#Blasts Inquiry

[xtruss]

Sweden Shuts Down Nord Stream Blasts Inquiry

— By Paul Kirby | BBC News | Wednesday February 07, 2023

The Nord Stream Pipelines, Blown up in September 2022, Carried Gas From the Russian Coast to North-Eastern Germany

Sweden's public prosecutor has closed an inquiry into underwater blasts that tore apart two pipelines carrying Russian gas to Germany after a 16-month investigation.

It is still unknown who blew up Nord Stream 1 and 2 in September 2022.

Prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said the "primary purpose" had been to find out if Swedes were involved or if Swedish territory had been used.

He concluded that Swedish jurisdiction did not apply.

Swedish intelligence service Sapo said it had shared information it had gathered with other countries.

German and Danish authorities are still investigating the series of explosions that sabotaged three of the four gas lines east of the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea on 26 September 2022.

Commentators said the German inquiry could benefit from Stockholm's decision if Sapo had come up with additional information.

Sapo said the decision to shut down the inquiry was taken because it was considered "not possible for the Swedish authorities to pursue the matter further".

The pipelines had been built by Russia's gas giant Gazprom, although Nord Stream 2 was never used because Germany halted the project days after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Russian ships were found to have been involved in suspicious movements in the area in the days and months leading up to the blasts. Moscow condemned the sabotage as a case of international terrorism, choosing instead to blame the US and UK.

There have also been suggestions that a pro-Ukrainian group might have plotted the attack, although Ukraine has denied any involvement.

Recent reports have focused on a yacht called the Andromeda carrying six people which was chartered in Germany and stopped off in Denmark and Poland before the blasts.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius warned last year that the Nord Stream blasts could have been a "false flag" operation to make it look as if Ukraine was to blame.

[faneth]

do emos have the same beef that goths permanently do? are there realness debates? i dont think i ever saw emo specific "this is a music based subculture 🙄" arguments

[knightofgreatrenown]

hey mr the mighty, thoughts on grubs?

That is not my--

...I will not be answering this question, regardless.

Off with you. Heed the same warning I've had to repeat twice now: Return when you've learned to address me properly.

[witchofthescions]

👀 Describe your OC through the eyes of another person! (bonus + specify who)

OC Questions

When Alphinaud and Alisaie first met the Warriors of Light, they weren't particularly impressed. To be fair, they were still fledgling adventurers at the time. The then-trio were still finding their feet. Granted, even back then Cress and Ernastral seemed more confident and capable than Lenar, but they were all on somewhat equal footing.

Alisaie's opinion didn't start to change until she asked them for help investigating a strange phenomenon that turned out to be the fallen primal Bahamut. They'd grown a lot since their first meeting, though Alisaie had quickly realized how much she had not. They'd earned the moniker of "Saviors of the Realm." And she would be lying if she claimed she didn't admire them now, after having fought and traveled alongside them.

To her, Ernastral was everything she wanted to be: strong, powerful and beautiful, decisive in her actions, and able to inspire those around her to greater heights. She looked up to the woman, both literally and metaphorically. She was proud to call her a friend, and viewed her as the exact type of heroine she one day wanted to be.

Alphinaud would never admit how long it took for his opinion to change, but he would gladly admit to the moment it did: as they fled from Ul'dah in the middle of the night, after the disastrous banquet that nearly cost the Scions their lives. The ride had been mostly quiet as they all sat there, licking their wounds and bemoaning their fate. Alphinaud most of all, as it was his own Crystal Braves that had aided in their inglorious downfall. Cress and Ernastral sat on either side of him, and despite her own momentary fit of pique just moments before, Erna wrapped an arm around his shoulders in a gesture of reassurance. In the moment he'd been too caught up in his feelings to really appreciate it. But he still remembered how... safe he felt in that moment, despite everything.

He also remembered Ishgard, and how Lenar's demeanor had abruptly changed once they set foot within its walls. How he'd reverted back to the skittish and quiet young man Alphinaud had met so long ago. And he remembered the moment Lenar stood up during the trial by combat, declaring that he "would not yield." And how he had single-handedly turned the tide of that fight not with steel or magic, but with healing. To say that Lenar was his inspiration to wholeheartedly pursue the paths of healing and diplomacy would be an understatement.

[clavicula-ovis]

     » » @deprcvities dares to ask; ❝ 🍺 Xav and Beel ❞

     From Caught Drunk

     ›› Maybe he should have made something to eat before he started drinking. Solomon had offered him some alcohol from the human world as thanks for assisting him and Xavier hadn't really considered that it had been a few hours since he last had any food; it meant the booze hit hard and fast, and he was left in a daze in the kitchen trying to guide himself to make a sandwich as carefully as someone his level of drunk could manage. It also wasn't helped by the fact he was giggling over how weird Devildom cheese looked, and really it just derailed from there.

     ›› Before he could process where he had moved, he heard a loud, metallic clattering all in sequence; it turned out he had knocked over a bowl he had put some lettuce in, and that bumped some utensils and knives off the counter, creating a cacophony of sounds that would inevitably draw one of the brothers to the kitchen. It was little surprise the gluttonous brother was the one to respond, but he'd end up finding Xavier waggling a slice of cheese in the air, giggling uncontrollably with his body propped against the counter as if his legs would give out otherwise.

    ❝ Beeeeeeel! Hehehehe- B-Beel! Why... Why is it so shiiiiiiny? It's like... it's like... the holographic foil of cheeeeeese! ❞ ›› He'd break down in to more giggling laughter as he took slow, unsteady steps towards Beelzebub, holding the slice up now like he wanted the other to have it — completely forgetting why he even had it in the first place, and the mess he left behind him.

    ❝ Here! Here, here, here... You take it! You... It's yours! I've decided it's yours... 'cause you're... you're like this cheese. Really neat, and unique, and... and... ❞ ›› His trail of thought wandered off there, and all he could do was then plop his head on the other demon's chest with a restrained, amused snickering and squeaking. He really was enjoying the moment, and it was clear he put a lot of his faith in to the demon he was cuddled up to now.

[madamhatter]

Sophie and Hajime for the ship meme if you're still accepting!

Send in two (or more) names and I’ll fill all this out about the ship! | accpt.

General:

Rate the Ship - Awful | Ew | No pics pls | I'm not comfortable | Alright | I like it! | Got Pics? | Let's do it! | Why is this not getting more attention?! | The OTP to rule all other OTPs

How long will they last? - Hajime and Sophie's relationships happen in two parts. One began over at Hope's Peak Academy, where they got introduced due to Sophie's frequent appearances in the Regular Courses hallway to help out other students. The other was after the events of the second killing game, where the former Remnants of Despair managed to break from their virtual cells. The first part was perhaps, at most, a year before all hell broke loose. The second part has been slowly rekindling for a while now, but it only becomes official after a long time (or appropriately addressed by both parties). 

How quickly did/will they fall in love? - Sophie was tender and taken more by Hajime during high school, but nothing evolved. Hajime's feelings towards Sophie were warm but distant, him being more focused on himself and his overwhelming sense of 'normalness' and certainly more abrash and cynical. During the latter half, Sophie's feelings return, but it is beyond that slight interest; Hajime's feelings have him reviewing what he felt about Sophie back then and piecing together what exactly it means (and piecing together some of Sophie's unintentional actions and what they mean). 

How was their first kiss? - There are many possibilities I can see, but here are three off the top of my head. (1) Inexplicably dry and rushed on Hajime's end after what feels like yet another long-winded bickering, the action fueled by loud support from friends (i.e., Kazuichi) about believing not in yourself, but in getting into relationships (perhaps about Hajime's attraction to an unnamed someone too?) while Sophie, hilariously, supported him without realizing WHO it was about; (2) Frustrated yet passionate on Sophie's end in the middle of Hajime's analysis about her - for everything she supports in others doing, like taking the initiative and going out, that she never does it herself and has a complex comfort bubble she keeps to avoid people noticing that - that then triggers the hatmaker to go 'LET ME DISPROVE THAT,' and well, she was pretty flustered after realizing what she did and wants to retreat; (3) Awkward but sweet from the both of them if they finally speak out about their feelings alone after what seems to be a good day for the both of them, sometimes sitting under the night sky and noticing how someone looks underneath moonlight makes you realize what you want is much closer than the moon and stars. 

Wedding:

Who proposed? - Marriage never seemed like an option in Hajime's eyes of how conflicted he found himself between the original and Izuru half of his mind. Too was the great future of unknowns in the present they live in. Had he been a different person, had he been younger before it all changed, he may have come to an answer quicker and simpler. Meanwhile, Sophie wishes to settle but dismisses her wants, thinking it'd cause trouble for someone to marry her (a fear carried from her childhood). Proposing may not even occur between them, and they may act more as lifelong partners. At the same time, both would if things are projected differently in their futures; Sophie would propose before Hajime.

Who is the best man/men? - Most likely, Hajime would have chosen one of his friends from the former Class 77-B.

Who is the bride's maid(s)? - One of Sophie's sisters.

Who did the most planning? - Unironically, most of the planning and arrangements can be made by Hajime (having a supercomputer for a mind lends to that). However, Sophie's prerogative is still to take on the workload and do as much as possible for efficiency. Funnily enough, Hajime is technically the person that can do what Sophie regularly does without breaking much of a sweat.

Who stressed the most? - Unfortunately, Sophie does not acknowledge her limitations and the incredible headaches of wedding planning. There is also the definite addition of former Class 77-B students wanting to provide their services, expertise, and surprises for the groom. Sophie is, understandably, stressed the hell out. 

How fancy was the ceremony? - Back of a pickup truck | 2 | 3 | 4 | Normal Church Wedding | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Kate and William wish they were this big. (This is supposed to be a small event, but with the cast of people Hajime and Sophie know, this will not be possible, and there will be no shortage of people deciding to amp up Hajime's big day.) 

Who was specifically not invited to the wedding? - Cannot think of anyone off the top of my head. However, if Sophie's stepmother (Fanny) survived, there would be slight nerves and a large backlog of conflicting emotions in the eldest daughter that Hajime has seen. Fanny would be invited, but Sophie is definitely more openly anxious-ridden than Hajime has ever seen.  

Sex:

Who is on top? - Sophie, at first, but then it shifts to Hajime once they realize what the other likes. 

Who is the one to instigate things? - Hajime has his mind and developed taste in specific physical attributes, but he is not one to initiate or direct things. Sophie takes the lead and pushes buttons on him to get the ball rolling. However, that develops once she realizes a pattern (and Hajime picks up on the fact that Sophie -likes- the pushback). The instigating on Sophie's half happens incidentally, and then both linger on it and awkwardly go at it. 

How healthy is their sex life? - Barely touch themselves let alone each other | 2 | 3 | 4 | Once a couple weeks, nothing overboard | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They are humping each other on the couch right now

How kinky are they? - Straight missionary with the lights off | 2 | 3 | 4 | Might try some butt stuff and toys | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Don't go into the sex dungeon without a horse's head

How long do they normally last? - Hajime is a super-person in his own right after the testing, so he's a bedroom mystery. Add the fact that Sophie is quite repressed in her emotions but is quite dire to express them in very intimate moments, and there is quite a lot to do. On average, thirty minutes to an hour. 

Do they make sure each person gets an equal amount of orgasms? - Of course! Sophie tends to be more wired to provide more for her partner than herself, so Hajime has to balance things out. 

How rough are they in bed? - Softer than a butterfly on the back of a bunny | 2 | 3 | 4 | The bed's shaking and squeaking every time | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Their dirty talk is so vulgar it'd make Dwayne Johnson blush. Also, the wall's so weak it could collapse the next time they do it.

How much cuddling/snuggling do they do? - No touching after sex | 2 | 3 | 4 | A little spooning at night, or on the couch, but not in public | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They snuggle and kiss more often than a teen couple on their fifth date to a pillow factory 

Children:

How many children will they have naturally? - Zero or one, but this arrangement depends on how the two feel about it. Sophie does want children, but given the circumstances of DR canon, that is certainly a situation. Hajime's feelings about starting a family are pretty complicated, and he won't have an easy time with it. 

How many children will they adopt? -  One or two, this is more likely to happen where an older Hajime and Sophie take on younger survivors into their home. 

Who gets stuck with the most diapers? - Sophie is used to diaper duty, but Hajime would get stuck with it because he manages to get in the oddest situations. 

Who is the stricter parent? - Equally shared, but both parents have their weak spots that their child(ren) would be able to spot. 

Who stops the kid(s) from doing dangerous stunts after school? - Both parents are preventing any shenanigans from happening at schools. 

Who remembers to pack the lunch(es)? - Both 

Who is the more loved parent? - Between the two, they are loved, but certain things differ in why they're loved. Sophie is much more of the emotionally touched one and does the comforting, Hajime being the analytical but the one who unexpectedly gets into his child(ren)'s situations. 

Who is more likely to attend the PTA meetings? Sophie more than Hajime, but the pair will go. 

Who cried the most at graduation? - Getting misty-eyed would be Sophie, while Hajime acts as a rock. However, both look back to what was before the Tragedy to where they are now. Technically, neither of them managed to graduate from high school, and their child(ren) managed to. So, Hajime would feel emotional but only assuringly squeezes Sophie's hand tighter. 

Who is more likely to bail the child(ren) out of trouble with the law? - Both of them do, but they certainly want a lesson to be learned by their child(ren).

Cooking:

Who does the most cooking? - The responsibility is equally shared, but Hajime does it more often when Sophie goes through her cleaning sprees. Even if she is adamant about doing it, compromises must be made. 

Who is the most picky in their food choice? -  Sophie

Who does the grocery shopping? - Both do it, but Sophie tends to do this more. It is at Hajime's discretion to avoid Sophie's reclusive habits and budge her out of the house. There are little ways to get her out the door, like he mentions this one dish she made before that he doesn't know how to (which is a lie, considering--), and she will spring to it. That glaring part of Hajime's mind (all analytical, photographic memory, etc.) is forgotten by Sophie sometimes. 

How often do they bake desserts? - Only sometimes during the beginning of the relationship until Sophie recalls a passing fact about Hajime that is reinforced: a certain someone has a perchance for tangerines and more citrusy flavors. Hajime, your gift inventory may soon be flooded with sudden fruit pops or an occasional coconut pound cake. It is Sophie's roundabout love language, and I hope you have the stomach for it! 

Are they more of a meat lover or a salad eater? - Meat lovers, but things have to be portioned right. Sophie has a particularly narrow palette and some things she cannot stomach some items, giving Hajime a slight edge over her. 

Who is more likely to surprise the other(s) with an anniversary dinner? - It is an earnest attempt on either part, but their plans headbutt. It wouldn't be the first time Sophie sneaked to the kitchen with her groceries to find Hajime already setting up his station. 

Who is more likely to suggest going out? - By a slight margin, Sophie is more likely to suggest it, if only to try for Hajime's taste in foods, especially if homesick. Though, this is very rare. 

Who is more likely to burn the house down accidentally while cooking? - Neither because they are rather good cooks. 

Chores:

Who cleans the room? - Sophie has a highly reliable habit of cleaning. Still, it is admittedly a pestering one that she almost does all the time when she feels nothing to do or her anxiety-ridden thoughts are rising. Hajime is also not against cleaning, but there is the reality that his partner tends to messes like a worse, terrifying typhoon. Mostly, the work will go on Sophie's shoulders, but Hajime works around her little and sudden bursts of energy.

Who is really against chores? - Neither! Hajime voices some sanity in Sophie's chore sprees because some things can wait longer. It comes from a place of concern since Sophie tends to overexert herself. 

Who cleans up after the pets? - Both

Who is more likely to sweep everything under the rug? - Neither

Who stresses the most when guests are coming over? - A mixed situation here where Sophie and Hajime can be stressed out but for entirely different reasons. 

Who found a dollar between the couch cushions while cleaning? - Hajime is the luckier of the two (a hilarious assertion, I know) and would undoubtedly find the most unexpected things. The Izuru counterpart in his mind would also be too aware of probabilities and painstakingly aware of all else around. That side would probably motion to Hajime that someone's change got into the sofa again, to know who and when it happened once he finds the money.

Misc:

Who takes the longer showers/baths? - Both would, but it does vary by the day; Sophie focuses on doing what she needs to do, but sometimes a girl gets caught up in daydreaming and humming to herself. Hajime uses his shower time wisely to decompress and catch up with his thoughts because this man seems to get little peace once he leaves the house. 

Who takes the dog out for a walk? - Hajime likes his leisurely walks around the area, and if the two manage to adopt a dog, the dog would most likely accompany him. At least, it is to Sophie's insistence that the two are bonding. The hatmaker does join occasionally. 

How often do they decorate the room/house for the holidays? - Sophie enthusiastically decorates for the holidays she celebrated with her sisters back home, but she does so because of the people there. Depending on how receptive Hajime is to the holidays - which may be a little - her decorations may be dialed back. Some holidays are nonnegotiable, like Halloween and Christmas, but no one expects a full-blown white horror/festive display on their front lawn and in their home. 

What are their goals for the relationship? - Interesting question because there are two parts to the relationship (pre and post-Despair) that evolved, matured, and complicated any initial goals from the two. Sophie's original intention for the relationship in high school was more from identifying with Hajime, being quite curious (despite not wanting to get close), and genuinely wanting to see him happy. Hajime's original intention for the relationship in high school was most likely that he was dragged into this odd acquaintanceship with an Ultimate who wiggled herself into the Reserve Course buildings. A notorious recluse and pessimist, he managed to be a slight pushover. Perhaps that was because Hajime was noticed by an Ultimate or that Sophie rarely addressed class status and almost blended with his peers, making for a kaleidoscopic effect on each other. 

Who is most likely to sleep till noon? - Hajime

Who plays the most pranks? - Neither, but a small asterisk on that since it depends if Sophie feels petty enough to one-up Hajime (and a prank precedent was set between the two). 

[purplephloxpress]

Another year, another Fanfiction Writers Appreciation Day!!!! If you are a writer of fanfic, please know just how appreciated you are!! Fandom would be such a different space without your creativity and labors of love. 💜

Holidays are all about making traditions, and the bookbinding friends with @renegadeguild once again came together to bind copies of fics for their authors as a show of our appreciation. This year I had the absolute joy of binding Emergency Help Wanted by the wonderful @piyo-13 and even got to collaborate with her on some of the design elements! It's a Modern AU Jiang Cheng/Lan Xichen fic that starts with a "help wanted" ad.

EMERGENCY HELP WANTED

I lied when I got my job. I told them I had a kid so I could leave early from work to pick him up from daycare, take him to doctor's appointments, and occasionally miss a day when he's sick. Long story short, I'm in too deep. I didn't think it through. Looking to rent a kid for bring your child to work day. Must be a boy ages four to six, longish dark hair, likes soccer. Must also be artistic as the macaroni noodle paintings I made seem a little advanced for his age. Also, I will pay extra for someone willing to play the role of husband when dropping him off. He's a prosecuting attorney who often brings his work home. Message me for further details. Serious inquiries only.

Ok. So. I may have gone a little feral with this one. Online "help wanted" ad spiraled into loading wheel scene dividers, spiraled into fake Google search result headers, spiraled into FULLY committing to those authentic looking text messages. In full color. (There are so many. I typeset in MS Word. It was SO worth it, but god what a struggle at some points.) And don't forget the "recent searches" title page! Or the computer cutout on the cover! (It's bluescreening, just like Lan Xichen through this entire fic!) Also that cover/title page image that I just kept adding details to. (It's supposed to be Lan Xichen's desk, so it simply didn't feel right until it had sticky notes on the computer, #1 dad on the mug, scissors and measuring tape, scribbles on the sticky notes) Did I have a ton of fun designing this one? Perhaps. Couldn't say. Maybe just a tad. (This is a lie I had an ABSOLUTE BLAST!)

Historically, I've waited until I finish at least the typeset before reaching out to the author, but not so with this one! I got the idea for the fake google search results from Piyo's authors notes, teasing the contents of the next chapter. But! Those didn't start until about chapter 4! So I reached out and asked if we could collaborate and I'm forever glad I did! Not only does this have teasers for each chapter, I also got to bounce design ideas off of her, including what shade of blue and purple for the text messages. Because my friends, that is a serious matter and changed SEVERAL times throughout the process.

Also shoutout to all my Renegade friends who gave input and encouragement over the past year while I worked on this (what endpages to use? how to make this shade of green perfectly Nie Huaisang? how do we feel about this text message design? or how about this one?) - I love you all dearly and appreciate you so much for putting up with my nonsense at all times.

Binding details below the cut!

Fandom: The Untamed/Mo Dao Zu Shi

Pairing: Jiang Cheng | Jiang Wanyin / Lan Huan | Lan Xichen

Bookcloth: Aqua/Purple Dubletta from Colophon Book Arts

Endpapers: Craft Consortium Ink Drops - Ocean pack

Textblock paper: short grain cream from Church Paper

Titling: We R Memory Keepers foil quill

Endbands: leather cording core, DMC embroidery floss for the bands

Body Font: EB Garamond

Title Font: Berlin Sans FB

Text Messages: Roboto

Additional fonts: Times New Roman, Kunstler Script, Magis Authentic

Title page image from Rawpixel and designed in Canva

Various computer graphics from The Noun Project

Tumblr insists on eating and doubling text in this section at its own whim, so if there's something missing that you're curious about, feel free to DM me an ask!

[burnyouwithacigarettelighter]

IT’S YOU, HAPPY ALL THE TIME ─── jonathan breech ✧☾𖦹

ೃ⁀➷ “I ask Jessica what drowning feels like and she says not everything feels like something else." — ‘Jessica gives me a chill pill’, Angie Sijun Lou.

pairing. jonathan breech x reader

summary. you’ve bared your heart to your bestfriend, jonathan, more times than you can count, whilst knowing practically nothing at all about him. what is friendship if it is not equal… what is love if it is not returned? can your relationship survive such one-sidedness?

warnings. swearing, TW mention & description of suicide/attempts & depression, very introspective/kind of a character study???, alcohol & drug use, pining, ANGST!!!!, crying, fluff, smut with feelings, p in v, unprotected sex, oral sex (f), SMUT UNDER THE CUT! 

word count. 10k (WTF??!?!!??)

a/n. the title is from “she won’t go away” by faye webster:) btw this is… rly angsty (and SO long omg im still in shock) so beware🫡 ALSO IM SO SORRY FOR NOT POSTING IN WHILE!! SCHOOL IS KICKING MY BUTT & THIS FIC WAS AN ABSOLUTE MONSTER TO WRITE LMAO

i. 

There are very few words in your vocabulary you can use to accurately describe Jonathan Breech. 

The boy is an enigma, a matryoshka doll that never ends: he is witty and lighthearted and sarcastic, but you’ll always catch that edge, the air of malaise he carries around himself, the unspoken elephant in the room that screams WHO ARE YOU REALLY?

He had always been more of a figure, a landscape; something to witness, observe-- experience without letting it do the same to you. You don’t know if that’s something you want, either: there’s an imbalance in his hilarity, and he always takes things a step too far. Jonathan lights matches and lets them burn all the way down to his fingertips; he shaves and lets the blade leave stinging little nicks, rivulets of blood running down his neck; he chainsmokes cigarettes in his room and only opens the window when he feels his heart hammering in his chest, desperate for air. 

You meet him — or, first experience him in a similar fashion: he had been in the university library, standing on top of a creaky, old bookshelf, shouting something you couldn’t understand over the music blasting through your headphones. You could certainly see him though, gesturing animatedly, dressed eccentrically in his signature winter trapper hat and a velvet blazer. That thin, effeminate figure of his was making winding, marionette-ish steps along the wood, an action that had everyone readying themselves to catch his inevitable fall. 

Then, seemingly out of nowhere and catching you completely off guard, you caught his eye. He began stepping from one shaky shelf to the next, a complete miracle none of them toppled over, before stopping on one close enough for you to read his lips. 

“Hi,” he mouthed, shifting uneasily on his left foot before regaining a steady balance, “you’re in my class, right?”

You nodded, hesitantly— yes, truthfully, you’d seen him in your Introduction to Literary Studies course a couple of weeks ago, sporting the same outfit as he did now, but you thought nothing of him. He’d been generally well-behaved then, asking slightly odd but in-tune questions that more or less answered all your inquiries, so you didn’t think the guy would have a penchant for, well… book-shelf hopping. 

He grinned, about to say something else, before something — or someone, made him flinch. A professor, probably, considering the unintelligibly muffled, booming voice behind you. However, Jonathan made quick work of the situation, sneakily climbing down and escaping out the door. 

The next time you see him, he’s sidled up beside you in your shared class. “Mind if I sit here?” a familiar voice had asked, to which you murmured a non-committal knock y’self out, before realizing with wide eyes.  His presence had caught you off-guard, as he so often did, and you sensed a pattern blooming. 

Jonathan certainly made for an odd desk-partner; his personality warped the environment around you, and it was suddenly so much easier to tear your eyes away from the lecture and land on Jonathan’s own. It’s something you never thought you’d ever do, because you adore the material being taught. 

At the end of class, he asks you out for a drink: he’s just found the best Irish stout in the entire city, and what better way to make it known than to take anyone and everyone he knows there?

Rejection is written on your face clear as day— you have class tomorrow, an essay that needs to be finished, and honestly, pubs just aren’t really your scene. 

But in the end… you still bite. You can’t help it: he’s disarming and warm and looks like he should smell like a bonfire. Somehow, that just does it for your brain; it’s here you learn of the charm that is Jonathan Breech. 

That night goes everything and nothing like you expected: you expected not to be able to predict his actions, and that’s exactly what happens. When you meet Jonathan at the aforementioned pub, it’s not actually the one he’s meaning to take you to— it’s just the closest public place to the on-campus dorm, which is where he says he’s rooming. 

“‘ve got a neighbor m’pretty sure is trying to sleep with me,” he says absently, ushering you onto the back of his bike, which had been leaning against a NO PARKING sign. “He’s always toget’er wit’ our dorm advisor, so I should l reject him before I get kicked out, if y’get what I mean.”

Now, you honestly should’ve expected this from a guy who jumped from six-foot book shelves, but Jonathan’s biking is all swift turns and jilted stops, mere milliseconds from repeatedly running red lights. You want to ask if he just learned how to ride the thing yesterday, but can’t, not with how utterly reckless and shameless he is about it, his terrible steering making you instinctively wrap your arms around his chest. 

You clutch him tightly, making him hum in approval, and you feel your ears burn flusteredly. You would’ve pulled away, but then he cut from the right lane to the left in one swift move, barely missing several cars, and you practically shrieked instead. “Oh my god!”

“Sorry,” he apologizes quickly. You can’t see his face, having shut your eyes in fear, but after hearing the blatant cheekiness in his tone, you can imagine clear as day how gleefully it contorts. You want to slap him somewhere, anywhere, but that’d defeat the point of being mad at his recklessness, so you squeeze him tighter instead, and he chokes on his breath. “Jesus-- m’sorry, really!”

When the two of you make it to the pub — alive and uninjured! — annoyingly all the way across town, your first few steps off his bike are stuttered, dizzy: “We are-- not going by bike next time,” you gasp, leaning against a random brick wall. 

“Next time, eh?” He grins, and this time you really do slap him— just on the arm, bless your self-control and niceties not to beat this oddly comfortable-to-be-around near-stranger to death. 

The pub, with its forgettable name and dingy stools, has a minimal, lackluster crowd. A kitschy neon sign flickers and dies as you walk in, making you raise a brow, but Jonathan merely drags you by the arm to a cozy corner table, then disappearing deeper within the venue before returning moments later with two pints of black beer in tow.

“Go on, then,” he gestures, setting the tall glass on the table, sitting down in the chair in front of you and taking a hearty sip of his own drink.

You let out a little hesitant sigh at his words, before relenting and taking in a long gulp of the liquid. “…Huh,” you remark, impressed. Jonathan smiled knowingly behind his glass, letting out a smug little ah, you see? 

“Worth the long ride?” he inquired innocently, as if that was the only thing wrong with the night.

“Worth the ride, but not worth almost dying for,” you rolled your eyes goodheartedly, knocking back the rest of the bitter drink and making him whistle. 

The rest of the night goes like this: Jonathan orders two more rounds of the quality Irish stout before the two’ve you are stumbling out of the pub, exploring all the nightlife there is to offer, like the crowd surrounding an out-door live comedy group performing down the street that has you and Jonathan giggling for hours after, or the underground speakeasy you accidentally find yourselves shoved into, a nasally guitarist singing on a smoky stage, several more drinks finding themselves in your system despite how nauseous you already feel.

“You-- d’you fancy him?” Jonathan slurs behind you, steadying himself by pressing his hands to your waist.

“F-fancy who?” you blink blearily, leaning into his warm touch.

“Who else m’I talkin’ about, girl? The singer!”

You shake your head no numbly, practically collapsing into his arms now, your head lulling on his chest. You’re so close you can smell the distinct scent of his skin, that unique musk everyone has, and it’s strangely familiar, like those smells that evoke old, nostalgic memories. It’s like how sunscreen summons the smell of the sun after a childhood beach day, or how vanilla extract takes you back to the smell of your mother’s baked goods on a specific winter evening.

“Reckoned you wouldn’t,” he assumes, hands coming away from your waist to wrap his arms around your shoulders, swaying to the music slightly in the crowded club, “looks like a -- right bleedin’ dope… wit’ that mop of hair.”

You giggle, alcohol riddled beyond belief, unable to formulate a response with the conflicting blurry thoughts in your head: it’s telling you Jonathan Breech isn’t the crowd you want, that you need to go home and work, that you let loose too easily— but it also tells you that you can see yourself becoming friends with him very, very quickly. 

It’s there, in that club, Jonathan Breech moves into your life and fills a gaping hole you didn’t know existed, like a hole in your stockings you only notice when you get home. You have friends, certainly, more than you can count on both hands, but they never get as close as Jonathan does. After that night, an unknown force pulls the two of you together, making you run into him everywhere, and a tight friendship blooms like a lilypad in a raging storm; beauty within the chaos. In the multitude of close friendships you’ve harbored, he is the first to see so many sides of you. The last thing that did was your mother; it had only ever been your mother. 

He is an endearing, amazing friend, both the intent listener and the charismatic speaker all at once; he knows his friends like the back of his hand, can recount their life like he can count the number of moles on his face-- but you, and everyone else, know absolutely nothing about him. 

At least, close to nothing-- you know he likes ice cream and hanging out and going to the pub; you know he likes biking and doing drugs and women; you know he hates the sea and his brother and his father, but you don’t know him. All you’ve ever seen him do is smile or laugh or shout in mock anger; there is a carefully glued mask on his face he takes meticulous caution in preserving-- he is terrified to let go, despite the blasé persona he lets on.

Or maybe the mysterious matter of your bestfriend is tripping you up for no reason; maybe you’re psychoanalyzing something that doesn’t need to be psychoanalyzed, reading between lines that don’t exist. But if you were asked to answer honestly, there’s just something about Jonathan you don’t get. There is a split seam in the tapestry of his life, missing pieces in the story he pretends to tell with utmost accuracy. There are things that he never talks about, that he recoils when asked like you’ve poked a tender wound. 

“So, what were you doing before… all this?” You ask him once, laying on his messy bed in his dorm-room and scanning the water-damage constellations dotted along his popcorn ceiling. By all this you mean going to university, being the resident party boy, aimlessly pursuing a degree you’re 99% sure he picked blindfolded (culinary science) and standing here, with you, snorting a line of something on his creaky wooden desk. 

Jonathan freezes, still hunched over. “What d’you-- what d’you mean?” he says, tone breezy but, uncharacteristically tense… jilted and preoccupied. You could’ve brushed it off as him being seriously focussed on his drugs, but the way he shifts, how his shoulders curl in like he wants to disappear, tells you otherwise. 

“I mean, before going to school here… y’know, what were you like as a dumb teenager?”

You two’re twenty, barely not-teenagers, but it still makes a world of a difference: you’re living away from home, doing what you want, experiencing (a juvenile, naive version of) freedom and adulthood.

“I dunno… kind of a tool, that's f’sure,” he chuckled, rubbing his nose roughly. He’s being funny on purpose, a jester’s distraction: he doesn’t want you to realize his answers’ not really one at all. 

You shifted on his bed, now leaning against his headboard. His answer strikes you as odd and uncharacteristic despite his attempts to evade suspicion: usually, Jonathan pounces at the chance to yap on and on. “What, the great Jonathan Breech doesn’t have any wild stories to tell? No bones broken, girls dumped, houses trashed?” 

He snorted at that, like some inside joke you weren’t privy to was brought up in your words, and he descended back down on a carefully partitioned line of white. “I broke my baby finger once,” he relented vaguely when he finished, dusting off the table and licking the remains off his hand. “I cried and I cried and I cried.”

“Did it hurt that much?” you grinned, mind trailing off to imagine a baby-faced Jonathan Breech, a juvenile highschool boy, doing something silly to break that finger. Maybe he accidentally flung off his bike, broke it because of a dare, or maybe it happened just by slipping and falling. 

“It - uh… didn’t hurt enough,” Jonathan smiled, tight-lipped and paltry. All at once the air in the room had changed, like someone attached a vacuum to the window and sucked everything out. 

Your grin fell, and you watched him carefully: perhaps, had you not been as close to him as you were, he’d have let something show. A twitch in the smile, a break in the facade. But you were, and his face stayed the same, and your thoughts ran circles around themselves. This was… something else, something belonging to the part of his life he didn’t talk about. 

The atmosphere had grown tense, taut, a rubber band twisted ‘round and round, threatening to burst, so you leave the matter of his injury alone; of his life alone. You go back to staring at his ceiling, he goes back to his drugs; Jonathan collapses within himself, and you don’t notice how badly he suffocates… how suffering in silence is also accompanied by the overwhelming desire to be found.

ii.

Sometimes, despite his self-imposed distance, Jonathan lets someone look inside his head. 

You are both the sometimes and the someone; you don’t know why it’s always you, but you chalk it up to the fact that beneath his unpredictable demeanor, the murky and unreadable feelings he holds for others, is this uncharacteristic constant: he holds a softness for you. It’s what lets you know there’s something haunted lurking beneath his happy-go-lucky surface. 

You don’t know where this softness comes from, either. But you know you see it, in lingering touches, tender duchenne smiles unlike the devilish tilt his lips usually hold, how he clasps his hand around yours after a night at the pub and walks you home because he knows you get paranoid. You see it in how he comes over to your apartment when you don’t answer anyone's calls during exam season, how he remembers what your mother’s name is and what your childhood pet was and what your favorite flowers are. How his lips brush past your cheek when he pulls away from hugs, his hands shuddering around your shoulders, like he’s afraid he’ll crush you.

You only wish you could do the same. You want to sit by his side and mend his heart, lend an ear to his most mundane fears, you want to take his hand into your own and kiss it softly, return all that he has done for you, take the same as you have given to him: what is friendship if it is not equal, what is love if it is not returned? It is something broken, unable; split halves of one heart, an imbalance in the scale, Bonnie without her Clyde, a fish out of water. 

Jonathan pours his heart into your own, filling holes you know you don’t have, and you think he may be overcompensating for something else, seeing things in you that really belong to him. It is maddening, and you just want to beg and plead he lets you in. 

But you settle for the gentle pokes, the prodding, and try to decipher the vague answers he gives you. Most days, you can’t really make sense of it. 

“Sorry,” you apologize, about to leave the outing you planned with Jonathan — studying, or, trying to study, at an intimate coffeebar the two of you frequented — “my dad’s gotten drunk with his lads and my mum needs help dragging him home.”

 “Hey, hey, don’t worry. I get it: my dad used to do that all the time,” he waves your words off casually, but you don’t miss how jilted he says used to and the pain in his tone at all the time.

“Oh, surely she was fit to go to the madhouse?” you laughed once, responding to Jonathan’s complaints about an eccentric classmate in his agricultural studies. He laughs back, he always does, but this one is hollow, forced; barely stopping a grimace from coloring his tone. 

You notice these things like it’s a shadow following someone in the sun. He is lying, hiding; about something you don’t know but it is happening. It is happening, and you are so very curious: you pick up on the littlest tendrils of him, fed wholly on any information you can squeeze out. He is a mystery you want to delve within completely; answer that question of WHO ARE YOU REALLY? and leave no room for error. 

You’d give yourself to him the very same if he merely asked; you’d whisper childhood fears and tell the origin stories of faded scars on your knees and why you check under your bed before sleeping. You’d detail your entire life from sunset birth to starry night end if he even made a passing comment about knowing; you would trust your love, your heart, your entire life in his beautiful, shaky hands. This is the relationship you have built around yourselves, and it is beginning to feel terribly one-sided. 

Alas, your curiosity overwhelms him, and you take it too far, just once. Only once. 

“Where’d this come from?” you murmur, brushing your fingers over a scar above his eyebrow. It’s something you see only now, his hair mussed and wild from the various blankets and pillows on your dinky couch. 

He’s crashing at your apartment tonight, an invited event, because you often miss him like you miss home; the boy is sneaky— he slinks away like a street cat and only comes back for food. It’s only fair he lets you wrangle him back like this, making him stay by your side at least once a week.  

Your words make him freeze, like he often does; it reminds you of hikers, who freeze when they see mountain lions— he thinks if he stops and stares and pretends to disappear you’ll look the other way, drop the question, forget him completely.

But you don’t. You don’t know what’s affecting him -- not that he wants you to -- so you just stare back into his cornflower blue eyes. You stop and stare and see right through him; you hold the question like a knife to his neck, and commit him to memory. 

“The scar?” Jonathan pales, shuddering despite it having long since been healed over. The aftershocks of an earthquake. 

You simply nod, fingers pulling away. You’re still closer than ever though, the two of you being the only things in your cramped concrete apartment, the chosen movie on your telly still running and long forgotten. 

Your attention remains on him, brandished into something dangerous, like you’ll carve the answer out of him if you have to— but the moment passes. He doesn’t say anything and you accept that as the answer. Gone is your razor-sharp focus, and there is nothing more to the matter. 

But Jonathan doesn’t register this, no, he’s thinking, gears in his head turning and creaking. His tongue grazes against the backs of his teeth, jaw chattering like it was as cold as it was when… as cold as it was back then, and he doesn’t want to tell anyone— but it’s you. You’re not just anyone. 

You’re the one he holds a certain softness for. The one he equally bares his heart to and holds the most secrets from. The one he’s most terrified to know. The only one he wants to know. 

So, he decides to tell a partial truth— something digestible. People adore that which can easily slide down the gullet: news headlines don’t detail the goriness of a murder, they give the “insider” scoop of the scared neighbor. To be able to digest information is what makes the world go round, and he does not think you could digest the full truth-- he does not think he wants you to. 

He feels ill at the thought of anything between you changing— oh, how ruined he’d feel if you began treating him like fucking glass.

This abhorrent social pressure is what makes Jonathan grit this sentence through his teeth: “I got into a car accident,” he gulps dry, “when I was nineteen. Was drunk… went fer a spin. I skidded off a -- um, an empty highway. The tall sorts; high up, y’know. Fell.”

His voice makes you look back up at him, and your eyes are beautiful and tense— it breaks his heart. He knows you’re probably thinking it was in-character, how expected that is of Jonathan Breech, how you’ll easily take this partial truth, how you’ll never know the full one until it comes in a letter under your door and he’s long gone. 

“Tell me,” you ask him, lips falling into a near-frown instead of laughing or grinning wider. It’s hushed, whispered like a secret, “What did it feel like? Falling, I mean.”

Jonathan licks his lips, bores his shaking gaze into your own, and tells you not everything feels like something else. That the word connotes all you need to know. Falling meant he was falling; his arms raised and the air took him and that was it. 

It makes your brows twist and your lips press into a thin line: his nonchalance is worrying, no more his signature characteristic— there is something wrong about this apathy toward injury, toward the potential death. 

“Is that how you broke your finger?” You murmur, and it startles him. How you pieced the two things together, how you weaved a web from what little you knew about him; how futile his attempts to hide could be.

“What?” he responds, hoarse. There is a lurking shadow in his bones telling him he’ll taint you, telling him to be ashamed, telling him how badly you will never be his. It is such a damning reality, that no matter how much he may yearn for you, he is too incomplete to meet your needs; he is too hurt not to hurt you too. 

“The car accident. Is that how you broke your pinkie?” you repeat, and you gripped his hand resting at your side, bringing it up to present the finger to him like he forgot where his pinkie was. 

Jonathan’s gaze darts from you to the finger, and he feels his insides quiver; so badly does he want to spill his entire soul to you. But that internal reminder -- hurt people hurt people hurt people -- makes him settle for nodding, parted lips locking closed. 

Nothing special happens that night, no shocking revelation or bombarded confession; Jonathan nods, keeps his lips sealed, and gets up from the couch, figure dreary and fatigued. He murmurs an incomplete excuse, something half-baked and blatantly unconvincing that he has to leave, and you let him go. You think you’re imagining the shudder in his shoulders, the shake in his voice as he says goodbye, and you let him go. 

It’s there, like that club so long ago, you discover another thing about Jonathan Breech: push too far and he shuts down, closes shop and puts up his guard forever. It’s the mere fact of how attentive you are to his words; you remember how he broke his finger, and he realizes he cannot hide from you any longer. 

You’re reaching a point in your friendship -- your relationship, no matter platonic or romantic for all lines have been crossed; nobody is so raw to one another with love not involved -- where you’ll bare your hearts on your sleeves, share your every thought and dream and fear. But Jonathan won’t be able to reciprocate, and the very thought of rejecting you, betraying you, makes his stomach twist in knots. That crestfallen face of yours would haunt him for all time, your every melancholy feature burning into his memory like the scars left by cigarettes on skin.

So he leaves, hurt people hurt people hurt people echoes in his ears all the way home; he turns into an alleyway shortcut and prays death swoops down and takes him right there. He leaves his consciousness curled lovingly in your arms; his shell walks home and prays you’re none the wiser. But you’ve already reached that point in your relationship; you already know. 

When people die, or friendships do, sometimes they end with just a goodbye, a mild, casual goodbye because you think there’ll be dozens, hundreds more-- but there won’t be. Suddenly, alone in that cramped apartment, the buzzing from the tv filling your ears, your couch still warm from someone long gone, you know.

You know you startled him, that he’s left your apartment and he’ll never come back. Your heart cools, and she whispers that you took it too far, that you crossed a line you were never made aware of, that when you see him in class tomorrow he might not sit next to you, he might not talk to you, that you might lose him forever because he is too stubborn to open up and you are too stubborn to let him go. 

Well, you were too stubborn to let him go. 

It’s three weeks before you speak to Jonathan again. Three long, dragging weeks, moments in time where he avoided your gaze, evaded your presence, slipped past you before you got too close. You certainly try, of course— you seek him out every chance you get, trying to get an I’m sorry, please talk to me out before he runs off, but it’s virtually impossible.

Once, after class, you’d caught him in the middle of a flurry of exiting students by the velvet blazer, your hands curled around the lapel. “Jonathan,” you panted, trying to drag him off to the side to escape the bustling activity around you, “please, we need to talk--“

But then Jonathan had faced you, eyes widened and spooked like he’d seen a ghost, a never-before-seen-by-you fear covering his gracefully cut features, before he tugged off the black blazer and escaped into the crowd. He had seen you, widened his eyes, left. Such a simple action tore your heart in two; it had confirmed your suspicions— you’d gone too far, he was never coming back, and you were all alone. There you stood, fingers wrapped around one of his favorite articles of clothing starkly without its beloved owner, completely alone. 

In three measly weeks, he has put up a biting winter of distance between you two. 

Your feelings are unable to comprehend themselves— they fight and sob and run circles around your mind, they make you doubt, crumble, devour yourself from the inside out; they make you ask yourself what you can do to salvage this, what can you do to fix this? What is there to make of him, of his behavior; what do you do with yourself and this guilt?

If you could imagine time was a construct, you were certain you could convince yourself this stretch of time was nothing… propel yourself into a present where Jonathan does not afflict your mind, take over your every thought— does not ruin you like so. If only you could do that, you could close your eyes and reopen them when you’ve let go. But you were always too stubborn to let him go, weren’t you?

It’s three weeks to the day before you speak to Jonathan again, and it happens through the crack of his dorm door, your arm wedged through it because you know he is not cruel; he will let you in without a doubt.  

“Please,” you plead to Jonathan, “just— I just want to talk. Please?”

He stares at you straight, expression cold and reserved, before he breaks and pulls away; bites his lip, lets you in his room, doesn’t look you in the eye. Looking around, you sense something in his dorm has changed; it had gained a bereft quality, like it was attuned to Jonathan’s state of mind and felt depressed beyond your comprehension. There was a cold air to the place, an utmost frigid demeanor to a room incredibly warm just weeks prior. In your absence, the dorm had been neglected, gutted, abandoned. 

“I’m sorry,” are the first words that tumble out of your mouth. “I- I know you don’t like… talking about -- about your life before here, and I’m sorry. But please, Jonathan, just talk to me. Tell me what I can do to make it up to you.”

He sits down on the edge of his weak bedframe, pulling his knees up and pressing his face into them. “You don’t need to-- don’t… don’t apologize. You don’t need t’make it better, either. All’s grand.” he promises, words muffled and shaky. It’s a weeping kind of tone; you could just as easily imagine him sobbing with that voice. 

Your brows knit. Your emotions are wavering, treading brutally between disbelief, despair and rancor. “Then -- then why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you avoid me? Why did you - why did we spend these last three weeks playing cat and mouse, if you weren’t mad at me? Is this your sick idea of a joke?”

“No! I-- jesus christ,” Jonathan looked up from his hands before immediately pressing two fingers between his eyes, “I wasn’t … avoiding you.”

“I haven’t seen you in weeks!” you point out painfully, exasperated. “You know, you’ve been avoiding me for longer than this. You— you push me away any chance you get. You’re afraid. I don’t know of what, but you’re- so fucking secretive, and it’s tearing me apart.”

“I’m not - afraid of anything. I’m just a private person— you know this. Would you, if I ‘pushed you away?!’” 

At his denying deflection, something within you snaps: “Why won’t you - fucking let me in? I’ve — I’ve bared my soul to you; you know me from the inside out. I trust you with my life— why, why can’t you do the same?”

“I didn’t ask you to do that! And I didn’t — I didn’t mean t’get so close to you, okay?!” He bursts, and you flinch. His hands shakily come up to his face once more; he wipes roughly but it’s no use— you’ve already seen his delicate tears threatening to spill, and it burns more holes in your heart than you thought his suffering would.

“What are you talking about?” you pry, now without any cautious reservations about his demeanor.

“I didn’t mean to get so fucking attached, because - ‘cause I…” Jonathan’s hands clenched into fists at his sides, “fuck.”

“What?” you repeat, but it’s softer, concerned; how quickly his body language shifted from irritated to terrified has you scrambling to support him. “Talk to me,” you ask, taking nervous steps closer, like you were approaching a wounded animal.

He sucks in a sharp breath, and holds it, like he did cigarette smoke, before exhaling heavily. “Okay- okay. When I was - nineteen, I drove a car… I drove off a cliff and tried t’kill myself. I was-- admitted to a psychiatric hospital for a year, and when I got out I moved here f’school. I- I… promised m’self I wouldn’t let anyone get too close.”

The confession hangs in the air, a lonely little thing; it’s a bleeding piece of his own heart he’s plucked and placed in your palms. He shudders, and you want to nurture it like nothing else. This is a culmination of a year’s worth of evasion coming to a close; you’re seeing him completely, rawly, for the first time.

“But- but why? You don’t have to— Jonathan, you don’t need to do that just because you - you… y’know.”

“I’m- I know that,” he starts brashly, defensively. “It’s b’cause I am very, very aware of my - of m’own self destructiveness…” His words taper off into something of grief; the Sisyphean struggle of wanting to live, while that depressive boulder pushes him back, colors him completely. “I just… I didn’t want to - t’hurt anyone in case I -- in case next time I succeeded.”

“Next time?” you repeat, and your voice broke in a way you wish was less vulnerable, less blatantly miserable.

“This is why I didn’t want to—“ Jonathan sighs, deflates, “I’m not telling you this because I want you to - t’fucking save me, okay? I’m telling you this because you wanted to know, and I couldn’t hide from you anymore. Because you asked.”

“You didn’t need t’hide it in the first place!” you exclaimed, coming closer to him. “You’ve never had to hide a fucking ‘ting from me.”

“You wouldn’t have understood!” He said back, volume nearing a shout. “You’ll treat me differently now, you see, you’ll look at me fuckin’ different—“

It made your heart sink-- how sure his words were, how certain he was of your rejection. How little trust did he have in you? 

(You remember he wanted to sink, too-- lose himself in the baby blue sea; let it swallow him whole and never be seen again.)

“You - you really think I’ll treat y’differently because of this? You know my every crevice, my every thought-- I have never once doubted that you’ll accept me.”

“I-I… why should I - expect any of this to stay the same?”

Suddenly, you took his face into your hands. “Because I-- I fucking love you, okay? And it’s not just friendly, or romantic, even if it’s both— I’m… I love you like nothing I’ve ever loved before. I accept and adore your every skill and flaw and antic; you wormed your way into my heart and I want to worm my way into yours.”

“That doesn’t mean—“ Jonathan tried to interject, a noise all utter disbelief. You cut him off, though, continuing your sudden confession; you hadn’t been privy to these own romantic feelings of yours till moments prior, but everything being said just felt right. 

“Jonathan, I don’t care if you drove a car off a cliff or cyanide-poisoned our professor or blew something up, because I love you. You, with all your problems and great, big, beautiful life. All I want is for you to want that life; I want you to want me in it. I feel it in my bones that I’m meant to love you; you are meant to be my home, you are everything I am supposed to know. It won’t fix you or fix anything at all but I just need you to know-- I need you to know the why to my every action. It’s because I love you.”

He looked up at you, wide-eyed, head resting in your gentle hold. “I - don’t know what to say… are you - for real?”

“As real as can be,” you smiled back at him, tracing circles along his smooth skin; you could’ve drank in that attentive stare of his for hours upon hours. “I love you, and nothing and no-one, not even you, can change that.” An aching grip had clenched around your heart at his words, that blatant disbelief: are you for real? God, had you ever been-- had you ever fucking been. 

Jonathan’s mouth opened to speak, but instead, he let out an agonizing sort of cry; an exclamation of utter surprise at the loving acceptance. Then, he hesitantly leaned into your touch, as if he’d never hugged before, wrapping his arms around your waist to snatch you as close to him as possible. He held you tighter and tighter as the seconds went by, like this was all a mocking dream his yearning mind had made up; that if he closed his eyes now he’d wake up desolate, alone, without you for eternity. His worst nightmare. 

“…God, I’m so - fucking stupid,” he grumbled, sounding angry, but you could feel vulnerable, hot tears soaking into the fabric of your shirt. “To assume you, of all people, would act that way… you of all people.” He said that tenderly; you of all people certainly meant miles more things you weren’t explicitly aware of, but you still felt the sentiment. “I’m not -- poetic or anything like that… but I love you, too.”

You chuckled a beautiful, wet laugh. “You don’t hafta’ say anything sweet or special. You’re everything to me.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, before wrapping his fingers around your wrist and pulling you onto the mattress with him. He flipped you beneath him, and held himself up by the forearms laying on either side of your head. “Fuck, I love you. I love you.” Jonathan repeated the words several more times, strange and foreign but right at home being said to you. Like his mouth was made to only ever say I love you to you. 

Suddenly, you pressed your lips to his, shutting him up momentarily. You could still feel the vibrations of I love you rumbling in his throat as you kissed him. Your tongues danced along one another, an all consuming waltz; you wanted to know everything about him, down to the taste of his tongue, memorize how sweet his mouth felt on yours. Oh, how you longed for this moment; how could you ever think about love again, and yearn for it, without thinking of Jonathan?

You reckoned that’s what this had been the whole time; your love started as a little flame, something under the guise of friendship, but the two of you had fanned it, nurtured it-- all of a sudden the miniature warmth of platonic love burst into a raging, adoring fire. You’d fed this flame with tenderness, and it responded in kind; you could never again look at Jonathan without a certain intimate reverie. Perhaps that’d been why Jonathan found it so hard to cut off this relationship as he had dozens others: something primal and unconscious within him had begged him not to let you go— some higher being knew his home was only ever in your arms. 

Jonathan deepened the kiss hungrily, pressing his weight onto you and pushing you into the mattress. Your head was spinning from the lack of air, and one of your hands had to sneak beneath his hat and tug at his hair to get him to stop. “Hey,” you panted, looking worriedly into his eyes, “what’s up?”

“Sorry,” he apologized sheepishly, hanging his head lowly for a moment before meeting your gaze once more, batting his long lashes. “Jus’ missed you. Thas’ all.”

“Missed y’too,” you murmured, pulling him back down to kiss you again. Your hands left the crown of his head and trailed down his backside, tracing over the curves and bumps of his frumpy yellow v-neck sweater. 

That touch of yours seemed to spur him on even more, and his kisses began to travel; along your jaw, to your pulse, down the long ravine of your neck, tongue darting out to lick the hollow of your collarbone, making you squeal. He chuckled against your skin, a genuine amusement rather than the mocking one you two so frequently practiced, and it all went downhill from there. His hands skillfully tugged off your tank top, knee between your clenched thighs, more teasing kisses being planted along your now bare -- save for your bra -- chest.

You didn’t mean to come over, profess your love and suddenly jump into a steamy, yearning makeout session (which, you were pretty sure was venturing off into sex…) but you supposed that apologizing— arguing, whatever —meant your relationship went back on track to wherever it was heading… which may have been set to end with an ardor romance anyway. This love of yours would’ve bursted at the seams of friendship; it could not be confined by such mere things as labels. 

“Fuck,” you groaned, arching into his teasing kisses along the peaks of your breasts, his hands ghosting around your clothed chest but never touching. “Please, Jon.”

You could feel his cheeky grin on your skin, “Tell me what you want, love.”

“…Take this off,” you demanded gently, referring to Jonathan’s sweater.

“Your wish is my command.” he snickered, obliging and removing the yellow knit-- as well as his white undershirt and pajama bottoms. He was left in a pair of boxer-shorts and that silly, silly winter-trapper hat, his fingers sneaking up to your supple thighs and tickling the edges of your jean-shorts; a silent plea. 

“Eager,” you mumbled, noticing his over-compliance in completely stripping, smiling and guiding his hands to the waistband of your shorts to tug the tight article off. 

When he did so, you shivered, both at the feeling of being only in your underwear, as well as Jonathan’s sharp, attentive gaze. “You’re so beautiful,” he panted, eyes exploring your every sweet feature. 

He was enamored with your bare body, not in a sexual way despite the blatantly sexual situation, but rather in a worshiping, religiously devoted way. It may’ve been blasphemous to think so, but Jonathan’s sudden chaste kisses along the curve of waist only seemed to prove you right; his mouth on you was gentle, like he’d held you before, except now without any guilt or hesitation. It was a holy way of loving you; something all-consuming, becoming the epicenter of a life, becoming the purpose, motivation, and belief all at once. 

That familiar broiling in your gut occurred as he made his way closer to the pulsing, lace-covered place between your legs; your hands were gripping the sheets tightly in pure anticipation, his hot breath on your sensitive skin. “Don’t be such a tease,” you pouted, legs fumbling for purchase along his body, trying to pull him closer to you.

“We’ve got all the time in the world,” he hummed, but his fingers still curled into the band of your baby-blue panties and dragged them down in one desperate go, “but I do wanna taste you….”

Jonathan’s veiny hands pried your quivering thighs apart, murmuring an offhand already stole y’panties, don’t get all shy on me now when you whimpered flusteredly, before he descended on your dripping lips, licking a flat-tongued stripe up to your clit. 

You gasped at the sudden action, but it quickly morphed into a choked moan when he pressed himself further and parted your lips, nose to your pelvic bone; he made quick work of you, artfully curling his long tongue into your hole and slurping your slick. 

“So sweet,” he praised, the vibrations of his voice making your thighs clench around his head. He hummed in amusement at your reaction, lapping you up quicker; he kitten-licked and slobbered, feeding on your sticky cunt, tongue darting in every direction, feeling your walls and prying deeper into your hot hole, which ached for the cock straining against the mattress now. The bottom half of Jonathan’s face was now positively soaked, glistening with his own drool and your needy wetness, all of it mixing dirtily and sliding down the length of his neck. 

“Jon!” you mewled, hands tearing off his trapper hat and flinging it elsewhere before curling your hands into his mousy brown hair and pushing his face deeper into your pussy, desperate to come. You were riding his face now — or, attempting to, more accurately bucking up into him — adoring his unceasing ministrations. He was basically fucking you with his tongue, overstimulating your clit with teasing licks then pulling away, feeling along the ridges of your walls.

“Pick m’hat up later, love,” he tutted, pulling away slightly to see where you’d haphazardly thrown it, and your desperate whine neared a sob. He breathed in sharply, taking in how quickly he’d undone you: in a matter of minutes, your expression had grown wanton, eyes blown out, drooling, hair askew, bra riding up your tits and revealing your sweet, puffy nipples. 

Jonathan quickly forgot about the state of his beloved hat, and went back down on you, mouth devouring in full force once again. You rolled your hips forward, and when he pulled his tongue out of your wet hole to suckle softly on your fleshy nub, your eyes rolled back into your head and your legs shook around his face, toes curling tightly. A choked moan left you alongside the sudden climax, sounding a hundred percent pornographic and all for him. 

You panted, silent and unmoving for a moment, and Jonathan began moving to get up and let you take a breather before continuing, absolutely terrified to push you too far or do anything you didn’t want to do— he was the spontaneous one, and you were the responsible one, but that didn’t mean he ever wanted to force anything upon you. His simultaneous decisions were made mostly in part with your interests in mind; he made the decisions you were too nervous and over-thinking to choose quicker. 

However, you took a long breath, then trailed your hand over the painfully noticeable bulge within his soft boxers. “Wan’… make you feel good,” you murmured, flattening your hand against his erection. 

Jonathan inhaled sharply, pitifully affected by the minor touch but holding back with an incredible amount of self restraint. “I can wait,” he offered sweetly, one of his hands coming up to your flattened hand’s forearm to rub the skin. 

You shook your head foggily, cupping him through the fabric, slowly adding friction by sliding your hand up and down. 

“S-shit,” he bit his lip, “you want this now, baby?”

You nodded vehemently with a whimper, and to make more of a point, you reached behind and unclasped your bra, tossing it elsewhere on his dirty dorm floor, before beginning to slip off his underwear. 

The hand on your arm stopped you, though, in favor of doing it himself and pressing his weight further onto you, your chests flush with one another. You were only able to take in thin breaths, making your head spin, but it also amplified the  arousal blooming in your cunt when Jonathan slotted himself at your soaking entrance, collecting his saliva and your slick on his tip. 

Before he pushed in, however, his head dipped into the hollow of your neck, plush lips brushing past the shell of your ear. “Is this okay?” he murmured, pressing a wet kiss to your temple. 

“Please,” you whined, hands pushing flat on his back to bring him closer to you.

With that, Jonathan slowly buried his length within your cunt, making your breath hitch. “I love you,” he groaned, entering you inch by inch, relishing how your warmth swallowed him whole. “Fuck, I love you so much.”

Your hole was stuffed beyond belief, but Jonathan was gentle with you, caressing your waist with the rough pads of his fingers and massaging you, trying to ease his entrance into something painless. Obviously, with that length and thickness it couldn’t be painless at all, but his attempts helped your mind drift off elsewhere and take some of the attention off the stinging stretch. 

After a long moment of ragged breathing, Jonathan cooing words of praise into your neck as he kissed you without moving, you dug your fingers into the skin of his back: “More,” you choked out, the fullness in your cunt now feeling delicious rather than cringeworthy. 

He smirked against your skin, “Looks like you’re t’eager one now.”

“Oh, get on with it,” you rasped and he let out a low chuckle, sliding out of your hole before thrusting back in. That first movement already made your hips jerk up into him, back arching. It was like all the warmth in your body had collected in your cunt, leaving you freezing from the tips of your toes to the top of your head, but still with a needy, burning fire in your insides. 

Jonathan’s pace was affectionate and rhythmic: you could feel the tenderness in his each and every gentle roll of the hips. It made you feel like the sun, how attentive he was, but he was also so fucking slow. If anything, that had your walls clenching onto him harder than if he hammered into you— that slow build-up of friction was dizzying. You squirmed, cunt clenching and contracting around his smooth thrusts— you wanted to take him within you completely, cause more friction for you were going stir-crazy with this lazy speed. 

“F-fuck! Faster, please,” you cried out, unable to take his sensual movements any longer. Your legs were twitching with his patient movements, and you could’ve sworn you saw a cheeky grin on his lips. The bastard— even in sex was he teasing you, wanting to torture you until you gave in to the pleasure and begged him to ruin you.  

Sure, this was your first time together, and was going extremely pleasantly and sweetly, but you were actually pretty fond of the idea of letting him pound into you like there was no tomorrow… 

At the lewd thought, your walls pulsed around his cock, making him buck up unintentionally, hitting that sweet spot within you. He grunted at the feeling of your tightened cunt, while you cried out his name, pleasure running like a current through your body. Your face was on fire, reminiscent of a raging fever, and your insides were coiling— god, how did his cock just feel so perfect within you?

“Oh,” he grinned in a pant, “found y’spot, didn’t I?”

Jonathan didn’t give you a chance to speak before he pulled out so far his tip was the only thing in your hole, before slamming back in and making your eyes roll to the back of your head. Props to him-- he hit your g-spot with utmost accuracy, and you let out a long, stuttered mewl, scratching at his freckled back, legs twitching. Your wail was almost catatonic, loud and cock-drunk, dripping unabashed, filthy pleasure. 

“Makin’ such sweet noises f’me,” he praised huskily, hair sticking to the sweat on his forehead, “fuck, ‘ve gotta hear that again.”

He must’ve noticed your neediness earlier, when he was slow and languid, for the new speed he set was double- no, triple that: his hips were snapping against yours, balls smacking filthily against your lips, left hand pinning your hips down and letting him sink into you faster. Shocks of pleasure tore through you at the sudden increase in speed- he’d inured you so well to the torturously slow pace from earlier that this new frenzied one felt like getting hit by a bullet train. You were overstimulated and needing more of him all at once, practically vibrating with need under his touch. 

“I’ve- hnngh- wanted this…” you gasped between moans, “f-for so long…”

“Wanted m’cock?” Jonathan questioned in a hiss, feeling with his every inch how your walls absolutely soaked him. His tone was, obviously, sarcastic, but it still made you feel incredibly lewd. 

You shook your head numbly, “Wanted you… I love you, Jon!”

“So fuckin’ beautiful,” he purred, fucking you faster and making you writhe beneath him, “love you s’much.”

Jonathan targeted the spongy, swollen spot deep within your cunt, suddenly filled with a renewed vigor and motivation to make you come as quickly as possible, and he pounded into that one, specific spot, watching how you twitched and squirmed, heavy moans exiting you. He was relentless, hands reaching to hook under your knees and spread you wider. 

At the new angle, his cock penetrated you even deeper, fuller, which you thought wasn’t possible with how goddamn full you already felt, but when his thick cockhead brushed up against your cervix you thought you were going to burst. Then, one of his hands came up to your tits to knead the flesh, and you squeaked when he tweaked your soft nipples. He was pawing at your sweet tits, fondling you in a needy, boyish way, like yours were the first pair of boobs he’d ever felt. 

“M’close!” you gasped, mind going fuzzy with pure ecstacy. Your skin prickled with goosebumps, cold  sweat running down your spine, a terribly stark in contrast feeling to the warmth buzzing under your skin. 

“C-can’t last much longer either,” he choked, still pumping in and out of your sticky hole and savoring the feeling of your tight warmness on his long length. He looked absolutely exquisite above you, and you lost yourself in the ethereal picture. Maybe you were in love, or maybe he really was just an empyrean beauty; you took in the sight of his focussed iceberg blue eyes, the cute flush spreading along his pale cheeks and bare chest, how he bit his pink lips to muffle his needy grunts and moans. 

Then, you mewled and convulsed around him, your walls spasming and contracting as you came undone, reaching the precipice of your pleasure. That made him fall off the edge— you had tensed all over- all over, and Jonathan couldn’t help how his hips stuttered, knees buckled, cock twitched; he only gave one last, powerful thrust into you before spilling himself inside of you. He painted your soft walls white, and you felt that familiar heat spreading within you; you welcomed it completely, and wanted such warmth to be there forever. 

You milked him for every last drop, cunt like a vice grip, and Jonathan gave you another wet kiss, this time on your lips, and your hands wrapped around his neck, allowing you to kiss him back. Your brows knitted at the sour taste of yourself on his lips, but it just made everything feel so real— Jonathan and you had “made love”. It was a phrase you always wrinkled your nose at, feeling uncomfortable and juvenile at the intimacy it entailed, but now you understood it completely. 

“I love you,” you repeated for what felt like the hundredth time, unable to say anything else that conveyed what you felt for him. 

Honestly, you weren’t sure anything could accurately do so— you felt infinitely about him, your love touching all edges of your mind, heart and soul, filling you completely. You supposed you felt about Jonathan how the sun felt about the moon— without one, there could not be the other. 

“I love you-- too,” he responded, pausing in the middle at the aftershocks of your orgasm, which had caused you to tighten around his softening, sensitive cock for a second. 

You peered deep into his baby-blue eyes, watching the utter love that coloured them; it was like submerging yourself in a great blue ocean, except you didn’t want to come out, because you knew you wouldn’t drown in those eyes. No, you knew Jonathan would always be there to pull you out. 

Speaking of pulling out… Jonathan slipped himself out of you softly, careful not to agitate that first stretch any more than necessary, before collapsing back into your arms. The two of you tangled yourselves in a messy flurry of limbs on his cushy mattress, sweaty and breathy, something that should’ve been terribly uncomfortable but just wasn’t— you swore you could fall asleep anywhere, no matter your own state or the circumstance, as long as you were with him. 

Blearily, both your eyes began to droop, until you gave into the familiar presence of deep, dark sleep. It was a dreamless sleep for you, but you had an ever present comfort at his weight on yours, something you could feel even in unconsciousness. 

Hours later, in a brisk, shuddering early-morning that you felt all over due to Jonathan’s unruly habit of opening his window at the peak of the day’s hottest weather and forgetting to close it before cold nightfall fell, you awoke to Jonathan watching you carefully, so close you could feel his warm exhales of breath on your cheek. 

There was no goodmorning or anything like that, just pure, uninhibited being, reveling in the space you two occupied together. Like you two were the only things left in the world. 

When Jonathan noticed you woke up, he shifted, presumably to extract himself from your grip. You stopped him, though, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and bringing him closer to you.

“What did it feel like?” you asked instead, for the last time. You brushed your fingers over his scar, and, knowing exactly what you were asking, this time Jonathan doesn’t flinch away. This time, he leans into your touch: it doesn’t burn, not anymore, and he wants your tenderness to swallow him whole. 

You didn’t mean what it actually felt like, of course. You meant, what were you thinking? What have you done, and what will you do to yourself? You meant, I love you.

“It felt like,” falling; not everything feels like something else; I raised my arms and the air took me and that was it-- “it felt like… giving in. Letting my desperation find its purpose. It felt like I’d reached a point of peace… gained clarity after a long stretching, wounded moment came to an end. It felt like becoming something only meant to be talked about in past tense.”

You don’t say anything to that; you know he doesn’t want you to. There’s no need for you to hush or plead or make better, you just need to listen, and love him. He knows you accept him for everything he is, all his flaws and his strengths; he knows your love is all accepting- it veers on saintly. 

At your silence, he melts into your arms and you can finally relax; there is an admission in the action, a release, an acknowledgement -- is suffering in silence not also accompanied by the overwhelming desire to be found? -- you have found him, at last, and you will never, ever let go.

You take it too far, just once. Only once. And you let him go just once, only once; never again. 

[watermelonlovershigh]

Spontaneous Pleasures {part 7.} (housemate!harry series) (SMUT)

The Rated R Card Game {part 6.} (housemate!harry series)

AN: we're getting so close to them actually having sex. then after that, it'll go back to more mundane things they do in their everyday lives. sorry i keep dragging this on but i'm having fun writing this series. enjoy!!! and make sure to leave your ideas and feedback!!! xoxo

This story contains: fingering (both pussy & ass) blowjob, analingus, aftercare, comfort

{ housemate!harry - friendrry - au!harry - softrry }

word count- 2,159

After Harry spontaneously fingers you during what started out as one of your typical movie nights, you get a wave of dominance come over you, leading you to get on your knees and sucking Harry's cock while also eating and fingering his pretty little ass hole for the first time.

> A few days later

"Har....H..Harry, mhm fuck!" you moan in pleasure as Harry fucks you with his fingers. What started out as a casual movie night, cuddling on the couch, soon turned into more when Harry's hand slipped into your yoga pants. Of course, there were kisses exchanged as well.

Grinning from ear to ear, he dirty talks, "Yeah, feels good baby? M' I makin' you feel so good? Fuckin' you with my, long, thick, fingers? Hmh?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" is all you're able to chant. It's rare for you to get fingered unless someone else fingers you. The angle at which you need to be fingered is something you've always found difficult to do to yourself. So you generally stick to clitoral stimulation or one of your dildos. But on the rare occasion you do get fingered, it feels amazing, when done right of course.

As Harry continues finger blasting you in the middle of his living room, on his sofa, he starts applying pressure to your clit with his palm, enhancing the sensation and causing your body to arch from its reclined position. The moist, squelching sounds reverberate throughout the walls of the house. Overwhelmed by immense pleasure, your mind becomes hazy and your toes begin to curl.

"You gonna come for me? Can feel you clenchin' down on my fingers."

You respond with a nod and out of nowhere, your orgasm hits you like a crashing wave. The intense pleasure you've been holding in your stomach erupts, creating a display of fireworks behind your closed eyelids. Your body trembles, your back stays arched, and your legs quiver as if they might close.

As you begin to come down from your euphoric state, the words "Oh my God!!" instinctively escape your mouth. Harry continues to pleasure you until he notices the signs of overstimulation and gradually withdraws. Now you find yourself lying on the couch, breathing heavily, as you attempt to regain your composure.

Rising to his feet, Harry states, "I'll be right back. Gonna get somethin' to clean you up with." While he's away, your senses begin to awaken again and you become aware of just how horny you still are.

Upon Harry's return, he cleans up the mess between your legs that he created from the spontaneous fingering session. Once he's finished with that, in a display of dominance from your horniness reappearing, you assert yourself by pushing him onto the couch and positioning yourself on the floor between his legs. Before Harry can utter a word of inquiry, you swiftly lower the front of his sweatpants, and he willingly aids in pulling them down even more until he's able to kick them off to the side of the couch.

His penis springs forth, looking as appetizing as ever. You reach forward and encircle his large shaft with your small hand, causing him to recoil slightly due to its sensitivity. Harry remains quiet, allowing you to have your way with him but his mouth is dropped open in an 'o' shape, breaths becoming heavier and more pronounced with each touch you give to him. Finally, you rise to your knees and lean over his lap, taking his dick into your mouth.

Upon feeling the head of his cock touch the back of your throat, he breaks his silence with a quiet curse of, "Shit" You adjust to accommodate to his size by tugging on what doesn't fit in your mouth, making Harry believe he's in heaven. Little does he know though, that what you have planned next will take him beyond the heavenly gates.

While removing your mouth from his cock, you continue to provide consistent strokes with your right hand as your face travels lower. When your mouth grazes over his testicles, Harry assumes you might engage in licking or sucking them, which he'd find incredibly satisfying. However, you exceed his expectations by bypassing his balls and positioning your mouth face to face with his puckering hole.

The act of performing analingus has never been your preference. You have only done it once, and that was with someone you knew very well. You would never entertain the idea of engaging in it with a one-night stand, as you had no way of knowing their level of cleanliness or when they last used the restroom.

However, you feel comfortable doing it for Harry. You're aware that he maintains excellent personal hygiene, especially when it comes to his bum, thanks to his experiences with men. He's well-versed in the practice of keeping his anus clean through regular douching and ensuring it remains free of excessive hair.

After gathering your courage with a deep breath, you plunge headfirst into the task at hand. Your tongue encounters the tense ring of muscles and slowly pushes its way inside. "What r' you doin'?" Harry blurts out. It's not that he dislikes what you're doing, because he fucking loves what you're doing. It's simply surprising, as he never envisioned you as someone who would engage in such activities. Nevertheless, he feels incredibly fortunate to have you in his life.

You pull away quickly with a smirk. Despite feeling a bit nervous about whether or not what you did was acceptable, you can see from his expressions that he thoroughly enjoyed it. "Did you like that? I bet you like having your little ass played with, don't you? I wonder if you'd ever let me fuck it. Would you? Maybe with one of my dildos, or I could purchase a strap-on. If I bought a strap-on, perhaps I could also fuck your throat. Just like you allowed that other woman to do. Make you choke and gag on my fake cock."

Harry has never seen you so confident with your dirty words. It probably has something to do with the orgasm he previously gave you. You're still out of it, he concludes as an explanation. And you referencing something he admitted happened in his past during that card game a week or two ago, he was hoping that by sharing that event, maybe, just maybe you'd get some curiosity and fantasize about trying it out on him. He guesses his plan worked.

Still breathing rather heavy, Harry answers back, "Y/n, you can do whatever you want with me. Anythin'. Nothin' is off limits." And he truly means that. You want to fuck his ass? He'll get on his hands and knees this instant. You want to fuck his throat? He'll open his mouth so wide his jaw threatens to snap. You want to tie him up one day? He'll tie himself up for you, if that's even possible. He'll be your submissive. The only catch is, you've gotta let him do the same things to you.

"Good to know." is all you say before continuing where you left off. You lubricate his tight hole with your tongue before slipping it inside and fucking him with it. Your right hand picks up its speed on his cock. Harry grabs the backs of his thighs to hold his legs open for you, his feet propped up on the edge of the couch, which you greatly appreciate.

After a minute of continuous action, Harry is nearing orgasm. His legs quiver, his breathing becomes strained, and his stomach muscles contract. As soon as you feel his cock twitch in your hand, you remove your mouth from his hole and proceed to place his dick back into your mouth. Although you don't neglect his bum hole. Slowly, you guide your left hand down until it reaches his tightening hole, then smoothly easing inside without any resistance thanks to the lingering saliva left from your mouth..

Just as you insert your fingers, Harry announces, "Y/n, baby, m' gonna come." True to his words, he ejaculates, releasing his warm jizz all over your tongue as you skillfully pleasure him. Simultaneously, you continue to stimulate his anus, ensuring he experiences the utmost pleasure.

Even after his orgasm subsides, you persist in pleasuring him with your mouth and fingers until he physically has to push you away, stating, "Enough, baby. M' too sensitive now." When he uses the endearing term, "baby," it fills you with warmth. Though it's mostly been used during intimate moments. You eagerly anticipate the day when he will use it more frequently and not just during your sexual activities.

With a pop, you release Harry's softening penis from your mouth and retract your fingers from his ass hole. Harry is left on the couch, panting like a dehydrated dog. He's trying to compose himself after what just occurred. You stand up on sore legs, from the hard floor that is, and go to the bathroom to get a damp cloth for cleaning him up with. He deserves aftercare too. While in the bathroom, you also wipe away the arousal that formed between your legs and change into a clean pair of panties.

Upon your return, Harry remains in the same position where you left him. However, there is a slight change as his head now rests against the back of the couch, eyes closed, and he's no longer holding his legs up. You step in between his legs and speak softly, "Let me clean you off" He raises his head slightly, his eyes barely open, and notices that you hold a damp cloth in your hands. Without uttering a word, he spreads his legs to provide you with more space and just silently observes as you lean down and meticulously cleanse his genitals, followed by his wet ass.

Harry's sensitivity causes him to hiss, but he relaxes once you're done. Placing the damp cloth on the coffee table, you stand up and reach for Harry's hands. "Let's go to bed. We're both knackered." Harry takes your hands and stands up with your assistance. Upon standing, he notices something shiny on the floor.

"What's that?" Harry questions looking downwards, prompting you to cast a glance downwards as well, seeking to identify what he's referring to. It's in that moment that you become aware of a small puddle, evidence of your overwhelming arousal while you were pleasuring him. Although you were conscious of your heightened state of arousal, you didn't realize it had reached a point where it leaked onto the FUCKING floor. This situation is unbelievably humiliating.

Stumbling over your words, you reply, "Ohh, um, well doing what I did to you got me wet. Like really wet. I didn't realize it dripped on the floor though. I'm so embarrassed."

"Don't be embarrassed, Y/n," Harry says softly, his hands cupping your face. "M' actually flattered that I got you so wet. It's an easy fix, we'll clean it up." With a nod of agreeance, you observe as Harry retrieves the cloth from the coffee table and bends down to eliminate the small puddle. In a matter of seconds, the area is completely cleaned and you both proceed to Harry's room where you'll be staying for the night.

Once in Harry's room, you go to slide under the covers when Harry suddenly asks, "Can we sleep naked?"

"Um, yeah if you want. But why?" Not that you have anything against sleeping naked but normally whenever you've shared a bed with each other, you have some form of clothes on. Typically you in an oversized t-shirt and panties, Harry in just his briefs.

As you both proceed to remove your remaining clothes, Harry answers, "I don't know. Just want to feel close to you, s'all. Your warm and your boobs make great pillows." That garners a laugh from you.

Now fully nude, he turns the one lamp that remained on, off and you each get under the duvet. "Come over here then." you instruct Harry. "Your pillows are waiting for you." He slides across the bed until he's settled by your side and gently places his head on your nearest breast while his top arm is slung across your belly.

In this moment, Harry realizes just how much he loves you. Never in a million years did he think he'd fall in love with the shy, timid girl who accepted his housemate position all those months ago. But gradually, after becoming friends, he realized how much fun you are to be around. How comforting your presence is. How you make him feel safe and warm. How you never judge him for his sexuality and accept him for who he is. He knows in this exact moment he wants to spend the rest of his life with you and you haven't even had sex yet.

But without a shadow of a doubt, he knows you'll be the best sex he's ever had and he has a feeling it's going to happen sooner than you anticipated. Like really soon. He can feel the sexual tension every time you do other sexual things. Tensions that make you just want to scream, "fuck me already." Soon can't come fast enough.

(PLEASE REBLOG BECAUSE WRITING IS NOT EASY AND IT'S FREE SO JUST DO IT)

(no more tags are allowed because i've hit my number limit. sorry : ( )

tag list: @one-sweet-gubler // @harryscherrysugar // @hsfanficsrecss // @lollypopsx // @harrycanyonmoonn // @allthelovehes // @damnasstyles  // @mrsstylesharry // @softmullet  // @meetmyblondemuffins  // @thegirlnextdoorssister // @stanleystyles  // @haarrrys // @michellekstyles  // @skyangel57   // @the-gardener-31 // @lhharrylilpumpkin // @yousunshine-youtemptress // @clairestylessss  // @kissmyaxe140  // @goldenmelonsugar-hi // @kaitieskidmore97 // @florencepughily  // @alienorknight //@dancearoundthelivingroom  // @swiftmendeshoran

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______________

My Masterlist Masterpost

The Next Morning {part. 8} (housemate!harry series) (SMUT)

[ladythornofrivia]

Kingdom of Fire & Blood || (Part One)

🐉 MASTERLIST 🐉

Next Chapter

summary: modern!reader woke up in Westeros after getting drunk.

pair: aemond x reader

warnings & disclaimer: smut, violence, p in v sex, sexual content, aemond being arrogant but is secretly a softie, modern reader doesn’t know how the world of GOT works but is a Aemond stan, praise kink, breeding kink, spitting kink, voice kink, fluff, angst—family drama, oral sex, hate sex, jealousy, stalking, virginity loss, obsession, reader being sassy and aroused, sweet moments with reader and aemond. Reader is a huge GOT & HOTD fan. Pro-Green, Reader is a green supporter. Aemond becomes king instead of Aegon. (P.S. Alys who? I only know Aemond x Reader).

a/n: it’s official! It’s here! I hope you enjoy my fanfic series of ‘Kingdom of Fire and Blood’.

Chapter One: The Dark Uproar

In a realm of dragons and knights,

There lays with conquer and fear, from scorching summer through bleak winters, through life of air and fire and ashes.

In a realm of nobility and law, in the halls of mountain and sea,

the green star has shed upon the dark, cloudless sky, wedged upon the shrouded waters of Westeros.

The green star has emerged.

“Seize her! Don’t let her get away!” the man pointed at you dashing away from the scenery.

It’s a dream. You were sure that it’s a dream. Dreams occurred in a blurry vision, not by transparency. Dreams are often—and easily—forgotten once awake after the newborn daylight arises.

In a midst of pursuit, you retraced back your steps. You went at your friend’s celebration, then eat and watched anime— you didn’t have much vigor to spare for removing your makeup due to sleepiness. The last thing you ever did was you resting on your warm bed without a change of clothing, now dry and shivering, laying down on a half-parched sand, half-asleep while unsure of what’s happening before your arrival. You were unconscious deeply in your sleep you weren’t aware of the commotion you have caused, awoken by the young knight, who found you in the brink of nightfall—who fled and carried you—travelled within distance for three days.

Under a huffed breath, legs and feet numbed as you carried yourself away to stray paths where band of guards weren’t able to trace you accurately. You’re much lighter and faster with sprinting; due to their armor, they couldn’t move they so desire. Even more so when some guards have horses with them. Or hounds barking with thirst for a good gnaw on your youthful flesh.

Until now, you’re steadfast with rush. Harsh wind blasted in your earholes at the stallion’s speed.

Your mind is raced with previous encounter, mind occupied with millions of panic inquiries.

~ before the chase ~

Previously, with your skin and bones beneath your tight crop top shirt and tennis skirt quivering at a spine-tingling weather, despite the lack of storming wind, you have no idea where to begin on what to say to the young knight but offering him a small yet timid smile to lessen the intensity of cumbersome fate that’s forcefully thrusted upon you, oblivious and frightened, shaking like a grumpy feline that despises water or anything that touches the feline.

Upon the yearnings of a weeping locked inside your heaving chest, of begging and wanting to go home was futile, estranged within a foreign land. As the vexed fate of anxiety clambered into your heart, the staggering breaths and rasps in your voice and your loud thoughts has been noticed by a young man in fancy armor, bestowing you with a relieved grin etched on his weary features. You’re certain that Halloween is over.

“You have awaken,” he said with a brightened grin, though you weren’t focused on the sound of his voice, but saw his lips shifted.

Noticing the young man’s eyes, you were positive that no one wouldn’t rescue a stranger such as yourself. Groaning, you leaned your back against over the bulkiness of a tumbled tree. Fire flickered and crackled like bones snapped to pieces.

“Can you hear me, my lady?” he asked, alarmed yet almost as quiet; he didn’t wish to see you alert under his aid.

“My lady,” you repeated, lifting your heavy-numbing head, confused as you were shaking with your eyes sealed with bursting pink stars flowing in your black vision, ears, head and heart pounded against you wakened state. Sighing, you resumed with, “How long have I been unconscious?”

“For three days,” he said, the soft outline of his lips curled upward, as if he was relieved to see you alive and well. Your eyes examined him, spotting the clean armor and a long sword carried in his sheath.

“What happened?”

“I saw you lying unconscious, so I have to come and save you, hoping that you’re alive.”

Everything was bizarre at this point.

“Save me?” you asked the boy, subconscious, coughing out the thick, salted water, clutching your chest tight, pounding for the leftover to drain.

“Yes, my lady,” the young man said with a kind smile, but his glassy eyes beamed against your frightful ones, covered in soot, despite being drenched. “I was sent by my father for a further alliance with another house, but as soon as I left the castle, I found lying you unconscious in the midst of the ocean. I have swam my way to rescue you.”

“Where did you find me exactly? I’m all wet,” you commented, lips curled in disgust your clothes are caked in black sand and puddle.

“I found you by the shores, and took you in quick before anyone could search on the grounds.”

Your head was pounding.

“Shores?”

“At Blackwater Bay,” he explained.

Blackwater Bay, you thought as your fingernails scraped onto your wet scalp. That name sounds familiar.

The back of your head was pounding. “Are we still at Blackwater Bay?”

“We travelled within three days while you were in your subconscious state. A fewer miles ahead and you’re already in the kingdom.”

Then the skies filled with an animalistic roar, screeching like nails on a chalkboard.

Your ears covered and shoulder blades flinched at the long, grating sound.

Your shoulders flinched as you said, “What the hell is that?”

The young man still grinned, remaining silenced from your projected inquiry.

“They’re still frightened of the sound,” is all he said. “Of the light.”

You eyed on him with perplexed expression resting on your features.

“What light?” you wondered. “What did you mean when you ‘they’re still frightened of the sound’?”

“Dragons,” the young man said, eyes twinkled. “You came down here with the light, and that’s what’s causing the uproar.”

You found his cryptic statement alarmingly bizarre due to his faint enthusiasm.

“We’re reaching close to our destination,” he said, but you still don’t comprehend.

Bewildered, before you could ask another, the clanging sounds of metal and flickering flames on a torch and countless heavy stomps dashed on its way to your direction.

“Allow me to escort you to safety. These guards are brutal than ravage beasts,” he said to you. “I can’t let a young maiden die in vain.”

Your breath held in shortly.

“Which way should I go? Is there a safe spot for me to hide?”

“Take the nearest path down on a pebbled road and hide. From there, you’ll see the narrow passage, one where no one uses. Traitors and spies lurking about the lower grounds.” and kept heading The young man pushed you, guided you and instructed you to conceal behind the large and sharp boulder, while your legs shaken, air colder than ice. However, another realization dawned upon your wake. You have nowhere to go. Not in this foreign land.

Thoughts conjured and slice your numb mind open. Death is near me; I’ll be killed if I don’t have something with me.

“Where am I heading to?”

“Somewhere far where they can’t reach you or trace your steps. You’re heading to a place where the crown’s might is still strong.”

You paused in your tracks. Wait, that can’t be right.

The rumbled noise made it’s passage close to your location, causing for your heart and his sprung with immense fear.

Both of you reached in time as he hoisted your body up on the saddle. Before whipping the reins on the horse, the young man gave you the dagger with a symbol on his shining armor. The same sigil the knight has on his armor—or so it appears. “You’ll be in safer hands if you carry something with you.”

“If we meet again, I’ll return this blade back to you.”

His eyes gazed into yours with a sad smile.

“Still, I don’t even know your name.”

He grasped your hand shortly. He smiled. “Ser Remon Blackwood.”

The pounded hooves reached a louder noise, getting near to your direction.

“Thank you, Ser Blackwood,” you said.

Remon Blackwood had his hand reached out to yours. “You share kindness like no other. Not like the people in the realm with conquering dragons. It’s an honor to meet you, my lady,” he said, giving you a one last smile.

“Dragons?” you questioned in shock.

He gave a hard slap on the horse’s front leg, as he watched his given horse galloped with you giving one last look onto the despairing knight with a somber smile.

Your eyes darted forward, leaving your ears perceiving the traced sounds of sword clashed and rang, forest filled with raged shouts.

Afar, a young knight plea for mercy, then a long-produced sounds of swords slipped through cracked armor and bones, blood shed and slimed over the forest ground.

Then nothing; only the solid ripples of the heavy hooves and a rushed wind from a great stallion’s speed deafened onto your ears.

The good knight is dead.

And the nightfall became colder.

~ present ~

The horse nearly reached to a wide-ranged road when five of the men continued to pursuit you, eyes preyed on you at the back of your head, drilling and contain in unyielding desire of violence.

“Kill the bitch!” one man shouted.

Looking over to your shoulder, on your left, you saw the man on the right drew out a bow, and sent the arrow down at your back. But you managed to duck in time. With an irritated huff, the man sent another blow with the second arrow. You ducked your head once more, gazing back, then forth, then back again.

Heart pounding in your chest; the distance between them began to shrink.

“For fuck’s sake,” the first man bellowed, wrinkles on his forehead protruded, veins on his neck were visible. “Sent the arrow flying down on that bitch’s neck, you good for nothing prick!”

The second man’s face went pale. “I’m trying, sire.”

“Try harder, you useless fucktwad!”

Clutched fingers against the writhed reins grew tired, the steadiness in your breath increased tenfold in suffocation, heart rate escalated twice as strong—feeling hot and cold all at once. Cold sweat plastered to your clutched hands as you whipped the reins harder, indicating a sign for the stallion advance farther. The pace began to slow; you whipped the reins, but no to avail.

“Please, hurry,” you begged, head leaning against the horse’s ear, holding onto your dear life as death still awaits for you.

The man reload with the third arrow. His aim targeted to your face. For a second, he went still with his aim, but immediately shot at the back of the horse’s leg. The back of the horse’s limbs tripped and flipped in mid-air, sent you flying forward with a loud clash on the forest ground that nearly shattered your back and ribcage. Ears rang and eyes shut with gritted teeth droned a sharp hiss from your lips as the men dismounted down and marched their towered over you crumpled form.

Immediately, you gathered your shattered form and fled with your hidden in plain sight. The limp on your leg made a painfully deliberate pace as you attempt to go farther while the men with cloaks and big swords, following you, wearing a yellow and crooked teeth on their lips, sniggering at your flee. And by the time you reached at the centered road, nearly to the exit, your path has been blocked by two more men, who you unaware of the extra company. One man grabbed a fistful of your hair and dragged you down. Drawing the dagger out, your hand brought down on his foot, then his knee, then his thigh—never minding the hysterical noise. Loosening the grip on your head, while on your knees, with a support of your foot, you spun around and stabbed a knee from another man.

You couldn’t scream or cry for help anymore. After all, you’re drowsy from ocean water, still wet and lost, in an unwonted void of labyrinth.

“What shall we do of this little cunt?” the man with a thin beard said.

“We’re going to make a use of her, bore into her with my seed and carry the filthy bastard inside her,” the second man with a short, uneven bowl cut suggested confidently. “After that, I’ll eat her flesh.”

“Stupid cunt can’t even fend for herself,” the third man, who was shorter than you said, cackling. “Let’s all take turns then. Whoever makes her scream the hardest, will get to keep her as a toy.”

One man undo his armor on the half-bottom, the clanging armor bumped in haste rhythm, as all the men who towered over your sicken stature, shed their trousers out.

Before one could pull the long cock out, with a knife in your hand, given by the young knight, you sliced his cock apart, left him wailing like an infant, blood splattered like waterfall. The men hovered you with their grubby hands, but you dodged—rolled back and took a hard swing at the man on your left, chopped his hand off. With the knife on your hand, it felt more like a short sword.

Another man has struck.

The bulky man in the middle plunged a full swing on your belly. Yelping, your arms encompassed over your flesh as the man plunged another blow with his hardened boot. His eyes gaze over the blade and punted it over to the side, then stomped over your belly and breasts in repeated motion until he grows tired. Once his foot has grown fatigue, he grabbed your thighs and spread them apart.

“No…” you said, pleading and crying. “Please don’t!”

The man dragged your panties and your tennis skirt down in barbarous motion. “Stay still and be a good wench,” he said, muddy fingers traced over your skin. You bit his fingers, drawing hot blood.

Enraged, his hands strangled you. With quick thinking, you knee slammed against his balls and kicked his face, crawling away before retrieving the dagger back, the man stomped over your left wrist, your mouth opened, but no sound came except the twinge of pain searing in your bones.

“You should’ve listen and stay still like a dog,” the man sneering, pulling your hair back again. The blurriness in your eyes worsened.

With your bones and limbs have been shattered, the hope in you began to fade. No hopes of a savior or luck stayed in hand with your despair.

His boot lunched another blow struck against your face, only to be bled through your nose, your body is broken and immovable, you couldn’t find yourself speaking, or cry for aid. Nothing good ever comes.

Except you’re alive. In fact, you were letting your guard down—pretending to be dead, abiding for the enemy to make a hasty error. The squint on your right eye left a little gap, seeing the man, kneeling down on you as he took off his trousers merrily. But as he splayed his cock out in the cold air, you managed the seize the dagger, tackled him and slashed his throat, while alive, the dagger impaled him through one of his eyes, then nose, then cheek—spare vigor imploded under a last sheer of your quick anger. The man’s face and mouth flowed with warm blood, choking and plopped down back on the surface with a thunderous thud.

From there, you stood once more and limped your way through the exit from the forest’s road in so little steps.

Only remains are the trees billowed and rustled and swayed through a gentle, cool breeze, and with you exhaling with a cautious breath you held in your chest and limbs worn out and limped as your vision drown into darkness.

~~~

Ser Criston Cole accompanied the band of men through the forest, as for they ought to repose for a short while. Sundowns became long, and the dragons in the heavens unyielded through an unforgiving climate.

The dragons don’t bear the coldness of wintry-like air. In the old days of Valyria, centuries before the time of Viserys’s reign, none of the great dragons and its people survived the Doom of Valyria, and within the errored times, from moving Essos to Westeros, dragons hatched into a total of eighteen—mighty and proud and carnivorous and bloodthirsty, though tamed through the influence of their rightful owners—heirlooms and foundation of companionship and trust between those who have the blood of a Valyria and connections through history. For instance, Vhagar is the second largest dragon compare to the other dragon riders owned. Dragons are obedient when those who dialect in Valyrian tongue, if not some. Some takes a special gift to have certain trust with a dragon, and dragon shares it’s mutual respect to the owner.

But it can’t say the same to the recent owners. The Blackwater Bay boomed nearby the Dragonstone. And during the nightly hours, the dragons were deeply asleep, though fully awakened by the quiet whiplash of what it appears to be none other than the small green light yet brightly shot downward from the vast of great, empty sky. Two nights ago, Prince Daemon tried to appease his dragon, Caraxes, the red scaly beast, but it’s clear enough to sent the prince with hesitation. Prince Daemon reached Caraxes with his hand for reassurance but Caraxes nearly snapped Prince Daemon’s hand in half. Criston Cole has neither seen Prince Daemon or Caraxes in the verge of calamity. Prince Daemon, a rogue prince who tends be as brute yet reckless and composed has been caught off guard.

The dragons have startled the men—knights and royals alike completely—peasants, too. The green starry light has fallen into the thundering waves, almost as if it was the end of Westeros. The booming wave from Blackwater Bay still lingers the aftermath effect. None slept through the night. They were returning to King’s Landing from meeting the lord from the north nearby the Blackwater Bay. But Prince Daemon, as always, fled away without considering so much of a wait for the others.

Under the gentle moonlight floating from the clouds, Ser Criston and his men galloped through the forest with their horses, hooves stomped over the twigs and dead leaves and the steeped grounds. By the time they reached into the monumental of pointed, red structures and gold and white in the city, Criston Cole couldn’t wait to repose and serve the Greens, mainly Queen Alicent, King Viserys’s second wife.

The stallion neighed loudly as it thrown its front hooves up in the air. Criston Cole’s heart leapt, somewhat appeasing his steed as the men behind him halted without a warning, causing others to nearly fall.

“What in the Seven Hells…” the man beside Criston Cole, took upon the glance at the fallen men in the midst of their exit.

Criston took the man’s torch and investigated the scenery. The fallen men all have bled from their knees to their open crotches. Hardness of their cock had flung out from a sharp blade. Criston winced at the sudden imagery flashed through his head.

“What could’ve done this…” a scrawny man said, perturbed.

“It must’ve been the work of a demon,” another man commented.

Criston moved onward, his legs carried him far and examined the view before him long before he reached to a figure, laying down. Rushing to her side, he noticed that her attire was far strangely and strikingly unique and bright compare what other women in the court wore. Turning her over, Criston settled his palm over her visage, pushing the long locks aside.

“My lady,” he muttered, still calm. While carrying the torch, he removed his glove with his teeth and touched her face. It was warm. Then he traced his hand below on the center of her chest.

Her heart in fact, still beating. He heaved with relief and called out to his men.

“This girl is alive! We must take her back to King’s Landing!” He passed the torch to the man beside him, who was following Criston without Criston noticed, and ripped his cloak off and wrapped the cloak around you and carried your unconscious body back to the men. Instructing the man to carry you while mounted on his horse and retrieved you back, placing you at the front.

“What of the Targaryens?” the man asked, somewhat scared.

Criston gave a sharp glare.

His fellow comrades, knowing Criston’s reputation, has not said a word, and followed Criston back to the realm where dragons reign.

Taglist: @liannafae

@ aemondswifffeeeyyy - all rights reserved

[fiveht]

Proof of life (Adore pt 3)

Hello my sweet angel babies ♥️

I'm not going to be able to adequately express my gratitude for the steady stream of love (and concern, sorry) I've been receiving over the past couple of months. I'm so sorry I've been AWOL, it will definitely happen again. Because see, for me, I usually have to make a choice between social and creative fandom participation. My battery is small, and takes a long time to charge.

Thank you to everyone who's left comments and asks and DMs since I've been gone. I don't think I can respond to all of it, but rest assured those messages ping my cold, dead heart every time I see them.

So I'm gonna go out on a limb here. I did this same thing months and months ago, when I was working on Head Over Feet, and let me be clear: posting even a single word of a WIP goes against my every instinct and principle as an author. I am someone who likes to finish an entire story before I post any of it, and on top of that, I am NOT a fast writer, so the expectations that I'm setting up here might not be advisable. But I did it before and managed to finish the thing, and I want to give you guys something in exchange for being so unbelievably awesome, so here I am again.

This will probably be the only time I mention this story in public until it's finished and posted, and inquiries about my progress are unlikely to help with the writing process, I'm just saying. I reserve the right to change every last word of this before the final draft, and I also reserve the right to fall off the face of the planet and simply never finish it, as much as I will strive to prevent that from happening. Please be patient with me.

Anyway, here is my paltry offering to say thanks for the love: the (VERY rough) first ~1300 words of the third instalment of The Adventures of Soft Daddy and Danger Twink.

Sirius secures his handheld shower head to its holder at the edge of his clawfoot tub, and steps out carefully onto the bathmat. He shivers in the cool air outside the shower curtain; it's about twenty degrees below zero outside, so even if he could afford to run his ancient radiator at full blast, it probably wouldn't help much.

He dries himself off and checks his reflection in the mirror, turning his face this way and that as he tugs his hair out of the bun he'd piled it into to keep it dry during his shower. There's no need for makeup tonight, not when he's not even planning to put on clothes.

It's incrementally warmer when he steps out into the main room of his apartment. He gathers an array of splayed text books and notes from his bed and dumps them carelessly onto the couch, then closes his new laptop and places it delicately on the coffee table. It's the most expensive thing he owns, save for the Gucci backpack currently sitting in his wardrobe with a three-inch berth around it like his shoes and other bags might somehow contaminate it. It's weird owning rich-people stuff when you are still, objectively, broke as fuck.

He perches on the edge of his bed and sets his phone to charge, because his battery doesn't even last a day anymore, and he's going to need it this evening. He tucks it in next to his pillow and picks up his new toy.

The plug isn't much larger than the one he already has. A little longer, which is appealing, but no wider, so it shouldn't be a challenge to get it in comfortably. He disconnects it from its charger and hefts it in his hand, feeling the added weight from the electronics inside.

He picks up his phone, and hesitates when he sees the notification waiting for him.

Rieka: let's go out tomorrow

Rieka: the fact that we haven't been drunk since the term started is criminal

Rieka: we've had two chem labs and zero drinks

Sirius purses his lips, thumbs hovering over the keyboard. There's a fine line here, and he hasn't quite found it yet.

Me: got plans

Me: raincheck?

So complete avoidance is the best strategy, right?

Rieka: booooo 👎

He sighs, but at least she's not asking for an explanation. He opens a different conversation then, pushing all thoughts of Rieka Lupin into a tidy, sealed compartment, not to be opened during certain activities with a certain relative of hers.

Me: i'm ready

Me: are you in your office?

Daddy: Yup, I've got a few minutes

Daddy: Want me to call?

Instead of answering, Sirius hits the call button himself.

"Hey baby," Remus answers. His voice is already smooth and honey-sweet, and just from that, Sirius knows he's planning to lay it on thick tonight.

"Hi daddy," Sirius says with a smile. "Should I put it in now?"

There's a low chuckle over the line. "Are we feeling eager?"

"Always," Sirius says, laying back on his bed.

"Use the good lube I got you, it's gonna be in there a while."

He switches the call to speaker, and snags the bottle from his nightstand. "I threw out the old stuff, you've got me ruined for cheap lube."

"Only the best for that ass," Remus says, and Sirius can hear his smirk.

He gives the plug a liberal coating, running his fingers along its shape, his dick twitching just at the feel of the silky-smooth silicone, at the anticipation of what's about to happen. He spreads his legs wide, drawing one knee up to give himself easier access.

"Take it slow," Remus says, succinctly heading off Sirius' impulse to just shove the thing inside himself in one go. "Rub the tip against yourself, so you're nice and wet."

Sirius shuts his eyes as he obeys, sliding the slick end of the toy over his entrance. "Okay."

"Are you going to be a good boy for daddy tonight?"

"Uh-huh," Sirius says, teasing the very tip of the plug in and out of his hole.

"Tell me how."

"I'm not gonna touch."

"You're not gonna touch, and you're not gonna come."

"Yeah," Sirius says. His cock is starting to harden as his body tries to draw the plug inside. "Can I put it in, daddy?"

"Slow," Remus reminds him, "Slide it in nice and slow for me, baby."

Sirius catches his lip between his teeth and tries to push the plug in slowly, the way he knows Remus would do if he was here. 

The shower has left him relaxed and more than ready, and it's hard not to take advantage, just press the toy in to its limit because he can. But he's working on his patience -- under Remus' careful tutelage -- so he shuts his eyes and tries to savour it, the tease of the plug's rubber tip at his entrance, the slow stretch as he eases it past the slight resistance before he sighs, and his body eagerly accepts the intrusion.

"Mmmm," Sirius sighs as he settles the base of the plug flush against his entrance, shifting his hips and feeling the constant, dull pressure against his prostate.

"How's it feel?" 

"Good," Sirius says, splaying his legs out and just enjoying the pleasant fullness. It's been almost a week since Remus last fucked him, and that's just way too long. Christmas really spoiled him. He tugs the blankets up around him, because it's going to take some time before his body temperature is high enough to fight against the chill in his apartment.

"Have you tried out the settings at all?" Remus asks him, and Sirius picks up the phone, switching off speaker and holding it to his ear.

"No," he says, grinding his ass down against the bed to test the plug's reach inside him. "I thought you'd rather do the honours."

Remus hums, and Sirius hears the phone shifting in his grip. "I'm gonna turn it on, okay? Lowest setting."

"O--" Sirius stutters as the plug buzzes to life inside him, nestled snug against his prostate and sending little zings of pleasure down his legs. "Fuck that feels good. That's the lowest setting?"

"It is," Remus confirms. "Want to run through them all, see how high it goes? Or would you rather be surprised?"

"Mmmm, surprise me."

"Surprise it is," Remus says, and Sirius hears shuffling papers in the background as he prepares for his night class. Psychology 1001, Thursdays, 7-9:30PM. Two and a half hours of a lecture that Remus swears he's given so many times he could recite it in his sleep, so why not give himself something fun to focus on while he goes through the motions? 

Being privy to all of this brilliant, upstanding man's secret perversions is a privilege Sirius does not take lightly.

"You can turn it off from the app if you need to," Remus is saying, "Or you can call me and I'll switch it off. My phone's on vibrate, so I'll see it right away."

Sirius smiles to himself. "Got it," he says, though this is a rehashing of the rules that Remus had laid out when he'd brought the plug over last weekend. He'd called it a "late Christmas gift", as if he hadn't already given Sirius several thousand dollars worth of presents on Christmas morning.

There's more rustling over the line, the squeak of a chair. 

"Tell me again how you're going to be good tonight."

"I'm not gonna touch myself, and I'm not gonna come." The toy is still buzzing away inside him, making everything a little fuzzy at the edges. 

"Tell me why."

"'Cause daddy's in charge, even when he's not here."

"Good boy."

Sirius squirms with pleasure, his cock smearing a little drop of fluid on his belly as the toy hums insistently at his prostate.

"I have to head out," Remus says. "How do you feel?"

"Good," Sirius says, his abs tensing as he shifts his legs and the angle of the toy changes. "Excited."

"Me too," Remus says softly. "I'll talk to you soon, beautiful. Send me some pictures." With a low beep, the call disconnects.

[luvtak]

baby i'm yours, lee felix

✧ pairing lee felix x gn!reader

✧ genre/tw fluffy fluff! kinda hurt/comfort, reader has a migraine and felix is a little lovebug as always, too many petnames, kissing and sleepy cuddles

✧ w/c 1000

✧ a/n something small inspired by my own migraines, i hope anyone who relates starts to feel better and feels comforted by the sweetest boy <3 title is after this song it reminds me of him 💗

The house is filled with sound, circling around the space with laughter and music and video game noise. Lively melodies of boyishness, teasing and yelling; roughhousing so loud you’re sure the neighbors can hear.

The house is filled with sound, all except for your place in Felix’s room. Behind the door it’s silent, no sound but your gentle breath hitting his skin. He’s always so warm, a space heater personified, heating you everywhere his star-studded skin touches. You can feel his smile moving across your neck, placing soft little kisses on his path from your clavicle to your throat, all the way up to the side of your mouth.

“Feeling better?” he asks, his voice is gruff from lack of use and his eyes are light when they meet yours. His question seems more like a wish than an inquiry, he always worries when you get these headaches. Pain throbbing underneath your eyes and inside your temples, sometimes you feel so sick, nausea begins to accompany the migraine, and the only thing your boyfriend can do is wrap you up in his arms and his blankets and hope for the best.

You both know it’s easier to cure these moments away from the boy’s dorm. The cozy quiet of your apartment is much better suited to comfort the constant pounding, but there’s something magic to the noise. A curious familiarity surrounds the home, in some ways it reminds you of being a little kid and going to bed to the sounds of your parents still awake. A memory from an easier life, a moment trapped in time, but relived in these hurtful days inside this room.

“Just a little, I’m sorry I’m not very fun right now.” Your voice is a whisper, and your eyes are still squinted shut, but you hope your words are enough to convince him to stop worrying.

“Don’t be sorry, my love, I’m having a blast laying here with you.” Felix’s grin is sunlight, as bright and pretty as the rest of him, and you think it doesn’t matter if he’s lying—your head is already starting to ease just from the sight of your starshine boy smiling down at you.

His hands are in your hair and his smile is on your forehead, and you think you’ll be better in a few minutes. When you came over you had plans to watch movies and play Mario Kart with the rest of the boys, and maybe in just a few more minutes you can. You can almost envision it, opening up your eyes to a clear head and telling Felix that you feel so much better, joining the rest of the dorm in their night of laughter instead of this sickly quiet you currently inhabit.

You can tell your boyfriend doesn’t mind, he’s always happy to take care of you, but you’re sorry that another fun night has become the opposite.

“Really, Lixie, Go have fun with the boys… I can do all this by myself.” You don’t want him to go, but you need him not to feel trapped. Popping one eye open, you can tell what he thinks about that offer—if the slight squint of his eyes having anything to do with his emotions, he must think you’re crazy for even posing it as an option.

“And what? Sit in the living room with people I see every day instead of lying here with you? Are you insane?” He’s laughing as he says it, and his arms escape from your hair to gently play with your fingers. “You must be, my crazy little love… where does it hurt?”

His touch is light as a feather, pulling at your hands and rubbing up and down your arms. The skin to skin contact makes you shiver, even after all this time all it takes is a few gentle touches to start up the butterflies in your belly. You tell him about the pain under your eyes, huffing and whining when his body moves too much atop yours, but you stop as soon as his lips land softly on your eyelid; pressing down gentle and tender where the pain started.

“A kiss to make it feel better, okay baby?” Even through the pain his voice (so deep and quiet in the dark room) makes you smile. So typical of him, to be as sweet and sugary as the treats he cooks up. A boy who grew up on kiss cures and tickle fights, what a blessing to have him lay with you in the dark.

You’ve been smitten with him from the first time he shot his shiny smile at you, in love with each picture perfect piece of him. With hands grasping out to hold his, you kiss wherever you can reach: his shoulder first than the divot of his adams apple, all the way up to his uplifting lips.

“I love you, sweet boy… thank you for being with me.” You can’t tell if you mean here in the moment, or just in general, but either way it’s true. You’ll never stop being grateful for his place in your life, a light in the darkness and a heart to hold you when you don’t feel good.

He kisses you again instead of a response, slow and closed mouthed—desperately trying to express his feelings in all the ways he knows how.

“I love you too, you know I do.” He rolls off you, tucking you just underneath his chin; keeping you as close as possible. Legs on legs and hands clasped together, you can’t seem to find where you begin and he finishes—you’re as close as you could be with your warm pajamas on.

Everything is burning up, his skin and your love for him. So, cozy you can’t help but feel your eyes flutter close again. This close you can hear all his sounds, his heartbeat and his breath, and his sweet voice like a lullaby lulling you to sleep.

© luvtak

[podkopayayva]

i want to send out an amber alert type blast message to every single 4 year fan saying YOU CANNOT SUBMIT AN INQUIRY ON E SCORES

[soobnny]

to be human — han jisung. roommate au. friends to lovers. kind of comfort fic. supernatural au.

your shapeshifter friend forgets how to turn back into a human and has a crisis. inspired by this artwork. (~1k words)

“Jisung?”

It’s quiet in your apartment where Jisung would usually blast music. It’s strange to be greeted by silence instead, a little concerning even.

“Ji?” You try calling out again, stepping cautiously inside as you briefly draw your eyes to each room in search of your roommate.

“I’m in here.” Jisung’s voice has a tone of dejection to it as he replies to you from the bathroom. Grogginess indicative of exhaustion and resignation.

You know something’s wrong.

When he hears your footsteps padding towards where he is, his tone shifts to one of panic. “Please don’t come in.”

You already know why.

“Jisung, I’m not scared of you.” The door creeks open when you enter, and Jisung is still hidden in the bathtub behind drawn out shower curtains.

He doesn’t want you to see him like this.

You know he startles easily in this state, so you do your best to keep your footsteps light, actions gentle as you peel back the shower curtain and step into the tub with him. One leg after the other. It’s small, doesn’t really fit the two of you — you press your knees to your chest in trial of a solution so you can give him more space in the tub.

A minute goes by.

“How many eyes do I have?” He squeaks, not being able to take the silence, and it’s a sign that it’s okay for you to look at him. Locking eyes with his form, you briefly scan his features, not dwelling too hard on anything. You know he wouldn’t want that.

You count in your head. One. Two. Three… “Uh, seven?”

“Just pick one to focus on.” You listen to him, eyes focused on the one of his eyes. He looks so small like this, despite doubling in his usual size, and you know cogs are turning in his brain (if he even had one). It’s been a while since he’s been stuck outside of his human form.

“How are you feeling?”

“Okay.”

“Are you in pain?”

“A bit.” The pained way he speaks is so close to human emotion that it shatters you. “I’m sorry you have to see me this way.”

“You are still my friend, you know?” You try to speak with comfort. You know he needs it the most. You hope to cement in him that what he looked like didn’t matter to you — just that, at the end of the day, it was still him behind all the masks he puts on.

He scoffs. “Not looking like… this.”

“That doesn’t matter. It’s still you, isn’t it?”

A heartbeat passes. Yours. He simply sits in silence to process your words. You wonder what he’s thinking of.

“I guess.” You smile at his response. It visibly calms him down. “Oh, by the way, I got you something.”

You grab the backpack you had dropped just beside the tub. It’s his, had given it to you months ago, and there’s a picture of the two of you in the form of a keychain hanging by the zipper.

“I know you technically don’t need to eat anything but… I remember you said you really liked this when you were still human.”

It’s cheesecake wrapped in plastic, and if Jisung had a heart, he’s convinced it would be beating twice the normal rate.

You’re right, he doesn’t need to eat, but he will save it as something to remember this moment by.

“I hope it helps you remember being… you.” You place it on the space between the two of you in the tub. He’ll grab it later. There’s something else in his mind.

“Where did you get that?” Jisung questions, eyes fixated on something else entirely.

“Oh, just the bakery I pass on the way to uni.”

“No, the picture.”

“The picture?” You look down at where he’s looking. Your keychain.

“This? I always carry it on me.” You show it to him proudly. A memory passes in his head. He doesn’t remember much, but he does remember being happy the day that picture was taken.

“You do…?” You hum to confirm his inquiry. Silence washes over, and just as quick as it comes, it’s ripped away by sniffling coming from Jisung’s end.

He doesn’t cry, but it looks like he’s about to.

“Give me your hand.” You demand, though tone gentle in case he didn’t wanna be touched.

“What? No.” He’s still sniffling.

“I want to hold it.”

This time, he blinks. All seven of his eyes. Flashes of him attempting to hold your hand before, all in vain.

“Since when do you like holding hands?”

“Since now.” You mumble. Your hand is outstretched, just waiting for him to take it if he wanted.

Long sharp nails greet you, and you have to use both of your hands to hold his one properly. For a second, you feel a spark of life when your hands meet.

He feels it too.

“We’ll get through this together, okay?” Jisung lets you hold his hand. He’s looking at you now, less afraid of himself and how he looks. It’s quiet here with you, isn’t so loud. He could get used to this.

His fingers curl around your hand, completely swallowing it by the sheer size of his. Your whole hand fits in his. It feels nice. Warm in comparison to the cold he feels in this state.

“Okay.” Jisung’s tone is softer now.

It’s easier to remember what feeling human is like with you. He wonders if the unidentifiable feeling he gets when you’re with him is something he had felt back when he had a beating heart.

Wonders if the way he felt when he saw the picture you keep of the two of you mean anything to his humanness. Does it count for something if he wants to keep holding your hand every day after today?

Jisung doesn’t breathe, doesn’t bleed, doesn’t need to consume anything to survive — but he’s capable of loving, and that makes him human enough.

[avatarmerida]

My hobby is imagining that the huntlow interactions we got in For the Future are parallels to moments we would’ve gotten of them in a full season of human realm stuff.

Like the pinky hold™ is just so specific that I feel like it was Willow’s subtle way of reassuring him when tensions got high during countless failed portal attempts or when they’d be walking around town and didn’t want to get separated when he was still getting used to physical touch. And him pressing back has an even deeper meaning and it make me feral.

But also like the iconic catch I feel could be such a cute parallel because I imagine Willow in her attempt to be the strong, dependable one is extra confident around Hunter because that’s just one way of her concealing her developing feelings for him. Like nothing bothers her, nothing gets to her especially not this silly, bubbly feeling she gets around him. Like she flirts with him, of course, but she never lets herself get flustered, ya know? She is always in total control.

Until she’s not.

So one day they’re outside hanging lights or something to plan a surprise for Camila and Willow is standing on the ladder trying to make everything even. Amity has paired them up for nearly everything (part of her attempt to show Willow her support and that she’s a supportive friend) and Willow has been having a blast making him blush at every turn. She’s complimenting his hand made decorations, his organization, just every little thing. And this loser doesn’t know what to make of it. He just know he likes impressing Willow and he’s spending the whole day trying to find a non loser way to communicate that.

But our girl is unstoppable, she’s adding vines to the string of lights, flowers here and there to make it extra stunning and Hunter’s holding the ladder below her in total awe. She’s completely aware of his eyes on her and so maaaybe she overdoes it a bit showing off and twists her ankle and falls off the ladder. Hunter quickly leaps to her rescue and catches her like it’s nothing.

But she’s not hurt. She’s not embarrassed. She’s not worried. She’s entranced.

Hunter is asking her a million questions but it’s like she can’t hear anything over how much she’s just focused on him. On the way he’s figured out how to style his hair so you could see his face better. The way his eyes looked brighter in this light. The way his nose and jaw were just so sharp and defined and demanded to be seen. It’s like all the times she didn’t let herself think too long about how cute he was were adding up now. Her brain is pure white noise and she just knows her face is bright red.

But Hunter is to concerned to follow suit as he would normally being so close and he thinks he red face is a sign that she’s hurt. And then she’s not responding? Never mind that this is definitely not the highest height Willow has fallen from nor is it one that could do much damage, Hunter is in full protector mode. So he rushes off inside to Camila and when he runs his hair blows back gently in the wind and he scrunches his face all determined and she’s like woah, okay. He tells her to hold on and she gladly tightens her hold around his neck like you don’t have to tell me twice.

She’s speechless and he’s not even trying. He’s just thinking about her and being so gentle and sweet and… handsome.

And then they get inside and he’s telling Camila what happened and Willow is not helpful because she’s in full loser mode. Camila is trying not to laugh at the contrasting expressions because she herself was once a loser and knows the signs. But then her mom/doctor mode activates and she asks Willow if she’s hurt and Willow’s response?

“Who’s Willow?”

Not a panicked inquiry like her disaster friend Amity, but dreamy and light as though she’s having an out of body experience. She’s hypnotized, she’s delirious, she’s delusional. Hunter panics, thinking she’s somehow concussed.

But Camila assures him she’s not, not explaining how she knows as she examines her ankle. Camila touches it just enough to break Willow’s trance and she lets out a small wince of pain. It’s not broken, just sprained but she shouldn’t walk on it for a few days.

Hunter says without hesitation that he’ll happily carry her should she need to go anywhere and Willow definitely does not hate the sound of that. Camila says it’s not necessary and Willow nearly tells her to shut up, but she would never talk to her that way. She says she has some crutches in the basement somewhere and Hunter makes it his mission to find them. He carries her down to the basement and places her gently on the couch as he looks through all the old things.

Willow just watches him, trying to catch her breath. She didn’t realize that by trying to moderate her feelings that they would burst to the surface with such force eventually. She thought she had a handle on them but every so often Hunter did something that was just so Hunter that she just stopped working. Usually she could excuse herself to another room to sort through them and compose herself when she was locked safety in his arms and she forgot the ground even existed. And now he was playing nurse, telling her all the thing he could help her with so she would heal as soon as possible. He wasn’t even trying to be charming, she can’t imagine how she would function if he was aware of what he was doing.

He brings out the crutches and adjusts them to her height without her even having to say anything. He tells her how they can add something to the bottom so they won’t get stuck in the mud when she gardens and how he was sure Camila wouldn’t mind Clover flying her up the stairs in the meantime and if not he could carry her upstairs no problem.

He talks so much when he worries, she thinks. His mind moves so quickly when he needs to plan something, when he’s certain about what to do. When he cares.

And yes they have the crutches and yes she has Clover and magic and infinite ways to work around her barely present injury but when Hunter insists on carrying her she turns to mush and just doesn’t have it in her to object. And he doesn’t always put her down right away and she doesn’t remind him to. Like they’ll come downstairs for breakfast and he’ll walk around the house before bringing her to the kitchen. It becomes a harmless habit. Gus joins in eventually, jumping on Hunter’s back and Willow is only more enamored. But Hunter sees it another way to help his friends and being helpful makes him focused and when he’s focused Willow’s heart beats like a beehive.

And it’s just a sprain so the need disappears quickly since Willow heals within a week. But it confirms what she had been contemplating for awhile now. She was so gone for this loser.

[ultimateyapper]

anyway, here's wonderwall. | chapter two

[ chapter 1 ]

why is frostheim so cold, and why is jin's room somehow worse? even just standing outside his room, you can feel the cold seeping through the cracks. like a freezer, a blast of icy air swings out each time it opens. everything about jin was cold, from his unyielding gaze to the feel of his hands. when he uses his stigma, chills run down your spine as his cold hands meet yours. it's like the dorm was made to fit him, a king with a kingdom to match.

jin could definitely be cold but he wasn't entirely made of ice. you could see the way your friends had managed to get under his skin, even if he still called them brats. had you managed to do the same? with all the back and forth you do for him you sure hope—

"what do you want."

ah, speak of the devil. the door opens with a gust of wind that makes you involuntarily shiver. standing there, looking mildly annoyed, was his majesty himself. his hair is tossed in a way that screams he'd just woken up. you're a little jealous of how flawless he looked, even with his eyebrows cast downward. you also wonder how he'd react if you told him that, but he's probably not in the mood for small talk. he never is, but still, it might be better to make this quick.

"good morning to you too. i got the documents tohma reprinted from your last mission but they need to be resigned. do you have a minute?"

his frown deepens at that. "for tohma? no."

"oh. well... do you have a minute for me?"

he continues glaring but sighs and halfheartedly opens the door. as he dips back inside the white-ish fluff on his head lightly swishes with the movement. "are you coming in or what? i don't have all day."

"...for tohma or for me?"

"for either of you now hurry up."

when you step in jins room it looks the same as always. not much changes and you wonder what he even occupies himself with in here. the plain and bare interior is way different than the other ghouls. ren has movie posters plastered across every wall of his room, a collection that he'd been building since he was a kid.

looking in his room would give you a glimpse of his personality even if you didn't know him. jin on the other hand didn't have anything like that. he walks over to the stupidly large couch in the back to recline as usual. "grab a pen and get over here."

demanding as ever...

over on a desk you find a cup with a few different writing utensils. funnily enough, despite the set up you've never actually seen jin sitting at this desk and you almost laugh. you'd only seen it occupied once by tohma, signing a contract he said you'd have to die to know about. with how darkwick can be you don't think he was joking. you return to his side with a black pen and present the papers.

"tch. i told that three eyes to handle this shit. i swear when i catch him." tohma definitely gets a kick out of getting on his nerves. it seems to be working well, too.

you start to feel awkward watching him lazily flip through the pages. you'd be constantly on your feet once you got to jabberwock, so maybe you should rest while you can. jin doesn't look willingly to budge anytime soon. his bed could be an option but you don't know if he'd consider that rude or not. it wouldn't hurt to ask. "uhm, jin can i sit with you?" you force yourself not to take it back when he raises and eyebrow.

"you expecting me to move for you?" why does he make it sound so absurd? you feel your face heat up at his inquiry but no way are you backing down. "well i didn't want to sit on your bed..." you trail off. his eyes follow yours before focusing back on you. "i just figured it's more comfortable than standing."

"comfortable? you think i care about making you comfortable?," he scoffs. is it a crime to rest your legs? your unamusement doesn't seem to affect him. a slight smirk starts pulling on his lips. "you realize servants aren't the ones who should be giving orders don't you?"

you want to roll your eyes but part you also doesn't want to test him. his status as the presidents son is a little intimidating. maybe if you don't break eye contact he won't be able to tell you're nervous. can ghouls smell fear?

"yeah but i saved you the trip by coming up here, the least you can do is allow me to sit with you. unless... you wanted me to send tohma instead?"

his smirk falls and he takes a moment to squint at your response. you doubt jin wanted to deal with tohma's pestering right now. the fact that he wasn't up before you got here was a clear sign tohma hadn't already swung by to interrupt his lazing about. after an exasperated sigh he surprisingly lets up.

"whatever, but don't get too comfortable. you're running more errands for getting snarky with me." you're too busy with the other dorms for that but decide not to mention it. you take your victory on the couch while he continues like you're not even there. "don’t make a habit of this," he mutters, almost as an afterthought.

"yes sir," you say without thinking. that's not a weird thing to say is it? it must be all the servant and master stuff he keeps mentioning. you look away so he doesn't see you get flushed again, and relievingly he doesn't say anything further. it's a little weird for him to be this nice but maybe he's just tired. an oddly comfortable silence envelops the room as you lean back and relax.

—

the sun greets you like a warm hug when you exit the building. it's comforting after being stuck inside a cold space for so long. automatically you stretch up toward the sky until your back satisfyingly pops.

"there you are! did you finish up with everything?," a voice says over to your side. when you open your eyes, luca's heading over with a certain blondie in tow. kaito perks up upon seeing you and meets halfway with a high five.

"just to be clear, i'm not indebting myself with this volunteer thing right? i really don't need another sinostra situation," he jokes. haru indebting people to him? he can barely get ren and towa to actually help around the dorm. even peekaboo doesn't listen to him sometimes. jabberwock is run like a kindergarten compared to sinostra's pseudo mafia.

"i doubt you'll have to worry about that... you'll see when we get there. luckily i got out of there before jin started ordering me around." any longer and you would've been doing his laundry again. thankfully the king of frostheim was still tired. luca frowns at this revelation so you nudge his elbow reassuringly. "i'm just joking, honestly it was no trouble at all."

you'd perfer luca not to make a big deal out of it. he almost confronted jin on his own accord once but was stopped by that vagastorm situation. you're glad it happened, even if he got in trouble for the fight that came afterwards...

truthfully, you didn't mind doing stuff for the dorms. it was only the ghouls that treated you like dirt in exchange that irritated you. it's not like you were trying to bother anybody. your honor student title basically just made you a glorified helper for them anyway. why do the ghouls have to treat you like a burden? you didn't ask to be here anymore than they did. if only you could find the cure to this stupid curse...

alas, there's no use spiraling, you can't do anything about it yet. eventually, it'll work itself out. the puzzled gaze of your friends grounds you back into reality. you give them a smile and head down the concrete path. at least, for now, you have something to focus on.

"let's get going, haru's offering of 50% off tickets expires at noon." a few steps in, kaito fully registers your words. "wait we have to pay!!?!!?"

ah. right. forgot to mention that.