#And guess who's probably not gonna be getting any fucking help for like 3 weeks

[drewbydrewbydrew]

I have a fucking master's degree and I've been beaten by a fucking couch and a coffee table

[headkiss]

fall right into me

pairing: steve harrington x fem!reader

summary: when something happens to your apartment and you need a place to stay, steve, your best friend, is quick to provide it for you. your prolonged proximity forces you both to realize some things.

word count: 13.6k

warnings: childhood bffs to lovers, absolute idiots in love, mentions of a negative relationship with parents, probably inaccurate descriptions of some things but it’s (say it with me) for the plot!!!

a/n: i know it’s been a LONG time since i’ve posted a long fic so thank u guys for ur patience <3 i had so much fun getting back to it and writing these two, and i hope it’s at least a little bit worth the wait!!! ily :,)

𝜗𝜚

Your shoes are still wet as you dial the first number that comes to mind: Steve’s.

He picks up on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Hey, Steve.”

“Hi,” you can imagine him on the other side of the phone, leaning casually against the wall, an easy smile on his face, “what’s going on?”

You’re not quite sure where to start.

Coming home from work earlier, you’d been excited to shower and change and lay around for the rest of the evening, your book hanging open in your lap and some mindless TV filling the silence.

The day seemed to have other plans for you, though, because as you walked down the stairs to your apartment—one in the basement of a sweet, older couple’s house who just never used the space and converted it—the carpet had made an ugly squelch as soon as you stepped on it.

You looked down at your shoe against the carpet, at the way its color was darker than usual from whatever water had gotten into it. Looking up, you found a complete mess. A piece of the ceiling hanging open right above your bed, water still dripping in steady drops from the gap, your bedding ruined among many other things.

You don’t know how long you stood there, hand over your mouth, eyes flickering over the damage like you were hoping it would vanish, like it was only something you imagined.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

The couple who owns the house came down when they heard you shout for them, unsure of what else to do. They’d both gasped when they came down, and began apologizing for something that really wasn’t their fault before one ran up to call whoever it was they needed to call to fix this and the other comforted you with a gentle “we’ll take care of it, sweetie.”

You nodded, eyes still roaming your space that was now uninhabitable.

It’s an old house, something was bound to happen at some point, you only wished it wasn’t so inconvenient for you. A small leak, you could have handled, but the ceiling practically caving in?

Yeah, it was a complete fucking mess.

Hours later, with the damage assessed and set to take a few weeks to fix up, you’re on the phone with the one person you’d known would pick up.

You fill Steve in on what happened, and his first response is a sigh of, “Shit.”

“Yeah, shit,” you agree. “And now I’m gonna have to live with my parents for a while and I don’t know how I’m gonna go back into that house, Steve.”

If you’re being honest, the couple you live with now was kinder to you than your parents were. You suppose that’s one of the many things that you and Steve have bonded over.

“Just come live with me, instead,” he offers without hesitation.

Steve says it like it’s obvious, a no-brainer, and you guess it should be, since you’ve slept over at the Harrington’s house countless times before. Only, this is different because you’d be staying for a while, because you’d be needing his help, which makes you feel all awkward and guilty.

He’s been your absolute best friend for as long as you can remember, and you’re one hundred percent sure you’d offer the same thing if the roles were reversed, but that doesn’t make it any easier for you to accept, not when you’re already frazzled from the events of the day.

“No, Steve, I’m sorry I’m just being dramatic,” you say, twisting the phone’s cord around your finger. “I’ll be fine, really. It’s just a month, or so, and I don’t wanna be in your way or-”

“When have you ever cared about being in my way, angel?” The pet name he’s called you ever since your ninth grade Halloween party slips out naturally, the way it always does. “Besides, this house is too fucking big for me as it is, and you know my parents won’t be around to care, either.”

“I can’t ask you to let me move in, Steve.”

“Well then, it’s a good thing you’re not asking. I’m offering. It’ll be like that one week when we were twelve and you stayed over for spring break, only longer. It’s perfect!”

There’s a small smile ghosting across your face as you recall the memory he’s talking about. A blanket fort in their spacious living room, sleeping bags and pillows piled inside it along with two flashlights.

You can picture the way he looks on the other end of the phone, his hair a bit messy from running his hands through it during the day, one strand rogue against his forehead, his shoulder leaned carelessly against the wall the way it usually is when he stands. Like he can’t be bothered to hold himself up, like there’s constantly a weight on him.

“Are you sure about this, Steve? It’s really okay if you’re not. I swear I’ll be fine.”

“As if I’m letting you spend multiple weeks back in your parent’s house. You’re staying with me, alright?” His voice is insistent, yet kind, letting you know that he’s being honest, that he means it. “We’ll order pizzas and watch shitty romcoms, ‘kay?”

“You can call romcoms shitty all you want, but we both know you get teary at every single one.”

“Don't change the subject, angel. Also, fuck off,” he says, though you can hear the smile in his voice. “So, you’re living with me, yeah?”

You don’t think you could say no to him even if you wanted to.

“Yeah, alright, Steve. Thank you so much.”

“None of that. I know you’d do the same.”

There’s something beautiful about the kind of trust and ease that comes with a friendship as long as yours. One where you’ve watched each other grow up, awkward phases and all, and stuck together the entire way. There’s no questioning whether or not you’d be there for each other if you were in need.

It’s known, felt. Like a fact.

“Now,” he continues, “I’ll pick you up, okay? Ten minutes, tops.”

“Okay.”

“You need me to bring boxes for your stuff?”

“I’m not sure how much is worth keeping. It’s pretty ugly in there.”

Your voice goes small at the end, because the gravity of it all is really sinking in. You’ll have to replace a lot of stuff. Stuff you don’t have money for right now.

But, you haven’t let yourself cry just yet, so you swallow it down.

“I’ll bring some anyway, then. We’ll figure it out, angel, don’t worry.”

“Thanks again, Steve. See you soon.”

“Ten minutes,” he assures you, then the line clicks.

-

True to his word, Steve arrives in under ten minutes, which isn’t surprising considering the size of Hawkins, but feels reassuring all the same.

You’re sitting on the curb in front of the house when Steve’s BMW pulls over on the other side of the road, and you stand just as he climbs out and shuts his door, rounding the car and jogging over to you.

His keys jingle as he tucks them into the pocket of his faded jeans, his opposite hand coming up to squeeze your shoulder, “You okay?”

The warmth of his palm seeps through your work shirt that you’ve yet to change out of, and you let your eyes fall shut just for a second before looking at his face, “Guess so,” you nod. “Maybe ask me again after all of this?”

Steve’s arm winds itself over your shoulders, tugging you into his side and dropping a kiss to the top of your head, simple as an instinct. “I’ve got you. We’ll get through this, angel.”

We’ll, he says. A team.

You reach up and squeeze his hand and nod, guiding him to the side-entrance leading to your basement apartment.

“I hope you didn’t wear your good shoes for this,” you say.

Steve looks down at his feet and shrugs, “Shoes can be replaced.”

He lets you lead the way down the stairs, his footsteps close behind yours. You wince when you look at the damage again, even though you’d seen it minutes ago. You can't bring yourself to look at Steve, to see the reaction on his face, because you think it’ll just make it all more real.

He mouths the word ‘fuck’ while you aren’t looking, then claps his hands once. “Okay, let’s figure out what we can save, yeah? Where do you want me?”

You’re grateful for his gentle guidance at what to do. “Maybe the bathroom? Everything in there should be fine, so it just needs to be packed.”

“‘Kay. I’ll just go grab some boxes from my car,” Steve says. He squeezes your hand once before heading up the stairs. “I’ll be right back.”

You decide to tackle the worst spot first. Though the place is more like a studio, the side that houses your bed and your closet is the most affected, so you head over there and try to tune out the squish of the carpet beneath your feet.

You’re opening the sliding doors to your closet when Steve comes back, dropping a stack of boxes by your feet and running his hand down your arm softly before heading over to the bathroom to pack for you.

Even his presence seems to be making things a little bit easier for you, and each time he finds a small way to touch you or speak to you, to remind you that he’s there, you’re glad for it.

Half of your closet is a gross, wet mess, but some things are salvageable, which you take as a win. Things might be damp, but at least it’s only water, you suppose. A cycle in the dryer and most things will be wearable again.

Your dresses that are hung get the worst of it, soaked and smelly, and you decide that it’d be easier to get a couple new ones than to try and save what’s there.

Steve checks in every now and then, poking his head out of the bathroom’s doorway to look at you and make sure you’re doing alright, giving you a thumbs up when you look over to him.

You’re not sure how you’d be managing this if you were alone, and you’re thankful that you don’t have to.

The next time he checks on you, you’re by your nightstand.

Sitting atop of it is a framed picture of you and Steve from summer camp when you were around ten years old, maybe younger. Only now, the picture’s stained with water and the frame you’d decorated all those years ago at camp is a splotchy mess.

Where yours and Steve’s handwriting used to be, is now a blur from the water seeping into the wooden frame, the marker’s colors muddy. You frown, picking it up and running your thumb over the edge.

Before you can stop yourself, you’re tearing up, frustrated and sad and tired. Memories like this one are the most special to you, the ones that have kept you going for so long, and just like that, the picture that’s sat on your nightstand since being taken is gone, and it fucking sucks.

“Hey, angel?” Steve calls.

When all you do is sniffle and mumble an “mhm?” in response, he sets the box he’d been packing on the bathroom counter and walks over to you.

He comes up behind you, resting his hands on your upper-arms and peering over your shoulder at the ruined picture.

“It was my favorite one,” you say, voice breaking a little. You wipe your tear away as it trails down your cheek, your own fingertips too harsh against your skin.

Although it’s soaked and splotchy now, Steve knows which picture it is. The one where you’ve both got your neon summer camp t-shirts on, the one where his cheeks and nose are completely sunburnt and you’re both grinning up at the camera from your seats on the ground.

Steve’s clutching a stick in his hand for some reason, and you’ve got your fist tangled in the sleeve of his shirt.

It feels like no time and forever has passed since then.

Steve grabs the picture and pries it gently from your hands, setting it back onto the table and turning you around in his grip to face him.

“We can fix it,” he tells you, his brown eyes all soft as his hands come up to cup your face, thumbs swiping your tears away.

“But the frame-”

“We’ll fix it, angel. I’ll find a way, okay? We can pack it in one of the boxes and figure it out.”

“Steve-”

“Look at me,” he urges you when your gaze flickers to the ground. You listen. “This fucking sucks, I know it does, but you’re strong and I’m here, and we can handle this.”

His voice is quiet, but sure. You search his face for any trace of a lie and find none. He really believes what he’s saying, and he really believes in you.

“Thank you for being here.” You take a deep breath and drop your forehead against the collar of his shirt. “I’m sorry for crying. I know it’s kinda stupid. Most of this is replaceable, it’s just-”

“It’s not stupid,” he says, letting his chin rest atop your head. “You’re allowed to cry. Hell, I’d probably be kicking and screaming on the floor like I'm back in the terrible twos.”

You laugh wetly into his shirt.

“Now,” he says, pulling back and putting his hands on his hips, “the quicker we pack, the quicker we go home. I’ll even let you wear a pair of my good fuzzy socks.”

A smile tugs at your mouth. “Deal.”

-

Steve wouldn’t let you do much of the work after that.

Instead, he simply held up items for you to assess from where you’d been leaning against the wall and packed it into a box if it was a ‘yes,’ or tossing it aside dramatically just to try and get you to laugh if it was a ‘no.’

Once things were sorted through and packed, you loaded everything into Steve’s car—which wasn’t a whole bunch, considering how much you had to leave behind.

You’d refused to let Steve carry the boxes all on his own, though he tried, but he still managed to open the doors for you whenever you made it to his car, even when his own hands were full, too.

By the time you were finished, you were drained. It felt like you’d lived multiple days in the one. An eight hour shift opening at the store, then coming home to a wrecked apartment. All you wanted to do was shower and lay down and not get back up.

Steve knows you well enough to be able to tell when it’s time to fill the silence and when it isn’t, and on the drive back to his place, while your head was leaned against his window, he knew to stay quiet and give you a bit of space.

He turned the radio on, but not too loud, letting the songs hum through the speakers. At every stop sign, he reached over and gave your thigh a light squeeze. Reassuring, kind, somehow exactly what you needed at the moment. Nothing more, nothing less.

You were no stranger to the Harrington’s house, having been there countless times since you were little, but it feels more intimidating now, knowing you’ll be staying. You feel silly for being worried, but you are. Asking for help makes you feel like a burden.

Steve, however, doesn’t let you entertain that thought for long, parking in his driveway and jogging around to open the passenger door for you. “Honey, we’re home!”

“Dork,” you say, though you accept his hand and let him tug you up out of the car.

Grabbing the first couple of boxes, Steve leads you inside and upstairs, right to the guest room across the hall from his own bedroom. The closest one to him.

The house has at least two guest rooms, though you suppose with how little Steve's parents are around, you could consider there to be three. Three spare rooms and Steve puts you up in the nearest one possible. It makes your heart squish in your chest, how caring he is. He doesn’t even have to try, really, the goodness in him shows even when he tries to keep it hidden.

It only takes a few trips down to his car and back before all of your boxes are stacked against the wall. You decide you’ll deal with them later.

Steve runs over to his room and grabs a set of pajamas that you’d left there, and hands them to you. “I figured you’d wanna wash up.”

“You calling me smelly, Harrington?”

“Shut up, I think you smell nice. Usually.”

“Hey!”

“I’m teasing, angel.” He ruffles your hair. You swat his hand away. “You know where the bathroom is, and there should be soap and stuff in the shower already. Just yell if you need something, okay?”

You do know where the bathroom is. You have your own toothbrush in a cup by the sink, a set of travel-sized skin care products in the cupboard behind the mirror for whenever you end up staying over.

It’s funny, you’ve always felt more at home here than at your own parents house, and though he hasn’t said it to you, Steve much prefers this house when you’re in it. There’s a warmth that comes with your presence that makes him ache when it’s not around.

You nod, “Thank you again for letting me stay, Steve. I won’t be in the way, promise.”

“I want you in the way. You know you’re always welcome. This is no different.” He shrugs, “Plus, it’ll be nice having you around. Place always feels so empty when it’s just me.”

“Maybe I’ll just stay forever, then,” you say, tone light and joking.

Steve, completely serious, says, “I’d let you.”

There’s a zip that goes through you when he says it, quick as lightning, something you’ve never felt—or noticed, rather—around him. It throws you off just a little.

“Anyways,” Steve cuts your thoughts short, “I’ll let you get settled. Pizza will be waiting for you when you’re done.”

He leaves the room before you can thank him again, his footsteps retreating and heading downstairs.

You’ve been to his house a million times, so you don’t really feel the need to ‘get settled’ but you desperately need a shower so that’s where you go.

You stay in for longer than you need to, letting the too-hot water run down your neck and back.

When you finally do step out of the bathroom, now clad in your pajamas, and head downstairs, Steve’s sitting on the couch in the living room, the romcoms he owns sitting out in front of the TV for you to choose from, your favorite blanket resting on your side of the couch, and pizza boxes on the coffee table just as promised.

It’s the best thing in the world, you think, to have a friend like Steve.

-

You’ve been staying at Steve’s for a couple of days already, and time seems to fly by a little quicker when you’re there, especially when you’re around him.

He’s taken it upon himself to have coffee ready in the pot for you every morning, one of your favorite mugs already next to it on the counter. You’ve cooked breakfasts together (pancakes one day, where you’d done most of the work, or something simple as toast when you both have to get to work), ordered dinners, and Steve comes home from his shifts with a new movie to watch almost every day.

It’s been so nice. Almost perfect, actually.

This morning, the first day where your shifts happen to be at the exact same time, he’d even insisted on driving you to work. It was an easy yes, considering it wasn’t out of his way at all.

After a short stint of working together at the grocery store in ninth grade, and your subsequent firing from the job after a month of constantly distracting each other on the clock, Tim, the grocery manager, took it upon himself to warn Hawkins not to hire the both of you together.

Eventually, you’d taken the closest you could get which resulted in you working at the arcade and Steve next door at Family Video.

You share a parking lot. Steve already drives you to work most days. You like to put up a bit of a fight just to annoy him.

Though you haven’t worked together in years, and he isn’t far away by any means, you miss having Steve around on days like this. Where the arcade is quiet save for the sounds of the games in the background, where you’re simply babysitting the desk and cleaning things multiple times to try and make the hours pass by.

If Steve were with you, he’d make stupid jokes that you don’t wanna laugh at but do, or coerce you into playing the games while on the clock with the change you find whenever you’re cleaning.

He’d probably trash talk you, and bump your hip with his while playing pinball, and be a sore loser, and for some reason you want him around so bad.

You chalk it up to getting used to spending hours and hours with him, every single day, these past couple of days. Staying with him has made you miss him more, you think.

That’s it.

Meanwhile, over at Family Video, Steve isn’t feeling too different from you.

He’s spent the morning stocking shelves, memories popping into his head whenever he’d come across a movie you loved or watched together, while Robin’s been manning the desk.

Then, when his cart was empty and put back into the back room, he sat on the chair behind the front desk, spinning around until Robin stopped him with her foot and asked what he was thinking so hard about.

Steve caught her up on what had happened with your apartment (you’d told him he could tell her, because she’s your friend too and would find out sooner or later) and how you’d ended up staying with him in his house.

She raised her eyebrows and hummed in a way that was automatically suspicious, because Robin isn’t very good at hiding things.

“What?” Steve asks.

“Nothing.” When Steve only gives her a pointed look, Robin continues, “Well… are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Now, Robin is one of Steve’s closest friends, and him one of hers, and she supports him in pretty much everything that he does even when she teases him relentlessly along the way, but she cares about both of you and doesn’t want to see anyone hurt.

She can read Steve better than he can read himself, probably, because to Robin, it’s clear that he feels more than friendly towards you. And he doesn’t even know it.

When they became closer, it was clear to Robin, even before meeting you, just from the way Steve spoke of you, that there was a spot reserved for you in his life that couldn’t be filled by anyone else.

He would say it’s that of ‘best friend’ but Robin would call it something even bigger than that. Still, even though she thinks he’s an absolute dingus, she’s trying to let Steve figure it out for himself.

Clearly, it’s taking fucking forever.

He looks confused at her question, “Why wouldn’t it be a good idea?”

Robin sighs and resists the urge to drop her forehead against the desk and decides on, “You know what they say: become friends with your roommates, don’t become roommates with your friends.”

“Whoever they are, they’re dumb as shit,” Steve says. “She’s been over, slept over, hundreds of times. It’s not any different, just longer.”

“I guess so,” she settles on. “The rules of the world never really seem to apply to you two.”

“That’s because the rules of the world are also dumb as shit.”

“How would you know? It’s not like you’ve ever tried following them.”

“‘Cause I’m a rule breaker, Robs.”

Steve wiggles his eyebrows. Robin shoves the rolling chair he’s sitting on with her foot, sending it into the other side of the desk with a thud.

“Don’t think that smoking weed in your backyard is enough to call yourself a rule breaker, dingus.”

-

That night, your routine was pretty much the same.

Steve was already waiting for you in his car when you left the arcade, a smile spreading onto his face when he saw you making your way across the parking lot to him, your skirt swishing a little with the breeze.

Rather than go straight home, you made a stop at your apartment to talk things over with the couple who owned the home. They’d met with a builder and plumber about getting everything fixed and wanted to walk you through it all.

Steve came with you and held your hand, and both of them cooed at him and pinched his cheeks and called him a cutie before getting to the important stuff.

After going over what had to be done (rip out the carpet, replace it, fix the pipes and make sure no others were at risk, replace the ceiling, and more you couldn’t even remember already), they’d assured you that they would be taking care of it all. Covering the entire cost.

You probably would’ve argued if not for how little money was in your bank account, and how stubborn you knew these people to be. Instead, you’d squeezed them both and thanked them while your eyes grew misty with tears.

Steve’s hand stayed in yours and squeezed when you sniffled.

He knew, because he knew pretty much everything about you, that these people were kinder to you than even your own parents. That, if this had happened at their house, they would’ve found a way to blame you for it.

You feel lucky to have found that kind of parental love elsewhere, sad that you didn’t know exactly what it felt like beforehand.

After giving the couple Steve’s phone number to call in case they needed you and giving them both another hug, you and Steve headed back home.

Home, you call it. Like it’s yours.

Sometimes it feels like it is.

Later, after you and Steve have both showered and had dinner and gotten comfy in your sweats, you’re back in the living room, Steve shows you the movie he’s brought back this time.

“Gremlins?” You ask, smiling and shaking your head.

“Hell yeah, angel. It’s a classic.”

Steve sets everything up, joining you on the couch after pressing ‘play’ on the movie and adjusting the volume with your guidance.

“So, how was work?” Steve asks during the opening credits. The two of you have a hard time being next to each other and not talking. It’s why you get dirty looks whenever you go to the movies.

“Weekdays are so boring, Steve,” you say, letting your head fall against the back of the couch. “You’re so lucky you have Robin to entertain you during the day. I think I dusted like, ten times at least.”

“Robin is a pain in my ass.” He says. He doesn’t really mean it, because even when she is, he’s glad to have her around. A different kind of gladness than he feels with you. “She kept pushing me every time I sat in the rolling chair. There’s probably a dent in the desk.”

“That’s because you were probably hogging the chair, Steve.”

“What the fuck!” Steve’s smiling when he says it, lacking any sort of anger. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

Your smile mirrors his, the way it always does. It’s contagious, you think, the way his eyes crinkle at the corner.

Shrugging, you say, “I don’t know, I’d wanna push you around on that chair too, I think.”

“You’d spin me too much. I’d get sick all over you and then nobody’s happy.”

“Don’t talk about barf while I’m eating, Harrington.”

You throw a piece of popcorn at him. It bounces off his cheek and lands on his lap, and he doesn’t even flinch. Steve just picks it up and pops it into his mouth.

When the bowl’s empty, you lean forward and set it on the coffee table before sinking back into the couch, Steve's shoulder brushing yours. You let the warmth seep through your clothes and shut your eyes.

It’s a little more than halfway through the movie when Steve realizes you’re asleep. You’d been quiet, sure, but Steve only thought that meant you were paying attention to the movie.

That was, until your head slipped and rested against his shoulder.

He looked down at you, at the hair falling across your forehead (he smoothed it away gently, so it wouldn’t be in your eyes or your mouth), your eyebrows relaxed and free of any worry, your chest rising and falling with steady breaths.

He thinks of how tired you must be, after everything. Your apartment and dealing with the aftermath both emotionally and physically, working long shifts most days to keep your bank account full.

Steve, though he doesn’t let himself look too deep into it, also thinks of how beautiful you are. Now and always.

Not wanting you to get a kink in your neck from the position, Steve decides to rouse you from sleep as gently as possible. He slips a hand under your head to keep it steady and maneuvers himself to kneel in front of you.

“Hey, angel,” he almost whispers, thumb dragging across your cheek. “C’mon, let’s get you to bed.”

Your nose scrunches and you grumble, but after some coaxing, you blink your eyes open and squint at Steve. You blame your half-asleep mind on the way you nuzzle into his palm. “Hmm?”

“You fell asleep.”

“Oh, sorry,” you mumble.

Steve laughs softly. “Don’t be sorry, I just didn’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

The warmth of his hand leaves your cheek as he stands and holds his hands out for you to grab. He pulls you up off the couch and starts leading you towards the stairs.

You knuckle at your eyes on the way, a tiny smile gracing your face at how sweet Steve’s being. As if you haven’t fallen asleep on his couch plenty of times before.

Still sleepy, you stumble a little on the stairs, but Steve catches you easily with an arm around your waist and a small “Careful.”

He leaves his arm there the rest of the way to what’s become your bedroom, guiding you over to the bed and lifting the covers for you.

Tomorrow, you’ll regret not brushing your teeth or washing your face before climbing in bed. But today, you don’t feel like risking not being able to sleep again if you wake yourself up further.

You’re practically asleep again by the time you’re settled with your head on the pillow as Steve tugs the blankets over you.

You’re just awake enough to feel the light press of his lips on your forehead and a soft “Goodnight, angel” against your skin before he leaves the room and shuts the door behind him.

-

On a random Thursday that you and Steve both have off, he convinces you to let him take you to the mall.

“We should go shopping,” he says when you walk into the kitchen. It’s a little later in the morning, having slept in since it’s a day off, the sun slipping through the window in warm beams.

You raise your eyebrows at him. “Like, groceries?”

“No, like shopping shopping. You know, the mall?”

You lean against the kitchen island, the countertop cool on your back where it touches the sliver of skin between your tank top and sleep shorts. Steve has his shoulder against the fridge, his arms crossed over his chest, the sleeves of his t-shirt tight against his muscles. Not that you’re looking.

You squint at him, trying to find his motive on his face. “You literally buy whatever the mannequins are wearing to avoid shopping.”

“That’s what they’re there for!” The sass in his voice has you biting back a smile. “You need new clothes,” he continues, “and I need to get out of this house.”

“We can do something else, Steve,” you say. “I thought you hated shopping.”

“Well, I don’t hate you.” There’s a pause, Steve’s eyes lowering to that sliver of skin above your shorts. He flicks them back to your face quickly, hoping you didn’t notice, because even he’s not sure what compelled his eyes to wander. “Plus, Eddie called me a hermit the other day and I really can’t stand for that, can I?”

“Ohhh,” you ignore the way your skin suddenly feels warm beneath his gaze, “so you need to make a public appearance to prove Eddie wrong?”

“Exactly. We’ll replace some of the things you lost and restore my reputation. Two birds, one stone, right angel?”

So that’s how you’d ended up at the mall. After Starcourt burnt down, the closest place was a couple towns over, and Steve (as always) offered to drive.

He lets you pick the music the entire way, sings along when you hold your water bottle by his mouth like a microphone, even attempts to harmonize with you which just ends in laughter because neither of you sounded that great.

You’re a couple of stores in, and Steve’s been complaint-free so far—which makes sense, since this was his idea, but you’ve caught him side-eyeing some things, so you know he’s got some remarks in his head he just hasn’t said out loud—and follows you around as you browse. You try not to take too long, because you can’t imagine that this is any fun for him.

“How about that one?” Steve asks, pointing at one of the dresses hanging along the store’s wall.

He’d seen your apartment, though that was a bit ago, and he remembered what you’d lost the most of, along with the type of stuff you like. He pays attention like that, in small, quiet ways that you think mean the most.

He knows you. He cares enough to know you.

“Yeah, that’s really pretty, actually,” you admit.

At your approval, Steve grabs one in your size (which he also just happens to know) and adds it to the couple of things he’d already been holding for you. Every time you picked something up, he was quick to snatch it from you, telling you it was ‘too hard to browse with your hands full.’

After making your way through the rest of the store, you decided to head back to try things on, holding out a hand for the stuff Steve’s holding. “You can wait out here, I’ll be quick.”

“Hold on,” he says, holding the hangers out of your reach. “Why do you think I’m here, angel? I wanna help you pick.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously. Give me a fashion show, yeah?”

“Oh my God,” you mumble, letting him follow you to the fitting rooms.

They’re hidden behind the back wall of the store, a hallway painted bright blue with pink changeroom doors on one side, and white benches along the other.

“Hi there,” an employee with auburn hair greets you both, her smile wide and kind, though you know it’s a practiced one. Customer service smile. “How many you got there, darling?”

“Oh, um,” you turn back towards Steve, who’s counting the hangers in his hand. “Five.”

“Perfect!” The girl takes the key hanging around her neck and unlocks one of the rooms for you. She takes the clothes from Steve and hangs them up inside for you, then turns to the two of you and says, “Your man can have a seat right here. We call them the ‘boyfriend benches.’”

“He’s not my-”

“Thanks,” Steve says, cutting off your correction because for some reason he didn’t want you to correct her.

Did he… like the idea of being your boyfriend?

Fuck. No. He just didn’t want you to have to explain the whole situation in your rambly way. That’s all.

The redhead smiles again, “Holler if you need anything,” she says before walking off.

You stand there for a second, something like confusion on your face. Did it look like you were boyfriend and girlfriend?

“Come on,” Steve says, snapping the both of you out of whatever that was. “Show me what you’ve got.”

“I can't believe you’re making me do this,” you say, walking into the fitting room and shutting the door.

You try on a couple of sweaters first, and Steve feels the fabric both times, making sure that it’s not scratchy on your skin. Then, there’s just some basic t-shirts that aren’t all that exciting, but Steve says they look nice anyway.

Finally, you get to the dress he picked out.

It really was pretty. A midi-length with a ruffled hem and straps that tie into little bows on your shoulders. You don’t always feel good in your clothes. Sometimes you wish you could crawl out of your skin when you look into the mirror, but right now, you don’t hate what you see.

You actually like it.

“Well?” Steve calls softly from the bench.

In response, you open the door and step out so he can see you.

Steve’s seen you in plenty of dresses—hell, you went to prom together—but for some reason this one makes his heart beat just a little bit quicker. Maybe it’s simply the fact that it looks great on you, or the way you’re smiling shyly as he looks you over.

Or, maybe it’s because he’s the one who picked it.

He stands up, spinning his finger in the air in a gesture for you to twirl. You roll your eyes but do it anyway, and he can’t take his eyes off of you. The hallway of fitting rooms isn’t very big, so with both of you in it, you’re standing toe to toe, the gold flecks in the middle of Steve’s eyes and the faint freckles that dot his nose are visible from where you stand.

As if he can’t help it, Steve lifts a finger and dips it beneath the strap on your shoulder. Not moving it or undoing it, just gliding along your skin where it sits.

“You look beautiful,” he says. His voice goes all quiet and soft when he says it, and his eyes widen a tiny bit, like he hadn’t meant it to slip out that way. It sounded… more than friendly. He clears his throat and steps back as much as he can in the small space, his finger leaving your skin. “I have great taste. Clearly.”

You blink at him, then shake yourself out of it as much as you can. “Yeah. Don’t let it get to your head.” You lift the tag where it hangs by your armpit and look at the price. You gasp and swat Steve’s arm. “Steve! Why would you let me walk into a place so expensive?”

You probably should’ve looked at the tag beforehand, but here you are. Steve, shrugging exaggeratedly, says, “I didn’t know!”

“Okay, I’m gonna change before she comes back. We can make a run for it.”

“We’re not stealing.”

“I know, but they look at you all judgemental when you try stuff on and don’t buy something. Trust me.”

You turn and go back into the fitting room to put on your own clothes, taking a look at the dress in the mirror one last time before shaking your head at yourself.

Steve, however, takes the opportunity to leave you and head back out into the store. He finds the dress easily and grabs another one in your size from the rack and heads to the cashier.

He’s just finishing up, bag in hand, when you walk out and meet him at the front of the store.

“For you,” he says, holding out the bag for you to take.

“Steve…” You grab it and look inside. Your chest aches when you see the dress, your heart suddenly too full and your stomach fluttering stupidly. “You didn’t have to do that. I would’ve been fine with something from the Gap.”

“I know that,” he says, a hand lifting to scratch at the back of his neck. It’s a nervous tick of his, and the thought of him being nervous right now makes you melt even more. “I wanted to get it for you. You looked too pretty in it not to have it.”

Your eyes catch his, and again, something passes between you that you don’t think you’ve ever felt before. A fizzle, a spark.

You rock back on your feet, looking down at the ground before meeting his eyes again. They’re so fucking soft it makes you wonder how lucky you have to be to have him in your life. Being your best friend, driving you to work even when he doesn’t have a shift, offering you a place to stay, buying you a dress.

He’s the sweetest boy you’ve ever known.

“Well,” you twist the straps of the bag around your fingers just to keep them busy. “Thank you, Steve. This is really nice.”

His knuckle traces down your arm just once, featherlight. “You’re welcome, angel.”

You don’t buy anything else after that, instead stopping at the food court for fries, stealing from each other’s baskets, smiling and slapping hands away.

It’s the best day you’ve had in a while.

-

You don’t think anything you do will convey just how grateful you are that Steve has been so kind to you. Always, but especially now. Letting you stay with him and refusing to let you pay rent. (“I don’t even pay rent, and I live here all the time.”)

But, this morning, you’ve decided you’re gonna try.

Steve’s favorite meal of the day happens to be breakfast, which is funny, considering he usually eats something as simple as cereal. He’d told you once that it was because, as a kid, breakfast was the most peaceful of meals, his parents too busy getting ready for work or wherever they were going that he’d have the kitchen table to himself.

Lunch was usually spent at school, and Steve was never a fan of school to begin with. Then there was dinner, which his parents (when they were home) still wanted to have all together. They’d ask him questions and make backhanded comments about every single answer he gave. He never won at dinner.

So, breakfast was, and has remained, his favorite.

You made sure to get up early enough to give yourself time to get everything ready before he wakes up. Steve’s usually the one making the coffee in the morning, and you figured the least you could do was give him a break.

Yesterday, while Steve had been at work, you went over to the Wheeler’s and asked Nancy if you could borrow their waffle maker. She’d directed the question to her mother, who went and grabbed it for you and handed it over with a smile. You promised to take good care of it and have it back in a couple of days.

By the time Steve walks into the kitchen, you’ve already made the batter and set out the toppings—berries, maple syrup, whipped cream—like a buffet. However, he just so happens to come in as you’re swearing at the waffle maker.

“Stupid fucking thing,” you mutter, trying to open it.

Steve smiles to himself before saying, “Morning, angel.”

You jump at his voice, not having heard him walk in. When you turn around, your heart beats for a different reason.

Steve’s still only in his pajama pants, plaid and soft, hanging low on his hips. And he’s shirtless, his chest smattered with hair and his skin a little tanned from the sun. He’s got beauty marks all over, like a constellation you could chart, and his abs are just visible beneath the soft of his stomach. A trail of hair leading to the waistband of his pants and disappearing beneath them.

You’ve seen Steve shirtless plenty of times. Swimming and sleeping over in the summer, in high school when you used to go to his practices, but it hits you harder for some reason this time.

The way his hair is still a mess from sleep, his eyes a bit heavy. The way it feels to be greeting him in the kitchen, cooking breakfast. Intimate. Domestic.

You clear your throat and turn back around to pry the waffle maker open, revealing a slightly burnt but otherwise good-looking waffle. “I’m making breakfast. Coffee’s already in the pot, too.”

He walks over, his chest close to your back as he grabs a mug from the cabinet above you before heading over to pour himself a cup. He looks at the spread you’ve prepared, “Waffles, huh? What did I do to deserve all this?”

“Just wanted to do something nice for you,” you say as Steve walks over to lean against the counter next to you, his hip barely touching yours. “To thank you, in a way. For letting me stay and the dress and-”

“How many times do I have to tell you to stop thanking me?” He says, though his voice is soft and still a bit rough from sleep. “I like having you around.”

“So you don’t want the waffles then?”

“Oh, I want the waffles. I just don’t want you to feel like you have to do anything for me. It’s not some debt you’ll owe me, angel.”

“Want you to know I appreciate you is all,” you say, pouring a new scoop of batter into the waffle maker.

Steve, unsure of what exactly possesses him to do so, dips in and presses a kiss to the apple of your cheek, his lips a whisper away from your skin when he says, “I appreciate you, too.”

Then he pulls away and moves to set the table. Like it was natural.

And it was, in a way. How you moved around each other in the kitchen. You leaning out of the way when he needed to reach something you were blocking, him putting a hand on your lower back when he walked behind you so you knew he was there.

Your cheek still tingles from where he’d kissed it when you bring the plate of waffles to the table, your skin somehow even warmer under his gaze, like he’s still remembering exactly how it felt, too.

You sit in the chair beside Steve, not noticing the way he tugs it a bit closer to him with his foot before you sit down. Soon enough, both of you are digging in. Steve’s got more whipped cream on his plate than waffle (you tell him as much) and you’ve got your berries on the side the way you always do.

Neither of you work until later in the day, and it’s nice knowing that you can take your time. Steve tells you about the advice he gave Dustin about how to be ‘cooler’ in school (he’d told him that being cool is completely overrated, he knew from experience, and that being himself is the most important). You’d told him he was going soft with age.

You talk about anything at all. How Keith somehow manages both of your places of work, how he also somehow does both terribly. The way he says ‘if you have time to lean, you have time to clean’ while literally having Cheeto dust on his fingers. Laughing at each other’s impressions of him.

What the new highscores were at the arcade, what people were renting from Family Video.

You wonder what it’ll be like when you have to leave. When you’re living alone again.

Logically, you know you’ll still see Steve frequently, because he’s your favorite person and you can’t remember the last time you went longer than a few days without hanging out. Still, it’ll be different than right now, waking up in the same space and sharing breakfast and brushing your teeth side by side in the mirror.

You’ll miss it, you think.

Trying not to dwell on something that’s still a few weeks away, you take another bite of your waffle. Steve catches your chin and wipes off a bit of whipped cream from the corner of your mouth, then pulling away and sucking it off his thumb.

He goes back to his own plate without a thought. Like touching you just now was an instinct.

Then, he teases you, “These are a little crispy, angel. Maybe you should stick to letting me make breakfast in this household.”

You kick his leg under the table. “That’s a funny way of saying ‘thank you,’ Harrington.”

He kicks you back, much gentler than you’d been. “Thank you.”

“That’s what I thought.”

When you look at him, there’s an easy, boyish smile on his face.

A similar one stretches across your own lips.

-

Steve has had the thought pop up into his head a couple of times, that maybe he should’ve just asked you to live with him before you ever bought that apartment. Because having you around feels the most right things have ever felt in his house.

And though the circumstances of your moving in with him (temporarily, he has to remind himself), were far from ideal, he can’t lie and say that he isn’t glad that you’ve ended up sharing his space.

The room across the hall will always be yours, even when you move back to your place.

He knows that you feel indebted to him for all of it, but if anyone owes the other something, he feels like it’s him. For everything you’ve ever done for him. Sticking around even when he was an asshole in highschool, defending him to his parents whenever you’d cross paths, simply being the kind of friend he needed.

Even when you’re not around, he can picture your face, the way your smile spreads slowly until you’re fucking beaming. Worse, the way you cried into his chest that day at your apartment.

He remembers the crack in your voice when you spoke about that picture frame from summer camp. Though he hasn’t seen you cry since, or even bring it up, he’s decided he wants to fix it. He’d told you he would.

Dustin wound up roped into his plan: find a similar frame, decorate it the exact same way, and scour the photo albums in Steve’s room for his copy of that same picture.

When he was younger, the photo albums pissed him off, because they were purely for show. Pictures of his family that were all fake smiles. Now, he’s glad for them, because at least he has some good memories to look back on. To know it wasn’t always all bad.

Steve probably should’ve thought that one through, because when they looked through his albums, he was on the receiving end of relentless teasing from Dustin. (“Dude, you have an insane boogie in this picture.” “I was four!”)

He hopes it’ll be worth it.

Dustin was the one who found the picture they’d been looking for, and he cheered and waved it in Steve’s face as if they’d been racing.

Now, after driving Dustin back home, decorating the frame the way the two of you did as kids, trying to make his handwriting look like it did back then (which wasn’t too difficult, ‘cause Steve’s writing still isn’t that neat), he’s waiting for you to come downstairs before giving it to you.

He’d picked you up after your shift at the arcade not too long ago, but he knows you like to shower and change as soon as you get home from work, so he’d taken the opportunity to wrap the frame and have it ready for you.

Steve can hear you singing in the shower, and he knows you’re done when it goes quiet. A few minutes later you’re walking down the stairs in a baggy t-shirt and silky sleep shorts.

His eyes, for some reason, linger on your legs for a second.

He stands up, frame in his hand, when you walk over. “I have something for you.”

“Steve! Stop buying me things. Seriously.”

“This thing was free, so you can’t even be mad,” he says, smiling almost sheepishly.

Your eyes search his face, flickering between his own and dipping down to his lips and his nose and back to his eyes. He looks… nervous.

Steve’s never nervous around you.

“Okay,” you say, shuffling on your feet. “What is it?”

“Here,” he hands you the poorly-wrapped frame. “Open it.”

You scrunch your brows at him once, because you have no idea what it could be. It isn’t your birthday, or any sort of holiday at all. With zero guesses, you look down at the light yellow wrapping paper in your hands and slowly tear it open.

What you find makes your eyes grow misty, tears pooling at your lash line but not quite falling.

It’s your favorite picture, the one of you and Steve in those stupid neon shirts with messy hair and dirt on your hands. Only now, it’s not water damaged, and the frame is new, but decorated just like the old one. You run your thumbs over the glass lightly, smiling down at little you and little Steve.

When you look back up at him, he’s already looking at you, his brown eyes all warm, his smile kind but also worried, waiting for your reaction.

Seeing his face springs you into motion, jumping forward and wrapping your arms around his neck tightly with the frame still in your hand. “Thank you,” you say into his skin.

Steve’s arms move to hold you around your waist without a thought. A reflex. They squeeze you close to him, his nose pressed into your damp hair, smelling your shampoo.

“It’s not perfect,” he says. “But I know how much you love that picture, and I wanted to fix it.”

“Steve. Shut up. It is perfect.”

“I’m glad you think so,” he says, his thumbs running back and forth against your back.

You hug for what could’ve been minutes, but neither of you moves to pull away first. You’re not sure if it’s still considered friendly to stand in each other's arms, breathing each other in, for so long, but you don’t care at the moment.

This is probably the nicest thing anyone’s done for you in a long, long time.

When you finally do pull away, you don’t go far. Your arms stay slung over his shoulders, Steve’s hands framing your hips. His thumbs still dragging those sweet patterns against you.

“I’m keeping it forever,” you tell him.

“You sure?” he asks.

“Certain. You’ll always be my best friend, Steve.”

“You’ll always be mine too, angel.”

Then, your eyes both move to each other’s lips, yours flick back up in a second, startled at their wandering.

Steve, however, is a bit transfixed. He looks at the slope of your cupid’s bow, the way your lips are shiny from your lip balm. He thinks it quickly, like a gust of wind that can’t be stopped: I really wanna kiss her right now.

Fuck. He wants to kiss his best friend.

He blinks a few times, clearing his throat and pulling back, letting his hands fall from your waist as yours slide off his shoulders. He misses the feel of your touch immediately, but he’s too freaked out and confused to do anything about it.

“What are you in the mood for tonight?” he asks, cutting off his own thoughts. “I brought back a horror and a comedy. Take your pick.”

“Mmm,” he picks up two tapes from the coffee table and holds them up for you to choose from. “Horror. Unless you’re too scared?”

“You’ll just have to hold my hand, then, won’t you?”

“I guess I will.”

You look back at the picture while Steve puts the movie into the player. You smile at it every time you see it, because you can still see parts of Steve in him now that were in him then.

His eyes, always kind, the way he smiles when he laughs, and about a half hour into the movie, the way he holds your hand and squeezes it when he’s scared.

-

You’re having one of those nights. The kind where sleep seems to be fighting you.

You worked a closing shift at the arcade, which usually lasts until late considering how long you’re open plus all of the cleaning you have to do afterwards. Today was no different, and despite how much later you finish than him at Family Video, Steve waited and drove you home. He hung out in the arcade with you until close, actually.

You’d think that after such a long day, the second your head hit the pillow you’d be out and breathing steadily. Today, that is not the case. You fell asleep for maybe an hour before a nightmare woke you up. You can’t quite remember what happened, only that you’d been yelling for Steve and he wasn’t there.

Groaning quietly, you rub your eyes and toss the blankets away. You stand up and head down to the kitchen in the dark, hand trailing along the walls to make sure you don’t bump into anything.

Just as you’re pouring yourself a glass of water, you hear the shuffle of sleepy footsteps coming into the kitchen.

“Holy shit,” he says, walking over to grab a glass, one hand on his bare chest. “I thought you were a ghost or something just now.”

You shift out of the way to let him get some water just like you did, taking the second that he’s distracted to look at him. His hair a mess, wearing nothing but his boxers. You take a big sip from your glass.

“I feel like I should be offended right now,” you say, “if you think I look like a ghost.”

“Shut up,” he says, dragging out the second word. His voice being rough from sleep makes his words sound much warmer than they are. “My eyes aren’t awake yet. Nothing to do with you, angel.”

You shake your head, though there’s a soft smile on your face the way there always seems to be when you try to be annoyed with Steve. You tilt your head at him, asking, “Couldn’t sleep?”

He shakes his head. “Been tossing and turning. Just can’t get comfortable, then I got pissed ‘cause I couldn’t get comfortable and only made it worse.”

“You would get pissed at that. Probably slapped your pillow like it was at fault.”

He folds his lips inwards and blinks at you. Because he did smack his pillow and call it a dipshit. “Why do you know everything? Spying on me?”

“Hate to say it, but you’re getting predictable, Harrington.” You shrug, then move to put your now empty glass in the dishwasher. “I know you too well.”

He looks at you, your hair falling across your shoulders, your pajama shorts riding up a little as you bend down. The moonlight slipping through the window seems to hit you perfectly. Like a halo.

Fitting, he thinks. You’re his angel, after all.

“Yeah, you do,” he agrees. Then, “What about you? Why’re you up?”

“Nightmare. Been forever since I had one.”

“You okay?” he asks, trailing a knuckle over your shoulder, pushing your hair behind it.

“Yeah,” you say, skin tingling where he’d touched you. “I can't even remember most of it, but now my brain won’t let me sleep.”

Steve wishes he could’ve protected you from whatever haunted you in your sleep. It’s silly, he knows, to think he might be able to ward away anything that hurts you, but he wants to, nonetheless.

He thinks about how comfortable he is whenever you cuddle during movie night. Your head on his shoulder or his chest, his hand on your back or waist.

So, he blurts, “Why don’t you sleep over?”

You furrow your brows at him, “Um, I’ve been sleeping over. A couple of weeks now, actually.”

“No, I mean, like in my room with me,” he says, suddenly shy at the idea. He’s grateful for the darkness, because he can feel his cheeks warming up. “A proper sleepover.”

You’ve done it before. Shared a bed a bunch of times, but for some reason your heart jumps when he says it. Your stomach swirls as you say, maybe a little too quickly, “Okay.”

Steve’s eyes widen like he’s surprised, just for a split second, before a soft smile takes over his face. He holds out a hand for you to take, “C’mon.”

Soon enough, Steve’s lifting his navy bedspread for you, letting you slip into bed next to him. He stays further away at first, letting you settle and lay on your side the way he knows you always do.

You blame sleepiness—or, maybe, the lack thereof—for the way you reach behind you for his arm and tug him closer, draping it over your own waist.

He obliges, of course, his arm securing itself across your stomach, palm spread out and warm against your sleep shirt. His chest is only a breath away from your back, though he keeps his lower half a little more distanced.

His thumb runs circles over your shirt, once, twice, three times before stilling, his forehead pressing to the back of your neck.

“Goodnight, angel,” he says into your hair.

Your hand splays itself on top of his. “Night, Steve.”

And suddenly your eyes grow heavier, and sleep doesn’t feel like much of a battle anymore.

-

You wake up the most rested you’ve felt in a while. There’s warmth surrounding you, but not the uncomfortable kind. The kind that feels safe.

Somehow, you and Steve are even closer than you’d been when you fell asleep. His arm is still around your waist, his other outstretched and tucked beneath your head like a pillow. His chest is flush to your back, and you can feel it expand with every breath he takes.

Most differently of all, however, is the way his hips are snug against the curve of your butt. And you can feel him hard against you.

Your skin feels even warmer than before when you notice.

Steve hasn’t woken up yet, you don’t think, because the faintest snores are getting puffed out against your shoulder where his face is tucked. His hand on your stomach has worked its way beneath your shirt, though, and his fingertips press against your skin, like he’s fighting to keep you close.

As if you’d go anywhere even in your sleep.

His knee is tucked between your legs, and you’re quickly realizing that it’d be pretty impossible to get out of bed without him noticing. You’re completely tangled together, a knot of limbs somehow fitting together just right. Like two puzzle pieces.

In his sleep, Steve’s mouth presses against the back of your shoulder, and only when you involuntarily shiver at the contact, does he stir.

It takes Steve a bit to really wake up, mumbling words that don’t make sense, scrunching his eyes shut even further before blinking them open. He’s met with the sight of you right in front of him. Body curved perfectly against his.

“Steve? You awake?” you ask, checking.

“Mhm,” he hums.

Then, something that has his cheeks flushing pink, he registers the feeling of his boner pressed against your ass. He shuffles them back enough so there’s space between you. “Fuck. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you say. Because he can’t control the way his body reacts while he’s asleep.

“I didn’t think-” he cuts himself off, because he’s not quite sure how to say I didn’t think about the whole morning wood factor or that I’d fucking plaster myself to you when I suggested a sleepover without sounding stupid. Instead, he just repeats, “I’m sorry.”

You twist yourself around to face him, sheets crumpling and twisting as you move. When you settle back onto the pillow and look at his face, at the redness on his cheeks and the tips of his ears, you squeeze his hand that’s now laying between you.

“It’s okay, really,” you say. “It’s, like, anatomy. You’re human, Steve.”

“I don’t want you to think I invited you to sleep in here for some pervy reason,” he says, scrunching his nose when he says it.

“I don’t think that at all,” you tell him. You squeeze his hand again. “We’ve shared a bed like, a hundred times by now. If anything I’m surprised this hasn’t happened already.”

“Oh my God,” he groans, shutting his eyes and pushing his face into the pillow.

“Steve,” you drag out his name, fighting a giggle at the way he’s acting. He’s got a reputation, after all, and how shy and embarrassed he seems to be doesn’t reflect the things you heard about him in high school. He’s changed a lot since then. “It’s seriously fine. We can pretend it never happened. Promise.”

Steve pulls his face from the pillow, eyes catching yours as his fingers squeeze yours back in appreciation. He lets his eyes wander a bit, at the messy bits of your hair around your face from sleeping, the marks in your cheek from the pillowcase, the way your sleep shirt has fallen off your shoulder.

He feels lucky to get to see you this way, right after you’ve woken up. Vulnerable, unguarded, beautiful.

It’s during this small stretch of silence that you realize how close your faces are now. You’re sharing a pillow, his nose not even an inch from yours. Shift forward the slightest bit, and they’d be touching. Your eyes trail down to his mouth, to the visible patch of chest hair and the freckles that dot his skin. He’s already looking right at you when your eyes flick back upwards.

You know Steve, could tell what he’s feeling just from the look on his face, but this is one you’ve never seen before. At least, not directed at you.

Steve moves first, his eyes a little darker than usual, shifting forward slightly, then looking at you. Daring you to make the next move.

“What if we didn’t forget about it?” he says. Quiet and scratchy.

You don’t have time to think before you move forward a bit, too. Your noses brush. “What would that mean?”

Steve doesn’t answer with words. Rather, he moves forward the final bit and brushes his lips against yours in a question mark of a kiss, giving you time to pull away.

You don’t.

Instead, the hand of yours that isn’t still holding his comes up to the back of his neck, gently encouraging him to do it again. His free hand tightens at your waist as he dips in a second time.

It isn’t as tentative now that you’ve urged him on. His lips meet yours more sure, more firm, but still soft against you. Neither of you cares one bit about morning breath, or about what this might change. As if the morning’s haze slows time, minds still a little sleepy.

You’re simply acting on instinct. And this feels too right to stop.

Soon enough it grows more heated, Steve shifting to hover over you, his elbows pushing into the mattress to hold himself up, his tongue sneaking out to lick against the seam of your lips for permission.

Just as you open up for him, the blaring sound of Steve's alarm cuts you off, pulling back with a gasp. He simply leans up on one arm and slams the snooze button—and you laugh, you laugh, at how hard he hits it—before diving back into you.

You feel hot all over, where one of Steve’s hands has moved to cup your jaw, his thumb running delicately against your face as his mouth moves against yours, practically devouring you. Where the blankets are still over your lower halves, trapping in heat. When he pulls back, looks into your eyes, fucking smiles all dopey and pretty, and then kisses you again.

It’s so good, you’re almost angry at yourself for not kissing him sooner.

You kiss until his alarm goes off again and Steve's forced to pry himself away from you, groaning about being on his ‘last tardy warning’ from Keith.

Still, he takes the time to kiss your forehead on his way out, Family Video vest slung over his shoulder, calling a sweet, “bye, angel,” on his way out. His hair’s still a mess from your fingers, and he doesn’t even seem to mind.

You stay in his bed longer than you probably should, blinking up at the ceiling, fingers pressed against your lips like you’re searching for physical proof that everything was real.

What the fuck just happened?

-

It’s been a couple of weeks, and Steve can’t stop thinking about that kiss. He doesn’t know it, but you can’t stop thinking about it either.

Neither of you have brought it up, and things have faded back to normal as if it had never happened. But you and Steve are both thinking the same things without knowing it. How good and natural and easy it felt, how, every now and then, you think about doing it again.

You talk and joke and watch movies and eat meals together the same way you always have, and it’d be so easy to stay that way, to never kiss again. But then, what if you could stay that way and kiss? Wouldn’t that be something close to perfect?

You lay awake thinking about it every few nights. Because, when you really reflect on your life and how intertwined it is with Steve’s, you realize that you’ve sort of always acted like a couple, minus the kissing and sex aspect. You go on what could easily be classified as dates—the movies, lunch or dinner—you cuddle on the couch almost nightly, and you’ve never shied away from physical touch with one another. Held hands, a palm on your back.

You haven’t brought it up with Steve because you haven’t even come to terms with it yourself. Feelings are so fucking confusing and messy and you’d like to have a better idea of what’s going on in your own head before asking him about his.

Meanwhile, Steve has allowed himself to come to terms with it. He’s in love with you.

He’s pretty sure he has been for a while. Months, maybe even years.

It hadn’t come easily, though. It was nights spent similarly to yours, running through interactions you’ve had and the way he felt that one time in senior year when you went on a date with some guy from your math class. Even then, a part of him felt wrong about it, that pit in his gut.

Then there were his shifts with Robin at Family Video where he’d practically spilled everything just to get her opinion. She looked up and sighed “thank you” before saying that it was nice of him to finally catch on.

Had he really been that obvious? All this time? And had he really been that oblivious to his own feelings?

Steve can’t answer those questions. He can’t say when his love for you changed from platonic to romantic, he just knows that it has and he doesn’t think he’ll ever come back from it.

You’re his best friend in the entire world, the prettiest girl he’s ever seen, and he can’t picture himself loving anyone but you so wholly.

He’s fucking terrified of losing you, but he’s also terrified of never telling you how he feels and testing that what if.

So, like a desperate idiot, he knocks on the door to Eddie’s trailer.

Eddie opens it after a minute and what sounded like him stubbing his toe, “oh, hey Harrington. More weed?”

“No, shut up. I need your help.”

“You,” Eddie points at Steve, then at himself, “need my help for something? Are you ill?”

“Okay,” Steve, dramatic and bitchy as usual, sighs and mutters something about this being a stupid idea and turns to leave.

“Come on,” Eddie laughs, “I’m just joking. What’s up?”

Soon enough, Steve’s sitting on Eddie’s couch, Eddie pacing in front of the coffee table like this is a very serious matter, and telling him pretty much everything. Your kiss, the train of thought it sparked.

“Basically I’m in love with her and I have no clue what to do,” Steve finishes, sinking back into the couch cushions. It squeaks as he shifts.

Eddie pauses, tugging at his bottom lip between his fingers, then looks at Steve and says, “You know I’ve never dated anyone in my life, right?”

Steve groans into his hands, “Why do all of my friends have to be losers with no dating lives.”

Eddie ignores that, because he can tell how affected Steve actually is by all of this. How much he cares. He walks over and sits down on the opposite end of the couch. “Have you ever thought of, I don’t know, telling her how you feel?”

Steve rests his elbows on his knees, leaning forward and letting his head hang for a moment before picking it up. “Of course I have, but I’m fuckin’ scared.”

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Um, she could reject me and not feel the same way and everything would be awkward because I ruined it and I’d lose my best friend in the entire world.”

“What if she does feel the same?” Eddie asks.

He’s both yours and Steve’s friend, he’s been around the both of you together. He’s seen the way you look at each other. Eddie might not be an expert, but it’s always looked a lot like love to him. He’s pretty sure the chances of you feeling the same are quite high.

“What do you mean?”

“What if she does feel the same and you never figure it out because you’re too afraid?” Eddie says. “Man, don’t you think that risk is worth taking?”

Steve thinks about it, and as much as he hates to admit it, Eddie’s right. He’d hate to always wonder, to lose out on the chance to really be with you when he knows it could be so good.

You are worth the risk to him.

“When the fuck did you become so wise, Munson?”

“Dunno,” Eddie shrugs. “Wanna smoke?”

Steve laughs, “Yes I do.”

-

With Steve gone at work and you off for the day, there’s been too much room for your thoughts to creep in. Too much silence.

You’ve already been thinking about things so much. Thinking about him so much, that in his absence, your mind seemed to work overtime to fill in the gaps.

You thought about the day he picked you up from your apartment, how quick he was to drop whatever he’d been doing and come over and help you and take you home with him. The day he took you shopping and bought you a dress because he thought you looked pretty in it, the way his fingers fiddled with the strap on your shoulder when you tried it on for him.

The day he gifted you a remade version of your favorite picture from summer camp because he knew how much it meant to you, the way you held on to each other afterwards.

How you’d been waiting for him to get home that night he went to Eddie’s, just to make sure he was okay. How when he came in, he smiled at the sight of you curled on the couch, and he kissed your cheek when he walked by like it was the easiest thing in the world.

Your brain knew he was high, you could smell the weed mingling with his cologne on his clothes when he leaned in close, but your heart didn’t care about that. It thumped in your chest the second he leaned in closer, even worse when his lips touched your cheek.

The realization hits you now like a shock, a quick zip of electricity running through your system. You fucking love him.

Sure, you’ve loved Steve practically your whole life, but this was different. You love him, love him. Like, you want to kiss him when he comes home from work and in the morning. You want him to introduce you as his girlfriend and to be able to call him your boyfriend.

You feel stupid for not realizing it sooner, because looking back on things now, knowing how you feel, you can see it written throughout your entire friendship. Holding hands and kissing foreheads and hands pushing hair away from faces.

For a second, you’re purely happy, because you get to be in love with your best friend and it feels as warm and sweet as sunlight. Then, the fear creeps in, and you’re scared. Scared of losing him, of making things weird, of change and doing the wrong thing.

So scared that you start to panic and pack up some of your things in your bag like you’re running away.

Truthfully, you’re not sure what else to do. You’ve never been in love before, you’ve never known it this way—so kind and unconditional. And your parents sure as hell didn’t set a good example for you. They’d fight, and someone would leave with the slam of a door, and then they’d be back and the cycle would continue.

You’re scared and confused and your instincts are telling you to run away even though the only place you really wanna be is with Steve. In his arms.

You’re stuffing clothes into your bag just to keep your hands busy, breathing hard and fast, when you hear the front door open and close. Steve’s quick to find you, his eyes scanning your room and then looking at you. “What are you doing?”

You feel like you might cry just looking at him. His brown eyes worried but warm as always, his hands stuffed into his pockets like he’s nervous.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to be home until later,” you say, hoping he can’t hear the shake in your voice.

“It was dead, so Keith let me off early. I-” Steve furrows his brows, “are you leaving?”

You nod. “I’ve been in your way long enough.”

“I told you, you’re never in my way.” Steve knows you, and he loves you, and he can tell that there’s something going on. That you’re panicked and trying to get away from whatever it is. He cares too much to let that happen. “I want you to stay.”

You want to stay, too. You just don’t know what comes next, and that unknown, the lack of control, of familiarity, it makes your hands shake.

Your mind doesn’t work the same when you’re afraid.

“Give me one good reason why I should stay, Steve. I’ve been taking up your space for weeks and-”

“Because I love you.” Steve cuts you off. He hadn’t planned on telling you this way, he wanted it to be romantic and perfect but he can’t wait any longer. Especially not when you’re trying to run away. “I’m in love with you. And I want you here.”

You immediately stop in your tracks, blinking up at him like you’re not sure you’d heard him correctly. “You- what?”

“I love you. Romantically. And I think I have for a really long time.”

“You’re not high again, are you?” You ask, your eyes a little misty.

Steve walks over to you and grabs both of your hands in his, making sure you’re looking at him, at the sincerity written all over his face, when he says, “Completely sober. I fucking love you and I want you to keep living with me, because this house doesn’t really feel like home unless you’re in it.”

“What about when my apartment is ready?”

He squeezes your hands. “Stay then, too. Stay forever.”

You look up at him, his hair falling over his forehead, his eyes so honest, a tentative smile on his mouth. The only boy you’ve ever loved.

You feel silly for trying to escape this when this is how it’s turning out. Steve had been brave just now, telling you he loves you and he wants you to stay, so you decide to be brave, too.

It’s easier than you thought it would be to say: “I love you, too, Steve. I feel the same. I only just realized it and freaked out. I’m so scared of losing you, is all.”

“You won’t. Not ever.”

You tip your chin up to kiss him after he says it, because you can. You pour your feelings into it, and Steve returns your kiss as if it’s one he’s known for years. It’s slow, and deep, and sweet, and so full of love you’re practically overflowing with it.

The two of you only pull away when you need a breather. Steve doesn’t go far, resting his forehead against yours.

“So what happens now?” You ask.

“Well, we’ve been acting like a couple for a while, I think, so we stay the same. Mostly. Except now I get to call you my girlfriend-”

“Um, I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to ask me first.”

He lets go of one of your hands and pushes a loose strand of hair behind your ear, his knuckle running lovingly across your cheek. “My angel girl, will you be my girlfriend?”

Your grin is wide and lovesick and cheesy and you don’t care one bit. “Yeah, yes I will. Boyfriend.”

“And, being your boyfriend means I get to do this.”

He kisses you once more. And you don’t ever want to not be kissing him again.

𝜗𝜚

thank you guys so much for reading!!! it would mean a whole bunch if you would consider leaving a comment or a reblog and letting me know what you think!! it helps more than you know <3

[maxwell-grant]

The Penguin: Episode 8 "Great or Little Thing" Series Finale Breakdown

So first and foremost I need to give a shout-out to everyone who's been following this with me and helped me week after week process and articulate this show, this brilliant Penguin Braintrust without which I would be incredibly lost on how to even begin breaking this thing down this way: @davidmann95, @wil4x, @book--wyrm and my friend Lucas who is not on Tumblr.

And so we're here at last, in the end of the show. This took forever. I need a goddamn break. This isn't enough and will never be enough but it'll have to do. So let's get to the episode that has had the world joining hands in the unanimous urge to see the absolute shit kicked out of Oswald, and has made the character at last earn this:

(Episode 1) (Episode 2) (Episode 3) (Episode 4) (Episode 5) (Episode 6) (Episode 7)

So who would have guessed that cartoon dirtbag Rex Calabrese was still gonna turn out to be less of a cartoon dirtbag than Oz the moment we stop seeing him through Oz's eyes. Still a terrible person by every metric, but terrible in the same way a lot of Sopranos characters are terrible: this is, at the end of the day, a job, and you can talk to them, you can sit at a table to get down to business with them, and you probably know people in your life like them, and maybe you can even count of them to get real and even help you when the chips are down, even if it doesn't mitigate everything else that they are or do. At the very end, he was neither the benevolent god-king that Oz saw him as, nor was he the absurd dirtbag gangster we had him pegged as - there was never anything exceptional about Rex Calabrese, he's just a real criminal. Maybe the realest in the show.

I said in the last post that Francis burned with hate at everyone in the world except the person who most ruined her life and haha WOW was I wrong, because it turns she's known the entire goddamn time, and quite possibly no one has ever hated him more than Francis.

Most people in the show who hate Oz do so because he's a destructive bastard who craps on their lives directly, or because he's a lying sneaky fuck who does nothing while their lives are ruined, and Francis has had to deal with both longer than anyone else. I can't possibly count every single way this wildly recontextualizes every single interaction, every moment, everything that Francis has shown us and done since the first episode, because I'd have to recap EVERY scene and line of dialogue she has and we still have so much else to get through.

Why was Francis was so effectively able to withhold affection and hold his feet to the fire and give him that bottomless pit of yearning in his stomach that's driven him to move mountains in pursuit of it? Because Francis wouldn't have loved him even if he gave her the entire world at age 12. She never had any affection or love left for him. Oz was always chasing nothing.

And all along it was Rex who shaped the entire course of Oswald's life, as well as prefiguring his dynamic with Victor, with a single conversation. Oswald spend his childhood wanting for Rex Calabrese to notice and like him and be his friend, and he has no idea how much Rex actually affected his life.

That fateful night at Monroe's was never the feel-good story about his Ma summoning the willpower to live by dancing away the grief, and it was never even just the night of the eternal promise that Oz thinks back to, it was a fucking trap to kill Oz. Nothing he has in his life is real, nothing he says is true, he has never not lived in complete total delusion.

The sheer disgust in Deirdre O'Connell's face at the "I do too". How much of her personality we completely understand was born from this absolute resentment she's nursed for decades towards Oz.

And this rotten little turd comes at her with a perfect speech that hits her every insecurity and bitterness and spite and situation and convinces her to give him another chance. The nature versus nurture thing again - Oswald was shaped by hardship, by decades of hard work and neglect, by the total absence of his mother's love while in turn being forced to live in stunted childhood dedicating himself to always taking care of her, and maybe what we're seeing here is heavily distorted by Francis's POV - or maybe he was always a little monster, because this guy talking to her is The Penguin, the same guy doing the same things in the same way, either way it doesn't matter. Again, born fucking ready.

So now we see our three major supporting characters - Sofia, Victor and Francis - all of them have shown that they had a chance to walk away from Oz, to not let him ruin their lives further. All of them could have left Oswald behind, and all of them should have left Oswald behind, but they had to come back and justify the choice to do so, they had to get satisfaction, it couldn't have been for nothing. Victor had his car and a girlfriend in a bus waiting for him, Sofia had a jet to take her to Italy, and Francis had Rex Calabrese ready and waiting to put him down without a word. All of them had a chance to get out of the show and never look back, but like Oz, they had to rectify and overcorrect for an insult.

Sofia can't walk away from Gotham without punishing Oz for turning her in, for killing Alberto and further lying to her, she can't accept that this man, this embodiment of Carmine's legacy and hold over her, is still out there unpunished getting away with what he's done. Victor can't walk away from Gotham knowing that his parents did everything right and still died for nothing, that every hurtful thing Oz said was right, he can't let "They don't give out awards for dying in the projects" be the last word in his and their lives. And Francis can't walk away from Oz, who killed her two sons and keeps lying about it, who ruined her life and now keeps promising he will take care of her and acting like everything will be fine, she can't let this pass even if she can't kill him either, and so she'll make him give her the world and die trying.

The tragedy of what happened is what hurt/broke them - the added insult of what Oz said or did is what they just can't live with. It can't be for nothing.

Goddamnit it, it was really just too telegraphed for it to not happen the way it did.

I fucking knew it the moment the episode started and we got the grungy boss orchestral take on the funny Penguin chords that we were in for some calamitous shit.

We see at first that, in spite of seemingly failing, Vic has graduated to the point he can give his own speeches, gain his own allies, run his own cons - he's not just Oz's proxy, but will manage to convince the others to become such as well, and he's coming at this from a place of complete sincere belief in everything that Oz says, all of the man of the people rhetoric he will so thoroughly pervert and then sell to the people actually responsible for everything he told Victor he was fighting against.

Zeke walks up to him nearly crying about how Sofia blew it all up and Vic instantly asks back where's Oz - not because he doesn't care about Crown Point, but he's already processed it and has already learned with Oz how to just barrel forward regardless, now it's time to get to work. Victor who so readily throws himself into rescuing Oz again and again. Victor who's lost everything - he doesn't have his family, he doesn't have Graciela, he doesn't have the other mobs backing him up, and right now he doesn't even have Crown Point anymore, all he has is Oz.

The man in red who reads the Law Gave him three weeks of life, Three little weeks in which to heal His soul of his soul's strife, And cleanse from every blot of blood The hand that held the knife - The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Sofia dressed in two thematically appropriate outfits - the red scarf echoing both the first outfit we see her in, back to covering her neck but in control of her own collar, and the outfit we see her the farthest back in time with at the start of Episode 4, and with her final crimson fur coat outfit accompanying her final greatest triumph and ultimate defeat in the show. Not only that, but in this episode she also gets to perform characteristically appropriate stylized torture - holding a family intervention and therapy session with mafioso torture tactics to try and wrench the truth out of her victimizer, enacting calculated sadistic yet righteous justice via psychological breakdown, and ultimately allowing the woman he victimized and wronged to take her killshot at him.

See, it's not just that Sofia Gigante is a Batman Villain, or that she's well passed the threshold of supervillain. Cristin Milioti doesn't play Sofia like she's a new character, which she basically is, and she isn't just playing a tortured gangster lady protagonist dipping into camp villain territory, which she also is - she plays Sofia Gigante like she's been a Batman Rogues headliner for decades now stepping into the spotlight once again, like she's the dark modern revamp of someone Adam West would have thought and she's just always been around showing up in stuff along with The Penguin, like she's only not fighting or teaming up with Two-Face in this because he's not here yet. It is crucially important that Sofia passes every standard of Batman Villain imaginable with flying colors, in part because it helps to reinforce that The Penguin is a monster all his own.

Even here, with as much power as she's ever possibly held over him, reduced him to a whimpering begging mess to be killed off in a second, she is so shocked at the sheer brazen selfishness and delusion and level of bullshit on display, that even now he won't break character and think about his actions and admit to what he's done not even to save his own mother from mutilation, that she just loses the script entirely. Her entire show of power collapses and she physically recoils from sheer disgust at just how low Oswald is, at just how much he lacks the ability to even suffer for what he's done. Realizing that there is simply not enough of a soul in this filthy beast to even torture, and that however much she hates Oswald for ruining her life, someone had a prior claim all along.

Eve - Sofia - Francis in the end united in, however much they may dislike each other, however different their circumstances may be, there is nothing they could possibly do to each other that would be worse than what Oswald has done to all of them, joined in silent agreement that their rage ultimately belongs in a bullet fired at Oz's head and that they deserve their kill shot at this man.

"I had enough to give, Oswald".

This really is gonna be the high point of Francis's life from this point on.

Aw man, I liked Sofia's scruffy dirtbag detective, I wanted him to stick around as one of the reocurring characters like the movie cops

Oh Victor, sweet kind Victor, you couldn't possibly ask for anything worse in the entire world.

Oz feebly already beginning to lie and spin his new version of the events, that Sofia stabbed him and fucked up with Ma, and here comes Victor with the reversal of their dynamic, seeing this guy who's been brought low by the oppressive force looming over his life that he must defeat (because all that Victor knows about Sofia at this point is that she used to be Oz's boss and is now out to kill them, that she is scary as hell, and regardless of whether or not she was the Hangman, she just bombed his fucking neighborhood) and reaching out to him with a speech about solidarity and dignity and self-worth and picking yourself up by your fucking bootstraps to save the day. And Oz responds by coaching him on how to be a better bullshitter. Because to Oz, he knows the playbook by heart, but Victor meant it all.

Victor rebuilds Oz from basically nothing by providing him with the validation that he so desperately always craved and never got, saying all the things he always wanted to hear, poised so they can finish this together, poised to give him not only the army he asked for, but a full-blown revolution, and he never once asks for anything in return. Just, goddamnit this isn't hurting any less.

"She, sh-she'll never look at me again, all right?....unless I get this done. Got a promise to keep." Maybe the one and only time his mask ever fully cracks. For a second. He rebuilds it right back up and gets to work, but it cracked. He knows what he's doing, up until the moment he doesn't. It's that simple.

A lot of what drives Oz is acceptance, and a lot of what drives him is his desire to be accepted in worlds that have been declared, by how they run themselves and by the people that inhabit these worlds, as worlds that he was never going to be included in. And one of those worlds is the hierarchy and the hoi polloi of the political realm and the power within the political realm because he understands that all politics are corrupt essentially, and the damage that he could do then in being part of a political infrastructure of Gotham interests him. I thought it would be nice if, in that time jump, he had been invited to maybe a gala or two, you know what I mean? It'd be awkward. He'd be slurping out of the fucking teacup, there'd be stains on the table, he wouldn't really fit in, but he’d fucking love being there. - Colin Farrell

Mirroring the scene in Episode 01 where he adjusts himself next to the car, scuffing himself up to look like the sleazy funnyman the Falcones keep around for kicks, now he's dressing up as much as he can and asking Victor for input, because he truly values what the kid thinks and, goddamnit.

"C'mahn, I don't bite", pfft yeah, not in this movie universe anyway. And to the same guy you did the nose-gushing-blood bit to, even.

Minutes inside of City Hall and he already parks his ass right on Bella Real's seat - not as any kind of intentional slight against her, it's just naturally where he goes to, even before the scene ends and we see his new plans start to come to fruition.

Guy who takes offense at Viti calling Sofia a psycho and then goes up to Councilman Hady talking about the unhinged loony bin broad who went "full psycho" that he's handing to him on a platter, pointedly calling her Falcone.

At first I thought it was funny that Sal Maroni was getting blamed here for Bliss and the underground lab, but then I remembered that he was actually the one who introduced Drops to Gotham and the whole epidemic that became, so if anything it is an extremely easy part of the story to sell, even without his body being down there and all.

"You're gonna have some trouble, Oz" - pointedly smiling and calling him Oz instead of Oswald as he had up to this point, because by that point he's already a crony and already willing to work with this guy handing him all these miracles.

"You wanna be welcome? You gotta look, clean" Yes Father Pal, I Shall Become A Capitalist Caricature

You can see in the walk around, in his look at Bella Real and the mayor's office high up above and the steps, how little Ozzie's gears turn once again and rebuild his life after losing the streets and everything that happened with Ma - This is the next nest, this is the next throne, this is next schmuck I gotta cozy up to, this is the next boss looking down on me that I gotta destroy, there's the reward waiting for me if I do. This is the one that matters, I did everything in the shit and now I'm gonna get me sum goddamn respeck, Feh Ma of course.

And before all of this we see Sofia's next move, showing the ways in which she is good at this, the ways in which she truly is something outside of the worldview of what these gangsters are used to, and why she is going to lose. "Because I can". She is good at commanding a room and promising rewards beyond the wildest dreams of these street crimelords because she can offer everything they want and lose nothing she cares about for it, she will hand them everything and dip because she can, and she is going to lose because she can lose. Because she still thinks there is an end in sight for her, she thinks she will get to walk away from this universe and go meet a happy ending at a cafe in Florence.

It's not just that Sofia was born into privilege and never really lived in Gotham and could just hop onto a plane out of here anytime, it's also that she has room in her life for introspection, self-awareness, consideration towards others, and all those things that come easier when you're "born full", and not when you're the starving hustler for whom leaving the city was never an option even if he had all the money in the world, the hungry animal who wants this, wants everything, harder than anyone has ever wanted anything. The guy who has no room for anything else in his brain other than a perpetual bullshit generator set to a 24/7 chorus of "I GOTTA WIIIIIIN"

Another element to her that I really love is, she's good at this. She knows she's good at this, she was supposed to take over the family. She may not know the ins and outs of the game as it currently stands, but she is good at this. Some of it is, I think that's the only world she knows, and some of it is there's something in there, that's always been there, and she believes it is rightfully hers. There's an element of, "I need to have made it worth it for something", and if that means power, then okay. - Cristin Milioti

There’s a level for both of them that they enjoy each other’s suffering, and that sort of leads to Sofia’s downfall. If she didn’t need to see Oz suffer she might have been free. And she really gets in her own way in that regard and largely because Oz is this crutch that she just cannot let go of. - Lauren LeFranc

And here we get to the end of season 1 of HBO's The Sofia Show, the bittersweet in hindsight but extremely cathartic torching of the set as a last hard-earned spiritual victory by our hard-done-by lady protagonist. All of her family is dead, the city is out for her blood, she gathered all the remaining criminals for One Last Job with everything on the line, and she is having a very fun time with her montage destroying her home and family name beyond recovery. She is going to finish her character arc, get to finally kill her former comedy sidekick turned mortal nemesis, and hop on a plane to The White Lotus resort straight away into greener (if only marginally less fucked up) genre territory away from this ugly nightmare city. Alas, this is not The Sofia Show, and it's time for her theme suite to catch up to her once again and tell us of how very badly this is all going to go for her.

And she can't even be that shocked, when the high of burning it all down goes away, when she sees that old Ozzie Cobb wriggled his way out of this jam regardless and is now coming at her with a speech, she can't even react to it. Deep down she knows how the rest of the night is going to go. She may not have expected Arkham outright, but she was braced for a loathsome fate.

It rules so much they give him a big fat fight the power speech with a bloody revolution montage, and we can only sit there aghast with Sofia at the sheer audacity of him to act like this, like a man of the people, thinking he truly has the right to be talking like this and to her of all people.

And now we see how Oz won the gang war, and the next domino to fall on the downfall of Gotham City, and the first effect of his own rise to power: like The Riddler, he has toppled the order of things and he has turned people into extensions of himself, Victor being the first and the one who gave him this revolution, of all the little mini Penguins out there devouring the social structure of Gotham crime forever. You kill the boss, you become the boss now. Everyone can bleed and everyone can be killed and everyone must be killed in the quest to the top, no handrails or codes, they wouldn't invite him and so he crashed. After he unified the criminal underdogs, Victor rallied the underdogs beneath the underdogs, and now the streets are a jungle where there will never be an end to the wars over who gets to be atop the food chain, because they are all fighting to see who gets to be the next Penguin.

For decades people have written Oswald Cobblepot as a creep and a sleaze and an incel who hurts/kills women for rejecting him, or who is chronically insecure about them and I can very confidently say nobody ever did anything half as horrible and half as truthful and half as meaningful as LeFranc did here. We see the other reason why it was so imperative to her that Oswald not be a misogynist, and it has nothing to do with just making him more likeable or sympathetic or honorable. We get in this episode the pay off to the thoughtline: okay, he's actually a gangster who respects women, he does not act like every other prestige drama gangster who ever lived, we are going to center women in this show and he will treat them with respect - now let's watch how he HORRIBLY screws them over in the name of this respectful gentleman persona he lives by, let's watch how he betrays them in the ways that matter most, how he even makes them wish they were dead without personally ever lifting a finger to harm them, let's do some grown-up feminist commentary in Batman for a change and highlight the ways in which men profit from belittling and oppressing and destroying women even when they're pointedly not misogynistic and even self-professed genuine allies to them.

And so it is that the only Falcone mobster who isn't misogynistic towards Sofia is the one who screws her the most horribly. He will murder every man he comes across, he will murder every man he could have been and every man who is even marginally better than him in any way, he will push all of his brothers out of the nest and not tolerate any other big shot in town bigger than him and not even the only man, the only person, in town who loves him will be spared. But he is a gentleman, so he leaves the women alive (well, except for Nadia Maroni, but she was a rival big shot and worse, his boss for a day or two, so she obviously had to go eventually).

I thought about his greatest fear, and it made a lot of sense to me that his greatest fear would be that love is transactional. That if he does not achieve a level of power and give Francis certain types of things that he’s promised her she might not love him. And that informs every relationship he has on the show It was always important to me, and this was always part of my initial pitch, that if Oz was to achieve a level of power—and that is something that was not up for discussion, that was my job that I was tasked with for the season—that he has to lose something emotionally. It can’t come without a cost. - Lauren LeFranc

"the crooked politics that have allowed wealthy elites like Sofia Falcone to wreak havoc". Oz has weaponized the status quo against her so throughly that she is going away under the exact same image that she did it the first time, as a privileged serial killer and Falcone. She doesn't even get to have her new name anymore, and the rest of Gotham does not see her as the new and strange and horrific new threat that she embodied in Oz's life - she is going away as just another upper-class monster like her dad.

The triumph that Oswald has fought his entire life for, the Big One that he's scraped and fought and hoped his entire life would happen and he'd get to show his Ma at the end, the thing that he's going to throw a party for at this moment, is just a politician on tv saying things that Oswald claims he told him to say.

All of our 3 major supporting characters will thus reach the high point of their lives, on the moment before it is ripped away and they are destroyed forever. Francis gets to finally spit all of her hatred back to Oz and take her revenge on him, and her babies appear before her alive and unharmed. Sofia gets to burn down her father and his legacy once and for all, and is on her way to kill her nemesis and finally be free of it all. Victor succeeds in helping Oz win, they have revolutionized the gangs and defeated the big bad Falcone and he's done right by his new family what he couldn't do with his old one.

And of course, Oswald finally wins - he is the last man standing, he's defeated his greatest enemy, he is the big shot of Gotham and his victory is, so he claims, right there on the tv for his Ma to see, he can finally get what he's always wanted now - and then he doesn't, and then his soul crumbles, before he finishes the job by murdering his heart.

Oz didn’t need to do that, like it wasn’t actually necessary. In that moment, Victor did not betray him. He did nothing wrong. In fact, the thing that he did “wrong” in Oz’s eyes is that he loves him and that he cares about him and Oz actually cares about Victor. I think by the end Oz sees that as a really big problem because he loves his mother so deeply and Sofia took advantage of that love, and then it became sort of a weakness in his eyes. Victor saw him at his most vulnerable and for Oz to achieve the power that he thinks he needs, he can’t have that level of humanity. He can’t have that heart with him anymore. So he stifles his own heart. He kills it. - Lauren LeFranc

When he said to Vic in the sewer, “They'll tell stories about us one day, kid,” he meant it. At that stage, he actually saw that he could rise and Vic could come with him. It's only when the vulnerability and the shock of his mother being taken from him, and the place of vulnerability and danger that puts him in, that he realizes there's no more love, there's no more affection, there's no one else I'm going to have in my life that can lead me to such vulnerability as my mother has led me to or as this kid could potentially lead me to. - Colin Farrell

He's not relishing being horrible. When he realizes, "Oh God, Victor makes me vulnerable. I can't have that shit anymore." The way that Lauren wrote it, and the way Colin played, there's such sadness under the horror. You're like, oh my God, how fucked up do you have to be that the one person who you feel you have any connection with now, you have to snuff out because it makes you weak. What happened to you? - Matt Reeves

"You think she forgives me?" Once again, the mask cracks. Only around Victor. Only because of Victor. And he can't have that again.

And thus we get to the final parallel between our 3 side characters - that in the end, all they did was serve Oz's own rise to power, and hand him the world in exchange for their lives. All they were to him were additional steps in the ladder that began with his brothers. Francis gave him his life, his drive, his motivation and eternal justification, the insatiable pit in his gut driving him to do this forever. Sofia got him his promotion to Falcone lackey, and then she got him another promotion by handing him the tools with which he could become an underground boss and rally them, and then she got him another promotion by handing him the keys to his political career on a silver platter. And Victor saved his life, more than once. He helped him, provided the justification he has craved for a lifetime, rebuilt him, gave him his revolution, gave him the streets, and showed him the last thing he needed to kill to make it to the top.

Wow man let me tell my good friend, The Family Butcherer, who butchers every family he gets his hands on whether a crime family or a literal one, how much I think of him as family.

"They don't give out awards for dying in the projects"

Just like with Squid, Vic's emotional intelligence dooms him. He sees this man whom is like family to him brought to his lowest point, crushed beyond measure, in what he assumes was just a phenomenally terrible stroke of fate and not something he had any blame whatsoever for, and reaches out to pat him in the back, emotionally reassure him that it wasn't all for nothing, that his family would surely be proud of him, and that there's things to look forward to.

Vic threw away his chance to walk away into the sunset with Graciela and he just had to come back to save Oz (AND Sofia, the one who'd bomb his neighborhood) from the Maronis, the least of all possible evils in his life and his city and who never even noticed him. Victor only narrowly missed out in 2 situations that Oz would have absolutely left him to die in, so there just had to be a third where he'd die in the absolute worst way possible. Not with Sofia's gunshot to the head, not bombed to rubble along with his neighborhood, no, Mr. Carmine 2 had to make it as painful and intimate as possible.

Vic the only Number Two in town who couldn't kill his boss and in fact never even considered doing so, and so he dies - there is just no room for him anymore, not in Oz's life, nor in the new Gotham that the two built together.

LEFRANC: "You see Oz become this next level monster, I remember the take too. Jennifer and I look at each other, Colin transforms his face in this really remarkable way, that I don't think any of us fully anticipated could be achieved in that way." - The Penguin Podcast Episode 8

I knew that the general sentiment was that, by the end, they kind of wanted to, in a way, kill the Oz that we met in the film. I felt that there was a sense of creative responsibility that leaned towards, “We cannot have this man as a likable character,” which is hard I think they wanted that in the earth by the end of the eight hours. They wanted that RIP. That's gone. I hated that scene. I really did. I was fucking so pissed off. It felt in performing it as — guess what? — you would like it to feel in viewing it. It felt gross, it felt cruel, it felt absolutely insane, and it felt like Oz was reaching a point of no return. - Colin Farrell

So the day after I watched this episode, my friend Lucas messaged me in the afternoon sending me audio messages, "Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch! He stole his identity, he didn't even die with his fucking name! They'll never find him! Fuck, goddamnit!" "ELE MORREU COMO INDIGENTE, PORRA" and, yeah. Yeah. That gets to the heart of it.

If Vic was just a guy taking his money, if Vic was purely transactional, if he was just another Link, he'd have made it. Oz wouldn't have given a shit about him, Oz would have died on the sidewalk when the Maronis hit at minimum. All this piece of shit wants is love, and when he gets it, when it's finally non-transactional, from the ONLY person in the entire show who loved him, he has to kill it, he doesn't know how to deal with it, he has to smother his heart.

He has to become Carmine Falcone 2, strangling the poor and vulnerable of Gotham while pinning all of his crimes on Sofia.

Vic just wanted his family back, man. He just wanted a family again, to at least show his family that they didn't die for nothing. The thing that Oz spits in his face as he dies. It wasn't for nothin.

This show has so many dozen little variations of Penguin getting his heart broken and retaliating cruelly, but this one hurts the most partially because it has no basis whatsoever on any pre-existing insult or cruelty, there was nothing that warranted this, and you still get why Oz felt that he had to do it. The lowest, weakest moment of his life, and he can never permit anything like it ever again.

Victor was his heart, and The Penguin remembered that his heart only exists to be broken.

Victor punctures the illusion, and he cannot have that. Everything about The Penguin hinges on that singular fact of his life: he cannot and will not break character. He cannot break character, otherwise he dies, otherwise Gotham City will eat him alive, otherwise he has done it all for nothing. That is the ultimate threat Sofia posed to him, and why his ultimate victory comes only from creating a perfect delusion and spinning everything that happened in service of it. Because all those things said at Monroe's? They weren't true - his Ma, y'know, it was just her disease acting up, that psycho did something to her, she wasn't thinkin straight, and it was really Sofia that stabbed him and did all that fucked up shit, and his Ma is really happy that she got the penthouse in the end and that he didn't put her down, look, she's crying tears of joy even, I gotta keep doing everything for her.

Everything and everyone in his life, he can spin in service of the delusion, they can all play dress-up with him forever, except Victor. Victor may not have the slightest clue as to what Oz actually did, but he's seen too much, he knows he has vulnerabilities, he knows the thing that Oz needs to bury far, far more than all the horrible things he's done. Killing Victor is maybe the one thing that he absolutely cannot in the slightest spin a decent delusion out of, that he did it for him or did it for noble reasons or anything other than out of disgusting self-serving weakness.

But who's Victor? Some kid who died in the projects and didn't even have a name? Someone with nobody left to mourn him, not even a street to get back to, nothing but a guy who's already forgot him?

That Victor Aguilar? Never heard of him

“I will never think my mother doesn't love me. She was having a bad day when she stuck that bottle in me. She was under a lot of pressure. She nearly lost her finger. She stuck a bottle in my belly. It was a bad day. She didn't get a good night's sleep the night before.” It's that kind of thing. He'll make up fucking whatever. He's already lying when he goes, and he's stitching up his belly, and Vic says, “What happened?” And he says, “Sofia, she stuck me with a bottle.” He's already beginning to bury the truth. - Colin Farrell

He needed your love, and then you didn't give it to him, and you didn't obey, and you didn't do those things that he needed, and then you mentally aren't there for him in the way that he needs, but he's got to physically keep you around because he's too weak to not do that. He can't give you the gift that he promised you in Episode Six, he's too weak of a man to do that. And so he needs to hold onto you, but under his terms. - Lauren LeFranc

There's a thing that happened on that last day that made my blood run cold, which was I felt Oz not love me anymore. I felt his coldness, and I think that Francis felt it too, and she always had so much of his attention and so much of his love. I don't even think she realized how much she had until he withdrew it. And when he withdrew it, it was utter and… slightly terrified. I was just lying in that bed, I just felt the love leave the room. It's a real thing, and it's gone, yeah, and I think Francis feels it, too. - Deirdre O'Connell

He's this man who is clawing his way to the top, and I knew he wanted power, but what what does that mean for him? That's where I started to conceive of like, he wants his mother's love, and he wants people's affection. He wants to be revered. That was like the main thrust for me of what defines power for Oz, and then by the end you realize that, when he doesn't get those things, he doesn't get his mother's acceptance, he still gets it. He makes sure he gets it. - Lauren LeFranc

So bowled over and miserable I was that I didn't even notice until later that he was wearing a version of the classic Bronze Age/Triumphant get-up.

If the pattern of his life is unjustifiably cruel retribution for slights and insults, perceived or not, by the end Francis had done it to him as well. That she never loved him and in fact always hated him more than anything and anyone else is the biggest insult of all, and so he punishes her the most cruelly, knowingly or not.

"You are who you are, and you couldn't change if you tried."

He will never stop telling Rex Calabrese stories, he will never stop bringing up his brothers and mom as a sympathy ploy, and even if he will never truly love her again, he will never stop ruining the world in her name, he will never stop, he will never stop, he will never stop.

You had to sit through 8 hours chipping away at all of his fun and charm and wacko comedy antics and motivations and all the scruples and principles that he turns out to have less and less of, until he butchers them all in the very end along with the heart of the show. Penguin burning through all of his lovable quirks and charm, everything that we loved about him in the movie, until he comes through as a black-hearted bastard of unlimited malice who will never stop growing and getting worse and putting more lives in danger. Not only as much of a lowlife backstabber as we initially assumed him to be in the movie, but far worse than what we could have imagined.

I said as much that the first episode marks the transition from The Batman to The Penguin with the titlecard, and this brings it back around. The show dies with Victor, we get Sofia's post-credits Nick Fury Tease with Selina's letter and with Selina's theme playing and a final grace note of hope for Sofia, and thus the only character in the show to end with anything resembling positive, and then we get the first scene of The Batman Part 2. showing us the horrible thing in this world that Batman will have to defeat for us.

RIP Bella Real, we all know this asshole is gonna become mayor, and he's not waiting for the next election.

Credit to @book--wyrm for pointing out one more horrible fucking thing, that at the final dance, his hands are covered in scratches, much like the hands of Carmine Falcone when he comforted Sofia.

“One of the very early things that Lauren pitched was that ending with Eve where she looks like Francis,” said Reeves. “He can’t get what he needed from his mother because she’s no longer in that state because of the dark events and what he’s done, so he recreates it in this other way with Eve, and it’s very disturbing,” said Reeves. “That was something we thought was a great idea and was so emblematic of this guy’s internal state. It’s like, even as he now seems to have gotten that first major step toward being the kingpin, you know that some part of him will never be filled. - Matt Reeves

When I read that, I was like, “Oh my god, we're going full Bates Motel here.” But again, it speaks to what has become a pathological inability to accept the world that he has played such a heavy hand in creating. As far as he's concerned, he's just doing what he needs to do to live the life of a good son. And look, his mother can't talk anymore, so he needs a surrogate. I mean, it would be kept out of the sexual realm — it wasn't about that. It was about the intimacy and the tenderness and the pride that Oz always so deeply needed to feel his mother had for him, and pride in him, that he never really got from her. The one time when he finally can say to her, can go to her bedside and say, “It's done. Everything you said that I was capable of, everything you said that I should aspire to, it's done. I am now the boss. I took it from everyone else.” And he gets nothing back. His mother's already gone. That's just too horrific for him, so he needs a surrogate. He would say to Eve, “Look, I'm grieving. I'm finding it hard to deal with the fact that my mother's alive, but she's not here. She's gone, but she's fully present at the same time, physically, but she's nowhere there. She doesn't recognize me. I don't recognize the woman she's become. Do me a favor. We used to dance together and talk at the end of the night. Would you put on her dress and just let me pretend?” But it was twisted. It was twisted, but I dug it. He needs it from his mom so much. And again, his imagination is so potent that he just cast her as that figure, that most prominent and most powerful figurehead in his life, which has always been his mother. She's got to stay alive. He's got to hear that he did well from her. He's got to hear that she's proud. Look, by the end, he's bananas, as they say in the film. Good cop, batshit cop. At the end, he's batshit. - Colin Farrell

Remember when this show had fun Dolly Parton end credits, remember when this almost looked like it was gonna be fun and light-hearted compared to the movie and The Riddler: Year One

So turns out all along they actually had something real twisted planned with the name Karlo, and the Clayface concept that evokes. Asking his prostitute girlfriend to shapeshift into his crying comatose mom in the room upstairs so he can finally get the dance with her atop the world that he craved his entire life and have her tell him how proud she is that he ruined everything forever.

It is not a good ending, but it is his happy ending. He achieved everything he wanted in the smallest possible amount and at the highest cost imaginable, and thus he burns more than ever to take more and more in the name of a satisfaction he will never, ever have. He ended his arch-nemesis, and he didn't have to kill her, that's not what a gentleman does. He got the streets, and he's poised to take political power, and there is nobody left to care about, nobody except the only person who's ever mattered. He can still keep taking care of Ma as a justification for all the shit he will do now and forever, but he doesn't actually have to take care of her anymore, he doesn't even have to love her or grovel her for validation anymore: He has a Ma who will tell him everything he wants to hear, forever.

Of course, he may not have his three dance partners anymore - his Ma is in a vegetative state, Sofia has been locked away once again, and that kid, what was his name again, ain't around. But then, he will simply move on to new ones: He didn't actually lose his first dance partner, his Ma is fine, look at her telling him how proud she is of him and everything he's done and how unstoppable he is now. And he has a new partner in City Hall who is all too eager to play along to everything he says and does, who will receive and spit back his rhetoric just as Vic did to the streets of Gotham. And if he's defeated his nemesis and dance partner, well, not for long. There's a new one waiting for him. He never wins without losing. He will never again live without his next dance partner there to hound and foil him at every turn. There will always be something in the way.

It was exciting to me, the idea that we’re going to meet Oz as a mobster, and to play him as just a man. There’s nothing fantastical about him. There’s so many people like Oz in our world who hold a lot of power, who also connect with people because they speak, on some level, the truth. They can be charming and engaging, but also really terrifying and calculated, and not necessarily doing what they say that they will do or caring for people in the way that they say that they will. It felt so timely and so important to really engage with a guy like Oz and not turn away from him, but actually turn towards him so we can start to unpack, in our own society, what makes a man like Oz so appealing, and what makes him equally appalling. - Lauren LeFranc

I think Oz has always been someone who believes that everything he’s saying in the moment is true, and he creates worlds and illusions for himself to merit his actions. He does it sometimes very briefly in impulsive moments, and then sometimes more methodically, and in the end the fact that he didn’t get from his mother what he’s always desired isn’t good enough for him. So he has to create this strange fantasy live in this delusion of his own making, and pay Eve to dress as his mother and force her to tell him he she’s proud of him. So mentally, emotionally, Oz is embracing his own delusion. I think, for the audience, I hope they more deeply understand him psychologically and realize that there is a deeply broken man inside. He is violent and problematic and and very emotional. And that’s really the man that will carry into the next film. - Lauren LeFranc

And it has to end in a total reversal of the movie ending - The Batman ends with showing there is a light in the darkness, that this tortured broken man can fix his mistakes and lead us into something better. The Penguin ends by grabbing your face and desperately yelling at you SOMEBODY FUCKING SAVE US, HE WILL ONLY GET WORSE. The Batman ends with telling us Batman can save us all, and The Penguin ends with telling us Penguin will kill every last one of us in real life if he hasn't already, if nobody stops him.

And so I'll leave these last partings words to the Penguin Braintrust as we close off this series - see you all in therapy and in theaters when The Batman: Part 2 drives us all completely insane once more.

@wil4x

I don't think this Penguin is someone Batman can tolerate, I don't think Bruce can ever save Gotham's soul with a force of corruption as big as Penguin taking root in the seats of power. No amount of informant work can justify letting a monster like Penguin stay "King of Gotham". I think there's an argument to be made that Oz is a bigger threat to Batman's overall long-term mission than guys like Joker or Riddler. Those are huge immediate threats, but Penguin does a lot more long-term damage to the very soul of Gotham and its people. As long as The Penguin is on top, there's no hope, Gotham will never not be the most corrupt and nightmarish place on earth with him in charge

@book--wyrm

He will truly climb anything no loss so great it can't be flipped into an asseet A nuke Francis armed out of pain and grief and desperation and despair And poor vic Only wanting to do good And instead he saves gotham’s own typhoid mary of misery

@davidmann95

so the thing is Oz kills hope for Gotham forever in this

he's replacing the mayor who stands for hope at the end of The Batman with a corrupt comics rando built on a lie so he can install himself as the power behind the power forever Batman can't be alluded to in the slightest until the very end because it can't be until there's no lingering 'aw, I don't want my boy to get Batman'ed' it can't be until we understand truly and completely why this man proves the necessity of someone out there to stop him

The other stabs at this with Oswald, from what I’ve seen, are trying to make him low-down and dirty and vile enough to be a ‘proper’ Batman villain. But this already made him low-down and dirty and vile. And made us love him for it. This isn’t about ‘fixing him’, this is about taking him all the way to the top He’d accept no less

This is about making him operatically nightmarish enough to be a guy Batman is going to fight forever

Lucas

VENGEANCE, GET OUT RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

[yooglefics]

Reveal — Part two: editing

Pairing: Yoongi x fem!reader ( camboy!yoongi x camgirl!reader )  Wordcount: 1,735 words Genre: 18+, mdni, remainder to not use fanfics as your only source of sex ed. Summary: Yoongi is just helping a friend help you, but is he even supposed to listen to this?. Part 2 of Reveal: recording. Read it for context. This is just why and how we got to that ending. More warnings under read more.

Includes: Mentions of selling sex content. People recording sex acts. Mentions of sexual activity ( doing things and also talking about doing things and thinking about doing more things ). Mentions of past and not past masturbation ( f and m ).  Dirty talk? I guess?. Sprinkle of possessive yoongi? Is not my fault i sweaaaar Author's note: Remember when I started writing something short and silly lmao, what a time. Btw, I have never used OF so if something I say about how they use the website is actually not true / completely wrong just pretend please lmao. Anyway, I thought it'd be fun to write Yoongi's side, hope you like it! If you do please remember to leave a comment, reblog, ask, follow and what not. Thank you for reading <3

Saturday is probably Yoongi's favorite day of the week. No waking up early, no work, and not worrying about having to do any of those the next day.

That's why he groans when his phone rings with messages from Jungkook. He knows is him because he is the only one who still insists on sending him a million messages instead of just one. 

Love the guy, but he can be annoying.

The fifth ring comes and hopping is the last one, Yoongi finally reaches for his phone and rolls to his back. 

JK: hey JK: are you awake? JK: and free today? JK: i need a favor JK: yoongi?

Yoongi: with what? If I have to leave my house is probably a no.

Both of them know that actually, even if it ruined his plans of relaxing, he would say yes. Because that's what friends do.

JK: no no. You can do it at your house  JK: I need to edit an audio for my friend JK: but I'm on the schedule today JK: and if I don't send it back quickly she will back out JK: please? 

Yoongi: ok. Send it to me. Yoongi: you own me, tho.

Throwing his phone on the bed, he gets out of it to grab a bottle of water from the fridge, getting ready to sit in his studio for at least an hour. He knows is probably a bit extra to use his expensive equipment for whatever this favor is, but if he is going to help, he is going to do it right.

Opening Jungkook's messages on his laptop, Yoongi almost wants to laugh at himself.

JK: [ killmepls.mp3 ] JK: is and OF thing, btw JK: don't listen to it in public lol

Yep, definitely Poducer Min equipment is too extra for this. But, fuck it.

The archive is already downloaded when he opens the software, starting a new project and naming it the same as the audio plus final, to not get confused. Plugging in his headphones he starts playing it, already noticing whoever this is, is pretty quiet at the beginning and he would most likely have to cut it off, still, he listens to make sure.

A few taps followed by a “hi..” is the start, and he chuckles at their giggles.

He decides to let that in, but cuts the next few seconds where only their breathing can be heard along with some clicking and fabric moving. Is too long of a pause for this kind of thing and the clicking gives a way they weren't ready to start. Sure they wouldn't mind.

They put music on? It sounds familiar but is pretty fade out, so he can't really be sure, and then “This angle is kinda…” 

That's him.

That's his voice.

“Hot,” the voice continues before he can rewind.

“You can't tell me I'm mean anymore. I'm spoiling you,” his own voice travels again on his headphones. “I'm giving you this view and I'm giving you what's probably the thing you all ask the most: hands.”

What is this? Some kind of joke?

Did Jungkook put them up to this?

“I hate him. I'm gonna sue him,” 

That gets a laugh from him, even if he is still confused about what is happening.

Maybe it's just his imagination?

Should he ask his friend?

More movement of fabric. Maybe bed sheets or clothes. More breathing, a bit faster than last time and then, a groan. 

He can leave that in.

Wait, that's right. He is supposed to be editing this. He has to go back and…

“This angle is kinda…” his voice says and he hits pause. Is really him. Is that possible?

He feels like he is imagining things.

“Jungkook, I swear if this is some kind of joke or something,” he rambles taking his phone out.

Yoongi: did you listen to it?

JK: no, didn't have time JK: why? something wrong? JK: don't tell me it can't be used JK: she is gonna be sad :(

Yoongi: who is she?

JK: dunno if i can tell you 

Yoongi: technically I'm doing a favor for her. I think is fair 

JK: good point JK: is afterhours(y/n)

He opens a new tap on his laptop, goes to the website and searches for the username through his followers. And sure enough there it is. Subscribed a month ago.

He clicks to see your perfil. The first post he can see without being subscribed is a picture of a lilac lingerie set on a bed with the caption “very early birthday present”, from a week ago. 

He considers subscribing to see more, but he stops himself from clicking, remembering Jungkook didn't even want to tell him who you were. Oh, shit. What would you do if you knew it was him editing your audio? Would you back out? Or be sad?

Now it feels kind of wrong, like if he were invading your privacy.

He clicks around on his computer again, audio track back to the zero seconds mark. He hears the “hi” and the giggles and stops it before his voice appears. 

“Okay, this is going to be posted. It was recorded with the intention of being posted for people to hear,” he reasons. “If it's not posted I'd just forget about it and if it is… I'd… subscribe? To make up for listening?”

Clearly that part is not completely made up on his mind, but he doesn't have to decide what to do right now, he has to finish editing. And so, Yoongi clicks around the software again, cutting and deleting another section, the one where you can hear his voice and even his music before.

That's it. It was a familiar track because it is his. He composed that himself to put in the background of his videos exclusively. He figured putting his own touch would help if something was posted outside his page, never imagining hearing it in the background of someone else's video or audio was even possible.

It shouldn't affect him this much. After all, people touching themselves to his videos is half the reason he likes making them. What can he say? Is a turn on to have that effect on others, it builds his confidence up.

But actually hearing it is different. 

Groan and fabric moving, a bit too close to the mic he considers doing something about it, but “I want you to touch me,” is the perfect whisper. Just the right volume, just the right words.

No more audio of SugaD can be heard now, you probably turn down the volume of the video or pause it. Yoongi is curious about it. The idea of your sounds being a reaction to his past self is doing things to him, and Yoongi would like to ignore them before getting too distracted, but is kind of a boomer not knowing exactly what your reactions are for.

Maybe he can open his video, it wouldn't be hard for him to synchronized it with your audio and—

No.

That would cross the line. Is enough that he—

“Are you hard?” your voice continues, timidly he thinks. 

Is this your first time doing this? That's why you couldn't edit yourself?

What would you do if you knew he was listening and his dick was calling for attention at all your little sounds?

He stops your recording, considers taking a break, going back to bed. But he knows just forgetting about this would be hard and in the end he would have to come back and finish helping.

He unpaused it.

More moans echo throughout his headphones and he fixes them on top of his head, as if that would help him concentrate. You just sound so pretty, and when you plead he wants to give you anything you ask for, his dick twitching with desire.

He could just— no. That'll be wrong. Is enough he is letting it affect him this much, he can't just—

His leg bounces under his desk, hand glue to his mouse even when he is just listening now. Only stopping and going back a couple times to fix the volume of background noise, making it less or more obvious depending on the flow or your moans.

A groan of his own cuts the silence in his studio when you form words again. “It feels so good, oh god.” And Yoongi wishes he knew what. Wishes he could see you, could touch you. Could make you sound and feel that good in person.

“Uh uh,” short moans leave your lips, and it sounds so much like you're agreeing with his thoughts he really considers sneaking a hand down his pants. Allow his mind to wander and imagine what you would look like under him. Or on top. Or just coming undone by him.

But he doesn't. He just listens to your recording, your breathing, your pleas and your cut out warning when you cum.

“Fucking hell,” Yoongi angrily whispers. And for a second he considers doing the SugaD special of cutting it out of the final audio, but that's too selfish.

Or perhaps is more selfish leaving it. Considering he wants the world to hear how you sound when listening to him.

Yoongi managed to leave the studio without touching himself. But is not really as impressive as it sounds since his hand is on his dick the minute he goes back to bed after listening to the final edit of your audio one last time. The excuse of being just to make sure is perfect is just that, an excuse. And your pretty sounds replay on his head while he jerks off until orgasm.

JK: thank youuuu JK: she says thank you too!

Does that mean you know he was the one editing it?

He opens the app on his phone, looks for your perfil again and debates a couple minutes his options. 

What's the worst that can happen? You blocking him? He would understand, but if he actually doesn't do anything, doesn't play his chance, he wouldn't forgive himself.

And so, he subscribes. Page refreshes instantly and a new post greets him.

[ afterhours(y/n):

Surprise, surprise. Is my birthday month but I keep spoiling you, ain't I the best? 😝 

      [ VoiceReveal.mp3 ]

                                                                         ]

Doesn't even have to listen to it, his fingers move on their own, “the cutest”, he comments.

♡ Tag list: @m00njinnie , @sexytholland , @seoullove96 , @thelilbutifulthings , @disneyprincessshuri ,

( is hereee! I appreciate u guys hehe <3 ) ( if anyone else wants to be tagged in the future, let me know )

➪ Part one. | ➪ Part three. | ➪ Updates for this verse | ➪ Ko-fi

➪ Main masterlist. | ➪ Updates in general | ➪ Request & chats ♡

[suuniyunnio]

squid game

HII this is my first time writing here soo im so sorry if this is a little underwhelming<3

ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ SQUID GAME | the 'recruiter' x reader !

! , when the reader is just a random small waitress, meets a man with a suit and a stack of cash accompanied by.. ddakji in his brief case?

Life fucking sucks.

That's one thing that life teaches you, and you've learnt that you've had nothing good happen so far in your life other than the fact that you got yourself a job, even if for a small amount, a car to sleep in and food to eat because you've got nothing else.

"Was I a shitty communist in my previous life?" you muttered to yourself, wiping the table with a cloth as you occasionally mutter small remarks regarding a customer or you, in general. Cleaning up the table from spilled alcohol from a drunkard for what felt like the 7th time, you were starting to think every thing thrown at you felt like karma for whatever bad you did before.

A single ding could be heard from the rundown restaurant as you steadied yourself to greet the customer, smiling rather forcefully and turning your head over to meet whoever came in, your eyes was a rather tall man with a suit and a briefcase who offered you a small smile and a nod along your way.

well, there goes the rest of your luck for the week.

'whatever.' you thought to yourself before shaking your head and heading to the counter to throw the used rag on the previously messy table and making your way to the man. You prayed this man wasn't going to molest you or scam you, but with the way the man looks you doubt any man with a suit would do such thing, any person in general... hopefully.

"Good evening, what can I get for you?" You asked with a tilted head, watching as he taps a few times on the table before looking up at you. What's a man like him doing here, in this shitty place always conquered by assholes?

he looks kind, for the most part.

"Excuse me, can I get two glass of soju?" The man asks as he sets down the briefcase, a kind smile on his face. You sighed internally before nodding in his way, before making your way to the kitchen to prepare two glass of soju. Two glass, huh. probably meeting a client, but why here anyway?

Coming back to the man with two glasses of soju, you hoped he didn't complain before setting them down with a small 'enjoy' and a turn of a head before he called out for you.

"Kyung Y/N."

You probably shouldn't have stopped in your steps and looked back, you probably should've convinced yourself you were hearing things but you didn't. You turned your head around slowly and locked eyes with the man, your expression dropping, but before you could say anything he gestured to the seat in front of him and said , "Take a seat."

A mistake on your part, because you did sit. Taking a seat in front of the man, he took one glass of soju before subtly gesturing to the other cup for you to take it, hesitating to speak a little you shook your head and narrowed your eyes at him.

"Can I help you, sir?" You asked, a silent request from him as you watch him set down the cup and folding his hand on the table. tilting his head, he spoke, "A very unfortunate situation for a pretty lady, a pity." he cooed, and smacked his lips. 

You tensed a little, gosh, guess your luck did run out. Before you could say anything, he raised a finger before he pulled his suitcase and opened it. Inside, you could see stacks of cash and .. ddakji?

"Would you like to play a game of ddakji with me, miss?"

"I am sorry?"

"Ddakji." he repeated before showing you the red and blue paper, gosh now you were starting to think this man was not okay at all. For whatever reason it was, no matter what you were gonna say you just keep getting interrupted. "For every round you win, you'll get 10,000 won. but if you lose.." he clears his throat before standing up, you standing up momentarily afterwards too.

"You'll pay with your body."

"absolutely no-"

"a slap, I mean." the man quickly corrected himself, adjusting his tie before he looks down at you. Holding out the blue paper, and a tilted head, you stared down at the paper. win a game of ddakji.. for 10,000 won? Is this where your luck finally comes into play?

Hesitating for a split minute, you sighed and picked up the paper. The man seemed delighted, with the way he whistled and nodded in approval.

well.

"ouch," a loud slap was heard after the 6th game. your cheeks is red after being harassed by this man, but hey? money is money, and you were gonna get there eventually.

"here we go," rubbing the red paper in your hands, you blew a wind to it before using all your force into throwing the paper and baam!

the paper flipped, and words couldn't express the joy you felt after seeing how it actually flipped to the other side, as if it was your only achievement in years. The man, idly standing, clapped before retrieving 100,000 won and handing the crisp bill right into your hands.

"thank you, sir." you thanked him and looked down at the bill, before looking up and realizing the man had disappeared, the cup of soju had been drank and sat empty, next to it was a card with three shapes.

Circle, square, triangle.

[ceilidho]

do u perchance have any ghost/soap/reader thoughts to spare 🤲

oh my god you wouldn't even believe the amount of thoughts I have about them (nsfw below the read more)

I love thinking about what the dynamic might look like depending on who initiated the relationship.

I love love love the idea of Ghost dating you (a civilian who lives off base; maybe he even keeps you tucked away in a house somewhere up north to keep you safe) and realizing that Soap has a bit of a crush on you. He talks a bit too much whenever Ghost brings you around, postures a bit in front of you, and gets VERY sketchy and flighty when Ghost tries to talk to him about you later.

He won't admit it, but it's hard seeing pictures of you (or worse, meeting you in person and getting to see with his own eyes how teeny tiny you are next to his behemoth of a CO) because anytime Soap does, his thoughts immediately jump to something nasty like "wonder how he fits his cock in her mouth" "she probably gags on it a little"

He really can't help it; it's part being cocky and competitive by nature and wanting to measure up to the guy he holds in such high esteem (Soap's had a bit of a work crush on Ghost since basically day 1 of working together; his little heart eyes when he said "Save you a seat, sir" that first mission) and part genuine attraction. And then part being just a regular guy with filth on the brain 24/7 - like sue him, he sees a gorgeous girl and a guy twice her size with his arm around her waist, he's gonna think about that when he's alone in the showers.

Ghost obviously picks up on this almost instantly.

The next time Ghost brings you up, they're setting up camp somewhere in the desert, and Soap's already red face (he tans as well as he burns) grows even hotter. It's obvious that he's got it bad for you. It's also obvious that he thinks he's being slick and keeping his crush hidden from Ghost.

Weeks in the desert are a bitch to deal with. Especially weeks spent in near constant proximity to work colleagues/friends; usually the guys are used to sneaking off to crank one out every once in awhile, but something about this particular mission makes that impossible. They're stuck in the same quarters 24/7 and Soap can't even handle hearing your name because he's so pent up and jittery. Probably hasn't jerked off in at least a week and a half.

Maybe one night, when it's just Soap and Ghost retiring for the night while Price and Gaz take over watch, and Soap's been particularly acerbic all day, frustration etched into his face, Ghost drags him by the arm down with him onto the bed. Soap's caught off balance (they're both dead on their feet; he didn't expect Ghost to suddenly tug him down beside him onto the too small cot that barely has enough room for one of them) and tries to scramble away at first, but Ghost growls at him that if he doesn't tug one out and quit making stupid calls on their mission, he'll do it for him.

(Obviously, in this 'verse, Ghost wouldn't have any problem with that. He hasn't been suppressing his feelings for Soap so much as figuring out the best way to get Soap to come around to the idea)

The thing that finally stuns Soap into silence is when Ghost pulls out his phone (which has basically 3 contacts, a handful of photos and nothing else) and opens up a bunch of your nudes. Completely gobsmacked. Immediately bricked up, sweat beading on his upper lip, eyes flicking wildly over to Ghost at his side, who's already undoing his belt and Soap feels like his heart's about to pump straight out of his chest.

"Y'gonna lay there like a fucking idiot with your mouth open or deal with that?" Ghost finally growls, pulling his own cock out (Soap stops breathing for a second at the sight; it's as big as he would've guessed, proportional, girthier than it is long, and already hard, wet at the tip because Ghost's a pretty leaky man).

He's giving him tacit permission to jerk off to his girlfriend's nudes.....obviously Soap's not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. His brain is fried though - he won't even acknowledge the degrees to which this whole thing is absolutely fucked, jerking off with his lieutenant to his lieutenant's girlfriend's nudes.

All he can concentrate on are the photos of you in your lacy lingerie (maybe tugging your panties to the side, flipped over on your stomach with your hips canted in the air and ass on full display) and the sound of Ghost's hand slick over his dick. It's the hottest he's ever felt in his life and he's almost worried that he's going to pass out before he can even enjoy himself properly.

[Maybe right before he comes, Ghost reaches over and wraps a big hand around Soap's balls and gives them just the slightest little squeeze, grunting in his ear to "c'mon, get it over with", and Soap near blacks out from how hard he comes]

[enkas-illusion]

About My Man

About My Man - Part 1/5

Fandom / Pairing: Jujutsu Kaisen / Choso x f!reader

Rating: SFW - Regardless, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

Content Warning: Fluff, language, hurt/comfort

Chapter Summary: Question – How to tell your crush that he is your crush without actually having to admit that you have a crush on him? 

Author’s Note: Hello, another Choso short story, this time with his personatilie stolen from my beloved boyfriend. All characters are in their mid 20s. I've tried to keep the job as vague as possible so that the girlies could be delusional in peace. This is gonna be a 3-part story (probably). Thank you for reading! 

-Eren’s Birdie

Song Dedication: for lovers who hesitate by JANNABI

Part 2

“What about yours?” you hear the words but your brain fails to register them.

You stare at your crush, nothing but creeping panic behind your eyes while he looks at you expectantly.

What was he talking about again?

“What about me?” you smile at him awkwardly.

“Is it just me or has she been zoning out quite a lot recently?” Your other colleague Satoru interjects, further highlighting your unusual aloofness.

“Yup, I've noticed it as well,” Choso, the crush in question, agrees. 

“It's just that… I'm worried about the Smith’s project,” you lie.

“... that we closed today?” Satoru raises an eyebrow in suspicion. 

Thanks, Sherlock!

“Well, I’m just worried as the team leader, I guess?” You try your best to make your lie seem legit.

“Okay nerd… anyway, Choso was really interested in your love life,” Satoru giggles. You look at Choso for clarification and he stares back alarmed.

“That’s not– Maki was talking about the guy she met last week so I just wondered about yours,” Choso explains and you turn to look at Maki and she simply giggles, akin to the female lead of a romcom on finding the superhot main lead, as her body practically melts on the sofa.

“Whatever gave you the impression that I was dating someone?” you ask Choso curiously.

“Umm… I actually overheard your conversation last week when you were talking to Luna in the kitchen,” his face shows his embarrassment clearly as he confesses laughing awkwardly, scratching the back of his head, “Not much though! Just before I got there, I heard you gushing over someone, so I assumed you were dating?”

Question: How to tell your crush that he is your crush without actually having to admit that you have a crush on him?

“Oh” you chuckle dryly, “you know it’s not nice to eavesdrop, Cho.” 

You give your colleague-cum-roommate, Luna, a quick glance filled with panic and it’s enough for her to take over the matter to ‘help’ you.

“Yup, she’s in a long distance relationship. Thought you guys knew?” Luna's lie had a much better flair than whatever you would’ve blurted out.

However, pardon, the fuck? 

How did you even get here? This was supposed to be one of your regular chill Friday nights with the group hanging out at your and Luna's apartment as per usual. 

Due to its location being the closest to your office, your house was the unofficial hangout spot after work on the weekends. 

Naturally, you find yourself cursing the moment you invited everyone for late night drinks tonight. 

Satoru’s voice breaks your inner monologue, “Really? Since when?”

“Since when what?” you ask.

“Now I think you’re just pretending to be clueless!” the white-haired devil complains.

“I’m just tired… from doing all your work too!” you tease him.

“Don’t change the topic,” his smile drops as he stares dead into your eyes, “Since when have you been dating this guy? How did I not get the info on him yet?”

“A few weeks?” you say it more like a question than a definitive answer.

“Oh, good for you,” Choso gives you a formal obligatory smile but doesn’t ask any more questions. 

“Well, don’t be shy! Tell us more about the lucky guy,” if only Satoru knew when to shut the fuck up too.

“Oh, it’s nothing really… Just someone back home,” you end it at that, hoping for this torture to end soon.

“Hmm, what’s his name?” the hell, in fact, did not end.

Right in that moment, as if your brain shifted into autopilot mode, desperate to save you from a huge embarrassment, your mouth uttered a name that surprised you too, “Suguru.”

Luna looks at you, impressed by how well you’re holding up the lie, but decides to help you by changing the topic out of mercy, “Omg, guys, I totally forgot to tell you but did you hear that Kento’s girlfriend apparently cheated on him? I mean, imagine cheating on the Nanami Kento.”

“Wait, the perfect looking blondie from accounts?” Gojo asks curiously.

You’d heard the story last week in detail so you quickly excuse yourself to go to the kitchen. You get a bottle of cold water and chug it down, feeling it ease the dry burning sensation in your throat. You sigh as you crouch against the kitchen counter.

What the fuck? To recap, you just destroyed all hopes of a possible romance between you and your current crush by lying about a fake relationship with your ancient teenage crush. Cool!

“You alright?” Choso’s voice startles you as you turn to look at him and smile.

“Yeah, just tired,” you sigh. 

“So… Suguru, huh?” he states plainly as he grabs another bottle from the refrigerator, standing across from you. 

You half-convince yourself to tell him the truth but don’t quite get there as your fear of embarrassment outweighs everything else. So you end up with just a half-baked, “Yup…”

“Hmm”

“Why? Does it bother you?” you tease him as usual to dissolve the awkwardness.

“Can’t say I’m thrilled…” he mumbles, looking up at you. His eyes hold your gaze in a stupor and for a moment you actually wonder if there’s still some hope left for you.

“To be hon–” your sentence is cut off when the white-haired devil reappears.

“Choso, we're leaving. Still want me to drop you home?” Satoru waits at the entrance of the kitchen. 

“Yup, let's go,” Choso replies before looking at you again, “I guess I'll see you later then... good night.”

You just nod and hug him briefly when he extends his arms for you before the two guys leave.

As much as you liked Choso Kamo, it was impossible to decipher whether he reciprocated your feelings or not. And you weren’t too keen on making a fool of yourself in such an astronomical manner.

Well, what’s another unrequited crush, right?

“Did I fuck it up?” Luna asks, guilt lacing her voice, the minute she closes the door when everyone leaves.

“Kinda? Can't say I blame you though. You were just trying to save me from imminent embarrassment,” you let out a dry chuckle as you collapse on your living room sofa. 

“Is it really that big of a deal? Just tell Choso you like him. It's like ripping off a band-aid,” she sits next to you.

“Well… you just reinforced the band-aid with concrete,” you laugh, finding your own misery weirdly amusing.

A few moments pass by in silence. While you may not have the power to hear your roommate’s thoughts, you know her well enough to believe she’ll have a solution for your problem soon enough. As if on cue, she speaks again.

“Umm… How about… tell the guys you couldn't do long distance! Say that Suguru broke up with you in like a week or so?” she suggests.

You stare into nothingness, contemplating it seriously – wondering all the possibilities and details of the elaborate lie. Luna brings you back to the present with her next question. 

“Anyway, who's Suguru? Does the man exist in real life?”

You snort at her question, “Very real… kinda wish he wasn't though.”

She waits for you to explain further so you continue, “You remember the story about the guy from my hometown? About the guy who kissed me but then decided he wasn’t sure if he was a ‘relationship kinda guy’?”

“Oh! That was Suguru?!” Luna exclaims, connecting the dots.

“Yup… first real crush and real kiss… you know, the tongue type,” you sigh as you reminisce, causing Luna to giggle at the dramatic look on your face.

“Hey! Don't laugh… it was right before we both left for college, shit hurt,” you pierce a fake dagger into you heart.

“Aww. Just one week babe. Put an end to your fake relationship and go back to whatever you got going with Choso,” she reiterates the game plan.

“Right… I might be into it even deeper for Choso than I ever was for Suguru. I really do need to fix this,” you mumble in a defeated tone.

“Hey, stop with the depressed, longing-for-love look! Just tell him how you feel for fucks sake!” she scolds you.

“Right, I'll sort this out and tell Choso how I feel!” You say with a half-determined half-dubious look in your eyes.

You get up to retire to your bedroom, leaving your friend behind and find your peace in the comfort of your dreams for the night.

~~~

The very next weekend, you make sure to set the record straight and tell the group about your very ‘sad’ breakup, cooking up an elaborate story about how the distance took its toll on the relationship and blah blah blah – catching yourself just enough to not go overboard with the lie.

You caught a sympathetic look from Choso that covered up the relief of his jealous heart well. 

“Well, you deserve better anyway,” he patted your head softly.

“Thanks,” you chuckled, “but you don’t even know the guy.”

“I know you well enough to know that you deserve someone who doesn't let distance get in the way of showing his love,” there's sincerity in his voice and you try your best not to blush and turn into a puddle right then.

The whole evening your mind's preoccupied with gauging how long you could wait after your fake breakup to confess to Choso without seeming like a psycho who doesn't experience heartbreak.

Luna suggests a period of mourning for a week. You counter it with ‘2 months… MINIMUM’. By the end of your discussion with your roommate, you decide on 1 month. 

In one month's time, you'll confess to Choso… or try your best to seduce him into confessing instead.

You still had time to plan the details.

Or so you'd thought. 

A week passes by and you slowly start to get back your usual friendly flirtatious relation with Choso, who for reasons unknown to you, had really started to get more daring with his advances.

So when your phone rings in the morning as you reach your doorsteps, right after your morning run together, you pick it up with a bright “Hiiiii”

“Hi gorgeous, how you doin’?” his voice resonates at the other end of the call.

“You mean since the last 15 minutes when you dropped me off at my place?” You giggle as you try to find your apartment keys in your gym bag with one hand.

“Every minute we're apart is torture to me,” if someone heard Choso speak, they would reach the conclusion that you were indeed entering the talking stage with him.

“You know I have enough cheese at home, right?” You joke, but not without smiling ear to ear.

“Ha. Ha.” he says plainly, yet he can't help but let his tone give his giddiness away even when he's trying to be sarcastic, “When should we get the pizzas?”

You jimmy the keys in the lock before pausing to think, “I'll ask Lu, but 7 should be fine, I guess? Anyway, that's 9pm on Gojo time.”

You don't hear Choso’s next sentence because your attention shifts to someone calling your name behind you.

You turn around and it takes a moment for you to register the presence of the man standing in front of you. 

A man so beautifully breathtaking that you can’t help but check him out purely based on natural human instinct. A beauty so magnetic that even those without any intention would risk it all for him.

You stare at his tall, muscular built – arms covered in exquisite tattoos that play hide and seek on his skin, obscured by the half rolled up sleeves of his hoodie. Long black hair tied up in a loose bun with two short strands escaping the rubber band's hold to adorn the outline of his face.

And his face, the only part you recognize as if it were just yesterday that you saw him and let him break your heart before you left town for dreams of a better future.

“Hello?” Choso's voice on the other end snaps you back to reality. 

“Cho, I'll call you back,” you hang up, finding yourself in a state of reverie.

“Hi stranger… Do you remember me?” the man smiles at you.

“Of course I do, Suguru.”

~to be continued~

[sadstrever]

cw: 116lbs

gw: 106lbs

hw: 150lbs

hi. so my last account got banned so i realize now i should be a little more careful of what i say cuz i guess i concerned some of you. or this will just be my last post because i need to vent.

wanna hear how i started my day? i chew and spit my food into plastic bottles(i know i’m disgusting no one should ever do this) and i was opening it and it exploded fucking everywhere and the smell was putrid and it was all over me and my bedroom. and i was hungover. and it was 7am. and i threw up immediately after. anyways, i haven’t e@ten in weeks. lol. almost a month, which isn’t the longest i’ve gone so don’t worry this is not that bad lol. ALSO NO I WILL NOT BE GIVING TIPS. ever since my brother moved away it’s been pretty easy to st@rve. the hard part now is knowing where to draw the line. my best friend has broken down a lot recently because of me. i’m an awful person lol. i let them get too close and now they know too much about the disgusting things i do. i needed space because seeing him just makes me feel guilty for putting him through this with me. i tried to end the friendship 2 nights ago over a bottle of v0dka. it did not work out very well. i said some really hurtful things to him that i didn’t mean in an effort to push him away. once the alc wore off i made him a cake to apologize which now that i say it out loud, it does not feel like much of an apology at all. he somehow easily forgave me which makes me feel even shittier. he said it was because he knows im sick. i don’t know what i’m doing. the derealization has gotten worse. i tried going half sober which didn’t help. i’ve developed a laxative problem too which also doesn’t help. it’s not as bad as others though, i was just taking 3 a day for a minute(a few months)but that’s so fucking bad for you and it really made my stomach problems worse. i took 3 today for the first time after not taking them for weeks and there was really no reason. just a desperate attempt to make myself feel better. when that didn’t help, i tried to smoke but i got too high because i only smoke every other day now which lowered my tolerance. when THAT didn’t work i went to the gym and burned 460 calories and then THAT didnt work so i walked around and burned 240 more. none of it made me feel less empty. i’m so sick of it. why is it all so fucked. nothing feels right. i want to try and recover but i don’t remember the person i was before all of this. my brain just fucking can’t figure it out. i don’t feel like a real person man. i want to recover and not because i’m giving up. starving is the easiest part of my life. it’s all that seems to make me feel a little better. eating always makes me so depressed and in a worse way. it makes me aware of reality in a way that fucking kills me. i need to do it if i want to feel human, if i want to be a good friend, daughter, sister. i’m gonna wait until i’m underweight which is once i’m 109lbs. 7lbs away lol. it’ll probably take a week or two so i guess i’ll update on how i’m trying to recover. fuck i really don’t want to man. pls give me tips because i can’t die and just be a sad fucking story to everyone i love. or just fucking report me like u guys did last time, not having any safe place with people who relate will totally help too!!!

[thedeadedhooman]

Favourite supernatural ship/s

thanks for the ask anon<3

samjess is my favourite I guess. it's tragic and sad and beautiful. It always makes me upset and I end up in a puddle of tears. It hurts my brain and heart. It's like a stabbing pain in the gut. what gets me is that even after such a long time, sam could never actually let go of jessica I think. I mean what am I supposed to feel after the i still think about jessica. he was shopping for rings, and he proposed to a ghost, to his past. a nice sweet normal figment of his life, that he held on to for a while until tragedy struck. sam probably doesn't even have any photos of jessica, they were all burnt in the fire. he probably had that voicemail that she sent when he went with dean to hunt the woman in white. which probably got deleted when they had to switch phones or simcards cuz of their shitty lifestyle. she's only a memory to him...fuck

sastiel cuz I love their autistic swag. of course there are moments that make me mad like cas breaking sam's wall but cas also took sam's pain. sam and castiel are so soft and tender with each other. I just know the sex would've been a galaxy brain moment.

samruby because they're toxic af but they truly loved each other at some point. they would've worshipped each other I think. it's bout the roles and the dynamics, there's also a lot of manipulation and betrayal going on and that adds to the more complex elements regarding the pairing. also the soft tender way ruby tries to cajole sam into believing that what he did was right scratches at my brain because she too sacrificed a lot to be the one who catalysed the whole thing. they could've ruled hell together. and their whole sex scene is like two lesbians fucking each other.

deanlisa because dean had a bit of normalcy and a cute son. dean and lisa made a cute pairing I think. he got to be a dad for a little while I guess. It's sad and tragic cuz when cas wiped Lisa and Ben's memories, it really hurt. Like you build this little family and they gave you something to hold on to for a while when you missed your brother and then have all of that taken away from you PERMANENTLY. that shit is sad af.

sambrady because I KNOW WHAT THEY HAD GOING ON. demon lover brady my beloved. I know they fucked. cuz brady is a demon and he died.

samsarah. they are so cute. and honestly out of all the partners sam had in the show I think sarah blake would have been perfect for sam imo. she wanted to help them during the hunt. she's a tough girl. they kiss for the first and the last time and she hopes that sam would visit again. she keeps waiting and waiting and waiting, days turn into weeks, weeks into months, months into years and then one day she gets married has a kid and that tall floofy haired boy with the puppy dog eyes turns up at her doorstep. she has moved on obviously but at what cost? she died cuz of the very man she waited for so long. and oh sammy. the only reason why he didn't go back was that he knew it was dangerous for her. later he had to go to her to save her but again at what cost? sarah still died and she had a husband and a kid...

wincest. do I need to even say anything? I mean where do I even start? It's not like I want them to fuck each other but it's the codependency. there's a lot going on with these two that can't be seen with the naked eyes. it's the subtext, the yearning, the longing looks, the roles...how dean can't function without sam, he's afraid to be alone, how sam loses it when dean is gone, the need to be the no. 1 person on their priority list, and the fact that they're canonical soulmates. yeah they're weird and that's what I like about it. sam and dean winchester are psychotically, irrationally, erotically codependent on each other.

sammadison how could I not mention this one. THIS IS MY FAVOURITE AS WELL. I mean it's so fucking tragic. like you think you saved the girl but for what? it didn't work and it's gonna happen again and there's no cure and you two share these tender moments of intimacy thinking everything's gonna be okay only to be met with the opposite. you gave her hope and now it's being taken away..it's never gonna be okay and she asks you to kill her. whatthefuck. now you slowly see yourself in her, what if I become a monster and there's no way back and what if someone I love so much has to put me down like a sick dog. GOSH. I cried while watching that episode.

I also like samwena and saileen and megstiel but I haven't watched the later seasons that well so can't say much.

[pculrstate]

how the night passes

day 2: prompt #36 (a story all in dialogue)

11:02 p.m.

Can you see in?

Sort of. Angle’s bad.

Can’t pull any closer without being spotted out his front window.

Other side of the street?

They probably have a neighborhood watch. I can practically smell the fuckin’ HOA, dude. We’re already pushing our luck.

It’s fine, I can see enough.

Pass me the thermos?

Yeah. Here.

Shit, Sammy. That’s good. From the motel?

Buy one get one at Wegmans. Whole bean.

Shit. How’d you grind ‘em?

Hand grinder in one of the drawers. Someone must’ve left it.

Well, lucky us.

11:47 p.m.

What’s it been, like two hours? Guy hasn’t moved.

Forty-five minutes, Dean.

Jesus fucking Christ. I hate stakeouts.

12:29 a.m.

You bring any grub?

Trail mix.

Ugh. I assume it’s too much to hope for some jerky.

It stinks up the car.

Roll a window.

That kinda defeats the whole being inconspicuous thing.

Whatever. Just gimme the bag.

12:57 a.m.

Stop yawning.

I can’t help it!

Take deep breaths.

How’s that different from yawning.

Are you kidding me?

It’s too warm in here, that’s the problem. Turn the AC on.

Can’t. It’s making that rattling sound, remember?

Dammit. Forgot I was supposed to look at that.

Just take your jacket off or something. Oh, don’t—don’t make a fucking strip tease joke, Dean. They’re not funny.

What are you talking about? I didn’t say anything.

I saw your eyebrow.

What about my eyebrow.

Nothing.

How’s that saying go? He who smelt it dealt it.

Shut up. Your voice is making me nauseous.

1:13 a.m.

Remember when we used to play I Spy? In the car?

Ha. Yeah. Dad was the best at that.

You’d always pick something green. Every time.

Cause there was a lot of green!

Yeah, but even when there wasn’t. And then it’d be something barely green, like. Like the reflection of my sock in the window.

Dad would make up colors. Charfuchsia. Ceruleaneon.

Jeez, how do you remember those? Charfuchsia. Yeah. Man.

I don’t know. But it was kinda weird, right? That he did that. Not like he was very creative.

What? Yeah he was. Had to be. Keeping two rascals entertained for fifteen hours straight? He was always making up games. Shit like that.

I guess.

Hey, Sam?

What?

You wanna play?

2:07 a.m.

I don’t think he’s coming out, man.

He has to. It’s the only time he can feed.

Maybe he’s fasting.

Yeah, I don’t really think they do that.

Maybe he ordered in.

Nice, Dean.

Bet he keeps a stash in the freezer or somethin’.

A stash? They’re people. Try exercising a little tact.

Sorry. Just saying it seems like he’s down for the count.

It’s still early.

Alright then, you good if I close my eyes for a few? I’ll take next shift.

Okay.

2:31 a.m.

You still asleep? Dean?

God, your snoring. You know, when I first got to Stanford I couldn’t sleep for weeks ‘cause my room was so quiet. My roommate slept like a corpse. I hated your fucking snoring. And Dad’s. Used to lie in bed thinking that one day I was gonna have my own room with my own bed and a pillowcase that didn’t smell like mildew and it was going to be perfectly silent, so silent that I’d be able to sleep through the night. You wouldn’t kick me awake. You wouldn’t drool on my shoulder. And then I finally got it, so many years of wishing, and those first weeks, it was…awful. It was so awful. I hadn’t been scared of the dark since I was a kid, but that dorm room. I still— Fuck, I can still remember the feeling. The black and the quiet. And I wanted it back, more than anything. You and Dad. Sometimes you sounded so alike if I wasn’t looking I couldn’t tell who was who. I almost called you so many times.

3:11 a.m.

Hey, sleepyhead.

Anything?

Nope. Still quiet.

Damn, I had a weird dream.

Strippers or Hula dancers?

Ha ha.

Bad?

Not bad. Just…weird.

Wanna tell me?

You gonna sleep?

I’m okay.

Okay. It was like…we were in the Roadhouse? Sort of. You know how that shit is in dreams. It was the Roadhouse but it wasn’t really. Ellen and Ash were there.

Not Jo?

Maybe. I can’t remember. We were all drunk. Like, plastered. Even Ellen. I kept asking her to look for me.

To look for you?

Yeah, I don’t know. I just kept saying that. You have to look for me. And she told me she would but I could tell she didn’t get it. What I was really asking.

What were you really asking?

Oh shit, Jo was there. Yeah, she was there. It’s coming back. ‘Cause every time I told Ellen to look for me Jo would come up behind her and say, What do you think we’re all doing?

Huh.

Yeah.

And what was I doing?

I don’t really…

What?

That part’s fuzzy.

Try.

I don’t know, Sammy. You were drunk like the rest of us. You never— Whenever I dream about you, it’s like. You’re never fully real.

What the hell does that mean?

It’s hard to explain.

How often do you dream about me? Dean?

Most nights. I don’t know.

Most…?

Alright, can we change the subject.

I’m never…fully real.

Like when I try to touch you you’re just air. And your face is blurry or something. Never mind. I shouldn’t’ve brought it up. Just a stupid dream.

Well how did it end? This one.

It didn’t, really. We were just there in the Roadhouse drinking and I was saying that to Ellen and Jo was saying that to me and you were looking at me the whole time but I couldn’t feel you. Whatever. Then I woke up.

Sorry.

What’re you sorry for?

Just—

It’s fine.

Dean. I’m real.

I know, Sam.

3:33 a.m.

We’re going out for the biggest fucking breakfast you’ve ever had in your life after this. Get ready, Sammy.

You sure you’re gonna make it that long?

Hangin’ by a thread. For a monster this dude is fuckin’ boring.

I mean, you think he slipped past us? Back door or something?

You wanna knock and find out? That’s what I thought.

I’m sure we got the timing right. Full moon thirty days before the solstice. Has to be tonight.

I’m thinking short stack. Bacon AND sausage. Home fries. Couple over-easys. Fuckin’ gallon of coffee. Damn. Pants are getting tight.

You’re disgusting.

Maple syrup dripping down my fingers. Shit is erotic, what d’you want from me? You seen that typa porn? Oh, wait, what am I saying. You get off to the History channel.

I do not!

Nothing to be ashamed of, Sammy. Those corset dress things? Hot as fuck. I don’t blame you.

I don’t do that.

Okay, kid. Whatever you say.

3:58 a.m.

Just go to sleep, Sam, I got it.

Not…tired.

Real convincing.

I can see the moon. Out my window.

How nice.

Waning—waning gibbous.

I bet it is.

Hey, Dean?

Yup.

Can you.

Huh? Can I what.

Never mind.

No, what?

I was just gonna say can you— Remember that song you loved, the one about moonlight. Dad had it on cassette.

Uh…

You sang it to me. When I was little.

Verging on delirious, dude. Go to sleep.

You remember. I’d be so scared in the middle of the night if Dad wasn’t there. Or when I was sick. You sang it to me. Say you remember.

I remember, Sam.

Can you…?

Oh, come on, I don’t—

Please.

We’re on a fucking stakeout. Waiting for a dude who eats people.

Dean. Dean?

Ugh, fine, just—just shut up. Don’t look at me. And I swear to God if you laugh I’ll take your head off.

Won’t laugh.

Okay. Okay.

Sam? Sammy? Man, that really works on you, huh? Just like— Yeah. Just like back then. Haven’t listened to that song in years. Surprised I even remember the words. There were nights when you were at school, Dad was on a hunt. I’d get shit faced off fuckin’ cask wine. Put down two or three bottles and then park in some field and lay out in the back seat and just. I’d listen to that song a hundred times in a row. And I’d think about you all alone, and Dad all alone, and me all alone. Why the fuck did we let that happen, Sammy? We were supposed to be together. Always. The three of us, and it wasn’t— Hey, did you wake up? Sam wears women’s underwear…

Look, I’m not saying—

It’s not that I—

It just sucked. It sucked so fucking bad. And I’m glad—

Anyway. Whatever. Sweet dreams.

4:47 a.m.

You ate all the M&Ms from the trail mix.

Yeah? And?

Five year old, I swear to God.

4:56 a.m.

Well those are spaghetti westerns, which don’t even count as real westerns.

What are you talking about they don’t count? Of course they count. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly?

Okay but spaghetti western? Seriously?

Oh, don’t start with that it’s racist crap, Sam. Times were diff—

Times were different back then, yeah, I’ve heard the speech.

They’re good enough for Clint they’re good enough for me.

Still don’t think anything beats El Dorado.

Hell yeah. I’m with you there.

5:13 a.m.

Hey, did I—did I say anything? In my sleep?

Nah, you were out.

Oh. Okay.

Why?

No reason.

You having those freak vision dream things again?

No. Not since.

Yeah. Okay. But you’d tell me, right?

Course.

5:16 a.m.

Sun’s coming up soon. What the hell happened? Why didn’t he come out?

I don’t know. Maybe I read the book wrong. Missed something.

We only got one shot at this.

I know, Dean.

5:23 a.m.

Why Ellen? Of all the people who would look for you. Why her? I mean, we don’t even really know her that well.

Beats me. Wondering the same thing.

And what does that mean? Look for me?

It was just a dream, Sam.

Yeah, but what you said, about me—

Please, I really don’t wanna talk about it.

About me not being real.

It’s not. It’s not that you’re not real. It’s just that I can’t, like. Grab hold of you.

Grab hold of me.

Shit. I—

Like I’m gonna run away.

Sam.

That’s what you’re fucking worried about? All this, everything that’s happened. You’re still— Even in your sleep.

I can’t control what goes on in my head, Sam. You of all people should get that.

You’re a fucking asshole.

You asked.

5:31 a.m.

Don’t let me forget to look at the AC later, yeah? Sam? Oh, what, you’re gonna freeze me out now?

5:36 a.m.

It was a shitty thing to say, okay. I Spy a very sorry brother. I Spy a jerk who’s saying stupid shit because he’s hungry and tired and sick of the fucking car. I Spy—

I’m here, Dean. I’m real. I’m here. Do you get that? Where else would I go?

Okay. I know. Yes. I know.

6:02 a.m.

Dean. Dean! He’s coming.

Ow, fuck, you don’t have to hit me, I see him.

Man, he really waited till dawn. Wonder why? Nothing in the lore about that.

Well he’s a mold breaker, Sammy. Who woulda thought. Let’s just hurry up and ice him so I can have my fucking breakfast.

[nozomi-kaizoku]

I hate whenever my parents act like they care about my mental health then get all pissy at me when I tell them that I don't want to do school anymore even if I explain why, and I'm genuinely fucking tired of it.

I don't know about you motherfuckers, but when you are mistreated by the people around you CONSTANTLY for your entire life, without any breaks, and when that's done you're then blamed for it all, it really does take a toll on your mental health, and trust me when I say that it royally screwed my entire life over, I MEAN IT.

I had to face constant stigma and ableism for over 13 years, and the harder I tried to fix myself, the more people had pushed me away.

So, I'm gonna be BRUTALLY honest when I say this:

I've given up on wanting to go to college because it's way to expensive, I gave up on wanting a career because there's nothing out there worth doing, I gave up on even trying to find a job in the first place because nobody wants to hire a mentally unstable retard with no work experience, and overall I've just abandoned all of my passions and ambitions. All because people have kicked me when times got rough, and when I tried my best to make things right, it was never enough, they still kept pushing me down, and I just can't do it anymore.

And it doesn't help that my basic human rights are slowly being stripped away from me because I happen to be a disabled queer trans AFAB kid with a mental illness, basically meaning that by the time I make it to my 20's (if I don't kill myself before I make it to 18), I'll be living in a constant hellhole where I'll die in the worst ways possible to humankind.

All I'm ever going to be in life is this sad, mentally unstable, egotistical virgin who makes other people's life worse, and there is nothing I can do to change that, let alone anyone else.

I was doomed to be like this since the day I was born. And that's probably one of the hardest things I had to accept as a borderline auDHD person.

And that's the entire reason why I want to drop out of school, it's making my mental health worse anyway, and what's the point of being in school if I'm not gonna have a good life regardless??

And instead of actually listening to me, my bitch ass parents told me to suck it up and that my feelings were invalid and that I deserve to suffer, and honestly, fuck them.

"I was like you two when i was your age, and I regretted it, so you should stay in school" good for you i guess, but that won't change shit.

Stop pretending like I have a future, you're only making it worse.

good thing I'm suspended for 3 days so that I won't have to put up with school for the rest of the week...

Anyway I'm supposed to be working on homework rn, but I'm not going to because there is no reason to.

[oncamelliastreet]

depression rant <3

idk sometimes i would like for just one thing in my life to go well. like literally not even my playlist is working right now. 700 songs off of my 1200 song playlist i listen to everyday disappeared so i have to make a new one. and the new one is only showing up on my phone, not my ipad. and i can’t fix it.

and as much as i wish he was, i really don’t think my crush is into me too. i don’t think im likeable. im not pretty enough to attract anyone (girls aren’t even in the picture at school because it’s literally a catholic school in the midwest everybody is homophobic and guys either chose the prettier girls or date someone outside of our school). and even if i was attractive i don’t think my personality is enough. i’m too quiet and anxious at first for anyone to stick around and get to know me. there will always be someone better in comparison. and yk what even if i did manage to find someone who liked me back they would probably leave the second they found out im really not comfortable with having sex any time soon (if ever) at all. i’m just gonna die alone with my dogs while my sisters live their happy lives with their families.

and none of my friends even care about me outside of school. they talk to me when i’m in their classes but outside of school i’m not getting invited anywhere. and when i do get invited somewhere, like to hang out at my “best friends” house for example, her neighbor she’s friends with conveniently is coming over and she couldn’t figure out how to say no so they’re just talking the whole time and i’m just there in the background. or i’ll try to make plans and then they’ll cancel on me 30 minutes before they’re supposed to show up 4 times in a row. because their’s always something better to do.

and my head hurts all of the time and i went to a neurologist for it but i basically have to try a bunch of pills that almost definitely won’t work before i can get to the stuff most likely to be effective because the stuff that will probably help is more expensive and my insurance won’t cover it if i haven’t tried the stuff that won’t work and is cheaper. and i had a headache all day during my family gathering for my moms birthday because i used a shampoo that smelled a little bit and i felt like throwing up from it, and my mom had to wash my hair over the sink like a baby half way through the day because it was so intolerable.

and on top of that i couldn’t even get my mom a good present for her birthday because i dont have a job to be able to afford anything and i couldn’t go shopping with what little money i have because i dont have a drivers liscence and none of my siblings live close to home anymore so i had nobody to take me shopping. so everybody got her a really nice and thoughtful present and i got her fucking flowers because that’s the shitty daughter i am i guess.

and my dog has had a lot of spine issues because she’s a hot dog and they’re really prone to back injuries. and she’s been acting really weird the last week and i’m worried she’s gonna get hurt for like the 7th time. and it feels like nobody but me and my mom take it seriously because my older sisters will pick her up like it’s no problem even though every time she gets picked up a lot she gets hurt some time soon after. and my fucking grandma invited her to jump up on the couch when nobody was paying attention (she absolutely cannot jump on couches for the rest of her life, every time she does she gets SUPER injured) but i couldn’t say anything because she’s an old lady so i was just on the edge of a panic attack the entire day even though i just wanted to yell at her because she completely ignored us EVERY time she comes to visit. literally every time she’s here my dog ends up jumping on a couch and is hurt and crying in her bed unable to move days later. and it seems like im the only one who cares.

and on top of that it’s now one in the morning and i have to be up in 5 hours to take the psat which im gonna fail because im horrible at standardized testing and theyre online now which means i really can’t focus at all and im just a lost cause.

i give up trying atp.

[12-seconds-to-live]

(Un)Lost: ‘Till the end of the line

Pairing: F12022/3!Grid! x Fem!Driver!oc

Warnings: DNF’s, angst, a little bit of love, episodes of anxiety, Seb’s retirement, harsh words.

DRIVE TO SURVIVE S.5 EP. 10

END OF THE ROAD

“So, What are your plans after Abu Dhabi?”

“I have a few things in mind, I’m officially unemployed. What are you gonna do without me?”

“Not much, for now we hired Charlotte as class clown, she’s is pretty funny. The other day she talked a lot about you”

“What did she say? Hope she didn’t reveal any secrets” Daniel showed a smile

“She looked sad, you know why?”

“Yeah. She’s the type of talent you saw on the track and your mind already click on what’s coming next, like, the next big thing. I told her that the events that happened on McLaren aren’t gonna affect our friendship”

“So, you’re good with the decision?”

“This is a sport that If they’re not happy with you, you’re out, you just have to remember the good days, enjoy the butterflies. I told her that she’s so powerfull, to surround to people who cares about her and then continue with their feet on the ground and let go the idea that you have to be the best or do the most to be worth something”

“You’re a good friend and we’re gonna miss you. What’s the next thing for you?”

“I don’t know. I guess we have to wait ‘till next season”

“Hello Charlotte”

“Hello Netflix, what’s up?”

“Good, how’s the media treating you?” I moved my head as saying no

“Like always, I haven’t been near my phone the past week, so Lando has to knock everyday at 5 am to wake me up”

“That’s a hard job” I laugh

“It’s discipline, I force him to go to the gym with me. Just to start the day with energy”

“Ready for the last race? This has been a incredible season, better that Hamilton’s”

“I don’t like to compare but yeah, the expectations has been high, for everybody, I also have a lot of responsability with me, Alex too. The team has helped us in a way that we feel in another level, even If we’re not longer be together, I’m gratefull and I hope to race aginst them next year. I mean, there was always a 50/50 situation and a lot of rumours and criticism but I just focused on what I wanted rather that follow people bad advices”

“Who gave you a bad advice?

“Daniel, he just told me to tell them F.E.A.”  

“What’s that?”

“Fuck them all”

“Inspiring” I laugh “And who gave you a good advice?”

I started thinking “Probably Carlos, he’s been helping me a lot, he just said don’t crash, pretty good advice”

“Hey, just wanted to wish you good luck”

“You too” I kissed Lando on the cheek

“I don’t like it there” I laugh and hug him

“Carlos is looking in our direction and his mom just took a photo”

He laughs “Family dinners are going to be fun with me in there”

“Funny, go get ready, love you”

“Love you too, my world champ”

“Let’s see” I looked around and the Sainz and my dad we’re smiling “Weirdos”

My get closer to my dad and hug “You’re mom is so proud of you, I know you’re going to be world champion, zero doubts, mind focus and have fun. Even if this is your job, remember those days when everybody just said that a girl, my little baby, can’t do it and now you’re proving them wrong, you always do that. We’re so proud”

“I love you dad. Mom’s still here” I said with tear on my eyes

“She is” I gasp “Carlos, let’s go. See you after the race” 

“Good luck, my favourite sister” I formed an “O”

“Ana and Blanca are gonna get so jealous, haha. See you on the podium or at the party”

“A little party sounds good” He laugh and I walked to my garage. All of the members looked happy, I took my balaclava and helmet and walked to the circuit to get in the car.

God, if this is my moment, please make it a good one.

“Radio check”

“Copy, ugh, I’m going to miss your voice”

“I already have the file of your radio in your inbox”

“You’re definitely the best race engineer in the world”

“Doing my best for you. Six minutes to formation lap”

“Copy, I remember that you’re going to McLaren with me, ups”

“Haha, nothing like a chaotic driver ‘till you decide to retire”

“Welcome to the last race of the season, here in Abu Dhabi. The story is repeating itself. Max Verstappen is going to be fighting for this year title with Charlotte Robyn-Jone, today as a Williams race driver and tomorrow she’ll be officially part of McLaren. There’s a lot going on in both garages. Red Bull has set up everything to a back to back and Williams has done the same for the girl. She’ll be the greatest, first woman to get through all the categories and win, hope that she do the same today and mark history”

Everybody is ready in their positions after the formation lap.

Five seconds to breath

Four seconds to be gratefull

Three seconds to blink

Two seconds to feel a champion

One second to be one

“And it all comes down to the last lap and no, Verstappen has braked and Charlotte has passed the Dutchman with ease and what a girl, she is three more corners away from being the first, mark history AND SHE HAS DONE IT, SHE DID IT. We have the first woman world champion in formula one. Remember her name, Charlotte Robyn-Jones is a world champion. Oh my God, I’m so happy”

“YEAAAAAAAAH, WE DID IT”

“YOU DID IT. What a race. We are so proud, Your mom is happy for you. This has been your year, champ” Everybody can hear the screaming coming from the Williams garage

“Thank you to all the members of Williams, I’m so happy. I hope we have a party tonight ‘cause everybody is invited. Call Kimi, Adam” 

“I don’t have his phone number and...”

“But I do, look for my phone. Oh my God, freacking champion. YEAAAAH”

Charlotte parked in front of  the P1, Max on P2 and Lando on P3. Due her excitement, she took off her helmet and balaclava faster than ever and run to Lando

“You did it. I’m so proud”

“So proud to deserve a kiss”

“As many as my girl want” And that kissed marked one of the most shared photos of the new crowned champion.

Little thing nobody knows. Happiness never last long.

Taglist: @evans-dejong @omgsuperstarg @bibissparkles @hoely-maria @mochimommy2002 @noope306 @eugene-emt-roe​ @80sloverry​ @rens-daylight @honeydanny​

part one

part two

part three

[meraxes-of-new-albion]

Tag games! Thanks for the tag @sparklehoard <333

(readmore because i ramble)

Are you named after anyone?

Yes! my parents are nerds. i got named after a doctor who character.

also trying to decide if i'm gonna use a new name... if i do it'll probably be Best Bland Bioware Man My Beloved

(Kaidan Alenko <3)

When was the last time you cried?

uhhhh.... more recently than usual. couple weeks ago i think? stubbed my toe or something and that's the straw that broke the camel's back, yall know how it is

Do you have kids?

nope! and noooo thank you, if i ever wanted kids i'd adopt a teenager

What sports do you play or did you play in the past?

I'm gonna be That Guy since i was a marching band kid for 8 years. that's some cardio, man.

Do you use sarcasm?

Whaaaaat noooo never (yes constantly)

What's the first thing you notice about people?

i'm a very bad Things Noticer in general so... maybe hair color?

What's your eye color?

That kind of blue-gray most blue eyed people have in my experience

Scary movies or happy endings?

I'm not much for horror but it's growing on me. It has to feel like it's *saying* something, though, i HATE paranormal stuff and mindless slasher flicks. But saccharine endings are no good either. so... i guess happy endings, if you make me pick.

Any talents?

Pedantry? uh. i'm very good at fucking around and still managing to mostly accomplish my original goal. Whether it be crafts or technology or even career stuff, I can usually approximate a result pretty well pretty quickly.

Where were you born

idk a hospital. apparently people actually give a damn about this stuff. there's lots of hospitals in my hometown so idk which one even lmao

What are your hobbies?

god i have SO MANY HOBBIES HELP. sewing. knitting. i weave rugs out of twine i get from work. i play warhammer 40k, and may end up getting into the fantasy side of it (i got an army as a gift for christmas lol). lots of video games (mostly FPS RPGs, and roguelikes, but a bit of everything). theoretically i like baking, although i hate doing dishes and don't own a dishwasher, so i... don't :( OH OH OH i write sometimes too... i never publish anything because i never finish anything but i do like writing

Do you have any pets?

How tall are you?

I HAVE A CAT HIS NAME IS WALL-E AND I LOVE HIM

LOOK AT HIM

5'9, or... ~175 cm

Favorite subject in school?

Biology :) though i don't like the cell stuff, i do better with things i can touch or see without a microscope.

Dream job?

zookeeper :) which i'm doing!!! but like. living wage zookeeper. would be great. with like. yknow. paid time off n stuff. that would be nice.

(don't feel pressured if i @ you <3)

@the-many-children-of-the-void @bonewhiteglory @zumer-feygele @testostergnomes @starspeckledabyss @cuntwrap--supreme and anyone else who wants to :)

[nikatyler]

Zeph 1.0

in other news we continue clowning for Astarion and letting him drink from us

(x)

Right so I don't know what or who to believe anymore in this goddamn game

I say goddamn but I still love it don't get me wrong

(x)

mum come pick me up i'm scared

now tell me why tf did i rush here with no spell slots left

yeah we're fucked, reload 💀

(x)

i may be a monster

(x)

I'm starting to get a headache but I wanna keep playing 🥴

Hyperfocus this, hyperfocus that, what about "I'm fully aware I should be doing something else or else I will suffer greatly but I can't stop and it's worth the pain" kinda focus

(x)

*You notice the blood's source* *Astarion approves* okay thanks??? 😂

(x)

"Can you imagine dressing entirely in red?" I'm not saving your ass when I create Ross for my next playthrough smh

(x)

I felt really really really bad about this and thought I was making a big mistake (I probably was 💀) but seeing only 7 % of players unlocked this? Yeah that's cool. Or maybe not. Idk I feel bad 💀

(x)

Trying to take down the bitch evil vampire again

Am I struggling? Mayhaps

We are Fucked™ lmao (that's a lmao of big pain not lmao of this is hilarious)

Alright let's try again

How do y'all not get attached and just play and stay cool because it's just a game. I'm 👌 this close to ugly rage crying lol stop being mean to my boy leave him alone stay away from him get a job

Not now duo dammit

...fuck

Yeah no I'm reloading and I'm just gonna fuck around the city a bit, I can't do this rn 💀

Okay so the strategy of 1) just go there 2) try not to die is not working too well in the big fights in act 3 for me 💀 oh well I'll try harder I guess

(x)

they need a pair of glasses smh

(x)

So I'm seriously considering throwing 2 weeks of gameplay in the trash just to get a better shot at a romance but…now I'm thinking about some tedious parts and ehhh 🫠

Is he worth it? He is worth it. Right?

Lmao I don't remember the last time a fictional character had a grasp on me like that. It's rather embarrassing really 💀 I'm too old to act like this aren't I 💀

(x)

Actually considering how bad today has been, reloading that far will probably Fix Me™ so I'm doing that right after a little afterwork nap

And if it turns out to be pointless or a bad idea I can always just switch back to the furthest point in the storyline I got, I won't overwrite that save

(x)

Sacrificing about 42 hours of gameplay 🫡 it's been an honor but I need the vampire's love more than oxygen. Reloading now 🫡

And I'm making sure to actually finish some quests I didn't the first time *cough* the shadow curse *cough*

(x)

I put him in Karlach's clothes...for science

(x)

HELP I'VE BEEN LAUGHING AT THIS FOR FIVE MINUTES NOW

(x)

I need to pickpocket people more. In the game I mean. Every time I succeed, I get a good giggle out of it 🤭

(x)

organ rearranger you say...can i...can i say something...

Okay we're all adults here right I can say it. Minors look away this isn't a safe space for you

Well let's just say I stole this for someone and he can rearrange my organs anytime okay byeeeeeeee

Well technically he stole it himself I just giggled with my finger ready on f8 in case things go badly 🤭

(x)

Okay so I just found that one reason why some things weren't going well for me was simply because I don't long rest enough in the game 💀

(x)

Me when I first started playing bg3: I hope there's a way to avoid a lot of combat, I hope I'll be able to just talk my way through Me now: woooo slaughter!! 😗

(x)

Nooo I was like "wooo yeah cutscene finally!!! is it happening?? are we so back???? we're so back amirite" and it's this guy 😭😭 (with all due respect i was hoping for something else 💀)

(x)

and it's only gonna get worse

let's goooooo

(x)

Does this game hate me or what

It's so joever it's so joever I'm just not getting any cutscenes in the camp lmao

My negative rizz is so strong not even videogame characters want me

(x)

You know what? I get her

(x)

WAIT HOLD WE ARE SO BACK

I USED TO PRAY FOR TIMES LIKE THIS *incoherent screaming*

I truly am the embodiment of this meme

I'm not even trying to scream anymore my voice is dead

I can't believe this actually happened so now I'm pretty much spamming the kiss, ignoring everything else

"I play for the plot" she said 🤭

(x)

my game crashed, good thing I save every five seconds otherwise I'd think about jumping off of very tall somethings

okay i actually lost like zero progress, jfc blessed day

(x)

Zeph you're standing way too close lol

(x)

"I'm gonna speedrun the parts I've been through about a week ago," she said, failing to realize she's not a good runner

There's no such thing as speedrunning this game lol. I just want to do everything always. Fight everything and open every crate and loot everyone 🤭

(x)

back to act 3 we go now that i've righted my wrongs 😌😌

(x)

wise words from daddy, wise words indeed

(x)

buddy you have one job

(x)

...okay?

(x)

"watch out for anyone acting STRANGELY" said by the guy who tries to suck your blood on like the first night of camping together but ok love whatever you say 💀

(x)

[69bitterbeingz]

IF YOU'RE GONNA BE DUMB || CH. 3

<- prev | next ->

DISCLAIMER: This is a reupload from my prev account! best to follow the fic through ao3 [linked below] to avoid any future issues PAIRINGS - johnny knoxville, bam margera, steve-o, chris pontius, ryan dunn x female reader WARNINGS - swearing, drinking, a little suggestive

ao3 version

In the end you didn’t make it to the bar, and apparently that was a controversial decision.

You didn’t actually remember when you passed out last night, but you woke up on your sofa at 11am, disoriented and exhausted. This had to be the earliest you’ve woken up in months , must have knocked out early because of the blow to your head. Through the bleary just-woke-up haze, you heard activity coming from your kitchen, making your ears perk. Someone was in your kitchen? You sure as hell didn’t bring anyone back from that shoot yesterday…

“Mila…?” You guessed.

“Nah, Dan.”

Yay, not an intruder! Your bones creaked miserably as you went from the sofa to the kitchen, but you always feel like that first thing in the morning. Dan was your drummer and a friend from secondary school - long black hair, odd braids twisted into his locks here and there. His hazel eyes always looked sunken, like he never caught a wink of sleep, but his slightly tanned skin hid it well. Like any metal artist, he had countless piercings and tattoos - you were always jealous of his coin slot mod in his ear, but never had the balls to get it done, even when he offered to give you one himself. Despite his appearance, Dan was incredibly gentle and soft spoken, but people always thought him some kind of tough guy . Maybe his stature didn’t help. At this moment in time, Dan was waiting for his tea to steep.

“I would’ve made you a coffee, but I didn’t think you’d be awake for another few hours.” He excused himself, his geordie accent especially thick [or maybe it just felt that way after a week of not seeing him]. You shrugged, rubbing your eye with the heel of your palm.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it, I’ll just go get one later.” You leaned against the counter, looking around for his partner. “Where’s Mila?”

“He went to bed as soon as we got back, you know what he’s like.”

Mila, lead guitar, Dan’s beloved [ick][just kidding]. Since Dan is a couple years older than you, he actually finished university, unlike you, which is where he met Mila. Mila was more of a pretty boy, blonde hair pulled back into a short spiky ponytail, with deep brown eyes and a permanent scowl. He was a little taller than Dan, covered in scars and homemade tattoos & piercings. It seems like every night of drinking he comes back with a new one of the three - you tell him he’s shit at all of them, but he’s nothing if not stubborn. Guess he’s a little like you in terms of his brash personality and ‘ fuck you I can totally do it’ attitude. Dan’s even offered to give the guy self defense lessons, but he’s too proud to take them. Idiot. 

“By the way–” Dan’s voice snapped you out of your thoughts. “Your phone was ringing earlier, few times really. Dunno who’s trying to get hold of you but you should probably ring back.”

Oh? 

Before you could forget, you scurried back into the living room and picked up your flip-phone, checking your missed calls. Two from the same guy, one from last night and one this morning - Chris. Did you remember to text him? You sucked the air through your teeth, probably not. You hit redial and fell back onto the sofa; as Chris picked up, Dan shuffled in the room to nose into your conversation.

“Hey, just woke up.”

“ Morning, just checking in. How’s the head?”

“Good, no complaints.” You leaned forward, rubbing your forehead. “Look, sorry I didn’t turn up to the bar last night.”

“ You abandoned us, I was hoping you’d show up.” You could hear his puppy dog eyes. “ Bam said you were wussing out, but he forgot about it a few beers in. I think he’s bitter you ditched him.”

You scoffed, a little unamused, a little flattered. “Brat. Whatever, I wasn’t gonna drink in case it killed my brain. I stand by that decision.”

“ If your head’s better then come out tonight! C’mooooon, you owe us for last night!” 

The anxious side of you wanted you to be cautious, maybe not go out for a few more nights just to make sure you don’t do any lasting damage. But where’s the fun in that?

“Alright fine, you’ve convinced me.”

“ Yes!! Awesome, I’ll text you the address for the place, we’ll meet at 7! We should go clubbing after, too.”

“Sure, 7pm, got it.”

“ Okay okay, I gotta go but I’ll see you tonight!”

He hung up pretty immediately after that, and putting your phone back down was Dan’s cue.

“...Have I missed something? You don’t have friends.”

“What about you guys? And Valo?” You defended, but he wasn’t convinced. 

“So who was that…? Did you actually put yourself out there?”

“Fine…” You fiddled with your hands. “I went to Ville’s show a couple weeks back, and he had one of his friends backstage, a guy called Bam.”

As soon as you said Bam’s name, Dan’s attention was grabbed.

“Bam Margera?”

You raised an eyebrow. “You know the guy?”

“Yeah, he was in those CKY tapes I showed you ages ago!”

“Oh…” You trailed off. “...I thought I recognised him from that new MTV show.”

“Go on!”

“Fine, anyway, we drank all night, went clubbing, got kicked out and a little beat up, then told me to come to the Jackass set. Did that yesterday and met like… 5 other guys. Even Tony was there.” You looked up at the ceiling as you tried to remember the name of the other guy you met. “I met the director too… Tremaine I think.”

Dan’s jaw damn near dropped .

“Jeff Tremaine? Big Brother Jeff Tremaine? Bloody hell if I knew that stupid show had Tremaine behind it I would’ve watched it.”

You raised your eyebrow. “Y’know, I don’t remember you being such a skater boy mega fan? I thought you were just super into the magazines.”

“Eh…” Dan sheepishly looked down at his mug of tea, drumming his fingers over the porcelain. “...Mila’s a bit of a skater boy.”

“Mila’s whatever the fuck he thinks is cool that week. He’s a chameleon.” You tossed your phone aside and kicked up your legs to recline on the sofa. “Last I checked he was a 'true punk', his words.” Dan didn’t respond, just switched on the TV and started flicking through channels. The mindless slog of the day had begun, much earlier than you were used to.

“So which of those five guys called you?” He kept the conversation going since clearly your brain hadn't started functioning properly yet. You grinned as Bunny’s face popped into your head.

“Guy called Chris Pontius, he’s sweet, likes dressing in little bikinis. He invited me out to a bar, so… guess that’s what I’m doing tonight.”

Dan smiled at you, eventually settling on Comedy Central and taking a sip of his tea. “It’s good to see you getting out the house, y’know? Glad you made some friends.”

You scoffed, hanging your head over the arm of the sofa. “Man, way to make me sound fuckin’ pathetic. Thanks mum.”

“What are you gonna do for the next 9 hours?”

Christ. 9 fucking hours? No way were you waiting that long. With a huff, you swung your legs off of the sofa to stand up, pocketing your phone on the way. 

“Shower, then I’m sleeping for 8 more hours.”

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

You were mostly kidding about sleeping that long, but lo and behold, 8 hours later you woke up to your cell phone ringing. Hazy and bleary eyed, you patted around for the little device lost in the sea of your duvet. Lucky for whoever was bothering you, you found it before it rang out.

“Unh, hello…?”

“ Did you just wake up? It’s fuckin’ 7pm.”

“Bam…?”

“ Get your ass out of bed, we’re picking you up. Where do you live?”

“...Uh, my mother told me not to give my address to strange men.”

“ Haha, c’mon already we’re already driving.”

“Fine, fine.”

As you relayed your address, you could hear general commotion in the background, the incessant snickering of mischievous daredevils. He hung up pretty immediately after, leaving you to get your shit together in time for their arrival. At least you had the good mind to shower before you knocked out, cut down your prep time by a solid hour. By the time the doorbell was ringing, you only just finished getting ready. You gave yourself a once over in the mirror - an old black slip dress with lace trim, ripped-to-shit fishnets, chunky demonias and a red leather jacket. To top it off, you had a silver ring on every finger [you remember Dan once said they were like knuckle dusters]. It was about time you left, if those assholes keep jamming the doorbell like that it’d break. Mila and Dan were cuddled up on the sofa when you ran down the stairs, almost tripping and eating shit when you stepped on your wedge platform wrong. They both waved you off as you ran for the door.

“Have fun.”

“Be back before 11, young lady!”

“Fuck off, Mila.” You yelled back, throwing open the door to see Bam about to spam the bell again. You grabbed his wrist before he got the chance. “Don’t.”

“Nice to see you, sleeping beauty. Let’s go.” 

Bam dragged you out of your driveway to the beat up Toyota Tacoma parked on the street, Chris waving at you from the driver seat. He stuck his head out the rolled down window to greet you with a goofy smile. “Wow, you look exhausted, your head still good?” 

In response, you smiled and knocked on the side of your head. “Good as it’ll ever be.”

“Awesome! Go on, get in!” But as soon as the back seat door swung open, you noticed a problem.

“Uh. Chris there’s only space for three back here.”

“No way, you can totally get four in.” Steve-O insisted, but you doubted it, it wasn’t exactly the biggest car in the world. Sensing your resistance, Bam clapped a hand on your shoulder.

“Guess somebody’s gotta sit on somebody else’s lap.”

His suggestion triggered everyone to start giggling like shitty teenagers, but like hell were you agreeing to what he was thinking of. Wordlessly, you pushed Bam aside and sat next to Steve. At first, Bam seemed confused, but he caught on when you patted your thighs.

“Get your ass in here, Margera.”

And that had them cackling . Johnny was holding his stomach in the front seat like it was the funniest shit ever, but he didn’t have the privilege of seeing Bam fidget and blush. You get why they pick on each other now, it was kinda fun to watch someone squirm. 

“Seriously?” He whined, and you nodded with a smirk. Defeated, hesitant and knowing he’d never hear the end of it, he climbed in and perched in your lap, having to uncomfortably crane his head to accommodate the low ceiling. “I can’t believe this shit.”

“Smile!”

“What?!”

Bam had just a second to react before Ryan snapped a picture on a throwaway kodak.

“Dude, come on!” Bam hissed, but you bumped your leg up to get him to shut up.

“It was your idea, Bammy.” The childish name you gave him didn’t help the red on his cheeks, though there wasn’t much he could really do other than hope the ride passed quickly. You screwed your nose up as you took note of the car’s smell.

“Aw Christ, it fuckin’ stinks in here.” You complained, and Johnny snickered.

“Probably Chris’ jockstraps in the back.”

“His–!” You kicked the back of Chris’ seat, making him laugh. “Why the fuck do you keep your jockstraps in here?”

Chris tried to explain through his giggles, “I fucking live here, man!”

“You live in your car…? Guess the smell makes sense then.”

Mercifully, the ride to the bar was pretty quick, though a lot more eventful than it should be. As fun as these guys are, you’re not sure you ever want to be in an enclosed space with them ever again. Bam was first out [can’t imagine why he was so desperate to get out], followed by the rest of you. The bar they had chosen looked like a pretty hole-in-the-wall place, kinda seedy, but you could get behind that. The music was so loud you could hear it from outside, thank god they were playing something good. As you followed the group in, an arm suddenly threw itself around your shoulders and drew you into a tall body.

“You ever been here before?” Johnny asked, raising his voice so he had a chance of being heard over the music. You shook your head, and he smiled. “Don’t worry, you’ll get acquainted real soon.” For whatever reason, the way he said that sent a shiver down your spine, and when he left your side to join the others at the bar you felt… disappointed. Dammit, stop thinking like that, you barely met this guy. You shook the feeling away and joined them as well, taking a seat on the other side of Chris as they ordered a round of tequila shots. He was quick to replace Johnny, throwing his arm over you and pulling you in close.

“You guys don’t start easy, huh?” You asked, the shots already set down in front of the six of you with a bowl of lime wedges and a salt shaker. Chris snorted, squeezing your shoulder.

“We started hours ago. C’mon, set up.” He offered you the salt shaker, so you smiled and licked the side of your hand. On went the salt, then you passed it down the line; once Ryan was done at the end of that line, everyone raised their shot glass, and you fumbled to follow along. 

“ Prost! ” Steve-O cheered, then down the hatch. You all followed suit, quickly sucking the lime after as you cringed at the tequila taste. You never liked spirits all that much - you couldn’t get over that perfume taste - but hell, you’ll drink whatever’s set in front of you. Again, Chris ended up leaning against you, a dopey grin on his face.

“You’re one of us now, [Y/n].” There was a boyish giddiness in his voice that made you smile, and you glanced back at the others, Bam already smacking Dunn’s arm for god knows what. There was an air of comradery among them, one you didn’t quite feel at the shoot yesterday, but you definitely felt it now. It was infectious, too, encouraging you to flag down the bartender.

“Can I get six kamikazes?” The bartender nodded, quick to set up the shots. Johnny playfully punched your shoulder, stealing away your attention.

“Ain’t that sweet? Buying a round for a buncha guys you just met?”

“Actually they’re for me.” 

Johnny barked out a laugh, while Bam booed and said something along the lines of ‘fucking alcoholic’. Six more shots in your hands, and Johnny nudged you with a look. Was it your turn to cheers? You only knew one interesting one. So, you raised your shot glass, the others following like before, and with a tilt of your glass you called:

“ Payehali! ”

Down the hatch. Kamikazes are way easier to stomach. Steve-O leaned forward to look past Johnny. “What does that mean?”

“God knows, some Russian guy taught me that a couple years back.”

“I should remember that for the next time Dimitry comes out with us.” Johnny commented, some murmurs of agreement as you guessed that was yet another man you’re yet to meet. Things continued in that fashion: a round of shots, somebody gets to show off some cool cheers, rinse and repeat. After 5 rounds, the group started to splinter - some took an interest in darts, some in pool - for now, you were trying to aim a dart while your head felt full of cotton.

“Just throw it already!” Bam called out, beer bottle rim pressed to his lips. You scowled, waving him off.

“ Shuddup! I’m seein’ double here…”

“Already?! Christ, you’re a fucking lightweight.”

“You can’t talk.” Johnny cut in, cracking a smile when Bam glared at him.

“What’re you talking about?? I’m not a goddamn lightweight.”

“You’re just as drunk as her. Look, you’re wobbling like a fawn fresh out the womb.” He cackled as he pushed Bam’s shoulder, enough to throw him off balance. All the background noise seemed to blend together as you focused all your brain power on that goddamn dart board. One eye closed and tongue poking out the side of your mouth, you decided fuck it and just tossed it. The dart lodged itself in the cork near the bottom, but you victoriously fist bumped nonetheless.

“What’re you celebrating for?” Bam asked, stumbling forward and practically crashing into your shoulder. Rolling your eyes, you jabbed his shoulder.

“It hit the board, didn’t it?” 

“Yeah, unlike the last 5 darts.”

“So? a win’s a win.”

Bam downed the rest of his beer and plucked out the dart from the board. “Watch ‘n learn.”

Meanwhile, Johnny was more interested in watching you than Bam, leaning against a table with a beer in hand. You stood back with him, shoulders nearly brushing, and he smiled down at you.

“You seem comfortable.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I mean ’m half pissed so…” You glanced at up at him then back at your glass, swirling the liquid.

“Just mentioning it, you seemed a little stand-offish yesterday, nice to see you loosen up.”

“Hard not to with a gin and tonic.”

Johnny nodded, took a swig then set down his bottle. “You know you put on a great show yesterday. I was a li’l concerned when you took that hit, you had this crazed look in your eye. Still surprised you got back up with no helmet.” Ohhh yeah, the ramp. You still remembered the buzz in your chest as you stared up at the sky, blood pumping like never before. You shrugged, sipping your drink.

“I don’t know, adrenaline felt pretty cool, plus I wanted to show up Margera.” You clumsily motioned to Bam with your glass, spilling some of your drink over the side. On cue, he yelled ‘fuck!’, the dart just missing the board.

“I win, loser buys me a drink.” Johnny grinned. “[Y/n], that’s you.”

“Fuck this, gonna go find Ryan.” With that, Bam was gone. Johnny followed you to the bar where the conversation continued.

“We got some great footage - the wipeout, the way you bombed into the lake.” He laughed as he thought back on it, grabbing his new beer. For a moment, you were too focused on his smile to pay attention to what he was saying. “By the way, Jeff wanted to ask if we could put it in the show, but you disappeared.”

You raised your eyebrows. “Oh… sure, I don’ care.”

“I didn’t think you would.” 

Usually, the booze would make it much easier for you to talk by this point, but somehow Johnny still made you nervous. What about him made you so nervous…? 

“You should come by more often, ‘specially if you pull more shit like that. Impulse is welcome ‘round here.” Maybe it was the drink making your hearing weird, but you swear his southern drawl was a lot thicker 6 drinks deep. Then you realised that he was inviting you back to set, maybe even accepting you into his crazy little group. Though a part of you was apprehensive, a lot more of you was excited, like you had accomplished something. When did you suddenly get so hung up on someone else's approval? You’ve never really been one to want to be included… you guess the drink makes you vulnerable. Or at least you preferred that excuse.

“Fuck it, I’m down! I’ll do anything if it’s fun.” You chuckled to yourself, and knocked back the rest of your drink. 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He got up from his stool, nudging your shoulder with his cold bottle. “‘M going for a piss.”

And off he goes; like hell you were waiting around on your own. You scanned the bar for any of the other familiar faces, then spotted Chris and Steve-O at the pool table. Unsteady on your feet, you abandoned the bar and crossed over to the dingy corner as Steve-O polished the end of his pool cue.

“[Y/n]!” Chris greeted, pulling you in with an arm around your shoulders. “Play a game with us!”

“You any good at pool?” Steve-O asked, and you shrugged.

“Decent.”

“Good enough, here.” He handed you the long cue, almost smacking you across the face with it. Ryan ended up joining the game on Chris’ side, but somehow you and Steve-O won, despite you barely remembering the rules and confusing them with snooker rules half the time. You and Steve whooped, clinking your beer bottles and basking in the glory.

“Fuck darts, I’m playing pool for the rest of my life!”

Steve-O pointed at the guys on the other side of the table, slamming back their drinks like their lives depended on it. “Loser shoves the cue up his ass.”

Ryan immediately left, while Chris giggled and twirled his hair. “Maybe if you take me out to dinner first!”

“Chris, I’ll give you five bucks if you do it.” You were only half joking.

“Five bucks?”

“Yeah, for the whole thing.”

“ The–” Chris was howling at just the idea of it. “The whole thing? Up my ass?”

“C’mon Chris, I’ve seen you take more.” Steve-O couldn’t stop grinning like a maniac, and soon it was suggested another round was gotten in before the next game. Then another, and another. Eventually, you never did get around to another game. You lost count of how many drinks later it was, but everyone got kicked out for unruly conduct - it was either because Bam was trying to pick a fight with a random drunk or because Chris dropped his pants to get started on that pool cue. Either way, you arguing with security didn’t help anyone’s case. At least they didn’t care enough to take your beers, that would be tragic.

“ Fuckin’ asshole .” You hissed under your breath, and Bam pushed you.

“You’ve gotta stop fucking doing that.”

“Whatever, let’s just go clubbing! It was getting boring anyway.” Everyone seemed to agree with Pontius, and despite barely seeing straight, you thought it was a great idea too. You all paraded down the street, loudly singing a Johnny Cash song, generally being a public nuisance. Somebody stumbled into you, and next thing you know, Ryan was next to you. 

"You really kicked our asses at pool, huh?"

"I don't know how, swear that was a total flook, didn't know what I was fuckin' doing." You chuckled to yourself as you raised your beer to your lips, then realised you'd already drank it all so dropped it on the pavement. "Barely saw you for most of the night."

"Yeah, Bam needs a lotta attention." The blonde looked you up and down, then nodded his head towards Bam down the front of the group. "Y'know he doesn't shut up about you?"

You raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"

"Honestly it's fuckin' annoying. Makes me think I'm missing out or something."

Without thinking, you blurted out, "Gimme your number 'n I can keep you clued in." Ryan was clearly taken aback - after all, kind of forward for someone he just met - but you barely noticed, to wasted to pick up on pretty much anything at this point. He seemed to hesitate, but ultimately held out his hand for you to hand your phone over.

"...Alright, what the hell."

It was quick; luckily, he was marginally less drunk than the rest of them, so small buttons weren't really an issue at that time. When he handed back the device, you gave him a wide grin, like you'd tricked him into something. With that, he nodded at you and went ahead to join his best friend. You toyed with the weight of your phone in your hand, watching the charms jostle - still smiling like an idiot. Three down.