thing Sonny wanted was for you to rebuilt those walls you had kept between the two of you. “I really appreciate your help, Sonny.”

“Anything you ever need, I’m here for you,” he replied. Maybe his tone was more earnest than usual, because you tilted your head a little and gave him a smile.

“Anything?” Your voice had a teasing lilt to it. “Because I’m famished, and I’ve heard that fresh pasta is just the thing for a traumatic blood-letting.”

He reached out and twined your arm back through his. “Hon,” he said, adopting the nurse’s thick Jersey accent. “I’m just the guy you’re lookin’ for.” You laughed and let him take you home to your apartment, and he whipped up a meal so enticing that you didn’t just hug him that night – you kissed him too.

Of course, it was just a friendly brush of your lips against his cheek as you saw him off from your front door, but Sonny knew with absolute certainty that it was just the beginning of the rest of his life – a life with you in it, partners in every way two people can be partners.

#sonny carisi #sonny carisi imagine #sonny carisi x reader #sonny carisi x you #law and order svu #law and order svu fanfiction #tropes-and-tales

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callsign-frostbite · 1 year

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Ma’am! How dare you with all those Lewis gif sets! I’m ogling him respectfully!

My dear, I refuse to accept any and ALL responsibility for my actions. Besides, shouldn't you be blaming the gifmaker? I meeeeean... I'd have nothing to reblog if not for the OP.

(But I can never be sorry for this.)

#replied #tropes-and-tales

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untetheredsymphony · 1 month

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Hey Whumpeteers! Cheerful reminder that the tattoo pain chart is applicable to most scratches, cuts or other open wounds! This chart doesn’t include bones damage or organ damage however, as it is for surface injuries.

My personal favourite is hip injuries, which various charts put in the red or orange zone 😉 Enjoy planning your whumpee’s pain with this!

#comet’s prompts #comet’s tales #whump #whump community #whump trope #whumpblr #whump tropes #whump writing #whump blog #whump prompt #whumpee #whump prompts

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arrgh-whatever · 25 days

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#they're my found family trope #whether they like it or not #ghost of a tale #silas wagstaffe #tilo the minstrel #kerold redwhiskers #otto powderkeg

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muchacha-encabronada · 2 years

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I know self-doubt is a raging beast that comes and goes, but know that you are wonderfully made too, and you're worthy of all the good things !

Honestly, I had to take a sec to go thru your message and respond, cause ur one of my fave writers on here (also realized ur following me which is 🤯) It's been hard to process my emotions, and I know realistically that I am loved by the people around me, but it's hard to feel that way when I'm so isolated from ppl too. Thanks for ur message it made my day 💛💛💛 Gonna go thru ur masterlist and be a lil annoying with my reblogs rn brb (here's a meme image or whatever I made with my beb's picture)

#tropes-and-tales #thanks for the ask!#emotions are hard but thanks so much for reaching out 💛💛

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laurasimonsdaughter · 12 days

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I just noticed a recurring motif among these Sicilian fairy tales that is so incredibly well-suited for fanfic:

A princess sees a handsome young man (usually a prince in disguise) making eyes at her in the marketplace and begs her father the king to make him a royal servant, because he is so beautiful.

The king complies, because he's too fond of her to say no, and makes the hero a stable boy or gardener.

The princess now suddenly spends much more time out riding or requesting flowers, and then tells her father that the new servant is far too good for outside work and must become a servant in the castle.

The king complies, but soon enough the princess requests that the new manservant is made her personal page. By now the king is getting very nervous, but he still can't say no to his daughter.

The princess and the page manage to keep up the charade a little longer before the princess goes to the king and outright demands to let her marry her favourite.

The king gives the hero three "impossible tasks" that are meant to kill him, but naturally he accomplishes them all through trickery or supernatural intervention and the clandestine lovers get their way.

The pining, the flirting, the sneaking around, the devotion— do you see my vision?

#please make this a new AU #please #in the fairy tales this is usually a side plot to the main event #but a good ship could /make it the main event/#laura tumbles #fairy tale AU #this is the happy version of this motif #there is also an not happy version but I like this one #fairy tales #fanfic #tropes #writing prompts

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fake-married-my-dead-fiance · 4 months

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I started watching Kdramas this year and I do a lot of literature analysis in my normal life, so I found it really fun to find the tropes that were unique to this genre/culture that were different than what I find in Hollywood TV/movies and novels. I started with Alchemy of Souls and I was kind of amused looking back, because I never thought the SML had a chance with the FL but if I had known how strong the "they met as children and therefore DESTINY" trope is, I probably would have thought they would get together for sure!

Here are some of the unique tropes I've noticed:

-Leads meet as children and therefore DESTINY (What's Wrong with Secretary Kim, 100 Days My Prince, It's Okay to Not be Okay, Castaway Diva, The King's Affection, Sh**ting Stars, Destined with You, subverted in Alchemy of Souls)

-Reincarnation, which happens a ton but of course for the same reason Western media is littered with Chosen One/Saviour plots (played with in Alchemy of Souls and Extraordinary You, straight in Destined with You, Tale of the Nine Tailed, Moon in the Day, My Demon, The Story of Park's Marriage Contract... so many)

-Guy (usually) buys the girl shoes and then puts them on her. They also usually make a joke about her running away. (Tale of the Nine Tailed, 100 Days My Prince, Extraordinary You, Castaway Diva, King the Land, subverted in The King's Affection and The Forbidden Marriage)

-Guy (usually) gives/brings the girl an umbrella to protect her from the rain. I LOVE THIS TROPE, symbolism for protection and shelter gets me (straight in My Lovely Liar, King the Land, Tale of the Nine Tailed, Extraordinary Attorney Woo, subverted/played with in Alchemy of Souls, Business Proposal, Doom at Your Service, Castaway Diva)

-Not sure if this would count as a trope, but unique to the genre because we don't have formal speech in English and especially not in Canada where I live (we've basically started just going first name with everyone) I love it so much when the main characters use informal terms with each other for the first time. The subtitles don't always translate this well, but I know what the honorifics sound like and I'm all, "She didn't use "Mr." that time it's serious now!!!"

Anyway, are there more? I'm probably not catching them all!

Edit: Definitely some sort of trope around characters finding wild ginseng to solve a problem.

(I've only been watching Korean dramas by the way, I'm sure some of these tropes are shared by other dramas from China and Thailand. I just found the comparison with English language TV interesting.)

#kdramas #tropes #alchemy of souls #my demon #castaway diva #my lovely liar #king the land #tale of the nine tailed #doom at your service #what's wrong with secretary kim #100 days my prince #extraordinary attorney woo

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pokkeshii · 2 months

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Jim as soon as he set foot in Camelot

#trollhunters #I died (metaphorically) watching TH #just like jim #wizards #jim lake jr #troll jim #give hero trope teenagers a break #toa #tales of arcadia

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tropes-and-tales · 2 years

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Take Care of You

Day 6: C*ckwarming (Steven Grant and Marc Spector x F!Reader)

(For the 2022 Kinktober event offered by @the-purity-pen. The original post and calendar/list can be found here.)

CW: Dub-con (technically); light angst; smut (c*ckwarming; PiV, unprotected; shades of dominance). 18+ only.

Word Count: 3786

He can never tell what is real and what’s not. What’s a dream and what is reality.

He wakes up every morning feeling like he’s been hit by a bus. Days slip past him with no recollection; he feels like a stranger in his own life. Sometimes he feels as though he’s not in control of his body—he wakes up with bruises he can’t explain, cuts he can’t explain.

Once, he wakes up with a dislocated shoulder. That was a tough day, trying to convince the doctor in the A&E why he didn’t have a convincing reason as to why his shoulder was out of joint.

He can’t tell what is real and what is not…save for one thing.

You.

He had seen you around the museum—you worked with the coins and medals. He saw you at the café all the time. You had the same hollow-eyed, slightly desperate look of a fellow insomniac, and you’d even made eye contact a few times, nodded at him and offered a shy smile.

Steven never once spoke to you, that he could recall. Yet…months after noticing you, you stopped by the gift shop and spoke to him. Asked him if the two of you were still on for dinner the next night.

He had been absolutely flummoxed. He never asked you out, and he opened his mouth to tell you so, tell you that he had no memory of even speaking to you, let alone asking you out on a date.

It was like someone else answered for him in that moment.

“Absolutely,” his mouth said.

That was months ago. An awkward first date: him bumbling, you shy. You were both earnest, though, both lonely and sweet, and the second date was less awkward. The third even less so. He opened up over time about his sleep issues, about how he lost time and struggled to feel tethered to this reality. You opened up too—you had your own issues with insomnia, with sleep paralysis and sleep walking. You made him feel less alone, less like a freak.

And now here you were: grounding him better than any line of sand around his bed, better than any ankle restraint.

“I’ve lost days again,” he whispers in the dark of his room. He knows you hear him: you pause as you undress.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Steven shakes his head. He feels the salt of tears stinging his eyes. He hates whatever is wrong with him. Hates losing time, losing days. Losing his mind.

“What can I do to help you?”

He’s so tired. He’s exhausted to the very core of himself. It’s not just a body tiredness: it’s his soul, his spirit, that is fatigued too. He wants nothing more than to curl up and sleep for days, yet he’s lost days and hasn’t seen you. He also wants nothing more than to curl up with you, lose himself in you.

He tells you so. He tells you that he’s so tired, but he hasn’t seen you for days. You hum thoughtfully at that, and there’s a lot going on in that hum, but Steven doesn’t have the energy to explore it…and you don’t expound whatever you are thinking.

“Let me take care of you,” you finally say, and in the darkness of the room, he feels the mattress dip down as you crawl into bed. He feels your hands on him—gently taking the hem of his t-shirt and urging him to sit up so you can remove it. Then the same with his sleep pants—the way you tug at the drawstring at his waist, then tap his thigh for him to lift his hips.

“I don’t think I can—” he starts to protest weakly, but you shush him softly.

“Let me take care of you,” you repeat. Your warm hand is on him, grasping him lightly, and he’s already growing hard even from such a tame touch. “Will you let me do this for you, Steven?”

He gulps, nods. He feels a queasiness in his stomach—he hates to disappoint you in bed, hates to think he takes more than he gives, but he knows he doesn’t have the energy to do much other than lie there.

Still, you’ve never held it against him before, the other times he’s fell short to the task. The times he came too soon, or fell asleep while making out…or the times he’s stood you up, lost track of days…

“I’ll make it up to you,” he whispers in the darkness, and you lean down to kiss him. It’s sweet, gentle. There’s no heat to it. It’s a sweet kiss, a grounding one.

“You can worry about that another day.” One hand is stroking him lightly, but the other reaches up and brushes the hair off of his forehead, and you kiss him there, just above his furrowed eyebrows. Then a second and a third until he relaxes and the furrows smooth out.

Steven takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, through his nose, as he was taught to help himself relax. He pushes as many of his worries aside for later, and it’s easier because his focus is on your hand, the light grip you have on him.

His lust notches up a degree at a time, and it’s still something of a foreign feeling. He had little experience before you, had always thought himself a romantic first and foremost…but he finds that he craves these moments with in you the darkness of his bedroom. He craves the intimacy of your body, the way you touch him, the way the two of you fit together so well.

“Is this okay?” you ask him, and he nods eagerly. Breathes out that yes, it is, and when you release him and straddle him, when he feels the slick heat of you…

“P-please, love,” he stutters, even though he knows he can’t offer you much, that you’ll have to do all the work…

It always bowls him over when he’s inside you. When he pushes into you, when you mount him, the way your molten heat envelopes him. You go slow now, take him bit by bit, and when he’s fully seated in you, he huffs out the breath he is holding.

“You feel amazing,” he whispers. You lean down, press another sweet kiss to his mouth, and tell him the same.

Steven expects you to start moving, but you don’t. You stay still aside from the gentle kisses you press to him: to his mouth, to his cheeks and forehead. To the spot under his ear and the sides of his neck. And then you nestle your head against his chest, right under his chin…and you just lie there.

You must feel his confusion. You whisper in the darkness, “does this feel okay?”

“Y-yeah.” It does feel okay. No, it feels great. Just…different. Without any motion, suddenly he feels more sensitive than ever. He swears he can feel his heartbeat—or maybe it’s yours, or maybe your heartbeats are in sync—where you are joined. He can feel your slick arousal coating him, pooling at the base of him, and every so often you twitch against his length, making him bite back a groan.

“Let’s stay like this, okay?”

“Y-yeah. Okay. Okay, yeah.”

“Think you can fall asleep like this?”

“Maybe.” He turns his head a little and buries his nose in the crown of your head, takes a deep breath of your hair. You use a lavender shampoo, a soft floral that soothes him. He can feel himself calming already, despite the situation: his heartbeat slows, like it’s synced with yours. His breathing syncs with yours too. You’ve grounded him, and Steven shifts his head enough to kiss your temple. He wraps his arms around you, strokes your bare back.

You’re better than any ankle restraint. Better than a line of sand around his bed. You ground him, weigh him down, and Steven relaxes. In his mind, he starts to slip off into sleep, but in reality…

He gives control over to another.

*****

Marc tries so hard to protect Steven.

He keeps up with the ruse of the gift shop job. He feeds his goldfish. He sends postcards from his “mother,” maintains that lie to cover the painful truth.

When Steven spends months pining over the same woman with dark circles under her eyes—Marc recognizes a fellow insomniac when he sees one—Marc handles that too.

He puts on his best attempt at Steven’s accent. He tries to act like Steven: stutters and stammers and trips over his own feet when he asks you out.

Asking you out isn’t protecting Steven, though. It’s something else entirely.

Marc wants Steven to be happy. To not just survive but to thrive.

Sometimes Steven gives up control and Marc has to play along. The first time you and Steven made love, for example: Steven fell asleep, Marc woke up beside you. The time you made a date to ride the London Eye: Steven with his fear of heights slipped off, Marc had to step in.

Marc does it because he wants Steven to be happy. Not because he has any feelings for you. You’re not especially his type, too milquetoast, too boring, and Marc watches from the shadows as you and Steven go through your boring courtship.

Until…

Until you start to grow on him too.

For Steven, it was love at first sight. For Marc, it was a slower thing.

You take good care of Steven, and Marc loves you for it. You are gracious in understanding his flakiness, even if you don’t understand what causes it. You are kind and gentle with him, patient with his fumbling, patient with his low self-esteem. You tease him gently; you encourage his interests. You learn to cook vegan meals for him. You spend entire evenings listening to his excited ravings about Egyptian mythology and gods and goddesses.

But there’s a sensual side to you too. A slightly darker side that tests boundaries (the night you talked Steven into using the ankle restraints on you, for example). It’s nothing extreme, but it’s a bit of shading that gives Marc a better understanding of you.

Like tonight, the feeling of you enveloping him. Steven is grounded by it; it relaxes him and calms his racing thoughts, calms his racing pulse. Marc feels the moment that Steven starts to cede control, and he takes it happily. Takes control a little greedily, because while it was a slower thing to fall for you, Marc is selfish with these rare moments he gets to be with you.

He thinks you’re asleep. You’re a heavy weight on him—the heavy weight of a lax body made soft with sleep. Your cunt feels heavenly, gripping him like a velvety fist, your arousal mingling with his own pre-cum and sliding out of you to pool on his groin.

Marc is selfishly glad that Steven was too tired to spur you on for more. He wants just a little for himself, just to spend some time inside you, to feel the soft flutters of you against him.

The thought makes a spear of guilt lance through him. Steven deserves this and more: he deserves you. You make him happy, and Steven is such an innocent walking through the world. Marc keeps him safe, but you make him happy.

“Thank you,” he whispers against your hair. He breathes out the words quiet so he won’t wake you. “Thank you for taking such good care of him.”

He realizes too late that he’s blundered. Your sleep is always thin, fragile. You stir against him, your breath tickling against the side of his neck.

“Take care of who?” you mumble.

“Me,” he whispers back, slipping into his best approximation of Steven’s accent. “Thank you for taking care of me.”

“’Course.” You turn your head, kiss his throat. It’s sweetness like this, your gentle kisses that Marc would have scoffed at even a year ago. That saccharine bullshit that Steven laps up, that Marc is too good for…usually. Usually.

Usually he’s too good for it, but Marc Spector is lonely. He carries the burden of Steven, carries the burden of all those memories. He carries the burden of the reality of their lives. He carries the mantel of Khonshu’s justice. And usually he’s fine, he’s strong.

But sometimes he’s lonely.

So sometimes he slips on Steven’s accent like a too-tight coat. .

He pretends he’s Steven because you love Steven. Marc wants to feel that, even for a moment, even if he can’t quite admit it to himself.

“Still can’t sleep then?” you ask, your voice a husky whisper in the darkness.

“No.”

“Did this make it better or worse?” Marc can hear the smile in your words, the playful lilt.

“Kinda hard to fall asleep like this, innit?” he replies in Steven’s accent.

“Hmmm.” You kiss his throat again, your petal-soft lips ghosting over his pulse point. “Seems that I miscalculated.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“Pretty rude of me,” you continue, not acknowledging him. Another kiss to his throat, then you shift your head and kiss him below his ear where he—and Steven—are both ticklish. He squirms under you, and he feels the huff of your silent laughter.

“Rude of me to not let you sleep,” you add. You whisper in his ear, let your breath ghost over him, and he breaks out into goosebumps. “Should I…”

You trail off, leave the question unfinished. The meaning is clear, though. You raise yourself a fraction off of him, and he reaches out quick, his mercenary skills giving him that lightning-fast reflex as he grabs you around the waist. He resettles you against him—bites back a groan at the bit of friction as you slide back onto him.

“Don’t you dare,” he growls.

“Don’t you dare,” you echo back, mimicking him. “Did you know you sometimes talk with an American accent when you’re riled up?”

Marc ignores the icy shard of fear that lances through him. He’s always so close to get caught, especially in these moments. It’s easy to pretend to be Steven for the boring shit—the gift shop job, picking up take-away from the vegan place—but it’s so hard not to be fully and completely Marc right now.

So he embraces it. Doesn’t bother to pull on Steven’s accent when he growls in your ear again. “Why am I bothering to talk then?”

His hands still on your waist, he rolls over with you, steadies you and rolls you with him. It’s a move that Steven would never even consider, not understanding that he even has the strength for it, but in a split second Marc has you on your back. He is still buried in you; he’s arched over you, and when you gasp at the sudden motion—when you gasp out the wrong name, squeal out Steven!—he dips his head and kisses you hard.

He’d never consider fucking you like this if he hadn’t watched all those times through Steven’s eyes: all the times you took a sweet moment and shaded it just a bit darker. The times you’ve used the ankle restraints. The time you convinced Steven to deal you a few light swats to your ass. The time you visited Steven when he was working in the gift shop, brushed a sweet kiss to his cheek and then slid your panties into his pocket on the sly.

You shade those sweet moments with the barest bit of darkness, and Marc wonders if you can take more.

He pushes his tongue into your mouth, insistent, and he smiles inwardly at how eagerly you press back against him, tasting him just as fiercely. He doesn’t move inside you. He just stays buried, still just letting you cockwarm him, but you twitch against him, and his resolve steadily weakens.

“You want this?” he whispers in the darkness. He can just make out your face: the whites of your eyes, the pouting lower lip as you take hitching breaths.

“Y-yes.”

He nips at the side of your neck, then bites you firmer, presses his teeth into your soft skin until you whine. Fuck, you whine so goddamned pretty. He’s never heard it before. You’re usually the one gently coaxing Steven out of his shell, such soft, quiet words and tones for him, but your whine has a thread of need in it. There’s a pitch to it that sounds needy and wrecked.

“You think you can handle it?” He shifts his head, bites the other side of your neck. Gives you a matching mark to the other, then soothes it with the tip of his tongue.

“Yes. Please.”

You whine so prettily. You beg so prettily. Marc obliges.

He reaches down and hooks a hand under your knee, hauls your leg up until it is over his shoulder. He repeats the motion, pushes your other leg over his other shoulder until you’re practically folded underneath him, the toes of your feet pressing against the wall behind the headboard.

He never knew you were this flexible. You’re completely vulnerable. Completely exposed. He can look down and see where he disappears into your heavenly cunt, and his hips stutter forward. He presses himself deeper, buries himself as deep as he can, and you cry out at the feeling of him.

“Too much?” he asks darkly. “Can’t take it?”

“I can,” you breathe out. There’s a ragged edge to your breath, harsh. “Please don’t stop.”

“Beg me for it.”

“Please. P-please!”

Marc lowers his head, presses a soft kiss to your pouting mouth. “Such a needy little thing,” he murmurs against your lips. “This how you saw the night going, teasing me with that sweet pussy and not expecting me to use it?”

“I…I w-wasn’t trying to tease you,” you whisper back. Your eyes are wide in the dark, and Marc realizes he’s overplayed his hand just a bit. Just a little. He has to channel Steven at least a little bit.

“I know,” he replies, and he kisses you again, even softer this time. “You take good care of…me.” He almost slips up, says him again.

“I try,” you agree, nodding. “I love you, Steven. I just want to take care of you.”

Marc tacitly ignore the I love you, ignores the painful twist in his chest when he hears it. You don’t know he’s not Steven, and he doesn’t have the heart to break the situation to you right now.

He doesn’t have the heart to end these moments either. These stolen moments where he takes over for Steven and gets to be with you too.

“Let me take care of you,” he replies, and he kisses you again before he starts to fuck you in earnest. He planned on being rougher, faster, but he slows the moment down. Keeps his thrusts slow and deep, draws almost all the way out of your tight heat before he pushes back into you. Pushes and pushes until he is flush against you, until every blessed inch of him is buried in you. He’s so deep that he can barely feel where the two of you are joined, where he disappears and you begin.

Like the two of you are one.

Schmaltzy shit like that…that’s Steven’s thinking. That walks a dangerous line to romantic bullshit.

In this position, you can’t move much. You reach out with your hands, grip his biceps as he pushes you closer and closer to your climax. He can always see it when you’re with Steven, a silent voyeur sharing a body with his alter, but these rare moments he can feel it too. He can see the way your face tenses up, the way your breathing gets erratic. But he can feel you, and it’s so much better: the dull bite of your fingernails in his arm as you grip him, the way your skin heats up. The way your cunt tightens, flutters along his length, coats him in your own slick cum.

“Come for me,” he orders. “Let me feel you coming all over this cock.”

You do—his words set you over the edge, and you shudder beneath him. You cry out, and he feels the way you grip him so hard, making it difficult for him to keep the slow, deep thrusts going. So he sinks into you as far as he can, stills. Feels every twitch and spasm of your orgasm.

He had the idea of drawing it out, of being more dominant. Giving you what he thinks you want, all the ways you play around with submission with Steven. He had the idea to make you come over and over, pulling them out of you, ordering you to come again and again until you are exhausted. He doesn’t realize that deep down, he—Marc Spector, not Steven Grant—is trying to take care of you, in his own way.

You are an insomniac, after all. He sees all the ways you take care of Steven. Even if he can’t admit it or even really see it, Marc wants to take care of you. Wants to exhaust you, body and mind. Wants you to curl up against him and get good sleep, restful sleep.

His plan falls apart. Still inside you, feeling your orgasm along every inch of him, it takes him right to the edge. He manages a few more thrusts then feels the tight coil of his own tension snap. He comes inside you, deep, and something about the sensation pulls a second, weaker orgasm from you.

-----

Even if he doesn’t exhaust you with some dominance display, you still fall asleep. Marc has no idea if it’s restful or how long it will last, but after the two of you clean up (and after you sweetly put the ankle restraint back on him, as if that would solve anything), you nod right off against him.

Not before you mumble another I love you to him.

Marc is still in control. He’s still running the show. He rubs your back, presses a kiss to your forehead. He waits until your breathing evens out and deepens.

He waits until you’re asleep before he says it back to you. “I love you too,” he whispers, so low that he won’t wake you from your thin sleep. He can’t admit it any other time, can barely even admit it to himself most times, but right now—sated from the sex, sad to know that you thought it was Steven the whole time—he can admit it.

#tropes-and-tales #tppkinktober2022 #marc spector #marc spector imagine #marc spector x reader #steven grant #steven grant imagine #steven grant x reader #moon knight

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moliathh · 10 months

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the scorpion and the frog

#hellsing #alutegra #i need period drama hellsing #the clothes might be historically inaccurate because i just shove every reference up together #did not have the time to differentiate between victorian or ewardian or regency something something #alucard hellsing #integra hellsing #the scorpion and the frog is my favourite fable #there are so many ways to interpret it more than just a cautionary tale #personally i see it as a tragic romance #all of my otps follow the same damn trope everytime #someone who believed that it is in their nature that they are unlovable #and someone who trusted them regardless even fully aware of their destructive nature #but as fairytales mostly go isnt true love can break the spell #so i think there are several ways that the tale of the scorpion and the frog can be retold #the scorpion and the frog

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tropes-and-tales-archives · 2 years

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Sonny Carisi: Dumpster Fire

Word Count: 2379

TW: Fluff; mutual pining.

There were good days and bad days with SVU. The good days were defined, usually, by the full weight of justice being applied to the perpetrators. By virtue of your work, the bad days were more prevalent. And there were levels of bad.

Bad: a date-rape at Hudson University. Worse: uncovering a string of assaults at a Catholic high school. Worst: a violent rapist-murderer cutting a bloody swath through Manhattan.

You weren’t sure where today would rate. It certainly wasn’t the worst, but it was far from good. You and your partner, Fin, were running a stake-out in broad daylight, waiting for a suspect to pop out of his Upper East Side apartment so that you could nab him.

You didn’t mind stake-outs with Fin. He didn’t chatter away endlessly, trying to fill the silence. He didn’t smoke in the car. He knew the city like the back of his hand and, as a result, knew the best coffee shops and every bodega with a bathroom available to the public. Important stuff, for a stake-out.

Mundane moments like that can take a hard swerve, and that’s exactly what happened: the suspect left his house. You and Fin exited the car, and the moment the suspect saw you both, he took off running. You – the faster and younger – took off after him while Fin brought the car around and called for back-up.

Days like this can go bad (the suspect gets away) or worst (the suspect takes and kills a hostage). Today, you caught the suspect but it came at a price: a scuffle on the sidewalk, flailing limbs. You took a hard elbow to the ribs that left you momentarily stunned before you hauled the suspect to the ground….and he pulled you down with him. Into the pile of garbage bags. Then more scuffling, which broke open some of those garbage bags.

Which, it must be said, had been simmering in the warm spring morning.

By the time Fin caught up and helped cuff the suspect, your entire outfit was grimy with liquids and semi-liquids that you didn’t want to consider too much. As it was, the smell of you made you want to empty the contents of your stomach onto the sidewalk.

Fin thought it was hilarious, and he alternated between laughing and gagging at the smell the entire ride back to the precinct. Once there, you made a beeline for your locker.

And your day got worse.

You usually kept a spare outfit at work precisely for this reason – shit went wrong sometimes. You usually rotated the spare outfit every few weeks – took it home, got it dry-cleaned – so it didn’t take on the stale, old-building smell of the precinct.

But you had taken your spare outfit home a few days ago and kept forgetting to replace it. The dry-cleaning bag with its crisp shirt, sharp suit – it was still hanging on the coat tree in your entryway. You walked past it this morning and completely failed to bring it in.

Which left you with two options: stay in your reeking clothes soaked in garbage juice, or change into the clothes in your gym bag. Neither choice was great, and you sighed heavily as you started to unbutton your shirt and strip.

-----

Growing up, like most girls, you had read the entire library of Judy Blume books. You had never related to the protagonists, though, when they waxed poetic about wanting breasts. You had never felt such desire – probably because you had developed early, and could hardly remember what it was like to not navigate the world with larger breasts.

You camouflaged them well: at work, you stuck with dark colors, high collars, and well-tailored coats and blazers that minimized your figure. You weren’t ashamed of them, exactly, but you knew what people thought when they saw them. The assumptions they would make. Throughout the course of your life, you had been accused plenty of times of using your voluptuous figure for a step up. You hadn’t, of course, but people were always going to assume the worse, it seemed.

Now, you had to do the best you could with what you had. The day was nearly over, and you didn’t have court or anything public-facing. You just had to run out the clock at your desk.

Or more precisely, run out the clock at your desk in your gym clothes: the black track pants were fine, and aside from the racing stripes down the side, they could even pass for dress pants to an unwary observer. It was the t-shirt that was the problem.

Bad enough that it was a v-neck, which meant that you had some cleavage on display now. Worse that you had an off-beat, off-color sense of humor that you kept carefully separate from your work life. You had tried so hard to cultivate a professional persona at work, and now here you were, about to walk into the bullpen in a t-shirt with picture of a box on the front, and the legend “Schrödinger did it for the pussy” writ large across your chest.

Fucking fantastic.

But maybe no one would notice. Liv was at 1PP with Mike, Barba was in a grand jury all day, Fin was escorting the suspect to the tombs to cool his heels for a while. That only left Sonny and Amanda….maybe they wouldn’t notice.

They noticed.

Of course they did – two steps into the bullpen, and Amanda gave a low whistle, which made Sonny’s head swivel around to follow her gaze. To land on you. More specifically, to land on your chest.

It was extraordinary watching Sonny’s face. It was an entire journey, of the sweet gentlemanly guy you harbored a small crush on to a more base man ogling you. Those bright blue eyes of his went to your chest first, then stuttered up to your face, then went back down to your chest. You watched his forehead furrow a little at the legend on your shirt. His cheeks had instantly pinked when he first saw you, but his face got steadily redder and redder until he was furiously crimson. His gaze finally settled somewhere over your head and past you, probably in an attempt to avoid the obvious place it wanted to settle.

Amanda, for her part, was also red in the face, but mostly from the gales of laughter.

“Zip it,” you muttered through your clenched jaw, and you crossed your arms over your chest which, unfortunately, pushed your breasts up to even more ludicrous heights. Sonny made a choking sort of cough, and you felt your own blush breaking out across your face.

You made your way to your desk and slumped down in your seat, wishing you were invisible. Funny, how a moment could slam you right back into your adolescence, with all the awkward pain of living in a body you couldn’t quite control. You were an adult with a career and an apartment and a pet cat, but right now, you felt like a child.

At one point, you heard Amanda whisper something to Sonny, but you couldn’t make it out and you ignored it. You only slumped a little further into your seat and stared at your computer screen. You almost always gave 110% at work, but this was a run-out-the-clock situation. You just wanted to go home and bury your head under a blanket.

It surprised you when Sonny suddenly materialized in front of you. You looked up but refused to quite meet his gaze – you had a small infatuation for the man, and the coolly professional vibe you had been trying to put out there was effectively dead now. There was no coming back from it.

“Here,” he said, and he held out a grey zip-up sweatshirt. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “it’s clean.”

“Thanks,” you replied. You took it from him and pulled it on. Zipped it up, and breathed a sigh of relief when it cleared your chest with some clearance.

“I just thought, you know,” he offered, and he rubbed the back of his neck like he did when he was nervous. “It’s a funny shirt, but it might get unwanted attention on the subway. On the ride home, I mean.”

“Thanks,” you repeated, and his sweet gesture made you look him in the eye and smile. “I appreciate it. And I’ll get it back to you tomorrow. I promise.”

“No rush.” He reached up and rubbed his neck again, and you wondered if he was aware of it. “It, uh, looks good on you.”

That made you laugh. “Liar,” you said, and he shook his head with a grin and went back to his desk. The sleeves were just a bit too long, and you rolled them up carefully. He said it was clean, but it smelled like Sonny. You raised one sleeve up to your face and took a surreptitious sniff. You knew he was just being kind, but you still felt the same butterflies in your stomach that you got in high school, when you swiped your crush’s sweatshirt in the nascent stages of your relationship.

You weren’t the only one drawing those parallels. You heard Amanda and Sonny talking – no, whispering at each other, trying to keep their voices down across the bullpen – and you weren’t able to make most of it out.

You caught some of it though. You caught enough.

“…cute,” you heard Amanda say. “Want me to ask her to prom for you?”

“Shut up,” he hissed back.

You didn’t look over at them and just kept your eyes on your computer. You didn’t want them to know you had heard them, but they both trailed off into silence too, and together, the three of you ran out the clock.

*****

It was hard being Sonny sometimes.

He wanted to be the consummate gentleman, but he couldn’t help but stare when you came into the bullpen from the locker room. He had known you were cute, but god – you were a knock-out. You had kept it all hidden under your dark, conservative suits.

And then he felt like a creep, staring like that.

He felt worse when he saw how uncomfortable it made you, how you tried to make yourself invisible at your desk. He had two older sisters, one younger one, and while he wasn’t quite sure what it was like to be a girl, he had some faint memory of his sisters’ awkward teenaged years, the embarrassment when they started to develop and pull in men’s gazes.

It was mostly the reason he offered you his Fordham sweatshirt. But, if pressed, he’s admit that it made his stomach do a pleasant little flip-flop, seeing you in his clothes.

Amanda had something to say about it because she always had something to say. She had picked up on his discomfort around you early on, the way he stuttered a little, how he couldn’t quite meet your gaze without the tips of his ears turning red.

“Aw,” she whispered to him now in the bullpen. “You two are just too cute. Want me to ask her to prom for you?”

“Shut up,” he said. He chanced a look over at you, but you hadn’t heard – your head remained bent over some paperwork you were thumbing through.

“At least offer her a ride home,” Amanda continued. “You both live in Brooklyn. No sense in condemning her to public transit in that outfit.”

Sonny opened his mouth to argue – he didn’t want to seem forward or pushy – but Amanda was always giving him hell to be more proactive. He glanced back over at you and realized that his partner was right. It was mutually beneficial to drive you home: you could avoid the creeps on transit, and he could spend some time with you. Win-win.

“Fine,” he muttered, and it made Amanda cheer, which made you look up at them in surprise.

*****

The ride home should have been awkward but surprisingly was not. You put your ruined garbage clothes in Sonny’s trunk, and then settled in for the rush hour traffic and long ride home.

You hadn’t ever really sat and talked to Sonny socially – your scant few working lunches and happy hours always tended to end in conversations about work – but you chatted now. He told you about his family, his time of the force. You did the same. You offered the story of earlier in the day, how you ended up soaked in garbage-juice. He offered his own story from his days in Homicide and how he got dumped in the Harlem River once in February.

By the time you were in Brooklyn, you felt like old friends almost.

You directed Sonny to your building, and he pulled into a spot with a fire hydrant. He parked the car but kept it running, and you both climbed out. He popped the trunk and handed you the bag with your ruined clothes, and you took it with your thanks.

“I really appreciate this, Sonny,” you said. “Both this – “ you gestured at your front, the Fordham sweatshirt, “- and the ride home. Today was a real dumpster fire, but it’s ending okay, thanks to you.”

He smiled at you, that patented Sonny sunniness, and he pointed down the street. “You know, I only live about five blocks that way. We could car-pool, if you want.”

You felt that tell-tale feeling of butterflies in your stomach, but you couldn’t help but smile back at him. “That would be nice.” You paused and then added, “I can return your sweatshirt tomorrow.”

He waved you off and walked back to the driver’s side. “Don’t worry about it. I said it looks better on you. You can keep it.” Then he waved again and ducked back into his car, but not before you noticed the blush reddening his ears.

You stayed on the sidewalk and waved as he pulled away, then went into your building. Days at SVU can go from good to bad, bad to worse – but as you settled in for the evening, wrapped in Sonny’s oversized sweatshirt that smelled just like him, you realized that sometimes a day can go from bad to good, too.

#sonny carisi #sonny carisi imagine #sonny carisi x reader #sonny carisi x you #law and order svu #law and order svu fanfiction #tropes-and-tales

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