#DO NOT. ASK WHERE WHATEVER SHOW YOU LIKE IS. MAKE YOUR OWN EDIT!!! THIS ONE IS MINE

[clueless1995]

what they don't tell you is that joy is real and it's stored in the tv shows

[the-travelling-witch]

summary: just some small hand holding headcanons ♡

pairings: katsuki :: hawks :: shouto :: deku x gn! reader

miscellaneous masterlist (i really need to give bnha it's own ml soon, i will infiltrate this fandom /silly)

update: i made a bnha masterlist

katsuki likes intertwining your fingers. at the start of your relationship, he was hesitant to do so, afraid he could accidentally hurt you with his quirk or scare you off with how hot and rough they are (not that he ever told you as much). so when you slowly warmed him up to the idea, he held your hand very carefully at first.

by now, however, his grip on you is firm and self-assured, pulling you closer to him in crowded areas or just enjoying the feel of your hand in his calloused one. the pro hero has also resigned himself to being your own personal hand warmer in the winter, cupping your freezing fingers between his palms with only minimal complaining.

keigo likes playing with your hands. whether you’re watching a movie on a rare night in or you’re in a restaurant with your hands resting on the table, chances are keigo is reaching over to cradle your hand in his, a boyish grin on his handsome face.

sometimes it’s really just him fiddling with your fingers to keep his own busy. but in instances where it’s just the two of you, he’s tracing his thumb along the length of your fingers and mapping the lines on your palms, culminating in the featherlight kisses he flutters against your knuckles and wrist.

shouto likes linking your pinkies. sure, he’s much more confident in your relationship than at the beginning, where he’d basically wait for you to initiate affection for him to know this was okay. back then, it was his way of asking for affection in whatever way you would see fit to show him at the moment.

but even after learning more about both you and himself, as well as the social norms around dating, he has taken a liking to the gesture. it is sweet and low-key enough to not draw much attention if you’re out and about, but still a good way to ground himself and make sure you’re still there with him.

izuku likes it when you play with his hands. even as an adult he still has the habit of losing himself in his rambled tangents at times and taking his hand in yours is an effective way of snapping him out of it.

the gentle way with which you hold him, like he was a delicate thing, lifts the responsibilities of always putting other’s well-being before his own right off his shoulders. deku is too flustered to ever say it out loud but, when you lovingly trace and kiss the scars on his hands instead of looking at them as if they’re a flaw, his ears and cheeks feel like they’ve been set ablaze.

© the-travelling-witch 2024 - do not repost, translate, copy or edit; do not copy into an ai

if you like my content, reblogs, comments and asks are always much appreciated ♡

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[kithtaehyung]

bet wrong (3tan717) | myg

drabble: bet wrong pairing: 3tan!yoongi x reader(f)  series: masterlist | three tangerines | 3tan717 | one  rating/genre: pg (18+) ; angst , fluff ; brother’s best friend au, implied age gap au summary: after seeing how comfortable yoongi is in his place with your brother and their friends, it’s hard for you to leave… but it’s also hard for you to stay. note: apologies for all the late postings! but kim yeji’s aura was so strong it made me write about her so here we are hahaha. it's not really edited cus i just wrote this up and posted so apologies for any mistakes! note 2: this is in a pocket universe in the three tangerines series, so if you haven’t read the series yet, these characters would make more sense if you did hehe. even though this is very heavily influenced by the olympics, i’m keeping it as easy to read as i can. you can imagine them watching any of the events happening lol warnings: 3tan yoongi as always, angst, olympics talk, yoongi fights back??, the Yearning is Strong, reader is a tease, shiv is back!, brother and jimin are dorks, but so is everyone else, yoongi on the phone, he's so down bad y'all i wanna cry :(( drop date: august 1st, 2024, 7:17pm est word count: 2.3k (just like the first drabble omg?)

—

—

“Hey, you made it!”

“Oh, shit, look who’s here!”

After a quick greeting to everyone in Yoongi’s living room, you slip off your shoes with a distracted, “I can’t stay long but, I’m here!”

Even though the handsome devil next to you shoots a look, it’s your brother that speaks up, “Wait, why?”

“I’m meeting my friends in a bit.” You hand a still-quiet Yoongi some snacks you brought for everyone, asking a question with a very obvious answer, “Where should I put these?”

He blinks before forcing out, “Over here.”

“K.”

Sounds of conversation and sports games spring about. Jimin’s clearly in some sort of squabble with your brother and Shiv is fanning the flames. There’s a couple guys you recognize but don’t really know talking on the opposite side of the coffee table, but they’re all watching the Olympics and giving their own comments. 

Hopefully it’s noisy enough to shroud your dizzying thoughts. Because Yoongi looks damn good in his casual fit and his hair speaks volumes. 

What you would give to run your fingers through those waves. Following him through his bustling apartment is already giving you the shivers, so what would a sudden touch feel like? A burst of fire?

“I’ll take those,” he instructs, taking the bags from you and pulling everything out with crinkles. When he sees a certain bag, his blinks make you giggle.

It’s a specific chip he likes, recently divulged during a long night of learning things about one another—like favorite foods, and how fast or slow he likes you riding. 

So of course you threw it in your basket before heading over. 

Commentators make conversation on the television as you shrug, “Don’t ask me, I dunno how those got in there.”

God, that smile always makes you melt. And he proceeds to turn you into mush as he shows gratitude under his breath,

“Thanks, doll.”

“Seriously, I think they just handed me those,” you joke, trying your best to not do any of the million and three things you want to. “Said I was cute or something.”

His laugh is immediate. But it’s shoved away by cheers and yells, and both of you pop out of the kitchen to see what happened on the tv.

Something big must have went down because even Yoongi reacts, scaring you with a delayed reaction,

“Holy shit, what happened? Sorry,” he immediately apologizes at your flinch, putting a daring but comforting hand on your lower back before making his way to the group.

Did he really just…

He is lucky your brother didn’t see from the other side of the couch. 

That was the boldest Yoongi’s ever been and he’s quite literally kissed you in your kitchen. 

“Yeji got silver.”

“What? Wait, run it back!”

“I thought she'd take it!"

Chill out. Relax, relax, relax. Everyone else is clearly entranced by whatever happened and no one is even looking at you. Relax.

But damn, that touch meant a lot more than an apology. 

Seems like the one vocally surprised at the replay wants to do a million and three things, too. 

On your emotional decrescendo, you scuttle back to grab a plastic cup. No use in trying to join them anyway. All you can do for now is get a drink in a kitchen you’re not supposed to know your way around.

Being in his place while your brother is too is quite the experience. 

However. 

This is absolutely the ideal situation you should be in. You would be the one showing up at Yoongi’s at the invitation of your brother, and it would be a small party where you blend right into the background with minimal interaction. 

But of course, the feelings of distance and guilt creep onto your feet, rooting you in place and forcing you to watch from afar. 

They’re all checking their phones and pointing at each other—accusingly? Excitedly?—before switching between different games on the tv and yelling at each other. 

And while you adore them for being such lovable geeks about this, your eyes cannot stop pinning Yoongi with longing. He’s so radiant doing the most normal things, and his eyes have that sparkle they get when he’s comfortable and at home. 

He’s perfect.

Your heart’s warm.

And the cup in your hand never touches your mouth.

—

—

After you take a seat at his dining table—yet another thing you should not know anything about—you cycle between watching them interact and scrolling on your apps. 

At first, you thought you were safe. Staying in the back and letting them have their own time together is good enough for you, especially since you were invited by your brother to stop by.

Really, you were just a courier for food they wanted. 

But it was on the way. And it’s a chance to see someone you’ve been missing.

So of course you faked reluctance to come.

The plan was to do exactly this. Hang back until you had to leave, maybe have a bite or two, and try hard not to yearn for Yoongi too long.

Failed step three.

But also now step one, because Shiv decides to twist around to yell, “Hey! Come join us!” 

“I’m good over here,” you reply, smiling when he gives you a look. 

“Suit yourself!” 

One of the guys you recognize but don’t really know gets off the couch to head into the kitchen, asking a question as he opens the fridge.

Wait, he’s asking you something? You?

You leave your chair so you can hear him better, and when he repeats his question you respond.

“Want a drink?”

“Oh, uhh. Sure.”

“Pick your poison. Yoongi doesn’t have much but it’s all strong.”

He’s pretty cute. But then again, all your brother’s friends seem to end up this way. “Water’s fine,” you say with a light smile. “I have to be somewhere else in a minute.”

“Leaving so soon?” He grabs a cup to fill with your choice before handing it over. Leaning against the same counter Yoongi has smushed you against many times, the man takes a sip of his beer. “You just got here.”

“I was told to bring food.”

“Ah, come on. You can stay a bit.”

Uh huh.

Bold choice to be flirting with the company present today.

But you know what to do. Swerve. “What even happened back there? You guys scared the shit outta me.”

From the creases of his eyes, your plan works. “Oh, Yeji? She was supposed to win gold.”

“Feel like she won anyway.”

You both snap your heads over to the kitchen threshold, and your stomach could win a floor routine with the amount of flips it completes. “How come?” You decide to ask, throwing both guys for a loop.

It’s Yoongi that responds first, “She’s trending from a video back in May.”

“Oh, shit, really?” 

“Fucking boss. But yeah, none of us got that one right,” his friend responds, which leaves you intrigued. 

“Got it right?”

“Mmhmm. We picked her for gold.” Glancing over at Yoongi now crossing between to get to his fridge, he claps his back. “Even this guy bet wrong and he’s usually right.”

“Bet with my heart,” your secret drones as he cracks open a bottle. 

“We all did, bro.”

Fucking hell, that move was hotter than it should’ve been.

But now you’re kinda invested in what they’re all doing, so you ask how the whole thing works.

Which leads you to sitting in the living room with everyone three whole minutes later.

“So all of these are events, and I pick what I think happens?”

“Yup!”

“Good luck.”

“Choose quick, the next games start soon.”

Everyone’s eyes are on your paper as you look at the options, with some laughs and comments as you circle your choices.

“Mm, I dunno about that one.”

“Hey, hey, no help.”

You glance at your brother and Yoongi before laughing, “I have no idea what I’m doing but this is fun.”

Their amusement is noticeable.

“If you get any of those right, I’ll be surprised,” your sibling teases, earning a laugh from Yoongi and a counterpoint from Jimin,

“Dark horse?”

“Nah, no chance.”

Park’s shoulders raise as he smirks. “It's all luck, you never know..”

Huffing, you pretend to have confidence for days, just happy that you get to be involved and not hang back like the initial plan. “Yeah, I have masterclass intuition, don’t you know?” 

Reactions pop and fizz around you.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Master class, huh..”

“We have a hustler here!”

Your eyes drift to Yoongi’s at Shiv's comment, and you both share a quick, mirth-filled, intimate stare.

This really is a lot more fun already. 

Your phone buzzing is the one thing that interrupts, and you immediately feel relieved and saddened by the fact that you have to go.

Finishing up, you hand your brother your picks before standing, heading to the door and saying that you have to leave. 

“Wait, already?”

“Tell them you’re busy!”

“I kinda want to,” you admit, feeling a little shy at all the eyes on you. “But we’re watching a movie and tickets are stupid expensive now.”

Yoongi’s already next to you as he waits to let you out. “You okay to drive?”

“Me? Oh, yeah, I just had water.”

“K.”

Why does he have to be so considerate right now? Now you just wanna stay here instead of sit through whatever movie your friends picked!

“Be careful,” your brother comments from the living room, and you wave goodbye.

“I will. Y’all have fun!”

“Okay!”

Facing Yoongi, you wanna do so many things. Hug him, hold him, kiss the shit out of him for his exuding presence in the kitchen earlier. 

“Thanks for the food.”

But you obviously can’t.

So you settle for giving him a smile. “Thanks for letting me come over,” you decide to say. “Have fun tonight.”

You get a small lift of his lips in return. “You, too.”

“Yeah.. I’ll try.”

Hearing sounds from outside as you walk to your car, you feel the loneliest imaginable. 

But alas.

It’s still not your place to stay.

—

—

Much, much later, you check your phone after the movie ends and you’re all walking out. While the girls are busy discussing the movie and Taehyung's checking his phone, you're greeted with two very surprising keystrokes.

Yoongi [9:30pm]: :( 

He texted that so long ago. Did something happen?

You [10:34pm]: you ok?

All of you talk for just a little longer. When you finally get into your car, you wave goodbye at everyone before looking at your device again, wondering what the heck warranted this rogue of a text.

Yoongi [10:40pm]: Yeah

Yoongi [10:40pm]: Just miss you

Well, fuck.

Heart clenching, your fingers skirt across the screen.

You [10:45pm]: i miss you too.. i didn’t wanna leave😭

Yoongi [10:45pm]: You did though😔

There are plenty of people in the lot. Many people walking past as you wait in your car. 

And all you can do is stare at your screen. 

Is… Is he drunk?

Yoongi [10:46pm]: So now you have to make it up to me :) 

That catches you so off-guard you scoff at your screen through a smile. 

You [10:46pm]: don’t be a loser!! 

Yoongi [10:46pm]: I’m your loser 

Cheeks hurting from your shy as hell grin, you bite your lip to keep your screams from alerting people in the nearby theatre. 

How dare this man be this bold when your brother is over there! 

If he’s gonna keep this shocking behavior up, who are you to not play into it? You fucking miss him and imagining being there and being yourselves—your true selves—makes your chest clench. 

You [10:46pm]: not today you weren’t :\

And now you have to make the drive to a house that no one's occupying.

This is so hard. So, so hard. 

But you have to keep going until that one day comes. If it ever does. The day you can do whatever you want with the man you’d fight the universe for? No one will know how to react, and frankly you don’t give a shit about that.

And then you wonder.

Does Yoongi feel the same?

Yoongi [10:48pm]: They're still here

Yoongi [10:48pm]: You down to come back?

Oh.

You are.

Yes, yes, yes you are.

Grateful eyes shut, forehead hitting your steering wheel and heart hurting but still burning lovingly.

There’s no fighting how desperately you want to see him. Especially after seeing him so happy earlier today. Of course you’re going to go. You’d cross mountains even if that meant you’d only get to see him from afar. 

Because—and this you know for sure—he would do the same. 

...But that doesn't mean you won't prank him just a little bit.

You [10:49pm]: don't bet on it w ur heart again💕

Buzzing with excitement, you start your car and pull out of the lot, calling your brother and letting him know you’re coming back.

“K! You gonna bring food again?”

Normally, you would say fuck no and hang up. But you’re so elated you get to go back, and imagining Yoongi's shock makes you laugh. “Yeah, yeah, what do y’all want?” 

“Wait, really? Hey! What do we want for dinner—”

“Wait!” You interject, something pinging into your mind and igniting your curiosity. “How are my picks doing?” 

There’s a scuffle on the line, and you can hear your brother complain, Jimin laugh, and a very, very familiar voice answer from your brother’s phone. 

Because Yoongi’s voice drones so beautifully through the speaker, and you can’t stop your cackling when he responds, 

“Turns out Jimin was right.” 

“Damn, I'm the best,” you boast, earning a loud laugh from him and welcoming the way your cheeks hurt with open arms. “Show me that video you were talking about when I get there?”

This is safe to say. It's all you really can say.

There's a little bit of silence before he answers how he can, too.

“Yeah, I will.” 

Mm. Maybe Yoongi does feel the same.

“Nice," you whisper. Lips curved up in hope, you keep your voice neutral, “See you soon!” 

Again, he responds how he's supposed to. And right after, you both hang up exactly as expected.

For now.

“See you soon.” 

—

—

—

fin. :)

-

how did the second 717 drabble go! | join the discord hehe | three tangerines

a/n: love you love you love you. that's really all i can say. but also, here's the video of kim yeji being an absolute badass in may and i cannot stop thinking about her GAHHHHHH and now the guy from turkey?? hello?? this year is so fun and interesting istg!!

[r3starttt]

STREAMER! GF! ELLIE

M.list

Streamer gf! Ellie whose wall is almost filled with guitars even though she only plays with one specific and does it just for you.

“Y’all wanna see the guitars? I only use that one actually” she moved her chair to show it properly, pointing her index finger at one that was lying on the floor

“Want me to play? I haven’t done it in a while”

Streamer gf! Ellie who remembered everyone that she had a girlfriend once she went super viral (and got made fun of bcs there was no way she could even approach to any girl without getting nervous and it seemed)

Streamer gf! Ellie who made you appear on stream with her after that just to prove you were in fact real and dating her.

“For today’s stream I’m gonna show y’all my wife, be nice, but not too much” she grabbed you by the wrist, bringing you closer to the camera and only showing you from your nose down.

“I told y’all to not be so nice, why’re you even calling her mommy? What’s wrong with you people”

Streamer gf! Ellie who got insisted on doing more streams with you so she started to play with you on stream (ofcs your favorite games most times) and bringing you with her anytime she played any horror game.

Streamer gf! Ellie who started to play Minecraft with you once a week on stream (having more views those days too) because people loved the dynamic you two had for that one game specifically.

Streamer gf! Ellie who ended up showing your face by accident while trying to adjust the camera and panicked once her chat told her because she thought you’ll get mad or something

“What do you mean? No I did not-“ she started to open like ten different tabs on her computers, checking something desperately and trying to push you so you wouldn’t see the screens “what? What happened?” you asked, confused.

Ellie was panicking but the chat didn’t seem to take it so seriously so you laughed at her too, still fully confused and trying to understand whatever the screens showed. That until you saw you face on a clip “Did you just show my face?”

Her eyes shifted to you, not saying a word “El, did you? Really?” once she heard you laughing it was like the sudden tension on her body disappeared almost immediately, letting out a small laugh as well “Well everyone, meet the wifey” your hand slapped her arm, not to hard but with how dramatic she is; she pulled away from you ‘oww’

Streamer gf! Ellie who tried to make a vlog and failed because she doesn’t know how to hold the camera properly (you ended recording everything for her)

Streamer gf! Ellie who social media is full of shit posting, kitties and you (likes every edit her fans make about you)

Streamer gf! Ellie who once did a bet with you during stream and ended up getting long nails because she lost almost immediately

Streamer gf! Ellie who wears lots of “I love my girlfriend” shirts on stream

Streamer gf! Ellie who spoils you a lot and likes having small dates with you, like building legos together, doing movie marathons or going shopping. Just anything where she can spend her money on you and have a nice time together.

“Babe, wake up” you were covered in blankets, hugging a pillow and trying to cover yourself from the warm but very bright rays of sun that entered trough the open spaces in between the contains. Groaning the moment Ellie started to pat your back because that meant she was either hungry or bored and needed you up too.

“El, let me sleep… cuddle with me, Mhm?” the way she chuckled made you turn around, trying your best to open your eyes properly “I have a surprise for you” her sleepy voice elicited a smile on you “yeah?”

She got under the blankets, crawling to you until she was practically on top of you “yeah, and I don’t wanna be late” her lips pressed on your forehead, hands on your face making small circles around your cheeks with her thumbs

Streamer gf! Ellie who insists on you making your own YouTube channel or something like that because people love you a lot and you would be a very talented influencer

Streamer gf! Ellie who got excited when you first opened an account somewhere to interact more with the fans and did lots of spam about it

Streamer gf! Ellie who begged you to get a cat. She wanted the orange + black combo originally but ended up getting a gray kitty she found on the street (and it’s obsessed with it, it’s her baby) She named it either a stupid name or something game related

Streamer gf! Ellie who apologizes a lot for having to go on stream during the weekends or when you’re free and feels bad for not being able to spend more time with you

Streamer gf! Ellie who always goes to cuddle with you and the cat after every stream and asks you to tell her everything about your day

[phecdasolar]

Tumblr I need your help I am in dire need of feral/unhinged Disaster Twins fics pleaseeee (and maybe Mikey as a bonus) I’m just in love with the idea of Raph being the impulse control for once with this iteration, and just the second he’s out of commission the other three go insane.

Weapons of War, Bioengineered Killing Machines, Manufactured Supersoldiers Rottmnt turtles my BELOVEDS

And maybe just like,,, set Leo and Donnie loose on one of the other dimensions and have them absolutely horrifically annihilate their counterparts’ villains while they watch on in horror

(B.E.A.S.T. was SUCH a good fic you guys oh my GOSH go read it I’m begging you-)

I NEED to have it addressed in fic form that the Rise turtles are fundamentally different than all their other counterparts, because their counterparts? They were accidents. Just a couple of turtles splashed with mutagen and oh look now they’re people but Green. (Huge oversimplification I’m aware but hear me out okay-)

But the Rise boys were created. They were specifically designed to be weapons of mass destruction. They were built with the intent to cause harm which means they were bioengineered to be stronger, smarter(?), faster, to heal quicker, to have the capacity to take hard hits while dishing out even harder ones, they were literally forged with a purpose to kill.

Add on their mystic powers? Then their unlocked Ninpo? You can’t honestly tell me that these four aren’t the strongest and potentially deadliest version of themselves out there.

Yes they still had to learn things, as did the other iterations, they weren’t immediately good (that much is obvious, like c’mon it’s IN the name) but I don’t think the other iterations possess the same instincts as these guys do. They’re just so. Unhinged. They’ve all had their moments in the show I think where it’s obvious they’re not really,,, stable. I love them.

In a plain fists only, maybe weapons, no powers fight, I do think some of the other iterations would win, but purely because they have way more experience than these guys do. (If I did any crossovers I’d say 2003 and 2012 are definitely older than these guys, especially if we’re basing this at the end of their shows) But put them against each other when they’re still at the same level? Rise is whooping butt, I know where I’m placing my bets. It’s called RISE of the TMNT for a reasonnnnnn they’re not there yet but they WILL BE, and as of the end of s2 and the movie I say they’re finally THERE.

I have no idea how this turned into a headcanon rant this was just supposed to be me asking for fic recs hsgdjdjdk it’s almost 3 am tho so whatever sorry if none or some of this is incoherent o7 o/

Editing this with a list of fics I have been graciously recommended below the cut:

Firefight by remrose [42/43 chapters 208k words] (edit: JUST FINISHED READING ch38-42 WATCH ME BAWL MY EYES OUT I was rotating them in my brain all morning at work) less on the feral side, more on the gut-wrenching angst side, still Disaster Twins and still super good

In Which Donnie and Leo Make Themselves Everyone Else's Problem in an NYC That Isn't Even Their Own by YukiSkyes [7/? chapters, 18k words] the CLASSIC “the Disaster Twins are unapologetically causing chaos” fic, always a delight to read

The Lemon Leak by TurtleSoupSwimmer [27/37 chapters, 143k words] I’m being told it’s very true to the theme here, and it’s very angsty, a suspenseful psychological thriller, and will make you scream at your phone. I for one am very intrigued

Eschatology by aenor_llelo, Alderous, ConcoctionsFromHell, izziel_galaxy, Jaybird314, Otakuforlife19, and Rocket999 [17/17 chapters, 344k words] “HEAVY on the boys being biologically engineered to destroy the world, it also delves into so much character building and worldbuilding that we never got in canon, and it gives even super minor characters the chance to shine” Sounds intriguing, AND it’s a BNHA crossover which I am a big fan of :D

The Hunter’s Bible also by TurtleSoupSwimmer [2/2 chapters, 15k words] Rated Mature, contains themes of SA and c@nnibalism so PLEASE keep that in mind!! Not a fic for the faint of heart this is a Dead Dove: Do Not Eat! The SA is only attempted, and never shown, only implied, and it’s only in ch 1, but the other stuff is fairly descriptive and takes place in ch 2. All that being said, flipping UNHINGED, just about lost my mind in ch 2, it was entertaining in a surreal kinda way if you get what I mean. Funky little feral creatures

[russellsppttemplates]

Hiii. how are youuu?? I was thinking of a blurb concept where fans go crazy over an Instagram story Charles posted of him playing the piano and his gf singing a Taylor song (could be lover).You can ignore it if you don't feel comfortable. Thanksss have a good day🥰❤️‍🩹

"Mon coeur, do you think I can post this?", Charles said as he listened to the clip he had just recorded. Whenever he played the piano and you sang along with him, your boyfriend recorded it so he could keep all the memories and your angelic voice on his phone for whenever he missed you the most.

"It's you account, you decide whatever you put in there", you mumbled.

"I would never post it if you didn't want your voice out there like that", Charles reasoned.

"If you showed everyone that I was wearing a t-shirt with toothbrush stain and the little peak of my underwear, I would not let you", you giggled, recalling the position you were in as you sang one of your favourite songs from Taylor Swift, "but since it's just your fingers and the keys on show, I'm fine with it", you kissed his forehead before looking at the edits he was making so it could go in his Instagram stories.

As soon as Charles posted it, you reposted it on your own account, taking the opportunity to hear it again, "we sound good, don't we? I swear I could hear your voice all the time", Charles mused.

"Can you imagine me always singing? That's a neurological condition people have sometimes, actually, and they say it gets annoying sometimes", you giggled.

"Never! I could never get annoyed at hearing you sing!", he smiled, noticing the notifications blow up on his phone.

it's the way you know he learned how to play it just for her 😭🫠

maybe Y/N made him a swiftie? mother can do anything

Her voice is so pretty omg! Why am I only finding this out now? WHY ARE YOU ALL NOT AS SURPRISED AS I AM?

She's quite private with her things as it is, but there has been a couple of occasions where we heard her sing! There was that time in the Monaco mini series and then that story from Marta's baby shower where you can hear Y/N singing to the baby bump 🩷

I have university debt, but I'd happily pay whatever they asked so I could listen more!!!

"Everyone is going crazy for you, amour", Charles showed you the messages, "we should do this more often", he suggested.

(Thank you for sending this in ✨️)

[pudding-parade]

It's the tutorial that no one asked for! And I blew my entire day on it, so you better appreciate it! :) No, seriously, this is as much for me as for anyone else. I don't do this process often, and when I do, I have to re-remember the steps, and sometimes I forget some of them and have to figure it out again. This will save future me from having to do that.

Even if you aren't me, if you're interested in being able to place diving lots in most any world you like and that has ocean, this will be relevant to your interests. Unfortunately, it is a sometimes fiddly process to get a working lot at the end, and I went into a lot of detail, so the tutorial is long, but please do follow it closely because if you skip a step or mess anything up, your lot will be wonky or it might not work at all, and I don't want to hear your whining. :)

Note that this is a tutorial for placing a new, empty diving lot, which is the first step in placing a downloaded diving lot or one that you yoinked from another world, but this tutorial doesn't cover how to get such lots working. This just shows you how to place an empty lot, which I'm assuming for this tutorial's purpose that you will then build/decorate yourself. Frankly, I've discovered that building your own is much easier than trying to ram square pegs into round holes, which is what placing downloaded dive lots often feels like, even if you know what you're doing. It can be as time-consuming, if not more time-consuming, to get a pre-made lot placed and working than it does to just build your own.

So, here we go.

Step 1: Pick Your Poison. Choose the world/save you'd like to plop a dive lot into, open it, and go into Edit Town. You can use any world you want, EA or custom, so long as it has accessible ocean in it. (More on that in Step 3.) I'm going to use Sunlit Tides, just because many people want to put dive lots in it yet can't always get them working.

Step 2: Cheats! You need some cheats, so open the cheat box by pressing Control+Shift+C and then enter these three:

testingcheatsenabled true buydebug on enablelotlocking on

Note that you need to enable testing cheats first because the other two aren't available otherwise.

Step 3: Placing the Lot. Go into World Editor and in the Lots submenu of it choose the lot size you want:

As far as I know, a dive lot can be any size you want from the minumum 10x10 to the maximum 64x64, any of the EA standard sizes or any custom size you might add using this mod. If you are bound and determined to try and place a downloaded/yoinked lot, then in my experience, it's best to make the new lot a little bigger than the lot you want to place, if possible, so that you have some wiggle room to get it to fit better. But, I'm assuming you're going to build your own here.

If you plan to do lots of terrain sculpting on your dive lot, bigger is better. That said, unless you're going to do something really elaborate, it doesn't have to be 64x64, the largest possible size, either. Smaller will mean that your prospective lot will fit in more places on the map. So, it's up to you. For this, I'm just going to place a 30x30 lot, because I'm not going to build/decorate it or anything.

Now, it needs to be said that not every world will be able to have diving lots. The world must have ocean, obviously, and that ocean must be routable or else sims won't be able to get to it. The ocean also has to be deep enough. Generally speaking, "deep enough" is if the water is dark blue. (Or green, or whatever color the lighting mod you use might make it.)

For instance, in Sunlit Tides here, it's pretty obvious where the deeper water is:

But you know what? I'm going to place a dive lot in some of the shallower water, anyway, because I/you actually can, within reason. And if you're interested in doing this in Sunlit Tides, I'll warn you that the deep spot in the pic above has a very uneven bottom. It's really not a good place to put a dive lot. And I'm not sure what the deep water on the outskirts of the map is like, but the good news is that much of the deeper and flat-bottomed shallows, as I've noted, work well.

So: With your chosen lot size selected, move your cursor around in the ocean where it seems to you that the water is "deep enough" until you come to a spot you like and where the lot grid is green. If the grid is never green, then the ocean likely isn't routable at all and you won't be able to place diving lots in that world. I have never run into that, myself, but I also haven't done this all that often, so it's certainly possible. Anyway, I'm picking here:

My advice would be to not make your lot too far off-shore even if you can do so, or else it will take sims a long time to get to it. Especially merfolk, because they always swim out to dive lots rather than take a water taxi, and they swim much more slowly than a water taxi moves. Once you find your spot, go ahead and place the lot. Doing so will create a square island, not a sunken lot. That's fine. We'll fix it in a moment.

Step 4: Change the Lot Type. Click the lot's icon and change the lot type to community and then choose "Diving Area" as the subtype:

Note that this option will only show if you've enabled lot locking. So if you didn't enter that cheat up in Step 2 or if you entered it incorrectly, rectify that situation now so that you can set the lot type.

Step 5: Sinking the Lot Enter the lot and flatten it with this tool in build mode:

This will submerge the lot so that it's level with the sea floor rather than being an island. You can now move the camera down under the water and have a look at your potential diving area, like so:

In particular, check the edges of the lot to see if there are any huge drop-offs or other great differences between the level of your lot and the surrounding terrain. Whether or not this will happen is world-dependent. Some worlds have very uneven/jagged underwater areas, which is what will make you end up with drop-offs, while others, like Sunlit Tides here, are (mostly) pretty flat.

You can see in the above pic that this lot is a little sunken along two of its sides. That's fine; that small amount of difference can easily be smoothed out with the terrain sculpting tools. If there are steep drop-offs or upward slopes, you can sculpt the lot to try to blend it with its surroundings, but be advised that 1) Interactable objects like dive caves can't be placed on uneven terrain and still be usable and 2) If you end up really deep down, the camera goes wonky and it's frustrating-to-impossible to build or play the lot. So, if you've got a huge drop-off and/or a steep upward slope on one or more of the edges of your lot, I'd recommend just trying a different spot. But, it's up to you. If you feel you can work with the uneven edges in some way, have at it. You are braver than me.

Step 6: Save that MFer. Once you have a lot you're satisfied with, this is a good time to save. So, go back to Edit Town and do that.

I recommend saving often during this entire process because, I don't know about your game, but sometimes mine will "hang" or even crash when moving between Edit Town and Build/Buy, especially if I do it a lot. And with this process, you will be doing it a lot, not to mention exiting out to the main menu and then going back into the save a few times. Since getting a dive lot placed can be a fiddly business, it sucks to lose a lot of progress to a hang/crash. So, in my opinion, you can't save too often, but in this tute I'll only prompt you to do it when you must.

Step 7: Exit Stage Right Remember long ago in the last step how I said you'll be exiting to the main menu a few times? Yeah, the first time is now. You do this because, for whatever reason, the game doesn't register changes made to the "structure" of dive lots without exiting and re-entering the save. So do that. Once it's reloaded go back into Edit Town and then back into the new diving lot. Because now it's time to place a dive buoy.

Step 8: Deploy Buoy The dive buoy is located in the debug items, so if you haven't turned on access to that yet, do so now. Then, go into the buy menu, sort it "by function," not the default "by room," and you should see this question mark here:

Click that, and then I recommend that you go to the filters on the right-hand side of the menu and choose just Island Paradise objects. Because you'll be going into the "Misc. Objects" tab and, especially if you have all EPs/SPs, there's a crap-ton of objects in there to sort through. So, filter, then choose the "Misc. Objects" tab, and you'll see this much-more-manageable selection:

Choose the dive buoy, as indicated, and place it anywhere on your dive lot. It doesn't matter where because (spoiler alert) this one's going to be deleted, anyway.

Step 9: Ogle That Shapely Buoy Once your buoy is placed, move your camera down to the ocean surface and have a closer look at it. Like so:

See how the ball part of it is just sitting on the surface of the ocean? That's bad. If you were to leave it like that, you'd have sims (and sharks, if you place a surface shark spawner) swimming/snorkeling in the air, if the lot would work at all. But don't panic! We can fix it. We just need to shift the entire lot down a l'il bit, so let's do it!

Step 10: Copy the Lot to the Library Go back out to Edit Town. Check to make sure that your lot designation is still "Diving Area." (Because during this process, it will sometimes change.) Then, save the lot to your library. The game will give you a warning about cancelling all sim interactions or something. That's fine. Just put a copy of the lot in the library. The thumbnail in the community lot catalog will look like a blue square.

Why are you doing this, you ask? Because now you're going to bulldoze the original. Why? Because we need to move the entire lot down a little bit, and you can only do that by placing a fresh copy of the lot. And you may need to do this several times until you get it at the right depth, so having a copy of the lot in your library is necessary. You can delete it out of the library once you've got your dive lot in the right place, if you want.

Step 11: I'm a Steamroller, Baby Once you've got a copy of the lot safely in your library, bulldoze the original lot you placed. Once bulldozed, the game will change the lot designation back to "No Visitors Allowed," so you'll need to change it back to "Diving Area."

Step 12: Go Down on That Lot To move the lot down when it's placed, you need this cheat activated:

setimportedterrainoffset -0.1

The value at the end can be whatever you want, as many decimal places as you want. A positive number will move the lot up, and a negative number will move it down. (You can use a larger negative number to make deeper a lot that's too shallow, and it can also be helpful if you're intending to try to place a downloaded diving lot on this lot so that it might better match the depth of the water in whatever world it came out of, but this won't always have the effect you want. For one, your lot will be down in a hole.) For the purposes of this tute, all I need to do is move the lot down a teeny bit so that the dive buoy on the lot is sitting IN and not ON the surface of the water. Hence, the -0.1 value.

(Now, I should mention that other tutes I've seen will have you just lower the terrain right under the buoy to sink it a little bit rather than doing this bulldoze-and-replace-with-a-whole-lowered-lot thing I do. This method can work, but I don't like it for various reasons that I won't go into for brevity's sake. I'm just telling you what I do, which has worked every time I've placed a dive lot, including shallow-water ones like this one.)

Step 13: Re-Placing the Lot Go into your library and place your saved lot back where it was. DO NOT ROTATE IT or else things will get screwed up. (Namely, your lot will become an island again and resinking it won't really work.) Just click "Accept." And then check its lot designation and change it to "Diving Area" again, if necessary, which it probably will be because stupid game.

Step 14: Ogle that Shapely Buoy 2, Electric Boogaloo Now, enter build mode and move the camera down to the ocean surface again to check the dive buoy. Ideally, it will now be sitting IN, not ON, the water, like so:

If it's still sitting on the surface, the lot needs to be deeper and therefore moved down farther, so go back to Edit Town, bulldoze the lot again, change the value of the imported terrain offset cheat to a larger negative number (Perhaps -0.5) and try again. Be aware that, as I said, once you get to larger numbers (as in greater than -5 or so) you start ending up with your diving lot down in a hole, which may or may not be workable.

Now, there is a marker on the buoy, the little black rectangle I outlined in the pic above. If the ball part of the buoy is at least partly in the water but that marker is still above the water, as in the above pic, the lot will still work, but there will be a "hop" (and sometimes a pause) when a water taxi or a swimming merperson crosses the boundary of the lot. The higher the marker is above the water line, the larger that "hop" will be. (Because, if you haven't figured it out yet, the dive buoy is what tells the game where sims can swim, vertically, on a dive lot.)

If such a hop doesn't bother you, you can leave the buoy as-is. If you're a perfectionist like me, you go back to Edit Town, bulldoze the lot, and change the value of the terrain offset cheat to try again. Do this as often and with as many decimal places as your level of perfectionism demands. :) I'm not that fussy, so I usually just move the lot down in increments of 0.1 until the marker is at or below the water line but the ball of the buoy is not completely underwater because you don't want the ball completely underwater, either. At least some of it needs to be above water. So, fiddle as much or as little as you feel you need to.

(For reference/scale, the gap between the marker and the water line in the above pic would probably be fixed by an offset of about -0.15 instead of -0.1. But it would also be fine as-is unless a little hop at the lot boundary will bother you.)

Step 15: Bye-Bye Buoy! Once you have the lot so that the buoy is where you want it, DELETE THE BUOY. I repeat: DELETE THE BUOY. Yes, DELETE THE BUOY. For whatever reason, dive lots drawn from your library that contain buoys won't work. I don't know why. They just don't. You need to place a fresh buoy. (I'm pretty sure this is why lots of people can't get downloaded dive lots or lots that they pulled from other worlds to work. Sometimes the answer is simply to delete the buoy, if the lot came with one, and place a fresh one.)

Step 16: Exit Stage Left Once you have DELETED THE BUOY and only once you have DELETED THE BUOY, go back to Edit Town, check to make sure the lot is still designated as a diving area (and change it back if necessary) and save. Why? Because now you need to exit to the main menu and reload the save again. So do that.

Step 17: Fresh Meat Buoy! Once the save is reloaded, go back into Edit Town, and check to make sure the dive lot is still designated as one. Redesignate, if necessary. Then, go into build/buy and place a fresh buoy, just as you did before. This one will be staying permanently, so place it where you actually want it to be. (Which really doesn't matter; aside from defining the vertical space of the diving lot, it just designates where your sim "enters" the lot.) If you want the lot to generate sharks on the surface, you can also place surface shark spawners now, too, as few or as many as you want, and because you have properly adjusted the height of the lot, the spawned sharks will not be swimming in the air. The spawners are also in debug mode, under the fish spawners. (There is also a spawner for underwater sharks. Do not put that one on the surface. Make sure you only put surface shark spawners on the surface.)

Step 18: Set the Lot's Skill Level You set the required skill level for the diving lot by going to buy mode (if you left it), making sure the hand tool is active, and then holding down control and shift while clicking on the dive buoy. Choose the option "Set Required Diving Level…" from the menu that comes up:

…and then from the resulting options under that choose a NON-ZERO number. For some bizarro reason, buoys default to level zero when placed, and a diving lot set to skill level zero is inaccessible even if a sim has level 10 scuba skill. (Good move, EA! Why is zero even an option if it doesn't work??) So, pick whatever skill level you'd like, so long as it ISN'T ZERO. (I suspect that this is another reason why people can't get downloaded dive lots that they place in a world to work.) Once you have the skill level set, go back to Edit Town and save.

Step 19: Test And now you're pretty much done. All that's left is to test the thing to make sure the lot works before you bother with building/decorating it. So, return to the game and send a victim to your new, empty lot and see if they successfully arrive (with or without a "hop" at the lot boundary) and successfully get themselves underwater. (My advice, for testing purposes, is to just give the sim you pick enough diving skill to use the lot. This can be done with NRAAS Master Controller.) Don't bother with doing anything further with the lot until you make sure it works.

Here is evidence that my lot, though shallow, works:

If your lot doesn't work, then something went wrong somewhere. Most likely, you missed a step or did a step wrong. I know there are a lot of words here, but they're all necessary to (more or less) guarantee a working lot in the end. So, try again. It's possible that you will have to pick a different location and start over, but I've been able to get a lot working wherever I've placed one, so long as it was in deep-enough routable ocean.

Step 20: PROFIT! Assuming that your lot works, "all" that's left is to build it! :D I'm not going to go into detail about that. It's all up to you. You can sculpt the terrain, paint it with whatever terrain paints you want, place objects, whatever. If you're in shallower water, any objects you place that are tall enough to stick out of the water will just be chopped off at the water line; you won't be able to see the rest above water. The corals and stuff are in debug mode under "Underwater Objects," but if you don't want the tropical look, so long as you have moveobjects turned on, you can place (almost) any object you want down there, aside from things like walls and fences and other build items that can't be drawn underwater. Rocks, plants, trees, columns, and anything from the buy and debug catalogs are all good. If such an object has a function, sims won't be able to use them, though. They'll just become deco. (So, no underwater basketweaving sculpting. Sorry.) So, go to town. Have fun. For this tute, I'll just mention a couple objects and their settings and we'll finally be done.

Miscellaneous Objects:

First, treasure chests. Like the dive buoy, they're located in the "Misc. Objects" of debug mode. There are two versions, one for land and one for water. Obviously, on a diving lot, you want the water one if you want any at all. If you do want to use them on your lot, place down as many as you want, and then set the diving skill level necessary to open each one and designate the treasure each one will hold. You do both by holding down control and shift while in buy mode with the hand tool active and clicking on a chest, just like setting the skill level of the lot on the buoy. This brings up this menu:

The "Assign Treasure" option gives you eight different treasures for the chest. You simply pick the one you want. The "Set Required Skill Level" option allows you to assign the diving skill necessary to open the selected chest. You can choose any number you like from 0 to 10. (Yes, zero is OK for this purpose, even though no one with zero skill can scuba dive, so…Yay EA.)

Then there's the dive caves. I think they are in the "Underwater Objects" section of the debug catalog; I'm not sure because a mod I use moves them to the regular rock section. Anyway, there are two styles, which you're probably familiar with, but they both function the same way. If you have more than one of them in the world, even if they're all on the same lot, your sims can travel between them, much like a subway. Unfortunately, I can't show you how to set this up because that mod I use to move the caves to the rock section also makes them recolorable, but it breaks setting up this functionality and I don't feel like hunting the mod down and taking it out. But it's pretty easy. You Control-Shift-Click on each one, give them a name, and then you can connect them by using the names you give them. Again, it works much like subways. It's pretty self-explanatory.

Finally, there's the fog emitter. If you're unfamiliar with this object, it's a base game object located in the "Misc. Objects" section of the debug catalog. The thumbnail in the catalog looks like this:

And it looks like this when it's placed:

They can be used on any lot, they disappear in live mode, and they can generate not just fog but many, many different effects. Literally thousands of different effects. You place the emitter where you want, and then control-shift-click on it and choose "Set Visual Effect" from the resulting menu:

When you click on it, you get this:

In that window, you type/paste the code for the effect you want. Of course, you will need to know the code for the effect you want. For your convenience, I've uploaded my list of effect codes, which is complete and includes the codes from all EPs, here. It's just a text file, and the codes are in alphabetical order. Since the list is all-EPs, some of them may not work if you don't have the EP the effect comes from, but if that's the case, then any such code you enter simply won't do anything.

The most relevant effects for a diving lot all start with "ep10," but there are others you could possibly use, too. Some of the names of the codes are more helpful than others in terms of knowing what it will do. Generally, you need to experiment. But, you can add schools of fish, single (but non-catchable) fish of all kinds (if you want catchable fish to spawn, you need to use the spawners, not the fog emitter), sharks (non-interactable), light rays, bubbles, glows, fog, all sorts of things, if you're patient enough to go through the list, look for interesting possibilities, and try them out to see if they will work for you. There are whole tutorials dedicated to the object, if you look for them. There's also a mod that makes them shiftable, which can be very useful, here.

One final suggestion: If you go through this process in a world that you know or even just suspect that you'll want to use again and you'll want the dive lot(s) you made in that future save, for the love of pie keep a copy of this save file somewhere. That way you won't have to go through all this crap again. Because even if you save a copy of your finished lot, unless you manage to place the empty initial lot in the new save in the exact spot you placed it when you built the lot, it's not likely to be quite right. So beware.

And with that, I think we're done here. If anyone has any questions, or if you decide to try to make your own diving lot and have questions along the way, feel free to hit me up and I'll do my best to help. Just keep in mind that I'm not an expert by any means.

[mikgreo]

try to forget her.

sypnosis. rin knows you’re far from reach. he didnt mean what he said, he knows he never will. hes slowly spiraling into madness. fully aware you may never come back. What will happen after he comes back from Blue Lock?

pairings. itoshi rin x fem! reader

content. angst, swearing, casual sae hating, au! before blue lock project but he later on goes into it, intrusive thoughts, mentions of self harm, depression, mentally ill rin, starvation, coping mechanisms, basically really mentally ill rin. unstable relationship, mentions of underage sex. dunno what else

wc. 2.7k

a/n. sadly very ooc.. not proof read. heavily inspired by tyler the creators snippet *try to forget her* i saw an edit and immediately thought i should do some type of angst fic with it. PART 2 IS CONFIRMED!!!

itoshi rin, a man full of disgust towards anything and everybody. many thought of him as self absorbed, selfish, a man with a distinctively huge ego. many admired him only his looks, some because of his brother, some not at all.

but if there was one thing everyone know about itoshi rin, it was that he was a hell of a striker. many acknowledged his skill at the sport, he led his team to victory, but was it really for the team, or for him?

it was no secret that rin had a brother, more successful and skilled. nobody had ever known why there was such tension between them, no one bothered to ask why.

rin hated being compared to the man he hated the most, he wondered if it was hate, admiration, jealousy maybe? he never really mentioned it. not that he had anyone to mention it to.

Rin did not set differences aside, he wanted to do everything his brother accomplished, but better.

Rin wanted to be completely better than Itoshi Sae. he wanted to have his own title in the soccer world. he wanted to be admired for being Itoshi Rin, not Sae.

He thought, “whatever i have that he doesn’t, will be one step closer to getting to my goal.” he desperately tried to obtain every skill he could to stand out.

Rin wasn’t exactly worse than Sae.. but he wasn’t any better. one could say there was just a tiny 10% that separated them, only in skill.

Rin was attractive. he had a good body, good voice, good grades. he was every girls dream man. his personality didn’t stop any woman from being head over heels for him, but it would always change once they saw his brother, only being blinded by the richness and success, rather than looks.

one could argue they were equal in everything but soccer.

it had come to the point where Rin couldn’t figure out what he was missing. until you showed up one day.

there was an exchange student, not only exchange, but foreign. you were from (country) and it just so happened to be the one Rin had always dreamed of going to.

when he set his glowing teal eyes on you, he was mesmerized. you didn’t look like the average japanese girl, or obviously an average tourist.

your beauty was something he couldn’t comprehend.

your hair looked so silky. your skin so smooth yet had the faintest texture. your outfit was carefully picked out, obviously not having a school uniform yet. your makeup so beautifully done, not being too packed with it, just enough to make him acknowledge it.

your lips were plump and glossy, your cheeks were flushed and shiny, all red from the embarrassment.

your lashes so long, not as long as his he thought, but long enough. your eye color wasn’t anything special but he just felt like it was. your eyebrows so perfectly shaped, but natural.

he looked further down, to your body. he could care less but he had to take in the amount of beauty you carried..

your legs looked so perfectly long and smooth, you were obviously shorter than him, just right. your arms rested by your sides so perfectly as well. your cutely done nails, how your hands had no scars, obviously belonging to a woman who’s taken care of herself.

he listened as you spoke, your voice had no roughness, no cracks no nervous vibrations. it was smooth and quiet. calm.

you were sat next to him, what a coincidence. the teacher put you there temporarily next to rin because he was the top student, we could help you catch up.

Rin introduced himself to you, catching you looking at his lips as he spoke, he remained nonchalant and just did as he was told.

you had told him you weren’t very fluent in japanese, but knew the basics, you could understand japanese, just not speak. your father was japanese, from the kanto region, and had gone to america for work, meeting your mother.

he taught you many things and helped you improve your japanese.

a couple months passed, you had asked him to meet you on the stairs before the top floor.

thats where you had confessed to him, he could never forget what you said.

“itoshi-kun..i am very sorry if i butcher this but.. ive been meaning to tell you for a very long time, about how i feel. so if you will let me, may i share this with you?”

rin chuckled at the hesitation and nervousness in your voice, knowing you didnt have to be so fancy with honorifics or anything, or call him by his last name.

“Yeah sure, go ahead.” he smiled at you slightly.

“Ever since you and I got closer, Ive felt a weird feeling inside my chest. everytime i heard a girl talk about you my heart would sink. i started caring more about your whereabouts and opinions. i found myself being worried about you, and caring about what you thought. i would get up in the morning excited to see you, trying my best to look pretty for you. i tried to go to all your games and support you even if you wouldnt see me, even if i would blend in with other girls. i was glad i got to sit next to you, i am grateful for it now. because it led me to become closer to you, and not anyone else. Itoshi Rin, i like like you. i love you. and i want to be together, as a couple. i understand if you dont feel the same way bu-”

“y/n.. i love you too.”

you two went on to have the best memories together, you had told rin a 9 months into your relationship that you were a virgin. you two ended up having sex. you went out together, he met your parents, he didnt feel comfortable about his family so he left it at that. you understood.

you two were in love.

you guys went on to date for 2 years, but whenever rin turned 16 things started to get weird.

you and him were always fighting. he would ignore you at times, sometimes hours, sometimes days.

you were understanding of his soccer career, not that it was much of a career, yet you never told him.

you just wanted him to be there for you, with you.

the start of november, you decided to confront rin about it.

“Why do you always fucking ignore me for that shitty ass sport?! all you do is make fake promises and go on and say how youre sorry and youll do better but do the same thing but just worse. im not asking for alot itoshi but for the love of god please act like you fucking love me again.”

rin was on his last straw, he didnt know why he was so mad, maybe it was because by the day his brother was getting better and more popular, he was determined to be better than him, even if it meant ignoring you, and setting you aside.

“Look y/n, i dont fucking know why you care so goddamn much. mind your own fuckin’ business and find something to do. all you do is complain, i need space okay?! Im not sorry to say this, and im gonna dumb it down for ya, your annoying, wasting my time, and i just need you to leave me the fuck alone alright? stop fuckin’ running yer mouth and be good at somethin’ for once. fuckin’ bitch. all you use your damn mouth for is to complain, go get a job or sumthin’ i dunno. wish you never fucking came to japan.”

you never said anything and walked out of his house.

2 days later you had sent him a message sending him farewell and you loved and hoped he would grow on his journey as a soccer player.

ever since that day, no matter how much rin tried to find your whereabouts, he always failed.

he felt miserable. he wanted you back.

how could he? he said so many things to you, he meant them at the time, but it wasnt his fault. he didn’t mean to bottle everything up. he wouldve talked to you about it, maturely.

he blamed it on his brother, like he always did.

he thought it was some kind of bad luck spell Sae had given him.

Rin suffered in silence.

he missed you he missed your touch, the way you would look at him and hold him, how you would whisper cute things in his ear while you cuddled.

he missed how he would open every door for you, he made you bento boxes, he missed your home made chocolate. he missed how he would spot you in the bleachers at his soccer game, he would pretend to not see you out of embarrassment.

he dreaded sitting in the same seat he sat in whenever you met, seeing you sit next to some other random dude.

how could he just forget about you? when you’re there everyday at school. he hated seeing you look miserable, alone.

he knew you still werent that good with the language, so you were unable to make friends, let alone girl ones. they all hated you for your relationship with rin.

he was worried. he wish he could have you in his arms and tell you everything was going to be okay.

he felt extreme guilt as the days went by, remembering how you have your own family problems, your own health problems.

how did he just leave without a fight? how did he accept you two were done and went on with his day.

he remembered about all the memories. how you two had sexual relations, despite being dumb teenagers. you didnt do it more than 3 times, but he still thought of it as special.

he missed how you cradled him in your arms, rubbed his cheeks, gave him massages after practice or games.

he missed you playing with his hair. your kisses. your soft warmth of your body. everything.

he wish he chased you, fought hard to keep you, beg for you.

but he didn’t.

thats when the thoughts started happening.

rin would find himself on the edge of his bed thinking about how your life would be with another man.

he sat on the floor of his bathroom and sobbed, knowing there was a zero chance in hell you would forgive him for anything.

he hated himself. he hated what he was, who he was.

it got so bad rin started praying night. he prayed for you, about you, for both of you. he begged and sobbed to the man he believed was up in heaven somewhere judging him for his actions. the man he believed put him in this situation to suffer.

he would never harm himself, he knew that. but he fought his intrusive thoughts. he didn’t want to make any cuts on his arms, he always thought they were unnecessary.

instead, he unconsciously starved himself.

rin couldnt eat, he couldnt sleep.

he couldn’t take care of himself or his room, he was a mess.

he wanted to disappear, he wanted to just pretend he never came into this world. he hated his mother for birthing him, he hated his brother even more.

he couldn’t think anymore, he layed on his bed. staring at the inanimate objects around his room.

he missed you, he thought about you.

about your mother, and father whom he met.

about your siblings and pets.

he missed who he was.

he tried to forget those things

“try to forget her.” he said to himself as he woke up for yet another day of school.

rin liked to think he could telepathically, someway, talk to you when he really tried.

“i just hope you saved my number,” he thought, “Call me when you can.”

he knew you had blocked him, but had you really? what if you missed him too. what if you couldn’t forgive him, but you could miss him.

he thought surely you missed your long talks at night on the phone, cuddling with him, having lunch together.

was it all a blur to you? did your people not care for relationships?

Rin went out on walks sometimes, to help cope, to help him forget, to ease his mind. he stared at the ponds, the fish, the trees. the sky, the clouds. he wondered what the plants felt like, being all alone, unable to move or speak. how they felt whenever a dog would urinate on them, or how a tree felt when a couple carved their initials on it.

did they need to scream? cry? laugh?

he went into a state of derealization at one point, for about 2 days, he thought he wasn’t here.

he was just a ghost, you were a dream, his brother wasnt his brother, he was just a sad dead person with free time. alot of it.

he hated being here.

Rin repeated the same cycle everyday.

wake up, shower, eat breakfast, brush teeth get ready for school.

see you in class, sitting alone, sometimes with a random person you had assigned seats with.

go up to the rooftop for lunch, seeing you at the stairs as he went up, trying his best to not acknowledge you.

go to soccer practice

walk the path to your house, then to his.

check the mail. go inside his house.

take off his clothes, take a shower, lay in bed, and eventually, after some tears, fall asleep.

Rin felt lost, he lost his will to try.

he continued exceeded at sports and school.

that he never worsened in, he was always top 1 and remained that way.

that was until his teacher asked him to help you again, since you were failing.

“I understand if you two have broken up, it is none of my business really. But if you could set your arguments aside and focus on her academic work, that would be amazing. She’s really struggling again, Itoshi-kun. If you are unable to please let me know.”

Rin had a selfish feeling, he was glad to know that you were also struggling like him over the breakup.

he let his ego get to him, sometimes the thought that it might just be your family crossed his mind. but he always settled on that it was the fact that you two broke up.

rin planned to talk to you about class, of course it being just an excuse.

he decided he was gonna do it the following day, november 20th, 2018.

unfortunately, you weren’t at school that day.

he thought nothing of it, he was just gonna ask you tomorrow. same plan same everything.

he was gonna confess his feelings of regret, and guilt. he was going to own up to missing you.

rin went home that day, devastated, but a slight excitement for tomorrow.

he was happy, that tomorrow might be the day that everything goes back to normal.

he checked the mail.

he had received a letter, something claiming that he had been chosen to go into some stupid Blue lock project. saying the meeting is in september 4th.

he ignored it.. but it interested him. he was gonna go, he thought why not?

you hadnt gone to school all week.

rin asked his teacher if he knew why you hadn’t attended school, claiming he just needed to talk to you about tutoring you.

“Oh, y/n-san? she’s gone to america, to visit her grandmother, she should be back september 4th.”

september 4th? thats the day he had to go to that meeting. that tuesday he would be gone and you would be back.

he began to worry, what was he gonna do?

the day of came. he decided to go to the soccer program, figuring he would just see you the next day.

“is this the right place? it looks all weird. i wonder what bullshit they’ll say.” he scoffed, looking at the letters address slightly looking up, matching it to the building number.

they had told him they wouldn’t be allowed to go back home, they would stare at this Blue Lock, until they fought to find the best striker in japan.

Rin was angry. Angry at himself, angry at this strangers.

part of him lured him to do it. he wanted to become better. he wanted to be the best.

but what about you?

ive never written angst before i hope i did good for my first time..😭

[7ndipity]

Accidental Announcement

Taehyung x Idol Reader

Summary: You and Tae’s relationship is revealed to his members in an unplanned, slightly awkward way.

Word Count: 1.2k

Warnings: suggestive, like one swear, Tae refers to reader as his girlfriend,

A/N: Thanks to the lovely anons who sent both of these requests! I decided to combine them into the same piece, I hope that’s okay. Idk why, but it’s funny to me that I went from not really knowing much about Idol AUs, to having several ongoing series’ of them on this blog!

Masterlist

Requests are open

°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•

The backstage area of the music show was always so crowded and noisy that it made it easy for Tae to slip up beside you without anyone really paying attention, catching your hand in his before leaning in closer than nessary to mumble lowly in your ear.

“I’ve got a room to myself tonight, do you want to come over?”

“What exactly are you suggesting?” You asked, casting a sidelong glance at him, a smirk playing at the corners of your mouth.

“Whatever you want.” He replied, slipping a keycard into your hand smoothly before going back to find his members.

You were a bit surprised by his brazeness of the action, the past few weeks apart while traveling with your respective groups having apparently made him a little more needy than usual, though you couldn’t say you minded.

It wasn’t uncommon for you and Tae to slip off to each others rooms when you found out you were staying at the same hotel, but it was usually brief since there was the constant risk of one of the members walking in on you, due to having to share rooms all the time. But having a solo room meant there was no such threat for once.

You slipped down to his room after he texted that the coast was clear, spending a relatively quiet evening together before getting ready for bed, borrowing one of his t-shirts to sleep in, having conveniently ‘forgotten’ to bring your own pj’s with you.

As you wandered back out of the bathroom, you noticed Tae very engrosed in whatever it was that he was watching on his phone.

Out of curiosity, you snuck up behind him and peeked over his shoulder to catch a glimpse at his phone, surprised to see yourself, winking at the camera as you danced earlier that night during the music show.

“Are you watching fan edits of me?!” You squealed, making him jump and drop his phone, which you were quick to snatch up to get a better look.

“Ya! That was just in my recomendations! Give it back!” He jumped to his feet, chasing you round the bed, but you were too quick, darting across the mattress to save yourself from a full body tackle. You tried to make a dash for the bathroom, but were to slow, as he managed to grab hold of your arm and spin you so you were pinned between him and the front door.

“Give me that!” He giggled breathlessly as he wrangled his phone out of your grip.

“I can’t believe it, you’re such a fanboy!” You laughed, equally out breath, choosing to wrap your arms around his neck both for support and to pull him down to your eye level.

“Only because you’re so cute.” He cooed, catching your lips in a teasing kiss, trailing his hands up your sides slowly and making you squirm against him, momentarily lost in the feel of each other that you didn’t hear the sound of his door knob turning.

“Taehyung, do you know where- Yi-ash!” Before either of you could react, the door had opened, resulting in you and Tae falling out into the hallway, landing squarely at Jin’s feet in pile of limbs.

For a moment, you all froze, staring wide-eyed at each other in shock.

“Hyung, I-” Tae started.

“What was tha- whoa.” The door to the room next to Tae’s opened, revealing Jungkook and Jimin now peering out, equally shocked. “Y/n?”

“Hi, guys.” You said awkwardly, hyper aware of how compromising your current position looked. “Uh, Tae, can I get up?” You whispered, snapping you boyfriend out of his daze.

“Yeah, sorry!”

“What’s going on?” Jin asked as Tae scrambled to his feet and helped you up.

“Nothing! We were just-”

“Does Namjoon know about this?” Jungkook asked.

“Know about what?”

“Oh, for shit’s sake!” Tae whipped around to face the leader and Hobi, who had just exited the elevator, trying to hide you behind his back, as if that was going to help anything at this point.

“What is with all the noise?” Yoongi opened his door, blinking tiredly at the sight of everyone standing in the hall for several long seconds before wordlessly closing the door again, deciding against involving himself in whatever scene was unfolding right now.

“What’s going on?” Joon asked, glancing around at his members, eyes widening slightly as he spotted you, wearing one of Tae’s t-shirts and wishing to dissolve into the wallpaper. “Y/n?-”

“Y/n’s my girlfriend.” Tae blurted out loudly, causing everyone’s attention to whip to him, including yours. ”We’re dating, but I haven’t told the company yet.”

There was another pause as that information sank in, before Junkook spoke again, breaking the silence.

“Way to go, hyung.” He grinned at you and Tae.

“Yeah, good for you guys.” Jimin agreed, shooting you both a thumbs up.

“You’re not mad?” Tae asked, glancing at everyone nervously.

“Why would we be mad? So long as you’re careful, It’s your life.” Hobi said encourangingly.

“Yeah, I mean, I would’ve rather not have found out by catching you two doing that-” Jin said.

“We weren’t doing anything!” Tae exclaimed.

“Tell that to the hickey on you neck.” Jimin chirpped, dissolving into giggles as Tae clapped a hand to his neck in alarm.

“Okay, um, we can talk about this later, can everyone just please go back to your rooms before one of the staff shows up?” Joon said quickly, herding the two younger members back into their room.

“Be safe, you two!” Jungkook called, closing the door before Tae could snap back at him.

“Thank you, hyung.” Tae said to Namjoon.

“Don’t worry about it, man, we’ll talk later.” Joon replied, patting Tae on the shoulder before nodding to you. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay.” You said, catching Tae’s hand before making your way back to his room.

“Oh, hyung?” Tae leaned back out into the hall to address Jin. “What was it you came to ask me?”

The eldest member blinked for a moment before shaking his head. “I don’t even remember.”

Tae nodded. “Alright then, goodnight.” He closed the door firmly, making sure both locks were engaged before slumping against it with a groan.

“Well, that’s not how I planned for that to go.” He said, rubbing his face tiredly.

“What? Telling you bandmates about us, or asking me to be your girlfriend?” You asked, leaning against the dresser as you studied him.

“Both.” He admitted, looking at you apologetically. “I am so, so sorry.”

You shrugged. “At least it was just them and not your manager.”

He nodded before slowly straightening and coming to stand in front of you. “Will you let me fix one of my missteps from tonight?”

“Depends which one it is.” You said, smirking up at him.

“Will you be my girlfriend?” He asked you, staring down at you solomly.

“Hmm.” You pretended to mull it over. “I guess.”

“You guess?!” He balked, making you laugh.

“Yes, you goof, I will.” You relented, wraping your arms around his neck to pull him into a kiss.

“Good, I don’t think my heart could take any more surprises tonight.” He mumbled against your mouth.

“Plus, the guys would be upset.”

“The guys?” He raised a brow at you before hoisting you up and dropping you on the bed. “I don’t want to hear about ‘the guys’ again for the rest of the night.” He grumbled, climbing to hover over you.

“Are you possesive now?” You asked, grinning up at him.

“You’re gonna find out.”

[menacing-menace-rat]

Can I get platonic yandere headcanons for all of the founding members of the Justice League?

I definitely can! Also sorry it took me so long to get to this. I'm still learning about how the inbox stuff works.

I'm going to have to make this in parts because it's alot to look at with all 7 members. This is part 1 of ?

I'm gonna use the founding members from the animated universe. More members and I love Martian Manhunter. If you were looking for the Snyder universe let me know and I'll edit the post and add Cyborg for you. 🤗

Warnings: kidnapping, gaslighting, obsessive behavior, general yandere creep stuff.

Platonic yandere justice league members part 1

Superman

You were a scientist at LexCorp

After some questionable experiments you knew you had to blow the whistle

So you went to the Daily Planet.

That's where it all stared.

So smart with a kind heart, how could he not protect you?

He's deluded himself completely.

He can't see how he can be the villain in anyone's story let alone yours.

He's very aware of his own strength thankfully.

You are more of a risk to yourself than he is. At least physically 👀

You'd be moved to a farmhouse almost right away.

When it comes to kidnapping you, he has no self control, it's near instant.

he knows how fragile humans are and he refuses to take any chances.

No matter how much you pleaded with him it was no use.

He was the only one who could help you and stop Lex.

This man has a scary amount of patience. No amount of hitting or screaming is going to set him off.

He will subconsciously prolong any solution that would make Lex and his people less of a threat to you.

He'd insist on sharing a bed. If he was anyone else you'd be worried he would try something.

If he wanted that kind of thing from you, you knew he could just make you.

So you were pretty sure whatever this was it was at least a platonic infatuation.

At night he'd hold you so tight it was difficult to move.

A physical reminder of what you already felt inside, trapped.

There was no escaping that farm. Anywhere in the city he could hear you.

He'd hear the front door open or your panting as you tried to run for the nearest road.

He wouldn't allow any kind of phones or computers in the house.

Why would he? Need help? He'll be there faster than any cop. You are lonely? That's fine he'd love to have hour long talks about anything you want.

Batman

Your best bet is to play along for years maybe. How ever long it takes for him to maybe let you make a grocery run alone.

He found you on the streets. Maybe it was your sad eyes or your dirty face but he knew he had to take you in.

He'd tell himself he could help you learn to fight. That you'd make a great Robin.

Deep down he knew he'd never let you fight in any way.

He's not like Superman. He knows how much he cares for you is unhealthy. He knows it's wrong to take you in and effectively trap you in a huge manor but what else can he do?

He is a world class manipulator. He also has far less patience then Superman.

Too many escape attempts and he's going to make a plan.

He'd go as far as to allow you to "escape". Only to orchestrate some horrible traumatic event so he can find you and save you all over again.

Depending on how strong willed you were the worst it would be.

It was twisted and horrible but he almost craved reassuring you.

He loved your tears so long as they weren't for a real reason.

Bruce kept a tight lid on his emotions. You'd never see him lose it. He'd never show he was upset with you.

Despite this being a very unconventional child/parent relationship his go to punishment is normally grounding and lost of privileges.

You'd be home schooled of course.

He isn't all that hands on unsurprisingly.

He'd ask one of the other kids to keep en eye on you or even another justice league members.

Asking them for help wouldn't work.

The kids are on board with Bruce. Even if they weren't what could they do?

As for the other JL members he'd tell them you were mentally ill and confused.

He'd get his colleagues/friends admiration for being so selfless by raising a sick child and you'd just look crazy.

Bruce is not known for his affection but he does try.

If you are crying or screaming he might try and comfort you with a hug or by rubbing your back.

He's not the best at comforting words either but his little acts of kindness are where he shines

He'd do his best to make most of your days as structured and predictable as possible.

You'd be kept in the best health imaginable. whether you liked it or not.

Anything you can ask for he'd give you, so long as you don't ask for freedom.

He even makes time to tuck you in every night no matter your age.

If he has time he might even read to you.

You probably are never getting free of him and his kids but your best bet would be utilize the uncontrollable.

Batman is a planner. He likes to be able to predict things.

Try and wait till something goes majorly wrong.

All of Arkhams prisoners being released or an alien invasion are your only chances of slipping out of that place. You'd only get one shot though.

Diana isn't crazy right off the bat.

Wonder Woman

(This one might be the only non gender neutral one.)

You were an anthropologist given the rare opportunity to study the amazonians from the island of Themyscira.

She is cool under pressure and isn't easily impressed.

After so long of staying there she'd start to feel like you were her sister.

But once she's invested in you there is no going back.

She would follow you back to whatever city you called home.

She isn't shy about her sisterly love for you. There would be no mind games with her.

She respects you too much for that.

She is so direct about it she would likely just tell you, you were going to go back to the island with her and be with her forever.

Depending on your reaction towards her directness she may not even make you.

She might be okay with you just visiting. For a while at least.

She's confident and self assured.

If you liked being around her as much as she likes being around you things would be easy.

If not life was going to be hard and potentially painful.

Rejecting her affection and forthcomingness will break her heart.

She would blame herself and work to be better.

Unfortunately being better to her means giving you even less space.

She'd make you come back with her.

An island full of tall strong women all who listen to Diana's will.

You are not escaping.

She is near impossible to trick twice if you have already tried to get away from her.

That being said it wouldn't be all that bad.

She would be painfully gentle with you. So long as you just listen.

You are her little sister after all.

She differs from Kent and Bruce in a big way.

She would train you, she is pragmatic and understands one day she may not be there to protect you.

Long and rigorous training sessions would be the norm for a while.

On Themiscyra you'd have much more freedoms. You would even be able to walk around alone if you showed you can handle it.

Your happiness is her second priority after your safety.

She'd being you anything you wanted from your part of the world.

She would like for you to participate in amazonian traditions and customs but she'd never make you. Even if she wants to sometimes

She'd relish in watching you acclimate to her world.

She would insist her sisters treat you with the love and respect she feels you deserve.

Your only hope of escape would be to somehow get off the island and disappear.

Nothing sort of complete disappearance would work. If she ever caught you again you wouldn't be leaving that island for a second time.

More to come hopefully soon. There will be 2 or 3 parts in total not sure yet. Hope you enjoyed!

[decaffeinatedcandycane]

Saw this on Tiktok and decided to modify it and give it a go.

NSFW warning. Call of duty random characters edition.

What would the boys do if you say to them: My cat is hungry, can you come feed it?

(You don't own a cat)

Price: Dirtiest of all the taskforce and you cannot change my mind. As soon as you ask he will stop whatever he is doing and stare at you, trying to figure out your intentions.

He will start asking you questions pretending to be clueless while approaching you like a predator. His voice will slowly switch from innocent and sweet to dark and dirty. This man can and will make your knees weak, before he even touches you. Be prepared for a long night as he has to make sure your kitten doesn't go hungry.

Ghost: He is not that big on teasing and he loves hates when you tease him. Will stare at you for a few seconds, then lift you up with your legs resting upon his shoulders and eat you out until you beg him to stop. He is a bit of a brat tamer. If you are not kinky he will respect that (will give you gentle, vanilla sex), but if you are - ohhh get ready to spend awhile on your knees, with his cock in your mouth his belt gently wrapped around your throat (using to guide you) apologizing for what you have done. Spanking is mandatory. Remote vibrators can be placed inside of you, if you keep misbehaving. Yes, this man likes to break and degrade you if that brings you pleasure.

Soap: The CHAOS boy of the group will laugh it off and leave the room, just to confuse you. He likes playing little pranks on everyone and you, my love, are no exception. His goal is to get you sexually frustrated and then fuck all the frustration out if you. Exactly like defusing a bomb. Wink wink

Gaz: He will laugh sweetly at you, maybe blush a little, then pull you in for a makeout session which will end up in the bedroom.

Don't get me wrong, he is dirty minded, but some jokes - make him a little flustered. In my eyes, he is a hopeless romantic who will fuck you gently, but can be rough if he is riled up enough. He is a member of the impulsive short tempered squad along with Soap.

König: This man.... If you ever say something dirty, no scratch that, if you EVER breathe dirtily in his direction, he will take you. No matter where you are. His squad knows not to stay around you two unless they want a show. Will he stop if he gets caught? No. Unless you want him too.

Rorke: No matter previous or post Federation, he is a pervert. This is the one thing that nobody could take away from him. Picture him sitting on a chair, peeling and apple, elbows on his knees. As soon as you ask the question, he will stop whatever he is doing and look you up and down. With a dark chuckle, he will stick the knife into the apple, leave it on the table get up and come to you. With a hand wrapped around your waist he will lean into your ear and whisper: "Let's feed it then"

[canarysage]

PSDs For Dummies <3

— as written by a dummy

hello dear readers and welcome back to canarysage, the world’s least comprehensive tutorial blog. today, we’re back at it again with photopea for dummies, and we’re tackling something i probably should have done first: psds.

example psds are: 1 (@cutesiplushi) 2 (@didlivio) & 3 (@lumieron)

what is a psd?

excellent question, dear reader! psd stands for photoshop document, and it’s a type of file format (like .png or .gif) that allows you to store a project’s individual layers! it’s a file format that, for obvious reasons, is exclusive to photoshop and photopea.

in editing circles, psd has become shorthand for filter. people use psds to save configurations of adjustment layers that are then used to filter images consistently, without having to remake them every time. when someone posts a psd, they’re posting a folder (hopefully it’s in a folder) with their specific set of adjustment layers for anyone to use!

where can i get psds?

right here on tumblr! check your favorite edit blogs, as they may have posted some, or search ‘free psd’ or ‘psd coloring’ in the search function. tumblr doesn’t allow you to upload psds directly, so you’ll be redirected to a site outside tumblr. probably either deviantart, google drive, or ko-fi, all of which are easy to use. deviantart requires you to have an account to download anything (luckily, an account is free!) and ko-fi may require you to pay money. google drive doesn’t have a search function in and of itself, but it’s extremely easy to download off of.

also, shameless self plug, but i post psds right here on canarysage! i personally use deviantart, but again, an account is free. if send me an ask, i may be able to provide you with a google drive link, if you ask really nicely (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

and of course if you don’t want to use someone else’s psd, you can always make your own.

how do i use a psd?

once you have a psd of your choice downloaded, open up photopea! or photoshop, if you’re rich like that.

once you open photopea, click this here button right in the middle of the screen, the one that says “open from computer”

from there, go to choose files and open up your psd! depending on from whom you got it, psds will look different once you open them. i’m using one of my own as an example.

you can see there’s two layers in my psd, a folder, and an image. the image is just for me so i know which psd this is once i save it—i like to save all my psds with images of real people so i know how it looks on moodboards or stimboards.

the folder is the important part here, that’s where the adjustment layers are contained. to transfer a psd, you can either go to file > new

which lets you start an entirely new project, or you can open an image using file > open

which will give you the image you selected.

as an aside, if you’re opening a psd and you already have a project in progress, make sure to click file > open and not file > open & place, as open & place won’t give you the adjustment layers.

then to move the folder, go to layer > duplicate layer into while having selected the folder (just tap on it, that will make it a lighter gray to show it’s selected) and duplicate the folder into whatever your image is

i’m moving mine to a random image of honami i found which is why it’s named like that. once the folder’s duplicated into your project, go over and take a look!

you should now see something like this! ensure that the folder is on top, as otherwise the adjustment layers won’t work.

here’s the difference between the unfiltered image and the image with my psd!

to save images in photopea (like i did just now) go to file > export as > (your preferred file format)

which will pull up something like this

i recommend either saving as a png (for still images) or as a gif (for… gifs) but that’s up to you! in order to save a psd, go to file > save as psd! that will save your project to your device

bear in mind that tumblr doesn’t accept psds as a file format, so if you’re going to post an edit, you have to save it as something else. also, don’t just save other people’s psds and claim them as your own—psds take a lot of time, effort, and skill, like any other art form.

can i make my own psds?

100% yes! i can’t give you a step-by-step process unfortunately, as there really is no one way to make psds. i recommend familiarizing yourself with adjustment layer and seeing what works.

shameless self plug again, but you can check out my other posts in this series to find out about some of the adjustment layers!

basically, i like to think of adjustment layers as a few different categories. light/darkness adjustments (ie: brightness/contrast, levels, curves, exposure, black & white, and threshold to a certain extent.) saturation adjustments (vibrance, hue/saturation.) color adjustments (hue/saturation, color balance, photo filter, channel mixer, selective color, gradient map depending on how you use it, and replace color.) and also, miscellaneous (posterize, which gives your images a pop-art crunchy kind of effect, invert, which… inverts your colors, and color lookup, which is a set of filters unto itself)

how you utilize adjustment layers is up to you! i personally like to use a variety and see what happens, my personal favorites being channel mixer, photo filter, and hue/saturation. you can also utilize blending modes (shameless self plug again,) or opacity.

if you have no idea where to start, you can look at other people’s psds to see their process. don’t copy or steal, for obvious reasons, but you can toggle layers on and off and see what happens and what each layer does.

making psds isn’t as intimidating as it sounds, you just have to start a project and start creating! it gets really fun once you get the hang of it (*'▽'*)

i don’t edit with photoshop or photopea, can i still use psds?

short answer: nope!

long answer: if you want use psds but you’re super used to ibis paint or whatever you currently use, have no fear! you don’t have to switch all your editing to photopea. you can make your main project in ibis or whatever as normal, then upload it to photopea and add a psd.

you can also make perfectly fine filters in ibis paint in your own right, with enough tweaking. there’s also apps such as polarr and picsart which come with filters, but i’ve never used them so i’m unable to vouch for how they work.

do i need to use psds when editing?

nope! psds are 100% optional. they’re a style like anything else—some people prefer them and some people don’t. it’s up to you.

did you genuinely write 1178 words answering questions no one asked?

yep.

what if i have a question you didn’t answer?

feel free to shoot me an ask! i don’t mind explaining further, and i promise i don’t bite. as with anything, this is just meant to explain to anyone who needs assistance—photopea for dummies by a dummy, after all. we can be confused together!

are you done now?

i am! congratulations for reading this far!

yours truly, canarysage

[pftones3482]

ATTENTION PnF fans!!

Myself and @animationnut would like to open up the invitation to all of you writers, artists, gif makers, and any other creatives to participate in a PnF "Secret Santa"

Attached to this you'll find a Survey Monkey survey, for your Tumblr username, what art you make, what art you want to receive, and what art you are absolutely not comfortable making/receiving.

Timeline:

We will be opening up forms TODAY (November 2nd) and closing them the day before US Thanksgiving (November 27th). We will generate the Secret Santas and have them sent out that weekend. Gifts will go out on December 20th to your randomly selected person!

Submission Rules:

Keep requests for your art short and sweet. No full length prompts, just a quick sentence or idea (i.e., "The gang building a snowman" or "Holiday Lights"). If you send a full length prompt, we will shorten it for you to the overall idea.

Absolutely NO NSFW or adult themes will be accepted (this includes sex, blood, death, gore, or incest themes). Romantic theme requests are allowed but this is, first and foremost, a kids show, so keep it PG.

No OCs - keep it focused to the show characters only

Phineas and Ferb requests only - we love the other Dwampyverse shows dearly, but we can't guarantee everyone has seen all of them and would know how to write for/draw other characters in the universe.

Please please PLEASE indicate things you do not want to create art for - we will be accepting requests from all parts of the fandom, no judgement, so if you have ships you are not comfortable writing for, please specify that. This is a large fandom with varying opinions and beliefs, we want to incorporate everyone but make sure everyone has fun in their own regard

Fic lengths can be as long or as short as you want to make them, and art can range from sketches to full blown shaded pieces. Whatever you feel comfortable with doing for the prompt you receive!

If you have an issue with the prompt you receive, please let us know! We can either tweak the prompt given, or reach out to your person and ask them if they have a secondary prompt they'd want (issues can be "I'm not confident writing for this character" or "I literally can't draw Doof to save my life pls help." Any moral issues need to be addressed in your "will not create art for" section in the survey.)

If for any reason you have to drop out of the event, please let us know ASAP!! And if you'd be willing to make two pieces of art in the case of someone dropping out, feel free to message one or both of us!

All that out of the way, this event is for fun!!! This is to encourage people to write, draw, and edit, to showcase the talents within the fandom. Everyone of all skill sets and levels is encouraged to sign up!

If we don't get a ton of sign ups, we'll still happily host the event, it'll just be a smaller caliber. We are looking to keep it focused to Tumblr only, just for ease of access, communication, and sharing, but if you have an AO3 account or other site where you post art, feel free to mention it in the survey in addition to your Tumblr account.

For any questions, comments, or concerns, please message myself or @animationnut!! We'll do our best to respond quickly.

All posts related to this event will be tagged as "pnfsecretsanta"

[strwberri-milk]

Heyaa!! Hope ur doing ok! If you have time, and if this peaks your interest can i request

Sumeru boys with a S/o who's secretly filthy Rich, came from a wealthy family, they are like Super duper REALLY RICH, when they found out they have to come clean, S/o doesn't told them because wanting to find an honest guy and not after their money.

So now that the characters knew, S/o is spoiling them, like for example, Cyno- buying him all kinds of limited/rare TCG cards all over teyvact at once, Tighnari helping buying the lots of expensive herbs, and S/o casually ask if they can pay off Kaveh Debt because for them- the debt is like pocket money to them. Taking out to a 5 star restaurants not even looking at the bills and just pays for it. At this point s/o just become a sugar mommy

You knew you could trust him from the moment you met him but that didn't stop you from hiding your family and wealth from him. You didn't want to risk anything after all and every day that you became more and more invested you realised that he loves you more than you could have ever fathomed.

He's always been kind to you and when he found out you were rich he thankfully didn't get mad at you for hiding it from him. You knew that if he did you wouldn't be able to stay with him but just his simple question of why and nodding in understanding made you more relieved than you ever thought you could have been.

Whatever it is you buy him he's very happy but he also insists that he never needed it. He was getting by just fine without it but you essentially tell him that he doesn't have to worry about it and that you did it because you love him and simply just wanted to spoil him a little bit because you can.

Tighnari doesn't expect to come to work to find a wild assortment of herbs and equipment that he's been wanting but unable to either expense out or pay for himself. He thought that someone had left it there by accident and was going to try to return it when he suddenly sees a note left on it. He smiles to himself as he realises it's from you, promising to put it all to good use to make sure you didn't waste your money.

You're so excited to show Cyno the new cards you got him, practically vibrating as he realises what you did. You even remembered the way he likes to store the cards he has for collection purposes, putting them away for him already and eagerly pointing at the spaces where you're waiting to buy him more when they come out. He's just as excited as you are, pulling out some of them to set up for a new round of TCG.

Kaveh adamantly refused you paying off his debt the first time you brought it up. He really didn't want you to and hated the fact that he'd be benefitting from your goodwill and kindness to him. That just means you went behind his back and paid it off for him anyway. You also use some of your connections to suggest Kaveh's name here and there, reminding people that he's the one who designed the Palace of Alcazarzaray to help him find some new jobs that are more befitting of his taste. He will spend the rest of his life trying to repay you back for your kindness, absolutely thankful as you constantly reassure him that you were under no obligation to help him out like this.

Al Haitham didn't expect to come home one day to an exclusive edition of a novel he thought ceased to exist. The fact that it's an original is even better, you giving him room to read the book. When he's finished you let him talk to you about it, having your own copy so you could also discuss it with him as he holds you and thanks you for doing something like that for him.

[miraclewoozi]

HIGH FIDELITY, PT 2. -c.hs

getting back on the horse is hard, and failing to hit it off with the cute gamer guy you went for a drink with last night has the potential to be your love life’s last straw. but when up and coming rockstar VERNON unexpectedly canters into your life, you find yourself asking one very important question: do you have it in you to saddle up, one more time?

( PART ONE )

pair ; vernon x fem!reader.  content ; strangers to lovers.  up-and-coming musician!vernon x record store owner!reader.   fluff, angst, smut. (MINORS DNI). warnings ; drinking + alcohol is a big theme pretty much throughout. mentions of past relationship breakdowns. reader experiences a lot of stress, anxiety and feelings of doubt, reflected in self sabotage. mentions of sickness (acute). wc ; 12.2k ( ~38k total. ) disclaimer ; this fic was inspired by rob + liam in the series high fidelity and is therefore pretty influenced by the show. if you’ve watched it, you’ll probably see a lot of similarities! i just felt so drawn to vernon in this kind of role that i really wanted to try and put a spin on it. i do not claim that every idea behind this is original. notes ; been working on this one for a while. hope you enjoy it.<3

smut tags : making out. some groping. some 'first time together' shenanigans. oral (m rec) & ball sucking hehe. he has a big cock because i have an agenda to push. implied f rec oral. implied multiple rounds. PLEASE let me know if i’ve forgotten anything.

The clock on your bedside table reads somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00 in the morning when you resign from trying to fall asleep and force yourself to sit upright, fed up of tossing and turning between your now too-creased sheets, brain stuck in a foggy, hellish limbo. Your mind won’t shut down. Your body won’t rest. Birds are starting to chirp outside and you can hear them clear as whistles through the cheap window that doesn’t quite seal shut to your left. Your eyes squint in preparation as you reach for your lamp and flood the room in yellowish light, drawing your knees up to your chest. 

You’ve spent so much time in your own thoughts that you’ve begun to feel systemically unwell. Your stomach twists and aches, your eyes are so dry it hurts to even blink and there’s an ache behind them that started as an annoying throb, but has grown over the hours into a roaring flame. From the hairs on your head all the way down to your toes, you feel like you could burst. 

You wish you had it in you to cry. To let it out. Keeping this pent up is no doubt making you feel a hundred times worse, and you think it would be nice to feel something other than the endless swooping of the spiral you’re well and truly making your way down. Your alarms are going to go off in a few hours. I can’t let anyone see me like this, you think. I can’t work in this state. 

You throw ideas around in your head for a little while, thumbs tweaking over your phone as messages get typed, edited, deleted, and repeat. Part of you thinks maybe you could manage. Just tough it out and put on a brave face, because actually, what right do you have to be hiding away when you’re the one who ran out one of the nicest guys you’ve ever met? But you just know something will go wrong, even if you tell the boys that you need to camp out in the office for the day. When you need peace and quiet, you can never find it behind that creaky old door. When was the last time you got a full admin day without being called through to help with a problem or deal with a drama? And truly, the idea of facing the world right now makes you feel like you could be sick. 

Sick…

Could you—?

You’ve never enjoyed taking sick days, even on occasions where you’ve really needed them, when you’ve woken up feeling like you’re knocking at death’s door. Sometimes, you swear the guilt that it brings ends up making you feel ten times worse than whatever your ailment is doing to you in the first place. But your exhaustion lets impulse take hold and you’re already sending a message into your group chat with the boys before you can talk yourself out of it, biting the inside of your cheek as the little indicator pops up on your screen. Delivered. 

Well. You’re committed now, whether you like it or not. 

Not feeling so hot. I won’t be in today. Take it easy, I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Sorry. 

You pick your comforter up off the bed and wrap it around your shoulders like an extravagant, well-padded cape, trudging your way through the apartment until you’re stood, barefoot and cold, staring into the bright light of your refrigerator. Somehow in the seconds between pulling the handle and now, you’ve managed to forget what is what that you were hoping to find. More out of spite for how the bulbs are currently bleaching your retinas than because you want it, you pull the milk from its home in the cradle of the door and fix yourself a glass to take with you and put it on the coffee table back in your living room.

Without an ounce of grace, you throw yourself onto your couch: your head rests against the arm of the seat like you’re in the apartment of a sketchy therapist, and you’re wrapped up in your duvet as if it’s a sleeping bag, treating yourself to the luxury of a slightly different ceiling pattern to stare up at. And it could be the change of the room that finally manages to drag you under, or it could be the total fatigue of the emotional rollercoaster that has been your last twenty four hours…

But your glass of milk goes completely untouched as you eventually drift off, either way. 

Of course, it’s not for nearly long enough. Barely an hour after finally managing to fall asleep, your phone starts to vibrate harshly against your chest. You tap at the screen blindly, hoping to shut off what you assume is your alarm; when it’s still buzzing a few seconds later, you reluctantly open your eyes, fighting back a sob. It’s not your alarm – it’s an incoming call. Why would it be anything else?

“Hello?” You grumble, putting the phone on speaker and resting it on the couch cushion next to your head. The energy expenditure of holding the device up to your ear feels mammoth.

“Ohh, you sound terrible.” Seungkwan’s voice sounds more taunting than it does concerned, but you pin that down to a symptom of his over-familiarity. “You’re sick?”

“Yeah,” you sigh. “I’m sorry.”

“I heard there was something going around,” Seungkwan tells you. Great, you think. Good to know. Now go away. “Yeah – one of my cousins… ah, what did she say…”

“Hey, man, I really-...”

“That’s it. She said she was love sick.”

You sigh so hard you think it’s a miracle you don’t pass out.  

“Don’t–”

“You better make sure Vernon gives you plenty of Vitamin D, today,” he harps on. “It’s quite the disease. I heard it can really–”

“Seungkwan!” You snap, finally, grabbing your phone and barking straight into the microphone. He doesn’t need to know that you’re stretching the truth to its absolute limit, but you certainly won’t let him keep believing that you’re calling out just to get laid. “Knock it off, okay? I’ve been awake all night.” 

(You suppose you should be glad that that much really is true.)

He falls silent, and you don’t know if he totally believes you, but a few breaths later, you hear his voice through the speaker again. He’s softer, this time. Quieter.

“I’m sorry,” he starts, hesitating a moment before he goes on. “Try to get some rest, all right? I’ll swing by after work and check in with some food, and… if you need anything, just text me?”

You’re immediately overcome with guilt at the sharp change in his demeanour, and it does nothing to settle the way your insides are writhing inside you. You clear your throat and pull your duvet up to cover your face, squeezing your eyes tightly shut. 

“I will,” you mumble. “I’m sorry – thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says. You can hear the front door to his own apartment slam shut and his breaths pick up as he starts to rush down the stairwell of his building. “I’ll see you later.”

“Okay.”

“Hey–” he rushes, before you can hang up the call. “Rest up. Run a bath, drink plenty. Love you.”

You cringe a little, but not enough to stop you from saying it back. Sort of. 

“Yeah. You too.”

Nobody could ever accuse Seungkwan of not being a man of his word. As irritating as he can sometimes be, as determined as he is to get on your every last nerve, you’ve never known him fail to come through on a promise. 

Not long after 6:30pm, you hear a series of knocks at the front door of your apartment. You’ve managed to squeeze in odd shifts of sleep throughout the day and though your head is still in a mess, you feel significantly less irritable than you were this morning. Cleaner, as well. One of your (several) naps took place in the bath, where you laid there and let the hot water draw some of the anxieties clean out of you to float towards the ceiling amongst the lavender-scented steam. 

In the knowledge that Seungkwan’s expectations of you are quite literally zero, you don’t bother to fix the one leg of your sweatpants that’s rolled up before you heave yourself off the couch and go to let him inside. He stands in the doorway with a bag of takeout food in each hand, all wind-flushed cheeks and that brilliant smile, and you feel like your stomach settles almost straight away when you see him.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, toeing off his shoes as he comes inside and lets the door close behind him. He sets the bags down on top of the small table by your front door and cups your face in both of his hands, squeezing your cheeks and frowning down at you. “You look awful.”

“Wow, thanks,” you huff, squirming to get out of his grip. “I was going to say I feel a little better, but…”

“You look exhausted,” Seungkwan clarifies, picking up the bags once more and following you through to your living room as you start to walk away from him. “I’m sorry about earlier, I didn’t realise you were actually… this bad…”

“This is doing wonders for my ego,” you grumble. “Keep it coming. Really.”

“Oh, you know what I mean.”

“No, no. By all means, continue to kick a girl while she’s down. Super classy.”

Your best friend flops down onto your couch with an exaggerated huff at your petulance. You curl up in the armchair instead, bringing your knees up beneath you. 

“Do you think it was something you ate?” He asks, refusing to give into your bickering and changing the subject matter instead. 

You shrug your shoulders at him. “I don’t-... I mean, it was more of a head… thing?” 

He sucks his front teeth. “What, like a migraine?”

“Sort of?” 

“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?” He asks. “You’ve had a migraine before. Was it that or not?”

“Well, it’s difficult to-... It wasn’t exactly…”

“Okay.” 

Seungkwan interrupts you as you hesitate again, swinging his legs off the couch and resting his elbows on his thighs, leaning as far towards you as he can while still remaining seated. He wrings his hands, plays with his fingers, lips drawn forward in a stern-looking pout. 

“I thought something was up this morning on the phone, but I didn’t wanna push it because you sounded mad. Now I know something’s wrong with you. What’s going on?”

You swallow hard and cross your arms over your chest, dropping your gaze away from Seungkwan’s very intense one. 

“Nothing,” you lie. 

“Bullshit.”

“Seungkwan!” 

“I’m sorry,” he sighs, tipping his head forward and running his hands through his hair. He’s never been a coddler, always one to prefer the tough-love approach: it’s no surprise that he doesn’t appear any softer when he looks back at you. “But we both know that’s crap.”

You can feel your pulse starting to quicken the longer he stares you down. It’s as if he’s burning two great big holes into your head, laser-beams where his pupils ought to be. He’s the master of the hard stare, and you know he won’t move until he hears the truth. 

Maybe I should just tell him. Maybe it’ll help…

“Look, I don’t care how famous he thinks he’s gonna be, if Vernon upset you last night, I’ll kick his ass myself.”

And there are the alarm bells. In hindsight, maybe you should’ve seen this coming; it’s not that far of a reach, and given the few facts that he actually knows, you can’t blame Seungkwan for jumping to this conclusion. It’s quite effective in triggering you to speak up, too. (You think that maybe, this was on purpose. Attack where you’re likely to defend. He knows you like the back of his hand.) In an instant you’re sitting upright with your feet firmly on the floor and you’re shaking your head at him like a dog trying to get itself dry. 

“No, no, no, back it up,” you rush. “It’s nothing like that. He hasn’t done anyth-... God, it’s not him.”

“It better not be,” Seungkwan tells you. His voice still has that dark edge to it, and you’re not sure how exactly to stamp it out. “I’m serious. If he’s done anything-...”

“He hasn’t,” you say more firmly. After a couple slow breaths, you clasp your hands together, swallowing your pride. “The food’s gonna go cold. Go grab a couple glasses and-... whatever else from the kitchen—”

“Only if you tell me what’s happening,” he says, slowly pushing himself up to stand. 

You don’t assent with words, but you don’t have to. You look up at him and nod a couple of times and that’s all he needs. Seungkwan strides off through the doorway, leaving you to shakily exhale away the stress that is once again squeezing at your lungs.

Once the containers are laid out on the table, food is divided up, utensils are handed over and he’s poured you each out a glass of soda, Seungkwan sits back on the couch. He doesn’t prod you, or ask you again – he doesn’t need to. You know what he’s waiting for. Even so, he allows you a few mouthfuls of your dinner first: seeing as this is the first substantial thing you’ve eaten all day, you silently thank him for the generosity.

“All right,” you say, gulping down a few mouthfuls of your drink to re-lubricate your throat. “Okay. Fuck – you’re gonna wanna make yourself comfy for this.”

The only way he moves is to pick up one of the food cartons and settle it on his thigh. Oh, how you wish you were joking. But if he really doesn’t want to heed your warning…

“You know I went on that date the other week?” You ask, biting the inside of your cheek. Seungkwan nods at you, lifting a helping of noodles out of the carton.

“With the hitter and quitter,” he confirms. “I remember.”

“Right,” you say. “Well – okay, wait, no. That’s a bad start. He didn’t do anything either.”

“I mean…”

“Not the time.”

He lifts his free hand up in surrender and gestures for you to continue as he slurps his food into his mouth. You clear your throat, bouncing one leg so rapidly that the decorative candle holder on your mantelpiece starts to rattle. 

“So… it was before the date. I was on my way to the bar, walking down past-... that convenient store. You know the one Chan keeps going into ‘cause he’s got the hots for the person who works there on a Friday night? Yeah, I was walking down that way. Actually running on time for once, and-...” 

You falter, sucking a breath deep into your lungs. It causes your next words to come out more strained than they ought to. 

“I ran into Jaehyun...”

Seungkwan swallows just in time to prevent himself from choking on his mouthful of food, but his eyes still shoot wide and you think his chest convulses a little bit anyway. His is a name you haven’t mentioned in a while, but he clearly hasn’t forgotten who it belongs to.

Because, well… how could he ever forget? 

Your ex-partner. Jaehyun.

The ex-love-of-your-life, Jaehyun.

The man who asked you to marry him after three and a half years of dating only to leave you, heartbroken and alone, six months later because he wanted to travel the world and there was too much that you couldn’t bring yourself to leave behind, Jaehyun. 

How could Seungkwan forget when he had been one of the people who helped drag you through what was not only the worst break-up, but one of the worst times of your entire life? 

Aside from the other week, it’s been… nearly eighteen months since you saw him last. Almost a year since you let yourself talk about him. Even sitting in your own apartment with a box full of your favourite food in your hands, a sense of dread chills you from head to toe just going so far as to say his name. But you’ve started, now, so you might as well finish.

“…right outside that stupid fucking store.”

Your voice cracks when you say it and you hurry to set your dinner down on the floor to free up your shaking hands. You cup them over your mouth, closing your eyes and taking a couple of deep breaths. It helps enough for you to be able to continue, even if you still feel a bit like you’re drowning.

“I thought he…” Seungkwan starts, putting his own food down and slipping off the couch. He comes to sit on the arm of your chair and puts a hand around your shoulders, pulling you into his side. “When did-...?”

“Yeah, uh… apparently he moved back a couple weeks ago,” you swallow, leaning into your friend’s embrace. 

Seungkwan looks down at you and you look up at him, all misty-eyed and drained. There’s more. He knows there is, but now he waits for you patiently, giving you all the time in the world to get through this and to let it out and to lean on him. He doesn’t butt in. The quiet feels worse than the talking. 

“He’s with someone now. They, uh— they met in Paris. Just over a year ago.”

Seungkwan finally dares to make a noise and breathes out heavily, so loud that it’s almost a groan. 

“Y/n,” he sighs, tightening his hold around you. “Shit – I’m so sorry,”

You shrug, staring across the room to where your record player sits on top of a low cabinet, lid open, table collecting dust. 

“For months, I sat here feeling… fucking, sorry for myself,” you say, barely above a whisper. You swallow around the lump in your throat and shake your head. “This whole time, refusing to get back on the horse ‘cause I thought maybe-... but he was-…”

The room goes quiet again as you lose the words you want to say and Seungkwan just rubs small circles against your arm. The problem is that you know this doesn’t explain why you called out of work today. It doesn’t explain what happened last night, and you’re not sure where to begin with that either. Especially seeing as the last time your best friends saw you and Vernon, the sparks flying between you were nigh-on visible. 

“I thought I was handling it, you know?” You sigh, leaning harder into Seungkwan’s soft sweatshirt. “Like… yeah — it hurt… but I was okay? I guess. And then Vernon fucking… kissed me last night—“

“He— what?”

“Hang on — no, he… I wanted him to.” You fumble with a thread hanging off the sleeve of your t-shirt as you talk. Why is this all so difficult? At the same time, why does it feel so juvenile to say out loud? “I just… I don’t know…”

Your wall clock tick, tick, ticks away in yet another painful fall of silence. 

“How bad was he?” Seungkwan asks when you struggle to elaborate. 

You assume this is an attempt to shatter the gloomy atmosphere and lighten your mood a tiny bit; it works, you suppose, because despite yourself, you laugh drily. Not without nudging your shoulder into his ribs, though. He deserves it, and you won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that it does make you feel a little better.

“He wasn’t,” you groan. “Don’t—… you’re such an ass.” 

He pulls himself away from you at the sound of your laughter and moves to sit on the edge of your coffee table instead, careful not to disrupt any of your food while keeping himself close enough to you that he can hold both of your hands in his and soothe his thumbs over your palms.

“You freaked out on him, didn’t you?” 

He sees straight through you and truthfully, no part of you is surprised. No part of you tries to fight it, or reject his assumption, or even question why that’s the first explanation he leapt to. You just nod, looking to where your best friend’s fingers are currently the only things holding you together. 

“Ran out his apartment like the building was gonna burn down,” you sigh, still laughing but harshly now. He squeezes your hands gently, urging you to look up at him. You do, slowly. “It’s ruined everything.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Seungkwan tries, narrowing his eyes at you when you scoff your obvious disagreement. “No, seriously. Anyone can see the poor guy’s got it bad for you.”

“Even if that’s right, you didn’t see his face,” you say. “God, he isn’t gonna wanna look at me ever again.”

“Have you spoken to him today?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Maybe if you explain what happened–”

“Oh, sure,” you snort. “‘Hey, Vernon. Sorry for running out on you like a lunatic yesterday. I ran into my ex recently and when you kissed me, it reminded me of being with him and I got freaked out and had to dash. Hope you don’t mind.’ God.” 

You try to draw your hands back but Seungkwan just holds onto you tighter. “We’ll workshop it,” he says firmly. “Do you like him, or not?”

“Seungkwan–”

“That wasn’t an option.”

You scowl at him. “It’s not that easy.”

“It’s a yes or no question.”

“Yes,” you stress finally, groaning through it. “Yes – I do.”

Seungkwan’s face lights up for a second, his eyes sparkling, lips lifting. You’re half expecting him to say ‘I knew it’. Half expecting him to try and be all deep and philosophical and a little bit motherly, as he sometimes does, especially when you’re upset. He’s always been a sucker for a happy ending. But this isn’t a happy ending, you remind yourself, squaring your jaw. It’s past that, already. It isn’t going to happen, you just know it. 

“Stop being so fucking hard on yourself,” he tells you, squeezing your hands one last time before he lets go and moves back over to the couch so he can finish eating before his food goes cold. “If anyone can pull this off, it’s you.”

You’re not sure what’s in the air right now, but this has been one of the busiest weekends that you can remember. Both yesterday and today, almost as soon as the store opened, your first handful of customers came through. Apart from about an hour around lunchtime, you don’t think there have been any periods of time where you’ve not had someone milling around the shelves. It makes a nice change, really, from some of your weekend shifts – hours at a time where the dust starts to settle and hardly anyone disturbs the bell above the front door. But this means you’ve been in full customer-service mode basically all day, and you’re starting to feel exhausted from keeping up the persona.

Still. There’s only an hour or so left — you can push through, and when you get home, there’ll be a nice, hot bubble bath with your name written all over it.

The bell chimes again just as you finish serving a group of teenage girls. You watch them scurry away, excitedly giggling about their new albums and you look towards the door with a smile already plastered on, all ready to greet the new customer until your eyes lock with theirs.

A ‘hey, how’s it going?’ stops somewhere midway up your throat, a pathetic little ‘huh?’ sound escaping you in its place. You’re frozen all of a sudden; you and the man who just came in both stand perfectly still, staring at each other like a pair of bunnies in headlights. It takes you forever to register the strap wrapped around his fist, the purse that hangs just below his grip. My bag, you think to yourself, but the voice that narrates your thoughts is hushed for the first time ever, too. Everything in your head gets sucked away into a little vacuum. The only thing left is him.

“I-… thought you might want this back.” Vernon breaks the quiet first. Your throat runs dry. In a flash, the noise in your brain is as loud as it’s ever been and in amongst all the chaos of thoughts and questions and apologies, you can’t pick out the words you actually want to say. 

He slowly unravels the strap from around his hand and takes a few steps closer to you, inching towards the counter. 

“You don’t have to say anything,” he hurries to assure you. Your heart aches for how reserved and nervous he looks. It doesn’t suit him. You hate it. “It’s okay. I’m… really sorry, about the other night. I didn’t mean to—” A deep breath. “I’ll see you around.”

Vernon lays your bag so delicately on the wooden surface that you could be forgiven for thinking he was handling an explosive. Then, he takes one, two, three steps back, before turning and heading to the exit.  

“Wait—” you call out to him, finding your voice at the most critical time, right as his fingers curl around the door handle. “Wait—, please.”

He spins back around to face you as you slip out from behind the desk. His left brow lifts higher than the right but otherwise, he gives nothing away. He doesn’t even say anything as he stands there, pushing his hands deep into his pockets. 

You swallow around the golf ball sized lump taking residence in your throat and clasp your hands together in front of you, wringing and twisting and accidentally popping one of your knuckles in the process. “I shouldn’t have run out on you like that. It wasn’t fair.”

Vernon chews this over in his mind but ultimately just shrugs his shoulders at you. What is there to say? He surely agrees, but he seems so adamant to ensure you don’t feel bad about it happening that he just… says nothing. Again. It’s kind of maddening, even if you fully get why. 

“No, I mean it,” you try again. “It wasn’t you. It’s nothing you did.”

“We really don’t have to do the whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ thing,” Vernon offers, his cardboard-like posture softening. There’s even a little bit of a smile on his face, you think — but it’s not the kind of smile you’ve grown used to seeing on him. It doesn’t reach his eyes; he looks kind of like someone who has read their cards and accepted their fate. “Seriously. It’s okay.” 

“It’s not,” you stress, stepping closer to him again. You sigh deeply. There’s something almost relieving about the position you find yourself in. You suppose this really is crunch time; it’s now or never. “Can we… talk? About everything?”

“What? Here?” Vernon asks. 

You glance around the store, at the few people doing a very poor job of pretending to be minding their own business, and frown. He’s right. This isn’t the time, or the place. The problem is, you have a feeling that if you send him away, he may not decide to come back and listen to you. In his defence, why should he? He’s already done more than the decent thing and brought you back that which you abandoned in his apartment; several of your previous conquests would have shoved the bag and its contents either in the trash or the back of a closet somewhere. This is more than you could have hoped for. 

You hold a finger up to him and ask him to stay where he is, and though he looks a little bewildered at the gesture, he ultimately doesn’t move. You rush off out the back to the storeroom where you banished Chan an hour ago, on account of his raging hangover and your low tolerance for his whining about it; you’re genuinely surprised to find him working, and actually alphabetising the records you got in a few days ago like you asked him to.

“Hey. Can you do me a huge favour?” You ask, not announcing your arrival and subsequently scaring Chan out of his skin. He jolts as he hears your voice and claps a hand to his chest, exhaling hard. You don’t entertain his dramatics, though. There’s no time. “I need you to close today.”

“Huh?” He asks, still acting as if he’s trying to catch his breath. “I thought–”

“Please.” You wave him off, knowing he’s about to ask about the task you gave him. “We can look at this together tomorrow. You did great. It’s just an hour – is that okay?”

He chews the inside of his lip, almost looking disappointed. To be fair to him, he did look like he was in a groove when you appeared, but he doesn’t argue with you as he puts down the record in his hand and picks his phone up off the table to his right, silencing the catchy tune that was playing while he organised. 

“Of course it is,” he says, holding his hand out for your keys and starting to walk towards you. “Everything okay?”

“It-...” you start, faltering as you place the store keys in his waiting palm. Your default response was about to be ‘it’s fine’, but you’re trying harder these days to stop pretending, especially around him. So you swallow, nodding your head, flashing him a tight lipped smile. “I’m about to find out.”

“Oh? Is it…?”

A brief pause later, not before cringing at how predictable you’ve apparently become, you say, “yeah.”

Chan claps you on the shoulder as he skirts his way around you, leaning in to give you a sort of side-along hug on his way. You stretch your arm across his waist and pull him closer for a moment, trying to drive home how much you appreciate this. He doesn’t comment on the uncharacteristic display of affection, and you want to find out why, but Vernon isn’t going to wait around for you forever. 

“Go get him, tiger,” Chan whispers.

“I owe you, big time,” you promise. 

He winks at you before he disappears through the door and you follow him briefly, but as he does a round of checking in with your customers and making sure they don’t need any help, you hurry off to grab your jacket from the office.

Vernon is exactly where you left him when you come back out into the storefront, hands unmoved from where he stuffed them into his pockets earlier, rocking back and forth on his toes and looking around from wall to wall. You think perhaps he took your request slightly too literally and the fact that even his feet are in the same position as before you left is reminiscent of a puppy commanded to stay, but if anyone here is at liberty to start poking fun, you think that it certainly isn’t you. Instead of trying your luck, you lock the office door and walk up to him, returning his polite, yet slightly awkward smile.

“You’re not, like, super busy right now or anything, are you?” You ask him. 

His brows crease and his eyes shift side-to-side before they land back at you. He shakes his head.

“Did you maybe wanna… take a walk?” 

Vernon nods this time, still not moving or even pulling his hands out of his jeans. His elbows are locked out and the length of his arms means his shoulders are raised quite some way. He could not be more uncomfortable looking if he tried, but he doesn’t say no and nothing on his face gives away that he wants to reject your proposition, either, so you’re the one to take that tentative first step towards the door. When you do, he follows. 

You left the store at least ninety seconds ago and still, neither of you have said anything yet. Honestly, it’s taking all you’ve got not to just burst and let it all out; it’s building and building and your stomach feels tight, but it’s less of a knot and more like a tightly-coiled spring. His eyes are dipped to the ground, incredibly aware of every step he takes, in what you realise now are a gorgeous pair of platform boots tucked up beneath his baggy jeans. He’s at least an inch and a half taller than the last time you saw him. 

“Your friend,” Vernon starts finally, pausing before he continues.  “Is he always so… you know?”

“What did he say?” You ask, peeking over to him. Trust Chan to start getting —

He hurries to shake his head. “Nothing. He just… kept looking at me. In a weird way, like…”

“Like he knows something you don’t, and he’s not gonna tell you, but he wants you to know that he knows it anyway?” You supply.

“Yeah— exactly like that.”

“Mm. That’s just… Chan.”

“Huh.”

“It’s worse when they’re together,” you say. He breathes out a chuckle and you feel his elbow bump into your upper arm. The distance he put between you when you fell into step outside the store has reduced, you realise now; you’re not sure when, or if it was on purpose. Did he move closer once you started speaking? Was it just so he could hear you better? Or…

Either way, despite being side-by-side, he still feels a hundred miles away from you. This isn’t enough.

“You get used to them, though,” you add, trying to stay on track. “I swear.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Jokes aside, he still won’t look at you for longer than a few seconds, which tugs at something deep in your chest. Discomfort clings to you, and even if it does seem like you’re making some progress, you can still feel unease radiating off him. A cheap laugh at the expense of your friends who aren’t here to defend themselves won’t fix that which you took a wrecking ball to a few nights ago. This needs to be heartfelt and genuine, and more importantly it needs to come out right. 

But when you open your mouth to speak, still searching your brain for the right way to explain why you acted the way you did, there’s nothing. 

How wonderful would it be for the perfect explanation to just tumble from your lips calmly and evenly, and for it to make everything okay? But the reality is that your throat runs dry as petrol fumes make their way through your parted lips. You hold your tongue again just a second later, sighing quietly. 

You’re starting to feel like a lost cause when Vernon breaks the silence for you, again. He slows his steps to a halt when he eventually says, “so.”

“So,” you repeat, freezing mid-stride as you go completely tense. It’s like you’re staring into oblivion’s wide open mouth. “I-… don’t really know where to start. I’m sorry.”

“The beginning’s usually pretty good?” He offers.

You nod. “How much did you want to know?”

“Whatever you’re comfortable with telling me.”

If anyone on this Earth deserves a medal for their patience, it’s Vernon. You still haven’t turned to face him yet, your eyes fixated on the traffic signal some fifty yards away from you and you’re pretty sure if someone poked you too hard, you’d shatter into a million tiny pieces. But, as impossible as it seems all the while you try to get your thoughts in a reasonable order, you manage to swallow your nerves. 

It’s crunch time. It’s now or never.

The explanation you give him is messy. Disjointed. But once you start, it becomes difficult to stop: you end up sparing very little detail and circle back on yourself no less than three times. You tell him about how you were engaged and about the breakup, the run-in, your shitty date, gesturing with your hands to emphasise the most important parts. When you start to move again, Vernon makes his steps bigger until he’s walking alongside you. He never interrupts you. He acknowledges every sentence when you pause for breath. Encourages you to keep going when you fall over your words. 

“… and—... I guess I just lost my head. But it wasn’t your fault.” You swallow hard before you continue, “I’m… really sorry.”

He nods slowly, taking his time to digest everything.

“Don’t be,” he says, lightly bumping into your side. It’s a very small reassurance that he’s not going to walk away, but it means much more to you than you’re sure he meant it to. “I get it.”

“I—”

“No, like. I get it.” 

“Yeah?” You ask, only understanding when you catch the very pointed look in his eyes. 

“For sure.”

Of course, it makes sense. Vernon’s young. Attractive. Nice. Talented. He must have been with people before. Hell, you think he surely leaves a trail of broken hearts everywhere he goes. He gets it. 

“We dated for like… five? Years. Her name was Nari,” he tells you. 

A few seconds later, you watch him start to shrug off his jacket on one side and expose one of his toned arms to you. You’re about to tell him he doesn’t need to air his dirty laundry out if he doesn’t want to when he twists at his elbow; you catch sight of a tattoo you remember having seen the night he wore that black singlet on stage. Two lily flowers blooming up the inside of his bicep. 

It’s so pretty. Intricate. The line work is beautiful, the petals shaded with hundreds of little dots. You wanted to ask about it that night, but you never found the right chance, and now—

Lily?

It takes you longer than you’re willing to admit to join the dots, but when the penny finally drops, so does your jaw. Vernon slides back into his sleeve with a big, entertained smile and a little shrug. 

“Mhm.”

“Oh my God?”

“I know.”

It’s not that you’re laughing, per se. This isn’t your baggage to laugh at, no matter how unbothered Vernon seems to be by what he’s just revealed. But you do rub your hand over your face and cover your lips, shaking your head in disbelief as a breath that contains the edges of a bemused chuckle escapes you. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to mind; if anything, it appears to give him a boost to keep talking.

“I got that on our third anniversary,” he goes on to explain. “A couple years later… She called it quits. Turns out there was another guy. I thought about lasering it, but… apparently that hurts worse than getting the tattoo in the first place, so…”

“That’s…”

“It’s whatever,” Vernon says, shaking his head. “They’re my mom’s favourite flowers too. That’s what almost everyone else thinks it’s for.”

You haven’t looked back up at his face since the unveiling, not until now. When your eyes meet again, Vernon tilts his head in the direction you’re walking and continues down the street, spinning now so he’s walking backwards but still facing you. “I just mean... It’s okay. I get it.”

The moment you’ve caught up to him and you’re back by his side, he turns to face front, just in time to avoid a collision with a streetlamp. The lingering awkwardness starts to fade to nothing; you can see it in the way he holds himself, and you can feel it in the way you do, too. Everything relaxes. Your neck, your shoulders, your fists. It all ebbs away. 

“It really wasn’t anything you did,” you clarify once more. 

“So you keep telling me,” Vernon quips, tips of his ears turning pinker by the moment. “It’s okay, I swear. Do you want me to walk you home?”

You accept his offer and lead him down a side-street, picking up a completely unrelated conversation now to purify the air. Before you really know it (what was that everyone always said about time flying?), you come to a stop outside your building. Vernon’s sentence fades away when you stop moving; instead he stills, glancing sideways, and you nod confirmation at him with a lopsided smile. 

“This is me,” you say, reaching into your back pocket for your keys. “So…”

“So,” Vernon echoes, glancing around again. “Can I like, lay my cards out, real quick?”

You nod. 

“I like you.” He shrugs, now toying with the leather bracelet around his wrist. “Like, a lot. But…”

But. You feel like you should have seen this coming. But. But. Of course there’s a— 

“I’ve got some shows coming up out of town and I need to see some family, I’m not gonna be here from tomorrow for like, three weeks...”

Oh. 

Well. On one hand, it’s not what you thought. It’s not a flat-out rejection. It’s not a shut down. On the other? You bite the inside of your cheek and look at your hands, playing with your keys to keep them busy. Under any other lens, three weeks isn’t really a very long time at all. You’re pretty sure that the milk you bought yesterday is going to last longer than that. But three weeks… this early into things? 

That’s longer than you’ve even known him.  

“… and I thought, if you wanted — I could… take you out. When I get back. For real. Maybe.”

Oh.

“Like…?”

“Like… on a date,” he confirms, rubbing the back of his neck. “One where I’m not like… fresh off stage and all gross and shit.”

Relief replaces anxiety on both his face and yours when you let out a quiet laugh. 

“I’d really like that,” you say, twitching fingers suddenly still. “Yeah.”

“I’m not asking you to like, wait around, or anything,” he says as he pulls his phone out of his pocket, fumbles with it, and just barely manages to soften the fall with the toe of his boot before it lands screen-up on the concrete. “We’ll just see how it goes. And it gives you some time to… deal with things. Whatever you’ve gotta do.”

You nod, crossing your arms over your chest as he bends low to pick his phone back up, smoothing his thumb over the small scuff on the protective case. It seems remarkably undamaged otherwise. 

“And if you’re still interested, then…”

“Interested?” You ask with a small grin. 

“Aren’t you?” Vernon asks.

“I—...” You think about playing coy, but when he’s been so open with you about where his head’s at, it feels so silly and childish to bother pretending. That playful ‘I might be’ gets swallowed back. Instead – “Yeah. I am.”

“Cool. Then we’ll figure it out. At your pace, okay?” 

“Okay.”

He grabs his earphones out of his other pocket, slides one in, and is about to step back away from you when you do something you don’t really expect yourself to. Something you’ve never done to a man you can barely even say you’re ‘seeing’. You close the space between you and, as if to lock in your words, push forward onto your toes to press a kiss to his cheek. 

“Thank you,” you say when you fall back down to your heels. If he wasn’t so dumbstruck, you feel like he’d be about to ask what you were thanking him for; as it stands though, he’s frozen, blushing, and the only reason you can tell he’s still alive is because he can’t stop blinking at you. “For… giving me another chance.”

He still can’t quite find his voice, so Vernon just shakes his head, clearing his throat. (No need, he wants to say.) Alas, his lips just open and close soundlessly.

“I’ll see you in a few weeks,” you supply for him. He takes in a deep, mind-clearing breath and nods his head.

“I’ll see you in a few weeks.”

You see the apples of his cheeks lift as he presses his thumb against his phone screen and restarts whatever song he was listening to when he walked into your store. A brilliant smile consumes his face. It only grows as he turns away from you and walks off down the street. 

For a second, you think it’s all very smooth. Movie-like, even.

Then, he stumbles over a crack in the pavement. When he glances back to pray you didn’t watch it happen, he catches you snickering into your fist. He shakes his head and continues on, leaving you to fumble with your key in the lock before you finally let yourself inside.

You overslept. 

Sort of. You heard your alarm go off straight away but you might have snoozed it, and when you heard it sound for a second time, you turned it off completely, telling yourself that you just needed one more minute. You just wanted to rest your eyes for a few more seconds. There wasn’t any danger of you going back to sleep.

Twenty minutes later, you practically fell off your mattress in a panic when you realised that there had, in fact, been a big fucking danger. 

You were still able to wash up well and make it to work on time, but you had to sacrifice your morning coffee stop after seeing that the queue at the register was going to take too long. For years, you’ve refused to consider yourself to be the kind of person who relies heavily on a caffeine kick first thing in the morning, but today? It’s barely ten thirty and you’re seriously flagging: like you’ve never known what energy is, like you’ll never feel it again. 

(You blame the fact that when you first looked at your phone today before rolling back over, there was no ‘good morning :)’ text to entice you out of bed. But you’re trying really hard not to think about why that is, nor why it was such a deciding factor.)

So, when the bell above your shop door jingles and you’re forced to stand upright (a change your back doesn’t thank you for when it has to readjust from the previous hunched position you had adopted over the countertop), you groan quietly. Nonetheless, your tired eyes crease at the corners as you smile at whoever it is that’s come across the threshold.

After a second, your eyes refocus; when you can finally make out their features, it’s as if someone gives you a shot of adrenaline.

“Oh my God,” You say breathlessly, brushing your hair back and moving to stand up fully unsupported. “I thought you weren’t back until Friday?”

“Change of plans,” Vernon grins, scratching the back of his neck. “We drove through the night. I got home like… an hour ago.”

This is the first time you’ve ever seen him dressed down, and hell, does he look incredible. Gone are the ripped jeans, scuffed boots, the leather jackets and chunky rings. Grey sweatpants and an oversized white hoodie (alternatively: the brightest outfit you’ve witnessed him in thus far) drown him, blurring out his usually so distinct frame. You pin both of these things as the reasons you hardly recognised him when your eyes were refusing to cooperate. Paired with what Seungkwan would call ‘dad-sneakers’ and completed by messy hair and tired, soft eyes?

If you could jump his bones right here, right now… God, you would. 

“But hey, it’s nice to see you, too,” he adds facetiously.

“Quiet down,” you groan, fighting the urge to run over and envelop him in a hug. You’re not sure that he’d mind if you did, but you also don’t quite know if you’re ‘there’, yet. “Obviously it’s good to-...”

His arms, both of which have been stuck behind his back since he arrived, now move around to the front, revealing to you a takeout cup and a little brown box from the coffee shop down the street. 

“Oh, shit. It is so good to see you.”

Vernon laughs, coming closer until he can set them both down on the counter. “If it’s wrong, Seungkwan gave me your order, so.”

You start to wonder how on Earth your employee and your… Vernon managed to have this conversation without you knowing. Does Seungkwan have his number? Did they happen across each other on one of their socials? Did Vernon call into the store while you were out in the bathroom a little while ago and ask? But whatever happened, you quickly stop caring to find out: popping the lid off your cup, the aroma of your favourite coffee immediately fills your senses. It’s so overwhelming that you think you might start to cry.

“Oh my God. You’re the best,” you sigh, wrapping your fingers around the cup and taking a long sip, eyes rolling back into your head. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Vernon laughs, rolling up his sleeves before folding his toned forearms over his chest. “I got you a-... okay, they only had those gluten free brownies in, and I’ll be honest, I don’t know if they taste the same as the normal ones but… like, he said you hadn’t eaten today and I know you said you liked brownies before, — if you don’t like those ones, it’s okay! I can go back, it’s–”

He trails off, cheeks turning pink when you tilt your head to one side and feel your brow go soft. He asks, “why… are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re so cute,” you say, putting the cup down gently so as not to splash your drink all over the counter. 

“Huh?”

“You really didn’t have to…”

“I wanted to,” Vernon says, shaking his head. 

You almost definitely hear a floorboard creak and quiet shushing sound from just around the corner towards the back room. You don’t call out your eavesdropping friends for trying to listen in on your conversation, though: it barely even crosses your mind. Besides... you can’t take your eyes off Vernon, even if you wanted to. He looks so soft. Like he needs to sleep for a whole twenty four hours, and he must feel like it too, but he came here first. 

“So,” he starts, tapping his right thumb against the inside of his left elbow. (The reason why he came so quickly starts to become evident. He just couldn’t wait to ask.) “You don’t have to commit to anything right now…” The silver of one of his rings glints with every tiny movement. “…but, I was just wondering–”

Smiling at him over the top of your coffee cup, it feels like your heart could burst.

“I was just… wondering… if you’d thought any more about letting me take you out?”

You’ve been texting him almost every day since he left. He’s sent you a hundred and one pictures of statues and cool buildings and nice looking food and the sky, and far more animals than you think you’ve ever actually seen in real life. You’ve spoken to him about your strange customers. What’s going on with your friends. Sent him recommendations for songs that you discovered on obscure albums that you pulled out to play over the speakers. 

One night after one of his shows, he called you. He was a little bit drunk at the time, chilling in his hotel room with a pizza as he informed you that he’d snuck out of an after-party super early but couldn’t get to sleep. With an audible pout, he went on to confess that he was feeling kind of lonely, that he just wanted to hear your voice: one thing led to another and you stayed up talking to him until he passed out at nearly 4 o’clock in the morning.

To put it simply… 

“I’d still really like that,” you say. It’s incredible to you that you can see every one of his features brighten up. 

“Okay,” he breathes, unwinding his arms and pushing his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants now instead. “Okay, cool. I’ll… text you later? We’ll figure something out?”

“All right,” you agree. “Now go rest up, okay?”

He laughs as he swears that he’ll go back home and get some sleep, and with that, Vernon takes his leave. You’re once again alone, but this time you have a drink that could only hope to make you feel as energised as he does, and a treat nowhere near as sweet as him. 

You aren’t complaining, though, and neither are the two men that miraculously reappear the moment the door closes again. 

The smile Vernon leaves on your face doesn’t falter for the rest of your day.

You suppose a big part of the reason you haven’t dated anyone in a while is because you can’t stand the ‘talking stage’. That weird little limbo where you’re never sure if it’s too early to make certain jokes, where you’re checking and second-guessing all your texts, where you can’t figure out if someone’s really into you or if they’re just blowing up your phone to pass the time. The awkward small talk. The ‘getting to know each other’ part. The ‘why haven’t they replied yet — was it something I said?’ anxiety. 

Thankfully, with Vernon, that’s not really something you have to worry about. 

While he was away, you learned that he’s the kind of guy who just spews random facts at you in the middle of his day and then forgets to check his messages for three hours. Sometimes those facts are interesting things about himself. Other times, you’ve known him to shoot you a text just to announce [ just found out tigers have striped skin as well as fur. wild ].

(On one such occasion, Chan caught you giggling at your phone in the middle of a quiet Thursday afternoon, zooming in on a picture of Vernon’s heart shaped birthmark. This put a swift end to checking your messages while you’re at work.)

[ btw, im allergic to peanuts ], he told you one evening. Completely unprompted, just after dinner time. You spilled half of your glass of juice down your front in panic when you put two and two together and scrambled to ask him if he was okay. [ near miss, dw about it! just felt important haha ], he replied, and your response was just a picture of your newly stained t-shirt and a request for him to never do that to you again. 

He can drive — at least, he has his licence — but he doesn’t have a car. He chooses public transport, and he tells you that it’s because he likes not having to worry about fuel prices and it’s ‘healing’ to zone out of reality on the train until he reaches his stop. He tells you that he came up with the melody and two verses of one of his favourite original songs on the bus to his parents house, and one time, he dropped a giant cockroach on a class field trip to the zoo because it tickled when it crawled over his palm and he didn’t like it. 

(You later discovered that this piece of information was triggered by the appearance of a large bug in his shower.)

Last night, as you settled into bed after a whole evening of back and forth, he told you that he has all five of the top scores at the piano game in the arcade downtown, and that he has an approximate 75% success rate on claw machines. When you replied saying you hadn’t been to an arcade in about two years, he was horrified. Enough to send 7 broken heart emojis back to back, as individual messages. [ shakespeare himself couldnt write a tragedy that sad ], he said. 

But, harrowed as he was by your admission, it did give him an idea. 

That idea is exactly how you end up standing side-by-side at a basketball shootout game on Friday night. It’s how he ends up winning one of those cute reversible octopuses — true enough, on a claw machine — which he gives to you immediately. It’s how you watch him hunch over a pinball machine for twenty five minutes before he loses his ball, how you end up tied after four games of air hockey, at which point he calls it quits while citing a ‘cramping hand’.

It’s also how you deliver his ass to him in not one, but two rounds of bowling.

“All right — all right,” Vernon laughs, holding both his hands up in defeat as your final ball takes out all ten pins at the end of the alley. “You made your point. Damn.”

You shrug your shoulders as you walk back in his direction, picking up your glass from the table and sipping your soda through your straw. 

(Though the arcade has an entire menu of cocktails, some of which you’ve never even heard of, the thought of navigating an evening alone with him under the influence of alcohol was totally unappealing after last time. Thankfully, Vernon agreed. You quietly think that being stone cold sober has made tonight even more enjoyable.)

“I told you,” you say when you finally sit down. He puts an arm around your shoulders straight away. Naturally, like it’s instinct. Like it’s a position he’s adopted a few hundred times before. “I’m undefeated.”

“We’ll see,” he says, tapping out a rhythm on the ball of your shoulder. “I still think you just got lucky.”

“So,” Vernon says once your leisurely stroll back lands you outside his place, kicking the toe of his left sneaker into the concrete. “What… are the chances that I get a do-over?”

You blink at him a few times, tilting your head. “What do you mean, a do-over?” 

Does he not think this went well? Gods, it’s probably the best first date you’ve ever had, but what on Earth else could he mean by that? Did you say something earlier, and not realise? Has he not had fun? What does he m–

“I got these new coffee beans,” he says. “While I was away — and I figured something out with the-… the machine? So— ”

Ah. There he is.

You smirk at him, patting the outside of his bicep and rolling your eyes. When you glance down, Vernon is pulling out his key, thumbing over the ridges down the one side. He reaches for the door, happy to take your teasing as confirmation that yes, you’ll come up. Yes, he gets his ‘do-over’...

…but leave it to you to fall for the world’s dorkiest rockstar. 

As he slips the key into his apartment door, there’s a steady pressure against the small of your back: the same one that’s been there ever since he gestured for you to step out of the elevator before him. One of his palms rests over the fabric of your t-shirt and you feel weirdly tingly because of it. He gently guides you inside once the door falls open and doesn’t move away when it’s locked again behind him. 

With an anticipatory shiver, you turn around to face him. You make a point to leave just a matter of inches between your chests. To have your eyes soft, patiently waiting.

Vernon’s hands are - for the first time ever - cold when his fingers hesitantly come up to either side of your face, tilting your head up so that he can see you better, unobstructed by any shadows. You gasp at the contrast between them and your flushed, warm cheeks. He swallows thickly at the sound.

“Is this… okay?” he asks, gaze darting between the space separating your eyes from your lips. “We can slow it down, if you want. I just—...”

Your own hands find home against his chest in response, fingers curling into the muscle beneath them. Not harshly, definitely not so much that it could hurt — just enough that it makes him puff himself up a little bigger. Enough to make him square his shoulders as he drags a thumb over the corner of your mouth. 

“Vernon,” you say quietly, pressing him backwards. Balling his t-shirt into your fists, you send him stumbling over his own feet before his shoulders find the wood of the front door. A quiet grunt escapes him on impact, but he just holds you closer. “Shut up ‘n’ kiss me. Please.”

Clumsiness aside, the moment he obediently ducks his head and presses his smiling mouth to yours, you feel weightless. Even when you tilt forward onto your toes to meet him halfway, it’s as if you’re not even touching the ground anymore: clouds beneath your feet have you floating. Everything about it is so very different from the last time.

It’s so much easier. Not just for you, either – you can feel it from him as well. Your collective baggage has been left out in the hall, barricading the door, shutting out the hesitation and nervousness and leaving you together, wholly alone, to just… be.

Vernon gets increasingly more brave as the seconds tick by. When you separate for air, his head tilts the other way, lips a little parted, hot breaths fanning over your skin as he meets you again, and again, and again. It’s the perfect give and take. Firm one second, waiting for you to chase him the next. The soft sounds he starts to make are amplified as his tongue presses against your bottom lip: he tests the waters, groaning into the heat of your mouth when you so happily invite him into it. He drinks you up for all you’re worth. 

One of your hands uncurls from his chest and moves up to his head instead, threading into his hair at the top of his neck. It feels just as soft as it’s always looked, sliding through your fingers. A gentle pull makes him whine. He draws away from you. His lips are pink and shine with the gloss you touched up in the elevator’s mirror, his lids are heavy, his pupils blown, and looking up at him feels like staring into the sun; you physically can’t keep your eyes open, but it’s so hard to look away. 

You tuck yourself into his neck as a compromise, laying gentle pecks everywhere you can reach. His aftershave leaves a bitter taste on your tongue as you touch the tip to a stretch of skin just beneath the harsh cut of his jawline, but the way he shudders and drops his hold down to your waist makes the sting in the back of your mouth all worth it. You only stop when one of his hands sinks lower still and he squeezes at your ass, making your eyes roll back.

He mistakes your surprise for hesitation, though.

“Is this… okay?” he asks, tipping his head back and pressing his crown into the door. Though he doesn’t withdraw his palm from your backside, he also doesn’t pinch at you again. You press your hips backwards, pushing into his touch to encourage him, with this green light he starts to knead at your cheek over the top of your skirt.

“You have no idea how hard it is to keep my hands to myself around you, do you?” You say, slipping one up the hem of his t-shirt as if to prove your point, splaying your fingers out over his stomach. 

He takes a shallow breath, hovering with it in his lungs, holding back from saying something. You get there before he can.

“I want you,” you say certainly, pulling back from where you’ve been nestled into his shoulder so that you can look him in the eyes again. He releases that breath and his face flushes when his eyes find yours, moving both of his hands back up to your waist, tightly gripping at you as if his life depends on it as he nods. 

“I just… I really don’t wanna mess this up,” he adds quietly. “I—”

When you kiss him again, hoping to further assure that you’re just as into this as he is, he reciprocates, sure. You can tell straight away that there’s a little less bite though — a stiffness to him. He doesn’t relax into you the same way he did a few minutes ago. 

“What’s wrong?” you ask, falling back onto your heels. Is this because of the way things went last time, or are you going too fast for him? Selfishly, you hadn’t considered that could be a barrier. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want, you know that right? It’s okay.”

You make to step away from Vernon, unwinding your arms from around him to give him some space but he refuses to let you go too far. His hold on you is just as firm as ever.

“Trust me, I want to,” he says. “It’s just–...”

You stay silent, waiting for him to finish. He chews at his bottom lip, his blush deepening right in front of your eyes. To try and steady him, you lay one of your palms over each of his biceps, saying, “Whatever it is – it’s all right.”

“I just… haven’t been with anyone since…”

And when you laugh, it’s not at him (at least, not for the reason a fly on the wall might initially assume). You drop your forehead down onto the muscle of his chest, feeling his heart’s erratic rhythm underneath his clothes as you loop one arm back up around his neck.

“I thought you were about to tell me something awful,” you chide him through your giggles, lightly swatting at his shoulder. He starts to loosen up beneath you, his own body beginning to shake with laughter too. Those strong arms pull you flush against him, the gentle shift of his weight from one foot to another rocking you both side-to-side. “Like– like you were secretly married or you realised you didn’t actually like me, or something. Jesus.”

He stays quiet for another few seconds, but even without speaking, you can feel how he shakes his head above you. You look back up at his face and brush his hair out of his eyes, fingers lingering on his brow when you’re done.

“It’s okay,” you tell him for the third time. The last wisps of anxiety start to fade from his eyes, replaced with the same look he’s been wearing since he showed up at your apartment door earlier this evening. “I don’t care — I promise, I’ll go easy on you.”

The kiss that follows lands hard and with it, Vernon succeeds in wiping your brain empty. You can barely remember what you were even giggling about a few seconds later. 

“Don’t want you to go easy,” he insists against your lips. Then, he’s wallowing up your breathy sighs as he licks into your mouth again, pressing your tongue with his own, reminding you that he’s absolutely not incompetent, just rusty. 

When you make it into his bedroom, confessions and various articles of your clothing forgotten out in the hallway, you separate from each other long enough for you to be able to to lay one hand on his bare chest and push him down onto the mattress. He bounces on the foam and pushes up on one elbow, watching as you sink down to your knees and press kisses down his stomach while your hands deftly take care of the button on his jeans. 

“Tell me if you want me to stop, okay?” You say to him as he lifts his hips up and lets you pull both his jeans and his boxers down in one sharp movement. 

“M’not gonna want you to,” he laughs breathlessly, pushing a hand through his hair as he kicks the remainder of his clothes all the way off and nudges them away to the side. “But yeah. Okay.”

He looks so pretty like this and you can’t help but think he’s even prettier when the first time you curl your fingers around his length, his jaw falls slack and his fingers curl into the bedding underneath him. You drink him in and he watches you do it; your mouth is watering, desperate to feel him press down on your tongue, and you feel a pull towards him that you’ve never felt towards anyone before. 

“God,” you whisper, shuffling on your knees to get a little closer. 

“Okay?” Vernon asks. He tilts his head to the side and you nod up at him.

“Just… had a feeling you’d be…” you trail off, tugging a few times to feel its thickness in your fingers. Why are you mesmerised by it, a little? What the hell has gotten into you? “But it’s actually bigger, and—”

He laughs quietly and falls back onto the bed, crossing an arm over his eyes. “Shut up,” he groans. 

“Yes, sir.”

You lean towards him and gather saliva on your tongue, dragging it from base to tip before closing your lips around the head. He gasps softly and holds onto his next breath, angling his head back further; you give a satisfied hum and slide a little further down. 

The glide is made smoother by the spit your tongue left behind and that which mixes with his pre-cum in your mouth. As you start to bob up and down, some dribbles out past your lips so you start to move your hand, too, smearing the mess all over his cock. When it bumps the back of your throat — and on assessment, you realise there’s daylight between your lips and your fist — you squeeze your eyes closed and whimper softly, holding him in place while you adjust before you can take him deeper. 

“Fuck— just like that,” he gasps out in a shattered groan when you start to move a little more fluidly, no longer too intimidated by your gag reflex preventing him from slipping down your throat. Your hand and your mouth work in tandem to get him riled. Every sound he makes feels like someone injects lust straight into your veins. When you look up at him from between your dewy lashes, you ponder that you’d watch him fall apart from this angle a hundred times a night forever and still not get bored. 

Your jaw starts to ache from the thickness of having him in your mouth and the way he’s restraining himself from fucking his hips up to meet you tells you that he’s too polite to ask you for more. You suck harshly one last time before pulling away with a ‘pop’, using only your hand to pump his length as you shift down to gently suck one of his balls into your mouth. 

The sound he makes is so fucking melodic. You think he’s made a similar one before when he lifts into a falsetto, and you’ve never felt more powerful than you do right now. Knowing you have someone with such a commanding presence eating out of your palm could really do something dangerous to your ego. It’s a bit of a miracle, therefore, that you recognise his desperate tapping at your shoulder, but the second you feel it you settle back from him, looking up at his impossibly tense abs and his blissed-out face.

You catch on quickly and feel your features split into a grin at the realisation. When it takes him a second, you know it’s because he’s still trying to remember the mechanisms it takes to breathe. Bless his heart. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, pushing himself to sit upright and running a hand through his hair. “It-… fuck, that was so…”

“What happened to ‘I don’t want you to go easy’ huh?” you tease, resting your chin on the top of his left thigh, grinning up at him. 

“I’m gonna come if you keep going like that,” he chuckles, shaking his head in disbelief at himself. “And trust me — I want to, but…” He swallows hard. “Not yet.”

You nod slowly up at him, starting to get up off the floor. You stop in your tracks when he says, “I’ve gotta taste you first. Please.”

Maybe it speaks too much to the quality of some of your previous lovers, but his desperation takes you a bit by surprise. You blink at him, ignoring how your thighs burn with the position you’ve frozen in. 

“If— that’s okay?” He adds. “I’ve… been thinking about it? A lot. Especially since-”

“Shut up,” you breathe, finally standing all the way up. He shuffles back further onto the bed and you quickly move to straddle across his hips, one hand coming up to hold his jaw in place when you’re in place. “Of course it’s okay.”

You lean in for an impossibly needy kiss, only breaking away when you physically can’t breathe anymore. Vernon’s eyes flutter open at the same time as yours do and as you reach behind yourself with one hand to unclasp your bra, he looks at you like you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him.  

(He tells you that you are no fewer than three times before you fall asleep a few hours later.)

thank u so much for reading, i hope you enjoyed it! as always, likes, reblogs, comments & feedback are so so appreciated. there's approx a scene and a half left for part 3 and then we're all done with this baby! stay tuned for that, coming soon.<3 p.s. no i will not apologise to jaehyun, this is what he gets for making me feel insane. thanks !

[henrioo]

✦ ── FALLING IN LOVE: SANJI

Sanji x Gn! Reader

Synopsis: Where slowly Sanji realizes that his feelings for you have changed

Warnings: Pure cuteness, nothing really alarming, just a passionate and jealous Sanji

Word Count: 1,4k

Notes: This should have been an ask, but when I finished it I realized it was very different from what I had been asked and decided to do another one. But so you don't miss it, here it is being posted, I hope you like it. Sorry for the English

Notes edit: Pronouns have been updated to neuter thanks to @waitingmydemons , thanks sweetie

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ• ────── ✦ ────── •

It's really not a secret that Sanji is a bit emotional and has a tendency to fall in love with pretty people, so when you introduced yourself as a new crew member with that bright yet nervous smile, no one would really be surprised if he had hearts eyes and a wide mouth.

Of course, initially he wouldn't think he was really in love, after all he doesn't consider himself a one-man man. That's why he tries to act as normal as he can around you, still having the aura of a lover and servant who would do anything for you, but also trying to convey credibility that he wasn't really in love.

Of course, he can't run away from it for long, but everything starts much slower than it seems, see:

First it starts with your kindness, you were more than excited to meet all of the crew and become friends with them, so you would walk up and down asking if you could be of assistance or just spend some time chatting to find out more about the people you now live with.

First Sanji didn't want to ask you for help, he didn't want to burden you with cooking and he also wanted to try to impress you by showing how he can handle the entire kitchen by himself. But you insisted that you could at least be of some use, so he sighed deeply and asked you to cut up some vegetables and occasionally stir certain pots or add ingredients. Nothing that could really be difficult if you were only pretending to want to help.

You might not be the best in socializing, but you were definitely doing your best to make the conversation flow naturally for both of you. So Sanji also made an effort so that you could talk calmly, he would ask a little more about your village and journey, always being careful not to press where he shouldn't, sometimes he would ask about your hobbies and food tastes, nothing really deep but that still counted.

You weren't far behind, you loved to talk and talking to Sanji was so easy! You asked about the restaurant, about Zeff, about his fighting style and his passion for cooking, even if you couldn't have known that there was a much deeper past there, you were pleased with what you discovered the first few times you started talking.

As the weeks passed and you were intimate enough with everyone, Sanji initially thought you'd drift away a bit, focused on doing your own thing and settling in on the ship. But what would be his surprise when you showed up in the kitchen not long after asking if he could stay there and keep you company while you studied some things. He didn't know what that feeling was, but his legs went weak, his heart skipped a beat, his stomach dropped, and heat surged through his body. He smiled and stammered out a statement as he tried to get back in control.

And you came back the next day, and also the next, you walked around the islands together, on the rounds... It was strange, at least for Sanji. He was close to all the members, that's clear, but he didn't feel that close to any of them. Every time you got close to him, his heart fluttered and he started stuttering, not knowing exactly how or what to say. He just needed to talk to you, whatever the subject.

He couldn't be falling in love with you, could he? Of course he thought you were attractive, your hair was magnificent, your eyes were sparkling and your smile was amazing. He also really liked your personality, your love for the crew and their tastes, your focus and determination, how you never give up on what you believed to be right. Of course, he also felt strange next to you, with his legs shaking, his stomach nervous, his hands sweating and the lack of words. But that was all just because you were a new person compared to the others, that would pass with time, wouldn't it?

Definitely not. But he only saw it in the first jealousy crisis he had, you should spend the day on the island together since you wanted to cook something and needed the help of someone experienced in that. But just in the nick of time Usopp needed your help with art supplies and you ended up leaving your object behind, prioritizing helping your friend before that. Of course Sanji didn't mind, it was just one day, you would have many more. So what was the problem?

He didn't know it, but as he walked around town looking for supplies he couldn't stop thinking about you, how much more fun it would be to run around the market stalls listening to your beautiful voice. How you could stop by some cafe and eat together while chatting, even how nice it would be to cook with you afterwards, teaching you what he loved so much. He muttered irritably, taking another cigarette, perhaps the fifth in an hour, as he stopped in a square to collect his thoughts.

That's when he saw you. You weren't together with Usopp, but in front of some stalls, buying jewelry and small weapons, he immediately smiled and thought about approaching. Perhaps now you were free and could spend the rest of the day together, but the events that followed had his stomach twisting as he bit down on the cigarette until he tasted it on his tongue. A man approached you with a huge bouquet of flowers, he appeared to be a civilian and by his clothes perhaps he worked as a florist or gardener. The man smiled and offered you a beautiful bouquet of roses, you smiled with slightly flushed cheeks and accepted, the man would not miss the chance to pass his hand to your shoulder as he approached.

Sanji expected to see discomfort on your face, maybe despair, anything he could use as an excuse to go over there and kick that man until his face was unrecognizable. But you didn't. Instead you looked like you were having fun, laughing and getting red in the cheeks at everything the other said, Sanji felt his stomach sinking and hurting, what was that? He grabbed his bags and walked back to the ship, not in the mood for shopping anymore that day.

Robin was in the kitchen as she had stayed to watch the ship, she greeted him quickly without taking her eyes off the book she was reading. He responded with as much cheer as he had, none, and then proceeded to unpack everything for storage, although he really hadn't bought much for being back early. He could feel Robin's gaze on her back, perhaps it was obvious how awkward he was, but the man didn't wish to trouble the beautiful lady with feelings he didn't even understand.

"How was your day on the island with (y/n)?" She asked quietly, but Sanji felt his entire body shiver and go rigid.

"Ahn… They couldn’t go, busy with Usopp I guess" he tried to dodge the subject and replied in the most ordinary tone, although there was a tremor in his voice.

"Oh, I see" he thanked her for the next few minutes of silence, maybe she would just forget about it and he could pretend that nothing happened "is that why you are so upset?" He nearly dropped the plate he was washing.

"I'm not upset" he said that to who? For Robin? For himself? Who was he trying to fool?

"Hm…" she hummed "Whatever you say" a good quality of the woman is that she wouldn't insist on these matters, she knew when to withdraw if necessary "But you can talk to me if you want" Sanji smiled appreciatively for having such a generous friend.

"I just…" he shouldn't have said it, he didn't even know what he was feeling! "I… I saw them with someone else besides Usopp… They looked happy" he mumbled not really knowing what the problem was, what exactly was he angry about?

"Oh… I see" he could hear the woman's smile.

"Understood what?" He asked, nervous and curious.

"Hm? Didn't you notice, cook-san?" She had a lively, light tone.

"No?" he asked, confused.

"You are jealous." She finished and it didn't take long to get up, ready to leave. Sanji is immobilized, completely paralyzed and not knowing what to say, let alone what to do. Robin must have noticed his face in shock and laughed at the door, then spoke calmly "Don't worry, it's normal to be jealous when we're in love…"

Then she left, leaving the man alone, and for the first time since you joined the crew, Sanji realized something: he was in love with you.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ• ────── ✦ ────── •

Notes: Well that was it! It was the first thing I wrote after my short break so I don't know if it was really good, but I liked it even though it was short. The next stories will be the ask

Also I'm planning to start a series of imagines so that's why orders are closed, hope you understand!