#🌺 posts

[critterchitters-closedcaptions]

IM SO EXCITED FOR THANKSGIVING RAAAAAAAAAAAH

happy thanksgiving everyone who celebrates!!

whsgshhfs this is my first holiday in like. fucking Forever off the tulpar and im soooooo fucking excited for some actually decent home cooked meals, im gona go fucking NUTS on this shit dude im so beyond excited for studfing dude holy shit

[whipped-for-fictionals]

bdubs isn't in real life because he knew so many height jokes were gonna be made

[pndrax]

get a room!!!!! gah. what are you, as a man, doing cuddled up with another man!!!???!!!!

i'll probably render this a bit later honestly i just wanted to draw gay things for my gay boyfriend

[hanafubukki]

Hanaaa i have a hopefully fun question for you if you want to indulge? ໒꒰ྀི⸝⸝´ ˘ `⸝⸝꒱ྀིა

how would you say the Disasomnia boys kiss? or even where do they enjoy kissing you most! ♡ hehe

Hello Gray 🌺🌻💞

When I saw this ask, I was so excited because I wanted to write more intimate/suggestive moments this year. 👏👏

But I also blue screened hahah Error 404. 😂😂

But I’m going to test my waters a bit and see how this goes:

Lilia Vanrouge:

He has lived centuries and traveled. He is the curious type, so it’s safe to say he’s not new to kissing. He has experience when it comes to intimacy of all kinds.

Initially, he would test the waters with his love. He, gradually and sometimes spontaneously, kisses you.

His kisses always left you breathless, even more so when he had a certain look in his eyes. His eyes speak of hunger and desire.

Don’t worry, precious, you’ll enjoy every moment while he partakes in his desire of you. His favorite place to kiss is where your heart is.

Normally, it would be your neck. After all, he can show everyone who you belong to.

But your heart? Your heart is his. Hearing the sounds as it beats for him calls to him. What a precious lullaby.

For him and him alone. He especially adores the way it beats when he’s with you. It’s all too telling how much you adore him. It’s okay love, his beats just as strong for you.

Malleus Draconia-Vanrouge:

He has lived for so long in terms of human years. He knows about intimacy and has even read it.

But he hasn’t experienced it before. With you, everything is new. He’s going to explore these moments with you. He’s all too willing to learn, especially with his lover.

But careful dear one, dragons are possessive. Once his hunger for you awakens, he’s going to be insatiable.

His kisses will consist of nips with teeth and with his tongue curling around yours. Leaving you gasping.

His favorite place to kiss would be your forehead, especially when you’re tucked into his arms. Here is where you belong and knowing you chose him above everyone else? How can he not love you?

His Future Queen.

His.

Silver Vanrouge:

Sweet dearest Silver would court you. He has learned how to court from his father, so expect something slow, in the beginning at least.

He would follow your pace and what you’re comfortable with. If you asked him for a kiss, he would gladly give it to you.

But careful, he’s the type to be passionate and once you open this pandora’s box, let it be known that never have you not needed to hold onto him for support.

He would wonder why he waited so long to kiss you and now he can’t get enough. So expect a kiss from him in the morning and at night at the very least.

His favorite spot to kiss is your hands. As a knight, he treats you as if you were nobility. You have his highest regard. But sometimes, you can’t help the shiver that runs through you as he nips at your wrist. His eyes conveying he wants so much more.

Sebek Zigvolt:

He has always been a loud one, hasn’t he? But with you? He’s quiet and tender. Not always, and surely not in the beginning, his passionate persona and determination would sometimes be difficult to handle.

But your patience with him and your comments would always be noted. He appreciates you. He knows how he can be given what others and especially Silver say.

So he takes his time with you. As you learn about him, he learns everything about you. Always the dutiful studious types.

He especially pays attention to what kinds of kisses you like, especially the ones that leave you asking him for more. The urge to consume you wholly is always there. He hungers for you and only you can satisfy it.

He loves marking you, but let it be known, that his favorite place to kiss is your eyelids and around that area. Because you have always seen him, haven’t you? When others didn’t and when he himself couldn’t, you have. With your eyes on him, he can hold himself proudly always.

I didn’t realize how long this became 😂🫶💞

Though this became more of a dating/kissing/favorite places combo didn’t it? 🤔😂 But I like how it turned out nonetheless. 💞💞

I had a couple ideas for each but chose these. ☺️💞🫶

[the-bar-sinister]

"Why the fuck am I in pain today" asks person who experiences chronic pain.

[pecanaclaw]

pecanaclaw and peanut Jack all 2025 baby !!!!

[fl0ralsxgar]

My baby here on Earth ㅤ showed me what my heart was worth. ㅤ So, when it comes to be my turn, ㅤ could you shine it down here for her?ㅤ

I normally dont do full backgrounds so... dont look too closely at it

Feel free to let me know if you want to be added or removed!

Finally using the taglist:

@vergils-beloved @lances-wife @strawbeaniie @sparkyscissorhands @zoroscanonhusband

[hibiscus-intern]

Fit check for my new internship! This freighter ship is super cramped. You can barely see anything in the mirrors! I'll h- uh. Sounds like the Captain... Curly, I think? Sounds like he broke the news to my new boss. I'd better go check that out. AMA and I’ll get on it after my shift, yeah? Apparently we only get like, five hours of sleep! Aw man, I don't know anything about... Recording ended.

ASK BOX IS OPEN!

A/N and guidelines under cut! Please read before sending :]

Hi and welcome! I haven't run an ask blog in years, now, but this isn't my first go at it so I'll hop right into some rules and guidelines for interaction!

As a canon-adherent Mouthwashing blog, themes of abuse, assault, institutionalized misogyny & violence against women, capitalist and patriarchal hierarchies, rape culture, ageism, etc. can and likely will be explored. I am 21 years old and as such will tackle adult topics! I gently ask that people who interact do their due diligence not only to keep themselves safe but also to respect the severity of the themes in the games when engaging with Daisuke. While lighthearted asks are more than welcome, this is a blog run in earnest and out of a genuine interest (personal and scholastic) in the themes in Mouthwashing. I will tag with trigger warnings as I see appropriate. Thank you!

With this in mind, the blog is canon-compliant, meaning Daisuke only knows what Daisuke knew in-game (thus far, only pre-crash)! For example, he is not aware of Jimmy's true nature. Please bear this in mind when interacting and please do not be too surprised if his answers aren't as critical as a player of Mouthwashing might be. But not all questions have to be explicitly about the game canon! Feel free to ask personal questions or pose hypotheticals--I will tag headcanons and non-canon responses as appropriate. This is still a blog made out of love and for entertainment purposes!

I will periodically update the transit time in the blog description to reflect when in the voyage the questions are being answered from. If you want your ask answered from a specific time into the voyage, just add it in your ask! For archival purposes, the date at which he answered the question will be recorded in the tags :D

My name is Clem (he/him 🇲🇽🇬🇹), feel free to directly ask me things you're curious about!! 💗

Small shoutout! The creation of this blog was inspired by @/ask-anya-anything, whose posts I ran into over on Twitter! Absolutely an incredible writer and artist you should totally check out!

Thanks a bunch! Hope to hear from you soon ☀️

[crystallizsch]

uh hi. meet jas(mine)???

[pinkwinesupernovas]

there's something so healing about sitting by the shore of an ocean and watching the sunset with your friends

[whipped-for-fictionals]

reblog for a larger sample size!

[covetcore]

I am now a mother. Her name is Calypso. 💚

[sappho-favourite-pupil]

Something nobody ever understands when they see us together is that i am her protector. I always have been. Since we were young girls i have seen her going to war to defend the ones she loved, me included. Good luck convincing her to do the same for herself. I do not mind it though, it's my job ♥️

[hitlikehammers]

steddie does the 🌷flower-blooming🌷 disease love thing—but make it ✨only softness✨

OR: think hanahaki with a princess romantic, ✨non-life threatening✨, horticultural🌿 streak

Honestly: after everything, the flowers should not have been a surprise. And look: sappy romance novels might talk about choking on them or what the fuck ever, about it being lethal if unrequited, blah blah etcetera. But as far as Eddie ever understood, it was kinda like…your body having too much of a thing, and needing to expel it, lest it cause some kind of imbalance. But when it was love—requited or otherwise—it expelled itself as something a little horrifying, but undeniably beautiful. Flowers. And you tend them as best you can. They’re a part of you. Because it’s terrifying. But it’s beautiful. You’re in love that big.

rating: t ♥️ tags: post-s4, falling in love, friends to lovers, fluff, romance, softness, hanahaki disease, or really more: hanahaki-adjacent 🌺🌻, as in: NO life-threatening angst ONLY big feelings and beauty, feelings reveal, love confessions, happy ending♥️

for @steddielovemonth day sixteen: “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.” ― Alfred Tennyson

A lot had changed since Vecna. Aches and pains that weren’t there before. Nightmares featuring a very new cast of characters. A family he never could have imagined cobbling together who actually took the concept seriously, in a way Eddie had never felt anything close to in his life—save with Wayne. Random worries that plagued a lot of random moments, unprovoked.

Steve goddamn Harrington sliding almost too-perfectly into every little crevice of Eddie’s life—except for the sexy ones and…that hadn’t started as a problem. In fact, it hadn’t started even as a consideration, because gorgeous as he is? Straight-hero-boy was never gonna be on Eddie’s metaphorical dance card. So it’d been a much less convoluted and earth-shattering experience—though it still very much was both of those things; just less—to wake up in the hospital with Steve napping at his side, or squinting at a pamphlets nurse had left about physical therapy; or waking up and Steve was already in the kitchen making breakfast, like real breakfast, when Eddie’s meal standards usually involved shoving his hand into a box and stuffing his mouth with theta he could grab. Or Steve just, stopping by before or after his shifts, to see if Eddie needed anything. To listen to Eddie ramble about a campaign, or bring Eddie the latest release from a band he said he liked probably one time. To fall asleep on the bed on top of the comforter and cut the nightmares short just by rolling over with a hand to eddies chest and a muffled S’okay.

Or most uncanny: coming over, just to hang out.

So getting used to all that made it easier to segue into going to visit Steve at work when Eddie could finally move around enough to drive again. Stopping at Steve’s place unannounced when he’d finally been convinced he was genuinely welcome—by way of Steve giving him a key, what the fuck—and that there really were no parents waiting with pitchforks. Trying his own hand at making meals for when Steve worked midday shifts, so he’d have something when he pulled in—so what if it’s frozen pizza. It’s the fucking thought that counts—and Eddie really does need to start small. He really can’t start a fire in Steve’s kitchen, so he needs to get a decent track record going here in his own first.

Because he does want to cook for Steve. In Steve’s kitchen. When he spent the night at Steve’s, even. When he kept some nightmares in check.

Honestly: after all that, the flowers should not have been a surprise.

And look: sappy romance novels—aimed either at horny teenagers or housewives who can’t get a refill on their antidepressants—might talk about choking on them or what the fuck ever, about it being lethal if unrequited, blah blah etcetera. But as far as Eddie ever understood, it was kinda like…your body having too much of a thing, and needing to expel it, lest it cause some kind of imbalance. Like lots of…body things.

But when it was love—requited or otherwise—it expelled itself as something a little horrifying, but undeniably beautiful.

Flowers.

So when Eddie starts growing jasmine from his fingertips; honeysuckle in the hairs on his arms and legs; bluebells from every line of scar tissue, no matter where it ran; alternating sunflowers, dahlias, and red asters, straight from the center of his sternum, always in the same order and always accompanied by whichever wasn’t steadily unfurling from his chest, the other two in spades were getting coughed up not violently, but persistently, in the meantime—always, like all of it, a little fucking terrifying—with blossoms of lisianthus to cover both his nipples—which he had to look up; they were real pretty but fuck if he’d ever seen one before it bloomed his tits like a Renaissance painting trying to be censored by a stray leaf—before he pulled them all the way out and sparked the cycle again: horrifying. But he knew enough that the point was to cultivate the growth, the encourage your own body doing its thing to keep you a-okay (or close enough), so he does what everyone’s taught to do, if this…challenge happens to visit upon them.

You fucking plant them. So they can take root the way they want to but can’t—whether because it’s too much for anyone to speak and show even their truest, most treasured partner, or because they don’t, or can’t, have a partner with whom to even try—but you plant the growing things, the living embodiment of what your heart’s beating out of your pores.

Literally.

And you tend them as best you can. They’re a partof you.

Because it’s terrifying. But it’s beautiful.

You’re in love that big.

And of course Eddie knows why. He watches Steve sleep too much, touches his chest to ease the nightmares too much, cooks next to him too much, feels his breath catch at his side on the sofa too much, for him not to know.

He’s kinda proud of it, actually. Because what he feels is this huge and terrifying and exquisite. No matter what he can never do about it with his gorgeous straight now-undoubtedly-best friend.

But it is massive and terrifying and beautiful, and fuck yeah his every cell should be blossoming a testament to the fact that he, freak-supreme Edward Munson, gets to feel it. No matter what comes or doesn’t—save for the flowers themselves.

It’s predictable, though, and definitely in line with both Eddie’s general mixed bag of luck, as much as with the life and routine and expectation of the presence of Steve goddamn Harrington, that…well:

“What is this?”

Eddie tapping down the soil around the last of this morning’s ready-to-transplant blossoms he plucked straight out the shower—good for like…watering and stuff.

He thinks.

He hadn’t heard Steve’s approach, is the thing. And he’s never shown Steve this little space, cordoned off at the edge of the woods behind the little house their government money earned them. It’s mostly out of sight. There no reason to poke around out here.

Save…well. This reason.

“Just my garden,” Eddie tries to say all casual, keep it light like his heart’s not in his goddamn throat.

“You,” Steve says slow, walks the perimeter like he recognizes on sight what this is, what this means, that it’s all terrifying and beautiful and something close to sacred.

All he says is:

“These can’t grow this fast.”

Like he actually does specifically know for a fact that the various species in the ground in front of them couldn’t naturally be this big, this fast, in the time since the Munsons moved in.

Eddie still asks, because he’s never taken Steve here, wasn’t expecting Steve to find him here now, and his heart’s still knocking wild at the base of his fucking throat:

���How do you know?”

Steve looks at Eddie for a series of blinks that feel probably a lot longer for how many heartbeats fit into the space of time. Then he shrugs, eyes back to the flowers:

“I like to garden.”

That’s news to Eddie.

“How do you know I didn’t like to garden, too? Y’know, before?”

Because Eddie could have. Not like they’d known each other. He doesn’t know where in the fucking trailer park he’d have done it, let alone hidden it from view so as to have no evidence, but he couldhave. These beauties could have been salvaged from a former home, a half-former life, for all anyone could prove—the trailer’s long been confiscated and the lot it’s sat on’s still quarantined.

Steve leans over the sad little fence Eddie’s put up around the edges, where the larger plants—mostly the ones that burst out from the center of his chest—make a border. His eyes flick up to Eddie’s as he reaches for a petal, but doesn’t touch: he’s asking permission.

And of course Eddie nods, because anything he has is Steve’s. No question.

“Who is it for?”

Eddie nearly can’t stop himself from snorting because: anything he has is Steve’s.

This, maybe most of all.

“No one I can have,” Eddie leans against the opposite line of fencing as Steve strokes bright red, bright yellow, satiny fronds that looks right in his hands.

“That’s insane,” of Steve’s response, more to the flowers than to Eddie.

Bur at the very least it lets Eddie get the snort he’d stifled earlier out as he deadpans:

“Gee, thanks.”

Steve looks up then. Petals still held delicate between deft fingertips.

“No, I just,” and his eyes are wide when he glances back down, releases the petals gently, makes sure they fall back to where they’re meant to lie. Pristine.

Precious.

Something pings like a plucked string in eddies chest, underneath where he’s due for a sunflower to appear real soon

“I mean, loving you would be such a,” Steve looks up and locks with Eddie’s eyes:

“A privilege.”

More plucking in Eddie’s chest for that, Jesus fuck. The sprouting of a petal above the sensation. Quicker; more urgent—his heartbeat slamming like it’s pushing the blossom out all on its own.

Eddie doesn’t know what to make of that, save maybe that’s how this works, when the reason for it all is standing in front of you, spouting…this.

This.

Then Steve’s glancing around a little more, taking in the varietals on display a little more intently before he adds:

“Flowers or no flowers.”

He says it almost a little breathy, but. It might just be Eddie’s imagination.

“I never really understood it,” Steve goes on, apropos of everything but still kinda out of nowhere all the same. “Like is it supposed to be a, a modern day dowry or something? But it’s not worth money which, I guess,” he licks his lips, and Jesus H, he’s so fucking beautiful.

Terrifying, but beautiful.

“That would be better, really,” Steve decides with a gentle little smile. “Means more.”

It means…everything, really. Steve means everything.

Flowers or no, he already did. And now, it’s…Eddie kinda appreciates the terror. He loves knowing, having tangible proof of how his heart’s that set, and unwavering with it.

“I wished for it. As a kid.”

Eddie tilts his head as Steve lifts a while sunflower—the one flower especially that Eddie knows gives full weight to the who of all this.

As if there was any question.

“So many times,” and Steve’s burying his face a little in the massive head of the flower—they don’t smell like much, Eddie’s learned.

But he kind of thinks what they do smell like, really is sunshine.

“Can I,” Steve swallows, straightens, looks hopeful, nervous.

Beautiful; terrified.

“Can you, just,” he clears his throat, and extends a hand; “cane you come with me somewhere?”

As if it’s a question. As if it’s ever been a question.

His hand’s in Steve’s between heartbeats.

“I need to show you something,” Steve whispers, but his smile is…golden.

The car ride is silent, but they done let go. Eddie gets led into the Harrington house, up the stairs, farther down the hall than he ever really goes.

He understands why once the door to one of the last rooms is opened, and as he’s led inside.

“Steve…”

He takes in the fragrance; he takes in a puzzling cross of chaos and maze-like intrigue in raised flower beds under greenhouse lights. It’s like a puzzle, a game, on a rich-boy budget.

It’s two lives, laid out in a single beautiful testament.

“I didn’t always love to garden, just always wanted to,” Steve murmurs low; terrified—but so so warm; “wanted to feel enough, to garden.”

Eddie turns from taking in the intricate lines from a bird’s eye perspective, appreciating how it draws him in, like it, like it’s for—

“Who,” he chokes around the question he can’t help but ask, hope to big and goring, a bubble set to burst through his ribs:

“Who’s it for?”

Steve leans closer, raises a brow.

“Eddie,” he says pointedly; it’s terrifying, how beautiful Eddie’s stupid simple name sounds in that voice, on that tongue.

Steve grabs Eddie’s hands again and walks the through the labyrinth slow, intentional, and eddies breath catches when it hits him: they’re all the same.

The flowers are familiar because their gardens are the same.

Save for one striking difference. A notable lack of yellow. But then—

Steve crouches a little, lifts a very delicate flower hanging from a broad-growing shrub, frames it in the hollow of his palm.

“What do they look like, to you?” Steve asks, but the answer’s fucking obvious:

Music notes. They’re, they’re…

They’re Steve’s garden’s sunflowers.

They’re the ones that make it undeniable, the answer to Eddie’s shaky-hopeful question.

But if they weren’t, if they somehow were not themselves enough—

Steve pulls Eddie close, close, closer.

Kisses his mouth as satin-sweet as a petal between fingertips.

And Eddie’s chest feels like it’s blooming every shade of loving, all at once, for the discovery:

He hadn’t even scratched the surface of just how much love he could feel. And there’s not terror in it, now.

But there is so much more beauty.

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @ajeff855 @allmyfavoritethingsinoneblog @anthrobrat @askitwithflours @awkwardgravity1 @bookworm0690 @bumblebeecuttlefishes @captain--low @depressed-freak13 @disrespectedgoatman @dragoon-ze-great @dreamercec @dreamwatch @dreamy-jeans137 @estrellami-1 @friendlyneighborhoodgaycousin @goodolefashionedloverboi @grtwdsmwhr @gunsknivesandplaid @hiei-harringtonmunson @hbyrde36 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @kimsnooks @live-laugh-love-dietrich @madigoround @mensch-anthropos-human @nerdyglassescheeseychick @notaqueenakhaleesi @ollyxar @pearynice @perseus-notjackson @pretend-theres-a-name-here

divider credit here and here

[newyork]

gone 2 the beach

[daydreaming-en-pointe]

it’s nice to have a friend (pt. 1)

Pairing: Hobie Brown (Spider-Punk) x GN!Reader

Type: Mini Fic - Fluff-ish??

Word count: 1.6k

Warnings: Cursing, maybe a little bit ooc Hobie since it’s been months, a few halfhearted attempts at his accent and then I just gave up whoops

A/N: wrote this while having the worst cramps of my life last month and only finished it now 👍 idk I just felt like cussing out the world at that point so that might explain the excessive swearing 😭

Tap tap tap.

You were just about dropping off to sleep when you heard those light knocks on the window. Probably just a clumsy bird.

Tap tap tap tap.

The knocks grew more insistent, more familiar - a pattern of sorts. You heaved a long, mildly annoyed sigh and got up to open the window.

It was not, in fact, an annoying pigeon. It was Spider-Punk in the flesh. Or as you knew him, your absolute dumbass of a best friend.

“It’s 3am in the fucking morning,” You waved your hand at the pitch-darkness outside, giving him the most formidable glare you could muster. “What do you want?”

“Hello, sunshine!” Hobie hopped inside, pulled off his mask, and gave you a completely unfazed grin. “Nice to see you too. Stop glaring at me! What, I can’t see my best friend whenever I want?”

“It is 3am in the fucking morning,” You repeated, pointing helpfully at the clock on your bedside table, though you had to press your lips together to squash a smile. Good grief, did his little cross between a smirk and a smile have to be so contagious?

“But I can’t sleep, and clearly you can’t sleep, and I missed you, so let’s go!”

“You saw me barely six hours ago,” You deadpanned, already pulling yourself to your feet and grabbing your coat from where it lay thrown across the the bedside table. “Drama queen.”

“Me? A drama queen? Nah, I’ll show you drama.” He flopped melodramatically onto the floor, grabbing your ankle and pretending to die. He looked ridiculous, like a lanky stick-bug-fish hybrid that crawled onto land and starting flapping about.

“Hobie, get up!” You gave a little huff, reaching a hand down to yank him upwards. “Okay, fine, let’s go wherever it is you want to go.”

“Yay! Can we go to the roof?”

“Sure, we can take the fire esca- HOBIE WHAT THE FUCK NOT AGAIN!” Before you could even take a step towards your bedroom door, he had grabbed you around the middle and leaped out the window. Your stomach dropped as he let you both plummet almost to the ground before shooting a web to the railing that ran the length of the roof and extended a little bit over. You both shot up like a rocket and he angled you in such a way that your landing would be much gentler than his.

“The next time you do that I’m going to throw up on you,” You warned him once you got the air back in your lungs (after a little bit of wheezing).

“That’s what you said last time. Besides, ‘s like a free amusement park ride! Honestly, I’m so generous, you don’t even have to pay,” He chuckled softly, brushing past you to sit at the edge of the roof.

“Sometimes I don’t even know why I put up with you,” You muttered, carefully navigating around the looser tiles on the roof to go and sit next to him.

The atmosphere was silent, not peaceful exactly but just still for the moment. Factories in the distance were still chugging out thick smog that floated up to join the suffocating clumps in slowly strangling the city. The alleyways were dark save for a few slivers of moonlight that managed to cut through the pitch-blackness of the backstreets.

Perfect time for a philosophical conversation, right?

“Do you ever wish that that spider hadn’t bitten you?”

Hobie looked at you in surprise, his eyebrows raising slightly. He looked back over the city, leaning back on his palms. “Well… sometimes. What I mean is… sometimes I just wish I didn’t have to do this, y’know? But it’s better me than some pig. One of those bastards as Spider-Man would be a fuckin’ nightmare. For everyone who sees through Osborn’s bullshit.”

You nodded, satisfied with his answer. Truth be told, you didn’t understand much of what he said - it was 3am, it had been a long day, and the words just didn’t register in your tired brain. You closed your eyes for a few minutes, leaning on Hobie. It wasn’t very comfortable, since not only did you have to avoid impaling yourself on the small spikes on his vest, but his shoulder was also pretty bony under the fabric.

“Tired?” He turned his head to look down at you, eyes soft and sweet and filled with something you couldn’t quite put a name to right now, perhaps because of the state of your consciousness.

You rolled your eyes, having still not fully pushed away the remaining traces of grumpiness that lingered from your rude awakening. “Thanks to the dumbass who woke me up at some unholy hour.”

“Come on, you know you wouldn’t have slept anyway. At least this way you have some company.”

You opened your mouth to say something back but slowly shut it upon realising that he was right. Absolutely insufferable.

You just snorted and closed your eyes, savouring the moment as best as you can. You loved quiet moments like these, where you could ask anything and get an honest answer instead of having to mince your words — maybe you liked them more than you should, but it was fairly harmless, right?

Marriage could end in divorce, couples could break up, and young love really wasn’t a constant. You couldn’t expect something so intoxicating to retain its magic against the test of time.

So it was better to take that fierce rush of whatever it was that you were feeling and label it as platonic love. Because strong platonic love, when it was returned, was benign and beautiful and all-encompassing, all at once.

“Oi, don’t fall asleep here. Still with me?”

You felt a light touch of ridiculously cold fingers against your forehead and jolted fully awake.

“Asshole,” You complained, batting away his ice blocks for hands. “Have you been sitting and stewing in a fridge for a few hours?”

Hobie snickered at your annoyed frown and chose that moment to break into a grin, reaching into his pockets. “Oh, that reminds me, I made us matching bracelets!”

He held out two bracelets, ridiculously tiny in comparison to his fingers. They were both composed of random beads, staples, half-broken bottle caps and bits of coloured string threaded onto a loop of fishing twine. The loud, mismatched colours practically vibrated off of them in shockwaves like some sort of sonic boom of Hobie-ness.

In short, they were absolutely perfect. There was nothing that he could’ve given you that would remind you more of him. All sleepiness was momentarily forgotten as you took one of them, holding it up to examine it in whatever moonlight managed to cut through the clouds.

You gave him a smile, slipping it onto your wrist carefully. “It’s beautiful, Hobes. Thank you.”

“Ah, we’re back with the nicknames! There it is! Good to know I didn’t actually make a mistake waking you up.” His tone was lighthearted and teasing, but his smile had turned into one of affection as he watched your reaction to his gift.

There it was again. You’d seen it a few times recently, and it had been silently eating at you no matter how much you tried to dismiss it as simple friendship.

Nothing more than a tiny little flash of that puzzling something in his eyes, but something that made you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and not just in a way that someone would feel about their best friend. Something that gave you the courage to finally break free from the voice in your head whispering about everything that could go wrong — although that might have been because of your horrendous lack of sleep and the tiredness that was tinging each of your thoughts with just a little bit of delirium.

Screw keeping it platonic.

“Hobie,” You began, and something in your tone must have sounded different because he trained his eyes on you, his head cocking to the side slightly. You faltered slightly, trying to think of something to say. But before you could find a way to put your exhausted, confused mess of thoughts into words properly, he winced and his face scrunched up in the way it always did whenever his spider-sense went off.

“I’m sorry, I gotta…” Hobie gestured vaguely down at the alleyways, an apology practically written on his face. You nodded, ignoring the hollow pit of disappointment forming in your stomach.

“Yeah, you should go. I’ll… see you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” He agreed, already fishing through his vest pockets and digging out his mask. He paused to give you a cheeky grin before slipping the fabric over his face. “Don’t worry, I’ll pick a more pleasant time to drop in.”

“That’s what you said last time!” You called after him as he leaped off the building, disappearing down into the roads winding around, into and throughout the city. You stayed where you were, hugging your knees to your chest as you stared at the ever-shifting skyline. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course something came up right as you had finally mustered up the courage to say something… and yet, it felt as though he was almost expecting it. Like he wanted you to say it.

You scoffed at the absurdity of your train of thought, looping around and around hopefully like a broken clockwork toy. All wishful thinking, perhaps? Then again, maybe not. You pushed yourself to your feet, pushing open the fire escape and beginning to make your way back to your apartment. You almost missed the terrifying rush of adrenaline that accompanied one of Hobie’s daredevil manoeuvres in and out of windows on the fifth floors of buildings. Almost.

You got into bed again and switched off the light, pausing to look out of the still-open window. Oh, well...

You moved to close it, pulling down the pane of glass and latching it at the bottom.

Maybe next time.

@hobiebrownismygod @l0starl @therealloopylupin2099 (not sure if i’m missing anybody else, it’s been a while 😭)