#when Simon’s so mean and intense i gush | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wolkoshka · 28 days

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Paranormal II

summary: after your injury in the birthday party, Ghost takes you home, takes care of your wound - and finally gives you a night you’ll never forget… Simon Riley/Ghost x Reader

warnings: slow-burn, eventual smut, eventual romance, mutual pining, excessive drunk flirting, slightly dark!Simon, touch-starved Simon, trying to get into Simon’s pants (and sort of succeeding??), nsfw-themed

•this is a simon riley ficlet, I repeat, this is not a one-shot but contains a bit of plot and character development, bcs god knows we need 'em

•part 2/3

an: here is part ii, and yes, yes, I know! It’s long overdue. You’re gonna have to forgive a girlie and her lack of awareness to the passage of time.

"I said go get him, not split yer head open. Ooch, lassie, look at ye bruising up. That's an ugly one."

Johnny hassled over you, thumbing your temples as he examined your wound.

Ghost had temporarily dropped you at the bar to go hunting for a med kit. When your gaze had arrayed the room, your best friend had caught your eye, smirking - only to then gasp and push his way to you.

"So what happened?"

"Mating dance," you retorted dryly.

You pressed the glove back to the wound when Johnny released you, leaning against the counter in a snort.

"Did he fall for it?"

"Hardly." Your shoulders slumped defeatedly. "I don't think he likes me very much, Johnny."

"That's Lt for ye, lass. Guy wears a skull for a face. Says he sleeps soundly in it. Shudders, I tell ye. You'd think that'd make ye think twice before approaching him, eh?"

"I think my brain short-circuited precisely for those reasons. I think maybe this hit to the head will remedy that. God knows I need to get him out of my system. A full-on purge. Like those, uh, uh, really intense only-water-for-dinner kind of diets."

"It's hard to get someone ye don't know out of yer mind."

"Exactly! Jokes aside, this is insane even by drunk me standards. Never thought I'd have a crush at this age, but, whelp, here goes nothing! Will get him out of my mind as soon as I stop gawking at those muscles, okay?"

Your friend chuckled.

Over Soap's shoulder, you caught sight of Ghost's form paving way to you, broad shoulders squared, back straight and gait commanding. And yet, there was an almost endearing swagger to his stride, subtle as it was, and it only added to the unmistakable confidence simmering underneath that quiet outfit.

Suddenly, you were air-headed. In the manner people jumped out of his path like he was the most lethal being they'd ever beheld had you seeing rainbows and hearing angelic hymns.

A stupid girl with her big, stupid crush. When was the last time you got one, anyway? High school, that's when. And you felt like a silly schoolgirl again, all those eighth grade magazines on how to talk to boys and attract your crush flooding back.

You wondered what three-way advice they would spell out for someone like Ghost.

Bathe in the blood of his enemies. A sexy look can go a long way!

Rip out the heart of his enemy and gift it to him. All men enjoy a sincere show of affection every now and then!

Take a bullet for him. Take several! Nothing says I have the hots for you like bleeding out in the arms of your crush!

When his eyes found yours, uncompromising and intense even from such distance, the choir increased until you felt like your chest might implode.

"Never mind," you dreamily sighed. This particular crush wasn't leaving anytime soon.

"Johnny," Ghost voiced, coming around the man. To you, he crooked a finger. "They got band-aids, but I need to stitch you up. We'll resolve the matter in your place."

Your head perked. "We will?"

Was your night actually going to end with Ghost in your apartment? Maybe even bed?

You looked at Johnny, Johnny looked at you - and you both raised your eyebrows in a knowing look.

"What the bloody hell you two peepin' at each other for?" Ghost growled.

"Peepin'? What's peepin'?" Johnny.

"We're not peepin'." You.

Eager, you hopped down - and immediately regretted it when your vision swayed. Whoops... You clutched your head tighter.

"Easy there," Johnny voiced, hands supporting your shoulders.

Once you righted, you looked up at Ghost. Expectant. Would he carry you?

You kind of, sort of, definitely desired his arms around you again.

As if seeing right through your needs, the muscle below his eye twitched. He set a challenge with his gaze, forcing you to admit defeat and walk a soldier's walk.

You faintly winced. Shrugged. "Owh, my poor head. I feel...dizzy. So dizzy. Don't know...might even trip in the rain. Get a concussion..." Another meek yet daring shrug. "So inconvenient, no?"

"Maybe ye need to go the hospital, lass - Umpf!"

You shut Johnny up with a backward punch to the groin, attention never wavering from Ghost.

There was a soft inquisitive sound, an arch of your brow, before he conceded with a weary blink of his eyes. You had to love the way his lashes fanned every time he did that. Long, thick, and softly curled, they might just make a girl jealous.

Internally, you performed a victory dance. Externally, you outstretched an arm.

His killer biceps bulged around your frame, tugging you close, as he lifted you off your feet. When you corded your arm around his neck and nestled your face on his pec, lashes batting up at him, Ghost looked like he was near to dropping you on your arse and dragging you by your heels instead.

"Don't get used to it, poppy," he grated low.

You wore a look of mock-surprise. "Never."

Gaze too slow to leave your face he spoke to Johnny next, "I'll meet you at the base." He strode past, strong legs falling into pace. "Don't be late. And for fuck's sake, Johnny, get some rest."

Johnny grinned, the act slightly laced with pain due to your earlier assault. "Ye got it, Lt." To you, he gave you a proud thumb's up.

Over Ghost's shoulder, you blew him a kiss and mouthed happy birthday, and I love you big time, you sucker.

When the bar door closed behind you, you pointed out to Simon that he'd forgotten your umbrella and proton pack.

For the umbrella, he said the rain might help sober you up. As for your proton pack, he didn't even bother providing an answer as he took down the street, all pleased with himself as rain mercilessly pelted your face.

When lightning crackled and thunder roared overhead, you thought you felt his arms slightly draw you closer, a bit nearer, but dismissed it, blaming it instead on your active imagination and stupor.

What the bloody hell was he doing, Ghost questioned, standing in your open kitchen and preparing tea for two.

Steam curdled up, obscuring his masked face as he poured green tea into two cups. Clasping the handles, he turned from the counter to place them on the marbled island.

Your abode was a spacious loft with four large windows peering out into the bustling city, the London Eye and the River Thames a distant view, with a ceiling that rose six meters high.

Before him was a sitting area with a comfortable couch, plush armchairs and a TV stand. Fully-stacked bookshelves flanked either side while pots of myriad flowers and wild ferns decorated the space.

A dining table perched to his left, a family photo and Mesopotamian antiques lining the dark cherry wood surface in display. He spotted Johnny in the frame, younger than he's ever seen him, dimples deep in a cheery smile, and he spotted you, hanging onto his shoulders with an eye-crinkling laugh of your own, also young and exuding innocence.

To his far right was your bed, propped against the wall and neatly made, accompanied by nightstands and a reading lamp. To its left was the entrance, separated by a narrow wall of stained glass depicting two mermaids frolicking about. By that, he clearly meant the large cock sprouting from the merman's groin and gripped by the mermaid's slender fingers, their tails entwining as deeply as their tongues, their bodies writhing in unabashed pleasure. It was beautiful, no doubt, made to come alive in colors coral blue, golden, and violet, but Ghost also knew it was custom made.

Anyone would've missed the unorthodox tableau at first glance, but he wasn't anyone.

You had wild fantasies, it appeared, and he wanted to bash his skull in for taking interest in that.

Just like he wanted to bash the mug of green tea in his hand because he couldn't will his feet to walk away.

Granted, you'd asked he stay, at least for a little while, to thank him for taking care of your wound, and sprinting to your bathroom thereafter for a quick shower.

It's been ten minutes now, and Ghost should've been long gone. He couldn't be here. He didn't do one-night stands. He had a number for that, a special visitor, that took care of his needs without him ever needing to undress. Left just as wordlessly when the deed was done. No unnecessary pillow talks, goodbye notes, or call me laters. No strings attached, just as Ghost preferred it.

But you...

The way you wanted him, the way you watched him, eyes growing dark and heavy with desire, it made him realize he'd never been pursued that ardently. Sure, he had instances where he attracted certain women his direction - any bloke with a look like his warranted that - but a simple glower from him had them scurrying off just as quick.

He should be scaring you off too, not exciting you.

Not making you out to be an intoxication he was uncharacteristically impatient to divulge in.

Hell, with his given background and formidable expertise, no one even dared to hold his gaze for longer than three seconds. When he talked, everyone shut up. His reputation preceded him. Yet you... Bloody hell, you not only held your ground, but also eye-fucked him every chance you got.

Ghost didn't quite compute; you were a perfect stranger to him, someone he met but once, and yet you had a face that could make a man happily dream into an early death.

God, there was something about you that made his palms itch for a touch...itch to wrap that hair of yours around his fist, lift his mask, and descend for a proper feeding. A sick, twisted part of Ghost perhaps wanted to see how good you could get him to pillow talk.

It was a passing thought, but chills abraded his forearms. The challenge in it gave him a heated rush of red.

What the hell was the matter with him? he questioned for the umpteenth time.

He shouldn't be wanting such nonsense.

He shouldn't be caring for it either.

He should walk away now. But...

The moment he chose to act, turning, the exit his target, the shower stopped running. The naked pad of footsteps resounded. A towel flapped open. More footsteps, and then -

You emerged from the bathroom, all robed and clean, leaving steam in your wake. It looked like you'd just walked out of a dream, cherub cheeks flushed pink and skin dewy, almost satiny, and - fuck. He internally groaned. He wanted to bite.

What in nine hells? He popped his jaw in frustration.

Upon spotting him, excitement flashed in your eyes, and you nearly skipped over.

"You stayed," you breathily commented, the towel you were using to dry your hair tossed atop the dining table. Traces of vanilla and coconut saturated the air, infiltrating his mask, and his mouth involuntarily watered.

He needed to call that special number tonight, he decreed, or else he wouldn't survive the coming days. Days? More like hour. Keep it together, soldier.

Such unpalatable delight seeped from you, he slowly shook his head.

If only you knew he sewed another man's skull on his mask, beaten to a pulp before stripped clean of all tissue. A constant reminder of what he’d lost. Who he'd lost. If only you knew he viewed the outside world from the eyes of a dead man. If only you knew poison swam in his veins, immortalizing the infectious ichor that damned any soul to near him. Touch him. You would flee the other direction.

You would curse at him, curse him, see him for what he truly was.

A rotting corpse unleashed to the world to haunt. To terrorize.

Would you crave him then, knowing those very hands you wanted wrapped around you had ended lives, and most not so humanely?

He wasn't capable of holding you without hurting you.

Anything good and decent in him had long ago been buried away, and in their stead festered rancid tendencies that worked his mind and body tireless.

Nothing survived him, and you would be no different.

Even tonight, his somber mood a result of the death toll that ripped through his heart, deadened as it was, when he heard - witnessed - the scream of little children blown to pieces by a human bomber he was meant to stop, was no coincidence.

His main objective was to retrieve classified documents, but it had come at a cost when the enemy understood they were compromised.

He had done a bloody good job clearing the entire building, knives soaked crimson, fists even more so, but he'd forgone the basement, a bunker where bombers kept their own hostage. It was a gruesome tactic the enemy utilized to throw their foes off balance. He had a moment's decision before the bomber pressed the button - shoot him with the off-chance of saving the children, get obliterated to pieces and fail the mission, or succeed.

It was either them or the classified intel. He’d ducked for cover.

Choices have consequences, he remembered telling Johnny once, and, fuck, if he didn't hate himself for his.

He tasted the sulfur, the clogging dust saturated with human remains, in the back of his throat. He couldn't wipe those deaths from his eyes no matter how many times he bathed, scrubbed, scraped.

So, no matter you being a perfect stranger, feeding him look upon look of insatiable hunger any man would gladly sacrifice a limb for, he couldn't go down that road.

Especially when you meant so much to Johnny, his brother-in-arms, a man with a heart of gold that reminded Simon of his own. He couldn't do that to him, to you. Christ, he couldn't walk through fire again.

He wouldn't survive it.

And - bollocks, he nearly chuckled - he never sounded more miserable. It didn't matter. He'd be dodging a bullet with you, all right. All his physical needs, he could deal with them like a grown man in the confines of his own four walls.

Besides, he was a goddamn mess tonight, his feelings and thoughts blown asunder. He hadn't slept for seventy-two hours and was in desperate need of some shut-eye.

"You look like you've just seen a ghost," your lilting voice broke through his thoughts. He blinked down at you. You shrugged, a small smile forming. "Funny how that works, don't you think?"

Maybe he should give you a taste of what it meant to know Simon Riley. Maybe then, and only then, would you understand the favor he'd been extending you.

Silently, he pushed the steaming cup of green tea your way.

A soft gasp. "A man after my own heart." Your fingers came around the mug, hugging it close to your chest and taking a cautious sip. "Mmm. Just what I needed."

"You feelin' better?" Christ, he might as well have spat out shards of glass with how rough he'd sounded.

You licked your lips, pink tongue darting out. "Yeah. Much," you whispered. "Thanks."

Your lips enclosed around the rim again, plump, red and eager. Red as poppies. He imagined them closing around something else, something harder, hotter, sweetened by your spit.

His muscles stiffened, the itch flaming his palms. Palms he then curled into tight fists - before releasing.

He unsuccessfully cleared his throat. "Right, then, you get that rest, poppy."

He turned on his heel, the exit never appearing more distant as he marched to it. At the end of the island, he'd left the box of med kit and his glove, and he reached for the latter as he bypassed.

A blur of white and he was staring down at your delicate features again.

"Wait, wait, you can't just leave. And you definitely can't take this." You snatched the glove from his grasp and quickly hid it behind your back. You pursed your lips at his quiet glower. "Because I'll, uh, wash it for you. More polite that way."

Bollocks. You meant to keep what was his, you wily little thing. He could easily wrestle it out of your hands, but he didn't want to give you more incentive to put your hands on him. Or, worse yet, his on you.

"You got somethin' you wanna say?" he roughed out.

"Only that I want to thank you. Properly."

"Properly thanked. Now out of my way."

He meant to sidestep but you halted him with a soft, warm palm on his chest. His heart, for the briefest second, quickened at the gesture. Didn't need incentive at all, it seemed.

You struggled for purchase. "Well - Well, what about your tea?"

"I'll live, poppy."

Another step, another pressing of your hand against his body. More adamantly this time.

Bloody hell, such a tiny thing, you were, but he'd never encountered a bigger hindrance. Especially when he was oh, so close to the exit. He was positive you were going to lock your door and swallow the key if he did not indulge you a moment's courtesy.

His abrasive exhale of defeat finally brought your palm down from his chest, and he - what? Wanted to beat your white-bricked walls in at the loss of contact? Absolutely not - couldn't have felt better.

His lids dropped, and his look of defiance rivaled yours. For a second too intense for his liking, both of you were stuck in a battle of wills.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

Four se -

Christ. That pulled a reaction from him, primal and almost aggressive. The kind that had the blood in his veins rushing hot and wild.

His low, grumbling voice, a contrast to the sudden, violent need unfurling in his lower abdomen, vibrated the still air between you.

"Properly thank me how?"

Of all the answers he could've expected, with how your teeth worried your lower lip, nibbling at the fleshly petal, or how your lashes fluttered, somehow nervous, or even with how your cheeks dusted pink in evident arousal, that is, a meek, "Biscuits?" was definitely not it.

His head jerked back, a frown creasing his forehead. "Biscuits?"

He fuckin' loved biscuits.

"Yes. With tea?"

Hell, he loved that more.

He let your words sit for a while. Then, "You got any ginger nuts there, poppy?"

A bashful smile revealed a row of straight, white teeth. He wanted to scrape his own against them, his tongue coaxing in to steal a little taste of you. At the heady image, he tensed.

Growled.

You swallowed. "You don't have to be so angry about it. I've got them. Come on, then, I'll share my favorites with you."

In under five minutes, you had the Ghost sprawled atop your bed goddamn picnicking with a plate of biscuits and a mug of tea in hand.

Having made away with his leather jacket, he leaned back into a heap of pillows you'd placed for him, and - oh, that felt good - his muscles hissed in pleasure at having finally relaxed.

He grunted, his lids threatening to drift shut. Your bed was warm, soft, and smelled of wild lilacs - all qualities Ghost was estranged to in the field, which happened to dominate the better part of his life.

"You'll love this," you said from your spot next to him. He'd momentarily slacked off, and your voice brought him back from the abating garden of flowers he was surrendering himself to.

He breathed in deep, pulling focus.

Having dimmed the lights to your loft, you wiggled to a comfortable position and succumbed to your own nest of pillows.

You smelled like a peachy sunset over a beach of glistening sands, and if he touched you, you'd feel even better.

And now he was turning into a bloody poet.

If 141 ever saw him like this, Ghost would never live it down.

He balanced his plate of biscuits and mug of tea on his lap, but when you pressed your shoulder to his, he nearly spilled the hot liquid over his pants.

It also chased the sleep from his burning lids, and, quietly, he suffered your presence.

His body seared where you touched him, but he made no show of it.

You outstretched your lithe legs, soft and enticing, over the bed, and crossed them at the ankles. At the movement, your white robe parted in the seams, revealing the supple flesh of your thigh, but you made no move to cover it. You simply lay there, still delectable with a kind of sweetness Ghost wanted to languidly lap at with his tongue.

So much so that the muscle now ached in his mouth.

He swore under his breath, his own legs shifting to distance his body from you. His booted feet, he dangled at the edge of the bed. He wasn't that barbaric.

"I thought you were the patient one," you chided, misreading his mood. In your fingers, you clutched some kind of a remote. It possessed two buttons. "Watch this."

You pressed the green one.

A soft whine reverberated from above, and then a portion of the sloped ceiling slid up to, inch by inch, reveal the thundering clouds in the sky.

Not many things had the power to surprise Ghost, but this... Well, suffice it to say, his jaw slightly slacked open.

Rain dazedly pelted the glassed frame, the droplets snaking down in rivulets, and distant strikes of lightning illuminated the cloudy world above, and in consequence, the dark room.

You dreamily sighed, sinking further into your pillows. You reached for the biscuits on his thighs.

Simon hadn't realized he'd placed them too close to his groin, and thought you went in for a different feeding, body abruptly tensing.

The faintest drop of your hand's weight on him had his throat contracting.

Subtly, he had the plate relocated to his abdomen. Much better.

"I had it installed when I moved in. It helps me sleep better at night. Oh, especially in such nights." You hummed out a chuckle and pointed. "Look at that cloud. Kind of looks like the head of a chihuahua, don't you think?"

Lightning crackled. The sky brightened in hues murky gray and electric blue - before plummeting into darkness.

He followed your finger, and released a contemplative sound. It was all he offered, but it seemed to be enough for you.

There was something about the sound of rain and your soft breathing that had Simon lulled to a cozy quiet. Snugged by the pillows, his weight sank deeper into the mattress, and he thought he was in a haven of your making.

This could put him dead out if it weren't for the tempting graze of your shoulder against his, forcing him awake ever time his lashes sluggishly fluttered shut.

You sipped your tea and reached for another biscuit.

Slowly, he lifted his own mask 'til his nose and watched, warily, if you'd sneak a peek. You did no such thing.

Ignoring the twitch in his brows, he bit into the biscuits. The tea smoothed them down his throat, and the warm nourishment felt good in his stomach.

All the while, you talked about your sweets and pastries, the corner shop you bought them from, and how it was your favorite with it having opened almost eighty years ago. And how he also should visit it once he gets the chance.

You finished your tea and placed the mug on your side of the nightstand. Brushing the crumbs from your fingers, you plopped back down, head on your pillows this time.

You still did not look at him.

Sober you seemed to have a few bit reservations than wasted you, it appeared, faintest traces of amusement pulling at the corners of his revealed lips.

Downing the rest of his tea, he put away the empty plate and mug to his side of the nightstand. With that, he masked his lips anew.

In the silence, the only sound the pouring rain, he dwelled in the dark with you.

Then, so softly, you said his name.

"Simon."

His breath hitched dead center in his chest. His eyes arrowed down at your lying figure.

You continued to look away, spiky lashes fanning delicate cheekbones.

"You can stay the night, if you want," you made out, swallowing tentatively and moistening your lips. With a tiny jump, you turned over - and finally tilted your face up to look him in the eyes. You cupped the underside of your cheek. "We don't have to do anything. Not that you - Not that you said you wanted to. I'm sorry. I only mean, it's late...and you must be tired." Then, oh, so gently, "Heard you had a long night, too."

Ghost remained silent for the duration of your speech, and at the last sentence, quirked a brow up. "Yeah? And who told you that?"

"Johnny," you murmured.

"Johnny," he echoed. A low crackling sound sizzled in his chest, but it dwindled out before ever reaching his throat. "You discuss me with Johnny, do ya now, poppy?"

Your eyes dropped from his masked face, and your fingers drew small circles into the pillow next to his.

"Sometimes, I do, yes." So effortlessly admitted. Fuck. "It was merely an evaluation of your person, is all. I could see it too. Your eyes are red. Bit groggy too."

He rasped out a low chuckle, if it could be called that, seeing as some sounds tended to get lost in the wide expanse of his chest. "That it, eh?"

A small smile crinkled the corner of your eye, and if he had a heart, he might've gone as far as to call you a darling right then and there.

You shrugged. "Yeah."

He ran the tip of his tongue against his teeth. Simon knew it was best he end the conversation now, rise from your bed, and exit your apartment. Your life. He got his proper thanks, after all.

But, like a damned fool he could only blame on his exhausted state, he stayed put - and probed further. "What else you bothered Johnny about me, mm?"

You licked your lips again, the tip of that tempestuous pink muscle wetting the seam, and he bit back a wanting grunt.

He'd never been more arrested by a mundane act.

Focus, soldier.

His eyes trailed the gentle curve of your jawline...and down your slender neck.

No, not there, you daft geezer. Away.

"Your mask," your tentative voice filled the room.

"What's wrong with it?"

Your soft hair rustled against the sheets as you shook your head. "Nothing. It's merely got something honest about it, is all. As paradoxical as that may seem, I realize now. It's pleasant."

Pleasant? That's a new one.

But he couldn't have you building false notions about him like that. Maybe it was time he warned you away for good.

"I have more blood on my hands than the one running in your veins, poppy. There is nothing honest about me," he coldly provided.

"Well, I think you're wrong."

Bloody hell, what would it take to dislodge you?

You moved, body climbing up the pillows until your head rested close to his shoulder. And then a little bit more, until you leveled with his face.

The sheer heat emanating from your skin traveled past his clothes, seeping into his pores.

Yeah, you were a darlin', all right. A damn appetizing one, at that.

You shifted slightly, weight on your left hip and bared legs so dangerously close to his.

Through the thick rim of your lashes, you regarded him. "Ghost," you said, and he nearly corrected you. "Would you like to know what else I discuss with Johnny?"

A burning sensation infiltrated his cheek, and he realized you were tracing your fingertips over his masked features. Carefully, cautiously, so as to not chase him away.

"For one, those pretty eyes of yours," you hummed lowly. On cue, you gently trailed a finger down his brow bone.

Heat speared his cheeks at that, and he was grateful for the coverage. Simon Riley, blushing. His lashes fluttered a bit, but other than that, you remained clueless as to his expression.

"And they change color every time I look upon you. Sometimes blue, sometimes silver, other times brown, like sweet caramel, and my favorite, pitch black. How do you do that?"

You studied him enough to have a favorite? At that revelation, his throat tightened.

Wordless, he performed a small, almost undiscernible, shrug, the pillows underneath shifting.

A slow, deep smile curved your cheeks. "You should let me study them in broad daylight. I'm sure I'll solve the mystery in no time." With a cheeky air, you booped the tip of his nose with your finger.

Quietly, he watched your face, coal-dark eyes intent and focused, the only sounds from him his steady breathing.

"God, they're so black." Tenderly, you ran your knuckles across his jawline, angled your head, and then softly guided his face closer to yours.

Once, someone had told him he had no present, past, or future, and he'd told them that he'd see them in hell. Now, Ghost realized hell was here, in the breath of a space between you, where you sat so close to him, and yet he could not close it.

"None of that, poppy." He nudged your hold off.

Disappointment colored your eyes, drooped your shoulders, and brought those pearl-white teeth to gnaw at your fleshly lower lip. And with so much bite, he spotted teeth marks form.

"Easy there," he murmured, fingers acting without his explicit permission and pinching your chin.

At that, the discouragement washed away and your eyes clouded with something dark and promising, putting the storm outside to shame. There you went again with that look. If his career in the Special Forces hadn't driven him mad, this surely would.

Understanding that he shouldn't have touched you, he made to move away, but your fingers wrapped around his wrist, keeping him close - and sliding your body closer.

The second your hip meshed against his, his muscles seized up, locking tight upon his bones.

God, you were hot against him. Burning up.

Simon nearly bolted from the bed when he felt your legs entangle with his, the blistering tension having unwittingly made away with much of his resolve and rendering him stimulated in places he'd rather not feel stimulated in.

Your toes teased his legs, rubbing up against the coarse material of his pants. Then, they glided over them, finding purchase in his inner calves - and massaging. Up, up, they traveled, then dooown they dropped, creating a spine-tingling friction.

Ghost grunted, shoulders bunching before undulating. He straightened a bit. Good God. He was suddenly too aware of his own body heating up and all his intimate areas. All too aware of his blood pumping and where it was rushing.

"You better stop that before you get hurt, yeah, darlin'?" he grated past his teeth.

You sighed, no doubt relishing in his deteriorating strength. "A little pain never hurt nobody. Isn't that right, Lieutenant?"

As you said that, you wedged your leg more firmly between his, parting them, and slid your knee upward to lightly grind it against his sensitive groin.

Christ. He grunted with less control now, the feeling slowly slipping through his fingers.

You shouldn't be using that kind of language with him. Shouldn't be talking in such a tone. Because addiction was another sin he didn't mind adding to the list.

His body sweltered from the inside and his heartbeat increased, beating in his ears. He had to leave.

Jerking slightly at another shiver inducing motion, he pushed at your leg.

A final, "No, poppy," scraped past his throat.

"Simon," you tugged at his wrist, voice hoarsely breaking at the end and so desperately, it nearly unmanned him, "I - I'm on fire. It hurts. It hurts so bad. Need... I need you. I can't stop. I don't know why I can't stop. I just - God, I've been needing you for so long now. Every night, I dream of you, do you know that? Every night. Please, please...I'm going insane. I'm - "

That did it.

With a ferocious snarl that was more animal than man, his arm shot forward, calloused fingers latching onto your cheeks and unchivalrously burying your head in your pillows with the abrupt maneuver of his body over yours.

His weight suffocated you into the mattress.

You gasped, eyes gaping wide in alarm.

His ire flared, his desire, even more so.

"Shut the fuck up," Ghost gritted in your face, now panting hot and fast. "Shut your fuckin' mouth now, poppy. Fuck. You ever heed a warning? You ever heard of using your own goddamn fingers? You ever use that pretty little head of yours? Bloody fucking hell, darlin'. Bloody. Fucking. Hell."

You squirmed under him, releasing small, breathless sounds.

The image of you rendered so helpless roused the most primal parts of him and his cock painfully hardened, straining against the strap of his pants.

It was blooming into an ache his hands alone wouldn't be able to assuage. Goddamit.

Your eyes searched his, arraying back and forth, attempting to grasp what just occurred within the span of a blink.

Then, they narrowed, pretty lashes fusing. "I have," you ground out, baring your teeth at him. "I do. But they're never enough." Fuck, you were talking about your fingers. You almost pouted insufferably. "Never what I want. Need. Crave."

"And I am?" he growled out, baring his own teeth. You seemed to like the intensity he exuded, even heatedly roamed your eyes over his masked lips, expression devoid of all fear.

You nodded eagerly.

Yes.

He cursed under his breath.

Lowly, lethally, "How hard did you hit that head of yours, mm?"

You bit your lips to suppress a moan, "Hard enough to get you in my bed."

"That mouth of yours is goin' to get you in trouble, poppy."

You keened at the warning. "Promise?"

At that, he couldn't will himself away even if he wanted to. Not even all the soldiers in his team combined could drag him away when you stared up at him so wantonly, so desperately, silently begging to make away with the terrible ache that shadowed over your every need.

So be it. You would learn your lesson.

"Open your legs," he growled - and slipped his hand underneath your robe.

an: i made it into 3 parts bcs, well, i just had too much fun writing ghost suffering in his self-imposed ✨ agonies ✨

suffice it to say, the next part will be pure filth. pinkie swear this time. strap your seatbelts, girlies, we’re going to the horniest, dirtiest bangtown.

on another note, if anyone is willing to chat/discuss fics relating to cod or any other fandom of their liking, I’ve created a new discord server and pinned it on my blog; all are more than welcome to join ✨

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faux-ecrivain · 3 months

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Yan Therapist x gn darling ———————————— (Name’s Conroy Simons) (Name means; Conroy; ’Wise advisor’ Simons; ’listener’) (Thirty Fourth Official Post) ———————————————— Yan therapist who hates his job, he finds it all tedious, and he hates listening to people talk about their problems. Why did he ever accept this job? Yan therapist that used to love his job, every day he’d wake up excited to make a change in someone’s life. But after doing it for so long, 7 years to be exact, he’s no longer excited, and would much rather be retired. Yan therapist that does his best to mask his exhaustion, but ultimately fails when you ask him what’s wrong. Yan therapist that insists nothing is wrong, he doesn’t really like opening up. Yan therapist that reluctantly spills his guts after some intense persuasion on your part. Yan therapist that starts to look forward to your visits, you’re a surprisingly good conversationalists, when you aren’t feeling spiteful that is. Yan therapist that starts to take notes, not about your mental health (although he does take note of that), but about what you like, and who you like. You know, personal throngs like that. Yan therapist that gets jealous anytime you mention someone besides him, he gets especially jealous when you ramble about the love of your life (can’t you see that he’s the only one for you?). Yan therapist that “accidentally” started stalking you. (He’s only trying to keep you safe!) Yan therapist that starts to manipulate you, he tries to rationalize his actions by pretending that he’s doing what’s best for you.

(“Are you sure about this, doc? I mean, I don’t really think my friend’s all that bad.” Conroy sighs and smiles politely, masking the anger he feels when you question him.

“Yes, dear, I’m positive. It’s best if you stop spending time with them, they’ve done nothing but upset you, and confuse you. Don’t you remember when they left you behind at the mall? Or when they stole your sister’s boyfriend?”

He reminds you of all the terrible things that your friend did and makes you question your friendship with them. Still, you’re uncertain. “I don’t know, doc, I mean, that was all in the past. Surely, it’s okay to hang out with them now?” Conroy sighs and shakes his head, which causes you to groan because now he’s going to give you a lecture about listening to him.)Yan therapist that uses the close friendship the two of you curated to isolate you from your other friends, and people who may want to steal you from him. Yes, that includes your sister and your extended family. Yan therapist that gets irritated every-time you question him, why must you be so bullheaded? Don’t you know he’s only trying to keep you safe? Yan therapist that decides the only way to keep you safe is to keep you with him. Yan therapist that invites to his house at some point and eagerly hopes that you’ll agree. (Mostly because it’ll be easier to kidnap you that way) Sadly, you refuse his invitation, something about being uncomfortable in a stranger’s house. Instead, you decided to invite him to your house, which he happily agreed to. Yan therapist that looks forward to going to your house, his joyous mood is noticed by everyone at work (patients and colleagues included). Yan therapist that dresses in his best outfit (which is a rather sharp suit and a comfy turtleneck sweater, a strange combination, I know) when he comes to your house.

(You greet him with a friendly smile and compliment his outfit, which, of course, causes him to internally gush. But, he plays it cool and pretends your compliment didn’t mean the world to him. “Oh, thanks, it’s just something I threw on.” He shrugs, and you chuckle, then invite him inside.

Conroy shuffles into your house, the moment his feet his the threshold a strange feeling washes over him. It’s a mix of apprehension and elation. He can’t explain it, but it’s as though he stepped into a sacred place. A place that you only allow your closest friends to enter (this wasn’t true, of course, but he’s an idiot, and has no idea what you’re planning) Yan therapist that thinks this will simply be a friendly visit that may, or may not, lead to something more. (He eagerly accepts any, and all, hospitality you show him. Happily sipping the tea you made, even if it was scalding hot, and happily eating the scones you made, no matter how strange they tasted.) Yan therapist that listen to everything you say, even though it doesn’t make any sense (all your words are slurring together and for a moment, he thinks you’re drunk). Yan therapist that desperately tries to be active in the conversation, despite how strangely tired he’s feeling. He yawns and blinks rapidly as he desperately fights sleep. Yan therapist that’s ignorant to the malicious smile you flashed him. Yan therapist that succumbs to his exhaustion with reluctance, his cup falls out of his hand, and would have landed on the floor had you not caught it. You chuckle menacingly and, with some effort, tote his unconscious body into your basement. Yan therapist that wakes up many hours later to you taunting him for falling for your tricks, and yet he can’t help the strange joy he felt upon knowing that you spent many months planning his abduction. Yan therapist that’s slightly angry you abducted him because that was his plan! But, also, now he doesn’t have to try that hard to keep an eye on you! Yan therapist that decides this isn’t so bad, I mean, you aren’t the worst captor in the world (there’s room for improvement though, and luckily, he’s a master manipulator. So getting you to treat him better shouldn’t be too hard.) and you haven’t harmed him. Yes, you were a bit overzealous, but who isn’t from time to time? ———————————————————

#yandere oc #my writing #yandere x reader #enjoy this short fanfic!#gn reader #fanfic #not the best #Yandere oc x reader #yandere therapist x gn darling #yandere male #yandere x you #male yandere #gender neutral reader x yandere

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romyowusu · 2 years

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template credit

But I love my friends, I love my friends We've got each other, don't need no others All of my friends, I love my friends We're a disaster, yeah you know it's true

meet rosemary romy owusu

full name: rosemary araba owusu

nickname: romy (you will get the evil eye if you call her rosemary unless you are her parents or auntie)

faceclaim: lovie simone

age: 22

gender: cis woman

pronouns: she/her

sexuality: lesbian

hometown: providence, rhode island

birthday: december 16, 1999

zodiac: sagittarius sun, aries moon, taurus rising

traits: reliable, sensitive, practical, volatile, competitive, self serving

major: sociology

more info.

Being Romy's friend means you know just how keen and energetic she is; you know she doesn't have an off switch, just energizer bunny's her way through life until she passes out into sleep quickly only to rise again back to her peppy state

You know that she's always suggesting group hangs, mostly study dates but no matter what, you know she's overplanned it, started the group chat to arrange things and will be arriving early.

You also know that she is the type to always come to her friends' defense, that she always takes your side even before she knows all the facts, that she is often a little more manic when group tensions rise. Some of you may know how quickly she will be there for a hug, to listen or any other comfort. You know she can be discreet but when it comes to good news, she's eager to share

You know that grades are important to her, winning is important to her, which is why playing board games with her can get intense. You know she's a polite loser, but not a gracious one. You know that she's dreading graduation because it means being a student isn't her identity anymore. You know she wants to work her way up in a non profit but she doesn't care which kind.

You know she likes her dad but with him in Ghana they've barely interacted in person since she was small. You know she complains about her mom being too hard on her but they're so much alike it doesn't take long before they're back to puzzles and game show watching together. You know she has a brother who is her opposite, kinda lazy and aimless but more chill than her.

You know her room is clean but her desk is covered in little trinkets and such she couldn't resist, you know there's more photos of you and the rest of your friends than you expected, you know she has a set of blankets and small pillows for anyone who wants to stay over

You know she's been out since you met her, that she's the type to gush about whoever she's crushing on but you may not have noticed that she's been pretty quiet on that front lately…

I'm still working on a playlist but ill be adding more musings and likely an aes mb for romy

#phantasm.intro

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shoutogepi · 4 years

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Shinsou Says

Shinsou Hitoshi

word count : 5k

[ ✘ (nsfw!) ]

themes : sauce alert !!! dom!shinsou, (shy)sub!reader, quirk use, teasing, dirty talk— kitten dynamics w surprise daddy

bio : Shinsou comes over in the dead of the night to find you touching yourself without permission, and he immediately has the perfect punishment in mind.

author’s note : i.. i’m not sure where this came from tbh cuz i’m not much of a shinsou fucker but… these days he has just been hittin different 😳😅

side note : usually i use the first name for bf smut, but a part of me really just wanted to keep the alliteration with Shinsou Says/Simon Says so deal with it lmao

also available on AO3 here

─── ・°* ﾟ✧:* • ｡ﾟ:*･☽･*: ｡ﾟ•*:✧ ﾟ*°・ ───

🄰 breathy sigh floats from your lips as your back arches off the mattress, the sheets beneath you damp with sweat. The blankets at your feet are spilling off the edge of the bed, a crumpled pile of havoc collecting on the floor. You can’t help but writhe and moan, your fingers prodding gently against your clenched walls.

The clock on the other side of the room flashes red numbers at you, reminding you that it’s much too late to call your boyfriend over. You’d gone to sleep at a reasonable hour, but you had awoken in a sweat and in the most lustful state, very much craving his touch. However, you’re aware that he has a demanding profession, and to bother him into coming over just to fulfill your wanton needs— you couldn’t possibly bring yourself into sending him a text.

The moonlight streams into your bedroom through the cracks between the blinds, illuminating the area in a soft white glow. Your phone casts a dim light in the darkness of the room, your headphones twisting as your body squirms around. The intimate video he had taken just a few sessions ago lighting up your screen, his heavy breaths fill your ears as your fingers slide across your sopping core. Teasing yourself, dipping the digits in two knuckles deep and rubbing your walls for a moment before taking them back out, trailing north to touch your clit.

You close your eyes, letting your memories take over and attempting to replay the feelings you know he can give you. Coaxing your body into recalling how his smooth palms feel as they hold your legs open, his wet kisses trailing around your torso and spending extra time on your breasts. Fuck, the thought of him whispering those nasty words he always says as his nimble fingers delve into your heat.

It’s no wonder you don’t hear the front door open.

Shinsou steps into the dark apartment, the light from the hallway licking against the wooden floor in contrast to the shadowy room. He frowns, taking the spare key out of the doorknob as quietly as he can. Perhaps it wasn’t a great idea to come over unannounced in the middle of the night? But after such a long day and a hopeless few hours of attempting to sleep, he’d found himself briskly walking the couple of blocks that separated the two of you. He told himself that all he’d wanted was to slip into bed and wrap his arms around you… but then again, there was the raging hard on he’d been sporting for the past hour.

All doubt leaves his mind as he hears a soft moan leak out from your bedroom, his ears almost physically perking in interest as he hurriedly takes off his shoes. He tries his best not to make a single sound, silently padding across the floor towards your door.

He can hear all the noises tumbling out of your throat now, your unrestricted whimpers of pleasure making his fingers itch with prickles and warmth rush through his body toward his pants. The door is cracked just shy of allowing him unnoticeable entrance, and he can’t help himself as he slides into the room, cringing as the hinges squeak in protest. But you don’t notice him at all, his recorded groans stopping your ears from picking up the alerting noise.

Shinsou is glad you hadn’t heard him, because the look on your face is damn ethereal. Your features contorted in rampant euphoria, he watches your hands slide along the body he adores so much, sucking in a breath of air as your lips part and let out a particularly heavy moan.

“Ugh, Shinsouuu.”

His pants suddenly feel incredibly tight, and he licks his lips, shifting his weight between his feet. The noise of your fingers plunging into your wet cunt falls heavily on his ears, making him bite his lip. Fuck, how long have you been touching yourself for? And is that your homemade sextape playing on your phone?

“Ahah— you feel so fucking good!”

Your cries throw him over the edge, his body moving before his brain can process the command. He’s at the edge of the bed in three strides, menacing over your oblivious figure rolling against your own hand.

“My, my, kitten.”

The gasp that rips through you sends a cocktail of dread and desire washing through his bones, your eyes flying open to meet his predatory gaze.

“Shinsou!” This time you squeak it out almost shamefully, your fingers flying from your pussy and landing flat on the bed next to your hips. The embarrassment thrown over your cheeks makes him gush on the inside, but all that surfaces to his face is a smirk. His eyelids are hung at half mast, his watchful violet eyes regarding you.

“Ah ah, don’t stop on my accord darling. You’ve got me quite invested in this show of yours,” he tantalizes, knees falling atop the plush mattress.

A whimper escapes you, your eyes shutting briefly at the tone in his voice. You can feel the bed dip as he slides closer to you, tugging the headphones out of your ears and disposing of them next to the pillow above you. He hangs his body over yours, hands so teasingly close to your skin.

“Did you hear me, kitten? I said, keep touching yourself,” he demands, his voice level and clear.

Your eyes still screwed shut, your now clammy palms rub on the sheets, mortified to have been caught committing such heinous acts of desire. “I— I can’t, Shinsou, it’s too… I’m so embarrassed,” you whine, brows drawing together as you wiggle slightly underneath him in distress. The friction of your thighs rubbing together makes your arousal spread, coating your skin with slick.

His lips only pull back further, grinning down at you joyfully. “What d’ya mean, kitten? I should be mad you were being naughty and playing with yourself like that, but knowing you’re so desperate for me…” he leans in closer, lips grazing the sensitive skin on your jaw as you throw your head to the side. “Well, what kind of hero would I be if I left my kitten all alone, knowing she’s in such distress?”

His words make a moan of shock and want slither out of you, your back bending and pushing your body against his. Your purple-haired boyfriend really has quite a way with words. Your fingers meet his knees, gliding up his lean, muscular thighs and dragging your fingernails along them. “Please, I— god, I need you so bad,” you plead, hips adjusting as you look at him again.

His eyes are drinking you up, traveling over your sinful pout to your hands on his legs, and then to that glistening pussy of yours that he just knows is fucking soaked. “Mmm, let’s see how I can help then,” his lips greet yours forcefully, passionately engaging them in a desperate dance. His hand slides under your curved back, dry fingers curling along the damp skin in contrast, his dull fingernails sending shivers to your spine. He pulls away and grabs the hand that had been in your cunt, capturing your gaze as his lips rove over your fingers. His mouth taking them in and lathering his tongue along your skin, he savors the tangy flavor of your desire with an intense look.

“You’re too embarrassed to show me how you touch yourself, baby? Why so shy?” His words only make you impossibly wetter, and your lip trembles as you mewl softly in response.

Shinsou accepts the noise as a reply, tilting his head slightly as an idea comes to mind. He sits up, his hand sliding up to the center of your back and taking you with him.

“Do you wanna play a game, kitten?” His inquiry has you curiously regarding him, trying to see if there is any ill intent lingering in him. But you can’t find anything, only being sucked into his ravenous eyes. He presses further, wanting to convince you more than anything to play along. “I promise you’ll have a good time.”

You do trust your boyfriend after all— he’d never misguided your desires before, always satiating your every need. So you find yourself nodding again, arms wrapping around his neck hesitantly.

The grin on his lips makes your heartbeat quicken.

Shinsou’s hands cup the backs of your thighs, scooping you into his arms as he slides off the bed. He steals your focus away as his lips cover yours again, his tongue roaming along your bottom lip. You gladly allow him entrance, and you jump slightly as your ass touches the cold wooden floor. Peeking up at him, your breath stops in your throat at the preying look in his eyes.

“We’re gonna play a game called Shinsou Says.” You let out a moan immediately, your hand flying up to cover your lips a second too late. The pure action makes the man chuckle, his hand giving your ass a playful squeeze. “You familiar with it?”

Simon Says— you’ve played it before. Maybe back when you were younger… but you have a feeling that Shinsou’s game is going to be a lot nastier than your past experiences. This could go either very right, or very wrong. “Yeah…,” you trail off, wondering what your boyfriend’s intentions are exactly.

As if he can see the lingering wariness in your eyes, he continues. “I’m gonna tell you what to do, and you’re gonna follow my commands. If you follow my instructions without me saying ‘Shinsou says’, the game is over and you lose.”

“Is there a punishment for losing?” You ask, maybe a bit too quickly because his lavender eyes glint at you with hunger.

“Not really… you just don’t get the winning prize.”

Interest piqued, you look at him expectantly. “Well tell me what it is already!”

“The prize is my cock, baby.” Your eyes widen and fall to his lap, regarding the sizable tent in his pants. “You’ll be rewarded kindly if you show me that you can be a good girl for me. I can’t just forget that you were touching yourself without me, like a little slut. Prove to me you’re my good girl.”

Fuck, he’s a good talker. His words sound so tempting, and if you play the game, he’ll be murmuring those intoxicating desires into your ear all night. You straighten your spine with confidence. You can prove that you’re a good girl.

“If you wanna stop at any point, you’ll be able to. Just say the word and we’ll stop, okay kitten?”

Even though your lip is between your teeth, you nod once again, the idea of the game appealing to you. If you just follow his instructions, it doesn’t really count as touching yourself… right? It can’t be as embarrassing...

His pleased smile is enough to make your lungs rattle with anticipation. His hands land on your waist, his fingers massaging the flesh there tenderly. “Shinsou says, turn around.”

You were planning on following his command, yet your body finds it already acting on its own accord. A tight feeling of excitement and a shred of fear bubbles in your chest, realizing that he’s using his quirk on you. He’s never used it on you before, and in all honesty, you had been wondering when he would finally man up and test it on you. When you finally turn, you aren’t expecting to find yourself in front of your floor length mirror, and your cheeks immediately flush with a telling red.

His quirk is interesting— it doesn’t feel intrusive, more like your movements are the true desire of your limbs and he is just oiling you up into performing them. This already exceeds your expectations.

You hesitantly observe yourself in the mirror, looking at the slick glaze that drips down your inner thighs. Shinsou follows the action, sitting behind you and sliding his hands under your thighs, parting your legs widely and trailing his fingers along your skin. You lean back into his chest, getting comfortable and licking your lips.

“Shinsou says,” he grumbles into your ear, watching your reflection as your pussy clenches at the words, “cup your breasts and gently pinch those nipples, kitten.”

Your exhale is shaky as your fingers collect the heavy flesh, your palms gliding along the sensitive skin. You whine as your fingertips roll the perky buds, your actions not your own but delighting you nonetheless. Your hips roll slowly in the air, shutting your eyes and tossing your head atop his broad shoulder.

“Sensitive today, are we?” His low chuckle draws another whimper from you, and the luscious noise only spurs him further. “Wow, I’ve never seen you so fucking wet before. Look at yourself.”

You keep your head where it is, an almost pained look washing over your features at having to keep the game in mind. Shinsou’s quirk is absent in your hazy mind, not pushing you into performing the incorrect action.

“Hmm, what a clever kitten I have,” he purrs, fingers running along your skin. “Now— Shinsou says— look at how soaked you are for me. And don’t you dare look away.”

Your head turns and your cheeks feel on fire as you take in your reflection, as well as the haughty smirk resting on Shinsou’s lips. Your eyes travel to your sex, and you stop breathing as Shinsou’s lithe fingers inch toward it. They delicately land along your slit, the tips running between your petals teasingly. They brush over your clit for a moment, almost mocking you as they disappear from your core completely.

“Shinsou says, touch yourself like I just did, and keep at it, too.”

Even with his quirk guiding your movements, you find yourself wanting to follow his commands. You arch into his chest, whimpering as your nails give your swollen cunt a different sensation. Your fingers just as gentle and teasing as his had been, your lust skyrockets as your touch ghosts over your clit again. You sigh, watching how your actions cause your cunt to flutter in anticipation.

The action does not go unnoticed by Shinsou, who seems delighted by your telling body. His dick is achingly hard, but the premise of the game has him holding back. He wants to push you into becoming comfortable touching yourself like this. In front of him. He wants you to see how beautiful you are when you spread yourself for him like this, how you have nothing to hide.

“Shinsou says, ease your middle finger inside that drenched cunt for me, baby.” Your finger slips into your hole, pushing all the way to the knuckle and whining when your own digit doesn’t reach as deep as you want. As deep as Shinsou’s fingers can reach.

“Please, Shinsou, fuck,” you moan, your eyes still glued to your pussy. Your finger just sitting there inside yourself, your hips shift in order to find more stimulation.

“Now fuck yourself with it.”

You cry out, your finger still frozen in your pussy. What a tease! It’s not fair, this game is too cruel. Anguish washing over you, you glare at his reflection.

The anger rolling off of you makes him laugh, but he closes his eyes, leaning in to start pressing gentle, open-mouthed kisses on the column of your neck. “Shinsou says, finger yourself, kitten.”

Your finger immediately starts moving, curling in and out of your slick cunt with fervor. The pad of your fingertip pressing intently, your body shivers at the sudden stimulation. “Ahhh~ Shinsou!”

“Shinsou says, add another finger.”

The familiar stretch makes your legs shake, your back pressing into his chest. He continues his assault on your neck, but his hands leave you in favor of stripping off his jacket and his shirt. His wild purple locks shift as he pushes your body into his naked skin, collecting your thighs in his hands once again.

His teeth nip across your collarbone, tongue washing over the reddened skin in a soothing manner. “Wish those were my fingers in your pretty pussy, kitty cat?”

The filthy words he utters make your already prominent blush intensify, your legs straining against his grasp. All you can do is moan, enjoying the stimulation your fingers dutifully provide. You meekly choke out, “More, please— I need it!”

Shinsou considers your dissolute request, watching the way your fingers thrust into your throbbing hole. You’d never been so desperate before, and he wonders again how long you’d been touching yourself before he’d arrived. Gauging how eager your actions are, he attempts more foul play. “You want more? You nasty slut. Go on then, rub your clit for me.”

Your hand jerks to complete the action but immediately you gasp and slap it back down against your thigh. Your breath is shaking, your fingers pressing faster into your cunt. You look at Shinsou with pleading eyes, a mewl croaking out of you.

The bastard raises a purple brow at you, leisurely returning to kissing your neck. “Aha, that was cute, kitten, I’m impressed.”

The pleasure and the build up from his taunting words send bolts of pleasure through your body, and you begin to feel your orgasm building once again. Frantic for more of his touch, your body wriggles with urgency.

He sucks in a tight breath as your ass grinds into his crotch, your body begging for his touch. “Shinsou says, stay fucking still.”

Your body freezes harshly on its own accord, and your eyes nearly pop out of your skull as Shinsou’s hand creeps down your pelvis, his fingers sliding along your own that are halfway in your pussy. He lubes the digits up on your excessive arousal, sliding the pads back up to massage your clit.

“Fuck!” You clench around your fingers at the novel sensation, and your eyes nearly shut as his other hand grabs your wrist, pushing your digits back into yourself.

“Shinsou says, tell me how that feels, darling.” His fingers on your nerve won’t quit, and the other hand shoves your fingers into your twitching cunt at a rapid pace.

Your jaw is slack, words unable to be voiced as your eyes dart between his arrogant smirk and his heavenly hands. But your body is not your own, and the words that come out of your mouth make your embarrassment increase tenfold. “It feels so fucking good Daddy!”

His movements halt and you let out a broken wail, your impending orgasm vanishing without a trace. Your wide eyes meet his in the reflection, both of you in shock at the term that he’d summoned from you.

You are his kitten, that had been established pretty quickly into your relationship. But he’s never heard such a scandalous term dare to come from your lips before.

It has him feral.

It happens so quick, you can’t even gasp as his hand closes around your throat.

“Daddy, huh?” His gaze on yours is like lava, molten desire oozing out of him so forcefully you can almost hear the crackle and sizzle. His other hand roughly shoves down his pants, thumb ripping his briefs southward.

His long length slaps his pelvis and although you cannot see it, your body shivers in excitement, ready to be split in two and filled to the brim. Your fleeting shame now crushed by your overwhelming famine for him. “Please,” you beg, the excitement of it all too much.

“Daddy’s perfect kitty-cat,” he groans, yanking you to sit up so you’re on your knees, thighs shaking. “You want Daddy to fuck this slutty little pussy? Huh, kitten?”

“Yes! Yes, Daddy— Please!” You’re practically groveling with the words that come out, like a delirious prayer on your lips.

The hand on your neck slips back to fist the hair at the base of your skull, and he shoves you forward roughly so your hands fly out to catch yourself. Tugging on the hairs, he forces you to look at your reflection up close, your knees propping your hips up to the perfect height.

Your heart thuds in your rib cage as the head of his cock glides along your glassy entrance. A growl rumbles in his chest as he watches your strands of slick stretch as he takes his cock away, connecting your cunt to his length as if tempting him to just shove it in.

“Y/N,” he murmurs, making your eyes open and lock onto his. Your ass lowers so the tip brushes along your folds again, and you pant desperately as he grins at you. “You’re my sweet little kitten— all mine. Got it?”

You nod again. Words are just so hard to come by tonight.

His hand that isn’t on your hair slaps your ass abruptly, eliciting a loud moan from you. His fingers dig into the reddened flesh, his tongue running eagerly underneath his teeth. “Now, Daddy says…”

Your lip trembles, pussy fluttering as you look at him once more.

“Make yourself cum on my cock.”

He doesn’t need to activate his quirk this time. Your hips smash downwards, your cry and his moan filling the room as you take every inch of him, his hard cock spreading your tight walls with ease. You don’t allow yourself to accustom to his intrusive size, immediately bucking your ass upwards before slamming back down.

Shinsou’s eyes roll back, his hand laying still on your ass as you bounce on his dick, stealing his breath away. Fuck, the feeling of your steaming cunt squeezing him so well— it makes him want to dominate you.

His thick cock hits just the right spot deep inside of you, and your wetness drips onto the floor beneath you in excess. You can’t help the unabashed moans and cries floating from your lips, your twice-denied orgasm already coming back and making its presence known.

The purple-haired man notices your imminent climax too. The sounds that you’re releasing, and the way your cunt grasps his length so desperately— it's not like you’re hiding it very well. His hand claps across your ass again, and a snarl leaves him at how you clench on his cock in response.

His hand leaves your head, making your face drop and your chin drag against the floor. His hands dig into your hips, spreading your cheeks and forcing your hips onto his with purpose. He thrusts upwards as your ass crashes down, soliciting the most delicious shriek from you. Shinsou groans, forcing a pace that repeats the action so swiftly your body hums and bright stars dance along the corners of your vision.

“Did you fucking hear me, kitten?”

Your eyes open blearily, tears dotting your lashes at the sheer pleasure he’s causing. His expression is malicious, slitted eyes glaring at your mirror image, as if tempting you to follow his command.

“Daddy says, he wants you to cum.”

The pressure in your stomach heightens suddenly, so much that your jaw drops and your legs shake, your body tightening up. And then you’re orgasming, cunt squeezing the life out of his cock and thrashing on his hips in ecstasy.

His hands only tighten on your hips, and his pace does not dwindle as he plows into you with ease. The continued stimulation on your g-spot makes a trail of drool run down the corner of your mouth, your eyes rolled back all the way. The persistent tempo of his thrusts draws out a string of unintelligible pleas from you, and he finally stops to give you a second to catch your breath.

Your body melts into a puddle on the floor, the forced orgasm having taken a startling amount of energy from you. Shinsou gives a tentative thrust, a soft whine dislodging from you. Wrapping his arms under and around your thighs with his hands landing beneath your ass, he pulls you off the ground, sinking to his knees in front of the mirror. He spreads your legs mercilessly, lowering your body and sinking his cock into your aching cunt.

“Mmmmph, Shinsou,” you whimper as you’re struggling for words, your body feeling a confusing mix of heaviness and lightness. Your mind is still foggy, trying to readjust after your orgasm has devastated you so harshly. You body hadn’t had enough time to prepare itself, Shinsou had just ripped the orgasm out of you before it was ready.

Your head lolls back onto his shoulder, another mewl releasing as he pushes his cock inside again.

“Shh, shh shh kitten, don’t you worry. Daddy’s gonna take good care of you, just like he always does,” Shinsou breathes into your ear, sending the butterflies in your stomach fluttering with renewed energy.

The moans just keep coming out of you as his strong arms guide you to sit on his dick, sheathing himself inside you all the way and then rutting his hips up into you to rub that spot that makes you quiver. Your head not as cloudy as before, your hand wanders to your breast and you tug your nipple with your fingers.

“Mhmm, doesn’t that feel good?” He inquires, dropping your body a bit quicker on his length. Your lips open in the shape of an ‘o’, your other hand trails down your thigh. “You wanna touch yourself, darling? Not so shy anymore, are you?”

You shake your head, licking your lips at the mirror before you. It displays the sinful image of Shinsou impaling you with his mighty cock, folding your body like a flimsy lawn chair.

“Daddy says, lick your fingers and rub them on your clit,” he orders, thrusting into you faster.

Your hand on your thigh instantly flies to your lips, parting them and shoving your fingers into your mouth. You moan as your tongue lathers the digits in your spit, making Shinsou bite down on the tip of your ear and growl. Your body lurches as your fingers meet your clit, your entire core tightening at the added pleasure. “Fuck! Shinsou, ahhh— I— ughhh,” you can't stop the groan that slips out, your overstimulated g-spot sending euphoria rushing through you with every thrust.

“Ready to cum again, kitten?” He pesters, the tension amplifying in his stomach. Just the game had him all riled up, and now, after your intense orgasm and displaying yourself like this… well, he’s getting pretty close himself.

“Yes, please just… give it to me, Daddy,” you whine, your body bracing for the impact of another orgasm. With no control over your fingers on your clit, all you can do is accept the sparks zipping through your limbs.

Shinsou drops your hips to meet his as they buck upwards at a rapid pace, the breath in your lungs being stolen as you fall off the edge, your second orgasm slicing through you. The pressure alleviating from your core, your lips part and a long whine tumbles out. Clear fluid spurts onto the mirror and the floor as you tremble against his slick chest, cunt tightening and spasming violently.

Shinsou lets out a suspended groan, the image of your release splashing out of you combined with the feeling of you gripping his cock so forcefully coaxing out his orgasm. He fills your womb with warmth, his grip on your thighs weakening.

The room is filled with ragged breaths as you both remain in a state of bliss, Shinsou’s length massaging your raw pussy as he slowly cradles your body against his. Your eyes are closed, your cunt throbbing and tingling with the aftershocks of your climax.

Shinsou presses feathery kisses onto the mauled skin on your neck. There’s a ridiculously dark and large hickey forming there, but you can’t bring yourself to give a damn as he licks the bruising skin with care.

He intently watches a thick stream of white trickle out of your pink cunt and down his balls. Your body droops against his, exhaustion ebbing into your form. Shinsou pulls out of you and you whine as his heated cock leaves your trove, the stretch immediately being missed.

“How do you feel, kitten? You alright?” He asks, adjusting you in his arms as he stands, holding your body with discretion. He carries you over to the bed, laying you on the now-cold sheets.

Your overstimulated core throbs in protest as you shift, pushing the hair off your sweaty forehead. “I’m good, I'm just so tired… and I can’t believe I just—” you cut off, glancing at him with a slightly embarrassed look in your eyes.

Shinsou smirks, but the pride beams through his faux-suave expression. “Squirted? You sure did, kitten. And it was hot as hell.” He crawls onto the mattress next to you, his long arms encircling your waist.

Snuggled into his warm chest, you sigh in content, your body buzzing numbly from the lingering head-rush of your peak. He always knows what to say.

“You did so well, baby, I’m so proud of you.” His words are soft and sweet now, warm and considerate. “You proved it to me, darling, you’re such a good girl.”

Your lips mould into a sated smile, which you press into the smooth skin of his muscular chest. Before you can slip away into a restful slumber, Shinsou’s fingers collect your chin, gently tugging it up so your eyes meet his.

“Good girls don’t touch themselves though, kitten. This time you were lucky I came over here needing you just as bad as you needed me.” He pulls you into a deep kiss, making your arms wrap around his neck and your fingers glide into his soft, amethyst tresses. He hums deeply, pulling back and stealing your gaze with a lazy yet ominous glower.

“But if I ever find you touching yourself again,” he pauses, lavender eyes twinkling with a refreshed carnality that makes you shiver, “Daddy’s gonna figure out just how many orgasms it takes to make you soak these sheets all the way through.”

─── ・°* ﾟ✧:* • ｡ﾟ:*･☽･*: ｡ﾟ•*:✧ ﾟ*°・ ───

thank you so much for reading!! I hope it was alright, as I said, I’m not well versed in the Shinsou realm heheh

make sure to let me know if you enjoyed ♥︎

➥ masterlist

𝐂𝐨𝐩𝐲𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 © 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐩𝐢 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟎. 𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐝.

#honestly i have no clue how this came to be #one second i was looking at a picture #and then the next thing i knew i had 5k of smut typed HAHA #yikes #shinso smut #shinso fic #shinso hitoshi smut #shinso hitoshi fic #shinso x reader #shinsou x reader #shinsou smut #shinsou fic #bnha smut #mha smut #bnha fic #mha fic #my fics

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chelsfic · 4 years

Text

Leftovers - Part 8 - Nandor the Relentless x Reader Fanfic

Previous parts: Masterlist

Summary: The night of the vampire orgy arrives and brings with it a boat load of angst!

A/N: I decided to just run with it and let my angst flag fly. Bon appetit!

Warnings: Female reader, Angst, dumbassery, idiots in love, infidelity I guess

---

The cameraman steps up to the barred window of the cell and points his lens inside. You’re curled up with Guillermo on a hastily installed couch, leaning into one another for warmth in the cold, damp room. A mouse scurries across the floor and something drips from the ceiling over your heads.

“You don’t think they forgot about us, do you?” you ask, trepidation clear in your voice. You tug the sleeves of your sweatshirt down to cover your frozen hands and press yourself further into his body for warmth.

Guillermo glances at the camera with a wince as he lies, “No. I’m sure they didn’t forget us.”

---

Earlier in the evening:

“The last orgy was a bit of a disaster and I never got to use it…”

Nandor stands in the middle of his room, doing a twirl for the camera to show off his outfit. Chains and leather straps crisscross his bare chest, and his waist and legs are studded with protruding dildos of varying sizes.

“Life of the orgy!” he gushes.

There’s a beat of silence that follows and then a muted question from the documentary crew, “And will...[unintelligible]...be participating in the orgy?”

Nandor avoids answering, looking away from the camera and baring his fangs in a nervous smile.

---

Guillermo’s lying across your bed, absently scrolling on his phone while you dig through your closet, holding up and rejecting piece after piece. Your “style,” if you could call it that, consists almost entirely of work out clothes, derby merch and the odd sundress for special occasions. Not exactly ripe pickings for a vampire orgy ensemble. But you know you still have that pair of fishnets from when you first joined the league and you figure you can build a look around them.

“So, you’re not gonna wear the t-shirt?” Guillermo grins, rolling onto his side and showing off the highly fashionable “Do Not Eat” shirt.

“Nandor will protect me,” you reply automatically, your voice is muffled from the back of the closet. “I just moved in! How can it be such a disaster already?”

Guillermo gets up and comes over to lean on the door frame of the closet as he cautiously warns, “Uh...okay, but...Nandor isn’t--um--he’s not known for being very reliable in social situations…”

Guillermo’s mind flashes back to the time at Simon the Devious’s club, when Nandor would have gladly handed him over to a strange vampire just to avoid confrontation. Still, his loyalty tugs at him and he adds, “I mean, his heart is in the right place...most of the time. But he just gets so excited and he has this need to impress when he’s around other vampires.”

You back out of the closet, clutching the rogue fishnets victoriously in your hands and looking back at Guillermo quizzically, “I know he can be flakey, Guillermo. But...he loves me.”

You recall the words falling from his lips that night...my love...and an irresistible smile forms on your lips.

Guillermo stares at you, gobsmacked, for a moment before replying, “Alright, Smash. But...are you sure you even want to go? I mean--and don’t be offended--you lost your virginity like a minute ago and now you’re going to an orgy?”

Heat spreads across your face and you look pointedly away from your friend. You walk over to the bed and pick up the little card from your nightstand, smiling down at it and tracing your fingers over the glittery letters. After a minute you finally answer, “It’s not--I mean, I’m not going to...do anything with anyone else. I just have to be there because…”

Because you’re afraid your boyfriend is going to have insane vampire sex with strangers if you don’t keep an eye on him… Because you’re too chicken to actually talk with him about it… Because what if he thinks you’re silly and stupid and decides being with a human is just as boring as he always assumed?

Guillermo reads your thoughts on your face and he croons, “Oh, honey. Listen, I was here for the last orgy. And, even though it never really got going… Smash, it’s not something for the faint of heart.”

“I’m not faint of heart!” you insist, your voice pitched up in indignation.

“No!” Guillermo agrees, moving to sit beside you on the bed. “No, you’re not. You’re in love with an immortal blood-sucking fiend who has centuries of experience on you, though. And you’re very, very new to...all of this. I don’t want to see you get hurt. You should talk to him.”

You can tell from his tone that Guillermo isn’t optimistic about the likelihood of Nandor understanding your human worries and actually changing his ingrained behavior in response. But you know he’s right, you should still talk to him.

---

You find Nandor in his room, making a few last minute adjustments to his attire. As soon as you set eyes on him you stop in your tracks, making an involuntary choking sound as you take in the ridiculous number of enormous dildos strapped to his body.

Nandor looks up as you enter and he puffs out his chest, stalking toward you with his arms held up and his mouth open in a menacing hiss.

“What do you think, my mortal? Do you want to run in fear...or do you want to come?”

You can’t think of a single thing to say to that. All that’s running through your head as you stare, transfixed, at Nandor’s ridiculous costume, is that he clearly hasn’t planned this with his freshly deflowered lover in mind.

You finally clear your throat nervously and mutter, “That’s what you’re planning to wear?”

You look down at your PJ pants and hoodie, feeling suddenly, painfully ordinary. How could you have ever thought you were a match for someone as intense, seductive and dangerous as Nandor the Relentless?

Nandor misses your reaction and enthuses, “Isn’t it great? If I position myself just right--” he drops into a squat-- “I can accommodate two astride each knee and hip while still having room at my pelvis…”

He starts thrusting into the air lewdly and you hold out your hands to stop him.

“Nandor,” you’re at a loss for words, feeling a hollow ache in your chest already anticipating the hurt to come. “I thought now that we’re...an item...you might want it to just be you and me, tonight.” And forever.

Nandor stops mid-thrust with a quizzical expression, “At an orgy?”

“Well…” how to explain your seemingly very human sensibilities on monogamy. “You said you love me, right?”

Nandor rises and comes toward you, looming over your smaller frame and taking your shoulders in his large hands as he answers, “Yes, my sweet mortal. But what does that have to do with the vampire orgy? Didn’t Nadja explain to you--?”

“Yes, yes!” you interrupt, frustrated. “But I don’t want you to...have sex with anyone else! Not while we’re…”

The cameraman bumps into a heavy lamp by the door, momentarily drawing Nandor’s attention. Suddenly feeling the weight of expectation on his shoulders, Nandor bristles and straightens his shoulders as he answers your concern.

“But you are my human,” he says, slowly as if he’s explaining to a child. “I am not your vampire.”

You close your eyes for a second, holding a hand to your chest as if you can somehow stop the damage happening inside. You really didn’t think he could hurt you so much with just a few words.

Desperately you try one last approach, “But...if you’re going to be busy having crazy, acrobatic sex with all these strange vampires...how are you going to protect me? Or do you think Nadja’s t-shirt is really going to stop someone who’s determined?”

“Ahhh!” Nandor cries with a relieved smile. “That’s your worry! Well, fear not, my human. I have worked out the perfect arrangement to keep both you and Guillermo safe for the evening.”

---

Nandor, wearing a heavy, fur-lined robe over his sex gear, leads you and Guillermo down the narrow staircase into the basement. You haven’t been down here since your first night in the house, when Nandor locked you up in the cell to save for later. Though it’s late April, there’s snow on the ground outside and a chill in the air. As you descend the steps the temperature drops even more. But you hardly notice in your effort to keep yourself from falling apart after your disastrous discussion with Nandor. Your eyes are trained on the broad expanse of his back, as if you can somehow will him to turn around and really see how much you’re hurting. Guillermo takes your hand in his and gives it a squeeze.

“Here we are!” Nandor announces, stopping in front of the human cell with a grandiose sweep of his arm. “I’ve made it nice and cozy for you. You’ll be locked up safe and sound, so no wandering vampires can get you. And I’ll come down and let you out before dawn.”

You glance skeptically inside and see that one of the couches from the library has been moved down here for your comfort. Other than that it’s still the same damp, dark, depressing cell you remember.

“Nandor, this is...extreme,” you complain, looking up to meet his eyes for the first time since you left his room after he said those harsh words. You see his gaze flicker as he takes in your red-rimmed, tear-misted eyes, but his expression is inscrutable.

“I agree, master. We could just stay upstairs in Smash’s room…”

“Silence, Guillermo!” he hisses, not taking his eyes off of you. He reaches up to cup your face in his hands and his expression softens. “This is the safest place for you to be. Only I have the key to the cell. You will be...protected.”

“I don’t care about being protected!” you cry. “I just want--”

“Enough! My word is final on this!” Nandor cuts you off and his tone is closer to the one he uses for Guillermo. You shrink away from his touch and he looks crestfallen for a second, but then he straightens his spine adopting the warrior’s confidence that he wears like a robe to cover what’s underneath. “Into the cell, now. Both of you.”

The door closes with a creak of its hinges and the heavy thunk of the lock sliding into place.

Nandor peaks through the barred window and waves at the two of you, “Alright, have a good night! Wish me luck at the orgy!”

His footsteps echo through the basement as he walks away, trailing the camera crew behind him. Once they leave, the cell is only dimly illuminated by the guttering flame of a single candle stick mounted on the wall outside. You meet Guillemo’s eyes silently for a long moment and then plunk down onto the couch and cry.

---

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Nandor curses frantically as he clambers down the basement steps, two at a time.

It’s the night after the orgy. He’d gone to bed at dawn feeling drained--literally and figuratively--and covered in the slow-to-heal puncture wounds characteristic of vampire fangs. The orgy was a resounding success. Though, truth be told, Nandor spent much of the night going through the motions as his mind fixated on the look of hurt betrayal on his human’s face before the party. He couldn’t understand why you’d begrudge him a night of dark fornication, a celebration of his vampiric identity. Nor why you’d resent his efforts to keep you safe from the violent debauchery. All he knew for sure was that with each new sexual encounter of the evening he found himself missing you and wishing more and more that you were by his side.

That is, until he and Laszlo partook of some opium infused blood towards the end of the festivities. Nandor stumbled to bed with a pleasant buzzing in his head that completely drowned out the small voice warning him that there was something important he’d forgotten.

“She’s going to be pissed!” he hisses into the camera while rushing down the dark corridor toward the cell. As he approaches the door he says, louder, “Good evening! Wake up time! Everyone have a nice sleep?”

He turns the key in the lock and swings open the door, ducking inside with a grimace of trepidation. He finds you curled up with Guillermo on the couch. The two of you are shivering against the cold that feels like it’s settled permanently into your bones. You’ve spent an entire night and a day locked in a frigid cell without a blanket, food, or any amenities whatsoever.

Nandor fiddles his fingers nervously and asks, “Guillermo...mortal...are you alright?”

It’s Guillermo who finally answers, “You forgot about us.”

“No, no...not exactly,” Nandor denies. “But you know how it is with guests over. Things get very hectic--”

“You forgot,” Guillermo repeats. “About. Us.”

Nandor’s shrugs helplessly, “A...bit. I forgot a bit.”

You can feel the intensity of his eyes on you, but you refuse to look up as you stand on shaky legs and make your way around him and out of the basement.

Nandor stands there silently for a moment before turning to the camera and mouthing, “Fuck.”

---

Tags:

@festering-queen @kandomeresbitch @strangestdiary @glitterportrait @scuzmunkie @redwoodshadows

#nandor #nandor the relentless #nandor x reader #nandor the relentless x reader #nandor the relentless imagine #nandor the relentless fanfic #wwdits #wwdits fanfic #what we do in the shadows #what we do in the shadows fanfic

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tiaragqueen · 4 years

Text

What I Want To Hear

✂ Pairing: Yandere! Villain! Shinsou Hitoshi x Reader

✂ Word Count: 1,1k+

✂ Trigger Warnings: Manipulation, possessiveness, murder, death

[Edited]

***

If you like my writing, please support me on ko-fi!

“Baby, you understand me now if sometimes you see that I'm mad. Don't you know no one alive can always be an angel? When everything goes wrong, you see some bad.” - Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood [Nina Simone]

You knew there was something wrong with you when you felt nothing over your friend’s death. No, perhaps nothing was too strong of a word. You definitely felt sad, but it was too far down, too familiar, and too frequent until you could only gaze emptily at her photo on the TV. The reporter relayed the news of her suicide – at least, that was what the police concluded based on how she ‘willingly’ jumped over the bridge and fell to the gushing river – with professional coldness.

But you knew better than to trust their judgment because it wasn’t true at all. She was brainwashed to plunge into her demise, and who else in this country that possessed brainwashing quirk if not the infamous Shinsou Hitoshi?

Funny how the police didn’t even think about suspecting him or even got suspicious with his sudden absence. Then again, it was proof of how sly he could be when he wasn’t trying to attract attention.

And it was funny, in a somewhat ironic way, that he was doing this just to grab your attention.

Your phone buzzed beside you, the number that had been haunting you like the monster under your bed lit up the display. What a coincidence; just as you were pinning all the recent ‘suicides’ to him, the said man decided to call you. You contemplated the possibility of him being a secret psychic but decided that it was too farfetched and too frightening. Merely imagining the crimes he would’ve committed beyond people's comprehension sent a chill down your spine, one that you hadn’t felt ever since you rejected him and cut off any contact.

One hand hovering over the quivering device, you pondered if it was worth accepting the call. You could almost hear his deep voice, mocking the futility of your predicament and luring you into his grasp. And honestly, after everything you’d watched these past few days, you thought you deserved at least a little bit of a rest.

But, of course, Shinsou was relentless. He would stop at nothing to get whatever he wanted, even if it meant causing a few casualties along the way. The end always justified the means, after all.

“Are you watching the news right now?” Your correct assumption and his fake questioning tone brought you no relief whatsoever, only accelerating your thumping heart. You didn’t respond, but he must’ve known that you were indeed watching because he soon continued. “What do you think?”

“… I think you’re sick.” you finally replied after seconds of recollection and controlling your voice. You didn’t want to give him another display of weakness, not after you called him on one restless midnight and berated him for his blatant disregard of human lives.

“That again?” Shinsou sneered, and you wondered how good it’d feel to strangle him. Your hands twitched, itching to wrap them around his slender neck. Though, knowing him, he probably thought you were being kinky instead. You shuddered when the image of his sultry smirk flashed on your mind. “Oh, dear. You should be more creative with your insults if you want me to stop.”

“But you’re not going to stop, are you?” You didn’t know why you were him asking that. It was rhetorical, anyway, and the answer was simply too obvious. “Not until I have nobody else with me.”

“There!” he suddenly exclaimed as if he’d been waiting for you to say that. “I was beginning to think that maybe you were really dense, after all, especially after your bold action at that time.” He chuckled, the mockery as clear as the sight of your friend’s body being carried on a stretcher.

You gritted your teeth, aware of what he was referring to. “You’re not my parents! You have no right to tell me what to do!” you screamed to the line, ignoring the logical part of your brain that begged you to not fall victim into his provocation.

And you wished you would’ve listened before you let anger clouded your judgment.

“Ah, you’re right.” Shinsou sighed, and you sensed danger crashed on to your shoulders like a meteor. “How could I forget about them? I’m such a forgetful person…” Another tired sigh drifted into your keen ears as though weary of his own self. “Thanks for reminding me, [Name]. I’ll be sure to visit them later.”

Your throat felt constricted, and it took all of your strength to utter a single word; a word that halted the time and bestowed upon you a fragile hope. “Wait.”

Shinsou was quiet, but you knew he was listening. He was always listening, whether you wanted it or not. That was what initially attracted you to him; how he hung on to every word you spouted despite his apathetic face. When other people would’ve been bored and moved on to a more interesting subject, he urged you to continue instead. The amount of attention you got from him – how intense his lidded eyes against your sparkling ones – was flattering, and you hoped he was the one for you.

However, being a naïve young woman you were, you’d made a mistake of believing every single lie that left his enticing lips. You’d made a mistake of believing that he could be your one and only boyfriend, probably even soulmate because everything looked so easy in movies. How quickly the girl got the boy after a single conversation. How love seemed to fix and justify everything even the most questionable acts. How the misunderstood boy immediately became attached to the girl because she showed him kindness that he never got to experience in his life, or hadn’t received in such a long time.

It looked so easy, you forgot that reality was much different than movies. It was more real, more painful, and more severe.

“Yes…? Do you want to say something, [Name]?” he inquired once a moment had passed since you spoke. Opening your mouth, you whispered.

“… I’m sorry.”

The line went mute, and for a split second, you feared he might’ve hung up. However, a pungent – and slightly relieved, if you discerned deeper – chuckle diminished any doubt and anxiety that bubbled on your chest.

“Now that’s what I want to hear.”

Definite silence greeted you this time, and you slowly lowered your phone. Looking at the clock that ticked off the last hour of your finite freedom, the tears you’d been holding in fear of vulnerability finally trickled down your cheeks.

You kept weeping and weeping until the tears had long run out and you were left curling pathetically on the floor. Even when the front door opened and you perceived a hand stroking your back in a mock attempt of consolation, you refused to look up.

Regardless, it didn’t hinder him from greeting you as though you’d been anticipating his arrival.

“Hello, [Name].”

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frommindtopen · 3 years

Text

Oh boy, now I’ve done it LOL I’m taking a flash nonfiction class and today’s assignment is to take a recent essay and read it aloud then shake it out to see how you can rewrite it. Hah, my only recent nonfiction has been gushing about Patrick McGoohan or talking about God and since this class doesn’t allow any religion or politics, guess what mine is gonna have to be! LOL

That’s okay. I’ll probably take all my blather about the teacup and his hands and turn it into something suitable. After all, I AM a writer, right? Ha ha. I’m not exactly making money hand over fist that way 😜

So, let’s get on to something more interesting. Let’s talk eyes today! Even in black & white those eyes are compelling, and when I use the word “compelling” here, I don’t use it lightly. He could literally compel somebody to do something with that gaze. One could crumple under the blue of his eyes in color.

The eyes and the brow, of course, are a package deal and, coupled with the lids tell a whole story. With a certain smile and a slight plumping of the lids, that intense shine in his eyes makes him appear incredibly kind and understanding, as if his entire focus is on “you” and what you’re saying is of utmost importance to him. If the smile is just a bit crooked, however, and the brows slightly raised, perhaps it’s actually charming disinterest or flirtatious humor. Most of that is John Drake. And do I even need to discuss No.6 here, that stormy brow causes thunder to crack at just the sight.

Then, of course, there are the very wide, very blue (oh-so so blue) eyes of Andrew Miller (Nor the Moon by Night) Yowsa. Filled with innocence and totally captivating. One would never guess the misery the real PMG was in when he filmed that movie.

Or the come-on heavy-lidded eyes of Simon Breck (High Tide at Noon) with all his swagger, taking in what he wanted to see from toe to head (you also get a glimpse of that in an episode of Danger Man as Drake squats by a car and this woman walks up to ask the mechanic something- can’t remember the name of the episode darn it).

And McGoohan is the epitome of haughty eyes in Silver Streak giving a glance at Richard Pryor as if something smells bad in the room. No words needed. Or the steel cold eyes in Omen of Evil going crazy then blank at the end.

There are a million pictures online - go look for yourself, but cover everything but the eyes and you’ll see what I mean. Watch him on YouTube and just watch the eyes! It’s fantastic. And with Brand… oh, Brand. He’slike a whole person unto himself. Brand’s eyes were really different… um… I mean McGoohan’s eyes were really different, don’t I? When he played Brand. No doubt about it, the man was incredible.

#john drake #the prisoner #prisoner #danger man #no. 6 #number 6 #patrick mcgoohan

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joemuggs · 4 years

Text

James Blake: Before Before

James Blake has a new EP out, called ‘Before’. It’s really good. I like him, he’s authentic. I’ve spoken to him on and off since he very first released music, and it’s been interesting to see his transformation from north London bohemian to LA superstar bohemian. Below is the text of the first time I interviewed him - I think the first feature length interview he did - from Mixmag in 2010.

youtube

James Blake is good at confounding expectations. At a recent gig at Shoreditch's warehouse-like XOYO, Mixmag saw the 22-year-old play a super-heavyweight mutant dubstep set, then immediately afterwards start larking about with Beyonce and Ms Dynamite tunes, much to the delight of the messy ravers – and yet the tune that's getting him known outside clubland is the deeply odd Feist cover 'Limit to your Love' with its haunted croon and folky repetitions. So, when we catch up with him in a Brixton pub a few days after the gig, we make a point of asking him what his ultimate musical ambition is – thinking it might reveal a common thread that draws these disparate sides together. "I'd like to play a solo piano show at Carnegie Hall," he says without hesitation, referring to one of the most renowned classical venues in the world, which has also played host to legendary shows by the likes of the Beatles and Pink Floyd; "maybe not even singing, just the piano." We think he means it.

That's how he is, though: pretty much every tune he's put out so far has come as a curveball. Going from the soulful mutant dubstep of 'CMYK' – which has ruled underground clubs all year – to the four tracks of gorgeous, weightless piano-laced electronica on his 'Klavierwerke' EP alone was a more radical shift than most artists his age would even think of making. But to then not only make the leap to the intense weirdness of 'Limit to your Love', but to make it work to the point where it is all over radio and sitting alongside 'CMYK' in everyone's “best of 2010” lists demonstrates a boldness that it making heads spin throughout the industry, and generating the sort of anticipation for his major label album that doesn't come around often. In a climate of insane gener meltdowns and turbulence stirred up by dubstep's big push into the mainstream, he truly is the maverick's maverick.

So, we ask him, what is with all of these stylistic shifts? “I get bored!” he laughs. “When I get a sound, like the 'Klavierwerke' tracks, I will just do it and do it until I literally can't do it any more, so then I just have to move on and do something different.” There's an intense air about James, not in the nerdy or over-serious way you sometimes get with electronica musos – quite the opposite, in fact: he's fun and engaging company, and our interview quite frequently gets derailed into just chatting away merrily about tunes, nights out and mutual acquaintances – but nonetheless with a fierce intelligence on display and a maturity way beyond his years. He'll fix you in the eye when he speaks, but often, especially when talking about music that he loves, his gaze will divert up and to the side, darting back and forth as if browsing some inner database to locate exactly the right reference, and he speaks with the clarity and lucidity of someone who has spent a serious amount of time thinking about their plans and beliefs.

As you might expect given the strangeness and diversity of his music, James's upbringing as an only child in the London suburb of Enfield, wasn't entirely conventional. His artist mother and singer/guitarist dad never listened to pop radio but played vintage blues and soul constantly – then as soon as James took up playing the piano his musical interest focused 100% on that. “I listened to Art Tatum and Errol Garner, and I listened to Bach and Satie and Chopin,” he explains; “it wasn't about being into a style, it wasn't a jazz thing or a classical thing, it was just piano, just technique.” And that was that – until finally he discovered dubstep as a teenager, and instantly realised that this could be, as he puts it, “a vehicle” for his musical ideas. “It was,” he says, “just massive for me.”

Listening to the likes of DMZ's Mala made him realise that electronic music had possibilities like the blues he grew up with: “it has that thing where if the ideas and the personality of the artist are strong enough, they can do whatever the fuck they like – Mala could take one simple idea and stretch it out for ages, and it would just work because it's him, and because it has that dread and intensity, and you go with it because you trust him.” It also gave him a way to be musically creative without simply relying on his previous schooling. “When I hear a producer is 'classically trained',” he scowls, “I'm suspicious, to me it's usually a euphemism for 'doesn't have any ideas'. Just because you can read the dots on the score and play complex pieces doesn't mean you have any ability to come up with something new.”

Music production took over his life completely from then on. “I went through a lot of shit, but once I got to 18, 19,” he says, “I just decided that I didn't really give a shit about anyone else. Not friends, not girls – I mean, girls are great...” – he flashes a grin – “...but I didn't want to be distracted. And I didn't want to socialise for the sake of it, go to some shit club just because my mates were, I knew that music was my focus and that was that. I knew from my parents that if you're serious about your creativity you have to be alone a lot.” He did, however, very quickly make connections with fellow one-offs Mount Kimbie and Jack Dunning aka Untold. The latter, after hearing a DJ play one of his demos on Rinse FM got in touch and became something of a mentor, releasing James's first 12” on his own Hemlock label. Mount Kimbie also got in touch after James sent them “a really gushing email about their music” and ended up performing live with him on vocals.

From thereon in, things snowballed fast, with dancefloor-oriented releases on Ramdanman and friends' Hessle Audio and the legendary Belgian techno label R&S – but he was also honing a freakier sound: the sparse, folky vocal tracks that would make up his new album. Only three other people got to hear these initially– Untold, this Mixmag correspondent, and a friend of James's who works for major label A&M records and persuaded them to take a punt. These all feature James extraordinary and emotionally intense singing voice, and are, he says , all about restraint. “I get fed up when people keep describing me as a 'soul' singer, because I'm not,” he insists – “I don't let rip, I just sing the notes as I write them. It's like the production: I don't want to just bang away, I use silence and quiet for effect, and then when it does build up to something tougher it hits much harder in contrast.” And he makes a surprisingly violent punching motion.

The result is something that is both completely removed from trends, and perfectly suited to the current climate of genre meltdown. It's possible to hear everything from ancient echoes of folk and blues to the influence of the crispest modern hip hop, particularly the anything-goes aesthetic of Outkast, who James says are “the Beatles of today, maybe not in sales, but definitely in importance and technical innovation.” It also completely tramples over the idea of dubstep as macho, with a real sexual ambiguity to both James's voice and playing. This is very deliberate: one of his greatest desires is “to learn to play piano in a female way – there's a particular way that Joni Mitchell plays, and also Nina Simone, that is technically incredible but isn't flash, that supports the voice without coming too much into the foreground, yet is incredibly beautiful in its own right.”

There's no disconnect from the dancefloor in any of this, though. He still talks with passion about dancing to his friend Joy Orbison's DJ sets in small, dark clubs - “at one point I completely lost track of where I was, and felt plugged into something bigger,” he says, “like the music was joined into a wider history” - and at XOYO Mixmag witnessed at first hand how even his oddest, most strung-out tracks have a sense of dance dynamics that grabs people on a very basic level. Surveying XOYO's punters, we met everyone from electronica dorks who proclaimed him “the deepest British producer since the Aphex Twin” through indie hipsters waxing lyrical about his voice, to a couple of girls in borderline hysterics about how fit he is (James is indeed striking looking, not to mention well over six foot tall). With this breadth of support, the sky would seem to be the limit for James right now; but whether in five years he's perfoming solo piano or singing with Andre 3000, evidence suggests the results will be beyond anyone's abilities to predict.

#james blake #outkast #dubstep #post dubstep #dmz #blues #joni mitchell

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animebw · 4 years

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Binge-Reading: Fate/Stay Night VN, Fate Route Day 3

In which the true protagonist enters the fray, and I gush about one of anime’s most enduring heroes.

Stopping Point: Dawn of the Second Day

I Need a Shirou

Quick, who comes to mind when you think about anime heroes? Not just protagonists, but the kind of paragon that inspires true faith in humanity’s capacity for good? I’m sure a lot of different names come to mind for you: Simon and Kamina, Izuku Midoriya, Jonathan Joestar- but for me, one of the biggest representations of the word “hero” will always be Shirou Emiya. In a franchise that gives mythic weight to the humanity of the characters at its core, Shirou’s self-sacrificing, determined nature, often desperate to ensure he made the world a better place in his passing, felt like the epitome of the heroic spirit made manifest. In fact, I’m just now realizing that Shirou shares a lot of eerie similarities with another character who’s come to define heroism in anime for me: Hibiki Tachibana from Symphogear. Seriously, think about it for a second. They both survived horrible catastrophes that left countless dead, and they deal with the survivor’s guilt by devoting their lives to helping people as penance for everyone they were unable to save back then. Not to mention how both of their arcs specifically deal with the limitations of that heroic selflessness, and whether or not they’re truly capable of doing the right thing. Apparently, I have a very particular picture in my head of what it means to be a hero.

And slipping back into Shirou’s perspective for the first time in forever was a good reminder of why: I really like this kid. He’s constantly thinking about everyone else’s needs, barely sparing a moment’s thought for himself. He adjusts his morning schedule around Sakura to help her feel more welcome, he’s practically overbooked with helpful side projects, and he helps Sakura learn to cook so well she’s even started to surpass him (and hey, not too shabby that the guy’s got some decent domestic skills alongside the girl). But he’s not an outright doormat either; he’s got plenty of sass and sarcasm for when people are obviously busting his balls. He brushses off Shinji’s antagonism without a second thought (Shinji Shut the Fuck Up Challenge 2020), and he verbally spars with Fuji-nee at every opportunity (”Kids learn from crooked adults.”) He’s far from a dope or a simpleton; he’s a teenage boy with a relatively full picture of the world, snarky and unsure of himself and burdened with the responsibilities of growing up (not to mention the, erm, occasional hormones). But he chooses to help people regardless, because he can’t think of anything else he’d rather do. It’s altruism based not on ignorance, but genuine comprehension of its value. And the fact that he’s able to make that choice, even in the face of everything he struggles with, is a testament to the heroic spirit within him.

The Price of Trying

That being said, man is there a lot he struggles with. What’s always made Shirou so compelling to me is that despite his intense desire to help, he’s stuck in a situation where he has so little power to do so and has to fight like hell to circumvent his own relative powerlessness. He’s about to step into a magical conflict despite not being a magus himself; the only way he’s able to summon a scrap of magical power is basically by constructing an entire nervous system from scratch inside himself every time he wants to bend the laws of reality. This being a universe where magical power is hereditary, he’s essentially had to use his adopted father’s teachings to hack his way into the tiniest sliver of what true magi can access for free. And it is hard as shit to pull off. This is another area where the VN’s language adds a lot; while the magic in the show is mostly played for action, Nasu’s writing is obsessed with the visceral consequences of humans dabbling with such an unnatural power. His magic is agonizing to use, like a living eldritch abomination flaying away at these characters from the inside (you really can tell he’s had experience in horror). It’s the arcane equivalent of forcing your body to surpass its limits; it’s gristly and painful, and if you do it too much, it could probably mess you up for good. And if you don’t have easy access to it like Shirou, then the stress and risk is multiplied a thousandfold.

But it’s not just the physical limitations he’s dealing with; the emotional minefield Shirou must walk is just as impossible a hurdle to overcome. There’s a moment in his flashback to the night of the great fire where he talks about experiencing the horror in very stark, flat terms: “A child understands things quickly in those kinds of situations.” It’s a very telling detail by omission: Shirou’s got some seriously repressed trauma lingering from that night, trauma he’s incapable of forcing himself to really confront because it hurts so much. His own damn mind is his biggest enemy; so much of his need to help people comes from a subtle, but noticeable sense of self-punishment. If only he helps enough people, if only he saves enough lives, if only he accomplishes enough good, then maybe he’ll no longer blame himself for being the lone survivor of such an awful disaster. And that’s all before Kiritsugu taught him that to become a magus, one must first accept the possibility of death. This poor kid’s got a nihilistic sword of Damacles hanging over his head that threatens to crush his self-sacrificing spirit with the weight of how difficult he’s made the challenge for himself. And the tension of waiting to see if that sword drops makes for such a compelling hero’s journey. Shirou compels me as a hero not just because how determined he is to do good, but just how much he has to fight against his worst instincts to do it. And I’m already looking forward to see just how dark the path ahead gets.

Odds and Ends

-”My father said he’s like a yakuza boss, but that’s just prejuice. He actually is a yakuza boss. ...well, that’s a problem in and of itself.” aksjdhakhsd dork

-You do not switch up oyster sauce and soy sauce Fuji-nee you MONSTER

-”You pitying me makes me happy.” ...forbidden Issei route when

-”Emiya, I’m always so pleased when you’re reliable!” FORBIDDEN ISSEI ROUTE WHEN

-”GOOD MORNING EVERY- *face-plants*” god dammit I forgot how great Fujimura was

-”I’m afraid she’ll bite me.” “She’s not a Mimic, she wouldn’t go that far.” askjdhasd oh my GOD

-”Our hearts all become one.” Okay, it is a criminal shame this part was cut from the anime, holy shit.

-I assume these choices at the beginning don’t have much impact on the story at all, right? Whether I help the student council out or go to work?

-oooOOOOOOSHIT HI ILYA

-Okay, Sakura shrinking when Shirou offers to walk her home is setting off my alarm bells. Shirou, go find Shinji and turn him into sashimi for me, will you?

-Aw man, I missed “Trace On”.

-”You die when you die, and kill when you must.” Yes, but do you die if you’re killed?

And thus, we press on. See you next time!

#anime #the anime binge-watcher #tabw #fate vn #Fate/stay night #shirou emiya #rin tohsaka #saber #sakura matou

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hlupdate · 5 years

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Harry Styles isn’t exactly dressed down for lunch. He’s got a white floppy hat that Diana Ross might have won from Elton in a poker game at Cher’s mansion circa 1974, plus Gucci shades, a cashmere sweater, and blue denim bell-bottoms. His nail polish is pink and mint green. He’s also carrying his purse — no other word for it — a yellow patent-canvas bag with the logo “Chateau Marmont.” The tough old ladies who work at this Beverly Hills deli know him well. Gloria and Raisa dote on him, calling him “my love” and bringing him his usual tuna salad and iced coffee. He turns heads, to put it mildly, but nobody comes near because the waitresses hover around the booth protectively.

He was just a small-town English lad of 16 when he became his generation’s pop idol with One Direction. When the group went on hiatus, he struck out on his own with his brash 2017 solo debut, whose lead single was the magnificently over-the-top six-minute piano ballad “Sign of the Times.” Even people who missed out on One Direction were shocked to learn the truth: This pinup boy was a rock star at heart.

A quick highlight reel of Harry’s 2019 so far: He hosted the Met Gala with Lady Gaga, Serena Williams, Alessandro Michele, and Anna Wintour serving an eyebrow-raising black lace red-carpet look. He is the official face of a designer genderless fragrance, Gucci’s Mémoire d’une Odeur. When James Corden had an all-star dodgeball match on The Late Late Show, Harry got spiked by a hard serve from Michelle Obama, making him perhaps the first Englishman ever hit in the nads on TV by a First Lady.

Closer to his heart, he brought down the house at this year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony with his tribute to his friend and idol Stevie Nicks. “She’s always there for you,” Harry said in his speech. “She knows what you need: advice, a little wisdom, a blouse, a shawl.” He added, “She’s responsible for more running mascara — including my own — than all the bad dates in history.” (Backstage, Nicks accidentally referred to Harry’s former band as “’NSync.” Hey, a goddess can get away with that sort of thing.)

Harry has been the world’s It boy for nearly a decade now. The weirdest thing about him? He loves being this guy. In a style of fast-lane celebrity that takes a ruthless toll on the artist’s personality, creativity, sanity, Harry is almost freakishly at ease. He has managed to grow up in public with all his boyish enthusiasm intact, not to mention his manners. He’s dated a string of high-profile women — but he never gets caught uttering any of their names in public, much less shading any of them. Instead of going the usual superstar-pop route — en vogue producers, celebrity duets, glitzy club beats — he’s gone his own way, and gotten more popular than ever. He’s putting the finishing touches on his new album, full of the toughest, most soulful songs he’s written yet. As he explains, “It’s all about having sex and feeling sad.”

The Harry Charm is a force of nature, and it can be almost frightening to witness in action. The most startling example might be a backstage photo from February taken with one of his heroes, Van Morrison. You have never seen a Van picture like this one. He’s been posing for photos for 50 years, and he’s been refusing to crack a smile in nearly all of them. Until he met Harry — for some reason, Van beams like a giddy schoolgirl. What did Harry do to him? “I was tickling him behind his back,” Harry confides. “Somebody sent me that photo — I think his tour manager took it. When I saw it, I felt like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction opening the case with the gold light shining. I was like, ‘Fuck, maybe I shouldn’t show this to anyone.’”

In interviews, Harry has always tended to coast on that charm, simply because he can. In his teens, he was in public every minute and became adept at guarding every scrap of his privacy. But these days, he’s finding out he has things he wants to say. He’s more confident about thinking out loud and seeing what happens. “Looser” is how he puts it. “More open. I’m discovering how much better it makes me feel to be open with friends. Feeling that vulnerability, rather than holding everything in.”

Like a lot of people his age, he’s asking questions about culture, gender, identity, new ideas about masculinity and sexuality. “I feel pretty lucky to have a group of friends who are guys who would talk about their emotions and be really open,” he says. “My friend’s dad said to me, ‘You guys are so much better at it than we are. I never had friends I could really talk to. It’s good that you guys have each other because you talk about real shit. We just didn’t.’”

It’s changed how he approaches his songs. “For me, it doesn’t mean I’ll sit down and be like, ‘This is what I have for dinner, and this is where I eat every day, and this is what I do before I go to bed,’” he says. “But I will tell you that I can be really pathetic when I’m jealous. Feeling happier than I’ve ever been, sadder than I’ve ever been, feeling sorry for myself, being mad at myself, being petty and pitiful — it feels really different to share that.”

At times, Harry sounds like an ordinary 25-year-old figuring his shit out, which, of course, he is. (Harry and I got to know each other last year, when he got in touch after reading one of my books, though I’d already been writing about his music for years.) It’s strange to hear him talk about shedding his anxieties and doubts, since he’s always come across as one of the planet’s most confident people. “While I was in the band,” he says, “I was constantly scared I might sing a wrong note. I felt so much weight in terms of not getting things wrong. I remember when I signed my record deal and I asked my manager, ‘What happens if I get arrested? Does it mean the contract is null and void?’ Now, I feel like the fans have given me an environment to be myself and grow up and create this safe space to learn and make mistakes.”

We slip out the back and spend a Saturday afternoon cruising L.A. in his 1972 silver Jaguar E-type. The radio doesn’t work, so we just sing “Old Town Road.” He marvels, “‘Bull riding and boobies’ — that is potentially the greatest lyric in any song ever.” Harry used to be pop’s mystery boy, so diplomatic and tight-lipped. But as he opens up over time, telling his story, he reaches the point where he’s pitching possible headlines for this profile. His best: “Soup, Sex, and Sun Salutations.”

How did he get to this new place? As it turns out, the journey involves some heartbreak. Some guidance from David Bowie. Some Transcendental Meditation. And more than a handful of magic mushrooms. But mostly, it comes down to a curious kid who can’t decide whether to be the world’s most ardently adored pop star, or a freaky artiste. So he decides to be both.

Two things about English rock stars never change: They love Southern California, and they love cars. A few days after Harry proclaimed the genius of “Old Town Road,” we’re in a different ride — a Tesla — cruising the Pacific Coast Highway while Harry sings along to the radio. “Californiaaaaaa!” he yells from behind the wheel as we whip past Zuma Beach. “It sucks!” There’s a surprising number of couples along the beach who seem to be arguing. We speculate on which ones are breaking up and which are merely having the talk. “Ah, yes, the talk,” Harry says dreamily. “Ye olde chat.”

Harry is feeling the smooth Seventies yacht-rock grooves today, blasting Gerry Rafferty, Pablo Cruise, Hall and Oates. When I mention that Nina Simone once did a version of “Rich Girl,” he needs to hear it right away. He counters by blowing my mind with Donny Hathaway’s version of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy.”

Harry raves about a quintessential SoCal trip he just tried: a “cold sauna,” a process that involves getting locked in an ice chamber. His eyelashes froze. We stop for a smoothie (“It’s basically ice cream”) and his favorite pepper-intensive wheatgrass shot. It goes down like a dose of battery acid. “That’ll add years to your life,” he assures me.

We’re on our way to Shangri-La studios in Malibu, founded by the Band back in the 1970s, now owned by Rick Rubin. It’s where Harry made some of the upcoming album, and as we walk in, he grins at the memory. “Ah, yes,” he says. “Did a lot of mushrooms in here.”

Psychedelics have started to play a key role in his creative process. “We’d do mushrooms, lie down on the grass, and listen to Paul McCartney’s Ram in the sunshine,” he says. “We’d just turn the speakers into the yard.” The chocolate edibles were kept in the studio fridge, right next to the blender. “You’d hear the blender going, and think, ‘So we’re all having frozen margaritas at 10 a.m. this morning.’” He points to a corner: “This is where I was standing when we were doing mushrooms and I bit off the tip of my tongue. So I was trying to sing with all this blood gushing out of my mouth. So many fond memories, this place.”

It’s not mere rock-star debauchery — it’s emblematic of his new state of mind. You get the feeling this is why he enjoys studios so much. After so many years making One Direction albums while touring, always on the run, he finally gets to take his time and embrace the insanity of it all. “We were here for six weeks in Malibu, without going into the city,” he says. “People would bring their dogs and kids. We’d take a break to play cornhole tournaments. Family values!” But it’s also the place where he has proudly bled for his art. “Mushrooms and Blood. Now there’s an album title.”

Some of the engineers come over to catch up on gossip. Harry gestures out the window to the Pacific waves, where the occasional nude revelry might have happened, and where the occasional pair of pants got lost. “There was one night where we’d been partying a bit and ended up going down to the beach and I lost all my stuff, basically,” he says. “I lost all my clothes. I lost my wallet. Maybe a month later, somebody found my wallet and mailed it back, anonymously. I guess it just popped out of the sand. But what’s sad is, I lost my favorite mustard corduroy flares.” A moment of silence is held for the corduroy flares.

Recording in the studio today is Brockhampton, the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest boy band.” Harry says hi to all the Brockhampton guys, which takes a while since there seem to be a few dozen of them. “We’re together all the time,” one tells Harry out in the yard. “We see each other all day, every day.” He pauses. “You know how it is.”

Harry breaks into a dry grin. “Yes, I know how it is.”

One Direction made three of this century’s biggest and best pop albums in a rush — Midnight Memories, Four and Made in the A.M. Yet they cut those records on tour, ducking into the nearest studio when they had a day off. 1D were a unique mix of five different musical personalities: Harry, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, and Liam Payne. But the pace took its toll. Malik quit in the middle of a tour, immediately after a show in Hong Kong. The band announced its hiatus in August 2015.

It’s traditional for boy-band singers, as they go solo and grow up, to renounce their pop past. Everybody remembers George Michael setting his leather jacket on fire, or Sting quitting the Police to make jazz records. This isn’t really Harry Styles’ mentality. “I know it’s the thing that always happens. When somebody gets out of a band, they go, ‘That wasn’t me. I was held back.’ But it was me. And I don’t feel like I was held back at all. It was so much fun. If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t have done it. It’s not like I was tied to a radiator.”

Whenever Harry mentions One Direction — never by name, always “the band” or “the band I was in” — he uses the past tense. It is my unpleasant duty to ask: Does he see 1D as over? “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think I’d ever say I’d never do it again, because I don’t feel that way. If there’s a time when we all really want to do it, that’s the only time for us to do it, because I don’t think it should be about anything else other than the fact that we’re all like, ‘Hey, this was really fun. We should do this again.’ But until that time, I feel like I’m really enjoying making music and experimenting. I enjoy making music this way too much to see myself doing a full switch, to go back and do that again. Because I also think if we went back to doing things the same way, it wouldn’t be the same, anyway.”

When the band stopped, did he take those friendships with him? “Yeah, I think so,” he says. “Definitely. Because above all else, we’re the people who went through that. We’re always going to have that, even if we’re not the closest. And the fact is, just because you’re in a band with someone doesn’t mean you have to be best friends. That’s not always how it works. Just because Fleetwood Mac fight, that doesn’t mean they’re not amazing. I think even in the disagreements, there’s always a mutual respect for each other — we did this really cool thing together, and we’ll always have that. It’s too important to me to ever be like, ‘Oh, that’s done.’ But if it happens, it will happen for the right reasons.”

If the intensity of the Harry fandom ever seems mysterious to you, there’s a live clip you might want to investigate, from the summer of 2018. Just search the phrase “Tina, she’s gay.” In San Jose, on one of the final nights of his tour, Harry spots a fan with a homemade sign: “I’m Gonna Come Out to My Parents Because of You!” He asks the fan her name (she says it’s Grace) and her mother’s name (Tina). He asks the audience for silence because he has an important announcement to make: “Tina! She’s gaaaaay!” Then he has the entire crowd say it together. Thousands of strangers start yelling “Tina, she’s gay,” and every one of them clearly means it — it’s a heavy moment, definitely not a sound you forget after you hear it. Then Harry sings “What Makes You Beautiful.” (Of course, the way things work now, the clip went viral within minutes. So did Grace’s photo of Tina giving a loving thumbs-up to her now-out teenage daughter. Grace and Tina attended Harry’s next show together.)

Harry likes to cultivate an aura of sexual ambiguity, as overt as the pink polish on his nails. He’s dated women throughout his life as a public figure, yet he has consistently refused to put any kind of label on his sexuality. On his first solo tour, he frequently waved the pride, bi, and trans flags, along with the Black Lives Matter flag. In Philly, he waved a rainbow flag he borrowed from a fan up front: “Make America Gay Again.” One of the live fan favorites: “Medicine,” a guitar jam that sounds a bit like the Grateful Dead circa Europe ’72, but with a flamboyantly pansexual hook: “The boys and girls are in/I mess around with them/And I’m OK with it.”

He’s always had a flair for flourishes like this, since the 1D days. An iconic clip from November 2014: Harry and Liam are on a U.K. chat show. The host asks the oldest boy-band fan-bait question in the book: What do they look for in a date? “Female,” Liam quips. “That’s a good trait.” Harry shrugs. “Not that important.” Liam is taken aback. The host is in shock. On tour in the U.S. that year, he wore a Michael Sam football jersey, in support of the first openly gay player drafted by an NFL team. He’s blown up previously unknown queer artists like King Princess and Muna.

What do those flags onstage mean to him? “I want to make people feel comfortable being whatever they want to be,” he says. “Maybe at a show you can have a moment of knowing that you’re not alone. I’m aware that as a white male, I don’t go through the same things as a lot of the people that come to the shows. I can’t claim that I know what it’s like, because I don’t. So I’m not trying to say, ‘I understand what it’s like.’ I’m just trying to make people feel included and seen.”

On tour, he had an End Gun Violence sticker on his guitar; he added a Black Lives Matter sticker, as well as the flag. “It’s not about me trying to champion the cause, because I’m not the person to do that,” he says. “It’s just about not ignoring it, I guess. I was a little nervous to do that because the last thing I wanted was for it to feel like I was saying, ‘Look at me! I’m the good guy!’ I didn’t want anyone who was really involved in the movement to think, ‘What the fuck do you know?’ But then when I did it, I realized people got it. Everyone in that room is on the same page and everyone knows what I stand for. I’m not saying I understand how it feels. I’m just trying to say, ‘I see you.’”

At one of his earliest solo shows, in Stockholm, he announced, “If you are black, if you are white, if you are gay, if you are straight, if you are transgender — whoever you are, whoever you want to be, I support you. I love every single one of you.” “It’s a room full of accepting people.… If you’re someone who feels like an outsider, you’re not always in a big crowd like that,” he says. “It’s not about, ‘Oh, I get what it’s like,’ because I don’t. For example, I go walking at night before bed most of the time. I was talking about that with a female friend and she said, ‘Do you feel safe doing that?’ And I do. But when I walk, I’m more aware that I feel OK to walk at night, and some of my friends wouldn’t. I’m not saying I know what it feels like to go through that. It’s just being aware.”

‘Man cannot live by coffee alone,” Harry says. “But he will give it a damn good try.” He sips his iced Americano — not his first today, or his last. He’s back behind the wheel, on a mission to yet another studio — but this time for actual work. Today it’s string overdubs. Harry is dressed in Gucci from head to toe, except for one item of clothing: a ratty Seventies rock T-shirt he proudly scavenged from a vintage shop. It says “Commander Quaalude.”

On the drive over, he puts on the jazz pianist Bill Evans — “Peace Piece,” from 1959, which is the wake-up tone on his phone. He just got into jazz during a long sojourn in Japan. He likes to find places to hide out and be anonymous: For his first album, he decamped to Jamaica. Over the past year, he spent months roaming Japan.

In February, he spent his 25th birthday sitting by himself in a Tokyo cafe, reading Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. “I love Murakami,” he says. “He’s one of my favorites. Reading didn’t really used to be my thing. I had such a short attention span. But I was dating someone who gave me some books; I felt like I had to read them because she’d think I was a dummy if I didn’t read them.”

A friend gave him Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. “It was the first book, maybe ever, where all I wanted to do all day was read this,” he says. “I had a very Murakami birthday because I ended up staying in Tokyo on my own. I had grilled fish and miso soup for breakfast, then I went to this cafe. I sat and drank tea and read for five hours.”

In the studio, he’s overseeing the string quartet. He has the engineers play T. Rex’s “Cosmic Dancer” for them, to illustrate the vibe he’s going for. You can see he enjoys being on this side of the glass, sitting at the Neve board, giving his instructions to the musicians. After a few run-throughs, he presses the intercom button to say, “Yeah, it’s pretty T. Rex. Best damn strings I ever heard.” He buzzes again to add, “And you’re all wonderful people.”

He’s curated his own weird enclave of kindred spirits to collaborate with, like producers Jeff Bhasker and Tyler Johnson. His guitarist Mitch Rowland was working at an L.A. pizza shop when Harry met him. They started writing songs for the debut; Rowland didn’t quit his job until two weeks into the sessions. One of his closest collaborators is also one of his best friends: Tom Hull, a.k.a. Kid Harpoon, a longtime cohort of Florence and the Machine. Hull is an effusive Brit with a heart-on-sleeve personality. Harry calls him “my emotional rock.” Hull calls him “Gary.”

Hull was the one who talked him into taking a course on Transcendental Meditation at David Lynch’s institute — beginning each day with 20 minutes of silence, which doesn’t always come naturally to either of them. “He’s got this wise-beyond-his-years timelessness about him,” Hull says. “That’s why he went on a whole emotional exploration with these songs.” He’s 12 years older, with a wife and kids in Scotland, and talks about Harry like an irreverent but doting big brother.

Last year, Harry was in the gossip columns dating the French model Camille Rowe; they split up last summer after a year together. “He went through this breakup that had a big impact on him,” Hull says. “I turned up on Day One in the studio, and I had these really nice slippers on. His ex-girlfriend that he was really cut up about, she gave them to me as a present — she bought slippers for my whole family. We’re still close friends with her. I thought, ‘I like these slippers. Can I wear them — is that weird?’

“So I turn up at Shangri-La the first day and literally within the first half-hour, he looks at me and says, ‘Where’d you get those slippers? They’re nice.’ I had to say, ‘Oh, um, your ex-girlfriend got them for me.’ He said, ‘Whaaaat? How could you wear those?’ He had a whole emotional journey about her, this whole relationship. But I kept saying, ‘The best way of dealing with it is to put it in these songs you’re writing.’”

True to his code of gallant discretion, Harry doesn’t say her name at any point. But he admits the songs are coming from personal heartbreak. “It’s not like I’ve ever sat and done an interview and said, ‘So I was in a relationship, and this is what happened,’” he says. “Because, for me, music is where I let that cross over. It’s the only place, strangely, where it feels right to let that cross over.”

The new songs are certainly charged with pain. “The stars didn’t align for them to be a forever thing,” Hull says. “But I told him that famous Iggy Pop quote where he says, ‘I only ever date women who are going to fuck me up, because that’s where the songs are.’ I said, ‘You’re 24, 25 years old, you’re in the eligible-bachelor category. Just date amazing women, or men, or whatever, who are going to fuck you up, and explore and have an adventure and let it affect you and write songs about it.’”

His band is full of indie rockers who’ve gotten swept up in Hurricane Harry. Before becoming his iconic drum goddess, Sarah Jones played in New Young Pony Club, a London band fondly remembered by a few dozen of us. Rowland and Jones barely knew anything about One Direction before they met Harry — the first time they heard “Story of My Life” was when he asked them to play it. Their conversation is full of references to Big Star or Guided by Voices or the Nils Lofgren guitar solo in Neil Young’s “Speakin’ Out.” This is a band full of shameless rock geeks, untainted by industry professionalism.

In the studio, while making the album, Harry kept watching a vintage Bowie clip on his phone — a late-Nineties TV interview I’d never seen. As he plays it for me, he recites along — he’s got the rap memorized. “Never play to the gallery,” Bowie advises. “Never work for other people in what you do.” For Harry, this was an inspiring pep talk — a reminder not to play it safe. As Bowie says, “If you feel safe in the area that you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you are capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

He got so obsessive about Joni Mitchell and her 1971 classic Blue, he went on a quest. “I was in a big Joni hole,” he says. “I kept hearing the dulcimer all over Blue. So I tracked down the lady who built Joni’s dulcimers in the Sixties.” He found her living in Culver City. “She said, ‘Come and see me,’” Hull says. “We turn up at her house and he said, ‘How do you even play a dulcimer?’ She gave us a lesson. Then she got a bongo and we were all jamming with these big Cheshire Cat grins.” She built the dulcimer Harry plays on the new album. “Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison, those are my two favorites,” he says. “Blue and Astral Weeks are just the ultimate in terms of songwriting. Melody-wise, they’re in their own lane.”

He’s always been the type to go overboard with his fanboy enthusiasms, ever since he was a kid and got his mind blown by Pulp Fiction. “I watched it when I was probably too young,” he admits. “But when I was 13, I saved up money from my paper route to buy a ‘Bad Motherfucker’ wallet. Just a stupid white kid in the English countryside with that wallet.” While in Japan, he got obsessively into Paul McCartney and Wings, especially London Town and Back to the Egg. “In Tokyo I used to go to a vinyl bar, but the bartender didn’t have Wings records. So I brought him Back to the Egg. ‘Arrow Through Me,’ that was the song I had to hear every day when I was in Japan.”

He credits meditation for helping to loosen him up. “I was such a skeptic going in,” he says. “But I think meditation has helped with worrying about the future less, and the past less. I feel like I take a lot more in—things that used to pass by me because I was always rushing around. It’s part of being more open and talking with friends. It’s not always the easiest to go in a room and say, ‘I made a mistake and it made me feel like this, and then I cried a bunch.’ But that moment where you really let yourself be in that zone of being vulnerable, you reach this feeling of openness. That’s when you feel like, ‘Oh, I’m fucking living, man.’”

After quite a few hours of recording the string quartet, a bottle of Casamigos tequila is opened. Commander Quaalude pours the drinks, then decides what the song needs now is a gaggle of nonsingers bellowing the chorus. “Muppet vocals” is how he describes it. He drags everyone in sight to crowd around the mics. Between takes, he wanders over to the piano to play Harry Nilsson’s “Gotta Get Up.” One of the choir members, creative director Molly Hawkins, is the friend who gave him the Murakami novel. “I think every man should read Norwegian Wood,” she says. “Harry’s the only man I’ve given it to who actually read it.”

It’s been a hard day’s night in the studio, but after hours, everyone heads to a dive bar on the other side of town to see Rowland play a gig. He’s sitting in with a local bar band, playing bass. Harry drives around looking for the place, taking in the sights of downtown L.A. (“Only a city as narcissistic as L.A. would have a street called Los Angeles Street,” he says.) He strolls in and leans against the bar in the back of the room. It’s an older crowd, and nobody here has any clue who he is. He’s entirely comfortable lurking incognito in a dim gin joint. After the gig, as the band toasts with PBRs, an old guy in a ball cap strolls over and gives Rowland a proud bear hug. It’s his boss from the pizza shop.

In the wee hours, Harry drives down a deserted Sunset Boulevard, his favorite time of night to explore the city streets, arguing over which is the best Steely Dan album. He insists that Can’t Buy a Thrill is better than Countdown to Ecstasy (wrongly), and seals his case by turning it up and belting “Midnight Cruiser” with truly appalling gusto. Tonight Hollywood is full of bright lights, glitzy clubs, red carpets, but the prettiest pop star in town is behind the wheel, singing along with every note of the sax solo from “Dirty Work.”

A few days later, on the other side of the world: Harry’s pad in London is lavish, yet very much a young single dude’s lair. Over here: a wall-size framed Sex Pistols album cover. Over there: a vinyl copy of Stevie Nicks’ The Other Side of the Mirror, casually resting on the floor. He’s having a cup of tea with his mum, Anne, the spitting image of her son, all grace and poise. “We’re off to the pub,” he tells her. “We’re going to talk some shop.” She smiles sweetly. “Talk some shit, probably,” says Anne.

We head off to his local, sloshing through the rain. He’s wearing a Spice World hoodie and savoring the soggy London-osity of the day. “Ah, Londres!” he says grandly. “I missed this place.” He wants to sit at a table outside, even though it’s pouring, and we chat away the afternoon over a pot of mint tea and a massive plate of fish and chips. When I ask for toast, the waitress brings out a loaf of bread roughly the size of a wheelbarrow. “Welcome to England,” Harry says.

He’s always had a fervent female fandom, and, admirably, he’s never felt a need to pretend he doesn’t love it that way. “They’re the most honest — especially if you’re talking about teenage girls, but older as well,” he says. “They have that bullshit detector. You want honest people as your audience. We’re so past that dumb outdated narrative of ‘Oh, these people are girls, so they don’t know what they’re talking about.’ They’re the ones who know what they’re talking about. They’re the people who listen obsessively. They fucking own this shit. They’re running it.”

He doesn’t have the uptightness some people have about sexual politics, or about identifying as a feminist. “I think ultimately feminism is thinking that men and women should be equal, right? People think that if you say ‘I’m a feminist,’ it means you think men should burn in hell and women should trample on their necks. No, you think women should be equal. That doesn’t feel like a crazy thing to me. I grew up with my mum and my sister — when you grow up around women, your female influence is just bigger. Of course men and women should be equal. I don’t want a lot of credit for being a feminist. It’s pretty simple. I think the ideals of feminism are pretty straightforward.”

His audience has a reputation for ferocity, and the reputation is totally justified. At last summer’s show at Madison Square Garden, the floor was wobbling during “Kiwi” — I’ve been seeing shows there since the 1980s, but I’d never seen that happen before. (The only other time? His second night.) His bandmates admit they feared for their lives, but Harry relished it. “To me, the greatest thing about the tour was that the room became the show,” he says. “It’s not just me.” He sips his tea. “I’m just a boy, standing in front of a room, asking them to bear with him.”

That evening, Fleetwood Mac take the stage in London — a sold-out homecoming gig at Wembley Stadium, the last U.K. show of their tour. Needless to say, their most devoted fan is in the house. Harry has brought a date: his mother, her first Fleetwood Mac show. He’s also with his big sister Gemma, bandmates Rowland and Jones, a couple of friends.

He’s in hyperactive-host mode, buzzing around his cozy VIP box, making sure everyone’s champagne glass is topped off at all times. As soon as the show begins, Harry’s up on his feet, singing along (“Tell me, tell me liiiiies!”) and cracking jokes. You can tell he feels free — as if his radar is telling him there aren’t snoopers or paparazzi watching. (He’s correct. This is a rare public appearance where nobody spots him and no photos leak online.) It’s family night. His friend Mick Fleetwood wilds out on the drum solo. “Imagine being that cool,” Gemma says.

Midway through the show, Harry’s demeanor suddenly changes. He gets uncharacteristically solemn and quiet, sitting down by himself and focusing intently on the stage. It’s the first time all night he’s taken a seat. He’s in a different zone than he was in a few minutes ago. But he’s seen many Fleetwood Mac shows, and he knows where they are in the set. It’s time for “Landslide.” He sits with his chin in hand, his eyes zeroing in on Stevie Nicks. As usual, she introduces her most famous song with the story of how she wrote it when she was just a lass of 27.

But Stevie has something else she wants to share. She tells the stadium crowd, “I’d like to dedicate this to my little muse, Harry Styles, who brought his mother tonight. Her name is Anne. And I think you did a really good job raising Harry, Anne. Because he’s really a gentleman, sweet and talented, and, boy, that appeals to me. So all of you, this is for you.”

As Stevie starts to sing “Landslide” — “I’ve been afraid of changing, because I built my life around youuuu” — Anne walks over to where Harry sits. She crouches down behind him, reaches her arms around him tightly. Neither of them says a word. They listen together and hold each other close to the very end of the song. Everybody in Wembley is singing along with Stevie, but these two are in a world of their own.

#harry styles #rs #260819 #drug mention

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klynnwordsadhoc · 6 years

Text

Writer’s block has been destroying me. So I wrote more coda. Post 3x10.

here beside you and me

read on AO3

Magnus wakes up alone. Magnus wakes up alone and empty and the panic is split second intense and visceral. He gropes once at the still warm sheets beside him, at the place where Alec was, a short time enough ago to leave his warmth still there. Magnus breathes, a ragged exhalation he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and flops back onto the bed. Alec is gone, but he’s not gone.

For a second, Magnus listens for him. He doesn’t hear anything, but he knows Alec is there, has to be, because one of his boots is still half propped against the wall by the door. For a moment, Magnus lays on the bed and prods at the emptiness inside him, at the place where his magic used to be, like someone would a healing bruise, like the pain of it once again confirms its existence. Or in his case, he supposes, its absence.

With a sigh, Magnus pushes himself up. With a half beat of hesitation, he shakes off the lingering tingles of adrenaline, the lingering ache, and he moves. The pants he puts on are made of silk, and he puts them on slowly, his robe is slung over a chair, but he bypasses it, instead picks up Alec’s dark gray t-shirt and puts that on instead. It’s soft and a little snug across the shoulders and arms, it smells like Alec.

The faint scent of coffee hits Magnus first as he pushes open the bedroom door, the faint clatter of cookware next, and Magnus follows the sound to Alec. Alec stands at the counter, chopping strawberries, and he doesn’t immediately notice Magnus. His gaze is set on his task, his expression distant. He is shirtless, his dark hair mussed and falling over his forehead, his black sweatpants riding low on his hips, and he is the most gorgeous thing Magnus has ever seen. Magnus watches his right hand wield the paring knife deftly, tries not to think about how that arm had flopped uselessly, unnaturally, against Alec’s side.

Alec startles a little when he notices Magnus there, breathes a laugh, “Hey,” he says, his voice rounded and soft. “How’d you sleep?”

Magnus tears his gaze away from Alec’s arm, “I slept fine,” he answers because it’s not completely a lie. “Until I didn’t.” He comes around the island and leans on Alec’s back, letting his hands settle on his middle, his cheek rest on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Alec sighs, “I know you asked me to wake you if I got up before you…I just… You need to sleep, Magnus.”

Magnus turns his head and rests his lips against the bare skin of Alec’s shoulder, “Don’t apologize, Alexander,” he murmurs. His fingers trail along Alec’s right forearm.

Alec lets out another sigh, “It’s fine, Magnus,” he says. He turns in the cage of Magnus’ arms and flexes his hand, twisting his wrist and his elbow so Magnus can see the natural strength of the movement. “I’m fine. Better than fine actually.”

“Cat is gifted,” Magnus says with a grimace that tries to be a smile.

“So are you,” Alec replies, his hands, big and warm, cupping Magnus’ face.

It’s supposed to force Magnus to look at him, but Magnus keeps his gaze fixed stubbornly on Alec’s shoulder. “I couldn’t save you.”

“Magnus, you did save me,” Alec says, his tone firm. “You saved all of us.”

Magnus gives a little derisive snort and tries to pull his face away from Alec’s grip. Alec doesn’t let him. Yes, he stopped Jace from driving that arrow through Alec’s chest, but he didn’t stop him from starting the process. He was too late to stop Alec from nearly dying. And Clary— Magnus forces himself not to think about that.

“Magnus,” Alec breathes, “Look at me.” When Magnus can’t immediately do it, Alec ducks his head to force their gazes to meet, “Beautiful, look at me.”

Magnus does then, his gaze snapping to Alec’s because when he calls him that his chest tightens and his throat closes up a little and he can’t not find Alec’s gaze then.

“You saved me,” Alec says firmly, “You always save me.” His tone is resolute, calm and soft, and achingly genuine. “Magic or no magic.”

Magnus looks at the warmth and affection in Alec’s gaze and kisses him, once, slow and soft. Alec leans into it with his whole body, his lips parting with a sigh against Magnus’ mouth. Magnus splays one hand on Alec’s waist, the other slipping into his dark hair, and Alec curls both arms around his shoulders, wrapping him in the warmth of his embrace. Alec tastes like black coffee and strawberries and warmth and Magnus loses himself in the simple act, the softness of it, the way Alec catches his lower lip between his own for the briefest moment before he leans back.

There’s a tiny, happy smile on Alec’s lips when he settles back and for a moment, the phantom ache of Magnus’ magic is less than it was when he woke alone and panicked. Magnus strokes his fingers along the warm skin of Alec’s sides, and Alec settles his hands on Magnus’ arms. He frowns slightly, plucks at Magnus’ sleeve and then chuckles, warm and low.

“You’re gonna stretch out the sleeves,” he says, though his tone is more teasing than put out.

Magnus shrugs, decides to be honest. “It smells like you. I needed the comfort.”

Alec smiles again, slightly bigger, definitely happy, “Keep it,” he says.

Magnus arches a brow, “You are going to need it back eventually. As much as I’d prefer you keep to a strict, shirts optional policy, people might talk.”

A short laugh leaves Alec, “Shirts optional policy?”

“I said what I said,” Magnus replies, unable to keep from grinning.

Alec glances away for a second and he sighs. “Well, I’m supposed to be taking some time, recovering,” he wrinkles his nose a little at the word, “So I thought I’d maybe stay… here for a few days. That’s if you want me to… I mean, I don’t have to…”

“You should stay,” Magnus says before Alec can keep up his halting explanation, talking himself out of it, before Alec can think for a second that he’s not welcome. “You should definitely stay.”

Alec nods, strokes his hands down Magnus’ arms. “Okay. I’ll stay.” He blows out a small sigh, “Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” Magnus replies lightly, releasing Alec so he can survey the counter. Alec has assembled all the usual breakfast components, milk, eggs, butter, and so on, but Magnus can’t quite guess what he’s making. “What are we having?”

“I thought I’d try making crepes,” he says with forced nonchalance.

Magnus smiles, “My favorite,” he says, his voice warm. “That’s ambitious. Might we be eating out this morning?”

Alec scowls at him without heat. “Rude. I can do it. I have instructions.”

Magnus nods, forcing himself not to smile, “Really?”

“Yeah,” Alec turns the tablet that’s propped on the counter and frozen mid-sentence on the screen is a trendy looking woman with a bandana, big framed glasses, and tattooed knuckles. “Simon showed me this. I figure if I can see it, it’ll be easier to follow.” Alec gives him a narrow look, “And you liked the French toast I made.”

“I did,” Magnus replies with studied innocence. “And I’m sure I will love these. Can I help?”

Alec nods, smiles then. “Yeah, wanna finish chopping those for me?”

Magnus picks up the discarded paring knife, “Your wish, my command,” he says with a flourish, getting to work on the strawberries.

Alec turns his attention to the video. It plays lowly while he works, and Magnus watches him out of the corner of his eye. For a long moment, they don’t speak. Magnus lets the repetitive task calm his mind, lets Alec’s presence chase away the circling thoughts he tries so hard to ignore and it works, at least for a moment.

“We’ll get it back,” Alec says suddenly, all in one breath, like he couldn’t stop himself.

Magnus pauses, sighs and cups Alec’s face. “I know you mean that, my darling. But it’s impossible.”

Alec’s eyes are determined. “Since when have we ever given up because something was impossible?”

Magnus opens his mouth, closes it, tries to think of an argument and finds himself unable to come up with a valid one. He’d sacrifice his magic in a second, again, even knowing now the ache it would leave behind, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want it back.

Finally he says, “Let’s at least have breakfast first. And then we’ll talk about it.”

Alec looks like he wants to argue, but he accepts Magnus’ words after a beat where Magnus stares him down, one brow arched. Magnus loves Alec more than he can express, but it’s his magic and therefore it is his decision and Magnus won’t hesitate to remind Alec of that. Alec gives him a kiss that tastes slightly of apology and turns back to making a batter.

The crepes they make aren’t the prettiest Magnus has seen, but they taste fine and even if they had been horrible Magnus would have eaten them because Alec made them. Alec made them even though he’d never tried before, because they were Magnus’ favorite. Sitting there, at the table, with Alec looking so very pleased with the gushing Magnus did over their breakfast, Magnus allows himself to think they might just achieve the impossible, and even if they didn’t, living like this, with ugly crepes and Alec shirtless and beautiful, and soft, calm mornings, Magnus starts to think this was something he could do.

#malec #Magnus Bane #Alec Lightwood #shadowhunters #myfic #coda: s3ep10 Erchomai #soft boyfriends #domestic fluff

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spellyjane · 7 years

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Ironman Cozumel - a day of “nearlies”

It is always good to wait for a few days after an Ironman to write up a race report. I never quite trust my sanity until I have processed the race day caffeine, eaten solid food, had a good sleep and dealt with my post race laundry.

I had originally signed up for Ironman Cozumel as redemption for my frustrating 1st Ironman in Arizona last year. But it just felt too far away and I decided to squeeze in 2 more Ironman and 3 more 70.3 races as well. Yeah, nuts. So I arrived in Cozumel feeling a little wary. I was carrying great fitness but I was feeling mentally DONE with all the intensity. The pain of that Kona course was still fresh enough in my mind to make me even wonder if I really wanted to do it again. I wondered how much I could make myself hurt for a Kona slot or a PR or a podium.

I fell in with a fun bunch of Colorado based athletes at my hotel and was really thankful for their company, it was great to share the race weekend with them. I will be keen to catch up when our family relocates to Denver in January.

Did you read my Kona race report? Remember that nasty Aunt Flo who decided to turn up the day before the race? Well can you believe she did it again? Seriously, this needs some investigating, this has happened (unscheduled) the day before 3 races this year. It is not a disaster but it does add a little more anxiety and more time consuming pit stops. Anyway, moving on.

The course layout at Cozumel makes for a busy race morning. Swim start, T1 and T2 are all in different locations. I got myself to the swim start with enough time to squeeze my way up to the fast kids corral, take a few deep breaths, throw down the 1st of 11 Gu packets and go!

I loved that swim. I got onto the pier and dived, yay, I can't remember the last time I was allowed to dive into a swim start. I took off hard. I was wary of being complacent in the current assisted conditions. I settled in, I did get tangled up with other swimmers a couple of times but for the most part just put my head down and worked hard. I was a little bummed that the course was short. I measured it to be 3463m, 350m short! That combined with the current and my more than usual aggressive intensity gave me a ridiculous 13 min PR at 53:21.

I tore through T1 with no complications, glad I chose to clip my shoes on my bike so I could put some speed into my run.

I was out on the bike course in under and hour and I was excited! I thought, right, let's not waste that massive swim PR, let's turn this into a race PR. The swim had not left me feeling as fatigued as usual and I was right on top of my target watts right from the start. (I had struggled with this in my last 2 IMs.) I had ridden 1 loop of the 3 loop course on a rental scooter before the race so knew what to expect. The smooth, flat, straight roads were a TT queen’s dream! (Yeah, I am calling myself a TT queen.) The wind was not as dramatic as I was expecting and even when it was, I just reminded myself that everyone was feeling the same and I just stayed tucked in aero and held my watts. I must say, it was all going quite well, I was right on target for a 5:15 bike, I had made the left hand turn and was about 15km from the bike finish and was crunching numbers in my head and thinking come on girl, you could totally go sub 10 hours when I heard that dreaded “pop - phshhhhh!” Oh dang, back wheel puncture, I shifted into my small ring, jumped off and started getting the puncture sorted. I had pulled out my old tube and was reaching for my new tube when the Ironman bike mechanic arrived, we worked together to get the job done quicker. When we discovered the 3-4mm tear in the tyre we both groaned. Oh crikey, I did not have anything to seal the hole! The mechanic grabbed my old tube, hacked a piece off and shoved it between the new tube and the tear and began inflating the tyre. I wonder if I would have thought of that? Even if I did, I would have struggled to cut a piece with no scissors. He pumped it up to 80psi and I could see the old tube starting to show through the tear and I nearly died, eek! “Stop!” I panicked, but he said, “no, a little more.” He got to 90psi and seemed satisfied. We got my wheel back on and I grabbed his hand and with a squeeze, gushed my most heart felt “Gracias!”

I took off, feeling relieved and terrified. My race was not over and even with a 5 min stop, I was still on target for a very reasonable bike split. However, with just 2 thin pieces of latex between the road and my inner tube, I was terrified that I would not make it to the finish without another puncture.

Well, it worked, I made it to the bike catcher and passed my bike (and a shit ton of anxiety,) right over to him at a time of 5:18:47, with my watts and IF right on point.

T2 was uncomplicated and I was on my way. I had set myself up for a sub 10hr if I could pull off a good run. Even at that stage I still was not sure what my body was going to let me do. I have struggled with dodgy guts in a couple of Ironman runs and I was not sure if this was going to hit me again, I was feeling as good as I have ever felt as I took off so I just focused on keeping tidy, holding good form and pace.

The 3 loop, out and back course was pretty flat, had some shade and a noticeable tail wind coming back into town each time. So, 7km out and 7km back 3 times. Easy peasy. (Haha, the silly things I say to myself in races.) Sebastian Keinle passed me on his last loop as I was hitting the 4km point, he looked like he was doing it easy and so was I at that point, he must have passed me thinking “Whoa, that age grouper is looking so tidy, I hope I can run like that when I am her her age!” So you can imagine he was super keen to pose for a selfie when he saw me at the award ceremony!

There were only a few other girls out on the course at that point and I began to wonder who they were and what my position was. I had stalked my age group competition prior to the race and will be honest, I was not expecting anyone to be ahead of me given the race I had had so far. So when a spectator friend told me,I was in 3rd place as I hit the 2nd loop I was really bummed. I wondered who they could be, every one I saw on the out and back looked either younger or pro and no one seemed to be looking particularly uncomfortable. I worked really hard to push those thoughts out and told myself that I was having a killer race. I reminded myself that I could only control my own performance and that I was doing a good job of it right now. That being said, I began to slow down a little, I was getting tired. I stopped for the loo just before the 21k turn around. I made that turn and could see the 10hr race slipping away, it was a tough loop that one. I was looking at every girl on the other side of the road and thinking that they looked amazing and that I did not look like I was holding it together etc, my mind was being really mean to me. My new Colorado friends cheered me on as I made the turn for the last loop. I remembered all the races where I have picked up places in the closing stages. I kept that front and centre and just kept trying to look the part. As I made my last turn at the 35km point I started to see girls who I had thought were ahead of me still on the out leg and I realised that I had been really hard on myself. I did not over take anyone in in my AG but I was on target for a respectable run and a big IM PR so I pushed on refusing to slow down and made that final turn onto the carpet. I lept over the finish line with a not terrible 3:46:25 marathon and an awesome 10:04:32 a 10 min PR.

I found the gal who came 2nd in the post race area, I recognised her from the course, I thought she was a pro! Neither her nor the smoking fast gal who won were on the pre race athlete list I had stalked, I guess they signed up late - serves me right! Anyway we exchanged a few words about the race before she apologised, turned away and puked. Oh and here those doubts flood back to me even now, why wasn't I puking? Did I not try hard enough? I was gaining on her and as it turns out I ran a faster run split than her. I also beat her on the swim too. She went under 10 hours and I did not. Yes I have lamented that flat big time and more and more so since she was able to claim the 2nd of the 2 Kona slots up for grabs. Ok, enough of that, it is what it is. I did the best I could all dang day, I know I did.

I am planning my 2018 race season, still hoping for the perfect race and I hope I can snag another Kona slot in the process.

I look forward to working with my most excellent coach Rick Schopp at INTENT, training at a mile high and starting a new chapter in Colorado with my family in 2018.

Huge thank you to Simon and my kiddos, your support and love through all of the training and racing is wonderful!

See you out on the course next year, I will be the one grinning like an idiot because I am doing something I love!

#racewithINTENT #Ironman #IMCozumel #triathlon

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the-hufflepuff-dramatist · 7 years

Text

Don’t Underestimate Me

Pairing: Simon Lewis x Female Reader

Warnings: Angst, violence, reader getting hurt

Word Count: 1,498

"No, it's too dangerous. I won't let you go!" Simon said to you, holding onto your arm trying to stop you.

"You won't let me go? Simon, this is my job!” you shouted back.

"That doesn't mean you have to throw yourself into every dangerous mission that comes along!"

"They're all dangerous!" You and Simon had been dating for a few months now. Ever since he graduated from the Academy and was turned into a Shadowhunter in fact. It worked well because you were also a Shadowhunter.

However, after what happened at the Academy, Simon had only become extremely protective, refusing to let you go on even the simplest of missions. You'd appeased him for the most part, but you had finally had enough. He couldn’t stop you from doing everything.

"You don't have to go!"

"I haven't gone to do anything in months! I know what happened at the Academy, and I know that really hurt you so I thought yeah sure, I'll appease him for a little while. But this is too much! You won't even let me leave the Institute!"

"It's too dangerous!"

"I'm not a child Simon!"

"I don't want you to get hurt!"

You sighed and looked at him, his eyes were full of worry. "I know. But I'll be fine, you know I can do this. Plus I'll have Jace and Izzy with me. Everything will be fine."

"You can't do this!" he yelled, ignoring everything you just said. Your anger flared up again.

"What do you mean I can't do this?"

"You're not capable of going on this mission." You stared at him, mouth agape, before ripping your arm out of his grasp.

"You have no idea what I'm capable of." You snapped, turning on your heel and walking to the entrance of the Institute to meet Jace and Izzy, Simon calling after you the entire time.

"Someone is pissed,” Izzy commented upon seeing you.

"Is someone having a lovers quarrel?" Jace taunted, and you rolled your eyes.

"Let's just get this done with okay?" You walked out of the Institute, Jace and Izzy following closely behind.

The mission was going well until a greater demon showed up. None of you were prepared or armed, to take care of this kind of demon. Izzy and Jace were both too preoccupied fighting different minor demons as the greater demon made its way to you.

You walked backward, your seraph blade in front of you as the greater demon cornered you. Your back hit the wall and you gripped your blade tighter.

"What now little Shadowhunter? Still think you can defeat me?" it taunted.

"No," you said, your voice shaking. You cleared your throat and glared at the demon. "I know I can."

It roared in anger and went to claw at you, you ducked under its arm and whispered the name of an angel, your seraph blade lighting up. You stabbed the blade into its chest and it roared again, flailing about. You lost grip on your blade and stumbled back. The demon clawed at you, catching you in the side and raking its claws against your stomach.

You screamed in pain as the demon got back up, your one blade not enough to kill it. You fell back clutching your stomach, feeling your blood gushing out of the wound.

The demon hovered over you. "Poor little Shadowhunter." It laughed as it began to bring down its claws again.

"No," you whispered, turning your head away. You heard a slice and opened your eyes to see the demon stumbling back, it's clawed hand on the ground in front of you.

The demon roared in fury but was quickly silenced by another seraph blade. Your vision was swimming and your hearing was fuzzy. A face leaned over you, and you could just make out their shape.

"(Y/N)! Stay with me!" You recognized the voice as Simon's. "Help me with the runes! Help her!"

"Simon," you whispered and he looked at you. You weakly lifted your hand up to his cheek before blacking out.

"Is she going to be okay?" a voice said, pulling you from your sleep.

"I don't know," another voice said.

You slowly sat up, wincing at the pain in your stomach. The voices were coming from outside the room.

"Is she awake yet?" the first voice said, you recognized it as Simon’s.

"No, but you're welcome to check on her. I've done all I can for her. It's up to her if she makes it or not now,” the second person, now recognizing it's Magnus, said.

Simon sniffed and pushed open the door. His head was down as he walked towards the bed. He slowly looked up at you, eyes widening when he realized you were sitting up.

"(Y/N)! You're awake! Magnus said that…that... you-you're okay!" he stumbled out, running to be by your side and pulling you into a tight hug.

"Simon," you whispered, your voice hoarse. "You're hurting me." He quickly let go.

"I-I'm sorry. Are you okay? Do you need anything? How are you feeling? Any pain? I can get Magnus if you need me to. Do you want me to get Magnus? I'll get Magnus."

You placed your hand over his and patted his hand gently. "I'm fine."

"Are you sure? Because anything you need, anything at all, I can get you." You opened your mouth to respond, but instead of words, you ended up in a coughing fit. "Water! I'll get you water! A-and another iratze!"

He ran out before you could stop him. You held your stomach as the coughing got worse. You leaned back against the headboard of the bed, covering your mouth with your hand. When you pulled your hand away, blood was covering your hand.

Simon ran back in with a cup of water, dropping it in shock once he saw the blood. He ran over to you, wrapping his arm around your shoulder and sitting you up as you coughed. "Magnus!"

Magnus walked in almost immediately, "what is it Si-oh my." He quickly walked over to you. "Simon, you should leave." You widened your eyes as Magnus laid you flat on your back. Your hand shot out to grab Simon's as he shook his head.

"I'm not leaving her."

Magnus sighed, "she's going to be in a lot of pain. The last of the poison has to be removed."

"All the more reason for me to stay with her."

"Alright, hold her still." You shut your eyes in preparation and gripped Simon's hand tightly. After a few seconds, excruciating pain spread throughout your body.

You screamed in pain, your entire body on fire. The pain was so intense, you passed out.

You didn’t know how long you were out before you woke up. Simon's arms were around you and he was talking to someone.

"This is all my fault, isn't it? If I hadn't made her mad, if I hadn't tried to keep her locked away she wouldn't have been angry and out of practice and she wouldn't have gotten hurt. She wouldn't be in danger of dying." Simon said, moving some of your hair off your forehead.

"Simon, this isn't your fault. Sometimes things happen, people get hurt,” Clary said softly.

"I'm afraid I'm going to lose her…I can't lose her. Not after G-not after what happened."

"You won't lose her." Simon sighed, obviously not believing Clary. You slowly opened your eyes, your whole body heavy.

"(Y/N), you're awake," you nodded groggily.

"I'll leave you two alone." Clary murmured and left. Simon helped you sit up slowly.

"How long was I out?" your voice was hoarse from lack of use.

"A couple of days. Whatever Magnus did to you…he said it would either kill you or save you. I guess it saved you."

You said nothing in response, just looked up at him.

"Listen, (Y/N), I'm sorry. For everything. I know you're capable of defending yourself and I shouldn't have tried to stop you from doing everything. I just worry. I can't lose you, not after what happened to…with…" he trailed off.

"It's okay, you don't have to say his name."

"No, I need to get over this. After what happened with George my head hasn't been in the right place. I'm so scared to lose the people I'm close to. It happened once and I don't want it to happen again, especially now that I have my memories back. I'm not trying to excuse my actions, but I just want you to know how sorry I am."

"Simon, I forgive you. And I understand. Just, don't do that again, okay? Let's be a team, let's work together." He nodded.

"I really am sorry. I don't know-" you rolled your eyes as he started to ramble again and silenced him with a kiss.

"I love you, you nerd," you said and he smiled down at you as he kissed you again.

"I love you too."

#the mortal instruments #simon lewis #simon lewis imagine #simon lewis x reader #my writing #fan fiction

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septimusheapheadcanons · 7 years

Note

Hey, this is a question for whenever you feel like it and have the time, but I'm curious what you think of each of the Heap's canon SO and why or why not you ship them?

this is gonna be me gushing a lot, but also kinda salty so be warned

Simon: Lucy. I love Lucy!!! She’s one of my faves. She’s so… atypical for a character in a book series, especially as one of the main “star crossed lovers”. She’s loving, strong, persistent, steadfast, strong-willed. But she’s also loud, nosy, overweight, stubborn, in-your-face, angry, and, most importantly to me, ugly. Lucy is not typically beautiful or soft or feminine, but she’s still the main love interest!! And even though she’s not typically feminine, she still likes things like pretty ribbons and silky cloaks and cute boys, which are traditionally feminine. She’s allowed to be complex, and have this strong dichotomy with both her personality and her role in the story. And!! She grows!! In my reread something I noticed and really appreciate is the arc that Lucy goes through. It’s easy to see how she saves Simon, but she matures so much on her journey. She comes to appreciate what she has, but also trying to do better for herself. She learns to (somewhat) keep a cap on her temper when she needs to, she becomes kinder to strangers, she tries really, really hard to be a good person. And it’s so good!! She makes friends, weathers hardships, lives on her own, helps pull herself and Simon up by their bootstraps. G O D I love her so much!! And her and Simon together??? Incredible!! She is so important in his arc, and y’all know how much I love him. They’re both so… weird. They’re kind of outcasts, they have their issues, and they never once falter on their love for each other!! Never once does Lucy think of abandoning Simon despite everything. Never once does Simon see Lucy as anything other than an angel. When he thought she left him, he wasn’t even angry with her!! He was angry with himself for not being better for her!! I love crying about them!! And like, with Lucy being kind of ugly, this becomes so much more important!! When Lucy comes out in her god-awful wedding dress, everyone’s like “oh wow, that’s kind of ugly.” But Simon!! Thinks she looks incredible and loves it because she made it herself!! Could your OTP ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sam: Marwick. G o d I love Wolf Boy. I love him!! I always knew I liked him but my love for him has skyrocketed during my reread!! He’s… so incredible, and I’m a little mentally tired after that Lucy analysis so I won’t go into why I love him so much right now (maybe another time if y’all wanna know). And Samwick!! OK, so I only have 2 problems with Samwick, and neither makes me not ship them. The first is the whole thing about Keepers not getting married, which I wanna do a separate post about sometime soon, so I’ll leave it there. The second is the age gap. But, like Septyrah, it??? Doesn’t seem to really exist in the world??? Like, Sam is 7 years older than Marwick, but I’m pretty sure canon ages mean Absolutely Nothing to Angie Sage. And they’re both adults in Sandrider, so I’m cool with it, but I still think it’s kind of odd. Angie, why are you like this. B U T!!! They’re so cute!! Talk about a #battlecouple. They’re so nature-y and wild and intense, and they travel the world together?? Talk about #goals. Sam almost dying is like, my favorite part of Sandrider!! And the way Marwick is so sweet and trying to be calm and helpful?? 10/10

Edd: no canon S/O. (I ship him with Moira Mole for no real in-text reason, but as they both have like, no canon personalities or S/Os I’m allowed to!!)

Erik: no canon S/O. OK, so I headcanon Erik as a HUGE flirt who dates/hooks up with a lot of girls. BUT!! I also headcanon that when he meets the girl who will eventually be his wife, he’s stunned!! He’s still a smooth charmer, but he loves this girl like a little puppy, and he’s so intent on taking it seriously. He knows after like, 2 weeks that he wants to marry her, but they date for a while and he’s so happy!! He has no trouble transitioning from player to ready-to-wed. At first he has a bit of trouble not flirting with everyone on instinct before he realizes His Girlfriend also does that and they laugh and use flirting to get what they want, and never ever once worry about the other not being faithful. Then they have like 6 kids (first 2 are a set of twin girls). And it’s good!!

JoJo: Marissa. S i g h. I… have so many mixed feelings about Marissa and Jorissa. On the one hand, it’s so interesting, because they’re so fucked up. But also…?? Their canon state makes me so M A D!! I’m sure I’ve ranted about it somewhere if you look in the “Starchaser,” “JoJo Heap,” or “Marissa Lane” tags. So I can like, vibe with it I guess, but I would have to do a lot of work before I was okay with them canonly ending up together. Like, a multi-chapter Jorissa fic is something I eventually wanna do, working on how I want to make them work. But I love JoJo and Marissa does NOT treat him well!! So… IDK. It’s real complicated.

Nicko: Snorri. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The original childhood OTP, my dudes. I was so sad (and angry) in Fyre when Snorri left and they broke up. Like, nooooo!!!! My heart was broken!! So when they got back together pre-Pathfinder, I nearly lost my mind. They’re both adventurous, a little snarky boat people!! And Snorri jumped into the past for him and his fam?? And he stayed in the past with her just so she wouldn’t be lost alone!! And the way they’re both changed after the House of Foryx. They went through so much together!! I love them!! And I love Snorri!! She’s really cute. The scene where she meets Jenna and Wolf Boy, and she just keeps laughing about the ever-growing number of Heap brothers?? She’s so deadset on establishing herself as her own person, but it’s not until she goes on her own journey that she realizes she was still just following in her father’s footsteps. And she does get her own journey, and also learns to appreciate her mom!! And she can see ghosts?????? I love her!!!!!!!!!!

Jenna: Beetle. Sheesh, okay, this is where it gets a little messy, but until Sage puts in writing that these two broke up and makes S/e//p/J//e/n// canon, I won’t accept it!! Even then I won’t, but still. A N Y W A Y, Beetle is such a great character. I did a bit of an analysis on his inferiority complex compared to Sep here, but besides that he’s?? Such a huge loser nerd and I love him. He loves so completely, he strives to do what’s right, he’s so genuinely interested in things!! And his crush on Jenna is one of the cutest parts of the series, 10/10. And how do I even describe Jeetle. Two cinnamon rolls who love to have fun and help people fall in love and proceed to spread joy and love and sometimes salt throughout the kingdom. They’d fight anyone for the other. I love them.

Septimus: no canon S/O. OK, so Starchaser kinda implies that he and Driffa are gonna date, but even Angie has said no way that’s gonna last lmao. #Let SepDateSyrah2k17.

#asks #anonymous #The Heaps #Septimus Heap #headcanons #i can't believe i actually sat down and answered an ask can u guys

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