#‘you’re not bringing anything to the table’ as if this isn’t a hobby and i KNOW that’s not fucking true with the amount of people i’ve

[bravevolunteer]

the audacity of the movie to release when i am both starting finals very soon and have been. weirdly anxious about my shit

[unstable-samurai]

Passenger

Nana x Male Reader

word count: 7.8k

A/n: special smut to celebrate Nana's birthday 🥳

You're sitting at the counter, glass half-empty. The bar lights are dim, casting a warm amber hue that makes the place seem imperfect, but in a comforting way. Most nights, someone else serves you, someone who never asks your name, and you never feel the need to say it.

But tonight, that person isn’t here. Instead, there’s Nana.

You’ve noticed Nana before. How could you not? She stands out like a wildfire in the middle of a forest. She has that kind of beauty that’s almost aggressive, as if every detail was designed to challenge the idea that perfect people don’t exist. Her hair is long, black like the night outside, and her body... Her body is like a work of art, covered in tattoos you try not to stare at for too long, but they demand attention. Her curves, her intense eyes. She moves like she doesn't care about the world, but you notice her every move, and although you haven't realized it yet, she also notices you.

Tonight, she's the one who walks up to you. When she stops in front of you, you can’t hide your surprise.

"Another one?" she asks. Her voice is slightly deep, velvety.

You nod, trying not to seem nervous, but you know you are failing.

"You come here every night," she says as she fills your glass. "But I never serve you."

"Yeah. It’s always that bearded guy," you reply, forcing a smile. Your voice feels smaller than it should.

"What brings you here every day?"

"I like the atmosphere."

"It’s not the best place to be every night, you know."

You let out a sigh.

"Still, you work here every night."

She raises an eyebrow.

"And that’s exactly why I know it’s not a good place for you. By the way, my name is Nana."

You grip your glass tightly, as if it’s the only anchor keeping you there. You do the formalities, say it's a pleasure to meet her and also give her your name, then continue: "Well, I’m new in town," you end up saying, not sure why you’re opening up to her. "I don’t know many people yet."

She pauses for a second, as if studying you. Something in her eyes changes. She doesn’t say anything, but the way her lips curve suggests she’s interested.

"New in town... and you’ve already chosen this hole of a bar to spend your time?" she teases, with a half-smile.

You laugh, a short, nervous laugh. "It’s what’s available."

She leans in a bit, resting on the counter. "And what are you looking for here? Besides cheap beer?"

You think about the answer. You don’t have one. Or maybe you do. Or maybe you really don’t.

"I don’t know," you reply.

She smiles. A smile that says she understands what you’re going through.

—

The bar is almost empty now, just you, Nana, and a few lost souls at distant tables. The conversation flows easily, slipping through words like the drink she keeps serving you. You feel a lightness in your shoulders that wasn’t there when you walked in, as if the weight of the day had melted away, dripping to the floor along with the drops of beer.

"I get off at midnight," she says, casually, as she dries a glass with a cloth. "What do you think about going for a drive with me?"

You almost choke. "Are you serious?"

She looks over the rim of the glass, one eyebrow raised, a small smile on her lips. "Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?"

You glance around, as if expecting someone to wake you from a prank. "I thought... I don’t know, it was just bar talk."

"Bar talk is usually full of crap, I know," she says, pushing the glass aside. "But I’m not the type to say things just to say them. When I need to clear my head, I go for a drive."

Now you’re more intrigued. "A drive?"

She leans on the counter, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. As if there were nothing strange about a bartender inviting a guy she barely knows to go out at night. "I have a hobby," she says, without rush. "I like to restore old cars."

"Old cars?" That catches you off guard. You didn’t expect that. Of all the things she could have said, that was the last.

She points her thumb outside, toward the street. "The Impala out there. It’s mine."

Your eyes follow her finger, and you see the car parked outside. A black Impala, classic, gleaming under the faint streetlights. You’ve seen it plenty of times, but you never imagined it was hers.

"You’re kidding," you say, with a half-smile. "I see it there all the time, but I didn’t know it was yours. It’s beautiful."

She smiles, a smile that feels more personal now, as if you’ve hit something you didn’t know you were aiming for. "I restored it myself," she says, with contained pride. "Took a few good years, but there it is, ready to take me wherever I want."

You can’t hide your admiration. She’s different. Very different. The kind of person who seems to have lived a hundred lives while you’re still trying to figure out your first. And she seems to enjoy keeping you off balance.

"You... seem like a one-of-a-kind girl," you blurt out, without much thought, and realize how foolish it sounds once it’s said aloud.

"I could say the same about you," she replies, with a wink.

You feel a little out of place now. She has this confidence, this raw energy that you’ve never had. And you, the opposite of everything Nana seems to represent, never imagined attracting someone like her. But, for some reason, here she is, inviting you out, asking you to get into her car, to see her world.

"So," she says, suddenly serious. "Are you coming or not?"

Your mind is still processing everything, but before you can overthink it, you respond. "I’m in."

"Then you’ll be my passenger for the night," she says, grabbing her car keys from her pocket and twirling them on her finger. She leans closer, the distance between you shrinking until you can smell her. "I’m gonna take you to places you’ve never been before," she murmurs, and the way she says it makes it feel like those places aren’t just physical.

—

You’re standing outside, arms crossed against the chill of the night that seems to grow colder by the hour. The bar has finally closed, and now you can hear the muffled voices inside, the last of the staff finishing up. The black Impala is parked in front of you, gleaming under the streetlight. You wait, anxious, unsure of what to expect.

The door to the bar opens, and she appears. Nana. This time, without the counter between you. You notice now, in a much more intense way, how her body fills the space. She’s all soft lines and yet strong, tattoos tracing her arms that you imagine extend to places you haven’t seen yet.

She pauses for a second, noticing your gaze, and smiles with a bit of amusement. "Like my tank top?" she asks casually, turning slightly as if wanting you to get a better look. "I think it fits just right, don’t you?"

You swallow hard, and suddenly, your words seem to have evaporated. "Yeah... it looks great on you."

She lets out a low laugh, tilting her head as she slips on her leather jacket. "You’re not very good at hiding things, are you?"

Before you can respond, she opens the car door and motions for you to get in. You walk to the other side, feeling the ground unsteady beneath your feet. When you settle into the passenger seat, the smell of the leather upholstery mixes with her perfume, something intoxicating.

She starts the car, the engine purring low, deep, like a beast waking up. Nana leans slightly toward you, offering a cigarette. "Want one?"

You hesitate for a second, but... why not? "Sure."

She lights your cigarette first, then hers. The car still parked, both of you smoking in silence. You cough twice before getting the hang of it. The smoke mingles with the cold air seeping through the slightly cracked window. She seems content with the moment, like the entire scene is unfolding exactly as she had planned.

"Where are we going?" you ask.

She takes a long drag from the cigarette before answering, blowing the smoke out the side of her mouth. "I was thinking we could head to the coast. There’s a cliff along the road where you can see the sea, the bridge, and the lighthouse... it’s beautiful at night." Before you can respond, she continues, turning her face toward you with that mischievous smile that seems to be her signature. "But honestly? The destination doesn’t matter much. What matters is the ride." She looks at you for a second longer. "The company."

The way she says that — the way her eyes linger on yours — makes you feel like, yes, you will understand.

“I’m in your hands,” you say.

—

The Impala rumbles softly as she finally parks on the shoulder near the cliff. The road seems deserted now, wrapped in darkness, except for the thin line of streetlights stretching ahead. You step out of the car, the night air cooler here, damper, with the salty scent of the sea rising up to meet you. Nana gets out on her side, slamming the car door and pulling the zipper of her leather jacket up to her chin. She glances at you for a moment, her eyes gleaming, as if analyzing your reaction.

“This way,” she says, her phone's flashlight on, pointing to a trail that winds down a small hill, overgrown with weeds. “Watch your step here. It gets slippery.”

You descend slowly, each step sinking slightly into the loose soil. The wind is stronger here, whipping through the leaves and Nana’s hair, which she pushes back carelessly. You follow close behind, focusing on each movement, trying to appear confident but feeling the vulnerability of walking along a dark trail leading to a cliff.

Finally, you reach the cliff’s edge. The view is breathtaking—the suspension bridge stretching across the gap, the sea below churning under the distant light of a lighthouse. Lights flicker in the distance, and for a moment, it feels like the whole world is just this scene, this moment.

“Wow,” you murmur, taking it all in. “I’ve never seen the bridge from this angle... but I’ve seen pictures of people here.”

“Some braver tourists come here,” she says. “I think it makes them feel alive.”

She turns to you, a mischievous smile on her lips. “Want to take a picture too? To mark the moment.”

You laugh nervously but agree. “Sure… why not?”

Nana raises her phone, positioning you against the dramatic backdrop. “Stand there, try to look... introspective.”

You awkwardly pose, crossing your arms and gazing at the horizon. She snaps the picture and looks at the result, chuckling softly. “Came out great. I’ll send it to you later.”

She shows you the picture, and yeah, it really is great.

She leans against a rock, lighting a cigarette and offering you one. You take it, inhale slowly, the bitter taste blending with the night. Silence hangs for a while, until she breaks the tension with a question.

“So… how’s life treating you?” Her voice is soft, but there’s something more behind it, a genuine curiosity, like she really wants to understand.

You hesitate, thinking about how to answer. “I’m not sure if I’m doing it right, to be honest.”

She laughs quietly, but not mockingly. It’s more a sound of recognition, like she’s heard that many times before.

“Knew you’d say something like that,” she replies, blowing smoke to the side. “Most people aren’t sure. Everyone pretends they know what they’re doing, but really, we’re all just fumbling in the dark.”

You look at her, waiting for more. She seems to be building up to something bigger.

“See… the problem is, we’ve been taught to measure happiness the wrong way,” she says, her tone turning more serious now. “They made us believe that happiness is about having things. Buying a new car, getting a promotion, finding the perfect partner. And all that’s just temporary bullshit. When you get it, it’s great. It lasts for a while. And then?”

She pauses, as if giving you time to process. “Then you need something else. Another goal, another prize. Happiness has become this trophy we’re always chasing. But no one tells you the race never ends. It’s like working on a treadmill.”

“You think we shouldn’t chase those things?” you ask, trying to grasp where she’s headed.

She looks at you with an intensity that catches you off guard. “It’s not that we shouldn’t chase them. It’s that we should stop measuring our lives by them. What really matters is right now. We spend so much time trying to build a perfect future that we forget the present.”

She exhales slowly, as if each word comes from some deep, lived truth. “What happens when you reach all those goals and still feel empty? Modern culture, capitalism, they sell you this idea that you’re incomplete until you have everything. But no one tells you that ‘everything’ doesn’t exist.”

You stay silent for a moment, considering. It feels like she’s saying something that’s been lurking in the back of your mind, unspoken.

“So, what should we do? Just give up on all that?”

Nana gives a sly smile, like she’s been expecting the question. “It’s not about giving up. It’s about redefining what ‘everything’ means. For me, it’s this. The journey. The company. Not the destination. What you do now, in the moment, with the people you’re with... that’s what matters. Happiness is in what you do along the way, not what you achieve at the end.”

She flicks the cigarette to the ground, crushing the tip under her boot. “Once you start living in the present, you stop worrying so much about achieving the future. Because, one way or another, the future comes. And most people don’t even know what to do with it when it arrives.”

You stand there, staring out at the horizon, feeling the weight of her words. It’s a philosophy that challenges everything you’ve been trying to do since moving to this new city, trying to fit in, trying to find your path.

“So, what now?” you ask, more to yourself than to her.

She smiles, looking at you in a way that makes the air around you feel heavier. “Now? Now you finish that cigarette, enjoy the view, and stop worrying so much about what comes next.”

—

On the way back to the car, Nana stops suddenly, spinning on her heels with a provocative gleam in her eyes. “Get in the backseat,” she says, her voice soft but with an authority that leaves no room for questioning.

“Why?” you ask, unsure of her intent.

She smirks. “Just do what I’m asking.”

You hesitate for a second, but curiosity—and something else—wins out. You open the back door and slide onto the seat. You barely have time to adjust before Nana climbs in after you, straddling your lap without hesitation. The warmth of her body against yours is immediate, electric.

“You’ve been waiting for this all night, haven’t you?” Her question comes as a whisper in your ear, her lips barely brushing against the skin of your neck.

Before you can respond, she kisses you, and everything becomes a blur of lips and skin, your heart pounding in your chest. Her hands move down your body while yours trace the curves of hers, feeling every inch.

“You’re so hot,” you blurt out, unable to hold back.

She laughs, a low, confident sound. “I know,” she replies, her lips barely leaving yours.

Her movements grow bolder, her body pressing into yours, her hips grinding provocatively against you, making you even harder beneath her. She notices. “I drive you crazy, don’t I?”

All you can do is nod.

“I’m going to take the lead tonight,” she says, sliding down without breaking eye contact.

“Lead on,” you answer, giving in completely.

She kneels in the cramped space of the backseat, shrugs off her jacket for more comfort, and tosses it to the front seat. Then, with swift efficiency, Nana unbuttons your pants, pulling them down along with your boxers in one fluid motion. Your hard cock is now exposed, throbbing under the dim light of the car.

She wraps a hand around it, pausing for a moment as if admiring her work. “Mmm, big and thick,” she comments like she’s appreciating a piece of art. She leans down, placing a soft kiss on the tip, running her tongue slowly along it, teasing. “Relax,” she whispers, her eyes never leaving yours, “because now, I’m taking you to the edge.”

She starts slowly, teasing. The tip of her tongue circles the head as if testing your limits. “Did you expect to get a blowjob tonight?” She smiles but doesn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll show you what it’s really like.”

Her tongue trails from the base of your cock, moving upwards agonizingly slowly, every movement deliberate. One hand grips you at the perfect spot, squeezing just enough to make you pulse, while the other fondles your balls, alternating between pleasure and pain in a rhythm that makes your mind spin.

You groan, the sounds escaping uncontrollably. “Fuck, Nana…” is all you can manage.

She pauses for a second, holding your cock against her face, rubbing it against her cheek. “This is what you’ve wanted from the start, isn’t it?” Her tone is a mix of teasing and command. “Seeing me down here, driving you crazy.”

Before you can answer, she takes you fully into her mouth, without warning, without preparation. Her hot mouth envelops every inch, the pressure perfect. She goes deep, as far as she can, not giving you a chance to breathe. You try to say something, but the sensation is too much.

She begins to move, her lips sliding up and down, with force and precision. “I want you to look at me,” she says, pulling you out of her mouth for a moment, her eyes locked on yours. “Watch what I’m doing.”

You obey, breathless, heart pounding in your chest.

She returns, this time more intense, sucking hard, obscene sounds filling the confined space of the car. Saliva drips down your cock, her hands working in sync, squeezing the base, each movement pulling you closer to the edge. She changes the pace again, speeding up, then slowing down, torturing you, keeping you on the brink of orgasm but not letting you go.

“You’ll only cum when I say so,” she declares, her mouth still around you, the words muffled but the command clear. “Understood?”

You can only nod, completely at her mercy. Every movement feels designed to extract the maximum amount of pleasure. Her hand is now firm on your balls, squeezing with precise control, while the other continues to guide the rhythm at the base of your cock. She speeds up again, sucking with a fervor that makes your vision blur.

“Fuck, Nana, I... I can’t anymore,” you moan, your whole body burning, muscles tense, pressure building.

“Not yet! Only when I allow it.”

Nana grips you harder now, almost brutally, her eyes locked on yours as she intensifies every movement. Her rhythm is relentless, no pauses, no mercy. Her hand squeezes the base of your cock as if she wants to wring every drop of pleasure from you. She knows what she’s doing, pushing you to the limit, not letting you breathe, not allowing you any control over what’s happening.

“Go on, I want to feel you lose control,” she whispers, her voice muffled as your cock slides deep into her mouth. The wet, filthy sound of each suck echoes through the car, mingling with your moans, now hoarser, more desperate. Her hand on your balls squeezes perfectly, making your vision darken at the edges.

She speeds up, her hot mouth sucking harder, her tongue swirling around the tip, teasing and pressing in all the right ways. Her other hand keeps your cock steady, controlling every inch that enters and leaves her mouth. You try to hold on, but she’s in command and won’t stop until she breaks you.

“You’re going to cum for me, aren’t you?” she says, her mouth still wrapped around you, each word making your cock throb more, pushing you closer to the edge. “I want you to cum now. In my mouth. I want to taste it.”

Your legs tremble, your whole body tense. The heat inside you grows, the pressure building until it feels impossible to hold on for another second. The control you tried to maintain disintegrates when Nana increases the intensity again, sucking with a force that makes you let out a deep moan.

“Nana, I’m going to...,” you can barely form the words, your entire body ready to explode.

“That’s right. Now you can,” she murmurs. Nana takes you all the way in, her throat tightening around your cock, and that sends you straight over the edge. Her hand grips your base firmly as she keeps sucking, drawing out every second of your orgasm. You have no choice anymore, your body gives in, and you feel the first wave of pleasure rip through you, your cock throbbing violently in her mouth.

You cum hard, your body shaking with intensity, muscles clenched as your cum explodes into her mouth. She doesn’t pull back, doesn’t hesitate. She keeps you deep, her mouth sealed, sucking every last drop, feeling every pulse. You feel the warmth of your own cum fill her mouth, and she doesn’t stop, still sucking, wanting more from you. She makes sure you give it all, every drop.

“That’s it... good boy,” she whispers between licks, her voice warm and husky, as the last spurt escapes, your body still trembling, exhausted.

She slowly pulls your cock out of her mouth, her lips sliding along the length in the process. Her eyes never leave you, dominant, satisfied.

“I told you I’d take you to the edge,” she says teasingly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, your taste still on her lips.

You’re buttoning up your pants, trying to process what just happened. Your mind is a whirlwind—everything feels surreal, like you’re watching from the outside. Nana is there, still with that lazy smile on her lips, as if she’d just done something casual, something she does with anyone. But you know that’s not true, she saw something in you. Though you’re not sure what.

“How do you feel?” Her question pulls you back to the car, to the moment.

You chuckle softly, a little incredulous. “Good... Too good, actually,” you answer, letting out a breath in a sigh that tries to release the tension.

“Great,” she says, reaching over the driver's seat to grab her jacket back. “That was the plan. And we’re just getting started.”

You look at her, confused. “Wait, there’s more?”

She laughs, tossing her hair back before sliding into the driver's seat. “Of course there’s more. I haven’t even had my turn yet.” She turns the key in the ignition, and the Impala roars to life like a beast awakening.

You join her in the front seat, grabbing another cigarette from the pack on the dashboard without thinking too much. The silence between you is comfortable now, almost conspiratorial. Nana glances at you from the corner of her eye, approving. “Light one for me too,” she says.

You obey, lighting both cigarettes and handing one to her. The smell of tobacco fills the car as the Impala rolls down the streets of the sleeping city. The engine hums, blending with the sound of tires on asphalt, a buzz that cradles the adrenaline.

Nana takes a long drag and exhales the smoke slowly, her eyes fixed on the road. “Ever gotten a blowjob in a car before?” The question comes casually.

“No,” you admit.

She smirks. “And how did it feel?”

You think for a second, the words swirling in your mind, trying to find something that captures what just happened. “Indescribable... Especially coming from someone as gorgeous as you.”

She laughs, a low laugh, like she expected that kind of compliment. “Thanks,” she says, with a hint of sarcasm. She shifts gears and speeds up a little more.

“Where are we going now?” you ask, trying to understand what else she has planned for the night.

Nana shrugs. “I don’t know. But there’s a gun in the glovebox, we could go out and rob some places... like Bonnie and Clyde.”

“Too bad I’m a pacifist,” you joke, playing along.

She pouts mockingly, as if disappointed. “Of course you are... The best guys always are pacifists.” She winks, taking another drag before leaning in closer, the smoke mingling in the air between you. “But maybe we’ll find another way to have fun, huh?”

—

The Impala roars down the empty road, slicing through the quiet of the early morning like a blade. The city lights flicker in and out of view, passing as yellow and red blurs, while Nana drives with one hand on the wheel and the other holding her cigarette. Each time she inhales, the glowing tip briefly lights up her face, showing the smile that never leaves her lips.

She’s been talking for minutes, maybe hours—you’ve lost track of time. Her words are like smoke, wrapping around you in a philosophical fog that seems endless. “Freedom,” she says, taking a deep drag and letting the smoke out slowly, “isn’t what everyone thinks. It’s not doing what you want, when you want. No. It’s knowing that you’re nothing, nobody gives you a purpose. You’re free to create your own.”

You watch the streets go by, the low buildings and traffic lights blinking green. “Sartre,” she continues, never taking her eyes off the road, “he had this view... that we’re all condemned to be free. Like, the freedom to have to make choices, to live with those choices. There’s no ‘fate,’ just the shit you choose to do.”

You nod, not saying much, but taking in every word.

“Real freedom is knowing that all of this,” she gestures widely with her hand, indicating the city around you, “is meaningless. You, me, everyone. And still choosing what to do with it.”

The Impala turns onto a larger avenue now, lit by an endless string of streetlights. “We live in this invisible cage, you know? Jobs, money, house, car. But none of it matters, because in the end... nothing matters.” She smiles sideways, as if she’s just told the most tragic and funniest joke in the world.

You stay silent, processing. You’re not sure if you agree, but something about the way she speaks, the intensity with which she lives, makes sense. It’s like she’s living everything with such urgency that you have no choice but to keep up with her pace. It’s terrifying and addictive at the same time.

Another turn and you pull into an alley, where a neon LED sign marks a convenience store. Nana slows down and parks the car. “Second-to-last stop,” she says, turning off the engine and turning to you. “Convenience store. Let’s buy something to celebrate this condemned freedom.”

You step out of the car with her, the cool night air hitting your skin. She pulls the zipper of her jacket up again. “Tell me something,” she says as you walk toward the store entrance, “if you could do anything right now, with no consequences… what would you do?”

The question lingers, heavy, as she opens the store door. You don’t know how to respond, but the truth is, ever since you got into that car, it feels like you’ve been living exactly that: a night without consequences, a blur of unexpected freedom.

She grabs a soda from the fridge and tosses it to you. “Cheap philosophy, right? I promise I’ll stop here. Wait for me outside. Don't worry, I'll pay for your soda and buy some things and be right back.”

—

You’re leaning against the car’s hood, soda can in hand, but not really drinking. Suddenly, the convenience store door opens, and there’s Nana, but now she's holding something. It’s not what you expected—no bottles of beer or another round of cigarettes. She’s carrying a cake. Nothing fancy, just a white cake with frosting. And as she approaches, you can read what’s written, a bit crooked, in pink and blue icing: “Happy Birthday.”

You’re confused. “Happy birthday to me,” she says with a smile that tries to be casual, but you can see a hint of something deeper there.

“Wait, is it your birthday?” The question escapes before you can process it.

Nana lets out a short, humorless laugh, as if amused by your surprise. “Yeah, it’s today.” She waves the cake in front of you, almost like presenting proof. “Surprise, I guess.”

You straighten up, the soda can dangling loosely from your fingers. “Damn, happy birthday!” You hug her, awkward but sincere. The cake almost squashes between you, but she laughs again, this time genuinely. When she pulls away, you're full of questions. “But why… why are you spending your birthday with a stranger instead of, I don’t know, your friends, family?”

She shrugs, her eyes drifting for a second before returning to yours. “I don’t think anyone’s awake now to celebrate with me. I’ve got the whole day ahead for that. Right now, it’s just… my time. I was going to do this alone, you know? But then, I saw you alone at the bar and thought… maybe it would be nice. Maybe we could keep each other company.” She makes it sound simple, and maybe it is.

You watch as she places the cake on the hood of the car, like it’s the most natural setting for a celebration. She opens the packaging of a plastic knife—the flimsy kind that could snap at any moment trying to cut through tougher frosting—and starts slicing the cake right there, no ceremony, no ritual. Just a girl and a cake in a convenience store parking lot.

“I’ve only known you for a few hours, but this is so… you,” you comment.

“Good. You can lose everything, except your essence.”

As you take your first bite, the sweetness fills your mouth, but it’s the bitterness of the early morning that still lingers in the air. You’re eating cake in the middle of a parking lot, yet somehow, it’s the most meaningful cake you’ve ever had. She’s eating too, her eyes fixed on the horizon where the city lights blend into the dark sky.

“Everything I’ve said tonight,” she begins softly, “was more about me than you. I’m getting older, and these dates always make me think… reflect on everything. The choices. What could’ve been different, what still can be. I guess I was just trying to reaffirm something to myself.”

You look at her, chewing slowly. There’s something vulnerable in that moment, something you hadn’t seen in her until now. “Nana, you’re doing great,” you say, your words feeling a bit silly, but somehow, they make sense. “Look at you—you’re killing it.”

She smiles, but there’s a melancholy curve to her lips. “Yeah, maybe. Who knows.” She sighs, not out of exhaustion—more like someone shedding a weight they've carried for too long. “I always get reflective on my birthday. Maybe I just need to stop overthinking.”

You smile back, and something inside you, a light sense of urgency, makes you promise, “I’ll get you a present later.”

“You’re already my present,” she says, and then, with a quick move, she swipes some frosting and gently spreads it over your lips.

Before you can react, she kisses you. It’s sweet and warm, the taste of frosting mixing with the heat of her lips. And for a moment, you think of nothing—not the cake, not the parking lot, not the wild world. Just her.

She pulls you a little closer, and for a second, you get lost in the rhythm of her breathing, in the way her chest rises and falls, pressed against you. Nana���s hair falls over her face, and you feel its softness brushing against your skin.

When she finally pulls away, just enough to look into your eyes, your lips are still wet from the kiss. She quickly licks her own, as if savoring the moment. “This night…” she begins, her voice low, almost a whisper. “It’s been really great.”

You try to say something, but your mind is still spinning from the kiss, so you just manage to say, “Thanks… for pulling me out of my comfort zone.”

“The night’s not over yet, we still have so much to explore, so much to feel. And if you think that was stepping out of your comfort zone… just wait.” She pauses, her eyes drifting to your lips before locking onto yours again. “There’s more where that came from.”

You chuckle, not because it’s funny, but because it’s all you can do. The weight of her words feels lighter now, the tension between you both like an electric current that keeps flowing, even when you’re not touching. Her taste still lingers on your lips.

“You have no idea how much I needed this,” you say, finally taking in a full breath, as if you’ve been holding it since the night began. “I didn’t know it, but… I needed it.”

She gives a small nod, as if she knew that all along. “I can feel the energy of the people around me. And when I saw you at that bar… you looked like you needed a different kind of night. Something… off the script. And now here we are.”

“Yeah… here we are.”

“But seriously,” she continues, her voice lower, almost confiding. “I wanted tonight to be good. And I’m glad you’re here with me. Truly.”

You run a hand through her hair, just a light touch, but it says everything. “I’m glad you chose me for this.”

“You were the best choice of the night. And now…” She glances around, as if looking for something, anything to pull you both back into the moment. “Let’s finish this cake before it melts on the hood.”

She scrapes a bit more frosting with her finger and brings it to her mouth, but before tasting it, she smears another dollop on your lips again, with a mischievous smile. “This time, I want you to kiss me.”

—

Nana drives in silence, the car gliding along the nearly empty road. The city lights fade behind you, and the cool night air begins to seep in through the slightly open window. You feel the freshness, the smell of asphalt and dew-covered grass. She doesn’t say much, just smiles occasionally, as if she knows exactly what's coming and wants to savor your curiosity. And you, lost in your own thoughts, can only wonder where she's taking you now.

"It's a place where we can really relax," she says, breaking the silence. "You'll see. I promise."

Minutes later, you pull up in front of a motel. It's not one of those seedy places you see in mafia movies, but it's no five-star hotel either. The neon lights blink in soft tones, and the sign above the entrance looks a bit old, but well-maintained. You recognize the place by sight, but you never imagined you'd find yourself here. Nana pulls the handbrake in a swift, almost automatic motion and looks at you.

"Shall we?" She doesn’t wait for an answer. She steps out of the car, and you follow.

Inside, the lobby is small and discreet. A receptionist behind the counter doesn’t even look up from the book she's reading while Nana handles everything. In minutes, you’re climbing the stairs, walking through narrow hallways with striped wallpaper. There's a strange calm in the air.

When you both enter the room, it’s... normal. No surprises, just a wide double bed covered with white sheets and a brown bedspread. A lamp in the corner casts a soft light, and the curtains are thick enough to keep the outside world at bay. In the background, a TV is mounted on the wall, a small fridge nearby, and the inevitable mirror above the headboard—a cliché the motel couldn’t resist.

Nana kicks off her shoes and jacket in seconds, almost like she's at home. She walks over to the bed and, without hesitation, jumps onto it, sinking into the sheets.

"Good," she says, looking at you lazily, "I hope you know how to make the birthday girl happy. You know what I mean, right?"

You give a half-smile, a bit awkward, and walk to the bed, sitting on the edge. The feel of the soft mattress under you eases some of the tension in your body. She reaches out and touches your arm.

"Relax," she whispers. "No need to rush."

She gets up and goes to the small light control on the wall. With a click, a soft neon glow, in shades of pink and purple, fills the room, replacing the lamp’s light. Now, the room has a warm, intimate, almost dreamlike atmosphere.

She returns to the bed, this time with two small bottles of tequila she found in the mini-fridge. She hands one to you, opening hers with a pop.

"Shall we toast?" She raises her bottle in the air. "To unexpected nights... and the best company."

You raise yours too. "To the most interesting birthday girl I've ever met."

You drink, and the alcohol burns its familiar path down your throat, spreading warmth through your body. She lets out a soft laugh, that laugh you know so well, and moves closer. The closeness between you grows, not just physically, but in a way you can’t quite explain. As if, with every sip, every exchanged glance, something deeper is being built.

"I like this," she says, her voice soft, almost melancholic. "Being here, now. With you. It feels like... like I've finally stopped running for a second, you know? Like life pressed pause so I could breathe."

You feel the warmth of her hand on yours and gently squeeze it. "And I like that you pulled me out of my own head for a night."

She smiles, her eyes glowing under the neon light.

The tension between you grows, but it’s not rushed. It’s slow, almost like a rhythm you’ve created together. She leans in and kisses you, this time with a softness that suggests it's not just desire—it’s connection.

She pulls back, looking into your eyes, as if she’s studying every part of you. "From now on, the birthday girl is all yours."

Then she sighs, looking at you with those eyes that, until now, always seemed in control. But now, for the first time, they seem to be surrendering to you.

She gently takes the tequila bottle from your hand and places it on the bedside table along with hers. Standing, Nana’s hands move to the hem of her tank top, and in a slow, almost ritualistic gesture, she lifts it over her head. The fabric slides down her skin like it's nothing, and suddenly, she’s exposed. Her slender body, the tattoos, her small, almost non-existent breasts, raw beauty without pretense. She sits at the edge of the bed, vulnerable for the first time.

"Do you like what you see?" she asks as she lies down on the bed. She’s not in control now.

For now.

You don’t answer. Instead, you stand up, just to be able to look down at her, feeling the power of the situation shift. She stays there, lying down, waiting, in a long, tension-filled pause. You want her even more because of it.

Nana looks at you, biting her lower lip, impatient but silent. And then, with a brief smile, you lean over her. Your hands go straight to her neck, firm but not aggressive. Just enough for her to feel that you're in charge. She closes her eyes, her breath quickening as you lower your head and begin kissing her skin—first her neck, then her shoulders. Your touch is slow, every movement deliberate, and she melts bit by bit. She moans as your lips trail down to her breasts. You open your mouth, teasing her skin with your tongue, tracing the outline of her small, dark areolas. Nana sighs, eyes closed, wordless now. She’s passive, completely surrendered, her moans soft and ragged.

"Keep going..." she murmurs, barely audible.

You obey, but at your own pace. You take one of her breasts in your hand, gently squeezing while sucking on the other, your tongue playing with her nipple. Nana arches her back, trying to move against you, but your hands on her hips keep her in place. She struggles, impatient, but you don’t let her. "Slow down, Nana," you whisper, your voice controlled, almost cold. "The night is ours."

She laughs, a short, shaky laugh. "You bastard..." she says, but there’s amusement in her voice, an acceptance of the role she’s now playing. "Are you going to make me beg?"

"Only if you want to," you reply, your lips returning to her breasts, alternating between them now, nibbling harder, your tongue circling the areolas. She moans louder, finally surrendering completely to the situation.

Nana lets out a long sigh, her fingers twisting into the sheets as you move over her with more intensity, and her breathing becomes erratic. "Damn, this... this is..." She can barely form a sentence. "This feels so fucking good..."

She tries to squirm, seeking more contact, but you hold her down again, keeping her in place. And for the first time, she doesn’t fight back. She accepts it, and that’s exactly what you wanted.

Then comes the moment. "Now I need you to eat me out," she says. And of course, you oblige. Her pants slide down her legs, and when you see it, there’s that wet spot on her white panties. You hold back the anticipation for a moment as you undress, there’s no rush, and that teases Nana in a fun way. Now free of any fabric, you trace your fingers over her panties, feeling the warmth, the moisture, while your lips travel down her thighs, following a path that leads you closer to what you really want.

She moans softly, but just enough to let you know you’re doing it right. Every second of anticipation is killing her, and she likes it. Until it becomes unbearable, and she squeezes her thighs around your head, whispering, "Lick me already. Come on, I’m about to explode."

When you pull off her panties, it’s like peeling away the last layer of something much deeper. The air in the room feels heavier, and her scent fills the space like a wild, addictive perfume. You kneel between her legs, the warm skin of her inner thighs pressing lightly on either side of you. Every breath she takes, every swallowed moan, brings you closer, deeper. Your tongue moves slowly, first lightly, as if testing, tasting the contours. The wet heat pulsing inside her precedes something big, something that’s going to break when you finally open the floodgates.

"Don’t stop..." she whispers, surrendered. "More... deeper."

You comply. Your tongue works as if following a rhythm only the two of you know. Its tip finds that exact spot, and Nana arches, her hips trembling, as if every muscle in her body is short-circuiting, rebelling. She moans louder now, unashamed, uncontrolled.

"Like that... don’t stop, fuck, keep going..." Her voice blends with her breathing, her moans becoming more spaced, almost suffocated.

You feel her taste growing stronger, the moisture increasing in your mouth, on your lips, and then, without warning, Nana’s entire body contracts. Her muscles tighten, her legs squeeze your head hard, and she cums, a muffled scream escaping her throat. Her body trembles, her hips spasming involuntarily, and you keep going, knowing it’s not over. Not for her.

"Fuck... this... my god..." She moans through gritted teeth, eyes squeezed shut, her whole body vibrating as if she’s in another dimension. And you continue, your tongue sliding faster, deeper, until she lets out a final moan, long, drawn-out, as if exorcizing everything inside her.

When you come back up, her taste is still fresh in your mouth. You kiss her, her tongue meeting yours, and she tastes herself on your lips.

"You... fuck... you drove me crazy," she says, her voice weak but still full of intent. She looks at you, her eyes bright, satisfied, then she smiles. "Now... fuck me. Fuck me like it’s the last thing you’re going to do today."

She turns over on all fours, her knees sinking into the mattress with that natural movement, without hesitation. The invitation doesn’t need words; it’s all in the gesture, in the way her hips raise, her spine arched just enough to drive you completely insane. The tattoos scattered across her slim body come alive under the soft room light, every line of the design blending with the shadows, while her desire escapes in small sighs.

You grab her hips, your fingers digging into the soft flesh as if trying to anchor her to the moment. The first thrust is slow, almost a test, and Nana lets out a low moan, something between pleasure and provocation. She loves feeling the tension building in you and pushes back, forcing you to go deeper.

"That’s it..." she murmurs through gritted teeth, "harder."

You obey. The sound of skin against skin fills the room, mixing with her moans, growing louder each time. The pace quickens, you pull her closer, burying yourself deeper, while Nana moves against you, her hips meeting yours with perfect precision at each thrust. The sheets bunch up beneath her, and her moans turn into something almost animalistic, a rough sound that makes her body tremble.

"Fuck..." she moans, her head dropping forward, hair falling into her face. "Fuck me faster."

You grip her hips harder, her body responding to yours with absolute submission. Every movement is an exchange—a silent request, an inevitable response. Her moans become more erratic, the bed creaking with the frantic rhythm you both reach. Her whole body tense, the muscles in her back and thighs contracted, almost falling apart under your hands.

Suddenly, she stops, breaking the rhythm, and turns around. Her gaze is wild, a mix of excitement and challenge. "Now let me do it my way."

She climbs on top of you, her knees sinking into the mattress next to your hips, and the sight is mesmerizing. Nana looks down at you, her eyes half-closed, lips parted, as she slowly lowers herself, feeling every inch of you filling her again. She lets out a heavy sigh and starts moving, first slow, controlled, her hips rising and falling with calculated precision, almost cruel.

"You like watching me like this?" she asks, her voice raspy, full of satisfaction.

All you can do is nod. And she smiles, that smile that says she knows exactly what she’s doing to you. Nana picks up the pace, her hips slamming against yours with force, riding you without a shred of inhibition. Her hands find your chest, nails lightly scratching your skin, her face twisted in pure pleasure. She leans forward, her small breasts pressed against you, her mouth close to your ear as she whispers, her voice broken by moans.

"You... are... perfect."

Nana's hands grip your shoulders, her hips riding your cock with the precision of someone who knows their body well. But it won’t last like this. Not for long. You need to take control. "My turn," you whisper against her ear. She lets out a low moan, a half-smile, like she was waiting for it.

She climbs off of you. You both adjust, lying on your sides, legs intertwined, and you pull her closer, your mouth on her neck, tasting her sweaty skin, the scent of desire mixing with the heat of the room. "Closer," you say, as your hands travel down her tattooed hips, pulling her into you. Nana doesn’t hesitate, grinding her hips, sinking deeper into you, her eyes half-closed, mouth open, moaning.

"You like it like this, don’t you?" you ask, one hand sliding to her neck. She turns her head to look over her shoulder, that same half-cynical, half-hungry smile.

"I love it," she murmurs, and then your fingers lightly tighten around her throat. Nothing violent, just enough for her to feel the pressure. It makes her moan even louder, her body reacting, giving in to the control you’ve taken. "Harder," she asks, eyes shutting like she's lost in her own satisfaction.

You squeeze a little more, controlling the intensity with the same precision you control the thrusts. Each time you bury yourself inside her, she grips the sheets, her whole body tense with pleasure. The heat of her skin, the way she moves against you, the sound of her moans muffled by your hand... all of it makes you lose track of anything else.

"You’re so fucking hot," you say, your entire body focused on how she’s giving herself to you. She moans in response, but her words are getting more fragmented, harder to get out. You release her neck for a second, just to let her breathe better. She swallows hard and lets out a short laugh, almost in disbelief.

"Fuck, you’re gonna make me come again," she confesses, and you realize you’re almost there too. You pull out of her, sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling Nana into your lap, and she climbs back on top of you. The heat of her skin against yours is instant, and you feel her entire body mold to yours like a second skin. Your feet are planted firmly on the floor, ready for the intensity of Nana’s hips. Her hands grip your shoulders, and her pussy sinks down slowly on your cock with a precision that’s pure wickedness.

The room is a mess of discarded clothes, crumpled sheets, and the scent of sex hanging in the air.

She settles in, adjusts, and then starts riding, slow at first, almost like she’s teasing, savoring the moment.

"Mmm, I knew you’d like it when I ride you… Mmm, yeah, I bet it has become your favorite position…" she murmurs, her voice low, while her nails lightly scratch your shoulders, her ass moving with pinpoint accuracy on your cock. The sensation is overwhelming, the tight, wet grip as if she was made for this.

You hold onto her hips tightly, fingers sinking into her skin, pulling her closer, deeper. "Fuck, Nana… You’re so good," you blurt out, not even realizing the words slipped out.

She lets out a little laugh, muffled by the sound of bodies colliding. "I know," she replies, and you can feel her ego swelling alongside the pleasure she’s giving you. She picks up the pace, and now there’s nothing gentle about it. No. Now it’s skin on skin, the sound of flesh against flesh, and her ass moving fast, faster, her moans coming in waves, louder and louder.

You feel everything. Her weight in your lap, her hips rising and falling in a rhythm only she controls. The way she moans when you pull her even closer, when you force the thrusts to go deeper. The sensation is brutal. You can barely think, barely speak, all you can do is moan along with her, your bodies drenched in sweat and pleasure.

"You like it when I do this, don’t you?" she gasps, her hair falling messily across her face as she rides you like she’s competing with her own pleasure. "You love it when I sit on your cock, right?"

You can only nod. Any attempt to speak would be a pathetic moan at this point.

She leans forward, her lips at your ear, her breath hot and ragged. "I’m gonna come like this… right in your lap," she whispers, like it’s a dirty secret. "And you’re gonna come with me. Together."

And there’s no escaping it. She’s pulling you along, dragging you down with her, every movement sinking you both deeper into this shared haze of raw pleasure.

Nana speeds up, riding with an almost desperate urgency now, her moans turning into muffled screams, her nails clawing at your back, leaving marks. With each thrust, you feel like you’re about to lose your mind, like the pleasure is tearing you apart from the inside.

Nana leans forward, her hair falling loose across her face, her hands braced on your shoulders as she picks up speed, and it’s like the world is melting around you. Each time she comes down on your cock, the sound of flesh slapping together is almost deafening. Her ass slides so perfectly in your lap it feels like you were made for this.

"Fuck, Nana…," you let out, almost without control, gripping her hips, pulling her even deeper, feeling your cock completely swallowed up. "I’m gonna come..."

She smirks, a wicked, crooked grin, as she keeps riding you with an almost violent intensity. "Come inside me."

Your hands slide down her sweaty back, fingers digging into her flesh, and you can only nod, speechless, your breathing ragged, your body already trembling, about to collapse. She leans in, her words a whisper against your ear: "Come with me… I want your hot cum in my tight little pussy."

And then it happens. Her body shakes, and yours follows, and everything implodes. You feel the spasm that grips her, her pussy tightening around you in a way that knocks the breath out of you, and that’s it. There’s no turning back. You come with a force that feels like it’s ripping your soul out of your body, filling her up, each thrust spilling more. Nana screams your name, or at least something that sounds like it, and she sinks down one last time, slowly, sitting fully on your cock, feeling every drop of your cum inside her.

"Fuck, Nana…" is all you can manage as the world comes back into focus, your body exhausted but still buzzing with the intensity of it all.

You stay like that, quiet, your bodies still pressed together, breathing heavy, trying to find a normal rhythm again. The room is drowned in silence, the kind of silence that only exists when the noise was so loud before it feels almost unreal now. You’re still inside her. You can feel the soft, steady heat of Nana’s body around your cock, a warmth that pulses slowly, matching the rapid beat of your heart. She doesn’t move, just stays there, relaxed against your body.

"It feels so good having you inside me like this," she says, almost like letting go of a secret, her voice low, muffled, without her usual brazen confidence. You smile, still catching your breath, and you feel a trickle of your hot cum running down your cock. "It’s your birthday, but I’m the one who got the gift," you reply. "Thank you. For this amazing night. For the conversation. For the sex. For getting to know you, Nana."

She stays quiet for a second, and you feel her body tense a little against yours. Like she’s embarrassed. Nana? Embarrassed? It’s almost funny. You can hardly believe it, but there it is, the slight blush on her cheeks, the way she looks off to the side. And before you can say more, she kisses you. A quick kiss, but full of urgency. Like she wants to stop whatever words you were about to spill.

"Shut up, idiot," she mutters against your lips, a little laugh escaping her.

You pull her a little closer, savoring the last remnants of the moment, not wanting to break whatever it is you’ve just created together. She sighs, relaxing even more, as if she’s finally let her body collapse after holding it all together for so long.

"This was a gift for me too," she finally says, letting out the laugh she’d been holding back. "And what a gift, huh? I didn’t think it’d be so... memorable." The word comes out with her typical sarcasm, but there’s a layer of real gratitude hidden beneath that tough exterior.

"I’d say the same," you reply, your voice a little lighter, your body finally slowing down, though still electrified by the feeling of being inside her.

Then, suddenly, she lets out a quiet, mischievous giggle. "Can you feel it?" she asks. "Can you feel how full of cum I am?"

She slowly climbs off your lap, placing one foot on the bed, her eyes locked on you as she spreads her legs. "Look at this," she murmurs, using two fingers to part her pussy lips, letting the cum start to drip out. "Wow, you really filled me up." The liquid drips down her fingers as she teases, "What’s better than a creampie for a birthday?”

—

You wake up to the soft light filtering through the motel curtains, making everything seem a little more golden, like the place was painted by an artist obsessed with warm tones. Your body feels heavy, but relaxed, your mind floating between dream and reality, the memory of last night still buzzing in your muscles, your skin, in the scent of Nana that seems to have fused with the air.

You barely move, and you can already feel it. She’s there. Pressed up against you. Skin on skin. Your naked bodies intertwined in a way that makes it seem like you’ve always known how to fit together, like you’re not strangers, like this isn’t the first time. And then, without warning, you feel her lips. First, a soft kiss on your chest, like she’s exploring the territory again, testing the waters. Then, the kiss travels up to your neck, and suddenly, her lips are on yours, warm and hungry. She doesn’t need to say anything. The way she kisses you says it all.

You finally open your eyes, your body starting to wake up, though you’re already fully awake where it matters. “Nana, you need to stop,” you joke, your voice raspy, trying to sound more relaxed than you really are. “You’re going to get me obsessed with you. And later, I’ll remember this and want more.”

She laughs, her lips still on yours, a quiet giggle that you feel vibrate against your mouth. “Who said we’re done here?” she whispers, gently tugging on your bottom lip with her teeth before letting it go. “Maybe I’m just getting started.”

“So, you want to see me again?” you ask, half-joking, half-serious, testing the waters.

She raises an eyebrow, like the question is ridiculous. “After a night like that? Of course I want to see you again. Many times, actually.” She bites her lip, her gaze a little challenging, like she’s already planning something, and you know she is. She always is.

Without warning, Nana reaches for her phone on the bedside table. She unlocks it and smiles, a mischievous smile. She opens the camera and points it at you both. “Let’s capture this moment.”

You frown, still half-asleep, half-disbelieving. “Are you serious?”

“Of course I am.” She says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “A night like this deserves a keepsake, don’t you think?” She doesn’t wait for your answer. Her finger is already on the button, ready to take the picture.

The idea feels strange, but you go with it. You snuggle up to her, both of you smiling for the camera, like it’s something you do all the time. She snaps the photo, the two of you grinning, with no pretense. Just warm skin, relaxed bodies. Then, she takes another. This time, you tilt your head and kiss Nana, the sensation more vivid, with a clarity that comes with daylight, when everything feels more real, less driven by the adrenaline of the moment.

When the camera’s click finally falls silent, she tosses the phone aside and leans back against you, eyes closed, body relaxed. “This is going to be a good memory,” she murmurs, and there’s something in her voice that makes you believe her.

She shifts, the sheet slipping slightly, and you feel the warmth of her skin against yours. Nana settles more into you, a slow, almost deliberate movement. She lets out a quiet laugh, more breath than sound, and you feel her smile against your neck.

“I can feel it,” she says, her voice warmer now, closer to a whisper. “You’re already hard for me.” And then, as if to prove her point, she adjusts her body again, rubbing against you like she’s discovered a new toy and can’t resist.

You sigh, half pleasure, half yearning. “Yeah, I’m horny,” you admit, no beating around the bush. There’s something about the way she’s pressed against you, the smell of her hair mingling with the room’s air, that erases any notion of self-control.

“Good,” she says, as if that’s exactly what she was waiting for. “How about a nice blowjob to start the day?”

You already know the answer, but you stay silent for a second, your mind processing the almost ridiculous simplicity of the proposal, the casual way she talks about it, like she’s asking what you want for breakfast. It’s something you love about this now not-so-strange girl. So finally, you open your mouth. “Yes, please.”

She giggles, the kind of giggle that’s full of mischief, of pure fun. She leans over you, her hand trailing down your stomach to your cock, her fingers cool against your warm skin. “I knew you’d say that,” she murmurs, almost to herself, as she starts to move slowly down your body, like she’s studying your every reaction.

Nana crawls down to your hips, her movements slow, lazy, like she has all the time in the world, and then lowers her head. Her lips touch the tip of your cock first, a kiss almost chaste, before she opens her mouth and takes you in.

—

The sun is already up, it's around nine in the morning. You're in the car next to Nana after a night that felt like it came straight out of a dirty and perfect dream. The motel is left behind like a distant memory, a blur of neon and crumpled sheets. Now, you're parked in front of your house, and reality is there, knocking at the door.

Breakfast helped you get your energy back. You had to insist on paying. It was the least you could do. Nana didn’t want to accept it, but at some point, she got tired of arguing. Though, you know she doesn't really care about that kind of thing. She doesn’t seem like someone who worries about small formalities. But for you, paying for breakfast was your way of thanking her for more than just the night. It was for a temporary collapse of everything you knew.

She leans against the steering wheel, her slender fingers drumming on it. "We’ll talk on Insta, I’ll send you the photos there too," she says, her eyes fixed on the road ahead.

You smile, still a bit dazed, your muscles tired from all the pleasure and exhaustion. "That’d be great." You smile, not sure what to say in these final minutes. "I really enjoyed meeting you, Nana. I mean that."

She turns to you. “I liked meeting you too, you’re a nice guy.”

The words come out with the casualness of someone who's been through this before, but with a sincerity that makes you believe that, even if it’s fleeting, it was special in some way.

You watch her, her profile illuminated by the morning light, and realize how something so simple, a chance encounter, can turn your day, your week, maybe even your life, upside down if you let it.

"Happy birthday again," you say, your hand already on the door handle.

"Thanks," she replies. “I hope the rest of my day is as interesting as it’s been so far.”

You laugh, unsure if she's being serious or joking. But then, just before getting out of the car, something pulls you back, a final question you have to ask. "But... what now, Nana? What do we do?"

She looks at you with that smile, the one you’ve already learned to associate with the unpredictable. "Now?" She pauses, starting the car, her eyes focused on the road. "Now, we just jump to the next night and see what we find."

Of course. You knew she’d say something like that. You nod, a smile forming on your face, because there’s nothing more to say. You step out of the car, feeling different somehow, even though everything around you looks exactly the same as before.

Nana waves slightly, and you stand there, watching the car disappear around the corner, knowing that last night was just one among many that could happen.

[pshbites]

enhypen as pro athletes

genre ⇢ reactions, imagines, wtv u wanna call it

wc ⇢ 200 ish per member ? idk

warning(s) ⇢ profanity, loll smth else?

taglist ⇢ @wensurr @nshmurarki @blvengene @sirens-dreams @mimismenu

a/n : erm i should be studying for my chem exam but that can wait 🙈

if you liked this please be sure to reblog and like this! feedback is always apreciated <3 and join my perma taglist here

HEESEUNG… basketball player

- major troy bolton vibes

- he’s got tunes AND hoops

- god forbid you’re at a park and he sees a court

- ��this one’s for you baby!!” *misses*

- all jokes aside he has that nba player aura to him

- DEFFF a d1 college athlete who then went pro

- always blowing a kiss to you in the crowd

- TROOOOYYYYYYYYYY

- he would try teaching you how to play but then get frustrated because he’s so passionate

- he’s just good at basketball and he can sing that’s what he brings the table that’s all he got!!!!

JAY… f1 driver

- lol did i give my bias my fav sport… MAYBEEE

- lewis hamilton and max verstappens love child

- oh and he’s a red bull driver

- fashion ICON. always pulling up in the paddock best dressed

- serves cunt on the streets

- he would be a menace whenever you two go go karting.. leaving you in the dust i fear

- you’ll never catch him below p5

- those sassy radios

- you’ll always catch him being snarky on the grid and off the grid

- akshully, he would tweet like lewis in 2014

- “he’s sitting in the middle of the road doing nothing”

- always blowing a kiss to you when he’s on the podium

- the alchemy by ts “where’s the trophy and he just comes running over to me”

- oh he’s looking for you the second he’s out of that car

- he would single handedly bring back red bull dominance

- picturing jay in a red bull uniform.. it’s heavenly.

- sigh i need someone to write f1driver!jay

JAKE… soccer player

- this was a given

- HE PLAYS FOR REAL MADRID NO QUESTIONS ASKED.

- him & that team would get along tooooooo well

- constantly posting q&a on instagram

- this un media trained king

- always mentions you no matter what

- “how are you feeling for the next match?” “great.. so my gf-“

- first thing he’s doing after winning is pulling out his phone and filming

- “LIVE REACTION TO THE WINNING GOAL” and it’s a 25 sec clip of him and güler running around the field.

- his insta story is such a struggle to get thru bc it’s either clips of him and the team on the private jet or a ton of random ass q&as

- “what’s your plan for the next season?” “idrk but today i had waffles for breakfast 😍”

- his interviews are always the most entertaining bc he just says anything

SUNGHOON… hockey player

- this is because i can’t just do a freebie and give him ice skater 😞

- BUT HE DID PLAY FOR THE HOCKEY TEAM WHEN HE WAS LITTLE!!

- he’s not like the other hockey men tho, not overly aggressive

- he’s actually calm when he isn’t annoyed about losing

- one thing about him, he will drag it through the mud if he gets in the penalty box

- kicking ice and everything 😭

- lowk i see him as the teammate who isn’t very public with his personal life

- only time people see him smiling with 50 teeth is when he’s with u

- thinks of his job as more of a hobby

- “so what interested you in ice hockey!” “i was bored…”

- deffo plays for the national team

- just the most nonchalant person there

SUNOO… tennis player

- now hear me out

- blonde sunoo = art donaldson

- LIKE WOAHHHH!!!

- once again on the national team FOR SURE

- does not play when it comes to tennis (idk anything abt tennis 🤣)

- WILL huff and puff if it’s out

- SO sassy

- like side eye when they’re sipping water and changing rackets

- cannot play duos for the life of him

- but he’s GOOD

- nicest person ever out of the field tho

- interviewers love him because he knows how to appeal to fans

- cannot be mysterious for the life of him

- his insta posts are either him or pics of you AND him

- he actually hard launched you on his insta

JUNGWON… swimmer

- i mean,,, have u seen that body???

- the way he dances helps out a lot because he’s very flexible

- oh he’s for sure on the national AND olympic team

- i know a body of water hate to see him coming

- you two could be at the beach and suddenly he’s doing all this fancy shit

- likes to brag about how long he can hold his breath underwater

- like a child “look look! 30 seconds” like yes baby you go!!!

- his personality switches when he has a swim meet though

- literally rbf EVERYWHEREEEE

- the second he’s out of the water tho he’s back to normal

- unfortunately he isn’t a pr nightmare

- too media trained for his own good

RIKI… baseball player

- he’s gonna be eating that dodger dawg 25/8

- idk anything abt baseball so bear with me

- bro is locked in for every single game

- and you alr know he’s in the mlb (america RAHHHH)

- i think he’d play for the yankees

- riki belongs in nyc we know this

- a pr NIGHTMARE.

- his managers hate to see him coming bc he’s just doing anything

- “what do you think you could’ve improved in the last game?” “nothing i’m amazing shut up”

- he doesn’t take anyone’s bs

- not even his own teammates r safe from him

- his social media is full of goofy ass posts or posts that you collaborated with him on insta but it’s only aesthetic bc it’s from your page

- lowk i think he would occasionally posts those pics like he does on weverse like just insane amt of aura in one pic

- probably has a streaming account in this universe too

- “can we hurry this session up i have to stream at 7 😑”

- part time mlb player, full time twitch streamer actually

[darkbluekies]

Trick or treat, end in defeat

Yandere!female!mafia OC x reader

Summary: Halloween ends in a bloody game

Warnings: yandere, jealousy, threats, knives, guns, humiliation, killing, drugs, alcohol, sexual suggestions

Word count: 2.6k

She’s dressed as a dead 1920’s flapper girl. Her shoulder length black hair have been forced into wavy swirls, her dress bloodied down. You’ve taken for granted that she didn’t buy her blood at a hobby store. She was wearing white contacts in her eyes. You have dressed as a vampire without fake teeth. Jerry said that you look stupid with them on. 

“Who wants to make out with a vampire with dentures?” she mutters before grabbing the back of your neck to bring your face to her lips. “Not me.”

She devours your mouth. Kissing and sucking on everything she reaches. She has the ability to suck the air out of your lungs when kissing you, leaving you breathless and dizzy. 

“If you do something stupid tonight, baby, I’m going to show you what the ‘trick’ in trick or tret is”, she whispers against your lips. “Maybe I’ll use you skin as a pumpkin? But if you’re good, I will give you a treat. And I promise you’re going to like it.”

You’re going to be her cover for a mission, a halloween party where she is going to be handed an envelope with a list of locations for weapons and money by a man you have never heard of before. 

“What’s the treat?” you ask. 

“Me, of course”, Jerry smiles smugly. “Aren’t I a yummy treat when I look like this?”

She spins, giving you a full view of her costume. 

“It’s real blood … isn’t it?” you find yourself asking. 

“Of course it is. Come now, we have to leave.”

She grabs your hand and walks out of the apartment. Her boss has sent a car for the two of you in which you jump into the backseat. 

The car stops outside a club. The loud music can be heard out to the car, despite the doors being closed. Jerry jumps out and helps you out on the sidewalk. 

“Remember what I said, okay?” she says, looking into your eyes warningly. 

The white contacts makes her look manic. You nod and swallow. Jerry leads you into the club. Everywhere you look, you see Barbies, Jack Sparrows, Spidermen and sexy nurses. The music pounds in your ears and you’re sure that you’re going to leave the club with no hearing. Jerry takes you to a pair of round couches by the wall and sits you down. 

“What do you want to drink?” she asks you, mouth close to your ear to be heard. 

Her breath fans against your skin. 

“Whatever”, you reply. 

Jerry nods. 

“Stay here”, she tells you. “Don’t move.”

She disappears into the sea of pretenders. You look around, wondering how many in here are aware that this more than a dance floor this evening. Could the girl dressed as a tiger be aware that this is a meeting place for illegal dealing? Or the man dressed as a cowboy, is he in on it? How many eyes do Jerry have? And how many do her enemies have? Is the man in the zombie costume the one to deliver it? Or the one in an astronaut overall? 

Jerry returns with two drinks. One lime green and one black. 

“One if sour and one is cola”, she says. “Which one do you want?”

“The cola.”

She gives you the dark one. You take a sip and grimace. 

“Oh yeah, it has vodka in it”, she laughs.

“I can tell”, you cough. 

She takes a sip of her toxic green one and grimaces. 

“God, that’s undrinkable”, she mutters. 

A woman comes up to the table. She’s dressed as a pirate. 

“Do you want some?” she asks — clearly on something — and waves a little, clear bag with white powder in it. 

Jerry shoots her arm over you, as a barricade. 

“They don’t want anything from you”, she says coldly. 

The girl stumbles away. Jerry moves closer to you. Although she’s wearing her contacts, you can tell that she’s gotten that look in her eyes again. She’s alert, ready to lash out at anyone that comes near you. She grabs your jaw, turning your face to her.

“If anyone offers you something you better decline and tell them to get the fuck away, you’re not into that”, she tells you. 

You nod understandably. Jerry kisses your lips. 

“How long do we have to stay here?” you ask. “When will you meet your contact?”

“He said around midnight”, Jerry replies and you are about to point out that it’s almost two hours until then, but she continues talking. “But we had to get here some time before so that it doesn’t look like we’re here to get something and then leave. That way, it’ll look suspicious.”

“My head hurts already.”

Jerry lifts your glass to your lips. 

“If you drink some more you’ll feel better”, she says. 

She watches you gulp it down until the glass is empty. You cough, trying to get rid of the burning in your throat. The liquid leaves a warm trail through your body. 

It’s as if you can feel your head fog up, feel your body burn up. The air inside the club is hot from all the dancing people. The costume sticks onto your body

“My poor girl/boy”, Jerry coos and brushes your hair out of your face. “Feeling hot? You’re sweating.”

She leans in and kisses your temple, licking her lips of your sweat. Someone sits down on the couch beside you. Jerry is quick to make them leave. She pulls you even closer. Her nails dig into your hot skin. Jerry knows that you need to go out for fresh air, but there’s something about your look that makes her want to keep you here. Your eyelids hang heavy over your eyes, your glowing, sweaty skin and tired pout. It doesn’t take much to get you here, and yet she loves to see it every time. 

“Can I have a water?” you ask. 

“Wait here”, Jerry tells you. 

She disappears once more and returns with a glass of water. She feeds it to you as you rest against her shoulder. 

“You’re so cute when you’re drunk”, she chuckles.

Are you drunk? Or are you dying of heat? You can’t tell. But she was right. Your head isn’t hurting anymore. 

“There he is”, she suddenly says and stands up.

She turns to you, holding your jaw and directing your face up towards her. 

“You’re going to stay right here, do you get that?” she says. “I will be back in a little while, and you’re going to remain here, do you understand?”

You nod. Jerry gives your jaw a warning squeeze before walking off. You follow her with your eyes, seeing how her and a man dressed as a detective walks into a backroom. Something else catch your eyes. A man in a spiderman costume. A very familiar man. An old friend. You feel your heart skip a beat. Oh, how you’ve missed him. 

“Y/N!” he shouts out, happily and hurries over to the couch. 

You give a quick glance towards the door to the back room. Still closed. 

“It’s been so long!” he says and hugs you. “How are you?”

“I’m good”, you answer and clear your throat. 

You can��t tell a drunk man to go away without it becoming a scene … and this is a drunk friend. 

“I’ve been wondering what happened to you”, he said. “None of our friends have seen you for a while.”

If only you knew. 

You give the door a new glance. Closed. 

“I’ve been busy”, you say. 

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.”

You force yourself not to glance at the door. Your heart beats inside your chest, causing a wave of fear induced nausea to reach your head. 

“We should do something soon”, the friend suggests. 

“Oh, sure”, you reply, knowing very well that it’ll never happen. 

But you can’t really tell them that the reason you’ll never do anything with him is because you have an insane girlfriend who is in the mafia. 

“What are you doing nowadays?” you ask. 

“I work at the bank”, he replies and laughs. “Basically their runnerboy.”

“What? You run their errands?”

“Pretty much.”

You tug at your lips, trying to imagine him run back forth between men in suits. You glance towards the door. Open. Your entire body goes cold, and for a few seconds you can’t hear anything. You look around, as in slow motion, trying to find her. She must already have seen you — talking with someone else, laughing with someone else. 

“What’s wrong?” the friend asks worriedly. “You look like you’re going to throw up.”

You want to shout at him to stop being stupid, but he doesn’t know why you’re suddenly mortified. He can’t be blamed for anything. 

You, however, know what's going on … and you know that you have to save him before Jerry gets to him. But where is she?

“You have to go now”, you tell your friend and push him towards the exit. Your voice is short and direct, trying your best not to show how scared you are. 

Where is she? Where is she? Where is she? Where is she? Where is she?

“What are you doing?” your friend asks. “Stop pushing me.”

“You have to leave”, you try again. “I’m not trying to be mean, I’m trying to save your life!”

“What?”

“Just walk!”

You manage to get him out of the club, out into the fresh air. Quickly, you look around. Jerry’s nowhere to be seen. You don’t want to leave your friend before you’re sure that he will be okay. If you leave him now, you won’t know if he will be okay.

There is only one thought in your head. WHERE IS JERRY?

 “Listen to me”, you say and grab your friend, forcing him to look at you. “Listen closely, okay? I don’t know how long I have. You have to leave. You have to run. If we’re lucky, she didn’t get a good look at you.”

“Who? Y/N, you’re scaring me.”

“I’m scaring myself. Please believe me. Just go. Now. Run. Please.”

The words seem to have trouble coming out. The man frowns, but starts to back away before turning around and running away. You dare breathe out, but the relief don’t last long. Someone grabs a handful of your hair and force your head backwards, cutting off the air in your throat. 

“Who the fuck was that?” Jerry hisses in your ear. 

“N-No one”, you manage to choke out. 

“Oh, so now I need to go to the optician?” Something sharp presses against your throat. “I’m asking again: who was that?”

“J-Jerr-” You can’t get anything past the bending point in your throat.

The knife presses closer to your skin. 

“Did you find him hot?” she asks teasingly, but with a sharp anger in her voice. “Did you want him to fuck you?”

You shake your head frantically. 

“I know that’s right”, she says and lets you go. 

You cough and desperately heap in air. You stumble forward with dark spots dancing over your vision. Before you have the time to register that she’s let you go, she’s pushed you up against the brick wall and put the knife against your chest. 

“I didn’t know my pet was a little news reporter”, she scoffs. “Talking to people left and right.”

“He was a friend”, you breathe out. “Someone I knew from school!”

“Mm, and I guess that you were so happy to see him again?”

“Jerry-”

“You either love the attention or to piss me off.” She tilts her head. “Where did he go?”

“I won’t let you hurt him. He did nothing wrong.”

“Oh, he did nothing wrong, did he? I saw him clinging onto something that belongs to me! I think that’s a bit fucking wrong, don’t you?”

“Jerry, I swear that I told him to go away.”

“Yeah, I saw that too. I saw quite a lot, actually. I saw too much and it made me fucking nauseous.”

“Jerry, please …”

“Mm, I love it when you beg.”

“I’ll beg all you want if you spare him.”

She uses the knife to point onto the ground. 

“Down on your knees.”

You sink down on your knees and stand eye to eye with the point of the knife. 

“Beg”, Jerry orders you. 

You lick your lips, preparing yourself for this humiliating task. 

“Please”, you say and look up at her with the most innocent, pleading eyes you can muster. 

“You can do better than that, baby.”

“Jerry, please, I’m sorry.”

“How sorry?”

“Very. Please.”

Jerry grabs your jaw, smiling cockily. 

“You say ‘please’ so sweetly, how can I not forgive you?” she coos. “I will let him go … if I don’t find him until the night is over.”

“W-What?”

“It’s halloween, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we have some fun?”

“Jerry, please, don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“He was at the wrong place at the wrong time, h-he didn't know. It’s not like he tried to piss you off. He doesn’t deserve to be punished for that. Punish me instead. I shouldn’t have answered him, I should have ignored him.”

She stares down at you, clearly contemplating. 

“Please”, you beg weakly, hoping that your ‘sweet please’ will be enough to make her agree.

“Okay”, she says. “Let’s play a game. If you win, I’ll leave him be. If I win, I get to slaughter him and you have to watch me do it.”

“Can’t we have something else?”

“Like what?”

“If you win, I’ll do whatever you want for a week-”

“A year.”

“A-A year …”

“You know I can make you do whatever I want? I can decide to humiliate you for no reason at all.”

“I know. But I can’t have a human life on my consciousness. If you kill him, I will never be able to forgive myself.”

“Aren’t you just adorable? Okay. Deal.”

You get to stand up. 

“What game do we play?” you ask.

“Russian Roulette”, Jerry decides. 

“W-Will one of us die?”

“Are you dumb? No, we’re not going to play with our lives. I have a guy we can use.”

She takes you to the HQ’s basement. You hate the HQ. A man sits on the floor, bloody and chained. Jerry picks up her gun and shakes out all bullets but one. She spins it and holds the gun towards you.

“Do you want the first try, my love?” she asks. 

“No”, you breathe out.

Jerry doesn’t hesitate before shooting the guy. You flinch and have to squeeze your eyes shut. The sight still haunts you. 

“Your turn”, Jerry says and presses the gun to your chest. “It was blank.”

“Fuck, Jerry …”, you whisper without opening your eyes. “This is insanity …”

“If you don’t shoot, you lose. Do it.”

You open your eyes slowly and take the gun in your shaking hands. You have a cold sweat. It’s a mistake to look at the man, one you regret immediately. His eyes are widened, taped mouth begging you not to shoot him.

“Jer-”

She stands behind you, holds her hand over yours and pulls the trigger. The following moments feel like an eternity. It’s blank. Your knees buckle and you stumble backwards. Jerry shoots. Blank. She holds the gun towards you. You shake your head and swallow thickly. 

“I give up, I can’t kill him”, you pant. 

“You might not kill him”, Jerry says and grins. “I might. Oh, the possibilities.”

“No …”

“Okay.”

Jerry lifts the gun and shoots until the bullet hits him. You swallow a scream and cover your head with your arms. She throws the gun on the cement floor. 

“I win”, she says in satisfaction. “Now, get those legs moving, the night is not over. On the contrary, it has just begun.”

[joelscurls]

a heart for melting

pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader

words: 2.7k

warnings: post-outbreak, implied age gap, themes surrounding child loss and grief, some angst but mostly festive fluff, grumpy x sunshine dynamics (Joel is a grinch & reader loves the holidays), reader is described as having long-ish hair

summary: Jackson's first annual Holiday Market brings about more than just cheer.

a/n: Merry Christmas @thetriumphantpanda; I'm your pedrostories secret santa! I hope you enjoy this lil festive take on grumpy!joel x sunshine!reader — I had lots of fun writing it 🤍🎄 🥧 🪵 🦌

Joel doesn’t want to be here — surrounded by garland and ribbons and so much unadulterated joy, it’s nauseating. No, he was forced to be here. 

Please, Ellie had begged, it’ll be good for you to do something other than patrol or drinking with Tommy. Plus, they’re too good to keep to yourself.

They, being wood carvings — the tiny sculptures of deer and bears and birds, tufts of hair and bunches of feathers drawn out of driftwood with the tip of his blade. It was only ever meant to be a hobby, a way to busy his hands after they’d been wrapped around the cold metal of his rifle all day. Something lighter, creative rather than destructive, an act of giving rather than taking. 

But sharing them with other people? He hadn’t been interested. Maybe he’d make one for Ellie or Tommy. Wrap it up in a piece of cloth and offer it as a gift for their birthday.

Not that he thought they were any good, really.

With the announcement of Jackson’s first annual Holiday Market, though, came Ellie’s pleading. “I’ll help you,” she’d bargained. “You don’t even have to give me anything!”

“Who said I would anyway?” he’d grumbled, digging his spoon into the bottom of his bowl of stew and sifting out a chunk of meat.

Joel despises the Holiday Season. He’d welcomed its disappearance with the end of the world. Because he had no reason to celebrate, with Sarah gone. Her absence stung like salt in an open wound on any normal day. But on Christmas, memories of her hanging her favorite ornaments on the tree and sneaking one of the cookies baked for Santa burned behind his eyelids. Left him heaving through hot tears.

The holidays had no place in his world, but they certainly had a place in Jackson. The first time he and Ellie had strode through those gates, they’d been met with that damned Christmas Tree, towering over the settlement like a beacon. And he hated it, hated the way it brought about that pounding in his chest and that spinning in his head. 

How could anyone find any good in such a poignant reminder of loss? 

Tommy says it’s about new beginnings, finding ways to be happy again. And what’s happier ‘n Christmas? God damn Santa Clause, hot chocolate, children singin’ carols?

Still, Joel isn’t convinced — not yet.

Standing across the mess hall, at your table piled high with baked goods, you are far too cheerful. You’re humming some song with a jovial beat, absentmindedly swaying as you rearrange rows of gingerbread and muffins and scones — all of which are draped in white icing, like flocking on Christmas trees. You pause to wish a happy holiday to everyone who passes through. 

Joel knows he’s seen you before, flitting in and out of the community’s kitchen, always with that signature smile scrawled across your face.

And god, you’re so bubbly, taking to everyone you meet like a bee to honey, letting them in without a care in the world. Popping from table to table, making sure they have enough to eat. That they’re doing well.

It shouldn’t surprise him that you’re so…spirited, too. You seem to find the good in everyone and everything, after all.

It infuriates him, nonetheless.

Joel groans to himself. Stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jeans as an elderly couple rounds on him. 

He grumbles a hello to them when they approach. They offer him half-smiles in return, beginning to pick up some of the carvings laid out on the table — turning them, inspecting them.

“This one’s nice,” the man says to his wife. She hums in agreement. 

“You got any tigers?” the man asks.

“Tigers?”

“Yeah — I used to love ‘em as a kid.”

“Got what’s on the table,” Joel grumbles. 

“You make ‘em custom? I can offer some homemade jam in return — elderberry.”

Joel sighs in annoyance. 

“Don’t make ‘em custom. Got what I got.”

The man seems defeated, nodding and walking off without another word. The woman follows closely behind.

Just as they leave, Ellie appears. She sidles up to Joel and shrugs her jacket off. Pulls a chair up next to him.

“There’s so much cool shit here!” she exclaims, too loud. A judgemental set of eyes flit her direction. She glares right back at them.

“Do you mind?” Joel huffs, jaw ticking.

“Jesus, who pissed in your Cheerios?” 

“How do you even know what Cheerios are?”

“Don’t,” she admits. “I read it in a book.” 

“Of course you did.”

Ellie leans back in her chair, pulling an apple out of her backpack and biting into it. She shuffles some of the carvings around on the table. “Gotta fill in these gaps, man,” she says, juice dribbling down her chin.

Joel ignores her. He sneaks a glance at you; finds that you’re already looking. Your expression is unreadable, gaze unmoving as he studies you.

Despite your upbeat disposition bothering him, he can’t deny that you’re gorgeous: bright, beckoning eyes, siren-like smile — it’s like you’re peering into his soul. 

He didn’t think he still had one of those.

“Dude.” Ellie nudges him. He peels his eyes from you reluctantly. “I asked how many takers you’ve had.”

“Uh.” He pretends to think. 

“You have no fucking idea, do you? Too busy staring at that girl.”

“Wasn’t starin’,” he clips defensively.

“No? Well she’s coming over here, man.”

Sure enough, you’re striding right toward him, abandoning your post. Joel barely has time to prepare for impact.

He unconsciously straightens up and pulls his hands out of his pockets. He brushes them on his jeans just as you stop in front of his table.

“Hi there,” you say.

“Hi!” Ellie chimes.

You pick up a carving of a two-headed deer. His favorite.

“This is beautiful,” you coo. “The craftsmanship is lovely.” You’re running a finger along the grooves in the wood, holding the piece delicately in the palm of your hand — as if it’s made of glass, not wood. “You have a real gift…”

“Joel.”

“Joel,” you repeat. He ignores how sweet his name sounds coming out of your mouth. You tell him your name, and it fits you, he thinks. It’s pretty.

“How long have you been making them?”

“Just since I got to Jackson. ‘ts somethin’ to pass the time.”

You nod. Continue scanning over the intricacies of the deer. “I was never much of a baker before I got here, either,” you joke, gesturing back toward your table.

“Good one,” Ellie laughs. “You’re funny — isn’t she funny, Joel?”

In his head, he’s glowering at her. Outwardly, he feigns amusement.

“Real funny.”

“I’d love to see how you make these sometime,” you say, then, placing the deer back on the table gingerly. “Do you have a workshop?”

“In our shed,” Ellie pipes in before he can say anything. “You should come by tomorrow! Joel’s off patrol.”

He shoots her daggers. She pretends not to notice.

“I’d love that! I have to work in the kitchen, though. I could come by after?”

Joel starts to shake his head no. Ellie’s hand wraps around his arm like a vice grip. He stills.

“Sure,” he grits.

“I can bring some pastries, if you’d like.”

“Don’t like sweets.” 

“Oh,” you say, a little thwarted, but you’re undeterred. You shift on your feet. Chew your bottom lip. “Well, how about something not sweet, then?”

Your brows lift, narrowed eyes on him as you await a response. Joel still isn’t thrilled about the prospect of a visitor. Really, he doesn’t like anyone on his property that isn’t Ellie, or Tommy and Maria if he’s invited them. But you don’t seem so bad, offering to bring him food. 

He can probably deal with your sunny disposition in exchange for a full belly. Lord knows he went too long without that luxury, and he’d be a fool to deny himself of it ever again.

So, he agrees, the garbled sure less than enthusiastic leaving his mouth. Still, you don’t seem too offended. In fact, you smirk at him, wordlessly sauntering back to your table, sneaking glances at him every so often for the remainder of the afternoon.

Sure enough, the next evening, while Joel is whittling in the shed, you show up.

You’re wielding a basket of savory hand pies, as promised, and Joel has to stop himself from drooling. They smell incredible. And they’re still warm, somehow, steam wafting off of them even after your walk here.

“Come in,” he gruffs, his nose following the scent like a dog’s as he trails behind you inside.

His set up is minimal: a rocking chair next to a bench, a couple stools he made for when Tommy comes by to play poker. But his works are scattered throughout, every surface in the small room cluttered with little carvings.

He settles atop one of the stools as you begin to wander around the room, plucking sculptures off shelves and awing at them with such genuine admiration, it causes something to pull in his chest.

Every so often, you make a remark about the details in a piece, how the fur on the deer looks real, how you can practically smell the replica evergreen in your grasp.

And something shifts — carried by your kind words through the stuffy shed.

Taken by the slight lilt in your voice when you speak to him, the almost-shy smile that pulls at the corners of your lips — Joel is attracted to you.

He’s following the line of your neck down to your collarbone, ogling at the exposed skin there when you pick another carving up off the shelf. And he feels guilty — he shouldn’t be looking at you like this. You’re just being nice, being neighborly, and he’s gawking at you like you’d have any interest in him.

No; you’re young, beautiful, could do a lot better than an old grump like him. 

He averts his gaze quickly when you suddenly set down the tiny, carved bird that had been in your palm, round the workbench and perch yourself atop the stool next to his. You retrieve a handpie out of the basket and pass it over to him. 

“It has braised rabbit and carmelized onions in it,” you explain, taking a bite and letting the steam roll out. 

He follows suit and — it tastes just as good as it smells, if not better. He’s salivating again, letting the dough melt in his mouth before swallowing. 

The two of you eat in comfortable silence, getting through the entire basket in mere minutes.

When you’re finished, you ask him where he’s from. 

The question shouldn’t feel like such a shock to the system. But after a year of being in Jackson, successfully avoiding conversation about his life before the outbreak, it sets off a panging between his eyes, a dull ache in his viscera. 

“Texas,” he tells you plainly. “From Austin, originally.”

You nod. And you must be able to tell that he’s not used to talking about himself — by the tick of his jaw or the lack of eye contact — he’s not sure. Because you don’t pry. Instead, you say, “you can ask me something.”

He nods. Thinks on it for a moment.

“When did you arrive here? To Jackson?” 

Unlike him, you do not grimace at the intrusion. Instead, you tell him: about your parents, their untimely deaths, the harrowing road that led you here. You do not cry, but Joel can see the pain in your shiny eyes. 

It’s inevitable; there isn’t a single person here who hasn’t been dealt a bad hand. But you wear your past like a badge of honor, like you’re still grateful, after it all, to be alive.

Joel envies your tenacity.

So when you ask him about Ellie, if she is his daughter, he lets the walls around him down — just an inch. He doesn’t get upset when he stumbles over his words while telling you about Sarah. He finds comfort in confiding in you, in the way you so attentively listen, quietly nodding along as he recalls his version of the end of the world.

“Thank you,” you say when he’s done, burying his hands back in his pockets.

“For what?”

“For sharing that with me. I know it can be difficult to relive it.”

“I relive it everyday,” he admits. “Everything reminds me of her in one way or another.”

“I understand,” you nod. He believes you do.

So sweet, gaze like honey, you are an enigma to him. He hasn’t met many people who are kind just for the sake of it — not in a long while. Maybe that’s why he’d been so bothered by it at the market. It had felt almost unnatural to him, bound to be laced with an ulterior motive. 

He’s still learning how to trust people again. It doesn’t come easily after twenty-odd years of rationing it like the pills he’d stowed. Still, there is something innate about baring his soul to you. Letting you in through the cracks in his battered being. You are safe, he’s sure of it; benevolence radiating from you like warmth.

It drips off your tongue when you ask him to show you how he does his craft — slips down your fluttering lashes. No longer can he deny you of anything — he’s accepted this swiftly — and so he obliges.

A half-whittled fox materializes from his coat pocket, along with his blade. He passes both to you and pulls his stool closer to yours.

He guides you, taking your hand in his, encouraging the press of the blade into the wood. Shows you how to round out a corner with a subtle twist of the knife. You’re a fast learner, Joel notes, attentive, taking every instruction like gospel.

The slow drag of steel, your fingers wrapped tightly around the handle; you’re so focused that you jump slightly when he places a reassuring hand on your knee.

“Doin’ great, darlin’,” he says, and your lips pull around pearlescent teeth. Joel feels as enraptured by you as you do the carving — the loose tendrils of hair that drape over your shoulder, the clinging of cotton to your soft curves. Though he hardened into stone a long time ago, he feels smelted in your presence. So he cannot help it when his fingers begin to drift up your leg, settling at your side as he turns his body toward yours.

The blade stalls, tip still stuck into the wood, puncturing the fox’s non-existent spine, and your face lifts. 

“Is this okay?” he whispers. You nod, gaze flickering between his eyes and his lips.

You’re so close like this; Joel can smell the floral perfume dappled along your neck, can feel your warm breath fanning his face. He has half a mind to stop himself from sealing the sliver of distance left between you. But then you’re sighing, placing the blade and the wooden fox on the tabletop. And it’s your turn to guide him — winding your delicate fingers around his wrist and settling his hand at the small of your back.

The air in the tiny workshop grows heavy with unspoken desire, a longing to disrupt; to create. Your body forms to his languidly, arms interlocking behind his neck, fingers weaving in his hair to pull him closer to you. And then your lips press to his — hesitant at first, then not. You drink from each other until you are drunk, breathless and giddy when you separate. 

“That was nice,” you whisper, and Joel chuckles. 

“Just nice?”

“Great,” you amend. “It was great. Better than I imagined, even.”

“You imagined this?”

“Yes,” you smirk. “On a loop since I first saw you at the market.”

He pulls you back in. Gives you another chaste kiss. “For good measure.”

“Joel,” you say then, “will you and Ellie come by mine on Christmas? I could even cook — it’s just-”

“Yes,” he’s accepting before you can finish. “I’d love that. As long as you make more of those,” he gestures toward the empty basket on the workbench. 

“That can be arranged,” you grin.

As soon as you leave that evening — sent off with a goodbye muttered between slotted mouths — Joel starts on your Christmas present. 

end notes: thank you for reading! Please consider reblogging or leaving a comment if you enjoyed <3

[aloesarchives]

Valentine's Day Special(JJK One shot)

Warnings: None other than Female Reader, and Domesticity with Toji, Megumi, and Tsumiki

Pairing: Toji x Fem!Reader

Wanted to write something for Valentine's Day. So I wrote one for Toji, I may or may not write one for Satoru but we'll see.

Man has never done shopping for anyone before in his entire life. Now it’s Valentine’s Day and he has gotten nothing for you…yet. Well, Toji is trying to think of something but the problem isn’t that he couldn’t afford it… Toji hasn’t didn’t know what to get you because you never ask. You were appreciative of his gifts and gestures but never dropped any hints for anything.

“Toji, Honey, the best gift you gave me is this life with you, Megumi, and Tsumiki. I don’t think there could be any better gift for me than that.”

God, you were the sweetest, loving, and humbling wife to him. He wonders every day why the hell you chose him out of everyone you could have. But that’s the thing, you never wanted anything else no matter how much he pressed you on. And everytime it’s the same answer. Toji has looked at your phone, pinterest boards, instagram likes, anything you saved in any carts on your favorite websites, photos/screenshots.

Nothing

It frustrated him that he was having a difficult time. He is your husband and the father of your two children who take after you. He was supposed to know your interests, hobbies, and likes. And yet nothing was coming to him. You said you already have everything and don’t buy something for yourself unless you need it and/or use it often. Sometimes reprimanding Toji for buying you things when he should be saving money. Toji knows you’re working overtime today and won't be home until 6:30pm. He has until then to get you something. Walking along streets of Tokyo, he sees the storefronts littered with red, white, and pink. Bakery displays filled with heart shaped pastries and desserts. Toji’s mind was drawing blank, nothing seemed to spark an idea in him. He wanted to get you something because you are and deserve the best, the best thing to ever happen to him. He knows he’s not the ideal man when you both got together but he changed for you. Bringing the world’s end if you simply asked him.

With a frustrated huff, he rubs his forehead. Now seeing himself as the number one most disappointing husband ever. He was tempted to call your friend to ask what he should get you when something caught his eye. Stopping in his tracks, he stares at the window of a jewelry store. Particularly, he was staring at one of their displays which laid a sterling silver necklace with a heart-shape locket. It was both simple yet beautiful. The longer he stares, the image of you wearing it becomes stronger. You would look so perfect wearing it that became you will look perfect wearing it. Toji goes to buy it and the lady helping him asks what photo he wanted to put inside. He immediately pulls up the one he wants, sending it for her. She smiled and said it would take a couple of minutes to get the necklace ready. So Toji wastes no time using that to get your favorite flowers and any baked goods. Coming back, the necklace was ready and he paid it off immediately. Silently thanking Shui for getting him a good cheek from his last assignment.

He briskly makes his way to pick up Tsumiki and Megumi from school where they had their own gifts for you. As soon as they all got home, Toji starts cooking dinner while the kiddos help put the flowers in your favorite vase. On the dot, you got home at 6:30pm. You make your presence known, albeit exhaustedly. The rapid footsteps your way makes you smile as your children rush in to give you a hug. You gently hugged them back before they started pulling towards the kitchen. A soft chuckle left you while watching Megumi and Tsumiki force you to hurry up.

“Hey, Hey~ What is it you two want me to see? Mama is right behind you– What’s this, Toji?”

There was more food on the table than your usual family dinner. Your husband just smirks at you while Megumi pulls your designated chair out for you. You thanked your son with a kiss to his forehead before he sat next to Tsumiki. 

“Just a little something for Valentine’s Day, (Y/N). Wanted to treat you since you worked late.” Toji said with soft eyes, tenderly kissing your cheek.

As always, the food was exquisite and tasted like love was poured into it. The kids ate their dinner fast, confusing you as they scurry off after cleaning up after themselves. When they come back, a loving smile spreads across your lips. Hand placed over your heart as you coo at the sight. Tsumiki was bringing the vase with your favorite flowers while Megumi brought their gifts for you.

“What do we have here? Did you two pick these out with Papa?”

They lightly shook their heads as you placed the vase at the table’s center.

“No, only Papa did. But Megumi and I made these for you, Mama! You can open them!” Tsumiki excitingly with his signature bright smile.

You move towards the couch with the kids as they give your gifts to them. Taking this opportunity, Toji slips away to get his. He sneaks up on you as his towering frame blocks the room’s light. Toji gets on one knee in front of you as he hands you a red bag. Curiously, you take it from him and retrieve the small velvet box from inside. Tsumiki and Megumi lean in to see what it is once you open it, hearing a small gasp from you. The necklace was simple and seemingly plain but it was demure. Taking it out, you let it hang before noticing the small hedges on the side. Your fingers swiftly opened the locket and what’s inside made your heart melt. 

Inside was a family picture of your small family. Everyone was smiling, including your husband. It was one of your favorite pictures because of that. Next to it were words engraved into the inside of the half of the locket. Once you read what’s engraved, tears started to trickle down. The words that brought you to tears:

“Thank you for loving me and being you” ~Toji

You looked up at him with love and appreciation, eyes softening seeing him deflate while taking your hands gently into his. His eyes were unwavering but sincere, already telling you everything you needed to know.

“I know you never ask for much, (Y/N). But I couldn’t help but get it for you. I’m god awful when it comes to words and I’m not the perfect man by any means. But I’m the man you chose to give your heart to and I will bring the Heavens down if you tell me to do so. All because I love you, (Y/N). I’m your husband, I’m all yours, Dear. Happy Valentine’s Day.”

You knew Toji wasn’t the most open man or prince charming by any means. But he was loyal, dedicated, supportive, and endearing. He was a loving husband and father to you and your children, a blessing you were grateful for every day because he gave you this opportunity and you were living it out. For him to speak his heart and leave it vulnerable for you, he really does love and trust you dearly. That’s why you never wanted to ask him for gifts or anything because Toji was a gift to you by some divine intervention.

You launch yourself at Toji, causing him to fall on his back. Wrapping your arms around his neck tightly was all Toji needed to get your answer. He lays there with you in his arms before Megumi and Tsumiki decide to make it a family pile. The kids giggle as he captures them with his strong arms, sitting upright bringing you with him. The kids look in awe at your necklace with Megumi happily commenting that he and Tsumiki are also in there. While the kids are excitingly distracted, you look up at Toji and caress his cheek. Gently tracing over his small scar with your thumb.

“I love you, Toji.”

He gives a soft smile and leans into your touch while grasping your hand with his own.

“I love you too, (Y/N).”

And this is one of many Valentine’s Days to come where you were more than willing to let Toji indulge and spoil you. Every one of them is always wonderful because Toji gets to spend it with the woman he gave his heart to and you are reminded your best gift you ever got was Toji himself.

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

The Great Escape

Warnings: allusions to non con/dubcon, kidnapping, drugging and other possible dark elements. Proceed with caution.

Note: Here is another wish! This one with Lloyd.

Please leave some feedback so I know you want me to do more of the wishes I got. Otherwise, I find it hard to keep my motivation.

Wish Corrupted: I wish Steve or Lloyd (dealers choice - I'm feeling indecisive today) would save me from my crazy, stress-filled job and give me more free time to enjoy my hobbies (reading, crocheting, quilting, or baking).

You hit the bar on the door. It doesn’t budge. You look up frantically at the beaming red EXIT sign above. You hit it again, again. You throw your body against the metal barrier, the calm footsteps closing in beneath the rampant puff of your breath.

“Real cute to see ya try, princess, but I’m doing you a goddamn favour,” his voice rolls down the hallways towards you.

You turn, pressing yourself to the door, pushing your elbows back as you continue your struggle to find some give. His shadow is skewed by the emergency lights, the stale office made sinister by the outage. You whimper. Who is this man?

“Aw, you don’t gotta be scared,” he silhouette reaches up with his pistol, scratching his head nonchalantly with the barrel, “but I can’t say it doesn’t fill my balls with joy.”

“Who are you?” You breath, choking on a sob as he struts closer, steps slow but startling. He doesn’t hurry, he knows you have nowhere to go. “Please, I… I didn’t do anything. Don’t hurt me.”

“I told you, kitten, you don’t needa be scared,” he coos, “I’m not gonna hurt you… much.” He snickers, the hall darkening the closer he gets, “I’m gonna do you a real big favour.”

You sink down to your knees. The door isn’t opening. You’re trapped. You put and arm up as you slump against the metal, waiting for the end. This psycho is going to murder you.

“Just don’t move,” he slithers as he stops before you.

He crouches and brings the silencer under your chin forcing it up. You bat your lashes and peer up at him. His face is lost in the dark. He tuts as pushes the barrel firm against you.

“Such a pretty face,” he purrs, “all you gotta do is hold still.”

There is no sudden explosion of gunpowder, no bang, just a prick. You slap your neck and he pulls away, chuckling as he holds up the long syringe. You brace the door with your other arm and whine.

“What was that?” You croak.

“Shhh,” he says, “deep breaths.”

Your muscles slacken, your lungs grow heavy, and your head wobbles. You lean into the door as the strength drains from you, eyelids drooping as the world tilts dangerously. The blackness of your subconscious swallows you up before you collapse.

💉

You come to slowly. Your body is stiff and your head is muddy. Your eyes open bit by bit, taking in the expanse of the strange room. The unfamiliarity fills you with dread. What is this place? How did you get here?

You can’t remember. You groan and touch your head, your hand clumsy, seeming almost detached from the rest of you. It takes all your effort to sit up. You gape at the pink skirt across your lap, the scalloped hem, and the tight cinch of the belt around your waist. You never wore anything like that.

You plant your hand on the cushy mattress beneath you and lean on your arm as you steady yourself. You let your eyes explore. The wooden bedframe, the frilly edge of the sheets poking out from beneath the duvet, the round rug beneath the bed, the matching night table; every piece pristine and exact. Like the replica of a fifties sitcom.

You turn your head. There’s a double-wide dresser with a mirror over it. Your reflection gives you a start. You shift your body to face yourself. You watch as you stand, as if you’re looking at someone else. The pink dress buttons up the bodice, cap sleeves top your shoulders, and a round collar frames your neck. 

You lean forward, hands on the dresser as you gape at yourself. This can’t be. Where are you? Who are you? No more stiff-cut blazer, no tucked blouse, no tailored pants. It’s a twisted joke.

The door opens but you can’t bring yourself to move. You glance at it from the mirror. A man enters but you can only see to his shoulders. He stops just inside the door.

“You’re awake,” he says flatly, “nice to have you back in the land of the living, buttercup.”

The voice sends a shiver through you. You know it. You close your eyes and see the flashing emergency lights, the nearing shadows, feel the cold barrel on your chin. You spin to face the man and look at him head-on.

His hair is slicked back, his sides buzzed, a trim of bristly hair across his lip, a singular flaw in an otherwise handsome face. A stranger, like the woman in the mirror. You grip the edge of the dresser and stare at him.

He laughs and reaches for you. You cower as he caresses your cheek.

“I couldn’t figure out the makeup so you’ll have to do all that,” he says.

“What– what is this?”

He snorts and tilts his head, letting his hand fall down your throat. He inhales as his eyes follow his touch and he plays with your collar.

“Not much of a thanks,” he hooks his finger under the top of your dress and draws you away from the dress. He keeps you close as he watches you placidly, “you’re free, sunshine.”

“What? Free?”

“That corporate wheel was grinding you down,” he intones, “it’s your turn to do the grinding.”

You shake your head. You don’t understand. He sweeps his other arm around you, groping your ass as he pulls you flush to him.

“Keep me happy, and I’ll do the same,” he rocks you with him, “eight hours at a desk or a couple minutes on your knees, I know what I’d choose.”

You blink at him in horror.

“Don’t worry, you’ll have more than enough time to catch up on that book,” he affirms.

“Book?”

He nods towards the bed and you notice the familiar curled corner. The same book you’ve kept on your coffee table for months, the one you never had the time or energy to finish. You gulp and look back at him.

“No more spreadsheets, cupcake,” he winks, “but you’ll damn sure be spreading those legs.”

[megzscribbleznwordz]

HAIIIIIII I loved ur athf love language post smsmsmsmsm......... can u done one for the mooninites plsssss :333 (specifically ignignokt but u can do err too if u want...sorry I am very autistic and very gay)

I'm so glad that you liked it! Full disclosure I was a bit weirdly nervous about posting it because that's like the only piece I have so far that I didn't get a request for and just wrote because I felt like it.

Ignignokt

Quality Time: He loves literally everything that has you two spending time together… talking you out on dates, having you tag along on his trouble causing, just hanging out while you’re partaking in your hobbies… as long as it’s time spent with you, it isn’t wasted. Even if you two are just chilling together he’s having a great time because it's you who’s there with him.

Words of affirmation: You can tell he loves you when he compliments you. He literally never compliments anybody, besides you and Err. His compliments are also more frequently based on ability or personality, rather than appearance. Ex. You’re getting good at that; I admire your ability to bring me joy; I like when you’re here with me

Physical Touch: Really handsy. Not big on grand displays of PDA But needs to have his hands on you somewhere so people know you’re his. Commonly seen with an arm loosely draped around your form, holding your hand, or resting a hand on your lower back. Very casual with affection

Acts of Service: He never does favors for anyone else, this is another point where you can tell he really cares for you. Even small things, like passing the salt at the dinner table would be refused for everyone except you

Giving/Receiving Gifts: Showers you in stolen gifts. Definitely steals things for you, and if you ask where it’s from he’ll say he found it. You both know he’s lying but if it’s Ignignokt you’re dating, you’re gonna have to get used to petty crime as a love language.

Err

Quality Time: Err is another who’s pretty down to do anything as long as you’re also there. He doesn’t mind sitting back and letting you plan dates, although if you express interest in his opinion he’ll provide some ideas. If you ask him, the best dates are the ones you spend at home watching shitty movies and ordering dinner.

Words of Affirmation: Definitely the type to shower you in compliments. It’d range from joking, silly ones to tender and serious on the flip of a dime. The type to tell you you don’t stink too bad to I never realized somebody could be so sweet in the same breath.

Physical Touch: Hold him please. Err constantly and forever begging you to hold him. He loves being the ‘little spoon’ of the relationship. Expect tons of kisses, absolutely covering you in kisses… any kind anywhere. Also bites, he chews on you a lot. In the way a teething dog does.

Acts of Service: Very similar to Ignignokt in the way that he never does anything for anybody else besides you. Like, the smallest thing he gives a very emphatic no to unless you’re the one asking him to do it.

Giving/ Receiving Gifts: Also steals things to give you, but owns up to it strongly. Like Hell yeah I stole that for you! Only the best for my babe!. A bit of a material girl deep down, he definitely takes being given gifts as like the highest compliment. Like damn, you like him enough to spend actual real money and effort on him?

[everwitch-magiks]

Shameless

Henry has a lot of sex. A lot. He's young and in college and there is no shortage of men to fall in bed with. What better time to explore what he likes and what he fucking loves, as well as to catalogue how to make his many, many partners feel as good as possible? It’s all part of the learning experience. And Henry is a very dedicated student.

Alex has been inescapably aware of Henry ever since that one time they kissed. You don’t just stop being aware of the guy who basically caused your sexuality. So when Henry propositions Alex at a lame frat party, Alex accepts eagerly. Maybe this is exactly what he needs. Maybe, if he can just have Henry once, he’ll have a better chance of finally getting over his embarrassing fixation with Henry. It's worth a try.

I wrote this fic just about two years ago, in 2021, and I still think about it frequently. I'd gotten this idea that I wanted to write one where Henry has a bit of a reputation. It came largely from the parts in the book that reference Henry's time at university: Henry says that was where he picked up 'skills' in the bedroom, and he also tells Alex about his 'assortment of guys' at Oxford. Fun, right?

I just kind of loved that whole idea; Henry exploring his sexuality, having all the sex he wants, and figuring out all the things he likes in the bedroom. And when I put Alex there with him - at the same college, interested in Henry, and perfectly aware of the fact that Henry has many, many sexual partners - I realised I had a lot of interesting questions to answer. Would Alex even consider the idea that Henry might be interested in him beyond sex? Would Henry think Alex had approached him for anything but sex? And even if they managed to get on the same page, how would things shake out if Alex felt that he wanted to take sex off the table for a while?

'Shameless' is a story almost exclusively about sex: it’s about having sex, about not having sex, about the trust it takes to say both yes and no, and about how incredibly sexy it is to be open and honest about what you want and why. I do so love to write intimate conversations about sex - there’s something to be said (ha) for when they put it all into words, you know? What they want. How much they want it. How utterly enthusiastically they consent.

I'm so glad my hobby is smut - it brings so much goddamn joy.

Below the cut, you'll find an excerpt from this fic that I'm still so proud of. Alex and Henry are at a point where they are not fucking, but that doesn’t mean they aren't thinking about fucking. Also, Alex is pretty curious about the other partners Henry has fucked - so they talk about it. A safe distance apart. Did somebody say sexual tension?

“Hey,” Henry tells him softly, tugging on Alex’s hand. “What’s up?”

Alex turns towards him, startled. They’re not even there yet. But Henry is watching him closely, his brows creased slightly. Like he knows. Like he cares.

“I just have a lot of thoughts,” Alex says, smiling weakly. “I’m fine. I promise.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Kind of,” Alex admits hesitantly. “Look. I don’t want to say goodnight just yet.”

“Okay,” Henry says easily. “Do you want to go somewhere else?”

“Yeah.” Alex takes a breath. “To mine. But not to… you know.”

“Okay,” Henry repeats. He frowns. “We can hang out in your room without having sex, Alex.”

“Yeah,” Alex agrees hurriedly. “I know, I know. It’s just, the words ‘do you want to come up’, they kind of imply things.”

“Sure.” Henry nods, like he understands better. “But I know you’re not implying anything. You just want to spend time with me. Right?”

“Yes,” Alex says. Except then he hesitates. “I mean, mostly.”

Henry is quiet for a moment. “Okay,” he says slowly. “Can I ask you to try to explain that?”

Goddamnit. Alex usually isn’t this useless at communicating what he’s feeling.

“I keep thinking about it,” he finally says, the words coming out in a rush. “Sex. With you. And I’d kind of like to talk about that? But that doesn’t feel fair, because I know you want to, and I don’t want to rub it in your face that I don’t, so like—”

“Hey,” Henry cuts in gently. “Alex, it’s okay. I think you’re being a little hard on yourself.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Alex sighs. “I just feel like I should make up my fucking mind.”

“Not necessarily,” Henry says. He smiles. “Can I take you up on the offer to hang out in your room? I feel like this is a longer conversation.”

They do go to Alex’s room. Alex digs out two cans of beer from his mini fridge, not because he wants to drink but because he needs something to do with his hands. He doesn’t even open his, just holds it between his palms and feels the cold metal against his skin. He’s not sure how he feels about Henry watching his movements carefully.

“Okay,” Henry says calmly, and Alex looks up at him in surprise. He’d kind of expected Henry to want Alex to explain himself more. “Look. You don’t need to justify to me, or to yourself, why you want the things you want. Okay? It’s okay to just feel what you feel, and it’s okay if some of those feelings contradict each other.”

Alex opens and closes his mouth. His mind spins. He hasn’t even told Henry how fucking frustrated he feels about wanting Henry but still not wanting to go there. At least not in so many words.

“And if you want to talk about sex, but still not have it, that’s okay.” Henry passes his own can of beer between his hands. He hasn’t opened it either. “Honestly, I’d be very interested in that.”

“You would?” Alex asks quickly. Henry is just full of surprises today. “Why?”

Henry smiles. It’s weirdly sheepish. “Look,” he says. “I’ve had a lot of sexual partners. I know you know this. And one of my hobbies is getting to the bottom of what people like and why. It’s kind of my thing.”

“Jesus,” Alex mutters. He takes a breath. “Just, for the record, that doesn’t make me want to sleep with you any less.”

“Noted,” Henry says, grinning. “That’s very mutual, by the way.”

A thrill runs down Alex’s spine. Yeah. He likes that. He’s very into how badly Henry wants him. Is that the feeling he’s chasing? Is that why he’s keeping Henry at arm’s length?

“So lets talk about sex,” Alex says quickly, before his thoughts can derail further. “I’m game.”

Henry looks at him for a moment. Then, very slowly, he cracks open his can of beer.

“Sure,” he says, like it’s that easy. “Sex. What about it?”

Alex bites his lower lip. That’s a fucking challenge, isn’t it? Henry is pushing him, just a little bit, and Alex likes it. God. He should start making a list.

“Well,” Alex says, thinking quickly. This shouldn’t be that hard. It usually isn’t. “We could talk about the time you fucked me, or what other things we might want to try. Or about the sex we’ve had with other people.”

“All good options,” Henry tells him. He drinks from his beer, keeping eye contact with Alex. “Would you want me to talk about the sex I’ve had with other people?”

“You would do that?” Alex asks him quickly. Too quickly. Too eagerly. “I mean, you don't need to explain any part of that to me. It's not like it bothers me."

“But maybe you’re curious,” Henry says with a knowing smile. “And you could ask me about it, if that’s the case.”

Alex swallows thickly. If this is still a challenge, then Alex is pretty sure he’s losing. Or, alternatively, he’s about to win big.

He is curious, is the thing. But he's figured it would be too rude to ask.

“Yeah,” he admits before he loses his nerve. “Yes. I am curious about that.”

“Well,” Henry says evenly. He thinks for a moment. “What was it that guy at the party said, something about me and half the football team...?” He meets Alex’s eyes steadily. “He’s actually not wrong.”

What. The fuck.

“Is half the football team gay?” Alex asks incredulously, before he can think to stop himself.

Henry shrugs and grins. “Some bi, some curious. I could make you a list.”

“No kidding.” Alex opens his can of beer but still doesn't drink. His heart is beating fast in his chest. “Did you really blow them all?”

“Most of them,” Henry admits. He’s still grinning. “I do like to give head. Although I should perhaps add that this wasn’t all in the same evening.”

“You didn’t do that to me,” Alex says, and then freezes. Shit. That can’t have been the right thing to say. “I mean, not that I minded. Not at all.”

Thankfully, Henry doesn’t look offended. “I just really wanted to fuck you,” he says, his tone earnest in a way that should not be as sexy as it is. "You asked me if I had a preference, remember? And I wasn’t sure if you’d be up for that, but I wanted to so badly, I figured I’d put it on the table and see what happened.”

“I’m glad you did,” Alex tells him honestly. His voice is actually fairly steady. “God, that night was so good. I’ve thought about it so many times.”

“Me too.” Henry’s gaze flickers down to Alex’s lips. “All the time, actually.”

Fuck. Alex wants him. Alex wants him so much.

“Well,” Henry says slowly, leaning back a little. He’s interrupting the moment, and it’s clearly on purpose. “What else did that idiot go on about… oh, right, the handcuffs.”

That makes Alex smile. “Look, you don’t need to confirm or deny every stupid rumour about you. Not that handcuffs are stupid, but you know. It’s okay if that’s not your thing.”

Henry’s eyes brighten with unmistakable interest. “They’re not my thing, exactly,” he tells Alex pleasantly. “I prefer ropes. They’re so much more versatile.”

Alex’s mouth turns very, very dry.

He remembers with vivid clarity the one time that Nora had tied him to her bedposts. He’s pretty sure that he hasn’t come that hard since then. Nora wasn’t crazy about it, so it didn’t happen again, but Alex has touched himself to the memory many times over. If Henry could do that to him—

“Which way do you like it?” Alex asks quickly. “Do you want to be tied down, or…?”

“I’m into both.” Henry is watching him closely. “And you?”

“I, uh.” Alex swallows. “I like having my hands tied. I like that a lot.”

“That would paint a lovely picture,” Henry tells him with a smile, and Alex has to close his eyes for a moment. Jesus fuck. “What is it that you like about it?”

Alex’s eyes fly open again. Is he supposed to have a succinct answer to that? Is he supposed to have words for that all-encompassing feeling?

“Is it that you’re giving up control?” Henry suggests curiosity. “Or do you still want to decide what’s about to happen?”

“No,” Alex admits after a moment's thought. “I mean, there are things I don’t want to happen, but I don’t want to pick and choose. I want to be taken care of.”

“Ah,” Henry says quietly. It takes him a couple of seconds to find actual words in response to that, and that’s a fucking first, isn’t it? “I’d be very into that, Alex. I’d be extremely into that.”

“Oh,” Alex breathes out. “Okay. Cool."

For a moment, they just look at each other. Something has shifted between them.

It would be so, so easy to just pull Henry close and take him to bed.

“Alex,” Henry says quietly, “I’m not going to have sex with you tonight.”

It’s really something, how Alex’s feelings of relief and disappointment mingle together. He should get a fucking therapist, shouldn’t he?

“Is it because I told you I want to wait?” Alex has to ask, his stomach knotting uncomfortably. If it’s not because of that, then…

“No,” Henry says plainly, and Alex’s heart sinks. “If you told me you want to, I'd trust you on that. No, I just didn’t think that’s where we were headed tonight, and you gave me a lot to think about just now. Sex and intimacy aren’t things I take lightly, contrary to popular belief."

“Oh,” Alex says. That makes sense, is the thing. It’s completely in line with everything Henry has shared with him. “Of course. And just so you know, I think I was equally relieved and frustrated when you said that just now.”

“That’s something to unpack, isn’t it?” Henry teases with a wry smile.

“I know,” Alex groans. “No need to rub it in."

"I think you’ll know when you're ready," Henry tells him softly. "Don't you?"

Alex looks at Henry for a moment, taking in the whole package of him—his kind smile and his clear blue eyes and his devastatingly attractive body. He's kind of impossible not to want.

"I fucking hope you're right," he mutters, and Henry grins and kisses his cheek.

Read 'Shameless' on AO3

[alyjojo]

June 📿 2024 Monthly - Virgo

Preshuffle: A time of financial ramifications due to impulsive action - financially - to “set yourself free” of something. The example I’m being given is breaking a lease, something you could potentially regret due to whatever is being asked of you, or something that happens because of this.

Meditation: I’m seeing autumn 🍂 lots of colorful leaves, children jumping in them, and you off to yourself away from all of that. Sitting in a chair at a small empty table, with no other chairs, in The Hermit’s hood & robe. I couldn’t see your face because your head was down. Like you were sad. There was a steaming cup of coffee ☕️ on the table someone had left, and I don’t think you noticed - mentally you were somewhere else.

Main energy: The Star

This message isn’t an easy one to hear, and you could be on either side of it. I’m going to read it as if you’re the problem, because Demon Red Rainbow is the color card - and King of Pentacles rev is the focus, but it can absolutely be switched for someone. There is a repeated cycle of someone (probably you) not learning their lesson, over and over again, possibly since childhood. The Star is your destined path being lit for you to clearly see - usually after a Tower happens - and in this case it’s showing how you haven’t learned the lesson. Or you waited until it was too late, Judgement rev isn’t going back, this is done and over with, there’s no going back. Or positively, this can be healing some shit you won’t do again 💯 Actually learning the lesson this time. Now this could be a deeeeep message for someone, and possibly losing your privileges at Costco for someone else, it’s not going to be the same level of intensity for all. For some it’s a person, and for anyone it’s something that means something to you, you love this thing/person.

What’s going on in June:

King of Pentacles rev:

Greeeeeed, especially with 4 Pentacles following. This King is unhealthy, he puts work, career, materialism, “what’s in it for me” and status before anything else in his life. He could flaunt what he doesn’t even have, demand what he can’t even provide, etc. Relationships, fun, hobbies, spiritual anything - meaningful or emotional things don’t bring in money and waste his time, in his opinion. Time is money 💰. Very black and white, 4 Pentacles just adds to that even more, extremely narrow minded and stubborn in their view of the world and their “responsibility” in it. Which has created a situation you didn’t want or intend, this wasn’t in your Google Calendar, you didn’t save enough for whatever this was, *excuses*. Could be relating to a gift but I’m seeing a gift more as an apology. Your love language may be gifts, this King can’t communicate to save his life either, could be an earth sign you’re dealing with or it’s you. Can’t verbalize “you mean the world to me” so I picked up some milk and bought you some flowers…type of thing. Acts of Service, Gifts, these are typical (not strictly) earth sign love languages and that’s how I’m seeing this be shown. It’s your language, not someone else’s, but you’ve been too busy to care…for a very long time. 5 Cups shows deep regret, mourning, sadness, sleepless nights. If it’s you then you’re deeply remorseful. Or sad someone else has been this way with you. What do you PROVIDE? And it probably not being “enough”.

Separately, you could be dealing with something you just cannot afford, or you’ll have to “settle for less” in some way - which hopefully isn’t regarding a person “beneath” him because ew @ that whole mentality (the King is rev, like we’d put up with that upright but c’mon) or it could also refer to like…a protein powder or something idk. Can’t get top quality, you have to settle for what you don’t want as much. Mint, they’re out of vanilla.

4 Pentacles:

You’re heavily resistant to letting people into your business, your world, even your family or friend groups - and it’s not a protective measure so much as a paranoid one. Overly protective to the point of like - jealously guarded. It’s like in guarding yourself from drama from others - you’ve created a ton of drama regarding others. Or you could just be uncooperative af and people are frustrated with trying to work with you. Very negative, pessimistic, there’s no hope for anything ever working out at any time is there? It’s all fucked, people are stupid, everything is going to fail and a million other doom and gloom reasons why you can’t be happy, everyone wants to take your treasure 🐉 - 4 Pentacles following this King rev. But…what treasure? The King is rev. Your friends may see you as unnecessarily argumentative. Or a partner, coworkers, people you’re supposed to be cooperating with feel like you can’t or won’t listen or work with them equally. If this is switched this could be someone you *have* to work with and it’s damn near impossible, they’re so thick-headed and stubborn.

If you’re facing financial crisis, asking for help is probably the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do because it’s eating your soul to have others help you - which they probably want to, it’s you that has the problem. Or reaching out and saying something where a conflict is involved, with someone you do care about or even love. You may have been stingy with money, time, etc., when everyone else was giving freely. Some legitimately can’t afford it, others can and just refuse. If someone is giving you something like “charity” they may as well branded you with a scarlet letter the way your pride burns.

Knight of Pentacles:

Time invested 💯 Very important to whatever this is, for many of you it’s relating to work somehow. A boss or person you’re having to deal with - maybe you are the boss. With time, effort, repeating the same thing every single day, you’re going to accomplish what you want - work wise. Prove your dedication, prove how hard of a worker you are. Someone may have put you into a role to “prove your worth” and I kinda want to gag, it’s not necessary…but you’ve done it! You’re the most responsible, dedicated, hardworking, reliable and financially driven person in the whole - wherever it is. You show up. You’ll die before you call in. You’ll work overtime and triple time, yes sir, thank you sir 🫡 Meanwhile…you’re losing someone. Queen of Cups. This feels like another person, if it’s swapped it could be you someone else is losing - or it could just be your own health and well being, your emotional needs, femininity (either gender) and softness by sacrificing your soul to money, status, other people’s expectations, etc. - Demon Red Rainbow 👺.

4 Cups rev:

Damn dude this is rough…a missed opportunity that you’re deeply upset about, you feel you made the wrong choice, or they did, and whoever did agrees that they did. Someone may have walked out, just done with the whole connection, nothing will ever change - Knight of Pentacles to a King rev can show years. I see conflict here so things have been said before that were resisted, what else could be done? Queen of Cups is a deeply emotional, loving, nurturing person. A forever cheerleader, she cares for the sick and goes above and behind for those she cares about - but she can be a doormat and a people pleaser when up against some ratchet ass attitude like this King rev’s. You or them, if it’s you then you know & regret this and if it’s them it’s validation 🙏

Queen of Cups is one healthy and loving person showing up to the relationship. King of Cups rev clarifies here showing an emotional manipulator, someone unhealthy and possibly abusive on some level with two Kings rev. If not that, then once sadness reaches this King rev it’s like a floooooodgate of repressed emotion, not maturely expressed, it’s a whole mess with this person. The Tower, there it is, at the bottom of the deck shows sudden and shocking changes where there’s no turning back, Judgement rev at the beginning mirrors no turning back - someone could be throwing in the towel & just done.

Queen of Cups:

This person expresses emotion in healthy ways. Upright, mature energy. Yes loving, yes giving, yes all of those things, no guilt tripping, no manipulating, no drama. This person (you/them) can’t handle the manipulative tactics of this King of fkery. Defining worth by whatever she’s not, she’s not the priority everything else is, and if she asks she’s wrong and nothing changes. For a long time probably. This card is clarified by not being able to handle this anymore, it’s too much for her and she has no confidence in herself or this connection. If you, this could be anyone you have to deal with, for someone I’m getting a shitty boss that likes to tear you down, keep you small with underhanded comments and manipulating situations against you, but with both cups it could definitely be a partner. Whatever this King isn’t giving - it’s not love. There are a lot of regrets, this Queen is saying absolutely not, it’s a missed opportunity, go fk yourself - with love, and this King is imploding on himself with all of these emotions he doesn’t know how to deal with on a normal day, much less all at once. Does he mean it, regret, probably. Can be change…maybe? Will she have it, I really don’t know. Not this month 💯

If you and not romantic, you have to focus on yourself and how you feel, what and who makes you feel crazy and separating yourself from that. You get to define your worth not someone else, idgaf who they are. FO FREE. You’re worth the world, and every possibility or affection being open to you to expand, for free. Simply for existing, maturely, kindly, the rest is perks - or whatever you define worth as, which you get to do. They get to as well - and then go find that. If you’re simply missing out on something because you can’t afford it, settling for next best thing or whatever - you may act dramatically and maybe kinda spoiled about it - but you’ll live. Queen of Cups could be showing you needing to work on “self-care” by researching better ways of expressing intense emotions, wholesome emotional videos about what’s really important in love, life, “healthy communication” and other helpful things - that are free & out there in abundance. If it’s someone else, they’re not your problem or you need to make it that way ❤️ It’s possible someone is apologizing with a gift…I’m not sure it’ll work but it’s a start. Is gifts your language? That might be a good place to start, if a conversation is even on the table.

Signs you may be dealing with:

Virgo, Cancer, Capricorn, Leo, Pisces & Scorpio

Oracle: ✨

42 Joy 🎉

We are created in joy. The balance of energy and higher vibrations brings us closer to divine love - pure joy. Joy can be a destination, but it can also be the vehicle that you use to get to that destination. Faith, grace, gratitude, and love all merge together, at different times and in different amounts, to create joy. There is love, growth, tears, change, and self-realization in this card. This card portends a happy and joyous time.

Apology 😞

Guilt - Confession - Forgiveness

Gift 🎁

Souvenir - Promotion - Delight

Hesitation 😬

Decision - Confession - Worry

We enter into June as:

Emaciated Periwinkle ⚖️:

“I must create before the opportunity disappears.”

This card is a good indication that something is out of balance in your life. You may be too focused in one area and therefore neglecting another. Change takes place in proper time. Slow down. With balance we gain the love and support we need to take risks. Periwinkle is also an indication you need to look at your eating habits. This could be a plea from your body to take better care of yourself. This can also point out workaholism or any compulsive behavior that has you feeling out of whack. Is there a part of your life that needs serious attention from you? This card wishes to remind you that...you take you wherever you go.

What is to be learned in June:

Demon Red Rainbow 👹

“The greatest adversary is the one living inside of me.”

If the Demon Red Rainbow speaks to you, it is an indication that you are starting to (or will) forge ahead on the path you have chosen. You are correct in thinking that this path is important. Demon Red Rainbow denotes miraculous changes which lay ahead but not without your dogged determination. If you are facing a hill that appears insurmountable, this card reminds us that most true adversaries are the ones inside of us. Life always turns for the better when we face our demons.

You are not to abandon your focus no matter what comes up. The direct route may be the best way to the other side of your fear. There is a crucial lesson here for us all. Know that Spirit always provides an ally when we face the Demon Red Rainbow. It will be clear to you who they are. You need not face anything alone. Spirit has chosen a very powerful lesson for you so that you may teach others what you have learned. A gift of this kind is never given without our ability to use it.

Red may be a lucky color ❤️

[adenei]

Ch 1 - Never Really Over

*Deep breaths*

Soooo I've been working on a new multi-chap romione fic since April. Have kept it pretty quiet aside from my betas who have been wonderful with their help and support because let's be real, finding time to write and allow yourself to become invested in a hobby with an infant is HARD. But that's a whole other slew of issues for another day. You're here for the fic (I assume), so let's get back to that.

I love the direction this is taking, and am super proud of the idea and its development. I think I'm known a lot for taking existing stories/movies/etc and twisting them to fit a ship in an AU, but this one is all me - yay proving to myself that I CAN have original ideas!

It is an American Romione AU in a modern setting.

Summary:

Hermione Granger is a modern woman who doesn’t need to find love for self-fulfillment. Not that finding love is even an option anymore. Her perfect love story has come and gone with the one who got away—sorry, the one who disappeared is more like it.

That fake fairy tale is all well and good until Ron Weasley, the man who ruined everything, suddenly turns back up in her life with no explanation whatsoever. It seems his only goal is to show up wherever she is, attempting to undo the walls she’s built around her heart after he shattered it into a million tiny pieces. But Hermione’s determined not to let him in. With the help of her best friends and an online dating site that promises users their very own ‘happily ever after,’ she sets out to move on from her first love for good. 

After a few misses, Billy slides into her inbox, a sweet, genuine, fun-loving guy who’s easy to talk to and fills Hermione with the hope that perhaps love isn’t off the table after all. Seemingly overnight, she’s gone from perpetually single to balancing a love triangle on a fine, fine line. The deeper she gets, the harder she realizes it’s going to be when she has to choose. The last thing she wants to do is break anyone’s heart—her own included.

So, without further ado, I give you the first chapter of Never Really Over.

Read on AO3

But once in a while I trip up and I cross the line, and I think of you

Work ᐧ a ᐧ hol ᐧ ic (noun) a person who compulsively works long and hard hours.

God, I hate the connotation of that word. And yet it still burns into my mind, distracting me from—unironically—the article I’m trying to finish up at my desk. Am I three months ahead of the current deadline? Maybe. But that doesn’t mean anything. There’s nothing wrong with having backups just in case. It shouldn’t classify me as a workaholic.

Because I’m not.

It’s only haunting me because my brain has a sick and twisted sense of humor. It clearly refuses to follow my strict list of off-limit thoughts, cementing the chokehold the word has on my life.

Ugh. Why am I letting this bother me anyway? I’m Hermione Granger, a capable, independent woman who is perfectly happy with her life right now. A twenty eight-year-old with a house of her own, a career she’s passionate about, and the five best friends a girl could ask for thanks to fate bringing us together during freshman orientation at Kearney University. The memory brings a smile to my lips. What more could one want?

And then the frown returns when I remember that I’m sitting alone in the office on a Friday evening and self-doubt trickles in. If I’m being honest, there’s a lot more I want. Like love. Finding the love of my life would be nice. I thought I’d at least be married by now, and maybe have one kid by the time I turned thirty. Not that I’m a traditional woman by any means. I’m about as modern as they come. It’s just…

No. You’re not allowed to think about him, remember?

Except it’s really hard not to think about him. Especially when that damn word keeps flashing in my mind while I sit here on weekend time, finishing an article that’s nowhere near due. But it doesn’t matter. That inside joke died a long time ago. I stopped finding the word endearing the moment I realized he was no longer in my life. Now if only my brain would get the memo.

I shake my head, brunette curls flying around as I try to refocus on the cursor blinking in front of me. It’s still a tough pill to swallow, but I’ve long since given up on love—or so I’m telling myself. Romantic companionship clearly isn’t in the cards for me, so I turn to the one thing that will never let me down: writing. And right now, I’m only a couple of paragraphs away from completing a lovely little piece on the hidden gems of Bora Bora—the things they won’t tell you in the travel guides.

A long, deep breath helps me push those intrusive thoughts away and brings me back to the salty ocean air and the calm lapping of the waves. If I concentrate long enough, I can feel the sparkling white sand between my toes, and it’s enough to catapult me right back into the article—until my phone rings two minutes later.

I don’t want to answer, but it’s Hannah Abbott, my best friend, and she’s always there for me when I need her. The least I can do is return the favor. Plus, the creative juices are no longer flowing thanks to the interruption, so I may as well see what she wants.

With a swipe right to answer, I do my best not to sound annoyed. “Hello?”

“Where are you?!” Hannah cries, though her voice sounds hushed, like she’s hiding in a closet or something.

“Finishing up an article at work. Why?”

“Unbelievable,” she grumbles, more to herself than to me. “Hermione, I’m going to let you think about why I’m calling for a second and see if you can put the pieces together.”

“What are you talking about?” I’m not in the mood to play this game, but I adjust the phone and hold it against my shoulder so I can lift my laptop and check my desk calendar.

August first. Friday. The day I try to forget. But then I see the periwinkle writing at the bottom of the square.  Harry and Neville’s birthday party.

Remember the strong support system I mentioned earlier? The freshman orientation group turned lifelong friends? Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom are part of that, along with Hannah, of course, and Seamus Finnigan and Lavender Brown. We never miss anyone’s birthdays, and Hannah knows that.

“Shit! Shit, shit, shit! How could I forget?”

Hannah sniggers at me. “Yes, how could you forget? Hermione, I don’t know if it’s because you love your job so much that you’re willing to stay late on a Friday, or because of what day it is, but—”

“We’re not talking about that. I’m leaving now. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

I slam my laptop shut and shove it in my bag a little too haphazardly. I’m already closing my office door by the time Hannah responds again. “Right…”

She’s clearly contemplating whether to push the subject or let it go. After all, she’ll have all night to try and grill me on it, but she knows better. We don’t talk about what happened on August first. Ever.

And just to make sure she doesn’t go there, I try to swing the conversation back to the guys. “Have they noticed I’m not there yet?” 

“Well, considering it’s a small gathering of our closest friends—all of whom are already here because the party started an hour ago—yeah, they’ve noticed.”

“Ugh, I’m sorry, okay? I just—”

“—Got caught up with whatever article you’re working on? I know, I know. You’re lucky it’s only their twenty-eighth birthday and not the big three-oh.”

“Come on, Han, this is one tiny mistake and I feel terrible. You don’t need to make it worse. I’m never late, you know that! And I would never miss something as big as their thirtieth birthdays. Especially not since we’ve already got a running list of themes and ideas going. Just—give me a break, okay? I’ll be there soon. I’m almost to the car now.”

“Alright.” Hannah sighs. There’s a stilted pause and I wait, knowing there’s something else she wants to say, and I brace for the lecture about my workaholic tendencies and what it relates to. Damn psychology major.

“Listen, Hermione, there’s something you should—” But after a long day of reflecting on it, I don’t want to go there right now.

“See you in fifteen, bye!” I hang up the phone before she can finish her sentence. She tries this every year. You’d think after six years she’d let it go. But no, she thinks that one of these days I’ll finally talk about it. Well, she can keep trying, but it’s not going to happen. That part of my life is over and it’ll only hurt more to bring it back up. 

⚭

It takes me a little longer than fifteen minutes, but that’s to be expected with D.C. traffic. Once I’m parked outside Hannah and Neville’s house, I quickly do a once-over on my appearance. Thanks to the mid-summer humidity, my hair is frizzier than when I tamed it into its half-ponytail this morning. It’s too bad my incessant need to run my fingers through the curly strands does nothing to combat its flyaway tendency. I guess I’ll just have to deal with yet another pitch from Lavender to let her help me with my nonexistent beauty regimen. Perks of having a beautician for a friend. 

Prying my eyes away from the visor mirror, I get out of the car and look down at the pale yellow eyelet sundress I put on this morning. There are definite wrinkles and creases from sitting at my desk all day, but what can I do? At least my mascara isn’t running down my face and I don’t have sweat stains under my arms. That’s more than presentable for a backyard barbeque after working all day. Kudos to whoever chose that over some fancy dinner.

Not that my friends would care. They’ve always accepted me for who I am. Sure, I’ll never hear the end of being late tonight, but at least I made it, and in their company,  I’ll be able to accomplish the one thing I’ve struggled with all day: taking my mind off of him.

Faint sounds of laughter echo as I walk up the path to the front door and let myself in. A ‘happy birthday’ sign hangs from the ceiling in the foyer, and red and gold balloons litter the floor leading to the kitchen. Of course they’d deck out the place with the colors of our alma mater—I wouldn’t expect anything less. 

“Hey, I’m here! And sorry I’m late, you know how work is,” I call to a seemingly empty house. 

I poke my head into an empty living room before heading back to the kitchen, where I find Seamus pulling a beer out of the fridge. Everyone else must be out back.

“Well, well, well, look who finally decided to show up.”

And so it begins. 

Rolling my eyes, I grab a wedge of gouda off the picked over charcuterie board on the counter. “You say that like I intended to show up almost two hours late. I lost track of time.”

That was sort of the truth. After all, I couldn’t tell Seamus I forgot, he’d never let me live it down. Seamus is usually the one who gets called out on things. His affinity for pyrotechnics has created many occasions for us to give him hell, and you can guarantee between the five of us, we never let him live a single one down. So I guess I can’t blame him when he doesn’t miss a beat now the tables are turned.

Which is why I’m not surprised he isn’t letting me off the hook yet. With a snort, he tries to call my bluff. “C’mon, Hermione. We all know you love working so much that you’d skip out on weekends if you could. You don’t have to lie.” And then, to make things weirder, he looks around and lowers his voice to add, “You can tell me the truth about why you’re late. It’ll be our little secret.”

My face scrunches up before I have a chance to control its reaction. Why does he care so much? 

“I…I don’t know what you mean. I really did lose track of time, Shay. Why are you acting so strange?”

A scowl crosses his face as he sets his beer down on the white speckled quartz. He eyes the back deck before lowering his voice and says, “Because I’ve got a bet going with Lav and Nev on whether you were going to show or not.”

“Whether I was going to—why wouldn’t I show? Honestly, it’s not my fault I got wrapped up in research and writing an article all day and then forgot I had plans tonight! Do you guys bet on my predisposition to get lost in my job and failure to show up to events often?” 

I’m so bewildered by the fact that there’s a bet that I don’t even care about letting my forgetfulness slip. Do I need to reconsider how genuine these friendships are? Does this happen often? Are my friends not as supportive as I thought they were?

I open my mouth to ask as much, but clamp it shut when I see the wide-eyed, pale shock cross Seamus’s face. His reaction is far more severe than it should be and now I’m really confused. He spins around and opens the fridge, rummaging around until he pulls out a mango White Claw—my favorite.

Things are getting more suspicious by the second, and I need to know what is going on. “Seamus, what—”

“Here.” He opens the can with a loud crack and hands it to me. “You’re going to need this.”

Oh, come on. “Seriously? You know I don’t care if I’m already three drinks behind.”

“Well, you might this time…” he mumbles before nodding to the door. “Come on, everyone’s out back. I’m sure they’ll be excited to know you finally made it.”

Okay, what is happening? I try not to let my jaw drop as my mind works to decode this odd behavior. Seamus has always been the one with the crazy ideas and adventurous spirit. There’s not a cryptic bone in his body. If anything, he’s always impulsive and up-front with his intentions.

All I can do is shake my head and follow, giving up on trying to make sense of anything. I take a few quick swigs and step through the sliding glass door that Seamus left open for me. Lively conversation comes from my left, where everyone is sitting around the patio table. I prepare myself for more endless teasing as I shut the door behind me, but instead, the chatter dies to a sudden silence. More peculiarity. 

Did I spill something on myself and miss it? No, Seamus would have said something. Or are they really just that shocked about my late arrival? I’m about to ask as much until I look up and see an all too familiar shade of red hair sitting at the table with his back toward me.

Despite the eighty-degree weather, my body breaks into a cold sweat. I’ve spent six years pretending he doesn’t exist anymore. Six years trying to forget that part of my life, convincing myself that he wasn’t the person I thought he was. That he wasn’t ‘the one.’ 

Everyone else’s expressions mirror my shock when they realize I didn’t know he was going to be here, though Hannah’s contains a tiny wince that’s meant to say, ‘I tried to warn you.’ And their reactions are enough to make Ron Weasley, my ex-best friend, ex-confidante, and ex-lover, turn around.

Seeing his face unfreezes my body from its current awkward stance. Anger and hurt burst through the gates that I’ve worked so hard to keep locked up as our eyes meet. In slow motion, my hard seltzer clatters to the ground, soaking my feet and wedge leather sandals in the sticky, bubbly liquid as I try to find my voice. 

As if this paradox couldn’t become any more ironic, he actually seems excited to see me. He opens his mouth to say something, but I’ll never know what since I manage to cut him off with the only scathing question that I can possibly think of. 

“What are you doing here?”

[lucero-is-here]

RUNS IN WEARING BONTEMPS’ HAT AND A BROWN JACKET

Hello ladies, gentlemen and folks! We have Katherine Woolf for headcanon time today!

Requested by!

Let’s get to this fine lady!

- she paints her nails with Evie sometimes. She has so much fun.

- lesbian. Lesbian lesbian lesbian.

- amazing spice tolerance! CAN EAT ANYTHING SPICY AND WILL BE OKAY-

- Amazing memory. Evie says Katherine has photographic memory, Katherine just politely disagrees.

- she heard Arthur dissing off Malcolm and Horatio once, learnt what Horatio planned to do to Bernadine, and proceeded to publish it and ruin Horatio’s life more ahah.

- disses off Justin Lawson, Malcolm and Horatio with Evie sometimes. They somehow find more and more creative ways to insult them.

- high heeled boots, boots or heels. Usually in high-heeled boots…But boots are her second favourite. Heels? Not that much, but they are pretty.

- she dances with Evie sometimes, and it’s the sweetest and most adorable thing ever.

- she plays the violin sometimes. She plays really well, and it’s a hobby when she isn’t finding more stories to publish.

- tap dance. She can tap dance.

- paints Evie’s nails sometimes. Finds it adorable when Evie is trying not to accidentally scrap of the nail polish while it dries-

- she can speak German

- she is really strong- i like to think when they trued to arrest her for being part of the resistance against Lawson, she put up a really good fight against them, and only went down cause someone threatened her friend.

- fire? She loves fire! She has a fireplace in her home, and she absolutely adores watching it burn.

- she will interview anyone and everyone. She will find out the best drama best stories, have that published and make herself some MONEYY

- she punched Larry Rochester in the face once. She just walked to him and punched him in the face. She was so satisfied with what she did.

- she attended Leopold Rochester’s funeral. She was genuinely upset and sad, because she really liked him. He actually took her interviews civilly and didn’t act aggressive. She just knew he was an honest man, and was sad to see him go.

- she has a habit of kissing people. She’ll kiss her close friends on the cheek, the forehead, the nose- yeah those kinds! She even knelt down and kissed someone on the hand once.

- she can play cat’s cradle. That string game where you make a bunch of shaped with string. Yeah and she’s really good at it.

- she brings a hat with her everywhere she goes. She likes looking classy and stylish.

- had a goth phase once. And she was so pretty-

- absolutely loves bees- she finds bees so adorable and absolutely loves them.

- she tried hitting Malcolm with a table once. Her friends had to stop her.

Okay that’s kind of it- if I think of more there might be a part 2-

Someone bursts into the room. “SO YOU’RE THE KID WHO’S BEEN MAKING THIS TAPE RECORDINGS! AHA! I NEED AN INTERVIEW WITH YOU RIGHT AWAY!” It was Katherine Woolf, as she had her pen and notepad ready.

“Whoops gotta go!” Lucero said, turning to the camera. “SORRY MISS! NO TIME!” And with that Lucero had fled the scene. The camera only showed Katherine scribbling something in her notebook before it turned off.

[unladielike]

PROS AND CONS OF DATING VIVIAN.

the pros.

She’s a very cute, glasses wearing girl. Need I say more?

You will likely end up being her special interest... aka she will have a page in her notebook dedicated to you, with all your likes and dislikes written in it. Stuff like blood type, birthday, hobbies, kinks, and turn offs would also be included as well, but regardless, you can expect to be gushed about.

There will never be a dull moment with her, so you don’t have to ever worry about being bored.

She will bring you flowers, regardless of your gender.

Vivian will take care of you if you get sick. Seriously, this girl won’t take no for an answer and will see to it that your health improves!

It’s very likely you will be the only person she truly loves. Like, she may be sexually attracted to other people, but she’s not the type to really fall for others, so romantically speaking, she will only ever have eyes for you.

Vivian actually likes physical contact and being touched, so unlike most touch-averse autistic individuals, she adores PDA, to the point where she won’t be uncomfortable if you shower her with affection.

She’s a very good girl. For example, Vivian isn’t very motivated to cook for only herself, but if she’s cooking for two, you can expect consistent home-cooked meals. She will also actually listen to you and heed what you have to say, so if you tell her you’re lactose intolerant? Expect anything she bakes/cooks to have no milk in it.

Vivian is an extrovert, so if you’re not much a talker, she can do most of the talking for you.

She’s very open minded and fun-loving, meaning she will likely agree to tag along in whatever adventure you’re dragging her into.

Vivian will actually stop hating couples/media with romance and fictional couples in it, so if you guys are dating, her bitterness towards normies would fade.

You will be up to speed when it comes to Gen-Z language and internet lingo in no time, because this girl is very much a nerd who grew up with memes.

With her, cringe culture is basically dead; in other words, she will absolutely join you, decked out in full frontal cosplay, and even go as far as to Naruto run with you.

the cons.

Vivian may be eccentric, but she isn’t a manic pixie dream girl, so you may end up disappointed if she doesn’t give you important life lessons or improve your life in any meaningful way. I mean, this girl is dumb, to the point where she doesn’t exactly have the best head on her shoulders.

She will still love 2D characters, to the point where she will continue hyperfixating over them and writing fanfiction of them. She will, however, cease to have the desire to date them in real life.

She has very bad table manners... meaning she might shamelessly belch around you.

Regardless of your gender, she will ask if you would want to take a leak together at some point.

With actual boundaries being set, Vivian can eventually mellow out over time, but if you don’t play your cards right, she can become obsessed with you. Honestly, due to the fact she has compulsive sexual behaviour, chances are high she will instigate very inappropriate actions around you.. Basically, though, if you give her an inch, she will take a mile, and by having sex with her, you’re potentially putting your dick in crazy.

Does prefer men and masc-aligned individuals, so while she is capable of being attracted to women/gender queer folks, Vivian might end up becoming miserable in a monogamous relationship with someone who isn’t a man. Like... if she is strictly forbidden to explore her sexuality with men/masc-aligned individuals, there’s a high chance she will feel trapped in that relationship, but she will never express it to you, because she doesn’t want to hurt your feelings.

She’s a slob, so she won’t often brush her hair and will probably be found with her pant pockets hanging out. Coupled with the fact she struggles when it comes to executive functioning, there might even be times where she forgets to brush her own teeth.

Despite being a true girl at heart, Vivian isn’t stereotypically feminine and will act very boyish, to the point where she’ll be the one to hold out doors and pull out chairs for you.

Vivian’s stubborn... and can get very mean-spirited, if you end up making her angry.

Because she’s an autistic woman who refuses to mask, she might prove to be a bit too much for the average neurotypical person. Honestly, her autism isn’t a cute quirk you can simply love away; in fact, it’s very much a permanent part of her, so there may be days where you’re frankly frustrated with her.

Her sense of humour can be considered off-putting at times.

She will risk her own life in order to protect you, meaning Vivian would basically shove you away from a moving car and let herself be hit instead.

The older she gets, the more she would become disillusioned by romance, so there may come a point where she would regret being in a relationship, especially with how much hard work it is and how much compromise it requires. Of course, this doesn’t mean she would necessarily stop loving her partner, but she might have lingering doubts and uncertainties over a future with them.

If you’re a man, her parents will likely bug you about having kids and will ask when you’re planning on give them grandchildren.

[amphtaminedreams]

The Fashion, the Thoughts and the Food (ARGH): 2023 Pt.1

Hiiii to anyone reading!

Isn’t this quite the surprise! A gap in posting which isn’t so vast that the context in which I framed it has had to be adapted several times since its inception! This was a 2023 part 1 post when I started and if this surfaces on the dashboard before June finishes (almost managed it!!!!) just consider me queen of organisation. I’m nearly finished with a piece of coursework on Prospect Theory and now I’m unburdened by THAT fucking torturous demand the somewhat constant sense of creativity-quashing confusion and fear is semi lifted. 

Originally, ya see, I planned to sum up the last few months with just a winter outfits post but that time went by so quickly and was such a shitshow, that when I came to reflect, it turns out I made myself presentable and did something interesting with my life on far fewer occasions than I thought. The prospect of going full 2013 lifestyle blogger and using this post as a conduit for a more general overview of the first half of the year seemed more fun and in the nature of why I started this Tumblr which was just to do fun, creative stuff, lol. Trying to build a whole post specifically on one topic and making everything neat is so silly when I’m just a silly little girl doing this silly little blog. It’s not like this messiness was ever monetizable or is intended to be. I am far too insecure to ever need to assume that there is anyone following whatever it is I’m rambling on about. All I promise to bring to the table is the enthusiasm and lack of refinement that characterised the early days of social media back when Tumblr came under the same umbrella as Bloggr, lookbook.nu, Polyvore, WeHeartIt, etc., humble little hobby platforms that were recognised as such and not as springboards for a career because they were for FUNNN not to make money. What an era! You need time, consistency, likability and a bit of self-restraint to do anything serious online and I can promise you I only have about one of these traits even on the very best days. What I mean is that whenever I’m on Tumblr or Pinterest just scrolling freely and liking and pinning and seeing what catches my eye, when it feels like I’m treating this as a casual thing, it’s a lot easier, and so I really want to push myself to just post stuff like this even if it feels irrelevant and unstructured because it doesn’t need to have relevancy or structure for me to post it. You’ve been warned!

There is 0 need to post as if you have to consider where sponsorships are going to fit or whether you’re going to piss people off en masse when you don’t have much in the way of an audience and you don’t NEED to have to have either to justify posting something online in the first place, wtf. Capitalist interests are very predictable in the sense that they can't NOT gatecrash a good party when they see it, cannot possibly avoid the urge to make everythingggg people enjoy doing feel like it needs to be packaged as part of a slick business venture but like…if the photo dump can be re-popularised (though I am kinda convinced this was a thing Instagram started themselves on the DL to distance themselves from criticism in this vein), then let’s call this Tumblr page a mind dump. A vibe vault, if you will. I know, ew. I hate myself for that one too. Plus these are less so things I’m vibing with because I don’t have adequate levels of chill  to simply "vibe" with anything anyway. Soo here are the first half of 2023’s Pathological Obsessions™, outfits, new fashunnn finds, places, media and some general sensitive thoughts.

Now let’s get into itttt.

The Fashionnnn Bit

*(if you’re here from the recovery tag maybe skip through this, use the find option and jump to the next “recovery” mention)

Starting with the fashunnn, because if there is a single kind of continuity on this blog it’s that. I’m gonna break it down into a few things. First, the designers I’ve discovered/rediscovered. Big shout out to Vogue Runway for entertaining me in that respect on the few occasions it decided to function properly.

But also!! also!! big question mark over why I can look at unlimited collections on the app but hit a paywall on the desktop site even when I’m logged in??? I’m emphasising this because I’m genuinely searching for answers here, lol, I’m not about to dish out my coins unnecessarily, not in this £1.65 for a bag of Magic Stars economy, ffs.

Back to the topic at hand though, I’ll structure the fashion section kinda like a Currently Obsessing Over post and cover a other few things as well. For starters, anybody whose style I’ve been appreciating recently-I can’t promise you I’m going to blow your mind with some obscure, undiscovered Instagram model you’ve never heard of, but I’m starting this tradition by gassing up Florence Given so I don’t think there’s gonna be much expectation of that going forward anyway, lol. Also, this section seems an appropriate place to get all the excitement out of my system about my  favourite ethical clothing store drops. I like to think of it as a redirection of the excitement that usuallllyyy results in me spending money that I am otherwise incapable of reminding myself I DO NOT HAVE. 

Lastly, the winter outfits that were the preliminary basis of this post will slot nicely in here. Let’s be real, as much as I’d like to think my using Tumblr is alllll about creativity, it’s clearly filling some kind of egotistical self-expression need too, lol. Ego hypothesis aside, though, I can confirm that I love to refer to “oooo potential for outfit post!” to justify the unnecessary Vinted and Depop purchases I make to myself whilst continuing to complain about being broke. But BOTH THINGS ARE TRUE AND IT’S NOT A CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP FFS. Yah, becoming aware that there are just as many gems on Vinted as there are on Depop did not do wonders for my savings goals, I have to say it. But it is ethical and cheap. Anyways, I’m just gonna sprinkle these outfit posts throughout the fashion section to dilute the vanity a bit.

*2023 purchases marked w/asterisk

-20th & 21st March 2023, Shoreditch->Beyond the Streets exhibition @ the Saatchi Gallery, outfit details L to R: mohair cardi from Collusion*, beret from ASOS*, faux leather blazer from NastyGal, faux fur coat underneath from Urban Outfitters, bag from ASOS, shoes from ASOS*, trousers from @niamho31 on Depop>beanie from ASOS, mini skirt from Minga*, cropped jumper from @alexnrx21 on Vinted, lace up corset top from @kyliemccabe99 on Vinted, & Doc Martens-

Currently Obsessing Over: Patou

-Top to Bottom: RTW S/S20, RTW S/S21, RTW F/W20-

I want to thank girlie Dakota Johnson for many things, one of them being introducing me to Patou (though her making Ellen publicly uncomfortable by drawing attention to the besties with everyoneeeee bullsheet takes no.1 on the achievements list).

-L->R: RTW S/S 22, RTW F/W21-

It’s what I can best describe as a combo between Simone Rocha, Brock, and Charles Jeffrey Loverboy with perhaps a touch of Erdem, slightly twee and coquettish but fresh and modern at the same time; a few of the collections have a bit of a street style vibe, and these are the ones which show Patou at its best. If you told me this was the wardrobe of an upper east side school girl growing out of her Blair Waldorf era and into her Virgil Abloh groupie phase because she decided her true passions lay in music production and used daddy’s money to buy an apartment in the gentrified Harlem, I’d believe you. Every cloud has to have some kind of silver lining, and the lack thereof when it comes to the invasion of a bunch of posh arseholes suggests there’s room for an accidentally brilliant style lovechild like this somewhere out there.

-Top to Bottom: RTW F/W23, RTW F/W22-

It was Alison Williams in a very Audrey Hepburn Patou look at the recent Met Gala that solidified, for me at least, they’ve pretty much got the monopoly on old timey socialite with 21st century polish. I assumed they were a new brand but doing a bit of Googling for this post exposed my lack of formal fashion education, lmao, because they’ve apparently been established for, like. decades, and have just been bought by LVMH who aren’t the type to take a gamble on a fledgling label. Feeling silly rn.

-RTW S/S23-

The LVMH takeover begs the question, whyyy are we not hearing more about them? I suppose Julia Fox having closed their most recent show is a sign they’re growing in influence/fattening their money pot at the very least, but in the meantime, the theme for the designers included in this post is obvs just gonna be undeservedly slept on labels lol.

-24th March 2023: hat from ASOS*, dress from UO, rollneck from charity shop, NastyGal faux fur coat from @emily170620 on Vinted-

Whatever Happened to Stella McCartney?

-Top to Bottom: RTW S/S22, Resort 2022-

Stella McCartney is one of those names everyone knows in the fashion industry but I’d say is rarely given the level of praise she deserves? Dare I say the collective sentiment is to kinda write her off as a designer condemned to 2000s irrelevancy? Is it because the association people make with the McCartney dynasty is now a brand of vegetarian sausages which aren’t even that bloody good? omggg, I can’t speak to the Linda McCartney mozzie burger but the sausages are nasty!!

-Pre-fall 2021-

Disgusting sausages aside, if we are talking the products of nepotism or powerful “connections”, some successes are more merited than others. If we can manage not to begrudge a specialist vegetarian chef her dues despite our awareness that the famous name has at least partially played a role in getting those human rights violating sausages in the freezer aisle of every Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda near you? If we do that on the basis girly was onto a good thing by filling a necessary gap in the market? Well we OUGHT to talk more about Stella McCartney and make sure SHE gets her place in the freezer aisle next to the Carte Dior (comedy genius) too.

-clockwise L>R: Pre-fall 2017, Resort 2019, Resort 2017, RTW S/S18, RTW S/S17-

I say all this with the disclaimer that I too really fucking hate how dominated so many fields of work are by the importance of “connections” and the way that it makes pursuing a career in the things you’re actually passionate about the kind of pipe dream you relegate to the realm of those driven by delusional, childhood optimism next to the corpses of the princess and prima ballerina fantasies. I hate that if I had wanted to pursue a job in fashion or film the best I could hope for would be a decade as a coffee runner under Wes Anderson’s 2nd cousin’s son or sat in a windowless, underground LA office managing Lila Moss’ Twitter account for my entire adult life. But you know, the fruits of one’s rich and successful parent’s connections are better earned by some nepo babies than others and Stella McCartney is one of the good ones. Those M&S red diamond strawberries were not simply handed to her. Tossed maybe, which necessitates some kind of ability to catch, but not handed. 

-clockwise L>R: Resort 2020, RTW S/S20, Resort 2024-

-Top to Bottom: RTW F/W18, RTW F/W17-

You don’t end up the creative director of Chloe solely because your family has money-there might be people equally as talented as you that didn’t have that stepping stone but I’d like to believe there’s no stepping stone strong enough to explain surviving CSM, successfully maintaining the reputation of a label pretty much renowned for being the epitome of understated elegance, and opening your own fashion house on the back of that. The other nepo babies could jump on their lil rocks all they like but they just haven’t got the upper body strength to deadlift their way onto the ladder. Stella stays hitting the metaphorical weights zone whilst the rest of them stay walking on the treadmill with me in complacency Kingdom. The fact there was a time when I used to actually run on treadmills? I could not BELIEVE. We’re out of the metaphor zone now btw-probs shoulda made that one a bit clearer.

-Top to Bottom: RTW F/W19, S/S19, Pre-fall 2019-

-Clockwise L>R: RTW F/W21, Resort 2023, Pre-fall 2023, Pre-fall 2022, RTW S/S21-

For one, she stands apart from other designers in that her brand has been at the forefront of ethical fashion from its inception. She was doing sustainable fashion long before using animal byproducts like leather, faux fur and suede was frowned upon, when animal cruelty for aesthetic’s sake was thought of as a talking point mostly adopted by fringe environmentalist groups, and where any public figure being able to leverage a major fashion house into abstaining from the use of animal fur was something unthinkable. But honestly, I’m really not hyping Stella up just for that but because she genuinely has been rolling out quality collections for years now. 

-Top to Bottom, L>R: RTW S/S15, Resort 15, RTW F/W15, RTW F/W16, RTW F/W14, RTW F/W15-

-RTW F/W23-

I can see how you could stick her with the safe label but I do think there’s talent in being able to identify elements of the ephemeral, “out- there” fashion trends with actual staying power. Stella has been able to streamline those elements into something that works outside of the high fashion bubble, and looking back at the archives was a delightful browse through the volume of evidence proving that knack. I don’t know why the name doesn’t carry more prestige other than the tendency of the high fashion industry to dismiss anything that is somewhat attainable to the average person, but if consistency is enough to grant Chanel a pass to put out the sameeee thing everyyy season because it fits with the widely established image of the brand, welllll…on the other side of that coin, consistency born of a sustained, purposeful, and analytical observation of the trend cycle and a concerted effort to refine rather than regurgitate the insane amalgamation of buzz pieces that emerge from the ever growing roster of fashion weeks…that warrants way more recognition, no?

-Top to Bottom: RTW F/W22, RTW S/S23-

-3rd February 2023, Objects of Desire exhibition @ the Design Museum, Kensington: Corset & trouser co-ord from ASOS*, blouse from ASOS*, trench coat from charity shop, & Doc Martens-

-3rd March 2023: cardi from @alisi on Depop, skirt from ASOS*, beret & shoes from ASOS-

Antonio Grimaldi 

-Clockwise L>R: Haute Couture (HC) F/W23, HC S/S23, HC S/S22, HC S/S19, HC F/W22-

For all my attempts to articulate what it is I like about collections from buzzy up-and-coming avant garde designers or prestigious labels known for intellectually driven, abstract pieces, I am no better at describing why stumbling across collections from the likes of Antonio Grimaldi fill me with joy. Pretty dresses give me a serotonin boost. Imagining myself as a princess in one is good for the soul, lol. I’m team Barbie not Oppenheimer. Does that sum it up for you? And as much as I feel duped being reeled in by Vogue sponsored content, on this occasion I’ll let it go because these creations are masterful and I’d never heard of the designer before they were featured.

-Clockwise L>R: HC S/S20, HC S/S21, HC F/W21-

-8th February 2023: skirt from Urban Renewal @ UO*, cardi from Collusion-

-23rd March 2023, Mike Nelson: Extinction Beckons exhibit @ the Hayward Gallery, Southbank: top from @kissmypeach on Depop, skirt from Ebay, waistcoat from @crisishawtline on Depop, coat from charity shop, shoes as before-

Gucci Resort 2024

I wouldn’t be surprised if we’d been through an AI takeover, another pandemic, and mass flooding throughout Britain by the time I get round to doing a 2024 collections post, so for the sake of making sure I cover my most pressing high fashion related concerns (I.e my opinions on runway shows I could only ever aspire to sit back row at in my very wildest dreams let alone own anything from), I thought I’d include the Gucci Resort 2024 collection from earlier this month in this post. See my expectations of greatness have been tentative since we lost my love, Alessandro Michele, under whose reign Gucci became my absolute favourite high fashion brand-I would get genuinely excited in anticipation of his collections every time Milan fashion week came around, which really is a little bit sad when you think about how far removed I am from that sphere of existence, but ya know, as a source of styling inspiration his maximalist, extravagant and wonderfully extra take on Gucci never failed me. 

Don’t get me wrong, this collection isn’t on the level of anything Alessandro did in his last few years as creative director but I suppose that’s something that comes with the confidence granted by time at the helm and this slots neatly into his body of work as a continuation of that elevated blend of the decadent retro aesthetic with modernity. Soo it’s promising and as a stand alone collection, comparisons prohibited, I do really like it.

-13th February 2023, Making Modernism & Spain and the Hispanic World exhibitions at the Royal Academy, Piccadilly: trousers from the Ragged Priest*, corset from ASOS*, beanie from @rosiejg2 on Depop, linen shirt from ASOS*-

-16th February 2023: beanie from Primark, skirt, cardi & corset from UO*, faux leather blazer & coat underneath as before, tights from ASOS*-

Florence Given (me life? Or some style inspo anyways, forgive me the bad pun)

Look, I know she’s everyone’s fave white feminist to go in on buut she hasn’t done anything egregious enough that we can’t appreciate her style that I’m aware of, at least? She makes a lot of valid points, one of which is that we will absolutely slaughter women for doing like 1/4 of the morally questionable shit male creatives do before we cross the threshold of dismissing their work. That man probs doesn’t deviate from jeans and a t-shirt 95% of the time!!! But Florence is the besttt at the 70s bohemian rock vibe, a shining example of why I may allow it on this occasion if the next in an endless list of tik tok’s aesthetic crazes is piratecore  (or have they been there done that already?), and an aspirational figurehead for all those of us who identify as members of the more layers the better agenda. To put it delicately, regardless of your feelings about her, with the acknowledgement maybe it’s not my place to give an opinion anyway, anybody who’s wondering how you combine the nomadic romanticism of Alessandro Michele’s Gucci/Etro/Erdem/Zimmerman/Johanna Ortiz with a little bit of that YSL glamour, we owe her one for the visual manual that her Instagram feed provides. You know, take some inspo. You don’t have to credit her. Level the playing field. Isn’t that what she did? Idk lol. It’s 2020 something. Expecting completely originality from anyone is a lot to ask. All I know is that there’s no harm in more popular feminist literature even it can be seen as surface level and her style is delicious, lol.

-13th March 2023, Lao Cafe in Covent Garden: jeans from charity shop, top from ASOS*, arm warmers from UO*, coat from @shikirajaydeen on Vinted, scarf from @jools560 on Vinted, coat underneath from UO-

-31st January 2023, @ Russell Cotes Art Museum & Gallery, Bournemouth: jumper from Bershka*, skirt from @semmoore on Depop, linen shirt from @alicialouwoods on Depop, hat, shoes and tights from ASOS*-

-10th March 2023, street art in Brick Lane: dress from the Ragged Priest*, faux leather blazer as before, coat from charity shop, tights from ASOS*-

You Better Buy, Bitch (as Karl Marx probably NEVER said)

Does it probably go against my principles to make purchase recommendations? I mean, I’d say probably, but let’s be real, being able to rave about something with minimal to no influence is a perk of the act of posting, for me at least, pretty much being an act of screaming into the void.

Pre-loved Faves

Given I’ve shown a bit of a Vinted bias in my last few posts, I thought I would stick to all the lush lil pieces I found on Depop recently. They were all still available last time I checked, which was a few weeks ago, so hopefully that hasn’t changed!

Make of these (and their potentially crappy quality given the sacrifice entailed when you want to include like 32 screenshots in one image with a pixel ratio designed for Instagram posts) what you will.

Ethical? Newness: Superdry

Any fashion company that has “it’s a start” as their rating on Good on You is practically saintly in the grand scheme of things hence Superdry’s tentative placement on this list.

What I want to know is when did their stuff get actually…a bit cute? 

My adolescence took place at a time when Hollister, Jack Wills, and (this one was practically a mark of the elite, it’s exclusivity only bolstered by my head of year’s banning of those paper bags with the anonymous male’s six pack on them) Abercrombie were the height of fashion, accessible to only an exclusive few, and Supedry, whilst not quite held in that level of esteem, was also up there. I might only have been able to get a couple of Hollister sale tops but a Supedry branded T-shirt was marginally more accessible; for whatever reason, my parents tended to see their stuff as high quality investments rather than lumping it in with Hollister, Abercrombie etc. as part of a fad of the youth, lol . Anyway, the point is, I very much dismissed all those brands as crazes of a bygone era. Buuut, despite a niggling discomfort with the English owner’s seeming attempt to masquerade as a Japanese brand,  it’s come to my attention that some of Superdry’s stuff (and actually, Hollister too) is a…bit of me? To be more specific, they do these retro style print sundresses which I have on my Karma wish list, my fondness for which is definitely in part attributable to their resemblance to Lana Del Rey’s early stage outfits. ARGH, her performing songs from the UV album in those psychedelic mini dresses were a cultural moment which still crosses my mind on the daily.

On top of that, their clothes fall within the upper regions of the high street’s price range which means they’re the kind of one-off pieces that are going to stay in your wardrobe for a long time and not end up in the fast fashion doom spiral that’s filtered through the local charity shops straight into a landfill 50% of the time.

The Ragged Priest

The latest drop I…girlies if I wasn’t BROKE already, this collection would be taking me there. I’ve gone on about my love for TRP ad nauseam already so I don’t think I need to add much more here.

Arcana Archive

Arcana Archive is an online Japanese clothing store which acts as a platform for small, independent designers to sell their stuff. It ships worldwide and despite a relatively more expensive price mark (I’m talking in comparison to a site like ASOS which operates on a similar business model), the pieces are really unique and quite experimental within the confines of current trends. But yeah, you really can’t get much more ethical than buying an independently designed piece and Arcana Archive cuts out the uncertainty by facilitating that through a streamlined medium.

Regal Rose

Behold their absolutely STUNNING new collection. I am sooooOooo obsessed with every jewellery line they put out. They have, quite simply, perfected the delicate to dominatrix vibe ratio lol, and have the most unique and show stopping collections of statement jewellery out there by a mile. 

Very Important Face Paint

1. Tarte Shape Tape

Look, nothing is every going to be able to fully erase these dark circles. I got into a space where I was okay with them because they looked hot on Bella Hadid, lmao, but as much as I don’t want to be influenced by whichever TikTok aesthetic we’ve deemed “of the moment”, this whole clean girl thing got me pretty much back in that “would under eye fillers really be thaaaat bad?” headspace. What is a clean girl? Why does the Pinterest tag look like a white supremacist’s inspo board for the creation of a master race? I’m overrrrr the back and forth on how WOMEN’S FACES, like our GENETICALLY DETERMINED FEATURES, should look to be “on trend”! Holy shitttt, like I’m sorry that tinted moisturiser isn’t going to cover up a break out on my chin but we are not blank canvasses to be used as ad billboards for skincare products. I’m not getting under eye fillers because 1. in this economy? I think the fuck not! but 2. because the concept of getting a needle under my eye bothers me to my core. I really want to try and practice what I preach in that our uniqueness is what makes us beautiful but ARGH it’s such a difficult stance to take when it comes to accepting your own insecurities. 

Soo let’s just call Tarte’s Shape Tape concealer the middle ground. I am under no illusion any concealer is going to get rid of my dark circles but anything that reduces the number of times people (usually men) feel the need to tell me I look tired is pretty much in the business of miracles. I have really tried EVERY other hyped up concealer from Touché Eclat to Charlotte Tilbury’s Magic Away concealer and this is the only one which makes a noticeable difference. It isn’t super easy to get in the UK which is the only drawback but I managed to get it on offer through QVC, as much as it pained me to do that given the deeply embedded association that exists for me between borderline sociopathic individual Lisa Rinna and the enterprise. But needs must.

2. YSL Touché Eclat Foundation

I won’t hold it against the Touché Éclat range that it was not capable of fixing my dark circles. Many greats have tried and failed and that is no mark on their greatness but a sign of my unfortunate genetics and terrible sleep schedule. And this foundation is gorgeous on every level; it truly is so smooth and glowy but simultaneously matte and blends into the skin like the milk I imagine cleopatra bathed in. IK I like a hyperbole but don’t let it be the reason you dismiss this stuff because it is goldddd.

3. Bybi Babe Balm

Truly got me feeling like a babe, this is the closest thing my dull, crusty ass skin will get to looking alive.

4. Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-on Lipliner

The only lipliner I have ever known not to bleed, and to retain its pigment for any substantial period of time. I haven’t tested it’s staying power past the 14 hour mark but I can confidently say it made it with only a slight fade to that time stamp.

5. NYX Dewy Finish Setting Spray

Very decent for the price and gives an amazing finish. The claims of its similarity to the Urban Decay setting spray is all that stands between me and further damage to my bank account because look, if I can get something slightlyy cheaper for only a slight discrepancy in quality I’ll take the L. Like all NYX products, it’s vegan and cruelty-free as well which is a personal must. 

Food…for Thought (see what I did there)

*Hi, recovery people, it starts here!

See if I do this again, ideally, there’s not going to be a whole category for food lmao. And strap in, btw. This section is 90% of this post’s mammoth word count, I reckon.

I’m thinking in future I’ll break the things I’m about to mush into one up into:

A more specific “places” category which will go beyond restaurants, I promise, and actually include other must-dos around London and anywhere else I happen to visit!

A more specific purchases/recipes/general recommendation category.

And then keeping a thoughts section separate as long as what I’m about to address continues to be relevant and helpful. I’ll expand in a sec. It’s a topic I’m disproportionately afraid of posting about considering there’s not exactly anyone hanging on my every word, lol, but still. Ideally in time, a “thoughts” section will transcend the topic of the anorexia recovery experience, if I do manage to shake my 5 remaining brain cells out of their dormancy anyway. Yeahhh, I thought I’d just drop it in there, bite the bullet and reveal that recovery is this elusive “issue” I have some thotsss on before anybody reading thinks I’m about to go on some outrageously offensive rant which ends up being the thing that DOES catapult me to online infamy and gets all excited.

This potential future post structure is more for the sake of having a more clearly defined section to broaden my recommendation horizons beyond restaurants to museums, galleries, general activities/experiences etc. But like, on this occasion my food recommendations are prefaced with some thoughts n feelings because they give a little bit of context as to why a list of restaurants is the first thing that comes to mind whenever anyone asks what’s good to do in London aside from the obvious tourist traps.

I’ve gone back and forth on posting anything about this subject a lot, kinda unnecessarily really. Like I said, I don’t have a tonne of followers, nobody that I know irl follows me (maybe like one very close friend), and so it’s not like there’s any real ramifications of whatever I do or don’t choose to post about. The perception that I’m making a declaration to some vast audience I don’t doubt is just an extension of that internalised male gaze thang which makes everything in life feel like it’s an act of solicitation for other people’s opinions based on which I decide whether or not the crushing sense of shame I constantly feel atm is warranted.

Making my first post on the anorexiarecovery Reddit (which has the cushioning of anonymity that Tumblr obvs lacks) and just how much it helped me and on a more general level, how hearing from others who have recovered from a long-standing eating disorder has helped me, is the kick up the arse I needed to finally talk about it here. If feeling like you’re “sick enough” to accept help is hard, you can imagine openly identifying  yourself as “in recovery” is even harder so please just gently let me know if you come across this on the anorexia recovery tag and there’s ways you feel I could have more sensitively addressed the issue.

Like a girlie is vulnerable, lol. I’m a whole mess, most likely even more unbearable to others than I was in the depths of anorexia. Even when you start the formal recovery process and have the intention to follow whichever course of therapy or program or treatment you’re receiving, thinking of yourself as actually in recovery and the acceptance of everything that comes with that, rather than seeing treatment as a means of learning how to maintain your control and your weight and basically, your anorexia, in a slightly less dangerous and mentally exhausting way, takes fucking ages. I hate being out of control. Hate it, hate it, hateeee it. And I know I know. Anorexia is more about control than about the food itself so that is probably an unnecessary addendum. But it’s a cliche for a reason, lol.

Saying traight up that you’re in recovery and identifying with other people who are feels like a very permanent thing and a huge change to your life as you know it. It’s solidifying that there is no going back now, allowing your body to do all the things with the acceptance that this is a process you cannot control, and that you can’t use anorexic behaviours to try and get that sense of (fake!!!) control back. When disordered eating of some kind is all you know, in my case a cycle of anorexia and binge eating that has gone on for as long as I can recall being aware of the fact that there’s a correlation between what I eat and how my body looks, it takes time to accept that recovery could represent anything but a fucking unbearable and embarrassing existence. I’m not the happiest with where I’m at in recovery right now but being willing to call what I’m doing right now that R word and affirming that this is a process of change rather than an adaptation of my mindset to a less outwardly concerning form is, from an objective perspective, really big! And I know I couldn’t have got here without being able to separate anorexia (I’m just going to shorten it to AN because it’s always felt a dramatic word for what has just been my way of life, if anyone can relate to that? lol) from myself, which happens when you can recognise that rather than everything you think is an inherent, unchangeable part of who you are being the cause, it is just something that’s been manipulated to become a fundamental element of a parasitic illness:)

This realisation has come from two different sources. Firstly, from the formal course of therapy itself (I’m doing MANTRA treatment for anyone who finds this and is in the same boat), and secondly, from spaces (I mean mostly online tbh but I have a friend or two in real life who have some experience) where others, whether still suffering from their eating disorder or fully-recovered, are voicing their own thought processes and feelings. We like to think of our thoughts as completely authentic and complex and as resulting from a reasoned conclusion, and we want to believe we do have control over our lives, so it only fees right to act in a way that aligns with these thoughts, but what you realise as you see the exact same sentiments expressed by others with AN is that a lot of the “thought” processes that fuel anorexia aren’t so uniquely yours after all. It’s one thing to be challenged about a single, isolated AN thought by someone you know pointing out that it’s not true and that it’s just the illness etc. because you can just defend its legitimacy and why you continue to act accordingly to yourself like “okay, that’s not rational and maybe sometimessss that’s a baseless, anorexia driven false belief but it’s different for me, this isn’t irrational. It’s true. I know this because I came to this conclusion myself and so in my case what I believe will happen if I don’t do X/Y/Z will actually happen”. The cognitive symptoms sound and look and adopt the same ways of thinking that you believe to be an inherent part of who you are. If you are a rigid, routine-oriented, stubborn, all-or-nothing, obsessive (reading the list of traits identified as signalling increased risk of developing AN was a bit of a self-roast I can’t lie) perfectionist then congratulations! You won’t notice anything out of the ordinary when those “thoughts” run through your head and you certainly will not think for one minute that they are textbook mental manifestations of an illness masquerading as your internal monologue. But maybe you will when you see just how routinely they appear as part of a more extensive, specific set of “thoughts” described by people who have also been diagnosed with AN. Big oh shit!!!! moment when you feel a little bit of the special snowflake armour melting away. 

The sense of vulnerability which descends upon the realisation you can’t trust your own thoughts, not knowing which of the responses that come into your head where you’re put into a challenging food-related scenario is the AN one, the “wise”/recovery mind (I.e the truth), and which one is the most “you” and honours YOUR well-being in all of this, feels like presenting yourself to Simon Cowell on the X Factor stage circa 2007, at its peak popularity. Ya got the whole of the UK watching, Simon looks you up and down, and says “it’s a no from me”, and then him, Louis and Sharon all start bickering about whether or not he was too harsh and whether Louis is being too generous by affirming your star potential. Essentially, it feels like throwing yourself to the sharks with no clue which one is being honest about how tasty you are. Enough metaphors?

Basically, eating disorder recovery of any kind involves mediating between a LOT of internal voices who guide you with dramatically varying levels of empathy and none of them agree. Throw experience of binge eating into the mix and the “go on, you knowwwww you’ll feel better if you do eat X, Y and Z” sentiment that characterises your impulses and how similar that can sound to the things you’re taught in recovery about how to listen to your body and practice kindness to yourself ANDDDD then what is most likely the AN voice which draws on all that societal shaming we do of women having “too much” of an appetite and it’s just, FUUUUUCK. It is so FUCKING. EXHAUSTING to constantly have to distinguish one from the other. I never realised how exhausting it would be. It has really turned me into a foul person to be around at times, and that is the thing I hate about all of this the most. But hearing that other people have had these thoughts, that they aren’t an objective truth of life or the only option in your case, that disentangling them becomes second nature in time, is the reassurance I’ve needed to keep me working at it. To have evidence that these thoughts are a symptom, not a inevitable product of who I am, and that they therefore won’t always feel THIS crushing gives me hope to just stick out the extra mental stress that introducing a mediator to the internal argument creates.

Sooo it feels worth describing some of these thought processes on here in case, selfishly, it connects me with other real people who have experiences of their own to share, or less selfishly, it becomes one of the many many recounts of these thoughts that somebody stumbles across which pushes them across that same threshold of like (Kylie voice) realising thingsssss. Well, you know, realising oh shit, there are alternatives to how my brain is dictating to me I must live my life lest I self-implode in an inferno of shame and self-hatred. That’s the state I personalllyyy associate with the version of myself that has tended to precede a shift back towards restriction, probably stemming from multiple sources but that the AN voice whittles down to the single variable of numbers on a scale. Realising that being trapped by the all or-nothing rules or rituals and impossible standards isn’t something you just have to accept because it’s the only viable way to live your life, that it’s just that sneaky little anorexia MF drowning out the alternatives is one of the first steps laying the foundations for a wholehearted go at recovery.

The ability to disregard the AN thoughts doesn’t stick naturally past that initial lightbulb detection moment without a constant effort to identify and reaffirm that’s all they are but with the initial realisation comes a sense of relief. Underlying that initial commitment to recovery was the visceral sensation of detachment I had once I realised just how many of what I believed to be my OWN thoughts were cognitive biases symptomatic of anorexia and the impact of its resulting malnutrition on the brain. In other words, that what I perceived as my core beliefs were mental manifestations of problems attributable to an illness, like any that we so seamlessly identify when they present as physical ailments.

The possibility that the categorisation of these thoughts as symptoms entails, that an adherence to all the rules I developed based upon them and the misery they caused me doesn’t represent the best of a bad bunch of outcomes, that the anxieties attached to these AN thoughts aren’t legitimised by facts of nature akin to whatever it is Einstein said about gravity or the laws of motion, and thus are something that can be viably challenged, is the fundamental driving force to keep at treatment. When you’re seeing everryyy other person with shock! gasp! The exact same condition feeling exactly the same, coming to the exact same conclusions in a roundabout way, you realise...ahhh, I’ve been DUPED. SCAMMED! Like I said, we can buy into something irrational by perceiving it as a truth exclusive to our unique psychological, biological, and physiological makeup, our specific self-concept; it’s natural to want to think of ourselves as unique individuals whose decisions in life result from a sensible weighting of all these factors. Nobody wants to feel like they are pre-programmed to behave in a certain way. Our sense of self-determination gives our lives meaning and that feels all the more important when our other tendencies make the experience of being alive feel a bit scary or monotonous sometimes.

It gets harder, ya know Occam’s razor and all, however, to continue to give any merit to the anecdotal logic of these beliefs when the much simpler explanation is that they’re very cut and dry AN thought patterns just subtly tailored to include some of the idiosyncrasies of your internal monologue and thought style so they’re believable enough to you as a legitimate, reasonable, self-realised philosophy sustaining your behaviours. To live abiding by the principles formed from this “reasoning” process placates that instinctive self-determination drive.

What I’m trying to say in an overly convoluted way (this is what happens when writing about psychology usually involves the suppression of any creative flair or subjectivity as is the defining feature of an undergrad essay lol) is that talking about it, resonating with the experiences of others and how their symptoms manifested, it helps. It makes all the situations you put yourself in so much less scary when the trajectory you’re on in recovery, though requiring you endure thoughts and feelings that are intensely distressing in the moment, has ultimately helped people in the exact same position you are get to a happy, healthy place in the lives:)

Realising there’s nothing essential to your survival about these thoughts, that they don’t warrant an entire section dedicated to them (and hopefully, at some point in the future, will not get from me beyond how much better off I am without them!!!), is the beginning of a process which allows you to see the world in its whole again, and there’s so many recovery stories out there to support this. I look forward to being a much less self-absorbed person in my day to day life, lol, and being capable of meaningfully engaging with the expanse of vastly more interesting issues out there, even if this means opening myself up to a little bit more of that good old existential anxiety.

Getting to the point, then, this section exists to get these thoughts off my chest but in a way that is clear enough for anyone who comes across the tag to quickly be able to identify as similar to their own, and that gets across what I’ve found helpful in challenging them. It won’t usually be prefaced with all this context, lol! I really invite suggestions from others in the approaches they’ve taken to do this as well since you need as many tools to deconstruct AN logic as you can get your hands on, and I, for one, want my own toolbox to be full to the brim. I am to be the Bob the Builder of the anti anorexia agenda if you will, lmao.

For this reason, when I’ve managed to separate an AN thought from myself and isolate it, I’ve made sure to always note it down, trap that baby in a glass like a spider, and that’s that on how to do a perfect metaphor because I KNOW SPIDERS CAN’T HURT ME AND THERE IS NO REASON TO BE AFRAID OF THEM BUT IT FEES LIKE THEY’RE TARGETING ME, OMG. Yes, turns out spiders represented an eating disorder free life all along. To describe these thought processes on their own and just make them salient to somebody who is already trying to drown them out wouldn’t necessarily be helpful so I’m only going to address or articulate a thought when I have something to challenge it with, that I’ve picked up either through MANTRA, my studies, recovery advocates, or now and again that I’ve concluded myself and found to be reassuring. I can’t promise that the latter source will be of value but they’ve been important to me and maybe will trigger somebody else to apply that same (potentially questionable) reasoning process to their own circumstances and consider that new perspective. It’s rare but once in a blue moon sometimes this silly little brain of mine does strike something not quite gold but maybe bronze or silver, takes a dip in the pool of positivity, and shuts down the AN bullsheeet all on its own. I have to take stock of these incidences somewhere, lol.

On the basis it’s still pretty early days, there’s still a lot of AN thoughts I can’t quite convince myself don’t have some legitimacy, so when/if I do address them in a post it’ll likely only be one or two at a time as follows. Whether there ends up being too many to limit to a section in these seasonal update/summary posts because I go back to my typical lackadaisical posting schedule and end up having to just do an overall progress post at some point down the line we shall see but for now, I’ll get into it:-) on today’s agenda I wanna address:

The Spectre of Shame: 

Yess, AN really be on some Mike Flanagan shit when it comes to convincing you that recovery is the catalyst for some unbearable onslaught of shame. Hinting at it, revealing flashes of if, hanging it over your head but never actually revealing it or what would be sooo fucking unbearable about this experience that there’s no available coping mechanism or approach to remedy the resulting pain. 

Fearing my recovery body and other people’s reactions has always been a big hurdle in seeking treatment in the first place. Underlying it has just been this mental cacophony of potential responses. Notably, the idea that the people you care about will forget how ill you were at some point once you achieve a healthy weight and suddenly come to resent you for being “dramatic” about the whole thing and putting them through the things you did as a result of AN. 

Yeah, that’s not going to happen. Shocker! It’s some more AN driven bullshit! And it is part of the way it sustains itself by making you afraid of throwing yourself into treatment. The truth is that the people that expressed their concern when you were sick, at first my primary motivation to give treatment a third (lol) chance, are affected by it much more they let on. Seeing you at your sickest is not the kind of thing your loved ones forget, and if anything they’re probably massively fucking relieved and grateful when they see you becoming more relaxed around food. I didn’t realise how exhausting it was for my family to watch me be completely consumed by my eating disorder because it wasn’t addressed routinely, it was only when other situational factors pushed everyone to the edge that it would all come out and I’d see how much anxiety about my health was being kept from me for the sake of not causing upset.

I get that openly choosing treatment feels a lot like walking into a crowded room of your friends, acquaintances, every last human being you’ve ever encountered, and inviting everyone there to hyper scrutinise your body. Ooo, is she gaining too quickly? Has she let herself go? Has she lost control? She’s weak. She’s sick, she has an eating disorder, but one that makes her more pathetic than us because we all want a whole ass bar of chocolate you cheeky lil bitch but why are you so SPECIAL you get to have one just because you’re sad!? 

Again, AN, I BEG of you: shut the fuckkkk up. I know rationally that I wouldn’t for a second make that inductive leap about someone else who stated they were in their recovery. If anything I would be ecstatic for them knowing how good it feels to finally give your body all those things it has been gnawing away at you to give to it for so long, to experience that freedom. Think about the environment you’re in and the people around you. The people in my life are kind, and understanding, and if I’m judging their likely reactions by all their past behaviours, they’re likely to have the same thought process as I would about someone else just chowing down all that food that is so good for the soul. If they’re not, I don’t want them in my life anyway. 

The shame comes from me and me alone. At this point, every time I do actually pay attention to what I’m craving and try and respond to that in a non-judgemental way, and accept that the absolute worst scenario in my head (omg wow weight gain, a never before witnessed human phenomenon!), I take a step backwards, and evaluate what power the actual worst case scenario consensus actually holds.

So people do think I’m greedy or weak or whatever. It’s the way I coped and still do sometimes to give myself that little serotonin boost through food, to eat every delicious thing in sight. It’s not a moral failure. Everyone has their ways of coping with strong emotions and for every way in which we give in to one self-soothing impulse, there’s some other coping mechanism we’re resisting. The idea that there is an empirically verifiable relationship between eating for joy and any kind of negative trait is a load of shite. I can’t help but think misogyny has a lotttt to do with it too. Like, can you imagine a show called Woman Vs. Food? Wolfing down everything in sight is practically celebrated when it’s a man doing it, or at the very least, just accepted as part of the male predisposition, much like a high sex drive. Horny, hungry woman=slutty slob in the eyes of society, lol.

How much/what you eat can’t inherently make you a bad person. The only adverse effect is probs that long term, it isn’t going to feel great for your body. In my case at least, I know my internal fluids be moving like Valhalla after a mad one on the carbs and salts lmao, soz if that’s tmi but nobody with anorexia said anorexia is actually glam or a B&W 2013 tumblr inspired serve in anyway. It’s 40% annoying gross body issues and 60% internalised shame, boring food thoughts, fear and the constant burden of calorie counting because who the fuck wants to be doing maths 24/7. Recovery in the long run takes a fucktonne of will power. JFC, it’s a marathon, it’s the 800m you got signed up to doing on sports day without your permission. So if you describe the internal conflict you go through with that, anybody who will still look at you choosing to eat what you ACTUALLY want at the end of the day and think that represents weakness…ridiculousness.

To stand on that stage and announce “I’m in recovery” and for that to be visible in some way or another (reminder that thinness isn’t a complete measure of sickness anywaysss!), isn’t something embarrassing. it’s a sign that it’s working and that I’ve hit the “oh my god what have I done” hurdle and actually jumped over it this time, and not been sucked back into AN. To learn to be okay with your new body, and be okay with others opinions of it off the back of that, is a part of recovery I feel I’m only just starting to be asked to think about in treatment as I enter the weight restoration zone. It’s defo revealing itself to be one of the strong walls of my AN’s lil fortress. That opinions about the way we look are important isn’t something that can be just shut down with science like those other AN “facts” are. One thing I loveee about my therapist is that she always brings the feminist perspective into it. Like, as women it’s drilled into us from the moment we’re old enough to comprehend there’s some implicit societal code that our worth is at least in part determined by the acceptability of our appearance, to the extent it feels like an inherent truth that we owe it to others to conform to beauty standards if we want to be treated with respect. Anorexia pounces on that and uses it as evidence as to why it’s not an illness, but something to be cherished, something you would be useless without. Treatment has focussed a lot on personal values and principles to aid that self/anorexia separation process so far and I think it will come in useful here too, again to break down the legitimacy of these beauty standards which reinforce AN fuelled beliefs, and tbh, are ever fucking changing anyway. Psychologically speaking, conforming to an arbitrary beauty ideal would never be a reproducible (see, it may have been some term 1 year 1 week 2 level terminology but I did get one thing out of my Research Methods modules) anyway.

I wish I wasn’t a fashion loving girlie:( I wish the phrase heroin fucking chic had never entered my verbal lexicon:( I wish I hadn’t fucking internalised the ideals of the 2013 EFFY STONEM LANA DEL REY ARTIC MONKEYS SOFT GRUNGE BRUISED KNEES SAD B&W GIF 90S AESTHETIC etc. etc. etc. Tumblr era and allowed it to mutate into the enduring ideal of what external standards would constitute my perfect self, the one that would have all her shit togetherrr and be okay. I wish it wasn’t an ideal which I still have to see reinforced every now again, when I engage with something I’m passionate about, minding my business browsing Vogue runway and seeing that YSL once a-fucking-gain seemingly came to the conclusion they’d maxed out their body diversity quota by hiring just ONE singular model who may be, like, a size 10 at a push in amongst the 30 other size 4/6 girls walking.

Maaaaybe that I feel this way, though, have such conviction about how harmful these standards are, will give me something positive to focus my energy on rather than wasting it paying any attention to these kinds of arbitrary societal ideals. We don’t have to accept that respect would be given on a shallow basis, and tbh doing what you can to fight that norm sounds a lot more fulfilling anyway. 

Anyway, I look forward to adding some proper, professional logic to what I can only summarise as that brain fart as I cover it in treatment:-)

“This is the Best it Gets”:

The biggest lie AN will tell you.

It might mimic that harsh AN tone a lil but I find it necessary to remind myself “course this isn’t your best life. FFS, everyone knows what this disorder does to people. You know of people that have died from it. The number of people that have recovered happily is huge. The outcomes for the people who have maintained their anorexia into adulthood on the other hand are BLEAK. So why are you so special that you’re the exception to the actual, EVIDENCE based rule. Anorexia is horrible and it’s shit and it IS possible to overcome it. Get a grip.”

The way you think is not the result of you having been fundamentally and irreversibly changed as a person, and does not represent an irreparable apathy towards the goals and principles that used to motivate you in life. Not to repeat myself as I’m sure I am doing here but it has been so hugely validating to hear my therapist (whether she’s just very good at her job, speaking from personal experience, or both, idk! I want to ask but I don’t know if that’s appropriate or not? Thoughts?) essentially say “I understand. This doesn’t feel like something you’re suffering from. It feels like something you are deciding to maintain, that you’re choosing thinness over the people you care about. But it is hurting you the most and why would you choose that?” MANTRA is based on the idea of several factors coming together to cultivate an AN mindset, a combination of thinking style, personality traits, values, relationship styles, experiences, and emotional disposition. Of course these factors aren’t always possible to change but you can change the way they feed into your AN and develop methods of channelling them other than through the medium of restriction, towards achieving other, more positive and fulfilling goals. You’ve always had these traits and you didn’t always need AN to get by, right?

The belief AN is a choice, not an illness you can be inherently vulnerable for,  goes hand in hand with the way eating disorders in general are misunderstood, including those that manifest in extreme obesity. You see it most with the people who will tell you to “just eat” and “why are you doing this to yourself!”. And then you feel like a fucking awful person. Why AM I doing this to myself? Look at what this is doing to people who care about me. Either I’m a fucking horrible selfish person OR I NEED this disorder to survive. I don’t think I’m the best person on the planet. But I don’t think I’m evil enough of a person to want to cause everyone pain if there was an alternative. It’s the last thing I want to do. So there must BE no alternative. This must be my only option. The result of this logic is the sense that there’s nothing beyond AN. Shame is the only thing on the other side of the coin it feels like you have no choice but to flip, it’s prospective existence a phantom in your head that you use anorexia as a shield against because it tells you it is your only defence. This is what AN does. The less you eat; the more you think about food, and the less capable you become of thinking about the bigger picture. The more rigid and black and white in your thinking you become. It’s eat nothing or eat everything, so even eating something sometimes can feel like opening floodgates. When you starve your brain of nutrients, you don’t have the cognitive recourses to think about nuance or develop solutions. Learning that was another intense lightbulb moment, and I almost physically felt things slot into place inside me, like I’d got a bit of myself back. The realisation that this, the psychological process underlying our conviction that anorexia is the be all and end all, is the ACTUAL truth, not the thought itself. That I continue like this isn’t the only way forward. That moment where I finally understood these thoughts weren’t organic, that they weren’t MINE, that they’re textbook AN biases, was really eye-opening. I just needed, still need, a little help to get the ball rolling and bring my rational voice back into the convo. 

I might not know exactly what an alternative I’m comfortable with looks like though with each practical suggestion I try and can tolerate, that becomes more fully formed. And though I can’t predict exactly what the end result of that alternative will be, what I do know is at the very least it will take away a handful of minor inconveniences. Shopping in the little girl’s section for pants for example-the PARANOIA I get when someone even glances in my direction whilst I’m doing so that they might think I’m some nonce who just enjoys perusing the kid’s undies section. No more! Your body panicking when you eat a bit more of certain types of food and either A). Sending you into a food coma, and yes, that’s WHEREVER you are and whatever you are doing, sitting in a theatre show or the cinema and even more frequently, on public transport or B). Immediately demanding you go…expel that entire whole meal right now of your own volition or find yourself empathising with Will McKenzie in that episode of the Inbetweeners where his bowels took his A-levels for him. The COLD!!! I spent far too many days this past winter trying not to cry because I was that painfully fucking freezing. The circulation issues had the skin on my knuckles cracking open when I bent my hands FFS, I was out in the customer service trenches serving people with raggedy ass plasters all over my hands, getting dirty looks from the pensioner buying his 3rd pack of JPS Superkings of the day, I-

It’s such an unglamorous disorder, and yet we still romanticise the shit out of it. Well let me tell ya. I do not feel ethereal or delicate or fragile or any of those qualities that I probably internalised as being inherent to anorexia back in those tumblr 2013 days. I feel boring and grouchy and gross and self-absorbed and incompetent. Utterly useless except as a calorie counting machine. No wonder catwalk models always had such a rep for being airheads because depleting your brain of nutrients, as has finally happened this being the longest restrictive phase I’ve experienced, truly makes you dumb AF in ways you don’t actually realise. Like stuff just goes in one ear and out the other and I have become this truly chaotic, all over the place person which is incredibly frustrating because I used to be, and want to be, someone who makes every effort to be on top of their shit with everything, always. Unfortunately, your brain just loses the capacity to hold all the information you need in the right places or evaluate anything properly and your time management gets all over the place. Your common sense disappears and you don’t make the links that keeping up with the pace of daily life (especially true in London, lol) requires. Anything that isn’t related to your AN loses its importance and without the motivation to give other commitments your full attention, the considerations you need to make to fulfill them fall through the cracks. The worst part is that people get sick of your shit because it seems like you just don’t care about them. You either feel incompetent as fuck or wonder if you’ve actually always been like this which deep down you know you haven’t because you’ve never felt such frustration at the inability to actually execute all these plans you make. I don’t want people to worry, I don’t want to go back to a hospital ever again, I don’t want to be painfully cold all the time, I sure as helllll don’t want such irregular bowel movements or hot and cold sweats, crusty ass skin or purple hands. I want to live deliciously (sorry Florence Given antis), and I WANT to be able to romanticise my life and AN doesn’t provide the content the 2010s soft grunge corner of the internet would have you believing it does. It’s just exhaustingly mundane, uncomfortable, and awkward.

The best thing I’ve noticed since committing to a regular eating schedule, to give one example of a recovery commitment, is that the constant mental chatter has significantly reduced. Sometimes no thoughts head empty is the GOAL. I do not want my brain to feel like the store I work at on a summer bank holiday once all the other supermarkets have closed. There is so little space for anything else-I gave up reading the news like 2 years ago because anything outside of the ED perspective felt trivial and that’s ridiculous. Kourtney Kardashian could scream PEOPLE ARE DYING! In my face and I’d be like yah, whatever. But to be serious, and kinder to myself, the soundtrack to the past few years of my life has seemed to ricochet between 2 defaults: a shouting match at the Queen Vic fought not by Kat Moon and…some other Eastenders character  (idk, it’s been a while since I watched, I forget the rivalries) but instead between advocates for all the different impulses and urges and rules and regulations, OR a droning, mundane static, occasionally permeated by calculations and conversions of calorie consumption to weigh gain in pounds. There is very little feeling in the anorexic experience. Pretty much just frustration, boredom and anxiety, fear of the absolute worst happening but you don’t know what that absolute worst even is and can’t really articulate exactly why it’s so terrible. Like the end of life seems to be spiralling towards me sometimes (thanks chronic anxiety and climate change and late stage capitalism heh) and I can’t get over how much FUCKING TIME I WASTE THINKING ABOUT FOOD. FOOD. There is nothing interesting about food unless we’re talking about how good it is. The best meal deals, sophisticated subject matter like that. 

My intention in articulating these thoughts is because the more of their forms you encounter, the clearer the similarities in their underlying structure becomes, and the easier it is to recognise them as symptoms. Once we know symptoms are all AN “thoughts” are, and that it’s part and parcel for the distorted reality we experience to seem like absolute truth, it gets a lot easier to have faith that acting to contravene the rigid boundaries they’ve led to us imposing isn’t going to result in catastrophe. When we have evidence that treatment for any physical illness is effective and reduces symptoms, we trust it’ll ultimately reduce them for us too even in the face of short term unpleasantness we experience as a result. So the point of verbalising these thoughts is to affirm that they are something which necessarily become less intense each time we assess and challenge them.

To wrap this section up, I really, seriously welcome feedback from anyone in recovery coming across this. Like, I hope none of it is patronising, or comes across as if I expect anyone to read and be like “thanks girlie, ya cured me!” xoxo

I want the way I explained myself to be helpful. If not, it’s just a particularly self-indulgent ramble lol. It seems necessary to articulate an unhelpful thought pattern before I get into challenging it in order to highlight how textbook it is but ofc when I name or describe the thought, I don’t want to do that in a way that enables or reinforces anybody else’s similar belief. Any suggestions if this section has done that for you are welcomed.

On top of that, it goes without saying I’m extremely privileged to have won the postcode lottery in finally getting a long-term, holistic, person-centred form of therapy. I hate to say I’ve been unlucky in the past with what I’ve received because I know some people have had no help at all, but what I’m trying to say is that it does take intensive support to overcome this not just, like, realising things. It‘s a lot easier when you have someone you know knows what they’re talking about, and whose support extends beyond the scheduled hours you have with them. The AN voice doesn’t take a day off and so much damage can be done in just a week without the recourses to challenge it. Being able to reach out to someone who uses their knowledge to validate you and relieve that extreme loneliness that comes with feeling trapped inside your own head, who treats you as a whole person who needs pointers on how to adapt the knowledge taken from scheduled sessions to the complexities of your everyday life and doesn’t fault you for not knowing already, is so essential. You need that external voice to hold you accountable in actually translating the act of challenging your thoughts into action, but one that communicates with kindness and empathy because they know that otherwise it all starts to feel a bit too similar to the tone of AN. What I wish is that there was some kind of sponsor network similar to those attached to AA/NA groups/if there already is, it was more widely known of. Of course, a professional sounding board is the best you can get but any external, motivating voice that comes in conjunction with a thorough understanding of how deeply embedded an ED is and knows how difficult it can be to challenge what feels like the core of who you are, can help. I don’t like to sugarcoat stuff, so I say all this with the addendum that you can be as picture perfect a model of a recovered anorexic as they come and still be changed forever by the period you spent consumed by it, especially if that begins at a young age when your brain is still developing. I do kind of believe the echoes of any ED will always be there, and the framework the illness puts in place in your head to maintain itself never fully crumbles. Your perspective may always be through a slightly disordered lens. But that framework will become weaker and it will become easier for the objective truth to break through and storm the gates and ultimately be victorious against what becomes a very fragile, pathetic version of the disordered voice, to make decisions based on principles of self-care and compassion. Obviously, knowing all this stuff in isolation won’t always be enough. I can identify thoughts as a product of AN, know they’re not going to get me where I want to be in the long term, but honestly don’t always have the energy to ride out the fight or flight response that going against them entails. The self-criticism and shame is still quite instinctual at this stage. I’m at the point of slowly testing what actually happens if I make small transgressions of those food rules, tolerating weight gain regardless of how uncomfortable it is, basically debunking the existence of this spectre one bar of Dairy Milk Oreo or B&J’s Baked Alaska at a time. It’s kinda like the flooding stage of phobia-specific CBT. The trick is that in the meantime, whilst you’re distracted by all these difficult feelings, your brain is well fuelled enough to redevelop the ability to think in shades of grey, and remember the things about life you loved before you gave the illness your complete unyielding devotion.

I’m hoping in time, especially as summer comes to an end, it will be easier to deal with the physical changes. I adore the sun and the heat and the beach but at this stage in recovery, I think I’ll feel more optimistic once the seasons change and bring with them the opportunity to wrap up and drape myself in layers. Like, although I’m almost within the healthy weight range now, there are moments when the (unfair and unwarranted) recognition that I no longer have the body that I was unashamed of and how that has become unattainable again fills me with self-hatred and disgust. For a second maybe, there is a rush of emotions worthy of the fear I felt at the beginning of the recovery process. To bring back the spectre, that initial full glimpse of it is sufficiently horrifying to make it tempting to reach out for the AN shield again. But the longer you share a space with that entity, the more obvious it becomes it’s just a costume. You notice the faint lines where prosthetics meet the skin and the rings around the contact lenses, and eventually it’s like seeing the lady who plays the Nun IRL on the red carpet, like witnessing a Scooby Doo unmasking, where you realise the horror is in the all the attachments and that what lies underneath it all can’t actually hurt you. These feelings aren’t a one time affair, they occur enough to make you feel really shitty and overwhelmed, but they are transient and there is a sense of freedom that comes with this being a body which doesn’t involve depriving yourself of everything you crave and the fear of all the other devastating consequences. A rush of painful emotions far supersedes death by a thousand cuts if you will, lol. There was a time when the thought of gaining even one pound was unbearable and yet here I am. So I know that I can get through these surges of distress too, and I don’t plan to set unrealistic expectations of being perfectly okay with it on myself right now. I said to myself yesterday I probably won’t wear shorts again this summer. But that’s okay for now. Any day that solidifies my commitment to resist AN is progress. This body acceptance should become easier with the luxury of a private, safe space to fully process these feelings, without any unhelpful outside influence on how I reshape my self-image. The last thing you need when you’re trying the radical self-acceptance thing is the prospect of external chatter that comes with being exposed to everyone else’s judgements too, as is the case in hot weather when you’re like, socially obligated to get ya bum out. I need that chance to be okay with my recovery body as it is rather than feeling pressure to accommodate it to others expectations, which I know I shouldn’t and once I know myself better, hopefully won't feel the need to. Being able to challenge the worst case scenario of shame and judgement from others isn’t possible if I still haven’t got to a place where my confidence and faith in the objective, non-disordered, empirically viable truth is robust enough to not give the hypothetical judgements any emotional weight, to stay neutral and detached as AN goes into overdrive trying to adjust the marker at which this unbearable, worst case scenario will occur. It doesn’t like it very much when you reach the previously established threshold, the one that was once so terrifying you couldn’t bear the thought of any kind of change pushing you towards it, and realise…oh…soOoo my world hasn’t fallen apart. Shit. And you wonder what exactly it was you were so afraid of. Still, with each revelation, whatever’s round the corner of this next threshold is still scary. It’s just that with each one you overcome you have more faith that you can muddle through it as you have before. It’s not an instinctual faith but one you have to actively search for on difficult days where you reflect on your lowest point and grieve because it was something you feel you really suffered for and LORD knowsss, we all love to romanticise tragedy. But you keep doing that over and over again and you choose to try and cope, something that takes practice, and ultimately the idea is that you won’t need faith at all, that acting against eating disordered thoughts will just make sense. The CBT-ish part, the restructuring of the cognitive framework maintaining AN into one which makes looking after yourself the easy, sensible option (I.e your new default) rather than something that’s gonna lead to eternal pain and suffering over just how grotesque it makes you, (tehe feels good girls x) can only work as it should once you’ve also had that exposure to observe how-decisions less dictated by anorexia actually turn out, as in maybe there is no earth-shattering catastrophe to follow. You need to have built up a body of evidence that the resulting scenarios are ones you can withstand. You also need to be able to perceive life in its entirety, outside of the disordered tunnel vision you’ve developed, to remind yourself, and wholly comprehend, the richness of the experiences AN steals away. That isn’t always there for everyone, which is why I want to reiterate that recovery doesn’t boil down to having “enough” strength, but about having reasons to recover too and I’m privileged in that aspect.

But anyways….flooding, a sponsor, CBT? Did I just create my own treatment programme? Much to think about. 

I don’t know how to round off such an intense section so I guess, here are some restaurant recommendations???? Which I felt compelled to include as a means of developing my budding Google reviews career (shout out to my one follower), and thennn onto some more lighthearted stuff, ya know, stand out films, TV, books etc. of the first half of the year. But maybe in future posts, assuming I continue to progress, I can start talking about some of the things I’ve gained in recovery to round up the thoughts section. It kind of sounds like a cliche that your AN tells you is bullshit that recovery is gonna improve your quality of life like of course they’re going to make this shit sound like a trip to Barbados, but just as accumulating other people’s accounts of anorexia symptoms delegitimises the truth you attribute to those symptoms, hearing the specifics of positive recovery experiences legitimises the idea that it’s something tangible. At this point I can already say I’ve got back into cooking, which I loved before my restriction got obsessive and health and balance and all that malarky was a goal of weight loss. SooOoo maybe I could share some recipes too. ANYWAY. Let’s get into my fave London eats, which I hope will also grow and evolve to include general London/travel recommendations as I regain the capacity to retain memories of experiences other than those revolving around food, lol. Unless I miraculously come into a large windfall of cash, the “travel” recommendations will most likely be limited to other UK places but on this occasion I can dip my toe into the “wAnDerrlustt” tag realm and kick things off with a few recommendations for Lisbon which I visited at the beginning of June. Having that goal of being able to write about these things in a few months time in a completely different mindset is definitively a good source of motivation. Being able to experience all these new places without the security blanket of my regular meal routines and advanced planning is scary but that spontaneity is part of what makes a trip away so exciting. Although on this occasion, being away and allowing myself to try everything I wanted didddd trigger a bit of a downwards spiral, in hindsight, that was a pretty good flooding experience and learning experience in general because like…I was bloated as fuck by the end and you know, 2 weeks later and I’m still here. Plus, all that boujie low calorie “healthy”, “high protein” food is costly!  Gym lads must be broke, honestly. If I want to do enough to justify an exPerIencES section I have to start eating like a normal human being, right? And just buy the Chicago Town pizza and the regular Ben & Jerry’s on Clubcard (as hard as Gym Kitchen pizzas, Yorkshire Prov. soups, Oppo ice cream and Halo Top Cookies & Cream/Cookie Dough flavours slap and you can’t tell me otherwise). I’ve gotta get some CULTURE and replicate the (mostly) fine dining experiences I had at these bad boys, which are my London stand outs of the last few months. 

Tavolino, London Bridge

Price Point: £15-30

Tavolino was fucking exceptional and thank god for that, because there is nothing worse than ordering a meat dish and it not feeling worth breaking the veggie streak at the end of it all. Their slow cooked lamb tagliatelle ragu was absolutely sublimeee, and so is the view, with the restaurant sat right on the Thames with the best view you can get of the City area. That’s the bit with all the skyscrapers that isn’t Canary Wharf, lol. When you’re sat with a beautiful dish of pasta in front of you and it’s all lit up, you almost forget all the moral corruption happening over there x

The service was also top tier. We had a waiter whose customer service performance was so elite you could almost believe they didn’t despise all other human beings which I feel at this point is an inevitability of working in a public facing job, lol. Like, he was super attentive but not annoyingly so to the point where you spend more time awkwardly swallowing your food as quickly as possible to feed back your enjoyment than you do actually eating it. 

My pasta was a leeetle bit on the pricier side (by my standards anyway, though relative to other London restaurants it’s one of the affordable ones, if you’re just doing mains and either a starter or dessert for instance). My pasta was probs the most expensive on the menu at about £17, discounting anything including seafood or truffle which are both icks for me anyway. I think I should take that as indication of the fact that my dream of living off the King’s Road is ill-fated, if I hadn’t worked that one out already when my card got declined in the Waitrose there when I tried to buy an own brand soup.

2. Ollie’s House, Chelsea

Price Point: £10-20

Sooo one of the absolute best things about treatment is that the clinic I go to is situated in the South Kensington/Chelsea area, which is how I came across Ollie’s House and a couple of the other faves I’ll mention. I should mention that yes, this is an NHS service, the clinic just happens to be based in Chelsea. I do not share a therapist with any Made in Chelsea cast members so no, I don’t have any wild stories about seeing Jamie Laing have a breakdown in the reception because being an heir to the owners of the UK’s bestselling biscuit company has given him pathological aversion to rich teas, or anything like that, sorry. 

-To clarify, that is a HYPOTHETICAL scenario. Jamie Laing’s family pls don’t sue me for misrepresentation, I’m a devoted fan of digestive biscuits, trust I’m a fan.-

What I do have is the location of one of the best all day brunch locations in London. Before you even get to the food, which constitutes a menu made up of Australian/Indonesian dishes (a fusion that produces reliably dreamy results and is arguably the only good thing to come out of rich Australians gentrification of that region), the interior itself of Ollie’s House is perfect. It’s spacious and airy, but also warm and inviting, full of plants and drenched in a colour palette inspired by sunset on one of Bali’s backpacker infested beaches. I should add here that I’ve never actually witnessed a Bali sunset but…a sunset is a sunset, you know. I’m gonna guess it’s the interior as a whole which gives the beach-y vibes, lol. 

Then there’s my Nasi Goreng which was ARGH. Beautiful, gorgeous, incredible. Rice for brekky, what a concept. Again, super friendly servers, which always adds to the experience.

3. The Jam, Chelsea

Price Point: £15-30

If I had to name just one of the restaurants I’ve visited in London as most worthy of the “hidden gem” title, it is The Jam, without doubt. From the outside it’s nothing flashy and it’s pretty small but the layout is everythinggg! The tables are on balconies! Like little treehouse structures! It’s adorable! I mean don’t get me wrong, you don’t HAVE to sit at one of the balcony tables if you don’t wanna climb the ladder up there (like, if you’re gonna be very thorough in your mission of trialling their very reasonably priced cocktails…perhaps…don’t?) but it’s so fun and makes you feel a little bit like a child again. It kind of does the impossible by creating an atmosphere that’s as lively as it is kitschy whilst still maintaining a sense of intimacy at each table, and general aura of sophistication. Say the food was just…decent, the novelty of the layout would make it worth a visit maybe just for the drinks, but idk, I feel like you can never be TOO disappointed by pizza ffs. What makes The Jam one of my absolute favourites, though, not of just the first half of this year but probably all time, is that the pizza is fucking heavenly and HUGE on that note. Mine was nduja, salami, and burrata and holy shit it was good. Like I am a pizza QUEEN. A good pizza outranks pretty much any other dish bar a good burger. This is up there with Crust Bros in Waterloo and this lil place called Pizza Baracca in my hometown area. This is a niche one because it’s a little family run takeaway in an area where the tourist industry is DYING (something I’m guessing the, uh, multiple recent stabbing as on the beach have a little to do with) but if by some wild and quite honestly bewildering coincidence you ARE reading this, and you have plans to broach the Dorset region over the summer, here’s your Deliveroo back up. You’re welcome. Consider them bonus recommendations xo

4. The Yorkshire Pudding Burrito Company, Kerb Market @ Camden Lock

Price Point: <£10

Look, Camden Lock in general is not what it’s hyped up to be. It is always teeming with people, seemingly regardless of when you visit. But the food on offer at the Kerb Market despite the lack of sheltered, and frequently, actually available, seating, makes it entirely worth a visit; on a warm, dry day you’ve also got the option of walking a little bit further along the canal to find somewhere quieter to eat. There’s a few Kerb street food markets dotted about London, and the South Bank one is a lot closer to me, but it truly pales in comparison. Not only does it house the Mac Factory (truly my bestie back in 2018 when I was in UCL halls and there was a branch at Euston Square station less than 100m away), but it has the Yorkshire Pudding Burrito Company which I’ve always wanted to try. That I spent SO much money on food in first year and passed the second half of it in a binge cycle and in that time, never tried one? A tragedy, lol, because it meant I’ve I spent the last few Christmasses telling myself that the ones they sell at my hometown’s Christmas market would suffice only to chicken out on that aspiration because it felt like a waste to go for the imitation when the real deal was out there. 

But recently, when I’ve travelled back up to London for therapy, I’ve been challenging myself and going through my Google maps list of all the places I bookmarked to eat whilst I was up there and couldn’t face the anxiety of at the time. My sister and I found ourselves in Camden recently for an art exhibition and on this occasion, it seemed like fate to test if it did live up to the expectations I’d formed over the years, which is a rarity. And guysss, the impossible occurred. It ACTUALLY DID. The meat was melt in your mouth tender, full of flavour, and the roasties and garlic and rosemary caramelised veg inside were exquisitely done. For it all to be wrapped in a fluffy Yorkshire pudding though like…ARGH. Otherworldly experience, truly. I know it was just that good because the lack of mint sauce didn’t bother me, and this was something which used to necessitate suppressing the urge to throw hands when I opened the fridge on a Sunday and noted it’s absence. Of all the cravings that stand in the way of going full veggie, a banging roast is one of them.

My last pro tip is that if you’re a caramelised biscuit fan, which it seems we all are atm (and I hope it’s a food trend that, much like Oreo filled/flavoured anything, salted caramel and “gold” chocolate, stands the test of time because I’m obsessed), follow up your Yorkshire Pudding Burrito company wrap with some Lotus flavoured ice cream from the Soho Ice Cream company. It is by far the most reminiscent of an actual lotus biscuit of the ones I’ve tried. There’s also a Chin Chin Dessert Club branch at the lock which is another magnificent way of tying a bow on top of what I advise you make a 3 course meal. If you want a YPBC wrap (I can’t type the whole thing out again, soz) or a Mac Factory pot but you also see something else you can’t resist trying, I say do starters too lol. You will spend more than you would at a sit down restaurant probs but look, if you’re a tourist doing the whole London thing, street food markets are an unmissable staple.

5. Badiani Gelato, various London sites (& Brighton!)

Price Point: £5-10

Anyone I spend any decent amount of time with will know I am an ice cream connoisseur. It’s a toss up with pasta for the one food I could eat forever. It is absolutely no surprise I have a list of every ice cream place I want to visit in London. I’m dedicated to the cause, whatever time of year, and no judgemental looks from McDonald’s staff for ordering a Mcflurry to go in December or tuts from the lunch lady at my secondary school for buying a Feast ice cream for lunch in sub zero temperatures has ever knocked my undying determination to satiate my yearning.

This pursuit continues to the capital and thus far, nothing has come close to Badiani gelato, another one I treated myself to for the first time after a therapy session given there’s one super close. I really can’t see anything tasting quite as good as their salted butter caramel flavour or their signature Buontalenti flavour (the Fior di Latte and white chocolate are fucking incredibleee too). Like listen, say heaven does exist. Say I don’t get to go there. There isn’t an Angel up in that cloud land who could whip up anything this ethereal tasting for God himself. Soo abandoning my disbelief in anything supernatural, if I’m allowed to stay as a ghost lurking on the King’s Road forever, I’ll be okay with that.

I’ve been enough now that I recognise some of the staff and they’re all really sweet and generous with the free samples too, lol, and there’s a cute covered patio area at the back too so you can sit in and eat. In the unlikely circumstance in which anybody with the same niche bucket list comes across this, this needs to be at the top.

6. Unity Diner, Whitechapel

Price Point: £10-25

Vegan cheese is usually pretty rough. I think most of us who eat both that and the real deal can agree. But whatever godly concoction it is Unity Diner drench their Philly Cheesesteak in is enough for them to deserve Vogue’s bestowal of the best Vegan restaurant in London award all on its own because they did the impossible: created something even more bursting with flavour than the dairy cheese on any similar dish I’ve had elsewhere.

Add to that the incredibly friendly, warm and informative service, the interior, the entirely sustainable business model and 100% cruelty free menu, and I hope this place stays open forever. If it becomes one of the long list of Veggie places in London that have shut down the last few years I will be absolutely gutted.

7. Bancone, Golden Square, Soho

Price Point: £10-25

Right off the bat, I do want to make clear that it is the Golden Square branch (not Covent Garden’s) of Bancone I’m hyping up. I’m sure this a statement that is going to absolutely devastate a restaurant which gets entirely booked up until 9pm on weekdays a fortnight in advance, lol, but yes, the former is very much in my bad books. It’s a policy which probably extends to both their branches but look, I got stung in Covent Garden so I’ll be damned if I favour that place. They charged me a £50 no show fee. FIFTY FUCKING POUND. Their most expensive pasta is probably half that price. Let me repeat myself: FIFTY. POUND. We are in a cost of living crisis here! And forgive me pls if I can’t wait for god knows how long for someone to pick up the store phone so I can try and reschedule because they don’t let you do it online if it’s not done days in advance or whatever. I was MAD mad. I sent a very strongly worded email. They did refund me but that I begrudge that I had to go pompous customer mode for that courtesy.

Moving on to the ray of sunshine, anyway, which is the Golden Square branch because I came here for a food love fest not a pile on. Yes, the silk handkerchief pasta is every bit as good as it looks and way more filling than you would think. Our waitress was also so sweet despite the fact she was stunning enough to make me reconsider the boy brow and resembled Dua Lipa. The internalised misogyny had me expecting a lil bit of snobbery and I’m mad at myself for that because I’m almost pleasantly surprised every time a pretty waitress gives good service and this is in spite of my worst service encounters being dished out by male waiters at 2 separate Big Mamma restaurants. Yes, I’m @-ing the guy at Circolo Poppolare who scoffed at one of our party for trying to order a dessert wine with her main (imagine mansplaining wine ffs), and at Gloria who stood glaring at my friend and I as we approached the midway point of what we were reminded was ONLY AN HOUR AND A HALF booking slot the second we walked through the door. He took my cacio e Pepe dish off me the minute I finished my last string of pasta COMPLETELY DISREGARDING THE BOWL OF SAUCE I STILL HAD! Sir, I am a broke student. You’re going to punish me for not being able to afford a multi-course meal by taking away the food I DID order before it’s finished. 

This is really turning into a restaurant rant section, I’m sorry, but I have a lot of feelings about food. Did I mention? I can only apologise. At least you can skim read a post, it’s the people I’ll bore to tears with this shit irl I owe the apology to, whoopsies. The next 3 are short and sweet!

8. Miscusi, Covent Garden

Price Point: £10-20

What Miscusi does really well is balance a quick and casual vibe with stand out service and incredible quality pasta which far surpasses in taste what you’d expect from how affordable it is. It kinda works a bit like Crust Bros (or Subway I guess, lol, which would ofc be worthy of a shout out if it wasn’t like, the world’s largest fast food chain. There are more of them than MDONALDS?!) that although there are preset options the main appeal is the create your own option where you get to pick the pasta, sauce and toppings. I made mine pretty much identical to the truffle vegan pesto pasta with the substitution of the truffle for good old regular sautéed mushrooms because as I’ve said, my taste isn’t that boujie, lol, and it was delicious. Can’t fault it. A perfect pasta dish tbh.

9. Chrome, St.Christopher’s Place

Price Point: £10-15

3 words: Biscoff french toast. Need I say more?

10. Patty & Bun, various sites (cheating, kinda)

Price Point: £10-15

Okay so including Patty & Bun in a London eats section even though there’s one in Brighton isn’t the part that makes it’s inclusion rogue because, like, Badiani has a Brighton branch too and I always tend to think of Brighton as London-on-sea anyway. It’s just that their Smokey Robinson burger (caramelised onions, smoky peanut butter mayo, and then I think the optional addition of chilli jam which stays improving literally any dish ever) is probs what saved me dropping out of uni for the second time at the beginning of 2nd year one night. I was sick of anorexia, sick of how hard it was making the basic organisational tasks required of my degree and sick of the imposter syndrome that came with that. I did what I had to do: flaked on the night at Ministry of Sound I’d organised with friends, stuck on a horror, and ordered myself a burger and fries. I knew reverting to 13 year old Lauren’s coping mechanisms wouldn’t do wonders for my mood in the morning but I also knew that this fuck everything and drop out impulse was just a result of a build up of emotions, culminating in a minor panic attack and that I would be able to think more clearly in the clear light of day, lol. So yeah I can overlook Patty & Bun being a food experience occurring outside of the 2023 window. IT SAVED MY DEGREE. And plus, it’s the only burger I’ve had which rivals the Bournemouth special from Central Story-again, another niche recommendation but it’s blasphemy to talk about burgers without name dropping this place. Both make an unbeatable case for why peanut butter elevates everything. Idk what it is but it truly takes a burger to the next level. And wilder still is HOW its the inclusion of BISCOFF SPREAD in the Bournemouth special that makes it magical!? Can’t explain that one because it sounds like a monstrosity but trust me, it’s mind blowing. I could do an “according to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should fly. The bee, of course, flies anyway, because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible” Barry B Benson style monologue on the matter if anyone wants to challenge my statement on that fact. Like I appreciate that according to all accepted culinary boundaries, this crossover, I.e  lotus, beef, cheese, onions, BBQ and chilli, should be inedible. But whoever the chef at Central Story is, they decided to go where most chefs wouldn’t dare tread and made something gorgeous. A true pioneer. It sounds so rogue but oh, feels SO right.

Now, to go international...

Lisbon, Portugal

I am aware that talking about an entire city as if it’s a cafe you could pop to one afternoon is very much giving Americans talking about going to “Europe” (sans further specification) energy but I only went for a few days and I feel like there’s soooOOo much there, we barely skimmed the surface; a “top things to do” list doesn’t feel warranted! I would LOVE to go back at some point in the near future to give it the rundown it deserves. It gets called the San Francisco of Europe, not that I knew that before, but now having been I resent it because the comparison does Lisbon a complete disservice. I see why the association is made; both are hilly cities with tram systems being the dominant means of transportation, and are situated on a waterfront. They also share near identical bridges. Again, I never knew but Lisbon has a near replica of SF’s Golden Gate landmark. Lisbon’s is smaller but built first by the same people responsible for the Golden Gate Bridge because Portugal’s dictator at the time found out about the plans for the SF version and demanded one too. Dickhead, diva behaviour. But shout out to the Uber driver turned tour guide who told us that.

Having spent the same amount of time in San Francisco 5/6 years ago, though, I prefer Lisbon! It just has more spirit-I know that’s kind of an abstract concept to define but I suppose it has less of the typical American city sheen, where as shiny and new and exciting as everything is, a lot of it seems cold and impersonal, and you know there’s always some pocket of poverty just around the corner that’s been pushed out of sight for the sake of maintaining this image. Lisbon feels more organic and laid back and has a cool, unexpected balance of trendy, hipster-y (I don’t know what other word to use, lol, but I don’t mean hipster in the negative sense as it’s generally used nowadays) areas and eateries, street art and brunch cafes GALORE, as well as older, more traditional streets and architecture teeming with history and the vibrant energy of the local community. Last but not least, let me tell you something about Lisbon: they love a pastry. You’ll find pastelerias, source of the most delicious crossaints known to man, on most streets. Anywhere which counts sweet carbs as constituting a crucial part of the culture is somewhere I’m more than happy to be.

NOW. Seeing as I can’t dedicate a whole section to recommending Cadbury’s Twisted chocolate buttons or Magnum Billionaire ice cream, I’d better move onto the next thing-I don’t think I can quite justify raving about food purchases you can make at your local Asda. So tell your internal monologue to put its best Robbie Williams hat on because this next section has the working title of:

Let MeeeEeE EnterTAIN YOU!

 Let’s talk about my fave distractions of this year:-)

Podcasts

I used to be a music girlie but now all I do is listen to podcasts. I feel very out of touch and uncool because I literally have no fucking idea what’s playing on the radio anymore hence why the prospect of going clubbing nowadays feels like a nightmare, but idk I just feel like I’ve never been someone who’s been engaged by music on its own and when I’m studying new content I find it hard to digest wordy stuff with pounding music. I do want to try and listen to music again but gotta find some way to incorporate it into my routine because I feel like such a fucking grandma at the ripe age of 24. Anyway, for podcasts, here are a few of my faves, ignoring the fact that I’m going outside the box of this post because it was supposed to be confined to things I’ve gotten into this year. It’s my first one though, allow me a little flexibility in this regard. There’s a lotttt of recommendations I must make.

Katherine Ryan’s Telling Everybody Everything: is everything Katherine’s husband says undercover tory coded? Yes. Am I almost certain he’s the kind of guy who admires Elon Musk on the DL? Yes. But I adore Katherine Ryan and could listen to her talk all day. I rarely disagree with her and it is a breath of fresh air to have someone who voices things that do depart slightly from the occasionally frustratingly rigid, moralistic stance of the people I follow. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the online left’s consensus 90% of the time but I do hate how SERIOUSLY everything is taken and the pile-ons that result from an acknowledgedly uninformed, passing comment on an issue, and also the shaming that comes from being interested in something which giving attention to is deemed to contravene interests of that political stance. This is how we talk irl. Your friends don’t accuse you of being a morally defunct person because you have a simplistic or admittedly problematic view on some things. I feel like it’s possible to feel ways we know we shouldn’t and that we know rationally don’t align with our general philosophies and as long as it’s not anything prejudice driven, as long as those convos happen with the adage that we KNOW these opinions are a bit fucked, it shouldn’t be a criminal act to lightly discuss them in a setting free of consequence. I also kind of agree with her stance on comedy, in that there shouldn’t be anything off limits. Ofc, if there’s a pattern of someone making harmful and punch down kind of jokes, criticise them as much as you want. Don’t talk about them! Don’t make them a topic of conversation and bolster their audience! But if we start drawing a hard fast line between what’s punishable and earns an industry blackballing then comedy becomes completely predictable and that element of unpredictability is what makes it entertaining.

Stephanie Harlowe & Derek Lavasser’s Crime Weekly: I mean an interest in true crime may be exactly what I’m referring to when I talk about interests that contravene your expressed political stance because I see a lot of the people I follow online, who are pretty much as far as I know entirely left leaning, disapprove. But morbid curiosity is a human thing and Stephanie Harlowe, both on her podcast and YouTube channel always does it with the best intentions; the ridiculously extensive amount of research she does show an unparalleled level of commitment and intention to do justice (seriously, they have cases they spend about 6 or 7 hour and half episodes on), and even on the most infamous of cases you are bound to come away with a tonne of knowledge of the case that you were unaware was even out there.  I also love the dynamic between her and Derek Lavasser, whose presence is a crucial element of what makes this a standout podcast given his actual first hand experience of investigating cases. I think the best podcasts are those that feel like sitting in on a conversation with friends regardless of how serious the topic is and in Crime Weekly, they always manage to uphold that vibe. Stephanie is very opinionated and I know a lot of people might disagree with that and think we should take a neutral stance when discussing true crime but honestly, if I wanted to do that, I’d read a Wiki page. This is how we talk about things irl. We give our opinions, we have feelings, we relate it to our anecdotal experiences-as long as the line between opinion and fact is clear and respect for the victims is maintained then I don’t see the problem.

Red Handed: I love Suruthi and Hannah. I want to be one of their best mates, lol. Pls girlies, let me be your friend. Again, I know there are probably people out there who would be firmly against any kind of true crime content which has a lighthearted tone but I genuinely do feel like all the laughs come from the dynamic between these two and never at the cost of the victims involved in the cases they’re discussing.

Sounds like a Cult: I loved Amanda Montell’s book Cultish and this is again a podcast where the dynamic between the girls is what separates them from all the other podcasts of a similar nature. I do want to know about current events and the serious stuff that’s going on in the world but there is only so much existential dread a person can take without a bit of levity framing it; Amanda and Isa take a serious subject matter and apply it to something which at face value sounds trivial but results in some genuinely interesting discussions about just how pathological our appreciation of certain fads and individuals truly is.

Books

How to Kill Your Family, Bella Mackie: So technicallyyy, this is kinda cheating again because I read this last summer, lol, but I continue to recommend it above and beyond any book I’ve read in the meantime because it truly is the perfect novel. It’s Gone Girl dark subject matter but in snappy magazine columnist format and that is a feat of genre fusion rivalling the Indonesian Australian blended brunch. 

Boy Parts, Eliza Clark: an actual recent read, and the first knock out of a book I’ve read since How to Kill Your Family. Like, the narrator is a disgustingly awful human being, to the extent that has put me off reading books from the perspective of individuals who meet similar levels of awful in the past (for example, I could never quite get into Lolita). In this, though, it adds to the compulsion to keep going. It’s probs because she is awful in a way that never requires a suspension of disbelief, the kind of way I feel like we glorify in everyday life on a lesser scale, and so the satirical element feels very relevant. At the same time, it’s not so heavy on the satire that some of the left turns the narrative takes and how twisted things become is without impact. I’d say it’s a bit like the book equivalent of watching a Real Housewives of Beverly Hills episode where the women are at their most unhinged but with a more sinister undercurrent, like everything that takes place is referred to as if it’s an mildly scandalous everyday occurrence when in actuality it’s disturbing AF. Imagine watching back the episode where Brandi Glanville yells “at least I don’t do crystal meth in the bathroom all night, bitch” at Kim Richards with the foresight that not only was she on crystal meth but like, her and Kyle were actually in there carving up a body or something. All the dark stuff is woven into the protagonist’s co-occurring everyday mundanities that very accurately capture the worst parts of the mindset and social values of the present and the devastating realisation is like...it all fits, lol.

Television

House M.D (2004-2012): My brain cannot compute that Gregory House and Hugh Laurie are the same person. That thing people always say about standout performances “they brought the character to life”? Hugh DID THAT. He SERVED. His performance alone is arguably enough to make House a great show. But other than that, it’s the perfect blend of drama and levity and almost every series main with only a handful of exceptions is a character you truly want to see flourish. Plus, I love me a 40 min show; an episode of House flies by and I would say there are only about 2/3 throughout the 7 seasons I’ve watched so far I haven’t enjoyed, all of which were a bit too conceptual for my liking. Also can I just say? Wilson and House, one of the most engaging TV duos of all time. For them and them alone, I will condone the use of a word that is in all other circumstances cringe to me, to grant their relationship the title of the GOAT on-screen bromance. 

The Missing (2014-2016):  I do love a good Brit mystery drama, I do.

Search Party (2016-2022): so watchable, so ridiculous, funny as fuck, but also addictive.

Yellowjackets (2021-): A perfect show, truly. And I’ve just got to say...Christina Ricci’s Misty fills the Mona Vanderwaal shaped void in my life that Pretty Little Liars ending created.

Succession (2018-2023): Succession must be one of those shows that’s really annoying if you don’t watch it/tried watching it and weren’t a fan because anybody who does watch it never seems to shut the fuck up about it. But like, chill out, it’s ended now, and I feel like it did so in a way that was satisfying enough that we can put it to bed and appreciate it on reflection like a nice piece of art every now and again, lol. After Game of Thrones, the ending of which left me raging for a solid few months, I think we all breathe a sigh of relief at this point when a really hyped up show ends in a way that actually feels correct, and doesn’t violate everything we’ve been told about the characters right up until that moment. 

Also...with Succession ending, I realllllly hope we can firmly put a lid on the idea of stealth wealth dressing or whatever you wanna call it because I don’t give a fuck if the clothes are expensive, they’re bland, I’m SORRY:( I don’t like subtle, if that isn’t obvious from the Alessandro Michele appreciation, lmao.

Black Mirror, Joan is Awful, 6x01 (2023): Okay so the fact I like, just watched this before writing this post would suggest it would be better placed in 2023 part 2 but I don’t want to acknowledge the horrifyingly fast passing of time so I gotta talk about it now while it’s fresh on my mind. Because what a delight!!! Apart from the movie that came out a few years ago and one or two episodes, Black Mirror hasn’t blown me away in a while. This was like, classic Black Mirror for me. Like left me with an appropriate level of dread so as not to trigger a complete existential crisis but enough to make me physically shudder. It was also, off the top of my head based on foggy memories of past episodes, the funniest episode to date. I never knew Salma Hayek had such great comedic timing and I feel bad for that. I owe her way more appreciation.

The Trashy Stuff..

Married at First Sight: I have never ploughed through reality TV like I have Australian MAFS. I started watching it with my mum and was so incapable of waiting til she was free to watch the season we were on I started simultaneously watching the previous season on my own. We haven’t even finished that season together yet but my solo venture sees me 3 seasons deep at this point. The dinner parties, man! I can’t look away. So much second hand embarrassment, awkwardness and tension that manages to permeate its way through the TV screen and yet despite getting my fill of that in day to day life, I consume that shit like I do carbohydrates in a binge episode, lmao. I won’t deny it probably falls within the vein of exploitative trash TV but you know what, it’s in an exploitative trash TV league of its own and if I go another 10 years down the line without being bothered to go on a date because I GENUINELY FEEL LIKE I HAVE NO TIME!! Sign me up. Producers exploit TF out of me. Give me the awkward recluse who just does not have the energy for the shit that interaction with a solid 60% of men entails edit if you want, though the driven career woman who is just above them all works too xoxo I’ll make the same argument I make about Big Brother and say that I genuinely do think there’s at least a pat of me which enjoys it from the psychological perspective, like putting humans in high-stakes unknown territory has our common pathologies spilling out allll over the place to observe in the bright light of day/the TV’s fluorescence but yes, ofc my engagement with it goes beyond educational purposes. It must be a known fact that I love watching some toxic individuals because it came highly recommended to me; whilst it shouldn’t be a good thing if my friends think it’s on brand for me, I’ll take that hit to any illusions I have of my refinement if’s what brought this show into my life. 

Love Island: It’s in a similar vein to MAFs, but look, I have no shame in admitting that there are some summer days where knowing LI is airing later in the day is all that keeps me going. I need structure in my life. Time is a human construct but ITV2′s programme schedule is NOT and if this show airing at 9pm every night is all that’s set in stone I’ll take it. No speak of guilty pleasures here. Straight up pleasure. It’s trash, it’s staged, it’s shallow, blah blah blah, but it’s in this brief period when the annual summer season airs I feel a sense of NATIONAL UNITY that, for once, doesn’t stem from something a little too closely aligned with things you’d see or hear at an EDL rally. England is really lacking in things to feel patriotic about that don’t have some kind of murky colonialist past, lmao.  So SUE ME. It’s giving judgemental. If you want to miss out on the top tier comedy going on this far this season (best cast in years I thinkkk) then that’s your loss. 

Film

Maybe mentioning some of my fave movies in this post issss taking a slight shortcut by removing the need to include them in my eventual film list buuut anyways idk, I love going to the cinema and a post like this would feel compete without naming a few standouts. For the sake of emulating a film ranking post, assume all these would fall under God tier:

Barbarian, dir. Zach Cregger (2022): A bit of a creature feature and a wild ride from start to finish. Definitely has the qualities of a modern classic horror, relatively simple narrative but definitely layered and open to interpretation if that’s your kinda thing.

M3gan, dir. Gerard Johnstone (2022): I could definitely get a roasting for including M3gan on this list and by implication, that it warrants a God Tier ranking but like 1). I’ve gone on for sooOOo long now that I doubt anybody who has got to this point has the brain power left to process this controversial stance and 2). even if this does register, I am willing to die on the hill of it being a perfect movie anyways. There’s probably plot holes, nonsensical writing and bad acting galore, but if there was I didn’t notice it because I was having a WHALE of a time. Sign me up to rewatch this at the cinema over a night out any day. Hear me out…it’s all the issues and psychology debates about artificial intelligence and the singularity and attachment theory and the dark stuff that might entail, yes, on what is probably a very, very shallow level, a massively take on all that stuff I’m sure many will argue but okay, nerd!!!! Live a little! It’s of the moment! Isn’t horror supposed to take that thing we’re all really afraid and exploit the fact that we know, like, next to nothing about the science of it all to paint some utterly ridiculous worst case scenario!? For whatever reason I can think of 0 examples of this right now, but I’m sure there’s some smart video essays out there about it that will explain it in an intellectual, less indignant way, lol. Like maybe I’m just amalgamating a bunch of unrelated facts in my mind here and coming out with some bullshit false statement but I’m suuuure I have read/seen/watched a video about how the vampire craze within horror has some kind of origin in tuberculosis panic hundreds of years ago. Don’t quote me on that! The only thing I’m sure on here, that I take zero issue with being quoted on, in which I have no qualms saying, is that M3gan was WILD!! ICONIC!!! It’s Chucky for the Elon Musk girlbossgaslightgatekeep era. Giving campy halloween classic. I'm standing my ground on this one.

Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, dir. Halina Reijn (2022): Imagine Bodies, Bodies, Bodies being your English language debut and still managing to capture the most annoying aspects of the speech patterns we’ve (and when I say we, I mean American and English youth, and yes, I include myself in that lol) developed this well. Uncanny. Even more impressively is how Halina Reijn is able to set the scene to communicate that very particular chaotic energy that hangs in the air when you put a bunch of intoxicated people with a messy group dynamic in a room together. The kind that unifies a startup company’s christmas do for their employees with a teenage house party. Like everyone’s kind of wild and throwing their weight around and letting off steam. The suffocating weight of the school/office/retail/what-have-you environment is lifted and at first the mood is electric and people who usually can’t stand each other are laughing together, getting on like a house on fire. But you KNOWW, you just know, someone’s gonna unleash some uncomfortable truth at any second, pull it back like an arrow back through the bow, fire it straight into the target and send half the room feral. Halina brought that dangerous kind of excitement to the screen in a way I don’t think any other director has managed in recent years, besides perhaps Gaspar Noé with Climax, but this was a lot more fun. It isn’t quiteeee on the same level but Bodies, Bodies, Bodies does the same kinda thing that the first Scream movie did in the 90s in making a film that is equal parts horror to Pandora’s Box for this moment in history, putting all the worst traits of our collective psyche in the...spotlight? Strobe light? Glowstick light? It’s glowsticks that were all over the ad campaign, right? She even got the Y2K aesthetic craze nailed down there, didn’t she.

 •Scream VI, dir(s). Tyler Gillett & Matt Bettinelli-Olpin (2023): 

That segue, honestly. The stuff of legend.

Admittedly, I didn’t make the Scream/Bodies, Bodies, Bodies comparison just for that purpose. But it does round off the post in a very satisfying way so I’ll pat myself on the back for it regardless. 

Speaking of legends...see, clunky when intentional...

I have to, of course, gas up this year’s Scream. Howwww there’s been soOoo many at this point and how they continue to be wonderful yet consistently on brand, when the brand in question could so easily go stale, is a marvel. It’s probably the franchise that got me into horror (or maybe Final Destination, it’s a toss-up) and if I’d watched something like the Insidious series first I don’t know if I’d be the horror fan I am today, possibly deprived of my beloved genre. Like I started watching them back when I still believed in ghosts and I was super sensitive to high levels of what they tend to categorise as “threat” or “suspense” which seems to be code for supernatural stuff. Now I’m a non-believer (lol) I love the supernatural stuff just as much when there’s a good story but I will always, and clearly have always, loved a good slasher, especially with a sense of humour. Scream is truly the prototype for that. It never misses. 

Plus, side note, I love that they gave Sidney closure. It shows confident writing, which again is something the films always deliver on. Similarly, the casting of Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera as the series’ new protagonists makes perfect sense; a new Scream is an instalment that never disappoints.

Much like...this post? 

Let’s just pretend that was an intentionally awful segue for the sake of continuity and not me having no idea how to tie a bow on this fucking ESSAY from me. Whoops.

But yeah!!

I guess that covers it all! She says after a post that supersedes the word count of your average dissertation, which is probably the crux of why I struggle with academic essay writing, lol. I love a waffle, cannot help myself. It’s a need that would ordinarily be satisfied through the medium of creative fiction writing but until I finish coursework anything requiring deep and meaningful thought is out of the question. One can only hope I don’t completely flop my degree and that by summer 2024, posts of this nature will be significantly shorter. In the meantime though, I do have a couple of photo dominated posts planned, including finally posting what we’ll call a master post of all the FW22 shows I didn’t finish covering, as well as SS23 which are actually of relevance to balance out the notion that it’s just a content dump (which it essentially is but idk, we all love a good runway photo set). Blame Tumblr’s stance on the female nipple which means fashion week posts are always delayed because I have to go back and photoshop out all the tatas. As welll as that I have an outfit post planned which is one of my faves I’ve everrrr done and basically another “sitting front row at” thang. 

And to anybody who comes across this post on the recovery tag and reads that section, please don’t hesitate to inbox me. In fact, I’d love it if you did, regardless of whether or not it extends to anything beyond that. Like I said as well, constructive criticism is much appreciated, though I love hearing people’s recovery stories too. To anyone who identified with my ramble and is struggling too, I’m sorry you’re dealing with this and I’m sorry it likely feels as if no one understand. I do and lots of people do and even if it’s not fully fledged formal treatment there are recourses out there. Suggestions in that regards are very encouraged!

But yeah! In summary, love & hugs to all!:D

Lauren xx

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

wallflower 5

Warnings: age gap, creepin’, slow burn, stepdad-adjacent, possible noncon/dubcon, abuse, violence, self-harm.

Character: silverfox!Thor

Your mother meets a new man, but he doesn’t seem very interested in her.

Note: Helloooooo! Another erratic drabble series. Appreciate any and all feedback. Love you all.

Your mother’s house isn’t small but Thor’s is at least twice the size. His home is tucked away in the upscale suburbs of the north end, a curiosity to you as you wonder who needs all that space for themself. Everything beyond your bedroom is always a bit confounding to you but your mind wanders further the longer you’re away from it. 

Thor has to be close to your mother’s age. Does he have a family? Rather did he? Divorced? Estranged? You see little evidence but you don’t dare delve into these questions very far. Your mother’s warning chimes in your head, keeping you in your place; stay out of my way.

You fidget with the long silver fork, uninterested in your meal as your stomach tosses and turns at your strange surroundings and your listless thoughts. 

Your mother has her mask firmly in place as she sits close to Thor, and you languish on your side of the table. She takes a greedy gulp of wine and squeezes his arm as he cuts into his T-bone. That’s how it goes; you, the third wheel, watching life from the outside. You doubt you’ll ever do anything exciting. You’re not meant to do, only witness.

You poke at a green bean, content to let their conversation carry on as if you’re not even there.

“You alright over there?” Thor asks and your fork pierces through the bean and tinks off the plate sharply. You glance up at him in surprise, believing for a moment you were truly invisible.

You nod and pick up the bean, shoving it into your mouth so that you don’t have to answer. Your mother sighs and reaches for the bottle of wine. Thor’s hand wraps around the neck first, as he grips it without looking.

“I have been so careless,” he slides the bottle away from your mother as she curls her lip, her hand still outstretched and empty, “I didn’t even offer you wine. You are old enough, yes?”

You rub your lips together. They’re dry and chapped and rough. You didn’t bring your lip balm. You catch some loose skin and it tears off under your front teeth. 

“Er…” you begin.

“No,” your mother says firmly, “old enough she may be but I wouldn’t have it. She can finish her water.”

You smile, or try to, your lips tremble in your fraught facade, “thank you, I don’t like wine.”

“I have beer,” Thor offers.

“I said ‘no’,” your mother insists, “Thor, she is my daughter.”

“She’s an adult, no?” He lets go of the wine, “I was only being courteous,” he sits back and looks at her, pushing his shoulders back as he rests his arms on the chair, “in my home.”

“And what a nice home it is, sweetheart,” she preens as she takes the bottle and fills her glass. 

You notice how Thor watches the pour and his cheek ticks. Is he annoyed with her? Or you? Maybe he regrets bringing you along. You’re just getting in the way. You slice another bean in half with the side of your fork and take a bite. It’s good, seasoned well, not too hard or dry.

“Thank you,” you eke out, “this is very good.”

Thor slowly turns back to you and smiles. “Thanks, I’ve been busying myself lately in the kitchen. I have much more free time so I’ve taken on the hobby.”

“Oh, a man that cooks, you really are perfect,” you mother smirks and takes another deep swig of the wine, a droplet escaping the corner of her lips.

“Perhaps you should have some water,” your host offers, his eyes lingering on you a moment before facing your mother, “that is a high volume cask. From my own brother’s vineyard. He sends me a bottle or two when he remembers me.”

“Your brother? A whole vineyard? That sounds wonderful. Perhaps one day you could take me.”

“It isn’t very fit for a family trip, especially if the young one can’t drink,” Thor shrugs.

“I said me,” your mother snipes then catches herself, covering her mouth and giving a gentle giggle, “forgive me, it has been a long week.”

“Mm, yes,” Thor sits forward and resumes carving into his half-devoured steak, “don’t let it get cold.”

“Of course, sweetheart,” your mother puts down her glass, almost empty again, “it is all so delicious. Again, I must thank you for all your effort and… inviting my daughter. You really didn’t have to.”

“Like I said, it’s important for us all to get to know each other.”

You cut into your steak and watch the juice ooze out, revealing the perfect pink tint of the inside. You eat in silence, hoping to clear your plate and be done with it. 

What happens after? When you’ve nothing to do but stare at the wall? When you have nothing to offer to the conversation and no excuse for it?

Why are you here?

Your stomach aches as you try to force down the savoury steak. Your mother regales Thor with the latest office gossip about how Nicole was called in for an unexpected performance review. The story is cruel but she tells it as if it’s a joke. He doesn’t respond as he eats.

The food is so rich but heavy. You put your fork and knife down and wipe your fingers with the cloth napkin. Your movement draws Thor’s attention and you nearly wilt beneath his stormy blue irises.

“I’m so sorry, I don’t think I can eat it all,” you say from behind the napkin, “but I can do the dishes–”

“It’s alright, I’ll give it to Fen.”

“Fen?” You wonder.

“Oh, I’ve locked that oaf up to save you the stampede,” he chuckles, “he’s the old wolfhound lurking around my garage. I imagine he’s knocked over the bin by now.”

“Wolfhound? A dog?” Your mother scowls, she always forbid you from having a pet.

“A dog?” You echo in a more hopeful tone, “is he nice?”

Thor laughs as he ignores your mother’s gripe. “I like to think he is but I’m afraid he takes after me. He’s big and a bit bullish, and can be a bit moody.”

“Oh,” you deflate, “I like dogs.”

“How about after dinner we see what he thinks of you. He’s a bit of a lady’s man, I think he might like you.”

“Really?”

“Dear, you really shouldn’t be hanging around dirty dogs,” your mother huffs, “she doesn’t need to see the mutt.”

“Mutt?” Thor whispers as he tears his attention from you, “I’ve trained him myself and he’s bred well. I consider him family so you won’t call him that.”

“Sorry, sweetheart, it’s just…” your mother gives a dramatic swoon and fans herself, “I had an awful experience with a dog, an attack!” She touches her chest, “it has given me a bit of a phobia. I am nervous, is all.”

You fold your hands in your lap and turn your face down, hiding so you can’t betray her lie. An attack? You recall her kicking the neighbour’s new puppy for pissing on the fence. It’s almost impressive how she frames the world through her Kat-tinted glasses. How every experience is a test of her character which she must overcome.

“May I use the bathroom?” You ask as you sit up straight.

“Just down the hall, honey,” Thor points with his steak knife, “don’t get too lost.”

“Right, thank you,” you stand and put your napkin down as your mother glares at you.

“Don’t touch anything,” she girds and lifts her glass again, “you know how clumsy you are.”

“Yes, mom,” you answer as you fix your skirt, the lace bunching up around one thigh and catching on itself. Thor’s eyes follow your hand and the flutter of fabric. “Be back.”

You sidle around the front of the chair and pad out quickly. You just want to go home. You have no place here. No purpose. Just like everything else.

[viviennevermillion]

Falling in love with Trey Clover

reposting bc I’m deleting my archived sideblogs

contains: trey clover x gn!reader

warnings: none

Okay so first off Trey is a good boy. He cares so much and he’ll always be there for you

You guys meet at the Unbirthday Party, at which you are a guest

Trey proudly offers you some of the food he made. Try it, his food is great!

You guys have some casual conversations and Trey notices how much he enjoys talking to you. You actually end up talking pretty much for the entire afternoon.

Conversations just flow so naturally with him. He’s also the type of person you can talk about anything with. Trey has no problem conversing about stuff like philosophy or the universe every once in a while. He’s actually a pretty deep person sometimes and easily finds something interesting in most topics you might bring to the table. And if not, he’s at least trying.

You follow eachother on Magicam afterwards. He likes your posts and often comments on them in your dm’s if he finds something interesting. For example if you post a picture of yourself doing one of your hobbies, he might tell you a story about a time where he did the activity as well.

Trey falls in love rarely but when he does, he falls quickly and hard. Probably already has some butterflies in his stomach at that point. He won’t dare think of anything romantic yet, but he can’t help to keep remembering your conversations at the Unbirthday Party whenever he sees you. Or smiling at his phone when you upload something to Magicam.

Whenever he sees you, you guys will make small talk and he’s just very sweet to you.

Will try to win you over a bit with his puns and jokes (he makes lots of dad jokes too)

After a while he’s head over heels for you without you even suspecting anything yet

But Cater notices

Oh,,,,,like it or not, Cater Diamond is your wingman now.

He’ll constantly poke Trey and be like “hey man, go and make a move already”. He also teases him to no end.

Trey will wait for “the perfect opportunity to approach you” i.e. the time when Cater gets too annoying to handle and he notices how irrational his excuses not to make a move are getting

He finally approaches you in your Magicam dm’s, talking about something you posted  and actually holding the conversation and trying to really get to know eachother

This is the first of many days you two end up texting until late at night, talking about all kinds of things

It continues like this for a couple of days

At this point you already have some inside jokes together and bonded over things you have in common.

Cater is still teasing Trey every damn day

Which honestly is his own fault because when Trey is in love he’s essentially a simp

“You tell no one about this”, he warns his friend; not wanting anyone to see him lose his otherwise calm demeanor because of a crush

Next time Trey meets you in the NRC hallways, he’ll approach you with one of your inside jokes to break the ice and later invites you over to Heartslabyul Dorm to bake together

He sees it as a date but then he notices you probably have no idea he meant it as a date

At first things are a bit awkward when it’s just the two of you but conversation comes quickly once you start baking.

He’ll tell you about his family and his home and honestly he makes you feel at home the more time you spend around him.

Baking with him is actually a lot of fun. You fool around a lot and make a lot of jokes.

Afterwards you two eat the dessert you bake and Trey makes you tea. He shows interest in your hobbies and passions and is probably informed about them at this point. He compliments your achievements and offers to help you with school work in case you need any help.

Will hug you goodbye when you part

“Compliment their appearance”, Cater will offhandedly tell him the next day.

So Trey will pull the “Your eyes look like a grape” card again in your Magicam dm’s. 2 hours later you get a message “Okay so Cater told me this isn’t a compliment, I was trying to say you’re pretty, I actually like grapes a lot, I’m sorry”

Go easy on him, he’s confused and he’s trying really hard

At this point you have a slight idea that he likes you

He’ll ask you out on a date properly later. And who would have guessed: You like him back.

Trey sets up a nice dinner table in the Heartslabyul garden (with the help Cater) and cooks some food for you

It’s actually pretty romantic besides the occasional awkwardness on his side because forgive him, he doesn’t know how to do romance as we’ve seen in Ghost Marriage

Will confess to you at the end of your date. He’s so relieved when you say you like him back. He’ll ask you if he can kiss you.

Gives you a soft peck on the lips. It’s short but full of love. He’ll smile at you and look into your eyes, caressing your cheek with his thumb

He’ll tell you he loves you right then and there. He doesn’t expect you to say it back but he just wants you to know. Gives you another kiss after that, this time a longer but slow one. Poor boy really has been waiting for this for a while now.

You two remain in eachothers embrace for a while after that, enjoying the atmosphere of the garden being lit up by the LED lights Trey hung up for your date and the fireflies being around. Cater, Deuce and Ace in the bushes are having the time of their lives.

From this point the two of you are inseperable.

Trey is a very considerate boyfriend. He’ll pay attention to all of your needs and will always be prepared when you need him. He loves seeing you happy and being the reason why you smile. He’ll bring you lots of presents at the beginning; mostly flowers and sweets; nothing too expensive

He usually doesn’t post selfies on his Magicam, pictures with you are the only exception. He just is so proud you’re with him.

When Trey is in love he idealizes the hell out of you; sometimes you have to remind him that you’re not perfect because for him you definitely are.

He’ll send you heart emojis in your favorite color because he associates it with you and ever since he’s with you he started loving the color too

A lot of things you love, Trey loves too now. He’s a man capable of appreciating the little things in life and things that remind him of you just make him happy yk?

PDA is at a normal amount but everyone can see you two are a couple based on the way he looks at you and how you make him smile every time you talk to him.

He likes to hug you from behind or from the side and places kisses on your cheek simultaneously.

Sends you random pictures of flowers or beautiful things he finds and tells him they remind him of you.

He’s the big spoon and he loves holding you in his arms.

Cooking dinner together is sort of becoming a ritual for you two. Trey just loves spoiling you and creating stuff together with you. He’ll be so proud of the cakes or muffins you two have baked after they’re done. Will stare at the finished product with a smile and then wrap his arms around you and kiss your forehead.

He tells you “I love you” often but he also sometimes just sends you a long text about how much you mean to him.

Whenever he’s stressed, he knows he can unwind around you.

He’ll even be humming you to sleep even though he can’t sing if you ask him to.

Will proudly introduce you to his family and they all welcome you with open arms. They immediately see how much Trey loves you.

He’ll take you for walks in nature often or even goes travelling with you over the holidays; taking lots of pictures together as memories.

Totally also has you as his phone background.

You two will often hang out with Ace, Deuce, Cater and Riddle and you two are kinda inofficially the dorm parents.

Sometimes he’ll ask you to dance when you two are in his room listening to music

He’ll listen to whatever you want to listen to

He rests his head on your shoulder and closes his eyes, having trouble to believe how lucky he is.

Trey can totally imagine a future with you even after only dating you for a couple of months and losing you would be his worst fear.

He has no problem giving you space but personally he wouldn’t mind having you around whenever. Even if you’d practically be living with him, he wouldn’t get tired of you. For Trey all his happiness is ten times better when he can share it with you.

He’s a problem-solver at heart. He’s very rational and sometimes maybe a bit too much. He’s not that good at giving emotional support but he will offer you neutral and rational advice. He just wants you to get better when you’re sad.

At some point he will tell you “y/n you mean the world to me” and Trey means it.

Please love him with all his sarcastic jokes where no one can tell he’s being sarcastic and his teeth brushing obsession. He’s a sweet guy who will love you with all his heart.

Tells you to always take care of your dental hygiene.

He also has no problem making time in his schedule for you. He will always take care of his vice dorm leader duties and help when someone needs him but apart from that when it’s just the two of you the world stops for him.

Trey also absolutely is the family type of guy. Be it a kid, a dog, a lizard or a cactus in a pot; he’ll love taking care of a living being with you.

You’re always there for eachother, holding eachother close when times are tough and one of you or both of you need comfort.

He loves you so much

Take good care of him