#Best Quality Makeup Products
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shoptastics · 3 months ago
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Why Professional Makeup Products Are Essential for Your Routine
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Choosing the proper cosmetics is crucial to having clean and glowing skin. Integrating professional makeup products into your beauty routine is vital for many individuals. This blog explores the differences between high-end cosmetics and everyday products, highlighting the importance of using professional makeup products. Additionally, we’ll discuss how selecting the best products from top online makeup stores ensures you find the perfect makeup for your needs.
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dheerajquintus · 4 months ago
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cosmetic shop in ratlam
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Are you on the lookout for the greatest cosmetics in Ratlam? Look no further! Discover the exceptional beauty store in Ratlam at Ten on Ten, your closing vacation spot for all things beauty. Whether you're purchasing for top class make-up, skin care, or splendor merchandise, we've the entirety you want to beautify your herbal glow.
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At Ten on Ten, we're dedicated to presenting you with the very best fine cosmetics and first rate customer service. Shop with self belief and let us help you appearance and experience your first-rate!
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nutriglowprivatelabel · 1 year ago
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Embrace beauty with compassion! 📷 Our private label cosmetics are proudly cruelty-free, ensuring that no animals were harmed in the process. Join us on the journey towards a kinder and more ethical beauty routine.
Visit Us: https://nutriglowprivatelabel.com/products/ 📷📷 #CrueltyFreeBeauty #EthicalCosmetics #CompassionateGlam #NoAnimalTesting #BeautyWithPurpose #CrueltyFreeMakeup
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rockingbytheseaside · 18 days ago
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✦ You test out a new lipstick
(Pierro, Capitano, Dottore, Scaramouche, Pantalone, Tartaglia)
Tw: smooches! Shield your eyes!
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Oh, would you look at that, you bought a new lipstick. You just need to test whether it wears down quickly or leaves any mark. 
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✧ Pierro is in a haste. You blurt out that you need a new lipstick once, and the next thing you know, he purchases several high-quality ones for you. Offering you swatches of colors, makeup removers, different shades, and lipstick textures, he observes with analytical admiration as you sit in front of a mirror and apply the lipstick carefully. 
One last step is missing – to try its imprint. The Jester is ready to reach for a napkin to let you try. But you only smiled. Before he can comprehend, your hand reaches to turn his head and gently guides him closer to your lips until you sweetly capture his. It’s not often that The Jester experiences a complete blank out, but when you deliberately trace your lips across his skin and start preparing his face with kisses, how else is he supposed to react? Hold in his hitched breaths? Not deepen the kisses to relish the ambrosia of your lips?
Suffice it to say, you are proud of the imprints on his pale skin. He seems even prouder, wearing them like a badge of honor, despite his stoic appearance.
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✧ You asked Il Capitano to evaluate the new shade of lipstick you bought. Like any loving partner, the honorable Captain stated honestly that any hue suits you elegantly. Even if his knowledge of cosmetics is minimal, he felt delighted and proud of your looks.  
But that wasn’t the issue. Now you were standing in front of him, smiling menacingly.  
“What is it, my treasure?”  
You stepped closer.  
“Dear…?”  
You stepped even closer. Oh no, thought the Captain, he’s in danger. His pleas for reason and mercy went unheard. Instead, he faced a bigger battle—a battle that left his helmet not with scratches but with various imprints of your kisses. You stood triumphantly, happy with your lipstick and the numerous marks on his helmet and neck. 
Il Capitano lost the battle that day. 
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✧ At last, Il Dottore mused to himself, the perfect hue of lipstick designed scientifically for you. You voiced your issue in finding a suitable shade of makeup for yourself, hence you asked none other than your beloved to find a logical solution. So he took matters into his own hands to find the best chemical solution and accurately create the best shade to match your skin. 
Naturally, it was a success. With his gloves stained in various colorful substances, he proudly handed you a slender tube with a delicate black cap from the table as if it were a casual concoction he could make on a whimsy. Hence, you thanked him and blithely applied it on the spot.
“Dottore, it turned out magnificently!” – you said as you looked into the reflection of your face. But when you turned to look at him, Dottore’s complexion went vaguely blank. “Hm, what is it? Isn't it good? You made it matte, too.” 
He silently stepped forward; even behind his black mask, you could sense his full attention zooming on the beauty of your lips. 
"Well, true... I formulated it to be stain-proof, so it won't smudge as you go about your day. However," - he hummed, his hand cupping your jawline warmly. "Every product requires assiduous testing. We could conduct a few tests of our own to ensure its performance. If I may," 
Of course, he would test it personally. Of course, he then captures your lips in a kiss, his hand on the back of your head, his touch an ardent mix of passion and desire. He explores your mouth, his tongue caressing yours with a fervor, wanting to test how long the lipstick will last under the pressure of his kisses. You should've expected this, as his other hand encloses around you to press you flush against him. 
"Ah... interesting. It's held up quite well. There's no transfer on your skin or mine, but I do think further testing is necessary."
“Enough, enough! That’s plenty of testing from you!” 
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✧ Scaramouche dislikes shopping. It’s a hassle, truly. You requested him to accompany you on a leisurely stroll, oblivious of your trap to drag him to some quick shopping. Except this quick shopping turned into a full-blown shopping spree. The question is: was he here to accompany you or to pull you away from wasting all your Mora on fleeting indulgences?
“No, you don't need any more clothes. You have plenty of unworn ones.”
“No, we don't need any more plushies, your bed is already littered with them.”
“And no, you already had some snacks on the way here. Stop buying more!”
You couldn't escape his stern reminders, even if they were practical. However, there was still one shop you left as an ace up your sleeves. Before finishing today's trip, you encouraged The Balladeer to join you in cosmetics shopping. Your innocent smile spoke promises of letting him choose your new lipstick color if he so desired, and the allure of it caused him to halt. 
“... Me? Why must I choose? Can't you pick a simple color and call it a day, huh?” - Scaramouche feigned annoyance when, in reality, he quickly grabbed your arm and led you hastily to the boutique. “We'll quickly buy one, but don't get any ideas that we're staying here for any longer.”
Poor Harbinger; he didn't have to lie to himself so cruelly. The two of you stayed in the boutique for a long while, not because you were indecisive, but because Scaramouche suddenly took the matters with utter seriousness. Should he suggest a carnelian shade? It would match with his own red eyeshade. Or perhaps a darker one would suit your complexion? Especially if you decided to leave contrasting lipstick imprints all over his porcelain skin- 
Scaramouche shook his head. Your voice interrupted his train of thought.
“Um… Scara, sweetie? Could we decide already? We spent the whole day in this shop.”
“We'll buy all of them, then,” - he held up your face, his full focus on you as you timidly averted your gaze. “Here. Now let me help you apply it.” 
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✧ Pantalone sat behind his desk, fingers intertwined thoughtfully. Silver glasses cast a shadow upon his already darkened gaze. His expression, unfortunately, was far from pleased. 
“L-lord Harbinger Regrator,” – the Fatui subordinate uttered. “It is with utmost sorrow that I must inform you that- that the cosmetologists you hired have not finished their work. They are still in the process of creating the products you requested.” 
The silence of the office was deafening. The Harbinger granted no mercy with his prolonged pause.
“... I commission the best cosmetologist in all of Teyvat, and they still dare to waste my Mora and time? Is this some frivolous matter for them?” - The Harbinger's hands sternly pressed against the table, his voice raised “My beloved requested a new lipstick! They deserve the best of the best, as soon as possible!” 
“Uh, honey… I am still here in the room.” - your voice interjected awkwardly. Indeed, it's true; you are sitting nearby, blinking in confusion. You waved at the Fatui subordinate to take it easy, signaling sympathetically that your partner was having another one of his ambitious episodes. 
“Honey, my love, this is no fleeting matter! I wanted you to get the highest, custom-made quality for cosmetics. You rarely ask for anything, but when you do, I can't just let you down!” 
“It's just lipstick…! I didn't even say what color or kind I wanted.”
“And that's precisely why you shall get all of them. You there,” - he signaled back to the subordinate swiftly. “Quick, send the letters to those cosmetic chemists to hurry up if they want to make themselves worth the Mora. Delays are not negotiable.”
With the Fatui worker scurrying away in a hurry, Pantalone sighed deeply before plopping down beside you on the sofa of his office. You patted his back, amused by his sudden precedence over something so mundane. 
“There, there, Pantalone. You know it's nothing urgent. It's just lipstick.”
“Not any lipstick. Your lipstick, darling! I need to see you don the most dazzling color on your lips.” He turned to gently trace his thumb across your jawline, his voice softening. “...The lips that should be showering me with kisses and leaving lipstick prints on my skin.”
You laughed heartily – “Oh, so that's what it's all about? You know, makeup or no makeup, I can still kiss y-”
You didn't register how The Harbinger's head bowed lowly in reverence. “I would pay you any amount of Mora for you to do so.” 
Pantalone truly knows how to blow up over the most bizarre things. Either way, as the weeks passed, the newly ordered cosmetics did arrive as instructed. How did people know? Because Pantalone didn’t shy away from flaunting the traces of your delicate lips on his neck and blouse. A testament to stolen kisses and intimate moments behind closed doors. His triumphant grin says it all. 
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✧ Your ever-observant boyfriend, Tartaglia, noticed you mulling something over by the mirror. You seemed in deep focus, a new item in your hands as you inspected your visage. You tried on a new lipstick! 
Childe, being the endearing goofball that he is, complimented your new purchase with delight. You appreciated his knack for noticing even the smallest changes, even if you didn't directly tell him you tried on something new. All was well! 
Or was it? For beneath his easygoing smile, in the deepest recesses of his soul, Tartaglia was begging, crying, screaming. He wanted to hold your face in his palms and kiss you senseless. He wished to taste the sweetness of your lips until this adorable color of your lipstick was smeared on both of your faces. He wished to soak in the warmth of your pecks and kisses, dreaming for your touch to litter his face with imprints.  
Did he say all of that? Of course not. He kept beaming at you in adoration, his smile tender while his thoughts devouring. Yet, after days of wrestling with his unspoken desires, Childe devised a plan – a very, very subtle plan.
“Oh nooo,” - he lamented dramatically, leaning against the doorway with a hand draped theatrically over his forehead. “If only my beloved was here to bestow me some loving kisses, especially when they look so alluring in their new lipstick! If only!” 
You raised an eyebrow at Tartaglia’s shenanigans as if asking him: Really? What is this damsel in distress act? Nonetheless, luckily for the 11th, his oh-so-subtle hints hit the mark, because you happily cupped his cheeks and smooched them with fervor, feeling his warm skin under your lips as he chuckled.  
Needless to say, your lipstick didn’t stand a chance.
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colebabey888 · 4 months ago
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Cultivating Your Signature It Girl Aesthetic | THE IT GIRL DIARIES
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Fashion and style are critical components of the ideal It Girl. However, style is not about following every trend, you are the inspiration, the trendsetter, the It Girl style is about creating a look that is uniquely yours, an appearance that no one else can replicate but instead only have deep admiration for it. It’s about creating a personal brand that feels true to who you are and owning it.
How to discover and curate your signature look?
Know Your Aesthetic
Identify your fashion preferences. Are you drawn to classy elegance, barbie doll pink, edgy streetwear, coquette or bohemian chic? Curate a wardrobe that reflects this aesthetic consistently. Identifying your aesthetic does not mean limiting yourself to only that, else you're just another follower taking inspiration from the trendsetter. Take your aesthetic and make it your own, add your touch of personality and characteristic to it, give it a bit of you.
Invest in Staples
Build your wardrobe around staple pieces that can be mixed and matched. Classic items like plain white or black tees, versatile denim, fitted slacks, clothing that can never go out of style because it can always be made into something more.
Embrace Your Natural Features
Celebrate what makes you you. If you have big lips or eyes, find ways to accentuate them! Instead of conforming to trends that don't serve your look, embrace and elevate your features. For instance, laminating your brows for a neat, polished appearance instead of shaving them all off and redrawing them on like.. Discover beauty techniques that enhance your natural beauty rather than masking it.
Maintain a Signature Hair Routine
Your hair is one of your defining traits! Whether you have silky straight hair or kinky 4b curls, a consistent haircare routine helps you feel polished and put together. Invest in treatments that align with your hair type and goals—like deep conditioning and hot oil treatments for moisture and strength. If you love to wear your hair sleek, using heat protectants and frizz control products will help maintain your signature look while preventing damage.
Curate a Low-Maintenance Glam Look
You don’t have to spend hours on makeup to feel fabulous. Find key beauty steps that give you lasting results, like applying a lip tint every third day to keep your lips subtly flushed without constant reapplication. Design a makeup routine that emphasizes your key features. A weekly face mask tailored to your skin’s needs helps keep your complexion glowing. Embrace easy, effective beauty hacks that fit seamlessly into your routine.
Focus on Clean, Minimal Elegance
True elegance comes from appearance and how you carry yourself. Paying attention to skin, hair, and environmental cleanliness, moving with grace and poise. Keeping things simple yet chic, whether it’s maintaining a daily skincare routine or practicing oil pulling—ensure you’re always putting your best self forward. The key is consistency and subtlety, qualities that define It Girl charm.
Stick to What Works
The It Girl aesthetic isn’t about following every trend—it’s about finding what works for you and sticking with it. Your style and beauty choices should reflect what feels comfortable and sustainable for you.
Your personal style should reflect who you are on the inside and help you radiate confidence. Discover what feels authentic, and from there, curate a signature It Girl aesthetic that highlights your best self.
mwah! xoxo, colebabey8.88
www.thedigitaldollar/gumroad.com
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asofttouchbymaria · 2 years ago
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Sweet bride Noemy 💋on her wedding day July 1, 2023
A little bit more dramatic but elegant and classy look!
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blindmagdalena · 6 months ago
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All of a Sudden, There You Are
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3k. homelander x gn!reader. pining. pure fluff! an older fic that desperately needed cleaning up. rewritten for a consistent perspective and added 600-some words. gif credit. AO3 link.
As Homelander's stylist, it's your job to ensure he looks his best, whether he's saving the world or saving face in front of the cameras. After nearly a year servicing him, things between you change abruptly.
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Familiarity and consistency feed a base need in all of us. So much of what is best in us is bound up in the permanence of those around us that it becomes the measure of our stability. For Homelander, there are precious few things in his life that offer him any such quality of solidarity. People come and go. It's the nature of the business that has always been his life.
He's stopped paying attention to the PA's, interns and other worker ants that rotate in and out. Their faces blend together in a bland sea of normality and mediocrity. They're little more than cogs in the machine of his contrastingly extraordinary life.
Funny, then, that you should catch his attention amidst the insectoid buzz of it all.
It happens quite abruptly. He's just sat down before a brightly lit vanity where it's your job to style his hair and makeup, as it has been for the last several months. You greet him good morning, as you do every time, but for whatever reason... He notices you today.
"Remind me, what's your name again?" Homelander asks, watching you draw a comb from your kit.
That visibly catches you off guard. You offer only a dumbfounded stare for a moment before snapping to attention, smiling sheepishly as you introduce yourself. The name doesn't sound familiar to him. Had he never actually asked? Probably not. There’s rarely a point in bothering.
He hums contemplatively. "You've been styling me for a while.”
"Yes, sir. About eight months now," you say, using the comb to begin working product through his hair. He’s fairly certain this is the most he's ever spoken to you in all that time.
That sounds like both a long while and yet no time at all. It's nothing in the grand scheme of his life, but in terms of the people he sees consistently, that puts you in a shockingly small pool of individuals. Inevitably they move on, whether by choice or because they’ve found a way to irritate him enough that he has them dismissed.
He can recall his last stylist not by their name or face, but by the way they’d always manage to spray product in his eyes. They hadn’t lasted two days. The one before that he can’t bring to mind a single detail of.
Typically humans only become exceptional to him for how they grate on his patience. You’ve somehow managed to avoid making yourself noteworthy in that regard. Before today you had served as little more than a properly functioning gear in the well-oiled machine of his life.
Now it's as though you suddenly exist to him. Blood, flesh, laughter and all.
"Gooood morning," he greets you the next day, once again triggering another flare of surprise in you. He’s aware of the strangeness of his initiation, but behaves as though he isn’t. He flashes you one of his trademark Hollywood grins.
"Good morning to you, sir," you say with an answering smile that catches his eye. You sound pleased, which tickles something pleasant in the back of his own mind. He likes how well you’re mirroring his shift in mannerism.
He waves his hand dismissively. "Please, Homelander is fine. You keep it awfully formal."
You're actually quite pretty, he notices. Not exceptionally so, not like the celebrities and figures of social influence that someone like him brushes shoulders with on a daily basis, but... pretty nonetheless. He doesn't remember you being this pretty before, and speculates while you work whether you've changed something about yourself. He cannot put his finger on what exactly that may be, though.
He’s perceptive when it comes to the things that matter. Until yesterday, you hadn’t.
You laugh sweetly, pushing your fingers through his hair. His eyes flutter shut as you do. You’re good with your hands, much better than the last stylist. He’s sure he made note of that at some point, but in the same way someone notices when a door stops squeaking. You take it for granted after the first time.
"I'm a creature of habit. Might take me a couple tries to adjust," you warn, covering his forehead with your palm as you spritz product into his hair. You never let any of that sticky crap get on his face, much less in his eyes. You take measures to ensure his comfort, even though he’s never scolded you. You seem to do it entirely out of reflex simply because you care enough to.
"Well, you've made it this far. You've got time to adjust," he says. Now that he's seen you, he finds that he doesn't care for the thought of you being gone. More than that, he starts actively looking forward to the time he spends in the chair with you. What used to be a monotonous aspect of the celebrity side of his life becomes a comforting ritual. 
The two of you chat with surprising ease, like old friends made new. He tells you about himself, vents to you about work and personal business alike. In turn he learns about you and the life you live beyond the time you share with him. It’s nothing extraordinary–not like his–but it's yours, and for some reason, that’s enough to make it interesting.
The more he grasps that you are an entire person outside of the service you provide him, the more he wants to know. He doesn’t give a fuck about your elderly cat, but he does like the way your voice changes when you talk about it. His mind drifts when you tell him these little anecdotes, and he wonders what you tell the people in your life about him. He wonders if your tone similarly changes when you do. Do you speak fondly of him? Days turn to weeks. Little by little, Homelander discerns small changes in himself. There’s a slight pep in his step these days. The sun feels a little warmer, the thrum of crowded events less irritating. His attitude towards interviews flips; even the ones he used to dread he begins to anticipate. He knows you’ll have him looking and feeling his finest. He knows that regardless of what awaits him, you’ll have something to say about it that will make it easier to smile for the cameras.
Thinking of you is sometimes all it takes.
When he has nothing on his schedule to be styled for, he sulks. On those days, he misses your laugh the most. 
He makes sure the products he keeps at home are the same as the ones you use. The smell of them reminds him of the smell of you, of your knock-off Dior perfume that fades too quickly after you apply it, which makes it just perfect for his keen sense of smell. The humble subtlety of you, your sincerity and gentleness, have become a boon against the unfeeling corporate reality of his life. On the days he does see you, he begins to miss you before he’s even left you. Now, as he walks to his next scheduled appointment with you, he’s painfully aware of the beat of his own heart. His stomach is twisting in on itself, though he isn’t hungry. If anything, he feels a little nauseous. The closer he gets to the door, the louder the cacophony inside of him becomes. Is he sick? That shouldn’t be possible, but he can’t understand what’s happening to him. Pausing just outside the door, he takes in a steadying breath.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
Taking a moment to collect himself, he gives his face two quick pats on either side, shaking his head. Get it together, he tells himself, stepping into the dressing room. 
“Gooood morn–” Homelander cuts himself short, looking around the empty room. His brows pinch. He isn’t early. Pursing his lips, he takes a brief stroll about the room, clutching his hands behind his back. He peers down the hallway, cutting through the layers of wall with his vision. No sign of you on the grounds yet. He clicks his tongue. 
You’ve never been late. Unable to settle, he paces for a while. He has the thought to call you, but he realizes he doesn’t have your number. Why doesn’t he have your number? It seems such an obvious thing to have despite the fact he’s never needed it.
He’s just pulled out his cellphone to track it down from Ashley when the door suddenly opens and his head snaps up. The initial relief he feels is cut short, turning cold in his chest when the person who steps through the door is most definitely not you. “Good morning!” the woman greets him, her voice chirpy and grating in his ears. She’s not really happy to see him. She doesn’t know the first fucking thing about him. At most, she’s another sycophantic drone who’s only pleased to breathe his air. In his upset, she looks freakishly distorted, her smile overly wide and fake. His leather gloves creak as he curls his hands into fists. “Who the fuck are you?” he asks, voice as measured as he can manage it. His anger hits in an unreasonable surge, hot like lava from a volcano. This woman’s only crime is the fact she’s not you, and yet it’s enough to make him want to rip her head off her shoulders, spine and all. The woman hesitates in the doorway, her chipper demeanor flipping to a fearful one. “Uhm, my name is Lisa, I’m supposed to style you to–” “Where is my stylist?” he interrupts her, prowling towards her like a hungry predator. He says again, louder this time, voice full of anger and anxiety in equal measure, “Where the fuck is my stylist?!” “I– I don’t know!” Lisa yelps, stepping backwards from him. “I was called in as a last minute replacement! They said– they said there was an accident, or–” Homelander pushes her roughly out of the doorway, blowing past her with a frustrated growl. She hits the wall hard before crumpling to the floor like a lifeless sack of potatoes, but he doesn’t even register it. He calls Ashley, stalking down the hallway, his footfalls loud with fury. Why the fuck didn’t anyone think to tell him? “Ashley!” He snarls into his phone the second she answers. “Tell me where the fuck my goddamn stylist is.”
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Homelander is at the hospital within minutes. The staff puts up a meager effort to enforce protocols, but he’s The Homelander, and after a lie or two, they eventually let him through. He hates the smell of hospitals. The sickly mix of bleach and illness, the buzzing of the fluorescent lights. They never should have brought you here. You should be in Vought’s med ward.
You should be with him. When he finds you, you’re sitting with the hospital bed halfway reclined, wearing nothing but a hospital gown. The vibrant reds and blues of his suit paint a sharp contrast to the stark white walls of the hospital room when he steps inside. You have a pudding cup in your hand, though you nearly drop it when you see him in the doorway. His hair is woefully unstyled, splayed loose in every direction from his flight. “H-Homelander,” you sputter, choking on your bite of pudding. You swallow, clearing your throat. He’s walking towards you. The closer he gets, the faster your heart beats in his ears. “What are you doing here?” “Are you okay?” He asks, blowing off your question entirely. He blinks and his vision flickers through your clothes and skin alike. He scans your body for internal damage, for broken or fractured bones. You’re not wearing a cast or anything, but he needs to be sure. You nod, clutching at the blanket, wearing your confusion plainly on your face. “Yeah, I’m okay, it’s probably just mild whiplash, but I’m getting an x-ray to be–” “You’re fine,” he breathes more to himself than to you, his relief palpable. He can hear the flustered patter of your heart clearly. With the adrenaline wearing off, he’s beginning to feel that sickly familiar feeling that he had experienced in the hallway; butterflies rampant in his stomach, battering their wings frantically inside him. His jaw feels tight, his tongue too big for his mouth. Staring at you now, frail and precious as you are in this ugly hospital bed, he realizes what’s the matter–what has always been the matter–he is deeply and incurably in love with you. “Are you okay?” You ask, taking in his tortured expression, his wildly wind-swept hair. The obvious concern in your voice and in your eyes churns his already twisting gut. “No,” he says, the response knee-jerk. Even though the room is still, he feels as though the world is spinning around him. “No, I think I’m in love with you,” he says, expression twisted up, like he’s figuring out each word as he says them. Your heart skips a beat, your breath catches in your lungs. It’s as if the words have paralyzed you. Homelander laughs. It sounds a little hysterical. 
“I’m telling you all of a sudden, but it isn’t new with me,” he says, reaching out to cup either side of your face in his gloved hands. “I love you,” he says, voice firmer now, the realization setting in fully. He looks slightly delirious with it. He’s discovered a secret that he should have known all along, that seems so obvious in hindsight. Of course he loves you, because you love him. The gentleness in your hands as you touched his face, the care in your fingers stroking through his hair far longer than both of you knew you needed to. You dedicated yourself like no other to showing him reverence in service of him, and is that not love in its purest form? And yet, you don’t look to share his elation. You look like you’ve been struck by lightning, expression wide and bewildered. You still haven’t taken a breath. Homelander’s smile falters. “What’s the matter?” He asks, tone dropping a touch. “This is good news! Great, even.” For every second that you do not speak, the beat of his heart feels heavier in his chest. Why don’t you look happy? Finally, you suck in a shaky breath. He watches you with all the intensity of a viper poised to strike.
“I…” You hesitate. You lift your hands and grip his wrists, squeezing them through the thick fabric of his gloves as if to convince yourself that he’s really there. Maybe the accident was worse than he thought. Did you hit your head? 
Panic swells in his chest. It hadn’t occurred to him you might not reciprocate. The thought makes him ill.
“I never…” your eyes turn glassy, welling with tears. “Say it!” he wants to shout, his own heart hammering loudly enough to nearly drown out your words.  “I never would have thought–or even dreamed–in a million years that you might love me back.”
love me back.
Like a dying ember roaring back to life, Homelander’s demeanor reignites, his faded smile broadening once more. 
“I realized it when I was worried fucking sick because you didn't show up,” he says, leaning closer to you. He’s brought the scent of ozone from the sky he tore through on his way to you, but all he cares about is the faint smell of pudding lingering on your lips.
He huffs a laugh. “They sent in some idiot to fill in for you. Like they could replace you. I almost tore her head off,” he says, giddy with euphoria. Your expression shifts, brows furrowing. “Wait, what? You almost-” “I’m gonna kiss you now,” he interrupts, his voice a low rumble. He can already taste you in the breaths you’re close enough to share with him, and he’s never been hungrier for anything–or anyone–in his life. You fall silent with a shiver, nodding minutely, eyes falling shut. “Please do.” His lips meet yours in a gentle press. He deserves a medal for not crushing you with the sheer magnitude of his desire. You all but melt against him, settling into his grip as smoothly as you settled into his life, his mind, his heart. When the two of you break apart, you make a breathless noise that shoots through him like a bolt of lightning. He feels hyper aware of your every sound and move.
God, how he wants to feel every part of you. 
You move your hands to touch his face and he leans into the softness of your caress. You’ve been close enough to kiss more times than he can count. The fact it’s only now occurred to him to do so seems like lunacy. Your eyes dip to his lips, your thumb brushes the bottom one. He catches it with a quick kiss and you laugh your sweet bell-chime laughter.
Pushing your hand into his hair, the wondrous joy in your expression becomes tinged with amusement. “And people wonder why I use so much gel,” you murmur, smooth the wild splay of his hair down with both hands, cupping the back of his head. Homelander smiles wide and boyishly, which prompts you to kiss him again.
“I’m not having some kind of brain bleed hallucination right now, right?” You ask quietly, the tip of your nose lightly pressed to his. He brushes his lips against yours between words. “You’re serious?”
“As a heart attack,” he purrs, stroking your cheek with his thumb. Despite the ugly fluorescent lights and the dreadful hospital stench all around, you look resplendent in your joy.
He had been right. It was love that you touched him with. It had been subtle, imbued in your every movement, and for months he had soaked it up until, unbeknownst to him, he fell into it as well.
“Trust me when I say you’ll be seeing a lot more of me from now on,” he says, brushing your nose with his.
Maybe instead of tearing them limb from limb, he’ll send flowers to whoever the sorry son of a bitch that rear-ended you this morning was. Who knows how much more time he would have wasted before he realized he was utterly smitten with you.
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liviawildrose · 12 days ago
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𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐥𝐲
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take yourself seriously. every inch of you. every dream of yours. every damn thing.
this isn’t just a pep talk; it’s a full-on life shift. if you’re not taking yourself seriously, no one else will either. i’m actually kinda irritated how us women in general don’t value ourselves enough cause bitch it’s a privilege to have a woman in your life like please, we have the power to create a life inside our bodies so best believe we also have the power to change our entire lives. it’s you versus you, babe, and it’s time to step into the main character role you’ve been putting off. here’s how you shift the vibe:
1. start by loving yourself to the fullest
every single inch of you deserves to be loved and respected by you. you want someone to love you? you want people to respect you? start by loving and respecting yourself first. how you treat yourself sets the tone for how others treat you. the mirror won’t smile unless you do. seriously like what’s stopping you from loving, cherishing and prioritising yourself? it’s your body, mind and soul ITS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO TAKE UTMOST CARE OF IT.
take your body seriously. work out, not because society says so, but because your body carries you through this world. strengthen it, nourish it, adore it.
do workout, stretching and yoga to strengthen your body. eat good quality food, healthy food to nourish your body and speak words of affirmation to adore that work of art aka your body. cause why the fuck not? go to a dermatologist, gynaecologist, dentist etc get your check ups done become the most hottest version of yourself. this will keep you strong and healthy ensuring a healthy and fulfilling long life while achieving your body, beauty and physical goals would be just an added benefit (the best possible benefit is your body will thank you when you’re old cause all this workout, yoga regular check ups led you to age like a fine wine without any health concerns)
take your appearance seriously. it’s not about vanity it’s about self-expression and confidence. dress like you care, because you should care. look in the mirror and know you’re that bitch.
do yourself a favour and stop following trends and start becoming more you, pro tip start wearing clothes and makeup according to your venus, rising or mid heaven to suit you better, take your skin care, body care, hair care seriously too. take your time to understand your style, your self care routine. understand your body type, face shape and get clothes that suit you, understand your skin and get skin care that suit you and your skin concerns, understand your hair type and develop a great hair care routine too. do you colour analysis and understand which colour palette suit you the best. START TAKING YOUR APPEARANCE SERIOUSLY.
do your colour analysis done for free with the help of chat gpt
understand your body shape and proportions to dress accordingly
figure out your face shape and get your haircut, eyebrows, eyelashes done accordingly (even getting the best shades or reading glasses)
understand your hair porosity and hair type (even your scalp type) and your hair issues to buy hair products accordingly
understand your skin type and issues you’re facing to buy skin care products accordingly
understand you body too, sometimes you face is oily type but body is dry (like me) so different products
experiment and see what suits you over time (another reason to start using journal, check if certain products are actually showing results if not replace) even certain workouts
2. take your goals seriously
whatever you want to achieve, treat it like your life’s purpose, because it is. no one else will believe in your dreams until you do. stop waiting for validation from the outside.
take your career seriously. what are you doing every day to move the needle forward? no more procrastinating or making excuses. schedule your time. commit to your craft.
become the best at everything you do, dedicate time to becoming better everyday single day. become addicted to getting better becoming the top 1% develop a mindset of getting better everyday single day. keep developing your crafts your passion and practice daily
take your learning seriously. every book, every lesson, every skill it’s building the future version of you. treat your studies, hobbies, and passions like they’re sacred, because they are.
one thing that i’m doing these days is taking my learning seriously, be it academic and school stuff but also watching youtube videos on manifestation and learning better my top recommendation for understanding manifestation better is this channel called nero knowledge. now the thing all of his videos are long videos surpassing 30 mins average easily but that’s one way up putting it i’m trying to get my attention i’ve lost to short term 1-2 mins content back (and you should do it too) learn new skills, cooking, baking, new language, or whatever seriously why? cause this will help you get better as a human and as a player in the game of life. no skill is a waste or not that great like someone told “cooking is not that great of a skill” but guess what it is. you can use this skill to feed yourself but also this is such a flex skill it’s a patriarchal world unfortunately and just because we as women hate it doesn’t mean the patriarchy will go away. knowing how to cook is a survival skill which is important for both the genders but for some weird reason when women do it it’s “hot” and “ domestic” so let’s just use this skill to use and throw men and society in general. similarly drawing is a skill that you can use to show off too. skills is not just about learning language or coding etc
3. curate your reality like it’s your personal museum
your life is your masterpiece. everything you consume; what you eat, what you watch, what you listen to, who you hang around is shaping your reality. be intentional about it.
• what are you watching? is it inspiring you or draining you? binge less nonsense and more content that pushes you to grow.
again, if you haven’t made your mindmovie, please make it. ask chatgpt to make you a beautiful story where you have everything you desire and read it every single day. listen to subliminals. watch long form educational content like nero knowledge. be very intentional with whatever put in your brain. i’m not even kidding. your brain will shape your reality, so be very intentional. with whatever things you say to it, movies you watch, songs you listen to. everything. also be very intentional with your friends and people you surround yourself with because they can also influence you a lot. you are the average of five people you spend your most time with so be very fucking intentional.
• what are you eating? fuel your body like you care about living long enough to see your dreams come true.
as i mentioned earlier, eat your food intentionally and eat your food. if you’re planning to lose weight, eat food accordingly, if you’re planning to gain weight, eat food accordingly. (make a meal plan and get a nutritionist too if needed) if you’re like me who wants to become a singer, stop eating ice cream and stuff that will affect your throat. eat your food like your medicine or you have to eat medicine as your food. be intentional with your food as well. don’t eat unhygienic food either eat home-cooked food. and if you’re eating outside, make sure that the food is hygienic and the ingredients are also good quality being very mindful with whatever the heck you are putting in your body my love. 
• who are you around? energy is contagious, babe. surround yourself with people who make you want to level up, not stay stagnant.
i’m not saying, cut off all your friends. but i’m saying that distance yourself at least with people who are not ready to grow. people who are way too comfortable in their own comfort zone. and people who are not ready to see anyone else grow. people who constantly put other people down. and people who try to undermine you. be friends with people who want to grow. if you are at a certain level get friends who are also at your level, but are willing to change. or get friends how are at higher level than you who can help you grow too. and is that means you have to cut ties with your old friends it’s okay
4. respect yourself enough to show up
it’s not about perfection; it’s about consistency. every single day is a new chance to prove to yourself that you’re worth the effort.
• wake up earlier. give yourself time to breathe and plan before the world starts pulling you in every direction.
half of the game is literally to show up every single day. most of us fail to do so. consistency is what matters the most. so show up every single day respect yourself. don’t disrespect yourself by showing that “oh i am just a lazy bitch.” no, you’re not. respect yourself enough to show up every single day. for example you respect your professor and that is why no matter how drained you are, you will still show up to the class or at least hand in the work on time because you know that professor have the power to deduct or increase your marks just like that in your life, the professor is all your goals and in order to please this professor (goals) you need to show up every fucking day so that the professor aka your goals, give you the results that you want 
• set boundaries. protect your peace. say no to what drains you, and hell yes to what fuels you.
respect yourself enough to set boundaries and protect your peace, no matter what. this is actually the very first step of levelling up and i have mentioned this in the first steps. have enough courage to say no to things, people and circumstances that are not aligned with who you wanna be and the goals you have. for example, if a friend asks you that or do you wanna drink? say no. especially if you’re like me, and you wanna become a singer, alcohol damage your vocal chords, and i cannot take that risk. start saying no to plans that do not align with your goals and the person you are trying to become. it’s a way of showing respect to the person you’re trying to be. again if your show respect to the person you’re tryna become or the reality your chasing you will not have it, your actions and beliefs should be in alignment with the reality you seek
• prioritize self-care like it’s non-negotiable. rest, hydrate, and treat yourself kindly.
again i’ve mentioned this earlier too in the first steps so please read that, no matter how much you train and hustle you need to give yourself enough time to recover even athletes do this after intense training, they do spend some time recovering so that they muscles and overall stamina get used to everything. if you’re only working like a robot and you refuse to give yourself time to rest, it’s not gonna work. moreover, it’s not healthy. give yourself time to rest. hydrate and do self-care. treat yourself, kindly. as i mentioned in my become your own mother blog. you have to become a mother to your own self, who says. “i want you to work hard, because you deserve a better life” but also a mother who says “you should rest and take some moment to relax because you’ve worked hard and you deserve it” it’s all about balance. even in my game of life blog, i mention fun and recreation category, because having fun and treating yourself kindly, relaxing all these things matter too. because you just can’t keep on working and not have fun and relax in your life. that’s not how i want you to live this life. i want you to hustle hard and the party even harder.
5. start dating yourself
no, seriously. treat yourself like the love of your life.
• take yourself on solo dates. dress up, and go somewhere that makes you happy.
ask yourself, when you’re in love with someone what do you do? you try to become better to get their attention (my sister aka me changed her entire music taste to get validation from this guy, yeah i know embarrassing) but seriously you take care of the way you dress, what you post on social media, your words etc. so now put that same “im obsessed with you” energy towards yourself. workout get a better physique FOR YOU, better your conversation skills FOR YOU, score good marks FOR YOU, become rich FOR YOU.
• journal your thoughts and dreams like you’re getting to know someone deeply because you are.
start journaling, shadow working etc to understand yourself better cause that’s exactly what you’d do if you’re the love of your life, understanding yourself your flaws, your dark side, your patterns, your attachment style etc why? cause you love yourself. do scrap book journaling to honour your life. paste photos of your achievements etc (i’ll make a post about my journals too) but y’all got the idea. start journaling you thoughts and feelings, you don’t need a “how was your day?” text to write about your day in your journal
• spoil yourself. don’t wait for someone else to buy you flowers or treat you to nice things. do it for yourself.
stop letting life happen to you, go live your life yourself, go audition alone, go start a business alone do things alone and be okay with that, if you do have a friend who is in this journey of growth with you together that’s great but please don’t wait for a man or a friend to start living your life be okay with doing with on your own and as well as in a group
6. heal for the little you inside
your inner child is still here, waiting for you to show her the love and care she deserved
just read become your own mother. i have explained this topic in detail. but seriously, one way to honour yourself is to honour your inner child too
7. your energy will mirror back to you
the way you treat yourself is the way the world will treat you.
• if you neglect yourself, people will neglect you.
it starts with you, babe. how you show up for yourself sets the standard for how others show up for you. if you don’t take your boundaries seriously no one else will. if you’re not putting effort in showing up for yourself no one else will, that is why one way to manifest your dream life (your dream reality) is by wearing what your alter ego (your higher self would wear) i have written about alter ego in first steps and the game of life so read it if you’re new here
• if you don’t respect yourself, people will disrespect you.
as awful it may sound, but you have to earn your respect. why do you think your professors will take you seriously? if you don’t score good marks it’s not like they will treat you like a piece of shit, but they won’t take your opinion seriously because you haven’t improved yourself enough for that yet i’m not even kidding. if you really wanna be heard, you have to do something that is remarkable. i know it’s a hard to swallow and it might feel like what the heck?. everyone should deserve respect equally. and that’s true. i agree with you. i personally would never look down on someone just because he or she haven’t done something remarkable, or they aren’t as rich or pretty. i would never do that, but that is not the same case with how society thinks if you wanna step up, you have to do things and show the world that: yes, i am capable. for that, you have to respect yourself enough to take the first step in order to achieve greatness. and then people would respect you more because the energy you’re putting will mirror back to you.
• if you don’t take your dreams seriously, no one else will.
i mean, seriously, just start taking your dreams, seriously. no one else will take your life, your dream, your looks, your income, seriously, if you don’t. it’s not like other people owe you success. you have to do that. you have to become your own knight in the shining armour. and change your life completely. because if you’re not taking your dream, seriously, why will anyone? you have to take initiative. you have put yourself up there. and get that bag. 
8. stop waiting for permission
you don’t need someone to tell you it’s okay to go after your dreams. you don’t need a cheerleader to remind you that you’re worthy. you have to affirm it to yourself, every single day: “i am capable. i am worthy. i am doing this.”
• stop hesitating. the perfect moment will never come. just start.
for example, i want to become a singer. but that doesn’t mean that i will wait for a label to notice me and change my life upside down. no, i will start making covers. i will start practising my craft, i will email managers and people in that field to notice me because it’s on me. i have to do that. i’ll have to do the research and look up for any audition. and by the time, i am gifted with a perfect moment or opportunity i will be ready to snatch that opportunity because i kept on levelling up my skills, so when the opportunity comes, i will be more than qualified for it. 
• don’t wait for external validation. be your own biggest hype squad.
there are gonna be days. no one is gonna hype you up, and you have to do that. actually, you have to do that every single day. if you wake up early and get your morning routine done give yourself a pat on the back every. single. day. tell yourself, “i’m so proud of myself.” you studied for three hours? give yourself a pat on the back. like come on, if no one else gonna appreciate you, you can! you can appreciate yourself every. single. day. and yes, every single day, i’m not exaggerating. i want you to keep on hyping yourself up every fucking day. and i’ll keep hyping you up too because i love y’all
9. get 1-2% better every day
you don’t need to overhaul your entire life overnight. just focus on being a tiny bit better than you were yesterday.
• drank one more glass of water? better.
• walked an extra block? better.
• studied for an hour extra? better.
those small wins add up, babe. before you know it, you’ll look back and barely recognize the person you used to be. it’s me vs me
10. make yourself proud
this is your life. your story. your masterpiece. stop living like you’re a side character and start owning the spotlight.
• take yourself seriously because you’re worth it.
i think i have explained this quite a number of times throughout the blog. but I’ll say it again. take yourself seriously. take your thoughts seriously. take your mental health seriously. take your body seriously. take your mind seriously, your spiritual beliefs seriously, your presence seriously, your ideas seriously every single thing i mean it every single thing seriously and get rid of anything that is trying to come between you and your goals (your dream life)
• work for your inner child, your future self, and the person you’re becoming.
be intentional with everything you do, the people you hang out with if the same people have hurt you or you’re inner child get rid of them. if these people will affect your future and your future self, basically, the person you’re trying to become get rid of them. similarly, if a thing or particular circumstance is affecting you, please get rid of those things. be intentional with how you talk to yourself and the things you listen, to the videos you watch, the food you eat, the songs you listen to, all of them should align with the person you’re trying to become. start aligning yourself in the same frequency as your dream self i.e your future self by wearing clothes that she might wear, by talking and watching videos that she might watch and basically embody her habits, believes and mindset. while doing all this, keep working on your shadow self (do shadow work) and healing your inner child simultaneously. (healing is a daily practice)
• every single thing you do for yourself now is setting the foundation for the empire you’re building.
also, the same thing be intentional with whatever you’re doing. if you wanna become a millionaire, your habit should look like one. if you are trying to become a good person, a loving person, your habits should look like one. If you’re trying to become a singer, your habits should look like one. It’s all in what we do daily and our habits literally.
if you want to join me on this journey of becoming my higher self. please comment, like, reblog, and follow let's embrace the glow of together.
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dheerajquintus · 4 months ago
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cosmetic shop in ratlam
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When it comes to locating a depended on cosmetic shop in Ratlam, Ten on Ten often is the ultimate destination for splendor fans. Whether you're at the hunt for splendid skin care merchandise or the today's in makeup trends, our keep gives the whole lot you need to decorate your beauty habitual. We are committed to handing over top-tier beauty merchandise and an unparalleled shopping revel in, both in-store and on-line.
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wonnieaura · 1 year ago
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GETTING INTO YOUR SOFT GIRL ERA
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Your soft girl era is all about embracing your natural beauty, indulging in self-care, and connecting with nature. Here are the steps you can take to get into your soft girl era:
1. Practice self-care: Take the time to do things that make you feel relaxed and pampered. These can include taking a hot bath, doing a skincare routine, or drinking a warm cup of tea.
2. Focus on skincare: Soft girls believe in the importance of skincare and skincare products that are gentle on the skin. Invest in high-quality skincare products that are natural and contain ingredients like jojoba oil, hyaluronic acid, or rosehip oil.
3. Embrace your hair texture: Soft girls often have soft, wavy or curly hair that they let dry naturally or style in a sleek and understated way. Avoid heat and damaging hair products, and instead focus on giving your hair moisture and shine.
4. Choose a cozy and comfortable style: Soft girls often wear comfy and laid-back outfits, often accompanied by cozy sweaters and cardigans. They love comfortable shoes and prefer a more natural and minimal makeup look.
5. Connect with nature: Soft girls believe in the healing power of nature and often find ways to incorporate it into their day-to-day routine. Go for walks in nature, read a book in a park, and incorporate natural elements into your home decor.
6. Practice mindfulness: Soft girls prioritize self-care and believe in the importance of taking care of both their physical and mental health. Practice yoga, meditation, or journaling to reconnect with themselves.
7. Cultivate a positive mindset: Soft girls prioritize mental health and focus on cultivating a positive mindset. Practice positive thinking, gratitude, and learn to accept and appreciate who you are and what you have.
Remember, being a soft girl is all about embracing your natural looks and focusing on self-care and connecting with nature so do not put too much pressure on yourself. You deserve to live the best life 💕
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nutriglowprivatelabel · 1 year ago
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Experience Excellence: Why Nutriglow Private Label for Third-Party Manufacturing?
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stylesloveclub · 2 years ago
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sunshine (part 1)
In which Harry's a dick and y/n is a virgin who cries a lot.
˙· .° 。  ˚ 。  ° . · ˚ ˙ · . ° 。 ˚ 。  ° . · ˙ · .° 。 ˚ 。 °.  · ˙ ‧̍̊  
Y/n wonders if she thinks too highly of herself.
She thinks she’s pretty. Not in an obnoxious, self-obsessed way! She knows she’s not a supermodel, and she definitely has a lot of days where she looks and feels totally dead – but at the end of the day, she’s not hideous. She splurges on pretty makeup products, does her hair in the mornings, spends a decent amount of time planning out cute outfits… you know, little things to make herself feel pretty!
She brushes her teeth twice a day, showers regularly, flosses. Wears pretty perfumes that smell like flowers and lip gloss that tastes like strawberries. There’s a stash of gum in her bag that she’s always chewing on, so she knows she doesn’t have bad breath; and she carries an extra deodorant in her backpack too, so you can’t tell her she’s repulsive or anything like that. 
She’s kind. She smiles at strangers and always laughs at people’s jokes (even if they aren’t funny)— holds the elevator door open and says a polite “good morning” or “hello!” with her happy, cheery voice. And even though she’s a bit shy, she tries her best to spread love and kindness in the world. It just makes her happy to make other people happy!
Plus, being nice means that everyone else is nicer to you. So even if she’s in a bad mood, she’ll fake a smile and pretend like she’s happy y/n.
But, she wonders... if she has all of these amazing qualities– if she really is as pretty and kind and wonderful as she makes herself out to be– then why hasn’t she been kissed yet?
She loves her friends, of course she does! But how is she so different from them? Why do all of her friends get asked out on dates and have amazing boyfriends while she’s still a lonely virgin who hasn’t even been kissed yet? 
It’s not like she’s this super virginal person who gets grossed out by boys! She wants to be kissed, she wants to get fucked! She’s toyed around with the idea of just downloading tinder and losing it all to some stranger in one night stand, but her romantic heart just can’t stand the thought of it. 
Yes, she’s desperate… but she’s also romantic. Love is on her mind 24/7. It’s what she thinks about before she falls asleep, what she daydreams about whenever she gets bored. She could spend hours with a romance novel, hyper fixating on the little things that most people wouldn’t blink an eye at. The way the boy’s hand cupped the girl’s jaw while they kissed, or how their fingers brushed as they walked down the street. Little things like forehead kisses and prolonged glances across a room. 
She craves it for herself, desperately aches for the affection that she reads of. She wants to rest her head on someone’s chest and listen to their heartbeat as she falls asleep, feel their fingers playing with her hair, or their lips skimming her cheek. Wants to laugh under the covers and share secrets and be vulnerable and in love. She wants it more than anything in the world! 
And yet, she hasn’t even been kissed! 
Everyone else seems to do it so easily – find a nice guy, go out on a date, and fall in love. So why is it so hard for her? Her friends tell her that she's the prettiest and sweetest girl out there, and that the right guy simply hasn’t come around yet… but y/n can’t help but think, is any of it true?
Is she even that pretty? Is she actually likable?
What’s wrong with her?
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Harry hates these stupid college parties.
They’re loud and stuffy, with way too many people crammed into one room for his liking. The alcohol is cheap, the music is annoying. The entire apartment smells like weed, and there’s not even a secluded corner for him to mope around in without some group of drunk girls completely invading his personal space. Everything about these parties sucks.
If he could, he’d leave. But he’s meant to give a ride home to his roomie Blake, and Blake’s currently hooking up with the host of this party. 
So Harry’s stuck here. Great. 
He checks his phone, and it’s nearly midnight. Blake should be done soon, right? The blonde girl who’s been talking to him for the past 20 minutes is getting awfully close, her hand trailing on his biceps and migrating towards his chest, and she’s blinking up at him with fluttery bambi eyes. 
Any other night and Harry might be into whatever this girl is hinting at, but he’s 100% sober and 100% not in the mood to hook up with a girl who’s taken one too many shots. He grabs the girl's hands and peels them off of his chest gently, muttering something about needing to use the restroom (he doesn’t even need to use the bathroom, he just needs a minute away from the pounding music). 
He sends her off in the direction of her friends, who are giggling to each other in a corner across the room and not-so-inconspicuously checking to see if their friend has managed to successfully get with Harry. He’s sure they’ve realized that he rejected her when they all glare at him. Sorry to disappoint, he thinks to himself. 
He’s nearly positive that any bathrooms in this shitty college apartment will probably be occupied, either with someone throwing up all the drinks they’ve had or with a couple hooking up. But no harm in trying anyway. 
The first door that he tries to open is locked. The second door opens up to reveal a coat closet. 
The third door however, opens up to a bedroom. 
The walls are decorated with posters and pictures, fairy lights hanging from the ceiling, and tiny pots of succulents placed all over the room… but the one thing that stands out the most is the overwhelming number of books scattered all over the room. There’s a bookshelf on each wall, cluttered with books of all colors and sizes. Stacks of books lie on the nightstand by the bed, a stray book sits on top of a dresser, and a pile of new, untouched books sits pristinely in the far right corner of the room. 
Books, books, and more books all over the room. And, a book in the hands of a girl sitting quietly in her bed, staring at Harry. 
Dressed in a hoodie and some fuzzy pj pants, the book that she’d once held up closely to her face now rests on her lap as she blinks up at this strange intruder. She sits upright, closing the book but sticking her finger between the pages so that she doesn’t lose her place. “Um… hi?” she says quietly. 
He steps into the room, and looks at her blankly. “Hi.” She blinks at him. “S’this room taken?” he asks.
“Um. Well,” she looks at him curiously. “No, I guess not.” 
“Okay, good,” he responds, quickly closing the door behind him. He sits on a spinny chair that he pulls out from under a desk and leans his head back, letting out a deep sigh of relief. 
The girl, with her finger still lodged between her book, stares at him confused. Who is this guy? 
He’s cute, and she’s mildly embarrassed that he’s come into her room when she’s looking so… sleepy. But he also seems kinda grumpy and is obviously not in the mood to talk. He’s leaning back in her chair and closing his eyes, gently rubbing his temples as if he’s meditating. 
She observes him with wide eyes. Then after a minute of silence she awkwardly picks her book back up and tries to resume reading. 
Kinda hard to do with some random guy sitting in her bedroom, though. 
In this secluded bedroom, the sound of the music has decreased dramatically. Harry’s pounding headache starts to fade away, and he feels himself start to relax for the first time since he arrived at this stupid party. He looks around the room that he so luckily stumbled into. 
The desk in front of him is, to no surprise, cluttered with more books. A laptop is plugged in in front of him, and there’s a cup full of colorful pens and markers sitting against the wall. Hanging on the wall is a string of pictures starring the same girl with different groups of people. 
He looks at the pictures hanging from the walls. Then he looks back at the girl laying in the bed. 
“S’this your room?” he asks, finally connecting the dots.
She looks up from the book again and nods. 
“Oh,” he hums, surprised. He supposes he should’ve realized it as soon as he walked in. Girl in a room full of books, reading a book. Face clean of all makeup, snuggled up in a blanket, nice and comfy as though she’s just about ready for bed. It’s a bit silly that he only made the connection once he saw her pictures up on the walls. “Why aren’t you out there partying?” 
“Um… not really my scene,” she says, closing the book and looking at Harry properly. Her nose scrunches up, “And it smells really bad in there.”
“Jesus, tell me about it,” he groans. “Could hardly breathe in there. In fact–” he says, already standing up, “d’ya mind if we open up a window? Still feels stuffy in here.” 
She shows no resistance as he slides the window open, accepting the fact that she’d be sharing her room with this stranger until the party was over. Harry sticks his head out and takes a deep breath of the cool, fresh air. Much better than the sweaty, smoky, sickly smell going on inside the apartment. 
When he turns back around, the girl has rearranged herself. She sits criss-crossed on her bed and looks up at Harry, fidgeting nervously with her lip bitten between her teeth. 
She’s kind of cute. 
Harry breaks the silence again. “I think your roommate is hooking up with my roommate right now.” 
“Oh.” She blinks. “Is your roommate Blake?” 
He nods.
“Yeah, Maddie’s been saying that she, um… you know,” she looks down at her hands as they play with a loose thread on the hem of her pants. “Wants to hook up with him or whatever.” 
He nods his head, leaning back against her wall with his arms crossed in front of his chest. As refreshing as the air is, the night time breeze is cold. 
“No offense,” he says, “But you don’t seem like you’d be friends with Maddie.” Maddie (y/n’s roommate) has jet black hair, wears heavy eyeliner and black lipstick everyday, and is at least a little bit high 90% of the time. Y/n, in comparison, has flowery bed sheets, a stuffed bunny tucked in next to her, and is hiding in her bedroom while a party being thrown in her own apartment. 
She just smiles softly. “Yeah, we met online. But she’s really nice.” 
He raises his eyebrow. “She seems like a bitch.” 
She defends her roommate immediately. “She’s not a bitch!” But then she thinks about it for a second. Maddie can definitely come off a bit… harsh at times. “Well… she’s usually really nice to me, at least.” 
That makes sense. It would be very hard to be mean to this girl, he imagines. She’s too nice. It would be like being mean to a puppy or something. 
Good thing Harry isn’t mean. He’s just… a bit of a grump. 
She taps her fingers against the cover of her book awkwardly, staring at Harry as he looks up to her ceiling and closes his eyes. He just wants to be in his bed right now. 
After a few more minutes of silence, Harry pushes himself off the wall. “I think Blake should be done,” he says, checking the time on his phone. “I’m going to leave now.” 
“Okay,” says the girl quietly. She watches as he leaves with a nod of his head, and shuts the door behind him. 
That was weird, she thinks. 
Whatever, though. She opens her book and forgets about it. 
+++
Don’t people say that drowsy driving is just as bad as drunk driving? What constitutes drowsy driving? Should y/n even be out on the road right now?
She doesn’t know. All she knows is that Maddie woke her up with a phone call at 2 AM, asking if y/n would come pick her up from Blake’s apartment cause she was too high to get back on her own and she doesn’t want to stay the night there. 
Y/n, being the sweetheart that she is, obviously wants her roommate to get back safe. So she’s in her car, at 2 AM, yawning every three seconds as she drives to the location Maddie sent her.
She texts Maddie from the car, but Maddie doesn’t respond. She calls her, then sends another text, but still no answer. After 10 minutes of no response, she goes up to the door and knocks. 
Maddie doesn’t answer. Instead, it’s Harry.
His eyebrows furrow as recognizes the girl from that party he’d been at two weeks ago. She looks just as comfortable as she did then, in a big pink hoodie and a pair of sweats. “What are you doing here?” he asks, his voice confused and his eyes doubting. Not many people come knocking at his door at 2 AM.
Unlike y/n, who looks like she just rolled out of bed and drove here (that is exactly what she did), Harry looks like he’s been up all night (he’s been playing COD). He’s not wearing a shirt and has a pair of sweats slung low on his hips, showing off a chiseled abdomen that acts as a canvas for a multitude of pretty tattoos. Y/n finds herself staring at the swallows that lie under his collarbones, the butterfly painted above his stomach, and the ferns lining a yummy pair of v-lines that point downwards… she swallows thickly and forces herself to look away. 
“Um,” she covers her mouth as she yawns, hiding her cold fingers with the sleeves of her hoodie, “Maddie needed me to drive her home.” She blinks sleepily, and can’t even bring herself to be embarrassed that she looks so dead.
“It’s 2 in the morning,” he scoffs. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
She blinks sleepily again. “I was.” 
Harry rolls his eyes. If it were him, he would not have gotten up and driven all the way over here. Someone else’s problems are not enough to get him out of bed. But, this girl… she’s too nice. 
He leaves her at the door and goes to Blake’s room, pounding on the door rudely. “Hey!” he yells, irritation evident in his tone, “your roommate’s here.” 
He hears a bit of shuffling, before Maddie stumbles out of Blake’s room, makeup askew and clothing only half on. She giggles up at Harry and apologizes playfully, but he just glares at her. Her eyes are glazed over and the whites of her eyes bloodshot, very obviously high if the way she couldn’t walk straight wasn’t enough of an indication. 
He feels bad for the stupid girl who drove all the way over here in the middle of the night because her roommate wanted to get high.
Maddie trips over her own feet and falls into y/n, who uses all of her strength to keep her roommate upright and walks her slowly down to the car. “Are you feeling okay?” Harry hears her ask quietly. He scoffs to himself.
He doesn’t get it. How the fuck has this girl not lost her shit? Her irresponsible roommate woke her up at 2 am and made her drive all the way to some stranger’s house, and yet she still manages to be so… gentle. So kind, to someone who barely even deserves it. So caring, to someone who seems to care so little. 
As y/n helps Maddie get into the car, she looks back up to the apartment and sees Harry watching them from the doorstep. They make eye contact for a few seconds, his eyebrows furrowed as he leans against the doorframe. His gaze makes her heart stutter, a chill running down her spine. He looks… upset. Almost like he’s mad at her.
It makes her frown. She wants to say something to him, apologize for ruining his night… but then Maddie sticks her head out of the car and vomits. 
Harry shakes his head and turns away. 
That girl is too nice for her own good. 
+++
“Hey.” Blake pokes his head into Harry’s room, where Harry’s busy playing a round on his computer, “Do you mind if Maddie and her friend come over?”
“Don’t care,” Harry mumbles, uninterested, not looking away from his game. 
“Sick,” he turns around to go back into his own room, but stops when Harry suddenly pauses his game and calls out to him.
“Who’s the friend?” Harry asks, turning around. 
“Y/n,” Blake answers. Harry stares at him, his brows furrowed. The name doesn’t ring a bell. “Her roommate.” 
“That quiet girl?” Harry clarifies.
“Yeah, that one.” 
Oh. So her name was y/n. 
Good to know. 
+++
It’s dark out when Harry finally turns off his game, sliding his headset off and stretching his back. He lets out a long groan as he feels his spine crack, a delicious feeling after being hunched over his controller for three hours straight. 
Standing up, he scratches at his stomach lazily, throwing his headset onto his chair. His arms feel a bit sore, having been to the gym earlier that day, and his hair is still wet from when he showered. He puts on a sweatshirt, finding his apartment too cold to be roaming around shirtless, and heads to the kitchen to find something to eat. 
He stops in his tracks when he finds y/n sitting in his living room all alone. 
She’s got a book in her hands, a thick, worn-out novel that looks older than herself. She’s sitting comfortably on their couch with her legs tucked underneath her butt, so engulfed in whatever she’s reading that she doesn’t even realize that she’s not alone anymore. 
It’s the first time he’s ever seen her outside of her sleep attire. She’s wearing a pair of loose, comfy looking corduroy pants, and a tight top that cuts off just below her ribs. Her chest rises and falls steadily, eyes skimming across the pages of her book so quickly that he wonders if she’s actually absorbing any of the words or not. She chews on her lip as she reads, eyebrows furrowed in concentration. 
When Harry finally speaks, it makes her jump in her place. “Where are Blake and Maddie?”
Her book nearly falls out of her hands as she whips her head around. When she sees it’s him, she relaxes. “Oh. Um,”  she sits upright, closing her book, “They’re in his room.”
He nods slowly, squinting his eyes. There’s no nice way to ask his next question, so he just spits it out bluntly. “Why’d you come over if you’re just sitting out here while they hook up?” 
She tucks her hair behind her ear nervously, feeling a little shy under his intimidating gaze. “Maddie was my ride to campus today. And she wanted to stop by here before we went home.” She shrugs quietly, “So I kinda had no choice.”
He huffs. Of course. 
Y/n says that Maddie’s nice, but Harry really doesn’t like her. How weird is it to drag your friend somewhere just to have them sit alone while you go hook up with someone? 
“How long have you guys been here?” he asks.
“Like, an hour.”
“So you’ve been sitting around doing nothing for an hour?”
She pouts. “I had my book.”
He blinks. She just sat here reading for an hour, while her roommate abandoned her to go hookup with Blake… and she’s okay with it? 
She is too nice for her own good. 
“Do y’want some pizza?” he asks, already opening the freezer.
Normally, y/n would say no. She’s kind of an unwelcome guest and she doesn’t want to be a burden on Harry. But… she hasn’t had anything since breakfast. And Maddie still hasn’t come out. She’s kind of starving.
“What kind?” she asks politely.
“Umm… cheese or pepperoni.” 
“I don’t like pepperoni,” she confesses shyly. “But also I could just pick it off if you want pepperoni. Whatever you want.” 
He rolls his eyes, shoving the pepperoni pizza back into the freezer. He wants to scream at her to stop being so nice! Stop being so considerate and just say what you want!
He puts it in the oven to bake, setting a timer for 15 minutes, then takes a moment to contemplate his next move. He could either go back into his room, where he could lie in bed and nap until the pizza was ready… or he could stay in here and sit awkwardly on the couch so that y/n wouldn’t be all alone. 
99% of him wants to just go back into his room where he can be grumpy and alone in peace… but then he looks over at y/n, who’s sitting on the couch all by herself. She looks so uncomfortable and out of place, tracing her thumb over the raised up font on the hardcover in her hands.
The 1% of him that feels bad for her wins. He sits down next to her on the couch. 
He nods his head towards the worn out book, which looks thicker than anything he’s ever read. “Are you reading the fuckin’ bible?” 
“No,” she shakes her head, laughing to herself quietly. She runs her fingers over the grooves of the title, a feeling so familiar that it comforts her when she’s feeling so out of place. “It’s Wuthering Heights.” 
He furrows his brow. “Never heard of it.” 
“It’s good,” she says. “Kinda dense, but I’ve already read it a few times. It’s one of my favorites.” 
He nods again, tapping his fingers on his thighs as silence overtakes the apartment once more. He looks around the living room, trying to find something else to say. 
Y/n’s heart pitter patters in her chest nervously. She can’t help but feel a bit nervous around Harry. She’s pretty shy in general, and Harry’s stoic demeanor certainly doesn’t help her relax. Her voice is quiet as she asks, “Um… what’s your major?” A feeble attempt on her end at a conversation. 
“Math.” 
“Just math?” she parrots.
“Mhm,” he cracks his knuckles. “Pure math.” 
She huffs out a quiet breath, a pout on her lips. “I’m in a math class right now.” Her fingers pick at a piece of fuzz that’s stuck on the couch. “Calc 1. It’s really hard.”
“Mm, yeah.” Harry hums, “Took that during my first year.” 
She looks at him with wide eyes, “Did you pass?” 
He holds back a smile. It’s amusing, how earnestly she’s asking him – a math major – if he passed Calculus 1. That class was generally easy for him, mostly just beginner stuff compared to the math he does now that he’s in his third year. But he doesn’t say that. “Yeah, I did,” he says simply, not wanting to make her feel bad.
She nods, looking back down at her book. “I’m kinda scared. Our first midterm was really hard.” 
He hums sympathetically. Even though it was easy for him, he knows that calc class is infamously hard for others – especially for those who aren’t math inclined like himself. “How about you? What’s your major?” 
His legs are spread apart so that he takes up nearly half the couch, whereas y/n sits curled up on the other corner, trying to take up as little space as possible. “Bio,” she readjusts herself so that she’s sitting crisscrossed, her book still clutched to her chest protectively. “With a concentration in ecology.” 
Ew. He hates biology. Actually… he hates everything except math. Math is easy for him. 
The oven beeps. A rush of relief fills his chest, finally free from this awkward conversation, and he eagerly abandons y/n on the couch to get the pizza out. He’s hungry, starving, and doesn’t bother with a plate or anything before grabbing a slice and shoving it in his mouth. 
“Come have some,” he mumbles, mouth full.
She timidly walks over to the kitchen counter that he’s standing at, wiping her sweaty hands on her pants, and takes a slice as well. Blowing on it, she takes a much smaller bite than Harry did since it’s still so hot. She doesn’t know how he managed to already finish a whole slice. 
Now that they can focus on eating their food, there’s no need for any more small talk. They eat comfortably in silence, only acknowledging each other when y/n asks for a napkin. He nods towards one of the drawers, asking her to grab him one too, and then they’re back to eating in silence. 
Blake and Maddie burst out of his room a few minutes later.
“Harry made dinner!” exclaims Blake, coming over and reaching for a slice of pizza. 
Harry yanks the tray out of his reach. “Get your own pizza,” he mumbles, putting the pizza back down in front of y/n. He looks at her, and nods his head towards the pizza, inviting her to take another slice. 
Maddie stops her before she can reach for a second slice. “Ready to go?” she asks. 
Y/n nods, wiping her hands on a napkin. “Thanks for the pizza,” she whispers to Harry, quiet enough so that only he hears. 
“Yeah,” is all he says. He barely looks at her, too busy scarfing down his third (maybe fourth) slice. 
She grabs her stuff and follows Maddie out of the boys apartment. 
+++
“Hey!” Maddie pushes her way through the stuffed apartment, reaching her hand out towards y/n. “Listen, I’m gonna go home with Blake.”
“W-What?” Y/n’s head is foggy, her brain a little clouded from the few drinks that she’s had. Y/n doesn’t normally drink, so the little bit of alcohol in her system has had its intended effect and gone a bit further as well – her cheeks are warm, and she feels the world sway a little bit as she looks up at Maddie with a pout. “But– but what about me?”
Normally, y/n stays home whenever Maddie wants to go out and party. She prefers the comfort of her own bed and hates the anxiety she feels when she’s drunk and wobbly and surrounded by a bunch of strangers. But Maddie had assured her that they’d be together all night, that she’d take care of her if she got drunk, and that she’d drive them home whenever y/n wanted to leave.
She’s broken all three of those promises. 
When they got to the party, Maddie abandoned her as soon as she saw Blake across the room. Luckily, y/n saw some of her own friends that she was able to hang out with, some girls from her ecology class who gave her a yummy strawberry smirnoff. They talked and laughed and y/n was having a good time, slowly but surely getting a little bit tipsy. The drink was so yummy, and Maddie wasn’t there to keep an eye on her, so she didn’t realize that she’d gone a bit over her tolerance. 
She’s a bit tipsier than she’d like to be in a public setting, surrounded with people she doesn’t know, and it’s too dark outside for her to get home safely on her own. And now… Maddie wants to abandon her? For Blake? 
“Don’t worry!” Maddie exclaims, completely disregarding the worry flickering in y/n’s glazed eyes. “I’ll order you an uber home!” 
Y/n bites her lip nervously. An uber? At this time of night, when she’s all drunk and stumbling around like a sad little baby deer?
“Um… can’t you take me home before you go with Blake?” 
Maddie rolls her eyes, “come on, really? I’ll pay for the uber. It'll be fine.” 
Y/n’s heart beats loudly in her chest, “I-I’m scared of going by myself, Maddie. I think I had too much to drink, I don’t feel safe.”
Her roommate purses her lips in a firm line, as if she’s annoyed. She looks around the apartment, tapping her foot impatiently, then she lights up with an idea. “Stay here,” she tells y/n. 
“Harry!” Maddie calls out, making her way back to the other side of the apartment. “Hey, Harry!” 
He’s sitting on a couch, next to a pretty girl in a tight black dress who has her legs splayed across his lap comfortably. There’s a furrow in his brow that makes him look pissed off, but his hand rests very comfortably on this girl's thigh and he makes no objections as she plays with the collar of his shirt. His head whips over to Maddie as she tramples her way over to him.
“What is it?” he snaps, voice closed off and irritated. 
“Can you drive y/n home?” 
He blinks. “Huh?” 
“Can you drive y/n home??” she says again, frustrated.
“Why?” 
“Cause I’m going over to your apartment with Blake and she needs a ride home.” 
He stares at Maddie unbelievingly, and peers over at y/n, who’s sitting all alone on the other side of the apartment. Her lips are pouted sadly, staring down at the floor with a far off look in her eyes. 
“Why can’t you take her home?” he grumbles, looking up at Maddie with a glare in his eye.
She huffs, impatiently stomping her foot. “Cause I’m going home with Blake right now! Come on Harry, it’s not that far! Please?” 
He shakes his head. “Fuckin’ unbelieveable,” he mutters under his breath, pushing the girl off of him as he stands up. 
“Thank you,” she sighs, dragging him behind her. “Y/n,” Maddie says, stopping in front of her. “Harry’s gonna drive you home.” 
She looks up, eyes wide and round. “H-Harry?”
“Yes,” she says harshly, “you guys are friends, aren’t you?”
“Um…” y/n doesn’t know what to say. She wouldn’t necessarily consider them friends just because they shared a pizza. 
Her night out with Maddie was meant to be fun, but right now, she just feels abandoned and kinda scared. And Harry doesn’t seem too happy about this either, which makes her feel even worse.
“Lets go,” he snaps, jaw clenching tightly as he swings his car keys around his index finger. She flinches at his tone and digs her nails into her palms nervously. 
She’s trapped. It’s either Harry takes her home, or she takes an uber all by herself. And she’s too scared to get home alone right now. 
With a final look towards Maddie, who stares back at her dismissively and shoos her towards Harry, she stands up shakily and follows Harry out of the crowded apartment. 
The air outside is much colder than the apartment, goosebumps immediately rising on y/n’s skin and making her shiver. Harry doesn’t acknowledge the way she stumbles over her feet, walking ahead of her briskly. She’s forced to keep herself composed, wrapping her arms around herself to keep warm and nearly jogging to keep up with Harry’s long strides. 
He unlocks his car doors and gets into the driver’s seat. Y/n opens the passenger’s side door for herself and takes a seat, buckling herself in quietly.
Turning on the car, he notices the way her arms are tightly crossed in front of her chest. He turns up the heat, and pulls out of the parking lot. 
They play no music and say nothing, driving in silence.
“Sorry you have to drive me home,” she says faintly after a few minutes. 
His turn signal blinks softly. “Can’t believe your roommate just left you,” he mutters irritatedly. 
She says nothing in response. She stares out the window, a lump in her throat as the drive past the streets of college houses and apartments. The red light they stop at and the name of the streets go blurry from the tears gathering at her waterline. She sniffles softly.
Harry whips his head to her. “Why are you crying?”
Her lower lip wobbles as the first tear falls from her lashes. She wipes it away quickly. “I don’t know,” is all she says with a watery voice.
He stares at her befuddled, brows furrowed and eyes a piercing green, but she refuses to meet his gaze. She just looks outside the window in a melancholy haze, lost in thought, eyes unfocused as tears drip down her face silently. 
He sighs deeply and taps his fingers against the steering wheel, praying for the red light to turn green so that he can get this girl home as soon as possible. 
+++
When they arrive at her place, he sits in his car and watches as she stumbles up the steps of her apartment. She mumbled out a soft thank you through her tears and managed to climb out of his car smoothly, but the way she wobbles on her feet makes Harry worry that he shouldn’t leave until he’s sure she got in.
She stands in front of her door for a solid two minutes, trying to find her keys, and Harry taps his fingers against his thigh impatiently. When she finally finds them, she struggles to fit the key in the lock, hands shaky and her vision still blurred from the tears. Aaaand then she drops them. 
Harry sighs and puts the car in park. By the time she’s picked the keys back up, Harry’s already gotten out of his car and reached the top step. He takes the keys from her and easily unlocks her door. “In,” he mutters, ushering her into her apartment impatiently. 
He follows her into her bathroom and turns the light on for her. Their eyes meet in the mirror as he asks, “can you get yourself ready for bed?”
She nods, looking down at the ground sheepishly as he leaves her to take off her makeup and brush her teeth. She opts to skip her skincare routine and doesn’t even bother with putting her jewelry back in her jewelry box, simply just leaving her earrings on her bathroom counter to deal with tomorrow. 
Harry’s probably gone back down to his car by now, she thinks. It’s so embarrassing, how he had to drive her home and guide her into her bathroom. He seemed annoyed with her. He probably thought she was so messy – an annoying, overdramatic girl who started crying in his car for no reason. 
More tears bubble in her tears as the hot wave of embarrassment washes over her. She was such a mess, of course she’s never been in a relationship. Nobody would want to date someone like her. 
She takes off her clothes and whips off her bra, sniffling to herself sadly. Slipping on her favorite sweatshirt, a huge pink one that goes down to her mid thighs and covers her hands, she uses the sleeves to wipe away the excess tears in her eyes. She stumbles over herself a bit and bangs her foot against her dresser as she reaches for a pair of sleep shorts and it only makes her want to cry even harder. Drunk y/n is extra emotional, and every little thing is sending over the edge. 
As she’s stepping into her pair of sleep shorts, her bedroom door opens, Harry walking in with a glass of water in one hand and a pill bottle in the other. She trips over herself as she tries to pull her clothes on as soon as possible, but it just makes her lose balance and stumble to the side. His eyes widen and he turns around quickly, muttering a quick fuck to himself. 
“Sorry,” he mutters. “Are you decent?”
Y/n regains her composure, cheeks burning as she pulls her shorts over her hips. This night could not be going any worse. “Yeah,” she says quietly. She hopes it’s dark enough in the room so that he doesn’t see her flaming cheeks and puffy eyes. 
He turns around and hands her the water, which she immediately starts chugging down. She didn’t realize how thirsty she’d been until she’d seen the glass in Harry’s large, tattooed hand. 
“Slow down,” he grunts. He pops open the pill bottle and takes out one Advil for her. “Take this.” 
She grabs the pill from him obediently and swallows it down with the rest of her water. Then she looks up at him, as if waiting for his next instructions. 
“Bed,” he says, nodding his head towards her daisy printed sheets. She goes to climb in but trips over her shoe that she’d messily discarded on the floor. Harry grabs her waist before she can fall to the floor though. 
“Jesus,” he murmurs. This was like the seventh time she’s almost fallen over tonight. Is she always this clumsy or was it the drinks? 
He grabs her hand and physically guides her into her bed, making sure she lays down properly and lifting the sheets for her to climb under. Grabbing her ankle, he literally has to guide her under the blanket, then lets the duvet fall over her gracefully. 
“All good?” he asks, once she’s tucked nicely into her bed, teeth brushed and medicine taken so that she wouldn’t wake up feeling gross tomorrow. 
She looks up at him, eyes no longer tear filled but still clearly sad. “Yeah..” she says quietly, however her eyes flicker around her room as if she’s searching for something. 
He furrows his brows, and glances in the direction her eyes have landed. A stuffed bunny lies on the floor next to the shoe that she tripped over. He bends over and picks it up, handing it to her questioningly. She takes the bunny and snuggles it into her neck, eyes fluttering as if she can finally relax. “Thanks,” she whispers. 
Harry nods curtly and heads for the door. When he turns around one final, y/n is watching him with sleepy eyes. “Bye, Harry,” she squeaks out. 
He stares at her for a second. “Bye.” Then he closes the door behind himself.
+++
Y/n wakes up with a pounding headache and an upset tummy.
That was mortifying. 
She’s never gonna be able to face Harry again. He was so annoyed with her, she just knows it! The way she dragged him away from that party, cried in his car, and tripped over herself like a stupid goat with clanky legs… oh, he probably thinks she’s the worst! 
She wishes she had more control over her emotions, that she could’ve held in the tears until she was alone in her bed… but she just felt so miserable last night. She had wanted to start crying literally when Maddie first yelled at her at the party, but she tried to stay strong. Kept herself together so that she at least didn’t start crying in the middle of a party.
But then… getting in the car with Harry. God. The deafening silence, the irritation radiating off of him… it made her feel terrible. She felt like a nuisance, like an annoyance and a burden. 
And she completely humiliated herself in front of Harry! The cute guy that she maybe sort of had started to have a tiny little crush on, simply because he was cute and mildly nice to her and she has a habit of romanticizing small interactions.  
There was no chance he’d ever want to be in a room with her after this. He probably wants nothing to do with her. 
She stumbles out of her bed and plants her feet on the ground, her head spinning a little bit as she squints her eyes. Her little stuffed bunny has fallen onto the floor again, and she picks it up and places it onto the bed next to herself. She remembers how Harry had picked the bunny up and given it to her before she fell asleep last night, like she was some little kid that he was stuck babysitting. 
Ugh. She’s never going to talk to him again. 
+++
Harry stands outside of his lecture hall, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed angrily. His eyebrows are furrowed in classic Grumpy Harry fashion and his lips are pursed in a disgruntled frown. 
He’s annoyed. 
He stares at y/n, who’s sitting on a bench not too far away. Her tote bag sits on the floor next to her feet and there’s a book in her hand, her finger in between the pages as a temporary bookmark to not lose the page she’s on. 
There’s something about her that just… annoys him so much. He can’t quite explain it.
The way her cheeks dimple as she smiles up at the guy talking to her, tucking her hair behind her ear gently when it falls into her face… it makes his jaw clench angrily as he watches her from a distance. She’s so nice. Too nice. 
She laughs at something the guy she’s talking to says and it makes his stomach feel sour. He doesn’t like it.
Blake’s hand snaps in front of Harry’s face. “Bro. Stop staring.” 
Harry forces his eyes to look away, brows still furrowed grumpily. “Wasn’t staring,” he mumbles, pushing himself off the wall and going into the lecture hall. 
“You were,” he responds, following closely behind. “She’s really nice… I dunno why you hate her.”
“Who says I hate her?” Harry scoffs. “I never talk to her.” Especially as of late, she’s quiet as a mouse around him. He was over at her apartment to pick Blake up the other day and she’d only said a quiet “hi” before scurrying back into her room, like a scared little bunny in the presence of a snake or something. 
“Well… I mean, you could be nicer.”
Harry furrows his brows. “What do you mean?”
Blake hesitates. “Like… I dunno. Maddie says you made her cry.” 
“Huh?” He thinks back to that night… “How was that my fault?” All he’d done was driven her home and tucked her into bed? She just started crying on her own!
“She’s just kind of sensitive,” says Blake. “I know you probably weren’t trying to mean, but you’re definitely not sunshine and rainbows. You’re scary, did y’know that?”
Harry rolls his eyes. Everyone seems to have this preconceived notion that Harry's this huge dick who never smiles… and though it’s true that he rarely smiles in the presence of strangers, he’s not an asshole! He just doesn’t feel like wasting his energy in pretending to like people he doesn’t actually like. Or smile when it’s much more comfortable to furrow his brows and pout grumpily. 
And he finds that usually his grumpy demeanor works in his favor – people stay out of his way, and he gets to avoid the headache that comes with interacting with people. But now this girl… this sunshine girl who always has her nose in a little book and always says please and thank you and is nice to everyone and stumbles over herself like a little puppy who's learning how to walk… she’s gone on and made him feel bad about it. 
How annoying is that? To have the nicest person on the planet think you’re scary?  
“I wasn’t trying to make her cry,” he mutters, irritated. “I didn’t even say anything to her.”
“Well maybe that’s the problem. Like… just try. I think you’ll like her.”
He doesn’t think so. She’s too nice. They probably wouldn’t get along. 
+++
There are three things y/n does a lot.
The first is studying. Her grades come first, always. She’ll be at the library for hours at a time, snuggled up in a booth with an iced coffee and her color coded notes, studying until she can barely keep her eyes open. It’s unhealthy, and she really should take breaks more often… but she just gets really nervous about her grades! 
She’s used to being at the top of her class, and has always been a straight A student.  But recently, she’s been struggling. She’s doing fine in her chemistry class, and absolutely thriving in biology. But calculus… calculus is her worst enemy.
The second thing she does a lot is reading. She’s been a bookworm for as long as she can remember. Her most frequent genre is romance (obviously!), but she’ll dabble a little bit in the popular fantasy series, maybe pick up a thriller every once in a while. And if she’s feeling sophisticated, she’ll try to read one of the classics… something philosophical, like Camus, or maybe something a little heavier, like War and Peace. But those situations are rare. She prefers her little world of romance.
The third thing that y/n does a lot… is cry. 
She’ll cry if she watches a sad movie, she’ll cry over a sad book. She cried when Finnick died in The Hunger Games, and she cried when she finished Of Mice and Men. She cries every single time she watches Pride and Prejudice (2005), sobs her eyes out when Mr. Darcy says, “You have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love- I love- I love you.”
She cries if someone yells at her, and she cries if she thinks someone doesn’t like her. She cries almost every time she’s drunk (example: when Harry drove her home), and she cries in the middle of the night when she’s feeling homesick. She cries for no reason when she’s getting close to her period… and sometimes, she cries because she’s just lonely.
Now, you might be thinking… y/n sounds super annoying. But please don’t think that! That would also probably make her cry.
She’s just a tad bit sensitive! She has so many emotions in her little heart, and she’s trying so hard to be responsible and manage life as a young adult but at the end of the day she’s just a girl!!! She’s just a girl, and she’s tired and stressed out and lonely and touch deprived, and sometimes she has a hard time keeping everything together so she just… cries.
If she could control it, she would! Do you really think she wants to be crying in the library? Of course, not! It’s embarrassing, and she’s trying really hard to keep her sniffles quiet and to suck the tears back into her eyeballs… but when she’s sad, she can’t stop the tears.
So now she’s crying in the library. And it’s all because of Issac Newton.
Why did he have to invent calculus? Like, what was even the point? Why did she, as a girl studying ecology, have to take this stupid class?
She buries her face in her arms, the tears unstoppable at this point, and just hopes that anyone walking past will think she’s napping and not crying her eyes out. 
She’d studied really hard for that last midterm. Like– she’d literally been in the library for a week straight, just doing calculus problems over and over again. She went to office hours to get help on all the questions she was stuck on, and was watching the Organic Chemistry Tutor’s videos religiously. She did so much math that she was literally having dreams about doing calculus. 
And yet, even with all of her studying, she still managed to fail the midterm. Like… she seriously failed it. As in, if she doesn’t get an A on the final, she will literally have to retake the class.
She’s so sad. She’s never gotten a grade this low, ever in her life. And she’d tried so hard!!! The morning of the midterm, she’d actually felt confident! She thought she had it in the bag!
She was so, so wrong. 
She feels stupid – not just because she failed the midterm, but because she’s literally having a breakdown about it in the library. 
This is stupid. Everything is stupid. School is stupid, Issac Newton is stupid, calculus is stupid–
“Y/n?” 
Uh oh. She tries to wipe away her tears discreetly, licking her lips and clearing her throat and desperately hoping that it’s not obvious that she’s been crying. 
When she lifts her head, she finds Harry standing in front of her. “Why’re you crying?” he asks bluntly, looking down at her with his brows furrowed.
Ok. So it is obvious.
“Um,” she sniffles, “Hi Harry.” She hopes that maybe if she pretends like everything is fine, then he won’t pry any further. 
It doesn’t work.
“Why are you crying?” he asks again. There’s not much compassion or comfort in his voice. Same old grumpy Harry, so blank and impassive. 
She shrugs her shoulders, feeling small and embarrassed. “I– it’s silly,” she stammers, looking down at her fingers. 
Harry doesn’t say anything, staring at her and waiting for her to continue. 
She swallows thickly. “I failed my midterm,” she whispers, her voice catching as a new lump grows in her throat. 
“How bad?”
One lone tear falls down her face as she shakes her head disappointedly, which she wipes away quickly. “Really bad,” she whimpers. Her cheeks burn hot as she realizes that she can’t hold back the tears any longer. She quickly averts her eyes from him, staring into her lap and hoping that he can’t see her face.
This is the second time he’s seen her cry, which is two times more than she would like. He probably thinks she’s some silly, over emotional girl… probably thinks she’s so annoying. She just wants to curl up in a ball, hide in a dark hole and cry by herself. She can’t handle Harry’s judgment on top of her shitty midterm grade.  
He stands there silently for a moment. Her lower lip has pouted out cutely and he can hear her sniffling quietly. “Was it math?” he asks. 
“Yeah,” she grumbles sadly. Stupid math. 
He hums. After another tense moment he asks, “Do you want help?”
“Help with what?” She stares down at her fingers, her tone dejected. The happy glimmer that usually sparkles in her eye is gone. 
“With math,” he clarifies. “I can help you.”
She looks up at him curiously, still pouting. “You’d help me with math?”
He nods, pulling out the chair next to her. “Let me see your midterm,” he says, nodding his head towards the packet of math problems she’d just been sobbing over. Embarrassingly, the front page is stained with a few tears, but she hands it over nonetheless. 
He scans over the first page quickly, reading the question and seeing how she answered it. “Do you know why you got this one wrong?” 
She sniffles and shrugs. She hadn’t even tried to look over the questions, too mentally exhausted to even try and understand what mistakes she’d made. 
“Look. You tried to cancel out the tan3x, which would make sense in any other case… but since it’s to the power of 4 you could really easily have used integration by parts.”
“Wish I knew that before I took the fucking midterm,” she huffs.
“Hey,” he tsks. “Learn from your mistakes so that you don’t make them again. You need to know this stuff to do integral tests later.”
She shakes her head. “I tried so hard, Harry,” she barely whispers, her voice exhausted. “Like I studied so much, and I really really tried to make it all make sense. But it’s just so hard for me.” She sniffles and wipes away more tears, taking a shaky breath and looking away from Harry. 
She doesn’t want to try anymore. She just wants to give up.
He purses his lips, brows furrowed. There’s something about seeing y/n upset that just feels so wrong. She usually brings so much… light into a room. Seeing her cry makes it seem like the entire universe has gotten a little sadder. 
“You’ve got the right idea when you’re solving these…” he tries to comfort her (though he’s never really been good at comforting people), “It’s just little things that you’re doing wrong. And it’s probably because you’ve got a shit professor who just has you copy down problems.”
“That’s literally all we do!” she whines, not even caring if she sounds like a baby. “He does the problems so fast and then I have to go home and try and figure out how he did it all by myself!” She sniffles and puts her head in her hands, more tears dropping from her eyelashes. She’s exhausted, her head starting to hurt as she exhales a shuddery breath. 
He lets her cry a little bit. “Listen,” he says gently, turning to face her. The normal furrow in his brow is gone, his gaze a little bit softer. “Next time you come over with Maddie, bring your notes and we can go over them together, okay?”
She sniffles. “Seriously?”
“Yes.” 
“Like actually?”
“Yes,” he says again exasperatedly, rolling his eyes. He stands up from the table and puts her midterm back down in front of her. “Lighten up, sunshine. One bad score is not the end of the world.” 
She feels a bit silly now that Harry’s witnessed her having another breakdown in the library. But, despite how little he said… he actually helped her calm down. This was not the end of the world. 
“Okay,” she whispers, “thanks, Harry.” 
He nods and walks away. 
Maybe he doesn’t hate her, she thinks to herself. 
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“I’m going out,” Maddie says as she walks into the kitchen, discarding her half full coffee mug on the counter as she grabs her car keys from the hook in front of the door. 
“Your mug!” y/n tuts like a mother. Maddie rolls her eyes as she pours the last of her coffee down the sink and puts the mug in the dishwasher. Y/n ignores the dramatic eye roll, knowing that Maddie’s just playing around, and asks, “Where are you going?”
“Over to Blake’s,” she responds with a wink. She’s been telling y/n about how she’s been waiting for Blake to text her all week because she doesn’t want to be the one texting first all the time… weird situation-ship stuff that y/n’s never experienced before. Seems like he finally texted her, with how excited Maddie is to be going over. 
Just as Maddie is about to step out the door, y/n remembers Harry’s offer. He’d been serious, right? He hadn’t just said that because she was crying… right? She really hopes not, because she really could use his help. She’d been up for hours last night, trying to do the homework, but ultimately giving up because she got too frustrated with herself. Maybe… maybe he’d be able to help her?
“Wait!” y/n calls out, “Um… can I come with you?”
Maddie raises an eyebrow, “Why do you want to come over to Blake’s apartment?”
Y/n turns a bit shy, “Harry… he’s, um, helping me with math.”
“Harry?” Maddie’s eyes glimmer curiously. “He’s literally such a dick. He’s helping you?”
“He’s not that bad…” y/n mumbles, remembering the ounce of kindness he’d shown to her in the library the other day. He’s just a little bit… reserved, she’s started to realize.
“Please. He literally never smiles. I dunno how you got him to talk to you, he always ignores me when I’m over.” 
(Honestly, she doesn’t blame Harry for not talking to Maddie… she sometimes ignores Maddie in her own apartment too…)
“You have two minutes to meet me in the car or I’m leaving without you!”
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With her schoolbag in hand, y/n taps lightly on Harry’s door. Blake had told her to just go in, but she feels like that’s rude, so she stands in front of his door nervously and waits patiently for him to open. 
“What?” he grunts, opening his bedroom door. “Oh.” The furrow in his brow softens the slightest bit when he sees it’s y/n. He’d thought it was Blake bugging him about something. Y/n is a much… nicer surprise. 
“Hi,” she says, chewing on the inside of her lip nervously. “I was wondering if… um, you could help me out with my calc stuff?” 
He stares at her for a second, then says, “yeah.” 
He opens the door wider and she follows him in. His room is messy, but not gross. The bed is unmade, three half full water bottles on his nightstand, and there’s a pair of sweatpants on the floor… but at least it doesn’t stink!
His computer screen is paused mid-game, and she realizes that he’d still been holding his controller when he’d opened up the door for her. He throws a jacket that had been thrown on the back of his chair onto the bed, and motions for her to sit. Then he pulls up another chair that was sitting in the corner of his room to sit next to her. 
“Let’s see it,” he says, shutting down his computer. 
“So…” she takes her laptop out of her bag, setting it down on his desk and turning it on so that she can open up her homework assignment. While it loads, she unlocks her ipad to the scratch work she’d done last night. “I was trying to do the homework last night, and I think I’m supposed to be doing integration by parts but honestly I’m not even sure how to do that… so I’m kind of lost.” 
Harry leans over her ipad and looks at the work she’d done. It’s… wrong. 
“Can I see your notes for integration by parts?” He asks, trying to figure out how she ended up with 1 as her answer when it should be a much larger, much more complicated mix of trig and integrals. She scrolls up until she lands on a page titled Chapter 7, and points to the second example on the problem. Her notes are cute, written in pink with girlish, bubbly handwriting. However, it’s clear that she’d been struggling to keep up with the lecture, some of her work completely scribbled out and replaced with messy numbers and formulas. Next to one of the big portions of scribbled out math, she's written “WHAT???” along with a sad face doodled underneath it.
Clearly she’s a bit confused. 
“Okay…” he scrolls down to a new page in her digital notebook and copies down the example problem that had confused her. “Let me show you how you do integration by parts first, and then we’ll look at the homework problem, okay?”
“M’kay,” she hums compliantly, crossing her legs and hiding her hands in her sleeves. She feels a bit… nervous. She doesn’t want Harry to think she’s stupid. But she’d rather have her ego a little bruised than fail the next midterm too. 
“So… you do integration by parts when you can’t just do normal integration… usually if there’s e^x in there or a natural log then you know that you have to do integration by parts.” 
She nods, following along quietly. 
“In this one… you have x times e^x dx… you have to break it up into two parts, U and dV. And then you take the derivative of U and find the integral of dV. And you plug that into the formula. Do you know the formula?”
She blinks at him. “Um…” she shuffles through her notes and finds it. “It’s this.” 
“Good… so what you do is you assign x to either U or dV and then e^x(dx) to the other… and then you find dU and V based off of that. Should we make x be U or dV?”
She purses her lips, “Make x=U?”
“Yes…” he nods. “Do you know why?” 
She shrugs. “I guessed.” 
His lip quirks up in the first smile y/n’s ever seen from him, a slight dimple popping up in his cheek. “S’cos we have to either find the derivative of U, or find the integral of dV. It’s way easier to use the derivative of x, cause it’s just one. If we made x equal to dV… then we’d add a fraction and a power of two to our equation and it’ll just make things ugly.”
“Oh.” She stares at his hands as he writes down what he just said in math terms, scribbling in his boyish handwriting that U=x and dU=1. “Okay.”
“So if U=x, then dV is equal to….”
“e^x?” she answers. 
“Good,” he says gently. “And what is V?”
She stays silent for a moment, searching the paper as if it’ll give her an answer. He senses her confusion and helps her out, saying, “IF V is the integral of dV, and dV is e^x…” 
“Well Isn’t the integral of e^x still e^x?” Her voice is unconfident, looking up at Harry with wide, round eyes.
“You’re right,” he says encouragingly, a soft smile on his face. “Stop doubting yourself so much.”
A reciprocating smile spreads on her face, feeling a little more confident with Harry’s praise. 
“All you do now is put your numbers into the formula. Can you do it?”
He hands the pen over to her, their fingers brushing. Her hair falls in front of her face as she leans over the page to write down her answer, and Harry watches softly as she tucks it back behind her ear. He notices how long and delicate her eyelashes are as he stares at her side profile.
“Is that right?” she asks quietly, trying hard to be confident but still so nervous that she’s done it wrong.
He tears his eyes away from her face. “Almost,” he says, leaning forward. Their arms brush against each other, the space that they initially had set between their chairs having shrunk as they worked on the problem together. She can feel his breath as he quietly murmurs next to her ear, “You just need to add +C at the end.” 
She furrows her eyebrows and turns her head towards him, and feels her heart stutter as she realizes how close their faces actually are. “What does the +C mean?”
“It’s just like… it’s supposed to represent any constants that we couldn’t find. Because when you take the derivative of a constant it just ends up being zero, so when you’re given an integral and doing the anti-differential process… you don’t know if there was actually a constant there or what it was. So the +C is just representing any constant value that could’ve been in the answer, even though you don’t know what the number is.”
She blinks at him. “Um… okay. I’ll just pretend like that made sense.”
He chuckles, the first time she’s probably ever heard him laugh. “It’s honestly not that important to get it. Just remember to add +C every time you take an integral.”
“Got it…” she says, adding the +C. 
“Think you can do the next one on your own?” 
+++
“Harry,” y/n pouts. “It says I’m wrong but I dunno why.” 
He pauses his game and slides out of his seat, going over to y/n. She’d relocated to his bed after they did a couple more problems together and felt confident enough to do the rest by herself. His chest brushing against her back softly as he leans over her shoulder, going over her work. “What’s the integral of sin(x)?”
“Cos(x),” she says confidently.
“Not quite…”
She sits there for a second, brows furrowed. “Oh!” she adds a negative in front of the cos(x).
“There you go,” he grins down at her. 
She lays down on his bed, her hair splaying out behind her as she throws her ipad on his bed, relieved. “Harry. You’re a genius.” 
He laughs, a quiet huff of air that passes out of his nose with an amused smile on his face. “So it makes sense?”
“I think you should be teaching our class. You’re so good. Thank you for helping me.”
He hums, giving her a satisfied smirk, and goes back to his game while she finishes her homework. It's a strange setup, sitting in his bed and doing her homework while he plays, but she doesn’t mind it. 
In fact, it’s kind of nice.
Harry’s kind of nice.
She kind of likes Harry.
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hope u guys loved it!!!!!! part 2 is up on my patreon already, and will come to tumblr next saturday (july 29) pleeeeaaaase lmk what u rhink and give her a rb and a comment i love u guys so so much!!!
sunshine - part 2 (already posted on patreon!) : In which Harry's a little bit nicer, and y/n is very excited to possibly, hopefully, maybe be kissed.
sunshine masterlist
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starryhutcherson · 8 months ago
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━━ A NEW FAMILIAR
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author's note: crawled out of my hole for this one guys. sorry for being so ghost mode im working on putting out more stuff, apologies if this isn't of the highest quality as i'm running on sugar free redbull and three hours of sleep ! love my life hahahahaAHHHH
'୧ ‧₊ pairing: best friend!mike schmidt x reader warnings: 18+ sexual content! oral sex (f!receiving), p in v, unprotected sex, dirty talk, swearing word count: 4600+ ⋆ ✩‧₊
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Mike’s expression always glooms when you bring up the next date you’ve arranged. He knows how this story plays out; he knows the truth behind the men you’ve matched with on whatever sketchy website you’ve wasted your time on. They’ve molded themselves into the embodiment of perfection, through falsified photos and fabrications buried in their bios. His patience crumbles like fireplace ash as you skip around his living room and drone on about whatever dickhead you’ve set your poor, precious heart on.
He knows, always, the the outcome is running makeup and salty cheeks, sobbing on the floor of his living room in a creasing satin dress and his welcoming arms, a bitter exclamation of “you were right Mike” leaving your lips in the knowing silence and him gritting his jaw and pretending that it doesn’t bother him the the only habits you ever find yourself falling back into are the bad ones. 
It’s no different today. 
Mark or Matt or Mitch – you really were killing him, because it should be Mike. It should be him. Him that you’re getting ready for, him that you’re daydreaming about. And it’s an odd feeling, like a movie where your favorite character dies and then movie finishes and you have to accept that they aren’t coming back, no matter how long you sit glued to the reclinable chair, popcorn crunched beneath your sneakers and the credit-scene reflected in your shrinking pupils. 
Mike’s not the type to be happier with the hope – he’d let the truth swallow him up, sink into his creaking bones, he’d live with the loss. But he still has hope for you. He has hope that your eyes will open and you’ll seep into his brain and his breath and his bed. He hopes you’ll start seeing him instead of just looking. Maybe it's wishful thinking. Ignorant optimism.
It feels like it. 
It feels like it, right now, when he’s leaning against the doorframe of his bathroom and watching you get ready, your animated chatter reverberating around the small space between coats of mascara. He offered to give you a ride before you’d even asked, and he’ll tolerate the sting of watching you get out of the car looking all pretty for someone who isn’t him, just to make sure you get there safely. It’s the type of sacrifice he’ll make for you. 
“I can’t even feel my face, I’ve been smiling so hard all day!” You squeal, powdering your cheeks with more purposeless product – he thinks it’s all pointless. You’re radiant, even in the harsh lighting of his bathroom. 
He offers a low grunt. What is he supposed to say? He’s not happy. And he’s not gonna pretend he is. 
You either don’t notice or choose to ignore, continuing to doll yourself up to whatever standards you have for yourself. “I mean, he says he’s been skiing since he was 6. He’s practically an olympian.” 
Mike scoffs. 
“What?”
“Nothing,” he grumbles, shaking his head. “Can you hurry up?”
“Alright, grumpy. Calm down. I gotta do my lips and then I’m ready. Plus, nobody told you that you gotta stand here.” 
A fleeting flush of fuchsia permeates his cheeks, but he looks down at his worn shoes to hide it. It’s true. He didn’t have to stand here. But if an angel was populating your bathroom you’d want to take a peek, would you not? That’s how he thinks you look. Angelic. Glowing from your soul, a content smile knitted on your lips. You might as well have a halo and wings – that heaven-sent aura is reinforced when you douse yourself in lingering washes of that sweet perfume that’s branded itself to you. He’d recognise that floral aroma anywhere, the way a shark detects a drop of blood amongst saline scattered seas. 
“Okay, I’m ready. How do I look?”
Cruelest question of them all. “You look… fine. Good.”
A knot forms in your brow. “All this effort for that terrible answer?” Playful, but with a truthful undertone. Why do you value his opinion so much? He doesn’t want to assume anything. 
“Well I’m not the person you’re dressing up for.” I wish I was. He doesn’t say the other words, but he thinks them so hard he’s half convinced if you were listening in the right spot, or looking into his eyes for long enough that you’d hear it anyway. 
“Okay, okay, whatever. Let’s just get going, don’t wanna keep Mack waiting.” 
Two letters. That’s all it would take. That’s all he’d have to swap to make it him.
“Yeah, let’s go.”
✩‧₊˚
Even if you aren’t aware, even if he did offer, he drives begrudgingly. He focuses as much as he can, on the road ahead and not your glistening figure beside him in the passenger seat, the very definition of temptation. 
The mall parking lot is barren, a few gleaming cars scattered amongst the otherwise desolate area. He pulls into a space, sets the car in park, rakes in a greedy sigh of air. 
“If anything happens, call me.” 
You sneer teasingly. “Don’t be so pessimistic. It’s gonna be great, he could be my future husband, y’know.”
Yep. Mack, the 35 year old you've met online, who’s only notable talent seems to be skiing and his greatest life achievement to date is shooting a deer, whose head is mounted to the wall in his bedroom, typically visible in the background of his many instagram posts which involved his shirtless figure straining to flex his overly pronounced bulk. A match made in heaven. He wants to scream. 
And how can you even tell him to not be pessimistic? How can you look him in the eyes and act like this moment hasn’t happened time after time, the point of no return before an evening spent crying in his arms as he reassures you that your failed dates are never your fault, even though by now it seems like you must be seeking out the same genre of shitty man if you’re this good at getting your heart broken. He’s sick of picking up the fragile little pieces of his bathroom floor, cutting himself on the shards of a heart that’ll never be his. You deserve more than these half-baked, single night romances. He could show you that. 
“Yeah, sure,” he grits. “Future husband. Just call me, seriously.”
You roll your eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll call you.” 
And with that, you’re off, disappearing into the gaping mouth of the mall’s entrance, and he watches with an alkaline feeling growing in his stomach. Your hair is caught up in the wind like clothing on a washline and he thinks his hope is all drained out. 
✩‧₊˚
Mike spends a good two hours back at his house. His movements feel vacuous, staring ahead at the screen, barely processing the raging garbage that masquerades as reality TV. The rain has picked up outside, licking at the window panes with a growing intensity. 
He’s not happy about the jean skirt and tiny little tank top you’d clad yourself in prior to leaving, you’re probably frigid by now in the cold. You did however reassure him that Mack was gonna drive you home, or even worse, take you back to his place, so his stupid fucking elk head trophie could watch with it’s empty eyes while the pair of you fuck on the bed that his mom still has to make for him because he never can quite manage those fitted sheets, can he? Fucking manchild. 
Shit. Mike’s feeling so so bitter. Maybe it’s because he’s finally realized that this is the dreaded pattern he’s going to have to endure with you until death. Or until he braves up and actually tells you that he’s been in love with you since the fifth day of second grade, when you mouthily confronted Jerry Murdoch and told him to give Mike his crayons back.  
With a weak sigh, he turns the TV off with a click of the remote still encaptured in the loose hold of his fist, and decides to see if he can melt into any form of sleep – but the knock on his door prevents him from doing so. 
He arises lethargically, not having much on his mind but the denial of his slumber as he shuffles over and turns the handle, but then, it’s you. 
Fluttery lashes melted to black smudges beneath your eyes, a mixture of rainwater and tears, completely drenched and dripping all over his doormat, your body is trembling and you’re wracked with tiny little cries and he’s feeling so many emotions he believes he might implode. 
He pulls you inside and into his arms, stroking your back in gentle, soothing motions, and it kills him that this has become routine. He’s angry. He’s sick of this. 
“What happened this time?” He grunts softly. 
“He didn’t even show up. He couldn’t even send a message as to why, Mike,” you sniffle into his warm chest, drunk off the even echo of his heartbeat. 
A moment’s silence rots like aged fruit. He draws a breath in, then out, then in again. 
“Why didn’t you call me?”
You crane your face upwards to meet him, instantly bathed in a nervous shiver when you see how serious he looks. 
“My phone was dead.” Is all you can manage to mumble. 
“What?” He’s pissed. “Why didn’t you charge it? You could have charged it there, they have outlets at the mall. Or you could’ve used someone else’s, so you didn’t have to walk home in the rain, because you’re drenched.” 
“I don’t–”
“Y’know how dangerous it is to walk around alone in this shitty neighborhood? Half the street lights don’t even work, and I don’t even know any of my neighbors, or what kinda people walk around here at night.” He grumbles. “I shouldn’t have to tell you all this, I’m sick of explaining all this to you.”
You roll your eyes irritably, releasing yourself from his arms and crossing your own across your dripping wet torso. “How was I supposed to know he was gonna stand me up? You’re telling me I should just expect it?”
He blinks like a deer in headlights, silence settles into his flesh.
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
You scoff. “It’s what you implied.” 
“It’s not what I—” He grumbles weakly under his breath, cutting himself off, deciding reasoning with you is somewhat of a useless attempt. “Why can’t you just listen to me?”
“What, charge my phone next time? Bring a raincoat? Yeah, great help, seriously, don’t know where I’d be without you,” your sarcasm hits like gunshot wounds to the teeth. 
“Or maybe you should try to meet actual people, instead of fake ones from some stupid website.” 
After a cold shiver bites up your spine, your expression deepens with defense. What is his fucking problem? “At least I try to get out of the house! At least I don’t spend every hour of every day moping around and feeling sorry for myself!” 
The pair of you fight, sure, every good relationship, friend or romance or family or whatever should, but nothing like this. This is stone-set, it’s been coming for a while, the wild gesticulations and the pacing and the raised voices. It shakes the bones of the weakened house. 
“Don’t,” Mike says with a furious edge, fists tightening and untightening like he’s about to take a swing at the wall, like this is going to end with bleeding knuckles nipped with shards of worn plaster. “Don’t throw that in my face, I do everything I can, for you and Abby. It’s not like I have a choice.”
“So what, you’re so fucking miserable in your own life that you have to try and control mine?”
“Control? You’re like my child! You don’t even know how to take care of yourself half the time, so yes, I try to help you not to make such shitty decisions!” 
You scowl. “You’re not obligated to do anything for me, y’know Mike. Why do you keep me around if I’m that much of a chore for you!”
He snaps, the tension in his fists bleeding up into his throat, his mouth, the words clot behind his gums and suddenly they tumble out in a fury-fueled shout. “Because you’ve got no one else!” 
You deflate, wilting like a flame without oxygen, and Mike deems the silence to be more cruel than anything else you’ve said to him tonight. He’s feeling everything and nothing all at once, the quiet crumbles around him like a burning building and he fears he’ll become rubble beneath the debris. 
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just… god, just–” His eyes flick to you, and then retreat back down to the faded living room carpet. He can’t swallow his guilt this time. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped like that.”
“It’s fine,” you say coldly, knuckling away an angry tear. The salt water is the trick of nostalgia, you’ve cried like this so many times. Your breakage of those promises to yourself. It’ll be different. And it never is. 
“No. It’s not – I’m a dick, I just… I hate watching other people ruin your life. You deserve better.”
Better. What is better? Some twisted fantasy that some people are indulged with and others are left longing for. That you’re left longing for. You know he’s tired of the same bullshit that you force yourself through, convincing yourself of change, painting yourself up to be fit for presentation, and hoping that whoever you’ve leeched onto likes what they see, so you don’t have to feel so alone anymore. You’re oblivious, painfully so. Because Mike could plaster together the cracks in your splintering psyche, if you’d just let him in. 
“Whatever, Mike. It’s true anyway.”
There’s a hole in his heart in the shape of your name. He begs you. Fill it. A part of him shatters at the defeat in your words — he’s crumbled you to the bone, to the marrow. He’ll build you back up. You deserve it. 
“No it isn't. No it isn’t. You have me. You’ll always have me.” 
A silence pervades; the look in his eyes is one of pleading, that you’ll stop and see what he’s offering you, that you’ll stop chasing your own tail, that you’ll stop the cycle. 
“Mike…”
“And Abby.”
You indulge him. 
“You have me. And you have Abby. And I know that’s… not much, but she loves you. So much. And I’m sorry, ‘cause I know I don’t say it enough, I don’t…. I don’t say how much you mean to me, but I just—”
“Mike.” 
He wallows in the waters of your rain kissed eyes, the way your pupils pulse and the words are falling before he can swallow them back down. 
“I love you.”
He gives you that stare. That stare that’s the color of black coffee, the look that you can feel, unearthing the graveyard of wilting feelings you’ve tried to bury, the heart that beats for him him him, lodged between the ivory bars of your ribcage. He maps you out with his eyes, he looks at you the way the sun hungers for daybreak. 
He’s waiting. He’d wait forever. 
“And… and seeing you with these… shitty people who don’t even care about you, it just…” He sighs exasperatedly, dragging a sweaty palm down his face. 
His sentences can’t seem to finish themselves. This is harder than it looks in the movies. Harder than when he’s practiced in the mirror, when Abby’s walked in and giggled at him and told him to just fess up. 
“You love me? Like…”
He looks up at you like a kicked puppy. “Yeah. I do.”
You’re beyond bewildered. He loves you. He loves you. 
“What– but… you—”
“You don’t have to… say anything. I just, I can’t… I can’t pretend anymore. I can’t do it.”
You reach for his hand. It’s a little clammy, a little trembly, but it’s a perfect fit. Just like you. 
“I love you too, Mike.”
What?
“You… do?”
He’s skeptical, but he’s also swooning. A stone man is slowly cracking. 
“I just didn’t… didn’t think I could have you. I mean, you’re so… you’re everything, y’know? You’re a good brother, and you work so hard, and you’re… I’m just… I don’t think I deserve you,” you whisper, confessing. With a newfound stroke of confidence, he approaches, one hand snaking around to the small of your back, another on your cheek. He’s gentle. In his eyes, you’re porcelain. Precious. Fragile. At least, at this moment. But you love him too and that’s all he needs. It’s all he’s ever needed. 
“You deserve everything.” He says it so quietly it’s barely audible. And then, nothing is audible because he’s carefully pulling your lips to his, linking you in every way, his hands tangle into your damp hair and he’s kissing you. 
His lips chase yours in messy, uncalculated movements. He’s starting small. It’s been a while. And he’s gonna take his time with you. He’s gonna show you what you deserve. Soft sounds squeak past his lips as they flutter against yours, and you’re closer and closer and closer still, impossibly so. 
Within moments he’s whisking you off to his bedroom, his hand tangled with yours, an interlace tight enough to cause ropeburn. His skin chafes with yours, and then he’s kissing you again atop his navy comforter. 
He’s gentle, respectful, but you understand what he’s trying to tell you, what he’s been trying to tell you. He speaks through silken drags of his tongue, through the hand that holds your cheek steady— he feels as though he’s gripping the very cusp of a constellation. You taste like stardust. You glow like the waning moon. 
He breathes heavily in the expanse of his throat, his pants have become tight and wet and filthy; he’s been subconsciously grinding down into your lap. You’re a little shaky and your pupils have darkened with lust and he is going to show you what you mean to him. What you’ve been missing. 
His hand falls lower, into the slope of torso that dips into your hips. His eyes travel back and forth, searching, hunting for the desire that he feels mirrored back at him. Do you want this, the way he does? Do you? His hardened stare doesn’t speak loud enough. He elaborates.
“Can I… uh… do you wanna…?”
Do you want to? You need to. 
“Shit, okay,” he croaks out, jaw tense and tight as he traces you beneath calloused fingers. You didn’t realize you said that out loud. 
He’s endearingly awkward – you know from languid late-night conversations that he hasn’t done this a lot. Maybe even at all. But he’s sweet, so sweet, like lapping up sugar and feeling it dissolve on your tongue, feeling him dissolve on your tongue, giving you comfort and cavities. 
“Can I take this off?” He asks nervously, fiddling with the hem of your camisole. A short nod, and he’s sliding it over your sweat-pricked figure, admiring your contours in the whisper of evening moonlight that bleeds through holes in his moth-eaten curtains. You’re perfect, and he knew you would be. 
He caresses your skin gently, drunk on the mellow feeling of your bare stomach beneath his fingertips. Your bra is black, a little lace peering along the straps, your breasts spilling into the fabric. He reaches around your back, fumbling at the clasp. When the garment drops, his hands are replacing it before you can even blink. 
“Beautiful,” he manages to get out, thumbing over your nipples. 
“Mngh, Mike—”
“Sh. Just let me… just let me. Let me make you feel good. Please?” He grunts out under his breathless voice, and how could you deny such a request?
The moment you agree, he’s grabbing you by the thighs and tugging you towards him slightly, so your back is nearly flat against his mattress and he’s settling himself in the gap that you create for him. 
Your skirt comes off first. Your panties are undeniably soused, his fingers trace the big wet spot that’s dripping all for him, teasing you through torturously thin cotton. 
“Mike,” you mewl gently, fingers settling in his nest of chocolate curls that are damp with sweat. A firm tweak and he’s groaning, his voice melting away into nothing like hot tar. 
“You’re so wet,” he mumbles to himself, like he’s never seen anything like it. Probably not in a while. His finger hooks beneath the waistband, pulls it out gently, and lets it go. It slaps against your hip bone and another fresh sound seeps from your lips.  
“Mike, shit, please just do something—”
“Okay,” he whispers, more to himself than you, carefully sliding your panties from your waist, down past your ankles, and he’s tossing them to join the pile of clothes that has begun to collect on his bedroom floor. 
You’re here, before him. The girl he waited for. Your soft flesh is glistening, clenching painfully around nothing, and he’s salivating at the sight of you. He pries your legs out further with his warm hands, leaving them to linger on your bare flesh for a few drawn out moments, before he claims what’s rightfully his. 
He presses a trialing kiss to your clit, and your back curves delicately, fingers tightening their grasp in his hair. He moans into you at this action, and you, in turn, moan as well. Confidence creates itself in him with each little whimper that he gets you to release, and he’s answering back, hearing your cries, your calls of his name with his own unabashed exclamations of pleasure. This is just as good for him, as it is for you. 
“Mike,” you whine gently, and he’s mumbling weak praise right into your cunt. 
“Fuck, you’re so pretty. Wanted this for so long.”
It’s barely audible between his languid sucks; he’s lapping at your drooling entrance, fingers subtly creeping closer, up and along your thighs and settling right above your throbbing clit. He presses his thumb against it, tracing sinful circles against your bud— once, twice, and then you’re far too close to the edge. 
“Oh, Mike I’m gonna come,” you choke out between gasps. 
“Do it. Please.”
He’s begging you. 
And you oblige. With a trembling sob, your thighs tense around his head, keeping him locked in place, capturing him and making sure he finishes the job, and oh does he plan to. When you soar, he’s still holding you in place, soothing the electric sparks pulsating throughout your body. 
He savors your sounds, and when they stop coming, he presses a lingering peck on your inner thigh, stubble scraping at the sensitive dermis. He then raises his face to your level, the light coruscating off the filthy souvenir etched all over his face, your glittering arousal that he wears so proudly. 
He steals a proper kiss from you, rubbing your side as a gentle comfort. He’s completely hard now, tenting his sweats, leaking against the fabric. You gingerly reach out, tracing what you assume to be the head of his cock, and he sags, boneless, against your touch. 
“Fuck, baby I—”
“Baby?” You chuckle softly, still hazed from the candy-coated afterglow of your orgasm. The first of many, he hopes. 
“Mngh— g… got a problem?” He grumbles softly, almost quivering as you begin to palm him with purpose.
“It’s out of character,” you tell him gently. 
“Shit, can I be inside you?” He asks you, voice ripped raw. 
And once again, Mike Schmidt leaves you breathless. 
“Yeah. I need it. I need you.”
He groans, slipping off his pants and boxers without so much as another word from your swollen lips. He’s hard, angrily so, his cock pulses violently and a little whimper escapes through the crack in his bitten lips when it slaps against his stomach. 
He’s stroking himself slowly, base to tip and then back again, collecting the pearls of precum that dribble from his slit. He’s never been so ready for something. For you. It’s all for you. 
He’s holding you, thumbing your hip bones and gently nudging himself into your hole, cooing at every cry that crawls from the crevices of your throat. When he bottoms out, finally, it’s safe to say that he gets a little dumb. “Oh, shit, I’m not— not gonna last long, you’re so tight, shit…” He’s rambling a little. It’s cute. 
A few wandering kisses land on you the way dandelion spores decorate a skyline – your cheek and your chin and your jaw, as he waits for you to let him move. You’re squeezing him for all he’s got and he’s three seconds away from spilling before he’s even so much as thrusted. You do this to him. 
All those days, staring into your eyes and wondering if you’d ever see him the way you do, all those nights, stroking your hair and softening your saddened sobs after failed date after failed date. They’re all worth it. 
You’re clamping down on him, warm and wet and wavering, and you’re exhaling softly through your nose and telling him to move, begging him to move, to make you feel good, and it’s what he does. 
He pumps into you with passion, magnetized to your every movement. He’s satisfying a decade worth of insatiable craving, he’s chasing your hips with his. You end where he begins. 
The headboard creaks and slams against thin plastered walls, one hand grips onto it with alabaster knuckles and the other one holds your hips for better leverage. He doesn’t need to say it, but each knocked kiss of his pelvis to yours is a silent I love you I love you I love you. 
“Oh my god Mike,” you sob, and he slides himself deeper, hitting everywhere he wants to reach. Everywhere to make you quiver beneath him.
“You d—don’t know how long I’ve wanted this,” he moans lowly. “How many times I’ve imagined you like— like this.”
He’s blabbering, every stray thought that passes through his head is already blossoming on his tongue and out into the air before he can even think twice. Admittedly, you’re too blissed out in your own mind to really respond, but it’s arousing all the same. 
“You’re so… so beautiful,” he’s flushed and he’s faltering, and you know he’s close before he even announces it. 
“Shit, baby, I can’t— can’t last much longer,” he stammers, his bruising pace beginning to shake. 
“Do it in me, Mike, please, please,” shit, are you trying to kill him? Your word is the only law he knows, and he’s wrapping his arms around your torso and diving his head in the elegant slope of your collarbone, biting down into the skin and spasming somewhere deep in your welcoming walls. 
He tries to keep himself quiet, but it’s really a futile effort. His hips jut sporadically as he empties himself inside you, and the sudden flood of subtle heat is all it takes for you to topple over as well. 
Bliss teeters back into reality after a seemingly ceaseless moment. He peels his head from its previous position to admire you, to stroke a stray lock of hair from your forehead and nervously greet it with a kiss.
He doesn’t let go of you. Not now, not ever, he thinks to himself. His arms snake around you tighter, and somehow it’s even more intimate after the fact. His bare chest collides with your back, his nose rests comfortably against the crown of your head. The pair of you follow each other into a dreamless sleep, safe in the sanctuary of a warm bed and an even warmer embrace. 
He’s found his new familiar. 
masterlist
✩‧₊
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everythingisromant1c · 3 months ago
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p2: three reasons why you can't stand co-star!james potter
co-star!james potter x actress!reader
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summary: you were finding the first days of shooting your new TV show to be absolutely amazing, aside from the fact that you absolutely could not stand your co-star James Potter. unfortunately for you, you spent enough time around him to narrow down his most irritating qualities to only three:
a/n: hey so this took waayyy longer than i would've hoped to release, but i promise this series is not going anywhere, so tysm for all the loveee and all ur guys' patience <33
also pls pls pls feel free to send in prompt requests for this series i am so all ears
full series: Trouble in Hollywood - masterlist
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1. He was insufferably good at his job
You wished you could say working with James Potter was such a challenge because he was simply bad at his job. But the thing was: he wasn't. It turned out he was really the impeccably good actor that your director Minerva seemed to swear he was, as if the talent truly was seeping through his veins. Somehow, that only made working with him more frustrating to you.
"Aaron, you've got to believe me."
James had come to you during the middle of hair and makeup and asked you to rehearse lines with him even before official rehearsals for the day's shooting began, saying it would make him feel more prepared. And, as much as you hated it, you felt the same. Your only regret was thinking you'd be able to stand him and his arrogance before seven in the morning.
"Why should I, Cassidy?"
The brunette responded to you fully in character, leaning back against a nearby vanity with his long legs crossed in front of him as you sat in your cushioned chair. He apparently got out of hair and makeup in under a matter of minutes, looking effortlessly put together with his curls hanging perfectly over his forehead—you didn't have the same luck. Your lovely makeup artist Mary seemed to be unbothered by the interruptions, continuing on with your makeup as you rehearsed your lines, though you caught her amused smile every once in a while from her reflection in the mirror.
"Because..." you began, trying to stay in character as your brain scrambled for your next line.
"You're supposed to say," cut in James, "'-because we can only trust each other right now.'"
"Please stop telling me my lines, James." You repeated the irritated request you'd uttered all morning to him as you put a tired hand to the bridge of your nose, one that Mary moved away hurriedly.
"Watch your makeup," she pleaded with a powder-filled brush to your nose , and you winced apologetically.
"Did you just want me to stand here and wait for you to remember them?" James's voice poked at you irritatingly as you stared up at him from your seat.
"Yes, that's exactly what I want." You fought from rolling your eyes. "You could at least give me a second. I didn't even ask for my line."
He raised his brows with an acquiescent sigh. "Whatever the lady wants."
Ignoring him, a skill you were growing like a muscle, you cleared your throat in focus, trying not to move too much as Mary blended some product on your neck. "Because we can only trust each other right now."
James quickly jumped back into character, right on time. "That didn't mean anything to you the other night."
"I already told you I'm sorry for that. When I heard all the rumors, I ..." you cursed at yourself as your mind drew another painful, embarrassing blank.
"-I didn't know what to think." James looked anything but guilty as his voice met your ears once again, finishing your line for you without fail.
"James!" You glared at him, doing your best to stay out in your chair and not storm out of the trailer he'd so brazenly infiltrated. You shook your head to yourself through your reflection in the brightly lit mirrors . "You're impossible."
James shrugged innocently. "I don't get why you're mad at me for trying to help."
"I'm not."
He scoffed, putting a dramatic hand to his chest. "So is this what you look like when you're happy with me?" The corner of his aggravating lips lifted along with his shoulder in a small shrug, before turning away again. "Isn't very much like how I've pictured it."
You didn't miss the way Mary let out a small breath of laughter from her nose as she switched over to doting on your hair. You gritted your teeth.
"I mean, I'm not mad at you for helping. I'm mad at you because you're annoying."
He crossed his arms defensively, his lips still quirked up, and you fought against the urge within you that had your eyes following the movement of his biceps. "I'm annoying?"
The feigned disbelief in his voice snapped your back to your right mind.
"Yes," you answered plainly. "You and your posh accent."
Maybe you'd stopped making sense, but it was too early for you to care. James was watching your meltdown with what you could only identify as merriment, his unfortunately unignorable presence taking up too much space in the cramped makeup trailer.
Thankfully choosing to ignore the part about his accent, he put up his hands innocently. "Last time I checked, I wasn't the one who keeps forgetting their lines."
"We just got the updated script for this episode last night." You shifted in your chair to face him, and you heard Mary wince from behind you, probably getting fed up with how much you were moving around, though you were too annoyed to stop yourself. "How the hell are you already off-book?"
James shrugged smugly, shoving his hands in his pockets as he leaned forward. You squinted your eyes at him. "An actor never reveals his secrets, love."
You twisted your mouth in disgust at his words—because you definitely felt something as he said them, whether it was disgust or not you didn't want to think about—and probably only made him more satisfied. "Mary," you groaned, looking at her through the mirror in front of you. "I think I'm going to be sick."
She shook her head and gave your reflection a sharp look back. "Not in that freshly ironed shirt you're not."
You sighed, settling back into your chair and sparing another glance at the man to your right. He tipped his head at you, almost tauntingly, and you felt your jaw tighten. It was going to be a long day.
2. Everyone else seemed to love him
You'd been going about your Thursday innocently, filming scenes when called upon—finally having memorized all your lines properly—and somehow getting through the morning without any irritating interactions with your least favorite person on set at the moment. That good feeling, of course, could only last so long.
"What's this?"
Minerva, your director, had been walking around set with you until you both stopped at the sight of a crowd forming outside one of the sets. You followed her, making your way through the crowd of your fellow actors and crew members until you were met with a nauseating sight: James Potter.
At the sight of your director, his already proud smile grew to a beaming one, almost blinding, as he greeted her. "We've all been really busy with this week's filming schedule, Minnie, and you mentioned what a hassle it's been ordering enough food for everyone every day with our budget, so I pulled some strings and got my family's chef to cater our lunch."
Your jaw slacked as he nodded his head to his left, where a number of tables were set up with what looked like pizza ingredients, a moustached-man in a chef hat standing behind the scene proudly. You couldn't believe your eyes. Apparently, neither could the woman next to you.
"Oh my- James this is ... amazing!" Minerva—or Minnie, as James somehow had grown accustomed to calling her—turned to your co-star, expression as bright and beaming as James's crowd-pleasing smile was. "But you shouldn't have gone to all this trouble-"
"It was no trouble at all. Francis was more than happy to help."
He waved a hand at the chef, who you assumed was the 'Francis' in question, who nodded back at him happily with a pizza cutter in his hand. It was like something out of a movie, the way everyone clapped for James who stood at the front of the crowd like the beloved man he was. You felt sick to your stomach.
"What's wrong? Do you not like the pizza?"
You'd taken your lunch shamefully, making sure to hide your amazement at the endless selection of pizza toppings that James had arranged at the build-your-own-pizza station, and were sitting with Remus, who you'd met at auditions for the show and luckily got casted in a role other than one that'd gone to James, and Sirius, another one of your co-stars who you'd quickly become friends with since you spent practically all your time on set nowadays.
You looked up at Remus briefly before returning your gaze to the pizza in front of you, the perfect slice underneath the sun seeming to taunt you. "No," you grumbled. "The pizza's amazing."
Sirius chuckled. "You'd think you'd be happy about that."
"I would, aside from the fact that it was Potter who brought it in."
The black-haired man tipped his head at you curiously. "What's your problem with James again?"
You shook your head forebodingly. "Don't tell me he's brainwashed you both with his hundred-dollar pizza too."
"I doubt the pizza's that much money." Remus bit into the slice in his hand, talking through the bite. "But it is pretty delicious."
"It is," Sirius nodded. "It was pretty nice of him to cover lunch for the day. If anything, you'd think you'd like him more for this."
You groaned. "He brought in his family's private chef, for God's sake. It's not like he rescued a cat from a tree or something."
Sirius and Remus shared a look as you spoke. You knew you sounded ridiculous, but you currently lacked enough dignity to care as yet another slice of pizza sat on your plate, ready to be eaten.
"James is actually a really nice lad," reasoned Sirius. "Take it from us. We kind of grew up with him."
That fact had yet to escape you as soon as you'd met the two of them. According to the stories they'd relayed to you, Remus's mum had been an on-set tutor to James growing up when he was acting in some movie, while Sirius's parents had been producers for some of James's parents' films. Safe to say, the three of them certainly left you feeling inexperienced in the world of acting.
"James should be the least of your worries," urged Remus. "He's harmless."
"If he's so harmless, then why has he gone out of his way to be a pain in my ass since I met him?"
Sirius snorted. "We said he's harmless, not that he's not an idiot sometimes."
"But," Remus added, "whatever James has done, just know that it always comes from a good place. The man doesn't have a mean bone in his body."
You sighed inwardly. The James Potter you knew seemed to be very different from the one that everyone else seemed to be familiar with, and it was driving you crazy.
3. He was an obnoxious flirt
When you said 'flirt', you not only meant that he flirted with you—unfortunately—but that he seemed to flirt with anyone in sight, whether he realized it or not. In fact, you'd been forced to watch as he smooth-talked one of the hairstylists on set for the past ten minutes.
You couldn't hear everything they were saying, thank god, but you were sure she was probably more charmed by the fact that his last name was Potter than anything he could remotely come up with to win her over. You'd had enough conversations with him to know that the movie-star smiles he offered were enough to charm people before they realized just how insufferable he was.
After what felt like hours, he said something to the woman in parting and left her looking flushed and smiley as he strolled away. You sighed, happy to finally be rid of distractions, and looked back down at the script on your lap that you were trying to memorize but stopped almost immediately as you felt an unwelcome presence lingering from in front of you. You looked up and fought a groan.
James tipped his head at you innocently. "You wanted me?"
You tensed at his phrasing and did your best to go back to ignoring him as you focused back on your script. "I did not."
Not taking the hint, as usual, he stayed put, shoving his hands in his well-tailored pockets. "Well, you've been staring at me for the past ten minutes, so I just assumed you had something to say."
"Well, you assumed wrong." You gave him a tight-lipped smile from where you sat. "And I wasn't staring. I just miraculously found it hard to concentrate on memorizing lines when you were harassing that hairstylist right next to me."
He squinted at you quizzically before shaking his head, finding your banter more amusing than you probably were. "Admit it. You're obsessed with me."
You scoffed, blinking rapidly to truly portray your disbelief. "You wish. Reality is, Potter—I think I hate you."
James peered at you with a glint in his eye like he'd never heard anything more amusing, leaning back against the wall next to you. "You think?"
You shrugged tightly. "The jury hasn't come to a decision just yet." You thought back to the unfortunately delicious pizza he'd provided, and all the things that Remus and Sirius had said to you that stood in stark contrast to practically every other experience you'd had with him.
James grinned, finding teasing you the most entertaining part of his day, even on set for a TV show. "So I still have a chance?"
His eyes glistened and you reeled. "A chance to what? Did you not hear the 'hate' part?"
"Hate is a strong word, don't you think?"
You shook your head. "Strong, but appropriate."
"Ouch." He touched his hand to his chest in that dramatic way he always did, something you blamed on his actor roots. "Your words hurt, you know." You rolled your eyes, truly trying then to get back to memorizing your lines so James would have nothing over you during filming the next day, but he didn't seem to care. "Look, I get it. You said you hate me. But really, I don't think you do."
You sighed, setting your script aside as you looked up at him with finality. "And why is that, Potter?"
"Because," James began, and you didn't like the tease in his tone as he looked down at you. "A little birdie told me you had some say in whether or not they cast me in South Bay. And that you actually encouraged it."
Your lips parted, those words being the last ones you expected him to say after weeks had gone by since the chemistry read. You didn't know who'd ratted you out, but whoever did would be getting a stern talking to. Or a partially stern one, since they were more than likely your boss.
You shrugged weakly at him. "That ... that doesn't mean anything."
James's thick brow lifted effortlessly. "So you're not denying it?"
At his challenging look, you relented with a drop of your shoulders. "I'm not. It's true; I told Minerva I think they should choose you to play Aaron becuase you are good at your job, James. As much as it annoys me. I mean, you're clearly a great actor, you get all your lines memorized overnight, not to mention the entire crew is in love with you for some reason-"
"Oh, I see."
You paused, looking at the way James's slight grin turned into a shit-eating one. "What?"
He tipped his head at you tauntingly. "You're jealous."
You let out a laugh harsher than you meant it to be. "Please. There's nothing about you I could possibly waste my energy being jealous over."
The brunette tutted, and you hated the feeling it sent through you. "For such a great actress, you're not a very good liar."
You felt your breathing shallow for a moment, not knowing what to do with the compliment that flowed so easily from his lips like he hadn't given it a second thought. You pushed the thought aside, focusing on the insult part of his statement instead, and rolled your eyes.
"Look," James continued at your expression. "Jealous or not, we're going to have to work together on this show for God knows how many more months. Years even, if it gets renewed for a second season." The thought both filled you with excitement and dread as it came from James's lips. He looked down at you with an honest curiosity. "How much longer can you go on pretending to hate me?"
You noted that what he was saying was true, letting the words sit in your chest for a moment, but you also noted that you had more fun being petty. You tilted your chin up at him. "Funny that you think I'm pretending."
James put a hand on the table you were sitting at, leaning forward slightly and making you freeze up. "Funny that you're still not a good liar, love."
Your throat felt tight with something you wanted to again dismiss as disgust at both his proximity and the delicate word that fell from his lips. You let an unpleasant pinch form between your brows. "I thought I told you not to call me that."
James felt something warm, almost giddy, form in his chest, and it didn't matter that you looked like you were considering slapping him right then. He let the corner of his lips quirk up. "You're adorable when you're mad."
"Don't call me that either." You huffed, picking up your still un-memorized script and standing. "I'm going to my trailer."
James quirked a brow, following you with only his eyes. "Is that an invitation?"
You rolled your eyes, walking away and calling over your shoulder. "Absolutely not."
taglist:
@ilovejamespottersomuch @empath-bunny @santaasi @veysxrge @bitterspoons @ladyhestiaa @rorybear14
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blissfullyecho · 2 months ago
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A Very Niche Level-Up + Looksmaxxing Idea List for 2025
This list is for the girls that get it. It’s niche and not for everyone, but I’m throwing up at the fact that every “how to level up in 2025” post talks about journaling sad pages 24/7, drinking 8 cups of water a day, and walking 10k steps. How original.
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Again, this is a very niche set of ideas. If you can’t relate then you can’t relate. But if you enjoy a good plastic surgery post and luxe lifestyle, maybe you will :)
1. Upgrade your car. We’re getting the Lexus’, the BMW’s, the Mercedes, the Jag’s, etc.
2. Upgrade your home. We’re living in high rises, we’re living in coastal areas, we’re living up in the mountains, we’re living where Amazon can drop our package off and we don’t have to worry about a porch pirate; we’re living in nice areas and in nice units/homes.
3. Breast augmentation.
4. Rhinoplasty.
5. Medical grade skincare.
6. Fresh, organic whole foods; focusing on lean protein, nuts and seeds, mushrooms, onions, leafy greens, pro/prebiotics, sea moss gel, etc.
7. Russian manicures and pedicures or a good acrylic set. Dip powder had its thing for a while but I’m not going to dip my nail in a powder everyone else dipped their nails. I bet they don’t even wash their hands and if they did, they prob didn’t even use soap.
8. Laser hair removal. Everywhere. If you want a design down there that’s cool, but you literally use the bathroom and it drips in the hair. “Oh but I use a wipe”. Okay, next time you need to wash your hair.. don’t use shampoo. Use a wipe. Invest in a bidet but still, hair shouldn’t be in your 🍑 or near the sensitive areas of your 🦋 the top is fine but if you have a period, pee, or “the other thing”, hair should be no where near those areas.
9. Lip filler. Everyone can benefit. Ask for a pout that sticks out a little bit. I don’t suggest a lip flip, I couldn’t do anything with a lip flip and it was driving me nuts.
10. Fake tan. Sunlight is fine but a spray tan just makes you look a million times better. Every skin tone and every race benefits from a spray tan. Trust.
11. Muscle definition. Muscle looks so much better than fat AND bones. You want muscle. Did you see how Bella Hadid had her foot on our necks at the VS fashion show this year? I was sickkkkkk.
12. Long hair. But if you have a face shape like Hailey Beiber, short hair looks better.
13. Makeup. Remember water-based products and oil-based products don’t mix, so make sure you choose your products wisely so your makeup doesn’t separate and you look a mess.
14. A better paying job. I left my hospital job and now I work in luxury real estate and international yacht sales.
15. Red light therapy for face and body. I have a body red light therapy dome that I got online for around $3,000 (USD) and it’s life. The one I have for the face is from Sephora and I spent like $400-$500 on that one. Whatever it says on the website.
16. Lashes. If you’re a pro at strip lashes, then yes. But I get my lashes done. Do not go crazy. Natural lashes are in so I ask for a classic whispy set focused for thickening my lash line and NOT for length.
17. Morpheus8 for skin tightening. I used it on my inner thighs and it literally saved my life
18. Lipo. If you’re a good candidate, get it. Sometimes belly pooch is hard to lose. I don’t have a pooch but I’m sure when I have kids I will.
19. Vampire facials. I can confidently say my best facials were vampire facials. My med spa charges around $950 for each facial
20. People can tell you’re wearing Shein. Their clothes are cute online but I’m going to hold your hand when I say this, they never look flattering in person when they’re being worn. People can see the loose thread and the see-through material. They also don’t fit anyone well and makes a lot of you look square. You get what you pay for in clothing. Learn about the basics of clothing and you’ll quickly only buy quality.
Yeah this list isn’t meant for everyone, but walking 10,000 steps isn’t going to take you to the next level. Neither is drinking water. They’re good habits, but they’re not going to level you up. And yeah I understand my list requires having money, but this is literally what my blog is about.
My 2025 Mindset Level Up book is here!
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harmonictechnicality · 2 years ago
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model!steve and voice actor!eddie
part 2 here | ao3 link here
Eddie chose a career in voice acting to avoid shit like this.
Forced socializing. Schmoozing with hotshot directors who are used to everyone kissing their ass until their lips bleed. And Eddie doesn’t do that shit. 
… Okay yeah sure, Eddie kisses asses. But only in the literal, consensual kind of way. Usually after a few mediocre dinner dates, at least.
But this particular fuckhole of a director is insisting that Eddie attends the production shoot of the commercial that he’ll be narrating for. Which is weird - that’s not how this process typically goes. Eddie gets the script and records it in his studio. Easy peasy.
“I do things a little differently with my projects.” The director sneers into the phone’s speaker. Eddie silently gags at the oozing amounts of ego on this guy. “I want to immerse you into my vision.”
Ew. Eddie would rather immerse himself into a nap, but whatever. A job is a job.
“Understood.” Eddie agrees with minimal teeth-clenching. “I’ll be on set shortly.”
The phone clicks dead with nothing but a chuckle from the guy. No ‘goodbye,’ no ‘thank you.’ Rude… but that’s kind of an industry standard, so why did Eddie expect anything different?
He folds the script into his back pocket, throws on a shirt that screams ‘Los Angeles disaster gay,’ and makes his way to the studio lot.
Fucking yay. 
Upon arrival, the director immediately escorts Eddie into the green room. Rambles on about needing him to meet the lead model for this commercial.
“Isn’t he just posing with the product?” Eddie lets his snarkiness run loose with that question, knows it right away.
Luckily, the guy is too busy snapping at a crew member to notice. “You’ll be voicing his character’s inner narrations.”
“Right.”
“And I want your tone to be seamless with the energy that he’s giving in this shoot. Got it?”
“Loud and clear.” Mostly loud.
The director swings open the door and reveals maybe the most cosmically beautiful person that Eddie has ever seen.
“Eddie, this is Steve.” The director says. “Steve, this is Eddie.”
Models are beautiful people, that’s the goddamn gig. Makeup, no makeup. Photoshop, no photoshop. They just look better than the general population and society accepts that as a fact.
But Eddie is a grubby little voice actor that burrows himself up in his boxy apartment for days. Very little sunlight, very little human interaction, and a shit ton of takeout.
Long story short, he doesn’t get out much. So this? Seeing a biblically hot heartthrob in the flesh? With his own two eyes? It’s knocking him into deep space. Sending him into an astral projection without sticking a tablet on his tongue first.
“Nice to meet you, man.” Steve holds out his hand while someone brushes more powder onto his shiny, glowy skin. God, that’s the best damn skin Eddie has ever seen. Powder be damned, Steve doesn’t need it’s chalky finish.
Eddie shakes himself out of this spell, takes Steve’s hand like he’s somehow worthy of touching him. “Yeah, you too.”
Lame. So lame. On a scale of one to Star Wars prequels, his response is the CGI in Attack of the Clones. ‘Yeah, you too?’ Ugh, what a dumbass.
The director tells them to get acquainted and to be on set in ten minutes. Ten minutes. Eddie has to be convincingly normal for ten whole minutes. Pfft, that’s laughable, but he’ll give it a shot.
“That guy’s a total asshat.” Steve grumbles.
Oh. Eddie could smother him in kisses for saying that. Lick Steve clean of all that stupid powder and probably die of talc poisoning. Death By Licking a Model is one hell of a way to go.
“Yeah.” Find some new words, Munson. “Major asshat. But he happens to be paying my bills this month, so technically, he’s my favorite major asshat.”
“Oh, same.” Steve laughs. It’s fucking glorious too. Eddie kind of wishes he had brought his microphone so that he could capture such a wonderful sound with high quality recording software. Is that creepy? Maybe he should dial it back. 
... As if. This guy’s hair is sculpted with effortless perfection and his shoulder blades could slice through a French baguette. No way Eddie can dial it back or keep it together.
“So you’re doing the voice work on the commercial, right?” Steve asks.
‘Yup.” Eddie shoves both hands into his pockets. “Indeed I am.” 
Okay, that was borderline Yoda. Get a grip.
Steve seems unfazed though. “That’s cool. Can’t wait to hear what you come up with.”
“Thanks.” Eddie smiles warmly. Nerves mellowing out. “And I can’t wait to see you in action out there.”
“Hope I can give you some good inspiration.” And Steve winks, legit winks at Eddie. Does it like it’s normal too, like he winks at everybody. He probably winks at nuns just to see if he can get them to consider conversion.
Eddie is so hopeless. Fucking tragic at this point.
They walk into the studio and are greeted by a somber, archaic set design. There’s a massive throne in the middle that is draped with fur. 
It’s… tacky. That’s the nicest adjective Eddie has to describe it. Tacky bullshit.
“I thought this was for a cologne ad.” Eddie says, eyeing the snowy backdrop.
Steve nods. “It is.”
“So what’s with the secondhand Game of Thrones set?”
“Mr. Asshat thinks this is his cinematic debut.”
Eddie snorts. Loves that he already has inside jokes with this beautiful, beautiful creature. “Someone should tell Mr. Asshat that this is visual plagiarism.”
“Nah.” Steve runs his hand over the tacky fur piece. Smirks to himself as he speaks. “I say we let him suffer.”
Eddie’s legs wobble. “Damn, you’re hot.”
He sounds ridiculously uncool, so breathy and gone. But Steve shrugs in a non-pitying kind of way, so maybe Eddie's uncoolness is excused. Or expected.
While the camera and lighting crew finalize their positions, Steve takes off his robe, revealing his costume.
Torn, muddied pants. Ripped and clawed to shreds. A billowy white top that’s completely unbuttoned. Un-laced? Eddie’s not entirely sure about the mechanics - just knows that Steve’s chest is out, that’s all he can focus on.
There’s a dented crown that the stylist places next to the throne, right at Steve’s feet. It’s shimmery yet tarnished, catches the light in a kaleidoscope effect.
The product is called The Fallen King, so deductive reasoning tells Eddie that Steve is meant to be the physical embodiment of this scent. He recalls something in the script about his title being slandered by promiscuity and forbidden love. Apparently they’ve bottled up that smell into a cologne. 
Do people really want to smell like a dethroned monarch? That’s a thing? Huh.
Just to make the sexual torture even more unbearable, Eddie gets to spectate alongside Mr. Asshat himself. Which also means that Eddie almost has a center view of Steve’s performance.
Cause that’s exactly what he’s giving. A performance. A full display production of his body, his face. His whole godlike essence. 
It’s unfair how fucked Eddie is from watching Steve pose. He can hold the oddest positions without budging a single tendon. So still. Durable. Strong.
Every last thought in Eddie’s head is impure from that observation. He wants to wrap his fingers around Steve’s muscles until he finally moves, twitches. Eddie wants to watch as Steve’s pretty lips part, falling open with sighs. See how long it takes for those sighs to turn into moans.
Steve slumps back into the throne, legs spread obscenely far apart. His gaze droops low and dark, practically eye-fucking the camera. It’s crazy how jealous Eddie is of that stupid inanimate object. The things he would do to get eye-fucked by that golden sex god up there…
His internal porno gets interrupted by a new pose. A wicked one. Steve is on his knees now, looking up into the camera lens. He sinks into the dreamiest expression. Looks dazed, all spaced-out and helpless. Eddie kneads at the growing heat in his pants with the heel of his palm. Hopes it’s not fucking obvious that he’s so horned up right now.
The director clears his throat and yells over the camera’s constant shuttering. “Can you tilt your head back, Steve?”
And Steve does. So obedient, so exceptional at his job. His head rolls back on his neck, shoulders sagging with the shift of weight.
Eddie is chewing the inside of his cheek, nearly ready to take the horny loss and go jack off in his car. Steve is in the most ideal position now, totally vulnerable. Eddie could fuck him so good like that, let Steve melt into his touch. He’d treat him like treasure, spoil him with dick and praise. Eddie would catch him if his legs give out. Would lick Steve’s kiss-bitten lips until the swelling goes down.
God, Eddie is so sick in the head for conjuring up x-rated scenes like this. In public, surrounded by strangers. Literally on the clock. He seriously needs to get his head checked for having such a whorish imagination.
The shoot ends shortly after that last pose, the one that rocked Eddie’s world. He closes his eyes for a minute, takes a few deep breaths. Tries to inhale some goddamn decency.
“How was it?” Steve heads his way, snaking his arms back into the bathrobe.
Eddie blinks hard. “It was… you were…” And the words stop. Nothing else comes out, his throat is strangled and bare.
Steve gives a soft laugh, nudges Eddie’s arm with his elbow. “Guess you do better when there’s a script in front of you, huh?”
Oh. So he’s pretty and darkly playful? This is too good, too delicious.
Eddie wets his bottom lip, recovers quickly. “I do better when there’s not an earthbound angel in my presence.”
“Wow.” Steve raises both eyebrows. “That’s quite the compliment.”
“Oh come on - you must get compliments all the time.”
“Not like that one though.”
“No?”
Steve takes a step into Eddie’s space. “Definitely not.”
They just stare after that - mostly because it’s Eddie’s turn to speak but words are so secondary when there’s this much beauty to behold. Gazing becomes his top priority.
And before the conversation can lead to an exchange of last names or phone numbers, Steve is rushed off by his agent. Maybe his publicist. Maybe his mom, Eddie has no fucking clue. Just someone taking away his shiny new toy. He sort of feels like reenacting that scene in Cast Away when the volleyball drifts into the ocean. Be dramatic as all hell about this ending.
Eddie doesn’t actually jack off in his car, although he really wants to. No, he decides to use all of his adrenaline and pent-up hormones for the voice recording. It gives his vocals this strained, chesty sound. Sinful and corrupt. Cracking with emotion in certain spots, spiking the volume in all the right ways.
It might be too much, a little bit too suggestive for a lousy cologne advertisement.
But as he listens back, Eddie can’t help but picture Steve. Imagining snapshots of him from every angle, especially the unspeakable ones. The recording barely sounds like a script anymore. It almost sounds like Eddie whispering the lines directly into Steve’s ear. A dirty secret between them.
This is it, he thinks. Sends the audio file to his sound mixer without a second read-through, without a retake. This might be the best voiceover Eddie Munson has ever done.
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