#“just buy stuff in the store” nothing's ever in stock

[greppelheks]

Planning: wake up, meditate, make coffee, take a shower, throw in laundry, do work, hang laundry, have lunch, pick up two packages, go back to work Reality: wake up, too late, ad, meditation not working, meditate, migraine, make coffee, take shower, forgot towel for hair, do laundry, start work, wifi not working, restart laptop, wifi not working, restart phone, start work, tension pain in shoulder, no concentration for work, laundry didn't dry properly put it in again, work, hang laundry, no lunch, go grocery shopping, pick up only one package because other package is not in yet, change pickup time for package to later moment in the day, pverstimulated by bright sun and hair in my face so feeling really stressed, not enough patience to properly prepare food so lunch didn't heat up enough and tastes bad, back to work, wifi not working, restart wifi, phone empty,

[temiizpalace]

☆┊SHOPPING SPREE!

SUMMARY: finally having a day off and permission to leave the campus, you take your beloved boyfriend to the mall! where does he like to shop?

CHARACTERS: all dorms

GENRE: fluff

WARNINGS: none

NOTES: IM STILL WORKING ON EVEN REQUESTS I PROMISE! this is a brain kickstarter yk

reader is g/n, reader is yuu

SPORT STORES

as soon as you walked into the doors of the mall, his eyes dart towards the sporting goods store. he’ll go where you want to go, but give him like ten seconds pretty please? just a peek at the sportswear! in order to stay fit and look continuously good for you, this is a mandatory stop. and as expected, he looked at running shoes, windbreaker jackets, sports balls (don’t be immature) ((i am immature and did that on purpose)), water bottles, everything. he bought matching sports gear for the two of you so you can work out together! don’t worry, don’t worry, it won’t be too difficult. now, where did you want to go? holding your shopping bags adds to his workout so please don’t hold back. shop to your hearts content.

deuce, jack, epel, silver, sebek

CLOTHING STORES

knowing that you wanted to go to the mall opened a gateway of opportunity for him. what you may ask? well, malls have clothing stores. this means not only can he buy outfits for himself, he can also buy outfits for you! if you’re comfortable with that of course. if you are comfortable with that, he’s giddily going through clothing racks, presenting you an outfit that has a balanced mix of both your own and his style. Seeing you wear the outfit was just breathtaking, he could cry. if you didn’t feel comfortable with him picking your outfits, please pick his. he’ll wear whatever you buy! to him, it doesn’t matter. there was something just so intimate buying outfits for each other.. (along with other purchases, you guys bought cheesy matching couple shirts)

ace, cater, jade, kalim, rook, malleus

DESIGNER BRANDS

he immediately walked towards the expensive side of the store and almost gave you a heart attack. like ??? hello?? you forget he’s rich sometimes. he doesn’t mind paying for you, that’s actually the least of his worries. stop being shy and just take the damn card. he’ll cover everything so go enjoy yourself. he just so casually purchases expensive jewelry likes it’s nothing, baffling you to see how nonchalant he is about his money. he bought you such an extensive wardrobe. designer shirts, pants, shoes, you name it and he’s got it. he takes pride in the fact he can buy such expensive things for you because you get to rely on him. not in a controlling way, but in a way to let you know you’re not alone and he’s here to help. so anyways here’s a $80,000 thaumark sunglasses kit.

leona, azul (lowkey cried looking at his budget), kalim, vil, malleus

ALT/POP-CULTURE STORES* (??)

skips all the clothing stores and designer stores and walks straight into hot topic (or stores similar). look, this is his kinda store. judge all you want (please don’t) but he’s going inside to purchase whatever the flip he wants. oh my gosh, something even slightly tying to his interest? purchase. something slightly tying to your interest? yes he’ll take the entire stock. wanted to get you anything and everything. he bought tons of shirts and stuff for you guys to share and trade so spoiler alert but next sleepovers gonna be pretty crazy. he thinks it’s cool to see you talk about stuff you like, so taking you to a store that has pretty much everything you’ve ever watched? you’ll be rambling for hours! he’s all in! of course, he’ll get his own fair share in. thank god you don’t think he’s a weirdo tho.

cater, jade, idia, lilia, malleus

ANYWHERE YOU GO

he’s down for literally anything. take him anywhere and he’ll be happy. this gentlemen carries all of your bags for you and takes you wherever you wish to go. clothing store? you’ll look good in anything. let’s go. sports store? always good to stay active. let’s go. designer brands? you’ll look stunning. just overall he’s happy so long as your happy, the location won’t matter much to him. even if you offer for him to decide, he respectfully declines and encourages you to pick another spot. he just loves you!!

riddle, floyd, kalim, jamil, rook, ortho, lilia

STRAIGHT TO THE FOOD COURT

as soon as he smelt the aroma of food in the air, he’s gone. he made a straight beeline towards the food court and intends to stay the course. shopping can wait, he needs to eat. he must admit it’s not as good as the food at nrc, but it’s wayyy better than nothing. he must build energy, who knows how long he’ll be inside that mall! fast food can only be so good for so long, so now he’s slowly regretting not going into an actual restaurant but he already paid so he’ll suck it up. after he finishes eating tho, you’re free to go wherever you please. just give him a breather he ate too much.

trey, ruggie, azul, jade, epel, lilia

A/N: this is ASS

date published: 9/24/24

© temiizpalace — do not copy, steal, or put my work into ai. thank you!

[k1ngdom-of-thieves]

Hello! May I ask for a Vil,Riddle,Trey,Idia and Jack with a frail reader who has a lot of medical issues like having a lot of meds and struggling to live in Ramshackle bc of the dust etc? I have a problem with my strength so it would be cool to see these characters deal with a reader like this.

Vil, Riddle, Trey, Idia and Jack + reader with medical issues

I tried to keep descriptions vague because I’m not the best with writing for illnesses.

Vil Schoenheit

Vil would immediately ask you to stay in Pomfiore as soon as he found out about your current living conditions. The dust and bugs in the dorm are not gonna be helping your medical issues in the slightest.

If you agree to going to Pomfiore, he’ll make sure that your room would be set up with any medical supplies you could need. From various types of allergy medicine, to practically any flavor of cough drop you could possibly want. Is it a little overboard? Yes, but he’s just really worried about you.

If you opt to stay in Ramshackle, Vil would be very against the notion but wouldn’t argue with you about it. Instead, he’ll help you clean every nook and cranny in that dorm.

Although he looks fairly thin, he’s still plenty strong. Don’t even think about over-exerting yourself; not only will you get the longest scolding of your life, he’ll also take whatever you were trying to carry and do it for you.

“Please don’t place too much pressure on yourself. I know you are plenty capable on your own, but you can still rely on me if you feel overwhelmed.”

Riddle Rosehearts

Riddle would be so irritated that Crowley would make you stay in a place like Ramshackle knowing of your medical problems. How could such a great mage be so irresponsible!?

He doesn’t mind if you would rather stay in the dorm than live somewhere else, but that just means he’ll work to make sure Ramshackle is spotless.

Since his parents are doctors, he knows a little bit about how to treat certain conditions or what medications work the best. He’ll practically buy the entire store’s stock of whatever medicine would make you feel better.

If you ever get sick, he’ll be worrying more than you’d be. He’s checking up on you every chance he gets; from in between classes, to after the equestrian club meetings, and before he goes to sleep.

“Do you want anything from the store? I could bring a humidifier just in case you need it.”

Trey Clover

Trey would love to be able to offer you a place in Heartslabyul, but he’s really in no position to do so; with him having three other roommates in his dorm room. But he’ll definitely ask Riddle about it if you’re interested.

He’ll be right by your side if you need anything, no matter how small it is. Even if it’s during club meetings, plus Rook doesn’t seem to be offended by Trey disappearing from time to time. He says stuff about being able to witness the beauty of young love.

Even though he’s a better baker than chef, he’ll still try to make you any dish that you could want. Don’t worry about it being to complex for him to make, if anything he’ll just ask one of the cafeteria ghosts to help him out.

If you ever experience aches and pains, he’ll offer to give you a massage. Sure, it may not help with all of your pain but it’ll definitely be super relaxing.

“How are you feeling? Please let me know if you’re feeling any pain; I may not be able to get rid of all of it, but I’ll try my best if it’s for you.”

Idia Shroud

Idia would have nothing but the highest respect for you. Not only are you living in a dusty, rundown, haunted building with no wifi; you’re doing it all with a bunch of medical conditions! That’s like playing on maddening difficulty!!

He’ll make sure that Ignihyde has the best medical equipment if you ever choose to spend the night there. He might go a little overboard with it, but he’s just worried about not being able to help of you need him.

Don’t be surprised if you see a little robot delivering treats to you if you’re not feeling the best. Sometimes, it’ll be Ortho that comes to sing you a tune from a show he and Idia watched.

If you ever ask him to let you live at his dorm, he’d be over the moon. He’d be so excited to have you around more often.

“How are you feeling? If you’re not feeling the best, let me know and I’ll turn your difficulty settings down as fast as I can!.” He just wants to help.

Jack Howl

Jack is another guy who’ll want to invite you to his dorm; just to get you away from all the dust if nothing else. But seeing that his dorm is Savanaclaw, you probably won’t be getting the best medical attention aside from athletic injuries.

He will drop everything that he’s doing in order to help you if you’re ever in pain or just feeling under the weather. Don’t ever feel guilty about him always being there when you call; he’s doing it because he loves you, and he wouldn’t trade it for the world.

This wolf boy has like a sixth sense for knowing what you need when you need it. Even if it’s not something like medicine; once he bought you bug spray without you even knowing you were out of it.

Constantly spends the night in Ramshackle to be able to check on you easier. He gets anxious sometimes. It’s gotten to the point where the ghosts have started bringing an extra chair to the dinner table for him.

“What? No I wasn’t worried over you, I know you can handle yourself. My ears aren’t drooping either!”

[pupkashi]

egg hunting

gojo’s never been easter egg hunting, you decide it’s time for the famous bunny to pay him a visit

a/n: hi hi !! i have no idea if easter egg hunting is an american thing or not but i felt like this would b so cute so plz let’s just go w this for now thank u friends

wordcount: 1,353

masterlist

“did you ever make an easter egg hunt for megumi?” you asked, your eyes leaving the easter commercial on the tv and looking at your lover walk back from the kitchen with a cup of water.

he shook his head and furrowed his brows, “is that like a real thing people do? i thought it was just a thing on tv and movies”

you looked at him in disbelief, “what? why would they lie about people doing that?” you laughed, moving a bit so that satoru could get comfortable as he settled into your side.

“hm, guess i just never thought about it much, growing up i never really go to do much kid stuff anyway” he stated, your heart sank as you recalled what he’d told you about his childhood, “did you?”

“a couple times” you smiled, recalling the memories, gojo only hummed and focused back on the show, not thinking much about the conversation.

a small pout settled on your lips as you thought about how much kid gojo would’ve loved egg hunts, your heart hurting for him.

after only a few short minutes you’d decided to take it upon yourself and help him heal his inner child. first thing tomorrow you’d go and buy his favorite sweets, fill some plastic eggs and hide them in the backyard.

and that was exactly what you did.

you’d spent all morning driving around finding a store that still had good candy and those damn plastic eggs and a little basket in stock. it took you an hour to write out the reasons you loved him and stuff them in each egg, fill them with candy and then write a clue as to where the next egg was.

by the time you’d finished, your hand was exhausted and you wanted nothing more than to nap. but you grabbed the eggs, hid them around the backyard as best you could before finally sprawling on the couch.

you hadn’t realized you’d fallen asleep until the feeling of you being pick up woke you up. your eyes fluttered open, arms instinctively wrapping tightly around your lovers neck.

“toru?” you mumbled, blinking the sleep away and smiling as he looked at you, his blindfold replaced by sunglasses resting on the tip of his nose.

“morning sleepy head” he smiled, laying you gently on the bed before joining you.

“no get up!” you spoke, scrambling off of the bed and grabbing his wrist, pulling him off the bed. “i did something for you!” you smiled, pulling him to the backyard and handing him the baby blue basket with a cartoon bunny.

“what’s this sweets?” he asked, a confused look on his face before looking back at you. his confusion only grew as you handed him a small sheet of paper.

look by the first flowers we planted

the words were scribbled on the paper in your handwriting, his heart raced as you giggled. he stared at the paper for a bit longer, glancing up at you before refocusing on the words.

“sweetheart wh-” you cut him off before he could ask anymore questions, “just go with it, okay?” there was a wide smile on your face as he walked closer and closer to the flowers, staring at them before glancing back at you.

“what am i supposed to do now?” he asked, you couldn’t stop the warmth growing in your chest.

“angel, you have to look around the flowers not just stare at them and expect them to talk to you” you laughed. gojo only blushed as he looked around the flowers, find an orange plastic egg with a piece of paper taped onto it

“what’s this?” he mumbled, picking the egg up and reading the piece of paper. a smile forming on his lips as he realized what was happening.

you found the first egg! i knew you could do it <3 you’ll find another where the birds chirp

gojo looked back at you, childlike wonder in his eyes as he raced around the backyard, finding the eggs quickly. you felt yourself falling deeper and deeper in love as his laughter and comments filled your ears, a smile on his face when he found the last egg, placing it in his basket and running towards you.

“i found them all! do i get to open them now?” you nodded, opening the door to let the both of you in before sitting on the couch. “do i have to open them in a certain order?” he asked and you shook your head.

“however you want lover,” you smiled, giddy with excitement as you watched your boyfriend, who was practically glowing with happiness.

you watched as his smile only grew when he realized there was candy in each egg, his slender fingers opening the small scroll on paper.

i love how caring you are

he knew it was your handwriting, but he still turned to you, a soft look on his face, “you wrote this?” his voice was gentle and you nodded, motioning for him to open the other eggs.

as he opened more eggs, he was greeted with more reasons you loved him. by the time he reached the final egg he had found it was taking everything in him to not burst into tears.

i love you for you, satoru

as he read the words over and over again he couldn’t stop himself from throwing himself onto you, wrapping you in his arms and squeezing tightly. you weren’t caught off guard by his sudden affection, almost instinctively wrapping your arms around his torso and holding him just as tightly.

hot tears landed on your neck but you didn’t say anything, only prying yourself from your lovers arms and wiping his tears with the sleeve of your shirt. you press feather light kisses to his damp cheeks, you were always gentle with him.

“i love you, angel boy” you whispered, he could hear the smile as you spoke, the words landing atop his heart like bandages, healing parts of him he didn’t know were wounded.

he opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out, opting instead to squeeze you a bit tighter, burying his face in the crook of you neck and pressing a kiss on your shoulder.

you returned the action, letting him take his time before he pulled away with a quiet sniffle, giggling and shoving a piece of candy in his mouth.

“i just realized you’re still in your uniform,” you smiled, gojo just nodded.

“was gonna shower but then i found out the Easter bunny had paid a visit” he grinned, popping another one of the candies in his mouth.

“go shower, you smell like dirt and something else” your nose scrunching as he sniffed himself.

“might be blood” he shrugged, your eyes going wide as you got up to check him over. gojo only smiled, grabbing you by the waist and bringing you into his lap, pressing a kiss to you lips. “‘s not mine sugar, don’t worry.”

you sighed in relief, running your fingers through his hair. “well you still stink” you teased, he only pouted at your words, standing up with you still in his arms, easily carrying you and setting you in the couch.

“how can you do something so sweet and then say something so mean” he sighed, you only rolled your eyes, smiling at how hurt he sounded.

“hurry and shower, i was gonna order your favorite and then we can watch some movies until we get sleepy” gojos eyes lit up at your words, rushing to the restroom and turning the water on.

you were glad you could do something for satoru. sure you couldn’t buy him the most expensive gifts, you couldn’t solve all his problems or give him everything he wanted.

but you could give the smaller things in life, you could give him your love and remind him how much you loved him, how much he meant to you and the endless amounts of things he’d yet to experience in life.

that to gojo was everything he’d ever wanted. he’d only ever want you.

[yjhariani]

Going ramadan grocery shopping and its a total disaster with simon. Like in my country its a disaster to shop during ramadan cause all the stores are full with ppl and they take all the stocks😅

Okay, but I made it pre-Eid shopping based on my personal experience.

“Okay, Mr Soldier, I have a mission for you today,” you stated once you came to see him after fajr prayer.

Hearing that, Simon tilted his head a little. He looked to be intrigued.

“Love, I worked hard to earn my rank,” Simon seriously said, but you knew he said it to tease you.

“It’s been, what, twelve years? You’re still a lieutenant, so it seems you don’t work hard enough,” you replied.

Simon only looked at you for a moment before saying, “It’s not that long.”

“Well—”

“Just get on with it,” Simon said.

“Okay. So, we’ll have a very early shower back to back and after that we’ll get into the car and we will drive to go shopping,” you explained.

Turning towards the clock, Simon sighed seeing what time it was.

“Can’t it wait two hours?” Simon asked.

“You don’t understand,” you said, clutching his collar tightly as if to intimidate him. “This is not regular shopping, Lieutenant Simon, this is pre-Eid shopping.”

“It’s actually Lieutenant Riley,” Simon said.

“Well consider me your General something and shut up,” you replied.

At that point, Simon almost smiled.

“Fine,” Simon said.

“Good, good,” you nodded. “This is pre-Eid shopping, meaning there’ll be a lot of people shopping. Eid is in three days, meaning that people are cooking, baking, buying clothes. That also means that the price of everything goes up. This has to be one of the most stressful environment you’ll ever get into. People are also hoarding fucking shit, Simon, so if we don’t get to it early, we will buy nothing but rotten, leftover ingredients and shirts that aren’t in your size or in tacky colours.”

When Simon only looked at you, not saying anything, you raised an eyebrow at him.

“So, what do you want me to do? Recon? Find which place sells the best shit at the best price?” Simon asked.

“Not really,” you said, letting go of his collar and flattened your hands on it. “I’m gonna be entering a crowded shopping place and by the end of it I’ll be carrying a lot of shopping bags. You’re practically a tank. You can make room in the middle of the crowd and help me carry my stuff.”

Simon huffed out a little bit of air.

“So, it’s babysitting,” Simon concluded.

You almost argued with him about it, but stopped yourself.

“I guess, yeah,” you nodded instead.

“Should be easy, then,” Simon said.

“That’s what husband is for, right?” you said

Simon took one of your hands and brought it to his lips, he kissed your knuckles.

“Sure,” Simon said.

[therottenkingsreckoning]

Gotta say, I'm surprised and incredibly happy with how much y'all seemed to enjoy the first chapter! Don't know what I was so nervous about lol.

Right, as promised, chapter 2, and more soon to follow!

It would take some time after breakfast was already made and eaten before Frank felt ready to leave on their ill-fated grocery trip, continuously finding excuses to delay in little busywork around the house. Some cleaning here, reorganizing shelves of books, and gee I'm sure I must've left the oven on!

It couldn't be put off forever though. Eventually, he knew, Eddie would come back from his business, and Frank had to know before then. There'd be no leaving the house under the watchful eye of their beloved husband, no avoiding his questions when he spoke in that sweet, caring tone of voice. Frank loved the man, in part because of how deeply cherished he made them feel in return. It'd be cruel to hide the truth from him (if truth's what it was) and let him continue to think his lover was merely sick. Getting dressed for the day (he'd not be seen outside in PJs!) they donned a mask as well- for posterity's sake, and in case he really was contagious after all. Better safe than sorry.

After all of that, and with the heavy weight of finality in their chest, Frank stepped out through back door of the house and made his way towards Howdy's shop.

They knew by now that Eddie would've come and gone from there, likely voicing his concerns over Frank's current health to the resident shopkeep. Oh well, if Howdy gave him lip for being outside while sick, they had no trouble telling him to stuff it.

He was busy stocking shelves when Frank came in, hardly pausing when he saw them but still offering a chuckle. "Mornin' Frank, you look like shit." It was a friendly tradition between the two by now, and normally Frank would've responded with a roast of his own. But they had little energy for such things at the moment, his mind too tangled up in fears and what-if worries to try for an insult. Luckily, the bug did seem to get the message, and Frank could quickly slip unseen past the corner and into the pharmacy aisle.

There they were, the dreaded purple boxes. The thing that would soon decide his fate. Frank thought briefly about why their town's store would stock this many- there were only a few womb-havers here, and even fewer who'd realistically ever put the thing to use. Still, suppose they were there just in case. Just gotta grab one, they thought. Grab and b-

Buy it. Frank would need to buy the thing from Howdy. The idea had seemed doable in the abstract, but now that they were here...he couldn't do it. Having to look him in the eye, face his questions, try to make jokes...Frank swallowed hard, fighting the rising lump of bile. But he couldn't just walk out without it!

Glancing around quickly, they pressed himself close to the shelf, silently praying forgiveness for what he was about to do. A box was torn open at its seal, the contents swiftly stuffed into the waistline of their pants, and the empty shell stuffed behind the others as discreetly as he could manage.

His heart was racing with nervous excitement. They'd never stolen anything before. Should he just walk out like this? No no, surely that's too suspicious. Grabbing a bottle of cold medicine as pretense for being in that aisle, Frank walked through the rest of the shop as casually as he could manage, even as their mind screamed at each passing second.

Bunch of bananas (on sale!)

A loaf of bread.

Some cheese.

Four things was enough, right? Just a normal quick trip to the store, nothing weird with that. Nothing strange, he'd done nothing wrong.

The caterpillar had long since finished up restocking when Frank approached his counter, the normal indescribable level of snark in his eyes as he watched them. "All set?" he said, taking a look in the basket. "Not much today, eh?"

Frank let out a noise meant to be non-commital and bored, but ended up sounding more like they were suffering from stomach pain. Still, it worked somehow, earning little more than a raised eyebrow from the taller. "Yeesh, you do look terrible," he said, all teasing aside for a second as he spoke in genuine concern. "Tell ya what, I won't ask for a joke this time- tell me a fact. Know you're good for that, won't be hard on your noggin."

Oh if only you knew, Frank thought miserably, how hard everything is for me right now.

He racked their brain for a moment, trying to think of a fact he'd not told Howdy before. They'd told him plenty, it was after all the scientist's favorite activity. But for as many as had been told, Frank knew at least a dozen more.

"D-did you know that butterflies can't fly...if their body temperature is below 80 degrees?"

They tried to let his mind fall into the familiar rhythm of infodumping.

"Or no, wait, i-it was 65 I think. The uhh...the mucles don't..."

It didn't work.

Howdy seemed to mull over what Frank was saying, a comedically exaggerated look of concentration across his features. Frank had always hated that, how he and Barbie never seemed to take anything seriously even though there was plenty of serious stuff in their lives. What they hated even more though, was what happened next.

"So what if it's warmer than that? Does that mean more flight?"

Frank's heart sank. Oh no. He's got follow-up questions. On any other day they would've relished the chance to share more information. Now though, it felt like agony, the clock still ticking and ticking fast. "I think..." he started, but their mind was drawing blanks, stuck like a broken record on the singular thought of Oh God get me the fuck out of here. "I..."

Just then, sounds of the shop's only doors jangling open rang out from behind them, along with the cheerful-if-monotone call of "hello my lovely neighbors!"

Wally. Wally, the beautiful, darling little demon. Frank could almost have hugged the man if they weren't still pretending(?) to be sick. If anything at all could convince Howdy to take focus off of the grey, it would be the appearance of his boyfriend.

And sure enough, he did, a hand gently shoving Frank back with their groceries as the bug locked lips and eyes with his little man. Frank made a noise of pretended offense at this, though truth be told they were overjoyed for an opportunity to seize. "I'll take my leave since you two are clearly busy," he said, earning quick looks of embarassment (mostly from Wally.) Heart still racing and with a carefully measured step to avoid jostling free their secret "purchase", Frank walked through the door and headed home, praying they'd get there before Eddie did.

[20dollarlolita]

I don't remember if you already answered this, sorry in advance if you have, but what are your thoughts on the Bernette 79 Yaya Han edition sewing machine + embroidery machine? I consider myself a cosplayer and a lolita (Yaya is, as far I can recall, a cosplayer but not a lolita), and I've only ever sewn on a vintage Singer in a table and a Hello Kitty Janome. I don't see myself using the embroider option a lot since I embroider by hand, so that part would be taking up space unless I put in the effort to learn. On the other hand, it's a pretty shade of purple and is meant to sew over a variety of costuming fabrics which cannot be said of my current machine. It seems like a lot of extra stuff I probably don't need or have time to learn about if I do need them, but preliminary research seems to show it's a great value for the price (unless you break it). Or do you have any other recommendations in the same line? Thanks again for all your diligence and hard-earned expertise!

Okay, so I just sold one of those to someone whose other machines are a Hello Kitty Janome and a vintage Singer in a table, and I had to immediately check if you and them were the same person. So if you're Singer in a table is a 201, you should really meet my other customers.

Also quick note to everyone who is interested in this machine: you can buy it from the company that I work for. It's an internet model, so I can sell it to anyone in the USA. I can price match anyone else selling it. If you buy it from me, I get credit for the sale and I make commission (but it doesn't cost you anything). So if you want a Bernette b79 Yaya Han edition, or probably any other sewing machine, please shoot me an ask and I'll give y'all my work email or my sale code.

So I personally don't like Yaya as a person, but the B79 is a pretty good deal if it's what you're looking for. The fact that it's got embroidery and it has the digitizing software is really the thing that pushes it into the really good price point. On the sewing side, the foot kit is a really good perk, especially because not a lot of places keep feet in stock that work with the dual feed.

But if you're really not interested in the embroidery, I'd suggest just getting the Bernette b77, which is the sewing-only version of the b79 (if you want the embroidery-only version of the b79, you're looking for the b70Deco). It's going to be about a thousand dollars cheaper. It, sadly, is not purple, but that's nothing a few stickers can't fix. My store's current price on the Yaya 79 is $2499 and our price on the b77 is $1499, so it's literally a thousand dollars.

(Or, if you're absolutely insane, you can get some Cricut infusible ink paper and an EasyPress mini and sublimate onto the front of your machine. It's the kind of plastic that takes sublimation. Isn't that absolutely bonkers wild?)

That said, if you're willing to spend the extra money, you would be getting embroidery with a very large hoop size (for a beginning sewing machine, anyway), the foot kit, the built-in stitches and designs, and Creator9. I tell creative people who are interested in embroidery machines that you should not consider embroidery software to be optional. There's a lifetime worth of fun premade designs and projects in the hoop, and most people are happy to jut use those, but most of the people who are in my age range would not feel like they're getting everything out of their embroidery machine if they can't digitize goofy ideas from scratch. Creator 9 is like a thousand dollars normally, so it's what I find really pushes the price of the Yaya machine into the "really good deal" range, if you ask me. But, if you're not interested in embroidery, it's not really worth paying the extra money.

Anyway, if you're interested, please buy from me because it won't cost you more and it helps me pay my utility bills.

[prize-pig-collection]

Only the Necessities

an inspirational story

Check out this post if you haven’t already. A recipe for a shake that’s about 3 gallons and almost 32,000 calories, and an update from the author who says she swears by it, and it’s a big part of what’s helped her blow up to 540 pounds as of about a year ago.

So that author @juliebelly and I were talking earlier. It turns out she’s 575 pounds now, and desperate to be 600 or more 😉

So desperate, in fact, that she wants one of these “little” shakes right now! But she said she needed a little motivation to get out of bed and to the store. Understandable at her size. Between that, and a little quirk of the recipe, that set off a little story in my head…

———

I can’t imagine what the scene at the grocery store is gonna look like…

Either you’ll roll up to the checkout on a scooter that’s struggling to handle your weight (it’s only meant for 500 lbs, after all!), or you’ll be sweaty and red-faced from all the waddling around the aisles you had to do. Hopefully you didn’t bump into anything in the aisles, because bending over to pick things up just isn’t your thing… someone who works there is gonna have to deal with that.

So either way, there you’ll be with your gallon of ice cream, gallon of milk, 3/4 gallon of cream, 4 cans of condensed milk, box of brownie mix, and 5 bottles of chocolate syrup.

One look at you, and the stuff on the conveyor belt, and despite how impossible it sounds, the cashier will just know, somehow, that’s all destined to get down your throat as soon as humanly possible.

I’m sure all the other times you go grocery shopping, and pile up junk food at the register, maybe they tell themselves, “Oh she’s having a big party…” or “Maybe she’s stocking up for a few months while there’s a sale.”

But I think this random set of ingredients makes clear in their mind: “She’s gonna drink this all together. I bet she somehow gets off on it too. Clearly this isn’t the first time she’s done this, I mean look at her…”

Maybe they’ll even tease you a little bit. Call over a manager and ask, “Hey there’s a deal over in Dairy, right, where if you buy a gallon of milk, a gallon of ice cream, and a gallon of cream, you get some money off, or something? I was just wondering if I should tell this piggy… I mean person, oops!… that they should go grab another quart of heavy cream, to make it a full gallon?”

And it turns out they’re right, an extra quart would trigger the deal. It’s meant more for their commercial customers—restaurants, bakeries, and so on—but they’ll allow it for you. Nothing says a regular person can’t get the deal, just no one ever tried. Huh, that’s weird, isn’t it? Oh well, someone’s gotta be the first.

A closer look at you, though, and it’s obvious that to send you all the way back to the dairy aisle would be too much of a struggle. And there’s people in line behind you. You’re gonna need a little help if you’re gonna make this quick.

So the announcement goes over the loudspeaker: “Can an associate in Dairy bring over 1 quart of heavy cream to register 6? We’ve got someone here who wants the gallon of cream, gallon of ice cream, gallon of milk deal. The one that’s usually for business accounts? Just a regular person this time, but my manager says it’s OK!”

Then they realize: they didn’t actually ask you if you wanted the other quart of cream. But the way you’re eyeing the stuff already on the belt, trying not to drool, tells them they made the right call.

Good luck having the patience to get all the way home and firing up the blender before you start chugging away��

[cleromancy]

HI I WOULD LOVE TO SEE SNIPPETS OF THE EX CHILD STAR AU

thank you anon 🥰 sry it took me a few days to post this lol

cws: references to mental health problems and a previous suicide attempt, and lasting trauma from exploitation. uh, and past drug use.

*

If you had asked Dick twenty-four hours ago about his apartment, he would have said it was fine. Not too modest, not too ostentatious, not so public he has to worry about creeps but not as isolated as the villa. He's so glad they sold the villa. Nicest place he's ever lived, and if he'd stayed there one more day he'd have been peeling off the wallpaper muttering about ex-child stars trapped inside, creeping. Where he lives now is within walking distance from a friendly little corner store where he picks up cereal and almond milk and anything else he doesn't want to wait to get delivered, which is convenient, and a somewhat-longer-but-still-doable hike away from Dick's favorite store in L.A, a tiny little candy shop that only stays afloat out of sheer spite. The owner, a cantankerous old man that Dick loved immediately upon meeting, roasts Dick mercilessly every time Dick comes in, but he also keeps Dick's standing order of the tragically discontinued Triple Xtreme Face Pucker Nuclear Warheads in stock just for him, so Dick wouldn't buy them anywhere else even if he could.

And as long as you have that and a laundry room, you're golden. If Dick had to leave his apartment to wash his socks he'd just lie down and die, or else wear a lot of dirty clothes.

So normally if asked, Dick would conclude that the apartment is, actually, better than fine, maybe even pretty good, and then he would change the subject.

It's just hitting Dick now that he's lived here for seven years now and he doesn't think he's ever actually looked around. They hired somebody to move his stuff into storage while Dick was still in inpatient and somebody else to decorate the apartment so it would be livable right when he got out, before he got around to picking up his stuff (he keeps meaning to do that). Moving in, all Dick cared about was getting a burrito the size of his face and sleeping on sheets that didn't smell faintly of industrial bleach masked poorly by something artificial, vaguely floral, and marketed as *Mountain Breeze.* In the grey haze it hadn't occurred to him to wonder if maybe the decor was itself a little too grey.

"Or whatever color they call this," Dick says to himself, staring down an oversized decorative vase with a few sticks poking out that you'd think would be silk flowers or something, but instead have these fuzzy little puffballs attached for some reason. "Gray-beige? Taupe? Greige? Why do I even have you." He tilts it to one side. It's shockingly heavy. "Why do I have *six of you.*"

Looking down the hallway it's obvious that the interior design team had a vision, and that vision was "innoffensive, featureless neutrality." There are just enough wall hangings to qualify as "minimalist" over "austere," black and white photographs of bland still lifes in featureless frames. Some kind of hanging tapestry except it's solid white with hanging tassels. Grey-toned floor, lighter grey-toned floor runner. The end result sails right past "boring" into "escaped psych ward patient" territory. Which Dick resents. He did his time, thank you very much, and waited until his official discharge like a good boy. That's probably why he didn't notice until now, psych ward home away from psych ward home.

Yeah. Let's blame that. The fact that he spent his first year out of the hospital doing nothing but trying to beat his Tetris high score in his underwear and scouring the internet trying to find the tragically discontinued Triple Xtreme Face Pucker Nuclear Warheads had nothing to do with it.

"He's going to think I'm a serial killer," Dick realizes.

He's most of the way through Tetrising the unwieldy, surpringly heavy vases into the tiny cubicle the guest bathroom calls a shower—and he'd like to know whose idea *that* was when anyone with a lick of sense would have just made it a half-bath—when the buzzer for the lobby goes off.

"Crap," Dick mutters, taking half a step away from the tower, which wobbles ominously. He lunges to steady it. "Crap!"

He casts around for a surface and sets the last two vases on the toilet lid and the sink respectively, the stupid little Q-tip stick things rattling mockingly inside, then dashes out to tell the doorman that no, Roy's not a stalker, yes really, yes Dick wants you to let him up please, yes he is serious, yes he is sure. He has enough time to sprint back to the bathroom and make sure his hair is okay and confirm that at least he doesn't *look* as sweaty and disheveled as he *feels,* but thankfully not enough time to start worrying if he might be due early for another round of fillers or if his hairline might be receding or if the skin under his jaw might be sagging. He looks fine. Everything's fine.

When the doorbell rings, Dick has to pretend he doesn't know who's on the other side to get himself to finally open the door. His breath still catches when he sees him.

Roy, casual as ever, pushing a pair of Ray-Bans he told Dick he shoplifted as a teenager up his forehead. His crow's feet, because he stopped getting fillers at twenty-five, except *his* are laugh lines, not stress wrinkles, less those *Where Are They Now?* specials they used to do on VH1, more Paul Newman aging like fine wine. His crooked smile, and he doesn't whiten his teeth anymore either, teased Dick when he drove him for his root canal that he was destroying his enamel and then held his hand when they put him under. His scuffed bomber jacket, older than either of them, which sparked half a dozen anecdotes about an Uncle Hal when Dick brushed his fingers against a faded patch on the sleeve. His henley with three buttons undone, straining over the curve of his chest. His jeans tight around the thighs, a little threadbare in places after over a decade of wear. The whole of him, broad and easy in the doorway, unapologetically imperfect, smiling.

Dick just wants this to go well so *badly.* "Hi."

"Hi yourself," Roy says, shifting a little. "Can I come in?"

"Please."

Roy closes the door behind him, bending to unlace his boots. Dick's eyes catch for a second on the strain of his thighs against denim, and the nervous inane smalltalk on its way out of Dick's mouth dies on his lips.

Roy kicks the second boot off and straightens up, dusting his palms off on his thighs, which probably shouldn't make Dick's mouth fill with saliva the way it does. He's looking around the entryway, curious. "Nice place."

*Don't mention the vases.* "You think so? I keep meaning to update a little."

"Yeah, man, it's nice," Roy says easily, and he's lying but Dick can barely tell, which is kind of him. "You want to show me around?"

No, Dick does not want to show him around. No, he does not want to discover alongside Roy what other modern minimalist nightmares the interior design team saw fit to install in case Dick got too overstimulated by non-neutral colors and tried to kill himself again.

"I want to show you the media room," Dick says, which at least has the benefit of actually being true.

*

The "whoa" Roy lets out when they enter the media room is gratifying. It's most people's reaction when they see it. It's always gratifying.

"Is that a pinball machine?" Roy asks.

Dick grins. "You wanna play?"

"Hell yeah, just. Later. You have so much cool shit here, show me all of it—"

Maybe the other reason Dick barely knows what the rest of his apartment looks like is because this is where he spends most of his time. Freshly discharged from the hospital, Dick had scarfed down his face-sized burrito, faceplanted on the bed, slept like a log for about two days straight and woken up not entirely sure what year it was or why. He looked around the room, remembered it was his, flicked on the lamp on his bedside table and didn't like it any better in the light. It was the smooth plasticine decor that Dick's belatedly come to realize populated the entire apartment, featureless, meaningless, trying desperately to be mature by being entirely devoid of interest. *My bedroom pays taxes,* Dick remembers thinking. *My bedroom has a 401k.* He grabbed his meds from his bedside table and stuffed them in his sweatpants pocket before wrapping himself in the big gray down comforter and dragging it to what he supposed was the den, flopping on the couch and sleeping for another six hours, eventually waking with the cap of PRAZOSIN - 10MG - GRAYSON, RICHARD J digging into his hip.

Time was sort of soupy a lot of the time back before he got his ADHD diagnosis, because of the brain fog. For the longest time his psychiatrists kept adjusting his Wellbutrin dose pretending they thought that had a chance in hell of working while Dick sat listlessly in their offices, missing meth. It wasn't until later when Jason Todd of all people dragged him to a specialist (because "if I have it, you definitely have it" successfully nettled Dick into going just to prove him wrong, except of course it turned out the bastard was right) and Dick found a new psychiatrist who was halfway competent and put him on Adderall that he really felt at all present again. The psychiatrist he has now, who is from hell and who doesn't let him get away with lying and who is incredibly good at her job, was the one who told him how much meth and ADHD stimulants have in common chemically.

Dick sat very still. Then he pointed to the throw cushion on the couch. "Can I borrow that for just a sec?"

"Take as long as you need."

Dick grabbed the pillow, buried his face in it, and screamed at the top of his lungs.

But for a while, yeah. Time was soup Dick was mostly afloat in. He spent it floating here.

Now that Dick is looking for it, he notices the gray in the floor and the walls, the aggressive featurelessness of even the window frames, but he likes the rest of the room enough not to mind. At one point he'd been irrationally angry at the pile of mail he'd put off opening for over a month, and he'd been going through a minor fixation with auction websites at the time, and there was an old, probably busted Ms Pac Man arcade machine up for sale and for some reason Dick latched onto it. For some reason winning the auction of the stupid Ms Pac Man machine was very briefly the most important thing in the world. And he did win the auction, because nobody else wanted the janky old thing, and to Dick's shock and delight it actually *worked*, and suddenly he had a project.

At first he bought and fixed up old arcade fixtures, classic games and pinball machines mostly but he dabbled in anything; he'd even gotten his hands on an air hockey table once. Then he'd get bored or run out of space, sell a bunch of things or even give them away if he was too sick of looking at them, and before terribly long he drifted away from arcades specifically. That part he credits to a film projector he ran into at a flea market and fell in love with, which prompted him to spend possibly obscene amounts of money on the sound system and improving the acoustics. He fell in love with a lot of objects, those days, maybe because he wasn't talking to *people* much. Not people who knew him well, anyway. He was on first name terms with his favorite antique dealers, one of whom inexplicably set aside an old Gibson electric guitar he found, a gorgeous machine in a charmingly 60s shade of Robin's egg blue, because he said it reminded him of Dick. Either because he somehow knew Dick would love it, or else because he knew Dick was a sucker with way too much money.

It didn't matter. Dick *did* love it, and he *is* a sucker with way too much money, and he *did* go straight home to almost give himself tinnitus playing every three-chord classic he knew at a truly unwise volume.

(Dick even replaced the original couch in this room because he kept falling asleep on it and his physical therapist threatened to quit over the havoc he was wreaking on his back. He's still not thrilled that he doesn't really sleep in bed ever, but the new couch isn't threatening to do permanent damage to his spine. Win/win in Dick's book.)

So. Not a home arcade, not a home theater, not a home studio. Scavenged bits and salvaged pieces, nostalgia probably in excess, anchors in time. Whatever magic they put in the air at antique stores and estate sales and really good museum exhibits, Dick managed to bottle a breath of it and take it home with him. When he finally started letting people into his life again, the unabashed delight often on their faces, walking into this room full of outdated obsolete frivolous things, sharing it with them… it's good. It feels good.

"Does that ancient popcorn machine actually work?" Roy asks, bouncing on the balls of his feet, grinning.

Dick matches it. "Yeah, and it's gonna knock your socks off."

*

So Dick gets the popcorn going and shows Roy around and silently laments that there was no way he could get his hands on film reels of The Muppet Show. Roy was almost as much of a geek about some of these machines as Dick was, and Dick had made it his whole personality for a while.

"It's just that there are some antique collectors that really don't mess around," Dick explained to Donna the week before, twisting and untwisting his napkin in his hands. "And I'm a competitive guy but some of the markets are totally cutthroat, and film people and puppet people are both intense. So this was better."

"Yeah, *and* it'd be insane to drop that kind of money on a first date," said Jason through a mouthful of bacon cheeseburger, Mister *we're not brothers we just played them on TV.* Dick had invited Donna to lunch, Jason had loudly said he was too busy to come, Dick said he wasn't invited, and Jason's schedule suddenly cleared up, *viola,* miracles do happen.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Dick told him.

"Die," Jason suggested pleasantly.

'Just played it on TV.' Sure.

"And it's not a date," Dick added belatedly, stomach swooping.

Jason had opened his mouth to probably say something horrible, as is his way, and instead let out a hilarious squeak, turning to Donna next to him in the booth with massive betrayed Bambi eyes.

She ignored him, continuing to pour Sweet-N-Low packets into her half-empty coffee as if she didn't just stomp on his foot under the table. She didn't really like coffee until it got to the consistency of artificially sweetened sludge. When they were young Donna was always on top of what was *in*, considering it part of her full-time job to appear effortlessly sophisticated; she skipped the teen-preteen fashion beat and shot straight to the big leagues by fifteen. They were putting the equivalent of a *sophomore in high school* on best dressed lists alongside grown-ass women. It should never have happened. No one should have *let* it happen. One time even before all that, Dick and Jason stole a box of Krispy Kreme donuts from catering and absconded to her trailer to share and she had a panic attack. Years later she described her youth as being in a room full of invisible mirrors at all times. Those days she wouldn't be caught dead with anything less chic than an espresso from whatever new *it* cafe just opened. And there she was, two decades later, blithely desecrating two-dollar-fifty diner coffee with enough aspartame to kill a cart horse in front of god and everyone. She was probably Dick's favorite person in the entire world, and he went into a little trance for a moment, watching her graceful hands with horrified fascination.

Finally satisfied, she took a sip of her monstrosity and hummed, satisfied with that which she hath wrought. "Wait and see," she suggested. "If it goes well, it can be a date."

"And everyone says *I'm* the crazy one," Jason griped, rubbing the prison stick-n-poke tattoo on one thumb with the other.

"Well, if everyone says it, it must be true," Donna said warmly, knocking her shoulder against Jason's.

[queen-of-writing-bad-things]

Henry Danger Reader Insert | Captain Man x Reader: SEASON 5

Episode 10: Knight & Danger (SMUT)

*smutlet wasn't planned but I had encouragement and then I was inspired and then this sinfest was born. Nothing extreme (lies), just a light sprinkling of filth to get us started. SKIP IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE BEAST WITH TWO BACKS, THE HOKEY POKEY, THE TERRIBLE TANGO, THE—you get the picture*

~Junk-N-Stuff~

Novelty lamps? Check. Assorted ping pong balls? Check. Hula skirts in various sizes? Check. Creepy clapping monkeys with cymbals? Check. New shipment of fifty glow-in-the-dark lightbulbs? Ten, fifteen, twenty—wait... Ten, fifteen, twenty... Twenty?

"Doofus, I'm trying to do something here!" (y/n) whined as she tried to count what the store above her home did and didn't have, but her attempts were thwarted by someone trying their best to distract her. 

It had been a late start to the morning and she had a lot to do because of said late start; the shop floor needed to be swept, the displays needed to be adjusted and fixed but most importantly, she needed to check her list of items in the storeroom around the back to see what they had plenty of and whether they needed to place an order. 

But that was hard when a strong pair of hands were wandering from her waist to her tummy to her hips and...elsewhere.

"It's a fake store, sweetheart. You don't need to worry so much...I don't," Ray replied, kissing down his sweet girl's neck as her shaking hands wandered through the shelves. She was trying to keep counting, hoping to come up with a figure so she could finish up and give him the attention he was so desperately craving but her brain couldn't grasp any numbers right now, even though they were her speciality. He was too good at distracting her. 

"Yeah, I know you don't, Raymond. But fake store or not, our customers are going to get suspicious when they come in to buy some junk and find that we have nothing to sell. So, that means I have to take stock, which is easier said than done when you've got hands...there," she scolded him, rolling her eyes when she felt his smirk grow against her skin and she knew that he'd never feel any shame for what he was doing, not when she showed that she loved it just as much as he did. 

His fingers were playing with the button and zipper on her jeans, flicking the metal slider and circling his finger around the cold stud, taunting that he might or might not pop it open and slide it down.

"But baby, it's been so long since this morning—since I last had you..." Now, he was the one whining, a high-pitched lilt in the back of his throat that told her that he wanted something and wasn't going to stop until he got it or got pushed away. But his statement was ridiculous; after all, there was a reason why she'd started so late, much later than she normally would on a Saturday morning when the teens were due to come in for work.

"It was an hour ago! And I've been trying to catch up on work ever since, so go...do it yourself," (y/n) muttered, feeling her cheeks heat up at the thought but she didn't have time for "action", not the sort he was after anyway. Henry, Charlotte and Jasper would be in the store any minute and she'd melt into a puddle should they see or hear or sense something that didn't involve them. 

Seriously, Henry's poop jokes would end and in the ashes would rise the endless teasing of how they did it in the back room. Nuh-uh, no way, Pedro, no thanks and goodnight. Besides, he'd loved her for years before they'd gotten together, so surely, one more round going solo wouldn't hurt.

"Hour's too long and anyway, I can't fuck my hand, sweet girl."

"And why's that?" She looked over her shoulder, inhaling sharply at how the air in the room had seemingly gone from frigid to suffocatingly hot in point five seconds. 

Only he could beat her argument of staying focused by being so crude, only he could say one thing and have her full attention, despite all her big talk about focusing on the task at hand and how he was the culprit who delayed her in the first place. She was intrigued, though. Most guys would happily take self-pleasure over no pleasure at all and they'd also probably think that they'd get lucky next time but not her doofus. He wasn't like most guys.

"I'm not interested in myself...I'm just after this," Ray whispered hotly and nipped at the skin under her ear as his fingers expertly worked the button on her jeans, poking it through the hole in the denim until it was open and then it was just a matter of slowly sliding down the zipper. 

Show off; he only had one hand but that was all he needed, just four fingers and a thumb to open her pants and pull them down by just a fraction. Not much, no more than an inch, just enough to loosen them so his fingers could dip past her waistband and into her cotton panties. Okay, so, that was his plan all along.

"Shouldn't have worn these jeans, pretty girl. Shouldn't have reached for the top shelf either," he growled, the throaty noise reverberating in her ear and causing the woman to release a soft, barely audible moan. 

Honest, he hadn't come upstairs looking for trouble, he'd actually ventured into his store to see what she was up to and if she needed help since she was on the shorter side when it came to stacking shelves but then, when he'd stepped out of the elevator, all he'd been able to see as she reached for a pink flamingo garden piece was denim pulled tight and smoothed across her ass, which was perfectly on display as her shirt rode up. 

"I walk in and I see this," the hand that had been holding her hip came back around to squeeze and knead her flesh briefly, "--this perfect ass practically presented to me," a rough slap to her left cheek and his hand left the part that had made him spiral into temptation in the first place, leaving the handprint there to sting numbly under the jean material. 

At this point, (y/n) was breathless, her breathing coming into soft pants as his digits danced and stroked around her mound, pulling back and then returning in a torturous rhythm that left her wanting what she'd originally avoided, but not on the verge of being incoherent. Not yet anyway. 

"I was—am working, d—doofus. I needed to s-stretch to get to the—the lightbulbs," the heroine argued, her voice breaking every time a fingertip dipped into her slit and brushed against her clit. There was nearly no pressure, he wouldn't allow her that luxury yet, no, Ray was going at a leisurely pace that suited nine AM and he found the way she jolted in his arms with each touch too hot to stop. A strong arm had curled around her upper body, leaving her torso immobile against his so all she could do was squirm in his hold and take what he gave her. And he had a lot to give.

"Oh, you're working? My sweet, little girl is working? Does that mean she doesn't want my hand down her pants, playing with her little pussy and the mess she made after I fucked her this morning?" He asked in a light, mocking tone, not enough to frustrate her but enough to make her wriggle when he pretended as though he was about to leave her alone. 

He would never be that cruel, not when he'd been the one to seek her out in the first place to pull more sweet moans from her lips. 

The previous hour hadn't been enough, not when she'd only come once and for a guy like him, who thrived off the pleasure of his partner, it didn't sit right. He wasn't looking for another fuck, that would take time and it would be messy and as much as he wanted to, they couldn't spend the entire day like animals, but he was looking to set the ratio right; three to one, that's how he normally played it. One had been given, two to go, but the lightbulbs still needed counting, even if the idea of a glow-in-the-dark lightbulb was ridiculous. 

Running his fingers lightly through her lips once, not enough for a lot of stimulation, but enough to explore, he could feel the wetness that had gathered there earlier and dare he say the cum he'd pumped into her, slowly leaking out, even though it belonged in her pussy and nowhere else. 

He groaned gutturally, harshly panting into her ears as she whimpered, bucking her hips into his hand when he returned to her clit, circling it once to smear the pearly stickiness that he'd left behind. Shit, did she know how hot she was?

"No—no, I'm your good g-girl. Please, s-sir—" a harsh tap landed on her clit, causing her whole body to tense and jerk at the rippling pleasure that seized her every nerve. It would've been a harder hit if he'd had the space to pull back his hand properly, but it was enough of a warning to make her bite her lips and be quiet, his good girl. But—good girls know what to call the ones giving them such pleasure.

"What do you call me, little one?"

"Captain!—I-I'm your good girl. Please, Captain, keep playing my pussy. Please, I need it." Had (y/n) not felt the pulsating need in her core, she would've been embarrassed by how needy she was, and even more embarrassed by how slick her blazing cunt was. 

It was their dirty, little secret that she sometimes walked around filled with his cum and then when he finally had another chance to get her alone, Ray took great delight in peeling her underwear down her legs and seeing what had stained the fabric. But for now, he also loved how he could switch between rubbing tight, fast circles and doing nothing.

"Precious girl, I know you need it. This cunt is insatiable," Ray murmured, savouring the sensation of silky, velvety slick coating his digits as he ran his fingers back and forth, stopping once to curl his fingertip into her clenching hole just once so he could push his seed into her again, but being filled was what so sorely craved; a fingertip wasn't enough. "But it's like you said. You have work to do."

"Wha—? Noooo, no work now. It's not important—just a—I'll just do it in a minute," the girl whimpered, fighting relentlessly against his iron grip to no avail because the minute she started whining, he began retreating. 

It was all part of Ray's game; turn her from a normal, functioning human being to a dripping mess in under five minutes and then refuse to go any further once she was aching with desire and then, he could tease her, taunt her, her until she went crazy...or at least until he decided that teetering on the brink of pleasure wasn't enough to satisfy his need to have her in his arms. 

The bulbs needed counting, it was unavoidable and his sweet girl had often said that she was the queen of multitasking.

"Count them." "W-what?" She blinked in surprise at his sudden command, having no idea what he was talking about since she couldn't think through the haze that clouded her mind. 

Count what? The number of orgasms he was going to rip from her body? The number of minutes he'd tease her for? The number of fingers he'd be able to fit inside her? The number of seconds they had left until someone came into the shop, whether they be a friend or stranger? 

She didn't know what he wanted, apart from that he wanted her like putty in his hands and wouldn't stop until she was twitching and oversensitive.

"I said, count the fucking lightbulbs, sweet girl. Do your job and I'll do mine," he ordered her, his voice deep and rough yet gentle in his command as his thumb kept its circling pace on her throbbing clit. "I'll push my cum back into your perfect, little pussy and while I do that, you can do the last job on your list. Seems fair, right?"

"No. No, I can't—Ray—I-I can't think or c-count—" (y/n) begged for mercy, knowing that focusing on anything but what he was doing to her was going to be near impossible. The pressure of her clit was heavenly, and so was the occasional finger that slid in to stroke her walls, it was too much...and yet he wanted her to do math at the same time. It couldn't be done, surely. Speech was difficult at that moment, let alone keeping track of what she'd looked at and what still needed attention.

"Yes, you fucking can, smart little girl. You can see if there's fifty bulbs here or not—and you'll take whatever I give you in the meantime," Ray snarled against her neck, dragging his canine down to her pulse point until she gasped at the sensation. 

Fuck, he could feel how her cunt clenched around nothing when he did and he suddenly became very aware of how hard he'd grown in his jeans. Rock-solid, twitching, ready to just slide into her pussy—it would take it, he could feel how wet she was—and if he wasn't trained in rarely practised patience, would've pulled her jeans over her ass and fucked her hard against the shelf, game or not.

But, where was the fun in that? He much preferred to see her cum than himself and giving in now would leave a disappointing anticlimax as if he wolfed down what he should've played with first. This was about his darling fiancée, he'd been allowed to make her orgasm more than just the meagre one she'd experienced earlier and he was gonna take that chance. Anything to hear her moans and sighs of pleasure, his be damned. 

"Come on. Count." Swallowing harshly, (y/n) looked into the crate of stock that she'd pulled from the top shelf—the action that had caught his attention. There were so many and they all looked the same, how the hell was she supposed to do this properly? 

An estimate wasn't allowed, it had to be accurate for the books and giving up would result in her being left to finish herself off and then would be downright abysmal in comparison to what her doofus could give her. His fingers were longer, thicker, faster, leagues in front of hers, so she just had to go for it, and that was precisely Ray decided to plunge into her heat.

"O-one—fuck—two—three—three—four—f-five..." It was a shaky start, but then again, she was shaking quite badly herself. Her knees felt like jelly and her core was pulled tight as one finger curled in and out of her pussy, palm brushing her clit every time it did, making it torture to keep going. Her eyes wanted to snap shut and work on grinding her hips into Ray's hand, anything to chase the climax that was on the horizon, building up in the pit of her stomach, but she knew that he wouldn't like that. 

But she was trying her best and that was what he liked, especially when he saw what he was doing to the woman who could do her sixteen times tables in her sleep.

"Good girl, keep going. This cunt is so tight, so needy, it's practically sucking my hand in—you wouldn't think it was fucked an hour ago," the man rambled, spilling whatever filth came to mind because he thrived off it as much as she did. She was so sweet when she whined for him, so sweet when he bit and suckled on her neck to leave fleeting bruises that never lasted long enough for him to admire. It was one downside to her superpower, but not one to dwell on, not when she was piecing her mind together to get the job done.

"Five—t-ten—fifteen—twen—twenty—twenty-five—thirty" her hand brushed over each bulb as she counted, ticking off clouded boxes in her head as the other gripped the metal shelves for dear life and slowly but surely, she started racking up the tally to the rhythm of his pumping finger. She could handle one, one wasn't bad, it wasn't what she needed but it was a start and not too distracting as she counted, so she was grateful. But Ray wasn't feeling merciful and it wasn't meant as a favour either. One was just the beginning.

"Thir—oh, fuck, yes..." her counting was thrown off when a second digit prodded at her entrance before sliding in to join the other, generating a delicious burn at the new thickness. Again, it wasn't enough, nothing would be unless it was his perfect cock but being filled more ever so slightly was enough to short circuit her brain and stop her fingers from tapping each lightbulb as she went. 

For a moment, numeracy was out of the window and she lost herself in the one thrust backwards she allowed herself, moaning when the fingers entered her more roughly and his palm gave hard pressure to her bud. She needed more and she found it, but as quickly as it came, Ray caught her and took it away.

"No—no. Don't test me, sweet girl. This pussy is mine to fuck or not fuck, so don't be getting ahead of yourself. Stop pouting, that mouth is better off finishing what you started before I leave you here to make yourself come on the dirty floor of the back room."

"Thirty," she knew he wasn't joking, he could easily step away and leave her a twitching mess on the floor and the idea of losing the fullness of his fingers made her break into reality again with enough clarity to finish what she started, "—thirty-five—forty—forty-f-five."

"That's it, so close, my love. So nearly there and I just know that you're almost ready to cum, aren't you?" He asked gently, kissing her cheek when she gave him a quick succession of nods. Fuck yes, she wanted to cum and there were only five left to count, not long to bring her to the die, so Ray upped the ante and slid a third finger into her hole. 

She was filled fully now, too shaky to try and add a fourth, that only happened on rare occasions when he wanted to keep her up all night, but three were satisfying enough. He pumped them slowly, wanting his girl to get used to them before he broke her into pieces and put her back together again, but for (y/n), even the slow pace was enough to drag her to the edge and hold her there.

"Yes. Yes, please, I want to cum so bad."

"Finish your job then, sweet girl. Finishing counting and you can cream this little pussy for me," he smirked, increasing the pace a little bit to make her walls tighten but not enough to push her over. He knew the signs, he knew when to stop and back off, he knew how to get her right back there because this was his game—and she was determined to finish it.

"O—kay...forty-five. One—two...three—f-four—five—fifty!" The quivering woman gasped, immediately rocking her hips into him when the winning number fell from her lips and she'd never felt relief like it. "Fifty—they're all here! Please, Captain—please, can I cum now?"

"Fuck, of course, you can. You're my good girl, aren't you? Cum on my fingers—that's it—fuck..." Ray groaned as his fingers pumped into her at a lightning speed, rubbing her clit furiously as his crotch met her ass and the ensuing hardness that ground against her taut flesh was enough to shove her across the line. 

White, hot light seemed to stab through her body as she came—hard—instinctively pressing her ass further into his hips as if she was trying to pull his cock into her further, only it was his fingers that she was clamping down on. A broken moan fell from her lips as she was crowded against the shelves, completely at his mercy as Ray got off on the sight of her facial expressions, right up until the waves of pleasure started to dissipate.

"Shit—shit, you're so hot, sweet girl, so fucking hot when you cum for me," he panted, feeling an all-to-familiar feeling creeping up his spine as his hips kept gyrating against her plump ass, his cock falling against his zipper perfectly like it was looking to slot in between her cheeks. Fuck, he couldn't take it, not when he felt her twitch again at the feeling of his hardness. Insatiable. "Fuck, pull these jeans down for me. Hurry up, need to see it—need to see your pussy before I—"

Even though the world seemed to be spinning after cumming so hard, (y/n) didn't need to be told twice, not when he practically barked the order at her. Upon hearing the sound of Ray's zipper going down and the rustling of fabric, her thumbs hooked her waistband and shoved her pants down over her ass, not to the floor, just enough to expose her glistening lips as she leaned on the shelves and presented to him. Just because she'd come ten seconds ago didn't mean she wasn't up to take him any time, any place.

"Show me—fuck—I can see my cum oozing out of you, sweet girl—" Ray's eyes darkened to the point of nearly swallowing the brilliant blue of his irises entirely when he saw the creamy mess of her puffy cunt. Dripping, clenching, vulnerable and for his eyes only as she wiggled it at him for a split second and it was enough to cement the idea in his head. He'd wanted this to be about her, he'd wanted to give her more orgasms since they'd woken up late and only had time for one each, which wasn't the usual agenda, but he couldn't ignore his throbbing hard-on any longer. 

He opened his fly, popped his jean button and pulled down his underwear, freeing himself in time to position the tip at her molten opening and push in. (y/n) had no time to react as his length slipped in with no resistance, aided by her slick-coated walls and the embarrassing amount of pre-cum that had built up as he watched her fall apart. The sudden thickness made her clench harshly and Ray couldn't stop himself from cumming; it shot up his spine and took them both by surprise the second he bottomed out, tip pressed deep inside of her as he shot his load and painted her walls white. 

"Shit, Ray—cum-cumming—again," she gasped when the hot, sticky substance filled her—the oddest sensation that she loved but never got used to—and it was enough to make her quivering walls convulse again. As if it was commanded of her, (y/n) came again, this time being wrung out dry by the perfect cock that she could clench around. 

All they could hear were ragged pants and the ticking sound of the wacky clocks on the shop floor as Ray held her to his chest like his life depended on it, pelvis not leaving her ass cheeks until his heart rate had slowed considerably. It was true, he'd cum like a teenager, one second of having her walls around him and he was a goner but to be fair to him, he did get off on her orgasms and any man would ruin themselves if they had her on their dick—not that they'd ever get the chance.

"That was unexpected," (y/n) was the first to speak, gulping with a rather dry mouth after all of her ragged breathing and moans. Ray shuffled behind her so she turned her head to find his lips, sharing a gentle kiss after an intense session to round it off sweetly and she could feel his smile against her cheek when he pulled away to kiss that too, and then her jaw, temple and the top of her head. He got soppy after sex and a quickie in the storeroom was no different, even if the aftercare couldn't be as good.

"Can't help it, sometimes. But I remembered I only made you cum once earlier and then, I definitely couldn't help it," Ray replied goofily, his need to be a dominant sex god draining away and leaving the same old, lovable idiot he was before and she shook her head at his logic. Right, he'd made it his mission and whilst she'd been fine with just one session that morning, considering they were behind in starting the day, it had not sat right with him.

"Whatever you say, doofus. Just warn me next time you want to fuck me upstairs. Y'know, anyone could walk in—"

"Nah, nah, nah, bro, I swear, Club Soda was bought by some rich kid last month."

"Henry, I know what I'm talking about! Trust me, when I went on Friday, the same old guy was still behind the bar!"

"Jasper, aren't you a little old for Club Soda? I mean, did you do your weird dance moves with a bunch of twelve-year-olds?"

"Hey, the J-man Shuffle is not weird! My mom likes it..." they couldn't make it up; they were still catching their breath as the signature sound of the T-Rex breathing fire and three voices entered the store, and they weren't customers. 

Ray didn't need to feel his girl tense and wriggle in his arms to know that play time was over and he hastily let her out of his embrace and gently pulled his softening cock from her slick, swollen pussy. A quiet grumble left his lips when he saw the mess he'd left behind; pearly white leaking through soft lips and down to her clit. The sight was glorious but if he stared any longer, he'd find himself running back down to Man Cave for a cold shower and leaving her to give his excuses. No, they were satiated...for now.

"Keep my cum inside you, sweet girl, where it belongs... That's my good girl," he grinned when she pushed her ass towards him even more when he pulled her panties back up, hiding his favourite sight from view until later that night. It was a shame but a man could daydream and they needed to straighten themselves out quickly so normality could resume. 

He tucked himself away and buttoned his jeans again as she tugged hers up and did the same, allowing him one last look at how they smoothed and shaped her ass perfectly. It made for a pretty picture, one that he could help but fondle gently one last time.

"You're such an ass man. You never leave it alone."

"I think you mean I'm a you man, babe. I can't leave you alone," he replied smugly, enjoying his dumb little joke when it tugged a smile on her lips that she couldn't smother. That was more accurate; he loved her ass, hips, tummy, thighs, boobs, face, hair, legs, feet, ears, nose, mouth, everything about her. And he didn't love them on anyone else, just her because he was what Henry would call "whipped".

"Okay, scratch that. You're such a dork, Raymond," she smiled and lifted the lightbulb tray back onto the high shelf, only to be helped by him when she couldn't quite stretch. She patted him on his pec as a small thanks and headed for the beaded curtain so they could make an appearance in the store before suspicion could be aroused and of course, Ray followed her heels like a love-sick puppy. Anything to stare at her butt as she walked away.

*AND WE ARE SAFE. Thank you for "coming", the ride is now over, please pick up your tongues and exit the smut with caution. We thank you for choosing Ruth's abomination that has landed us all in hell as we are now all filthy sinners. Bye-bye and have a lovely day.*

"Why's Ray a dork?" Henry's head picked at the noise of the infamous couple coming from the back. The three teens had perfectly clueless faces as they smiled at their boss and his fiancée, appearing like the ideal, idyllic couple as they floated into the store, him trailing after her with droll practically running down the sides of his mouth. They were so in love, it was cute, but what could he have possibly done or said to make him more of a dork than usual?

"Uh—well—he—we—"

"I told (y/n) a really funny story!" Ray quickly lied, seeing how his sweet girl was struggling to come up with something believable to tell their innocent faces. She couldn't tell them that they'd been having a steamy rendezvous in the storeroom, they would never go in there again unless it was hosed down and sterilised. 

And of course, being the funny man he was, he had material to back up his claim, so there was no need to worry her pretty little head about anything. All she needed to do was stand there, look gorgeous and admire him in his hot, blue shirt.

"Oh, right...let's hear it then," Charlotte smiled, eager to hear this story that had amused (y/n) and that would hopefully amuse them. She was all for funny stories and even if it was a little corny, enough to label him a dork, they'd never satisfy their curiosity until he spilt the beans.

"Okay, so there's this bowling alley downtown, right? Well, it used to be downtown, it got demolished a few years ago, but it was super popular back in the day, y'know when I was in my...early twenties. Anyray, I was there with a gir—a person once—" he started, plucking the most random funny story he could from his memory. It wasn't the best story, it was long and rambling, old and irrelevant but he was sticking with it. He had to, although some details were rather unfortunate. 

"Ray, I don't care if you went on a date with a girl when you were younger. I went on dates with guys too, you can say it," (y/n) told him gently, not missing how he avoided so the g-word with her around. It was silly really, unnecessary; she knew that he'd done some normal things just as she had, dates, sneaking out, making out, driving out, everything that a boy could get up to as he progressed into manhood and through his hero training, she couldn't be mad at him for that. 

Hell, he'd once taken three separate girls on three separate dates in the early days of their friendship and they'd still found their way into each other's arms. It was okay, it was normal, not some big secret.

"...Thanks, sweet girl," the hero smiled at her softly and curled an arm around her waist as they stood before the curious kids, who were hanging onto his every word, "—So, the guy that owns the bowling alley, he comes out from the back and he says to me this guy, he says, I got a hundred bucks here for anybody willing to box this kangaroo."

"You mean like...put him in a box?"  "Why would you put a kangaroo in a box?" "You should not cage animals," the teens told him, finding the tale weird from the get-go. First of all, it had been so long since Ray had confessed to (y/n)—or it felt like it anyway—so it was weird to imagine the man with anyone else. Second of all, they'd never heard of there being a bowling alley downtown, old or not. And third of all, what were these people doing to the kangaroo? They couldn't tell if this was a nice story or not, or more likely, a shaggy dog story that was a figment of Ray's imagination. 

"No, box, like boxing. Like, put on boxing gloves and fight," the large man clarified, wanting to make clear that he didn't lock up some poor kangaroo, he intended to fight it instead. Which, of course, was so much better.

"You should not fight animals." "Yeah, doofus," oh, (y/n) was loving this. Ray gave her a dry look as she smirked up at him, loving how he was forced to tell this story with no prior rehearsal. No frills, no lies, just the truth as he remembered it and as the teens found it hard to believe him, she studied his every facial twitch. A peck on her forehead kept her quiet, but not for long. If he loved to tease then so did she.

"Well, darlin', I didn't. As I put on my boxing gloves, my cousin's car comes smashing through a wall!" Ray exclaimed, letting go of his sweet girl as he got more and more animated and into the story. He could recall the thrill, the adrenaline, the craziness of the story, he almost didn't believe it himself, but he'd been there. They just had to take his word for it...with a pinch of salt.

"So, I dive out of the way before my cousin could run me over with his car, and naturally, the kangaroo, he jumps straight up into the air and he lands right—" "Uh, do you guys hear that?" Charlotte asked, butting into Ray's big climax with little animosity, merely a curiosity for what the hell was going on outside. Now that she said that, there was an awful racket going on past the glass, not that they could see anything happening on the road. It sounded like screams and crashes? Eh? Should they be concerned or had the circus arrived in town early?

"It's just a bunch of people screaming. Now, the kangaroo lands right on top of the clown! Now, we don't know if the clown is okay at this point—we don't know if he's dead, we don't know if he's alive..." Ray moved on, ignoring whatever was going on because he had started so he'd finish. He even tried to get (y/n) to stay with him, clawing for her waist absentmindedly when she wandered over to the door to see if she could find something out. Who cares? He looked good today, he had one of his best shirts on, and his biceps were out, why would she want to look at anything else as he told the best story ever?

"Uh, those screams are getting louder," Henry pointed out, feeling like the people in trouble were getting closer, not that it made a slight bit of difference.

"Then so am I. My aunt was an amateur lion tamer!" The man shouted at the top of his voice, earning him a pointed look from his sweet girl as she gave up trying to see. The view was too narrow and clearly, he needed supervision, judging by how he wasn't using his inside voice. With her back by his side, or rather, with her arms wrapped around his waist and her cheek smushed against his back in a hug from behind, the hero calmed down and returned to his story. 

"Now, everybody thought, hey, she can tame lions, she can probably tame tigers, right? As it turns out...not the case at all," the more random his story got, the worse the situation got outside, up until the point where it was turning into a Captain Man and co sitch. Come on, people were running past, screaming at the top of their voices, clearly terrified of something and trying to get away from it, how could he ignore that? Oh, right, he could ignore anything with the love of his life by his side and an amusing story to tell.

"Ray, sweetheart, those people look scared," (y/n) said to him softly, pulling away from his back so he lost the warmth she gave him and it sucked. Five minutes, that's all he needed. Five short minutes to wrap up his story, kiss her senseless and then go out to see what was going down. Was that too much to ask for? Captain Man waited for Swellview, couldn't they do the same for once?

"You wanna know who was scared? My aunt in a circus tent surrounded by tigers! Now, my cousin comes out of the back, right? And he's like, we gotta go to Florida real quick." "I think that guy's on fire," Jasper pointed out and everyone turned around to see the horror on some poor man, whose sleeve was ablaze. He was understandably panicking, waving his arm around in an attempt to smother or blow out the flames but nothing was working. All he could do was scream and pray that it didn't spread. So, it was left to the Man Cave team to wonder what the hell was out there that could set something on fire like that.

"Great! We will call the fire department after my story!" Ray told him firmly, growing frustrated at how close to ten minutes had elapsed and he still wasn't near the end. And he would've been able to finish it, probably, had a weirdo not burst through the door, shocking them all to the core. What the—? 

"What is this land? Where is Astoria?" The stranger demanded to know, which would've been rude and odd enough had he not been dressed in a full suit of armour. Not like swat team armour, no, proper solid steel, shiny, medieval, knight saves the princess armour, the kind that you'd see in an old castle full of treasures. And not only that, his entire vibe screamed weirdo, plus, he also screamed literally. He spoke with a powerful, commanding tone that held an archaic lilt as if he was from five centuries prior. All around, his sudden presence was a shock but as the teens froze and (y/n) instinctively glued herself to Ray's side, the man knew how to deal with him perfectly.

"Uh, I'll be with you in a second, pal! I'm telling a-storia right here," he replied calmly, keeping her noise down and not rising to the man's challenge. How dare he come into his store and start mouthing off. This asshat could wait patiently like all of his other customers did and maybe if he was lucky and if he didn't scare his precious girl again, he'd be served with a polite smile.

"I need a sword!" The knight demanded and to their surprise, began pushing over displays and rooting through the fallen junk to see if he could find a suitable weapon. It was like he had no etiquette at all, but Ray wasn't diverting from his zero-tolerance policy. Junk-N-Stuff was a front anyway, he didn't care if some of the items broke, as long as he got to speak before this guy did.

"Dude, that guy's breaking a bunch of stuff," Henry pointed to the man, who was seriously testing (y/n)'s patience as he knocked over piles and piles of stuff that she'd straightened out earlier that morning. Hang on, who was this dick? This was her home, her store that she ran and he was tearing everything apart—if it wasn't for the hand suddenly placed on her shoulder, she'd have stormed over there and scratched those stupid face tattoos right off his stupid cheeks. Her doofus needed to do something, use those big muscles, that big mouth, anything before she blew a casket.

"Who cares? It's a fake store." "Raymond, we went through this earlier. Fake store or not—" "Now, I don't know if the clown and my aunt were dating or not...I didn't ask any questions," Ray brushed past anyone's concerns and slung an arm around (y/n)'s shoulders as if that would be enough to keep her calm. The woman huffed in frustration, eager to rip that guy's head off if she was given the chance. It was like she'd said earlier; a fake store didn't give the knight a free pass to be a bully and neither did it mean that she wanted to piss away money on the ruined stock, something she wished she could get into her doofus' head.

"Where's the nearest castle?" The intimidating man demanded to know, no manners about him at all. He was used to getting his own way, whether that be in whatever play he was starring in or whether he genuinely had minions to order about, but now, Ray too was getting annoyed. He was the alpha around these parts, when he wanted silence, he generally got it and no one challenged his position as the leader of the team, so he wasn't going to let some asshole with ideas above his station change that.

"Hey, guy. You are interrupting my story!" He growled, but even his authority didn't do much.

"There's a Burger Castle about a mile that way." "Yeah, turn left when you walk out and keep going until you get hit by the smell of French fries," Jasper and (y/n) told him, not thinking much of it because that was the nearest thing Swellview had to a castle. A medieval-themed fast food restaurant down the road that served normal, cheap food, paper crowns and foam swords, nothing special. But it was the best thing they had to offer and maybe it would please the rude man into leaving them in peace—and apparently, a "castle of burger" was what he was looking for now that he'd found a novelty sword amongst the junk.

"Your loyalty will be rewarded when I am king. I shall consider you as queen consort," The knight pointed his stolen sword at Jasper and bowed his head at (y/n). His reply was shocking but also kinda...satisfying as he turned and stomped through the door with the same pomp that he'd entered with, leaving Ray to silently clench his jaw at how he'd mentioned taking his sweet girl as his queen. He'd quickly that she was already his queen, his love and next he'd find a boot up his ass if he dared to steal her away. Still, he was gone, nothing to worry about...story time?

"Nice!"  "No, not nice!" For Jasper, the idea of a reward sounded quite nice, but (y/n) felt a shiver run down her spine. Queen? She didn't want to be queen, not with someone like that, the worst example of a future king she'd ever seen. She wanted to be a sweet girl to a superhero doofus, nothing more, and so, she labelled the retreating weirdo as a madman.

"Dude, I think we have a bit of a situation here we need to deal with," Henry turned to his boss, deeply perturbed by what had just transpired in the small junk shop. First, he hadn't been filled with confidence by the hoarders of screaming people, then there was the man on fire and now, the storm in a teacup that was the knight was just the cherry on top of a rather worrying cake. Definitely a situation, one that needed three superheroes to swoop in and save the day. Hint-hint, wink-wink. 

"You want to talk about a situation, try driving up a mountain with your cousin, your aunt, a clown, a kangaroo—" "Hey, Ray!" and the story would have to wait yet again. As Ray tried to get it going again, y'know, inspire a bit of enthusiasm in the teens or even his sweet girl who were no longer interested, but it was useless, especially when Schwoz came barrelling onto the shop floor. He rarely came up this far, preferring to hide down in the Man Cave with his gadgets, tools and projects like Gollum, but this looked like an emergency. Why else would he be holding the emergency phone line that was weirdly stretching a hell of a long way? How did he do that?

"What?! What?! What?! Schwoz, I'm trying to tell a story here!" The hero exclaimed, frustration coating his every word. This story was meant to be a cover-up for what had occurred in the storeroom and now it was turning into a nightmare, but one he was going to finish even if it killed him. His sweet girl would listen, right? He listened to all of his stories, even if she'd heard them before and sometimes, even when it wasn't for her benefit—the benefit of being her beloved idiot.

"Emergency call from Bill Evil," Schwoz explained and held the phone out with his hand covering the receiver. Lord forbid that the most irresponsible scientist in Swellview heard someone's name or a scrap of revealing information. However, it had been so long since the portal to another dimension incident that Jasper had forgotten about it completely, including the man responsible for kidnapping Piper, and the trouble his boss and his friends had gone to save her from a really nice alien monster man.

"Who?" "Bill Evil!" "Oh, right, he's the Chairman of Evil Science Corp," (y/n) recalled the stress they'd gone through to find Piper after thinking she was being murdered. She also remembered the purple goo that she'd been covered in after going through the portal and how it made her hair smell like candy floss and boot polish for two weeks. And finally, she shivered when the memory of how Ray intimidated the man into confessing everything, using his tall stature and deepest growling voice to make a mouse out of him so he'd cop to being a massive idiot. Come on, who names their company "Evil Science Corp" and not expect to be found out?

"He opened the door to another dimension on Halloween..." Charlotte added, jogging the boy's memory. Right, that's what he split his lip open and talked funny. Fun times. But, more seriously, if the guy was calling, it had to be important, right? No bad guy phoned unless something really bad was happening. Ever. 

"I think we should take the call, dude," said Henry, who thought that they should do the sensible thing and at least hear the guy out.

"Fine! We'll take it in the Man Cave," Ray conceded, hearing their arguments and deciding that yes, it might be a good idea to take the emergency call. Something about promising his girl that he'd be a little less selfish and a little more self-aware. But, he did use his head for once though, in the form of agreeing to answer the call but only when he was in his headquarters and his uniform. That way at least, no one would see or hear anything that wasn't meant for them, even if Schwoz had gone to the trouble of coming half a mile up.

"But I brought the phone all the way up here with this hilarious long phone cord," the genius pouted, having thought that his idea was courteous, funny and cool. When was he gonna get another chance to use the mile-long cord again? Probably never.

"I said we'll take it in the Man Cave!!" One snap from Ray and he clammed up. 

"You know it's best not to argue with him Schwoz, it makes him moody. Let's go, Hen," (y/n) sighed, throwing the repairman a sympathetic look as she followed after her man-child so she, Miss Danger, could see what Bill had to say. Henry was quick to follow too, looking at his friends one last time before they disappeared through the beaded curtain and into the storeroom. Hopefully, the kid wouldn't pick up on any "vibes".

"Yeah, coming, (y/n/n)—All right, see ya! That guy's still on fire," Henry waved to Jasper and Charlotte, knowing that the time to socialise was over and that he had to do some actual hero work. And so could they if they were feeling humane, after all, the same guy from before came running into the ship with his arm still flaming and smouldering. 

Hopefully, they'd find where (y/n) kept the fire extinguisher, something Jasper should've known, because, at the end of the day, they all took an oath to help the citizens of Swellview, even if the action did seem far away sometimes. 

~Downstairs~

Having put Bill Evil on hold for a few minutes, Ray, Henry and (y/n) quickly blew their bubbles and changed into their uniforms. They preferred speaking to the man on the computer's monitor rather than crawling on top of each other to hear through one itty-bitty phone; this way, they could read his facial expressions and ensure that he wasn't bullshitting them.

So, as Schwoz sat on the floor with his legs spread out like a teddy bear, reeling in metres upon metres of red cord that had carried across the tiles, up the elevator shaft and into Junk-N-Stuff, they were content to get on with it. After all, no one could see or would pay attention to a little weirdo sitting on his lonesome.

"Okay, Bill, let's make this fast. You kinda caught me in the middle of a story and I got a lot of people who wanna hear the end, including my incredibly hot fiancée," Ray started as he meant to go on - sharp, snappy and to the point. He hadn't let the story idea go, not yet anyway, and neither did he love the idea of talking to this dick when he could be enjoying the company of his lover without the need to act professionally.

"I thought that was the end," Henry frowned, wondering how his tale could still be going when it was already so long and complex and...odd. Far-fetched is how he'd described it, certainly not one of his boss' best stories and honestly, he knew that even (y/n) had struggled to pay attention when he got onto the bit about his aunt. Where did that leave him on the boredom spectrum?

"No! Why would you think that's the end?" "Probably because you were talking for ages, doo—" the woman tried to comfort him quietly as he gave Henry a semi-betrayed look as if he couldn't believe that he'd just said that. Okay, she knew that it wasn't over but she understood why the boy was reluctant to hear anymore. 

She loved Ray, more than anything and she'd pull the stars from the sky if he asked her to, but dear god in heaven, she didn't want to hear any more about his weird cousin whom she'd been introduced to at a family wedding. The guy had suspiciously clammy hands when she went to exchange a handshake but was goofy just like Ray, so it was no wonder that they were like two peas in a pod whoever they were together.

"I just have a question..." Bill piped up, not wanting to interrupt the little domestic they had going on here because it wasn't his place to come between hero and sidekick, man and lover, but he had called for a reason. It would be nice if he got to share that reason.

"What?!" "If a scientist—not me, but a totally different scientist—were to open an inter-dimensional portal..." he started, his tone cautious as if he could predict their rightly outraged reactions. It was obvious that he was referring to himself, no other scientist would be so reckless, and the fact that he hadn't learnt his lesson from last time got their blood boiling, especially (y/n)'s, given her keen interest in the area. Bad things happen when people stick their noses where they don't belong, why didn't he understand that?

"Aw, come on, Bill! What is wrong with you?! Why?!" Ray growled as Henry and (y/n) pinched their eyes and noses in agitation. The poor computer chair took the brunt of his anger as he pulled and pushed it, back and forth, until it started creaking and then, he finally let go to snarl at the idiotic CEO. This was his life and sometimes, he loved it, but other times, he hated it; someone made a mess, he cleaned it up—all well and good—but then, not five minutes later, it was back to being ruined. 

"...And a scary-looking knight with a face tattoo jumped out and punched the scientist right in the face, and then, the scary-looking knight ran off into Swellview..." Evil carried on, sounding more like he was confessing to a massive fuck-up than asking the heroes' advice. Now that they looked closer, they could see that the entirety of his right eye was bruised quite badly, nasty violet patches swelling up to make tender skin painful. Scary-looking knight—what had he done now?

"What's your question, Bill? Enough messing around..." (y/n) asked tightly, trying to keep her calm as he danced around spilling the beans. Ray's hand slipped into hers and squeezed, the gesture small yet reassuring enough to cause her to take a deep breath and let go of the emotions bottled up inside of her.

"Would that scientist be in trouble?"

"Yes!" "No shit, Sherlock. Of course, you would be!" The sidekicks replied immediately, seeing through his bullshit despite his rubbish attempts to make his question hypothetical and light. His attempts to reflect the blame on himself were poor; they knew that he'd done something, it was obvious, just like it had been obvious on Halloween that his company was evil because it was literally in their job name and description.

"Yes, just like you were in trouble the last time you opened an inter-dimensional portal!" Ray scolded him, a stern finger pointing at the monitor to try and make the man feel bad, but for some reason, he didn't look intimidated by the hero. Maybe it was because they were separated by a virtual barrier and he wasn't in danger of getting beaten up this time, or maybe it was because he didn't fear any repercussions at all.

"Actually, I didn't get in trouble. You three just walked away, covered in goo, Captain Man flirted with Miss Danger, and left me alone, unpunished and free to open up as many portals as I want," the scientist replied nonchalantly and for once, the trio didn't have a smart answer. 

Right... After the whole Piper, monster, kidnapping thing, they'd just sort of gone home straight away and left Bill to continue his tricks—having forgotten to punish him for what he'd done because they were tired, fed up and in need of a good shower. 

Plus, once Captain Man started flirting with Miss Danger and vice versa, it was hard to get them to focus on anything else anyway, particularly when Henry was distracted and throwing up at their mushy words and kisses. 

"He's right, we did that," Henry whispered to the adults, who had gone quiet when they thought about the past and realised that he was right. Their bad.

"Yeah, well, we flirt all of the time! It doesn't mean that he should be opening portals willy-nilly! Come on, Evil, man up, take responsibility!"

"Yeah! Dang it, Bill, why do you keep opening inter-dimensional doors?" Ray agreed with his sweet girl, thinking that whilst it had been their duty to bring him to justice, and fair enough, they'd slipped up on that one, the man still should've taken responsibility to not let another disaster happen. Surely, he should've learnt his lesson after the first incident, y'know, shut the program down and locked the technology away forever.

"It's just so much fun!" Or not. Turns out, Bill Evil was a bigger kid than he was and didn't care what happened to the world as long as he got to play god with the fabric of time and reality. 

"You never know who's gonna jump out!"

"Well, starting now, you're not allowed you're not allowed to open any more portals!" Kid Danger told him firmly like he was laying down the law for an unruly child.

"Yeah!"

"What if it's my birthday?" Bill pouted, accepting the general rule, but he also wanted to see if he could push his luck just a little bit. Captain Man was a pushover with Miss Danger, maybe he could tweak the same nerve, not that he was anything like the well-loved heroine.

"Well, I mean, if it's your birthday—"

"No, doofus, no! No more portals, no more messing with stuff that doesn't concern him! Nothing!" (y/n) quickly interrupted her fiancé as he began to debate whether Bill could have birthday privileges, which couldn't be tolerated. 

"Yeah! No more portals, Bill!" That was more like it.

"Fiiine," Bill Evil rolled his eyes at their refusal to budge and ended the call a disappointed and morose man. Well, that told him, no more causing unnecessary problems, Captain Man already had enough to deal with and perhaps, next time he wouldn't be around to save the day when an alien what tearing its way through the factory. But, all in all, that went well and the trio turned away from the screen feeling relaxed and good about what they'd just achieved.

"Pfft—that guy..."

"Pffft, yeah...let's go," Henry jerked his head from his boss to the tubes. He hadn't missed the memo in Evil's story about the scary-looking knight, which he had no doubt was the asshole who'd stormed into Junk-N-Stuff earlier, so he figured that they were about to head out to catch the guy and find out why he was terrorising the city. But to his shock—well, not shock, not at this point—Ray wasn't interested, he was too busy trying to touch the back of (y/n)'s throat with his tongue. Jeez, man, they'd been off the video call for, like, three seconds.

"Hmmm? To where?" The hero pulled away from his sweet girl, who pouted at losing contact with his lips so soon. His tongue in her throat was a bit extreme and an overstatement, she wished that they'd had enough time and privacy to go that far but as always, there was an interruption and because they'd been so preoccupied, neither recalled what Bill had said, just the taste of honey clashing with bubblegum.

To stop the scary-looking knight guy, who Jasper and (y/n) just sent to Burger Castle."

"Oh, right. Him," (y/n) didn't need telling twice, getting her head back in the game as soon as Henry looked at her with raised eyebrows and said her name. 

"What scary-looking knight guy?" He asked, head titled and arms holding her tight to his chest as he looked between sidekicks. Who were they on about?

"What? The—the face tattoo? That just came into Junk-N-Stuff?" Henry said, not believing that his boss couldn't remember the events of the past hour.

"Was this today?"

"He interrupted your story...and said he'd consider making (y/n) his queen for her loyalty." Dirty tactics were never Henry's favourite method of getting a rise out of his boss, but he felt that on this occasion, they were necessary.

"Oh, that guy! I hate that guy!" Ray's hissed instantly, his arms tensing into his biceps that were rock-solid and his fists were clenched, ready to punch the guy like he was in front of his face.

"Let's go punch his interrupting, fiancée-stealing face right off his face!"

"Yeah, love the energy, doofus, but let's take it down a notch. I wasn't going to accept his offer anyway!" She winced at the snarl lodged in his throat; it was lovely that he was protective, it made her feel safe and warm on the inside when he took care of her and made sure she had everything she wanted, of which violence wasn't present. 

Without hesitation, and even if she was offered the world and all its riches, she'd decline his proposal and the knight would never win her hand. It was already promised to someone else; a grumpy, childlike idiot, whose emotions had a habit of running away from him. 

"You wouldn't?" Ray murmured questioningly as she and Henry bounced up to the tube pads where he stood, him having crossed the room in record time thanks to his angry stomping. A quick slap of Henry's belt and the tubes fell around them as he didn't want to waste any time when that psycho could be burning the Burger Castle to the ground, and for a brief moment, the world was silent before the rush. 

"I mean, he did offer you the chance to be a real-life queen...y'know, jewels, treasure, castles. You'd be marrying a king, sweetheart."

"Raymond, I know you think that what makes a king is gold, a palace and diamond rings, but I don't want any of that. I just want you. Only you," (y/n) whispered to him as her arms slid around his neck and they pressed against each other as the suction pulled them up and out of the building.

She knew he had some ever-lasting doubts floating around in that silly, old head of his but the truth of the matter was that all the kings in the world couldn't give her what she'd been looking for all these years. She wasn't one for people who tried to rule others, after landing with someone like that she'd played her cards close to her foolproof vest, only to find true love with a joker — her beloved doofus.

~The Burger Castle~

This place hadn't changed.

(y/n) had fond memories of Burger Castles, not specifically that one, but the one in her hometown. 

Every kid had their birthday party at the fake castles at least once during their childhood; they got to be the king or queen and sit at the head of the table with all of their friends as they ate their food and played with the little free plastic toys that broke two seconds later. 

Then, when everything was coming to a close, they got a crown and everyone sang happy birthday to their "ruler" as a bored employee brought out the cheapest, shittiest sheet cake in the world. Ah, good times.

But, this time, there was no cake. No laughter. No room for fun as the three heroes stepped out of the Man Van, much to the awe of the odd passerby on the street, and marched towards the restaurant with taut frowns on their faces. They meant business and that meant using their angry faces, especially when they approached the automatic doors and looked through the glass and saw their culprit borderline threatening the poor people trying to eat. 

Hell, even Piper and her dad were in there, although the former looked rather embarrassed to be out with a man who still looked for the crappy toys in the kid's meals. But they were shaking after the knight unsheathed his sword and started brandishing it about the place, demanding that they all kneel before him like the puny peasants they were.

"Okay, tin man, you're coming with us," Captain Man announced in a deep growl as he strode through the door to the thankful applause of the crowd, ignoring how his tummy rumbled when met with the heavenly scent of fried food. No, focus, he had to look tough, he had his sidekicks with him, walking like they had potatoes under their arms, acting like him as they faced the knight. Sure, he had a sword, but they had lasers. Who was gonna win?

"Thanks. Thanks, everybody," he nodded to the wide-eyed citizens, who seemed shocked at their sudden appearance, but the three assumed that it was because they were surprised that they'd swooped in so promptly to save the day. 

"I didn't know you guys were part of the show!" Piper exclaimed, standing up from the table she'd plonked at after getting fed up with her humiliating excuse for a father. Her brother and the adults accompanying him gave her a few funny looks, wondering what she was going on about because they weren't there for anyone's entertainment and neither was the psycho with the razor-sharp weapon. 

"I'm sorry, let's start again. What show?" (y/n) smiled at her kindly since in her civilian life, she got on with the girl so well. But as she looked from them to the knight, there wasn't a trace of fear on her face, rather, she seemed in wonder about what was going to happen next, something she may have inherited from her dad.

"Piper, be quiet! Let them say their lines," Mr Hart scolded his daughter, childlike excitement in his eyes as he watched the tension rise between the competing sides. Like his daughter, he thought that this was just some medieval-meets-modern-era performance, good vs evil, maybe even a promo for the heroes so they could appeal to the public. After all, there was a knight at a Burger castle, how on-brand could you get?

"Who dares challenge King Ryder?" The knight asked in a booming voice that entertained the crowd to no end.

He looked at the heroes—or intruders—with fury ripped across his harsh features and he clearly didn't understand that a king was made by the opinion of his subjects—not that any Swellviewian was his subject.

"Seriously, what is going on here?" Henry asked (y/n) and Ray quietly, the woman giving him a shrug since she was none the wiser and just as confused as him. However, her doofus didn't look perplexed, instead, all of the fighting talk seemed to excite him and he looked ready to step up to the plate because Ray Manchester could never ignore a challenge, not one that felt like the WWE moment he'd been dreaming of all of his life. And it would give him the chance to superman-punch and clothesline the guy who disrespected him and hit on his girl. Win-win.

"I'll tell you what's going on here, Kid Danger..."

"Oh, dear god..." (y/n) rubbed her temples, massaging away in advance the migraine she knew she was going to have by the end of this as she watched her doofus strut around the room like a peacock ready to brawl. Two egos, locking heads, what could go wrong?

"This guy's comin' onto our turf, trying to take on the undefeated champions of Swellview!" Ray exclaimed, his voice blending into a stereotypical wrestler's tone, and "Ryker" looked around in confusion when the crowd applauded the puny man. Baffled, he looked at their pleased expressions and wondered why they were excited by the man, who was muscular but still smaller than him, and why he felt the need to climb onto a chair.

"Actually, we got defeated last month? Remember, doof? The kid lost his powers?" (y/n) contradicted him, unable to hold her tongue since it was the truth.

"You're goin' down, brother!" Ray declared, patting her hand a few times before she dropped it in defeat. Nothing she said would tempt him away unless she wore a see-through shirt and nothing else, so if he wanted a fight, she'd stand back until he needed back up. It could be fun, to watch him in action and see the way his body used its power so carefully and with such accuracy. Yeah, fun...The crowd certainly thought so.

"I will destroy you!" Ryker bit back, looking down his nose at the hero, which drew many boos from the crowd. Okay, scratch what (y/n) previously thought, she'd take him herself if she had to, this guy was too cocky. Ray didn't seem phased, though, he was loving the fight-talk, sticking his thumbs downwards to taunt his opponent as his people backed him up. Yeah, that's right, his people.

The knight responded in turn and he must've been from out of town because had he been aware that Captain Man was indestructible, y'know, the thing that everyone knew because that was his power, he probably wouldn't have been so calm. Arrogance was thick in the air as Ryker sliced his sword through the air like a madman in danger of taking someone's eye out or cutting a limb off, but it wasn't particularly scary, more like all bark and no bite. A show that impressed the spectators but bored the heroes who didn't flinch at theatrics.

"Yawn." "Okay, bored now," Henry and (y/n) muttered and rather than engaging with the man and risk losing a few fingers or a head, they simply whipped the laser controllers from their belts and fired two green lasers into his face since it was the only patch of skin not covered by iron. He might have thought he was a tough guy, acting all big with his mean words, weapon and affinity for domination, but like any other man, he stumbled back and clutched his nose in pain as the laser stung just enough to make him drop the steel and teach him a lesson.

If that pleased the crowd then they'd love part two; in perfect synch with his sidekicks, Ray kicked out at the knight, striking him in the chest so he hit the ground like a sack of spuds with a clanging screech. The following applause was breathtaking and the trio were happy to soak it up as the nutter stayed down, although Ray was still weary for his next move and ensured that his precious girl and ward stayed behind him as he approached to place his heavy boot on the metal chest piece. The legendary alpha had retained his throne and the loyalty of his followers.

"M'lord!... Oh, and m'lady!" Mr Hart said rather embarrassingly as he appeared in front of the heroic couple when Ray took up (y/n)'s hand to press a rather sweet kiss to her knuckles, and they blushed awkwardly when he dropped to his knee in a very respectful but unnecessary courtesy. The man was just trying to bring his lover into his victory because if he fought for anyone, it was for her, there was no need to express any devotion to him, hers was enough. And (y/n) didn't agree with towering above someone else, it made her feel...icky.

"I am so sorry about him," Piper interjected shakily, swooping in quickly to drag her father away when she spotted the slightest hint of discomfort on her idols' faces. Talk about an embarrassment; she'd seen him pull some stunts in her lifetime but nothing felt this mortifying, she couldn't believe that he'd done that when Captain Man was having a moment with Miss Danger. Now, all the papers would be talking about was how some weirdo, identified as Jake Hart, was the biggest loser about, not their cute interaction, so now, the poor girl just felt awful.

"Oh, it's fine, no worries. I know what it's like to care for a man-child," (y/n) told the tween kindly, giving her the warmest smile she could before turning to Ray with her most teasing. He was looking at her with raised eyebrows, a faux-offended expression on his face as if he'd taken her joking to heart. A giggle left her lips, finding herself funny more than him and it broke through his annoyed façade, leaving Ray powerless to stop his next actions. 

His head dipped and their lips pressed together as the world disappeared around them until nothing but the kiss existed. The crowd cooed, Henry shuffled awkwardly on his feet to mask how he too was silently shipping them and everyone agreed on one thing. 

The papers would have something to write about and the photo snapped of them as they smiled and smooched would without a doubt make the front page.

~

There was one thing to say about this Ryker guy; he was a damn difficult man to haul onto a chair.

The Burger Castle goers had calmed down eventually and returned to their tables and food to gossip about how Captain Man seemed to follow Miss Danger around like a lovesick puppy, how Miss Danger was the luckiest girl in the world, and how Kid Danger was so adorably awkward around the two when they teased him for his aversion to PDA. Well, some of them gossiped, and some man-children argued about who had the best toys in the toy box, which was especially difficult for their children trying to maintain control.

With no eyes on them, the heroes were left to sort the situation out without hindrance; the staff didn't care, they were just teenagers who were longing to sneak five minutes of their PearPhones anyway. So since the knight was still dopey from the effects of the laser, Ray, (y/n) and Henry wasted no time in stripping him of his protective armour, starting with the helmet and then working on removing the shoulder plates and chest piece so he wasn't so invincible. 

Now, it would be easier for them to take him down should he get rowdy again but interestingly, he seemed placid now, non-threatening, kinda like he knew he'd been placed on the naughty step and needed to think about what he'd done.

"Get up, you weirdo. Let's go, come on. Easy."

"Haul ass, knight-man."

"There you go..." The heroes' pulled Ryker to his feet after removing the last of his armour, tossing the shin plates to the side as he staggered due to the laser's effects. He was just a man now, no metal and no threat, with just his leather under-armour left and that wouldn't protect him that much. 

Still, regardless of his weaker state, they were wary of him, well aware that he was still a large, powerful man with the stature and muscle to hurt them or someone else should he want to. Never trust a bad guy, they'd learnt that the hard way, but strangely, he was so...polite now.

"Thank you for helping me—You fools!" Or not. After taking a few steps, the knight spun around and bared his teeth at them as he raised his open palm at them, his hand high-fiving the air whilst Ray instinctively put an arm in front of (y/n), ready to shield her from danger should he need to, but the danger never came. Ryker screwed his face up with the effort of whatever his hand was supposed to do, but he did nothing more than confuse the three, who wondered what the hell he was doing.

"Is something supposed to happen?" (y/n) asked in a mocking tone that showed no trace of fear. He'd expected something awful to happen but had fallen at the last hurdle so he was as harmless as ever, lacking both his offence and defence. It was rather amusing since he'd tried to trick them, playing dead only to attack again and upon realising he was powerless, the knight deflated in defeat, downhearted at being a laughingstock in front of the lady.

"Yes, fair maiden. Usually, smoke comes out of my hand and then, you bear the Mark of Ryker and I can control your mind!" He replied, looking genuinely frustrated at his lack of power, which was probably used to having. Henry turned to Ray, who seemed a tad grumpier at the man's mention of (y/n) as a fair maiden because yes, she was fair, the fairest of them all, but he didn't like how he seemed to notice that.

"Is he controlling your mind, dude?"

"Nah, I'm thinkin' about cheese fries...and Miss Danger," he replied truthfully, looking wistfully into the distance as he daydreamed about food and his sweet girl. Or, better still, sitting in the Man Cave with his sweet girl as they watched a crappy movie and fed each other fried potatoes loaded with mozzarella. Yeah, that sounded nice.

"Now, I'm thinkin' about cheese fries...but not Miss Danger," Henry replied, liking the sound of getting a small snack after they were done here. The only thing he didn't imagine was (y/n) in any capacity similar to what his boss was thinking of. That was just...ew.

"Whoa! I'm controlling your mind!" "Whaaaat?" "You two are so weird..." (y/n) rolled her mind as they bantered back and forth about nothing special at all. It was kinda cute, though, the rapport that they had and breaking the tension was nice after being so serious - seriousness didn't come naturally to Ray, not at all.

"The cheese fries in your mind are now covered in chilli!" "Now, they are!"

"You mock me..." Ryker stated, a melancholy tone in his voice as he recognised that they were taking the piss. Where he came from, no man, woman or boy dared to make fun of him, so it was a blow to see them having fun when they should've been bowing at his feet and begging for mercy. God, he was up his own butt...

"Yeah, we definitely mock you," (y/n) nodded, shrugging nonchalantly since he seemed to get so touchy about people disrespecting him. She'd met plenty of assholes in her time and he was one of them, so she wasn't going to be intimidated because it was clear that too many people had been frightened and it had inflated his ego until he deemed himself a god amongst men. However, her bluntness was not welcome and his fury returned when she dared to speak so freely in his presence.

"Then, taste my steel, wench!" The knight shouted and plucked his sword from the ground in preparation for a second bout against the heroes. But, as before, the lasers were mightier than the sword and within a blink of an eye, Henry and Ray had pulled their controllers from their belts again and blasted him in the face for raising the weapon against Miss Danger when she'd done nothing wrong. 

A cry left his mouth as the sting bloomed across his eyes and nose, the sword clattering to the floor when his knees crumpled under the strain. Ray's eyes worriedly scanned (y/n)'s face, looking for any sign that she was scared or upset from the failed attack and he let a breath go that he didn't know he was holding.

"He said taste my steel, doofus. He's a bigger doofus than you!" The heroine giggled, melting his worry since she wasn't threatened at all, more like amused that he thought she'd cower in fear when facing a sword. It was funny; she was standing next to the biggest lump of power and punches she'd ever met and that lump would lay down his life to keep her safe—Ray had never given her a reason to fear for her life and Ryker hadn't changed that one bit. 

But, even though she was okay and laughing, a kiss placed between her eyebrows, he was still angry, furious even, because no one, not future kings or the lowest man in the land, got to terrify her.

"Hey, what's your dill, pickle? Why're you so mad?" Ray growled with a pointed stare.

"You'd be mad too if someone stole your kingdom," Ryker replied with a sadness in his eyes that disarmed the heroes, who weren't expecting an answer like that. They were still cautious, highly aware that he'd tricked them before and could do it again just as easily, but they still showed a sliver of concern. Losing an entire kingdom sounded so tragic, like something out of a fantasy film where the burning down of the village is the hero's character-defining moment. It sounded like he'd lost everything and the trio couldn't help but feel a tad sorry for him.

"Huh?" "How do you lose an entire kingdom?" "What's up, big dog?"

"I am the rightful ruler of Astoria. But my throne was taken away from me," the knight explained, eyes downcast and staring solemnly at the floor. Well, that tugged at their heartstrings; if it was his right to rule, then it must've been hard to watch the fair land, "Astoria", be lost. Maybe they'd judged him too quickly, maybe his scary look was just that—a look—and he was just a stranded soul in an unfamiliar place.

"Aw, buddy..." "That's actually pretty sad..." "That's not goooood." They gave him some very sympathetic looks and Ray pushed away his old anger so he could place a comforting hand on the man's shoulder since he looked like he was on the verge of tears. He'd hate it if he lost his home, followers and lover, he wouldn't know what to do, so as a fellow leader, he kind of empathised with what the man was going through.

"I almost got it back, but I was defeated by a squad of knights. And a wizard banished me from my realm, and suddenly, I was, well, here..." he went on, illustrating a picture and narrative in their heads that were almost heartbreaking. Who were these asshole knights who'd hurt such a...gentle man? He wasn't so bad now that he'd calmed down and although (y/n) was still a bit skittish, which was understandable given that he was, like, double her size, the boys connected with him. 

"Ah, I get it. He's not a bad guy, he's just scared." "Yeah, he's just a lost lil' puppy from another dimension...right, precious girl?" Ray nudged his fiancée as he and the kid softened their looks, but (y/n) was still unsure. Puppy wasn't the term she'd used; Ray was a puppy, adorable and goofy, clumsy and soft but this guy, looked mean and vicious, tough and bitey.

"Yeah...with a very sharp sword, scary face tattoos and a Jackanory story that has me crying my eyes out," she whispered, angling her body so half of it was hidden behind Ray. Could that be classed as cowering? Perhaps. She didn't like to look so weak, not against her possible enemies but she felt nervous and naturally when feeling nervous, she got mouthy to ward off predators.

"You are right to fear me, fair maiden. I am a stranger in your land, but I swear, I mean you nor your companions no harm," Ryker bowed his head and curled his fist to her chest in a respectful gesture and made her slouch slightly, but there was still the feeling that she was the lamb looking at a wolf in sheep's clothing. 

"Are we supposed to take your word for that? You tried to cut my head off."

"And I apologise most deeply, to you and the one who came to your defence so valiantly. He must be very fond of you," he also bowed his head towards Ray, who practically purred at the respect he was being shown, going from the snarling alpha to a pacified leader in one sentence since his target was now toeing the line perfectly, acknowledging their connection and keeping his distance. Damn right, he was fond of her, more than that.

"Well, pal, she is my beautiful fiancée," Ray replied, looked at the woman dreamily and slung his arm around her shoulders, causing (y/n) to blush since they were still in public. The contact was heavenly and being able to smell his cologne made her feel safe, especially since the display showed the knight who he'd be messing with if he tried something—the prancing hero in his red and blue spandex. 

"She is your betrothed? Then you, sir, are a lucky man indeed," it was almost as if Ryker knew every method for stroking his ego, pandering to Ray's every love; being admired for his prowess and being able to bask in the knowledge that he had the most gorgeous woman in the world as his future wife. There was no doubt in his mind now that this knight was a stand-up guy and he needed to get back to his kingdom so he could reclaim his throne, something they could certainly help him with. It was the least they could do.

"We'll get you home, little fella," he smiled and put his arm around his shoulders so they could escort him to the Man Van. Henry looked at (y/n), (y/n) looked at Henry and neither knew why his tune had changed so dramatically but the woman went along with it when the kid gave her a reassuring smile. She had nerve flare-ups sometimes, they came and went with the full moon or something, so she wrote off the uneasiness in her stomach as inter-dimensional waves or particles or something like that. It would be fine, right?

"I'm bigger than you are." "Sure you are, little buddy!" Ray laughed at the man's analysis, not realising that he was telling the truth. Ryker stood a couple of inches above Ray and whilst the hero could probably take him in a fight, there was no getting away from the fact that on this rare occasion, he wasn't the giant in the room. Well, he still had the biggest head.

"You know...in a way, I'm kinda the king in this town and I suppose that kinda makes Miss Danger my queen..." "Oh, god..." Henry groaned when the cringiest sentence he'd ever heard came from his boss's lips. Bigheaded, much?  No, he was not the king, he was just the guy who donated all of his time to save the city, he did not rule the place, no matter how much he liked to think that. But in one respect, he was right about something; (y/n) was his queen and he was the lowly joker, basking in her majesty.

~The Man Cave~

It was difficult explaining to a man from an ancient world was technology was. The most advanced kit he knew was a spell book and catapults, so seeing him freak out in the Man Van was an odd experience until they realised that the "metal horse" was frightening him. Of course, they'd never thought about it like that but eventually, he sat comfortably, listening to Ray bragging about their many adventures, which meant they had a plethora of weapons that he could borrow in his bid to regain the throne - it was no biggie, an honour, in fact. 

Maybe he'd even reward them for their service once he was crowned king.

"Help meeeeeeeee!" Ryker screamed as he went down a tube, which was a bit embarrassing for him since he was supposed to be this big, strong, emotionally unmovable knight. But the weightless feeling made his tummy flutter like it always did on the first trip and he squeezed his eyes shut, prayed for it to be over and cursed the couple in the next tube who said it would be fun. Filthy liars.

"Hey, man, it's just the tubes." "Yeah, you don't have to be so scared, they're very safe," Ray and (y/n) comforted him, quickly untangling themselves from each other's arms since he was having a mini breakdown. Whilst they understood why he was scared, it was necessary since Schwoz maintained the tubes like nothing else and if he couldn't handle them, he wasn't going to find his bravery against these enemy knights. Where was his courage?

"I wasn't scared! That was, um...brave screaming," the knight lied, trying to save face as the brave superheroes mollycoddled him. Yeah, because he looked so brave when he was near tears refusing to step into the tube opening and here came Henry, ready to pull that lie apart.

"Dude, you were so scared! I could hear you screaming the whole way down!" The boy laughed, teasing the man for how he'd betrayed his tough-guy persona so utterly. He could lie all he wanted, it was plain that he was shitting himself down and there was no shame in that; it happened to everyone when they first experienced the zero-gravity effect, although, the resident couple were certain that they'd never seen anyone react like that before.

"That was brave screaming!" "Yeah, I also scream help me when I'm being brave..." Henry rolled his eyes and brushed off the pathetic excuse, shaking his head at the banter. He didn't mean it, it was just some harmful teasing, but either way, Ryker wasn't in the Man Cave to have fun. Get the weapons, get home, get the throne, that was his plan, among friends with these people in court jester's clothes were not.

"I would like to go home now and fight for my throne!"

"Yeah, sure, braveheart, where are we on that, Schwoz?" (y/n) was best pleased with his curt tone but turned to the genius who'd been working away like a busy little bee for the past hour, trying to locate an inter-dimensional chatter on this Astoria place that Ryker was from. 

As per Ray's instructions, Charlotte, Jasper and he had gone to Evil Science Corp to confiscate the machine that Bill Evil and his team used to play with portals, so he was using that technology to listen between worlds...freaky. The hat and headphones helmet he'd created was weird but so far, he'd been able to find a few signals, just not the ones he was looking for. 

"I'm still working on it," he replied, flicking switches and adjusting his knobs so the search could continue. Now, Schwoz was a wonderful man, very kind, very gentle, very helpful and his family loved him, but none of them could deny that he was weird—both in looks and personality. So, it was no surprise that when the knight took notice of him, he thought he was a creature from his world - an odd, little, scurrying, pitiful slave with a piggy face and smooth head.

"Oh...nice troll slave. How much do you want for him?" "What?! I'm not a troll!" Schwoz protested, taking great offence that someone would deem him a slimy, grunting, tucked animal that lived under bridges or scratched a living slaving in a grubby kitchen. He was a person, he deserved some respect, which Ray sometimes forgot and took advantage of his skills.

"Quiet down, troll!" "Ra—Captain Man! Naughty!" (y/n) thumped her lover's shoulder lightly for being so mean to a key member of their team and the hero gave her a slight pout and a small yet genuinely remorseful look as she admonished him. But as he thought about his actions, a brilliant idea came to mind. "Hey, hey, hey!"

"What, what, what?!" "Let's give this dude some of our sweet weapons to take home with him so he can get his kingdom back!" Ray suggested, pulling his sidekicks close so they could huddle up and whisper, but as ever, Ray's whispering was more like shouting and Ryker perked up when he heard everything. 

For Ray, it made sense; Schwoz was forever inventing and discarding older prototypes of blasters and bombs in the Man Cave, so they had plenty to spare and this guy needed some help. Look at his little face, he was giving them puppy-dog eyes and it felt cruel to send him off into the unknown to fend for himself.

"I love that idea and I would like to do that right now," Henry stated seriously, agreeing with everything his boss said because he viewed the knight in the same way - a lost soul in need of guidance onto the right path again. 

"I don't know, guys, is this really a good idea? I mean, some of the weapons we have are kinda dangerous and we hardly know this guy," (y/n) argued uneasily, not wanting to be mean or a stick in the mud, but rationality won with her as always. 

A part of her wanted to give Ryker the benefit of the doubt and admit that she'd made a judgement of his character but also, there was a tugging on her heart, one that said that giving him proton blasters, molecular shifters or flamethrowers was foolish. This wasn't the first time she and Ray had butted heads on a problem, one thinking against the other but they always worked it out, so this time, she'd trust his judgment...and pray it wasn't misplaced.

"You have weapons here?" Ryker questioned and stepped in, butting in before the couple could debate the suggestion.

"So many weapons!" "Yeah." "Maybe..." the heroes replied, ranging from enthusiastic to a little reluctant to divulge what they kept in storage. Henry was excited, Ray was proud and (y/n), well, she was trying to stay on the fence. That way, she could see what was growing in both gardens.

"What, like swords and axes?" He asked, assuming that they'd have weapons like he was used to, basics that cut and chopped rather than blasted and burnt. That drew a few smiles because swords and the like were so five centuries ago, practically Neanderthal to the modern fighter and it was cute how he thought combat was still so brutish.

"Yeah, yeah, swords!" "Yeah, we got axes!" Ray and Henry laughed, causing (y/n) to roll her eyes as Ryker gave them a confused look. He didn't know what was so funny but Ray was about to wipe that expression clean off and replace it with wonder. Curling an arm around his shoulders, he turned the man towards the tube pads and the rooms that lay beyond them, where they kept some of the older weapons that were no longer regularly used.

"Hey, uh, let me tell you called a thermonuclear hand cannon. And after that, I'm gonna tell you a hilarious story about my cousin, a kangaroo..."

"Doofus, don't touch or give away anything before I look at it! Are you even listening to me?" And off they went. Ray was determined to find a friend in the knight, and so was Henry, whilst he was more interested in this fancy cannon thing they spoke of. That's what worried (y/n), did she need to explain how dangerous they were? Sure, Schwoz had built better things since but that didn't make it deadly, so she stormed after the giggling pack as they stumbled away, leaving the genius to scan the multiverse for an answer that came sooner than expected.

"I found it! I found someone saying Astoria!" Schwoz cried in delight as his boomerang-shaped scanner picked up a frequency of voices. Astoria, Astoria, Astoria...they kept repeating over and over, and he knew that he'd discovered what he was looking for. Sadly, it was a massive shame that there was no one around to pat him on the back for it. "I found someone saying Astori—ahhhh, I'm talking to myself!"

He sighed and continued listening to the distorted voices. A boy and a girl he was sure, they sounded quite nice, not at all evil like he'd been predicting and he figured that he'd just have to report his findings to his boss or (y/n) once the scary man was kitted out with some hand-me-downs. 

But, as he stood there, minding his own business, reality seemed to bend and before his very eyes, a blazing portal opened in front of him, revealing two people whose voices were the ones he'd been hearing through the signal. They were in a halo of swirling amber and electric pink, seemingly lost in their conversation until the door closed on their old world and left them in the new one—the Man Cave to be exact.

"Stromboli, Stromboli, strombo—oh my god, where are we?" A tall, blond, good-looking boy screamed as Schwoz turned the machine off, deeming its purpose fulfilled now that he'd found someone to take their guest home. They were an odd-looking pair, that was for certain, although he could say much about that. The boy was wearing what looked like spares from Robin Hood's wardrobe and was accompanied by a pretty, young girl with bouncy curls and a Middle Ages-themed blouse. She had a sword on her hip and Schwoz knew that he'd have to be delicate with the situation, after all, they were bound to be like cornered animals now that he'd pulled them from Astoria.

"Welcome to the Man Cave!" He greeted them warmly, throwing his arms out to show that he carried no weapons and was trying to be non-threatening but of course, most heads-of-house are normally easy on the eye. Schwoz's funny looks did him no favours as the unknown teens took him in with shock in their eyes and as Ryker had, they didn't see that he was a human like them, more like a stubby, mythical slave that was a spawn of evil.

"Oh, it's an evil troll!" The boy exclaimed, looking like he was ready for a fight in his leather armour and fighting stance, no matter how innocent and placid the genius tried to appear.

"I am Schwoz..." "It's an evil troll named Schwoz!" The girl cried, clearly panicking as Schwoz shuffled closer and her fingers twitched to draw her sword. Anything to save herself and her friend from his filthy, clawed clutches. 

"Okay, why don't you just relax and let me explain how—oh, good, you have weapons!" The small man gulped when they took their swords by the ears and yanked them from their sheaths, which meant that quickly, he was facing down two very pointy ends. His heart was hammering in his ears as they charged forward, causing him to back up quickly to avoid being skewered since any time he tried to reason with them led to him taking another step back. And another. And another until he couldn't go any further and found his back pressed to the secret door in between the auto-snacker and supercomputer. 

"Let us out of this cave!" "Why did you bring us here?!" "You best send us home right now!" They snapped at him and Schwoz found himself losing his grip on his nerve as the metal wavered under his nose. He couldn't answer them all at once but he figured that even if he could, they'd probably cut out his tongue for some misunderstanding because trying to talk with them was futile. They thought he was evil and they were the ones with razor-sharp, folded steel, it was best not to provoke them.

"This is my personal space!" He hissed back, unable to control himself any longer because there was no escape for him. He wanted them to back off or at least drop the swords and for a moment, he thought he'd gotten through to them as the boy's frown cracked, only for him to say something ridiculous.

"Wait! I'm pretty sure that if you tickle trolls, they puke gold," he smirked at the girl, whose eyes lit up at the thought of getting rich quick. Her friend was a bit far-fetched at times, but the troll was right there and it couldn't hurt to try, so she was all up for it, whether the creature agreed or not.

"No, we don't—I mean, no, they don't!" Schwoz tried to brush over his slip of the tongue, wanting to disassociate himself from any connotations of being a troll because it was so damn demeaning. And ridiculous. Very ridiculous, not that the mischievous teens seemed to care; they were willing to try anything once.

"I'll grab him." "I'll get the treasure. I am great at tickling!" Partners in crime was how Schwoz would describe them and whilst they were smirking at each other, he saw his chance and made a break for it. He didn't like tickling at the best of times, he certainly didn't want it done by two teen strangers with that cunning twinkle in their eyes. Their swords were abandoned to the tiles as they chased after him and predictably, their agility and speed far outshone his, meaning he was their prisoner, not a second later, trapped in the girl's arms as the boy got to dancing his fingers along his ribs.

His laughs filled the room as Ray sauntered back into the main room with (y/n) hot on his heels, totally unaware of what had been going down whilst they and Henry had been enjoying a little weapon fashion show with their new friend—well, his and Henry's friend. It had been great; he now had ample gear to take back his kingdom, including blasters, the cannon, grenades, electrocuting prods, the works and he looked very happy with himself, so it was time to send the knight on his merry way.

"Don't go there, dude. Don't go there!" "Anyway, my sweet girl designed these and they're sick! You pull the pin, you throw it at your enemy...boom!" Ray explained to Ryker with a huge smile on his face, failing to see what was happening to Schwoz since they were having a great conversation about how a problem could be solved with no more than a classic grenade. One that (y/n) thought up when she was still but an employee with a lot of long, lonely nights and a curious mind. That meant Ray was very fond of them and not shy to show them off to the knight, who was now armed to the teeth with guns strapped to his back and bombs pinned to his chest, all courtesy of Captain Man and Co.

"Yes, doofus, they're great but be careful how you use them. I can't tell you how many walls we've had to hose down because of splattered—what the actual fuck?!" The woman bashfully advised the man, flustered by the praise but also concerned that a grenade used in the wrong place could leave an unfortunate mess. And Ryker seemed to be taking her worries on board, listening carefully until she just so happened to look across the room after hearing a peculiar noise, only to see Schwoz being attacked by two strangers that he knew very well indeed.

"Hey!" "Whoa!" "Who are you?! What are you doing with my troll?!" If Henry and (y/n) were shocked, then Ray was infuriated, demanding to know who these strangers in his hideout were. 

Nothing happened in those four walls that he didn't know about and the fact that they'd managed to sneak in troubled him deeply, especially since these two looked like Camelot rejects. Well, one of them also bore a striking resemblance to Henry with his fair hair and fine features but that wasn't important. What was essential was finding out why they were in his home and tickling his repairman, torture that only he was allowed to inflict when Schwoz annoyed him. 

"Nugget-head, we've been through this. Schwoz is not a troll!" (y/n) snapped her head to her lovable idiot and gave him a pointed stare as his remained on the kids, who looked rather pale-faced as they looked over to see not only some strangers in funny outfits but also, the cruellest, evilest, most brutal man their land had ever known; Ryker, enemy of Astoria. The one who'd laid waste to the kingdom once before and had been trying to do so again for years—looks like he'd found a new land to purge, new people to terrorise and force into his army.

"Arc!" "Ryker! "Ciara!" They addressed each other, seemingly shocked to see each other, which was then replaced with a determined fury to claw at each other's throats. 

"Schwoz?" "Hi!" Okay, this was getting a bit weird for Ray, (y/n) and Henry, who found themselves in the middle of a standoff that they didn't understand, merely that Schwoz seemed to be okay now that he had been left alone and that if these kids, Arc and Ciara, were enemies of Ryker, then they had to be their enemies too. Because they were friends now, right?

"And Captain Man as the hero, set to save his pretty girl from the clutches of ev..." Ray joked, turning to (y/n) with a smouldering smirk on his face like he was trying out for the lead role in an action film where a sweaty, muscly underdog defies all the odds to save the sweet chick from a gang of ruffians, only to ride off on his motorcycle into the sunset together. Y'know, that kind of movie. But, as she rolled her eyes and cupped his cheek to accept the kiss he so desperately wanted to share with her, things got heated rather quickly. 

Ryker drew the blasters they'd given him and not just any old blasters, some of the most powerful, heavy-duty ones they had, which had been retired due to their tendency to work a little too well. The kids stood steadfast against him, trying not to look afraid and helpless as he pointed the weapons they'd never seen before straight at them. Hang on a second, there seemed to be a little history here and whatever had gone off, it had left some real beef.

"Hang on a second, do you know these guys?" Henry asked, eyeing the boy and the...surprisingly hot girl with a curious eye. Surely, someone as pretty as her couldn't be bad, she looked like perfect girlfriend material—not that he wanted her to be his girlfriend. Yuck, she was bad. He'd had enough date disasters. Ew. Not that he thought she was pretty in the first place, no way. 

"Yes! They took my kingdom from me!" Ryker replied and took a few steps towards the unarmed teens and something felt off to (y/n). Their swords were on the ground, not that they'd help against the modern tech, but still, they had no way of defending themselves...and her heart lurched when she looked at the boy. For a second, she could swear that it was her Henry standing there petrified.

"Yeah, well, that doesn't sound very nice but let's not be hasty. Come on, Ryker, let's put the blasters down and—"

"How dare you do that to this sweet man?!" Ray dragged her away from the children, worried about what filthy tricks were up their sleeves because if they could hurt his new friend like that, what could they do to his sweet girl? It wasn't her fault that she was the kindest, gentlest, sweetest soul on Earth and a little too trusting of young faces, those qualities endeared her to him, but so help him god, he was going to teach these punks a lesson. Anything for the man who'd laughed at the story he'd told him like it was the funniest thing in the world, which was more than Henry did.

"Sweet? He enslaved everyone in the kingdom!' 'Then, he used mind control to turn my own sister against me," Arc and Ciara argued, painting Ryker as an awful character, one that (y/n) suddenly found herself backing away from. She knew that he was more than he said he was and despite not knowing anything about them, she found herself siding with the teens, who knew more about this man than they did. Judging by their outfits, they came from the sale oldy-worldy land, so they had to know something and whatever it was, it wasn't good.

"They're making you sound pretty baaaad, dude," Henry whispered in the knight's ear, thinking, or rather, praying that what they were saying wasn't true because he'd been such a nice guy whilst he'd been with them. Kind, courteous, a little blunt after the bad start but capable of great banter as they showed him their stuff. The hot girl and her...friend that was a boy had to be lying, they just had to be.

"Oh, I am bad." "Ooooh...wait, what?" The heroes recoiled from him slightly, not liking how cool he was with that admission. It was like it didn't phase him at all and (y/n) looked at Ray with fear in her eyes for what they'd done to help this evil man. But he wasn't giving up hope yet and reasoned that maybe Ryker was just a bad boy, kinda like he was a baaaad boy when he pinched her butt when no one was looking.

"Wait, hold on. Bad, like bad bad? Or bad like I'm a bad mamma-jamma?"

"Whatever bad means evil," Ryker, the villainous coward shrugged and instantly, the trio gasped in horror and took a step back. Brutus, is that you? Why didn't he just stab in the heart as well as the back? Ray hoped (y/n) behind him and shared a wide-eyed, disgusted look with Henry as they gave the knight an appalled glare because what the hell? They'd given him their weapons, their time, their help, their everything and now, he was a bad guy. Talk about not knowing a guy.

"What?!" "You're evil?! "I told you so, doofus! I told you so! I said to be careful and you ignore my tummy again!" (y/n) facepalmed, practically shaking Ray by the shoulders as he tried to sound out a desperate apology to her but all he could do was open and close his mouth like a goldfish - his shock had stolen his voice. Whatever, she'd deal with him and his too-trusting nature later, right now she had a villain in her home, one that had more weapons than her.

"Oh, yeah...wait, aren't you guys evil? I mean, I thought the girl was a bit soft and flowery but you guys..." Ryker frowned, making them scoff at such a rude presumption. First of all, (y/n) wasn't some dainty mascot that they brought along for the fun, she was a fighter and a good one at that. And secondly, they were as pure as they came, fighting for the light or whatever and it was offensive that he thought otherwise. Captain Man, Miss Danger and Kid Danger bad? He should've washed his mouth out with soap.

"No!" "We're good guys!" "I'm not soft, okay?! And why would you think we're evil?"

"Uh, 'cause you've got this underground lair, tons of weapons, a troll slave and he threatens to break the arm of any man who disrespects his queen?" "I am not a troll!" The villain did make a fair point, some things did look a little shady in the wrong light but that was just semantics and didn't mean that they were plotting the enslavement of humanity. Ray had dedicated his entire life to the city of Swellview and its people, and so had his future wife and if he was overprotective of her then that was that, it didn't make him evil. And neither did Schwoz's coconut head make him a troll, not that anyone was listening.

"...I see what happened here. Classic misunderstanding," Ray chuckled dryly and put his arm around Ryker just as he'd done earlier as he tried to mop up his mistakes, "Sooooo...gonna need those weapons back real quick." He grabbed the end of one blaster as Henry and (y/n) took the other, and together, they pulled with all their might, only to discover that the man's grip was like iron; relentless and unbreakable. He refused to return the weapons because they'd given him a chance of stealing back the kingdom that had managed to slip the reigns of his tyranny once and he sure as hell wasn't going to let this chance go—or those blasters.

"Pretty firm grip, dude," Henry nodded to Ray, who gestured for them to relinquish the guns. Time for a change of tactics.

"Tell you what, on the count of three, you're just gonna let go and give those—" Ray smiled at his former acquaintance, doing the decent thing and giving him a chance to give up the blaster before things turned ugly. But, unlike the adored Captain Man, Ryker wasn't known as a decent or kindhearted man, hell, even his mercy was as icy as his frozen heart. So he didn't bat an eyelid when he squeezed the trigger as Miss Danger had demonstrated, sending Ray flying backwards onto the floor with burning pain in his chest, much to his sidekicks' horror. Thank god for his indestructibility.

"Shit, shit—back, everybody, back!" (y/n) shouted to Schwoz, Henry and the two kids from Astoria the moment the plasma was released from the chamber, fearful of what might happen should one of them get hit. She'd be fine, they wouldn't and since Ray was now officially preoccupied, she got to pull rank and make the decisions. So, they took covered behind the couch, ducking so the foam would take the blasts and not their bodies, but when they were safe, she made another decision, one that was rather reckless.

"That means you too, (y/n)!" Henry hissed when she dashed to run to her fiancé's side, thinking that she'd be able to help him in some way, even though no ideas were springing to mind. His harm seized her forearm, keeping her by his side, kneeling on the ground and not charging off into the fray when she'd get blown to bits. If she got squashed into jelly, would her super-regeneration be able to de-jellify itself? Now there was a question, one he didn't want to find the answer to.

"But Ray needs help! I can't just leave him with—with him!" She cried, feeling her heart break as her doofus clawed at the ground whilst fighting through the pain. And to make matters worse, the look on Ryker's face was murderous as if he enjoyed the pain he'd inflicted on his opponent, who might not have splattered on the walls like he'd been told, but then again, he had always enjoyed toying with his prey before the killing blow. 

That alone made her want to rip his head off or at the very least rush to soothe any of her doofus' hurts and it was only because Henry refused to let her go that she wasn't facing the mouth of the gun herself.

"He'll be fine, you know that! Look at him, he can take Ryker!" The boy reassured her, aware of how worried she became when her lover was in danger because on countless occasions they'd both made no secret of the fact that they couldn't live without the other. But Ray had super density on his side and that would protect him no matter what that bastard threw his way, so it was safer and wiser for her to stay leading the group. After all, the man was already getting to his feet, looking for round two.

"Get ready to suffer," Ray spat, standing to his full height so he and Ryker could begin to circle. Those blasters didn't scare him, he'd faced much, much, much darker forces and won, so this would be like a light workout, an opportunity to beat this guy up for tricking him so well.

"How? You gonna finish telling me that boring story about your mom and that clown she was dating?"  "It was my aunt and I'm not sure if they were dating!" Oooh, now that was a low blow, one that had Henry and (y/n)'s jaws on the floor because they didn't know how their boss was gonna react. He loved that story and he'd loved how much Ryker had seemed to enjoy it, which was now just another lie, one that fuelled his rage enough for him to pull the laser controller from his belt. 

However, the traitorous knight was quicker and before the hero could fire, it was shot from his hand and a piece of melted garbage before it even hit the floor. Then, there was another blast, which this time hit his arm...and another and another, so he had no choice but to duck, weave and roll his way across the Man Cave as Ryker became a madman, intent on destroying this man or causing him agony at the very least. 

Most shots missed since his aim wasn't good with the newfangled tech but occasionally, Ray took one to the back or leg and had to limp away the pain just to stay on his feet. This fight wasn't fair and it showed.

"What are you doing? We should help him!" Ciara bent down to address the boy and woman as Ray hid behind an electricity pillar, but they seemed to be reluctant to help their companion. She didn't understand, wasn't the older man his master and her lover? Why would they not want to help? If he was her friend, she wouldn't hesitate to swoop in to save him from the enemy and yet they were buying their time.

"Uh, trust me, sweetie, he insulted Captain Man's story. Now it's personal," (y/n) soothed her concerns, understanding that it looked a bit mean and mutinous to not step in but it was like Henry had said. Ray could take care of himself, as per his reputation as the greatest fighter ever and the fury fuelling his movements—she knew that better than anyone. She knew him.

So, they settled down to watch the fight, rooting for Ray since she spoke so highly of him. However, all of the prowess in the world wouldn't help Ray right now; he was seriously outgunned and unable to get even a single punch as he worked more on his defence than an offence. Another plasma bolt to the back had him yelling in pain, enough to make the spectators cringe as he started to slow down, no doubt a side effect of his body trying to recover from the excessive amounts of pain.

"So, uh, you and your boyfriend go into different dimensions a lot, or...?" Henry asked the pretty girl and the annoyingly handsome guy next to her, thinking that despite the drama going on, he could at least make some small talk and perhaps, maybe, possibly get cosy with this girl. Given that she wasn't already taken, of course, and it didn't take long for (y/n) to see what he was doing. She'd given him all the training she could give in terms of wooing girls, it was time for the student to become the master, but boy, was he bad at it.

"Uh, we're not—" "He's not my boyfriend," the girl laughed off his assumption and the boy crawled off to go and talk to Schwoz or something. Great, now he was alone with her and single which meant he was free to turn up the charm, even though he was setting himself up for heartbreak since she was from another dimension and everything.

"Nice," he whispered and made a mental note for his later flirting when (y/n) jerked her head towards the fight and gave him a knowing smirk. Right, pay attention, Hart. Ray was doing better; he'd managed to land a kick on Ryker's chest, although it was merely a way of getting him to back off for a moment to allow him to retreat and the firing didn't stop. A well-executed shot landed square on his back, causing the hero to stumble mid-leap as he hopped from the back of the room to the couch. Okay, this wasn't going so well.

"I don't know if they have music in your dimension, but I'm in a band." "Bullshit," (y/n) coughed into her hand to hide the cackle that threaten to break through her lips when she heard the outrageous lie. Rule number one when flirting; be yourself and don't make stuff up. She'd taught him that and yet he was saying ridiculous things to get some girl he'd know for five minutes to fancy him, even when Ray was getting his ass handed to him. And then, he had the gall to give her a sharp glare. Ugh, teenagers.

"You know your friend's husband is getting beat up pretty bad, right?" Ciara asked, wondering why he was acting calm enough to flirt at a time like this, and why the lady's cheeks seemed to match her satin skirt when she said that. This dimension was weird.

"Oh, uh, they're not married—not yet, and they get touchy when people mention it. And you got me, I'm not in a band—but I'm thinking about joining one...as the star," the boy deflected her question, picking out bits that he felt comfortable talking about and leaving the part about Ray sucking against Ryker. (y/n) had her eye on him, it was fine, even if she did look like she was having a breakdown every time he got hit. He was trying to impress the hot girl and those were few and far between in his life. A few fibs couldn't hurt...

"Hey..." Arc whispered, crawling back to their huddle after interacting with Schwoz. And that wasn't the only thing he'd been doing. " Check it out! I just stole the troll's wallet!" He grinned and held up the leather item that Schwoz angrily snatched back when he saw that it was missing. He had no idea how he'd been able to steal it from under his nose but he wasn't going to let those sticky fingers near him again. Jerk. 

"Arc, can you stop stealing for one second?" His friend asked tiredly. Obviously, this kinda thing happened a lot with him.

"I can't help it. It's my thing!" He replied, giving the curious sidekicks a small smirk. That was his skill set, a lowly thief training to be a knight, although he was pretty damn good at the first. But, the joking mood turned sour as Ryker tired of his puny, pathetic blasters, which had probably overheated after so much use, so he switched to the handheld cannons that had been strapped to his back. Oh, god, if Ray thought the old ones hurt, he was in for a nasty shock, one that could take him down if he wasn't careful.

"Getting tired?" The villain taunted. "I'm just getting started," he replied, staggering to his feet like a drunkard and raising his shaking fists to his chest. He wasn't fooling anyone, the man was on his last legs, barely able to stand up, let alone fight but being the most stubborn on Earth, Ray didn't surrender, merely carried on lamely dodging when Ryker ploughed on. Oh, he did love it when they fought to the bitter, bitter end.

"Uh-oh...he always says I'm just getting started right before he's about to collapse, the silly doofus!" (y/n) murmured, knowing that hardheaded comment from anywhere, as well as the sway in his step and the slur in his speech. He'd be no good to them if he fainted or strained himself and what would they do once Ryker turned on them? Henry would be squished, Arc and Ciara would be squashed and Schwoz really would be taken a troll slave, perhaps even Ryker would make good on his word and steal (y/n) to be his evil queen. 

"We have to go!" Henry told his fellow teens and nodded at (y/n) so they could charge in together. Teamwork was the only way they'd managed to get to this guy if they distracted him whilst one of them hit him.

"Let us help!" "Yeah, we're knights!...in training." However, they weren't gonna have to do it alone. Ciara and Arc offered because they knew Ryker better than anyone and were certain that they could help take him down. After all, that was in their future job descriptions and even though, the hero man was able to land one punch on the villain's face, he looked like he needed all the help he could get. Three were on-target shots as he ran away and he was back on the floor, ready to give up as his body felt numb from soothing pain only for it to rush in again. He hadn't had a beating like this in ages, so his sidekicks scrambled for an idea.

"You're a thief, right?" Henry asked his double, a plan forming in his head that might just work if they were sneaky, clever and very, very lucky.

"Okay, you got me. I stole your wallet too..." Arc confessed, holding up the Man Cave-issued wallet that Henry had for whatever Kid Danger needed to purchase on the company card. Ray and (y/n) trusted him with it, how did that guy manage to take it? Why? Was it because he flirted with the girl? She said she was single...

"What?! No!" "Oh..." "Yeah, no, give me back my wallet. Never steal from me again," Henry said sharply, snatching back his wallet quickly since he was well aware that they didn't have time to stand around chatting when Ray needed help. (y/n) was the verge of charging in headfirst and then all hell would break loose, right before he got to divulge his plan.

"I just told you, it's kinda my thing—" "Listen, I got an idea!" He cut him off, pulling everyone in close so he could whisper about what they were gonna do. Meanwhile, Ray truly was on the verge of collapsing, having resorted to pulling a drawer from a cabinet to use a shield, anything to slow the onslaught of plasma coming his way. He saved himself from a few, but lifting the heavy metal was difficult for his exhausted muscles, which begged for him to put it back down the second he pulled it over his face. He couldn't go on...

"Wait...wait, did you just say time out? I mean, I don't need one myself but if you want to take five, I'll let ya," he panted, staring at the bad guy with blurry vision, praying that he took the bait. Of course, Ryker was still at one hundred per cent, ready to finish the fight and claim victory but the small conversation had been enough to distract him from the group hiding behind the couch and Ray couldn't believe his eyes. 

Henry and those strangers had climbed onto the sofa and were diving onto Ryker, piling on him together so he fell to the floor from their combined weight and velocity. That gave (y/n) the opportunity to slide across the floor and kneel by his side, her arms rushing to wrap around and support him when he practically fell into her. Her embrace had never been softer, her words had never been gentler and her kiss had never been sweeter to his tired soul as he bathed in her care, leaving the kids to resume the fighting for him.

"Oh, wait, wait! I don't need help!" He slurred, his stubbornness rearing its ugly head again since he saw this as his responsibility, his problem, his fight, therefore, he should've been the one to finish it. His body was screaming yes, let them get on with it so he could lay and regain his strength with his sweet girl but his head was ordering him to suck it up and fight like a man. He couldn't choose, both sounded like the better option so when he moved to stand up, someone else decided for him.

"Yes, you do, Raymond. Let us help you," (y/n) whispered hotly in his ear, dragging her lips over the shell and that made his mind up then and there. He slumped into her hold again, arms loosely around her waist so he could get closer and he accepted that they knew what they were doing. Fighting would be good, but the medicine she dished out was better.

"Well, if you want to help me, darlin' I'll let ya..." he murmured back and for a moment, she thought that he was going to try and doze on her shoulder - Lord knows he needed the rest. But, in true Ray fashion, as his head dipped, it turned to the right and his lips found their place against hers, the honey taste invigorating him more than sleep ever could. It was brief, too brief to be satisfying but he still wanted to watch the fight and just having her holding him was enough.

Henry groaned as he was tossed from Ryker's back with one throw, landing awkwardly as Arc and Ciara had but he hoped that the brief pileup had been enough for the boy to work his magic in the chaos. He owed him his life too; as Ryker went to blast his new ally, Arc moved quicker and kicked the cannon from his head, meaning Henry was free to wriggle away as man and boy engaged in hand-to-hand combat. He blocked whatever punched came his way and managed to triumph against his opponent, holding back his arm as he sucker-punched him in the nose. 

Ryker stumbled backwards, towards Henry, and the kid was able to react in time to try and kick him, but not fast enough to stop him from grabbing his foot. As he was hit down, Ciara came from behind, ducking when the evil man tried to swipe at her and kicked him from the chin harshly. In a flurry of punches, she pushed toward Arc and Henry once more, who was able to land a blow on his face and then a swipe to the back of his legs, meaning he fell to the floor when she dealt the final kick.

"Schwoz, get the elevator button!" Henry cried to the genius, who scurried out from his hiding place near the controls for the portal machine as Ray found it in himself to finish the fight. Peeling himself from his sweet girl's arms, he took up his drawer again and glared at Ryker woozily, striking him on the fore hump with a satisfying thump. He was down, for now, disoriented from their attacks and they were ready to shove him in the elevator as per Henry's plan but poor Charlotte and Jasper had made an innocent trip down, unaware of the carnage.

"Oh my god!" Jasper shouted, looking at the scene with fear and confusion. Wasn't that the scary knight who'd promised to reward him? And who were these people? Why did one look exactly like his best friend? Why were they fighting? No one questioned by they were wearing the Task Bunny uniform, all pink and cute and fluffy, it was adamant that they remove the self from the danger before they seriously hurt themselves.

"Get out of the elevator, you two!" (y/n) yelled, beckoning the kids into the room as Ryker stood up like a newborn foal, wobbly and unsure. They scattered, diving to the side as Henry and Ciara came charging forward, kicking the villain hard in the chest so he stumbled backwards into the open elevator.

"Did you get the pin?" Henry asked Arc, hoping that his part of his idea had gone smoothly. Ryker was covered in so many grenades, all it would take was one to defeat him. Not necessarily blow him up, god, they weren't sick, and the teen knights promised him that his armour would keep him alive so that he'd just feel the immense pain of the blast. Hopefully, that would then be enough to subdue him, if not, they were all out of ideas.

"Oh, I got all ten!" Arc replied cheerfully and held up his fingers so they could all see that he had a small key of metal hanging off every finger. Okay, ten grenades going off at once would be a bit of an overkill but whatever. It paid to be thorough.

"I said just get one!" "No, I know, I really hate Ryker. Plus, it looks neat with one on each finger," he smiled at Henry's concern for the asshole who'd attacked his home and jingled the pins a little bit. It was less than he deserved, only a fraction of the pain he'd caused to others, so Ryker had it coming and the boy was not one bit sorry.

"Hey, Ryker..." Ray suddenly piped up, having fallen silent and back into (y/n)'s arm after smacking the villain on the head. He was exhausted, lounging in her lap but dear god, he was the king of having the last word and he wasn't going to let this fool burn without saying something cool to round off the fight. Or something stupid, his head wasn't in the best place right now. "Your story's boring!"

'What? I wasn't telling a story," he replied with a perplexed look on his face because this weirdo was talking nonsense. Charlotte closed the elevator door, which was blast-resistant so it would contain the explosion from all of those flickering grenades going off and now that he was safe in the knowledge that he'd said something vaguely witty, Ray was free to drop his head onto his girl's shoulder. She giggled at her dumb he was, but said well done all the same and rewarded him with a kiss on his damp forehead, which had him smiling more dopily than any comeback could.

And as Ray let himself be carried off into relaxation, Ryker's time was up. The explosion rocked the Man Cave but still, the elevator held up, releasing nothing but vibrations and a little smoke as ten bombs went off all at once. Some did cringe at the agony the guy was no doubt feeling, it was hard not to and the minute the dust settled, Charlotte tentatively pressed the button again, eager to see if she needed to get the hosepipe for this intimidating man.

They gathered around, seeing nothing through the thick smoke, only hearing the coughs and splutters of Ryker as (y/n) helped Ray to his feet and slung one of his arms around her shoulder. Preferably, he'd be sat down right now as she got him a hot drink and a snack but he was insistent, eager to see what had become of his enemy, even if he couldn't see properly.

"Ohhhhh..." "Yeah...." "That does not look right." "Burned mamma jamma," they winced at how crispy the man looked and boy, were they glad that that was not them. But for Ray, it was a job well done, after all, there was no way he'd have ever been able to take him down himself, so he was thankful to his fiancée for taking care of him and proud of his sidekick for saving the day. However, a slight problem came about when he stood next to Arc and patted him on the shoulder instead because both boys looked identical through a sober man's eyes, let alone ones that had been beaten up. 

"Nice job, Henry..." "Doofus, what are you tal—oh, no, no, no!—Too late..." (y/n) flinched as he smiled at the wrong kid and then felt his body slump next to hers. She was holding him up, sure, but her small frame could never hold up his six-foot body unaided, so she had no choice but to let go and regretfully watch him fall, lest he drag her down and hurt her too. He'd be fine, a little nap would probably do him good and besides, it's not like face planting the floor could ruin his perfect face.

"Who's Henry?" All's well that ends well, but the thing was, it wasn't over yet.

~

Half an hour later and Ray was back to his normal self in every sense. He'd been a little too handsy and kissy with (y/n) as per usual, which led to some awkward explanations to Arc and Ciara, he'd been as bigheaded as ever, bragging about the fight and now, with his sweet girl curled into his side, he was retelling his lame story to Schwoz. 

No one cared, no one wanted to listen to something with a non-existent plot line, so the genius just nodded and smiled occasionally as he scanned the multiverse to send the knights home, leaving (y/n) to make her doofus feel like he wasn't talking to a brick wall. She'd rather talk about something else, but as ever, she listened patiently like it was the most interesting tale in the world.

"So, now I'm in the truck with the clown, my aunt, the kangaroo and my cousin!" He exclaimed happily to the confused group. His team were used to it but the Astorians were wondering what the hell was wrong with this man as he kept rambling. Ryker had been peeled from the elevator wall too, just so he could sit and be tortured by the hero and his sucky story and his neck brace and head wrap for the burns didn't do much in blocking out the racket.

"And we're on our way back to the bowling alley when we realise—" "The portal's about to open!" Schwoz suddenly exclaimed, interrupting the story, much to everyone's relief.

"Yes!"  "Oh, thank god...." For Arc and Ciara, it was time to say goodbye and whilst the new world had been fun and slightly terrifying, they couldn't wait to get home...and away from the man who wouldn't shut up. The same violet and pink portal opened as before, showing the gateway back to Astoria and they quickly rushed towards it. It could close again at any moment and they weren't going to live the rest of their lives here, although one of them was...

"Wait, aren't you taking this guy with you?" Jasper called after them and pointed at Ryker, who they'd naughtily left behind as they strode towards the inter-dimensional door. Hang on, they didn't want to have him living with them but to the knights, it made sense that the villain stayed with them.

"Uh, no." "No way!" They chuckled, knowing that if Ryker returned to their kingdom then he'd regain his powers and try to invade again. No, it was much safer that he stay here, in the realm of twinkling lights and shiny screens and they didn't care what happened to him, not one bit as long as he stayed away from Astoria.

"Well, what should we do with him?" Charlotte asked, shocked that they were having some evil guy dumped on them by two mischievous knights.

"Anything." "Don't care. Your dimension is weird!" Arc replied, thinking that he much preferred the simple life he had back home, where normal things happened like magic and sword fights. He understood that stuff, not the strange weapons and clothes they had here, so he was more than happy to leave Ryker where he was in over his head. He was their problem now, he was glad to say.

"Good luck with your band!" Ciara, however, said kindly to Henry. She wasn't sure exactly why he'd been so weird but he was quite cute at the end of the day. Not cute enough for her to want to stay behind, no way, and cross-dimensional relationships weren't her thing but a parting smile couldn't hurt anything...except for Henry's lonely heart.

"Hey! I never got your number!" Henry jumped up from the couch and stared longingly at Ciara, hoping by some miracle that Schwoz could create a phone strong enough to send signals to her world. But, there was one small issue; Astoria was a medieval world and in olden times, people didn't use phones, so it made sense that the pretty girl had no idea what he was talking about.

"Uh, four?" She offered, thinking that he was after her lucky number or something. And just like that, before he could explain or find an answer, the portal closed forever, leaving Henry loveless once again as he would never see Ciara or Arc ever again. Passing faces in his life and for a moment, he allowed himself to be sad at the thought of another girl who'd gotten away, but as ever, he had his wingman to boost his confidence.

"That number does not help me!" "Still got it, though," Jasper commented, causing Henry to smirk and high-five him. Yeah, it was a small success on his part and he didn't let it trouble him, well aware that there were plenty more girls out there and they wouldn't be from a different dimension. They'd be perfect.

"So! I was in high school, yeah?" Ray clapped his hands, smiling that all-too-familiar smile and instantly, the teens knew that he was back on story patrol. Right, yeah, they wanted no part of that and even though it seemed cruel to leave (y/n) with him to listen to it alone, they figured that she secretly enjoyed it. After all, she got to spend time with her doofus, her most favourite thing in the world, what was not for her to love?

"Hey, you guys want to go upstairs and do anything else?" "Yes!" "Absolutely!" "Yeah, I love anything else!" Charlotte, Jasper and Schwoz quickly agreed with him and they speedily walked towards the elevator, intent on going up to Junk-N-Stuff to "work" and gossip about what had happened that day. That caused (y/n) to give them a raised-eyebrow look, but her telling smile told them that it was fine for them to go off and have fun, no matter how offended Ray looked. She got it, no one else could listen to his stories as she could and that was okay, it just left her with more time to admire everything about him.

"Hey! Who's gonna hear my story?!" Ray asked with a pout, not liking how everyone, bar his sweet girl, was walking out on him.

"Uhhhh, (y/n), obviously, she always listens to your stories, anddddd...him! Byeeeeeee!" Henry smiled happily, a glint of cunning in his eye when he saw how Ryker tensed at the thought of being alone with the loved-up couple. He'd seen how they acted, they were handsy and sickeningly cute to the point where he wanted to vomit. No, no, no, they couldn't leave him like this, it was inhumane and god, that story. That story would end him, but for Ray and (y/n), it was a perfect idea. 

So, slowly, the hero guided his lover over to the couch, slightly unsure of where to start since the villain had already said he hated it earlier. The best place to start was probably getting comfortable, so Ray sat on the end of the cushion and brought (y/n) into his lap, allowing her to snuggle in for the very long haul. She sat with her legs thrown across his, her arms around his neck with one of his around her back as she rubbed her nose into his neck and relaxed. Ryker was tugging at his chains for dear life, wishing that he'd taken a better path in life as the story/torture began.

"So, I was in high school, right? And my aunt, she met this clown. Now, I don't know if they were dating or not, I didn't ask questions. But something was definitely going on 'cause they had...a connection—" Ray started, remembering how weirdly his auntie used to look at this clown and now, that he looked back, it was pretty similar to how he looked at his beloved girl. She was drawing circles on his neck, enjoying his voice in her ears more than what he was saying, but for the dark knight, he didn't enjoy any of it. He flopped backwards in frustration and prayed for it to end soon, even though they were only getting started.

"You mean like how we have a connection, doofus?" (y/n) asked teasingly, her fingers sliding up Ray's neck, leaving shivers where they went as they moved over his jaw. She was being deliberately annoying and flirtatious, having a little fun since she saw how much their enemy hated anything fun or loving, plus, it had been a long day and Ray seemed to feed off of her smirk to fuel his own steadily growing, internal blaze.

"Yeah, sweet girl, just like that..." the man smiled and Ryker felt like puking as he saw their lips connect for the fiftieth time that day out of the corner of his eye. The ensuing smacking noises made his stomach feel queasy and he wondered how their friends put up with their constant need for affection. 

Seriously, he didn't know what was worse, the lame-ass story or this joker and his queen.

[helenarlett-rex]

So if you've ever heard of Game X Change before, it is the 2nd biggest retail chain of used video games in the United States. This company is second only to Game Stop. Which I guess isn't hard to do when Game Stop is already a dying company... I happen to work for this company.

I should point out that this company is actually broken up between a couple of different owners. Each owner running a handful of different stores in different sections of the country. The man who runs the store I work at... will not be named... but what I will tell you is that he is a rich frat boy who was born into money, never had to work a day in his life, and then married a literal Saudi Arabian oil princess on top of that. This man doesn't need Game X Change... It's just a pet project because he thought it would be cool to own a chain of game stores. Why he thought that would be cool, I have no idea... Because he knows nothing about gaming... He knows nothing about geek culture as a whole... He knows nothing about ANYTHING any of his stores sell... This is probably why we are a store that depends on trade-ins for all of our stock while still offering the lowest trade-in values in town. On everything except video games, that is... We have an app that makes sure we offer a fraction more than Game Stop on all video game trade-ins... But on literally everything else, the amount we will give you for your stuff is just insulting. Generally speaking, we offer 10% of what we are going to turn around and sell it for. 20% if you will accept in-store credit instead of cash... That's pathetic. If you bring in a Pokemon card worth $100, I'm going to offer you $10 for it... There is literally a card shop right on the other side of town that will pay more than that. If I drive an hour into the city, I can find card shops that will pay as much as 50%.

Our company is so bad at what it does, we are $200,000 in the hole on comic books... We buy comic books for $0.05 and then turn around and resell them for $1.00 each. And somehow we are $200,000 in the hole doing that... I don't even know how you do that... That math doesn't work...

But maybe I should also mention that our owner is a raging cocaine addict who is always coked out of his mind... That could maybe have something to do with it...

Either way, today he came up with a great new plan for the company. He is testing this idea out on a couple of different stores, and mine happens to be one of them. What is this new plan...?

"The company isn't making enough money to keep up with my growing habit. Stop buying and selling DVDs."

Oh... but... DVDs make up half of our sales... Half of our customers only come in here because we are the only place in town where you can even get DVDs... If we stop selling them, we are going to lose half of our customer base... And I mean... we're doing really well on DVDs. We buy them for $0.15 each and then resell them for $4.99 each. We're making money...

"We're going to make it up in a different area. I want everyone to focus on used collectables instead. Like, action figures and shit."

Oh... but... we don't even pay value on those... We have a flat rate trade-in value based on size... It doesn't matter if a figure is worth $500 or nothing at all, if it's six inches tall we are paying $1.50 for it no matter what... People won't sell to us at those prices... Literally everyone who comes in with that sort of thing refuses to sell to us when they hear what we are offering... Most of them get mad at us for wasting their time and insulting them with those low offers... You are taking away our best product and telling us to focus on selling the one product we can't get...

"If this doesn't work, it's the staff's fault for not working hard enough. I'm strongly implying that all managers should fire their staff if sales don't improve under these new instructions."

And so, yeah... That was my day today... I really didn't want to have to start looking for a new job again, but like, this place is going to go out of business at this rate...

[akwolfgrl]

LFT 27

Sanji shook Zoro's shoulder. He had shit to do but didn't want to slip out of the room like this was some walk of shame.

“Huh?” Zoro grunted, cracking his eyes open. “whatcha doin'? Come back to bed,” Zoro lifted the blankets in clear invitation. It did, in fact, look inviting, to spend a day lazy and warm in bed, maybe some slow soft sex, but Sanji really hated to waste the day doing nothing.

“Can't the best time to hit the market's is first thing in the morning, but I'll see back on ship,” Sanji informed him apologetically. He had a job to do after all. “Or you could join me?”

“No, I'd rather sleep in more, its to early to be up,” Zoro huffed and dropped the blanket. “You left your hair alone, mmm I like it, you should wear it like that,” With that, the green haired man fell back to sleep.

Sanji rolled his eyes and walked out the door and towards the markets patting the notebook he tucked into his slacks last night before leaving. He had to make sure the ship was well stocked, who knew how long until they had the chance to resupply when they entered the grandline. With the Luffy ate, it was best to be overly prepared.

<>

Usopp finally was able to do his own shopping. Yesterday, Nami had dragged him into helping her. But he got a nice lunch out of it. His new backpack was empty and ready to be filled with everything he could ever need for the Grand Line. He wouldn't be caught unaware! He would become a great warrior of the sea just like his dad. He wouldn't let Luffy or his crew down.

Usopp stopped at the store after the store, seeking out only the best stuff. Soon, his once empty backpack was stuffed to the brim. He even bought new papers for his blueprints. He wanted to make Nami a better boa staff, even if he wasn't sure how to. He'd figure out the details later. He was brimming with ideas for new ammo. He couldn't wait to cozy up in the galley and draw up all the new plans. To sit under the shade of Namis trees and work on them, to test his skills in battle…from far away, very, very, very far away.

“Goggles! I need new goggles. I can't believe I forgot those! A mighty warrior of the sea, a great sniper, needs only the best goggles!” He hurried off…well more like waddled off with his heavy load to find the best goggles for the job.

<>

Nami opened the curtain of the expensive clothing boutique dressing room. She had come back like she said she would, this would be a great place find clothes she liked before she went eles where to buy them cheaper. Just because they were more expensive didn't mean that the quality was thire.

“Well how do I look?” She stroked a pose as the clerk gushed and raved about her beauty, nothing that Sanji hadn't already said before. Then, in front of her, he wasn't subtle in his endveros to get her to buy the clothes. “Hmm nah I don't like any of these.”

She didn't feel the slightest bit ashamed about the massive pile of clothes she left behind. She, of course, slid a small bottle of sparkly blue nail polish into her pocket while the man was distracted. Couldn't have her skills getting rusty now that they were on their way to the grand line.

“Hmm where to next? I don't need map drawing items, I've plenty of ink and parchment,” As Nami walked past a different clothing boutique, she spotted the cutest outfit. It was a yellow sweater with a sliced mikan with the word written underneath. It was accompanied by a cream skirt with a mikan pattern. There was also a pair of thigh-high stockings in a soft orange. Nami had very rarely allowed herself to buy clothes, to busy saving every last belli she had to buy back her village. Now, however, now she could buy clothes!

[omegaremix]

Mr. Cheapo’s (Commack) shopping list, 2018.

If there was one store that started it all for me, it was Mr. Cheapo’s. It was the first in a long line of mom-and-pop record stores that sold used titles. Brentwood’s Pine Hollow Video was the first store I went for all my hip-hop and rap CDs and cassettes, but realizing that my interest in music was growing, Mr. Cheapo’s showed me what potential was about. The first year of earning a paycheck was the same year I discovered this store. It was where I bought my first stack of used CDs notably from Pearl Jam, Marilyn Manson, and Filter, whose “Dose” promotional single would be the first-ever I’d buy. It’s been around for decades and hasn’t been renovated as long. It’s also the only record store on Long Island to have two locations: Commack and Mineola.

Cheapo’s is just like Talking Heads: same as it ever was. Nothing has changed except for its’ overall stock. New releases behind the counter, near-endless bins of new and used vinyl and CDs with a cassette wall nearing the back. What used to be shelves upon shelves of VHS tapes now have the most extensive used DVD and Blu-ray library of any store. Vintage and classic vinyl 12″ and 45′s were pinned up on the back walls. Boxsets, posters, other 45′s, music-related books, DVDs, and more rows of obvious titles on vinyl and CD made up the rest of the store’s real estate. And plenty of shelves of used pop CDs for $3 each. No. Thank. You.

I didn’t scan the entire store as I was uninterested in all those used pop CDs, so I go right to the jazz / fusion section as I always do. About seven to eight columns wide with another three for soul, funk, and R&B, they didn’t let me down. One, two, three Bob James albums; the stuff of samplists. Blackbyrds, George Benson, and Deodato were mine and so was Jon Lucien whose “A Sunny Day” stood as one of my most-played tracks of all time. Tough that wasn’t found on his Columbia’s Best Of… The Hubert Laws that I passed up a while ago? It’s back in the bin and I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. What I also picked up was The Rolling StonesUndercover. Once in my possession, I decided to give it away to friend and collector Tommy when he found a dump of 500 records one of his customers threw out on the sidewalk. 

A category I haven’t thumbed through in a minute was the hip-hop section, we’re not talking vinyl. For the first time in a while I scored some good titles on disc.Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth and Naughty By Nature were titles that’d be in my collection starting out in the Brentwood days. Jedi Mind Tricks because Vinnie Paz is real underground hip-hop. Got to have M.I.A. in my collection, too. Then I come across P.O.S. whose truly-innovative packaging with interchangeable transparent and solid panels with CMYK theme caught my eye. It harkened back to the pre-internet days of discovering certain artists you never knew existed by purchasing blind. An inquiry for anything Suicide led me to search through the punk bins where I found The Unseen. Watching The Blank Generation made me seeRichard Hell & The VoidoidsBlank Generation disc with bonus tracks in the bins but at first passed it up. Then I find the vinyl re-issue of the same album with live and alternatve versions for double the asking price. In that case, I ended up going for the disc version.

I rounded out my two-hour visit with other odds and ends. Other titles I bought for $2.00 and less were The Jerky Boys, Katt Williams, and Last Stop Standing, a record-shopping documentary. How fitting! Finally, I got a Paula Abdul cassette, one I used to have in my collection until my bro- misplaced it on me. Like I have to answer to any of you.

Blackbyrds, The Action

Deodato 2

Jon Lucien The Best Of…

Bob James 2

Hubert Laws Romeo & Juliet

Deodato Love Island

Rolling Stones Undercover (stickered)

Bob James 3

Deodato Whirlwinds

George Benson White Rabbit

Bob James 4

Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth Mecca & The Soul Brother

Jedi Mind Tricks Legacy Of Blood

Naughty By Nature self-titled

M.I.A. Arular

P.O.S. Never Better special edition disc

Unseen, The Explode

Richard Hell & The Voidoids Blank Generation

M.I.A. Kala

All Dogs 7”

Last Shop Standing DVD

Katt Williams The Pimp Chronicles Vol. 1 DVD

Jerky Boys, The Stop Staring At Me cassette

Paula AbdulForever Your Girl cassette

[darkcloud-kcalifornia]

Okay, so Forbidden Scrollery establishes something of a premise in the first chapter. It doesn’t do much to establish the setting, I still know next to nothing about Gen-whatever-it-is or why the town is specifically called the Human Village, but we do get a premise.

A magician, Marisa, informs a shaman, Reimu, that a girl working in the local bookstore her family owns, Kosuzu, has a Youma Book. These are rare texts that were written by yokai. Some are just normal stuff that just so happened to have a supernatural author (and honestly I like that things like that exist), some are things like spell books, but the real problem is the third kind. These are books that yokai write about themselves to remind people of their existence, and thus through that knowledge and belief give themselves a way to come back if sealed away. So Reimu and Marisa head over to see if Kosuzu really has a Youma Book.

Kosuzu is happy to inform them she has a whole lot of them! Loves the things! Oh, and she recently awakened her own special power of being able to read anything, so it doesn’t matter what kind of dead or otherworldly language they’re written in! Oh, but don’t tell mom and dad she’s spending store funds to buy tomes of forbidden lore with the rest of the stock.

Reimu, upon seeing this idiot is metaphorically BASE jumping without any gear while screaming “YOLO!!!” asks if she has any idea of what she’s going to do if she accidentally unleashes any yokai reading these things. And Kosuru actually has an answer for that: nothing. Dealing with yokai is Reimu’s job, not hers. Silly Reimu.

Like I said, I don’t know these characters. So I don’t know if Reimu ever needs a freaking drink, or even if she’s old enough. But while I certainly can’t condone using self-prescribed chemicals to cope, if she were to do so… I’d understand.

Oh, and Marisa is of no help whatsoever because OMG they have a copy of the first kanji edition of the Necronomicon WANT!

[wirewitchviolet]

Ever think about how weird it is that we've sort of collectively agreed games devalue over time?

This is one of those subjects where I just know people are going to start reading this and think I have some sort of weird vested interest in the price of some particular game or the profits of some publisher or whatever, so let me just get right out front here and say no, this really is me just waxing philosophic in a vacuum.

You like movies? You like actually owning copies of movies? Right now, taking a look around, it seems like if you want to buy a movie on bluray, that costs you about $25. Maybe more like $30 if it's some big fancy release with a lot of pack-in material, like the Criterion Collection stuff, but basically you're looking at $25. You like music, want to buy a new album? On CD, that's going to cost you $15. Or at the point we're currently at where there's this odd revival of vinyl records, you're looking at maybe double that? Little harder for me to work out the basic going rate since I think we're at a point where people are doing limited printings and stuff isn't going to stay at the sticker price long, but there's SOME pretty consistent price point everyone goes with, I'm pretty sure. Books? $20 hardcover, maybe half that for a paperback. You want to buy a video game that just came out though? Well, if it's new-new, and this is the first time it's ever been made available, that'll be about $60. If it's a rerelease though? You damn well better not ask for more than $5 for that or people are going to be furious. And that's super weird!

I've tried discussing with people just how weird this is, and it doesn't really seem to properly register with anyone. One big hangup is that (and this may be because the target audience for games skews really young and the industry has been really pushing to obliterate the concept of owning a game for like a decade or two) is that the people I'm talking to are completely conflating the concept of the work and the publication of a work. Like, yeah, if a store orders a stock of 50 copies of something, and it doesn't end up selling all that well, then yes they are eventually going to mark down the ones that don't sell or toss them into a bargain bin or whatever. That's true for everything, but that is also not at all what we are talking about here. This is specifically about the actual suggested retail price on the package when it leaves the manufacturer. When I'm saying "a movie on bluray costs $25" that's true for a movie that is only just being released on home video for the first time after premiering in theaters two months ago, but that is also true for a movie from like the 1980s that someone's only just now getting around to putting out on the format, or they just got the rights to distribute in a given country (and yeah yeah, super America-centric numbers I'm using here, I know), or it came out like 4 years ago but there's a sequel out soon so we want to make it available again. Doesn't matter how old it is. We're selling it now, we're selling it for $25. It does not work this way for video games. If I port some game from the mid-'80s to whatever hardware is current, and I try to charge the standard price of a game for it, people would be outraged. I can charge $5 or I can bundle it together with a dozen other games and MAYBE get away with that. But I better be throwing in some extras, or make it like 30 games or whatever.

The next thing I hear people say is "well no, see, because with games, budgets for graphics keep going way way up! And you know, hey, that's why the average price of a game keeps going up! Hell games on the PS5 are like, $70!" and... OK so nothing about this argument has any basis in reality, at all. Games for whatever weird reason have always been just kind of immune to inflation. Like, in the 80s a videogame would typically cost about $50, and $50 in 1980 is about $200 adjusted for inflation. That number basically has not budged. Didn't come down when actual production costs dropped to practically nothing, didn't shoot up when budgets kinda ballooned either. You do sometimes see people make "budget games" for maybe half the typical price, but that's kind of just a marketing decision when you're going to release something you know critics are immediately going to pounce on for "looking cheap" or being shallow or whatever. By and large, whether a game is churned out really quickly on the cheap or has some bloated budget in the hundreds of millions, it's getting sold for that same $60. Movies work the same way. The movie that cost $400,000,000 to shoot and the movie that cost $35,000 to shoot both cost you $25 to pick up a copy of at a store... and they also cost a bit under half of a what a game typically costs despite the fact that that they cost roughly twice as much to make (the math is kinda fuzzy, but that seems roughly true for the record-setters and the median, at least for big budget major studio stuff). Capitalism is weird like that, basically no connection between cost and price.

Those are honestly the two main points I see people toss out, at least out loud and in public. The next logical thing to assume though is that there have been profound qualitative gains in the field of video games across the board over the years. That they just keep getting better and better and better. And like, hell no to that. I will grant you that early on in the history of the medium, like, late 1970s to mid-80s, where we went from kinda basic arcade games where you've got maybe 2 minutes worth of game play and then you loop it at a higher speed, then this flurry of new technology and priorities and emerging concepts, and if you want to make a lesser value case against the former there, there's a case you could maybe argue. But you can't look me in the eye and sincerely tell me you'd rather play the worst game released this year than the best game from 30 years ago... actually holy crap there's a bunch of absolute gems turning 30 this year, look at this random wad of search results you know I didn't cherry pick because Earthworm Jim's in here:

Point is, yeah, video games are relatively young as an art form but not so much so that we don't have some immaculate classics older than half the people reading this. And again, hey, movies that predate any modern understanding of direction or editing, shot on cameras too old to record sound or color, and where all existing copies are pretty heavily degraded still get reissued at the same sticker price as anything else. Classic albums that were terribly mastered still sell for the same as stuff recorded on bleeding edge gear.

Oh and just to cover all my bases on this, I was tempted to bring up paintings and how with those the oldest works, especially anything where the artist is no longer with us, shoot way up in value, but that's not really fair to bring up since there we're talking about unique original one-off works, not mass-media. There was never a time when we could all go to the mall and pick up van Gogh's The Starry Night. Unless you just want a nice reproduction print. In which case that'll be like $20 (which when you think about it is an outrageous markup for a single frame of video).

Finally though, we have that argument I alluded to that I'm pretty sure IS a lot of people's logic on this which they probably aren't saying out loud, or maybe even consciously thinking to themselves- The older a game is, the easier it is to emulate. If I'm really jonesing to play the original Castlevania right this minute, it's gonna take me like 10 seconds to type a search query, grab a zip file that's all of 65k, unpack it, maybe spend another 10 or 20 seconds double checking what emulator people recommend these days, and I'm good. Maybe even less, I'm sure there's some site I could find quicker than that just emulating it with HTML4 or something right in my browser. But if I want to play like, Wild ARMs 3, I'm grabbing a bigger file, I don't know if there's any good PC emulation of the PS2 these days, I might need to get into the MiSTer scene, or work out how to make my actual PS2 read a burned DVD (in this weird hypothetical scenario where I don't have the actual game on a shelf in my eye-line and I don't have to dust off a computer old enough to still have a DVD-burner standard issue) anyway). And if I want to play, uh... what's current and doesn't have a PC release? And isn't on the Switch which has weirdly good emulation for a current system. That new Ratchet & Clank game? I assume I'd need to do some serious research, have a much fancier computer, seems like a huge game.

But you know, if even on a subconscious level, that means you inherently consider those earlier games to be less valuable (and hell, now that I think about it, I think I actually HAVE seen people openly make the argument that cartridge-based games have literally no intrinsic value because it's so easy to just emulate them), then... you're kind of a total piece of garbage and invalidating any sort of morally defensible stance you might have on piracy and emulation? Like you want to talk to me about preservation or ease of access or outright refusing to financially support whatever company would profit off a particular purchase, those are all pretty defensible positions, but you try and tell me art only has value when there is no easy way for you to personally enjoy it that doesn't involve cutting a check to someone, I think I might actually hate you and everything you represent? Or at the very least I'd like for you to really take a moment to reflect on your principles and reevaluate some things.

And again, that final little thought on this subject in particular strikes me as something people can take in a particularly inflammatory way, so let me just again reassure you I have no issue with anyone's habits regarding piracy or emulation or whatever. I'm coming at this whole subject purely as a sort of philosophical question/exploration of the commodification of art and artists/anticapitalist sort of thing.

And yeah, to just articulate that last point a bit more, while I totally think it's the weirdest thing that the public consensus is that games inherently plummet in value over time, I feel like we got here thanks to a series of very conscious decisions from scumbags in boardrooms. People want you to give them all your money and ideally avoid giving you anything in return. Their whole deal works best when they can convince you that whatever it is they have to sell you right this minute is the most valuable thing in the world and you need to have it right now, and whatever they sold you yesterday is actually total garbage with no value and you know you should really just toss it in a dumpster and make sure you have the room for today's new thing.

Hell, this is getting a bit out of scope, but marketing people are actually really working hard these days to build up an association between how much space a game takes up on your hard drive being a direct reflection of the game's value, and people are shipping games with intentional bloat like ultra-high-resolution assets and needlessly uncompressed files, because if you can only fit like 3 games on your drive, hey, buying this new game means tossing a ton of stuff out. Less stuff for you to play and be content with, less options for what game you're just going to log into every day and have people sell you DLC, and by the time they have a new game to sell, you're going to have to throw this one out to make room for that. No deep libraries, just the current thing.

So, yeah, on the one hand we have companies asking you to buy the same games now you already bought a while ago, and screw them for that, but they're also trying to convince you that nothing you own has value or deserves preserving to always keep you hungering for something new, and WOW screw that so much. Art has value, it retains that value, it's good to build up libraries and share them and keep stuff in circulation for new audiences to discover and people to revisit and re-examine. So quit letting anyone try to convince you old games (or old art of any other kind) has no value. And if you can be bothered, hey, do your best to support artists as much as you can and creeps trying to commodify art as disposable product as little as you can.

[rmhashauthor]

hey!! this is chance and here’s week 5’s prompt. your oc suddenly gets transported to a mall. what store(s) would they go in? would they buy anything? what would they think? tell me about the experience.

Mmm interesting.

I'll be referring to my OC Lienfang, from the book I am currently releasing serially on Wattpad: The Dragon Prince's Consort.

Fang grew up extremely poor. Her parents did their best, but when her mother got hurt working in construction the company decided to terminate her instead of pay out the worker's comp. Her father got sick and through some underhanded bureaucratic nonsense the Federation denied him insurance benefits, so he slowly wasted away and died. Eventually Fang's mother also passed, leaving Fang alone and burdened with her parents' debt, which she tried to work off for years with no success. She just fell deeper and deeper into the pit, occasionally homeless and eventually moving to the Drassian Empire to try to start over, where she gets into trouble with a certain extremely wealthy young fella whose older brother is a complete dick.

Now that she's with Valen, the titular Dragon Prince, she's loaded. Just SOME of her clothes are worth millions, which Valen made sure of in the event that he can release her from her contract - that way she'll have more than enough stuff she can pawn for cash with plenty left over.

Before, Fang would have just gone into a mall to look around and maybe get warm. She might have had a few coins in her pocket, but probably not enough to buy a pack of gum, let alone food that isn't compressed protein rations and vitamin tablets. Now that she's Valen's concubine, though, there's literally NOTHING she can't afford to buy at least a hundred of. In the novel (I really need to get used to calling my 'stories' novels) Valen takes her to the highest of the high-end shopping avenues and takes her first to a master robe-maker and proceeds to spend about six million on Fang's wardrobe. To start. Gowns, stockings, leggings, tunics, riding kit, boots, underwear - he blows through cash like there's no end to it and Fang's head spins when he makes a guess at how much it all cost.

After that he takes her to a dozen other shops to buy her jewelry, shoes, combs, pins, soaps, creams, cosmetics, anything and everything a prince's concubine is expected to have and then some. It's so much stuff that it has to get shipped back to the palace compound (which by the way is the interior of a friggin' mountain, because DRAGONS) and an army of servants have to unpack it and put it all away. Fang is overwhelmed by the estimated price, though she accepts that in order to pull off the scheme she's cooked up with Valen she'll have to act like she deserves all of it. At the same time, it's not so hard to grow accustomed to warm socks that don't have holes in them, gowns and robes that fit properly and aren't patched dozens of times, and shoes that aren't so thin she can step on a penny and tell you what year it was minted.

It's only when the newness wears off the clothes and jewels that Fang starts wising up to the idea that it's not so much the stuff she enjoys or the comforts they bring, it's Valen's attention and apparent enjoyment of giving her things she's never had before. Brand-new shoes that no one else has ever worn? They're hers now. Silk and satin gowns trimmed with fur and silver thread? Made custom to fit her and only her. Rouge and makeup in colors Drass don't wear? Specially ordered for Fang. Valen's beyond wealthy - his dad's the goddamn Dragon Emperor - he can afford to spend 10-15 million on his new "girlfriend".

I figure lots of people have a princess fantasy, or at least a sugar daddy kink. I don't judge.

The Dragon Prince's Consort updates THURSDAYS on Wattpad, and it as well as my finished novel STARFISH are available to read absolutely for FREE because why not.

HOWEVER, if you do happen to have a dollar to spare, I also have a Ko-fi. I don't expect to make money off of these but it sure would be nice if I could afford some toast or a piece of cheese. *GASP* or a grilled cheese sandwich?!

You can follow me on Instagram for updates and short-form junk like mini-rants on romance tropes I love or hate, update announcements, very short snippets, dorky memes and pictures of my cat Nell. She is EXTREMELY cute and I love her VERY much, even if she is a brat 78% of the time.