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#which is not something I’m writing the pronoun situation would be a nightmare

livyjh · 1 year

Text

Eight Days (ch. 1)

Joel Miller x Reader (AFAB reader that uses at least she/her pronouns)

Rating: EXPLICIT 18+

Word count: 3.5k

Summary: You’ve known Tess for awhile now. When she asks you to come on a run and she isn’t able to go, that leaves you alone with Joel. Who you’ve never met before. Traveling through the wasteland with a complete stranger? This should go great.

Can be found on ao3 here

Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Joel Miller Masterlist

A/N: I’m very excited to be writing my first multi-chapter Joel fic. Not a request, just an idea that popped into my head.

Chapter warnings: age gap, mention of guns, mentions of infected, wet socks and shoes, wet clothes, Joel sees your butt, Joel has nightmares/PTSD flashbacks

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You’d known Tess for almost 6 months now. You trusted each other, helped each other get out of sticky situations around the QZ. So when she asked you to start smuggling with her and her friend Joel, you weren’t all that surprised.

She told you where to meet her, when to meet her. This would be your first time meeting Joel, you’d heard from others in the QZ about him. Just as a passerby. And from Tess. Everyone said he was hard headed, dangerous, and like a brick wall. Tess said he wasn’t as bad as everyone said he was, but you’d have to find this out for yourself.

This was a firearms run. That’s all you knew besides the basic rules of “be careful, don’t get caught, don’t get bit”.

It was 4am, raining, early spring air flowing through your lungs as you made your way to the corner of Prince and Salem streets.

FEDRA was currently switching shifts, which meant the three of you would have just enough time to make your way out of the QZ through a tunnel under a building that FEDRA hadn’t completely blocked off yet.

No one else was on the streets, you made your way carefully between buildings and down alleyways. When you saw a man standing exactly where you were supposed to meet Tess, you hesitated.

You watched him for a long moment, he kept looking around, like he was waiting for someone. Shit, is that Joel?

You quickly walk to the man and he immediately grabs your arm and pulls you into the nearest alley. “You’re late.” He grits.

“Sorry. Um, you’re Joel?” You ask shyly as the grip on your arm lets up.

“Yeah. You Y/n?” He raises a brow.

You nod. “Where’s Tess? I didn’t see her so I freaked out a little.”

“Broke her goddamn ankle last night.” He huffs.

“Fuck.”

“Just you and me, now.” He explains. “Hope you’re a good shot.” He hands you a black pistol. Nothing fancy, but it was heavy.

“I’m alright.” You say honestly.

“Consider this training day.” He sighs and walks further down the alley, beckoning you to follow. You perk up and walk closely behind him, trying to keep your footsteps light.

You follow him into a little shop, it now unrecognizable from being boarded up for so long. He shuts the door behind you both and you look at him, his hair and chin dripping with rain. You’re not lost on the fact that he’s a good looking man, although roughly 30 years older than you.

“Come on.” He meets your eyes and then continues on into a back room. You follow and he’s pushing a bookcase out of the way to reveal a huge hole in the wall that opened into a tunnel.

You got out your flashlight and the two of you entered the tunnel, you waited as he put the bookshelf back in place. He too got out his flashlight, leading the way.

The tunnel isn’t that big, something that was probably made after the main building had been built. You reached a ladder that led down and Joel went first. You went down after him, scanning the now larger tunnel for anything that might cause you harm.

“Are there infected down here?” You ask quietly.

“No.” He says shortly.

You don’t say anything else, letting him lead you through the tunnel until you eventually reached another ladder. He went up first, lifting the manhole cover at the top and sliding it away. He pokes his head above ground and waves you up, giving you the all clear.

You both make it onto the street and he puts the cover back in place before you’re both running, trying to avoid floodlights as you sneak away from the Boston QZ.

The sun is just coming up when you reach the freeway, glad you hadn’t come across any infected before dawn.

Before making it to Boston, you’d survived with your dad and your aunt since you were just a child. You were taught how to defend yourself at a young age, taught about cordyceps and how to avoid getting infected, taught about all the bad things in the world. You were no stranger to a warm gun, nor loss. Your aunt was bit and your dad had to end her life when you were 13. You and your dad were with a group when you were 15-20, but when raiders came through and destroyed your little settlement, your dad got shot and died while you were escaping.

It’s something you’d never forget, your father begging you to leave so he could stall the raiders while you ran. But he saved your life. You’d never forget that either.

You walked the freeway for a couple hours, not saying much to each other as you did so.

Joel was… pensive. Was that the right word? No. More like… frigid. Maybe he was just upset that Tess broke her ankle. Things were going to be harder with just two of you, rather than 3.

“Uh, where are we going anyways?” You finally think to ask him.

“Springfield.”

You wait maybe ten minutes before popping another question. “Did I say something wrong?”

“What?” He asks, oblivious.

“It just seems like… I dunno. You seem grumpy.” You say shyly.

“Fuck you.” He huffs a hint of a laugh and that’s the only indication that he may be joking.

You hoped he was joking or things were going to feel awkward for the rest of this run. “Shouldn’t have said it like that. I mean, is there anything I can do to make things easier for you?”

“Quit talkin’, for one.” Joel shrugged a shoulder.

“Noted.” You sigh and keep walking.

It’s another 6 or 7 miles (with a couple silent rests along the way) before he says anything. “This exit. We’ll camp here tonight.”

You praise god for the words coming out of his mouth. You’re tired, it’s been raining all day, and you just wanted to get inside somewhere and dry off.

You easily could’ve made it another mile or two before dark, but you were more than happy to stop for the evening.

Joel broke you two into an apartment building, checking doors to see if they were unlocked as you made your way through the building. It was fairly free of fungus, but there was grass growing through the first floor.

You made it to the third floor before finding a door unlocked. He held a fist up to you, silently telling you to stay where you are. He opens the door, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other.

You pulled your gun and readied it, just in case. But you stayed where you were told.

You hear him walking around inside the apartment slowly, boots sliding as he whipped around corners to check his surroundings. After a few minutes, he comes back out. “All good.” He nods and you both enter, Joel locking the door behind you.

It’s a modest studio apartment, bed tucked into a corner, couch on the other side of the room, pointed towards a TV in the middle of the room. The kitchen was small but the countertops were nice.

You prayed you’d get lucky, walking over to the faucet and turning it on. “Shit.” You curse as nothing comes out.

Joel just scoffs.

“What?” You look at him.

“You don’t really expect there to be running water in a place like this, do you?” He sighs.

You were sick of his attitude at this point. You were just gonna keep your head down, get through this run, and then tell Tess you can’t work with this guy anymore.

“I guess not… just thought I’d give it a shot.” You shrug, trying not to snap back at him.

You’re tired, you’re hungry, you’re now grumpy because Joel is grumpy… you just need food and sleep and everything will be better tomorrow.

You sat on the couch, digging in your bag for the sandwich you’d packed. You watched Joel sit on the bed, look through his pack and pull out a snack as well. Some nuts, it looked like.

You ate in silence, not looking at each other, not paying much attention to each other.

It’s only when you were both done eating, trying to figure out sleeping arrangements that he would finally start a conversation.

“Y’can have the bed. I’ll take the couch.” Joel says gruffly.

“Alright.” You keep yourself from offering other options, trying to be agreeable.

You switch places with him and although you wanted nothing more than to take off your wet shoes, you had to be ready to run at a moments notice in this world.

You put your gun under the pillow before laying down, resting your head on it. Joel laid on the couch, pulling a blanket off the back of it and covering himself with it.

It didn’t take long to fall asleep, tired from the walking you did today. Plus, you’re not sure how, but the rain really exhausts you.

It was the fact that you woke up only a couple hours later to the sound of Joel groaning about something that had you rolling your eyes.

You turn your head to look at him. He’s laid on his back, arms crossed over his chest, he’s mumbling to himself. If you’d known he was a sleep talker or whatever, you would’ve found some earplugs to bring with you.

“No.” Is the only thing he’s saying now, and the only thing you could make out.

“Joel.” You whisper loudly.

“No. No.” He repeats himself.

You pull your blanket off, getting up and walking over to him. “Joel.” You whisper again.

“Mm mm.” He hums in a negative tone.

“Joel.” You speak in a low voice and reach to touch his shoulder.

Your fingers are hardly on him when he yelps a “Sarah!” and swiftly grabs your left arm. His eyes snap open and he looks at you. You’ve never seen someone so terrified in your life. And you certainly never thought you’d see Joel this way.

He releases his tight grip on your wrist, you were sure there’d be some light bruising. He visibly gulps, his knitted-together eyebrows slowly relaxing as he stared at you for another second.

“Are you okay?” You ask quietly.

“Fine.” He nods, voice soft. He crosses his arms and closes his eyes once more. “Go back to bed.”

“If-“ you start.

“If nothing. Go to sleep.” He grumbles and turns away from you.

You sigh and turn on your heels, walking back to the bed and crawling into it. It’s the second time you try falling asleep that takes longer.

***

The next morning you’re woken up by the constant opening and closing of cabinets and drawers in the kitchen, the occasional sound of things sliding around on shelves.

You lift your head and turn to face the kitchen. “Joel?” You rub your eyes.

“We should go. Just lookin’ for supplies we might want.” He says plainly.

“Okay. Let me help.” You swing your legs over the side of the bed and walk over to him.

He holds his breath for a moment. “It’s easier if I jus’ do it.”

You step back. “What, I stink or something?” You sniff your pits. They’re not great, but not bad either.

“No, you- you smell fine.” He blurts out. “I’m almost done looking.”

You cross your arms and shrug. “Whatever.”

You walk over to the bed and grab your backpack, slinging it over your shoulders. Joel was done after a minute or two. You watched him put a couple cans of food and a pack of bandages into his pack before putting it on his back.

“Let’s go.” He nods at you and unlocks the door, checking the hallway before walking out.

You follow behind, going down the stairs to ground level and finding your way back to the interstate.

You and Joel walk for three or four hours before resting for a bit, glad you hadn’t come across any infected. When you asked Joel why, he explained the patterns of the infected, the way they combed through cities in dense packs because that’s most likely where they could find people to infect.

You’re not sure how it all worked, how smart an infected person could possibly be with mushroom for brains. But you decided not to poke the bear, leaving questions for later. To be spaced out, as not to annoy Joel.

You kept moving, going another five hours before approaching Worcester. Which meant you were about halfway to Springfield. A total of six more days with Joel if you were calculating right.

“There’s a small firefly settlement here. If I mention Marlene m’sure we’ll get a warm meal and a place to sleep.” There’s a hint of a smile on his face, if you’re not mistaken.

The simple pleasures in life. That’s what made Joel happy? Good to know. Next time he says ‘fuck you’ you’ll give him a hot can of beans and a bedroll, problem solved.

“Sign me up.” You grin at him and he actually returns a small smile. The longer you were with him, the slowly more tolerant and tolerable he became.

You made your way into the city, having to redirect a little when seeing a couple of infected roaming around.

You finally approached a tall fence, two people standing guard just inside. They raised their guns toward you. “Stay right there!”

You and Joel pause.

“Joel Miller! I know Marlene!” He yells to them.

The two men look at each other before lowering their guns. One of them speaks again. “How?”

“I’m a smuggler for the Boston QZ. Makin’ a run to Springfield. Need somewhere to stay for the night.” Joel responds.

“And who’s she?” The man asks, nodding towards you.

“This is Y/n. A trusted associate.” Joel glances at you for a second before looking back to the man.

The guards look at each other once more, exchanging a few hushed words. They look up to someone posted at the opening of the gate and nod to him.

The gate slides open as the two men beckon you inside.

Joel thanks them for their hospitality as you follow him into the settlement. One of the men, who introduces himself as Tom, takes you to what they’ve set up to be a mess hall in an old restaurant.

“We don’t have much extra room.” Tom explains. “May have to put you two on the floor somewhere.”

You and Joel nod, “Thank you. We just appreciate you letting us stay.” You smile.

Tom smiles at you two. “Go ahead and get something to eat. I’ll meet you back here in 20 to take you somewhere to sleep.”

You and Joel thank him once more before going to the counter to be served soup and bread. It wasn’t gourmet, but it was better than what you’d eaten the last couple of days. And warm.

It wasn’t particularly cold this time of year, but the rain always made it feel colder. Tonight, being in a safe place, you’d actually get to take off your shoes and let them dry overnight. You were rather excited for dry shoes.

You and Joel sat down and ate across from each other. You tried to make conversation. “They’ve got a nice set-up here.”

“Mhm.” Joel hums around the bread in his mouth.

You study Joel’s face for a long moment, the dimples hiding that would certainly show with at least a half hearted smile. They were cute. His worry lines on his forehead. The crows feet at the edges of his eyes.

His eyes. They’re looking right into yours. “What?” He raises a brow.

“N- nothing.” You shake your head and look down into your soup as you continue eating. Joel doesn’t say anything else and you’re happy to be off the hook.

Tom returns as promised after about 20 minutes, giving you more than enough time to eat firsts and seconds. It’s the fullest you’ve been in months.

Tom brings you two out of the mess hall and down the street to a small house. “Alright. Well, it’s not a room. It’s a garage. But it’s got a bed.” He says, lifting the garage door open to show a makeshift room made in this house’s garage. A full size bed, a dresser, a very old TV, and some shelves with action figures lined up on them.

“You can uh, share the bed.” He looks at you, then at Joel, who was scowling slightly. “Or- or,” Tom speaks again. “I see you’ve got sleeping bags. One of you could also sleep on the floor. I don’t- it doesn’t matter to me. But this is all we’ve got. Restroom is just inside the house, to the left when you walk in.” He points at the door connected the garage to the house.

“Thanks.” You nod at Tom and nudge Joel’s arm with your elbow.

“Thanks.” Joel finally says after a minute.

Tom smiles briefly. “I’m across the street. Come see me before you leave. We’ll send you with some food… goodnight.” He waves to you both.

“Night.” You and Joel say in unison.

Whoever was sleeping on the floor was gonna freeze their ass off. It was a concrete floor and you knew it probably wouldn’t be over 45 degrees until the sun rose the next day. You felt selfish, wanting the bed. But you decided to offer it to Joel anyways.

“Since I had the bed at the last place, you can have it.” You say to Joel as he closes the large sliding garage door.

“No. You take it.” He says in a soft tone.

“Or we could sh-“

“No, I insist.” He says a little firmer now, keeping you from finishing your sentence.

“Alright.” You sit on the bed and unlace your shoes, kicking them off before peeling your wet socks off.

Joel rolls out his sleeping bag not far from the bed, then takes his own shoes and socks off.

“I need to change into dry clothes.” You sigh, looking through your bag and grabbing a fresh, dry outfit.

“Me too. I’ll, uh, change in the bathroom.” He picks up his bag and walks out of the garage without another word.

You quickly peel off your jeans and shirt, then your panties. You leave the bra because it’s the only one you have at the moment.

You take a second to put up your hair before slipping into a shirt when you hear the garage door.

“Not done yet!” You pull the shirt down to your thighs and turn towards the door quickly, catching a mere glimpse of Joel before he’s turning away and closing the door again.

He had to have seen your ass. There’s no way he didn’t.

You sigh. Oh, well. Whatever. In a week you’d never see this guy again so what’s the point in being embarrassed?

You step into a new pair of underwear and cargo pants before calling to Joel. “Okay, you can come in.”

He hesitates but after a second he’s stepping back into the room and shutting the door behind himself.

“Sorry.” He quickly apologizes for having walked in on you.

“It’s fine.” You laugh it off.

You crawl under the three blankets that were on the bed, thankful your body heat would be well insulated overnight.

Joel turns off the light overhead before getting into his sleeping bag and zipping it up as much as he can with his head still poking out.

Over the next ten minutes or so, you hear his breathing get slightly heavier and you assume he’s fallen asleep. You pass out a few minutes later.

***

You’re woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of Joel’s teeth chattering while he sucked air through his teeth, shivering violently.

“Joel.” You whisper.

“H- huh?” He responds between his teeth clicking together.

“Come here.” You say flatly.

“What?” He turns towards you.

“Get up here. It’s warm.” You sigh, staring at the ceiling.

“M’fine.” He grunts.

“Joel, get in the fucking bed. Your shivering is keeping me up.” You order him, rubbing your eyes.

Once you hear his sleeping bag unzip and he gets up, you scoot over to the other side of the bed so he can get in. Your body had warmed the spot so you know it would warm him up at least a little to start with.

Joel lifted the covers and slipped under them next to you, sighing with relief at the change in temperature.

You roll to face away from him, he’s laid on his back, his shivering finally slowing down and stopping, letting you finally fall back asleep.

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clementinegreye · 2 months

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clementinegreye's masterlist and navigation station:

REQUESTS: OPEN!

you can make requests or simply come chat to me; here

💌 criminal minds:

🍋 aaron hotchner

the sweetest sin of all || 3.4k

the sweetest sin of all (part 2) || 2.6k

who'd have thought aaron hotchner was a man so consumed by longing (lightly inspiredin the midst of investigating a serial killer who chooses victims based on the seven deadly sins, aaron hotchner finds himself entangled in more than just the case (inspired by hozier's new song 'too sweet'):

more coming soon!

🌷spencer reid

safer dreams || 2.3k

it's not easy to keep someone safe in your nightmares, something Spencer knows all too well.

false god || 1.2k

it's never a good idea to reminisce about a relationship, especially one that ended with betrayal left you with a permanent scar

some stuff about me and my writing below the line:

about me: hi! my name’s soph, im 23 and an aquarius.

some quick fire facts about me; i’m a cat person, i have a chronic illness, get anxious a lot and my favourite show is criminal minds (in case you couldn’t tell), im trying to get back into reading this year, i have an abnormal amount of jellycats (yes the soft toys) and i love fruit (all fruit)! 🍋‍🟩🍓🍒🍊

i’ve been writing since i was 15 and i’ve been posting my work for a few years now, albeit under different blogs and i post some of my stories on Ao3, which i’ll link below.

writing/requests notes and guidelines:

i currently only write for criminal minds. i’m happy to write angst, fluff, hurt/comfort etc. just be specific in the ask what you’d like and i can try accommodate it!

i use she/her pronouns and therefore feel comfortable writing from that perspective (or gender neutral.m). i’m hesitant to write male!reader as i don’t want to inaccurately portray something i have no experience with.

as a guideline i definitely won’t write anything containing rape, incest or child abuse, non-consensual sex or anything including minors or those underage. i am also hesitant to write abusive situations.

i’ve never written smut but if the topic came up i guess i could give it a go. i would just have to be comfortable with the context and the setting. if you’re request it and i don’t write it, i’m probably not comfortable with it. 🌷☁️🐚

my requests are OPEN and right now and i’ll write for any criminal minds character (i’m most used to writing for spencer and hotch, but i’ll give anything a try) if you want to request something or even just come have a chat and get to know me better my inbox is always open!

i always appreciate feedback and comments, likes and reblog also! but if you just fancy reading something go ahead, there’s no pressure on this blog to interact, it’s always appreciated but i know how i sometimes interact with things on tumblr so i understand. 🌟

note: i do not support AI or using AI to write, i’ve been practicing writing for many years and i think it’s a shame to use it and it feels like it undervalues the hard work people put in to writing. while AI might be a useful tool for some things my writing does NOT include it and my writing is my own. (i do use grammarly to check my spelling because i can be a silly goose and miss things because i edit all my fics myself but that’s it). my works are only posted here on this blog and on Ao3, if you see them somewhere else please let me know. 🩷

you can also find my work here on Ao3:

#criminal minds #spencer reid #criminal minds x reader #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fanfic #criminal minds imagine #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner #criminal minds masterlist #masterlist #soph writes #spencer reid imagine #aaron hotchner fanfiction #criminal minds writer #emily prentiss #derek morgan #penelope garcia #jennifer jareau

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chopper-witch · 2 years

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1979

Eddie Munson x afab!reader

Warnings: mentions of (but no description) torture, being shot, birth, pregnancy, death, and human experimentation. Overuse of the word “smile”. I’m sorry for making Eddie sad.

Wordcount: 11k ish but worth it (I hope)

Reader note: gender-neutral pronouns used, but mentions of you being pregnant and having a daughter. Use of “mother” and related terms as well. If someone has gender neutral terms for mom/dad they would like to tell me about I would appreciate it. Reader is also explicitly mentioned to be a part of some sort of experiment at Hawkins Lab and taken in by Dr. Owens, but no mention of precisely what that experiment was. No physical description except for one mention of hair, but it’s just hair - not type or length or color.

Summary: Just over 10 years ago, you vanished without explanation, right as Vecna began to enact his plan. Now everyone has moved on from Hawkins, built lives away from that nightmare. Except for Eddie, who can’t because moving on means moving on from you. He’s slowly become bitter, hating the world around him. Until he is shown there is a reason to love it again.

Authors Note: this is a modified version of a possible ending to my Dani California fic that I “threw out” pretty early on (I tend to write the start and finish and then figure out everything else and modify the end as I go). Upon seeing this fic by @thefreakymunson and noticing people liked the reverse, I decided to alter it as a reader insert one shot. I’m really bad at one-shots.

Eddie hates how he isn’t able to move on.

Everyone else left, got the hell out the second the last of them, Erica, graduated and have only come back once or twice. No more visits during summer or winter or spring break. No more visits during the holidays or for birthdays. No more yearly reunions at the Wheeler’s or Steve’s. They put the nightmare called Vecna as far away as they could.

Eddie just couldn’t do it. He pretends it’s because he can’t. Financially or whatever.

But the reality is he can’t move on because then that would mean moving on from you.

He hates how never got a good explanation for why you vanished sometime on Saturday, though he didn’t know that at first because he hadn’t planned to see you until Saturday night and didn’t get to see you Friday because you were working. He never got a good explanation for why nothing was gone or out of place. Your car was still parked in the lot of the complex, the door was locked, your wallet was still on the counter where you always left it, and your keys still were still hanging on the hook by the door. Your boots were missing, alongside your jacket and what you were likely wearing that day. The teddy bear he won you at the Fourth of July festival last year and a polaroid of him you keep in your wallet were the only two things that seemed weird to be missing.

But it was as if you vanished.

He never got a good explanation for how you ended up in Nevada, apparently.

What he did get was some girl he never fucking met, Mike, who he is close to strangling half the time, and both Byers, only one of whom he met, in his room while he was healing from a fucking demonic bat attack telling him that you had died after the military or something invaded the secret lab you had been in with this girl he never met.

Oh, and your father? The one whom you said adopted you after you got out of a bad situation (which you refused to speak about)? Apparently, one of the doctors in charge of this secret lab superpowered girl was in.

As if the situation could get any more confusing, right?

But to not worry, because they also didn’t see you die, so you could be alive.

And, of course, he lost his mind at that. Why didn’t they go back in? If this super-powered girl was close enough to you for you to also end up in some basement lab in the middle of the desert, then why didn’t she try to save you?

Then when he was able to go home, living with Steve, of all people, since his trailer was kind of ruined regardless of their day-saving and Wayne decided maybe it was time to find somewhere new, and Steve’s parents also decided to just ditch Hawkins more permanently without actually giving up their much cheaper residence, the agent who had practically interrogated him at the hospital multiple times showed up with a box.

Just a simple cardboard box.

“What is this?” He remembers asking cautiously.

“They’re dead. Confirmed it. This is what we were able to bring back.”

That’s all she said. Not your name, not how you died, just “they’re dead”.

“Not a body?” His voice had cracked. He was suspicious enough to wonder, no matter how much his gut twisted.

“With the number of gunshot wounds they had, there wasn’t much of a body left to bring back.”

There wasn’t much of a body to bring back.

And she had just left him there on Steve’s doorstep holding a box of whatever they could bring back of you.

He had opened it right there in the open doorway.

On top was a teddy bear. The one he had been searching for months now. The only you cheekily called your ‘Teddie Bear’ (“T plus Eddie. Teddie. Get it?”), and whenever you weren’t with him, you slept with it cuddled in your arms. Hell, even sometimes with him, you still fell asleep with it cuddled in your arms.

But it was no longer golden brown and fuzzy and kind of misshapen. There were tears and holes all throughout it, spots of dark brown where blood must have once been, stuffing missing. And it was wearing your necklace. The dog tag one with a series of letters and numbers he never could decode that you wore every day that you added the guitar pick to when he made you a matching one.

With his breath held to stop him from crying, he went lower in the box.

Your jacket. The jacket you wear nearly every day. The one he loved to tease you about because it was a faded army green military style jacket instead of the black leather like a true freak wears.

But it was also decorated in holes and stained with blood. He held it up and saw it was barely a jacket anymore.

The last thing was a small note placed on top of an envelope. He reached for the message.

‘This letter was supposed to get to you soon after they left. It didn’t for obvious reasons and was accidentally kept’.

He hates how Steve had found him hours later, still in the doorway, hunched over without any tears left.

He hates how Steve held him and then went and called everyone when he thought Eddie was asleep. How he broke the news that you were confirmed dead with such little emotion.

Yeah, he barely knew you, but that doesn’t change the fact that you still died.

Eddie hates the letter you left him.

It barely makes any fucking sense, and when he tried to beg El for more information, she admitted she didn’t really know much. It was a separate program held at the same lab. There was no interaction. She only knew you were also in the Hawkins Lab because Dr. Brenner, that man in charge of her experimentation, had told her you were, and that’s why you were also in Nevada. And then you had explained that when Henry - Vecna tried to escape - it made it possible for you to as well.

Which is apparently why Hawkins Middle got a very odd new student in the middle of the school year in ‘79.

He hates how the letter is basically a goodbye like you knew you wouldn’t make it back. How it somehow intertwines the truth within its apologies and farewells and practical breakup message.

He hates that he’ll never actually get to know the truth. Pieces of it he knew before and knows now. Like he knew you were adopted but didn’t know it was the only doctor left in charge of the program after everyone else was killed that adopted you. That you had actually escaped, and he had to choose between killing you and bringing you back and instead fought to have you live a normal life.

But what was the experiment? Not psionic powers, clearly. But something worth killing a kid over and then kidnapping them years later. Or coercing them. He still isn’t clear how willing you were to leave.

Eddie hates how they had to bury a fucking jacket.

Eddie hates how at the funeral, everyone seemed to act like they all knew something he didn’t. The letter barely made any fucking sense, after all. So maybe they did.

Absolutely hates how the only person who stuck around with him as he struggled to keep his shit together after was Steve. Even Dustin could barely look him in the eye.

Steve tried to explain later. It had nothing to do with knowing something after Eddie had accused them all in a fit of frustration one day. Despite everything, all the risks, everyone made it except you. That guilt ate them differently, especially since most didn’t even know you. Many didn’t know what to do or how to feel.

The only one who may be suffering more from guilt was El. Who Eddie thought was incredibly suspicious. But really, she just kept wondering if she could have stopped some of the bullets, reached out for you somehow.

What he hates most is how your mother - not mother - was there. Your father - captor? - was also confirmed dead, but what was left of him was apparently buried in an old family plot out of state. But he doesn’t hate that she came. She raised you for five years. He hates that when he pressed her for something, anything about the past, she simply told him she didn’t know. That she was left mostly in the dark about what happened in that lab. And that what she knew of you was only that her husband was told to kill you or bring you back, and instead, he fought for a normal life. So she ended up with a terrified young teen in her home whom she raised, cared for, and loved like they were hers.

But surely she must know more?

So he hates how she must be lying.

He doesn’t hate any of his bandmates for moving on. Corroded Coffin fell apart pretty fast after the ‘unprecedented earthquake’. Gareth’s family moved away. Jeff’s family stayed, but only so he could finish school. Grant was due to graduate in the spring, just like him, and as soon as he did, he chose to go to college.

He just hates that they have no idea. The cards he gets during holidays from the others always include notes about he should come to visit. How nice New York or Chicago or some random town in Florida or California or Washington is this time of year. How their house is always open, no questions asked. It’s annoying, frustrating, but he appreciates it.

The ones from his school friends are just reminders that some people have no idea. Smiling wishes and cheerful reminders that it was just some freak disaster that was able to be kind of fixed. You died. They knew that. But they didn’t know how or why. They, like everyone else, were just told it had been due to the earthquake.

Eddie hates how he hears your voice and sees your smile and spots the way you stand, of all things. Strangers will come in, and they will just have something that is just so like you, and it breaks his heart.

For the first few years, he would hear someone with a similar voice and hope it may be you, only to look and see someone he has never met.

(Hawkins got a lot larger after everything was cleaned up because although the gates only partially opened and were able to be shut, lots of people moved out because of everything that kept happening, leaving lots of cheap housing available to people who just no longer wanted to live in cities or suburbs.)

Eddie hates how it has been ten years, and he is still in Hawkins, still working as a mechanic, and still cuddles a poorly stitched teddy bear every night like someone who can’t get rid of their baby blanket.

He hates how he can’t listen to half the music he used to love because he reminds him of you. He hates that he had to shove most of his clothes in a box and store them away and borrow clothes from Steve fucking Harrington for a while because you had worn almost everything of his before.

He hates how he stares at the shitty ring he got you that he knows you would have just loved. How he never got the run like hell off that stage finally to you and ask you to marry him because fuck it. Who cares about being kind of young? He’s known it was you since you quietly thanked him back in 8th grade after he helped you pick up everything that spilled out of your backpack after some kid purposefully knocked into you a week into your being in Hawkins Middle. He hadn’t heard you speak a single word before then and at most only saw you look up to see the board.

He hates that the photo your mother - or experimenter’s wife, he supposes - took when you convinced him to go with you to Snowball is fading. You both look so out of place in slightly more formal clothes, but it’s still his favorite because it’s the first photo he has with you.

He wishes he knew you never went to any school dance before because you used to go to sleep in a locked room no larger than his bathroom and were never provided such an opportunity. He would have been less stubborn about it, less of an asshole the whole night. Maybe he would have taken up on your ask to dance instead of letting you get taken by some guy who only ended up making fun of you later because you still struggled to speak in public and could barely make eye contact.

He wishes he knew about your life before you met. More than just “it was hard”. He poured his trauma out to you, and you couldn’t do the same? He doesn’t hate you for not doing so. In fact, he hates himself that you weren’t comfortable being honest.

He hates that your clothes are all still tucked beneath his bed in an airtight container he never opens. He’s too scared to. They could lose their scent if he does. And he doesn’t want to lose any part of you. Your favorite comic, though, comics, Uncanny X-Men #129 - #138, sit on one of his bedside tables. The one that would be yours, on the right side of the bed. He hasn’t touched them beyond taking them from your place and moving them there. But he spent every year since they came out watching you read them nearly every day. So he looks at them every day.

“What’s so great about Jean Grey and her Phoenix persona?” He asked one day.

“I just… I feel like I relate. It sounds silly, I know.”

He hates that he still doesn’t fully get it but does at least appreciate that it doesn’t sound quite as silly anymore. He never felt it was ridiculous to be relating to an X-Men character. He understood that. It was the way you would linger on her change, her persona, her eventual sacrifice. Like that was what you related to.

Like that was what you planned to do, now that he thinks back.

He kind of hates that he began calling you Phoenix at the time and never stopped. You never seemed to dislike it, but he wonders if maybe he did something wrong by clearly poking fun at what was some sort of comfort for you.

And he really hates how empty his apartment still looks.

Despite all his attempts, he hasn’t drawn in years, and everything you ever made is tucked away in a different box that he can’t even look at. They aren’t decorating his walls as they should be. The painting you did for his 18th that wouldn’t fit well anywhere in his trailer would be perfect above his bed, but he just leaves it in the closet, carefully wrapped and boxed up.

Band posters are tucked away somewhere too.

It’s devoid of you. But it’s also devoid of him.

Eddie hates how he still gets looks from people who remember ten years ago. Hawkins has changed dramatically over the past decade, but those that stayed and keep staying still look at him with worry.

Jason Carver went to jail for assault and attempted murder and murder for the shit he did to Lucas (and Max, and they just connected him to the rest of them because he was already going to jail). Yet, he, who never even spent a day in police custody (except a few times in his teen years) and was immediately taken off the suspect list as soon as the super secret government people could, would sometimes be side-eyed like he might start stabbing someone for fun in the middle of the road.

He is tempted to stab some customers occasionally. But that’s just how working is.

Eddie also hates how he lost a bet and has to close the garage by himself on a Friday. It’s a stupid thing to hate in comparison, but he hates it nonetheless. He rather be at home. Rather be just sleeping off the day.

It’s nearing 11 PM, and he’s almost done. A few more things to do, and then he can lock up and leave and thankfully take tomorrow off.

Of course, those assholes placed a nice pile of grease on tools that shouldn’t be quite that greasy. So he sighs and gets to work on wiping the table and tools down.

He’s not even done with the second wrench, the first on the floor next to him, when a voice calls out to him over the music. It’s loud, blasting out Black Hole Sun from the only station that will occasionally play rock and metal. It also plays the newer genres like grunge, which he likes, and alternative, which he is still unsure about.

You’d tell him they're just natural derivatives of one another, so he should stop being so uptight about it.

“Excuse me?”

That voice.

It sounds just like yours.

Eddie just keeps wiping down the tools that need to be cleared. He has been through this game enough times. He can’t keep doing it. He can’t keep putting himself through the cycle of hope and pain.

“We’re closed. If you need something, come back tomorrow.”

There’s a pause.

Eddie assumes whomever it is has walked away. The music is too loud to really tell.

Then there is a pause, the host quickly reminding everyone that the last song was Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden.

“And up next —”

“I don’t think this can wait until tomorrow, Eds."

Eddie stills.

Eds.

No one calls him Eds.

A few have tried, but he put an end to it because it isn’t the same as how those letters fall off your lips. It has never had the same love, the same bite when it needs to.

He turns.

There stands you.

Under the shitty lights of the garage, hands tucked in your pockets, is you standing in front of him for the first time in over ten years.

The wrench in his hand falls to the ground.

You’re skinnier than he remembers you being, face gaunt and eyes sunk. Your hair is drastically different, too. The clothes you are wearing don’t look quite right on you either, a little too big and not quite your style. Definitely ‘90s, though.

It’s your eyes that give you away.

He has stared into those eyes enough to know exactly what they look like under any circumstance.

He whispers out your name. Partially in hope, partially in fear. Maybe he has finally fucking lost it. Maybe he is just seeing your ghost wandering around instead of just pretending it’s you when he falls asleep or when he needs to tell someone a really bad joke.

You give a little half-wave, hand still in your pocket. “Hi.”

Eddie is running to you and pulling you into a hug, spinning you around before you can even notice him moving. He’s transferring dirt and grime all over you, but you don’t care. You can’t find it in yourself to. The last time you saw him was 7:37 AM on March 22, 1986, when he left for school, and it is now 11:01 PM on June 9, 1996.

It’s been over ten years.

He sets you down and just holds your face for a moment, grease smearing all over.

But you let him. Let him squeeze your cheek and run a thumb along your chin just to make sure it really is you standing in front of him, even though you can feel the slick of oil and grease wetting your face. Let him dig his fingers near your jaw and up into your hairline. Just to ensure you are real and not some hallucination.

Your hands gently rest on his shoulders as he does so. You know he’s real. It took you a whole month to even convince yourself to even come here. But touching him is still terrifying. Like if you touch him wrong, he’ll walk away. He’ll realize that you’ve changed and that he has as well and he can’t be with you. That he isn’t compatible with you anymore.

He kisses you.

You let him, despite the splotches of dirt and grime covering his lips.

He tastes like cigarettes and beer and weed and that cinnamon gum he likes. Only oil and grease have been added. It’s familiar, even if it is new too.

It’s all the kisses he left along your forehead and cheeks long before and after you began dating, leaving a lingering of his scent.

It’s the soft first kiss that led to his panic run when your father opened the door, even though he wasn’t mad. Just wondering why a flower pot had knocked over.

It’s making out at Lover’s Lake high as hell and giggling into each other’s lips like it’s the funniest shit in the world.

It’s the last kiss you gave him before you left, not knowing it would be your last for so long, pressed to his lips with a promise to see him Saturday.

It’s home.

It’s him.

But you’re different. Something is different about you, and he hates it. It’s your mouth, your tongue and your weird lemon chapstick he always thought was ridiculous but was also always distinctly you, but nothing else about you tastes right.

He can’t taste all the kisses you have peppered him with or the first kiss he ever had that was with you or the make-out sessions at Lover’s Lake or the way your lips would kiss away his tears when he got overly frustrated or sad or the last kiss you ever gave him that he replays over and over and over in his head every night wondering if something went wrong at that moment that he was too him to realize.

He pulls away fast, too fast, only to yank you hard against him again and cry. A body-shuddering, face-weeping cry.

And you do too. You just cry.

And cry.

Hands are gripping the other's so tight, confirming the other is real. Eddie especially is practically digging his hands into your skin and muscles so hard he’s squeezing your bones and organs. You don’t care. He could snap you in half, stab you, do anything, and you wouldn’t care. He’s here in your arms again.

Neither of you knows how long you’re crying for, you just know both of your shirts are soaked by the time either of you has the ability to speak again.

“You’re alive,” he barely musters out, voice broken from the tears. “You’re fucking alive, and your hair is…”

You chuckle through the tears you still have left. “Yeah. Though you’re one to talk. It’s… short.”

That wasn’t a change he wanted to make. But it just got to be too much. You were the one who encouraged him to grow it in the first place, too.

He rubs the back of his head nervously. “Yeah. Look bad?”

“No.” You smile, fingers threading through some of the short curls. “Looks amazing.”

His head leans into your familiar touch. Touch he has only dreamed of, felt like a ghost along his scalp. Nothing like the real thing.

“We had a funeral,” he says, interrupting the silence that had fallen. “We… you were dead. They said you were shot.”

“I know. I know. I am so sorry. I have so much to explain. I was shot but not shot to death.” Your eyes land on the scarring on his cheeks. “And you…”

Your fingers ghost over the healed scars on his face, trailing along and down to his neck.

“I know.” Eddie grabs your hand to stop you. “They’re… ugly.”

“Hot. I was going to say hot. Rugged. Handsome.” Your eyes return to his. His stupid, baby cow-like brown eyes that you fell in love with that are full of tears and love and hurt right now. “But what happened?”

“Nearly got killed by some demonic bats. Henderson and Harrington, though.” He chuckles. “They saved my ass.”

You tilt your head. “Steve Harrington?”

“Yeah. Steve Harrington.”

“I’ll have to thank them.” Your hands drop, and his follow. It feels silly, stupid even, to be holding hands and facing each other like this again. It feels childish almost.

But you like it.

Eddie fucking loves it.

“Finish closing. Because we have a lot to talk about.”

Eddie looks over his shoulder at what is left to do. Not that he even cares at this point. He could have everything left and it wouldn’t even matter.

“Fuck that. My girlfriend just came back from the dead. I’m leaving now.”

Sitting on his couch with his left thigh flush to your right, what Eddie discovers he hates the most is how he is staring at a kid with eyes and hair identical to his and a smile brighter than yours, which he didn’t think was possible. He hates how he can no longer be excited about your return and is no longer full of questions about how you escaped. He hates how he can barely listen to your explanation about being shot and some army person taking you, and that guy whom he thought was your (adopted) father but was actually some scientist doctor to some secret black site and torturing you guys and…

“Where is she?”

You knew he wouldn’t be able to listen after whatever point you told him that he had a kid. So you practically led with it, knowing the idea that you had been pregnant and didn’t know would be a lot easier to swallow than CIA black sites and torture and the background of the experiments before you guys met.

“Safe. Healthy. Surprisingly well-adjusted and happy, all things considered.” You reach up to play with his hair. It’s so short now. “You can see her tomorrow if you’d like.”

“And she’s 10?”

You pull your hand away from the black waves beginning to form on his head. “Nearly.”

He hates that. He hates that a lot.

“I missed 10 years…”

You reach down to his hands, resting your left on top of his left and leaning further into him. He stares at the way your hand is covering his as he grips this photo of the daughter made of both of you. Made of you and him.

“10 years were stolen from you. It’s not your fault.”

He dryly laughs and grips the photo tighter. It bends - distorting the photo of the smiling girl.

“I still missed them, though.”

You can’t disagree with that. Whether through his own fault or not, he still missed 10 years of her life.

“What’s her name?”

“Veronica Andrea. They wouldn’t let me use your last name for her when she was born, but we got it changed last year.” You press a quick kiss to his shoulder, even if it is on his oil and grease-stained skin. “Call her Ronnie.”

He likes that. No. He loves that. Veronica to sound normal, Ronnie as a nickname. And Andrea for his mom.

“Why now, Phoenix?” He finally asks. “Why not 10 years ago?”

Your hand moves from his to his forearm, fingers dragging along his skin like you used to whenever he was overwhelmed. A way to ground him. “You really haven’t been listening, have you?”

Eddie glances over at you and offers an apologetic smile. “Is it really that obvious?”

“It’s fine. I get it. I’ll explain it all again when you are less distracted.”

“Can I see her now?”

He isn’t a big fan of the way you sit up and entirely withdraw your touch.

“No. She’s… she’s not in Hawkins. We’re going to need to drive a few hours.” You pause and sigh nervously. “A few states. So we should leave after we’ve slept.”

“A few states?”

Yeah. He fucking hates that too.

He hates how scared he is to sleep beside you for the first time in ten years. He hates how you are right there, feet away, and he can’t do anything but freeze. He hates that he ignores your sly offer of showering together, and he hates that he won’t let you touch him beyond his face and hands.

He lets you shower first, setting out some of your old clothes. His, technically, but you stole them so many times over that he considers them yours. The second he opens that airtight box, his eyes well up because it still smells of you.

He hates that he is so afraid all of a sudden. Afraid to lose you again, mostly. That you’ll see the rest of his scars and decide he’s not attractive enough anymore. That coming back after all this time wasn’t worth it.

“Since when have you worn both a shirt and pants to bed?” You ask as the exits the bathroom. “It’s always a shirt and boxers or sweats and no shirt. Are you already that old?”

“Just more comfortable like this,” he mumbles, sitting down on the left side of the bed where he always sleeps, even after 10 years.

You’re close to the center, knees tucked up as you wait. But he stays facing away from you, sitting as far to the edge without falling off as he can.

“No, you aren’t.” You shift to your knees, trying to reach out to him. “Eds…”

He flinches away from your touch.

Your heart drops.

He’s frightened and rightfully so.

But fuck, it took you a month to convince yourself to come here. You aren’t letting him shut down and shy away.

So with no hesitation, you pull off your own shirt and kick off your pants and yank the covers off.

“Eds, look at me.”

He grips the bed beneath him. He’s too frightened to turn around.

“Eddie.”

He closes his eyes. He can’t do it. He can’t lose you now.

“Edward Joseph Munson. Look at me right now.”

He does. Because when you pull out his legal name - full legal name at that - he knows you aren’t messing around.

And he can’t help but gasp.

There is scarring everywhere on you.

He hates that you’re scarred as well. You explain each kind. Gunshot wounds that were purposefully treated poorly, scars from various torture types, a slightly jagged line where the daughter he never met came into this world.

“They practically just ripped her out. I was pretty numb and barely conscious, though.”

His fingers touch each one, and you watch as his entire face morphs into a sadness you have never seen.

And afterward, he reluctantly pulls off his shirt and sweatpants.

The bats got most of his torso, a good portion of his left thigh, and the right side of his neck up to his face. He’s had 10 years of healing to get them in a better state, however, rather than the continuous disruption of the healing for yours. Still, the scars take up feet of his skin and still look painful.

“You’re okay. I’m okay. It’s going to be okay.”

“How are you so calm?” He asks shakily, head buried into your shoulder.

“I’m not.” You finally admit it to him. Outside you’re still, but inside you are trembling greater than any earthquake. “But I’ve spent years hiding parts of myself from you. From everyone. Hiding my fear comes naturally to me at this point.”

“Talk about being a phoenix, Phoenix,” he jokes.

There he is. There’s your Eddie.

You pull him down onto the bed with you then, foreheads touching.

He continues to gaze into your eyes like you’re both teens high on Lover’s Lake again. Only this time, there are no giggles shared because something is just too funny. Only light touches along each other’s scars occasionally and silence.

He hates driving from Indiana to Wisconsin in the middle of the fucking night.

He just couldn’t wait.

You begged him to wait until the morning as he suddenly stood up and started getting dressed, to drive when you’ve both had some sleep so you can properly explain things to him and guide him there. But he didn’t want to wait, so as you were falling asleep, you told him to wake you when you hit the border to Wisconsin on 94 (after mumbling some other directions about Chicago because you knew he could get there).

He does listen when you tell him you will not be buying him cigarettes when he stops to get gas because he knows you hate that shit and you are literally on the way to take him to meet his fucking kid. And he appreciates the way you reach across and press your hand into his forearm for as long as you can until you fall back asleep when he gets jittery.

(He buys cigarettes anyway when you are asleep the second time he has to stop).

(You throw them out the window when he isn’t looking when you spot them in the cupholder a few hours later).

He listens again when you guide him through miles and miles and miles of land in Wisconsin until he reaches a city larger than Hawkins but still relatively small along a series of lakes. Far north, too. Therefore cold most of the year.

Which, considering how often you complain when his cold hands touch any part of you, is surprising.

“Here,” you eventually tell him, pointing out a house amongst a neighborhood full of them.

An actual house.

“Here?”

Eddie is skeptical. A normal-looking two-story suburban house with a yard and a porch and a vibrant blue door and matching garage is where you’ve been hiding?

“I know. Point is to look normal. Like anybody and everybody else. Just park here.”

So he does, pulling his truck up along the curb in front of your house.

Your house.

Yours.

He’s just a stranger here.

Just a stranger in this new life you’ve built.

He doesn’t get out when you do.

He just sits, gripping the steering wheel, staring at the blue door and faded green shutters and kind of dirty off-white paint and yard with a bike in the middle that you frustratedly pick up and lean against the porch. And god, the house has a porch that looks weathered but stable and has flower pots on it and is screened-in and actual furniture instead of a worn-out couch that should have been tossed a decade ago.

It’s all he ever wanted for any kid he imagined and then some and he isn’t even part of it.

“Hey. Eddie. Are you coming or not?” You shout when you reach the said porch, breaking him from his reverie.

Fuck. He shouldn’t be so scared. But he is, and he hates it.

He gets out with a heavy exhale and makes his way toward you. His heart beats louder with every step, hands shaking so hard he has to grab his jeans to keep them steady.

You reach out and press your hand to his chest when he reaches you, trying to calm his shaking. “It’s going to be okay, Eddie.”

“What if she hates me?” Eddie asks, voice quivering. “Because I wasn’t here?”

“She knows it isn’t your fault.”

“And if I don’t live up to her expectations? I’ve changed.” He backs up from you, panic setting fully in. “I’m not who you remember and definitely not who you’ve romanticized in your stories to her, Phoenix. I’m just some guy who couldn’t move on from a town that wanted him dead and fucking ran from almost every fight he was in and is frankly a shitty person and a—”

“Eddie. Hey, Eddie.” He freezes his pacing and looks at you again. You, who is leaning up against the entrance of the opened porch door, hands tucked in pockets as you try to comfort him with your smile. The smile you didn’t even show him until over a month into knowing him. Your smile is so hard to pull from you, so seeing it like this - leaning up against your home to comfort him hits his heart differently. “She just wants to meet you finally. No matter what that means, okay? You can’t possibly disappoint her. Not after everything. Trust me.”

“But what if —”

“We will figure it out then. Okay? No matter what if.”

Just as you promised him. You’ll always figure it out with him. You promised him that so many times.

He nods.

You turn, pushing the screen door further open, so Eddie has time to grab it while you go and unlock the front door.

The first thing that greets him is not a kid, however. It’s a dog that weaves its way around your legs and straight to him, nudging its very wet snout into his hand.

“Quicks, inside.”

Before Eddie can even fully process the feeling of a wet, cold dog nose on his hand, the dog is retreating back through the door.

“You have a dog?” He asks, confused. The dog is trotting off far into the house before Eddie can take a good look at it.

It’s not that you hated dogs or cats, but you just never seemed fond of the idea of owning either.

You shrug as you finally step inside, gesturing for Eddie to follow. “Yeah. Hard to say no to your eyes, especially when they do the baby-cow thing.”

His heart drops a little at that. She must really have his eyes then.

But curiosity pulls him back. “Named… Quicks?”

“Named Quicksilver. Who Ronnie tried to nickname Quickie. But I, uh, shut that down pretty fast.”

Eddie smiles. Yeah. That’s his kid.

He shuffles all the way in so you can shut the door.

It looks so normal. A room to the left filled with what looks to be an office of some kind, a room to the right that looks to be part of just one big room on that side of the house. He steps on something as he moves to continue looking, and a soft snap causes both of you to freeze.

While you just look down, kicking his foot out of the way, Eddie can’t help but worry he broke something important. What a great way to introduce himself to his kid.

“I keep telling her to stop leaving her pencils everywhere,” you mutter, picking up the now cracked dark blue alongside the handful of others. “They keep snapping because they keep getting stepped on.”

It’s so parently. Has such an adult kick to it. He smiles at that. He kind of hates that he missed watching you change into that person, however. Ten years ago, you would have chucked a fucking baseball at his head for saying something stupid. Now you’re groaning in frustration as you gather up colored pencils and tell him to take off his boots.

“So, where is she?” He nervously asks as he follows you past the stairs and through a narrow hallway.

The hallway is covered in paintings and drawings instead of portraits like he’s seen at others’ houses. He knows some are yours for certain - knows your style - but others he can’t quite tell who they were done by.

“She has lacrosse practice right now,” you explain as you both enter the kitchen. Eddie can’t help but scrunch his nose. “I know. An athlete. She plays hockey too. But she’ll be back in a few minutes. It’s actually a good thing we got here when she was gone. Gives you time to breathe since you look like you’re about to pass out.”

Yeah. He is.

“Please tell me she isn’t just an athlete.”

You smile at that. Of all the things. “She’s also an artist if you couldn’t tell by the colored pencil fiasco. And she does play guitar. I think the sports thing is gonna get kicked soon. Mostly because she is gonna get kicked from them soon.” You pick up another few colored pencils from the counter and table, grumbling to yourself as you do so. “Hold on.”

You disappear into what Eddie assumes is the basement, leaving him to look around.

This definitely isn’t the way he would decorate a house. Nor would he think you would, either. But he could see your dad, that doctor, whoever, doing something like this. It’s just too clean, even though it is clearly lived in. Too pale blue and pale yellow too.

He can’t help but wander up to the fridge - the only place he’s seen actual photos so far.

On the fridge are a handful of photos. Mostly of Ronnie.

Mostly of Ronnie alone.

None of you and her when she’s a baby or a toddler or a young kid. Just alone. And with strange backgrounds. Just plain cement or what looks like military bases. If she is with people, it’s people he doesn’t recognize. Or she is with other kids. Except a few with that agent who handed him the box of your stuff. Those he does recognize.

Of course she knew.

But not even any with your dad, really.

The ones with you and your dad look recent. Look like they could have been taken on the same day as the one you handed to him.

And the few with the dog - a whippet, if Eddie remembers his breeds correctly. A gray whippet that, of course, was named Quicksilver. Because what else would a kid name a fast, silver dog?

Who, in a holiday photo, has been shoved into the ugliest Christmas sweater he thinks he has ever seen. But Ronnie is smiling as she leans next to the patiently sitting pup, who somehow doesn’t look distressed, considering the situation he has been shoved in to.

Eddie feels the wet nose against his hand again.

“You must really love Ronnie, huh?” Quicks’ ears perk up. “Oh. Ronnie. You know her name. Well, you must really fucking love her then.”

“You have no idea.”

Eddie looks up. You’re holding a portfolio binder in your arms - a large one - and shutting the door behind you with your foot.

“He’s actually normally at practice with her. Just sits there, but still. Don’t know what he’s doing at home. He’s only here when she’s going somewhere he can’t be - which is school, really. Must’ve been worried about me.” You pause as you stop in front of Eddie. “Well, Ronnie was probably worried about me, so he got worried and wanted to wait.”

“What did you tell her you were doing?”

“I said I had a doctor’s appointment. I’ve had to go well out of town for a few, so it isn’t unbelievable. But she gets the gut feelings like I do. She had to know something was different.”

Eddie smiles. “Like parent like kid?”

You smile back. Such a simple thing for him to say, and your heart is skipping beats over it. “Something like that.”

“Why do all of these look so recent?” Eddie asks, nodding towards the fridge. “Like the ones with you?”

“Like I tried to explain, we’ve only been really living normal lives for like a year. The rest of the time, it’s been… well, for her, strange. But almost no more strange than what any military kid goes through. But for me.” You pause, and a sad, soft laugh leaves your lips. “And my dad, it’s been pretty fucking awful.”

Eddie doesn’t like the way your voice cracks at the end. More than that. He hates it.

Before he can ask more, however, you are thrusting the portfolio towards him.

“Here. Some of her art.”

He takes the portfolio from you. He’s seen enough of yours to know how meticulously you like to preserve certain pieces; how much care you put into placing them into archival protectors and sealing them shut (in ways that can be opened, of course).

“Some of my favorites she didn’t want hanging up anywhere.”

Eddie flips it open. It opens to a landscape. One he is quite familiar with.

Well, at least he is in his mind.

If he didn’t know better, he’d say it was some elaborate painting of some foreign, forested place in the mountains with a castle nestled within. Maybe a painting of some old fairytale.

But he does know better. It’s Rivendell.

The tiny illustrated label card in Elvish helps.

He can feel his heart swelling with love. She’s a goddamn nerd. Not just a comic book nerd, as evident by a gray whippet named Quicksilver, but a full-blown nerd.

“She’s amazing.”

“She had a lot of time to kill. Like I used to.”

Eddie tears his eyes away from the landscape he only ever fantasized of to find your eyes staring far off, despite them being right on him.

“What… what exactly happened to her? And you?”

Your focus returns to him, but it is still hazy. He can tell your mind is still somewhere else. Scratch that. Some time else.

“Do you think you could sit and listen to me for a few hours later tonight? I will explain everything. Beginning to end. You just need to listen.”

“I’ll try.”

You nod and head to the fridge.

He keeps going through the stack of drawings, one by one. Renditions of DnD monsters or characters, landscapes (both real and fantasy), portraits of you, of ‘grandpa’, that damn dog, and even one of him that he pauses on.

It’s from the polaroid of him you kept in your wallet. Your wallet was there in your apartment. This photo wasn’t.

It was on you. With you this whole time.

And your daughter took it and drew him from it in uncanny detail.

From a polaroid no more than a few inches by a few inches, she drew a nearly foot-and-a-half by two-foot portrait in full color. He wants to be impressed, but he also can’t help but think back to all the times you drew things from almost nothing. He showed you a photo of his mother once, the only one he had, and a week later, you handed him a painting of her and him when he was maybe five, despite him never showing you a photo of him that young. You had just muttered out that you guessed.

He’s starting to wonder what precisely those experiments were. He was told they weren’t psychic in any way, nothing like what Eleven went through, but what you created for him and what he is staring at requires some degree of psychic powers to achieve. To know a moment you were never in takes knowledge only a psychic would be able to obtain.

He is so absorbed in thought and wonder that he misses the sound of the front door opening, even when the distinct and loud thunk of Ronnie’s duffel bag can be heard seconds later.

It’s your voice that breaks him from his trance.

“How was practice, princess?”

Eddie looks up from the drawing of him.

From the shadows of the hall races the girl from the photo.

Only real.

“It was good!”

She stops dead in her tracks. Normally she’d be leaping to her spot at the counter, chugging the drink you or grandpa set out for her. The one she hates but you both insist is good for her. But instead, she just stares at the man leaning against the counter.

The photo didn’t do her justice.

Her hair is braided back, but lacrosse has brought some of the curls and frizz to the forefront, wild dark brown tufts of hair sticking out in strange directions. Wide, brown eyes are staring right back at Eddie as if he is looking at a mirror.

“Hard to say no to your eyes, especially when they do the baby-cow thing.”

Yeah. He’s inclined to agree even if they are technically his eyes. They are hard to say no to. And she isn’t asking anything of you.

She shares so much more with you, Eddie acknowledges, but if you simply showed up with her on his doorstep, he would know. He would know that she was his without a singular doubt in his mind. There is no mistaking his own eyes, his own hair.

“She broke a girl’s nose. On accident, of course,” Sam adds, shuffling around Ronnie so he can head outside before the realization really hits.

“Was it Kelly’s?” When your daughter doesn’t respond to tell you all about the nose she broke, you turn to see what’s going on.

And you smile.

Then, without holding back, she runs right to him and practically jumps onto him. She’s stared at that polaroid enough to know exactly what he looks like, even with his short hair.

Eddie is stunned as her arms fling around him. The first real hug he got in nearly five years was last night and from you. The second is right here, right now. Given to him by his daughter.

His.

His daughter.

He relaxes into her grip. He loves the feeling of this kid’s arms around him, squeezing him half to death. His kid’s arms around him. He could get used to this.

“Mommy said she was gonna bring us home one day. But she brought you home instead.”

His arms finally wrap around her, squeezing her just as tightly back.

It’s a strange feeling. One he only occasionally dreamed of years ago. One that would sometimes come to him when the would see parents with their kids at work or in the store, and he couldn’t help but wonder what life would be like if you had made it back and made it back alive. He wasn’t even sure you would even really want kids despite you saying so, given your even stronger reservation than him to bring up your childhood.

But it builds in his chest and heart first; slowly pouring out from there. It reaches his throat next, and his breath catches hard. A hiccup escapes his mouth. Tears are the next thing to come, falling faster than they did last night.

Fuck if he doesn’t love the feeling of crying, though.

“Yeah,” he chokes out, already borderline blubbering. “I’m here. ‘M here, princess.”

Ronnie doesn’t wait for him to cry it out. She doesn’t even cry. No. She leans back in his grip and immediately begins to talk faster than he ever has.

Eddie just keeps crying, brows stitching together in confusion and shock as she does.

She just doesn’t stop. Ceaselessly beginning to talk about everything and anything she can and slowly pulling out of the hug, but moving her right hand into his left as she does so. Even tugs a little like she might start bringing him somewhere.

He lets her.

He’d let her do anything she wants. She’s already got him wrapped around her finger.

“Ronnie, sweetheart,” you interrupt, and both of them turn to you. You’re smiling, happy as hell, but you know Eddie. And know how he is when he’s overwhelmed. Sure, he’s crying because he’s happy, but you can see the tremble of his system overloading. “How about you go get changed? He’ll still be here when you aren’t covered in grass and sweat.”

“But mom, he—”

“Veronica.”

“Mom, I have —”

“Veronica Andrea Munson. Go change.”

“I will be right back. Quicks, come on.”

Seems she too knows the threat of a full name from you.

She leaves with one last squeeze, the dog sticking close to her side.

Eddie is stiller than a statue as she goes because at least statues vibrate with the air and ground beneath them. He seems to be completely out of time and space. Eyes distant just as yours were earlier.

You reach out to him, hand barely grazing along the non-scared side of his face. “Eddie? Are you okay?”

“I love you,” he blurts out. “I love you. And I love her. She’s so amazing. I know it already. I just wish I was here and I —”

“I wish so too. I wish we were never apart. But that wasn’t up to either of us.” You grip his shoulders tight. He lets out a heavy breath, and his body relaxes. “I sometimes think about that day. Think about what would have happened if I hadn’t left. But I know I would have just been forced to leave instead of going voluntarily.” You press your forehead to his. “And you’re here now, yeah? She’s going to go get changed, and then you can listen to everything she has to say. Because it is… a lot. And she will not stop until she has said her peace.”

A lot is an understatement. He didn’t think anyone could talk so much for so long, and he was a DM for 6 years.

It begins with her dragging him to her room.

Which feels like someone took his room and let an Easter Bunny vomit all over it. The walls are a pastel green, a color he would never even think of painting a wall, but covered in band posters and drawings and photos. Her sheets are pale purple and pink and if it wasn’t his kid’s room, he knows he wouldn’t be able to stop the teasing about the color palette - completed by pale yellow curtains. There’s even a baby blue guitar hung up on the wall, out of reach from danger but low enough for Ronnie to still grab.

But if Ronnie sees his face of concern over her color choices, she ignores it and just drags him right to her bed so she can talk and show him all sorts of things.

He hangs onto every word, despite half of them not even making sense (which leads to a lot of ‘it will make sense later’s from you. A lot.).

She also divulges some… strange secrets, which have him raising his eyebrows. Like her admitting her birth certificate says she was born in Hawkins despite her never even having crossed into Indiana.

She shows off even more drawings and a trophy her hockey team won during the winter and her ‘best new player’ award and everything under the sun she can think of to show him in her room, including a tour of the band posters. Which he knows, of course, but listening to her explain Nirvana in disturbingly accurate detail and alongside her favorite songs is worth it.

“Mom said you play guitar too?” She eventually asks, grabbing her guitar from its spot.

Eddie looks down at the pale blue guitar she is holding. Then he glances to you, where you sit in some beanbag chair in the corner of the room, petting the dog.

“Yeah. I used to. I… I don’t really anymore.”

“Oh. Well, why not?”

"The last time I did it I almost got killed by demonic bats in an alternate dimension,” doesn’t seem like the best response. “Also, my guitar still fell victim to the quake there was, and I couldn’t bring myself to buy a new one.”

“Just didn’t have the time.”

“You should have plenty of time now, then!” She gleefully responds. “And I can help you remember anything you may have forgotten.

After that, she plays him some songs she’s learned.

Then she goes right back to talking.

She talks until dinner, through dinner, after dinner, during everything she does, up until she is almost too tired to do so. At which point you had put a stop to it, telling her she could finish all her storytelling for the next day. That it is time to shower and time to go to bed.

At which point she throws the most dramatic fit. Not a screaming and crying fit. But she groans and sighs and acts like you’ve sent her to her death and even turns to him for backup. Her eyes doing the baby-cow thing.

Which has him grinning and also feeling very, very weak. Day one, and she already wants dad to play good cop.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” you whisper.

He knows your threat is true. It doesn’t even need to be complete.

“I’ll be here in the morning, princess,” he chooses to respond. “You can finish all your stories then. And I will even share some of my own.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

She keeps her arms crossed as she considers his proposal. “Okay. But you also have to tell me a bedtime story.”

“I think we have a deal, princess.”

Your dad comes in first to say goodnight and tuck her in. Quicksilver is already curled up at her feet, a teddy bear near identical to the one he won you eleven years ago clutched in her arms. This one is not covered in blood stains and hand-stitched together after being shot, however.

Then you come in and wish her a goodnight, telling her to enjoy the story dad’s going to tell her.

Dad.

Yeah. Eddie’s heart flutters at you calling him dad.

“Don’t take too long. She needs to sleep,” you whisper on your way out, pausing to give him a quick peck.

“Will do, mama.”

You pause, trying to hold back your grin.

Eddie then enters his daughter’s room to see her patting a spot by her head, already half-asleep. He takes her silent direction and sits down, feeling his heart beat out of time as she leans to rest her head on his stomach.

“You comfortable there?”

He can feel her smile on his skin, which warms him more than just seeing it.

“Very.”

“Any requests, princess?”

“No.”

That surprises him. For spending hours talking and demanding, it’s weird seeing her so subdued suddenly. His eyes catch a far too familiar bottle of pills as they flick around for inspiration. He’s seen those on your bedside the entire time he’s known you and questions about them were always left unanswered.

Must be about those experiments or something.

“How about I tell you all about…”

By the time he is finished, only a half hour later, which is extremely short for him, he is surprised to find Ronnie not quite asleep. Getting there - evident by her breathing and loosening grip, but not quite there.

“You’re much better at storytelling than mommy,” Ronnie mumbles.

Eddie tilts his head to look down at his sleepy daughter, hand gently running along the braid it’s been put back in to. Just like you always told him to do for sleep. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Mommy is kinda boring.”

Eddie smiles. “Don’t tell them that.”

“They know. Apologizes for it. Says they wish they were like you.”

“Well, I’m here now to tell you all the stories you want.”

“‘Nother tomorrow?”

“Another every night, princess.”

He presses a kiss to her forehead. Quick and gentle, and over top her bangs, but still, a kiss nonetheless. The first kiss he has ever given his daughter in her nearly ten years of life.

He can’t stop the swell of sadness that fills his chest when he realizes that, and he hates it. Nearly ten years of her life went without him. He would have been here, after a mini heart attack anyway, if he had known.

Before he can break into tears, he gently moves her head to rest on her pillow rather than his chest and stands up. His legs carry him quickly to the door. He needs to get out before he starts sobbing again.

“Daddy?”

He freezes. “Yes, princess?”

“You did’n’ say night.”

“Oh.”

Ten years without a proper goodnight from him, too. Ten years. Like that doesn’t make his heart hurt more.

“’S okay. You didn’t know. Goes like this.”

Eddie hates the conversation you have with him after Ronnie has fallen asleep. The hours of explaining Hawkins Lab, the capture in Nevada, the torture, how they found out you were pregnant before you knew and used it against you, used Ronnie against you. He only found relief in knowing that she was left out of it all. She was still raised as normally as possible. They still let you have her and hold her and tell her stories and do normal parent things. But there was always this looming threat and this thought that you were speaking to her in code or that the stories had a double meaning and weeks when you would ‘be leaving to do something for work’.

And other terrible, terrible things. Things she has no idea about and hopefully never will.

He wonders why she never shuts up then, though, if she was raised in such a situation. It isn’t entirely genetic.

“Because they encouraged her. Hoping something would spill out. And now I have a child I have to pick up from school at least once a week because the CIA thought it would be a wonderful fucking idea to let her never shut the fuck up and teach her an attitude at the same time. And you, my dear.” You poke his chest. “You provided her with the perfect genetic blueprint to do so.”

He doesn’t love that she was basically raised by some of the scummiest people on the face of the earth. But he does appreciate that his child is more chaotic than him. And that you, sweet, nearly failed freshman English because it had a public speaking component you, now suffer through dealing with her.

He takes you up on the offer to shower together. He is hesitant about having sex, but he so badly wants to hold you, feel you again. You can tell, and without a single word assure him you too just want to feel him again.

So he gets under the warm water with you. Where he gets to really, truly look at you in all your scarred glory and you get to do the same to him. He can’t stop himself from touching the worst of the scars - the places where wounds were forced to not heal - and you simply let him.

Eddie’s touch is better than any other.

“Can you… can you wash my hair?” He nervously stutters out.

“Turn.”

He does.

He loves the feeling of your fingers gently massaging his scalp. He missed little things like this. The things that weren’t big or overly romantic or sexual. Just your fingers running through his hair with this near scentless shampoo is something he missed more than any sexual act he could possibly think of.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until you ask if he’s okay.

“Yeah,” he chokes out. “Just… just really, really missed you. And this. Your touch. You know?”

“Yeah.” You press a kiss to his shoulder. “I do.”

He loves being able to wash you as well once you finish him. Gently running along your curves and planes. He may have done so not long ago, but that felt different. Methodical. The water and soap allows his fingers to glide over your skin however he pleases, digging into some spots and ghosting over others. He has missed this too.

“I’ve missed your touch too, Eds,” you mutter out when you stop his hand on the c-section scar. “And I wish I had you with me.”

He mimics your earlier action, pressing a kiss to your shoulder. “I wish you had me with you too.”

After the shower, you tell him to put his clothes in the laundry basket as you should have a few things that fit.

“These should fit. Unless you’ve suddenly grown or shrunk an insane amount.”

He takes the clothes from you - a fading shirt, new sweatpants and boxers - and cannot stop the heavy feeling in his chest.

“These will work.” He looks back to you. “Keeping someone else around?”

It’s half a joke, half not. He wants to be lighthearted in the event you have seen anyone else in your time apart. It would be reasonable, understandable. Being alone is hard. Still, he doesn’t really want to know.

“No.” You shift your weight back and forth. “I got them for if… when I finally got the courage to find you and speak to you.”

Eddie nods and rubs the worn Nirvana shirt between his fingers. Ronnie really, really likes Nirvana, he mentally scoffs. She’s not even ten.

A sniff alerts him back to you.

To you, already bordering sobbing on the bed.

“Phoenix. Hey. What’s wrong?”

“I just…” You play with the fraying bottom of your robe. “I was just so worried that I would come to you and you would be moved on. I wouldn’t have blamed you, and it’s what I would want you to do. But it still terrified me. Because I had spent years hoping, praying to anything that might exist that I could see you again one day and hug and kiss you and if you had moved on and I had just come back with a fucking kid and either ruined your new life or got rejected… either way…”

“Move on? From you? From the person who I shared everything with? From the person I loved first and last?” Eddie brushes his thumb along your cheek, brushing away a tear that has fallen. “Never. I could never.”

“If I was really dead, I hope you could.”

“Maybe. But receiving your jacket and no real answers wasn’t good enough. Couldn’t move on from that.”

You hum, leaning further into his touch.

Eddie loves crawling into bed with you for the first time in ten years and actually feeling comfortable with it. He loves the way you snuggle into his chest and press a kiss to his clavicle.

The way you whisper goodnight to him, assure him you’ll still be here when the sun comes up, still fit so perfectly with him. The way he falls asleep so easily for the first time since that night, dozing off with only minimal panic in his brain.

Eddie loves the way the morning light filters into the bedroom. It hits your face just right, highlighting your cheeks and nose and lips and all the things he has been missing.

The sun is also filtering onto Ronnie, who he didn’t notice coming in last night. The braid is almost entirely ruined - her hair being naturally unruly like his, despite it being taken care of better than his ever was. She apparently sleeps with her mouth slightly agape, like you swear he does (and even have picture proof of, but Eddie still denies it).

“You’re staring.”

He looks back to you to see your eyes now open, lips pulled into the tiniest of smiles.

“Can you blame me?”

You shake your head. “No. I’ve stared a few times in the night too.”

His thumb runs along your cheek. “I think that was the first time I actually slept through the night in a long time.”

“I still haven’t made it.” You adjust your head to be closer to Eddie without waking Ronnie. “But I’ll get there.”

“I could get used to this.”

That draws a soft laugh from you. “You better. I don’t plan on letting you go.”

Eddie smiles. He doesn’t plan on letting you go either. “But we’re not actually going to stay in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin, right?”

“Sh.” You close your eyes and pause. “Too early to think about that. But where would you want to go?”

“California seems nice. New York even.”

You reopen your eyes. The morning sun has moved just enough for it to hit them just right, their color sparkling in the golden sun. “California or New York, huh?”

“Yeah. But I’ll go anywhere with you, Phoenix. And Ronnie. But the dog…”

You roll your eyes. “California or New York sounds good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You stretch over the child sleeping between you two and press a kiss to his lips. “Mm. Morning breathe.”

His lips stay just barely pressed against yours. “You love it, don’t deny it.��

“I do.”

And you kiss him again.

Ronnie shifts in what you think is her sleep until she is literally shoving you and Eddie apart.

“Gross,” she sleepily mutters. “Didn’t want him just so you could smooch him over me.”

You laugh at her comment. “You jealous, princess? Cause I got plenty of smooches left for you.”

She tries to shield her face before your lips can reach her cheeks, but it’s too late. You’ve already begun assaulting her with pecks all over.

“Eddie, babe, you gotta help me out here!”

He just stares. With the goofiest and happiest grin you’ve ever seen him have, he just stares.

And though he’s already said it many times over the past day and some odd hours to both of you, he says it again.

“I love you. Both of you.”

You pause your attack and smile.

He means it wholeheartedly. He loves you and Ronnie and another thousand things he could spend days listing off.

So many things that maybe hating life while stuck in Hawkins for ten years was worth it.

No, not maybe.

Definitely.

Final note: Ack, anyway. Not sure how I feel about this.

#Eddie Munson x reader #dad!eddie munson #Eddie Munson x fem!reader #Eddie Munson x gender neutral! reader #Eddie Munson imagine #Eddie munson fic #Eddie Munson oneshot #Eddie Munson angst #Eddie Munson fluff #anyway sad Eddie Munson to happy Eddie Munson hours

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lotties-ashwagandha · 2 years

Note

hi!! i just found yr blog & i absolutely love the way u write <3 if you're currently open for requests, could i please request a lilith ritter (nightmare alley) x reader (she/her pronouns) hurt/comfort fic? if not, thats ok too! i hope you're doing well :)

DEAD SEA

pairing: lilith ritter x reader

word count: 1811

notes and warnings: thank you for the request darling!! i’m so excited for this,, it’s inspired by “dead sea” by the lumineers. also,, i might have misinterpreted the hurt/comfort aspect,, i’ve seen hurt/comfort shit that is physical injury and i’ve seen hurt/comfort that is emotionally based - i wasn’t really sure what you wanted in that respect, but i tried my best!! TW: panic attacks, guns, knives.

summary: you’ve been panicking ever since lilith was attacked by stan in her office. when you finally break in her office, lilith assures you that she’ll never leave you.

DEAD SEA:

The fear was palpable to no one but you.

You were alone in an abyss of shadow, waiting for something to jump out at you, waiting for the world to fall into the hands of flames.

And yet, no one else joined you in the maze, no one else saw that you had withdrawn from the world to be pulled in by a terrifying darkness.

Five weeks. You counted the days every morning.

You had been carrying a gun everywhere you went for the last five weeks. There was not a single place in which the gun did not accompany you. Even in your own house, it was always by your side, and sneaking it into the drawer of the bedside table before bed had become a part of your routine.

It hadn’t stopped at the gun. You kept knives as well, though they were much less practical and you had to position them just right or else you felt as if you would unintentionally stab yourself.

Lilith hadn’t noticed – you didn’t think she had noticed, and this was one of the few comforts you still possessed.

She had not noticed, either, that you had been having panic attacks every so often, their onset quick and unstoppable. If she was home, you would hide away in the bathroom, you had even resorted to a closet at one point, though that had only made the whole situation worse.

Anything to keep your pain from her. For in addition to your fear, you were overridden with guilt.

She had been the one to be strangled.

She had been the one to be attacked in her office.

She had endured the unfathomable, and yet you were the one packing daggers and hardly making it through each day.

You still believed that you should have been there, five weeks ago in her office with Stan Carlisle, for you know he would not have walked away with his life.

Your daggers, your gun, were not for your own protection. Not in entirety.

Your episodes of unceasing panic were not due to fear of your own unsafety, but that of Lilith, for if an attack had happened once, surely it could happen again, and again you would not be there to stop it.

On this day, however, you would be present, and it exhilarated you. The previous night, Lilith had taken home the file of one of her patients, studying it a bit, and had not remembered to take it back to work this morning in a rush of being late.

Little did she know that you had purposely broken the alarm clock in an attempt to keep her home, or that you’d hidden the file underneath the sofa.

You knew your mental state was worsening. This truth had not escaped you in the slightest. Yet the pull of your quest for safety, and the guilt you felt due to such a pull had roped you in with a force you could not counter.

You were alone in the shadows of the abyss.

No one was with you in the maze.

No one could see through the darkness. Not even Lilith, who you thought could see through the lies of Satan if she looked hard enough.

Yet it did not matter, for you were almost there, almost to her office, and from there it would all be just right, for you would be there to guard the two of you.

Finally, after what seemed to be hundreds of hours, you reached the building that held her office.

You hadn’t expected it to feel so fucking terrifying.

You had not visited Lilith at work since the day of the attack – fresh in your mind was the memory of her voice on the other end of the call telling you that she had nearly been strangled, that she needed you with her, that you needed to remember to take a gun with you incase you ran into unpleasantries on the way.

You remembered stepping through the threshold and making your way into the building, all of the fucking stairs leading up to Lilith’s office, the blood staining the walls and pointing you in her direction.

How petrified you had been, how utterly panic-stricken you were at the prospect of the blood being hers.

Ripping yourself into the present, you started slowly up the stairs.

Everything was a threat. The way a secretary had gazed at you when you came in, the way the lights bore down at you like rifles, the silence of the building holding your senses captive as you listened for any sound of danger.

The trek to her office could not have lasted any longer.

When you finally made it, however, you did not immediately knock, did not immediately go in.

You needed a moment to compose yourself. Every sense was on fire. You knew that if you entered in this state she would surely notice, and you knew that if you spent another moment in the hallway you would go into a full episode of panic.

Part of you wanted to die right there and then, to sink through the floorboards, to simply cease to exist all together.

You knocked rapidly on the door to her office.

Lilith shouted that it was open, and with a shaking hand you twisted the handle and entered her office.

Upon seeing you, her expression lightened, and in her gaze you felt like you had been brought back into the protection of her love.

Yet even her protection could not save.

It took you a moment to remember how to speak, and when you did, your voice was raw. “You forgot your file.”

She eyed you closely for the briefest of seconds. “Well, it’s nice to see you too,” she said airily, taking the file from you. You did not realize it, but Lilith noticed how your hands shook and the way your gaze flitted rapidly all around the room. “Darling, are you alright?”

You nodded with a smile.

“Thank you, love, for bringing me this. You’re a lifesaver.”

You felt like you were going to vomit.

Everything was all so wrong.

No one was with you in the darkness, the maze was empty, it was closing in on you, the sea was swallowing you in a storm.

Lilith’s hand came to rest on your shoulder, and you jumped. “Are you sure you’re feeling well?”

“I’m fine,” you assured her, “I think I just… I think I just need a second.” you continued into the bathroom that connected to her office. The small space suffocated you, and you were thrown into a deeper sense of panic. All you wanted to do was stop moving, yet to stop moving would be to die.

Everything was wrong.

Everything was so, so wrong, and there was nothing you could do to fix it.

You were alone in the darkness.

The sea swallowed you in a storm.

You didn’t like the way your reflection was looking back at you – and you didn’t realize you had smashed the mirror above the sink until it had already happened.

Lilith shouted after you, yet her words were incomprehensible.

Tears were streaming down your face, blood seeping from the gash on your hand from the mirror’s glass.

Before you could comprehend her presence, Lilith was at your side, carefully taking you into her arms.

You could not stop your sobs, your guilt resurfacing and deepening when you realized that your blood was seeping into her clothes along with your tears, which only caused you to sob even more.

Yet she continued to hold you – through everything she held you.

Until the sobs subsided, she held you. Until you realized that you were safe.

You pulled away from her after a few minutes, using your unharmed hand to take the gun out of your purse and throw it in the sink. You followed suit with the knife strapped to your thigh, the knives in your sleeves, and the knife you had attached to the inside of your jacket. A sizable collection of weapons filled the sink, and Lilith’s curiosity was soon replaced with realization as everything pieced together.

“You are safe with me. You’re safe here, I promise,” she assured you, moving closer to you.

“I never feel safe anywhere. I haven’t since…” you trailed off, yet you knew she understood.

She understood you more thoroughly than anyone ever could.

“Darling, listen to me – I will never let any harm come to you, not ever. What happened was a rare occurrence, the act of a madman–”

“I’m not worried about myself,” you interrupted. “Every day you leave and I wonder if you’ll come back. I’ll never forget the way you sounded on the phone, Lilith, the blood on the wall when I came in… what the hell happened that night? It came out of nowhere.”

Lilith was silent for a while before she spoke.

“There are many things I haven’t told you,” she admitted, noticing how you froze under her touch, “things I’ve hidden from you. I will tell you everything, but as of this moment, I need you to understand that I hold every power over Stan Carlisle. We will never see him again, I promise.”

You weren’t quite sure how to respond. You knew that Lilith had a way of falling into risky ambitions, and you tried to avoid it as best you could, yet nothing like this had ever happened during your relationship. “You promise to tell me everything?”

“I promise.”

And you realized in this moment that you did not carry the world on your shoulders, and that you did not need to.

You were not alone in the darkness.

Her danger was protection — her fury was never yours to bear.

“Why didn’t you come to me?” She asked.

You sighed. “I felt guilty. I still feel guilty. After everything you went through, I shouldn’t be the one that’s stockpiling weapons.”

“Never feel guilty. Never. You have every reason to feel just as you do, and I never want you to think otherwise. I love you more than you will ever know, and I will protect us with all of my strength.”

“I love you so much.”

“And… darling, do you realize that you’ve fallen for a psychiatrist?” she asked quietly, her tone laced slightly with humor, as if she herself were not quite sure if the remark had been a joke or not.

“Yeah, that’s the fucking tricky part, isn’t it?” you grinned. “Why couldn’t you be, I don’t know, a baker or something?”

“I love you very much, but you will never see me in an apron.”

“No? Not even for me? It would surely get my thoughts away from weapons and murder…”

“Your thoughts should be on your hand at the moment – let’s go, we’ll get you sewn up.”

“Sewn up?”

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yourturntosimp · 2 years

Note

Hey there! I loved the Keiji x Reader x Alice so could I request some more? Yandere of course, just them finding out Reader snuck out in the middle of the night. Male or gn is fine!

Could I also claim Heart anon? He/It/They pronouns!

A/N: I'm sorry in advance if this one sucks bc i'm rusty as hell NBVCVBGNH-- glad to have you here, Heart anon! (Also, i’ve only noticed this js before i’m posting, but i’m sorry that this one is so short!! i write in google docs so i dont rlly think about how the hc length transfers over to tumblr formatting <///3)

TWs: paranoia mention, Keiji is mean, unnecessary amputation mention, mention of leg breaking

♡ Keiji is probably the first to notice when you leave ♡ i feel like he’s probably a light sleeper, and also chances are he was either in the middle of a nightmare or already awake– ♡ he’ll let you think you’re sneaky for a bit, waiting to get up until he hears the door, window, etc close, and then he’ll wake up Alice-

♡ which took a minute bc mans could probably sleep through a tornado–

♡ and ofc, once he figures out what’s happening, Alice starts freaking out ♡ bc you’re outside??? On your own??? In the middle of the night??? ♡ he’s hurt that you’d try to run away, but his main concern is your safety ♡ Alice strikes me as the “handyman who may not know what he’s doing but it works out in the end” type sooooo ♡ they decide that Keiji will go get you, and Alice will just stay at home and make sure that you wouldn’t be able to even dream of running away again ♡ if you left through the windows, good luck doing that again while he’s jamming them shut–

♡ have fun trying to leave through the door when he’s changed the locks, and now it locks from the outside as well ♡ don’t ask how he did this in a timely manner, im doing my best <///3

♡ Now, Keiji is more annoyed where Alice is scared ♡ like, seriously? They treat you so well, and you have the nerve to run away from them?? ♡ since he’s less panicked than Alice, he’s able to concentrate more on thinking about where you’d go

♡ and considering how none of his “friends” have contacted him to say you’re with them,,, ♡ he narrows it down to either your family (if they live nearby), or an actual friend that he’s let you keep ♡ and since he also hasn’t gotten any panicked texts from Alice about your family sending the police their way,,,

♡ you’re on your way to a friend’s place, 100%

♡ so of course, he does the only sane thing to do

♡ just when your friend’s front door comes into view, so does Keiji-

♡ and he doesn’t look very happy with you tbh

♡ you can’t even try to babble an excuse, turn to run, or do anything before he’s got you by the back of your shirt

♡ of course, he would never raise a hand against you in public! no, never

♡ but he will mock you for being such a dumbass ♡ did you honestly think that they wouldn’t notice? that’s a bit rude, isn’t it? ♡ the way i’m getting annoyed from my own writing fucking bye–

♡ you really thought you would be able to escape with no means of transport? You do realize that cars are quicker than,,,well, you, right?

♡ you realize how much trouble you’ve caused? Not only did he and Alice have to wake up in the middle of the night to come find you, but you’re not even thankful for it, are you?

♡ if you think he’s bad, Alice is arguably worse–

♡ he almost starts sobbing when you two get back <//3

♡ the way he’s worried about you would be sweet if the circumstances were different and you weren’t being taken back to being held captive in your own home–

♡ where were you???? Do you have any idea how worried he was???

♡ you could’ve gotten hurt, or kidnapped, or killed, or something worse, and how would they have helped you out of any dangerous situation if they hadn’t noticed that you were gone?

♡ but because he’s the nice one, he’ll forgive you, this once

♡ you must’ve been half-asleep, right? Or you just sleepwalked? Or you were just confused? Because surely you wouldn’t do anything so reckless on purpose, right? ♡ it’s alright, though, because now they’ve got new safety measures to make sure you don’t make the same mistake! ♡ don’t complain, because he initially proposed just chopping off or breaking your legs to stop it from happening again <333 ♡ the only reason this didn’t happen is bc Keiji deemed it as too harsh for a first-time offense and also cleanup would be alot of work this late into the night–

♡ mhm yep Alice is still the nice one idkwym--

♡ good luck leaving home ever again after this little stunt, btw

♡ bc that friend who you tried to run to? ♡ they’re either mysteriously too afraid to speak with you or whatever method you had to contact them is just cut off altogether

♡ on the bright side, at least your boyfriends are so willing to excuse your actions! And now they’re spending even more time with you, isn’t that nice? ♡ i’d advise against being inconsiderate of their generosity, though ♡ after all, if you even think to try something like this again, they’ll have to actually go through with Alice’s idea

♡ and i don’t think anyone wants that, so it’s best for you to just stay placid for now <333

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kurokens · 3 years

Text

Gojo Satoru | Loving you is a losing game

anime/manga: jujutsu kaisen

character: gojo satoru

words: 929

pronouns: none

request: “First of all I would like to praise you because your writing is incredible. Second, I would like to ask for an angst with Gojo. I read what you wrote and honestly, I am an angst-loving reader. I thought of something like Gojo cheating on the reader or she is pregnant but ends up losing the baby (If you write about pregnancy.) I would be extremely happy with either or whatever you want, I just love angst. Thank you, have a great day or night. ^^”

notes: hello! thank you a lot for requesting! I went with the cheating one bc I am not comfortable with writing about pregnancy! I hope you will like it. have a great day/night as well!😚😚 also this won’t get a part 2 if anyone is wondering bc fuck cheaters lmaooo (sorry im reposting again tumblr isn't letting me in the tags, pls tell me im in now)

not proof read

song rec: arcade - duncan laurence

genre: angst

warnings: cheating, implied sex but nothing in details, gojo is a cheating bastard, im so sorry gojo lovers (me)

Being with Gojo Satoru was a wild ride, and you knew it was going to be from the first day you two starting going out. But you never regretted falling for him, no matter how much he could get on your nerves sometimes, you still loved him for who he was, and you were happy with him. To this day you still couldn’t comprehend how you made him fall for you, dating the strongest sorcerer of them all was scary. The fear of never being enough was always somewhere deep inside your brain, but Gojo was always there to reassure you that you were far more than enough for him, and you were grateful for that.

Yet, here you were, standing on your doorstep, a piece of your heart shattering with each moan ringing through your ears. Moans that were definitely not yours, nor your boyfriend’s. You took a few hesitant steps that guided you to your shared bedroom, the moans echoing louder with each of them. With a shaky hand you turned the doorknob, mentally preparing yourself for what you were about to see. Fully knowing that, in reality, nothing could prepare you for this nightmare. A part of you wanted it to be a fever dream, praying that none of this was real, and that you weren’t witnessing your boyfriend of 5 years in your bed with someone that wasn’t you. But another part of you knew that this was real, and that the fever dream might have been your relationship all along, way too good to be true.

With this thought crossing your mind, a bittersweet laugh left your mouth, one that made all movements in the once squeaky bed abruptly stop. The bedsheets ruffling in a hurried manner, before blue eyes finally met your glossy ones.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Am I interrupting something?” You asked mockingly, laughing once more when all you were met with was silence and your boyfriend with his mouth agape. “I finished my mission earlier than expected, I wanted to surprise you with some sweets I got from overseas. I guess the surprise was successful, wasn’t it?”

“Love, I can explain everything.” Gojo started, scrambling to his feet to put his underwear and pants back on.

“Love?! Explain everything??? Oh Gojo, darling, what is there left to explain here? Did you trip and accidentally fall in bed with someone else? Oh no, better. Was it a curse’s doing? What kind of bullshit are you going to try to make me believe?” You roared, the reality of the situation slowly hitting you.

“No, it was a mistake I promise, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” The sorcerer said, taking a few tentative steps towards you, which just made you back further away from him.

“Oh yeah? Then tell me, love, for how long has this mistake been going on?” You questioned, harshly whipping off your falling tears.

“It’s not-” He began.

“HOW LONG?” You screamed, completely losing your temper, your body shaking in anger.

The silence in the house was heavy and was starting to rile you up even more, you wanted nothing more but to slap him across the face.

“A year and a half.” Gojo finally answered, his eyes never once meeting yours.

At his response you could only laugh once more, hot tears slowly streaming down your face. Neither of you made any move for a while, giving you the time to process the information.

“Why?” You finally asked, no longer caring about your swollen eyes and runny nose.

“I don’t know, baby, I swear it didn’t mean anything to me.” Your boyfriend urged, reaching out to hold your hands, only making you back away to stay out of grasp.

“For a year and a half? You’re trying to make me believe that you slept with someone else behind my back for a year and half and that it didn’t mean anything to you? That it was a mistake?” You cried.

“Baby-” The sorcerer started only to be interrupted with your hand colliding with his cheek, the slap so hard it was sure to leave a mark.

“DO NOT BABY ME!” You shouted, your last wall finally breaking down. “You do not get to call me baby Gojo. You do not have the right to try and change my mind about all of this. You are a piece of trash, you are a horrible person. I gave you 5 years of my life Gojo, FIVE. I did everything in order to be the best partner for you and this is what I get? You cheating on me? I knew all of this was too good to be true. Of course. You’re The Gojo Satoru, the strongest sorcerer, the one everyone wants. Why would you be with me? It didn’t make sense, right? Even you knew it. What was I to you? A game? Well, I’m sorry you lost that one. I’m sorry I wasted your oh so precious time.”

“Don’t say that. You know this isn’t true.” Gojo declared, once more trying to reach out to you.

“If it wasn’t you wouldn’t have done this.” You shook your head, taking another step away from him before turning around to make your way out. “Goodbye Gojo, hope it was worth it.”

With these last words you closed the door, leaving behind you the man you once loved and who you thought loved you too. And as you walked down the streets with your broken heart and tear-stained cheeks a thought crossed your mind.

Loving him was truly a losing game.

#saturn's writing #jjk x reader #gojo satoru x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #gojo x reader #jjk angst #jujutsu kaisen angst #gojo satoru angst #gojo angst #gojou satoru x reader #gojo satoru x you #gojo x you #jjk x you #jujutsu kaisen x you

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lumini-317 · 3 years

Text

Hello!

This will be my official “introductory” post!

My real name is Erica, but I go by many names. My nickname repertoire includes but is not limited to: Lumi, Lumini, Cricket (I have a habit of rubbing my feet together, lmao), Jinx, Eri, Er, EriJoy, Sunbaeby, and Aceir (my real name but in alphabetical order).

This is my first ever Tumblr blog. I’ve had it for a while but have rarely posted anything, that along with the fact that I’m on mobile is kind of a mess so I apologize for mistakes and all that.

I have 3 older brothers, an older sister, and a younger brother.

I’m an ambivert. Sometimes I love hanging out with bigger groups of people, other times I dread it.

I’ve taken the “16personalities” test 4 times and all 4 put me in the “Diplomat” category, however I got “Advocate” (INFJ) 2 times, and “Protagonist” (ENFJ) and “Mediator” (INFP) 1 time each.

I am LGBTQ+. I’m asexual, aro+panromantic flux, and while I feel like I’m genderfluid, the changes are very subtle and so I sometimes just go with agender, gendervoid, or neutrois. It’s a lot less complicated that way. I’m ambiamorous, and also pronoun apathetic!

I love whump. I’ve loved it for as long as I can remember but only found the whump community maybe 3(?) years ago.

I also love K-Pop, C-Pop, J-Pop, and Asian dramas, mainly K-Pop and K-Dramas, though.

I’m a HUGE multistan. ATEEZ, SKZ, TBZ, EXO, BTS, Red Velvet, SHINee, iKON, MONSTA X, TWICE, TO1, WANNA ONE, SuperM, X1, MIRAE, Ciipher, Golden Child, Purple Kiss, BAE173, SF9, IU, ONEUS, ONEWE, The Rose, PIXY, LUCY, STAYC, WEi (which I pronounced as “way” for an embarrassingly long time), Dreamcatcher, Brave Girls, TXT, ENHYPEN, SNSD, KARD, AKMU, SHAUN, Gaho, NCT, GHOST9, 1team, SE7EN, Cross Gene, D1ce, AB6IX, CRAVITY, BLACKPINK, CIX, VIXX, f(x), 4Minute, CLC, YEZI, B.I, Wonho, (G)I-DLE, EVERGLOW, SEVENTEEN, BROOKLYN, Ha Hyunsang, DAY6, GOT7, Teen Top, BAP, TREASURE, UNIQ, etc! It goes on, far longer than I can list. I am also very much against fanwars, they disgust me.

I’m also a HUGE animal lover, and a big softie. I can’t even squish insects. I don’t care that they can’t feel pain and don’t experience emotions, I just can’t bring myself to. I make it my mission to save any type of animal I come across. I find toads in our koi pond and immediately pick them out and take them to a safe place. I help turtles across the road. I got a mouse out of a puddle and revived it, releasing it when it was healthy enough. I saw a snail on a piece of wood that was going to be thrown on a fire and carefully pulled it off and put it somewhere else. So far I’ve found 5 stray cats (Piper, Toothless, Felix, Kai, and Kit Kat—all were found as skinny, sickly kittens) and took them in, raising them as my own. I rescued a chipmunk from certain death-by-cat. I’ve even saved a few baby raccoons, ducklings, lizards, spiders, and snakes in my time. And I’ll keep doing so for as long as I live.

I love writing, drawing/sketching, and painting, however I’m not confident that I’m good at any of those things, lmao. I mean, I don’t think I’m the worst, but my finished “works” often leave me unsatisfied with my “skills”. But of course, that won’t stop me from trying to improve!

I’m a maladaptive daydreamer. This can cause issues in some places while helping me out in others. On one hand, it makes doing chores and such kind of difficult. Like one time I had to take care of my dad’s pigeons while he was fixing our shed and one time he pointed out how slow I was with the chores. His words were something along the lines of, “I’m already almost done with what I have to do and you’re still working with the pigeons.” Also, it (and maybe ADHD if I do have it?) made school a nightmare for me. But it’s also helpful because then during church it’s really easy to keep myself occupied while the pastors go on about their Magical Sky Daddy™’s son throwing a tantrum and killing a figtree because it didn’t have any figs and how that story should “challenge” us or something.

The characters in my daydreams are weird, though. They merge and separate with each other to make different characters depending on the situation. Most of them don’t have definite genders. Only a handful of them have names because they’re always merging and separating like some kind of Shadow Clone Masters or something. Stuff like that.

One of my characters is for sure a demi-boy, though, and his name is Kyler.

I brought this up because I was watching The Andy Griffith Show and Andy was giving Opie a lecture on how many poor kids there are in the world and used the ratio “one and a half boys per square mile”. Opie then says that he’s “never seen a half a boy before”. Kyler just sort of pops into (fake) existence, jumps off the couch, and throws his arms in the air while saying, “Half a boy, right here!” I burst out laughing. Thankfully it didn’t seem weird, since my parents started laughing at Opie and thought that I was just laughing at it, too.

Any-who.

If I daydream while I’m standing, I’ll often pace and gesture with my arms while moving my lips. Sometimes I’ll even whisper. If I’m sitting down, I usually fidget a lot (such as pick at my shirt and rub my feet together), stare into space, and move my lips or whisper. My family sometimes ask me, “Why are you whispering?” Or, “What are you grinning about?” And I just shrug because I don’t know how to explain it to them without risking them calling someone to pray over me, lmao. I mean, I wasn’t even allowed to have imaginary friends because that was “evil”. When I was about 7, I told my parents about my imaginary unicorn friend and they gave me a lecture and “prayed over me”. It was embarrassing and awkward for me.

I’m suspicious that I might have ADHD, but don’t have the money to actually get a professional diagnosis. I’m also too scared to ask my parents about it.

Speaking of which, my family and I don’t see eye-to-eye. I mean, they don’t know it because I’m good at hiding it, and they think I agree with mostly everything they do but boy, is it a mess.

You see, they’re evangelical conservative Christians. “LGBTQ+ people are going to hell”, “ThE LeFt ARe eViL AnD ARe TrYiNg To BrAiNwAsh OuR ChiLdrEn”, “Trump was sent by God”, “Intersex is fake”, “Women must submit to men”, “You should get married no later than in a year or ‘the temptation’ to have sex might become too much”, the whole bit.

Meanwhile I’m over here with my (imaginary) pride flags, just existing as an agnostic leftist who wants everyone to have equal rights, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, and would rather redo my horrifically atrocious kindergarten closing program role than pray to a god who (if they/he/she/it/whatever exists) gives cancer to kids and killed millions of innocent animals and people in the Bible.

But they have no idea that this is how I feel and now expect me to be baptized within the next month to show that I have “accepted Jesus Christ as my savior”. Yeah...that’s gonna be an awkward discussion...

Anyway, that’s just some things about me. Sorry that I got sidetracked a few times, lmao!

I look forward to posting more and maybe even making friends!

Thank you for reading (:

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iclaimedtobethebetterbard · 3 years

Text

confiding over cuddles

Fandom: Sanders Sides Characters: Logan, Virgil, background Roman & Remus. Rating: Teen & up Relationships: Analogical, both pre-relationship and during the relationship. Warnings: Language. First scene has mentions of being outed, religious homophobia, the implication of the f-slur having been used (the actual word is never on the page), and could maybe come across as critical of Christianity although I intend it more as critical of the homophobia. All of this is kept vague and not gone into in great detail. In the second scene, there are a couple of lines that are implied to be suggestive, but no other warnings. Word count: 4657

Read on AO3!

My writing masterpost

Starlight Universe masterpost

analogical week 2021 start - previous - here - next - masterpost

Summary: Throughout the years, vulnerability has always been easiest for Virgil and Logan while cuddling.

Notes: Day 3 of Analogical Week 2021! @analogicalweek Yes, I’m posting it a day late, but I technically finished it before midnight last night, lol. Takes place in my Starlight Universe, does not need context to read. Remus uses he/they pronouns in this universe.

part 1 - nightmares “Virgil?” Logan said quietly, looking up from the textbook he’d spread open on the floor of Virgil’s dorm room.

Virgil flinched, startled in spite of the soft tone and not too eager for conversation. “What?” he mumbled, dragging his headphones off one ear. He wasn’t actually listening to anything—he’d put them on to avoid conversation—but apparently now they were having a conversation anyway.

“I’m sorry if I am overstepping, but you don’t seem like you’re doing okay.” Logan looked up at him with wide, earnest dark brown eyes. “If there is anything I can do to help, I would really like to.”

Virgil heaved a sigh, considering his options. He hadn’t had time to cancel their normal study session, and when Logan had picked up on his distress at the beginning of the visit, Virgil had insisted it was fine and Logan didn’t have to leave. Logan had taken him at his word and settled in, sprawling on Virgil’s floor while Virgil curled up on his bed and hugged his pillow, avoiding homework and everything else too, to wallow about—well. The reason he would have canceled if he’d had five minutes’ more notice.

On the one hand, it was kind of personal, and Logan was a good enough friend (not a crush, not a crush, not a crush—) that he’d certainly be understanding if Virgil said he didn’t want to talk about it.

On the other hand, Logan had offered to help, and the opportunity to seek comfort from a pretty, thoughtful boy with nice hair and eyes and lips and hands and—but this wasn’t a crush, so none of that mattered, obviously—well, regardless, it was a tempting opportunity.

“Can I talk about it?” Virgil asked in a voice that came out smaller and more vulnerable than he intended.

Logan nodded at once, closing his textbook and climbing to his knees. “Is it okay if I come up there?”

Virgil nodded, patted the space on the bed beside himself, and scooted over to make room. Logan joined him, clambering onto the bed and laying down beside him with a good few inches of space between them, propping his chin up on his elbows. “What’s up?” he asked, focusing all his attention on Virgil.

This close proximity had the unintended side effect of shorting out Virgil’s brain for a solid three seconds. “Uh.” He tore his eyes away from Logan’s face. “I… so I have this friend, right? He used to be my best friend. When we were kids. I haven’t really talked to him at all in a few years.”

Logan nodded.

“So, uh.” Virgil hesitated, fidgeting with his phone. “I guess somebody outed me to him. And he wasn’t okay about it.”

Logan sucked in a concerned hiss of air, half-reaching for Virgil’s shoulder and stopping himself partway through the motion. “Are you okay?”

Virgil nodded on instinct, thought about it, and then shook his head. “He texted me out of the blue about it and offered to pray for me.” His voice shook. “And I—I told him no thanks, I like being gay.” He swiped aimlessly back and forth on his homescreen, opening a folder of apps and then closing it, just so he had something else to focus on than the words he was saying. “He got mad. Called me a—a, a… you know.”

“Oh my god,” Logan murmured in a hushed, horrified tone, and this time he did put his hand on Virgil’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “I’m so sorry, Virgil.”

Virgil let out a little hiccup of a laugh that held no humor but was a way to avoid bursting into tears. He drew the back of his hand across his eyes. “I blocked his number right before you got here,” he mumbled.

Logan nodded. “Good.”

“But he’s been messaging me on Instagram this whole time,” Virgil added with a grimace. “I haven’t been opening them, but…” Right on cue, a notification banner popped up across the top of his screen, previewing a message that contained more of the same stuff he’d been seeing flash across his screen for the last half hour.

“Block him there too,” Logan said instantly. “He doesn’t deserve your time.”

Virgil brushed at the corners of his eyes, swiping away the tears that were threatening to accumulate. “I—I don’t want to open it,” he admitted, voice cracking. “If I open the app, I know I’m going to read all of the messages, and I don’t want to.”

Logan was already shaking his head. “No, don’t read them, oh my god—please don’t read them, please don’t hurt yourself like that.”

“I don’t want to,” Virgil repeated, burying his face in the bedcovers for just a second to hide the tears he couldn’t quite hold back.

Logan’s hand cautiously crept from his shoulder to his back, where it began rubbing soothing circles between his shoulderblades. “Is there any way I can help?” he asked after a moment, his voice almost calm enough to hide his own distress. “I could block him for you, if you want. That way you wouldn’t have to handle the app at all.”

Virgil considered this. He didn’t like the idea of others going through his phone, ever, full stop. But he really didn’t like the idea of opening the Instagram app himself and seeing the little red notification in the corner and inevitably clicking it against all his common sense and scrolling through the messages, reading them over and over again, and maybe trying to reason with the guy about Virgil’s own humanity, even though all that would do was invite a dozen more paragraphs of hurt to read and internalize and argue about, and it would only turn into a vicious cycle of never-ending emotional damage. Not ideal.

And he trusted Logan. He still didn’t like the idea of handing Logan his unlocked phone, but it was a lot less bad than the idea of pretty much anyone else having that access, and it was probably way less bad than trying to do it himself and just hoping he’d somehow have the willpower to leave well enough alone when he knew he didn’t trust himself to do that.

“Can I watch you do it?” he asked, turning his head to the side so he could make suddenly-tired eye contact.

“Of course,” Logan said gently. “Whatever makes you feel most comfortable.”

Virgil worried at his bottom lip with his teeth for a moment, then unlocked the phone with a quick hard press of his thumb and passed it to Logan, wincing slightly.

“Instagram?” Logan asked, finger hovering over the app and waiting for Virgil’s confirmation.

“Yeah,” Virgil said.

Logan opened the app and, waiting at each step for Virgil’s next instruction, blocked the guy without opening any of the messages sitting in Virgil’s DMs. “Does he have any other accounts?”

“I don’t think so,” Virgil mumbled.

“I’m glad. Are there any other methods he has of contacting you that you’d like to block him on?” Logan offered the phone back.

Virgil accepted it gratefully, his shoulders untensing a little. “I guess Snapchat.” He looked up the account and blocked it. “I deleted my Facebook ages ago.” He drummed his fingers on his lips, thinking. “I don’t have a ton of social media, I think that’s everything.”

Logan nodded, visibly relaxing. “Do you need anything? Any kind of support, or anything?”

“I dunno,” Virgil mumbled. He rolled over onto his back. “It just… it sucks.”

“It really does,” Logan agreed.

Virgil forced out a dry chuckle. “Guess I didn’t need that many friends, anyway,” he said, trying hard to make the situation into something amusing. It didn’t particularly work. “It’s not like most people like me, what’s one less?”

“I like you!” Logan protested, his voice much louder than it had been for the last ten minutes. He froze, looking anywhere but Virgil’s face. “I, I like you a lot. You’re a very good friend,” he added, fidgeting with the cuff of his sleeve, his expression flustered.

Virgil set that aside to overthink for ages later. “Uh. Thanks. You—you too,” he managed.

They were both very quiet for a moment, Logan’s fidgeting only increasing as Virgil chewed anxiously on the inside of his cheek.

“Is there anything you need right now?” Logan asked again, just as the tension between them began to become uncomfortable.

Virgil let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “I don’t know… are you busy?”

“Not until my next class, which is at noon tomorrow,” Logan assured him.

“I don’t want to be a bother—”

“I enjoy spending time with you, and you are clearly distressed and I’d like to help if I can,” Logan interrupted, “and you are my friend and I care about you very much, and it is not bothering me to ask whatever you want. If I want to say no, I will.”

Well. He had covered all his bases when it came to anticipating Virgil’s hesitations.

“Would you mind staying for a bit?” Virgil blurted. “To help me keep my mind off it? I—I don’t want to be alone. I think too much.”

Logan’s expression softened into something so tender it almost hurt to look at. “Of course,” he agreed easily. “As long as you like.”

“Thank you,” Virgil whispered.

“Anytime.” Logan fidgeted with his sleeve a bit more, not looking at Virgil. “Um. Would you like to cuddle?” he asked hesitantly after a minute.

Virgil wasn’t sure he’d heard that right. “What?”

“There are several physiological and neurological benefits to—” Logan began, determinedly not looking at Virgil’s face.

“No, I believe you,” Virgil interrupted, and in a surge of daring, added: “Sure.”

Logan blinked, his lips parting slightly in surprise. “Oh! Alright.” He shifted closer, carefully closing the gap between them like he was afraid of doing it wrong, and arranged himself against Virgil’s side with his head on Virgil’s shoulder and his arm draped across Virgil’s chest.

Virgil’s own arm curled around Logan easily, like it was meant to go there. Virgil ignored (mostly) his rapid heartbeat and how soft Logan’s hair was where it brushed against his cheek.

“Do you want to know something totally stupid?” Logan asked.

“Sure,” Virgil said, wondering where this was going.

“I’m scared of the space under my bed.” Logan half chuckled.

Virgil blinked. That had been kind of out of the blue. “What?”

“I’ve tried to rationalize it away. I know it doesn’t make sense.” Logan sounded half amused, like maybe he was trying to cover up some mild embarrassment with humor. “But ever since I was a little kid, it’s scared me. It was worse when I was little, I would have nightmares about it and everything. But it still makes me kind of nervous to just have empty space there. I like to fill it up.”

“That’s fair,” Virgil said. He understood irrational fears. “How come you’re telling me, though? Like, not in a judgemental way,” he added quickly, feeling Logan’s shoulders tense just slightly. “Just wondering where that came from.”

“Ah.” Logan relaxed again. “I am attempting vulnerability. You just shared what seemed like a pretty personal moment with me, and I know that can feel uncomfortable. I am trying to level the playing field a little.”

Virgil couldn’t help but smile. “That’s really sweet, Lo,” he said.

“I am just trying to be a good friend.” Logan shrugged one shoulder, but Virgil could hear the happy note in his voice.

“I was scared of going places by myself when I was little,” Virgil said. “Actually, that came from a nightmare, too.” He laughed a little.

“No, hey!” Logan protested. “Now it’s uneven again!”

“I don’t think that’s how vulnerability works,” Virgil told him, only teasing a little bit. “Friendship isn’t math, it doesn’t have to match on both sides. Besides, I got over that one, mostly. It’s all good.”

Logan nodded slowly in acceptance, rubbing his thumb back and forth across Virgil’s shoulder. “Alright.” He half sat up, but only took his glasses off and reached to put them on the sidetable, then lay back down, cuddling up even more cozily against Virgil once again, making a small noise of content.

“What have you been up to lately?” Virgil asked, his voice hardly above a whisper, because he needed there to be some kind of conversation. Not just to distract himself from the unpleasant stuff of earlier, although that was still a part of it, but also so that he could avoid examining the current situation too hard. Because Logan was just a friend, just a friend, and Virgil couldn’t afford to risk ruining a friendship as wonderful as this one with a big gay crush on his friend.

“Getting used to my new board position in the astronomy club,” Logan said. “And a lot of reading for my classes.”

“You’re the Vice President this year, right?” Virgil asked. Almost without thinking about it, he raised his hand to stroke Logan’s hair, which was just as soft against his fingertips as it had felt against his cheek.

Logan let out a soft sigh of content at the touch, nestling his head a little more snugly against Virgil’s shoulder, and coincidentally fucking melting Virgil’s heart into a puddle of goo. This whole not-a-crush thing was getting to be a serious problem.

“Yes, I’m the Vice President,” Logan confirmed. “I was the secretary last year, so I kind of know the ropes, but I have very different responsibilities this time. So that’s been interesting.”

“Tell me about it,” Virgil invited.

Logan did tell him about it, and then he asked Virgil what he’d been up to, and Virgil got to talk about a research project he was helping one of his favorite professors out with, and that led to telling each other stories about their favorite professors and classes (and some of the bad ones, too), and that led to stories about their friends, and Logan was looking up at Virgil with a soft gaze that Virgil could have stared into forever, and he really didn’t know what was up with Logan of all people’s sudden desire to cuddle, but he wasn’t asking questions because this was kind of the best thing that had happened in forever.

When, much later, the conversation slowly died down and Logan’s voice trailed off into a sleepy noise that he stifled against Virgil’s shoulder, scrunching his whole face up into a yawn, Virgil only tugged at the piled-up blanket he was leaning against until it half-covered the pair of them. Maybe the more responsible thing to do would have been to rouse Logan so he could go home to his apartment, but when Logan shifted closer to him and held him a little tighter, his eyes drifting shut, Virgil couldn’t find it in himself to regret it.

And he’d meant for it to only be a brief nap, really he had. He hadn’t planned to drift off himself as well. He could’ve sworn he only closed his eyes for a second or two—but when he opened them, sunlight was streaming through the window, and Logan was still there, still in Virgil’s arms cuddled close against his chest. Logan was wide awake now, but he seemed perfectly content to just lie there and examine Virgil’s face, a funny look in his eyes and a tiny smile on his lips.

“Hi,” Virgil said blearily, blinking at him. Then he processed where they were and what had happened. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I should have woken you up,” he began, half sitting up, his voice coming out a sleepy mumble that probably wasn’t anywhere near intelligible.

“No, it’s fine,” Logan assured him, gently pushing him back down. “I don’t mind.”

Virgil was half of a mind to keep apologizing, but it was very warm and he was still barely awake and Logan was so soft and nice, so all in all it was much easier to just lie there and accept the cuddles.

“Are you doing better?” Logan asked quietly.

It took Virgil a minute to fully remember the events of yesterday and figure out what he was referencing. “Oh. Uh, I guess. Like, it still sucks, but I’m going to be okay, you know? And this is nice, anyway.”

Logan nodded, resting his head on Virgil’s chest as if to listen to his heartbeat. “Yes. This is very nice.”

[4 years later]

part 2 - dreams “Come to bed,” Logan said. “You have been scrolling through Tumblr for the past twenty-seven minutes, you can do that just as well while snuggling me.”

“I’ve been attacked,” Virgil said lightly, shutting off his laptop and turning around to face his boyfriend. Logan was sitting in bed in his pajamas, leaning back against the headboard of their bed, a book in his hands and the covers pulled up over his lap. Virgil smiled. “Let me go brush my teeth and then I’ll come cuddle you, babe.”

“Acceptable,” Logan agreed with an answering smile, his eyes flicking up briefly from the pages to meet Virgil’s own.

Virgil brushed his teeth in the little bathroom of the apartment Logan had shared with the twins in the two years since they’d all graduated college. Before reemerging, Virgil changed into the old t-shirt and flannel pajama pants he’d brought with him—he usually stayed overnight on the weekends these days, and this one was no exception.

Roman, sitting at the kitchen table poring over a wad of papers that were probably a script from the local community theatre’s latest production, waved at Virgil as he exited the bathroom. “G’night, Virge,” he called.

“Night, Ro,” Virgil responded, and for good measure, he added, “night, Remus.”

Remus, somewhere out of sight, cackled. “Have fun getting—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Virgil interrupted automatically, without any real bite, making his way back into Logan’s room and shutting the door behind himself.

Logan smiled at the sight of him, pulling back the covers invitingly. Virgil snagged his phone off of Logan’s desk on his way over, climbing into the bed and curling up with his head in Logan’s lap.

Logan let out a small, pleased sigh, resting his hand on Virgil’s shoulder.

“Happy?” Virgil asked, reaching up to touch Logan’s face.

Logan nodded. “Very.”

Virgil chuckled and half sat up so he could reach to kiss Logan, then settled himself back where he’d been and unlocked his phone, scrolling through Tumblr without paying too much attention. Logan’s hand came to rest lightly on the back of his head, and after a moment began stroking his hair.

He turned a page, then after a minute closed the book and set it down.

Virgil looked up. His boyfriend was gazing down at him, face scrunched up just slightly the way it always did when he was thinking hard about something.

“You good?” Virgil asked.

Logan started slightly. “Oh! Yes.” His hand, which had drifted to a stop at the base of Virgil’s skull, resumed gently stroking Virgil’s hair.

“Whatcha thinking about?” Virgil asked.

Logan was quiet for a beat, then met Virgil’s eyes. “Would you like to get married?”

Virgil choked on air. “What?”

“Married,” Logan repeated, a little shy this time. “You and I. Would you be interested in doing that?”

“I—” Virgil found himself at a loss for words. “I don’t know? Maybe?” He sat up, shutting off his phone and setting it on the sidetable. “I’m sorry—are you proposing to me in our pajamas?”

“No,” Logan said emphatically, frowning. “This is not a proposal. This is so we can talk about it ahead of time, so that if you do want it, then you won’t need to be anxious when I do propose.”

Virgil blinked, processing that. “Wow.” He reached over and brushed his thumb lightly across Logan’s cheek. “I love you so much, you know that?”

Logan’s brow smoothed out and his shoulders visibly untensed. “I love you too.” He put his hand over Virgil’s where it rested on his cheek, cradling it tenderly. He closed his eyes. “And you don’t need to have an answer right now. We can have this conversation whenever you like. I just… wanted to bring it up. Because I would like that, if you are also amicable.” He turned his head slightly and pressed a kiss to the palm of Virgil’s hand.

Virgil hooked a finger in the collar of Logan’s pajama shirt and drew him close for a soft kiss. “Come lay down and cuddle me properly, nerd.”

Logan obediently set his book down on the sidetable beside Virgil’s phone, pulled off his glasses, and set those down too. With some shuffling of limbs, the two of them lay down, Virgil curled up in Logan’s arms. To anyone else, Logan would have seemed perfectly relaxed, content to lay there and press the occasional kiss to Virgil’s forehead; but Virgil could sense the slight tension in Logan’s face. He was nervous, even if he was trying hard not to show it.

Virgil’s own thoughts were whirling. Did he want to get married? He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about it. But they were both still so young. Marriage was so big. Even if they’d been dating for more than four years at this point, that was barely more than a blip in the really long run. And what if they found out too late that they disagreed on something important? What if Logan wanted to take out a huge mortgage, or move across the country, or have kids? (Okay, they’d talked about kids, and both felt super hesitant, not-yet-ready at best, about the whole idea. But what if Logan changed his mind?)

(But also… waking up to Logan’s face every morning. Waking up to coffee with Logan and sleepy yawns. Casual touches on the elbow or shoulder or wrist or waist or cheek throughout the day, little reminders of love that were almost thoughtless in their routine. A home that would be just theirs. They could get a pet, if they wanted. They could paint stars on the ceiling or walls. They could cook dinner together every night. They could stay up late watching old TV shows and making snarky commentary back and forth. They could be each other’s home.)

Logan was watching Virgil’s face intently, even as he did his best to play it cool. Virgil met his eyes. “So,” he began, struggling to find the right words for what he wanted to convey. “I—I don’t know what I want. Or. I guess I kind of do. But I’m nervous.”

“We don’t have to,” Logan said quickly. “I mean. Obviously. But I don’t want you to—to feel pressured, or anything, to say anything one way or the other or to have to even say anything at all or—”

“Hey,” Virgil interrupted soothingly as Logan’s voice sped into anxious overdrive. “Hey, it’s okay.”

Logan sucked in a breath. He nodded. “I—sorry.”

Virgil shook his head and leaned across the few inches between them to kiss Logan. “Babe, I just told you I’m nervous. It’s fine if you are too.”

“I’m not nervous—” Logan began. He cut himself off at the wry look Virgil gave him. “I—okay, fine. But it’s not a big deal.”

“Hmm, disagree.”

“But the whole point was so I could support you if you felt—”

“L. Babe. Light of my life. You get nervous when you’re vulnerable. I get it.”

Logan bit his lip and reached for Virgil’s hand. He held it tightly.

Virgil squeezed back and snuggled closer under the covers. “Anyway, uh.” He paused for a second to make sure he knew how he wanted to say it. “I—I still don’t know exactly what I want to say about that idea. But I know the answer is definitely not a no.”

Logan breathed in, not quite sharply enough to be a gasp. “Oh,” he breathed, letting go of Virgil’s hand so he could caress his face.

“Does that make sense?” Virgil asked. “Like, I don’t yet know how or when I want it. But I—I think I want to, eventually, and I really want it to be you.”

“Yeah,” Logan said, his voice coming out a little choked. “Yeah, that—that’s good.”

Virgil half smiled. “Kiss?” he asked.

Logan was reaching for him before he even finished the word, pulling him close and clinging to him as he kissed the breath from Virgil’s lungs like he never wanted to let go. Virgil wrapped his own arm around Logan, holding him just as tightly, and cupped Logan’s face with the hand that was trapped between the two of them.

“I love you,” Virgil whispered as they pulled apart, and now he was choking up a little too.

Logan pressed their foreheads together. “I love you so much.”

They were both quiet for a moment, holding each other close.

“I think it’d be nice to get one of those really fancy coffee machines,” Virgil whispered after a minute. “Someday. For our someday kitchen.” He enjoyed Logan’s sudden intake of breath and the way his eyes widened slightly at the word our. “The kind that can make espresso, and shit,” Virgil went on. “We could try out all different kinds of things. And I wouldn’t tell anybody how much sugar you always put in your coffee.”

“I put a normal amount of sugar in my coffee,” Logan protested, a smile quirking onto his face.

“L, I love you, but that is maybe the least true thing you have ever said in your life.” Virgil snickered.

“Shut up,” Logan whined, pushing lightly at Virgil’s shoulder with an answering grin.

Virgil leaned in and kissed his cheek. “It’s cute.” He hesitated for a beat. “What would you want? In your dream future?”

“You,” Logan responded immediately.

Virgil pressed a hand to his mouth. He absolutely should have seen that one coming, but he hadn’t, and the surprise made the pang of fondness in his chest all the sweeter. “Logan,” he managed after a minute.

Logan only grinned, looking very pleased with himself. “A coffee machine does sound very nice, too, though,” he added. “And space for you to keep an instrument.”

“Oh,” Virgil breathed, lighting up at the idea. “Yeah, that sounds really good. I’d want a library for all your stupid nerdy books.”

Logan put a hand on Virgil’s cheek. “I’d want a kitchen table that we both picked out together.”

Virgil grinned. “A couch to hold you on.”

“A wall full of art that we both like.”

“Windows so there’s light everywhere and you can see the stars at night.”

“A pantry full of our favorite foods.”

“A bed to—”

“Virgil!”

“Whaaat?”

“We were being cute!” Logan smacked his arm lightly. “Remus is a bad influence on you,” he accused, though Virgil could see he was trying not to laugh.

“I mean, probably,” Virgil allowed, grinning. “But maybe I was just going to say a bed to sleep in. And cuddle in. And perfectly innocent things like that. Maybe you’re the one Remus is a bad influence on.”

“I—” Logan struggled for a second, then broke down into snickers.

Virgil grinned, wrapping his arms around Logan’s waist and enjoying the sound of his laughter.

“Were you going to say something like that, though?” Logan asked, composing himself.

“Oh, no, absolutely not.” Virgil snickered. “You were right, I was going to ruin the cutesy vibe we had going on there, one hundred percent. But you’re really cute when you laugh, so no regrets.”

“Hmm,” Logan hummed, leaning closer. “You know when else I’m really cute?”

“When?” Virgil breathed.

“When I’m kissing you,” Logan murmured, and closed the gap between their lips.

Virgil kissed back, eyes fluttering shut and hands sliding a little more securely around Logan’s waist. In his opinion, Logan made a very compelling point.

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scarletemeterio-thesecond · 4 years

Note

hi! i saw that you were accepting requests for LOK and i was wondering if you could write a Mako x Reader fic where they are enemies to lovers? maybe where the reader is Lin Beifong’s daughter and they constantly bicker but there is so much ~tension~ and everyone else but them can see it? and then they kiss and reveal their feelings for one another during an extremely heated argument? thank you!! :)

omg i love some enemies to lovers content, and i think that mako fits that trope so well lmao, i hope you like it!!

•••

Fights and Revelations (Mako x Fem!Reader)

Warnings: some cursing, i think that's all

Genre: some angst, fluff

Fandom: The Legend of Korra

Summary: See request

Word Count: 2030

Reader uses she/her pronouns!

•••

You and Mako had never liked each other. There was something about him that you just couldn't stand, something that made you want to punch him in the face every time you saw him.

You two practically hated each other.

But you weren't sure why Mako seemed to dislike you so much, you had a good relationship with everyone in the group, even Wu, who was Mako's best friend. However, your relationship had been like that ever since you two met, he was very dry all the time, and that completely frustrated you.

The thing you hated the most was the way he cared about everyone else. It made you angry because you wanted someone to care about you the way he did with all his friends. You wanted your mum to care about you that way. You loved her, but sometimes she could be a little too distant and cold and sometimes it made your blood boil. You knew it wasn't fair to let out your anger on him, so you tried to hold it inside, but sometimes you just couldn't help it. And you also hated how cute he was, how you had a huge crush on him.

Mako on the other hand couldn't stand the way you acted around everyone. You were Lin Beifong's daughter, so your main goal in your life was to be as perfect as she was, to make her proud, but he didn't know that. He thought that you were so arrogant and self-centered, and it just made him want to roll his eyes every time you two were in the same room. But for some reason, he also wanted to talk to you. He didn’t like you at all, but he still cared about you even though he’d never show it.

So when everyone wanted to go on a camping trip together, he wasn't a big fan of the idea of you joining them. There was a huge tension from the very first day, and everyone was aware of that.

It was time for you to set up your tents, and since you'd never been camping before, you had to ask for help - which was something you hated to do. You figured you'd ask Bolin, mainly because he was the closest person to you, and you were a bit lazy to walk, but also because he was always very kind to everyone.

"Hey, Bolin?" You said, making him look at you. "Could you maybe help me with my tent? It's the first time I'm doing this and I'm totally lost," you chuckled, but your smile disappeared as soon as you heard Mako's voice.

"Wow, so there's something that you don't know how to do? It must be killing you." He only mumbled it, but it was loud enough for you to hear him. His brother hit him on the shoulder and you just took a deep breath.

"You know what? It's okay, I'll figure it out. I don't want to bother anyone," you whispered the last part and started walking away before you got a response.

However, you heard Bolin calling out your name from behind you, and he told you that he would help you. You thanked him and in less than thirty minutes, your tent was all set up.

"Thank you so much, Bolin. I never would've done it without your help!" You started to arrange your stuff inside the tent, and he walked back to his brother.

"I don't know why you hate her so much," he said to Mako. "She's really nice."

"Yeah, she's also very cocky and annoying. You're only saying that because you don't know her."

"Well, you don't, either," he commented. "Maybe you should give her a chance."

…

Being alone in the darkness of your tent made you think about the past before you managed to fall asleep.

You first joined the famous Team Avatar when you helped your mother find Korra when she got kidnapped by the equalists. You also helped her save Tenzin's family, which resulted in you losing your bending.

Losing such an important part of your identity was the worst thing you could've imagined, and you still had some nightmares about that night, repeating it over and over again.

And tonight was one of those nights.

You’d finally fallen asleep and you woke up with sweat covering your entire body. You touched your face, trying to get rid of the sensation of Amon’s hand on your forehead, and noticed you were shaking. You started to feel constricted inside the tent and decided to get some fresh air.

You sat far away from everyone since you didn’t want to wake them up, and put your legs against your chest, hiding your face. You wanted to cry, you wanted someone to hug you, and you wanted to stop feeling so weak. You hated that you were still haunted by that memory, and you hated that you were too scared to tell anyone about it.

"Hey, can’t sleep?" You heard a voice behind you. You turned around and saw Mako standing a few meters away from you. When he realized that it was you, his expression changed completely. "Oh, I didn’t know it was you," he mumbled. You nodded slightly and turned around again. He thought that it was weird how you didn’t mock him or said anything to him like you always did. "Hey, are you okay?"

"I’m fine, Mako. You can go now." You were about to cry and it was totally evident in your voice, so he ignored your words and sat next to you, leaving some distance between you two.

"Do you want to talk about it or…?"

"Stop it, Mako. We both know you don’t care," you mumbled. Tears started falling down your face, and you turned to the side so he wouldn’t see you.

He ignored once again what you said and let out a sigh. "I do care, (Y/N). Why would I be here if I didn’t?"

"Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you’d absolutely love to see me like this since you hate me so much," you said, looking at him. He opened his mouth to talk but you lifted your hand, signaling for him to stop. "I thought I told you to leave, but since you didn’t listen I guess I’ll leave." You got up, and he did too.

You started walking away and stopped when you heard his voice again. "Why are you leaving? I’m just trying to help."

"Well, I didn’t ask for your help! I didn’t ask for your fake sympathy! I didn’t ask for any of this and yet here we are." You didn’t care about possibly waking the others up anymore, and you also didn’t care that Mako was seeing you like this. You just wanted your fear and that stupid relationship you had with the boy in front of you to stop.

"Ugh, why do you have to be like that? Why do you always try to be so perfect? It’s so frustrating and annoying," he said. You took a deep breath and decided to walk back to your tent, you didn’t have the strength to keep fighting, you just wanted to keep crying, hoping that you’ll feel better in the morning.

…

When you got up, you saw that everyone else was already awake. You knew that everyone could see that you’d been crying, even you could feel how swollen your eyes were, and you suspected that maybe they’d also heard you and Mako last night. You tried to ignore them and decided to go and sit near the river so you could be alone, but when you got there you saw that Bolin and Opal were there, and also Mako. You still stayed there and sat away from them.

A few minutes later, they all got up and you thought that they were leaving, but you were surprised when you saw Opal walking towards you. The two boys followed her but stood a few meters away from you, waiting for the girl.

"Hi, (Y/N)," she said. You smiled softly and greeted her too. She kneeled next to you and grabbed one of your hands. "Are you okay? I heard you screaming last night and Mako kind of told us what happened."

"Oh, I’m sure he did," you mumbled. "I’m fine, Opal, you don’t have to worry. Thank you for asking." Mako scoffed at your words, and you glared at him. "Is there something wrong, Mako?"

"No, it’s just funny to me how you’re so kind now, you know?"

"Dude, what the hell is wrong with you?" You stood up and started walking towards him.

"(Y/N), Mako, why don’t you just calm down? There’s no need to fight," said Bolin, trying to ease the situation.

"No, I want him to tell me what’s his problem!"

"You wanna know what’s my problem? You are! You and your attitude, always pretending to be Ms. Perfection!"

"Maybe we should let them talk..." you heard Bolin say to Opal but stopped paying attention to them once they started walking away.

"I’ve never done anything to you! And yet you’re always annoying me. If you hate me so much then stop paying attention to me," you started walking from side to side. "You have no idea of why I act the way I act, you have no idea of what’s like to be my mum’s daughter! You don’t know the pressure I’m under, trying to make her proud all the time, and it’s even worse when you come and just bother me all the time." He tried to talk, but you just didn’t let him.

"You don’t know what it feels like to still have nightmares about Amon taking my bending away, or what it feels to feel so alone all the time! Not everyone has a perfect friend like you who’s always there when you need it, okay? But of course, you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about. No, you’re so worried about annoying me with your words and your perfect face all the time. You don’t know anything about me, Mako!" You stopped talking and took a deep breath, trying to calm yourself down.

"I didn’t know about any of that, (Y/N), I’m so sorry, really." He made a pause and looked at you. "But you’re not a saint here, either. You get irritated just by looking at me, and you always have something to say to me, too!"

"That’s because I can’t stand how nice you are! I’d do anything to have someone like you in my life, Mako! You’re always so attentive to everyone and you know it! It makes me sick because I’d love for you to be that way with me too." You mumbled the last part, but he still heard you. You wanted to make a hole in the ground and never get out of there, and for a moment you actually thought about doing it.

"Did you just say what I think you said?"

"No, I didn’t. Of course I didn’t! I’d never confess that I like you in the middle of a fight."

"Not even if I told you that I liked you too?" He took a step towards you, leaving you two face to face. He couldn't believe that he'd actually said that out loud; it wasn't a secret anymore.

You made eye contact with him and you could already feel your heart racing. You licked your lips and you both stood there, waiting for someone to say something. "Mako, I-," you were interrupted by him grabbing your face and pressing his lips against yours. You immediately wrapped your arms around his waist, pulling him closer to you.

You two pulled away since you needed to breathe, and pressed your foreheads together. "I'm sorry for being such an asshole," he said. "I promise I'll be there for you whenever you need me."

"I'm sorry for being an asshole, too. I guess that a part of me didn't want to admit that I liked you."

"Well, I'm happy to know that you do," he said before kissing you again.

•••

TAGLIST

@burningcurrently

#mako x reader #mako fic #mako fanfic #mako imagine #mako x you #tlok x reader #tlok fic #tlok fanfic #tlok imagine #lok x reader #lok fic #lok fanfic #lok imagine #lok fanfiction #tlok mako #lok mako #mako tlok

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oswildin · 3 years

Note

i haven’t sent a request for a ship in a while so sorry if this is all over the place

i’m a female and i use she/they pronouns. i’m still working through my sexuality and what i am so any character regardless of gender is fine.

i really enjoy writing either with characters that i’ve created or already existing characters. making characters on its own is a fun process for me especially if the characters is from a different country or lives in another time period. mostly because i like looking at how what names were popular when and how did naming conventions work.

i like reading fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, and poetry. when it comes to music i’m not very picky. i listen to all types of music but my favorites are 60s music. i’m starting to really like 20s music as well. i also like listening to (and watching) musicals and soundtracks for movies. i recently listened to the music for black widow.

i pace a lot. either while listening to music, talking on the phone, texting, anything, i just pace back and forth.

i really like playing games on the nintendo switch, i’ve been playing animal crossing the most. i also like two player video games and board games as well.

i like telling corny jokes and making people laugh. my personality is ESFP-T which is the turbulent entertainer. i have lots of talk about always, i will never run of out things to talk about and if you let me i will never stop talking. my thoughts are very unorganized so the flow of conversation will change drastically and we’ll go from one top to another topic that is completely unrelated.

i’m very passionate about things i don’t like and i will talk about those as well whenever i have something to add to what i’ve previously said. i get very upset over these things.

i try to stand my ground when talking about something i believe is wrong and i like to believe my friends and family know where i stand on certain issues. i try my best to do what i can.

i’ve been told i’m very empathetic and sensitive to other people’s emotions. i don’t want to make someone feel worse for feeling a certain way.

i try my best to be as nice and supportive as i can be but every now and then it seems i get taken advantage of with how willing i am to give so i’m working on setting boundaries with people.

my favorite marvel movie is captain america the first avenger. i just love seeing pre serum steve and pre war bucky together. seeing steve lose connection with peggy will never not make me sad.

for my favorite song i’d go with look of love by lesley gore but i love all her music so it’s hard to choose. again, i love 60s music.

i quote that i really like is “i’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. i make mistakes, i am out of control and at times hard to handle. but if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you surely don’t deserve me at my best.” from marilyn monroe

thank you (:

I ship you with… Bucky Barnes!

Things Bucky loves about you:

• The fact you were one of the few people around him with love of his times music.

• It would take him back when he’d walk past your room and hear an old school song playing.

• He’d often find you reading entranced by the novel in your hand, which he found very sweet.

• He was cautious at first around you, but when you started conversations with him it helped him open up a bit more to you.

• Once he did consider you a friend then he started to see you in another light.

• Of course, he was attracted to you, but because of his past he wasn’t easy to trust in others, meaning the thought of any relationship was off the table.

• You’d comforted him from his nightmares, seen him at his weakest and didn’t judge him.

• You yourself were a little cautious at first, after feeling disappointed before by those around you, you also thought with a steady mind about yours and Bucky’s situation.

• He loves how you don’t hold your tongue with Tony. You always fight for what you thought was right. Just like Steve.

• Bucky had been away on a mission for a few weeks, you hated to admit that you missed him. It was then he called you, which of course you answered straight away. It was then he told you how he felt. You were confused. It sounded like he was saying goodbye.

• He said he didn’t think he’d make it out of this one. But alas, two days later he came walking through the doors. Which earned him a giant hug from you, and a slap round the face too.

• But after all that, you and Bucky became a thing.

Your BFF: Thor - He was like an excited puppy when he first met you. He was just happy someone else was joining the family. You often swapped stories of old tales and play games together, which Thor always loses.

Your Theme Song:

#reader insert #marvel imagine #marvel ship #bucky barnes #bucky imagine #bucky barnes x reader #character ship #thor odinson

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k-s-morgan · 4 years

Note

I am a big fan of your metas

(I didn’t get a second message if there was one!) 3) During the honeytrap plan, do you think Will ever felt guilty or sorry for Hannibal, sympathy or something like that ? I was trying to write a s2 pov of all characters for a friend who want to read it. It's an espionage AU but the situation is similar, Will is trying to trap Hannibal. The show hasn't shown his private moments, was wondering what would be the full range of his feelings !! You analyse emotions so well share the emotional part (logical pieces not so necessary). Thanks !

------------------

First, thank you - I’m glad you enjoyed my analyses! And I love how your idea sounds, espionage can be fascinating.

Yes, Will did feel guilty and sorry for Hannibal both. In E11 of S2, Will has a dream of a fake Freddie in the burning chair. He hears his own scream and wakes up all sweaty, like he does from his nightmares. Fake burning Freddie is a symbol of betrayal (which comes into play again in S3 with Francis), and coupled with Will’s scream, he obviously feels guilty for lying and betraying Hannibal. It’s horrifying for his subconscious, but he’s still going through with it, even if hesitantly - until he doesn’t.

In E13, Hannibal says:

Hannibal: If I'm ever apprehended, my memory palace will serve as more than a mnemonic system. I will live there.

Will responds with:

Will: Could you be happy there?

He’s obviously concerned and unhappy about what he’s doing, and he seeks at least some justification. He wants to know if Hannibal can find a way to be happy even if he’s in jail - his happiness is important to Will. And the way he looks at Hannibal in that scene...

Then we have E2 of S3. Will blames himself repeatedly for lying. This is from conversation he has with ‘Abigail’, a reflection of himself, so I’ll change the pronouns accordingly for better impact.

Will: The wrong thing being the right thing to do was too ugly a thought. He was supposed to take me with him. We were all supposed to leave together. He made a place for us. Why did I lie to him? He gave me a chance to take it all back, and I just kept lying.

Here, too:

Will: I still want to go with him? Yes. ... What if no one died? What if we all left together? Like we were supposed to.

It confirms he has regrets over what happened, and this conflict has been living inside him during the entire S2 arc, too. “Still” underlines that he wanted to be with Hannibal before, during entrapment, and he wants to do that now as well.

#hannibal #hannigram #will graham

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soulwounds · 4 years

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--------- 「 richard madden , 30 , cis male + he/him 」 did you know 𝘉𝘖𝘓𝘋 𝘎𝘙𝘠𝘍𝘍𝘐𝘕𝘋𝘖𝘙'𝘚 real name is 𝐆𝐎𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐂 𝐆𝐑𝐘𝐅𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐎𝐑 ?! around the island they seem to be quite brave , but also stubborn , but it makes sense given they are a HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER and come from 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐘 𝐏𝐎𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑 . you can hear 𝙶𝙻𝙸𝚃𝚃𝙴𝚁 & 𝙶𝙾𝙻𝙳 by 𝙱𝙰𝚁𝙽𝙴𝚂 𝙲𝙾𝚄𝚁𝚃𝙽𝙴𝚈 blasting from their house , but be careful ! they can be agitated as nightmares bring back memories of ROWENA’S DEATH . even so , it’s impossible to see 𝒆𝒚𝒆𝒔 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒍𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒏 𝒎𝒂𝒏 , 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒓𝒖𝒃𝒊𝒆𝒅 𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒂 𝒔𝒊𝒍𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒔𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅 , 𝒃𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒔𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒍𝒆𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒈𝒐𝒍𝒅 , 𝒂 𝒓𝒐𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒇𝒊𝒓𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒍 𝒂𝒕 𝒉𝒐𝒎𝒆 and not think about them .

full name : godric magen gryffindor stark . alises : n/a . age : thirty . gender & pronouns : cis male , he / him . sexual & romantic orientation : bisexual / biromantic . species : human / wizard . identifying marks : a scar over his right collar bone as well well as another on his thumb . both are small cuts . a tattoo of a sword along his left forearm , the hilt starting at his elbow & the tip at his wrist .

𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑'𝐒 𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐄 𝐒𝐎 𝐅𝐀𝐑 ?

simple , mostly . his family was wealthy but his father passed away when he was twelve . along with his twin brother , robb , godric helped in the household where he could . always a bit more reckless than his twin , godric had the unique tendency to never keep his mouth shut . if he saw something he disagreed with it would be well known & sometimes he’d follow things that lead him to less than desirable situations . due to his hard behavior , godric found himself in a large share of fights . instead of ever fixing this problem of his like his family wished , godric only drove himself to get better at what he did . he wouldn’t stop getting into fights so might as well become the best at them . it came to the point where everyone figured to keep their mouth shut on their bad opinions if godric’s shadow was looming near . in high school he at least put his skill to some better use & joined the wrestling team . while his brother was becoming student body , godric was taking home the national championship for the school . not that he minded . while godric was a good person at heart , noble & chivalrous to a fault , he lacked the way with words his twin had . he was never one for politics .

as he always looking out for & helping the youth , godric went to college studying education . he now works as a high school world history teacher with help from his TA steve harrington . he also runs the small woodwork / metalwork shop electives at the school . though asked to coach the wrestling team too , it’s something he’s debating as not to overwhelm himself . he keeps up with students he’s had , trying to keep in touch with them as he always proved a fun teacher to most .

outside of work & family , godric is a very loud & typically friendly fellow . he’s a bit hard headed though so he can get into arguments quite easily . he’s not afraid to stand up to literally anyone which can get him into bad situations . he loves his siblings to death & is often seen either planning trouble with albus or teaching illyana how to sword fight . he has a sword replica collection ( he just thinks they’re neat ) & lives in the stabler apartments with the company of his cat , lois .

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑'𝐒 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 ?

first come flashes of happiness in the dream . laughing & little things that seem impossible . but one of the faces , a man who seems so important to him yet he can’t place him , twists & what follows is flashes of colored lights as if he’s being attacked by them , dark castle corridors , & the sounds of shouting voices before a door slamming followed by a hiss until he’s woken up . salazar was once his closest friend in the world . his betrayal & leaving broke godric’s heart .

𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐘 𝐅𝐄𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐈𝐑 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓 𝐅𝐄𝐖 𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒 ?

to think he had a life beyond this seems so impossible to him . he’s never been the overly curious type for the sake of curiosity , that’s rowena , but these dreams catch even his attention . they feel so real . he feels like he’s forgotten something he swore to always remember . typically , he takes his frustrations out in the gym or practicing with his swords because that always improves his mood .

𝐀𝐍𝐘𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐄𝐋𝐒𝐄 ?

since jk rowling literally only told us this man exists pretty much then left it at that i’m gonna give you a quick rundown on my hcs for godric’s life in his canon !

he was born to a family with little money , they didn’t even have a family name to them . his father was a muggle blacksmith for a small village & his mother was witch who sold potions . a muggle & a witch together was very taboo for the time , seeing as many places had magic uses burning at stakes .

he also had two younger sisters , but he was the only one who inherited his mother’s talents . though taught how to blacksmith by his father when he was a boy , godric was better at using swords than making them .

his father died when he was still fairly young . to help his family for money , godric entered local fighting rings . though a low place to start , his victories won him enough fame that people from villages all around came to try & beat him .

when he got older , around 18 , it was suggested he enter more legitimate tournaments that could bring him to real fame . he fashioned himself a crest , choosing a lion with the colors gold & red , & chose the name gryffindor as griffins were a known symbol of bravery as well as a touch to his magical ancestors .

he entered both magical & non magical tournaments & became renown in both as the greatest duelist of his time !

anyway beyond his backstory !

godric was not just talented in wizard duels . he can & will lay your ass flat in a fight with no magic too .

he’s extremely chivalrous & respectful to those he thinks deserve his respect but he also isn’t afraid to speak his mind at any given point nor is he afraid to stand up for what he believes in !

funny ! loves jokes . tells bad puns . loves dad jokes . also a big fan of pranks , even if they are childish .

while his personality suggests a dog person he’s actually a huge cat person . still likes dogs a lot though ! spoils lois rotten . makes kissy noises at her . lets her nap on his chest constantly .

doesn’t love like ... to be fancy . but likes objects that are fancy for no reason . ex: why does he have a a goblin made sword with rubies all over the hilt ???

will teach anyone how to kick major ass for no cost .

loves fantasy world stuff ! swords ? yes . dragons ? HELL yes .

very soft romantically will bring u flowers n hold ur hand while staring at u with in love eyes n write u bad poems that’ll make u laugh & he knows they’re bad but he just wants to hear u laugh honestly he’s so sweet .

#inf.intro #❝ 𝑮𝐎𝐃𝐑𝐈𝐂 ( about ) .

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unproduciblesmackdown · 5 years

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i’m always 2 exhausted even by thinkng about it to even begin discussing At Length what’s So Exhausting About Billions’es Handling Of Their Trans Character (which is way way better than it could be) but like, some of the main points of it are

taylor can outright say that they’re nonbinary One Time, but otherwise their gender can only be Made Relevant via other people misgendering them and/or by being transphobic towards them, and this happens like. loads of times. and sometimes in ways that feel a touch excessive / kind of indulgent in reminding us like haha don’t forget this character Is Seen As ___ by people and their body and presentation is a matter of Fascination for cis audiences, but not necessarily respected, and we can see the character navigate this but they won’t discuss it at length b/c why would any trans person Want to talk about being trans OR have another trans person in their life to talk to, cuz what are the odds of That.

in relation to that last point: taylor can’t talk about their Not Cis experiences / reality, or even hardly mention it directly / by name, but the show can keep writing them as reaching out to random useless cis people in their life when these cis people are having some kind of super particular individual problem, and taylor laying out some really REALLY watered-down, vague, indirect version of their being trans as a way to show they Relate to whatever dumbass situation this awful cishet person has gotten themself into. being in some kind of frustrating situation? feeling alienated or isolated or undermined or misunderstood or judged? well i guess you’re experiencing a tiny bit of the trans existence! except you are not. and like, of Course a character would look like an asshole if they were like “boy taylor, now that i’ve had a rough week due to some really dumb problem, i think i understand what it must be like for you to be nonbinary!!!” but it’s fine if Taylor Chooses To Relate Their Transness to whatever some cishet loser is dealing with. no, being #outed as i-do-bdsm is nothing like being an out lgbtq individual. and like all these people in taylor’s sphere are nightmare people who don’t deserve their sympathy in the first place but that’s another gripe lmfao

can’t believe that was the “brief overview” version lmao but anyways, i was thinking about another weird and kinda frustrating thing that someone brought up on twitter

well actually it was kinda what two people were talking about on twitter, and the first thing was how like, yknow in a show like this where the ppl focus of the series (supposed to be axe and chuck i guess like eugh can you even imagine) are Supposed To Be Assholes? it’s always like, how those main chars in “prestige drama” are generally men who are *meant* to be seen as shitty and probably dumbasses, and yet like, there’s an inherent Sympathetic Treatment in focusing on them and in having their godawful exploits drive a lot of the plot and action and suspense and etc, and it’s not exactly enough to just say like “oh but you’re suppoooosed to Know that they suck”

but the second thing was how in “Prestige Drama” Tv With Shitty Protagonists, there has this tendency to have the crappy usually-cishet-white-abled-men main chars be like, not ever really display any “””especial””” level of bigotry?? saying something how like, any big -isms or -phobias seems to be reserved for the “”””real”””” bad guys. and that kinda ties in a bit i think with how, even if there’s the “well they’re supposed to seem unsympathetic” justification, they’re still........not really supposed to seem too unsympathetic. and it’s not that anyone would ever think it’s ~realistic~ for a nonbinary person to be in the world of High Finance and be able to announce their pronouns and have their identity for-the-most-part respected by everyone right off the bat, and i sure don’t want billions to be going for that ~realism~ on this one thing (especially when it doesn’t exactly try to strictly hold itself to Realism in plenty of other regards) and have taylor dealing with constant misgendering and likely no one with authority consistently watching out for them in this manner and people telling shitty jokes behind their back and etc etc etc which might be more ~realistic~ but please don’t.........

but at the same time it’s awfully convenient that apparently everyone at axe cap is such a committed Trans Ally that even when taylor defects by the end of s3 and everyone is like “booo hiss we hate taylor” they all feel free to disrespect taylor in pretty much any way Except for showing any signs of transphobia, ever. very nice that none of these characters have to bear the burden of being labeled A Real Jerk for insulting taylor on the grounds of their being trans (other insults are fine). like the guy on twitter said, bigotry is only for the Really real bad guys who really only need to be one-dimensional or in the background or otherwise not given that much attention.

like it exasperated me So much when there was some scene with axe and wags and wendy (like, scream. already i’m in hell. for gods sake) where wendy’s getting the green light to try to sabotage taylor’s relationship with their dad (to.....destabilize their fund?? just kinda bum them out, possibly??? it seems to be the latter 9_9 ) and axe is like “yeah fuck it, go for it, grrrr i hate taylor >:| “ and wendy says something in which she then Pauses and adds a footnote to her sentence, in which she clarifies that by “them,” she is referring to taylor, not taylor and [someone else she’d mentioned in the same sentence]. it’s just exhausting, ugh. like, yeah yeah believe me everyone who uses singular They pronouns knows allll about how oh no, there’s the chance for Ambiguity now!!! we never have that problem with other pronouns ever!!! and it means we deserve to force people to pick He or She! and it’s just like, ugh. yeah thank you for reminding us that these three bastards who are currently plotting how to permanently destroy a familial relationship of tay’s are nevertheless being sure to Respect Their Pronouns while doing so!!! not that they *shouldn’t* but like, as fucking though. and it’s just so......fucking unnecessary ugh. you don’t have to awkwardly make sure to point out you were using ~the singular They~ right then just as this clunky reminder that oh i’m not Transphobic @ them tho........like shut up thanks so much. i would like for taylor to never have to interact with wendy again, but god knows im sure that wish won’t come true. like, you didn’t have to clarify in the first place. and it’s so nice that all these nightmare individuals are such committed #allies. ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

#again not that i Want them to be more ~realistically transphobic~ but it's all sooo annoying #and again like. the interviewee comes in and misgenders your trans coworker? and you don't say a god damn thing to correct him? ty SO much..#nobody's even Actually that good at supporting this trans individual's Existence In This Space but. they're not blatantly transphobic so!!!!#conveniently enough none of them have to get the Easily Hateable Points for it; not that the general billions audience is where i'd expect 2 #find a zillion trans allies or ppl capable of encountering the concept of Nonbinary Identities without imploding for 2.3 weeks #and of course there's the inherent limitations of taylor being a) a trans character set in this world of High Finance and b) the Only trans #character that we know of on the show.......they have to represent The Entire Experience and Every Non-Cis Person Ever ughh #but the approach of (this character will never talk about their Being Trans if they can help it) and (we'll have other ppl force Their Being #Trans into being directly relevant by being shitty to them about it / forcing them into situations in which they have to deal w/ transphobia #just like. kill me. and even the ''look how Not Transphobic this person is'' is hardly done right like. yeah wow #i'm sure that for axe it's like oh he ~doesn't Care abt ur identity~ as long as you can Get Those Results!!!!! great..#it's not like a trans person couldn't relate their Transness to a certain experience that a cis person has #it's just that that experience would Not be something like [axe being in timeout for insider trading and shit]#e.g. inchrestingly i think that [autistic experience] and [lgbtq experience] are ones that have some real solid parallels / similarities #aka some opportunities for fun convos betwixt winnie n tay wherein like...not that The Hc isn't that winston is Gay but also like #one of those rare times i don't particularly think abt this Wrol Character as being trans. he could be!! nobody can stop us! but yeah like #if in theory taylor was relating their transience (haha....nah seriously their Transness) to this cis autistic person's experience....#there would be a lot more Genuineness (there needs to be a better form of that word ugh) and value in that conversation than all the other #times Billions has them make their being trans more like....palatable / watered-down by like ''wow i understand Experiencing Undesirable Cir #*Circumstances....'' like god please. trans people talk about Being Trans sometimes. they talk to other trans people. let them say #''nonbinary'' more than once #ANYWAYS ugh it's all just. ex as pe ra ti ng #it's very exhausting seeing this content which is clearly For(tm) a cis audience like. i appreciate that taylor's shitty father's transphbia #and disrespect towards taylor in that matter is probably the way that plenty of the audience feels towards taylor and it's Nice that taylor #gets to smack that shit down but. it's very!!!!!! exhausting ugh!!!!!! im used to The Clipz now but boy it was stressful the 1st time around #and it still is.......love 2 b misgendered even when it's ~not a big deal~.......#all of this on the authority that im trans / nonbinary (and autistic; re: that sidenote lol. and also not straight either)#not that being nonbinary is separate from being trans b/c it's not unless you just so happen to not id as trans #coz guess what....ppl who ''qualify'' as trans don't Have to use that particular label / feel that it applies whether theyre nonbinary orNot #and being nonbinary is never inherently distinct from being trans. being trans means You Aren't Cis (and you describe urself as trans)

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sillymeter · 4 years

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oh my GOD i cannot believe i have to hold your hand and walk you through this. let’s break this down piece by fucking piece since clearly you cant think for yourself @ace-altair here’s the image im referring to

i dont know what some of these refer to and some of these are just borderline free spaces because blah blah stereotype. fucking whatever just say you think we dont have personalities. - emotional just say you think we’re all hysterical and leave. fucking freak - accidentally fell for a straight girl what does this mean. what does this fucking mean. anyone can have a crush on anyone. why is this in here. - keysmash once again just say you all think we sit around going SWGHHAGBHJG and thinking about girls. - watches lesbian tiktoks ah yes suck up to the corporation why don’t you. i don’t watch these tiktoks nor do i go on tiktok so idk what exactly this is talking about but. you know. - overuses heart emojis i dont really know what to say to this one. cant explain why this makes me mad. too tired. - can’t sit right LOLL SO QUIRKY!!!! LOLLL! - girl in red i think the quotes mean someone else is asking this. why is this here. who fucking cares. its music. - short nails idk what to say to this one. i really am bewildered why you would put this on here. puzzling me. its not bad or anything i don’t think it’s just a weird thing to say. - wears flannels i 100% bet the only exposure you’ve had to lesbian culture is popular ( FOR SOME REASON ) tumblr posts about wearing flannel in the fall and going pumpkin picking with your girlfriend or some fucking thing. it’s clothes. it’s just clothes. - wears vans / converse ties directly in with the flannels thing. you forgot to add “wears a beanie” go ahead complete the “i don’t think they have actual styles and opinions, what do you mean they’re real people” trio. go ahead. - HNGGG- WOMEN PRETTY if i met you i would spit directly on your face. (also leaving out nonbinaries in this. i see you ) - thought you were bi once again, if i met you i would spit on you. identities can change over time. this is such a shitty thing to put on this. - can’t drive *spits on you.* go ahead and say you think we’re all stupid people who can’t think for ourselves and all we do is sit around thinking about women, crytyping, keysmashing, and spamming heart emojis in our vans and sipping starbucks. i fucking despise you - types only in lowercase BUT NOT WHEN WE’RE SCREAMING!! OMG!!! QUIRKY!! LOL!!! Sorry to say I don’t type like a proper person. Is this better? - will fight homo-phobes something something aggressive lesbian stereotype. just say you think we’re brainless animals already i’m tired of waiting to hear you explain it and you refuse to or direct me to something completely fucking different - awkward flirt sorry you think we’re all shy widdle wesbians who can’t talk to girls without keysmashing. hope your brain gets better soon anyway thats kind of all i have to say about those in specific. let’s get into the general shittiness. - you don’t mention nonbinary people in this at all. in fact, you go OUT of your way to only mention girls. - you treat us like (shocker!) a stereotype. which is exactly what these cards do, and you shouldn’t have made them in the first place. horrible move on your part. really a bad idea. OHHH BUT IM NOT DONE YET! let’s get into the nonbinary bingo so you can understand why i want to yell at you so bad

- is out irl not all of us live in safe situations.

- “that’s not real!?” - “what’s in your pants?” - “there’s only two genders!!” - “are you a boy/girl?” - always misgendered why are all the gender bingo cards about being misgendered or having horrible things said to you? what the fuck makes you think anyone would want to hear this? genuinely why are the gender bingo cards so fucking centered around suffering? - masc/femme ( isnt femme a lesbian term? like specifically a lesbian term? i’m very tired and i might be remembering wrong.) - name is a noun - has short hair - wears a binder/bra - uses they/them - has anxiety - plans to/ takes HRT - andro-gynous - uses neo-pronouns - dyed hair ohh it’s all just a fucking nightmare isn’t it. some people are comfortable with their fucking bodies you freak. im relatively fine with mine but this card actually made me feel like i was doing something wrong for a moment because i didn’t hate my body enough. fuck you. fuck you from the bottom of my heart. you’re completely incapable of thinking of nonbinary people as anything other than someone (skinny and white, most likely) wearing a binder with a dyed undercut. people fucking exist. i can’t really talk much on this topic because i grew up in a very toxic western culture and i am white, but there are other cultures where nonbinary people are a thing. this isn’t a western-crafted identity, and you are treating it like one. that is horrible. EDIT: adding more to this. your view of nonbinary people is very eurocentric and westernized. that’s what i meant. - is an artist wah wah im gonna write poetry/paint about how much i hate my body wah wah. fuck you. what a weird thing to put in a bingo space - listens to cavetown once again. these bingo cards were a fucking horrible idea. why would you ever make bingo cards from stereotypes. what is wrong with you? i might add onto this later. im tired and have not slept in a long time. these cards made me very very angry at myself because i was worried i was doing something wrong, for some reason. stereotypes are harmful.

#lesbophobia #transphobia #antisemetism #bonespiel #long post

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thirstzone · 5 years

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On The Interpretation Of V

V is an interesting character to be sure, and certainly one that’s taken the hearts of many of us, I’m sure. I’m still trying to nail down how I want to portray him, so hopefully this helps organize my thoughts a bit more. As always, everyone is entitled to their own character interpretation and their own way of writing characters! This is just how I personally analyze things.

On to the topic of the mysterious one, V.

Where to begin with V... As I write him on this blog, he’s... sort of his own character? I leave it ambiguous whether or not he’s his own entity or if he retains his origins. I do this because most of the time, it’s not relevant to the writing at hand. This leaves it up to the reader, and everyone has different opinions on this. Everyone can see V as they wish, so long as they aren’t attacking others for having a different opinion. Personally, I’ve already crafted a completely alternate storyline for the purposes of my own fantasies. However, for this particular analysis, I’m writing strictly from canon. So let’s dive in.

Before I reflect on V’s personality, let’s trace back his beginnings and his emotions when he came into existence.

With the release of the Visions Of V manga, we’re getting some more information about V directly after being formed. It’s still being released on an every other week basis, so this is absolutely subject to change as we get more information from that.

I think to understand V’s situation, it’s important to understand where Vergil’s been in his life. Of course, that post will be coming soon, so for the short of it, Vergil’s been broken. He didn’t always start out so corrupted, but having been tortured to the point that he completely lost his identity must’ve seriously messed the guy up. Even before that, Vergil was trying to suppress his human side, but he still acknowledged it, sort of. But after all that broke him, well... we saw the state he was in. In the manga, he states that he needs to sever his human emotions because it was doing nothing but holding him back, plaguing him with nightmares.

And thus, V came to be.

V was just dregs. I’m honestly stunned there was enough of him left to even manifest alongside Griffon, Shadow, and Nightmare with how absolutely broken down Vergil had been. But there’s something the manga revealed: he was scared. He realized he was separate and he was scared of what “he” had become. We can even see it on his face in the game. He’s absolutely mortified when he sees Urizen. He realizes he’s helpless, and it terrifies him. And let’s not forget this panel.

Pardon the non-translated text, but the website I use to read the English translation isn’t connecting at the moment. What he’s saying is shinitakunai which translates to “I don’t want to die.” He knows almost immediately that being split off means that it’s a death sentence. Given what he’s saying, and the imagery of the darkness creeping in around him, it’s obvious that he’s at least mildly afraid of dying.

So let’s tie that in with the prequel novel Before The Nightmare. I won’t linger too long on this because I’m mainly analyzing his actions in relation to his emotions. He’s already mentally separated himself from Vergil, as evidenced in the manga when he says, “I guess ‘I’ had forgotten how scary it is to be helpless.” Or something to that effect. I attempted to use Google translate before the chapter was actually translated and I noticed that when he uses the pronoun “I” in that sentence, it’s in the equivalent of quotation marks. Just that shows he sees Vergil as someone different. And in the novel, he even says that his “past self” was “full of delusions.” Though it’s interesting to me that Griffon seems to treat V’s actions as surprising when he chooses to leave on Dante’s suggestion. It’s possible that Griffon sees V as Vergil, even though V himself doesn’t feel the same way.

Another action of V’s that Griffon is shocked by is his decision to stay in Redgrave City to try and help the humans there. Vergil would’ve never done something like that. He may not have actively tried to kill them, as Urizen was doing, but he wouldn’t have bothered saving them. So for V to actively want to do so is something out of character for his old self. And V volunteers to do this knowing that doing that would only accelerate his death.

So we know that at the beginning, V is, to some extent, selfless. He would wear down his already decaying body to save people, or at least attempt to.

Regardless of this, let’s not forget that V has a touch of ruthlessness to him. In Before the Nightmare, he obtains the money to hire Dante by basically mugging a man. He’s not above doing things like that if he really needs to. He’s not maliciously manipulative, but he knows how to pull strings to reach the outcome he desires. He even refers to how he gets Nero involved as “using” Nero, with that exact word. In the prologue of the manga, he states that he will use anything at his disposal. In the game, he tells Dante “I never would’ve dreamed of using that child.” He’s pulling strings by getting Nero involved. He didn’t outright lie to Dante, but he did leave out some pretty important facts. He told Dante his adversary was Vergil, which was partially correct. He knew the name would mean nothing to Nero, and so he named him Urizen when speaking to Nero. Why he would make this distinction, I’m not sure. It wouldn’t have impacted anything to tell Nero Urizen’s name was Vergil from the start.

In regards to Urizen and Vergil, I think another thing that I should discuss is his motive. Was V planning to re-merge with Urizen? Was he planning to defeat Urizen? In my personal interpretation, I think merging with Urizen again was not his initial intention. So what changed?

When he tells Trish the story of his birth, you can tell he’s sincere. He’s being genuine and open and vulnerable. He is truly regretful for the things that Vergil had done and wanted to set things right by taking down Urizen. He’s guilt-ridden, and it’s clear in his voice. I do think he told Trish his origins in particular because she looked like Eva. Vergil’s mother. The memories V was in possession of. When he tells her, she basically brushes him off and tells him that it’s his own problem. To hear that from someone who reminds you of your late mother must have hurt. To add insult to injury, my friend pointed something else out: that must’ve drove home the fact that no one cared about V. When he says he’s glad Lady’s okay, she responds “You too, I guess.” Now, I get it. This stranger you know nothing about is kind of shady. But to add the “I guess” on is sort of... well, it’s rude, in my opinion. Then again, I’m southern, and manners are a huge thing here. And when Trish also shows that she’s not personally involved with V, it must’ve made him realize that oh right. They don’t care about him. They’re only working with him because he’s paying them. What happens to him or what he feels doesn’t matter to them.

So when Trish tells him “You need to see this through,” I think that’s when his goal changed from “I need to take down Urizen” to “I need to take down Dante.” He wasn’t seeing his goal as V through anymore. He was seeing his goal as Vergil through. That moment is when he decided to merge with Urizen, even though he didn’t originally plan to do that. I think he really was ready to bring down Urizen and save Redgrave City, even if it meant he died.

Now that I’ve talked about that, let’s talk about his personality in regards to how I write him.

When I write for V, I always write during the point of the story that he wants to save Redgrave. So basically I write V as he is before mission 12. Whether or not he’s a part of Vergil or his own person doesn’t come into play with his personality, as it only effects his motivations. V is polite, that much is certain. He tells Lady that he’s glad she’s okay, he specifically picks up a piece of Geryon for Nico without her asking him to, he doesn’t fuss when Dante tells him to turn back, among some other examples if I thought a little more about it.

He’s kind, but not too kind. He would willingly sacrifice his health to help the people of Redgrave. At the same time, he doesn’t have qualms about acquiring money (or clothes, according to the new Visions of V chapter) by unsavory means. He’s most definitely an “ends justify the means” sort of person, as he strung along Dante and Nero with just a bit of manipulation, although his intentions were good at the time.

Above all, being someone’s concentrated humanity, I think V feels his emotions very strongly. He may not know how to process them, but he’s the most open about what he’s feeling.

#devil may cry 5 #devil may cry #v dmc #dmc v #v (dmc)#musings #I'm almost done with the next request. It's not long by any means but I got SO HUNG UP ON IT #writer's block hit me SO HARD #and it was a double whammy of being overworked for the past week #ANYWAY here's this #I have so many feelings about V

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